Together, we go downstairs. The basement’s like this weird messy museum of our family. There are shelves and shelves of broken dolls, camping gear, Mina’s old trophies, a vintage bowling ball collection (which is maybe the weirdest). Mom’s already started to organize. There are three piles on the floor. “This one’s the throw-away. This one’s to donate, and this stuff we’ve got to find a new home for.” The last pile is the biggest one. “Why don’t you go through the stuff on those shelves over there.”
I kneel down and look at the bottom shelf. There’s a bunch of Mina’s stuff on it. “Okay, what about this little microphone thing?” I hold it up so Mom can take a look. There’s an attachment where you can hook it into the TV. Mina used to perform mini concerts for her stuffed animals.
“Keep, probably,” Mom says, even though it’s super unlikely that Mina will ever use it again.
“Stuffed alligator?” One of his eyes is torn off and his tail is dyed a strange shade of blue. Probably exploded Magic Marker.
“Keep again,” Mom says. “You know, go ahead and move onto the next shelf. We probably should wait till she gets home to make any decisions about her stuff.” There’s a pause, and I know what’s coming next. “How are you feeling about that?”
“About waiting till she gets home? Smart. We wouldn’t want to accidentally throw away this dumb alligator.” I toss it back onto the shelf.
“Emily,” Mom warns. Then she softens. “About her coming home. I know things were hard before and—”
“No, it’s good. I’m excited. Golf club?” I hold it in the air.
Mom sighs her very biggest sigh. “Pitch.” The golf club was Dad’s.
“Old pair of shoes.” They still had mud on them from when Dad took us hiking.
“Pitch.”
“You know, Emily—it’s okay to talk about things.”
“I know. That’s what Wednesdays are for.” I’m feeling a little huffy now. I came down here to clean and throw things out and now I’m being trapped into some kind of unexpected Feelings Conversation. I’ve said what I’m supposed to say and now I want to move on.
“Puzzle?” I pull the box from the back of the shelf. The cardboard pieces rattle.
There’s another sigh again. Sometimes it seems like that’s all Mom does. “What does it look like?”
I turn it over in my hands so the picture faces front. “Map of the world. There’s a bunch of animals and monuments and stuff.”
Mom comes over. I hand it to her. “Talk about a blast from the past,” she says. “Wow. I hadn’t thought about this in forever.” There’s a small smile on her face. “You know, when your Dad and I were first married, we didn’t have tons of money, so we’d do a puzzle on the weekends.”
I try to picture younger Dad and younger Mom—the ones I’ve seen in pictures: Dad with an easy smile and goofy mustache and Mom with long blond hair around a table. Smiling. Happy. Together. I mean, I read books about unicorn detectives. But somehow this seems way harder to imagine.
“Fun, Mom,” I say, even though it’s the furthest possible thing from fun.
Mom swats my arm with the box. “They were fun. Your mom is totally fun. Hey, what do you think about us doing one of these together?”
“It’s five thousand pieces.”
“And? You have to be somewhere? You’d rather clean?” She gestures around to the basement, most of which we haven’t tackled.
I shrug. “Sure, then. We can do a puzzle.”
She hands me the box. “You put a smile on that face and take this upstairs. I’ll bring up the card table. We’ll need somewhere to set it up.”
I start for the steps. “Where do you want it?”
There’s a long pause before she says anything back. “What about the dining room? It seems silly that it’s still empty, doesn’t it?”
My answer comes out small. “Okay.”
I get to the top of the steps and look at the dining room off to the left. There’s an old-fashioned rolling door with rectangular wooden panels of different colors decorating it like a checkerboard. It’s kind of odd, but Mom always liked it and said that’s the really great thing about old houses: they have “character.”
I grab onto the brass handle and roll back the door. It mumbles and groans. The hinges creak. Mom used to oil them. Bean barks from upstairs like she does anytime she doesn’t recognize a sound.
“It’s okay, Bean,” I call up. I say it as much for me as for her.
I flip the switch on the wall. The light flicks on and the ceiling fan comes to life. It swirls the dust around like they’re tiny pieces of snow. Unlike Mina’s room, Mom hasn’t cleaned in here in a long time. There wasn’t a reason to. Dad’s not coming back.
But here we are.
Two fancy silver candlesticks sit tarnished in the corner. Every year for my birthday, Mom would get out the good china and the goblets of sparkling grape juice. She’d light the candles and they’d give off this cozy glow and make the room feel like something special. I’d get to invite a friend. I always asked Hazel. And we’d sit there—me, Mom, Dad, Mina, and Hazel eating pot roast and fluffy rolls with butter and chocolate cake for dessert. My favorite.
Everything’s so different now.
Mom joins me at the door. She’s holding the card table and also looks a little bit like she’s going to cry.
“Okay!” I say, shaking my head as if it will make the bad feelings disappear, like some kind of imaginary Etch A Sketch. I make it a point not to look at Mom too long. I don’t want to remember the twisty crying face she had as she’d sit in front of the TV in the days after Dad left. “It’s a sad movie,” she’d tell us, even though she had just been watching some game show or something. “It’s a sad commercial,” she’d tell me once Mina had gone.
“Let’s set this up,” I say. I take the table from Mom and unfold the legs so that they click into place. I turn the table right side up. Mom drags in two chairs from the kitchen table. I sit in one and fold my left leg under my body.
Bean noses on into the room and starts sniffing around the corners and edges of the walls. There are a lot of unfamiliar smells for her.
Mom takes a deep breath. I can tell she’s remembering—her and Dad. Or maybe all of us in this room where we used to celebrate holidays together. Then she dumps out the pieces. “Okay, puzzle strategy.”
“Strategy? I always thought you kind of just put them together.”
“Emily, no.” Mom looks like I’ve personally wounded her. “I feel like I’ve failed you as a mother. We have to flip all the pieces over first.” She starts flipping them all to the colorful illustration side. “Then we have pick out all the edge pieces. And then sort them by color. There’s a system.” She stands the top of the box up so we have the picture to help us.
We sit there for I don’t know how long. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. Mom says Puzzle Time is like magic because it passes by so quickly. She said she and Dad would sometimes just have popcorn dinner instead of real dinner so they could keep working.
The candles still sit in the corner, but tonight in there with Mom kind of feels cozy and warm in its own way.
Mom goes to heat us up some macaroni and cheese. I take a picture of the progress we’ve made so far and text it to Hazel. It’s not a lot. We’ve just put together the lower half of Africa. There’s a roaring lion and some grasslands and a bit of the ocean. But it actually is kind of cool—Mom was right.
Emily: 48367 pieces to go! :P Maybe you can help us.
I wait for a response, but the minutes go by. Nothing.
Bean turns belly up so I can give her a rub. I take a picture of her face and try again.
Emily: Upside-down dog!
Hazel loves Googling pictures of upside-down dogs. Their faces look so goofy. She still doesn’t text me back. The uneasy feeling from today in the cafeteria returns.
When I go upstairs for bed, I pull out my list to add two things. First, I write good-ish at puzzles. Then I write a q
uestion mark next to Hazel’s best friend.
DAD’S HOUSE
Mom drops me off at Dad’s house Saturday afternoon after she gets home from work.
Dad’s house is nothing like our house, which is cozy and small with lots of rooms. Dad’s house is big and blocky and so brand-new it doesn’t even have grass yet. It just has a big, yard-sized rectangle of dirt.
It’s the kind of neighborhood where all the mailboxes are the same. Different from our neighborhood, where mailboxes are all different shapes and colors. One is even the shape of a duck. Interesting, not boring.
Alice greets me at the door with Pickle meowing like crazy under one arm. She waves at Mom’s car like they’re old friends and not like she’s Dad’s new person. My heart hurts when I watch her drive away because I know Mom’s going home alone. She has Bean to keep her company, but that’s not quite the same.
“Emily! Come in,” she says. She reaches for my sleeping bag and pillow, but I hold on to them in front of me like a shield. She eyes them. “We have a bed for you, you know.”
“I know,” I say.
If Alice were anyone but Alice, I’d probably like her. She has these funky glasses and knows a lot about TV game shows and has actually read all the Unicorn Chronicles books like me and Mina. That’s usually such a good way to judge someone’s character.
I wait for a Mina question. People who know about Mina always ask about her first. But there, standing in the front hallway on their brand-new fancy rug, she says, “How are you?” She reaches out to touch my hand.
How am I? A lump forms in my throat. “Fine,” I say. I shift my duffel bag from one hand to the other. It’s so light. I’ve barely packed anything at all. “I’m going to take my stuff upstairs.”
“Okay, yeah. Great!” Alice grins. She’s not bothered by my not wanting to talk. Or maybe she’s just good at covering her feelings up. “Your dad should be home soon. He thought we could go bowling tonight. Won’t that be fun?”
I like bowling. The sound of the ball hitting the pins, the glow-in-the-dark lane lines, the cheese fries sprinkled with bacon. But I don’t like that Dad suggested it. I shrug.
Alice’s grin fades a little. “There are some paint samples on your dresser, too. Maybe take a look and see if there’s one you like. I’d love to get going on your room.”
I’m almost all the way up the steps when Alice calls my name. “Yeah?” I say and turn around.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she replies.
When Dad first told me about the new house he said, “There’s lots of room!” like it was some kind of huge selling point. He even stretched out his arms as if to somehow demonstrate exactly how much room there would be. I didn’t know why he needed so much space when there was just Dad, Alice, Pickle, and sometimes me living there. And maybe Mina. One day.
There was enough room at our house, too.
My room here is at the end of the hall. It’s big but it doesn’t have my bookshelf or my rug or my art supplies or my Unicorn Chronicles book posters on the walls. I don’t like that it’s bigger than my room at home; it just feels emptier. Like a hotel room where anyone could come and stay.
There’s a window that overlooks the garden that Dad and I are supposed to plant this summer. They had a seat built in special. Perfect for reading.
I set my duffel up there instead.
I roll my sleeping bag out next to the bed, which is made up with sheets that aren’t my own.
The paint colors on the dresser are nice. I fan through the choices. Inspired Lilac. Veri Berry. Spangle. Naming paint colors must be the very best job. I hold the last one up to the wall and try to picture the whole room that color. It reminds me of the color of Starlight’s horn. But I turn them over on the dresser, facedown.
I sit down on my sleeping bag and pull out my cell phone. I text Mom: “Miss you.”
A second later, my phone chimes. “I miss you, too, Em,” followed by a pink heart. I take a deep breath.
Pickle’s followed me in here. Curled up by my feet, she looks like a lumpy pumpkin. I stroke her fur. Her whiskers twitch. She’s no Bean, but she’s not that bad, either. I don’t hold the fact that she’s Alice and Dad’s cat against her. She’s not the one who caused all this mess in the first place.
BOWLING NIGHT
“It’s crowded here,” Dad says cheerfully, as we get out of the car at the far end of Ten Pin’s parking lot. “I wonder if they’re having some kind of event.”
It’s exactly like Dad not to check ahead of time. “What if we can’t get a lane?” I ask.
Dad chuckles. “It’ll be fine, Em. Don’t worry.”
I roll my eyes and hang back behind Dad and Alice, who are now holding hands in front of me. I pat one of Mina’s old purses, which is hanging down by my hip. I’ve looped it across my body, but it somehow doesn’t look as cool as it does on the girls in Hazel’s magazine. In it, I’ve stuffed my paperback copy of Nightshade and the Case of the Dastardly Dragon. Emergency reading material.
The bowling alley is loud. We stand in line at the shoe counter. “Size?” the young guy asks me when we get to the front. He’s wearing the official Ten Pin polo.
I step aside to let Dad and Alice in. “I’m not going to bowl,” I say.
“Button.” Dad puts his hand on my shoulder. “Be a sport.”
“Size, Button?” The guy smirks. My face goes red, and I shrug off Dad’s hand.
“Seven.”
The guy sprays the shoes with sanitizer—a thick aerosol fog descending on top of them. I grab mine without saying thanks and head to our assigned lane ten. Lane ten is not the good lane. It’s the lane where one of the bumpers from kiddie bowling permanently juts out. Broken.
There is an event tonight. Family leagues. I can’t even believe it.
Dad logs our names into the scoring console. “B-U-T-T-O-N,” he spells out loud, pretending to type it in, like what he said back at the shoe counter is funny.
“Just Em, Dad,” I say. I slump down in the hard plastic chair.
There are all kinds of families here. Grandpas and grandmas with grandkids. Parents with teens as old as Mina. Moms and Dads with kids who actually need the bumpers up.
And us.
“Why don’t you go test out a few of the balls?” Dad says.
I want to avoid him calling me Button in public again, so I agree. I walk over to the thin metal racks that sit just past the lanes. There’s a purple sparkly one up top. I like the color and pick it up. Too heavy. I pick the pink marbled one next. It looks like a giant gumball.
I stick my fingers in the three holes to try it out.
“That one’s too small,” a familiar voice says next to me. “Your fingers will get jammed in there. You’ll never get it down the lane.”
It’s Hector.
Have you ever been in a room where there’s a constant noise? Like a buzzing light or the hum of an aquarium, but you don’t actually hear it till someone points it out? Then you’re super conscious of it? And it’s always there?
Hector’s exactly like that, I think. “Maybe try that green one,” he says.
Until this year, I hadn’t seen him anywhere. Suddenly he’s everywhere.
First, the bookstore. Then the cafeteria and Ms. Arnold’s room. And now Ten Pin Bowling Alley on a Friday night.
“Hey, Anita!” he calls out over the noise. He’s so loud. “It’s Emily. From school!”
“Em,” I say, but he doesn’t correct himself. “I like the pink.” I hold on to it stubbornly.
Hector shrugs. He, and now Anita, who’s jogged over from their lane, are wearing matching bowling shirts with buttons down the front. Hector’s is buttoned to the top and tucked into his shorts with a black belt. Anita’s hangs loose over a navy blue strappy top. It looks kind of cool the way she wears it.
Hector pulls a red ball from the racks. He holds it up. It does kind of seem like he knows what he’s doing.
“Are you here for the leagues?”
Anita asks, looking over at Dad and Alice. Dad has his hand over hers and is guiding it in the bowling-ball-throwing motion. Like she needs any help. I turn away in disgust. “Are those your parents?”
“That’s my dad.” I pause. “And Alice, his . . . Alice, I guess.”
“Huh,” Anita says. “Looks like they like each other.” That’s not the point, I want to say. He’s supposed to like Mom. But I keep my mouth shut.
“We’re the Turkeys,” Hector says, turning around to show me the back of his shirt. There’s a giant appliqué turkey with its feathers shaped like colorful bowling pins.
“The Turkeys? Like Thanksgiving?”
“No, it’s a bowling thing,” Anita explains. “When you get three strikes in a row, it’s a turkey.” I nod like I understand. I’ve never been close to even getting one strike, so I guess I’ve never needed to know that.
“I wanted to be the Nightshades,” Hector says. “But I was vetoed.”
“It has nothing to do with bowling.” Anita laughs.
“Yet,” Hector says. “Maybe book ten will be Nightshade and the Case of the Bowling Banshees. It could happen.” I don’t say that I would have voted for the Nightshades, too.
An announcement comes over the loudspeaker signaling the start of the first game for the family bowlers. “We get a break between games two and three,” Anita says. “If you’re still here, meet us in the arcade, okay?”
“And use the green ball,” Hector adds.
I nod, but when they leave, I stick with the pink.
“Were those your friends?” Dad asks when I return to our lane. Alice is perched on his knee like the teens in the food court. It’s gross.
I shake my head. “Just kids from school.”
“Well, you’re up first,” Alice says. The row on the screen with my name lights up. EM. At least Dad did that right.
I walk up, my bowling shoes smooth against the wood. I hold the ball out in front of me. Then I take a few steps, swinging my arm behind me first and then to the front. I release but my fingers stick. The ball thuds to the floor and rolls into the one bumperless gutter. Just my luck.
Things That Surprise You Page 6
