What You Left Behind (16 page)

Monday morning, Mom gets up early to go with me to drop Hope at the day care downtown. It's in a municipal-type building, and you have to go through security to get in. We have to take Hope out of her car seat so it can go through the X-ray machine. Mom carries her as she walks through the metal detector.

Mom hasn't said much about my decision to go with this place. It seemed like she'd been pulling for the nanny option, but ever since I made my choice, she's been all business about the downtown day care, like it was the plan all along. She's probably just glad I made a decision at all.

We walk down a few different cinder block corridors, following the handwritten signs for the child care room. Harried parents in badly fitting suits and various uniforms hurry past us.

The day care is a large room with mismatched tiles and area rugs and crayon drawings on the walls. It seems clean enough, but the furniture is old and worn. Freestanding shelving units and cubby bins divide the room into sections. Signs hang from the ceiling over each area: 6 Weeks–1 Year. 1–3. 3–5.

And it's really, really loud. There are kids everywhere. Each section is more crowded than I imagined. Kids crying, screaming for their mommies, running around, squealing, fighting over blocks and books and markers. I have an instant headache.

Mom and I head over to the front desk. The woman sitting there is holding a cup of coffee with both hands and guzzling it as if it's Gatorade at halftime.

“Excuse me,” Mom says, but the woman holds up a finger for us to wait while she takes one last gulp.

“Mondays,” she says, shaking her head.

Mom makes a kind of commiserating
I
totally
hear
ya
chuckle that I have never heard her make before. She doesn't work in an office. And she loves her job. She doesn't care about Mondays. I raise an eyebrow at her, and she shrugs.

“We're here to drop off Hope Brooks,” Mom says to the woman. “Today's her first day.”

The woman punches some buttons on her computer's keyboard with her way-too-long nails. “Right. Brooks. Full days, seven a.m. through three p.m., Monday through Friday, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Mom says, and the woman pushes some forms across the counter at her.

“Make sure all the contact information is correct, fill out the rest. Don't leave anything blank. And sign.”

Mom slides the papers to me and hands me a pen.

I look at her. “Can't you do it?”

“You're the parent, Ryden. I'm not her legal guardian.”

I let out a little groan and complete the forms as quickly as possible. Name, address, emergency contact, allergy information, feeding information, insurance, blah, blah, blah. I hand them back.

“We send our bills every two weeks. Payment is due within five days.” She waves a hand, gesturing that we should bring Hope over to join the chaos.

The 6 Weeks–1 Year section is actually the calmest. The kids aren't old enough to be fighting or playing with each other much, so there's just a lot of crying and sitting around and stuff. But there're a lot of kids here—at least twenty—and there're only two teachers or whatever you call them.

I feel Mom tense beside me, but she keeps a smile on her face and introduces us to one of the teachers. In a matter of seconds, she's handing over Hope and we're waving good-bye, and then we're out in the hallway.

Mom and I look at each other as the door swings closed and the noise from the day care is somewhat dimmed.

What just happened?

And why does it feel weird?

Mom's eyes get watery, and she swallows a couple of times to keep her emotions in check.

“You okay?” I ask.

She sniffles and shrugs. “That was harder than I thought it would be.”

Sort of, yeah, for me too. But that's stupid. I've left Hope with my mom and Alan a zillion times. This isn't any different, except now I have to pay for it. I get to go back to school and go back to normal, and Hope gets to be around other babies and do, I don't know,
baby
stuff. So what's the fucking problem?

“
You
okay?” she asks, and I realize I'm staring off into nowhere.

I'm fine. It's all fine. But I can't seem to find the words, so I nod.

Mom puts her arm around my shoulder as we walk back to the car.

• • •

School.

Friends. Lunch. Homeroom. Report cards.

It's all back.

The first clue that the normal world is still spinning—and that it now actually expects me to get back on board—is how everyone comes up to me like I'm their long-lost brother or something.

“Ryden, omigod,
hi
!”

“What's up, Brooks?”

“State champions fifth year in a row, man! Eastbay is going
down
!”

“How was your summer?! I went to France—it was
amaaaazing
.”

I guess, unlike that day at the lake, because I don't have Hope with me, they've forgotten about her. Or maybe they're avoiding the subject on purpose. I smile and laugh and hug and fist-bump everyone, like life's totally great.

No one mentions Meg. I guess it makes sense. She stopped school in November of last year, so everyone's used to seeing me without her. I wish
I
were used to seeing me without her.

My locker is the second sign that nothing has changed in the Bizarro World that is Downey High School. I don't even know which one is mine until we're given our assignments in homeroom, but clearly someone got the memo before I did, because my locker is decorated. It's covered in Puma blue and white, with a paper soccer ball with a giant
#1
painted on it and lots and lots of streamers and silver glitter. I look down the hall—there are a few other lockers that look like mine, all belonging to my fellow varsity soccer team members. Clearly whoever went to the trouble to find out my locker assignment and get here early to decorate it hasn't heard that I'm benched for Friday's game.

I don't have any books yet, and though it's almost fall, it's not really cold enough outside for a coat, so I don't have anything to put in the locker. So I just close it and go to AP English.

And there she is. Meg Reynolds, dark hair all wild and flowing around her shoulders and down her back, pale face resting on her pale arm sprawled across the desk, vigorously scribbling in a notebook. She looks up and gives me the brightest, most beautiful smile in the whole world. I stop dead in my tracks. The memory is so real, so vivid, I have to fight to get air. And then I blink.

She's gone. All that's left is an empty desk with the class syllabus sitting on it. There are plenty of other seats, but I sit there.

Shoshanna walks into class just as the bell rings, so I'm saved from having to talk to her, but she keeps throwing me grins throughout the period.

As soon as the class ends, I hear, “Ryden!” Shoshanna throws her arms around me and keeps the hug going way too long. I try to pull back twice, but she just holds on tighter.

Finally she lets me go, and we exit the classroom together to find Dave waiting for Sho in the hall. I give him a fist bump. “What's up, guys?”

Shoshanna's still beaming at me. “What did you think of your locker? Did you love it?”

“Um, yeah. That was you?”

“Yup.” She claps her hands excitedly. “You're my player!”

Oh God, no. There's this tradition at Downey where the varsity cheerleaders are each assigned a soccer player during the fall and a basketball player during the spring. All season, the cheerleader wears his number, cheers his name during the roll-call cheers, brings him cookies and little gifts and stuff on game days, and on and on and on. Last year, this girl named Madelyne Binder was my cheerleader. She moved away a few weeks into the season—I think her mom lost her job or something—and I was cheerleaderless. But I had Meg, so I didn't care. Now it seems I have Shoshanna. At least in this one way. I know she means well, but I really don't have the energy for this.

“Shouldn't Dave be your player, since you guys are together now?” I ask.

“That's what I said!” Dave replies. “But Sho insisted that you're the team's star, and she won't accept anyone less than the best as her player.” He laughs as he says this, like,
Isn't she so cute?
so I guess he doesn't care that his girlfriend basically told him he's a shitty player and not good enough for her. Well, whatever.

“The locker was great,” I say. “Thanks.”

“There's more where that came from, mister!” Shoshanna giggles, and she and Dave continue on to their next class.

A few periods later, I'm making my way to the cafeteria when I'm hit with another hallucination. Meg's smiling face flickers in and out of view through the gaps in the passing stream of students. Unlike the last hallucination, this one doesn't bring me to a halt. Instead, I pick up speed and push past arms and shoulders and backpacks, desperate to get close to her. I blink once, twice, but she doesn't disappear this time.

“Meg,” I whisper through my clogged throat.

Meg's eleventh-grade class photo, blown up to the size of a thirty-two-inch flat screen and framed in light-colored wood, hangs on the wall. She's not a hallucination. But she's not real either.

Under the photo is a plaque that reads,
Megan
Elizabeth
Reynolds. In our hearts forever.

I want to claw the stupid plaque with its stupid message down with my bare hands. I would too, if it weren't screwed into the cinder block.
In
our
hearts
forever.
On this wall forever.

They think they knew her. They think they'll miss her. They think they're mourning her.

They know nothing.

I see Alan at lunch. He's sitting with a few people I don't recognize. When Meg was in school, I sat with her and Alan most days. But it was just us then. Whoever these other friends of Alan's are, they must be new.

I carry my tray over. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You see the picture?”

He nods. “I thought it was nice.”

“Nice. Yeah,” I say.

“You wanna sit?” He slides down, making room for me.

I look across the cafeteria toward where Dave and Shoshanna and Matt Boyd and a bunch of the other guys from the team are sitting. Dave's shotgunning a Dr Pepper, and everyone's cheering him on. He breaks away from the empty can, face red, and gives Shoshanna a sloppy, wet Dr Pepper kiss.

I look back at Alan and his quiet group of nerds. With the exception of Alan, everyone here is staring at me like I've got a dick growing out the side of my head.

I don't know what the hell to do. I don't feel like sitting with a bunch of people I don't know, who I surely don't have anything in common with, but I also don't feel like I belong at that other table either. They'd take me back no question, but that's not the problem. It would require a massive effort on my part to try to blend in. I'm so tired. I don't care about arm wrestling tournaments or betting Dave a dollar that he wouldn't eat his fries if they were smothered in a mayo, Tabasco, pickle juice, and A.1. concoction.

But I'm not gonna sit by myself either.

“I think I'll go sit with them,” I tell Alan, nodding over to the soccer table. At least I
know
them. “See you later?”

Alan nods. “You bringing Hope by after school?”

“I have to pick her up at day care. But then I'll bring her to your house, yeah.”

“I can pick her up if you want,” Alan says, shrugging.

“Dude. Really?”

“Sure.”

“That would be fucking amazing. Then I wouldn't be late to practice. I'll text you the address of the place.”

“Cool.”

Oh
shit, wait.
“I'll need to switch her car seat to your car somehow. Maybe I can do that now—give me your keys.”

“No need. I have a car seat in my car already.”

I blink. “You do?”

“My mom got it when Hope first started coming over. So we can go to the park and stuff.”

I shake my head, amazed. “I owe you one, Alan.”

“Ryden, you owe me about a billion.”

• • •

I'm in the locker room changing for practice when my phone rings. It's Alan.

“They won't let me take Hope home,” he says when I pick up. “Something about me not being on an approved list.”

Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
“Put the lady on, I'll talk to her.”

The woman from the front desk comes on the line. “This is Sonya.”

“Yeah, hi, this is Ryden Brooks. Hope's father?” A few of the guys in the locker room pause what they're doing and look my way. I duck behind my open locker door and lower my voice.

“Yes, Mr. Brooks.”

“Listen, you can send Hope home with Alan Kang. He's her babysitter. It's fine.”

“Mr. Brooks, we can't do that. You need to come in and add Mr. Kang to the approved pickup list and sign the form.”

“I will, tomorrow. But can you just send her home with him today? Just this once? I'm telling you it's okay.”

“I understand, but I still can't do that. We need to have it in writing, for legal reasons.”

I kick the row of lockers, and the clang reverberates throughout the room. “I was in this morning filling out all your paperwork and there was nothing about an approved pickup list.”

“You have to ask for that separately.”

I can't deal with this woman. “Can my mother pick her up?”

I hear the clack of Sonya's typing, and a second later, she comes back on the line. “Is your mother Deanna Brooks?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, she's fine. She's listed as an emergency contact.”