The Whole Story of Half a Girl (17 page)

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“No, but I will be.”

“I want to lie down, Mom.”

“Me too,” she says, and we both lie down on the bed. I curl into her and she puts her arms around me.

“Mom?” I ask with my eyes closed.

“Yes,” she says.

“What if Dad never comes back?” I can’t say what I really mean, but Mom must know. She must be thinking it too.

“We have to take this a day at a time,” she says, smoothing my hair back. “What we know today is that there are lots of smart people out there looking for him.”

“But—”

“Sonia,” she interrupts. “We have to believe in your dad. He wouldn’t leave us like this. He wouldn’t …”

Her voice trails off and she hugs me tighter and all the hard stuff between us melts away.

It’s dark when I wake and I see a figure standing in the
doorway. Dad, I think. He’s home. It was all just a mistake, or a dream. I sit up and squint into the lighted doorway. It’s not Dad. It’s Grandma, and Natasha’s standing beside her like a little ghost in her white nightgown.

“She wants to sleep in here,” Grandma says. Mom lifts up the blankets for Natasha to get in. And she does.

For the next three nights, Natasha and I sleep in Mom’s bed. Grandma cooks us big, hot meals of brisket or chicken with lots of gravy and bread, hardly a vegetable in sight. I just eat, sleep, play cards with Grandma, draw cartoons with Grandpa, and try to pretend there isn’t a hole as big as the Grand Canyon in my heart.

Something about all this, though—the cuddling in bed like kittens, the warm, heavy food sitting in my stomach, my grandparents treating me special—feels good, feels like a holiday. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want this coziness to end. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want Dad to come back if he’s going to be sad and empty and ruin it.

On Friday, Kate calls.

“Are you okay?” she asks when I answer the phone. Her voice sounds different, tiny.

“Yeah,” I say, and wonder if somehow she’s heard.

“How come you haven’t been in school? Are you sick?”

“No.” I let the quiet that follows hang there like a soaked towel, wet and heavy.

“What’s going on?” she says finally. “Is this about Peter’s party? I didn’t know I made you so upset.”

I have to smile. Kate thinks I’m staying home because of her.

“It has nothing to do with that. I don’t even care anymore.”

“Oh.” She sounds disappointed.

“It’s my dad. He’s—” I start to say, but I can’t tell her. “He’s in the hospital. He has pneumonia, but he’ll be okay.”

“Oh, no. Well, I’m glad he’s going to be okay,” she says, not questioning it. “So are you going to be at the game tomorrow?”

“I can’t. We have to visit him.”

“Can’t you go after?”

“I don’t think so. The game’s during visiting hours.” God, how I wish it were true. I picture bringing Dad a big bouquet of flowers at the hospital. He smiles a happy, weak smile when he sees me, and the best part is that he’s not going anywhere.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to change the halftime routine.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Hey, Kate?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to go.” I don’t even bother to give her a reason before hanging up. I wish Kate were a different person. I wish I could have told her the truth and trusted her with it, but
after the way she acted at the party, I see her whispering to Jess at lunch, thrilled that she has the most interesting story to tell at the table. I want so badly to talk to someone who’s not Mom, Natasha, Grandma, or Grandpa. I dial before I can think about it too long.

“Hi,” I say to Sam, and as soon as I hear her voice I start to cry.

“Sonia? What’s wrong?”

I tell her everything. About Kate, Peter’s party, Danny’s kiss, watching Kate and Jess at the party, that last year feels like another universe, a much better one. I tell her I’m jealous that she gets to be there in that universe and I don’t. I tell her that I miss her.

“I was jealous of you,” she said. “You have your big new school, new friends, cheerleading. What do you need me for?”

“Who else am I going to have ESP with?” I say, laughing, but still sort of crying too.

Then I tell her about Dad. She listens quietly.

“The worst part is that I can’t do anything. I just have to wait. It’s the hardest waiting I’ve ever done. It makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

That’s when she gets an idea. She runs and gets her Magic 8 Ball and asks
the
question: Is my dad coming home?

“I’m shaking it,” Sam says, fast and breathy.

I chew the hard skin around my thumb.

“Oh,” she says.

“What?”

“It’s just a stupid Magic Eight Ball.”

“What? What did it say?” I try to swallow, but my mouth has gone as dry as paper.

“It says,
My reply is no
.”

“No?”

“My reply is no,”
Sam says.

chapter twenty-four

That Monday, Natasha and I go back to school, Mom goes back to work, and my grandparents go back to Florida. We all go back to sleeping in our own beds. It’s a short week, anyway, because of Thanksgiving. Mom says we’ll wait to celebrate when Dad comes home. That’s okay with me. I couldn’t imagine having Thanksgiving without him either.

The police say that Dad took out a thousand dollars in cash at the airport on the day he was supposed to fly to Hong Kong. But Mom already knew that. She looked up their bank statement on the computer. So much for the police, she said after they told her. The police say it’s a good sign that he took out the money. I keep hearing Sam’s voice telling me about the Magic 8 Ball.
My reply is no
, it says to me all day long in my classes. I want to stick my fingers in my ears to drown it out.

People know now in school. Mom called the principal to
tell her what was going on and she told my teachers. Somehow every person in school, and maybe the town, and maybe the world, has found out. I assume this because no one has looked me in the eye this week except Alisha. She keeps trying to catch my attention in English, but I just keep staring at Mrs. Langley like she’s saying the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard.

When the next bell rings, I try to disappear into the crowd of kids rushing off to their lockers, hoping no one says anything to me. Then I hear my name. I ignore it, not even sure where it’s coming from until I feel a tap on my shoulder. Mrs. Langley is standing right behind me.

“I want to talk to you,” she says. “It will only take a second.”

I follow her to her classroom, wondering what I could have done. I haven’t been passing notes or anything. She pulls up a chair by her desk and motions for me to sit down. I do and cross my arms tightly over my chest.

“I’m sorry about what you’re going through,” she says. Her voice sounds different, lower, almost gentle.

I look down at my knees. “Thanks,” I mumble, not really knowing how I’m supposed to be. Should I act really sad, or pretend I’m okay, like it doesn’t bother me?

“I’ve wanted to say this to you for a while, and maybe this isn’t the right time, but I know how smart you are, Sonia. I can tell by your writing assignments, but I know I haven’t seen what you can really do.”

“I miss my old school,” I blurt out, the tears springing to my eyes.

“I know you do, but there’s always something new to learn wherever you are.”

I nod.

“I understand your mind is elsewhere right now, but remember, I’m here to help. Don’t be afraid to ask.”

I just nod again. She stands up and hands me a tissue. I take it, give her a half smile, and rush off to my next class.

At lunch I quietly eat my avocado, Swiss cheese, and sprout sandwich at the end of Kate’s table, trying to be invisible. Mrs. Langley’s words play over in my head. Was she nice to me because she felt sorry for me? Has she really thought I was smart all this time, even when she gave me a D on my vocabulary test?

Jess and another Jessica whisper together at the other end of the table and take sneaky sideways glances at me. Kate sits by them, but doesn’t whisper. She’s leaning back in her chair eating M&M’s, and glances, but not in a sneaky way, in my direction. Then she gets up and comes over.

“I heard about your dad. I’m sorry,” she says. I hate the way everyone’s talking about him like he’s dead.

Then she leans in to give me a hug. I take it with a stiff back and arms straight at my sides.

“Thanks,” I mumble into my sandwich.

She pulls away from me, her blue eyes blinking and sad for me. She looks like she’s about to cry.

“What were they saying about me?” I ask.

“Who?” She reaches back and smooths her braid. I’ve noticed she does this in awkward moments.

“Jess and Jessica.”

“Nothing,” she says. “It wasn’t about you.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. A piece of sprout is stuck between my back top teeth. I move it around with my tongue, but stuck it stays. Kate sits in a chair next to me and strokes her braid with both hands. Neither one of us says anything. I go back to eating my sandwich, wondering how I got so mean.

“Jess makes fun of people when she’s nervous … or when she’s jealous.”

“Jealous of who?”

“Well,
you
, since we’ve been friends.”

“Why do you like her if she does that?”

“She’s been my friend forever. Our moms are best friends and she’s really funny.”

I thought I was the funny one. She goes on.

“I guess she can be kind of stupid too. But she’s always been there. For me.”

I just shrug.

“You know my dad isn’t my real dad,” Kate says. At the
word “real,” my heart starts to beat faster and the stale, oily smells of everyone’s chicken nuggets turn my stomach.

“He’s not?” I say so quietly I can barely hear myself.

“My real dad left me and my mom six years ago. But I hardly remember him now.”

My eyes blur with tears. It’s hard for me to breathe. This isn’t what I want to know about her.

“I know what it feels like, Sonia,” she says, and puts her hand on my arm.

“My dad’s coming back. He didn’t leave us.” I look at her and wish that I could forget everything that’s happened. I wish we could be best friends in the same way Sam and I were and maybe still are. But I can’t forget that Kate’s not Sam. I turn away, the tears falling and falling. She lets go of my arm and walks away.

The bell rings and I get up with the crowd of kids moving toward the front doors, the doors that will take me to classes for three more hours. I hear someone calling my name. Once, and then again. I can tell it’s Alisha, but I can’t talk to anyone else, especially her. She’s going to tell me she’s sorry and then she’ll probably want a sorry from me. Maybe she thinks we’ll hug and make up and everything will be back to normal, like Kate did. But there is no normal for me anymore.

I walk with the crowd faster and faster down the windowed hallway, and when one of the lunch aides turns her
head I slip into the bathroom. I pray Alisha doesn’t follow me in. When the sound of voices dies down, and I hear the click of grown-up shoes pass the bathroom door outside, I walk out and keep walking. Then I’m running, running down the hallways, past the closed classrooms, past the lady at the front desk who calls out, “Young lady!” I push through the brown doors into the crisp fall sunshine and sprint as fast as I can off the school grounds.

I finally stop at the top of a big hill to catch my breath. I’m not sure how far it is to walk home, but if it only takes ten minutes to drive to school it can’t be that far. After a few more hills, I need to rest again. I wonder how long it will take my teachers to know I’m gone. I leave the road and walk into the woods. My feet step on the fallen leaves, making a crisp, satisfying sound.
Crunch, crunch, crunch
. When my mind starts to wander—thoughts of Kate hugging me, or Alisha’s face when I told her I couldn’t read her book, or Sam’s voice telling me what the Magic 8 Ball said—I just crunch the leaves harder. The birds in the trees add a melody. The trickle of water in a stream somewhere tickles the air.

After a lot of crunching I step out onto the road. Up ahead is an open field. Did I make a left instead of a right when I left the school? Or maybe I went straight past a road I should have turned on. I walk into the field and the soft grass collapses quietly under my feet. I decide to sit and then
lie down. The ground against my back is cool and damp. The silver-white sky shimmers above, and I watch the film of clouds moving across it as my limbs grow heavier. I sink into the ground and let the flat, solid feeling fill me, fill up all those empty spaces I didn’t know I had.

chapter twenty-five