Caleb and Kit

by Beth Vrabel

  Patrick sniffed the air. “Yeah, I smell it, too.”

  Dad’s mouth twisted a second. “Kristie’s cooking brunch.”

  I followed Patrick into the house. Almost immediately Patrick stopped, making me walk into him. He flashed me a quick grin and stepped aside. The table in front of us was loaded—I mean, just about overflowing—with pancakes, muffins, scrambled eggs, hollandaise sauce, and a heaping platter of crispy, delicious bacon.

  “Hi!” Kristie said brightly as she walked in from the kitchen with a bowl full of orange slices. “Come right in and eat. I bet you’re hungry, Patrick, after your meet!”

  “Wow,” I whispered. “This looks amazing!”

  Kristie grinned. “Dig in!”

  A few minutes later, after I had my third serving of bacon and drowned my fourth pancake in syrup—the good stuff, butter flavored and thick—Perfect Patrick cleared his throat. “Thank you, Kristie, for making this brunch. I know it’s not what you typically have and it…” His eyes slid toward mine and away. “It’s really nice.”

  Kristie’s pretty forehead wrinkled for a second. Her fork, filled with a giant piece of cantaloupe she had dredged through pancake syrup, paused midair. Still looking like someone figuring out a jigsaw puzzle, she scooped up a bit of bacon and popped the whole concoction in her mouth. While still chewing, her eyes widened and floated to me. “Oh,” she said. “Right! Caleb.”

  Dad sighed. His plate was empty except for a few orange slices and a dry pancake. “Do you want syrup?” I asked him to fill the awkward silence. If Kristie wasn’t making this huge buffet for me, who was it for?

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t eat that crap.”

  Kristie’s cheeks flushed and she put down her fork. “Well, boys,” she said, but this time the brightness was a little forced, “we have news!”

  “I thought we were going to wait,” Dad hissed.

  “Not for family,” Kristie hissed back.

  “You’re pregnant,” Patrick said flatly.

  Kristie squealed and nodded. “We got the test results a day after you were last here. It’s only a month, but we got pregnant right way. Probably even our first official try!”

  Patrick coughed.

  Kristie laughed. “I’m sorry, it’s just, it’s hard to believe how quickly life can change. One month and I’m already feeling like… like a mom.” She squealed again and clapped her hands. It was a pretty non-mom thing to do, if you asked me.

  “Already feeling cravings, too,” Dad said and swiped his hand toward the bounty on the table.

  “I’m not hungry anymore.” I put my fork down beside my pancake. “May I be excused?”

  “Not quite,” Dad said. He put his elbows on the table, cradling his chin in his palms. “I know this is a big adjustment, but maybe a congratulations or a question about the due date, a hug for Kristie, maybe? Come on, Caleb. Think of someone other than yourself.”

  I stared at my lap, waiting for Perfect Patrick to fill in the gaps. “Congratulations,” he said, staring straight ahead and not smiling. “May we be excused?”

  Dad’s hands curled into fists, one of which he slammed onto the table. “No. We’re going to finish this meal that Kristie has prepared for us.” Kristie jumped but after a second, she carefully cut into another piece of cantaloupe. Patrick was a statue like me for a moment, but then smoothed the napkin back over his lap.

  Was I only thinking about myself? Yeah. Probably. I scooted forward and took another bite of pancake. But it was like my body just said, “Nope. No more for us.” The bite tickled everything in back of my throat and I realized it—and a bunch of mucus—wasn’t going to stay down.

  I hacked, feeling the glob move forward a little but not enough. Leaning forward, feeling each cough shove my ribs into my gut, I scrambled for a napkin. Patrick handed one to me.

  Vaguely, I saw Kristie stand, one hand on her stomach, the other at her throat. “I can’t get sick,” she said. “Please stop coughing over the food, Caleb!”

  Patrick pounded my back. Not to be mean or shut me up or anything. It sometimes helps. “He’s not contagious.”

  “But it is unsanitary,” Dad said, also standing now. “Why don’t you excuse yourself, Caleb?”

  I spit the mucus into the napkin. Finally, I could breathe again.

  “You okay?” Patrick murmured at the same time Kristie said, “Oh, that’s gross.” Her face turned a scary pale color. (Actually, honestly, it looked a lot like what I just spit up.)

  Kristie fanned herself with her hand. “I can’t handle that. I’m sorry, but I can’t handle seeing you coughing like that.” She swallowed, and I saw tears in her eyes.

  “Everything makes her nauseous right now,” said Dad, as he went to the kitchen to get her a glass of water. “Let’s all try to be courteous about it.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “Do you think I wanted to do that?”

  “Of course not,” Kristie said. She smiled at Dad and sipped the water, still fanning her face. “It’s just, could you leave the room when you cough?”

  “I cough all the time,” I pointed out. “I’m supposed to cough all the time.”

  Kristie just stared at me. Another tremble in my chest and I realized I’d be hacking again any second. I got up; maybe I would make it out of the room in time. Just as I passed Kristie, she whispered, “Thank you.”

  And, without even thinking about it, I leaned into her, coughing smack-dab right in her face.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “What is wrong with you?” Patrick matched his pace to mine. It was a few hours later and we were at the mall, which on any other day would’ve ranked on a suck level next to living in a musical costarring Shelly. But now that I had that crisp twenty-dollar bill in my pocket, I couldn’t wipe the huge grin off my face.

  If only I could dodge Patrick. He was the one who suggested Dad drop us off at the mall. Kristie hadn’t left her bedroom since brunch, not that I cared. What was nagging me now was why Patrick had suggested shopping in the first place. It certainly didn’t seem like he was in any big hurry to go off and buy stuff, since he was just following me around. “Did Mom tell you I wanted to go to the mall or something?”

  Patrick shoved his hands through his hair. “I listen to other people, okay, butthead? I heard you complaining to her about it. You know, listening to other people might be an interesting change of pace for you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean maybe being aware of people other than yourself. Like how you talk to Mom and me.”

  We turned to step onto the down escalator.

  “Oh, so now you and Mom are like the same entity?” I backstepped, squeezing between the mom and toddler just behind us on the belt and took two more steps back onto the main floor. “I have two parents already, Patrick. Get your own life and stop butting into mine,” I snarled over my shoulder, knowing Patrick was trapped going down. Now, to find Kit a gift.

  I knew not to stare at the sun because it could make you go blind from all the brightness. But no one warned me that shops for girls were exactly the same. They were all pink or silver or orange. And glittery. Or they had enormous cartoony signs with giant arrows and hearts and, not even kidding here, unicorns. All of them had crazy bright lights. So many lights. And so many sales clerks. I must’ve walked by a half dozen stores, waiting to find one that wasn’t crawling with, well, girls. Most of me wanted to just park next to one of the old men honking snores on a bench and wait for Patrick to find me.

  To delay having to actually enter one of the shops, I stopped and bought a soft pretzel and lemonade. But I fingered the money—I was down to $14.53 after the pretzel—and thought about Kit.

  For some reason, I kept picturing that box of cereal she had eaten all week. The way she had worn the same red paint–splattered dress two days in a row. I wanted her to have something special. So I ducked my head and barreled inside the store that was orange instead of pink. I held my backpack on my arm
like it was Captain America’s shield. I’d go straight to the back where maybe they had something Kit-ish (which, at this point, meant anything that didn’t look like a rainbow-farting unicorn had thrown up glitter on it).

  I paused by a rack of T-shirts. There was a white one with a blackbird on the front. It would’ve been perfect for Kit except for the outline of glitter on its wings and the fact that a little cartoon cloud with FLYING HIGH hung over the bird. I fingered the words. Maybe I could rub them out or something? Great. Now I had glitter covering my fingers. I wiped them on my pants. Now I was wearing sparkly pants.

  “That T-shirt is on sale. Only $37.99 today!” This woman—who had to be at least Kristie’s age but wore her blue-tipped hair in spiky pigtails—popped out from a rack of sweatpants with words like LOVE and HEART stitched on the butts. “Looking for something for someone special?” She winked. The sides of her eyes each had a triangle of gemstones. I bet they were glued there. And her eyelashes were blue. For real.

  “Um, no,” I blurted. “For myself.”

  “Oh.” Spiky Hair nodded. “I think we have larger sizes—”

  “I mean, I’m just browsing. Just looking.” I barreled past her, eyes down. Toward the back was a table with notebooks and bags and things. Another clerk popped around the corner. “I don’t need any help!”

  She eased back behind the rack like a fish retreating into a sea anemone.

  The back table was stuffed with notebooks. It’d be pretty cool for Kit to have a place to write down all our stories, right? I started to check them out, avoiding the ones with feathers and fur. (Seriously, a ton of them had feathers and fur.) One just had a picture of the ocean, which kind of looked like our stream, I guessed. Only problem: written across it in the same big bubble letters used on the sweatpants’ butts was EAT, SLEEP, SURF.

  A familiar sigh wafted over me. “The first two apply, but I’m not so sure you’re the surfing type. The ocean’s pretty far from Missouri.”

  I turned and found myself inches away from the last person I wanted to see. Shelly Markel.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurted.

  Shelly raised an eyebrow. “I’m a person who wears girls’ clothes. This is a store that sells girls’ clothes. What are you doing here?”

  And that’s when the blue-tipped clerk reappeared. “I found that shirt you were admiring in your size!” She held out the blackbird T-shirt.

  Shelly’s eyebrow disappeared under her bangs.

  “You never saw me here,” I said, dropping the notebook and rushing from the store.

  “Sort of like camp then!” Shelly called to my back.

  Of course I bolted out of the store and right into Patrick. “Hey!” He looked from me to the store and back. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Can we just go?”

  “Do you need more time at”—he glanced up at the store sign—“Twinkle Dot?”

  “No!” I said, sure my face was even brighter than the sign. “I just—I just saw a friend and said hi.”

  “A friend?” Patrick bent around me, staring into the store. Somehow he wasn’t blinded by it. I saw him do a quick salute-like wave and figured Shelly was still in there. “Okay.” A tiny smile tugged at his mouth.

  “What?”

  “Your friend is kind of cute.”

  “Shelly?” I groaned. “Ohmigod. Stop. Can we just go?”

  Patrick scratched at his head with the corner of a small leather-bound notebook. I snatched it from his hand. It was just a little bigger than a paperback novel, the leather as smooth as the pebbles at the bottom of the stream. It was perfect. “Where did you get this?”

  Patrick pulled it back from my grip. “I bought it at the bookstore.”

  “There’s a bookstore?”

  Patrick nodded. “Are you okay? Do you need a snack or something? You seem a little… off.”

  “I’m fine!” I shouted. But then my lungs trembled and a cough turned into a coughing fit. “Let’s go to the bookstore,” I said a few seconds later. I wiped at my mouth with a napkin I had shoved in my pocket after eating the pretzel. “Come on!” I tugged on Patrick’s arm.

  “No time, Caleb.” He glanced at his cell phone. “Dad’s in the parking lot waiting for us.”

  That night, Mom came in just as I was unsnapping my vest. I tried to cover what I had been working on with the edge of my blanket, but Mom’s eagle eyes missed nothing.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, tilting her head toward the bulge under the blanket.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Looks like something.”

  I shrugged. “It isn’t.”

  But it was. Dad had dropped off Patrick and me at Mom’s right after the mall. Not once in the entire thirty-five-minute drive did any of us speak. As soon as we got home, I went right to my bedroom, only coming out for snacks and dinner.

  “You’ve been awfully quiet tonight, locked up here in your room.”

  “I haven’t been locked up,” I muttered. I tried to keep my eyes from darting around the room to incriminating evidence—curled scraps of paper under my desk; squeezed-out glue bottle in the trash can; black and red paint, brushes, and bits of ribbon from the craft basket Mom kept in the hallway closet.

  “Looks like you’ve been feeling creative.” Mom leaned against the doorframe, crossed her arms, and cocked an eyebrow.

  I shrugged. “I’m tired. Good night.”

  “Oh.” Mom straightened. “Let me tuck you in.” Mom came forward and pulled back my blankets before I could stop her. Slowly Mom stepped backward with her hand drifting to her mouth.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, staring down at my pathetic attempt to make a notebook. It was just a bunch of printer paper cut in half. The front and back covers were pieces of cardboard with fabric from an old white T-shirt glued over them. I had poked three holes along the sides and used a blue ribbon to hold it all together. Then, on the cover, I had painted a blackbird like the one on the mall shirt, just minus all the glitter and stupid words. At the bottom, in red paint, I had written We do what we want.

  “It’s not nothing,” Mom said. She bent her legs to look at the notebook closer but didn’t touch it. “It’s really cool, Caleb. I didn’t know you could paint.”

  My face flamed so much even my ears burned. “I can’t. Not really. The bird looks like a big stupid blob.”

  Mom smiled and shook her head. “No, it looks amazing. What did you use as reference?”

  I stood just behind Mom, so she didn’t see as I kicked her World of Faerie book under my chair. “Memory, I guess.”

  “Who is it for?” Mom asked.

  “No one!” I said it too fast for her to believe me.

  Mom looked at me over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed again and her mouth twitching. She turned and stood so we were just a couple inches from each other. I was pretty much entirely trapped, the chair behind me and the bed behind Mom, who further pinned me in place with those eagle eyes. “Who’s it for, Caleb?”

  “No one,” I whispered, staring at my feet.

  She tilted my head up with a finger under my chin. Her voice was soft. “Patrick told me he saw you talking to a friend at the mall today. A girl.”

  I jerked free from Mom’s hold. At any moment my face was going to spontaneously combust—that’s how absolutely on fire it was right then. Forget Captain America, now I was archnemesis Red Skull. My number one target for destruction: Perfect Patrick. My jaw clenched so hard I had to practically spit out, “Patrick is pathetic. When’s he going to get a life of his own?”

  Mom moved her hand to my shoulder, squeezing it. “Patrick loves you. He’s worried about you. We all are, honestly. You’ve been so secretive. What’s going on?”

  I stepped back as far as I could, the backs of my legs pressed against the chair. “I’m not secretive,” I grumbled. “I just want to be left alone.”

  Mom’s hand dropped. Her shoulders rose as she took a deep breath. For some
reason, watching her do that made me do the same. Only where she quietly exhaled, I hacked into my elbow. Mom handed me a tissue.

  “I’ve heard I’m a really good listener,” she said. “Sometimes it helps to talk things through, especially relationship stuff.”

  And sometimes it’s nobody’s business.

  “But then again,” she said in her forced-brightness voice, “it’s not like I know a lot about relationships.”

  “Obviously.” The word ripped from me like a cough. Mom clenched her eyes and mouth like I had sprayed her with poison. I felt like I had.

  “Obviously,” Mom repeated quietly.

  So, of course, I made it so much worse. “Did Patrick also tell you the awesome news?” I snarled out the words. “Kristie’s already pregnant.”

  She left without saying good night.

  Mom was on her way to work when I finished my vest treatment the next morning. My pills were laid out alongside my huge lunch box and bottle of sunscreen, but she didn’t leave a note like she normally does. Whatever, I told myself. It’s not like she wasn’t going to find out about Kristie eventually.

  “I’m heading to the bus stop,” Patrick said from the kitchen table, making me jump. Why did he constantly have to be lurking around? “I’ll walk with you to camp.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “I can go myself.”

  “But I pass right by it.” Patrick dumped his cereal bowl into the sink and washed his hands. “Let’s go.”

  “Fine!” I snapped. I ran back to my room to pack Kit’s gift and put on the stupid electric-green camp shirt.

  In the early morning light, the gift suddenly looked so stupid. So childish. Like something we’d make at camp. Kit deserved something special. Something awesome. Not just chopped-up notebook pages covered with a ratty old T-shirt. I shoved it into my backpack anyway. Just as I zipped up my bag, I spotted something else. The World of Faerie.