by Beth Vrabel
“Oh, come on!” she whined.
Wrong move. Master Waters turned around suddenly.
She was still doing push-ups when Gramps and I left a couple minutes later.
Chapter Ten
Here’s another bad joke for you: What’s black and white and red all over?
Answer: A half-eaten zebra.
I know, I know. I should be dodging rotten tomatoes for that one. If you’ve never read a joke book, the real answer is supposed to be newspaper. (Get it? “Red” is actually “read.”)
While I don’t have a lot of experience with half-eaten zebras (at least not yet. Who knows what Dad will turn to once he’s bored with buffalo?), I do know a lot about newspapers. A perk about having two scientist parents is being wicked good at researching. When I wanted to learn more about what caused all those scars on Jocelyn’s arms, I headed to the school library, logged onto the local newspaper’s website, and searched. I entered “fire,” “children,” and Jocelyn’s last name into the search bar.
The first thing to pop up was a picture of a boy. It was just a square shot of a smiling face, black and white, but I knew right away he was Jocelyn’s brother. He had the same dark eyes, same dusting of freckles over his nose. Yet I could tell, just from the smiling picture, that he was different to her, too. He smiled like he was the sun, blazing to the cusp of a burn. Does that make sense? Sorry, we were reading sonnets in English class just before lunch.
I almost shut down the computer right then. I even opened a new tab and started to log onto YouTube, thinking I’d watch someone play Minecraft or something instead. I didn’t want to read about how that smiling face belonged to a boy. A boy who had died. But I clicked back to the article that ran with the picture.
A young Papuaville boy died and his sister was severely burned Tuesday in a fire that began where they played in a small shed. Papuaville Fire Company firefighters struggled to contain the flames.
Police say Jacob Andros, 10, perished from smoke inhalation after he and his younger sister, age 9, and a neighborhood friend, also age 9, turned a backyard shed into a play fort. Jacob Andros toppled a kerosene heater kept in the shed. Police were not able to share why the heater was on at the time.
“We suspect the deceased lit the heater himself,” Police Chief Frank Williams said.
The spreading flames kept the children from escaping through the shed door. The other boy crawled out a window he appears to have broken open, but police speculate that Jacob Andros and his sister attempted to put out the fire themselves. The escaped child ran inside the home of Margaret Andros, the siblings’ mother. She attempted to free the trapped children, while the escaped boy called the fire department.
“I have no doubt that we would have had two lost lives if it weren’t for that call to the fire department,” Williams said.
I stopped again. I fought the urge to just close the webpage. Did I even have a right to know these details—to learn about the ugliest part of Jocelyn’s life? I rubbed at my eyes (okay, fine, eye) with the heel of my hand and thought about Jocelyn flinging herself against the person she was sparring in karate. Of course she stayed and tried to fight the flames. I thought about this unnamed boy who had saved her. I had an idea who that might have been. Wasn’t Max still trying to save her, every chance he could?
I turned back to the article.
Margaret Andros suffered minor burns to her arms and torso from pulling her daughter from the burning shed. The daughter sustained severe burns. The mother was only able, however, to retrieve the younger child before the fire consumed the walls of the shed, her son still trapped inside.
“While Margaret Andros undoubtedly acted on instinct to protect her children, she should’ve waited for the fire department,” Williams said. “She put herself at great risk.”
Fire fighters were on the scene within minutes but by then the boy had perished, most likely from smoke inhalation, Williams said.
“Let this be a powerful lesson to the communities,” Williams said. “This mother believed her children, at ages 9 and 10, knew not to play with matches. But Jacob used a box of matches to light the kerosene heater. Fire safety is a message families should continue reiterating with their children throughout their lives.”
Margaret Andros was released from the hospital last evening but her daughter remains in critical care.
I clicked on a smaller image at the bottom of the article page. Up popped a picture of a still-smoldering shed, the kind Gramps had in the backyard to house his lawnmower. A yellow bicycle with a white basket attached to the front lay on its side just outside the shed. I zoomed in on the basket. Dandelions tumbled out of it in a forgotten, wilted heap.
I should’ve closed the article right away instead of staring off into space like an idiot with it on my screen, wishing I could go back and never read what happened to Jocelyn and her brother. Wouldn’t it be better to never find this out, to never have to think about a little kid going through something like this? Wouldn’t it be better to find out when—and only when—Jocelyn shared it herself? Man, I was such a jerk, always having to push things too far. Now that I knew, what next? What was I supposed to do with this information?
I took off my glasses and rubbed at my eye again. It didn’t matter, of course. I still saw the article just as well as I had before. My glasses aren’t to correct my vision anyway. The tumors made my vision acuity twenty-sixty to twenty-seventy, instead of twenty-twenty, but the glasses didn’t fix that at all. They’re just clear lenses, but the doctor (and my parents) insist I wear them, to give another layer of protection for my good eye.
But I sort of wished now that taking off my glasses made my vision blur. What if I slipped up and dropped in conversation something like, “Oh, sort of like that time you and your brother were in that fire and he died?” Okay, that’s not likely to happen. And now I’m feeling like even more of a jerk for even thinking that.
I am such a jerk.
Such.
A.
Jerk.
I don’t think anyone sighed as heavily as I did just then. It sort up bubbled up from my toes, making my ribs hurt as I heaved it out of my nose.
Mega-sigh, and the fact that she came up on me from the right, totally covered up Miss Singer’s approach. I jumped about a half-foot in the air when her fingers patted my shoulder. Then I squeaked like a squirrel and she jerked her hand back so fast that she slapped herself in the face with the notebook she carried.
And that’s how I gave my bio teacher a bloody nose.
A few minutes later, Miss Singer sat beside me pressing a tissue to her nose.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”
“Nah, it’s my fault.” She sniffed and checked the tissue for blood. When she saw that it had stopped, she nodded to herself. Miss Singer must take this quilting business seriously. Today she was wearing a quilted vest covered in frogs, their legs outstretched. I vaguely hoped she’d wear it later in the year when we did dissections. “I should’ve said something instead of just approaching you like that. I forgot about the whole …” She jabbed a thumb toward her eye.
“Oh, right.” I clicked off the article, embarrassed to have been caught reading it.
“That was a terrible time,” she said, pointing at the computer screen.
“Was—was he one of your students?” I asked.
Miss Singer nodded. “I stopped teaching kindergarten after his death. Even though it had been years since he was in my class, everywhere I looked in the classroom, I saw Jacob.” She pulled the edges of her vest closer and sort of shuddered. “Every time, it felt like ripping off a scar. He’s—he was—one of those kids you never forget. A kid who will always be one of your kids, as a teacher.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything for a long time. Probably it was only a few seconds, though. “Would you mind not mentioning …” I chewed my lip for a second. “It’s just, Jocelyn never told me about it herself, and I don’
t want to …”
Miss Singer shuddered again. “I’m not going to bring this up to Jocelyn, Richie Ryder. You don’t need to worry about that.”
She ran her thumb around the cover of her notebook. It was one of those leathery type ones—moleskin, I think it’s called. “I probably shouldn’t say anything like this to a student, but speaking with you just now about Jacob? It’s the first time I’ve ever said his name without crying. That’s why I have this.” She lifted up the notebook. “My therapist, he suggested writing down my feelings.”
I rolled my eyes. “Therapists,” I said. “I had to go one for a while, after Artie.” I pointed to my fake eye when she looked confused. “Useless.”
“Not always.” Miss Singer lowered the notebook. “I find it helpful, putting my thoughts into print. Makes them organized. Makes them real.”
“Whatever works,” I said. “And no worries, I won’t mention it. You won’t either, right?”
“Here’s the thing,” Miss Singer said softly. “A part of Jocelyn is always going to be stuck in that horrific shed. We don’t need to worry about bringing it up, about what it would do it her. She’s already there.”
A rush of chatter from the library door being opened to masses of students in the hall broke up the quiet between us. Miss Singer glanced at the clock.
“What time is it?” I asked. For a second, Miss Singer’s brow wrinkled in a look-for-yourself expression. But, of course, then she remembered I couldn’t see the clock on the wall.
She swallowed. “About two minutes before the bell. You should shut this down,” she said, gesturing to the computer.
I took her advice, determined to get to history class before the bell for the first time yet. But the computer took forever to shut down and then I had to make a pit stop by my locker for books. I still had a cool minute leeway to get to class, but then I passed Jocelyn in the hall and she gave me a sideways grin and time slowed for a moment, or maybe it was just me. So I ended up not at all ahead of masses of students and instead just smack dab in the middle of them.
“Mr. Raymond,” my history teacher, Mr. Sidewick, droned as I came in late. Again. “What’s the explanation today?”
Here’s the thing: history class was on the second floor, right in the middle of the hall. Let me tell you why this stunk. First, there were identical lockers lining both sides of the classrooms and students darting in and out of them like adrenaline-junky chipmunks rushing across the road. I literally didn’t see them until I was stepping on top of them. Second, even though I knew history was the fourth door on the left, the rush of students made it super tough to count the doors. Third, I had the class with Lash Boy, who always seemed to be lurking right inside the door, watching me. (Okay, fine. He was there because his assigned seat was the one right by the door. But still, it felt like he was watching me. Or, more specifically, watching me walk right by the classroom and doubling back.) The alternative was fighting through the crowds to zero in on the room numbers and then moving to the next one. Would it kill Mr. Sidewick to hang a poster or something on the door? But nope, he was as boring as his subject. No way to distinguish his classroom from any other.
“I missed the door,” I mumbled.
“Would you like me to take its picture? Text it to you, maybe?” Mr. Sidewick crossed his arms and fought a smile as the rest of the class laughed.
“Take a picture,” this dumb-as-rocks kid who sits next to Max sniggered. “Hear that, Max?”
Max didn’t say anything.
I called Mom as soon as I got home. Gramps wasn’t there and he was always home. Mom wasn’t, either. It felt weird, like I was an imposter, to be at Gramps’s house without anyone else. Just the General was there, staring at me with vicious, evil eyes from the doorway of whichever room I entered. It would be a long shot to reach Mom. Lately, she’d been coming home later and later as her research took off. Last night, I felt her brush my hair off my forehead with butterfly-feet-light fingertips hours after I had fallen asleep on the couch. (I woke up with a rash. Not from Mom, of course. From the nubby couch that had been gathering dust since 1976.)
I called her anyway, mostly to ask about dinner, but, okay, fine, also because I was creeped out at being in Gramps’s house alone with the General.
Only, when the call connected with her phone, I heard it buzzing from her bedroom. She had forgotten it. Great.
I hung up on my end and went into her room to find the phone. I’m not sure why. I mean, I guess it was sort of nosy of me. But I wanted to see how many missed calls she had. Dad hadn’t called me in a couple days and I wondered if he was too busy to call her, too. I was throwing myself another little pity party. Whatever.
Mom’s room was super neat. Her bed was made with the sheets tucked tightly. The window shades were open to let in as much light as possible. Her phone was the only thing other than a lamp on her nightstand. A soft breeze from the open windows made the flowers on her dresser flutter. Dad sent her flowers every week, and she always kept them in her room. Never in the living room where Gramps and I could see them, too. For some stupid reason, I wished the wind would knock the daisy bouquet right over. I picked up the phone. One other missed call, with voicemail, but it wasn’t Dad. It was my oncologist, Dr. Carpenio.
Even though we moved around a lot, we always kept the same ocular oncologist right in the DC area where I had been first diagnosed. At screenings, I had an MRI, had my eye dilated, and was then scrutinized by the doc. Bloodwork, too. It was a long, boring day.
All right, fine. I lied there. It wasn’t boring at all. It was scarier than being stalked by a demonic cat to have a doctor actively look for what else could be wrong with you. I hate it. Hate it. Just seeing the caller ID on the phone made my hands get sweaty and my heart flop down into my gut. For a second, I wondered if somehow Dr. Carpenio somehow felt that my remission was over. That’s stupid, I told myself. He hasn’t seen me in more than a year. How would he know? But my idiot heart stayed put, drowning in stomach acid.
I wasn’t really thinking as I listened to Mom’s voicemail. I know it was the wrong thing to do. I mean, it’s her phone. But still, I listened to the message: Dr. Raymond, it’s been more than a year since Ryder’s last exam. We’d like to schedule a visit as soon as possible. Please contact Dr. Carpenio’s office and we will schedule our next available appointment for Ryder. Still not really thinking, I hit the delete button.
I about jumped out of my skin at the voice that came trickling through Mom’s open window. “I know, I know.”
Only it wasn’t a creepy you-just-got-caught “I know.” It was a sad you’re-right-and-I’m-awful-and-wrong “I know.” The type I’d be saying when Mom found out what I had just done. The thing was, it wasn’t me being caught right now. I put the phone back where it was and hot-tailed it out of Mom’s room to see who Gramps was talking to outside.
When I got to the front door, I saw that he was alone, kneeling down in front of the yard horse to pick weeds in the flowerbed circling the cement horse. He had planted some purple mums around the horse’s hooves. And now, apparently, he was talking to said horse.
“He’s more like me than he is his dad. You know how Tom would always clam up? Storm off to his room? Richie, he never backs down. Always pushes back. Usually with a joke.” Gramps snorted, like the yard horse said something back to him.
Great. He’s demented.
“You’re right, of course,” said Gramps, throwing another dandelion in the pile behind him. “He’s covering up what’s bothering him with all those bad jokes. ’Course he is. Don’t know where he gets that. Cah, cah, cah. Yeah, I know. Going to have to face it sooner or later. But enough ’bout that. Since it’s nearly October, how about I add a rake to this here horse’s arms?”
Gramps whistled softly, which is probably why he didn’t hear as I eased open the screen door. I stepped onto the patio. If he wasn’t talking to the yard horse, who was he talking to? I got my answer a second later.
“W
ell, now, Marlene,” he said as he positioned a rake across the horse’s upright arms, “I can just about hear you laughing at this getup.” Then the old man bent to gather up his gardening tools, but instead of picking them up, he sort of crumbled next to them. I almost rushed to him but I heard the suck of air into his lungs and a sob. “I miss you, Marlene. You’d think I’d be done missing you by now, but I miss you more now than ever.”
His big, dirt-splattered hands rubbed at his head, knocking his huge gardening hat sideways. “I don’t know how to be a grandpa any more than I knew how to be a dad.”
I eased the door back open and let it slam shut, pretending I was just now stepping outside.
“Hey, Gramps,” I called. “What’s up?”
Gramps’s back stiffened for a second before he pushed himself back to his feet. “Just keeping up with the landscaping,” he said. “Got to keep the place respectable looking.”
“Are we looking at the same thing?” I said, even though I immediately wished I hadn’t, since the old man’s face turned as stony as the yard horse. But I mean, come on. We’re talking about a giant cement horse wearing a gardening hat, complete with ears poking out of the top, and holding a rake, surrounded by purple mums.
Man, I can be such a freaking jerk sometimes.
The thing is, I didn’t even realize how much of a jerk I was until after we sloshed through another round of takeout—Chinese food, which Gramps ordered by asking me, “Which Oriental rice do you want?” despite me rolling my eye and groaning—and got in the enormo car to go to martial arts.
Even then, the whole ride there, I didn’t realize the depths of my jerkiness.
It wasn’t until Gramps turned on the ignition and immediately punched the off button on the stereo that I really looked at the old man. I don’t mean “old man” in a he’s-a-grandpa way. I mean, he suddenly looked old. Not cackling to awful jokes, bopping to bad tunes, or smirking in his ’70s glory. Just old.
