“Isn’t that what a party is? When you have people over?”
“Not really.” Pup sighed. “Can you maybe make me some bacon, too?”
“We’re out of bacon. I’ll make you pork sausages instead.” She poured the eggs into the pan. “So you’re not seeing this Izzy person? Does that mean you two broke up?”
“We did not break up.” Pup put his head in his hands. If it weren’t for the promise of pork sausages, he’d be halfway up the stairs by now. “We were never together. We’re just friends. Why does Noreen act like she knows my life?”
“Well, maybe I’ve gotten my facts wrong. It’s possible, at my age.” She pointed at him with her spatula. “But honey, if something’s on your mind, you should tell me. You can always tell me if something is bothering you. You know that, right?”
“Yes, I know that,” Pup said, even though of course this was not even remotely true. Pup’s mom moved very carefully through life these days. She avoided anything that could disrupt the delicate balance of her emotions—she didn’t follow politics, didn’t go to parties or public events, had abandoned her beloved true-crime shows, didn’t drive during rush hour, quit her bowling league because it was too “competitive.” When the Cubs had won the World Series, while the rest of the family had gathered inches from the big-screen television in their matching blue T-shirts, Pup’s mom went and hid in the bathroom during the late innings, unable to bear the thought of possibly having to watch them lose. And she most certainly did not want to know if her children were suffering from anything worse than a mildly rumbling stomach, a problem she could instantly fix with a large plate of scrambled eggs and pork sausages. He could not talk to his mother about his pathetic relationship with Izzy. He could not talk to her about his crappy grades. And most of all, he could not talk to her about Patrick, about how much he missed him, and how bad it got sometimes. Even if he wanted to tell her about these things, it wouldn’t matter because she wouldn’t want to hear them. She just couldn’t handle it.
At that moment, Luke himself, glassy eyed and greasy haired, appeared in the doorway with his laptop bag slung over his shoulder.
“Morning,” he growled, without meeting Pup’s eyes.
“You’re just in time for breakfast,” said his mom.
“No thanks,” Luke said. “I’m running late for study group.”
He grabbed a bottle of red Gatorade from the fridge, stuck it in his bag, gave a general wave, and went out the back door.
“Poor boy,” Pup’s mom said thoughtfully, watching through the screened window as Luke hurried across the backyard and disappeared through the back gate. “He does look stressed. It’s probably all this business with the bar exam. You know how hard he works.”
She picked up a pencil then, and continued to work on a half-finished mandala in her coloring book, swirling with blues and greens and pinks, while Pup ate his breakfast in silence. He already knew what he would find when he went upstairs to put his camera away: the laptop Luke had bought for himself when he’d started law school three years earlier, forgotten, as usual, on the nightstand. And he already knew what he would do when he found it: he would pick up a magazine from the floor and toss it casually over the forgotten computer, so that if their mother happened to go upstairs she wouldn’t see it and grow suspicious. Pup had his own suspicions, of course, about Luke’s weekend study groups; about his shaking hands and bloodshot eyes and untouched notebooks stacked on the floor next to his bed. He would never ask his brother about it directly, though. He couldn’t. That just wasn’t the way their family worked.
5
MR. HUGHES WAS A WALKING stereotype of an art teacher. He had graying shoulder-length dreadlocks, a thick pair of black square-framed glasses that he was always tearing off his face to squint more closely at his students’ work, and a stubby set of charcoal pencils that he carried around in the breast pocket of his yellow-armpit-stained open-collared shirts. The artsy kids at Lincoln whispered about how legit he was, because he’d had one of his installations displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art and he’d lived in New York for like ten years.
On Monday morning, as soon as Pup walked into class, Mr. Hughes, who was standing on a ladder hanging a stack of papier-mâché kites from the ceiling, beckoned him over.
“Flanagan. How was your shoot with the photography club?”
“Pretty good.” Pup stood next to the ladder, at eye level with Mr. Hughes’s tattered Birkenstocks.
Mr. Hughes pointed a kite down at Pup. “You showed up, right?”
“Of course.” Pup tried not to concentrate on the yellowish-ridged outcroppings of Mr. Hughes’s toes. “I mean, I was a few minutes late, but yeah, I was there and I took a bunch of pictures.” He unzipped his backpack and pulled out his borrowed camera. “I just need to have them developed.”
“Good.” Mr. Hughes looped the kite string around an exposed pipe in the ceiling. “Darkroom key is hanging on a hook on the wall behind my desk. Get to work! I want that camera back ASAP, and I want that photo on my desk a week from today!”
“Darkroom?” asked Pup. “But how do I . . . ?”
Mr. Hughes yanked off his glasses and stared down the ladder. “I went over that in the fall, when we did a photography mini-unit for extra credit. Don’t you remember?”
“Uh, absolutely,” Pup lied. “Of course.” Where had he been in the fall? Oh, yes. The Chicago Cubs had won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. For the duration of the playoffs, Pup and the other twenty-six members of his immediate family had squashed together in the front room, wailing over the losses, screaming at the victories, eating vats of queso cheese and spinach dip and drinking inordinate quantities of root beer. The sky itself could have come crashing down all around him, and Pup would still be watching on a loop the replay of Kris Bryant fielding a Michael Martinez grounder and then firing it to Anthony Rizzo for the series-winning final out. How could he have been expected to worry about extra credit at a time like that?
Pup headed over toward Mr. Hughes’s desk now, the black camera hanging around his neck like a noose. On the way, he passed Marcus Flood’s desk. Marcus, like Pup, was a known slacker, and if there was a shortcut to be had, Marcus was the one who would know about it. Right now, Marcus was whistling contentedly to himself and molding a lump of clay into a one-hitter. “Hey,” Pup whispered. “See this camera?”
Marcus stopped whistling and looked up. “Yeah. What about it?”
Pup glanced around to make sure Mr. Hughes was out of earshot. “If I took the film into the one-hour photo at Walgreens, do you think they could develop it for me?”
Marcus burst out laughing.
“Dude, don’t you pay attention in this class at all? The only way Mr. Hughes will give you credit is if you develop that film in the darkroom. Weren’t you there that day he showed us how to use it?”
Of course Pup had been there that day. He just hadn’t been 100 percent listening. He’d been too busy mentally and emotionally preparing for game three of the NLCS, which was being played the next day in hostile territory—Dodger Stadium—with the series tied one game to one.
“I was there,” he said. “I just wasn’t . . . you know, there.”
“I totally understand,” Marcus said, reaching up and patting Pup on the shoulder. “You have my sympathies. But you’re screwed, my friend.”
“Hey,” Pup said, forcing a smile, “how hard can it be, right?”
Marcus put the one-hitter to his lips and blew into it, sending a plume of stale breath into Pup’s face.
“Famous last words.”
Pup left Marcus to complete his illicit pottery project, grabbed the key, and headed out into the hallway. The darkroom, a former utility closet, stood adjacent to the art room; Pup had never actually been inside. He fumbled the key into the lock before realizing it was unlocked already.
“Close the door!” The voice, sharp but embroidered with a soft accent that sounded familiar but that he couldn�
�t quite place, startled Pup so much that he stumbled backward, bumping against a hard surface and sending some metallic-sounding objects crashing to the floor.
“Sorry—I—shit.” Pup’s eyes adjusted to the weak red light that lent an eerie cast to the tiny space. Standing a few feet away from him was Abby Tesfay, one of the photography club girls.
“You have to be careful in here,” she said, turning her back on him now and tending to a counter lined with big plastic jugs of liquid. “There’s a lot of super-delicate equipment and Mr. Hughes will kill us if we break any of it.”
“Sorry,” Pup mumbled, bending down to pick up the plastic bottles and stacks of metal pans he’d knocked over in his idiotic entrance. “I just need to, like, develop this film and then I’ll be out of your way.”
“Oh, okay.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Don’t you need to rewind it first?”
“Yes,” Pup said dumbly. “Of course. I need to rewind it.”
Abby leaned against the counter and watched as he flipped the camera around in his hands, fiddling with its various parts.
“Need some help?”
Pup looked at her sheepishly and handed her the camera. She took it, wound a tiny crank on one corner of the machine, and snapped open the back.
“No offense,” she said, popping out the roll of film and dropping it into the palm of his hand, “but I can kind of see why you’re failing art.”
“Thanks,” said Pup.
“Do you need me to turn off the safety light?”
“The what?”
“The safety light. So you don’t ruin your film?”
Pup had a vague recollection of Mr. Hughes explaining light sensitivity, but when he tried to remember the details, all he could see was the beautiful, heaven-sent explosion of bat on ball, and Miggy Montero—pinch hitting in a tie game, eighth inning, two outs, bags jammed, a literal dream come true—rounding the bases, and the Flanagan household shaking to the rafters.
“Um . . .” Pup trailed off.
Abby sighed, reached across him, and snapped off the light switch. The room was plunged into a darkness so total it felt like stones were pressing on Pup’s open eyes.
“That,” he heard Abby’s disembodied voice say, “was the safety light.”
With his sense of sight temporarily disabled, Pup felt his other senses heighten. He could hear the thump of his own heart, the soft intake of his breath, the reek of chemicals, and beneath that, faintly, Abby Tesfay’s scent, like hand lotion and some sort of flower whose name he didn’t know. The darkness was so complete that he had to touch his eyes to double-check that they were, in fact, still open. He wondered if this was what it was like down in the abyssopelagic zones of the world’s oceans, those unimaginable depths filled with slimy-skinned alien fish that Patrick had once dreamed of exploring.
“Hope you’re not afraid of the dark,” Pup joked.
“Actually, I love it.” He could sense that Abby was standing right in front of him, even though he couldn’t see her. Her voice was a round, floating thing in the darkness, like the echo of a bell. “Where I’m from, nighttime is no joke. It gets so dark at night, you can’t even see the mountains.”
“Aren’t you from Chicago?”
“Not originally. I moved here from Eritrea when I was ten years old. It’s a tiny country in the Horn of Africa. Ever heard of it?”
“Of course I’ve heard of it,” Pup said. “Just because I forgot to rewind my film doesn’t mean I’m a moron.”
“Could you find it on a map?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But don’t take it personally. I came in dead last in Mr. Seton’s geography bowl last year. I forgot the capital of the United States.”
“Seriously?” Her voice in the darkness was flat and amused. “It’s Washington, DC.”
“Yes, I know that, but I just got mixed up for a second. I mean, it should be New York. New York’s bigger. Anyway. I’m not good under pressure. There’s a reason I’m in mostly low-track classes.”
She laughed. “You know, for a country that’s all about ‘everybody is created equal,’ American kids are really obsessed with who’s in what academic track. Just because you’re in low track doesn’t mean anything. I bet you’re smarter than you think.”
Pup considered this. “Okay,” he said. “Want to put that theory to the test?”
“Maybe. How?”
“Teach me how to use all this darkroom stuff. If I pick it up fast, then it’ll prove you’re right. And if I don’t, I’ll accept my failing art grade and leave you alone.”
There was a short silence before Abby’s voice floated out of the darkness. “All right. Deal.” He felt her fingers brush his palm and grab back the roll from his hand.
“What I’m doing now,” she narrated, “is removing the film from its cartridge. Then we have to load it onto the reel. Where are your hands? Wave them around or something so I can find them.”
Pup reached out and began wiggling his fingers. He felt a whizzing of air as Abby swept her own hands back and forth to find his. Finally, her fingers caught his wrists, then moved upward so that she could pull his hands over to the reel.
“I’m going to guide your hands to load the film,” she said. “If you don’t know how to do this part, you won’t be able to do the rest.”
He felt his fingers, guided by hers, feed the tongue of the film through a round thing.
“Okay,” she said, letting go, “now we place it inside the developing tank and screw on the lid.”
He heard movement, plastic on plastic, a twisting.
“You can turn the lights on now.”
Pup complied, fumbling his large, rangy hands over the walls until he found the switch.
For the rest of the period, Abby explained to him the contents of each of the jugs that floated in the water-filled sink—the developer, the stop bath, the fixer. Eventually her patient explanations poked awake some memories in his brain of the tutorial Mr. Hughes had given in the fall. When Pup had finished pouring and agitating the chemicals, the negatives were ready to hang. On the wall behind the counter was a little clothesline-looking thing, where Abby’s negatives already hung drying from little hooks. Pup carefully opened the developing tank, and as he began to hang his negatives beside hers, he saw that the images from Albion Beach, as if by magic, appeared on the glossy little rectangles.
“Thanks for the advice,” he said, leaning forward to observe the negative images of the water and the benches and the sandstone columns. “About the composition and the wide-angle lens. These don’t actually look terrible.”
“It will be easier to tell if you’ve got anything good once you enlarge them.” She pressed in next to him to see his work. “Hey—this is interesting. What is this?”
She was pointing at the final negative, the only one he hadn’t taken on the beach, of Luke passed out on the roof.
“Oh, that?” Pup turned his body a little to block the image from her sight line. The last thing he needed was for the girls of photography club to think he came from some crazy dysfunctional family where drunk people slept on roofs and chugged protein shakes to conjure the spirit of their dead brother. “That’s nothing. I took that one by accident.”
She looked at him like she was going to say something, but the bell rang before she could.
“Hey—thanks again,” Pup said as they moved to gather up their stuff.
“Just remember, if you end up not failing art, you owe me one.”
With a little wave, she opened the door and stepped out into the blinding light of the hallway, disappearing into the commotion of the passing period.
6
OUTSIDE THE ART ROOM, Izzy stood waiting for Pup, scrolling through her phone in a jean skirt and Vans.
“Hey,” she said, sticking her phone in her back pocket when she saw him coming. “Who was that?”
“Just this girl I know,” Pup said, falling in step beside her as they headed toward the counseling o
ffice. “She was helping me with my photography project.”
“She’s really pretty.”
“Oh.” He glanced back to where Abby was just turning down toward the cafeteria. “Yeah, I guess she is.”
“You should invite her to my house this weekend. I’m having people over.”
“Wait. It’s Monday and we’re already talking about the weekend?”
“You know me, I always get like this when the weather warms up.” She twisted her hair into a bun as they walked, and Pup tried not to stare at her bare neck, the hollow of collarbone that disappeared into her T-shirt. “Saturday. My mom said it was fine. It’s her turn to host book club, so she and her friends will be too busy chugging wine upstairs to pay attention to what we’re doing in the basement. Brody might even be able to sneak in some beer.”
“Wait a second.” Pup stopped short, and a pair of freshman girls slammed into the back of him. “You’re not just trying to get me to chaperone for you again, are you? Because to be honest—”
“Of course not!” Izzy looked at him, offended. “That’s why I’m saying you should invite somebody. It doesn’t have to be the photography girl. It could be anyone! You should try getting out there more, you know? Asking girls to hang out. That way, we could go on double dates!”
Pup blinked. The idea of sitting at Chili’s across from Izzy and Brody, watching as they sucked face between bites of their Awesome Blossom, was a nightmare to which he would never subject himself, let alone an innocent bystander like Abby Tesfay.
“We’ll see,” he said vaguely.
They had arrived at the counseling office. Mrs. Schmidt, phone cradled between chin and shoulder, gave them a familiar wave as they passed her desk and headed back toward the tiny office at the end of the hallway that was framed with blinking holiday lights all year round.
It was here in this office that Pup had first laid eyes on Izzy, on a November afternoon during his freshman year. His counselor had placed Pup in a group for bereaved students that met once a month during their lunch period. The group was led by Mrs. Barrera, the school social worker. She was the type of educator who spoke in a talk-whisper, spiced up her outfits with festive seasonal scarves, and kept a candy dish on her desk filled with Smarties. Her office walls were hung with photographs of puppies sleeping in flower pots and kittens rolling around in pumpkin patches, and she had boxes of tissues set up all over the place, like a funeral home. There were two springy, worn-in couches lining the office walls, and when Pup walked in with his bagged lunch and his carton of chocolate milk that afternoon, he saw five strangers sprawled across these couches, opening their lunches and avoiding each other’s eyes. There was only one couch space left, next to a small, pale girl with frizzy hair tamed into a long braid. Her eyes—they were a pebbly green—flicked to his and then flicked away again as he walked over and sat down next to her. She smelled, pleasantly, like the checkout line at Target: Altoids, dryer sheets, and that round strawberry lip balm all the girls in school carried in their backpacks.
Sorry for Your Loss Page 3
