Wild and Crooked

by Leah Thomas

  I maybe hate that about her. I hate myself for maybe hating her for anything.

  The Dads on the fridge don’t wink at me when I lower myself into the waiting chair. Mom makes sure I take a bite before digging a fork into her own soggy stack.

  She rattles on about my class schedule, about sharing afternoon rides with Phil, about when I’ll be seeing Alicia, my speech therapist (“It’ll be Tuesdays and Fridays during lunch”). Mom makes me recite, between bites, the exact procedure I should go through in case of emergencies, followed by a memorized list of important phone numbers: hers, Tam’s, Dr. Petani’s, Mr. Wheeler’s. If my cheeks weren’t full of orange juice, this is one conversation I could have upside down with my eyes closed.

  Without warning, Mom lifts up the left leg of my jeans. “Where’s your new AFO? The starry one?”

  I cough up pancake debris. Wearing a cool, cosmic-patterned orthotic boot is only actually “cool” in middle school, and I’m a junior now.

  Mom never pities me, but she does treat me like I’m perpetually seven. She’s only a decade wrong. In the grand scheme of the vast and unknowable universe, that shouldn’t feel as awful as it does.

  I tap the plastic on the black AFO encasing my foot. “This one matches better.”

  She can’t argue. My jeans are black, and so is my long-sleeved shirt. You might think I’m trying to mimic my idols.

  The Gaggle, I call them. They’re this group of kids who’ve formed an artsy coven on Jefferson High’s campus. You can’t call them Goth, because they’ve evolved beyond that, and it’s really hard to commit to corsets and Tripp pants in this sweltering patch of southern Kentucky. These kids shy away from the sun, but they aren’t pretty enough to pass for vampires. But in this town of Wrangler jeans, the Gaggle is a local miracle.

  Sure, they write poems about child funerals and sculpt inverted rib cages full of crows during art class. But they also fold colorful origami creatures and scatter them in the hallways. Their leader, a widow’s-peaked wonder named Garth Holden, composes goofy songs to raise STD/STI awareness. Who can forget his classic hit from freshman year, “See Ya, Gonorrhea!” or the heartfelt ballad that rang from his sable ukulele last spring, “STI, ST-Me, ST-You”?

  The Gagglers laugh through their piercings and pastel hair spikes. One of the members wears floor-length black gowns with hot pink rocking horse shoes and dozens of decora hair clips. It’s like they fell right out of Harajuku.

  The whole Gaggle might as well be there. I can’t get near them. They have something I’ll never have. It’s not fashion sense.

  The Gaggle has carefreedom. Every day they dress to make an impression, or create something to make an impression, or sing to make an impression. They’ve got constant opportunities to define who they are in the eyes of other people.

  Most people who meet me? I know how they’re going to describe me later. Commentary on my clothes or personality will never be anyone’s go-to. The moment I’m out of earshot, I’m not “Gus, that kid obsessed with Alexander McQueen.” Nope. I’m eternally “Gus, the disabled kid.”

  Or sometimes I’m “Gus, the kid whose dad got murdered.”

  I’m not wearing black to make a statement. I’m wearing black because it’ll get me the least amount of attention today. Some attention is inevitable during the first week. There’s not much in Samsboro apart from the Munch-O Mills cereal factory. People shift in and out of positions there, so every year I’m an object of curiosity to anyone unfortunate enough to have moved here over the summer.

  I could cosplay as Björk and still be “the disabled kid” to newcomers.

  “Not hungry?” I’ve been staring into the distance. Mom’s been staring into me.

  My untouched pancakes are dissolving. “Sorry. Thinking.”

  “How’s the abyss today, Gus?”

  “It’s nothing.” We made up this awful joke years ago. “I’m just spacing out.”

  I look to Fridge-Dad. He sits on a pontoon boat. I can’t see his eyes, so I silently address the water reflected in his sunglasses: Fine. I’ll give both arms not to go.

  Dr. Petani says at this point there isn’t much more that splinting can do to undo the contractures in my right arm. Wearing an elbow brace might only “incur unnecessary muscle stress and pain.” Back in junior high, I went through a stubborn phase of refusing to wear my splints and orthotics. I’m still paying for it. My right arm’s a tightened spring that curls up against me like a question mark.

  “If you didn’t like the space brace, you could have told us.”

  “The space brace is great. It rhymes.” I smile at her. “I’ll wear it later.”

  Mom raises an eyebrow. “No one will see it anyhow.”

  That’s not the point, and she knows it. Sure, Mom works from home, but she doesn’t live in her pajamas. This morning she’s wearing a tasseled cardigan over a caramel-colored dress. Her earrings are porcelain roses. A floral headband straps down her frizzy gray hair. You’d think she was going to open a candle-selling shop. Instead, she’ll lock herself in her paper-strewn office to ghostwrite the autobiography of some soldier in a nursing home. Mom always dresses for work, even if she doesn’t leave the house. She says taking yourself seriously means dressing yourself seriously.

  Why can’t she apply that logic to me?

  “Well,” she concedes, “I can’t say I dislike a dark palette. But if you’re going to look like the night sky, I don’t see how it could hurt to add a few stars.”

  “Adding new stars could speed up global warming.” I wipe my chin. “That would hurt a lot. Consider the polar bears.”

  Tamara’s laugh enters before she does. She appears beyond the open kitchen window, popping up from below like a whack-a-mole.

  “Special delivery!” She plops a heap of filthy carrots into the sink and leans on the sill. There’s soil all over her, as always, and she’s smiling, as often. “Honestly, Beth. You can’t force a guy to wear the cosmos.”

  Mom’s on her feet, inspecting the shrunken carrots. “Not a very special delivery.”

  “That’s because I haven’t delivered it yet.” Tamara leans forward. Mom stands on tiptoe to meet her.

  A lot of people probably look away when their parents kiss. Maybe I’m a weirdo, because I hope I never will.

  Before Tamara moved in, our house was a mausoleum. That wasn’t Dad’s fault. Dead or not, his teeth have always brightened the place up.

  Our house was a mausoleum because Mom locked herself inside it. The windows were always closed, and incessant air-conditioning left the place frigid. Our world was white walls and white carpet. I used to wake up in my bedroom and panic, thinking I was back in the hospital again.

  Tamara’s the only landscaper in town, so Mom commissioned her to install a therapeutic Zen garden in our backyard. Tamara showed up beaming with bags of stones under her arms. Mom suddenly thought of a dozen excuses to bring her back again. Tamara dug a small koi pond, lined our walkway with ribbon grass, trained ivy to grow up our porch pillars, planted hollyhocks and irises in curving flower beds. After a year, it looked like all the color that had drained out of our house had pooled on our lawn.

  Early some mornings, second-grade me would hear Tamara’s laughter rattling our kitchen walls. I’d shuffle downstairs to hear its echo—Mom’s little chuckle in the aftermath—and find them swapping gossip and sipping coffee: Mom in her muted dresses, Tamara looking like a fashionista gone country in blue overalls and black boots, her bright yellow Peake Landscaping baseball cap on her head.

  In third grade, after surgery landed me in a wheelchair, Tamara spent several August hours squatting on our front step, taking meticulous notes with the help of a tape measure. She must not have slept that night, because the next morning she was squatting on a brand-new wooden mobility ramp instead, painting it ivory to match the porch.

  “I don’t like people feeling sorry for me,” I warned her.

  Tamara snorted. “Hell if I feel sorry for you. You�
��re the most pampered kid I’ve ever met, and I’ve seen some real princes. Your mom dotes on you like no other.”

  “Then . . . why are you here?”

  Tamara cocked her head. “I’m hoping some of your mom’s doting might rub off on me, is all. You get me?”

  Soon Tamara was giving me rides to school, and I was giving her tips on how to woo my hermit mother. I told her Mom loves Thai food and terrible piano ballads and Christmas puppet movies and pictures of my dead father.

  “Yeah, what’s that all about?”

  I remember shifting in the seat of her truck; I’d sat on a spade. “She wants him to be part of my life. Is it weird?”

  Tamara shrugged. “He’s got a good face. Looks like a certain kid I really like. But who the hell hangs pictures halfway up a staircase?”

  An unplanned laugh burst out of me. “Right?!”

  I don’t know exactly when color started bleeding into the house. First it was potted hens and chicks on the kitchen windowsill, and then a vase full of snapdragons on our dining room table, and eventually daylilies on Mom’s nightstand.

  For years now, Tamara’s trailed soil and blades of grass along the white carpets in jade strips of bright color. Every day, Tamara wakes up at dawn to check on the plants before work, but she leaves the heat on in her wake.

  Now she winks at me from the window. “Morning. You ready to give ’em hell?”

  “To be given it, at least.” A smile escapes me.

  “Beth, wanna stop strangling your kid so he can go get given hell already?”

  Mom’s suddenly hugging my head to her stomach. I don’t even know when she crossed the kitchen, but I’m buried under her heavy arms.

  “Stop growing up.”

  “I’ll, um, work on it.”

  She lets me go. Maybe Mom treats me like I’m seven because she wants me to stay small enough to hold. But Mom’s broken out of the tomb. There’s room in our house for things besides me and my dead dad and my dead right side.

  The truth is, I’m the one who wants to stop growing.

  I’d give all my limbs to stay home today.

  My pancakes have liquefied.

  KALYN

  IT’S A CLICHÉ to say that Jefferson High looks like a prison, but it’s also the truth. I don’t say goodbye to Mom when she drops me off, even though she wishes me a happy birthday. The hot September air smells like sticky cinnamon.

  The front hall is empty when I get inside. Well, almost empty.

  There’s only one tumbleweed in this windowless space, and man, does he look like he’ll tumble, made of skinny twigs like that. But I need help, and apparently stick-boy’s the only soul besides yours truly who’s late for class.

  And that’s uncanny, too, because damn if he doesn’t look like the kind of dweeb who drools over textbooks. His glasses are more old man–ish than mine ever were, and there’s a quill tucked behind one of his ears. He’s wearing a T-shirt with Shakespeare’s iconic mug and the words Will Power! slapped on it, for chrissakes. This kid is dying for more English Lit class. He’s Christopher-Marlowe-with-a-knife-in-his-eye dying for it.

  People assume I don’t like English Lit, mostly because people suck. But I inherited the bookworm bug from both parents. Dad has a shelf of murder mysteries in his cell. He knows it’s ironic. Mom’s always had a taste for forbidden romance. That’s also pretty ironic, when you think about it.

  Back in Alleghany, she kept a stack of Harlequin paperbacks in the living room. They held up one side of the coffee table where a leg was missing, but that table was always slanted because Mom was constantly wiggling books loose for rereading. You’d set your drink down and end up cussing.

  And I get peckish for words. I’ll read anything from John Donne to coupon pamphlets. Ten bucks says this guy— ­Quillpower, let’s call him—is more particular.

  Quillpower leans against a row of lockers, looking left and then at a handheld game and then right and then rinse-repeating the cycle.

  “Hey! You’re local, right?”

  Quillpower’s head snaps up. He scans me in one swoop before dropping his eyes. His fingers start moving faster.

  “I’m new. My name’s Kalyn Sp—wait. Shit! I forgot my last name. Paulski? Popski? Do either of those sound like real names to you?”

  “Not remotely.” His voice sounds like how he looks: weedy and crisp.

  “Yeah, I know. Dumbass hick can’t even remember her own name. Funny, right?”

  He’s back to groping the handheld. I feel like maybe it’s a defense mechanism, like when pill bugs roll into pebble-balls. “Never mind. Just—which way to the office?”

  Quillpower unsticks one hand from the screen and points. His arm’s so thin I wonder why the weight of his hand doesn’t snap the damn thing. I follow its trajectory and see a dozen doors.

  “Mind showing me there?”

  But that’s about as much mingling as this weed can handle, because he’s already tumbling elsewhere. Quillpower scuttles away and falls through the boys’ room entrance.

  “Thanks anyway!” I holler. If I’ve got social issues, Quill-power clearly has social volumes. But he did point me the right way. We used to find pill bugs in our pantry back in Alleghany, and I always liked them. Mom calls them roly-polies, which is just too good a name to squish.

  And what’s in a name? Apparently every damn thing.

  “Pawlski, Polansky, Powpowpowsky?”

  “I don’t have a Kalyn Powpowpowksy on the roster.” The secretary, a “Kitty Patrick” by her brown name placard, peers at me from behind an ancient computer. I don’t know how she can see me past the collection of framed dog photos lining the counter. “You’re a sophomore?”

  “Yeah.” I’m smiling again. God, don’t girls get cheek-aches from this crap? I’ve never felt sorry for pageant queens before. Then again, a pageant queen would have received a nicer welcome. Mrs. Patrick took one look at my face and nearly jumped through the ceiling, all, “Jiminy Christmas, girl, wipe your face!”

  I’d totally forgotten my eyeliner trails. No wonder I spooked Quillpower. But the minute Mrs. Patrick asks me to wash my face, I tell her I sure as hell won’t.

  She raises tattooed eyebrows and leans forward in her roller chair, beads rattling against her blouse. “Well, whatever. Stick to your guns if you want, Annie Oakley.”

  Mrs. Patrick’s got rhinestones on her nails, and her dyed red hair has streaks of violet in it. I bet she was a rebel in high school. I bet she skipped college to join a grimy punk band. Bet she misses the excitement.

  “Still not seeing you, dear.” She clicks her mouse. “But wait, now—we do have a Kalyn-Rose Poplawski registered in the freshman class.”

  “That’s it!” The rest of her sentence drops. “Wait, what? That’s a mistake.”

  “We’ll get that fixed. It’s been a tragedy in here ever since they had Brad covering while I was on vacation in Tampa. Brad’s the worst, Kalyn-Rose. So how do you really spell your last name?”

  “No, the mistake is, I’m not a freshman. I’m a sophomore.”

  “Some credits didn’t transfer, and it looks like your attendance in Alleghany was . . . ​we’ll say patchy. You’re a freshman again, sweetie.”

  “But I’m sixteen today!”

  “Happy birthday!” Mrs. Patrick rifles through a drawer.

  “This is bullsh— Come on, Mrs. Patrick. You’re cool, right?”

  She passes me a glittery purple pencil. “It’s Ms. Patrick, and yes, I’m the coolest person in this office. Not that there’s a lot of competition.” A man at the copy machine, probably Brad, gives her this sad, basset-hound stare. “But it’s not up to me. You’re on Officer Newton’s list.”

  Not only does this guy reject sweet tea in our kitchen and guilt Mom into thinking she’s no kind of mother; now he shoves me backward into freshmanhood?

  “Well, shit-sticks.”

  “Language. Look.” Ms. Patrick taps her glasses. “Take it up with Officer Newton. For now,
just get to class and don’t burn the place down.”

  “I didn’t burn down Alleghany. I only pulled the fire alarm on occasion.”

  “You’ll be in room 107. Mr. Smalls. I’ve drawn you a map.”

  Ms. Patrick is in her fifties, looks like. She seems local as hell, so maybe she worked here eighteen years ago. I wonder if she remembers Dad. I wonder if she thought he looked like the kind of kid who’d be in prison one day. Do I look like that, too?

  “Anything else I can help you with, Kalyn-Rose?”

  “It’s not Kalyn-Rose.” I tuck the birthday pencil behind my ear, à la Quillpower. “I mean . . . ​it’s just Rose. Can you show me how to spell Poplawski?”

  Ms. Patrick doesn’t bat a lash. She spells out the letters on a heart-shaped sticky note and shoos me out of the office.

  I retrace my steps, duck into the girls’ room, and scrub the black off my face. I pull my braid to the side of my head and wind it twice around my skull before rolling the last bit into a knot, twisting my hair tie tight around that. I tuck the glittery pencil into the knot and tug a few bangs from my hairline.

  I look like some discount duchess, crowned in red ropes. I practice a meek smile. My eyes aren’t as pink now that the contacts have nestled there for a while. I almost look like a nice, straitlaced country girl. It’s anything but Spence, anything but me.

  People sometimes claim they were born lawbreakers. I’ll do you one better—I was conceived one. Kids like me are raised on Happy Meals, destined to start smoking by age thirteen before they become dropouts.

  But some kids are destined for great things, like Girl Scouts and summer camp and homemade food, and whatever else rich people think is great. I imagine Rose Poplawski is that kind of girl. Maybe other people will imagine it, too.

  GUS

  THE FIRST TWO minutes of school were okay. I made it up the stairs and through the front door without any incidents, even in my heaviest boots.

  Dr. Petani chided me for my Doc Martens the last time I was in her office. “Isn’t it difficult wearing your AFO with those?”