by Gae Polisner
Find the table with the other kind of PIe.
Pi—3.14.
There.
No way Joy will miss them.
Still, I gouge the oval around them deeper, just to be sure.
The air conditioner sounds exactly the same as I remember, and I don’t know if I ever noticed it before, but now I do. It hisses and spits. It rattles, or maybe that’s my heart pounding. In either case, I am afraid to open my eyes as I push open the door and walk into Vincent’s Pizza. Instead, I squeeze them shut and I take a long second to wish as hard as I can that Lukas’s clue is still here, somewhere. And that I’ll be able to find it.
As if wishing a thing can make it come true.
Yeah, yeah, Lukas, I know you think it can’t.
Still, I’m only wishing for something small.
I am wishing that no one is sitting at our booth. I wish no one is sitting at our booth. I wish. No one. Is sitting. At our booth.
I open my eyes.
Presto, magic.
No one is.
Getting out of the house had been easier than I expected, but mostly because when Davy was jumping off the arm of the couch, his cape got caught under his foot and he hit his cheek on the coffee table. It wasn’t that big a deal. It sure wasn’t out of the ordinary, but it did divert everyone’s attention long enough for me to announce that Mrs. Rogers, the lady I babysit for, wanted me to stop by to give me a birthday gift, which wasn’t a lie because it was true. It’s just that it had happened last week.
Natalia looked up from her computer long enough to give me a deadpan look that I couldn’t exactly read, but I knew she wouldn’t say anything because that’s kind of our sister bond.
My dad was holding a bag of frozen peas and trying to get Davy to stay still while he pressed it to his face. Isabel was standing on the arm of the couch, re-enacting exactly what had occurred, while Mom was telling her to stop.
They both looked up and waved at me, and I was out the door.
I slide into our booth, third one on the right, and I tell myself to pretend that this is just any other day. That I’m not here to find a clue that may, or may not, have been left here for me 366 days ago. If I don’t worry and get anxious, maybe I’ll remember something; if I just open my brain and let it come, maybe it will come to me. My dad always says a watched pot doesn’t boil.
Yeah, yeah, I know a pot will still boil even if you are watching it. Very funny.
Outside the window is the too-blue sky, and gulls swooping past. If I changed places and sat on the opposite side, I’d be able to see the seawall and the Sound. But this is my side, my seat. The one I always sat in, while Lukas sits across from me, pizza goo stuck on his face. Tomato sauce on his shirt.
I know, right?
Always tomato sauce on your shirt.
But none of that matters right now; right now I have to take my time and try to sort things out, prepare myself that the clue isn’t here. Or prepare myself that it might be.
No one is going to bother me. It’s not that kind of restaurant. I can sit here and think. If you want to order, you have to walk up to the counter.
“Can I help you?”
I look up. “Huh?”
I guess it’s a waitress because she’s wearing a uniform and holding a pad of paper, a pen poised in her fingers. “Can I get you anything, sweetie?” I must be looking at her funny because she adds, “To eat?”
A waitress? That’s new.
So I look around—I mean, really look around. I see that the big mural on the wall of the Roman Colosseum is different, mainly because there never was one there before. And there is a red-and-white-striped half-umbrella thingy that stretches out over the place where you used to stand and order, and there are waitresses now, too, I guess.
So many things are different. Is anything the same?
Maybe this isn’t the right table after all.
But I’m sure he meant Vincent’s Pizza, right?
No, it’s right. And I’m sure he meant pi.
As in 3.14, Archimedes’s constant, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
Or did the clue have to do with the time, like 3:14 in the afternoon, and pi was a red herring that was supposed to throw me off?
Hey, what time is it? Shoot, I forgot my cell phone, and I’m starting to panic a little. What if I never figure this out?
And now I’m not breathing so well, either.
“Sweetheart? Do you want anything to eat?” The waitress is still standing here.
I am having one of those weird out-of-body experiences, like I’ve lost track of my own body and maybe I’m in the wrong moment or the wrong place. Everything gets blurry and freezes. I know what I’m supposed to do: Count my inhale. Count my exhale. Make them longer.
I place both my hands down on the table to calm myself.
The table.
I’m sure it’s the right one, but something is different. The surface is smooth and feels polished—I don’t remember that. I lean closer.
It even smells faintly of shellac.
Of course, it’s different. It’s been a year.
Yes, I know. I’m using my brain. I’m trying, Lukas, I really am.
What could have changed in a year? What could be the same? Where could he have hidden the first clue? I look around.
The basic structure of the room is the same. The layout. The open wood fireplace. The windows and doors and booths. It looks like it’s just been redecorated: the painting on the wall. Maybe it’s even the same owners and they just wanted a little lift. Spruce the place up a bit. Add a striped awning, and a waitress or two.
“Are you waiting for someone?”
Oh right. She’s still here.
Now I feel something new. Anger. Angry at this waitress who won’t leave me alone when I’m trying to concentrate.
Angry.
And then at Lukas.
I’m mad at you. You really need to ask why?
For leaving me here. For not being here to explain things. We were supposed to help each other when the clues got too hard. We always did this together. That was the whole fun of it, watching the other person running around, trying to figure it out. Enjoying the hide-and-seek of it.
When we were little kids, we did the whole hunt in one place, of course, like the library or the Dolphin apartments, which was good that one year it rained all day. The wind blew the waves against the seawall, crashing so loud we could hear them. But we were warm and safe inside. I put one clue in that old, dried-out wreath that Mrs. Clemson never took down from her front door. When Lukas reached up to find it, the whole thing disintegrated and crumbled into pieces of dried twigs and gray, papery leaves.
We could hear Mrs. Clemson’s shoes clicking on her wood floor inside her apartment, coming closer, so, of course, we ran.
Now, where is your clue, Lukas? Where did you leave it?
I’m so mad at you.
For leaving me here to notice all these changes and not have anyone to talk about them with. I can imagine Lukas’s voice, the funny things he’d have to say about that butt-ugly mural.
“No,” I snap back at the waitress.
I don’t mean to. It just comes out that way.
“Well, you can’t sit here.” She’s not smiling anymore. “It’s almost lunch hour. You can’t take up a whole booth.”
I’m not sure if I’m still angry or sad or just dizzy, but I know I want to hide under my covers, except I’m still sitting here in this restaurant, with a grown-lady waitress looming over me. I want to curl in a ball, which I kind of try to do, but my knees knock into the underside of the table.
Wait, what?
No way.
But maybe.
Maybe?
There’s something stuck under here, an
d it’s not gum.
“I’m really sorry,” I say quickly.
I need to buy more time.
I am sorry for being rude, but mostly I don’t want to jinx the chances that someone might have been kind enough to leave Lukas’s first clue right here. Right where he left it. Right where I am sitting. I feel around with my hand.
“What are you doing?”
I probably look pretty strange right now, bent over and twisting around, trying to look like I’m not doing either of those things. Then my fingers land on what feels like a piece of paper, taped under the table. And I don’t want to let go. I want her to go away so I can get under the table and get a good look at what this is before I tug at it.
“I feel like I might be getting sick. Can I get a glass of water, maybe?” I grimace a little, for added effect.
“Okay, but after that, you have to order something or you’ll have to leave. Okay?”
My face is about two inches from the table, but I manage to nod. As soon as she’s gone, I slip down, ever so slowly, loosen the ends of the tape, and peel it back. I can feel little bits of fake wood coming off, too, but as quickly as I can, I unstick the paper, pull my hand out from under the table, and bolt for the door.
I’m sweating, walking up the hill from Vincent’s toward Angel’s Consignments, which is Thea’s shop, and suddenly remembering the night, last November, when Joy met me outside our buildings because I asked her to, because I needed to talk to her, because I was happy and sad about Rand leaving, and also because it was the Taurid meteor shower, so we were killing two birds with one stone. Maybe I’m thinking about that now because last time I walked past Thea’s, she had all those sparkling star lights hanging down in the window, like shooting stars.
* * *
“Fifty-fifty is the real answer,” Joy says excitedly. “I can’t believe I almost forgot to tell you, Lukas. And it even has a name. It’s called the birthday paradox.”
It’s chilly out, and pitch-dark, and Joy and me are lying side by side in an unzipped sleeping bag I brought down to keep us warm. We’re allowed to lie like this to watch the meteor shower, so long as we stay here, where her parents can see us from their window. The last one we watched together was the Perseids in August, but it was overcast, so we didn’t see much. But this night is crystal clear, and we can actually see the meteors zipping and arcing like magic lasers across the sky.
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you,” she says. “It’s a real thing. The birthday paradox. That first thing we were ever trying to figure out—in Mr. Carter’s class, remember?”
Of course I remember, the day with the cupcakes. But I don’t say that because maybe I don’t need her to know how I think about it so much. Not that I used to worry about stuff like that, but now it feels too weird, especially with us lying here close together, side by side.
Joy gets impatient, waiting for me to say something, though. She kicks her foot against mine. “Hey, Lukas,” she says, “you’re not even listening.”
She’s right and wrong. I am listening, obviously, but not completely. Not like I usually can. Because my mind is a little crazy tonight, probably because of the Rand stuff and, also, the super-bright white streak that’s zooming in an arc across the sky, which I’m pretty sure may be an actual fireball.
Where we are lying is on the slanted dirt mound near the swings. In spring, they plant a whole bunch of tall purple-and-yellow flowers with orange tongues that stick out here, because it’s right where the sign staked into the ground says DOLPHIN GARDEN APARTMENTS. But this time of year, it’s just dirt, and a slope that makes for a good stargazing position.
“Yes, I am,” I say. “The birthday paradox. I am, too, listening, Joy.”
“Okay, fine,” she answers. “So, it’s an actual famous paradox about sharing birthdays, of all things. Can you believe it? How did we not ever know that? Mrs. Roessing just told us all about it today.”
“What’s a paradox?” I ask, adding, “I forget what that is,” as if I knew just a few days ago.
“Oh, like a thing that sounds logically impossible, but then ends up being possible. Sort of, kind of,” she says. “Mrs. Roessing explained it a whole lot better than I can. Aren’t you doing logic problems in Spear’s class?”
Mrs. Roessing is her math teacher. Now that we’re in middle school, we have homeroom and a few other classes together, but math and social studies, we have different teachers. I have Spear, who kind of sucks, and she has Roessing, who is totally awesome. So, lots of days, we have to share the things the other person didn’t get to hear about during the day.
“So, how it goes,” she continues, “is that, in a room full of twenty-two people, there’s actually a fifty-fifty chance that two of the kids will share the same exact birthday. Fifty-fifty! And in a room of seventy-five people, those chances go up to ninety-nine percent. Remember how we thought it was really, really slim? Like twenty-three divided by twelve divided by something else, or something like that? Anyway, I’m not sure I understand it. I really needed you there to help. Actually, now that I’m trying to explain it, it doesn’t make too much sense at all.”
I nod, working to focus on the math stuff while also keeping my eye on the sky.
“It’s got to be a probability thing,” I say, to come up with some sort of answer. “Like the marbles worksheets Ms. Spear had us doing last week in groups. Did you do those?” I ask her. “Those marbles problems?” She shakes her head. “Okay, well, at first they were easy, but then they got more and more complicated. Like: ‘If you have a bag with twelve marbles, and seven are purple and three are red and two are green, then what is the probability you reach in and pull out a blue marble?’ And the answer is zero, obviously, and the probability that you reach in and pull out a purple marble gets higher, and so on. But there are ways to figure out more specific percentages, too. So, with your birthday paradox…” I’m trying to compare that to the marbles problems, but even as I’m saying it, it’s all turning to mush in my brain. “Okay, so, like, if there are twenty-three people, you’re comparing the first person to twenty-two other people, but then, when you’re comparing the next person, she’s already been compared to the first person as one of the other twenty-two, so that leaves only twenty-one comparisons, and so on. So your chances actually go up. Right?”
Joy shudders like I’ve confused her, but then it occurs to me she’s cold, so I pull the sleeping bag up around us tighter, feeling instantly weird about it, and even weirder when she squishes right close next to me. So, now my heart is beating fast like someone wound it up too tight, with her this close to me, because ever since we got to middle school, I’ve been noticing more and more girl things about her. Even when I try my hardest not to.
And I do. I try hard not to.
I never used to pay attention to those things. The girl things. Like, zero attention. Like, not even one tiny bit at all to how her eyes are really dark and serious most of the time, but when she’s happy, they start to smile even before her mouth does. Or how some of her clothes fit tighter in spots in a nice way, more than they used to. Or how her hair smells like vanilla most days, but also like firewood in the winter, and cherries in the spring, like the seasons are exploding up out of her.
“Wait, but wouldn’t that make the chances less?” she asks, touching one of my fingers with one of hers, maybe accidentally, but still it makes it harder to answer, because now my thoughts are spinning off in that wrong direction even more.
I think her mom notices the girl stuff about her, too, because she doesn’t want me in Joy’s room so much anymore, and she used to not mind it at all.
“I swear, Lukas,” she says, managing to bend her arm up to jab me with her elbow in my side, “sometimes I think an actual alien abducts your brain and only leaves your body here, pretending to care about things.”
“I care,” I say fast. Probably
too fast. “I mean, I’m the one who said we should come out and watch the stars, right?”
“But I’m talking about this birthday paradox thing.”
“And I’m trying to explain it, I swear.”
She rolls toward me and gives me bug eyes and starts in again, but this much closer, I can smell the sugar-and-fire smell of her hair, so strong it makes it hard to breathe. I make a noise, which she luckily thinks is about the meteors, because she turns away to look up just as another bright light streaks across the sky.
“Quick, make a wish,” she says.
“I don’t have any.”
“Yes, you do.”
Joy loves to make wishes, but she knows I think they’re kind of stupid. Too much pressure, and, anyway, it’s not like they ever come true. Besides, when your dad dies when you’re five, it’s like everyone is watching and waiting for your wishes, with these super-sad faces, every time you find a penny or blow your birthday candles out. Because they all think they know what you’re wishing for, which is for your father to come back, because why would you wish for a new bicycle or Lego set or a new Pokémon game when you could be wishing for that? Except the weird thing is, you’re not always. I wasn’t. Not only because I barely remember him, but also because it would be a dumb, old waste of a wish. I don’t care how magical wishes are supposed to be, you can’t make a dead man come back again.
So, why wish for something that can’t happen? And if you don’t wish for that, you end up wishing for something greedy or selfish, like that new bike or a bigger fishing boat, or at least I would, when instead I should wish for Mom to win the lottery or to have a boyfriend again, but one who is way better than Rand.
“So, did you wish for something, Lukas?” She makes an arc in the air with her finger, tracing the trail of the star.
I wish I could kiss you.
“No,” I say fast, and she drops her hand, and the air stays silent, with her probably being sad about my answer.
