Worth a Thousand Words

by Brigit Young

  “Your dad is just going through a time,” Tillie’s mom used to say to her when she’d ask why Dad didn’t like pushing her around in the wheelchair.

  “Is he scared of wheels?” Tillie had asked.

  Sometimes there were questions her mom simply did not answer. There was a whole world of mysteries in her family’s small, one-floor home.

  Her birthday was in May, the perfect time for outdoor parties. For her last two birthdays, her dad had organized a soccer game with their neighbors, her grandparents, and her cousins, and so, after Tillie had blown out the candles, she asked her dad when they were heading to the park to play. Instead of answering her, Tillie’s dad sighed and stayed quiet, as he had been all day, as he had been when everyone else was singing “Happy Birthday” at full voice.

  “Let’s go after we eat,” her grandpa answered for him. He spoke to Tillie but looked right at her dad when he added, “You can be the referee, kiddo.”

  When everyone was leaving, Tillie heard her grandpa and dad talking in the kitchen.

  “Come on,” her grandpa was saying. “Look at her. She’s smiling. She’s fine.”

  “She’s in pain, Dad. Constantly. She can’t do regular stuff, like ride a bicycle, or—”

  “Just snap out of it,” her grandpa said gruffly.

  “Dad, just leave,” her dad said. “I’m not going.”

  “Kid, at some point you’ll have to accept that accidents happen. You didn’t put that ice on the road. Anyone could have been driving.”

  “Stop it, Dad. Stop it,” her dad interrupted, with a sharpness that was followed by silence.

  Before the game began, Tillie’s grandpa handed her a box. It wasn’t wrapped. It was just cardboard, its sides closed up with duct tape.

  As she ripped the tape off, her grandpa said, “Someone needs to watch this game carefully so we know what really happened. You know your cousin Aaron can be a wily goalie.”

  Inside the box sat something that looked like a little robot: gray rectangles stacked upon one another with a black circle of glass in the middle that reminded Tillie of a cyclops eye.

  “It’s a Polaroid camera,” her grandpa said with a smile. “Had it for years. Got it fixed up the other day. They told me it should work just fine now, and that we can get more film for it on eBay. Give it a try.”

  Tillie turned the camera toward her face to look at it more closely and a flash of light blinded her. She had accidentally taken a picture of herself. She laughed. From the bottom of the camera, a tiny slip of plastic paper shot out. It began to transform into shapes and colors right before her eyes, and slowly the outline of her own delighted face began to appear; her hazel eyes smiled and the freckles on her nose reflected the sun like brown sparkles. She had taken her first photograph.

  “Try again,” her grandpa said. “Point your camera at something. Something out there.” He motioned to the landscape of the park.

  Tillie lifted the viewfinder to her eye. She landed on a towering tree with sprawling roots. When the image printed and came to life before her, Tillie gasped.

  “You have a good eye,” her grandpa said, looking over her shoulder at the picture. “I figured that’d be the case.” He patted her back. “Try to get a shot of me scoring the winning goal.” He winked at her and ran off to start the game.

  That day, Tillie caught every moment she could: a high five between her cousin and grandpa, her aunt’s laughter, her grandpa running, her mom posing with the ball after scoring. At nightfall, Tillie flipped through all her Polaroids and felt like she had made a million paintings with just her eye and the tip of her pointer finger, like magic. As she leaned out the window to try to take a Polaroid of the starry Illinois sky, she saw that someone had put the soccer ball out on the curb by the trash.

  It was her dad’s job to take out the garbage.

  Since that birthday, Tillie had collected several more cameras, but had never seen a soccer ball in the house again.

  * * *

  “Honey? There’s a boy on my phone asking for you! Did you hear me? There’s a boy on the phone!” Tillie heard outside her door, along with a series of frenzied-sounding knocks.

  Tillie was busy ignoring her homework and playing around with her film camera. She had been trying to capture the way the crescent moon sat in the sky. The word “boy” caused her to take the shot at the wrong moment, and she was sure the effect would be ruined.

  Before she even had a chance to say it was okay, her mom came into her room, holding the cell phone against her chest like a baby doll. She had her palm over the mouthpiece and she mouthed the words without sound:

  There’s a boy on the phone!

  Tillie grabbed the phone and shut the door before her mom could give one of her signature concerned looks.

  She slammed the phone against her ear, and hissed out, “What are you doing calling my mom?”

  “Hey! How’d you know it was me? Your mom seems nice.” Jake’s voice sounded upbeat, pleased.

  “How did you even get her number?” Tillie asked.

  “What do you mean? School directory, of course,” he said, as if it were obvious.

  Tillie had never used the school directory.

  “I asked around about your full name, Matilda Green. And the directory has all the parents’ numbers. I meant to ask for yours earlier. Hey, can you text it to me from this phone or something?”

  Tillie hesitated. She went to the door and opened it a crack to see if her mom was eavesdropping, but the hallway was empty. “Okay, fine,” she said. “And it’s Tillie. So what do you want now?”

  “My mom was looking over bank statements tonight,” Jake whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “Earlier tonight I saw her poring over some papers, and normally I’d assume it was just work, but she looked … extra stressed. And my mom is like Clint Eastwood or something, I mean, she’s tough. Stoic. But there she was—rubbing her head and stuff, sighing. Anyway, when she went to the bathroom, I did a total ninja move and flew over the couch, checked what she was looking at, and saw the papers were bank statements.” He paused as if waiting for Tillie to respond with shock. “Family finances, Tillie. That’s pretty telling, don’t you think? Like maybe my dad is in some kind of trouble and we need money to help him?”

  “I guess,” Tillie said. “Isn’t it almost tax season or something, though?”

  Jake groaned. “Tillie, these things are cumulative, okay? Taken one at a time they’re not a big deal, but add them all together! Hey, I think I know the first place we should investigate,” he continued.

  “I told you earlier, I do this all…”

  “Alone,” Jake interrupted. “I know. But the thing is … my presence is kind of crucial in this. It’s my dad, after all…”

  Tillie heard some grumbling and shuffling on the other end of the line, and then Jake yelled out in a singsong voice as perky as a cheerleader’s, “I’m okay, Mom! It’s fine! Yeah, I’m on with a friend from school! Sorry about that,” he said back into the phone, sounding like the real Jake again. “I’m trying to act like everything is even better than normal. I could tell she sensed my suspicion about Toronto when she told me. But if she’s lying to me about something, the more innocent she thinks I am, the more I can actually uncover. And it’s working. She never would’ve left those bank statements out for me to look at if she knew that I knew something was up.”

  “Look,” Tillie said, “I’m not ‘on call’ here. I don’t know what you think I do with my time, but it’s not all Lost and Found.”

  She could hear the sad lie in her voice and was sure he could, too. And, truthfully, she’d been thinking about Jake’s dad all afternoon. Despite his wild, unrealistic tales about all of it, he was probably right that there was something there that needed unraveling.

  Tillie still heard noise in the background, but it sounded like more than one person. “It’s hard to hear you.”

  “My mom and I have both been watching TV a lot since
Dad disappeared,” he said. “He’s the talker in the family. Without him around, we just binge-watch and play on our phones next to each other.”

  “He’s the talker?” Tillie heard herself asking. She tried to imagine her dad being chatty and couldn’t.

  She headed toward her laptop and absentmindedly clicked through the photos from the day.

  “Oh, yeah. He can tell jokes like nobody’s business. Hey, here’s one of my favorites: You can’t run in a campground. Only ran.” He waited. Tillie didn’t answer. “Why?” he continued. “Because it’s always past tents!”

  Jake laughed and Tillie couldn’t help but join in a little. “Grammar humor,” she said.

  Tillie clicked on the photo she’d taken earlier that day of Jake’s friends across the room in the cafeteria. A couple of them looked surprised that he was over there, talking to her, while the others didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Yeah. Anyway,” Jake went on, “weird about the bank statements, right?”

  Tillie wished he’d ask her what she did besides Lost and Found. She’d think of something.

  “That really could be random.”

  “I was thinking,” Jake said, ignoring her dissent, “since my dad was so funny and everybody loved him, maybe we could go talk to a couple of his friends at work tomorrow. Maybe they do know where he is—maybe it’s only Jim who’s lying. Or maybe Jim really thinks my dad is using his vacation time—though I doubt it—but we could chat him up and get some clues. Collect evidence. Or however it is you find people.”

  Things, not people.

  “And then we could go somewhere he might have gone. Like the happy places from the pictures. I was thinking of the house he and my mom first lived in together, on Maple Street. If he’s hiding somewhere, on the run from somebody or something, if that’s what’s going on, I know that’s where he’d go to leave me a clue if he had a chance. I mean, I know it’s unlikely—other people live there now. But still, we’re short on leads, right? Plus,” Jake added, his words slowing and softening, “I know it sounds dumb, but whenever we’d drive by that house, he’d always talk about moving back to that neighborhood someday. He loved it there.” He paused. “I’m really worried, Tillie,” he said.

  A moment of quiet passed between them. Tillie could hear his breath.

  “So could we meet tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Okay.” The word tumbled out. “But I’m always supposed to come home right after school,” Tillie heard herself saying, as if it were a disembodied voice. It was odd to be making after-school plans with someone who wasn’t her mom. “So I don’t know how I could get around that.”

  “Hmm…” Jake said, and she imagined him doing something silly like stroking a fake goatee. “I’ll have this figured out by tomorrow. Your parents won’t have a clue, trust me. And hey,” he added, “think of how many photos you’ll get. And not just of dirty hallways and lunch lines, but, ya know, the big, bad world.”

  Tillie sighed. “Fine.”

  “Great!” he nearly yelled. “After school! Tomorrow!”

  Hearing Jake’s voice, away from the noise of the hallway and directed solely at her, Tillie could suddenly picture him in pajamas in front of the TV, or reading comic books alone, or answering his mom’s questions about his day over dinner, not just goofing off for all the kids at school. It was so strange she almost giggled.

  * * *

  After texting Jake her number and then immediately deleting the text so her mom wouldn’t see it, Tillie got up to hand her mom’s phone back to her and to tell her to please never say anything like “There’s a boy on the phone” again. As she opened the door she saw her mom standing right outside of it, pretending she hadn’t been listening, trying to look like she’d just been heading to her own room, but she’d obviously come sneaking back after Tillie had checked the hallway.

  Tillie glared at her.

  “Who was that, honeypie?” she asked with a smile. Her mom looked so much like a mom sometimes.

  With a step-drop, step-drop, step-drop, Tillie shuffled right past her down the hall to find her dad.

  As if on cue, he walked out of the bathroom with a book in hand, absorbed, as her mom said to her back, “What’s with all this about lost and found? Did you lose something? Was it those gloves? Please don’t tell me I need to worry about your hands getting cold this March!”

  Her dad didn’t look up from his reading and walking.

  Tillie turned to him, shifting her weight toward her good leg. They all stood crammed together in the hallway between their rooms.

  “Dad! I got a phone call, and Mom listened to my conversation through the door!”

  “Hmm? Wait, what’d you say? What’s the problem?” her dad asked, as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “She was on the phone with a boy,” her mom said to her dad, but really to her. “He called on my phone. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay. I—”

  “Mom! He’s just from school! It was homework! It’s … normal!” Tillie sputtered. She looked toward her dad.

  He let out a tiny exhalation, the ghost of a laugh. “I’m sure it was just homework,” he said to her mom. “No need to worry,” he added, and he left the conversation, back to his book, into the bedroom, door shut for the night.

  Tillie’s mom gave her a look of apology, but whether it was for her dad’s indifference or the eavesdropping, Tillie didn’t know. She gave her mom one last frown, turned away, and shut herself in her room.

  Why wouldn’t you have to worry, Dad? Tillie thought. You don’t have to worry about a boy liking your weird, limping daughter? That’s funny to you?

  A surge of pain shot down her leg that was so bad she had to lie down. Resigned to a night of discomfort, she did her usual B-grade job on her math and geography homework, hating every minute of it.

  That night, before turning off the lights, Tillie looked toward her nightstand at her now-broken Polaroid camera and, sitting beside it, the framed shot of her grandpa playing soccer. It had been one of the last times she had ever seen him.

  She closed her eyes and wished that photographs could be time machines. As she fell asleep, she remembered the perfect family photos that Jake had shown her that afternoon, and how he probably knew exactly how that wish felt.

  5

  Hiding Something

  The next afternoon at lunch, Jake presented Tillie with his plan for her cover story. Tillie would pretend to join a school club, a club any parent would be happy about their kid joining. “Somewhere you make friends and you learn—a parent’s dream,” Jake had said. “Like … Salsa Dancing or Meditation Club?” Jake visibly shivered. “All that sitting still and breathing … Yikes.”

  She shook her head at both suggestions. “Salsa? Really?” She motioned with her head down to her leg. It’s not as if she couldn’t do some Tillie version of the salsa; it’s just that it would physically hurt. And because of that, her mom would never stand for it. But Jake couldn’t understand that.

  “Oh. Right.”

  They decided on Art Club—vague, but believable enough. It would meet on Mondays and Thursdays. Tillie wasn’t sure it would work at all, but when she texted her mom that Ms. Martinez had asked her to join the new Art Club, and it started that day, so she had to stay at school and would take the town bus home, she was surprised to find that her mom responded, Ok!!!! Sounds amazing, honey!!! Have so much fun!!!

  “See?” Jake said. “Moms love clubs.”

  Apparently, Jake’s mom didn’t care much about where he went right after school as long as he told her his general plans. It was his dad who’d been the one who paid attention. But he felt he needed a cover story, too, just in case, so he would also be joining the imaginary club.

  “So you told her Ms. Martinez runs fake Art Club?” Jake asked between bites of pizza.

  “Yeah,” Tillie said, putting French fries into her mouth with one hand and flipping through pictures on her camera with the other.

  “Ms. Martinez
loves me,” Jake went on, seemingly unable to end a conversation quickly. “Told my parents at the parent-teacher conferences that my work in class is ‘original.’ You better believe I kept that one in my brain’s compliment file, along with my rabbi telling me I’m one of his favorite kids, and all the times my mom called me handsome.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down at Tillie.

  Tillie choked a little on her French fry. “You’re a total weirdo! Your ‘brain’s compliment file’?!”

  “Hey, I’m very special,” he said. “Everyone in my immediate family says so. Though, to be fair, ‘original’ probably really meant ‘his-drawings-look-like-chicken-scratch-and-I-need-a-nice-way-to-say-so.’ Ha!” He laughed with the food in his mouth showing. “And she’s the prettiest teacher I’ve ever seen. Makes Ms. Rudolph look like a goblin. Though that’s not hard. Did they have to find someone who was alive during the Civil War to teach us about the Civil War or something?” Jake chuckled again. Then he patted Tillie on the back, a little too hard, and went off to his friends.

  * * *

  After meeting at the flagpole, they began walking down Hillberry Street toward Lake Avenue, where Jake’s dad’s office building was.

  “So here are my two theories,” Jake said as they began their long trek.

  Just like everybody who walked with Tillie, Jake’s pace kept him slightly in front of her, but he seemed to remember every few steps that he needed to slow down.

  “I think he might have seen something, something really bad, and has to lay low for a while, even from me. Ya know, like in that old movie Enemy of the State.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “The main guy ends up in possession of some footage of a political assassination, and the whole government is out to get him,” Jake told her matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, that’s—” Before Tillie could say “ridiculous,” Jake jumped in.