Split (3 page)

I open the tap and let the water run through my fingers. I have no razor, no soap, no toothbrush. My toothbrush in Chicago is an electric Oral B, and I don’t think my three and a half bucks will cover that. My teeth will rot out, and I’ll have to gum my food by the time I’m nineteen.

I look at the one-person medicine cabinet in the one-person bathroom in this one-bedroom apartment. I’m okay with the couch. It’s not that bad, really. I pee, wash my hands, and splash some water on my face. It’s good and cold, like a much-deserved slap. The cut on my forehead burns from its introduction to water. I find one towel hanging from a single hook and dry my face with it, using just a corner.

When I return to the living room, he is putting on his coat.

“Aren’t we going to get a jacket for me?” I fold my arms over my chest.

I probably look like a 1950s housewife, sulking as her husband says he’s going to work late. I stick my hands up into my armpits to counter that image.

“We’ll go out after I get back from work. Then we’ll talk about what you’ll need to do if you want to stay with me.”

Thanks. Now I have something to obsess about all day long
.

“Sure, okay,” I say.

“I’ve left my cell number on the fridge, in case you need anything. There’s soup in the cupboard. I, uh, hell, I don’t even know what school district we’re in. Are you a senior?”

I examine my big toenail, which was blackened last week in a soccer match. Would he like me to be a senior?

“Junior.”

He nods. “Listen, Jace. I’m sorry. This is going to take some getting used to, okay?”

He’s almost out the door when he steps back in and pulls it closed. I exhale. He gets it now; he’s going to stay, take the day off, and figure out what we need to do.

“I thought that you would have made plans. When I got out, I made—”

“He threw me out at about three in the morning. Couldn’t very well go knocking on doors, now could I?” I ignore that I came knocking on his door.

“He what? He
threw
you out?”

I suddenly see my trump card. “I drove straight here.”

“Oh.”

“What did you think when I came here last night? That it was a vacation stop on the way to sunny California?”

Maybe if I’m nicer he’ll let me stay. I try to smile with the good side of my mouth, but I’m guessing it looks like a grimace.

“God, Jace, I assumed that if you were driving crosscountry, you’d have at least called or—”

“I didn’t have your phone number.”

He pauses and looks down. I watch him breathing.

Finally he says, “I’ll be back around one, and we’ll make a plan then. Don’t worry, though. No matter where you end up, I’ll make sure you land on your feet, okay? I promise.”

I’m not that comforted by his promises.

chapter 4

w
hen I knocked on Mirriam’s door
with a soccer ball tucked under my arm, in search of a place to practice, she drove me out to the high school where she teaches. (English, she told me.) The fields that lie behind the school are decent. Two sit side by side, divided by a gully that is designed to trap escaping balls and drain rainwater. The white paint marking the field is fresh. No major potholes lie in wait to twist ankles, and one of the goals still has its net up.

Mirriam lies on the grass, propped on an elbow, reading a paperback. Her purse and my camera bag are next to her. I was too jittery to stay in the apartment, so I asked Mirriam for directions, and she ended up driving me over.

My shirt is so laden with sweat I’m certain my body is no longer 65 percent water. I peel off my shirt, toss it in the grass, and pray for a breeze. Who ever thought that September could be so hot? Luckily, I left Chicago with my soccer gear in the car, so I’ve changed from jeans to shorts.

Interminable hours of driving and waiting and sitting and stressing, and now—movement. My legs in motion, my arms swinging for balance. I chip the ball in the air and pop it up for a header. My heart is pumping; my blood is flowing; everything is moving, but my brain is still fixated on what Christian said.
We’ll talk about what you’ll need to do if you want to stay with me
.

I place the ball inside the box to practice my penalty kicks. I take measured steps back, but I’m not focused. I’m thinking,
Like what things?
Probably won’t make it easier when I tell him I’m broke. I let loose on the ball. It bounces off the crossbar, the goalie’s best friend. I chase it down. What kinds of things could Christian expect? More than keeping my room clean, I suspect. Come to think of it, what room?

Nope, nope
, I tell my brain. I refuse to obsess. Channel change.

An announcer’s voice, scratchy from too many cigarettes, starts up. “For those of you joining us late, the score is 2–2 after two overtimes in a heated match between the U.S. and Germany. We’re down to penalty kicks, Nigel.”

“Yes, Dick. It’s amazing soccer. Germany has scored four penalty kicks out of a possible five, missing the last try. The Americans have scored four and have one kick left.”

(Bet you can guess who it’s all up to now.)

The goalie has gotta be Germany’s version of Paul Bunyan
.

When I make the nearly impossible shot, the crowd leaps to their feet, cheering. All but Christian, who is sitting. I only hear his
voice. “You’ll need to sweep, scrub, and pick tumbleweeds out of the cactus garden. Forget about college. You’ll have too much to do if you want to stay with me.”

“But college was your ticket out,” I call from the field
.

“Well, you don’t have enough to buy that ticket.”

Okay. Better come up with another way to silence that brain-o-mine. I start to race the perimeter of the fields when I hear a car honk. I slow down to a jog while Mirriam gets up, brushes the grass off her butt, and shades her eyes with her hand. A green convertible is parked in the middle of the road with a commercial-worthy redhead in the passenger seat and her bulky boyfriend driving. Behind them is a cigarette-smoking blonde. The blonde is trying to find a way to hide her cigarette. Finally she tosses it out of the car.

“Are you trying to get in trouble?” Mirriam says, “Smoking
and
littering.”

“Oh, I didn’t—”

“Whatcha doing here on a Sunday, Ms. Ngu?” the guy shouts.

“Eric,” Mirriam yells, “don’t hold up traffic.”

“Who’s that? Who he play for?” Eric shouts again.

“Who
does
he play for?” Mirriam says.

“Hey, guy! Who you play for?”

A black-and-white cop car pulls up behind him, and its siren burps.

“See you tomorrow,” Mirriam says. “We’ll work on grammar, okay?”

The car jolts forward as Eric hits the gas, then jolts again as he, presumably, remembers that he shouldn’t speed with a cop behind him. As he crawls the car forward, I hear one of the girls say, “He’s hot.”

“Eww … his face is all banged up.”

“Who said anything about his face?”

High-pitched giggling rises over the revs, and then their voices are gone.

“Students,” Mirriam says.

“I figured.”

I turn my focus back to the field before brain-o-mine can start its little games again. I decide to race the perimeter of the fields. My feet churn up the ground, and I watch the horizon. Focus only on the horizon. Hor-i-zon.

Before I’m halfway around, I can’t catch my breath. An elephant is sitting on my chest. I tumble over, lie on the grass, and breathe. In and out. In and out. I slow it down, counting IN one-two-three, OUT one-two-three. What is this? Late-onset asthma?

Mirriam is watching me when I poke my head up.

“Thin air,” she calls out. “High altitude.”

I nod, only because I can’t get enough breath to do anything else. This is going to take some acclimating.

On the way back, Mirriam makes “just a quick stop” at a bookstore across the street, which, I swear to God, she
drives
us to. When we walk in, the AC blasts us, sending my sweat-drenched T-shirt into slomo waves. I stop and let my camera bag drop off my shoulder so the cool air can hit every inch of me.

This Barnes & Noble wannabe has a wheat-colored carpet-path that twists up to the register and branches out to different areas of the store. It’s like Hollywood Boulevard, but with quotes instead of handprints. I step over Harper Lee and plant my foot on William Faulkner.

Mirriam and I break—she goes for coffee, and I head to the Art section in search of a collection by one of my favorite photographers, Cindy Sherman. At home, I have two of her shots framed on my walls, and I already miss them.

Before I get there, a crystal chess set distracts me.

I started rescuing queens about eighteen months ago. I was downtown, had just crossed the Chicago River when I passed a gaming store. A board was set up, mid-game, facing the window, as if you could just reach in and play. The queen was exposed. Her alabaster face was stern and uncompromising, with one eyebrow arched. She looked as if she were trying to stare down the threatening knight.

When I pulled the door open, a set of bells that hung from the knob clanged against the doorframe. I picked the queen up, studying her don’t-fuck-with-me mouth. I thought:
I should learn to play chess
. I thought:
I don’t want to learn to play chess, I just want her
. I thought:
Yes
. I palmed her and walked out the door, past the two metal arcs that ineptly stood guard.

Alabaster, nicknamed Ally, was the start of my collection. Not counting Ally, I left six queens behind in Chicago—plastic black, sandalwood, walnut, green marble, her sister white marble, and a pewter Guinevere from a Camelot set. I kept them in a tube sock, stuffed under my mattress. I wish I had kept them in the car instead.

This queen is featureless, just a crystal orb for a head, but I recognize her by her position on the board. She’s cut like a gemstone, all angles and ridges. Light bounces through her, casting mini-rainbows onto the chessboard squares. She’s a beaut.

I pick her up—cold and heavy in my hand. I run my fingers over her facets and check the store for cameras.

The crystal queen will make a good inaugural piece for my Albuquerque collection.

No one’s at the register, Mirriam’s far enough away, and I can’t make out any cameras. I stretch the waistband of my Hanes and slide her in. I’m not a perv or anything. I just know how to avoid getting caught. Who’s gonna strip-search me for a chess piece? The queen just makes me look like God was even nicer to me.

My hand is just out of my shorts when a girl, maybe sixteen years old, appears in front of me. Her black hair is bobbed so that the ends lick at her rounded face. Her jeans have a rendition of Lady Godiva on the right thigh that takes my mind places it shouldn’t go. She pushes up the sleeves of her billowy shirt as she stares at my bruised face.

“God, do I want to see the other guy?” The way she talks, as if she regrets moving her mouth, makes me think her career goal is ventriloquism.

“Car accident.”

Not a great lie, but it’s out of my mouth before it’s gone through my brain.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I shrug.

She gestures to the board. “Do you like it?”

I nod. “You play?”

“Nope, books are my addiction. Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“You work here?” I ask, a little disbelievingly.

She is young, and last time I tried to get a job at a bookstore, I had to go through three interviews and was beat out by a PhD candidate. Or an undergraduate. Or something like that.

“Uh-huh. My dad knows the guy who owns it. D’you like to read? Maybe you’d like this,” she says as she reaches for a book. Her hand swings too far, knocking over a knight. She rights it and stares at the board. “Where’s the queen?”

I lift my hands, palms open. She tilts her head, and I sense I just screwed up. I reacted as if she were accusing me.

She leans over, and I smell cinnamon and rain. She gets down and searches the floor like a blind woman, running her hands over the pale, nubby carpet. I carefully kneel to join her in her futile search. After a few minutes, she looks over her shoulder at me.

“Do you see it?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Probably just rolled off when you—”

“I didn’t hear anything hit the floor, and it’s heavy.”

You don’t say
. It is pressing against my balls and sagging my briefs down. I stand up awkwardly, trying to make sure the queen lies right. The girl sits back on her heels for a moment and then, in one quick movement, is on her feet.

“Sir,” she says.

Her brown eyes go distant. I’ve never been called “sir” before. I thought I would like it, but now I’m guessing I’m in for a whole lot of trouble.

“I’m going to have to ask you to empty your pockets.”

Oh, great, now I’ve got Gestapo Girl on my ass. I cock my head and rely on my inherited legal knowledge.

“You can’t ask me to do that. For one thing, unless you actually saw me take something and you actually know where it is, we can’t even be having this conversation. It’s called harassment. And second, I haven’t left the store, so even if I had something, you couldn’t levy a complaint.”

“Who are you? Atticus Finch?”

“You’re gonna compare me to a fictional character?”

Mirriam walks up, cradling a tower of books in one arm and digging through the stack of books with the other. She’s gripping the rim of her coffee cup between her teeth. “I think Christian would like—” She is muttering into the lid. Then she looks up and takes in the scene. Extracting the coffee cup from her mouth, she asks Gestapo Girl, “What’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I didn’t steal anything.”

“Jace,” says Mirriam. “This would not be a good way to get started here.”

“You think I’m stupid?”

“I didn’t say that,” she says with exaggerated patience. “But I wouldn’t want this to be our first impression of you.”

“Tattle if you want, but you won’t earn any bonus points with my brother with false accusations.”

“I don’t need bonus points.”

My cheeks heat up. Of course she doesn’t. It’s me, the one with the blood bond, who needs to “discuss what I need to do if I want to stay.”

Gestapo Girl shifts her weight toward me and glowers at Mirriam.

“If you don’t have anything to hide, just show her, and let’s get out of here,” says Mirriam.

“As long as you don’t feel like your rights are being violated, sir,” Gestapo says.

I tell her my name so she’ll stop calling me “sir” while I pull the linings out of my pockets. Limp white cotton.

“Bag, too,” Mirriam says.

I pull my camera bag off my shoulder and put it on the ground. I unzip the top, pull out my camera, and scatter my flash and filters on the author carpet. I stand up, turn the bag over, and shake it. A silver gum wrapper plunks on Ben Jonson.

“But then, where is it?” Gestapo asks.

“See?” I say to Mirriam.

“Now, wasn’t that easy to clear up? No need to fight.” Mirriam walks over to the counter.

“Who
is
she? Your stepmother?” Gestapo Girl asks.

“Thank God, no.”

I’m about to explain when I notice she is scanning me from the top of my head down. Her eyes stop at my crotch, and she says, “Oh …”

Suddenly I hear my pulse in my ears. She’s going to catch me, and then I’ll be standing in front of Christian with Mirriam pointing an accusing finger at me while I plead stupidity. Convicted and banished.

She reaches for my elastic waist, and I back up. Jesus, what girl has that kind of, well, balls?

“Whoa, whoa,” I say, hands in the air.

I turn to Mirriam, hoping for a rescue. She is unloading her books and drink on the counter. When she turns, she stares at me, hands on hips in a let’s-see-just-how-big-of-an-asshole-you-are way, with a poor-Christian-to-have-his-thieving-brother-show-up-and-ruin-his-life look. I narrow my eyes at her, glaring. Gestapo has caught my expression, pauses, and follows my gaze toward Mirriam.

Mirriam calls from the counter, “Are you kids done yet? I’d like to go.”

Gestapo turns back to me—my hands still frozen in the air, my telepathic brain pleading for God, Krishna, Zeus, something to intervene. She drops her hands to her sides, as if they were never on the attack, screws up her face, and mouths
blah, blah, blah
. She has recognized the common enemy—bossy, bitchy grown-ups.

I exhale and tug my shorts up higher on my hips.

“Maybe the queen found a better place to rule.” Her full lips open and close as she fights a smile. “Let me just recommend this book to you. You know, for next time.”

She grabs that book from the shelf behind me and hands it to me. The cover picture is someone’s fingers pushing over a chain of dominos.
The Book Thief
.