Worth a Thousand Words

by Brigit Young

  The story panned out. She’d gone over it again and again. The lost dad, the cheating husband, the reunion of the glasses with the blind artist. None of it made sense, exactly, but it was certain nonetheless; Jake’s dad was not on the run, or kidnapped, or a spy, or dead. It was much worse. He was choosing to be somewhere else. To be happy somewhere else. He must have been there, at Ms. Martinez’s home, the whole time. And Jake’s mom must have known. She must have known everything. Jim and Cubicle Man were probably just trying to be good friends, covering for their buddy. Cubicle Man was probably picking up a bag full of Jake’s dad’s things, handing it off to him so he could go kiss Ms. Martinez. Jake’s dad was happily living a life away from his family, causing chaos and sadness all around him without a clue. Or maybe he did have a clue, which made it even worse …

  How could Jake’s parents not tell him this? And did they really think he wasn’t freaking out? Did his mom really buy his “I’m fine, I’m fine” act that he was so good at putting on? Even Tillie could see through that!

  It was all just too much.

  Tillie swept the carpet of photos into a pile. She imagined throwing a match on them and watching them light up into flame. She kicked them under her desk.

  “Tillie, are you up?” she heard from the kitchen.

  “I’m coming!”

  After changing and getting ready for the day, she went to the kitchen only to be greeted by a glum mother. Her dad had left early for work, her mom said. Her mom, looking pale, sipped her coffee and leaned against the sink counter in her robe. She motioned to the toast on the table.

  Tillie thought of the night that had just passed. The worry of her mom, the confusion of her dad, the surrender of her parents to not knowing where Tillie had been. She had not taken pictures of whatever argument might have happened between her parents. Her deciphering skills had been focused elsewhere, away from the eternal mystery behind the keyhole.

  “Where’s Dad?” Tillie asked.

  “I told you, at work,” her mom said softly.

  Her mom took a sip of coffee. Tillie bit into her toast.

  “Right, that’s just kind of early,” Tillie said.

  “They needed him in person early this morning to check over some important articles before they went online,” her mom said in a voice close to monotone. “Some politician did something awful.”

  Tillie looked at the clock and saw she was late but did not want to move. First of all, she was still achy. Second, her mother seemed weird.

  “So he left that early? For that? Can’t they, like, email it to him? Why’d he have to go in to the office?”

  Tillie’s mom just looked at her.

  “Sometimes he’s needed, that’s all.”

  Tillie stared down at the cold wads of butter on her bread.

  “I know,” Tillie responded after a minute.

  “What?”

  “I know he’s needed.”

  They didn’t talk for the next few minutes and then her mom made a “you have to go” face and came over to help her put the backpack on her arms, which Tillie didn’t need help with, and hadn’t for years, but she didn’t have the energy to resist her mom.

  As Tillie got to the doorway, she turned back to her mom and asked, “What did the politician do?”

  “Hmm?”

  “The awful thing he did?”

  “Oh, the usual,” Tillie’s mom said as she turned around to the sink, put her coffee cup down, and began to do the dishes. “He left his wife for some twenty-year-old or something. And then lied about it.”

  Tillie felt herself unable to move from the doorframe. Maybe she was waiting for a “Don’t worry, there are no twenty-year-olds in this town to steal your dad,” or even the typical “Be careful today! Did you take your pain medicine?” but there was nothing.

  “Okay, bye, Mom.” As she was leaving, she added, “I’ll be home right away after school.”

  She saw the back of her mom’s head give a nod, and she hobbled off.

  * * *

  Morning math class was a torturous bore. All Tillie could see through the x’s and y’s on the board was:

  BRICK HOUSE + LOST GLASSES = AFFAIR

  If “Jake’s Dad + y = Jake’s Life as He Knows It Is Over,” then y is Ms. Martinez.

  In geography, the map of the earth became a map of the neighborhoods in town. If the bowling alley was Africa, then they had been an ocean away from where Jake’s dad really was, in North America, which was Ms. Martinez’s house. It was a long trip. They’d been so far off. But somehow they were still on the same map, in the same universe. In English, in Jacob Have I Loved, Wheeze was Jake’s poor mom, and the lucky Caroline was Ms. Martinez. Tillie couldn’t listen to a word.

  At lunchtime she figured that if she stopped sitting next to Jake’s friends then she could be alone again, with no one to hurt or disappoint. And that way, if she told Jake about where she saw his dad it wouldn’t be so bad, because she would be nobody and wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t be a girl on the cusp of joining his group as an official friend, and she wouldn’t be someone he would then turn to and cry in front of.

  But then she saw his face.

  “Tillie!” Jake said, beaming.

  She had been afraid that seeing him cry would create an awkwardness between them. But instead, as he smiled over at her, she found herself feeling more comfortable. She felt like she knew what was behind that smile now. This was a person-to-person knowledge, she realized, that could only be hinted at in photographs. And it felt good to really start to know someone.

  She couldn’t tell him anything.

  “Tillie!” He bounded over to her. “What’s up? How’s ol’ rickety?”

  She realized he was referring to her leg and she belly-laughed. No one had ever openly made fun of her leg before, in that way, and it was actually a relief to laugh about it. And a relief to laugh at all.

  “It’s the usual,” she said, working to stifle any more too-loud guffaws.

  “Rickety as ever, huh?” Jake asked as he started walking next to her, guiding her toward his lunch crowd. “Sorry about the last two days,” he said in a low voice into her ear right as they sat down. “I was in a tight spot with my mom. You sounded like you came up with an idea about the cubicle jerk?”

  Tillie shook her head. “No. Nope. I just … Well, I thought I did and then I realized it made no sense, so I—”

  “Hey, Tillie!” Several voices called out from Jake’s table and saved Tillie.

  She waved and headed toward them.

  He seemed so upbeat. That meant either something was really wrong and he was hiding his true state, or he thought he’d found a lead.

  “So I went to a rental place yesterday.”

  “Yeah, you said.”

  “The one closest to his work. And it was a bust. They wouldn’t give me any info. But,” Jake continued, “even though they didn’t give me any information, it hit me. Pierce’s Save-You-Rent Rental Car. Eureka! Why didn’t I see it before?”

  Tillie stared at him blankly.

  “Alice Pierce, our classmate,” he said. “It’s her family. Pierce’s Save-You-Rent.”

  “Okay.” Tillie tried to get to the table faster.

  “It’s her family’s rental place! They wouldn’t give me info, but Alice could totally help! Maybe get us a look at their actual records and stuff!” He patted Tillie on the back, as if she’d been the one crying at the bus stop. “We’re gonna get Cubicle Man. Ya know, in a way it’s like what my dad said. He’s just a ‘blah blah blah’ jerk in our ear. And the good guys are gonna get through it.”

  Tillie said nothing. They sat down at the table with his friends, a little bit removed from them. Tillie tried to look like she was interested in the group’s conversation so that Jake would stop talking to her, but Jake went on, anyway.

  “So it’s totally a thing where my dad saw Cubicle Man do something, right? Because when I said that, he freaked out. So we really have two potential nex
t steps: talk to Alice about the rental car stuff, and go back to my dad’s work. I don’t know, maybe we find a covert way to sneak into the office this time? I could dress as a delivery boy? Search his cubicle?”

  Tillie kept her eyes down, toward her food. “Jake, do twelve-year-olds work as delivery boys?”

  Jake smirked. “Stop with the whole overthinking-stuff thing, Hermione. So are you up for it? Look, I know I freaked out, but I’m rested. I’m ready. I’m back in the game.”

  Tillie had begun to like the “Hermione” nickname. “I told my mom I’d be home today.”

  The brightness faded from Jake’s face momentarily, but then he said, “Okay, sure. But, hey, what about Art Club?”

  “What?” Tillie thought of her mom’s confrontation about Art Club and for a split second she felt certain that somehow he’d heard her conversation last night, that he’d been following her and taking pictures just as she’d been following his dad. But of course he hadn’t heard her or seen her.

  “I mean, why don’t you just tell her you’re going to pretend Art Club again? Twice a week, right?” he said.

  “Actually, she knows now that there isn’t an Art Club.”

  “What? How’d she figure it out?”

  “Well…” Tillie tried to think of how her mom had put it all together. “First of all, I told her I was there, like, multiple days a week and probably in reality school clubs meet only once a week? And I never came home with any art projects, so … And then at some point I guess she called the school.”

  “Oops,” Jake said, wincing. “Yeah, we really didn’t think through the whole art-projects aspect … Nice she notices stuff, though.”

  Mom-genius wasn’t rocket science, actually, Tillie realized. It just involved paying a lot of attention.

  “Oh, hey, here’s a joke my dad likes to tell that fits us really well: What does a superhero put in his drink?” Jake raised up his plastic water cup in one hand and his pointer finger in the other as if he were giving a superhero lecture.

  Tillie sighed. “What, Jake?”

  “Just ice.” He looked at her expectantly, with a big smile, his huge front teeth on full display. “Just-ice. Get it? Justice!”

  “So … How exactly does that fit us really well?”

  It was Jake’s turn to sigh. “Because, silly Tillie, we are looking for justice. Like superheroes. For my dad!” Jake shook his head at her with a “tsk-tsk” sound and drank a swig of his water.

  “Ah, okay.”

  They sat in silence, eating their pizza, listening to Ian and Abby debate who would win in a battle, dwarves or elves. And then it was vampires or killer mermaids. When they argued who would win in a fistfight, Snow White or Cinderella, Jake jumped in.

  “Okay, obviously it’s Snow White. The girl has serious backup.”

  Tillie realized she had been holding the pizza slice in her hand for a while now and yet she hadn’t touched it. She put the slice back down and looked out toward the cafeteria door. The clock above the exit read 12:08. In a few minutes she would have to get up and go to art class. And right next to her, so close that she could feel his jeans graze her own, was a boy whose father that art teacher was hiding. What would Ms. Martinez do if she knew that Jake was crying at bus stops wondering why no one would give him even a hint as to why his dad wasn’t home? Did she even care?

  Tillie had never kissed a boy, but she knew from the kiss she saw between Jake’s dad and Ms. Martinez that it was not the first kiss. It was a familiar kiss. A kiss that people did again and again. A kiss you see in your parents’ old wedding pictures. The kiss, and not a coworker, was what had kidnapped Jake’s dad.

  She couldn’t get it out of her mind, the way they had stood there embracing, smiling. All Tillie could think as she had watched them was, These should not be your smiles. You’ve stolen Jake’s smiles. He deserves to smile, not you. And all she had been able to do was snap picture after picture as their heads had moved closer together and they had kissed that endless, horrible kiss and shut the door behind themselves.

  “So I’ll see you soon, okay?” Jake said to her as everyone gathered their stuff to go to their next class. As they stepped away from the crowd, a touch of panic seemed to creep back into his rejuvenated back-at-school self. “It’s been two whole weeks now,” he said. “Tillie, how worried should I be?”

  Tillie felt the words of comfort come out before she could stop herself. “He’ll turn up. We’ll figure it all out.”

  The bell rang and everyone started to rush into the halls.

  Jake nodded at her with a touch of gratitude. “Okay. And we’ll plan a new cover story for your parents, okay? Unless your mom is as good a detective as you are! Then we’re really in trouble! Ha!” He trotted off toward class.

  “Yeah, okay,” she responded to his back.

  Charlie Jordan came up to her. He told her he couldn’t find a library book he’d taken out and he was going to owe a dollar if he didn’t get it back soon. Tillie nodded.

  “Thanks, Lost and Found,” he said as he broke into a little jog toward class.

  “Hey,” Tom Wilson said, popping up behind her out of nowhere. “A … a note again,” he grunted. “Had it yesterday.”

  Before she could even respond, he’d bolted off.

  She was at the stairs, the stairs she regularly felt frustrated by because she couldn’t get up to art class fast enough. She usually wanted to get there first, before the rest of the kids, and ask Ms. Martinez questions. But now she just put a single foot on the stairs and felt sick.

  So she turned around. She went down the stairs instead of up.

  No hall monitors stopped her, as Tillie knew they wouldn’t. Spotting her walk, they’d feel too awkward to say anything. The security guard at the front of the school just gave her a compassionate smile and waved to Tillie as she went on her way.

  * * *

  When Tillie arrived at Jake’s dad’s office she knocked on the glass door to the cubicle area so hard she thought it might break. A lady in a navy-blue pencil skirt opened it. “Can I help you, honey?”

  “I’m here on business,” Tillie replied as she walked right in, past the woman. People eyed her, but when they saw the limp they turned away. Jake had been a hindrance after all. No one had a reason to look away from him.

  When she made it toward the back of the cubicles, she marched toward the man in the last corner cubicle as well as she was able to march. He was typing away. Bored. Going through the motions. She stood at the cubicle’s entrance. On the inside corner of the office was a rectangular plaque that read, “Eugene Doyfle.” Eugene Doyfle? Cubicle Man was named Eugene Doyfle?

  “Hi,” Tillie said.

  Eugene turned and then did a double-take.

  “You again,” he groaned.

  The overhead light reflected off his sweaty, hairless head and produced a slick sheen. She had an artistic urge to take a picture to compare the camera’s effect on his features up close to the ones through the glass, but she stopped herself. She left the camera at her chest but did feel her fingers twitching.

  “Yup. It’s me.”

  “Kid, I told you…”

  “I know. ‘Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.’”

  Eugene shook his head. “Look, I don’t know what you guys want from me. I don’t know what your friend thinks about me, but I didn’t steal anything, I didn’t do anything. You should go.”

  Tillie couldn’t believe she’d ever been scared of this guy. His scar, which had seemed like such a frightening omen to her before, now gave rise to compassion. She imagined he had gotten it in some childhood accident, or something sort of pathetic, like walking into a lamppost.

  “You were right,” Tillie said.

  Eugene raised his eyebrows in a question.

  “I didn’t want to know the answer.”

  He rubbed between his eyebrows with his thumb and finger.

  “You were covering for Jake’s dad,” she went on.r />
  He didn’t respond.

  “Jake’s dad told his friends at work that if Jake came by they had to make sure he didn’t know his dad was breaking up with his mom. Is that it?” Speaking the words made her understand that they were correct.

  “Things aren’t that simple,” Eugene said, and he stood up, looking around. She saw him catch someone’s eye and make a motion with his head that indicated, “Get over here.”

  Tillie went on. “He knew Jake would come looking for him here, and he told you to cover for him. Was he here the first time we came? Did he see Jake and hide in the back? Or the bathroom?” Tillie said, not waiting for Eugene to answer. “Probably he sent that other guy, Jim,” she said in a voice dripping with contempt, “to make sure we stayed out. And you watched Jim. You put your finger to your lips to remind him not to break, not to give Jake any hint of the truth.”

  A couple of people walked by the cubicle and threw quizzical looks in the man’s direction.

  “You knew he was having an affair.”

  As she said the words out loud, a calm came over her.

  Eugene Doyfle sat back down and put his head in his hand. At his response, any lingering doubts—those parts of her that wanted to be wrong—left her, and she knew she had cracked the case entirely.

  “An affair,” she repeated, as if by saying it twice Eugene Doyfle would better comprehend how horrible it was. “And you were just … looking out for your friend. Well, I guess I can’t blame you for that.”

  Maybe Eugene Doyfle was just a good friend. Maybe he was a loyal person who would do anything, even things he didn’t like, to help his buddies when they needed him. She’d judged him on his appearance and on the story she’d concocted about him in her head, just like people judged her.