One for the Murphys (14 page)

Toni laughs. “So you
do
want to fight me then. Huh, Rain Cloud?”

“I’d toast you, and you know it. We’re not kids anymore.”

Then she gets serious and leans toward him. “Look, you waste. I don’t know who would win, but I promise you that I’d bloody you enough to make you the laughingstock of Smith Middle School.”

He sits up straighter. “You think so, huh?”

Toni shakes her head in disgust. “Even though you’d need a magnifying glass to see your reputation, you wouldn’t really want to mess with it, would you?”

Rainer shifts his weight, trying to decide what to do as Toni glares at him. He finally turns away. With a smirk, Toni sits across from me.

“What’s with these carrots?” she asks. “Can’t blame Rain Storm for chucking them, really. I’d sooner swallow live locusts than eat these.”

“Thanks,” I manage to say. “Thanks for helping me out.”

“Did you ever think that maybe I just wanted a clean table so I could eat my lunch?” She smiles a crooked smile. “You know… it’s not all about you, Connors.”

I want to say more, but as Toni Byars moves on to complaining about Ruben’s next project, I know that we’re okay.

I
have been with the Murphys for forty-six days. The spring weather is finally here for good, and the trees are filled with leaves and everything’s blooming. It would be a hundred degrees in Vegas now. I like it here.

Daniel and I are shooting hoops when the peace is broken by familiar yelling. Three houses down we see the younger Murphy boys with a kid wearing overalls. Michael Eric is holding his stomach and crying.

Daniel and I race down the street.

“Touch my brother again,” Daniel threatens, “and I’ll knock you into next week.”

The overalls kid steps up. “Michael Eric is a baby. He needs his big
bwother
to help him,” he says in a baby voice.

Michael Eric hugs my leg and I place my hand on top of his head, rubbing his hair.

“Who’s this?” the kid asks, like I’m something he found on the bottom of his shoe.

“No,” I say. “Who are
you
? The neighborhood farmer? Aren’t you a little old for overalls?” I step up to him. He looks about nine years old but skinny enough for a stiff breeze to carry him away.

Michael Eric speaks through tears. “That’s Jimmy Partin. He hits me and calls me a baby. He’s a jerk face.”

“He must be,” I say, stepping up to him.

I must look like I’m going to whack him, because Daniel says, “Carley, you can’t hit him. Mom will
kill
us if we hit first.”

“Well, it seems like he
did
hit first,” I say, looking at Michael Eric. “Besides, I’m willing to hit him and lie about it.” The kid looks nervous, and I have to say I enjoy watching him squirm. “Just kidding,” I say, pushing his shoulder with one finger. “You’re too young for me to turn into a pancake.” I take Michael Eric’s hand. “Let’s go back to the house.”

As we turn to go, the twerp says, “You must be a Murphy. All they ever do is turn and run.”

Now, this is the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a while, but I don’t want the boys to see me run from this little creep. I decide to take the consequences for teaching him a lesson. I turn around. It must be in my eyes, because he runs.

“Who’s running now?” I ask, snagging him easily.

“Carley, don’t…” Daniel begins.

“Relax,” I say. “Me and Jimmy here are going to be friends.” I hold the straps of his overalls as he tries to twist away.

“You wouldn’t dare hit me,” he says, trying to look tough.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t. But I have something better.” I drag
him by the straps of his overalls to a tree that’s in the side yard. It has nice climbing branches; I find a short, solid one.

I hoist Jimmy into the air and hang him by the straps of his overalls. He dangles there like a Christmas ornament. He kicks and yells. I lean in. “Touch a Murphy again—or tell anyone I did this—and I’ll hang you from the gutters next time.” I lean in closer. “I
mean
it.”

Adam and Michael Eric run back to their house. I follow, Daniel walking beside me. We both look back to see Jimmy squirm and wiggle. He kicks his feet and turns apple red. He waves an angry fist as he tries to twist himself off of the branch. I wonder what the chances are that he’ll keep quiet. Probably not good, but the words
a family sticks together
ring in my head.

Daniel shoves me and starts cracking up. “God, that was sweet to watch. But if my mom finds out, you’re gonna really catch it, ya know.”

“For Michael Eric?” I say without thinking. “I don’t care what trouble I get in.”

Daniel looks up. “I know you don’t. That’s what made it so great.”

Then he shoves me again. And I shove him. And we laugh as we walk through two more of the neighbors’ yards and, I have to admit, it feels pretty good.

When we get back to the Murphys’, Michael Eric flashes his crooked baby teeth and throws up his arms. “Carley! You’re my hero!” He leaps.

In my guts, I leap too.

If there’s any punishment for making Jimmy into a Christmas ornament, it will be completely and totally worth it.

T
oday Toni arrives while I’m sitting on the kitchen counter, “helping” with dinner.

“Hello, Toni. Good to see you again.” Mrs. Murphy smiles at her and Toni kind of smiles back.

“Hey, Connors,” Toni says. She motions to Mr. Murphy. “So, does he ever eat… or go to the bathroom… or do anything but watch the Sox?”

“Well, he puts out fires,” I say, jumping down from the counter. “That’s pretty good.”

“Putting out fires, huh? Like the Sox going up in flames in the bottom of the ninth. An ocean couldn’t put out that fire!”

“I heard that!” Mr. Murphy yells from the family room.

Mrs. Murphy chuckles. “Oh boy. Here they go.”

“I thought I told you, Carley, that she isn’t allowed over here!” he yells.

I know he’s kidding, but still he makes me nervous.

Toni walks over. “Well, I could wait eighty-six years to come back. Because that’s a really, really, really long time. Don’t you think?”

“It wouldn’t be long enough,” he says.

They both laugh, and I think how funny it is that they are so alike.

“In fact, I was thinking,” she adds. “Have you ever considered that it was Murphy’s Law that the Sox couldn’t come through all that time? I mean, does Red Sox Nation know it was your fault?”

“Toni, can you tell me how it came to be that you actually root for those blowhard Yankees?”

Toni’s face darkens a little. “My dad loves the Yanks. He and my mom grew up in Jersey and… Well, it gives me a reason to e-mail him every day.” She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “I print and carry his note with me the next day.” She shuffles her feet a bit. “He doesn’t usually answer…” She brightens. “But sometimes he does!”

Mrs. Murphy has stopped and turned to look at Toni, but I’d never stopped staring. Toni glances back at me, seeming embarrassed and much younger and not so tough.

“That’s cool, Toni,” I say. “You’re lucky to have notes from your dad. I’ve never met my father.” I hope it makes her feel better to have a little of her dad rather than none.

Mr. Murphy stares too. He presses his lips together before patting the couch next to him. “C’mon in here, Toni.” Then he yells, “You too, Carley! Come on in here and see your beloved Ellsbury!”

I’m surprised that she heads right over. So do I.

“Ellsbury, Connors?” Toni asks. “Are you serious?”

“Who do you like?” I ask. “A-Roid?”

“Ha!” Mr. Murphy says. He ruffles my hair and says, “That’s my girl!”

And I really do wish I were.

In the fireman room, Toni lounges on the bed as we listen to her
Wicked
CD. A song called “What Is This Feeling?”, also known as the “loathing song,” comes on and she cracks up. “Remember, Connors, how we couldn’t stand each other?”

“Wait a minute,” I tease. “You didn’t like me?”

“I liked you like poison ivy.” She laughs again and throws a fire truck pillow in my direction. Then she takes a deep breath. “So, Connors.” She looks serious. “What’s the deal with this foster kid thing? Did your mother die or something?”

“No,” I say, shifting my weight.

“Did she leave you in a basket on some church steps or what?”

“No,” I snap.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Connors, but I’ve been wondering.” She picks at her sneaker. “You know, wondering how bad it was. Kids don’t end up in foster care for paper cuts.”

I can tell it’s not just curiosity. I can tell it worries her. I look out the window. “Let’s just say that my mother cared more about her new husband than she did about me.”

“So she left with him?”

“Not exactly,” I mumble.

“It was bad, wasn’t it, Connors?” I can tell she’s praying for a particular answer—one she knows she won’t get.

I nod.

“That’s why you were in the hospital? Because of them?”

“Yeah.”

She sits up fast. “You know, I’m pretty ticked that they would hurt you,” she says. “If I’m around and they try to do something like that, I’ll hit them so hard they’ll have to carry their teeth in a baggie.”

I laugh.

“Not funny, Connors. Believe it.”

“Sounds like something you’d say to Rainer.”

Now she’s laughing. “Yeah, it does. I’ll have to use it on him.” She turns to me. “Did you know he used to carry dental floss to school every day?”

“No way!”

“Yes! All through the third and fourth grade.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s Rainer, that’s why!” She jumps. “Oh, by the way, he was acting weird yesterday. He actually came over and didn’t act like a simp.”

“What’s the story? Is he delirious?” I ask.

“Our little boy is growing up,” she says, sniffing.

She falls back on the bed, and all is quiet for a while. “So,” I begin. “You like your dad, huh?”

She looks surprised. “Yeah. I like my dad a lot. His only fault is that he’s invisible. He says he works those hours in Japan to give us a good life, but I’d take a smaller house with him home in a heartbeat.”

“I wish my mother was different too, you know?” I confess to Toni. “Before coming here, I didn’t even know I wanted her to be different. It’s like when Mrs. Murphy kept trying to get me to try Hawaiian pizza. I thought it sounded gross. But I finally tried it, and I love it. I guess sometimes you don’t know what you want because you don’t know it exists.”

“So what
is
your mom like?” she asks.

“Well, if you found the person most unlike your mother on the planet, it would be my mother. For one, we’d shop for clothes in the Salvation Army drop boxes.”

She sits up quick. “No way! Really? You mean the metal boxes? Not the store?”

“Yup. You got it. Under dark of night with flashlights.”

“We have to try that, Connors. That sounds like the best!”

“Oh, yeah. It was the best all right.” I don’t want to keep talking about my mother. I throw the pillow back at her.

The first few notes of “Defying Gravity” play. Toni stands on my bed and does the intro perfectly. I jump up and join her and say Elphaba’s part. Once the real song starts, we both sing everything, and I pay more attention to the words than I ever have. And as I listen, I realize that Toni and I feel the same way about things.

That we’ve both changed. That we’re tired of having the world push us into places we don’t want to be. That we’re both scared of losing love that maybe we never had to begin with. That we can have whatever we want in our lives; it’s only a matter of deciding. But Toni and I don’t have to do it alone. We have each other.

C
arley,” Mrs. Murphy says. “Daniel has a game tonight. It would be nice if you would go.”

I bite into a saltine. “Sure. Sounds good.” A few weeks ago, it would’ve been more likely that I’d run off and join the Russian army than find myself actually liking Daniel. But I do.

So when I sit down on the bleacher next to Mrs. Murphy, I haven’t brought a notebook or anything to read.

Before the game I grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “All right, Murphy. You go kick some you know what. Remember. Dribble low to the floor and protect that ball. Protect it. Don’t forget that arc on your shot. Okay?”

“Got it.”

“Take a shot if you’ve got it!” I yell. “You are invincible! Remember that!”

Mrs. Murphy stares at me.

“What?” I say, turning. “Is something wrong?”

She sputters. “Are you
kidding
me? No, I just can’t believe it! I couldn’t be happier!”

I turn in time to see Daniel take a shot that almost goes in but rolls out.

He looks nervous.

“That’s okay, Daniel! Keep at it!”

Daniel makes a decent pass and later makes a good bounce pass to another player, who goes in for a layup. He pumps his fist and looks at us.

Then, unbelievably, Daniel makes a basket. I’m on my feet and Mrs. Murphy looks back and forth between Daniel and me. The rest of the team is already running back up the court as he stands there with a smile that covers his whole face.

His coach yells, “Daniel! Keep it moving! Down on D!”

He wakes up and follows his team. Within about four minutes, he dribbles the ball down the court and shoots for another basket, which misses. I clap. “That’s okay, Daniel! Way to take the shot!”

Daniel is taken out for a while, but we make eye contact while he’s on the bench. His coach ruffles his hair, and he smiles. I give him a nod and a thumbs-up, because I remember how my coach did that for me. When Daniel goes back in, he takes a shot from beyond the arc, and I swear I stopped breathing as it sailed up.

Swish!

I’m on my feet, yelling, “Dan the Man!” His mother claps like the kid just won the lottery. Even Adam and Michael Eric pull their heads out of their Matchboxes game to look. Two of
Daniel’s teammates high-five him; the kid is happier than I’ve ever seen him.