by Wiltz, Jenni
“The guidance counselors found two scholarships up for grabs,” Mrs. Evans continued. “The Italian Brotherhood of St. Anthony will give a $500 scholarship to a graduating senior with Italian ancestry. If your parents or grandparents were born in Italy, you are eligible to apply.”
Emma thought of the names her mom spent hours poring over: Townsend. Sevier. Evans. Kendall. Hamilton. She was surprised her mom even liked marinara sauce.
“The second scholarship is offered by the Mexican-American Alliance of the Bay Area. The scholarship will be awarded to two students of Hispanic origin who have demonstrated outstanding leadership skills over the past two years. If you’re interested in either of these, pick up an application from Betty in the counseling office.”
Emma sighed. No one wanted to give any money to the meek, pudgy descendant of a bunch of Pilgrims. She scratched a line through the day’s date, written with unfounded optimism at the top of the page.
• • •
After English, she went to her locker to swap Of Mice and Men with her chemistry book. The first thing she saw when she opened her locker was the Boardwalk photo. Her dad smiled broadly, his grey T-shirt and pale jeans blending together in a fog-like smear. She’d told him those were the worst jeans ever, the “dad” version of “mom jeans” that he should be embarrassed to ever be seen in. Now she felt guilty for having thought the criticism was worth a single breath.
She wondered what he was doing now. Was he still sleeping? Eating breakfast? Maybe today was the day he’d finally be able to open his left eye. His right eye was so red she wondered how much he could see out of it. Her mom still hadn’t called the optometrist to get him another pair of glasses. Goddamn it, she thought. Hitting a man with glasses was one of those things even kids’ cartoons told you not to do. She leaned her forehead against the locker, hoping the cold metal would cool her anger.
A familiar pair of black flip-flops shuffled up beside her. “What’s up?”
“Doc,” she said softly.
“Nice. You can’t go wrong with a Bugs Bunny reference.” Dan bent his head to look into her eyes. “How are you? You were really freaked out on Friday.”
“I’m okay.”
“How are things with your family?”
“Bad.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“I want to.”
“Em, you look like you’re about to cry.”
“They hit a man with glasses.” Her dad didn’t even have those fancy shatterproof lenses or twistable frames. He had old, brittle lenses that would shatter the minute they hit the ground, kaleidoscoping into a shower of star-shaped shards. Shards shaped exactly like the nicks and divots dotting his cheeks.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Dan reached for her hand. “Em, what’s wrong?”
“I know what they did.” A rush of heat flushed her cheeks. Suddenly, her knees shook and she wasn’t sure how much longer they’d hold her. How could one human being do that to another?
“Okay, let’s get you out of here.” Dan pulled her away from the locker and shut it behind her. “Come on.”
She closed her eyes and leaned into him. His flannel shirt smelled of detergent, a chemical-based clean meant to replicate an ocean breeze. It was new to her—her mom only used unscented. He picked up her backpack and slung it over his shoulder. Then, with one arm around her, he piloted her down the hallway.
Emma kept her eyes shut. She trusted him not to trip her or push her into the boys’ bathroom. Even if he did, it didn’t matter. She would just stay there until someone made her leave.
“Step,” Dan said.
She obeyed and sunlight fell upon her. Like a vampire, she turned away.
“Okay, one more.”
She lifted her foot and felt for the ground with her toe.
“There you go. It’s flat now. Keep moving.”
A bell clanged in the courtyard. She knew she was supposed to be somewhere, that she’d told Rachel she wouldn’t skip any more class. Rachel would understand, wouldn’t she? She had to, once she knew.
A few steps later, Dan’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “Okay, here we go.” She heard a doorknob turn and raised her foot to step over a threshold. When the door closed behind them, she let her eyelids flutter up slowly. They were in a dark room that smelled like sweat and metal.
“Where are we?”
“It’s a room. In the music studio. For practicing.”
As her eyes adjusted, the ceiling and walls began to give off a faint glow. She made out the edges of pale perforated tiles. “Is it soundproof?”
“It’s for jazz band.”
“Are you in jazz band?”
“No.”
He reached for the light switch. “Don’t,” she said. “Not yet.”
“Here, you should sit down.” He pulled a chair toward her. “Can you see that?”
She nodded, but he reached for her hand anyway and placed it on the chair back. He pulled a second chair over and sat in it backwards, propping his arms on top. “What happened to you back there?”
She put her hands on her temples, as if she could squeeze out the image forever. “I figured something out that I wish I didn’t know.”
“What was it?” He stretched his long legs out toward her. If he brought them together, they would touch hers.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You know why.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He rested his chin on his forearms. “Because you’re beautiful.”
She pulled her chin into her neck, the way her mother had told her never to do in pictures. “What?”
His eyes stared straight into hers. “You heard me.”
I heard you, but I don’t believe you, she thought. But as she looked at him, she recognized something in the loose curl of his lips and the warm light in his eyes. She shook her head, confused. “When?”
“The first day of class. You came in with Rachel. Her hair was in a lumpy braid and yours was smooth. She asked if she could borrow a pencil.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You pulled your backpack toward your chest and reached into the pocket to give her a pencil. You didn’t even wait until you sat down.”
On the first day of school, she’d worn a floral T-shirt and jeans with brown suede boots. She’d wanted to use her mom’s hot rollers but didn’t wake up in time. “Is that why you asked me for paper?”
“I wanted to see if you’d treat me the same.”
She shook her head. The images and facts in her brain were all mixed up, aligned around poles that had suddenly reversed. Maybe the Earth’s axis had slipped, and the resulting orbit wobble disturbed the stars, the sky, the tide, the moon, the waves. Maybe in this brave new world, she was beautiful.
She looked back at Dan. His eyebrows were thicker than hers, longer, with a less pronounced arch. Where his left brow originated, over the inner corner of his eye, the hairs stood straight up instead of curving toward his ear.
They were nothing alike.
He was long and lanky and she was short and stocky. He had perfect vision, and she was probably going to have to get glasses. He walked like a basketball player, all grace and slouch, and she shuffled like a sloth. How could there be something in her that made him want to be around her? Even her parents, genetically obligated to believe in her higher-than-average redemptive qualities, praised her brain and her heart, but never her face. Somehow, Dan saw something else.
“Something happened to my dad,” she said.
“Is he sick?”
“Some bad people hurt him.”
“Why?”
“He was a census worker.”
“Why would anyone hurt a census worker?”
She looked down at her hands and then back at his fa
ce. His eyes hadn’t moved. They weren’t looking at the floor or the wall. They were looking at her.
She took a deep breath and told him everything, hoping all the poison had come out in the telling. “I wanted to come on Saturday,” she finished. “But we didn’t even know if he’d be okay. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” Dan reached out with his right hand, resting it against the plump part of her cheek.
“Not even for fighting with my mom?”
“Not even that. You should hear me and my dad. We fight all the time, over stupid stuff, like who put the milk container back without any milk in it.”
“Was it you?”
Dan nodded. “I was too lazy to take out the recycling.”
“You probably deserved it, then.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
He pulled her chair next to his and settled her head under his chin. She nestled her face in his flannel shirt, closed her eyes, and listened to the footsteps in the hall without any desire to re-emerge among them.
• • •
Mattie drummed her nails against the white tile countertop and flipped the pages in their homemade cookbook, compiled from family recipes dating all the way back to Great-Grandma Jennings. “What’s scrapple?”
Emma shrugged.
“Read the recipe,” her mom said, using plastic tongs to toss a cabbage salad.
“Is Dad coming down to dinner, or are we eating upstairs again?”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Should we wait until he wakes up?”
Her mom slapped an unopened package of ramen noodles against the kitchen island, breaking the noodle chunk. The recipe called for toasted almonds, but they couldn’t afford the package of almond slivers, so her mom substituted crushed ramen. She slammed it five more times, then crunched it between her fingers.
“I think it’s dead,” Emma said.
Her mom’s eyes glowed, lit by a sudden amber flare of anger. “Would you like to make dinner, then?”
“That’s crunchy,” Mattie said. “Are you sure Dad can eat it?”
Emma shifted her weight, bumping her knee against the edge of the kitchen island. “We don’t even know if he’s getting better. We should take him to the hospital.”
“There weren’t always hospitals. People survived.”
Emma thought back to Mr. Spelman’s sixth-grade class, when they studied ancient Rome. He showed them an artist’s rendering of suburban apartment buildings, as well as an infirmary and leper colony. “Yes, there were.”
“Emma.”
“There were hospitals in ancient Rome. I remember it from sixth grade.”
“You know what I meant.”
“No, I know what you said.” She wanted the words to pick at the skin of her mom’s coldness, opening a scab to let some of the warmth beneath seep out. She hadn’t hugged either of them since calling the police on Thursday night.
“Do you have a house to clean? People to feed? A sick person to care for?”
“Dad’s not sick,” Mattie said. Her fingertips curled over the edge of the island. “Is he?”
Emma looked at the salad bowl. Its geometric border was composed entirely of red blobs and orange triangles arranged to look like roosters. As she stared at them, she realized you could turn those shapes into anything if you tried hard enough. “Mom, you need to call the car insurance company. And the optometrist.”
Her mom held the salad tongs in mid-air. She stared at Emma for a moment, then stabbed the tongs into the salad and left the room.
“Em,” Mattie said. “Why did you do that?”
She picked up the tongs and scooped out a portion for Mattie. “Eat,” she said. “Don’t let it get soggy.”
• • •
When her sister had eaten and gone upstairs, Emma dug the phone book out of the drawer and looked up the number for their car insurance agent. She remembered his name from the card her mom gave her to keep in her wallet: Michael Cavarossi. She found his agency’s number and dialed.
The automated system picked up after the second ring. “Thank you for calling Cavarossi Insurance. Press ‘1’ to continue in English.”
Emma’s knuckles tightened around the plastic phone. Why is my own goddamn language an option? She held the phone away from her ear and jammed her finger against the key.
“Thank you for your selection. Please note that our business hours are from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays. If you are calling outside of regular business hours, please stay on the line to leave a message or call back during our regular business hours. Gracias por su selección. Por favor, note que nuestro horario es de 9 a.m.—”
At the sound of the words, she imagined a dark-skinned man speaking that language, holding a black boot over her father’s face, grinding his cheek against the broken lens of his glasses. He laughed and swung his leg back, aiming for her dad’s nose. Then he said something in Spanish—“Gracias por su selección.”
She dropped the phone and covered her face with her hands. If her visions hurt this badly, what did her dad feel? How were they ever supposed to forget that?
From the floor, the phone’s speaker blared. “Thank you for your selection. Please note that our business hours are from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays. If you are calling outside of regular business hours, please stay on the line to leave a message or call back during our regular business hours. Gracias por su selección.”
Chapter Nineteen
Tuesday, April 8
The summons arrived in history class. Mr. Parker had already reminded them their Lonesome Dove papers were due on Friday, and launched into a lecture about the boundary dispute over Oregon between England and America in the 1840s. “The slogan Fifty-Four Forty or Fight was a direct reflection of the belief that—” Then a student messenger opened the door. Mr. Parker stopped in mid-sentence, crossing his arms over his chest.
The messenger, a skinny Filipino kid wearing a T-shirt that came to his knees, gulped and handed him a slip of pink paper. He fled as soon as Mr. Parker’s fingers had a firm grip on the note. Mr. Parker held it up to the light. “Emma West. They want you in the office.” He leaned against the blackboard and re-crossed his arms.
Emma blinked. Notes from the office were never for her. Normal kids could go four years without seeing the inside of the main office, or rubbing shoulders with the stoners and gangbangers lining the walls of the principal’s office. She swallowed heavily and shoved her binder into her backpack.
“You can copy my notes at lunch,” Via whispered. “If you show up, that is.”
Rachel turned in her seat. “It’s not about your dad. He’s fine, I know it.”
Emma wanted to believe her, but Rachel couldn’t know what had happened any more than she could. What if he’d had a blood clot or heart attack? What if he needed treatment they couldn’t afford? Her parents weren’t old enough to collect Social Security, and her mom had already complained about losing half the value of their 401(k) in tax penalties and early withdrawal fees.
Emma took a deep breath and hitched her backpack over her shoulder. Mr. Parker nodded when she took the summons, like a cowboy might when a woman passed him on the way to the general store. “See you tomorrow, West.”
She tightened her lips and nodded back.
In the empty hallway, her footsteps thunked against the laminate floor. She wore her favorite boots, brown leather with a stacked heel. Her mom had taken them to the cobbler last year to put rubber on the soles to make them last longer. Emma would never have thought do to that. There was no way she was qualified to be a grown-up. She couldn’t even take care of shoes.
As she walked, she tried to think of alternate explanations for the summons. Maybe this time it was her mom. They hadn
’t said a word to each other in the car that morning. Maybe, blinded by tears, her mom missed a turn or crashed into a phone pole. Maybe her mom was hospitalized or already gone. In books and movies, the mother was always the first to go: Cinderella, Luke and Leia, Huck Finn, Cathy and Heathcliff.
She broke into a run.
At the end of the hallway, she turned left. The Cinco de Mayo murals blocked the hall’s natural sunlight, shadowing everything in a wash of brown and red. Emma flung open the office door and stepped toward the big oak desk where the school secretary sat. “They gave me this,” she panted, holding out the crumpled summons. “Is my family all right?”
“Have a seat, dear.” The woman took the slip and adjusted the reading glasses on the bridge of her nose. “Oh, of course, Miss West. There’s a policeman here to see you.”
Emma froze. “What?”
A man sitting on a too-small chair in the corner of the office stood up. He wore a grey suit and a white button-down. He had no badge or lanyard visible to mark him as a civil servant of any kind. His face was pale and lean, with pitted acne scars above the cheekbones. His grey buzz cut had receded so far it almost wasn’t visible looking at him head-on. “Miss West? I’m Detective Ivan Kobilinski. Can I have a word with you?”
“You’re not here about my mom, are you?”
He shook his head. “Your mom’s fine. Let’s take a walk. Is that all right?”
“As long as you don’t leave school grounds,” the secretary said. “You could walk in the courtyard. It’s a nice morning.”
No, Emma thought. It is not a nice morning. “Isn’t there a room we can go to?”
“You don’t want to get some air?” the detective asked.
“I might want to sit down.”
“Suit yourself.” Kobilinski asked the secretary where they could go, and she offered them a room next to the guidance counselors’ office. “Lead the way,” Kobilinski said. “I don’t know my way around.”
Emma stumbled down the hall and around the corner. There was an empty room to the right, next to the counselors’ office, with the door open and the lights off. “I guess this is it.”
