Matt & Zoe (8 page)

I look in the fridge with a frown. I’ve never cooked dinner much—living in the barracks in Tokyo, I didn’t have to. Plus, for the last few days, we’ve eaten casseroles and other food dropped off by well-meaning faculty friends of my father’s. That’s all gone now.

When I was in Tokyo, we all ate in the mess hall or on the economy. I have Mom’s old recipe book, though, and sometimes when I was teenager she made me cook with her. And options are limited—all that’s left in the fridge is chicken legs.

Fried chicken it is. I wash my hands and get the meal going, noting that I’m going to have to go grocery shopping. One more thing I’m not equipped to do.

I bread the chicken, then carefully drop the pieces into the hot oil. Despite my caution, a drop of oil burns my wrist.

The phone rings.

I walk over to it and pick it off the cradle, then walk back to the stove, the cord stretching across the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Nicole. What are you doing?”

“Cooking dinner.” As I answer I open up a bag of frozen green beans and pour them into a pot of hot water. No potatoes. Or rice. I’ve got half a loaf of bread. No butter, but… best I can manage right now.

Nicole launches into a story. “Okay, so classes start on Monday, and all the kids are moving in, right? You’re not gonna believe what happened.”

She pauses. Waiting for me to ask, I guess. “What happened?”

“A bunch of freshman guys get into a fight in the North Residential Area at the dining hall. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of—one of the guys wanted sushi, and another one called him a not-so-nice name, and the first one punched him. It turned into a brawl.”

“A brawl? Seriously?” The chicken is sizzling now, a satisfying sound. Smells nice too. I see Jasmine through the window… she’s leading the horses back to their stalls for the night. Third grade or not, she knows how to take care of the horses. At least I don’t have to worry about that.

“Yeah, seriously. We made
fourteen
arrests, and classes haven’t even started yet.”

I throw my head back with a full-throated laugh. I am
so
glad I didn’t consider applying for a job as a cop.

“So what happened next?” I ask. I walk to the bare pantry trailing the phone cord behind me. Nicole goes on telling her story, elaborating with more and more outlandish facts.

What the hell?

I kneel. There’s a hole in the baseboard of the pantry, and it looks like something’s been chewing near there. Then I see the tiny black dots.

Mouse droppings. I shudder.

Then I hear Jasmine scream.

Instantly I jump to my feet, dropping the phone. The phone’s on the end of a long wound-up cord, which retracts suddenly, yanking the handset across the floor until it crashes into a cabinet.

Jasmine is at the kitchen door, eyes wide, staring at the pan of frying chicken, which is now burning with foot high flames. She screams again, and I launch myself across the kitchen to the sink, searching for the fire extinguisher. It’s not where it belongs. I shove cleaning fluids and various unnamed items around until I yank the extinguisher out from the very back of the cabinet. Without hesitating, I pull the pin and aim the extinguisher.

It’s empty.
Nothing at all. Damn it!

I search, my mind first turning to the sink, but water will just make an oil fire worse. Then my eyes fall on the five-pound bag of flour.

I tear it open wide and pour it on the flames. With a loud
whomp!
the flames are smothered and the kitchen is enveloped in silence and smoke.

I gasp for air and stare at Jasmine, who stares back at me. In the background, I can hear Nicole shouting into the phone. “Zoe? Zoe? Is everything okay?”

I hesitate, then lean down and reach for the phone. “Everything’s okay,” I rush out. “Pan caught fire, but it’s out now.”

“Are you shitting me?” Nicole screams.

“Nicole, I gotta go.”

“Zoe, wait —”

“I gotta go.” I hang the phone up.

Jasmine is still staring at me.

“What?”

She says, “I’ve never seen a fire in here. Mom never did that.”

Mom never caught the kitchen on fire?
I don’t know what to say, but my chest tightens and I want to say something unkind. I can’t even imagine what to say that might be appropriate. I just turn back to the pantry and look for something for dinner, because we sure aren’t having fried chicken.

I stand in the pantry. Pretty slim pickings. Some staples, like flour, but I’m no baker. Pasta is all gone (we ate it), so is the spaghetti sauce, the tortillas, the rice.

I need to go grocery shopping.

High at the top of the pantry is a box of Lucky Charms. Every once in a blue moon, Dad would buy a box. He wouldn’t let anyone else have them, which is why it’s way up there. I step on the bottom shelf to be able to reach to the very top and pull the box down.

It’s half full. “All right,” I say. “Change of plans. We’re eating Lucky Charms.”

Her response is caustic. “We’re eating
what?
Mom never made me eat cereal for dinner.”

“Well you know what, Jasmine? I’m not Mom.” I drop the box on the table, then walk to the fridge.

Ahh, damn it. There’s no milk. I sigh, then say, “Okay. Okay. That’s not going to work.” I look back at her. “Pizza?”

She nods. Then she says, in a very low voice, “Sorry, Zoe.”

I suck in a breath. Jasmine should
not
have to apologize to me. She’s going through hell, and I need to remember that.

“It’s okay, sweetie. Pizza it is. We should both go shower though. You go first.”

She runs out. I sag against the counter, exhausted.

I’ll call Nicole back later and apologize. Meanwhile, I’m looking at the disaster of the kitchen. Flour covering the stove. Oil splattered everywhere. Oily black soot coating the range hood and the wall above that.

That’ll take some cleaning.

I turn to walk upstairs, but stop in my tracks when the phone rings again.
Who the hell is that?

I pick the phone up off its cradle once again. I need to get a shower and change into not-horse-and-fire-smelling clothing, and go to the bank and get some cash, then we’ll head to the pizza place up the street. Hopefully this will be a quick call.

“Hello?”

“Zoe? It’s Matt Paladino.”

My mind stops in place, and my body follows. I breathe a sigh and say, “What … what can I do for you?”

He hesitates. I’m guessing that means it is bad news. “I wanted to let you know—the teachers union met this afternoon. The vote was near unanimous to strike.”

I close my eyes. “Do they even care how this is going to disrupt people’s lives?”

I can almost hear his sigh. “Zoe…”

I exhale. “I know. I get that there are reasons. But … you can’t just disappear, Matt. You
can’t.
She’s lost everyone she depends on. We don’t have any other relatives, and she barely knows me, and you’re the only adult she even knows. You
can’t
just disappear.”

There’s a long silence. Then he says, “I’ll do the best I can, all right?”

I guess that’s the best I can expect.

Chapter Six

Red (Matt)

Red Jackson wasn’t called Red because of his hair. It was because of his temper. He’d always had a bad reputation as a scrappy little bastard, a dirty fighter, a not so smart guy with a chip on his shoulder. I encountered him for the first time when his family joined the Ringling Brothers Circus when I was twelve. Red was about two years older than me, and at that age two years makes a big difference in size. He had the frame and muscular power of someone already well into puberty, who regularly worked out on top of that. I wasn’t in bad shape… after all, my parents had me up on the rigging by the time I was 10. I was still considerably smaller than he was.

We were on the northern tour that fall—New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia—when Red’s father, a cat handler, joined the circus. If Red ever had a mother around, I never heard anything about her. That Saturday afternoon, I was hiding out. I’d spent the morning doing my chores, laying out the spare ropes, arranging the costumes and laundering them, and cleaning up the trailer. It was almost one in the afternoon when I finished that, and the adults were all practicing for that night’s show. I made myself scarce.

No matter where we were, we always tried to arrange the trailers and equipment in the same way. It made for a much quicker and better organized set-up and teardown. Most of the time, when I wanted to hide, I picked a spot behind the funhouse—it was invariably a dead spot on the lot, surrounded by generators, trailers and ticket booths.

That particular day, I couldn’t take my usual spot. I’m not sure where we were. Allentown? Pittsburgh? Somewhere in Pennsylvania anyway. The lot shape was unusual, long and narrow and curved, so we were configured very differently than normal. I found a spot not far from the ticket booths where I settled in, sorting through my Yu-gi-oh cards.

The cards were precious to me. I didn’t get much of an allowance, though every once in a while Papa would give me spare change. Whenever possible, I would pick up extra work on the lot. Shoveling manure, cleaning out trailers, whatever, it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t get paid anywhere close to minimum wage for those jobs, but over time I’d used that occasional pocket change to amass a sizeable collection of cards, including some rare collectible ones.

Those days were gravel and dust, the heat and humidity of Indian summer, the longing I felt whenever I saw Carlina Herne, the daughter of one of the animal trainers. She was thirteen and had long flowing locks of black hair that hung well below her shoulders. Her eyes were sapphire, her lips curvaceous and inviting.

Or I suppose they were inviting to somebody. Not to me. She was a year older than I was, but she was so far out of reach she might as well have been the daughter of the President.

That didn’t stop me from thinking about her constantly, watching her whenever I could, fantasizing that one day, she would realize that I wasn’t just a kid… I was a flyer; one day I’d be the star of the circus just like Papa. As it was, the only words she’d ever spoken to me were, “Get out of my way,
runt
.”

They weren’t kind words, but they’d been said in her rich, lilting voice. I treasured them.

The first sign that something had gone awry that day was when a stranger appeared, towering over me. I looked up, assessed the situation, then stood. In front of me was a kid a couple years older than me, with powerful shoulders and upper arms. His expression wasn’t friendly, but it wasn’t hostile either. Looking back, I still think it’s possible Red set out that day to make a friend.

His desire to make a friend evaporated when Carlina came around the corner of the building.

Carlina with her flowing black hair, her shapely body, her tantalizing eyes.

Red saw her, and decided… what? To impress her? He looked back at me and his eyes narrowed. “Give me those cards.”

I started to back away, confused. I shook my head, and began putting the cards in the metal tin I carried them around in.

His face screwed up into an angry bunch. “I said, give me those cards.”

“L–L–L– leave me alone.”

I was wholly unprepared for the punch. Out of nowhere, he brought up his right fist and jabbed it at my face. He connected hard, and my vision went black instantly, and I fell down on my ass. He kicked me in the side. “I
said
, give me my cards!”

“Leave me alone!” He kicked me again, and I started to cry.

“Look at the little baby cry!” Then he grabbed the box of cards off the ground next to me. “Don’t you
ever
touch my stuff again.”

My last sight of him that day was when he walked over to Carlina and said casually, “Hey. I’m Red. I’m new here.”

The remainder of that fall was terror, sometimes mixed with rage and frequent boredom and anxiety. Red was the perfect bully. He came out of nowhere, struck by surprise, and humiliated in the process. As the fall continued, he got bigger every day, while I stubbornly remained the same size. Small. I wasn’t just physically small. He made me
feel
small. I didn’t understand how or why this had happened to my life.

What I did understand is that within two weeks of his arrival, he and Carlina were a couple, and I was in fear of my life every day.

***

Of course, it wasn’t always that bad. That winter, when we returned to Florida, I had a reprieve from Red. He and his Dad went wherever they went for the winter, and I prepared to spend four months in school in Sarasota. School was never a good experience—I was always a stranger, an oddity, a circus freak. I was there for a few months a year; always out of sync with both the curriculum and the other kids.

Something had changed. Carlina’s family had joined the small community of circus families living in Sarasota—they were renting a house five doors down from mine. So during those four winter months, normally a period of bewildered shock and sadness, I was on a high.

It’s not that she noticed me. After all, she was an eighth grader and I was a seventh grader. We shared no classes. I didn’t care. I knew that somehow, this winter was my chance.

I had little opportunity to do anything about it in the first few weeks. Dad had made the decision that this year would be my first one actually performing in the ring. I would be doing a few simple tricks—a simple crossover and a half somersault. As always, he insisted on incessant practice to make sure we were safe. I was under strict orders to come straight home from school, park myself at the kitchen table and finish my homework no later than 3:30. Once homework was done, it was back out and to the gym.

The gym was owned by the circus, with unusually high ceilings and plenty of netting. It was here that we practiced during winter quarters—an endless procession of leaps and jumps and falls to the net. The first day that winter, I didn’t fall to the net to Papa’s satisfaction.