“Mexican. We had pizza last night. You picked it up in Manchester after work.” I tap my fist on the edge of the counter, in time to the beat inside my skull. “The pizza in Willingham stinks.”
He flips open his cell phone. “Garcia’s doesn’t deliver, and I’m too tired to drive there.”
“I want Mexican!” I pound my fist on the counter as I repeat the words. The countertop is shaking—or is it me? I want to bang my head against the counter like I used to do when I was younger, because maybe if I bang my head hard enough, I’ll set free the thought that Chad tricked me into doing something evil and scary and my father didn’t even notice I had gone. And that when I came to the kitchen wanting dinner, he didn’t see me because I was invisible and the person on the phone was real.
• • •
“You’re too old to be throwing tantrums,” Dad says in his truck on the way to Garcia’s in College Park.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I mumble. I’m also too old to play with X-Men figures and kindergartners and to cry every time someone’s mean to me or things don’t go my way. But so far, Mr. Internet hasn’t given me any rules on how to stop.
“Think about what made you melt down tonight,” Dad says. “I’m sure it wasn’t the bad local pizza.”
I rub my aching hand. “You forgot about me. You always tell me not to interrupt, so I didn’t interrupt and you acted like I didn’t exist.”
I examine the pink mark on my fist that will be a bruise tomorrow, but out of the corner of my eye, I see him nod. “I should have noticed sooner. And praised you for not interrupting. But it was an important call.”
My stomach twists. Important call usually means change, and not in a good way. “Who were you talking to?”
“He’s an old friend in New York City. Someone I used to play with. We’re trying to get into some summer festivals.”
“What’ll you do with me?”
He hesitates for a long moment. “Bring you along. And your brothers too, if they’re free.” His eyes are on the road. Not on me.
I sniff. “Just don’t leave me with them.”
“Why? You’ve stayed with Eli and Max before.”
“I’m scared of Eli.”
Dad’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “What happened?”
“I heard Eli say something to Max …”
“You know they don’t mean it when they call you the accident.”
“Except that I was.” I clench my uninjured fist. The other will only bend partway. “Why did you and Mami have me when you knew I’d be …” I spit out the last word. “Defective?”
He reaches toward me. I shrink away, press myself against the door. Rogue cannot touch or be touched. “You’re not defective, Kiara. You lost your temper and got into trouble at school. Ms. Latimer and I think it’s …” He takes a deep breath. “Nigel’s death. Dee moving away. Your mother leaving. Too much … stress for you.”
“That’s not what Mrs. Mac said.” I can’t believe it was only a week ago, when she told him the same things I’m telling him and he made the same excuses. “She gave me that book by someone who’s like me.”
“I agree that Dee’s trying to help, but—”
“What about in kindergarten, when I didn’t talk for six months? That’s one of the signs, you know.” Before then, I’d sing entire songs from TV in English and Spanish, and everybody thought I was a genius. But when I started talking again, my voice was funny. Off-key. Flat. And I had trouble pronouncing all the big words I knew. “What about … ?” I stop.
Suddenly, I don’t want to talk about it. The teasing. The kids who beat me up and the ones I beat up. Katie Lyon in kindergarten. Sammy Ortiz in second grade. Jason Karl in fifth. Emily Stein in sixth. Melanie Prince-Parker in March. And Chad yesterday. My face feels hot and damp, but when I think of some of the kids I gave it back to, I smile.
Then I remember the last birthday party I went to, and my smile fades.
• • •
Fourth grade. Emily Stein.
We weren’t friends, but her mother took Spanish lessons from Mami. Mami bought me a new puffy-sleeved dress with seams that stuck out on the inside, and it itched like crazy. In the car, I chewed on one of the sleeves to take my mind off the itching.
At Emily’s house, I sat in a corner of the living room and kept chewing because none of the girls talked to me. When they lined up for Pin the Tail on the Donkey, I got in line too because the winner was supposed to get a prize.
“The back of the line is that way, Kiara.” Emily pointed to where I’d been sitting.
“No, it’s not,” I said, because I hadn’t cut in line. I saw no one in back of me.
“Emily’s right,” one of her friends said.
Another girl joined in. “You have to wait your turn. Like the teacher always says.”
“You’re just making me sit down again. You don’t want me to play.” They never did. At school they always said they had enough people when I tried to get into the jump rope line or their kickball games.
Emily whispered to her friend, but loud enough that everyone could hear her. Including me. “I didn’t want to invite her. But I had to. On account of her mom teaching my mom Spanish.”
My eyes watered, and my cheeks stung.
“Look, she’s crying again,” someone said.
Quickly I wiped my face on my sleeve. My upper arm felt damp, and I didn’t have to look to know why.
“Hey, there’s a big hole in her sleeve.”
“She was chewing her dress.”
“Yuck!”
“Like a billy goat.”
One of them poked her finger through the hole and touched my arm. I trembled, then let out a scream. The film over my eyes cleared, and I saw not the girls but the table where the birthday cake sat. It had green icing and a maypole with little figures dancing around it. All the figures in one happy circle. No one left out.
I ran to the table with the maypole cake and flipped it over.
Never invite Crybaby Kiara to your birthday party, or you’ll be really, really sorry. For the next two years, Emily and her friends told everyone so and the reason why. Because of her I never got invited to another party again. Which was why I had to yank out a handful of her frizzy brown hair and bloody her lip one morning before school, while all her mean friends tried to pull me away.
• • •
Dad’s no longer driving. He turned off the road somewhere and cut the engine, and now he holds me in the still, dark truck cab, his arms squeezing my shoulders, his soft beard against my forehead.
“You got cured, but there’s no cure for what I have,” I say.
And I finally tell him what Mr. Internet told me about Asperger’s syndrome, that it’s not something you can take a pill for. “It’s probably genetic. You weren’t supposed to have any more kids.”
In my mind, my genes are a giant twisty ladder—two parallel strands connected by crosstrees—the way Mr. Internet showed me. Sometimes they’re red, blue, green, and yellow—colorful and pretty. Sometimes they’re dark and ugly. Mine are always broken—strands bent and crosstrees knocked out. That’s what poison chemicals do. Dad’s broken genes making broken copies.
“What exactly did your brothers say?” Dad’s voice is hard, like he plans to get both of them in trouble.
“Just Eli.” I don’t want Max in trouble for nothing. Especially now that I know he’s Antonio’s friend. “He learned about it in one of his classes. That the chemicals they gave you to get rid of the cancer cause genetic mutations.”
A couple of cars pass by our parked truck, their headlights turning everything inside shadow and silver. “I’m sure Eli thinks he knows everything now that he’s in that premed program. But there’s no proof that what they gave me causes birth defects.” Dad’s chest rises and falls against my upper arm. “At least once the treatments are done.”
I swallow the knot in my throat. Eli had a special class about all this stuff. He should know. Dad
quit college in his sophomore year and said he cut most of his classes before then to play music or do what he called solidarity work. Mami’s smart, but she probably couldn’t understand the doctor because she doesn’t speak much English. “Whatever. At least you guys wanted me.” I swallow again. “Just don’t change your mind on account of what you got.”
Dad squeezes me tighter. Any more, and my eyes will pop out. “Never.”
“What about Mami?”
“Your mother loves you.”
“Then why did she leave me?”
Dad releases me from his death grip. “She has to make a living, which she can do in Montreal but can’t do here. More than anything, she misses you.”
I fold my arms against my chest. “If she misses me so much, she should come home.”
• • •
I wish Dad wouldn’t keep talking about Mami at dinner, but he does, even if what he mainly talks about is how Garcia’s isn’t real Mexican food and how Mexican food is different from Salvadoran food. It makes me miss Mami’s pupusas, thick tortillas filled with beans or cheese and served with tomato sauce and pickled cabbage called curtido.
“You still love Mami, right?” I ask him on the way home.
He nods but doesn’t say anything.
“And she still loves you, right?” When they first met, he didn’t speak Spanish, and she barely spoke English, and they didn’t seem to learn much of each other’s language over the years. Sometimes when Mami got mad at Dad, she’d yell at him in Spanish and English and he’d sit there quietly as if he didn’t understand either language. But whenever they played music together, I could tell right away that they loved each other. They didn’t need words—the music said everything.
“If your mother could be here with us, she would,” Dad finally says.
I don’t think he wants to hear me tell him how in X-treme X-Men, Rogue left Gambit even though they loved each other because she had to kill the evil Vargas, who had attacked them. Gambit almost died while Rogue was gone, but she got back just in time to save him. Once right after Mami left, he yelled at me because I talked about nothing but X-Men, so I imagined myself writing a sticky note saying, Never talk to Dad about X-Men and slapping it inside my brain.
CHAPTER 14
I DON’T SEE BRANDON OR CHAD GET OFF THE SCHOOL BUS the rest of the week. I watch for them through the hole in the fence as I work on Max’s old bike using the directions Mr. Internet gave me. I sand the rust from the frame, crankset, and cassette; tighten the cables; straighten the brakes; clean and oil the chain; and inflate the tires. Now that I’m five foot four, the bike fits me perfectly. It’s heavier and harder to pedal than Mrs. Elliott’s bike, but it will get me to College Park. On Thursday, I ride to the pharmacy in Willingham to buy black nail polish. The lady at the register stares at me, and I look away. I think she remembers me from when I bought the Sudafed and now believes I’m one of those creepy druggies who dresses all in black and paints her fingernails and toenails black too.
On my way back home, I see Brandon standing next to the concrete platform in the park. He clutches the edge of the platform and doubles over, coughing.
I ride up to him. “You okay?”
Brandon gasps for breath. His mouth looks like that of a fish taken out of the water. “Chad … says … I got … puny-monia.”
I laugh at the way Brandon says it, even though it’s not funny that he’s so sick. “It’s pronounced new-monia.”
“New-monia,” he repeats.
“Is Chad sick too? I haven’t seen him.”
“He said he was getting medicine. But he ain’t back yet.”
Brandon coughs again. I hear him sucking mucus into the back of his throat. “You shouldn’t be out here if you’re sick. You should be in bed,” I tell him.
“Mommy says I need fresh air.”
Or to stand lookout. Which means they’re cooking at home again. Are they still making Chad carry the bottles too?
Friday it rains. Before I have a chance to take my bike to the trail Saturday morning, Chad shows up with his mountain bike and a scratched BMX bike.
The bruise on his cheek is faded. But he has a scrape on his forehead.
“Maybe you should wear a helmet. Those bikes can be dangerous.” I point to his BMX bike and think of the pictures in that Ride BMX magazine he was reading in the drugstore. Everyone in the pictures had a helmet because it’s easy to fall doing tricks and crack your head open. “We have a helmet you can use.”
Max left his old helmet in the lean-to, and he’s at college, so he won’t mind if I loan it to Chad. I run through the house and out the back door. Max’s helmet is balanced upside down on a ladder and covered in cobwebs. I wipe the helmet on my jeans. Strands of spiderweb cling to my thumb and forefinger.
When I return, Chad has leaned his mountain bike against the tree. He sits on the BMX bike, rolling it back and forth. “Here,” I say, holding the silver helmet out to him.
Chad pops a wheelie. “I’m not taking your crummy helmet. You wear it.”
Cobwebs still crisscross the inside, and dust coats the felt pads. “Yuck.” I set the helmet on the top step, by the front door. I figure I can clean it before I ride to College Park. “Want to show me some tricks?” I ask Chad.
Chad walks the front wheel in a semicircle. “No. I want you to talk to your friend about letting me ride on his track.”
“M-my friend?” I stammer. Antonio said that he’s my friend—and that Chad’s trouble. But my stuck tongue tells me I don’t really know what Chad is, and I’m not sure Antonio’s enough of a friend that I can ask him.
Chad pivots to face his mountain bike. “You can ride the boy’s bike.”
My mouth goes dry. “I’m not carrying your …”
“I don’t got any. See for yourself.”
I approach the mountain bike as if it were a bomb, slide my fingers into a saddlebag, wriggle them around. Nothing but warm air. The same with the other bag. “So you just want me to talk to Antonio?”
“Yeah. But I gotta make a stop first. You don’t have to go in.”
One stop turns out to be all the drugstores in College Park. One of those that kept Sudafed on the shelf last Sunday now locks it behind the pharmacy counter, Chad tells me. And the other one only has three boxes. Chad limps a little when he goes inside, and when he comes out almost empty-handed, his face is pale. The three boxes fit inside the pocket of his cargo shorts.
We ride to the bike trails, my stomach tightening the closer we get. Will Antonio tell Max if I bring Chad back—even though Chad doesn’t have any dangerous chemicals on him?
All this is so new for me. I know what it’s like to be excluded, to have no friends. I don’t know what it’s like to be invited and then have a friend who I’m trying to get invited too. “What do you want me to tell Antonio?” I ask Chad, because he’s supposed to be my tutor in these things.
He rolls his eyes toward the sky and says, “I’m doomed.”
Because you don’t think I can do a good job? Swallowing hard, I pass Chad and turn into Beresford Estates without a backward glance. I’ll show him I can talk to Antonio. I don’t need any help.
The damp ground smell, mixed with pine sap, hits me as soon as I enter the canopy of trees. My tires kick up mud that pelts my ankles where I’ve rolled up my pant legs. The tree that blocked the path has been cleared and the trail stretches out ahead of me. I pass the sawed-off trunk of the fallen tree with only the briefest glance at its exposed rings. The trunk is the diameter of a basketball. The tree had many years ahead of it.
“Beep, beep,” Chad calls from behind. I veer to the right, and he pulls even with me on the wide trail.
“Maybe he’s not here,” I say, disappointment muffling my voice.
“Then we ride until we find it.” He lifts the front end of his bike and leans backward slightly so he rides only on his rear tire.
“How did you do that?” I ask when his front tire returns to the trail.
>
He doesn’t answer. I know the answer anyway. Lots of practice. A few scrapes and bruises.
Chad and I ride alongside each other into the maze of trails. Even if we get lost, I figure we’ll find the BMX track eventually.
The main trail, wide enough for our two bikes, splits into three trails, each one narrow and twisty. The first one we take dips and rises before it leads us right back to where we started. We then take the third trail, which crosses a creek twice, once over a bridge, the other splashing through the water. After following the creek for a while, we head back uphill. I pass Chad because his BMX bike doesn’t have low gears. Rotting leaves and pine needles cover most of the trail, but near the top of the uphill part, we hit sand that makes my bike fishtail.
We emerge from the sandy section at the bottom of a grassy hill. Chad stops. He leans against the handlebars, panting, clutching his right side. His eyes are squeezed shut. Faint voices, voices of older boys, rise from the other side of the hill. My stomach does a quarter turn. If Antonio is here … What am I supposed to say to him? What would Rogue tell Wolverine so he’d let Gambit join the X-Men?
Laying my bike on the ground, I climb the hill. When I get to the top, I see an open area with BMX bike jumps made of sand, tires, and plywood. The meadow surrounding it slopes gently upward to more woods. I stand at the only steep side, but the entire BMX track appears carved out of the meadow below.
I gape at the massive sandbox that makes real people appear as small as action figures. Antonio isn’t there, but two other boys wearing helmets ride on separate mounds, and a bigger kid with sideburns sits next to a wheelbarrow. He holds a video camera.
I scoot back down the hill before they see me. “I found the track, but Antonio’s not there,” I whisper.
“Good. I’m riding,” Chad says. He pushes his bike up the hill. I leave mine at the bottom and follow, feet dragging, certain that if Antonio isn’t there, the others will kick us out.
Chad stumbles once on the way up. But at the top he waves, yells, “Look out!” and flies down the hill into the pit.
He zips up a mound, catapults straight into the air, and turns 360 degrees—twice—before riding down the other side of the mound. I suck in my breath.
Rogue Page 7
