The Bubble Wrap Boy (14 page)

T
he wok hit the ground a second after I said Dora's name.

It spat angrily in my direction, annoyed at the size of the secret I'd dug up. Noodles scattered across the floor. I expected them to spell out the word “panic,” the emotion etched across Dad's face. His expression told me everything: that he knew all about her, that it was all true. I felt the last disbelieving cells in my body collapse and held on to the door, tight.

He didn't move at first. His mouth twitched as if it wanted to form words but had no idea what they were.

Then he did something he'd never done before.

In the middle of his dinner rush, he turned off each of the burners in turn, the woks hissing their disappointment, this time at him.

I loved watching Dad cook. It was the one time he came to life, the one time he looked truly—or even vaguely—happy.

He was octopus-like, spinning a dozen things at once: knives, woks, pans, graters. He was never fazed when orders came in thick and fast. He just stepped up to the plate. That was when he was most alive.

But now, with the mention of one name, he fell apart.

The hands that could dice an onion in fifteen seconds fiddled nervously with his apron strings, failing to untie them.

“Charlie,” he mumbled. “Where did you hear that name?”

Maybe he hoped I was asking about another Dora. One who didn't mean a fourteen-year-old lie.

“On the phone this afternoon. Some woman called. She thought I was Mom. She said Dora was sick, which was strange, because I had no idea who she was talking about! Turns out Dora is Mom's sister. Imagine that, huh?”

Dad said something in Chinese that I presumed was a swearword. I hoped it wasn't an explanation—he'd have to do a lot better than that. I suddenly wished I still had Sinus with me, that I hadn't insisted he jump off the rhino as we passed his house. He was so pumped by the mystery of it all that he hadn't looked at a single wall all the way home. Instead, he came up with elaborate, implausible, and highly inappropriate reasons for Mom hiding Dora away: her sister had been possessed by aliens or lost her mind in a top-secret pharmaceutical experiment. I chose not to listen. Whatever the reason, it made me feel sick.

Back in the kitchen, Dad walked slowly toward me, trying to put his hand on my shoulder as he passed. Irritably, I shook him off. I didn't want a hug or calming down; I just wanted answers. Today. Now.

But Dad was in no rush. He sheepishly dispatched the other delivery guy without anything to deliver, flipped the sign on the door to Closed, took the takeout phone off the hook, and pointed me toward the lounge.

“Let's sit,” he said, suddenly looking as old as Dora had.

I followed him, flopping down on our saggy sofa as he perched nervously beside me.

“I've been expecting and dreading this conversation for a long time.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes. I could feel the heat from the woks pouring off him. “Tried to work out in my head what I would finally say when you found out.”

“And?”

“I don't know what to say. I never worked it out. What do you already know?”

I was fuming now, more confused and angry and hurt than I thought it possible to be.

“Oh, you know, just the usual stuff that happens on a Wednesday. That I have a long-lost aunt, that she's seriously ill, that my parents have lied to me ALL MY LIFE!”

He nodded and looked me right in the eye. “Yep, all of that's true.”

There was a calmness to his voice that I couldn't cope with. It was the opposite of everything I was feeling.

“Well, were you ever going to tell me, or was all this planned? Was it easier for me to find out from a complete stranger than for you to tell me the truth? I mean, what was going on in Mom's head?”

“She's your mom,” he said for the millionth time in my life. It was one time too many, the straw that broke the camel's back, even though I had no clue what a camel was doing here anyway. They weren't on Dad's menu.

Tears escaped from my eyes, which only made me angrier.

I wanted to be livid, not weak.

“But that's not good enough!” I yelled. “Do you really think that's enough? That it explains how she—you—could possibly hide something as important as this from me?”

“Of course it's not enough.” He looked close to crying himself, which was hugely worrying. A sentence was a huge achievement for Dad, but tears? Really? “I don't know where to start. How to explain to you.”

I jumped to my feet, heading for the door. “Then I'll go back to the hospital and ask her myself.”

“The hospital? You've seen Dora?”

“Seen her? We chatted, we're best friends. We're going bowling next week to get to know each other better. I even hid under her bed while Mom talked to her.”

Dad leapt to his feet and guided me back to the sofa.

“Wait, Charlie. Before you go rushing off and upsetting your mom, just wait….”

“Upsetting Mom!” I hollered. “Upsetting Mom? What about me? What about how I feel? I think I might be a teeny bit peeved myself. Can't we think about that for a second?”

“Of course we can. I'm just trying to keep the peace here. Trying to work out what to do for the best.”

“Well, the best thing would've been telling me about this years ago. The best thing would've been honesty. Instead of hiding an aunt behind flower-arranging lessons and plastering diplomas, because the last time I checked, they weren't the same thing.”

Dad looked shell-shocked, like I'd pounded him on the head with a wok. He was way out of his depth.

“I don't know what to say, son,” he said, and I believed him, I really did.

“Just tell me the truth, Dad,” I begged. “That's all I want to know. The truth. All of it.”

So that's what he gave me.

“D
ora was thirteen when the accident happened,” Dad began. “Two years younger than your mom.”

I thought of my tiny aunt, perched in her chair, of how much older she looked than Mom or Dad. Twenty years at least.

“They were very close. Always had been. Your grandma and granddad were…strange people. Never showed either of their kids much love, so Dora and your mom looked after each other. Know what I mean?”

I didn't, but it wasn't important. I just wanted him to go on.

“They did everything together, and as a result didn't have a lot of friends. They didn't need them when they had each other.”

My legs were bouncing nervously on the sofa, shaking us both.

“Dad, this is all very nice, but what happened?”

He coughed nervously, clearly not wanting to go on, but he had no choice.

“It was an accident. A stupid accident that could've happened to anyone.”

I made a circular motion with my hand:
Come on, come on
.

“They only had one bike between them. Your grandparents were too cheap to buy them one each, and as a result Mom used to carry Dora everywhere on her handlebars.”

I thought of Sinus crammed into the rhino's basket and felt kind of sick. Maybe I didn't want to hear this after all.

“Your mom was riding them both to school one morning, and they were late, as usual—no one had bothered to wake them up. Mom was going really fast, but because Dora was sitting in front of her, she didn't see a pothole in the road. The bike hit the hole and both girls hit the pavement. Dora first, Mom second, on top of her.”

Every single inch of me cringed. The scene unfolded in my head, but I didn't want it there, especially as I knew what was coming next.

“Mom was okay, just grazes to her legs and arms, but Dora had taken the full impact, and she didn't have a helmet on. No one wore them back then.”

My head was full of the steel rhino, how cripplingly nervous Mom had been when she gave it to me, the demands she'd made about helmets and lights and stuff. It all started to make sense.

“Dora didn't wake up for a long time, Charlie. Months. The doctors weren't sure she ever would. They could see that her brain was still active but didn't know how badly it had been damaged.”

The room was completely still. My legs had stopped bouncing. I could smell soy sauce wafting from Dad's clothes.

“What happened to Mom after the crash?”

“We hadn't met then,” he said, and sighed, “so I only know what she's told me, but she blamed herself completely—for going too fast, for not making Dora walk, for not seeing the pothole. She took all the responsibility on her shoulders and carried it everywhere.”

“But Grandma and Granddad…They must have told her it wasn't her fault?”

Dad shook his head. “They were strange people. Hard. Were more interested in Dora after the crash than before it, and blamed Mom. They had so many chances to make her feel better, but they never did. As a result, your mom blamed herself more and more.”

“So that's it? Dora's been in Oakview ever since? That's, like, twenty years.”

“Almost. There was one other hospital before your grandparents died, but after they died Mom decided to move away. She was paranoid everyone in town knew about the crash, and was convinced that everyone blamed her. It upset her so much that she moved here, miles away from all the prying eyes, and found Oakview for Dora, knowing it would use up every penny her parents left her. We met a few months after.”

“But she told you about her right away, right?”

“Nope. Not until the night I asked her to marry me.”

“So she lied to you too?”

Dad looked mildly cross. “No, she didn't lie to me. She just didn't know how to tell me. What you have to understand is how guilty she feels. Her parents had told her so often that it was all her fault that she believed it. She thought if she told me I'd run the other way.”

“But you didn't.”

“No, of course I didn't. I accepted her for who she is.”

“So why didn't she tell me too?”

“Charlie, I wish I had twenty dollars for every time I've asked her to. We wouldn't be living here, that's for sure. Your mom is complicated, and proud and scared, so scared of what everyone thinks of her. The only way she could deal with it was to bury the truth from everyone, including you.”

“But she must have known that I'd find out in the end.”

“I knew that. But she refused to believe it. I gave her my word that I'd keep her secret. It was wrong of me, but I did.”

I felt weird, like someone had stuffed me full of truths that I didn't want to hear, truths that didn't fit inside me. It was the most Dad had said to me in my whole life, and I wished it could've been about something else, but at least I knew Mom was wrong about one thing: he
could
speak as well as he cooked.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, still angry but sad as well, about everything.

“I wish I knew,” he sighed.

“I'll speak to Mom when she gets back.”

“No, don't,” he blurted out. “Not tonight. Let it settle.”

“You don't want me to lie about it too, Dad, do you? Because I don't think—”

“No more lying. I just need time, and so does she. Dora's been so sick lately that it's eating her up. Let Dora settle; then I'll tackle your mom, I promise.”

“You really will?”

He crossed his heart with his rough, burnt fingers and smiled.

“Absolutely. And in the meantime, you need to think what'll make you feel happier. Anything you want, son, I'll do it for you.”

There wasn't anything I wanted, except for all this to be a dream, and I knew Dad couldn't fix that. So instead, I gave him a hug, feeling his body shake slightly against mine, making me squeeze him that much harder.

As we finally parted, I thanked him for telling me everything—and meant it.

Not just for telling me the truth, but also for volunteering to play a part in the crazy plan that followed.