Bounce (10 page)

I can't get the words out of my head.

We're pregnant.

We.

WE are pregnant.

“I need to get to Portland, Maine,” I tell the lady in the ticket booth. She has on a Red Sox visor with a mushroom hairdo sprouting out the top.

“Yah can't get they-ah from hee-ah,” she says, and at first I think she's making fun of me, doing the old Maine hillbilly routine, but then I realize it's how she really talks.

“This is Ahlington. You need South Station.” She takes out a little map and points with a pen. “Change hee-ah, at Pahk Street. It's wicked easy.”

“Thanks,” I tell her.

“Shoo-ah.”

It's my first time riding the T, and I am alone. Well, not technically. I'm packed in with hundreds of other people who all seem to be drunk and wearing Red Sox jerseys, but I don't know any of them.

“I hate that pitchah,” says the guy who's pressed up against my back.

And his buddy, whose elbow is jammed into my solar plexus, says, “He's a pissah.”

I lean my cheek against a pole that's probably swarming with salmonella and wonder why nobody at the March School talks that way. Or the Gartoses. They don't have the accent. Why? Because they're loaded?

“Yankees suck!” someone on the other end of the train yells.

The whole train starts chanting, “
Yan-kees suck, Yan-kees suck, Yan-kees suck, Yan-kees suck.
”

And even though I don't want to, I think about Birdie. Because he grew up in New York, and he still has the Yankees cap he wore when he was a kid. Because he took me and Mackey to a baseball game last summer. It was only the Portland Seadogs, minor league, but still. The three of us ate peanuts and Cracker Jack, and ice cream out of tiny baseball cap bowls. Then, during the seventh-inning stretch, Birdie stood on the bleachers and sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the top of his lungs.

I picture him in his sawdusty overalls, bits of popcorn stuck in his beard, embarrassing the crap out of his children in public, and a wave of sadness hits me.

I want to go back.

“Pahk Street! Pahk Street Station next!”

I want to go back to that summer, to that baseball game, to that exact moment in time.

The subway slows. As the doors open, I feel myself start to panic. Because I can't decide which way to go.

Stella? It's me, Evyn.

I close my eyes and wait. All around me, bodies are moving.

Stell?

Nothing.

I have two choices, right? Go back to Al and Betty Boop and their love child, or go home to Maine. Home, where I no longer have a house. Where my best friend may or may not be my best friend anymore. Where—

“Pahk Street! Pahk Street Station! Change here for the red line!”

People are shoving past me, but I stay where I am, waiting.

Stella?

“Hey,” someone says.

There's a hot blast of beer breath in my ear.

“Move it or lose it, sistah.”

I wait another second, but Stella doesn't say anything. She doesn't even show her face. It's like she never existed.

So I get off the train, stumbling through a sea of elbows and Red Sox jerseys, and I feel so scared and alone I want to cry.

But I don't.

I just keep moving.

In South Station, I find a pay phone. I don't have a credit card so I have to call collect.

“Guess where I am,” I say.

And Jules says, “Where.”

“Guess.”

“I don't know. The mall?”

“The train station!” I sound more enthusiastic than I feel. “I'm coming to visit!”

“What? When?”

“Now! I mean, I don't have a ticket yet, but there's a train that leaves at eight-forty. It gets in at eleven-something. Do you think your mom can pick me up? Or your dad?”

“Um.”

This is her response.
Um.
Not
Oh my God, Ev, I'm so psyched to see you!, but um.

“What?” I say. “You don't want me to come?”

“It's not that. It's just…it's Friday night.”

“So?”

“So, I have, you know,
plans.
”

“What kind of plans?”

“Just this high-school party.”

Just this high-school party,
she says. Like she's been going to high-school parties all her life.

“So?” I say. “Your curfew's ten-thirty. Your mom can pick you up from the party and then she can—”

“Ev.”

“What?”

“The thing is…I'm sleeping over at Jessie Kapler's, so, you know…”

So, you know. You're not invited.

“Oh,” I say.

“I mean, I want you to come and everything, it's just…Hey, did you call Raquel? Or Ann? Maybe you could stay with one of them.”

Right. Because now that Jules has Jessie Kapler, who needs Raquel and Ann?

I stare at the wad of sweaty bills in my hand. I think about what I could do at a train station with all this money.

“Or, like, you could come another weekend…Ev?”

Who needs a ticket to Maine when you can get a
Seventeen,
gum, and forty scoops of Ja-makin' Me Crazy Fudge?

“Great,” she says. “Now you're mad? Hey, it's not my fault I have plans tonight. You could have given me a little notice.”

By this stage there is no point in explaining why I wanted to come in the first place—no point in telling her my whole life is falling apart. The conversation has already deteriorated.

“You're right.” I laugh into the phone. It's the kind of laugh that comes out when nothing is the least bit funny. “Next time I'll give you
notice
. Next time I'll take out an ad in the
Portland Herald.
No, wait. I'll hire a blimp to fly over your house!”

I slam down the receiver before she can say anything. That's the great thing about pay phones, you can just hang up and walk out.

I make my way over to JB Scoops. Fifty-two flavors. Maybe I'll try them all. Maybe I'll eat until I'm sick, until I never want to eat ice cream again in my life. Until I
explode.

It's not like anyone is here to stop me.

Ohhhhh, my stomach. I can't believe I just did that.

In the restroom mirror, my face looks warped and pasty. I splash cold water over it again and again. I rinse my mouth and spit. Rinse and spit, but my teeth still feel like they're wearing individual caramel-fudge sweaters.

I hate ice cream. I really do.

After that, I wander around. I find the escalator and ride it up and down a few times. When we were little, Birdie would take me and Mackey to the Maine Mall, not to shop, but to ride the escalator. We thought it was the coolest thing. He would hold our hands and we'd ride together, hundreds of times probably. “Again, Birdie!” we would say, and he wouldn't get impatient like most parents. He'd just laugh and say okay.

Tonight, I ride by myself. It's ten o'clock on a Friday in Boston, and I'm a teenager out on the town. I can eat what I want, buy what I want, go where I want—no parents anywhere. Woohoo!

At first there's a little thrill in it, but then it's gone. All I'm left with is the sick feeling in my stomach.

I walk over to a bench and sit down. My feet are tired from walking. My eyes are tired, too. I think about curling up right here and going to sleep. I could stay here all night. I could
live
here. Hey, those kids in
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
did it; they lived in the Met. Why not a train station? People are doing it right now. See? There's a homeless guy over there, using newspapers for a blanket.

Oh my God, there's a homeless guy over there, using newspapers for a blanket!

I am alone in a train station at ten-thirty at night, in a strange city. All I have left in my pocket is thirty-seven cents. And I am just moments away from getting strangled and thrown in a Dumpster.

I. Am freaking. Out.

I move to a different bench, closer to the security guard, but that doesn't make me feel any better. So I close my eyes.

Stella? It's me, Evyn.

Stell…?

Are you there?

Nothing.

Please?

After all this time, the moment I need her most, she's gone. She's really gone. And I know this sounds crazy, but I miss her. I miss my dead mom that I never got the chance to know. I miss our talks, even if they weren't real. I miss her smile. I miss the way she could find good in any situation. I miss—

“Evyn?”

My eyes fly open.

Plaid shirt.

Stubble chin.

White, white teeth. Oh.

My. God.

Next to me there's an empty spot, and Linus sits down. He holds out a roll of mints, and I shake my head.

“We didn't know which train station,” he says, peeling off a mint and popping it into his mouth. “So we had to split up.”

I am too stunned to respond. I am too busy being glad I'm not wearing horse pajamas.

“Your friend called. Jules, is it? She was worried about you. So your dad took Back Bay, Thalia took 128th Street, and I came here.”

You came here.

I can't think about Jules or my dad or anything. All I can think about is Linus's hand, which has found its way to my knee.

“Let me call home real quick.”

He takes a phone out of his pocket and starts punching in numbers.

“Ma,” he says, “I found her. South Station. Yeah, I think so.” He turns to me. “You okay?”

I nod.
I am now.

“She's fine…Uh-huh. You want me to bring her back?”

And I don't know where I find the courage, but I grab his arm. When he looks at me, I shake my head like crazy.

“On second thought, Ma…”

And suddenly, miraculously, he starts wrangling with his mother about where I should spend the night. He uses terms like “decompression time” and “adolescent anxiety overload,” and he is so incredible that he actually wins the argument.

I can't believe I am walking into a college dorm right now. No, not I. We.
We
are walking. Linus and me. Together.

“The room's a sty,” he says. “Just to warn you.”

“That's okay,” I say. Because it is. Everything about Linus is okay. Better than okay. Everything about him is just right.

At this very moment, he is taking a keycard out of his pocket and sliding it into the door. I am about to walk into his dorm room, and I feel nervous and excited and, more than anything, ready for what will come next.

The door opens, and we walk through together. Me and Linus.

“Babe?”

Babe?

“Babe? Is that you?”

Me, Linus, and the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. No, not girl—definitely not girl—
woman.
Woman, jumping into his arms.

“Babe!”

I am speechless.

She has her legs wrapped around his waist, and he is rubbing her back, which is mostly skin because she's wearing some sort of skimpy number that barely covers anything. And when he puts her down, even though I don't want to, there is only one place to look and that's her chest.

“Evyn, this is my good friend Pamela.”

Good friend. Right.

And after I have recovered from the size of her boobs, I look into her eyes and see that they are a color not found in nature. Not blue, not green, but something in between. Teal, maybe. With the longest lashes ever.

“Pamela, this is my sister Evyn.”

“Hi, Evyn,” she says. And of course there are the lips, and just when I am wondering if I could possibly be any more devastated, she says, “You're adorable!”

And she pats my head.

From my sleeping bag on the floor, I can hear them whispering.

Linus says, “She's having a tough time. I feel bad.”

And Pamela says, “Yeah, I remember thirteen. It was awful. I was a band geek.”

“C'mere, my little band geek,” he says.

They kiss in the neon glow of the Budweiser sign on the wall. Both of their faces turning blue, then red, then blue again.

When I wake up, Pamela is gone.

The room smells like cigarettes. There's an empty wine bottle by the window, a glass with lipstick smudges all over it.

Linus is sitting on the couch, typing away on a laptop.

I watch him for a while. The curls. The shoulders. Everything.

When he looks up, he sees me and grins.

Oh, the dream teeth.

“Morning, kiddo.”

And there you have it.
Kiddo.
Open heart, insert dagger.

“Your dad called,” he says. “I told him I'd have you home by nine. I'll ride the T back with you.”

When I don't respond he says, “Hey. Sorry about your dog. That sucks. Then the baby and everything. Double whammy.”

I nod. I'm not sure I trust my voice right now.

“I'm sorry this is all happening to you.”

His eyes are so beautiful I have to look away.

“If you ever want to talk about it…”

I stare at the floor.

“I mean it. Clio and Cassi call me all the time. You can, too.”

“Really?”

He nods. “That's what family's for.” And when he gets off the couch to hug me, it feels so warm and safe I want to stay here forever.

“Thanks,” I say.

“You're welcome, kiddo,” he says.

Kiddo.
Again. Only this time, the dagger through my heart feels more like a butter knife.

Walking to the T, he asks if I care what sex the baby is.

“Not really,” I say.

“You're not hoping for a girl?”

“Are you kidding? I have enough sisters already.”

Then I realize what I said. I just called them my sisters. I am completely losing my mind.

Birdie won't let go. The minute I walked through the door, he grabbed me and started hugging, and now I can't move.

“You're cutting off my circulation,” I say.

But he just squeezes harder. “Don't do that again.”

“What?”

“Run off like that. You scared me.”

“I wasn't even gone a whole day,” I say.

“You
scared
me.”

His voice is serious, and his voice is never serious, so I know he means it.

I tell him I won't do it again.

“Okay,” he says.

He finally lets go, and we just stand there, neither of us talking. The silence makes my skin itch. I can't stand it.

“Hey. My sister the runaway.”

Here is Mackey, holding a sandwich. Peanut butter, I can smell it. There are little orange gobs in the corners of his mouth.

“I didn't run away,” I say. “I was just at the train station.
Thinking
about running away.”

“Mmf.”

Birdie says, “The important thing is she's home now.”

My brother, overwhelmed with concern for his little sister, grunts and takes another bite.

Well, here we are, the three of us, standing in the front hall. Me, Mackey, and Birdie. The Linneys.

“So,” I say, “
Al.
Where's your family?”

He says they're out.

“All of them?”

“Yup. It's just us chickens.”

“Wow.
Al.
I can't believe they left you alone with us.”

He tells me to give the Al thing a rest; he's still Birdie. “No matter what anyone calls me, I'm still your dad. I haven't changed.”

I try not to roll my eyes, but my mouth has a mind of its own. “You can't be serious.”

“What?” Birdie says.

“Everything
about
you has changed. You're a different person. You have contacts now. You wear
Weejuns.
”

Birdie looks confused. “Weejuns?”

“Your shoes,” I say. “They're name-brand.”

“Oh.” He shrugs. “I don't know. Eleni bought them for me. They're remarkably comfortable. Here.” He slips off a loafer. “Try one.”

I ignore this and go on to talk about his lack of a beard, and his newfound love of spanakopita. “And since when do you like
golf
? Yesterday you were wearing a P.G.A. shirt.”

To Mackey I say, “Right?”

He shrugs. “I didn't notice.”

Birdie just looks bewildered. “A what shirt?”

Then I remember the four-course meal he cooked a few nights ago, and I get mad all over again. I say, “Imagine how you would feel, if I started doing things I'd never done before, with somebody else's dad.”

I realize how stupid this sounds, but I keep going.

“And I made you go live at his house. And sleep in a room that smells like strawberry musk, with roommates who fight all the time. And eat hummus! And go to a school full of snotty girls in headbands!”

Mackey starts laughing, then choking on his sandwich.

I am torn between telling him to shut up and telling him to watch out, someone in this house knows the Heimlich.

“Ev,” Birdie says. He leans in and kisses the top of my head. “Ev. Ev.”

I try to duck away from him, but he won't let me. “C'mere,” he says.

He scruffs his chin against my scalp, and I am quiet for a minute.

Then I say, “You never even asked us.”

Birdie keeps on scruffing. “Hmm?”

“You just told us you were getting married. You didn't even ask first. You just went ahead and did it.”

Mackey lets out a big peanut-butter burp.

“My feelings exactly,” I say.

Birdie pulls back and looks at me. “We talked about it.” Then, he looks at Mackey. “We
talked
about it. Remember the lobster?”

Mackey nods. “Good stuff.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That's when you
told
us you were getting married. You didn't
ask.
You told.”

Birdie looks confused, which is confusing in itself. “I thought you liked Eleni. On Visiting Day you said she was great.”

I did?

“That's not the point,” I say.

Birdie shakes his head. “I said if you weren't okay with it, you should…” He hesitates. “Neither of you said anything. I thought…”

“You thought what?” I say. “You thought we were happy about it?”

“I thought I was doing something good. For all of us.”

I stare at him.

“I finally met someone…I finally met someone I knew would be a good mother. And a good partner.”

I look at Mackey, but he's looking at the floor, kicking at something with his toe.

“It took me…” Birdie stops to clear his throat. “It took me a long time to find Eleni.”

What, was she lost in the woods, living in a hut made from birch bark, surviving on nothing but mushrooms and berries?
The question is on my tongue, but I make myself swallow it. Now is not the time for humor.

Birdie takes a breath. “It took me a long time to fall in love again. I guess I just wanted our life together to start right away.”

“Oh,” I say. “Uh-huh.”

“Because life is too short.”

He keeps on going, but I am still recovering from the triple punch to my stomach.
Fall-uh! In-uh! Love-uh!

“You never know when something is going to happen that will alter its course irreparably.”

I look at Mackey, but he is still toeing the floor.

“It's not that I wasn't thinking about how you two would be affected,” Birdie continues. “I was.”

He looks from me to Mackey and back again. “I'm sorry,” he says. His voice is low. “I'm sorry I didn't consult you first. You kids are the most important people in my life.”

It kills me to ask it, but I have to. “More important than the
baby
?”

“Yes,” Birdie says. He doesn't even hesitate. “More important than the baby.”

Mackey looks up, finally. His face says he's as surprised as me.

“Why?” I ask, for both of us.

“Because,” Birdie says, “I loved you first.”

Upstairs, alone in my room, I can't stop thinking about what Birdie said. I lie on my storage-drawer bed, staring up at the lofts he built for the sweater twins. It's quiet in here for the first time in history, and the quiet is peaceful. A person could actually relax for once. But it's weird, too.

Stella?

Nothing.

I pick up a book and try to read, but that doesn't work, so I borrow some red nail polish and start painting my toes, which I have never done before, and it is a very messy and mildly
distracting task, and then it's over. Only one thing left to do now, and that is analyze some more.

Because I loved you first.

There are so many ways he could have meant that. Maybe he was just trying to make me and Mackey feel better about the baby, but I don't think so. I think he was saying something more. More about our mom and how much he loved her. More about where Eleni fits into the whole picture. It's all so mixed up and complicated, and part of me does feel better, but another part feels worse. And I have no idea how to sort through it all.

In loving memory of Clam Moon-Muffin Linney.

This is what it says, on the front of the folded piece of paper someone just shoved under my door.

Then, on the inside:

Dear friends, Please join us for an evening of solemn reflection and heartfelt tributes to Clam M. Linney, the dog we loved so well. Also, refreshments.

“What the hell is this?” I say to Birdie, waving the paper in his face. It took me a while to find him. He was smart to hide. But not smart enough to shut the pantry door.

“Are you responsible for this?” I say. “How did they know about Moon-Muffin?”

(I was four when we got Clam. Birdie let Mackey pick the first name, and I got to pick the middle name. I was
four.
)

Birdie turns to me, his hand in a box of crackers. “Hey, Ev.” Crumbs spray everywhere. “You got the invitation? Good.”

“Not good,” I say. “They're not having a funeral for
our
dog. Anyway, you don't send invitations to funerals.”

He puts the box on the shelf, then turns to me.

This wasn't his idea, he says. It was Phoebe's. Apparently, she organized the whole thing, it starts at six, and all I need to do is show up.

“Phoebe didn't even
know
Clam,” I say. “None of them did. I mean, come on. Eleni made him sleep in the yard, which is probably why he died anyway. From neglect.”

“Thalia's allergic to pet dander,” he says. “And I doubt neglect had anything to do with it. Clam was old. In dog years, he was sixty-three.”

When I don't respond, Birdie tells me to be gracious. Everyone has been working hard to give Clam a nice send-off.

“That's what they're out doing?” I say. “Planning a funeral for a dog they hardly knew?”

“Yup.”

He reaches into his pocket. It's toothpick time.

“Are you kidding me?” I say.

“Nope.”

“
God.
”

I stare at my father, while he finishes removing every last molecule of food from his teeth.

“Anyway,” he says, turning to me, “what makes you think they're doing this for Clam?”

The funeral is held in the backyard. You can barely recognize the place. There are origami birds perched on every surface, and where there aren't birds there are strands of Christmas lights, and where there aren't Christmas lights there are miniature dog bones and Beggin' Strips hanging from fishing line.

It is a scene so ridiculous that my first instinct is to crack up. But then Phoebe appears, and she's wearing a black floppy hat with a veil, and her orange Gartos-Linney Utopian Experiment T-shirt, and that urge is squashed flat. There is nothing funny about her outfit.

Phoebe hands me yet another folded piece of paper. On the front is a brown crayon dog—or what I assume was meant to be a dog but looks more like a bear with balloon hands. She leads me to a semicircle of lawn chairs in the middle of the yard and gestures to one with a big yellow stain on it—maybe lemonade, maybe pee.

I sit.

“I'm sorry for your loss.”

She's whispering, even though we're the only ones here.

Now she's patting my arm. “Clam is in a better place. They never run out of bones there, you know.”

I don't want to smile, I really don't. But I can't help it. I hold up the program and say, “Did you draw this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nice.”

Phoebe hands me a pack of mini tissues and takes off.

I wait.

After a while, music starts playing. A voice yells, “Is that loud enough?”

I look up and there's Cleanser Boy, leaning out the third-floor window, holding a speaker. I yell back, “Yeah!”

“Sorry in advance for the music selection! Phoebe's orders!”

I close my eyes and listen—and it's surprisingly uplifting, actually, to have a bunch of orphans tell me how hard-knock their life is.

Finally, everyone starts filing out of the house. They are lined up smallest to tallest—Von Trapp style—which might be cute, if they were wearing the matching window-drape outfits, but no. It's the matching GLUE shirts.

Once again, I am dressed wrong, but that doesn't explain the feeling in my stomach. The mad-sad-could-barf-any-second-now combo. I know my face is turning red, but it's not the crush-blush. It has nothing to do with Linus, even though here he is, in line with the rest of them, smiling at me.

I smile back, barely.

The last one out of the house is Mackey because he's tallest, and on top of the GLUE shirt he's wearing…what the hell is he wearing? Some sort of a fluorescent patchwork-quilt cape, tied around his neck in a big bow, with fringe hanging off it and—

Ah.

The Dreamcoat.

Of course.

Because we wouldn't want this dog funeral to be missing anything obvious.

Birdie takes the seat next to me. “Hi, Ev,” he whispers.

I whisper, “Are you kidding me with this?”

Now Phoebe is standing in the middle of the semicircle, her hand raised for silence.

Everyone gets quiet, but Annie keeps right on singing. Her voice is clear, her outlook sunny. She thinks she's gonna like it here.

No, Annie! Run! Back to the orphanage! You're not gonna like it here, trust me! They're freak shows!

Then someone cuts the music, and Phoebe peers out at us from under her veil. “Dearly beloved,” she begins. The way six-year-old funeral directors always do.

She says things about Clam that could fit any dog. What nice soft ears he had, and how he always gave her hand a big lick when she came outside. Then she tells us that her whole life she'd been asking, “Can we
please
get a dog?” And the answer was always “No, we can get a goldfish.” But the goldfish were constantly jumping out of the bowl or eating each other.

“Finally,” Phoebe says, “the Linneys came, and my dog wish finally, finally, finally came true! Finally!” She pauses. “Even though he died, too.” Another pause. “May he rest in peace.”

Then she bows and everyone claps, which doesn't seem like normal funeral behavior to me. But then, there is nothing normal about these people.

“Bravo!” Birdie yells out. “Bravissimo!”

Next up, Thalia.

In her flowy skirt, with her flowy hair, bare feet, and still the single eyebrow, she reads a poem that sounds like it came straight from English class. According to my program it is “The Road Less Traveled” by Robert Frost. The whole time she's reading about roads and woods and traveling, I am thinking,
What does this have to do with anything?
Anyone who knew Clam can tell you he was not much for the woods. He was an ocean dog.