Capture the World (3 page)

He watches my face. “I guess it’s a good thing this is my best subject then.” Giving my shoulder a gentle fist bump, he flashes a smile. “No worries, you buddied up.”

He’s cocky, and while that wouldn’t work for most people, it kind of does for him. His fairy godmother is an over-achiever.

My fingers play with a text book, folding and unfolding the corner of a page. Agitation wreaks havoc with my breathing, my stomach a bubbling cauldron of nerves. I’m sweating, and for the life of me, I can’t remember if I put on deodorant this morning.

Oh, please—
I start to pray, but then stop because my relationship with God is kind of complicated.

My gaze flicks to Matthew’s smug profile. “What’s this about?” I ask abruptly. “You speaking to me at the gym? You partnering up with me now?”

He glances my way, and I’m startled by how old he looks compared to the other guys in our class, like his mother feeds him Miracle-Gro-laced eggs for breakfast. His rugged face is too cut to be considered pretty. Until he smiles. The dimples in his cheeks soften everything, dialing back the chiseled features. He’s the perfect happy medium. I vaguely remember a gangly, awkward boy a few years back who stumbled over his too big feet.

“What? You don’t talk to people?” he asks.

“Not much.”

His eyes laugh at me. “My grandmother goes to church with your aunt.”

As if that explains everything.

“Okay.” I’m saying that word a lot lately.

He shrugs, lips moving silently, his gaze falling to the table, deliberately avoiding me. No longer arrogant but hesitant. The change in him is instant, so starkly quick I know this is it, the part of the play where everything goes wrong because guys like Matthew Moretti don’t offer to partner up with social pariahs.

“So, your aunt hasn’t said anything to you about me?” he asks. “At all?”

Uh oh.
“Was she supposed to?”

He thinks about this, taking a moment to scratch his temple before turning to look at me. “Okay, so it’s probably best to say it outright. You know, lay it all out there on the line? I may have been asked to, I don’t know, friend you. Keep an eye on you.” He drops the words like a collection of bombs, each of them bigger than the last, the missiles exploding on impact, tearing me apart.

His fingers tap the table’s scratched, black surface. “I don’t like admitting I’m scared of anyone, but you don’t cross my nonna.”

He says it like he’s making a joke, or trying to make up for his bluntness, as if I’m supposed to be amused by all of it.

This is me, not amused.

“What?” I shriek. Half the class looks up, and I lower my voice. “What do you … wait a … do you … I don’t ....”

I have lost the ability to speak. Not that I’m strong in that department to begin with, but usually I can at least
finish
a sentence.

My stomach hurts, and hurling becomes a scary, imminent possibility.

Aunt Trish? His grandmother? Matthew Moretti and me? Friends?

Evidently, I have also lost the ability to string more than a few words together in my head.

Why?

He fidgets, clearly uncomfortable, and the truth sucker punches me in the gut—hard, fast, and painful. “You know about my mother, don’t you?”
 

He coughs. “Everyone knows about your mother.”

My eyes burn, and I blink rapidly, horrified. Because the only thing worse than this guy knowing about my mom is crying. Now. In front of him.
“No, not that …” He’s going to make me say it, and I can’t. Overwhelming emotion chokes me, damming up my throat. “Never mind.”

Matthew sneaks a peek at my face, his eyes sad. “I know about the choice your family made.”

Out of an entire school of people, they told Matthew Moretti? I’m having a nightmare.

Covering my face with my hands, I manage—somehow—not to scream. My fingers fall away. “Making friends isn’t going to make me feel better about sending my mother away. You can stop now, okay? I’m not a charity case.”

“Not until my nonna is satisfied.”

Again with the amusement, like I’m supposed to picture his grandmother as the world’s most terrifying wrestler when I happen to know, personally, she’s the smallest, most optimistic old woman I’ve ever met.

I begin to rethink his wittiness.

My fists clench. “Lie to her.”

He shudders, a smile playing on his lips. “You wouldn’t say that if you
really
knew her.”

“Whatever.” Sitting back, shoulders stiff, my eyes dart to his face, to the way he focuses on my lips, and suddenly, I’m angry.
Really
angry. “Stop staring at my mouth.”

Matthew drops his gaze. “Sorry … it’s habit.”

“Staring at my lips is habit?”

“Not just
your
lips. All lips.” He gestures at his ears. “I’m hearing impaired. I have hearing aids, but for a while my family couldn’t afford them, so I got good at reading lips.”

His confession floors me, stealing my anger, and I stare. “I didn’t know.”

Turning his head, he points at a small device tucked into his ear canal. “And here I thought it wasn’t a secret.” He smiles, flashing the devastating dimples. “It helps being good at basketball. Get good enough at something and people don’t notice things like that so much.”

All these years passing him in the halls, sharing classes with him, living down the street from him, and I’d had no idea.
  

“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” I ask, out of nowhere. “About my mom?”

Mrs. Pierson writes on the board, the room filling with soft chatter. The smell of chemicals and dry erase markers permeates the air, leaving a sour taste on the tongue. The wheeze-roaring warm air gushing at us from the room’s ancient heating system sounds like an allergy-ridden, sneezing dinosaur. It’s too hot in here. Mrs. Pierson isn’t just cold-natured, she’s a corpse that never gets warm, and I have the least favorable table in the room because it’s next to the heating vents.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Matthew murmurs, answering me.

“Because of your nonna?”

“No.” He pulls at the neck of his shirt, revealing smooth, muscular skin beneath. “I wouldn’t say anything because I’m not that kind of person.”

“We’ll see.” I pull a piece of paper out of my notebook, folding it. Anything to keep my hands busy.

“You don’t trust people, do you?” he asks softly.

“Nope.”

“Not even a little?”

“Not even a smidge.”

He rubs his chin, his fingers finding the stubble he missed while shaving. “That’s going to make it hard to be friends.”

Throwing him a look, I nudge him playfully with my shoulder, which surprises us both. Together, we glance around the room, seeing if anyone noticed. “No worries,” I tell him, repeating the words he said to me earlier. “You friended
down
.”

Mrs. Pierson turns, and it quiets the room. When she talks, it sounds like the principal over the loud speaker. Some words make it out of the box, other words get lost in space. No one listens because she’s basically repeating what she has on the board.

My fingers work the paper in my hands. Greece is gone now, long forgotten, and replaced with real things. Scary, angry, and nervous things.

It’s supposed to feel good when the school’s star basketball player tries being friendly. When you’re a punishment he’s being forced to endure, it feels like crap.

My mother’s world is safer.
 

FOUR

My mother’s world

India

MOM IS UPSTAIRS, laughing.

Tugging on a hideous turtleneck sweater, Aunt Trish flies into the front hall, fanning herself. “You’re back! Good! I’ve got to run to the grocery store. I need you to sit with your mama for a bit.”

My backpack hits the floor. I want to say something to her about Matthew, about
everything
, but she’s moving too fast, like a hummingbird, so quick I can barely keep up.

Aunt Trish brushes past me, stopping just long enough to stamp a swift kiss on my forehead, the door clicking shut behind her.

My gaze sweeps the hall—over the wood paneling, the gold-framed pictures of me and my cousin on the wall, and the leather furniture my uncle insisted on getting last Father’s Day—before sliding up the stairs.

Mom’s laughter rises, and my lips curve with it.

“Where are you today, Mom?” I ask, walking into her room.

I talk to her, not out loud, because she wouldn’t understand.

“
I feel lost today.”
My face grows hot. “
Aunt Trish conspired with our neighbor—at church, mind you, because, obviously, this is big enough even heaven needs a front row seat—and set up a play date with one of the school’s star athletes. Who does that? It’s like I’m in kindergarten all over again when you told Mrs. Fetterman that I’d make a good friend for her daughter, Heather, because we both had an obsession with stuffed elephants.”

Mom stands in front of a full-length mirror propped against the wall, pressing a flower-shaped sticker to her forehead, between her eyes … completely unaware of my internal monologue. Paintings, drawings, and sketches cover the paneling. Maps and books are strewn over the floor. A small television rests on a desk, the screen on, the sound on mute. She’s been watching the Travel Channel.

“India!” she cries, handing me a book.

It’s a copy of
A Tiger for Malgudi
by R.K. Narayan. Mom loves books. All forms of literature really. From all over the world. That’s what’s so odd about my mother. It’s like her mind needs knowledge but resists reality.

Wrapped in a sheet, she twirls in the center of the room. She’s too thin, the circles under her eyes too dark.

Cupping her hands, she lifts them, reaching for the ceiling. “We’re in the middle of the street, my jewel, surrounded by cars and cows. Hindu temples, so colorful, like a watercolor painting, line the road.” Her forehead scrunches. “There’s trash there, too, piled up. Cars honk. Tricycle carts roll past, carrying passengers.” Her fingers touch her nose, eyes distant. “Curry spices, stagnant water, manure … do you smell it?” She touches her ears. “They’re beating on drums. Feet pound against the road. There’s chatter and laughter everywhere.”

Suddenly, I am there with her, standing in the middle of a foreign street, curry on my tongue, the sound of sizzling rice and children laughing beating against my ears.

“Read to me,” Mom insists.

Grabbing a pillow off of her bed, she turns slowly, hugging it, her cheek pressed to the soft fabric.

Flipping open the book, I find the bookmark she wedged between the pages, and I read, “There was a jungle superstition about how the tiger came to have stripes …”

Mom giggles, seeing the tiger where I see nothing. The words I read are music she dances to, around and around, back and forth, inside her jungle.

She startles me with, “You need a sari!” Pulling open her closet, she tugs a sheet out of the top, wraps it around my body, and grins. “Bright purple because you look good in purple.”

The book is forgotten, open on the floor where it’s fallen.

I dance with Mom on an Indian street and dream of tigers until she stops, glances at me, and says, “I’m tired now.”

We sit together on her bed.

She unmutes the television. “Did you travel today?”

Every day, she asks me this question. Usually, I evade it, changing the subject, because my aunt says I’m not supposed to encourage her delusions.

Today, I surprise myself. Today, I want to talk, to pretend like she does. “I went to Italy,” I whisper.

Why, oh why, did I say that?

Mom freezes, her face contorting with excitement. “Oh! Tell me!”

Tears threaten, the sudden, sad emotion overwhelming me, and I lean into her, breathing her in, the television murmuring across the room.

“It was beautiful.” My imagination isn’t as big as hers. “I met an Italian boy, and he was handsome. We danced.”

You can quit talking now, Reagan.

She clasps her hands to her heart. “In the Sistine Chapel under the paintings?”

In my head, I’m spinning in Matthew Moretti’s arms. He’s too tall for me, and he keeps staring at my lips.

Why am I thinking about him?

I nod, and she sighs.

“We’ll need to stamp your passport,” Mom tells me.

My gaze flies to her desk, to a bent piece of cardboard covered in stickers. “Can we do it later?”

She holds me close. “No tears today?” she asks.

“No tears, Mama.”

Her arms are home, even if her mind is halfway across the world, and in this moment, I think I’ve never been happier.

“I’d like to meet this Italian boy,” Mom says suddenly, knocking me into reality.

I shouldn’t have mentioned Matthew, but something about the way he’d looked at me at school, the way he’d ignored people just to sit with me, keeps him there in my head. The way he acted was so unlike the last boy who’d really spoken
to
me, and not about me.

“We’ll fly to Italy soon,” I promise.

She sighs, happy. Her eyes close, and I study her face, remembering the mother she used to be before the world changed. Before the tornado ripped apart our house, killing my father and baby sister while sparing my mother. I was six years old and staying the night with my cousin at my aunt’s house. Louisiana has unpredictable weather.

That night, the storm changed everything.

“I love you, Mama.”

Her heavy breath tickles my face, and I realize she’s fallen asleep against my shoulder. My words hang heavy in the air. I say them every day and wonder if she remembers she had a daughter named Reagan. It doesn’t matter that I call her mama. She believes I’m my sister, Julia, and that her little jewel never died in the storm. I think she believes we’re traveling the world together in a dimension no one else can touch.

Gently, I climb off of the bed, making my way downstairs and out the back door. It’s late afternoon, the November breeze chilly against my cheeks. My uncle’s house is near the woods, the leafless trees spindly sentinels climbing down toward the bayou. The grass is turning brown in places. A rusted grill rests against the side of the house, lonely and rarely used. We live in a neighborhood of mixed incomes and mixed cultures, elegant next to poor next to middle class.

The smell of grilled meat wafts over the lawns, wild yells chasing it. On the street corner, four yards down from mine, a paunchy man in a white apron stands outside flipping meat on a grill. Two boys play a game of one-on-one basketball. A little girl toddles in the grass, the boys dancing around her. A woman shouts something from the house.

Hardly no one grills in November, even if it isn’t intolerably cold outside. Except the Moretti family. They grill no matter what time of year it is.

“Watch out for Mia!” another woman—slim, young, and beautiful—scolds, scowling as she saunters out of the house. She stares daggers at the two boys.

“We see her!” the younger of the two responds, scowling in return before dunking the ball through the hoop.

The screen door snaps open, slamming shut behind a grinning Matthew Moretti. He’s in the same red shirt from school, a letterman jacket thrown over it. With his hands shoved into his pockets, he hunches against the chill, his expectant gaze on his brothers.

The game pauses.

“No way, man.” Again, it’s the younger brother that speaks. “You’d pulverize us. We’re keeping this game simple. Him and me.”

“You step on Mia, and it’s between you and me, Christopher Lawrence Moretti!” the girl spits.

“Bring it on,
Celia Rose
!” Christopher taunts.

“She’d do a worse number on you than me,” Matthew laughs. “Or did you forget the records she swept at Heart Bay?”

Celia smiles sweetly at Christopher. “Trip over my daughter, and I’ll castrate you.”

Matthew stoops, sweeping up the crawling toddler. She wriggles in his arms, face scrunched and red. “Always trying to get away,” he says, touching her nose.

“She’s just like the rest of you. Never still,” a black-haired woman teases, throwing Matthew a wry grin as she marches from the house, door banging.

Celia groans. “Don’t say that, Ma. I don’t want to have my hands full.”

Matthew releases the child, setting her down gently. “Consider them full.”

My heart does funny things seeing him with the little girl, seeing the gentle way he cradled her while teasing Celia, his voice full of affection. There are five Moretti children that I know of, all of them boys except for the eldest, Celia. She graduated Heart Bay High five years ago, going straight to university on a basketball scholarship.

Matthew stands, his jacket molding to his shoulders, his gaze finding my stooped figure four houses down.

I sink into the steps, wishing they’d turn into cement quicksand.

Be the stairs, Reagan. Just be the stairs and maybe he won’t see you.

He waves—
oh, great—
and his mother’s gaze follows the gesture.

Like the rest of the Morettis, I’ve known Francesca Moretti for most of my life—from a distance anyway. She has a loud voice, a teasing nature, and a temper that, once flared, remains a while. I’ve spent years watching her play with her children from my mother’s bedroom window. I’ve also seen her angry, yelling Italian words at her husband while hanging laundry from a clothesline in the yard because he hadn’t fixed the dryer the way he promised he would. Five kids. That’s a lot of clothes. I’d yell, too.

Shielding her eyes, she shouts, “You hungry, Reagan?”