Whatever (8 page)

She didn't sound too mad, in spite of her words. “Sorry, Mom. I got busy and forgot to call.”

My mother had already hung up. I'd have to apologize again when I got home.

I detoured by the bathroom and cleaned up a bit. Mrs. J. was trying to bend down far enough to peer into the oven. “You look,” she said. “Tell me if you think they're golden brown on top.”

They were. They were also double their original size. I grabbed the oven mitts and pulled out the pan. I'd used the biscuit recipe variation in the red book and made cheese
biscuits, and the golden tops of the biscuits were speckled with flecks of grated cheddar.

“These smell good.”

She told me where to find the cooling racks, and sniffed appreciatively as I took the biscuits off the pan. “Pass me one, please.”

I did, and watched nervously as she broke it in half, blew on it, then took a bite. “Ah,” she sighed. “That hits the spot. Almost as good as if I'd made them myself.”

I beamed, as proud as if I'd landed the lead in a play. I had just taken my first bite when Dad banged at the door. I inhaled the rest of the biscuit. “See you on Monday,” I said.

“Don't rush off, have another one. After all, you made them.”

“I should go.” I knew I was in for one of Dad's lectures on the “always letting your parents know where you are” theme. No point in making him wait to deliver it; he'd get madder.

“Invite him in,” said Mrs. Johnson.

“Maybe it's not a good idea.”

“Maybe it's an excellent idea. Bet he hasn't had a fresh biscuit since he left home and married your mom.”

It turned out that Dad hadn't had homemade biscuits in years. He wolfed down two, and didn't object when Mrs. Johnson insisted I wrap up a half dozen more to take home.

“How's Andrew?” I asked as soon as we got in the car.

“He's got stitches where he hit his head, but he's okay, I think. He doesn't want to talk, shut himself up in his room
when we got home from the hospital. Your mother thinks he's crying but he won't let her come in. She's upset and doesn't know what to do.”

Then he remembered to be mad. “She's got enough on her mind without having to worry about where you are, Darrah. You know the rules.”

But he said it mildly, and nodded absently when I apologized.

“Think you could make those biscuits at home?” he asked.

Chapter Seven

ANDREW NEVER CRIES
. I mean, not since he was little. The last time I remember him crying was his first day of kindergarten. Mom drove us both to school and went in with him, but she had to go to work. She couldn't stay like most of the other mothers, so she took Andrew to his classroom, hung out for a half hour, then left.

Shortly after she left, Andrew arrived at my classroom door, bawling his eyes out. The principal was with him. “Darrah, can we borrow you for a few minutes?” I ended up spending the rest of the morning in the kindergarten room, holding Andrew's hand until snack time when he let go long enough to grab and eat a happy-face cupcake. At the end of
the kindergarten day, which was lunch time for the rest of the school, I took him outside where he clung to me until Mom arrived and lifted him into the car.

The next morning, he took a deep breath, opened the car door, got out and marched across the playground without looking back.

“Andrew? Do you want Darrah to come with you?” Mom shouted at his back. He turned around briefly and called, “No, I can do this.” Next thing I knew, he was on top of the monkey bars, hanging upside down. Two little girls were staring up at him with silly looks on their faces. He wasn't crying.

Now he's in grade five, plays soccer, wins ribbons at sports days and is always covered with bruises and cuts because he throws himself completely into whatever game he is playing. But I'm almost positive he hasn't cried since his first day of school.

Tonight he was crying. I stood outside his bedroom door and listened. The sound was faint, muffled, as if he were sobbing into a pillow, but he was definitely crying.

“Talk to him, Darrah,” pleaded Mom. “Find out what's wrong. Every time I ask him he says, ‘Nothing.' I told him we had pizza for dinner and he said he wasn't hungry. See if you can find out what's going on.”

I didn't think Andrew would talk to me about why he was crying; we're not exactly close. He leads his life and I lead mine; the five and a half years between us separate our lives
so much that they don't intersect very often. Our parents make me go to his soccer games if he's in a tournament and insist that he comes to see any play I'm in, but we don't “talk.”

I looked behind me. Mom stood at the foot of the stairs, making “go on” gestures with her hands. I knocked on his door. “Andrew?”

No answer.

“Can I come in?”

No answer, but the sobs grew quieter.

“Please, tell us what's wrong.”

“Go away, Dar.”

“Andrew? Remember your first day of kindergarten? How scared you were? Remember I came with you and the next day you weren't scared anymore?”

“You just wanted a happy face cupcake,” he said.

“That's right, I got a cupcake at snack time, too. Mine was blue and pink. Yours was green with a big white smile.”

Silence. Then a grudging, “Okay, come in.”

Andrew was huddled on his bed, clutching a damp pillow. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, then tried to grin. There was a bandage on his forehead and he looked almost as white as it was. “No cupcakes here, Dar. Just the zombie.”

“What do you mean?” I sat down on the bed beside him.

“Today, while the ambulance guys were wheeling me out of the school, I woke up. The blood was running down in my eyes and they were holding something on my head to catch the blood and Mom was there and she was saying . . .”

“‘Oh, Andrew, oh, Andrew, oh, Andrew?'”

“How did you guess?” He almost grinned.

“And?”

“All the kids were in the hallways and on the steps outside because it was lunch hour, and they watched the ambulance people take me away. I kept saying I could walk, please let me walk, but the first-aid people kept pushing me on that wheeled stretcher and wouldn't let me. This one grade seven guy, he's hanging over the stairs and he says, ‘It's zombie time again.' Then he goes cross-eyed and sticks out his tongue and everyone laughed.”

“Oh.”

“They call me ‘Seizure Salad.' I hate that name.”

“Oh.” I wasn't doing well in the talking department; I didn't know what to say.

“Darrah?”

“When I have a seizure, what happens?”

“Uh . . .” I wasn't too sure myself. “There's some broken connection in your brain and . . .”

“I don't want medical stuff. I mean, what do I do? When I wake up I can't remember anything, there's this blank, like time got swallowed up in a black hole. What do I do when it happens?”

“It's not much to look at.”

“Liar. There's a video clip on one of the medical sites. I saw someone jerking all over and drooling when they were having a seizure—is that what I do?”

I swallowed hard. “Sort of. But it's not gross.”

He looked hard at me. “Honestly?”

“Uh . . . you thrash around a bit.”

“I always fall down,” he said. “This time I hurt my arm as well as my head, but I didn't tell anyone about the arm. They were all worried about my bleeding head.” He touched it gently. “Four stitches!”

“Way to go, I guess. Let's see your arm.”

“What's to see except a bruise? You're not a doctor, you're trying to change the subject. Tell me the truth. What do I look like? Do I do funny things with my eyes?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But sometimes you just close them.”

“Do I look stupid?”

“No. Honestly, Andy, it's more frightening than gross. We all feel helpless; there's not a lot we can do except wait. The doctors told us to stay calm. Actually, mostly we try to keep Mom calm. You know how she is.”

Andrew smiled.

“And we make sure you don't hurt yourself.”

He looked puzzled. “How?”

“We put something soft under your head and move furniture so you don't thrash into it. Then you go limp and fall asleep. Sometimes you sleep for a long time. Mom cries and keeps saying—”

“‘Oh, Andrew, oh, Andrew, oh, Andrew?'”

My turn to grin. “How did you ever guess?”

He hugged the pillow against him. “I'm not allowed to do anything anymore. I miss soccer.”

“That's just until they find the right medication. Then you can do everything you used to.”

“That's what the doctor says. But I have to try out a new drug for weeks and then have more tests to see if it's working. Soccer will be over before I can play. I'm going to miss everything!”

“It will work out, give it time.”

“I don't want to give any more time to this stupid disease! It's not fair. The first medicine the doctor put me on made me so tired I fell asleep at school.”

“I remember that. You fell asleep at the dinner table too, right into your mac and cheese.”

“This new drug, I feel like I'm shivering inside all the time. My hands shake. I hit the wrong keys on the keyboard, lost half an assignment last week because I hit delete and didn't realize it.”

“Everyone does that.”

“Not all the time.”

Mom poked her head into the room. “How's it going?” she asked cheerfully.

“You didn't knock!” I said. “Were you listening?”

“Oh, of course not, I would never—”

Andrew glared at her. “You're supposed to knock. That's a family rule.”

“Sorry. I wondered if . . .” She stopped, looked from one of us to the other. “If . . .” She stopped again.

We waited. “If what?” I finally asked.

“If you're ready to, uh, eat dinner?”

“We'll be down in a minute.”

She backed out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

I pulled the pillow away from Andrew; reluctantly he let go.

“Come on.”

“I don't want pizza again! We had it twice last week. I'm not hungry.”

“You know she'll keep at you until you eat something.”

“Don't want to.”

“Want to try a cheese biscuit with butter and jam?”

“Cheese biscuit?”

“Wash your face and come downstairs and I'll give you one,” I said, hoping fervently that Dad hadn't eaten all of them. “You'll like it, I promise.”

Mom and Dad were waiting for us, the pizza box was on the table, dinner was served. The box looked greasy; I suddenly wasn't hungry either. Maybe I'd open a can of chicken noodle soup instead.

“It's so good to hear the two of you talking,” said Mom, smiling and hugging us.

“Mom!” Andrew pushed her away. “Don't helicopter.”

“Sit down, let's eat,” said Dad.

“Go ahead,” I headed for the kitchen.

There were two biscuits left. I found the butter and jam and gave the biscuits a few seconds in the microwave to warm. Then I brought them into the dining room and announced, “I baked them myself. Try one.”

“Poison, poison, spare me, evil sister.” Andrew threw his hands up over his face and pretended to cower. I thrust the plate under his nose. He sniffed, grabbed a biscuit and took a bite.

“Hey, not bad for poison. Did you really make them?”

There were still traces of tears on his cheeks. For a moment I thought I was back in that kindergarten room with a five-year-old brother clutching my hand. It was a good memory.

Andrew was himself again by the weekend. He'd pulled the bandage off so the stitches showed—ugly black threads with the ends sticking out like spider legs over the angry slash of the cut. When Mom made a fuss, wanting to put another bandage on him, he ignored her. “It really is gross,” I said.