Split (6 page)

chapter 7

w
elcome to my new life. Part One.

It’s more complicated than you’d think to establish new residency. My parents made it look easy the few times we moved. Even though I remember the move right after Christian bailed the best, I still didn’t realize that they had found new schools and had gotten transcripts, transfer agreements, course accreditations, birth certificates, and given their pound of flesh. Two pounds, if you’re under eighteen and can’t sign anything without a legal guardian or parent. And that’s just for school. Never mind car registry, plates, and insurance (which costs far too much when you’re a male teenager, good-student discount and all).

It took me three days just to gather all the paperwork I needed, much less figure out what to do about it. While I’m sitting here surrounded by papers all demanding a signature, wondering if I can lie my way around the forms, I hear the bolt slide, and Christian walks in. I want to ask him if Mirriam can use her English-teacher privileges to cut through the red tape at the new school, but I can’t read his mood yet. He glances at the littered papers, says nothing, and heads into his room. I hear him in the bedroom, putting his keys on the dresser, changing into his running clothes.

When he comes back, he’s geared to the nines in sunglasses, a baseball cap, a chafe-free, meshy shirt, and tighter-than-I-ever-needed-to-see leggings. He pulls a piece of blank paper from the printer’s tray and rests it on the desk. He scribbles on it, crosses it out, scribbles again, and a third time. He shows me the page.

My father’s signature.

“I’m out of practice. How’s that one?” Christian asks.

“Use the first one.”

“Really?” He frowns at it. “Muscle memory, I suppose.”

He replicates that one on the practice page again before he begins signing. I stand up, hovering over him as I hand him page after page. When he’s done, he returns the stack.

“Forgery is punishable by up to five years,” I say.

“Me? Wasn’t it you?” He claps a cupped hand next to his mouth and whispers loudly. “Take the heat, Toad.”

I grin dopily, like a six-year-old with a new bike, since he resurrected my family nickname.

He continues, “You’re underage, remember? Slap on the wrist.”

The next morning, I’m armed with the papers, sitting in the parking lot of my new school, people-watching: three guys who apparently get their fix at Abercrombie & Fitch, a couple of duuudes who wear their hair long and remind me of Shaggy from
Scooby-Doo
, and a pride of girls with that redhead, who is a half-step ahead of her pack.

First days usually suck; everyone is trying to classify you.

Former classification: Cool kid. Jock. Smart. My status was enhanced notably when I started dating Lauren. By the end of freshman year, she had taken me from the seats in the middle of the school bus, the wannabe seats, all the way to the farthest-back seat, the one where you can stare out the back window.

New status: ?

I’ve switched schools before, but this time it will be different; this time I have an actual clean slate. So who will I be, remade? I ponder that for a second and then come up with an answer: I will be a bastard no longer.

I don’t have any idea how to do that, but at least I have a goal.

The Land of Enchantment Charter School, a.k.a. LECS, is a three-story adobe building that blends into the brown buildings all around it, save for the four sets of doors in the entrance. The steps up to the doors are flanked by foot-threatening cacti. Inside, I find the office and go through the whole red-tape thing. They inform me that I’ll have a buddy. Not a mentor, not a guide—a buddy. For a second, I wonder if I registered for the third grade by mistake. But when I meet my buddy, I’m sure I’m in high school after all. It’s the redhead from the convertible. Her name is Caitlyn, and her tank top is tight, and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail that is like something out of the fifties: all the hair gathered into a single bounce.

She turns around and gestures at her ass. She wears a pair of sweats that have WELCOME written on the butt. Well, that’s direct.

“I just wanted to make you feel, well … welcome,” she says, and laughs. “Are you gonna try out for the soccer team?”

“What are you? A cheerleader?”

She bats my arm as if we’ve been friends for years. “Nope, no cheerleaders here at LECS. We’re all too serious for such things,” she says, turning her face into a mock frown.

All right, so after two years in high school, there are some things you can tell right away. She has a pack; that I already saw. She’s into soccer players. LECS is too small for a football team, so the soccer jocks rule the school here. Socially, this place will be a breeze as long as I stick by the girl with the following.

While we walk to the classroom, she tells me that LECS is a small Montessori school. Only 120 people, divided into four classes, all multi-age settings. Instead of group learning, individual lessons are taught by subject teachers who go from classroom to classroom, student to student.

“Weird, but cool,” she says.

She’s right. The classroom is weird. It’s more like someone’s house: there’s a kitchen on one side where a girl is at the stove, grilling toast, while a younger guy washes some dishes. Against the far wall is a workshop with hammers, a table saw, a bucksaw, and rows of other equipment. Through an arch, I can see another room with only two computers.

Caitlyn tells me that this is the way you work here—independently. No blackboard or pre-ordained desks. I could drop and kiss the floor. No more lectures, no more passing notes and getting busted, no more “Back to reality, Mr. Witherspoon.”

When the teacher, Mr. Ortiz, asks her to introduce me, she takes me around, her hand on my triceps, taking possession. But the kids all blur together. I notice only that there is no Dakota in this classroom, and I notice Eric, who says, “Didn’t I see you shooting a soccer ball at the fields here last Sunday?”

“Yep.”

I look him over. His jeans strain across his thighs (only soccer players and maybe gymnasts have this problem, buying jeans wide enough to accommodate our quads), his hair is cut clean and simple, and I can just picture him on the field. He’d be decent.

“You play?” I ask.

His mouth twists, and he crosses his arms. “I’m the captain.”

Okay, then. Captain. Don’t get into a pissing war with me. I don’t want to brag, but I will if I have to
.

“Where’d you used to play?” he says, pressing me. When I tell him, he says, “Are they good?”

I remember my bastard-no-longer pledge and don’t tell him that we took third in State for the last three years, that I was bumped into first-string varsity this year, and that my nickname on the team is “Bullet.”
Better than you, you piss-ass, pathetic wuss
. I just nod.

“You gonna try out?” he asks.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

After school the LECS coach, Coach Davis, is standing on the fields. He doubles as the history teacher. Or rather, he’s the history teacher who doubles as a soccer-coach-wannabe, judging from the team’s 0–2 record.

“My varsity team is pretty tight right now. And we’re looking for a leader on the JV team, so let’s just see what you can do, okay?” he says.

“Okay, sir.”

Cardinal rule of sports: don’t piss off the coach. Not unless you like running extra laps and sitting on a cold bench.

He smiles at the “sir” and says, “It’s not the army. We’re here to have fun, remember?”

To have fun? No. To complete, to battle, to win. Got it? Sir
.

“Okay,” I say.

He claps me on the back. “What are you waiting for, son?”

What kid has ever liked to be called “son”? I bite back my sarcastic remark and take off running. The team rounds the corner of the track. I sprint to catch up, and by the second length, that elephant is already resuming his comfy seat on my chest. Cannot, will not stop breathing.

After drills, we split into two teams, and he puts me in my usual spot, right forward.

The right midfielder, whose name I don’t remember, passes to me—or it’s supposed to be to me—but it hops to the sweeper. He cocks his leg. I turn on the speed, pull the ball from under his foot, and take off down the center. I look for anyone in the triangular patterns that all soccer players form to pass and move the ball, but there’s no one. Not even anyone running square. I face off against Eric, who is subbing for the goalie. O Captain, my Captain.

I feign a hard kick, presenting to the left. When he bites down on it, dropping to the post, I tap it right and wink. The bastard-no-longer pledge can wait.

The second string team beats the first string 3–2 and, bang, I’m on varsity.

chapter 8

w
elcome to my new life. Part Two
.

I yank on the door and walk into the air-conditioned cool of the bookstore, looking for Dakota, queen in my pocket.

At the chessboard, the queen has been replaced. I pick up the new one. Even though I’d love to start my Albuquerque collection with a set of twins, I put her back in her spot.

I am heading over to customer service when I spot Dakota crouching in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section, pulling books from a cardboard box. She inspects the spines before placing them on the shelf. Her skirt pools around her, hiding her legs.

When I approach, she turns her head and stands, her skirt rising like a curtain, revealing smooth skin. Her ventriloquist’s mouth refuses a big smile, but the corners lift for half a second.

“Sir?”

“Call me Jace.”

“Not until I have that queen in my hand.”

“Hmmm.” I tilt my head as if I’m considering her offer. “Nope. I’m not that easy.”

“You’re here to bargain?” she asks, her voice going high in disbelief.

“You bet.”

“A Get Out of Jail Free card wasn’t enough? You’ve got some balls.”

I remember her hand reaching for my belt and glance down. “We’re two of a kind.”

Her mouth tugs into a half smile. “Your face looks better.”

“Thanks.”

The mountain has receded, and the red canyon in my forehead has faded to a scar. I appear normal.

We small talk: You don’t go to LECS? No, she says; she’s at La Cueva, and I learn that she lives across town, in a nicer neighborhood, but she drives here after school because she wanted to work in a bookstore—“better than a pizza joint”—and could get a job here.

“Where’s your chaperone?” she asks.

“You think we need one?”

She lifts her eyebrows and puts her hand back out. “So, what’s your offer for getting my queen back?”

“I was hoping you’d help me with something, seeing as how you know you can trust me.” I pluck the queen from my pocket, close her in my hand for one last moment, and then let her roll down my palm. Dakota catches her.

I say, “You said you were looking for help?”

“You want a job here?”

“Yeah.”

She smoothes out her skirt and seems to think about it for a second. I can see the “no” forming on her lips. But I jump in, King of Persuasion.

“I didn’t have to come back, and it won’t happen again, I swear. Besides, you need the help, and I have retail experience. Last summer, I worked at a shoe store, and before that—”

“You didn’t have to steal her in the first place.”

“I know,” I pause. “But that was just a second, you know, an impulse. I’ve had some time to think about it, to decide, and then I came back. Come on, you can take credit for my moral rehabilitation.”

Her lips tense up again in her not-a-smile smile. “Do you know anything about books?”

I nod.

“Okay … who wrote
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
?” she asks.

“Betty Smith. Something harder.”

“Name three Hispanic authors.”

“Isabel Allende, Sandra Cisneros, and Pam Muñoz Ryan. I said, harder.”

“Favorite Shakespearean line?” she says.

“‘I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.’” The phrase that kept playing through my brain on my nineteen-hour trip.

“Macbeth.”
She pats my shoulder as she walks by me. “Let’s go get you a job.”

chapter 9

c
hristian and I finally went shopping,
and now I’m surrounded by bags: two white plastic ones from the secondhand clothing store, another from Walgreens, and two adorned with red circles from Target. Underwear, toothbrush, sweaters, undershirts, T-shirts, long-sleeved shirts, jeans, and a jacket.

Christian bought linens “for the house”: a couple of towels and bedding for the couch, which, I’ve discovered, pulls out. He even got me a backpack that he told me was a “belated birthday gift,” a.k.a. guilt gift. I averted my eyes whenever the cashiers totaled. I pretended to be fascinated with a chili ristra, which, as it turns out, is a string of dried red chilies, but I saw enough to know his Amex bill won’t be pretty. I can’t imagine how I’m going to repay him.

Christian comes in from the bedroom and says, “I’ve cleared out the bottom two drawers of my dresser. Do you need any closet space?”

I say no, and we agree to keep my bathroom stuff on the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet.

“Do you want soup for dinner?”

What I want is a stuffed pizza from Edwardo’s. “Sure, okay.”

I gather the bags, stringing their handholds up my wrist, and step down the hallway. Laden, I’m too wide to fit through the doorframe. I turn sideways and crab-step through. Gravity pulls the bags off my arms, and I begin to organize: socks, underwear, undershirts on the left, T-shirts and long-sleeved shirts on the right. Jeans and sweaters in the bottom drawer. Everything lies down neat and simple. As if it belongs here. I smooth out the wrinkles on a folded sweater.

When I walk back to the kitchen, I see that Christian’s cooking skills have not improved. The tomato soup is boiling over. Bubbles slide over the top and sizzle on the stove beneath while he sits on the couch with a textbook on his lap. I turn the heat off, pick up the spoon that has dripped tomato soup on the counter, and stir. I open his fridge and stare at its emptiness.

Milk and yogurt. One of the bottom bins is dark through the glass. I open it and find mushrooms, tomatoes, mushrooms, yellow asparagus, and more mushrooms.

“I thought I might steam some mushrooms,” he says.

I get that I’m a beggar, but mushrooms? Soft and sticky and a flavor that makes me want to transfer the entire contents of the bin to the trash can. I mean, they
are
a fungus. Really, I want a pizza.

“Sure, okay,” I say.

“Or not,” he says, and I realize that I’ve given away my disgust for mushrooms.

I search the cabinets for something worth eating. Wheat Thins, whole-wheat pasta, brown rice, and an entire cabinet of tuna. There are cookies, but they’re low-fat and from Nature’s Choice; low-fat dessert is an oxymoron. His spices: salt, pepper, and—let’s get crazy—onion powder. He has no taste buds and is out to kill mine.

At home, the cabinets always had some junk food: a bag of Fritos or a box of ice cream sandwiches. A stash my mom and I shared that was supposedly all for me. I wonder what she’s doing for frozen pizza now.

My dad hated my affinity for junk food and said that Mom was ruining my tastes when she bought it. Too low-class for him, an echo of her factory-town past—another dig about how she married into money and away from food chosen by coupon, how she was the only one in her family to go to college, while he was third-generation Yale. I close the cabinet slowly.

“Is the soup ready?” Christian calls.

I tell him it needs to cool and check my e-mail. One from my mom. I open it, curse his download speed while I’m waiting, and read.

I skim for my answer:

glad you made it … miss you … tell him I love him …

I find what I’m looking for:

Thanksgiving.

I go back and read the sentence:

I will come at Thanksgiving. I should have the money by then.

She’s on her way; she’s getting out. I delete the e-mail, call up his calendar, and count. Just shy of eleven weeks. Seventy-six days.

I walk into the kitchen, glance at the finally-cool-enough-to-be-simmering soup, and watch the steam rising. I have no idea how to tell Christian she’s coming. One family member descending was almost too much to handle. I remember how my clothes look in his drawers and decide the news can wait.

I look into the dining room/living room/office/my bedroom. Where will she sleep? He looks up at me as I stand in the doorway, my eyes roving for more space.

“Soup?” he asks.

He tells me where the bowls are, and I put them on the table. Christian stands up and gets a yellow highlighter from inside his desk.

“Christian?”

“Just one second,” he says as he marks a passage in the book, the highlighter squeaking against the page.

“Mom wrote back,” I say.

The highlighter goes quiet.

“She sends her love,” I say.

“Right.”

“Right?” No “Tell her I love her, too”? Not even a “How is she”?
They used to be so tight that my dad would half-joke, calling Christian “Oedipus” just to watch them both squirm. Of course I didn’t get it at the time, but reading that play subsequently freaked me out.

“She seems all right,” I say.

“Oh.”

“How well do you guys get along these days?”

“Rule violation,” he says.

“Exception.”

We used to recite legal tidbits to each other all the time. I was shocked when I found out that most nine-year-olds don’t know that
res ipsa loquitur
is Latin for “the thing speaks for itself” and is a legal term that shifts the burden of proof to the defense. Now I slide into our familiar legalese.

“Need-to-know exception. I need to know so I can figure out what to say.”

“We get along fine. She doesn’t write me back.”

I am too thrown to respond. Whenever my dad was out, she started with the, “Remember the time Christian won that marathon?”

“I wonder what he’s doing today?”
Do you think he still runs, still eats, still breathes?
Until I was ready to ask her if she had noticed that I was still playing soccer, eating, and breathing.

I place the spoons out slowly.

“I asked her not to,” Christian continues.

“How come?”

“Tell her I’m fine, all right?”

He goes back to the couch, closes the book, and puts it on the corner of his desk. He is putting the highlighter away when we hear a knock. I have a crazy panic moment, thinking that Mom is on the other side of that door. But it’s just Mirriam, bringing over dinner.

After they kiss hello, I take the bowl from Christian and put it down. Real food. Chicken, snow peas, and bamboo shoots, too. I might drool.

In a few minutes, we have places set and food served. Christian chooses the soup; Mirriam and I don’t. I heap rice on my plate and ladle her concoction on top of that. I wish for chopsticks. Eating Chinese food with a fork feels like I don’t know better.

When I take a bite, flavors explode on my tongue.

“This,” I say with my mouth half full, “is great.”

Mirriam smiles, takes a bite, and then says, “So, Jace, tell me about Christian. I haven’t met anyone else from his—excuse me, I mean from
your
—family. I want the dirt.” She smiles big. Suspiciously big.

Christian’s elbows press tight against his waist. He stares at me, wide-eyed. I put down my fork, wipe my face with my napkin, and begin.

“Let’s see, there was the time when he … Wait, no, that was me. Um … How about when you … ? Hmmm … Me, me, and me.” I shake my head. “The most remarkable thing about Christian is that he has no embarrassing stories. Isn’t that embarrassing enough?”

Christian’s elbows release. This guy is so closed off, I’ll need a crowbar.

He gives Mirriam a quick victory-look and then glances at me and does one of those small “thanks” nods. I return a “you’re welcome” nod. Mirriam scowls, slumps back in her seat, and jabs at her food.

“Wait, wait,” I say. “There was the time when you forgot the blender top.”

He smiles, so I tell her about how we tried covering up blueberry splatters on the ceiling with leftover white paint. But it was the wrong shade, so we had to paint the whole ceiling before my parents got home. They couldn’t figure out why our house reeked of fumes.

We do the “and how was your day?” thing; I bring them up to speed on my first days: No, so far, I haven’t found a niche. Yes, the classes seem all right. My favorite subject is English, which makes Mirriam smile, and I’m just grateful I didn’t get her assigned to me. Then we get off of me, and I ask Christian, “How’re your marathon times? Still aiming for Boston?”

“They’re okay.”

“He’s being modest,” Mirriam says. “He made the last one in under three hours.”

“Boston, here you come.”

“We’ll see,” Christian says.

“Why not?”

He shrugs and glances away. Warning: Lie impending. “Money.”

“Christian told me that you’re looking for a job?” says Mirriam.

“Got one.”

I tell them about the bookstore gig.

“That’s great, Jace. Congratu—” Christian says.

“Christian,” Mirriam interrupts. “I’m not sure he should do that. I mean, he does have homework, and LECS is a demanding school.”

“I’ll be all right,” I say.

“I mean … It’s not the … If he has to quit something, maybe it should be this job. Soccer is a great way to stay—”

Christian drops his spoon loudly into his bowl.

Mirriam corrects herself, “To meet people. It just … It seems like a lot of pressure. And what happens if it gets to be too much? If he has to make money … It can just invite trouble.”

“So far, it seems fine,” I say. “The homework isn’t hard, actually. Easier than my old school.”

A smile plays on Christian’s face until he takes another sip of soup to hide it.

“But the grading might be harder,” Mirriam says. “And you might want to try to get good grades.”

“He gets good grades,” Christian says. “I mean, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good enough for college?” Mirriam asks.

“Coll-ege?” I say, as if the word is unfamiliar to me. Christian shakes his head at me, so I modify my tone. “I’m applying to Stanford next year.”

She stirs her food. “That’s a good school. He’ll need excellent grades. For students to succeed at LECS, they need to spend about three hours a night on homework and more on weekends.”

“Really, I’ve got it covered,” I say.

I’m in the same room or hadn’t you noticed?

Mirriam starts to object, but I go on, “If my grades fall, Christian and I will decide what to do, okay?”
My life, lady. And by the way, there’s the door
. “Until then, I don’t have any reason to quit soccer or my job. Besides, the season’s so short. We’ve only got a couple of months left.”

Mirriam sits back, her eyes narrowed.

There’s a pause, and I dig into the garlic chicken.

“Jace,” Mirriam asks, “do you play chess?”

I stop, fork in midair. I don’t know whether my cheeks are suddenly so hot from embarrassment or anger. Now I get why Christian was glaring at her earlier. I’ve been dubbed: Kid-At-Risk. I’ll start stealing for profit or peddling drugs if I’m required to bring in cash.

“Mirriam,” Christian says, a warning in his voice.

“What? He seemed interested in the chessboard, that’s all.”

After a kid at my school lost it and beat his teammate with a lacrosse stick, the school required all students to attend an anger-management workshop. What did the anger-management guru, a blond-haired twenty-something with horse teeth, say? Count to ten and visualize. One, two, three … my dad would have the table overturned by now. Four, five, six … twisting an arm behind her back. Just a split lip and I would erase my embarrassment right out of the world. Seven, eight, nine … Counting is not working, and I have a feeling these are the wrong visualizations. Something else. Breathe, right. Didn’t horse-teeth lady say “breathe”?

Mirriam continues, “And anyway, Christian, you wanted to know about his interest in chess too, didn’t you? I mean, you said—”

I stand up so fast that the chair flips over. Suddenly the guru appears before me, screaming, “And walk away. WALK AWAY!”

Right. Walk away.

“Thanks for the food, Mirriam. It was really good,” I say. “For the record, I’ve never played chess in my life.”

My plate is shaking as I scrape my leftovers back into the bowl and walk into the kitchen. I don’t want to go back out there, but there’s nothing to do in here but shake and breathe. I feel both of them staring at my back. I glance around for something, anything, to do. I will … wash dishes. Yes.

I turn on the faucet, and water pours loudly into the metal basin. Their voices start squabbling behind me, but I can’t make out the words. I don’t really want to hear them; it’s enough that I walked away.
Don’t break the plate
. I rinse it clean and put it in the dish rack. I clean the soup pot and my fork, and then there’s nothing else.

Damn my lack of bedroom, my lack of door.

I settle on an urgent need for coffee.

When I turn off the water, I hear Mirriam say, “He’s already stealing for the fun of it—” and goes silent as she registers the quiet.

I dry my hands on my jeans and return. “I could do with a coffee. Anybody want some?”

They both shake their heads. They don’t say anything as I right my chair, get out my car keys, and put on my new jacket; I escape before the explosion.

When I’m in the car, I remember that I don’t have any money for coffee. I drive the one route I know, to the school and back again, so I won’t get lost.

I slip in the apartment building’s security door as someone is walking out, and I had left Christian’s door unlocked.

Christian is lying on the couch with his feet up, a book unfolded on his chest. No Mirriam. He watches me through eyes dragging against sleep.

“Hi,” I say. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

He closes the book and gets up. He stumbles to the bookcase and back and then, as if the couch cushions are heavy, slowly pulls them off. He must have been in a deep sleep. I’m surprised he doesn’t zombie off to bed. I yank the foldout’s handle, and the bed lets out a long, metallic moan. He gets the sheets from the table and hands me a corner. Together, we unfold it and tuck it in under the mattress. This isn’t roommate behavior. It’s brother behavior.