The List of Things That Will Not Change

by Rebecca Stead

  “I hated it,” I said.

  Miriam says that, a lot of the time, behind the feeling “I hate this” are other feelings. Like maybe “I’m afraid of this” is hiding behind “I hate this.” And maybe hiding behind “I’m afraid of this” is “I don’t know what’s going to happen next” or “I don’t know if I can do this.” There are a lot of feelings behind feelings.

  When Miriam first told me about that, I got a picture in my mind’s eye of a girl standing very still, with someone hiding behind her, and someone else behind her. And they’re all perfectly straight so that no one can tell how many people are actually there. Sometimes I feel exactly like that. Like I’m a bunch of different Beas, all lined up to look like one. I wondered if Sonia ever felt that way. But I didn’t know how to ask her.

  After Pizzeria Pete’s, we went home and Sonia Skyped with her mom and her little brothers. She called her mom’s husband Dad. I looked at Jesse, but he acted like he hadn’t heard it.

  In my bedroom, Sonia still hadn’t put her clothes in the bureau. They were in her suitcase next to the orange couch, which was all the way across the room again, against the wall. Jesse and Dad had made up the couch like a bed, with two pillows and a little lamp next to it.

  Sonia went into the bathroom and came out wearing her nightgown and holding the clothes she’d worn that day, all rolled up into a little ball that she stuffed into her suitcase.

  “Use my laundry basket.” I pointed to it. “Dad can wash everything together!”

  “That’s okay,” Sonia said. “It’s only seven days. I brought enough stuff.”

  It felt like Sonia was trying to make it sound like this trip was no big deal.

  She got under the covers on the orange couch. She turned off her lamp and closed her eyes.

  I bounced on my bed, hinting that we didn’t have to go right to sleep if we didn’t want to. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said.

  I waited a long time for her to say something back, but she didn’t. I told myself maybe she just fell asleep.

  Miriam says don’t lie down inside a bad feeling if you can help it.

  * * *

  —

  When Dad and Jesse told me that Sonia was coming, I asked Mom if I could spend the whole week at Dad’s, because Sonia was only staying for six nights and I didn’t want to miss any of them. Mom’s face changed, but right away she said, “Okay, sweetie, sure.” And a second later, she said, “That sounds like fun!”

  And right away I felt horrible.

  When I feel guilty, it’s like a wave is rushing up on me from the ground. First, my legs feel seasick, and then the feeling runs all the way to my head. I wouldn’t know this except one time Miriam gave me the homework “What does a feeling feel like?”

  She told me to write down where I felt my feelings in my body. I told her that was pretty dumb homework, because feelings didn’t feel like anything in my body. “Feelings are in your head,” I said. “You don’t know you’re sad because your toes hurt.” And Miriam just smiled and said we would talk about it next time.

  So I went home and sat on my bed with my green pen and my green spiral notebook, and I thought about what a feeling feels like. First, I thought about Ben Larson’s birthday party and the horrible speedboat ride. Right away, my chest hurt like someone was pressing on it and squeezing my throat a little bit at the same time. I wrote in my notebook: Afraid = throat closes up. No wonder it had been so hard to scream.

  Then I thought about the time I took Lizette’s root beer and pretended it was mine, and how Ms. Adams was ashamed of me, and how guilty I felt. It took me five or six times of thinking about that to write down exactly where the seasick feeling starts (in my legs), how it goes through my stomach and the wrong way up my throat, and how, when it gets to the top of my head, it fizzes.

  It’s worse when I don’t expect it. When I told Mom I wanted to spend a whole week with Dad and Jesse because I was getting a sister, I didn’t know it would hurt her feelings until I saw the way she looked right before she said, “That sounds like fun!” The fizzing in my head lasted longer than usual, almost like a burn.

  * * *

  —

  In the middle of Sonia’s first night, I woke up because my hand was itching and the backs of my knees were stinging. I usually put on lotion before bed, but I didn’t want Sonia to see my eczema, so I had skipped it.

  According to my digital clock, I scratched for about ten minutes while I listened to Sonia sleep. Then I decided to go to the bathroom to get my medicine. Once I was in there (with one eye open), I held my hand under hot water for just ten seconds, to see if it would stop the itching long enough for me to go back to sleep. I hated being the only person awake because it made me lonely. You might think a person can’t get lonely that fast, but I can. I wanted to get back to sleeping as fast as I could.

  With my one eye, I saw the bathroom door, which I hadn’t closed all the way, opening wide, and then Dad was there, blinking in the light. He turned off the hot water and pressed my hand into a towel, his hands flat on the sides of mine. Then he opened the cabinet for my ointment, which he put on the right places between my fingers and on my palm. I did the backs of my knees myself. Dad said, “Hot water is a five-second solution, Bea. Remember? It never lasts. Use the medicine.” He put the tube of ointment away and left.

  When I turned off the bathroom light, the apartment went dark, but then I opened my closed eye and I saw everything.

  I have an old-fashioned tape recorder that used to belong to my grandpa—my dad’s dad. It still works, with D batteries. When Dad was little, his dad read to him at night and recorded the stories so that Dad could hear them again whenever he wanted. When I was little, Dad and I listened to some of them together. Now I listen by myself. I never met my grandpa, because he died when my mom was pregnant with me.

  I had never told anyone about those tapes before, not even Angus. My grandpa had this voice, sort of slow and careful but with a big smile in it. It was like Dad had shared that voice with me, and I was helping him keep it.

  On her second night with us, I let Sonia listen to my grandpa’s very first story tape. I know it was the first one because he wrote dates on all the labels. This one said: 3/8/1983, Frog and Toad.

  Sonia had slept really late that morning, and Dad wouldn’t let me wake her up. Then he made chicken tacos for lunch, and the four of us bundled up and took Rocco for a long walk in the park, where Jesse introduced Sonia to all of Rocco’s dog friends (and their owners). Everything was really good until Sonia Skyped with her mom after dinner. Then she did a bunch of crying in the bathroom. I was so afraid she would go home.

  Now she was on the orange couch in my room, and I was back in my bed against the opposite wall. The lights were off, and we were listening to my grandpa read Frog and Toad. It felt like a relief, because I was getting tired of asking Sonia questions. I’d asked her every question I could think of, which was how I knew that she loves barbecue potato chips and yogurt with honey, that her brothers’ middle names are Manuel and Raphael, that she has her own room at home, that she likes to swim, and that she’s a good speller. Sonia didn’t ask me any questions back.

  I’d heard my grandpa read the Frog and Toad stories fifty times and never cried before, but for some reason as soon as he began that night, tears started. It was really quiet crying, and I kind of pressed it down with my hands under the covers, which helped me be even quieter, because I didn’t want Sonia to know.

  I was sad that Sonia didn’t want to be there, but I was also happy that she was there. I was thinking about the next four nights with Sonia at Dad’s, a staircase of happiness in front of me.

  My bedroom door opened just a little, and some light fell on the floor. Dad leaned in, and I watched his hand on the doorknob, hoping he wouldn’t open the door any more, because the light broke the spell of Grandpa’s voice
in the dark. Dad listened for a second, and then he closed the door, very quietly.

  We got to the end of Frog and Toad, and then I swallowed a couple of times and said, “I’m really happy you’re going to be my sister.” I was afraid of what Sonia might say back. She might say nothing. She might say We won’t really be sisters. She might have fallen asleep during Frog and Toad. That happened to me a lot, actually.

  But she answered right away. She said, “Yeah. Can we put in another tape? How many are there?”

  A tiny balloon of happiness blew up inside me. I said, “There are a lot.”

  At Miriam’s that week, I told her about everything that Sonia and I had in common.

  I told her how we’d gone to the museum to look at the armor, which is my favorite thing there, and how Sonia said it was her favorite thing, too, even though she had never been to the museum before. Jesse asked us which was our favorite armor, and we both picked the German armor “for man and horse.” Jesse thought it probably weighed a hundred pounds, but Sonia said it was worth it because if you were wearing that, nothing could get you. Or your horse.

  Miriam listened.

  I told her how Dad wouldn’t let me take any days off from school even though Sonia was only there for one week, and how Sonia and Sheila had made cookies together and gone shopping without me, which made me feel left out until I came home and found a big cookie and a pair of very cool barrettes on my pillow. I told her how Sonia was spending time at the restaurant with Jesse and Dad, and that Angus and I went after school one day to meet them there. Angus introduced Sonia to the orphan coats (Gerald, Phoebe, and Tim). He made her shake hands with their sleeves, and she laughed really hard and said two times how lucky I am that a restaurant is named after me. We all stayed for family meal, which everyone working at Beatrice eats together at four o’clock every day, before the dinner rush starts. (Angus loves family meal. He loves that it’s loud, and that you’re allowed to eat standing up.) Then Jesse made a special dessert, just for me, Angus, and Sonia, which turned out to be warm peanut-butter cookies with chocolate chips and whipped cream on top.

  Miriam listened.

  I told her how every dinner was fun this week because Dad and Jesse came home early and bedtime was “out the window,” and how Sheila brought over some amazing ice cream bars and Sonia and I both ate all the chocolate off ours first. And how we laughed when we realized.

  When we had five minutes left, Miriam opened the gummy-bear jar and put it between us on the coffee table. The jar was filled to the very top.

  Miriam must have refilled that jar so many times.

  “You look a little sad, Bea.” She didn’t take any gummy bears, and neither did I.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m something, but I’m not sad.”

  Then I told her about how Sonia cried after she talked to her mother at night, how we listened to Grandpa’s story tapes in my room (our room, I said), and how I wished we talked in the dark sometimes, but we didn’t. We just listened to the tapes.

  During the day, Sonia talked to me a lot. But when it was just us, at night, she didn’t.

  “Dad says that when you’re homesick, nights are harder than the daytime,” I told Miriam. “Dad was really homesick at camp one summer when he was a kid. Because my uncle Frank didn’t go that year.”

  And suddenly I felt a little homesick, for Mom.

  * * *

  —

  Dad was waiting for me outside Miriam’s office, not in Mom’s usual waiting-room chair, but on the other side of the room. I looked at the little table where Mom always piled her students’ papers, and I told Dad I wanted to call her. He nodded and handed me his phone. Mom’s number was already ringing. I sat down in her chair.

  She answered, “Daniel?”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Hi, sweetie!”

  “Hi.”

  “Are you at Miriam’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Everything good?”

  “Yeah. I just wanted to say hi.”

  “Hi! How are things going with Sonia?”

  “Good.” I tried to think of something to tell her. I said, “We went to the museum. We saw the armor.”

  “Oh, fun! How’s school going?”

  “Good.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice, honey,” Mom said.

  “Yeah.”

  Dad was holding my coat. After I said goodbye to Mom and gave him his phone back, he put my arms into my coat sleeves the way he did when I was little. It felt good. He zipped me up and tucked my hair into my hood. “Ready?” he said.

  “Ready,” I told him.

  That night, Sonia and I listened to my grandpa read Harriet the Spy.

  Harriet the Spy is one of the special tapes.

  We lay straight back in our beds like the girls in Madeline. I pressed “play.”

  Grandpa starts reading. But before he gets to the end of the first chapter, there’s a sound. The first time I heard it, I thought it was Dad’s blanket or something, brushing up against the tape recorder. But it’s the sound of Dad, crying, when he was little. When Grandpa stops reading, you can really hear it.

  Grandpa says, “What’s wrong, Daniel?”

  “I don’t know.” Now Dad is crying harder.

  There’s a pause, and I imagine Grandpa rubbing Dad’s back, like Mom does for me. Then Grandpa says, “It happens sometimes. Like a passing storm.”

  Dad keeps crying.

  “Should I read?” Grandpa says. And I can’t hear an answer, but he starts up again. He reads to the end of the chapter, while Dad gets quieter. Then Grandpa says, “Better now?”

  There’s no answer. But I always imagine a smile from Dad.

  I clicked the recorder off and waited to see what Sonia would say. We just lay there, in the mostly dark. After a minute, I sat up and looked at her.

  Her eyes were open and looking straight up at the ceiling. “I miss my mom,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That happens to me, too.”

  Then she pointed at the tape recorder and said, “Play.”

  * * *

  —

  In second grade, when I had Ms. Adams, we did an art project where we used crayons to color in every inch of a piece of paper—I did swirls, red and orange and yellow. Some kids drew rainbows. Some made squares, like a quilt.

  Ms. Adams walked around, making sure we hadn’t left even one bare spot of white paper anywhere. And then she handed out these extra-fat crayons, dark blue, and told us to cover up our colors, every bit of them. We rubbed and rubbed with those crayons until we laughed, because no one had told us to scribble over our work before, and also because it took so long, but then, after a while, we had done it. Every paper in the room was blue like midnight. Finally, Ms. Adams gave us wooden Popsicle sticks and told us to scratch designs into the dark, whatever we wanted. We scratched, and the colors underneath came through, surprising us.

  That was how I felt that night with Sonia. Like I was waiting to find out what was underneath.

  On Sonia’s last day, we went ice-skating after school. Angus came with us. The locker room was crowded and smelled like French fries, rubber, and wet socks. Sonia and Angus were both good skaters and I wasn’t, but I didn’t mind. Sonia showed me how to skate backward, which I could do after a while, but not fast like she did it. She said not to look over my shoulder, but I couldn’t help it.

  Jesse is terrible at skating. Dad took him to the middle of the ice to show him how to shift his weight, but Jesse didn’t really catch on. He fell so many times that Dad made him wear both of their wool hats, one over the other, so that he wouldn’t crack his head open.

  After an hour and a half, Jesse said his feet hurt so much he was crying inside, so we all got off the ice to get fries at the snack window, which were a
fat kind that we ate with little wooden forks. Then we went back for more skating, with Jesse sitting on a bench and waving every time we went around, like we were kids on a carousel. Finally, Dad said we should pack it in, and he yelled, “Last loop!”

  I was a little bit behind everyone else, so that when I came around for my last stretch before the gate, they were all together—Dad, Jesse, Angus, and Sonia, just off the ice, waiting for me. They were waving and shouting, “Go, Bea!” like I was about to win a race.

  I hunched over and sped up until I was going pretty fast—the fastest I had gone all day. I didn’t slow down for the gate—I just let myself fly off the ice and hit the rubber mat, knowing they would catch me. And they did.

  The locker room was still packed, and people were circling, waiting for empty lockers. I recognized a purple coat—it was Lizette’s. I shouted her name, and she weaved her way over to us, with her family behind her. She was bummed we were leaving, but happy that we could give them our lockers. Jesse said he liked the green pom-poms on the toes of Lizette’s skates—each pom-pom had two tiny bells hanging off it, and she shook them for us, but we couldn’t hear any ringing because of all the people talking and the locker-door slamming.

  I introduced Lizette to Sonia, and Lizette introduced her parents to Dad and Jesse. Lizette’s mom said, “I hear you two are getting hitched,” and Dad smiled this huge smile. I looked at Sonia, and she was smiling, too.

  Jesse took his skates off and said, “Ahhhhh,” and Sonia and I jumped up and down in our sneakers and said how they felt like pillows on our feet.

  Lizette’s mom told Dad, “My mom’s a baker. She makes great wedding cakes. No pressure.”

  “Really?” Dad said. “Can you give me her number? Jesse wants this thing called a 7 Up cake that I’ve never even heard of.”