“Is that what everybody saw?” I ask. “Is that what I look like when it happens to me?”
Mom cringes at the blank screen. “More or less. The teachers cleared the lunchroom as fast as they could, but yes.” She meets my eyes. “That’s what everyone saw.”
“She looked scared,” I say. “The girl in the video. Was she?”
“No. She didn’t know it was happening. Like you didn’t.” Mom reaches over and rubs my arm up and down.
Like the offscreen person in the video did.
I jump to my feet and back away. I press my hands over my eyes, but I can’t stop imagining that girl on the floor, and all I can think is that she didn’t look as strong or as brave or as powerful as anyone else.
She looked like she needed to be saved.
No wonder Sofía doesn’t believe in me. No wonder nobody comes near me.
I can’t even save myself. And the Ring is just a hunk of metal. It won’t help me either.
Which means that something else has to.
I lower my hands and take a deep breath. “I need to tell you something.”
Mom gazes up at me. “Okay.”
I hang my head. “I haven’t been great about taking my medicine.”
She reaches for my hand. “I know, hon. It’s a new routine for all of us, but we’ll get there.”
I don’t have to tell her anything else. That’s my way out. Right there.
But I don’t like the heavy feeling in my chest—like a stone sitting there, weighing me down, making it hard to breathe.
I go pick up my piggy bank and turn back to Mom. “Hold out your hands,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows at me. “I don’t want your money.”
“Just do it.”
When I turn the bank over, four little pills fall through the slot and into her palms. She stares at them.
“I haven’t been taking them,” I say.
She squints at me, like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. “You haven’t been taking them… on purpose?” she asks.
Well, duh. “I thought I could take care of myself,” I say.
“This is how you take care of yourself, Meena.” Mom holds up the pills, her voice urgent. “These can help keep you safe. Don’t you see that?”
“Are the seizures dangerous?” I ask.
“Not necessarily. But if they happen too often or last too long, they can be. That’s why we want to get them under control.” Mom stands up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Will you help us?”
I take a shaky breath and turn to look out the window. There’s no mist now, just a dried-up smear from this morning that makes everything blurry—another piece of magic that doesn’t work.
I hold out my hand.
Mom gives me one of the pills. I toss it into my mouth, grab my water bottle, and wash it down. I open my hands and my mouth for her to see. “All gone,” I say.
Like a baby.
Mom puts her arms around me and pulls me close. “This doesn’t change anything, you know,” she says. “You’re still the same smart, fun, creative kid you always were. You have friends who care about you and a sister who looks up to you. You can do all the things you did before.”
I nod against her shoulder. But I don’t want to do the things I did before. I don’t want to go back to painting all the same pictures as everybody and learning all the same songs and getting all the same answers. I don’t want to go back to being just another kid. I want to do big things—extraordinary things!
But I can’t. I never will.
Because I’m the one who needs to be saved.
17
I slip my note under Sofía’s front door and knock as hard as I can, but I don’t wait for anyone to answer.
If she doesn’t want to talk to me, she doesn’t have to. I wouldn’t blame her.
But if she isn’t too mad, or too sick of me, maybe she’ll come to the playground like I asked in my note, so I can say I’m sorry to her face.
It seems like I’m always apologizing.
By the time my feet hit the wood chips, my cheeks are warm, and I’m out of breath from running. There’s nobody here except for a little boy on the swings, singing loudly to himself while he pumps his legs higher and higher.
Like there’s anything to be happy about.
I have to step over a puddle to climb into the orange slide. My backpack is still there, right where I left it yesterday. I push it out the bottom and lie down. It’s the perfect size in here for someone to stretch out and stare at the seam where two sections of the tube meet. Even though you can’t see the bolts that hold the slide together, you know they’re there because a rusty trickle seeps down from the crack after it rains.
This same spot is also wide enough for two people to lie side by side—that is, if they’re very good friends who don’t mind squishing close, especially now that they’re both a lot bigger than when they first started hanging out in here. The way the tube curves, it tilts you sideways so you can look each other in the eye.
But if you don’t want to—if you’re too ashamed of yourself—then when your friend lies down next to you, you can keep staring up at the smooth orange innards of the slide instead.
So when Sofía climbs in and lies down, I don’t have to look her in the eye when I say, “You were right.”
She doesn’t say I know or I told you so. She doesn’t even play dumb and say About what? She just lets me keep staring at the rusty seam.
Outside, the singing boy comes closer, but he’s not too loud to drown out the sound of me saying, “I’m sorry.”
The air inside the slide warms up from our breath, but the plastic is still cold against my back. Sofía turns onto her side and rests her head on her arm. “What happened?”
“It’s just like you said.” I sigh and finger the empty place below my neck. “I can’t do one single thing a superhero can do. There’s nothing special about me.”
“I didn’t say that.” Sofía props herself up on her elbow. “I said you didn’t have special powers.”
I shrug. “Same thing. And you knew all along. You never believed in the Ring.”
“No.” She gazes at me. “But I believed in you. I still do.”
I shake my head. “I can’t save anyone. I never could.”
Sofía is quiet. She turns onto her back so we’re both staring at the top of the slide. “You saved me,” she says finally.
I snort. “I couldn’t even get you to be my sidekick.”
“Before that,” she says. “In kindergarten.”
The boy outside stops singing. I turn and squint at Sofía.
“We moved away from everyone when we came here,” she says. “All my cousins. The other kids I knew. That summer, I used to sit and wish for school to start so I wouldn’t be alone, but then when it did…” She shakes her head. “I was too shy to talk to anybody. Sometimes it seemed like nobody even knew I was there.”
I remember that—how quiet Sofía was at first. She barely spoke or raised her head. I remember, because I wanted to know what color eyes she had, and I couldn’t see them.
“At recess, I’d swing by myself,” she says, “and after that, I’d hide in the craft center, drawing circles. I used to pretend they were holes that I could fall into and disappear.” She turns to me. “Until you came along.”
“Me?” I stare at her. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You noticed me.” Sofía’s lips quiver into a tiny smile.
I shake my head. “Anybody could have done that.”
“But you’re the only one who did.” She hooks her pinky onto my bracelet. “You were my first friend here.”
I shake my head. “I just wanted to play with you. It was no big deal.”
“It was to me.”
I don’t know what to say. What I did back then shouldn’t count for anything. It was nothing special. I was being my regular self, that’s all.
It doesn’t seem like that’s good enough for h
er anymore.
“Then why—” Tears spring to my eyes. I take a breath and blink them back. “You never want it to be just us lately. You’re always inviting other people in. It’s like you’re bored with me. Like I’m just one of your friends.”
“It’s not that,” Sofía says, rolling the yellow bead between her fingers. “You’re my best friend, Meena. But when we were fighting a few weeks ago… it was like I was on my own all over again. It hurts to be left out. I don’t want to do that to anyone else.”
I think about the bracelet she made for Rosie. About the times she invited other kids to stay in with us for recess. I think about how she kept letting Eli show us his sound effects.
Then I hear something that makes the back of my neck go cold.
It’s like the squawk Eli’s chickens make when you pick them up. I lock eyes with Sofía, my whole body going stiff. We sit up, scoot forward, and look out the bottom of the slide, but all I see is the empty playground and the muddy soccer field.
I hear it again and look up.
The singing boy is on the top of the monkey bars. He’s lying flat on his stomach, clinging to the rungs with both arms, and staring at the ground below. He’s one of those kids who holds his mouth wide open when he cries, and you think any second there’s going to be this foghorn blast of a cry, but instead the blast stays inside so all you hear is a little chicken bleat when he takes a breath.
“Hey,” I say, grabbing onto the edge of the slide. He’s gripping the bars so tightly that his fingers are turning white. “Are you stuck?”
The boy doesn’t answer. He takes a hitchy breath, his eyes wild.
“It’s okay.” I scramble out the tube, over the puddle. “I’m coming.” I look around, thinking hard. Even if I had my Rainbow Ring, I couldn’t fly up there and get him. I couldn’t levitate him down or shoot a web to keep him from falling. I doubt I can even run fast enough to get help.
Sofía hops out of the slide. She doesn’t have any more powers than I do, but she starts climbing the ladder anyway. “Hey, what’s your name?” she asks.
He takes a shuddery breath and squeaks out, “Logan.”
What’s she doing? He’s way too heavy for her to carry down.
“You’re okay, Logan,” Sofía says.
I eye the long drop to the ground—the one I would have jumped if Sofía hadn’t stopped me yesterday. “But he can’t get down,” I say. The bottoms of my feet start to tingle as I look up.
“Sure, he can,” Sofía says. “Can’t you, Logan? I’ll stay here with you, okay?”
His teeth are chattering, his legs shaking.
Sofía stands on the top rung of the ladder. I move to stand under him. I’m not stretchy or bouncy, but maybe I could at least break his fall.
“What grade are you in?” Sofía asks.
“First,” he gasps.
What the heck is with all these first graders getting themselves into trouble?
“Did you have a leprechaun in your class this year?” Sofía asks.
He jerks his head in a quick nod.
“Was it the same one as the kindergarteners’?”
“Ours was a girl,” he squeaks.
“How do you know?”
“She left us a note,” he says through his chattering teeth. “Her name was Tallulah.”
“Put your hand right here,” Sofía says, pointing to a rung closer to her. “What else did she do?”
He reaches. “She turned the toilet water green.”
“She had green pee?”
He bleats out a giggle. “I think so.”
She taps his foot and points. “Step right here. Hey, I heard you before. You’re a really good singer.”
He slides his foot closer to her.
“Now swing your leg over here. What’s your favorite song?”
Logan edges his feet closer to her. “ ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ ”
“That’s a good one,” Sofía says. “Scoot over this way. Will you sing it with me? You are my sunshine…”
He joins in, inching toward her. “… my only sunshine…”
“You make me happy…”
“… when skies are gray.” He swings his hips over the gap.
“You’ll never know, dear…”
“… how much I love you.” His legs dangle, feet reaching the top rung.
“Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
She climbs down in front of him, hand on his back. When he stretches his toes down far enough to skim the wood chips, Sofía says, “That’s it. You can let go.”
He lets go and drops to the ground.
She throws out her arms. “You did it!”
He looks up at the bars, then turns and hugs her around the stomach. He runs off, hop-skipping and starting the song over at the top of his lungs.
We watch him until he crosses the street and climbs the steps of a blue house. He turns and waves before disappearing inside.
I turn to Sofía in amazement. “You saved him,” I say, breathless.
She laughs. “Stop it.”
“It’s true! He could have fallen. Or he could have been stuck up there forever. Or a storm might have blown in all of a sudden, and he could have been struck by lightning.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Okay, maybe not that, but did you see how he looked at you? You saved him!”
“He saved himself.”
I open my mouth to argue.
But she’s right. She didn’t do anything, really. She didn’t leap. She didn’t swoop in. She didn’t even control his mind. “But you stayed with him,” I say.
She shrugs. “That was all he needed.”
And just like that, I know it was what I needed too.
I needed someone to stand by me in line. Someone to sit by me at lunch. I needed someone to treat me like my same old regular self—not better because of the Ring, not different because of the seizures, but the same. The same as before. The same as always.
I stare at Sofía. How did she know to do that? How did Eli? “You don’t even have powers,” I say.
“I don’t need them.” She raises an eyebrow and looks at me. “And neither do you.”
18
All the way home, I can’t stop thinking about how Sofía helped that kid.
It’s what she always does, I realize, picking a yellow twist tie up from the sidewalk. She’s nice to Rosie when I’m not. She listens to Eli when he’s being annoying. She even let me test out my powers when she knew I didn’t have any. Sofía wasn’t thinking about being a hero. She wasn’t thinking about herself at all.
Neither was I when I saved that girl or when I asked Sofía to play in kindergarten.
I just knew they needed help.
Dad is in the driveway when I get home. All the bikes are out, tools scattered around while he pumps up one of my tires.
“What’s wrong with my bike?” I ask, winding the twist tie around the tip of my finger.
“I’m just getting it ready for the season.” He puts the cap back onto the inner tube. “I thought we’d take them out for a ride tomorrow.”
“Where to?”
“The scoop shop, if you give me a hand.” He flips the bike upside down, sprays oil onto the chain, and turns the pedal with his hand. “You want to grab the wrench for me?”
I set down my backpack and pick up two of the tools at my feet. “Is it the pinchy thing or the wheely-deely one?”
He smirks. “The wheely-deely one. The other one is a pair of pliers.”
I hand it to him and plop down on the cement. The pliers remind me of a bird beak. When I open them all the way, they look like a bird that’s yawning. “Dad?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Does anybody write comics about regular people?”
He tightens a bolt next to the tire. “What do you mean?”
I close the pliers. They look tight-lipped and irritated now. “It just seems like you only hear about heroes that can fly or shoot lightning or
pick up buses with their bare hands. But what about people who help little kids get down from the monkey bars? Or who cheer up their friends or pick up trash and keep their neighborhoods clean? Aren’t they heroes too?”
“I think so.”
“Even if they don’t have suits?”
“Sure. You’re talking about everyday heroes.”
Everyday. Meaning ordinary—not original. I toss the pliers onto the driveway. They land next to a coffee can full of metal bolts and hooks and other hardware. On the top, I spot a couple of washers. They’re exactly like mine, only smaller, and they don’t have the rainbow sheen. I let out a big sigh.
Dad cocks his head at me. “What’s up, boss?”
I look away from the coffee can. “I know I can’t do anything really special if I have seizures. I was just hoping maybe I could do… I don’t know… something else.”
Dad lowers the wrench. “Who says you can’t do anything special?”
My shoulders slump. “It’s how everyone treats me now.”
“How?”
“Like I need help.”
Dad looks at me for a minute. He tosses the wrench onto the driveway with a clank. “Everyone needs help sometimes,” he says, sitting down in front of me. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I make one of those shrugs that means You’re wrong, but I’m not going to argue.
He scratches his chin with the back of his hand and leaves a streak of grease across his cheek. “Did you know that Albert Einstein had seizures?”
“Who’s that?”
“Only one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time.”
Humph. “Never heard of him.”
“How about Teddy Roosevelt? He was president of the United States. Have you heard of him?”
I shift a little. “Maybe.”
Dad pokes me in the chest. “Well, he had seizures too. And he’s not the only one. There have been Olympic athletes with epilepsy. Writers, artists, judges. You name it.”
I pull my knees into my chest and wrap my arms around them. “You don’t have to do this,” I say quietly.
Never Fear, Meena's Here! Page 10
