by Wiltz, Jenni
Emma raised her hand, along with most of the class.
Rachel and Via did not.
“Then you’re familiar with the kind of moaning and groaning that happens when one sibling thinks the other is getting a bigger piece of the pie.”
It’s not just siblings, Emma thought. Via had barely said a word as Emma stumbled into her seat before class. She mumbled “hi,” but never looked up from her phone. All Emma saw was her scalp, cocoa brown beneath a horizontal flurry of black curls.
“So how do you think they solved the problem?” Mr. Parker put down his piece of chalk and brushed his hands together, releasing a white cloud of dust. “Give me your best guess.”
“Flipped a coin,” said Dominic Abrego.
Mr. Parker hung his thumbs on an enormous silver belt buckle with a turquoise stone embedded in the center. “Anyone else want to pretend they care about passing this class?”
“They didn’t solve it,” said Via. “They went to war.”
Emma tightened her grip on her pen. What do you want from me? she thought.
“Not yet they didn’t. This time, to keep things even, they split Massachusetts in two, creating the new free state of Maine. That created one new free state to balance the new slave state of Missouri.”
“Bullshit,” Emma mumbled.
“What was that?” Mr. Parker asked. “Speak up, West.”
Emma looked up and felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Nothing.”
Mr. Parker tilted his head, looking at her down the bridge of his nose. “I’m pretty sure I heard you say something. I think you should tell the class what it was.”
Some sort of fan or vent clicked on, shaking the ceiling tiles. Emma cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “They called it the Missouri Compromise, but what did the slave states compromise on? They got everything they wanted.”
“Go on,” Mr. Parker said.
She looked up at him anxiously. “That’s as far as I got.”
“Then it’s time to go further. You have a theory, West. Let’s hear your evidence.”
“Well.” Her cheeks felt heavy and bright. “There were a set number of people in Massachusetts, whether they called it one state or two. But Missouri was going to be full of people who could all own slaves. More slaves meant more population and more representation in Congress. The free states didn’t get any more people.”
Via’s hand shot up behind her, rustling the nylon of her jacket. “Let’s not forget that slaves were only counted as three-fifths of a person. People always forget that.”
“No,” Emma said. “They don’t.”
Mr. Parker raised an eyebrow and she bent her head, breaking eye contact. The whole thing should have been called the Missouri Clusterfuck. No one got what they really wanted and all they did was push back the deadline for a war.
“Moving on,” he said, picking up a piece of chalk.
• • •
In chemistry, Dan greeted her with a wink, the flimsy rope straps of his natural-fiber backpack looped over the chair. “Hey. You look tired.”
She dropped her backpack and slid into the orange plastic seat. Someone else’s long hair was caught on the silver bracket that held the seat to the metal frame. “Not an ideal conversation starter, but I’ll take it.”
“Why?”
“I have low self-esteem.”
“No, I meant why you were tired.”
“I stayed up late reading for history class.”
“You’ve heard of SparkNotes, right?”
“That’s a cop-out.”
“Speaking of cop-outs, are you still coming on Saturday? No excuse about washing your hair or a Real Housewives marathon or a second cousin’s wedding?”
“I don’t even know any of my second cousins.” She smiled. “I’ll be in the bleachers by the pool.”
“Keep an eye on the line judge. They like to cheat and give points to the other team.”
“I’ll keep him honest.” Emma held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“That’s not scout’s honor. That means you’re a Wudan swordsman.”
Emma held up all four fingers and separated them in the middle. “How about this?”
“You don’t know anything about anything, do you?” His eyes flickered over her face, like she was a painting whose brushstrokes held a hidden meaning. “That’s what I like about you.”
Before she could reply, Mr. Lopez hustled into the room, his aggressively pleated khakis rustling like Edith Wharton’s bustle. The next forty minutes vanished in a flurry of furrowed brows and disappointed sighs as he tried to explain shifting equilibrium and Le Chatelier’s Principle and she realized her A- wasn’t going to save her on the final.
After class, Dan took off down the hallway in the opposite direction. She watched his backpack bounce on his shoulders and realized he didn’t have anything in it.
As if he knew she was watching, he raised his hand and waved without turning around. As if she knew he’d feel it, she waved back.
• • •
The clubs had all finished their Cinco de Mayo murals in the courtyard. Student council reps passed out voting slips in first period, and the winner would be announced tomorrow at lunch. They were supposed to circle the name of the painting they liked best: Aztec Glory, Mexican Pride, or Viva la Raza. Emma pulled her ballot out of her backpack and circled Aztec Glory, hoping that was the title of Ana Gonzales’s window.
For once, the speakers weren’t blasting ranchero music. Hip-hop rumbled like an earthquake through the courtyard. Emma felt it in her veins, fighting with the natural rhythm of her heart as she unpacked her lunch. Today, she had peanut butter and honey on wheat bread, green grapes, a brownie, and a foil-wrapped can of iced tea. Via was nowhere to be found.
“She can’t stand the sight of us,” Rachel said, tearing open a bag of chocolate candy.
“Us? I’m pretty sure you mean me.”
“In Spanish, I told her my dad’s almost done with his letter to the principal. She didn’t say another word to me.” Rachel dug a piece of candy out of the bag. A constellation of glittering specks in her nail polish caught the light, throwing rainbows on her neck. “Has Dan asked you to the prom yet?”
Emma shook her head. “I’m going to his water polo match on Saturday.”
“He’ll ask you then. He just doesn’t want to do it when everyone else is around.”
“It’s okay if he doesn’t.”
Rachel lifted one perfectly arched eyebrow. It was weird how much attention Rachel paid to her eyebrows: plucking them, darkening them with a chubby brown pencil, then shellacking them with sealer. “You need to have more confidence in yourself.”
Emma glared at her. Someone with perfect skin, perfect teeth, a flat stomach, and concave thighs shouldn’t be allowed to say those words to anyone. “Sure, but why stop there? While you’re at it, why not ask all those people with Parkinson’s to just stop shaking all the time?”
Rachel tilted her head, studying Emma like a stain on her favorite sweater. “You’re different these days.”
“I don’t feel different.”
“You are.” Her glittery nails dove into the bag of chocolate again. “I think you need to remember how you used to be.”
“How’s that?”
Rachel shrugged. “Nice. Happy. Grateful.”
Emma looked at one of her grapes, brown and sunken at the stem. If you only ever looked at it from the bottom, it was the most perfect specimen possible. “I’m just me. And I’ve always been this way.”
“That’s too bad.” Rachel turned her head toward the Cinco de Mayo windows. She circled “Viva la Raza” and folded her voting slip in half.
• • •
Emma held up her hand to shield her eyes from the glow of the late afternoon sun. She watched other
students pour out of school, unencumbered by thirty-pound backpacks and the resentment of their supposed friends.
Griselda Gutierrez opened the door of a low rider blasting ranchero music and slid into the passenger seat. She wasn’t carrying a single book. “But we have French homework,” Emma muttered.
Ten minutes later, her mom’s Buick pulled up with Mattie sprawled in the back seat. Emma heaved her backpack onto the floor and three tiny frown lines appeared on her mom’s forehead. “Careful,” she said. “You’ll leave a dent.”
“Like the one in my shoulder?”
“Bad day?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything you want for dinner?” This was her mom’s favorite peace offering—the equivalent of a hug or pat on the back. Today, she would rather have had the hug.
“Let me think about it.”
“Tell her you want macaroni and cheese,” Mattie said.
“Let your sister decide.”
They drove home through Malo Verde’s north side, full of subdivisions with names like “Overlook at Sunbright by Rush Builders IV.” No matter how white-bread the names were, they all butted up against El Jalisco Road or La Grenada Boulevard.
At the stoplight on El Jalisco, her mom pulled up beside a Cutlass with an airbrushed woman on its side, a shirtless bandolera with bullet belts covering her enormous breasts. She sat with one leg crooked, holding a pistol over her crotch. Emma wondered if any little girls had to ride in that car and, if so, how long it took for them to wish they didn’t.
“Last call,” her mom said as they turned into their subdivision. “Anything you want to stop and get?”
Emma wanted the frozen chicken patties that made excellent sandwiches when paired with dill pickles and mayonnaise, but the box was over four dollars for four patties. Her dad always ate two, which meant they needed two boxes for one dinner. “I can’t think of anything.”
Mattie shook her head. “You should have said mac and cheese.”
• • •
When her stomach let loose a growl that rivaled a guard dog’s, she realized Mattie was right. She set down her pencil and rubbed her eyes. Somehow, she’d blasted past her French homework, read the first five chapters in Of Mice and Men, and finished half of the pre-calc problem set. But now the sun had dipped below the fence line in the backyard and the table wasn’t even set yet.
“Mom,” she called, “what time is it?”
“Quarter to six.” Something on the stove sizzled. It smelled warm and dry, like cumin.
“What’s for dinner?”
“Tamale pie and Spanish rice. I’ll dish up as soon as your father’s home.”
Cornbread, ground beef, kidney beans, and olives topped with sour cream, cheese, and salsa. Emma’s mouth watered. She went back to her math problems, expecting to be interrupted at any second. But she finished one problem after another after another, until she was on the verge of actually understanding vector cross products. Her stomach growled again. She licked her lips, which had gone Gobi Desert dry, and went into the kitchen to snitch a pinch of cheese to hold her until dinner.
The first layer of night had already shaded the backyard in grey. She looked at the microwave clock: 6:33 p.m. “Mom, I’m starving.” She reached for the paper towel holding a haystack of grated cheese. “Why isn’t Dad home yet?”
“Don’t touch that,” her mom said without turning around. “And you’re not starving.”
“Did Dad call to say he’d be late?”
“No.”
Emma stopped her hand in mid-air, fingertips hovering over the grated cheddar. Her dad always called when he was going to be late. Unwanted thoughts burst like fireworks behind her eyes: El Camino Rojo, the boy named Jesus, the chain-link fence. “Mom, do you think—”
“No.” She clutched a wooden spoon in her hand, dragging it aimlessly through the congealed contents of the saucepan.
Emma blinked. Her mom never stirred with diagonal strokes. She scraped the edge of the pan with wide circles that left no particle unstirred. It was how she’d taught them to make gravy and alfredo sauce—wax on, wax off, always moving, always circling, like a shark.
Emma pulled her hand away from the cheese.
What if the man who threatened her dad did it again? Or, even worse, what if there was more to the story? Maybe her mom was scared because she knew things her dad had only confessed behind a closed door. But if that were the case, wouldn’t her mom have insisted on a transfer? She wouldn’t have let him walk back into danger, would she?
At the stove, her mom pushed her sleeves up past her elbows. Two white scars swooshed in parallel just above the right elbow. Emma wondered what put them there.
Eight days ago, she’d have assumed her dad was giving someone a ride home or stuck in traffic. Not now. The sharp edge of fear replaced the blunt edge of hunger in her belly. “Mom,” she whispered. “What do we do?”
“He’ll be here soon, Em.”
“What if he’s not?”
“He will be.”
“How long—”
“Em, please.” Her mom’s knuckles shone star-bright where they clutched the wooden spoon. “Just be patient.”
But the last thing she wanted to be was what they called people in hospitals. She leaned against the counter and stared at the oven clock.
Dogs barked.
Lawnmowers fired up.
Horns honked.
Her stomach growled. Her mom’s stomach growled.
Windows opened and closed.
Doors opened and closed.
There was no sign of her father.
At 7:32 p.m., Mattie padded downstairs, her bare feet sticking to the hardwood floor. “Where’s Dad? Are we ever going to eat?”
Her mom let go of the wooden spoon. Shiny patches of skin stood out on her forehead and on either side of her nose. “Your father’s late. It’ll just be a f—few more minutes.”
“He always calls.” Mattie yawned and flung herself onto the couch. “Why didn’t he call?”
“I don’t know.” Her mom spun around and reached into the cabinet for a stack of plates. The seams of her blouse under her arms had darkened in the shape of half-moons. Emma wondered how long it would be before Mattie realized what they were scared of.
She bent her head and pictured an antique television set, the kind with rounded edges and rabbit ears capped with rubber pellets. It had two dials on the front with black hash marks representing channels. The screen was a field of snow. She imagined climbing inside it, barely finding enough space between the black zigs and white zags to breathe. As long as she stayed inside it, nothing could be real.
In third grade, she learned that Hebrews never spoke the name of God. In Rumpelstiltskin, the dwarf’s name was his power and once the princess knew it, he was done for. If you went into the bathroom and stared at the mirror and said “Bloody Mary” three times, a ghost would appear. Bad things happened when you said the names of things you shouldn’t. She wouldn’t be the first to say it, not out loud.
From the corner of her eye, she caught the change of the oven clock’s readout. 7:59 p.m.
A minute later, the microwave’s clock followed suit.
“Mom,” she said. “The clocks don’t match.”
“I know, baby.” Her mom’s voice was thick and raw, as if she’d been crying silently the whole time.
Emma covered her face with her hands. This was how families ended up on the news, begging the police to find their father, brother, sister, mother, daughter, son. It started with something as simple as a missed dinner. Time progressed on a sliding scale of doom that grew darker with every half hour.
Cop shows made it clear that missing people couldn’t be reported for forty-eight hours. But when you did report them, everyone hustled like a chicken with its head cut off, spouting figures
about how the first few hours are the most important. If that were true, why did you have to sit on your hands for the first forty-eight? The real first few hours were long gone.
Mattie padded across the floor, slipping her arms around their mom’s waist. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
“I think so, baby,” her mom said, pulling Mattie to her chest. The two of them sniffed and sighed and tried to pretend they weren’t crying.
Emma kept her face in her hands, breathing the smell of graphite and sweat. Her mom hadn’t cried when her dad fell off the ladder at a vacation cabin while trying to dislodge a wasp’s nest. Or when he was knocked unconscious after a runner slid into him at second base during a SeedCorp softball game. If anything, she’d seemed angry, as if he could have prevented these events and spared her the difficulty of caring for him. But there wasn’t any anger in her now. Without it, she seemed lost, like an electric car drifting to a stop after it lost its charge.
If her dad came home in twenty minutes and said he had a flat tire, they could all feel stupid and smile as their bones shook with relief. But if he didn’t, Emma knew she’d have to face the truth: The only reason they were still in this godforsaken town was because of her.
Chapter Fourteen
Thursday, April 3
The phone book lay buried under a pile of notepaper, the kind her mom made by cutting up botched photocopies. Emma’s hand shook as she pulled it from the drawer. Her mom stood by the phone, an old-school model mounted on the wall with a twirly cord connecting it to the handset. She held it in front of her, its rectangular number pads glowing alien green in the darkness. “Give me the number,” her mom said.
Emma turned page after page, but her hot tears blurred all the tiny black type. “Mom, I can’t see.”
“Go back to the beginning.”
In the front of the book, white pages with blood-red borders marked the city’s official phone numbers. She looked at the numbers for poison control, the national runaway switchboard, and the suicide prevention line. There were also numbers listed for the FBI, the US Marshals, and the Secret Service. “I don’t know which one.”
