Get Real (10 page)

Something about that hits me wrong, but I decide I'm just being a spoiled brat about the missing T-shirt, so I shut up.

“She remembers kissing me in the hospital, and wanting the best of everything in the whole world for me, and she knew she couldn't give it to me. She didn't have a job. And she wanted to finish high school.”

“Did you tell her that you
do
have the best of everything? I mean, great parents and all.”

“Yeah.”

“Did that make her feel better?”

“Yeah. I guess. I don't know. Maybe. Anyway, she said she'd promised my parents—no contact. Not until I was eighteen.”

“So what made her change her mind?”

“Oprah.”

“Oprah!” I shrieked.

“Yeah.” Jil giggled. “She saw some show where this adopted kid got reunited with her birth mother and everybody cried, kissed and hugged, and lived happily ever after. And Mom said, ‘If she can do it, so can I,' and so she started calling Mom and Dad and bugging them.”

I'm picturing poor Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. I'm also thinking how confusing it is that Jil just said “mom” twice in the same sentence and meant two different people.

“Dez!”
Jil says emphatically. “Stop freaking out. It's okay. Mom and Dad keep acting all worried, too. They're afraid I'll get hurt, but this is a good thing. Honest. I'm happy. I love knowing who my mother is, and who my sister is, and that if my children end up being allergic to cantaloupe, I'll know why, and—”

“Jane's allergic to cantaloupe?”

“Yeah.”

“Cantaloupe?” I repeat.

“Yeah.”

“What happens when she eats it?” I'm picturing Jane eating a piece of orange melon, then suddenly scratching her arms in an all-out frenzy. Or scratching her throat like mad. Would she claw at her throat? Or her arms?

“It makes her throat swell up,” says Jil.

“No kidding?” Then I think about that. “You mean, she could stop getting air?”

“I don't know. I guess. I hadn't thought…”

Jil stops talking. Suddenly I know that she's picturing her own imaginary children not breathing.

“I bet your kids won't inherit that,” I say.

“Really?”

“Sure. I mean, you eat cantaloupe, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there you go.”

For a minute or two, nobody says anything. I turn over in bed and sink my head into the pillow. It must be after one o'clock in the morning. Suddenly, I'm so sleepy. I wish we didn't have to go to school tomorrow. I bet Jane lets Penny sleep in. I bet she writes her a note.

Dear Teacher: Please excuse Penny from school today. She ate cantaloupe and can't breathe.

A total lie, but for a good cause.

Would my parents lie for me?

I doubt it.

Is there a difference between a mom and a parent?

“Jil?”

“Yeah?”

“You're happy?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Totally.”

“It … seems messy to me.”

“Messy?”

“Yeah. You know. Two moms. They have the same name. Don't you—”

“Dez.”

“Yeah?”

“I know who I am now.”

I lie in the dark and think about that. Jil knows who she is. She is the biological daughter of Jane. The sister of Penny. The child of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. Her children may or may not be allergic to cantaloupe.

I hear her, but I still don't get it.

What about me? I don't look like my parents. Okay, I'm tall like my dad, and sturdy like my mom. But that's it.

They're messy. I'm neat.

Dad likes poetry. I like verse.

Mom likes weather and swamps. I like grand pianos.

Who am
I?

Chapter Thirteen

“‘Hark, all you ladies that do sleep.'”

Dad's voice creeps into my dream.

“‘The fairy queen Proserpina bids you awake and pity them that weep.'”

Oh, no. It's not a dream.

“Please, Mr. Carter,” Jil moans from the twin bed next to mine. “Don't make us get up.”

I roll over and stare. Just as I feared, it's not the fairy queen Proserpina. It's Dad, and he's wearing his old, yellowed terry cloth bathrobe and gross-green bedroom slippers. “Go away,” I whisper, closing my eyes.

“‘Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, smiles awake you when you rise.'”

I open one eye. Sure enough. He's smiling, just like his poem promised.

“Dad. If I get up, will you stop rhyming?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you.”

I roll over and cover my head with my pillow. But I can still hear him.

“Your mother and I knew it was a mistake to let you girls go to that game on a school night.”

That game.
I wonder if he even knows who won.

Somehow, Jil and I get up. And somehow, we drag ourselves through the school day. I can only hope that none of my teachers said anything that will ever show up on a test.

And somehow, I get through the next four months, February to May. With more sleep, but not a lot worth telling about.

The most exciting thing that happens in that entire time is Mom's discovery of a rare spotted newt in one of her ponds. I try to share her joy, but honestly, it's not even a cute newt. Just slimy.

The most embarrassing thing that happens is when Mrs. Macon gives me back a C on my Warren G. Harding poem. With red pen, in her tiny, pinched handwriting, she claims I didn't include enough facts.

Facts!
In a poem! Even I know that's insane.

Dad's reaction? You can probably guess. He goes 100 percent ballistic and publicly champions a major campaign to get her fired. Privately he rants about how he'd like to see her head and hands locked up in one of those wooden torture stocks that seventeenth-century people were put in to punish them. And, as if that's not enough, he lobbies to require a poetry appreciation course for every eighth-grade teacher in the state, even if all they teach is P.E.

A bunch of administrators deal with it, and no doubt have lots of good laughs about my father, the peculiar professor-poet-parent. Lucky for me, no kids find out.

The most fun thing that happens is my very own, self-taught, sixty-day course in Fake Piano Playing. I discover an article on the Internet that explains how movie stars make it look as if they really
are
playing the piano when, in fact, they don't have a clue about music. I rent a video clip of Vladimir Horowitz playing for real, and then I imitate him. His rhythm, fingers, posture, everything. The most amazing thing I notice is that his fingers never leave the keys.

Of course, real actors have real pianos to pretend their fake music on, and I don't. So I get a big piece of poster board and draw black-and-white piano keys on it—to scale. It takes me hours to get it right. Then I sit in the den at home, playing fake piano in time to the real music streaming in from my headphones. I may look stupid, but it makes me feel like a pro.

Mom's response is to pat me on the head on her way to turn on
Local on the 8's,
saying, “Practice makes perfect.”

Dad strolls through, stops, stares, and mutters,
“‘Have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?'”

Denver dances and twirls in time to the tunes that no one can hear but me, and says, “Dez hears secrets.”

Best of all, I still get to play for-real piano, twice a week, at the Lewises'. Which is great, except that lately, Mrs. Lewis seems smaller, as if someone has let a little of the air out of a beautiful balloon. And Mr. Lewis is quieter. As if someone cast a sadness spell over him.

The most frustrating thing that happens in all that time is that Jil never gets our shirt back from Penny,
and
she stops talking to me about it. She still goes to visit almost every weekend, but they always hand her some radically lame excuse like, “It's dirty. We'll wash it, and give it to you next time.” I can tell it embarrasses Jil to even repeat this stuff, so I stop asking about the shirt.

And as hard as I try to hide it, I also know Jil can sense that I don't much like Jane and Penny anymore.

So. Overall, my life is mostly on hold. Not much to do until I get Jil back, or a piano, whichever comes first. Or ever.

At least I get out of town twice, even if it's only in my imagination. Once to Venice, Italy, when I read
The Thief Lord
—a very cool adventure about parentless kids living on their own in an amazing city of water and canals. They make a home for themselves in an abandoned movie theater and outsmart all kinds of grown-ups.

My second imaginary trip is to Israel, when I read
Samir and Yonatan.
That book makes me sad, though, because it's about a Palestinian boy stuck living with his enemies in an Israeli hospital. Sometimes I feel like that—not that my parents are enemies exactly, but they sure do seem foreign sometimes. The good thing is that Samir makes a best friend. The bad thing is that I seem to be losing mine.

The most potentially stupendous thing that happens is my how-to-get-a-piano idea. I think it up one day when Mom is moaning about the cost of summer day care for Denver.

“Sometimes I wonder if there's even any point in my working,” she tells Dad, who is busy gathering up a wad of exam papers and stuffing them into his briefcase.

Denver is zooming a big plastic truck back and forth across our already scratched-up coffee table.

Mom sighs. “So much of my salary goes to pay for day care.”

“Of course it's worth it,” says Dad, trying to fasten the clasp, but there are too many papers sticking out. His briefcase looks like Graham's locker. “You love your work,” Dad adds, glancing distractedly around the den.

“Vroom! Vroom!”
goes Denver.

“I'll look after him,” I announce.

Mom laughs.

“Sooooper Truuuck!”
shouts Denver in a sing-songy way. His truck goes sailing off the table and crashes into a lamp.

“Denver!” yells my mother. “How many times do I have to tell you—?”

“Sorry,” whispers Denver, his body shrinking so pitifully that it's incredibly cute.

“Where're my car keys?” asks Dad, picking up a stack of old magazines and looking under them.

“No, really. I will,” I say.

“Will what?” asks Mom.

“Look after him,” I repeat. “It'll be my summer job. And with the money you save, we can rent a piano. Maybe even buy one.”

I happen to know that day care costs a lot.

“You're too young for a summer job,” says Mom.

“I'm not too young to babysit. All my friends do it. Michelle. Samantha—”

“Not all day, every day.”

“But this would be different. This is my home. And Denver is family.”

“Frenetic family,” says Mom.

“Frenetic?”

“Frenzied,” says Mom. “As in, wild. Without an intermission. No rest for the weary.”

“‘Double, double, toil and trouble,'”
says Dad, picking up an old pair of tennis shoes and shaking them upside down.

“I can read him the poems he loves,” I proclaim. “All day. Every day.”

Dad stops searching for his car keys and focuses on me, as if he's seeing me for the first time ever.

“At least give me a chance,” I beg. “Let me look after him the first week that school's out. Just let me try. Please.”

Mom looks at Dad. Dad looks at Mom. For both of them, it's that knowing look, the smug one that parents use on little kids when they agree to let them do something everyone knows is impossible. As in, sure, you can walk to Florida and join the circus. We'll help you pack. Meanwhile, we'll wait two miles down the road to drive you home because we know you'll quit.

Dad gets down on his hands and knees and looks under the sofa. He pulls out seven Legos, a tangled wad of fishing line, one chewed-up sock from when we used to have a dog, and a cereal bowl with furry lumps of blue mold growing on what might have once been milk.

“I think we should let her do it,” he says quietly into the scary cave under our couch.

“Yes!”
I scream, and dive directly onto Dad's back to give him the biggest hug ever.

“Oomph!”
His breath bursts out in one big whoosh. He almost collapses under me.

“Sorry.” With my arms still wrapped around Dad, I look up at Mom. Expectantly. Pleadingly.

She shrugs and says, “Fine.” Then, in a voice filled with serious doubt, she shakes her head and adds, “I guess you just can't learn that fire is hot until you touch it.”

“Yes!” I shriek, clambering off Dad's back.

He pulls himself to standing and returns my hug. I'm pretty sure he's winking at Mom over my shoulder.

Who cares?

I run to thank Mom next. She gives me a loving squeeze, but it's the kind with sadness in it—the kind that whispers,
I hate to see you fail, but life is all about trying.

I know they're setting me up for defeat, but I'll show them.

Chapter Fourteen

Today is the last day of eighth grade. I can't wait until tomorrow.

Tomorrow is when I start Denver duty. Full time.

I'm cleaning out my locker when Graham strolls by. He stops and says, “You gotta be kidding.”

“Huh?” I look up at him. He is cute. But his shirt is buttoned lopsided because he must have matched the buttons wrong, and now one side is three inches longer than the other.

“That's your locker?” he asks, squinting.

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“It looks like the inside of a … of a…,” he stammers, and gives up. “I can't think of anything to compare it to.” He leans into the open door. “I've never seen anything so neat.” He backs away. “Except maybe Jil's kitchen.”