Dear Blue Sky (4 page)

CHAPTER 7

WHAT A WASTE

JACK WAS QUIET
the rest of the way to school. Finn dropped us off at the elementary school entrance, and he and Van kept going down the road to the high school. The middle grades had their own wing on the other side of the school from the kindergarten to fifth-graders. I took Jack to his special-needs class, then ran to the main office for a late slip.

On the first day of school, the sewer had seeped into the hallway, leaving a stink in the entire middle school hallway. It still seemed to be there. I stared at the fluorescent panels of light along the ceiling of the hallway all the way to social studies. On the door there was a poster of different-colored ice cream cones. It said
SUCCESS COMES IN MANY FLAVORS. HAVE A SCOOP.
I was already late, and for a minute, I thought about not going into class at all. No one would have said anything. I got all A's.

Mr. Barkan was writing on the chalkboard. He had on his usual too-short brown polyester pants, white socks, and clunky brown shoes. I dropped the pink slip on his desk. Sonia glanced at me as I passed her. She had on lots of makeup and a new tight black T-shirt that said
SWEET
. I couldn't remember if I'd brushed my hair this morning. My best friend seemed like a stranger. Or maybe I was. But somehow I felt like nothing more could hurt me.

As I took my seat, Kimberly Love turned to me and whispered, “Did Sef leave?”

Everyone called her Big Mouth Kim. She was half Japanese and had a long dark braid and glasses. Her brother Don was a friend of Sef's. A senior this year, he was about the best basketball player Hillview ever had.

“Yesterday morning.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Thanks.” I looked down.

“Don would have gone to the party, but he wasn't here—”

“Girls, do you have something you want to tell all of us?” Mr. Barkan was chewing on the end of his glasses.

Kim and I looked at each other.

“Is it more important than the War of 1812?” he asked.

That only happened about a million years ago. “Yeah, it is,” I said, surprising myself.

Laughter rocked the classroom back and forth.

“That so?” Mr. Barkan said. “Well, Cassie, you can tell me all about it after class. All right, everyone, eyes up here. Washington's advice to the country was that we should steer clear of permanent alliances with the foreign world—”

Sonia was smiling to herself. I remembered her saying, “Everything's always about Sef.” I closed my eyes, and the world became white noise.

I stayed after class. Mr. Barkan said, “You were disrespectful. You're setting the wrong example. Okay?” He crossed his hands over his chest. “Do you have anything to say?”

Tiny specks of spit were coming out of the corners of his mouth. I suddenly felt sorry for him.

“Well, can we talk about something more recent? I mean, what about the Iraq War?”

He nodded. “Okay. We can do something like that. Is your brother there?”

“He left yesterday,” I said.

“Okay, okay. We'll figure something out. Go ahead to your next class.”

“Thanks.”

• • •

“Hello, earth to Cassie. Did you do your paragraph on
The Giver
?” It was Big Mouth Kim, waiting in line for school lunch.

“No, I forgot.”

She leaned against the wall, her fingers tapping the Girl Power Got Milk? poster. “9 Essential Nutrients to Help You Perform Your Best.” She pointed to the poster. “That's why I'm getting chocolate milk. Where have you been going to, anyway?”

“The library.” Last week I started taking my lunch there instead of sitting at Sonia's table.

“Oh, that's cool. Do you want to sit with me today?”

She wore Converse sneakers, one red and one black, jeans, and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. She'd always dressed a little weird. But I liked her style—better than what Sonia and all the other girls were wearing. I shrugged and carried my tray to the far seat by the window. “Sure.”

She followed me. “What's up with you and Sonia?”

The last person I was planning to tell anything to was Big Mouth Kim. “Nothing.” I sat down. “Just a stupid fight.”

She nodded and opened her Hello Kitty lunch box.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Cabbage and carrot and radish on fried noodles with egg.” She held up the plastic container. “Want to try some?”

“No, thanks.”

Sonia's new best friend, Michaela, stopped at our table. For years, Sonia had made fun of her for being such a princess, but not anymore. Michaela straightened her hair every week at a salon and wore a diamond ring because her father owned a jewelry store. She looked from Kim to me and back. “What business are you doing for math?” she asked Kim.

We were all in the same English class, but only I was in advanced math. I used to help do Michaela's homework for her during lunch.

“What's the assignment?” I asked.

“You have to plan and budget a new business,” Kim said. She turned to Michaela. “Mine's organic farming.”

“For real?” Michaela said.

“Yeah.”

“You think you can actually make money selling carrots and peas and stuff?” Michaela lifted her eyebrows.

“What's yours?” Kim asked.

“I have my own line of clothing.”

“Like JLo?”

“I'm totally not doing perfumes.” Michaela smiled. “Mine is more like Gisele's.”

“Right.” Kim ate a forkful of vegetables and noodles.

I ate the blob of whipped cream off my green square of Jell-O. It melted in my mouth. Then I bit into my sloppy joe oozing with tomato.

“Are you going to eat that? Do you, like, even know where that meat came from?” Michaela asked.

“China?” I asked. “Doesn't everything come from China?”

Kim laughed.

“Very funny,” Michaela said. “When you start rolling around the ground dying, don't say I didn't warn you.”

“No one else has died, so I guess I'll risk it.”

“Whatever,” Michaela said, and walked away.

“Whatever,” Kim mimicked. “Maybe she should go to Iraq. Did you know I have a cousin there? In Iraq.”

“You do? Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he's okay.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“For what?”

“Just thanks.”

• • •

I was the first one in English class. In black jeans and T-shirt, Mr. Giraldi looked up at me and smiled. Before he came to the middle school, he taught at the high school. Sef was in his class. Everyone liked Mr. G. He was young and pretty cool, and there was the cute factor. Some of the girls had crushes on him.

“I don't have my paragraph,” I told Mr. G. “I couldn't really do anything. Sef left yesterday.”

“All right, no problem. Don't worry, okay? Sounds like you have a lot going on right now.” Then he sighed and muttered, “What a waste.”

“What's a waste?”

His eyes blinked shut, then opened. “Listen, Sef's a good kid. I hope to God he's safe. Try to do your work tonight.”

I nodded.
What a waste
. Sef?

I sat down, watching everyone like they were on a screen in front of me. I was far, far away.

“All right, everyone, eyes and ears please. Let's review
The Giver
before we talk about your paragraph on memory. In Jonas's utopia, there are no choices, no pain or fear. There is no access to memory. What would we be without our memories, without our past?”

“Zombies?” Brandon said.

A few kids laughed.

“That'd be so cool,” Sonia said. “I mean, like, no pain? Ever?”

“Aren't utopias perfect? They probably didn't have homework there either,” Kim said.

“Okay, you have a lot of ideas. Let's get on track. I want to do a little brainstorming. Remember back to your first day of school in September, a whole two months ago, and write your thoughts. Fears, joys, expectations, whatever comes to mind—”

“The only thing I was afraid of was how much homework they said you'd give us,” Kim said.

“Kim, you're talking while I'm talking. Write it down. Whatever you experienced, good or bad.”

I stared at my sheet of paper.

“Five minutes, just write.”

Through the window I could see the field hockey field. The sun was bright, and the sky was blue. I wrote on the top of my paper “My First Day of Seventh Grade, September 6, 2006: The Day the Sewer Overflowed in the Hallway.” It seemed like so long ago. Sef was at boot camp.

• • •

Early that morning, Dad had knocked on our door. “Who's ready to roll?”

“Not Van,” I said. I was sitting on my bed in jeans and a T-shirt watching Van try on outfits.

“I can't decide what to wear,” she moaned.

“What's wrong with what you have on?”

“It looks stupid.”

“No it doesn't,” Dad said.

“Yes it does.”

“She thinks the skirt makes her look fat,” I said.

“Oh, Van. You're not fat.” He put his hand on his belly. “If you just wore the same thing every day like me and Cass, you wouldn't have this problem.”

“Thanks. That's helpful.”

Dad shrugged and looked at me, and I shrugged back.

“Cass,” he said, pointing to my window, “what happened to your flag?”

After 9/11, Dad got us each little flags on stands for our rooms. “It fell down,” I said, which was pretty much true. It fell down because I knocked it down the day Sef left for training.

I said, “Dad, I don't want Sef to go.”

“You sound like your mother.”

Van laughed.

I turned to her. “What? You want him to go?”

She stopped brushing her hair. “No.”

“Then why don't you ever say anything?”

“Listen,” Dad said, “it's his decision, and he's protecting our country. We have to honor the fact that he's going.”

“Well, I don't,” I said.

Downstairs, Mom called, “Breakfast!”

“Do you know what Sonia's dad told Mom?” I asked.

“What?”

“That he was for the war, but he'd never send his own kid.”

“That figures.” Dad took a sharp breath, straightening his shoulders and puffing out his chest. “He told Mom that? He should have told me.”

“I bet you could still talk Sef out of it.”

“It's not exactly up for discussion, Cass. He's going to defend his country.”

“From what?”

“From terrorists.”

“In Iraq? I thought bin Laden was in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan or somewhere.”

“Terrorists are everywhere. Listen”—he pointed at me—“you better hurry up and get downstairs before your mother turns into a terrorist. And your flag's going back up.”

When I left that morning, I saw it standing in my window—the little flag that didn't wave or flap or make a sound.

• • •

“All right, who wants to share their fears, hopes, and expectations of their first day of seventh grade? What memories have you come up with?” Mr. Giraldi asked.

Hands went up. Whoever Mr. G threw his orange ball to had the floor. He wasn't going to throw it to me. I drifted out. But when everyone started laughing at Brandon, I laughed too.

He threw the orange ball to Michaela. Under her sweater, her T-shirt said
I'M NOT SHORT. I'M FUN SIZE.
“Whoa, Michaela's got the floor. Go.”

“I was so nervous on my first day. I mean it was, like, seventh grade. I did the most embarrassing thing, I can't even say it.” She giggled.

“Did you make the septic overflow?” someone asked.

“No way!” Michaela turned red. “But who wants to have bad memories? That's crazy.”

“Okay, how do others feel? Is having no memories better than having bad memories? In a way, they're like our history. How do memories make us who we are?” The orange ball flew across the room.

What if Sef went away and I had no memory of him? Would that be better? What if I couldn't see his face anymore or remember him running beside me or even miss him? What if he just disappeared?

Next thing I knew, Mr. G was throwing the orange ball up and catching it as he told us our homework for tomorrow. “I'll take your memories before you go.”

Everyone started streaming out. Brandon tripped and fell in the doorway.

“Brandon, if you pulled your pants up, you might have an easier time walking.”

They laughed as they turned in their memories. I folded up my nearly blank page and put it in my pocket.

CHAPTER 8

THE DEAL

WHEN JACK AND
I got home, Mom was on the couch watching soap operas with the phone in her hand. Jack dropped his backpack on the floor, turned around, and went back outside.

“Why are you home?” I asked Mom.

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she worked as a receptionist at a dentist's office in town. Dr. Hoffman was always chewing gum and telling bad jokes. Once he cleaned only half my teeth. Since we got our teeth done at a discount, we never said anything.

She didn't answer me. The breakfast dishes were piled up in the sink, and the counter was covered in coffee cups, eggs, and bread. Old photo albums were stacked on the kitchen table. I put the food away and put the dishes in the dishwasher and wiped down the counter. Through the door, I saw Jack sitting under the chestnut tree in the backyard looking up into the leaves.

“Do you still want me to watch Jack?” I asked Mom.

“If you want to.”

“You can since you're home,” I said, and went upstairs and lay on my bed, using my backpack of books as a pillow. So much homework had piled up from last week. I had to study for math and science tests, read
The Giver
, and write my paragraph. Osmosis, I thought. My brain would absorb it all as I slept.

• • •

When I woke, it was dark out. I saw the outline of Van's body bent over the computer. She never took naps, ever. She turned to me.

“I take it Sef didn't call,” she said.

“I guess not.” The words stuck in my throat. “But he's not dead as far as we know.”

Her eyes widened. “Don't even say it. What's Mom doing, anyway, lying on the couch all day? I mean, why isn't she getting supper or anything? If she even brings up that stupid premonition again—and you don't have to tell people either, like you did this morning. Everyone will think she's totally crazy.”

“She is crazy.”

“He's only been gone for a day, and it's like a morgue in here. I mean I miss him, too, but we still have to do everything. We have to eat.” She slid her chair back. “I'm going to get something for supper.”

By the time I made my way down, Van was making her way back up with a salad. I could hear Jack down in the kitchen singing,
“E-I-E-I-O.”

I started making a deal then. If Mom's premonition was wrong and Sef was fine, then I'd be good. I really would. It wasn't like I was bad, but I would have to stop being so mad at Mom, for one. I didn't know exactly whom I was making a deal with as I looked up at the sky and said it.
Swore
it.

On the table next to Mom was a bottle of wine. The weather lady was talking about a cold front coming down from Canada.

“Do you want something to eat, Mom?” I asked.

“Moo moo here, and moo moo there—” Jack sang.

“Can we make pancakes?” I asked.

Still she didn't answer. In the kitchen, Jack was holding the refrigerator door open, staring in at the white light. “Moo moo and moo moo—”

“Go ask her if we can make pancakes,” I told him. “She'll say yes to you.”

In a minute, Jack came back smiling.

I already had the Bisquick in a bowl. “Get the chocolate chips,” I told him. We added the whole bag and started eating spoonfuls of the batter while the frying pan heated up.

The phone rang once. I ran to the living room just in time to see Mom drop the receiver and then pick it up. It was Dad calling to say not to wait for him.

When we were done eating, Jack and I went up to Sef's room. Jack lay on top of Sef's bed, his face and hands sticky with maple syrup, his clothes grass-stained and caked with dirt. Bits of leaves were stuck in his hair.

“White Kitty,” he said.

I brought his kitty, and he closed his eyes.

On the back of Sef's door was a dartboard of Osama bin Laden's face. You got one hundred points if you hit him between the eyebrows, fifty for his face, and twenty-five for his beard. We had laughed at bin Laden before, but now when I looked into his black eyes, I was afraid.

I pressed Play on Sef's CD box. The song started in a soft guitar. A deep bass sounded next and then something ominous. A thumping, like out of a scary movie. Then the voice came in:
Did did did did you see the frightened ones
— I hit Stop and went over to Jack with his mouth open, snoring, and White Kitty tucked under his chin.

I spread Sef's blue comforter on Jack, rolled him over, and lay down beside him. Just below the headboard, the wallpaper was peeling off. The silver airplanes were curling up as if they were driving into each other. I tried to stick the paper back to the wall, but it was old and dry and kept coiling off. Jack's stomach rose and fell. Outside the world was black.

I pressed Play again.
Did did did did you hear the falling bombs?
Behind the music I could hear planes whooshing by and bombs exploding.
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter
— I'd heard Sef playing this all summer and never really listened.
Good-bye, blue sky, good-bye—