The Theory of Everything (3 page)

I was craving some serious headphones-wearing, Bauhaus-listening time, but Mom attacked me as soon as I walked through the door.

“You're home!” she said, shoving a Chinese takeout menu in my face. “Ready to celebrate your first day with a little General Tso's chicken?”

When I started kindergarten, Dad decided that we should celebrate the first day of school like a rite of passage with Chinese food and old movies. The idea was that whether the day was good or bad, at least you'd have egg drop soup and Audrey Hepburn to look forward to.

“Pass your plate,” Dad said on the eve of my first day of second grade. He poured sauce over my moo shu and root beer into a plastic goblet and placed egg rolls on our plates.

“One, two, three!” he said, and we bit into our egg rolls simultaneously. It was part of the ritual, like a prayer that contained cabbage. So was the speech that followed.

“I'd like to make a toast,” Dad said as we raised our goblets. “To second grade. Be nice to Sophie. She sees the world differently, and that's a good thing.”

He winked at me and then he stared like he was sizing me up, seeing how different I was from the year before.

“And to Sophie, I say, be free,” he said. “Be curious but thoughtful, adventurous but kind, led by your imagination but guided by your heart.”

“Hear, hear!” Mom said, bringing her glass to meet ours in the middle, plastic thudding, affirming the idea that we were in it together. Mom hopped up and threw her arms around us, squeezing, her tears dropping onto the egg rolls.

“Mom!” I said, moving the plate away.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes and smiling. “You know how I get with your father's speeches.”

Dad grabbed her and kissed her cheek. Those were the days before the fights. Before Dad disappeared all the time. Before craziness came in and didn't leave until he did. After that, Mom kept up the first day ritual, anyway. At first I complained, but after a while, I got it. Just as Dad predicted, it was nice to know that whatever evils the first day of school contained, at least I knew I'd get plum sauce and movie stars out of it.

“Longest. Day. In. Existence,” I said, tossing my backpack on the floor. I would have thrown it somewhere else, like a chair, but we didn't have one. Mom called it the minimal look, but I called it “Sir Moves-A-Lot,” named after the famous '90s rapper. It was also because we only owned the essentials—rust-colored sectional couch, long teak coffee table, kitchen table, dressers and beds. Oh, and Dad's red beanbag chair, which I had in my room. Dad used to sit in it and verbally plot how he was going to unleash his greatness into the world.

“First days are always long,” Mom said. “My day was long, too. Do you want to talk about it?”

“That's pretty much the last thing I want to do,” I said. “Would you care if I took a quick nap?”

“Not at all,” she said, sneaking in a hug. I was too tired to resist. “I'll wake you when the food's here.”

Balzac and I went up to my room, and he joined me in a group flop on the bed. Emotional roller coaster of a day? Meet my dear friend: the nap.

|||||||||||

One hour and three magical words later, I was awake.

“Egg roll time!” Mom's voice floated up the stairs.

My eyes flew open and I rolled over on Balzac, who screeched and jumped off the bed.

“Sorry, buddy,” I said, swinging my legs around. A red jelly bean fell out of my pocket and landed on the blanket. It was a souvenir.

Souvenirs were physical objects that I brought back from my episodes. I didn't steal them, they just appeared when an episode was over, like a whistle around my neck, which wasn't there anymore. Or jelly beans in my pocket. I called them souvenirs because they reminded me of where I'd been. That's what souvenirs were for, but in my case, the places I visited didn't exist for other people. It's not like I went to the Grand Canyon and brought back a magnet or something. I played poker with pandas on a football field. I brought back jelly beans and a whistle.

Most of the time, souvenirs were small, like a pocket watch or a feather, but sometimes they were bigger. That was why I started sewing extra-large pockets on my clothes, to give the souvenirs a place to go. And since I loved fashion—and squares were boring—I ventured out a bit. I sewed cloud-shaped pockets and tree-shaped ones. Squirrel pockets and guitar pockets and, one time, part of the Pacific Ocean. Pretty soon every pair of pants, every skirt was well equipped with a hiding place—and a story.

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“Sophie Sophia!” Mom called. “These egg rolls aren't going to eat themselves.”

I went downstairs and saw our own moveable feast.

“There's moo shu pork, General Tso's chicken, veggie lo mein and two orders of veggie egg rolls. With extra plum sauce,” Mom said.

Her chopsticks were already sticking out of the moo shu, and she held a pancake in one hand.

“I even convinced them to bring us jasmine tea.”

She pointed to a paper cup sitting in the middle of takeout boxes and sauce packets, curls of steam rising like a salute. I'd survived my first day of school. Now I just had to survive this town.

How to Survive a New Town
by Sophie Sophia

1. If you move to a big city, throw this list away. You won't need it.
   
2. Order Chinese food, specifically moo shu pork. Evaluate.
   
3. Find a diner that serves coffee. Chains are a last resort.
   
4. Locate and frequent the following: bookstore, music store, thrift shop, cheap movie theater, Goodwill or Salvation Army.
   
5. If the above don't exist, rely on the library.
   
6. If a library doesn't exist, move to another town with haste and without apology.
   

Mom sat on the couch, but I sat on the floor, Indian style, so I could be eye level with the food. I opened the veggie lo mein and dug in. It was salty and sweet, on the edge of perfection. For a few minutes, hunger won out over conversation.

“Don't put those there,” Mom said, breaking the silence. She nodded at the small pile of celery I'd started on the table next to me. “It's disgusting. Just push them to the side of your dish.”

“No way,” I said. “If I ate one, the strings would stick in my throat and I'd choke and die.”

“You're so dramatic,” she said, smiling. “Maybe we should watch
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
?”

“I'm in more of a Tim Burton mood,” I said.

“Of course you are.”

Mom picked up an egg roll with her chopsticks, dipped it in sauce and brought it to her lips. She used to be a dancer, which explained the graceful thing, but it was annoying. If I'd tried that, the egg roll would have dropped on the floor halfway to my mouth.

“How about an Asian film?” she said.

“Too predictable.” I nodded at the cartons littering the table.

“Then you pick,” she said. “I don't care what we watch, I'm just glad you survived your first day. Sure you don't want to tell me about it?”

“Amazingly sure,” I said, erasing the day by shoveling noodles into my mouth. “How about
Roman Holiday
?”

“Perfect!” Mom said. “Audrey goes with everything. Could you pass the pork?”

|||||||||||

I woke up with my cheek stuck to my arm, courtesy of the lo mein sauce. At some point, I'd eaten so much I laid my head on my arms, which were on the coffee table, and fell asleep. I grabbed a napkin, cleaned myself up and rubbed my eyes. The movie was still playing, but it was near the end, the press conference scene where Audrey goes back to being a princess and Gregory Peck asks questions like nothing happened. I was thinking about how hot he was for an old guy when Walt plopped down on the floor beside me.

“Isn't this a great movie?” he said. “You can't get better than Hepburn. I could look at her face all day.”

“Could you keep it down?” I pointed to Mom, sleeping with a carton of moo shu in her lap.

Walt pretended to zip his lip with a big black and white paw.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“You missed me,” he said. “Besides, wherever egg rolls appear, so do I.”

Walt grabbed the last one, dunked it in the remains of the plum sauce and tossed it into his mouth.

“I haven't had time to miss you,” I said.

“Okay, then I missed
you,
” he said. “Where's the love?”

“More like where are your friends?”

“So many questions,” he said.

“And so few pandas,” I said. “Why is it just you? And why did you come to me, instead of the other way around?”

I usually popped into episodes already in progress, like when you hate the movie you paid for and sneak into another one. It was already playing, only now it was playing with you in the back row, confused about the plot but happy about the popcorn. The movie didn't come to me; I went to it. But now a panda from the football field was in my house, eating all the egg rolls. Nothing about that could be a good sign.

“Allow me to formally introduce myself,” he said, twirling both chopsticks in one hand. “I'm Walt, your shaman panda.”

I didn't know everything, but I learned about shamans in seventh-grade history. Shamans were messengers between the visible and invisible spirit worlds. They also had the ability to heal, which, judging from Walt's chopstick drumming on the coffee table, wasn't his forte.

“If you're some kind of shaman, prove it,” I said. “Heal me.”

“You want to be more specific?”

“Make my episodes go away,” I said. “You're charming and all, but I'd like to quit seeing things now.”

Walt stopped drumming, and Mom started snoring, softly, like someone running her hands up and down a set of mini blinds.

“That's not how it works,” Walt said, speaking quietly.

“So enlighten me, enlightened one,” I said. “Are you a healer or what?”

“I am, but sometimes the healing is internal. I'm here to guide you, not make things happen or prevent things from happening,” he said. “I'm more like a guardian angel without wings. Unless they're chicken wings, of course.”

He picked up a carton of fried rice and emptied it into his mouth.

“I didn't ask for a guardian panda or shaman or whatever you are,” I said, standing up and pacing back and forth in front of the television. “I didn't ask to see things or to move away from New York, but those things happened anyway. So here's some guidance for you. Leave. I don't want you here.”

But as soon as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. Maybe having a giant, invisible shaman panda as my first friend here wasn't the best choice, but maybe it was. Walt was in on the joke. I'd never have to lie to him, to tell him I had a headache when really I was just reeling from returning from an episode. I didn't have to explain how scary it was to try to live on shifting ground, never knowing if I was safe in my own head, much less a math class. And if he wanted to guide me, as he said, or watch over me like some black and white furry angel, I was in no position to pass
that
up.

“I'm a jerk,” I said. “Also known as a brat, prima donna or pariah. I'm sorry. Peace offering?”

I handed Walt the small white bag from the middle of the table. It was the same bag that came with Chinese takeout in every city and contained the usual suspects: soy sauce, duck sauce that no one ever ate and two fortune cookies. Maybe that's why Dad made Chinese food a part of our ritual. If you wanted to commemorate something, you couldn't do much better than food that came with fate at the end.

Walt shook a fortune cookie into his paw and presented it to me.

“I know you didn't ask for me,” he said. “But look at it this way: there is nothing you can tell me that will freak me out. No one else can see me. And the best part? You never have to come to me. I'll come to you.”

“Plus, you have a killer smile and impeccable wit,” I said, giggling and taking the cookie out of his hand. I broke it in two and stuck a piece in my mouth. Stale mixed with vanilla.

“Depart not from the path that fate has assigned,” I read from the slip of paper. “You have
got
to be kidding.”

“What? I didn't write it,” Walt said. “And I never used the word
path,
thank you very much.”

“But you're going to,” I said. “If I let you be my shaman panda, Zen words are going to start popping out of your mouth like a slot machine.”

“Zen is in!” Walt said. He smashed his cookie on the table, sending pieces—and Balzac—flying around the room. I grabbed his fortune off the table and there, in tiny black letters, was his destiny. Even though it sounded a lot more like mine.

“A friend is a gift you give yourself,” I said. “That's corny.”

“But true,” he said, sticking his paw in the plum sauce and then in his mouth. “Admit it. You know you like talking to me.”