Goodbye Stranger (12 page)

Her dad looked up. “You okay, honey?”

“Yeah. Just saying hi.”

“Did something happen?”

“No, Dad—I told you, I’m just saying hi.” Nothing had happened, she told herself. Emily promised not to send any of the pictures they took. Bridge had made her swear, twice, that she wouldn’t do anything yet.

“It’s dark already,” her father said. “I’ll walk you home.”

“I’m fine!” Bridge said, turning around. “It’s only five blocks. I can walk myself.”

Of course she could. She’d walked home alone in the dark before. But once she left the Bean Bar, Bridge couldn’t remember exactly
when
she’d walked home alone in the dark before.

She decided to count her steps. Jamie was right: she took about a hundred steps for every block she walked. When she got to her building, she was on step 485. She wondered if she could make it to her room without going over five hundred. She glanced around and took four giant steps to the elevator. It reminded her of that game, Mother, May I? She used to play it with Jamie in the hallway of their apartment.

You may take two giant steps.

Mother, may I?

Yes, you may.

In her mind’s eye, Bridge could see Jamie, hair in his eyes, wearing the Spider-Man pajamas he loved all the way through fourth grade. That intense look he used to get when he was trying to do something hard.

She reached her room on step 498. Then she went and knocked on Jamie’s door.

“Enter!” Jamie was hunched over his math homework. Bridge could see graph paper.

“What’d you bet Alex?” she said. “Come on, tell me.”

He pointed his pencil at her and said, “I told you, it’s irrelevant.”

“If you tell me, I’ll make you soup. For free.”

Jamie hestitated.

Bridge smiled at him.

Then he said, “No deal.”

SHERM

Sherm loved the feeling inside his house after his parents left for work.

He and his grandmother both woke early, but they stayed out of the way until the questioning mumble of his parents’ first movements became the sound of running water, quick heels on the wooden floors, a spike or two of laughter. And then: urgency in their voices, someone always rushing back upstairs for one last forgotten something, until finally—kiss, kiss, love you!—the door slammed behind them.

It was as if Sherm and his grandmother supported themselves while a windstorm blew through the house every morning and—kiss, kiss, love you!—left through the front door. Then the house seemed to exhale. Sherm became aware of the sound of the radio in the kitchen and the smell of his grandmother’s coffee, and beneath that, he felt his grandmother’s satisfied presence, which never changed.

He always sat at the kitchen table and did his math homework while she cooked his breakfast and wrapped up his lunch for school. She never had the appearance of hurrying, and yet things were done quickly.

Sherm used math homework to wake up his brain. When he didn’t have any, he missed it. Writing out each problem, going through the steps, circling his answers—it was a satisfying system check. He was like a pilot in his cockpit.

His grandmother never asked him what he wanted for breakfast. She put an omelet in front of him, with toast grilled on the stove with olive oil, or semolina pancakes, or a frittata with peppers and mushrooms. After she put down his plate, he thanked her, and she rested her hand on his wrist for a few seconds, as if she were gently pressing something there—and then she walked to the sink or to her coffeepot. Even the morning after his grandfather left, she got up and did this for him, never letting her eyes stray to the chair across from Sherm’s.

—

This morning it was French toast. No syrup: his grandmother used powdered sugar. Next to his plate, she put a small bowl of blueberries. He ate, thinking about everything and nothing. Thinking about Bridge.

Using the side of his fork, Sherm cut up his last piece of French toast. He made it into a face with two pointy, lopsided ears on top, using blueberries for eyes.

The guys at school had started calling her his girlfriend. She was definitely not his girlfriend. But she might be his best friend.

Sherm got along with everyone—he was like that. But once his grandfather left, Sherm realized that with the guys at school, talking was like a game where everyone piled on jokes and the winner was the person whose joke ended up on top. With girls, it was a different game, a lot of teasing and trading fake insults. But it wasn’t that way with Bridge.

When he finished eating, Sherm brought his plate to the sink, jumped up the steps to the second floor of the house, ran down the short hallway to his room, and grabbed a pack of cards from where he’d left them on his desk. Then he ran back down the stairs to the kitchen to pick up his backpack and hug his grandmother, breathing her kitchen smell—it would have to hold him through the long day—and left.

He could only imagine how quiet the house was after that.

—

After his grandfather left, Sherm’s parents blew through the house a little more quietly for a while. They were stunned.

They kept saying it, on the phone, or to each other: “Stunned.”

People’s parents got divorced, but whose
grandparents
got divorced? Officially, Sherm’s father was the kid going through it, only he wasn’t a kid. He was a cardiologist.

After a while, though, things went back to normal, except that Sherm’s grandfather was gone. His grandmother left all the pictures of him right where they were, on the walls and the tabletops. It was almost as if he’d died and they were trying not to forget him. But he hadn’t died. He still texted Sherm at least three times a week. And Sherm couldn’t forget him anyway.

Sherm was a block from school when his phone buzzed. He slid it from his pocket. A text. Not from his grandfather. No words. Just a picture.

A WARM OBJECT

“The
weirdest
thing happened,” Tab said, poking the crusts of her sandwich into her thermos. “So it’s like five in the morning, and suddenly I’m wide awake, which is weird, and for some weird reason I’m thinking
something’s weird.
”

“Sounds…weird,” Sherm said.

Tab pointed a warning finger at him. “Don’t make fun of me, Sherman.”

He smiled. “Sorry.” He looked at Bridge. “Ready to spit?”

“Wait,” Bridge said, still straightening the cards in her hand. “Not yet.”

In a few short weeks, backstage had become a place that was theirs, a secret corner carved out of the great un-ownable space called school.

Tab started again. “Anyway, it’s dark, right? And I sit up, and something
drops into my lap.
At first I thought it was Sashi, but that would be weird because Sashi always,
always
sleeps with Celeste.”

“In her bed, you mean?” Scrolling through her texts, Em pretended to shudder. “Evan says you should never let a cat watch you sleep.”

“Well, that’s just ignorant,” Tab said.

“Tell it to Evan. He says they can steal your breath. Or your soul or something.”

“Listen!” Tab said. “So I touch this thing in my lap and it’s like—this warm object that feels just like human flesh.”

“Ugh!” Bridge said.

“Guess what it was,” Tab said.

“What?” Em said.

“It was my
arm.
My own arm! Dead asleep so that I couldn’t feel it from the inside. My arm was like this random skin-covered object that fell on me! When I touched it, it was just like touching someone
else’s
arm. How weird is that? I can’t even tell you how weird.”

Bridge looked at the fat deck of cards Sherm held while he took double bites of his sandwich. “Hurry up,” she said. “You’re messing with my momentum. This is the part where I crush you.”

“One-two-three
spit.
” They each slapped a card onto the floor. Then their hands flew, throwing cards on top of cards until Bridge yelled “Out!” and banged her hand down on the smaller of the two spit piles.

She smiled at Sherm and began straightening the cards into a thin, tight pack. Fewer cards meant she was winning, and she liked to win. But she never liked the feeling of just a few cards in her hand.

When Sherm wasn’t looking, Bridge finger-combed her hair over the sides of the cat-ears headband.

—

When she’d shown up for school wearing the cat ears on November 1, Em had called a meeting in the fourth-floor bathroom, which was almost always empty.

“Halloween was yesterday,” Tab had said firmly. “You’re still wearing the ears. Are you going to wear them forever? If you’re going to wear them forever, you should tell us.”

“Why?” Bridge asked.

“Because.” Em looked at herself in the mirror and blew the bangs out of her eyes. “Then maybe Tab will stop asking me what I think it means.”

“I don’t know what it means,” Bridge said. “I just know they feel good.”

Tab and Em glanced at each other. “There’s nothing you’re not telling us?” Tab said.

Bridge laughed. “Like what?”

“To tell you the truth, I like them now,” Em said.

Tab leaned away and looked at Bridge. “I guess they are kind of a ‘statement.’ ” She used air quotes.

“Great,” Bridge said. “Then let’s put a pin in it. A really big pin.”

The truth was that Bridge didn’t even think about the cat ears anymore, unless a little kid pointed at her on the street or some jerk said something obnoxious. Tab’s mom said that when people reached out to hurt your feelings, it was because
they
secretly felt
they
deserved to be talked to that way. She said that they had “long, hard roads ahead” and that you should just wish them well. Bridge didn’t examine the idea too closely because she liked it and hoped, really hoped, that it was true about the long, hard roads.

Although she wasn’t so sure about the wishing-them-well part.

—

Tab shoved her lunch bag into her backpack. “The whole dead-arm thing was way weirder than it sounds. I might even write a reflection about it, for the Berperson.”

“But there’s no important feminist message!” Em said.

“Ha, ha,” Tab said, unwrapping a butterscotch.

“Sure there is,” Bridge said. “She experienced her body as an object!”

Even Tab laughed. “She’s gonna love it.” She glanced at Em, who was texting again. “Did you even eat anything?”

Em shook her head. “Too nervous. I can never eat before I sing. You aren’t nervous?”

Tab jumped experimentally, landing with flat-footed thuds on the stage. “Nope.”

“Lucky,” Em said.

Emily hadn’t said a word about the pictures since the afternoon Bridge had helped her take them almost a month before. Bridge had pretty much stopped worrying.

—

When the Talentine show audition notices were passed out, Em had been scornful. “It’s like they’re always trying to control us—that’s what Julie Hopper says. So we have a dance on Halloween that keeps us out of trouble, and we have a talent show for Valentine’s Day to distract everyone from the fact that half of us are total geeks.”

Bridge had wondered about Em’s definition of a total geek.

“Or,”
Tab had said, “it’s just a fun show. I notice you’re still trying out.”

“Yeah, well, if it’s where everyone is going to be, I guess I want to be there too. And if you’ve got a voice, you might as well use it, right?”

Em sang. She sang really well. Tab juggled, not all that well, but a lot better than most people. She’d learned at the circus shed at sleepaway camp.

—

Auditions began right after last period.

“Performers only!” Mr. Partridge told the kids peeking in the auditorium-door windows. “No
gawking
!” And he knocked on the glass until they went away.

Every kid who wanted to audition got five minutes onstage. A few of the eighth-grade Tech Crew kids helped plug in the amps and carry microphone stands.

The three audition judges were stationed just below the stage: the vice principal, Mr. Ramos; the head of the language department, Madame Lawrence; and Mr. Partridge, who stood at the light board, which he’d rolled out on its metal cart.

The rest of the tech crew was also there. Mr. Partridge had seated them on the left side of the auditorium, in the first two rows of seats. Bridge and Sherm sat next to each other and watched as the kids took turns performing.

How did people do it? Bridge wondered. Sing all alone in front of everyone? Or worse,
dance
in front of everyone? One girl, an eighth grader who played the piano, was shaking so hard she had to start four times. After the third mess-up she got up to leave, but all the kids waiting their turns cheered and clapped and wouldn’t stop making noise until the girl, cheeks wet with tears, broke into a smile and sat down again. That time, she got through it.

Mr. Partridge was right, Bridge realized. This place was different from every other room in the school.

Still, sitting there, she was getting more and more nervous for Em and Tab. She felt almost light-headed when Tab’s name was finally called.