37 Things I Love (In No Particular Order)
Read 37 Things I Love (In No Particular Order) Online
Authors: Kekla Magoon
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Family, #Parents, #Social Issues, #Friendship, #Death & Dying
For my mom
Contents
5. Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies
16. Rain on a Stained-Glass Window
1
Wings
If humans had them, the world might just be perfect.
I LOOK FOR WAYS
to stop myself from falling. The air is wide beneath me. Wide and warm. The beam, cold and narrow. This balancing act will end with me spread wingless in the sky, no idea how it happened—maybe I closed my eyes at the very wrong moment. Then I’m tumbling, tearing, down, down …
The scream that rips out of me is so familiar, I recognize its taste before I even hear the sound. My stomach soars into my throat, about to choke me, when I buck and come awake.
The dream. It’s only the dream. I clutch the edge of my mattress, which is on the floor. There’s nowhere to fall from here, but I feel as if I’m groping the air.
Mom appears in the doorway. She crosses the room with fleet footsteps and puts the washcloth in my hand, cool and soothing. I press it to my face as she settles down beside me.
This is our routine.
Mom scoops the hair away from my cheeks. Her hands are small and swift. She says nothing. She’s tried every comfort word already and learned that saying nothing is always safest.
I get that she doesn’t know what to do with the dream, or with me. The inside of her slim wrist strokes my cheek, maybe by accident.
It’s almost time to get up. Light seeps in under the curtains, and Mom’s here, still dressed in her work clothes.
Her fingers sweep through my hair, every strand, repairing the loose ponytail I was sleeping in. By the time she’s finished, my grip on the mattress has relaxed. I hold on to her arm, knowing she has both feet on the ground.
I don’t like the worried look on her face, or the urgent way she strokes my hand, trying to calm me down.
When I lie back against the pillows, she stops and holds my hands between hers.
* * *
“I’M HAVING FETTUCCINE,”
Mom says, pressing buttons on the coffeemaker. “What do you want for breakfast?”
It’s things like this that make me sure that we will never talk about the dream. Never talk about anything that matters.
“Oatmeal, I think.”
“Raisins?”
“Yeah.”
Mom stretches high to reach the Quaker Oats carton. It’s only the second-highest shelf, but she wobbles on tiptoe, like a beginner ballerina. At times it’s hard to believe we’re even related. Mom is thin. Rail thin. Dirty-looks-from-passersby thin. Eating-disorder-ad thin, but just by nature. She loses weight when she sneezes. Sometimes I think she loses weight when
I
sneeze.
Her voice doesn’t match her body. Not at all. People never guess she’s Laura Baldwin, late-night radio goddess, by looking at her. Mom has this deep-throated voice like hot milk on chocolate. Her voice is her job, her life. Her voice is this amazing gift to the world.
To look or sound like her, all small and throaty, is a different kind of dream. Standing side by side, we seem like strangers.
I head for the coffeepot as Mom shifts to the stove. She starts heating water for my oatmeal. Then she nukes the leftover fettuccine from my dinner last night for herself.
Mom works nights at the radio station, so she cooks me dinner while she cooks herself breakfast, and vice versa. We hardly ever eat the same thing at the same time. According to my guidance counselors, this makes me more likely to be “troubled.”
But it works for us. Mom sleeps during the day while I’m at school, so she’ll be awake when I get home. If I come home late, she knows I’ve been to see Dad. Those are the days when she bakes cookies. It’s funny, because Mom’s not at all domestic like that.
She leaves for work at the radio station late at night. Her on-air shift is midnight to four
A.M.
, and she’s always home by six, when I’m getting up for school.
It’s five thirty now. In two hours, I’ll have to leave for school. Four days until summer vacation, and I’m counting the minutes.
“We need to talk,” Mom says, over fettuccine and oatmeal.
“Huh?” My spoon slips, clattering against the bowl.
Mom and I do great at not talking. It’s not a hostile thing. There just aren’t any words lost between us. Mom saves up her thoughts for when she’s on air.
I don’t have a whole lot to say. At least not to her.
“I want us to talk,” Mom says. “About your father.”
I push my bowl away half full.
She’s dragging me across the invisible line, straight into the never-ever domain. I am shaken.
“Ellis, I think it’s time.”
She couldn’t be more wrong.
2
Dad
My hero. In all ways but one, perfect.
I STAND OUTSIDE
the building I call ALF, lingering on a path that I’m usually happy to follow. I rarely come here before school, but this is an emergency.
I pace in the grass. In two years, I’ve never hesitated for a second on the way to visit Dad. Today, I don’t know what I’m going to say.
It shouldn’t be this hard.
Dad knows everything about me. Every wound and how I got it. Every scar, the ones you can see and the ones you can’t.
I tell him things I didn’t even know it was possible to say out loud, until I say them and they’re out there, in the air. He listens, never judges me. Never says anything that would make me feel bad.
Or good.
Taking a deep breath, I glide in through the main doors of the nursing home, the Assisted Living Facility, aka ALF.
I push open the door to his room. “Hi, Dad.”
The machine beside his bed hisses, this eternal sound. That’s how he sounds to me now. The voice that I will always remember as his.
I go to the side of his bed and take his hand. I know he’s glad to see me. I’m sure he knows I’m here.
When he goes, it’ll be me and Mom. Mostly, it will be me alone.
* * *
I WAS THIRTEEN,
but I barely remember the construction accident two years ago. Some flashes, but that’s it. All I know is, Dad was here one day and not here the next.
Dad owns a construction company; that day he was with the foreman at a building site. He slipped, crossing an I-beam that was suspended seventeen stories up at the time. He only survived because he happened to land on an elevated platform several stories below. He was wearing a hard hat, but he still fell a long way.
The first time Mom took me to the hospital to see him, his head was bandaged and he had casts on an arm and a leg. It must’ve been soon after it happened. I sat on her lap across the room from the bed, and she whispered in my ear that Daddy was going to be all right.
I don’t know if she believed it.
* * *
I SPRAWL AWKWARDLY
in the vinyl chair beside Dad’s bed. My right leg sticks out straight, while my left knee hooks the armrest. My bare toes rest on the edge of his mattress. My left arm’s in my lap, and my right arm trails out of the chair, almost brushing the floor. I rest my neck on the chair back.
This bizarre position is really comfy to me now. This is how I always sit when we talk. I stare at the ceiling; it’s just easier for me that way. There’s this weird green smudge on one of the ceiling tiles. I’ve spent hours, maybe days, inventing ways it could have gotten up there. It’s a problem I really need to get to the bottom of, before … I just really need to get to the bottom of it.
“Dad, this whole situation is really fucked up.” One of the things I love about Dad is that there’s no need to censor myself around him. I can be real.
“Mom wants to turn off your machines. Can you believe that? I told her to shove it. Well, I didn’t say ‘shove it,’ but you know what I mean.”
Dad’s hand twitches.
“I know, right?” I say. “Like I’d ever let her do that to you. Anyway, she won’t do it unless I say it’s okay. She promised. So we’re fine. You don’t have to worry about anything. You’re not worried, are you?” Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this up.
I look at his face. Eyes closed, lips a little bit parted. Very dry looking. I reach for the jar of Vaseline on the nightstand and smooth some over his mouth.
“Sorry I can’t stay,” I say, rubbing my hand over the scratchy top of his head. The nurses have buzzed his hair close, and recently. “Mom’ll find out if I skip again.”
* * *
RUSHING OUT OF ALF,
I pass Dad’s day nurse, Carmen, in the parking lot.
She raises a brow at me. “Hi, Ellis. Cutting it close for school, eh?” She glances at her watch.
“Whatever.”
“You need a ride?”
“Nah, bus,” I say, waving toward the stop. Who cares if I’m late for school?
Carmen looks me up and down, repositions her bag on her shoulder. Her scrubs are a bright, friendly purple. “Oh, c’mon.” She shrugs. “Shift doesn’t start for ten minutes. I’ll drive you.”
I dutifully follow her to her car, a beat-up two-door sedan with low bucket seats. We ease in, and she starts the engine, zipping right out of the space as she’s snapping her seat belt into place. I love that she doesn’t comment when I don’t buckle mine.
“You sure this won’t make you late?”
“No worries,” she says, artfully gunning across four lanes of traffic to catch the right turn arrow. It yellows as we sail on through.
“Well, thanks.”
“Morning visit,” she says, eyes on the road. “Anything going on?”
Pause. “Was it you who cut his hair?” I ask.
Carmen makes a face. “Too short, right?”
“Definitely.”
“So much for my second career as a hairstylist.” She dials up the volume on the radio. “I love this song.” It’s a croony love ballad that makes me want to gag even while I hum along. We rock, heads bobbing to the beat, until the car pulls into the bus lane at my high school. I hop out, minutes to spare before the bell rings.
“Catch you later,” Carmen says.
“Yeah, later.”
3
Colin
We both cling to our obsessions.
THE LAST DAYS
of school are the most painful. I can practically touch the edge of that summer euphoria—the ice-cream-truck, bike-to-the-beach, sleep-till-noon liberation high that comes on the heels of the rising heat and humidity. Close, but not close enough.
I slam my locker, wiping sweat from my brow as I meander down the hallway toward whatever is first. Social studies?
My skin is slick with the inevitable perspiration. The sun steams us through the windows, turning our no-AC classrooms into greenhouses. The teacher has two fans pointed toward her desk, stacked textbooks tamping down all her piles of papers. Great. She’ll be looking windblown, talking over the hum, while the rest of us swelter.
Abby is already there, sprawled in a seat at the center of the room, working her electricity on poor Colin. Short and wide, with comically thick glasses, Colin Conner hovers on the verge of any number of unpopular groups: nerd, geek, reject, loser, loner. But he has a quiet power that has allowed him to rise to be one of the in-crowd. Strings attached.
Abby smiles up at him amid a feline stretch of her perfectly shaped arms. Colin’s cheeks are flushed red, his armpits stained with sweat, but he’s rapidly fanning Abby’s exposed throat with a worn notebook.
“Oh, Colin,” I say to this pathetic specimen. “Have you no pride?”
His fanning arm works faster than ever. Colin has the biceps of a Greek god and the belly of a Buddha. We’re not sure how such a quirk of physique is possible, but Abby exploits it at every opportunity.
She grins at me and reaches beneath her desk for a second notebook. Colin automatically takes it in his hand and begins to fan me, too.
It feels damn good, but I roll my eyes.
“Colin, get a life.” I grab the notebook from him and smack him on the back of the head. The notebook lands with a splat on Abby’s desk. She shrugs, closes her eyes, and leans back into her personal wind.