The Million Dollar Race

by Matthew Ross Smith

  Except… it’s not a cousin.

  It’s his older brother, Tua.

  The Marine who’s supposed to be in Afghanistan.

  For what feels like an infinitely long second, Jay’s shell-shocked. He stands in the center of the circle, arms at his sides, eyes welling with tears. Then he springs forward and hugs his brother super tight.

  Everyone cheers.

  “You’re home!” Jay keeps saying, face pressed hard into Tua’s chest. “You’re home. You’re home.”

  Mrs. Fa’atasi’s sobbing, fanning herself with both hands, her boys reunited.

  “A picture!” she says. “We need a picture!”

  The Fa’atasis all drape their arms around one another, cheesing super bright. “Come on!” Mrs. Fa’atasi says, waving to me. “Come on! Get in the picture, Grant!”

  “Me?” I say. “No. I’m fine. I’m—”

  But she insists.

  They all insist.

  Probably no one else can tell, but I can—it’s my fake smile. Like all my school portraits. I’m not doing it on purpose. I really am happy. Tua’s home. He’s safe. This is awesome. It’s amazing. I guess I just feel awkward because I’m not really a member of their family, you know? I just like to pretend that I am.

  We all dance for a while longer, and then it’s time for the best part—dessert. Tua eats a slice of cake with one arm draped around Jay’s shoulder. You could see the affection between them from the moon.

  “So,” Tua says. “We gonna finish that game of Monopoly or what?”

  “I kept it just the way we left it,” Jay says. “I swear. I didn’t touch it.”

  They do a secret brother handshake with slaps and snaps.

  I have no idea what they’re talking about.

  My face must show it.

  “The night before he left,” Jay explains, “we were playing this epic game of Monopoly, but it wouldn’t end. So we counted the money. I put the board under my bed so we could pick it up when he got back.”

  “That’s awesome,” I say, though suddenly I’m fidgeting, desperate to get out of here.

  “You wanna sleep over?” Jay asks. “You can jump in the game. I’ll give you half my money.”

  “That’d be awesome,” I say. “But I, uh, I told my dad I’d help him with this project when we get home.”

  Jay tilts his head at the obvious lie.

  “Your dad still make those dolls?” Tua says. It’s the first thing he’s said directly to me all night. “What were they? Dracula?”

  I can’t believe he remembers. I wasn’t even sure he knew my name. His gold chain is hanging outside his plaid button-down shirt. It’s like a god has come down from the heavens and is sitting here with us.

  “Yeah,” I say. “This is his busy season.”

  “That’s cool,” Tua says. “That’s awesome. You guys are awesome.”

  “Grant’s family is very creative,” Mrs. Fa’atasi says, and I can tell she means it as a genuine compliment, but I still cringe inside.

  The party ends, and the adults all hug goodbye. Mrs. Fa’atasi says, “Ah! So good to see you guys! Let’s do it again soon!”

  “We always say that!” Mom says. “But for real this time!”

  “Yes! For real!”

  I said before I have two different worlds—one at the Fa’atasis’, one at home—but sometimes it feels like I have none. Nowhere I truly belong.

  On the ride back I daydream about having my own private island again—my own sovereign country where I’m king. But until I win that million bucks, it can only exist in my mind.

  “What are you smiling about?” Franny asks as we turn into our driveway.

  “Nothing.”

  14

  What do you see when you look at that?

  If you’re like me, not much. It sort of looks like a piece of a beehive? Or a soccer ball? But to my parents, it’s much more. They both have it tattooed on their inner wrists. They scribble it on the love notes they hide around the house for each other.

  They claim it’s the exact chemical structure of their love.

  They met in ninth grade. Organic chemistry. That was the formula written on the board the first day.

  Their first “date” was in the school lunchroom (open-faced turkey, mashed potatoes, dirt-brown gravy). The conversation was so awkward, Mom says, that she opened her notebook, offered him a mechanical pencil from her twelve-pack, and said, “Let’s both start drawing at the same time and see what we make.”

  (What they made has been lost to history.)

  They dated all through high school. After graduation they drove cross-country in a beat-up minivan that looked like a spaceship. (This was before they swore off fossil fuels.) They moved to one of those “off-the-grid” hippie communes in northern California. Everyone was equal there. A pure democracy. It’s the basis for our Family Council.

  “We wanted to live outside the lines” is how Mom describes it. “We didn’t see why our lives had to follow the same boring map as everyone else’s, you know? That same dotted line—high school, college, work—leading to the big fat X at the end. So”—she reaches out and squeezes Dad’s hand—“we made our own map.”

  “We both came from such small families,” Dad says. “Driving out west to the commune, we had this crazy idea that could change the whole definition of a family. Make it bigger, more inclusive—why not, you know? That was our dream. Why does a family have to be just people you’re related to by blood? Why do we have to do things the way everyone else does?”

  I was born on September 14, 2008, in an old yellow school bus with all the seats ripped out. Mom was in labor for twenty-six hours, apparently.

  “Only day in your life you weren’t in a rush,” Mom jokes.

  I have this mental image of her—exhausted, sweaty—though obviously it can’t be my own memory; I must’ve borrowed an image from a movie and swapped in her face.

  I wonder how often we do that.

  How much of our personal history is pirated.

  The three of us lived on the commune until Mom got pregnant again.

  “We loved it there,” Dad says with a touch of sadness in his voice. “It really did feel like a big family. But we realized it wasn’t the place we wanted to raise you guys. We didn’t feel it was fair to force such a big choice onto you. So we took some of the big ideas and brought them home with us, the best of both worlds.”

  Which Mom translates as “We got tired of pooping in the woods.”

  * * *

  Dad uses our garage as his Dracula production studio. It’s always super dark, lit only by electric jack-o’-lanterns and occasional bolts of fake lightning. The creepy atmosphere (fake cobwebs, fog machine, high-pitched evil laughter) gets him in the zone, he says, which as an athlete I can respect. He’s the number four producer of custom Halloween tchotchkes on the East Coast.

  I flick on the lights. Now it just looks like a cluttered garage. The boxes he ships the dolls in—custom-designed like little coffins—are stacked up on the far wall.

  He’s not in here.

  Back inside, Mom’s in her office, surrounded by law books, reading glasses on the tip of her nose.

  “I need your help with this registration stuff,” I say. “The national qualifier has more paperwork.”

  “Oh, your father’s really the one for that.”

  I have trouble believing he’s the one for anything.

  You know, except her.

  I finally find him down by the gas station on Ridge Avenue. He’s doing one of his weird community-art projects. When he’s not making Halloween stuff, his “day job,” he designs “interactive experiences.”

  For example:

  Today he’s taped the front page of the newspaper to a bus shelter. A picture of the president touring some kind of natural disaster. Beneath it he’s taped a blank sheet of paper labeled COMMENT SECTION with blank boxes for people to write their thoughts. A pen dangles from a string.

  It’s
sneakers-melting-on-the-asphalt hot out here. Dad’s already sweat through his white V-neck. Seeing me, he tips up his fedora and smiles. “What’s this?” I say.

  “I call it Real World Comment Section. What would happen, it asks, if we took the toxic, divisive, anonymous discourse we find online and made it public? What happens if, instead of hiding behind a screen, you have to declare what you think in front of your neighbor in a shared public space?”

  “I need your help,” I say.

  “Exactly,” he says. “That’s just it. When forced to express yourself in a public space, it immediately makes you vulnerable. It says, implicitly, I need your help. You need my help. We’re both in this—”

  “No. Dad. I need your help. Like, right now.”

  “Oh. What’s up?”

  “I can’t find my birth certificate.”

  “Birth certificate?”

  “You know. The cer-tif-i-cate? That certifies your birth?” I let the words hang in the sticky-hot air. He’s still standing next to the bus shelter, hands on hips.

  “I need it to register at nationals,” I say.

  “Why?”

  Ugh. His favorite question. With Mom and Dad there’s always this built-in layer of skepticism. They’ve tried to pass it on to us, but it’s not necessarily genetic. Sometimes I just want to take things at face value. It’s exhausting to question everything.

  Dad wears homemade deodorant (“You know what kind of chemicals they put in that stuff?”). It isn’t working. He reeks like boiled onions. He blots his forehead with the sleeve of his T-shirt. “I have to tell ya, son. If I’m being honest, I do kind of resent the whole idea of”—he makes air quotes—“birth certificates.”

  Here we go.

  “I mean, what does a silly piece of paper tell me that my eyes can’t? You exist. There you are. A miraculous, living, breathing feat of nature who presumably didn’t appear out of thin—”

  “Dad.”

  He runs his hand through his greasy hair and puffs out his cheeks. “I think it’s in the attic. Come on. I’ll help you look.”

  15

  Attics are funny, if you think about it. It’s like every family builds a time capsule and buries it in the lowest part of the sky.

  Dad reaches up and pulls the knotted string hanging from the ceiling. The hatch unfolds into a wooden ladder. “After you,” he says.

  This time of year—last week of July—it’s like a sauna up here. Dust motes are swimming by the lone circular window. First thing I see (it really draws the eye) is a massive plaster sculpture of my parents when they were teenagers.

  Dad’s standing behind Mom, prom-pose style. They’ve both got talons and wings like they’re fearsome mythical creatures. I recognize it as an amazing work of art… but that doesn’t mean I wanna look at it.

  I mean, they’re nude.

  What kid wants to look at his parents naked? What’s the point of winning the trust fund if I have to blow the whole thing on therapy?

  Dad—still in his sweat-drenched T-shirt—crouches beneath the sloped ceiling. He opens a cardboard box labeled KIDS’ ART. He digs for a minute and unearths a family portrait I must’ve made when I was five. We’re all stick figures. Mom. Dad. Grant. Franny. The lines of our arms are connected, signaling that we’re holding hands. We’re all smiling. The paper crinkles like a dead leaf.

  “It might be in that one,” he says, nodding to a box behind me.

  I tug open the cardboard flaps and look inside.

  * * *

  I’m six years old. Still gangly and freckle-faced, but not so hunched over yet. Alone in our kitchen, I reach up and pin a piece of loose-leaf paper on the fridge—two magnets just to be safe. I smile at my work. Front teeth missing.

  TOP 5 THINGS GRANT WANTS FOR HIS BIRTHDAY

  1. Captain America action figure (New)

  2. Captain America action figure (New)

  3. Captain America action figure (New)

  4. Captain America action figure (New)

  5. Captain America action figure (Fine, I’ll take a used one)

  The Avengers are super popular right now. Even our teacher, Mr. Mack, has an Iron Man key chain. It’s like a CGI religion.

  When the big day finally arrives, I race home from school, book bag bouncing on my shoulders. We have pizza from Frank’s (mmmm) and homemade vegan angel food cake for dessert (can’t win ’em all). Mom, Dad, and Franny sing an out-of-tune “Happy Birthday” and then… nothing. No gift. I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re always going on about the Toy-Industrial Complex.…

  But still…

  I thought maybe…

  “I’m tired,” I say, softly pushing in my chair. “I’m going up to bed.”

  I mope up to my room… and that’s when I see it. This action-figure-shaped box at the foot of my bed. Wrapped in butcher paper and yarn.

  I can’t believe it!

  My heart is pounding. Yes! Yes yes yes! I race over and rip it open. Mom and Dad—who, I have to say, have set this up perfectly—are behind me, leaning in the doorway, smiling. And then…

  “What’s this?” I say, shedding the paper.

  “A new action figure!” Dad says. “Just like you wanted!”

  Um, did they not see the list? The very specific list? This is a doll. A homemade doll. Glued-on buttons for eyes. Real human hair.

  “What’s ‘NVM’?” I say, frowning at the nail-polish lettering on the chest.

  “It’s NON-VIOLENT MAN!” Dad says. “Pull the string in the back!”

  “Pull it!” Mom says giddily.

  It’s a wonky recording of Dad’s voice, rasped real low like Batman. It says, “Let’s make a better world… through kindness.”

  “And look!” Mom says. “When you pull the lever, he gives hugs!”

  “Awwwwwwwesome!” Franny says, crashing into the room. He rips the doll out of my hands. “This is so—”

  Lame, I think, burying Non-Violent Man deep in the cardboard box. This is why I never come up here. This stuff is like emotional quicksand.

  “Dad,” I say. “Can we please find this stupid birth certificate?”

  He’s smelling an old crayon drawing of our house. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. I just love all this stuff. You guys are so talented.”

  Of course it’s in the very last box, way in the corner. An eight-by-eleven manila envelope labeled BIRTH CERTIFICATE/GRANT.

  “You’d better check,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “To be sure there’s actually something in there.”

  He peeks in.

  “Yup,” he says, flashing a thumbs-up, “all good.”

  And he reseals the envelope.

  16

  Because we don’t have a car, we have to ride up to New York on this horrible bus called the Discount Rider. We make it just in time and have to sit in the very back, where it reeks like blue toilet water. The guy across the aisle is wearing a chicken costume for some reason, eating soup out of a ziplock bag.

  “Would it have been so bad to rent a car?” I say.

  “The electric ones were all sold out,” Dad says. “Plus they’re too expensive.”

  “The Wi-Fi isn’t working,” Franny says.

  “This is dumb,” I say. “Think how much carbon this bus is spewing out.”

  “Yeah,” Mom says, “but this bus would be running either way. If we rented a car, we’d be adding to what is already a very serious problem. Future generations will look back on us and say—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say.

  “I’m serious,” she says, turning to fully face me. “This is important. Sometimes you have to take a stand in life. Even if it’s hard. Even if it makes your life a little less convenient. I hope when that day comes, you’ll listen to your conscience instead of all the voices saying gimme, gimme, gimme.”

  Registration’s in this old armory building in New York. I guess it used to be filled with tanks and bombs, but now it’s a state-of-the-art athletic center.
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br />   The Babblemoney company logo, a golden B with a vertical line through it like a dollar sign, is everywhere. From the way I’m bouncing on my toes, you’d think I was nervous. But really I just want to get away from my parents.

  “Oh hey,” I say. “Looks like they have free coffee over there.…”

  Mom takes the hint. “You have all your paperwork?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, text us if you need us.”

  She mouths good luck and drags Dad away.

  Franny follows, arm up high like a submarine’s periscope, filming the crowd.

  I look around for a few seconds, taking it all in. It’s pretty cool: Of the thousands of kids who competed at regionals, only the best of the best made it here to New York.

  And I—Grant Falloon—am one of them.

  * * *

  Heading for the registration table, I spot a familiar face—Jay! He cuts diagonally across the crowd. We hug extra tight. “What are you doing here?” I say.

  “Had my bro drive me up to surprise you!” he says. “You think I’d miss this?”

  Tua’s behind him. The sleeves of his T-shirt are rolled up on his tattooed arms. He gives me a fist bump and a smile. “Good luck, little bro! You got this!”

  Hearing that—from him—gives me such a rush.

  The three of us wait in the A–F registration line. Finally, I give the lady my PPF (parental participation form) and my birth certificate. She runs her finger down a list until she finds FALLOON, GRANT. I’m weirdly relieved. She makes a photocopy of the birth certificate and hands me back the original. “Just need your parents to sign this image release form and you’re all set.” She passes me the document. It says:

  I hereby give permission for images of my child, captured during the MILLION DOLLAR RACE through video, photo, and digital camera, to be used solely for the purposes of BABBLEMONEY COMPANY promotional material and publications, in perpetuity, and waive any rights of compensation or ownership thereto.