The List of Things That Will Not Change

by Rebecca Stead

  We were standing right next to the elevator, and people were streaming by, grabbing party bags from a big basket next to Carrie’s apartment door. Jason Feld’s little brother cried for a party bag, and Carrie’s mom turned away from us, waved at the basket, and said, “Of course he can have one! I got extras, just in case! Of course I’m sure!”

  Mom squeezed my hand: once, twice, three times.

  I. Love. You.

  I squeezed hers back: once, twice.

  How. Much.

  And then Mom squeezed mine again, long and hard.

  Sooo much.

  Carrie’s mom turned back to us. “Maybe there’s a book you can buy her? My sister is a teacher, and she says this kind of problem doesn’t usually get better on its own. Unfortunately.”

  Yes, even Carrie Greenhouse’s horrible mother has a sister.

  Mom was polite to her. We got into the elevator. And then, just as the doors were closing, I threw my party bag at Carrie’s mom. It hit the wall right behind her, and everything inside—candy corn, mostly—exploded all over the floor.

  Later I told Miriam that when I saw that candy flying everywhere, it was like fireworks were going off inside me, but there were two kinds of fireworks—one kind felt really bad, like I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing, but the other kind felt good. Like I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing.

  Miriam said that if I had looked past the moment I was afraid of, which was the moment of not getting a chair when the music stopped, I would have seen that pushing someone off a chair onto the floor was not the best idea, because then everyone looked at me much more.

  That’s called thinking two steps ahead.

  And I had hurt someone. Even though I only felt half-bad about the party bag, I did feel sorry about shoving Angus off that chair.

  “Shouldn’t I feel really bad about all of it?” I asked Miriam. “Because”—I waited to feel really bad about making Carrie’s mother pick up all that candy corn—“I don’t.”

  “Carrie’s mom was humiliating you, Bea. You got angry. That’s normal. Throwing candy isn’t a great way of expressing your feelings, and that’s the part that needs to change. But it doesn’t make you a bad person.” And to prove it, she threw a gummy bear at me.

  That was the day Miriam and I became actual friends. She could have taken the gummy bears away, and I would have kept going to see her anyway. But she didn’t. She just kept refilling the jar.

  In the waiting room at Miriam’s, Mom’s head was bent over the papers in her lap. She didn’t hear me come in because of Miriam’s noisemaker. It hums really loudly so that no one can overhear anyone else’s private conversations.

  I tiptoed over to Mom and kissed her on the hair. When she looked up, her glasses were crooked. She pulled me onto her lap, and I leaned back against her, like she was my chair.

  “Look at those long legs,” Mom said. “How did you get to be ten years old?”

  I decided to give her a Miriam-type answer: “One day at a time?”

  * * *

  —

  When Mom unlocked our apartment door, Red was standing right inside, meowing his head off.

  “Oops,” Mom said. “I must have forgotten to feed him this morning.” Because Red never comes to the door when we get home. He’s the kind of cat who wants you to come and find him. And then he’ll let you pet him, but only for half a minute.

  “Sorry, Red.” Mom grabbed his food bag and shook some onto his plate. I refilled his water bowl, and then I opened the refrigerator and yelled “Box!”

  That’s what Mom and I used to say whenever Dad left us a food package. He came at least two times a week and left stuff in our fridge, as a surprise: rice with vegetables, chicken in lemon sauce, meatballs, cheesy polenta, and so many other things, always packed in containers with reheating instructions scribbled on strips of blue tape across their tops.

  * * *

  —

  The first time Dad left us food was right after he moved out. It was in a big cardboard box, crammed into the fridge, and I yelled “Box!” when I saw it, and pointed. After that, we always yelled “Box!” whether it was actually in a box or not. Then Mom would reheat whatever it was, make a salad, and say, “Voilà, dinner!” When there was no box, Mom made us cheese quesadillas, tuna salad with pickles, or scrambled eggs.

  * * *

  —

  “Ooh, what’s in there?” Mom said, getting the salad bowl.

  It was something big and rectangular. I peeled back the foil. “Looks like…lasagna.”

  “Yum.”

  “And there’s some kind of cake. Lemon cake!” I know the shape of Dad’s lemon cake because he always uses this one pan with ridges on top.

  “Wow,” Mom said. “Cake and everything.”

  I was unwinding the plastic bag from my foot when the doorbell rang. I hopped over. It was Lizette, holding a greasy paper bag.

  “Aw, gross!” Lizette said, pointing. A little blood had soaked through the bandage. I hadn’t noticed. She leaned down and yanked off the last piece of plastic, still stuck to my leg with some tape. “I’m glad you’re okay, Bea.” Then she held out the bag. “Here’s what you missed. It was awful.”

  I took the bag. Inside was a chunk of rock-hard French bread. I tried to bite it, but my teeth just slid off.

  “Told you.” She did her cat smile. Lizette has two smiles, cat and clown. Cat smile is like she knows something, and clown smile is just goofy. Angus came up with the names. When I asked him what my smiles were called, he said I have too many different ones and he couldn’t keep track of them.

  * * *

  —

  Mom invited Lizette to stay for dinner. We had a “working dance party,” which Mom invented. It’s when you do chores and dance at the same time. It can be for folding laundry or vacuuming or whatever you want. Mom cranked the radio and we unloaded the dishwasher, took turns with the salad spinner to dry the lettuce, and set the table. Mom kept doing hip bumps with us, which I was used to, but which made Lizette laugh until she was almost hysterical. Actual tears were coming down her face.

  When the lasagna was hot, Mom turned the radio down and we sat at the table in the kitchen.

  “I like dinner at your house,” Lizette said. She pointed her fork at her plate. “And this is so good.”

  Mom smiled. “Thank you, Lizette.”

  Neither of us said that Dad had made it.

  * * *

  —

  While we waited in my room for her dad to pick her up, I told Lizette about Dad and Jesse getting married.

  “Ooh, can I come to the wedding?” Lizette said.

  I remembered what Jesse had said about who was invited: Everyone!

  And I told Lizette, “Definitely.”

  “Will your mom be there?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Oh, I just wondered. I mean—she was married to your dad before, right? It could be awkward.”

  “My parents aren’t like that. They still love each other. In a way.” A different way.

  “That’s cool, Bea. You’re lucky.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My brother has this friend? His parents got divorced, and they are so mean to each other.”

  Lizette has a brother who’s three years older than us. He’s nice. When Lizette and I were in kindergarten, he was my reading buddy. I remember that she always ran to hug him when he came into our classroom.

  “You’re lucky, too,” I said. “Luckier.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because your parents are together. And you have Damian.”

  “Yeah. But you have your mom, your dad, and Jesse. And Sheila. And a restaurant where you can eat anything you want, anytime you want it!”

  That’s not actuall
y true. It’s not like I can just walk in to Beatrice and order French fries and an ice cream sundae. But I didn’t say so.

  “Plus,” she said, “Damian is allergic to animals. So I can’t have a cat or a dog. You have both.”

  Right then, her dad rang our bell. Lizette smiled (clown smile) and bounced off the bed.

  * * *

  —

  When she was gone, I found Mom loading the dishwasher. No music.

  I said, “You’re coming to the wedding, right?”

  She looked surprised. “I haven’t even thought about it.”

  “I want you to come,” I said.

  She nodded. “In that case, I will be there with bells on.”

  “Okay. But you don’t need to bring bells. Jesse says Sheila is doing the decorations.”

  She told me it’s an expression. It just means she’s going to get dressed up.

  Then she turned the radio on.

  I didn’t think she wanted to dance, so I went to my room to worry.

  My dad almost choked to death once, on an orange. It was a long time ago, before the divorce. He’d shoved a few sections in his mouth (it was maybe a quarter of an orange, he told me later), and then he couldn’t breathe. He started running around the apartment in a panic. Mom wasn’t home. I didn’t know what to do, and even if I had known, I wasn’t strong enough to do it. Dad rushed out of our apartment and banged on our neighbor’s door. The neighbor realized right away what was wrong and did the Heimlich maneuver on Dad. The orange popped out of his windpipe and flew across the hall, where it landed on Mrs. Carmody’s doormat, which says “Welcome” in ten languages. (Angus has memorized them all.)

  The neighbor was Jesse. He wasn’t our neighbor, really—he was cat-sitting for our actual neighbor, who was in California. It was really lucky Jesse was there, because our actual neighbor is a lawyer who is almost never home, and Dad might have died right on his doorstep. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know why that lawyer got a cat in the first place.

  After the orange hunk landed on the doormat, the hallway was quiet for a few seconds except for the sound of my sobbing. All I did the whole time until Jesse saved Dad was scream, and all I did afterward was cry. This was back when I wasn’t so great in emergencies. But I was only seven.

  The lawyer’s cat ran out between Jesse’s legs and walked around sniffing everybody’s doormats while Dad thanked Jesse about a hundred times. The next day he made Jesse a coffee cake. They became friends. When the lawyer came home, Jesse left. But Dad and Jesse stayed friends. When Dad moved out, Jesse’s big sister, Sheila, started babysitting for me and cleaning up for Dad. After a while, Dad and Jesse fell in love.

  Angus asked me once if I thought my dad “turned gay” when he choked on that orange. But Dad said no, that being gay had been a part of who he was from the beginning of his life. The orange just showed him how short life could be.

  * * *

  —

  After I saw Dad almost choke to death, I had a worrying problem. I started to worry all the time. I worried that one of my parents would die while I was at school. I worried that I would die while I was at school. If I fell and scraped my knee, I worried that all my blood would fall out of my body.

  One of the first things Miriam told me about was how to worry. She wanted me to worry for five minutes straight, two times a day. She said I should sit quietly somewhere, maybe with a piece of paper and some colored pencils, and just worry, one time in the morning and once at night (but not right before bed). And if my worry showed up at any other time, like during school or at Angus’s house, Miriam said I should tell it, “Go away, and I’ll see you later.”

  It actually works. Sitting down to worry on purpose is kind of like sweeping the wood floor at the lake cabin (which I have always loved to do). Everything ends up in two big piles that I can step around (instead of walking around with sand stuck to my feet all the time, which I hate).

  By the time I was ten, I only needed to worry once a day. Usually I worried around dinnertime. After Lizette went home, I sat on my bed and worried about spelling (mostly about the party, not the spelling itself) and I worried about Mom.

  Angus called right after I finished.

  “Did you get stitches?”

  “No. Just a bandage.” Angus knew that “stitches” was on my list of nightmares. Angus’s number one nightmare was eating a scallop.

  “Lizette said there was blood all over.”

  “There was blood all over.” Some kids might have wanted to see that, but Angus was not one of them.

  “Are you coming back to school tomorrow?”

  “Yep. How was the spelling test?”

  “Easy.” Then he felt bad. “I mean—”

  “It’s okay. How was the practice butter?”

  I could hear him make a face, don’t ask me how. “Pretty gross,” he said.

  “Yeah, Lizette brought me some.”

  “She did? It tasted like nothing. No one brought salt.”

  I pulled out my folder. “The recipe doesn’t say salt,” I said, thinking of Jesse and his bowl of salt. “Maybe the colonists didn’t have salt?”

  “Well, they didn’t have French bread, either. Mr. Home says he’s going to bring salt next time.”

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, I sat on the edge of the bathtub and soaked my foot while Mom quizzed me on times tables, which I knew perfectly. Then she patted my foot dry with a clean towel. The cut looked tiny. One Band-Aid covered it.

  At school, Mr. Home said I could take yesterday’s spelling test right after lunch, during Drop Everything and Read. He scored it right in front of me, and I got a seven out of ten. At the top of the paper, he wrote Not bad! and drew a smiley face. It was only the first week in October, and I was already uninvited to the next radio party.

  That weekend was a Dad weekend (the weekend = Friday and Saturday), so Sheila picked me up after school on Friday to take me to Dad’s.

  “Rough week!” she said. “Fever and injury! How’s your foot?”

  “It’s fine.” I waved it around in a circle. Mom had made me wear sneakers and socks, so there was nothing to see.

  “You’re good to walk?”

  I nodded.

  She said, “You heard about the wedding?”

  “Yep. In May!”

  Sheila grinned at me. “You know what’s great about May?”

  I couldn’t think of anything. “What?”

  She held her hand up for a high five. “The wedding!”

  “You’re weird,” I told her. But I high-fived her anyway.

  When we got to Dad’s, I let my backpack slide to the floor, hugged Rocco, and said, “Star Trek?”

  She smiled. “I’m leaving early today, Bea.”

  “You are?” Dad and Jesse usually came home extra late on Fridays.

  I noticed a smell. Popcorn?

  “Surprise!” Dad practically jumped out of the kitchen with a giant bowl of popcorn.

  Sheila kissed me on the cheek. “See you next week.”

  “Parmesan popcorn!” Dad said. Then he told me that Jesse was on his way home, and that we were having a family meeting.

  A family meeting.

  Right away I figured the wedding was off. I didn’t understand why Dad was bothering with popcorn, because how could I be in the mood for Parmesan popcorn if Dad and Jesse were getting divorced before they even got married in the first place?

  I locked my bedroom door and spun around in my purple chair until I felt sick. It took Jesse forever to get home.

  We sat in the living room. I wondered if I would get another spiral notebook. Dad put the popcorn on the table next to the couch and I ignored it.

  And then Dad and Jesse said the single best thing anyone could ever say to anyone: I wa
s getting a sister.

  Jesse’s daughter, Sonia, who lives in California, was coming to stay with us, for a week.

  “I want Sonia to start spending some time with us in New York,” Jesse said. “In the summertime, and on school vacations. I want you two to get to know each other. After the wedding, you’ll be sisters.”

  Jesse had told me about Sonia. I’d seen pictures of a dark-haired girl, usually in a sundress. I knew we were both in fifth grade. I knew he went to visit her in California a few times a year. I knew he called her on the phone. But Jesse never once talked about Sonia coming to stay with us. For some reason, it never even occurred to me that this was possible. And I had never thought about how Dad and Jesse getting married meant I was going to have a sister. And now she was coming to live with us (for a week). Soon.

  A sister. I was finally getting a sister. Not only that, but she was staying in my room, with me, for a whole week. And it turned out that we practically had the same birthday.

  “June?” I shouted.

  “Yes!” Jesse shouted. Another thing I love about Jesse: if you get excited and shout, he gets excited and shouts. “You guys are only twenty-two days apart!”

  I hit the couch with my fists. “Why couldn’t we have been born on the same day? Then we’d be twins!”

  Dad reached for my hand and said, “Thanks for being so terrific about this, honey.”

  I was way too excited to hold Dad’s hand. I was getting a sister. She was going to share my room for seven days. What was there to be terrific about? The whole thing was terrific!

  “I’m going to clean my room,” I said. “I mean, our room.”

  I locked my door and dance-cleaned my room.

  Dancing, I got all the dirty clothes off my floor and into my laundry basket. I made my bed. Still dancing, I rearranged my jewelry box, lining up my turquoise ring, my three bracelets, and my yellow cat pin. I looked at the orange couch, where Sonia would sleep. I got the lint roller and rolled it all over the couch. I hoped Sonia wasn’t allergic to dogs like Lizette’s brother. I shook the big square pillows so they looked puffier.