Still a Work in Progress (17 page)

“Noah? Do you want to talk about it?”

Curly comes out from under the couch. I reach for her, and she touches my finger with her cold wet nose.

Ms. Cliff waits for me to answer.

Curly rubs her body against my leg. She’s wearing a green sweater with a red heart on the back.

I pat my thighs and she jumps up, circles on her pointy feet a few times, then settles down. Her warmth presses through my jeans. I pet her over her sweater and she starts to purr.

Someone knocks on the door and opens it before waiting for Ms. Cliff to say “Come in.”

The Tank peeks his head inside. “Oops. Sorry to interrupt.”

Curly looks up at the sound of his voice and makes her happy chirping noise.

“Community Meeting is about to start,” he says. He nods at me. “Hey, Noah. It’s good to see you.”

“Hey,” I say quietly. I wonder if he means it. Is it
really
good to see me? Why? My being here doesn’t mean I’m OK or fine or something. It just means I don’t want to be home. It means I couldn’t stand to be there for another second. It means there was nowhere else to go.

“Go ahead and start without us,” Ms. Cliff says.

He shuts the door.

“Noah? I just want you to know that I’m here if you decide you want to talk about anything. About Emma, or about anything you want.”

I pet Curly harder. She stops purring.

“We all care about Emma,” Ms. Cliff says. “And I know you must be worried sick. But your mom said she’s getting good care. That she’s making progress.”

“I guess so.” I haven’t seen or talked to her since we said good-bye at the hospital, just before they took her to New Horizons, also known as “Puker Prison.” That’s what Emma whispered in my ear when we hugged good-bye. “Come visit me at Puker Prison,” she said. “Promise?”

She looked at us like we were abandoning her. Like we were sending her to some kind of jail. When we were little and we finished eating everything on our plates, my dad would say, “You belong to the Clean Plate Club!” New Horizons is like a jail for all the people who can’t make it into the club.

The whole drive home from the hospital, my mom cried quietly and my dad tapped his fingers on the steering wheel uncomfortably and I sat in the backseat, staring out the window, feeling like the worst brother in the world.

“She’s in a safe place,” Ms. Cliff says.

“Can I go to Community Meeting now?” I ask.

She does that deep-breath thing again, then stands up.

“Sure,” she says. “Let’s go.”

Curly jumps down and mews, then slips under the couch again.

We start to walk down the hall, but I stop. “I’m just going to get something from my locker,” I say.

“All right. I’ll see you there.”

I wait for her to disappear down the hall, then close my locker and press my forehead against the cold metal. I don’t want to go to Community Meeting. I don’t want to walk in late and have everyone look at me and feel sorry for me or wonder how my family could have been so stupid not to see how sick Emma was. I don’t want them to wonder how we could have let things get so bad. I’m sure that’s what they’re all thinking. I would.

There’s a faint clicking sound as Curly walks down the hall. She stops to sniff my leg, then keeps going.

I decide to go to the art room and wait for the stupid meeting to be over and hope Ms. Cliff doesn’t come find me and ask why I never showed up.

The art room smells like turpentine and paper and eraser. I find some of the projects I left to be fired over vacation. There’s the bowl I made, and some things I meant to be Christmas presents but didn’t finish in time. The shiny blue glaze for the bowl came out just right. Inside, there’s a note from Ms. Cliff that says, “Beautiful, Noah! A+.” I don’t feel like giving it to my parents anymore, so I leave it on Ms. Cliff’s table and write “Thank you” on the note, hoping that’s enough to let her know I want her to have it.

I find the bag of clay and take a chunk out, then pour some water in a paper cup. Curly peeks her head around the corner.

“I thought you were going to Community Meeting,” I say.

She slinks around the room, rubbing against the legs of the tables.

I start to shape my clay, wetting it with water from my cup. I don’t really think about what I’m making; I just start to shape it, letting my hands move over the clay and push and form it. There’s a head, I think. And a body. But I try not to label the shapes as they form. I keep working, not paying attention to Curly as she hops up on the table and sniffs the clay.

I find my clay shaper and begin to make lines. A face. Hair. Arms. Legs.

And wings.

As I carve and scrape away, the figure gets smaller and smaller.

A loud noise outside startles me. Meeting is over. A herd of people pass by the partly open door. I quickly cover my figure with a damp cloth and rush to class to avoid being late and having to walk in on everyone. But I spend the whole day wanting to sneak out of class and go back to the art room. Back to my figure. Back to shaping and sculpting and not having to think about anything else. Back to just being alone.

“Did you hear Curly’s sick?” Sam asks when I get to school the next morning.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. The Tank had to take her to the vet last night.”

“Maybe she got rabies from a mouse after all,” Ryan says.

“That’s not funny,” I say.

“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

The Tank walks toward us. “Noah? Can I talk to you?”

I follow the Tank to his classroom. Why do all the teachers want to talk to me? I’m not the one in the hospital.

“Were you working in the art room yesterday?” he asks once we’re alone.

“Yes.”

“Did you put your project away properly?”

I try to remember. “I — I think so. I put cloth over my project so it wouldn’t dry out.”

“Did you put it on the storage rack where Curly couldn’t reach it?”

My heart sinks. I shake my head.

“Do you remember the rule about that?”

My throat feels like it has a giant piece of food stuck in it.

“We can’t leave anything out that Curly might get into. Anything she might think is food.”

Something shifts in my gut.

“Did —? Is she —?”

“She had to stay at the vet’s overnight for observation. I’m not sure how she’ll be yet.” He walks over to his desk and opens a drawer. He pulls out something wrapped in the same cloth I used in the art room yesterday. Carefully, he starts to unwrap it, then holds the clay object out to me. It’s my figure. But the face has been smoothed out and the details erased where Curly must have licked it.

The figure is small but powerful. It has long, strong arms and legs, and a round, full belly. And bird wings. The Tank looks more concerned about the shape of what I was making than he is about anything else.

“Did you make this?” he asks.

I blink several times, but my eyes still water.

I nod.

“It’s beautiful, you know,” he says. “Is it supposed to be anyone in particular?” But he knows the answer. I’m sure he does. And I feel ashamed that he saw this, because I don’t know if he’ll understand what I was trying to do. I don’t even know if
I
understand. But I was thinking about Emma, and this is the shape that emerged. The shape I wish she could be in real life. A bird that I
could
change.

Tears slip down both sides of my face, gathering along my jaw. I quickly wipe them away.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

He sets the sculpture gently on his desk and wraps it up again.

“Noah, did you talk to Ms. Cliff about what happened over vacation? To Emma?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“Do you want to talk to me instead?”

I wipe my face again. I think of Curly in some cage at the vet’s. I think of Emma in some cage near Boston. Why couldn’t I be more careful? Why couldn’t I pay more attention?

“It’s my fault,” I say. “Everything’s my fault.”

“We all make mistakes,” the Tank says. “Curly’s tough. I’m sure she’ll be all right in a day or so.”

My nose starts to run.

“Why don’t you sit down,” he says.

“I ruin everything,” I say, pacing instead of sitting. “I should have confronted Emma better. I should have forced her to admit what was going on. Or stopped her somehow. Told my parents. I mean, not that they didn’t already know. Why are we all so useless? Why couldn’t we help her?”

The door opens, and the Tank waves his hand at whoever started to come inside to go away.

He walks over to me and puts his hands on my shoulders so we’re face-to-face. “You know, Noah, you’re only responsible for one person in this world.”

I shake my head. “No. I could have helped her.”

“I’m serious. We can work to be kind. We can work to be generous. We can be fair and responsible. But in the end, we can’t prevent people — or animals — from making their own choices, and their own mistakes, like Curly, if they’re determined.”

“But I
could
have — I
should
have.”

He squeezes my shoulders tight with his huge, strong hands. “You can’t change what happened. No one could. Only Emma. She has a disease, Noah. A really complicated one. What happened isn’t your fault. But it’s what you do now that counts.”

“But there’s nothing I
can
do. That’s the problem!”

“You can let Emma know that you love her. You can let her know how much she matters to you.” He lets go of me and gets a tissue from his desk.

“Here,” he says, handing it to me. “Do you want to go hang out in Ms. Cliff’s office for a while?”

I wipe my face off with the tissue. “Not really.”

“Yeah.” He grins. “I don’t blame you.”

He takes my soggy tissue and throws it away.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from the vet. OK? Curly — she’ll be OK. And I bet Emma will be, too.”

I nod, wanting to believe him.

He hands me the clay figure, but I push it back.

“I don’t want it,” I say.

“But Noah, it’s really good. I mean, you’re really talented. You know that, right?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does. Why would you say that?”

“There are just — more important things. Art’s a waste of time.”

He looks disappointed to hear me say that. “Someday you’ll know that’s not true.”

He puts the figure back in a drawer in his desk.

“You ready to start class?”

“I guess.”

I go over to my seat and he opens the door. Students file in quietly and seem to avoid looking at me. I don’t know if it’s because they feel sorry for me because of Emma or hate me because I might have killed Curly.

The Tank starts class, but I don’t really hear what he says. I just watch him pace around in front of the room, and I tune out. I think again about Emma and Curly in their unfamiliar cages, wondering what they’re thinking right now. If they’re scared. If they’re in pain. But mostly if they’ll be OK, like the Tank said.

After class, I try to become part of the herd, moving from one subject to another. None of the teachers call on me, and no one really talks to me. At lunch, I go outside and sit on the steps, even though it’s freezing out and I don’t have a lunch, because I was used to that being Emma’s job and forgot I had to make my own now. Ryan finds me within a few minutes. He hands me my coat. Sam follows and hands me a bag of trail mix. They sit on either side of me and eat their lunches. I eat the trail mix one piece at a time. Peanut. Raisin. M&M. Sunflower seed. The cold air swirls around us, stinging our faces. My fingers start to feel numb, but I keep eating. Peanut. Raisin. M&M. Sunflower seed.

“Molly and I got to second base during vacation,” Sam says when I’m about halfway through the bag.

I stop eating.

“Wow, Sam. I’m sure Noah was dying to hear that,” Ryan says.

“Well, I just thought he should know.”

“Why?”

“Because we tell each other everything! Or we’re supposed to.”

Ryan crumples up his paper lunch bag into a ball.

“What part of second base?” I ask, just to keep Ryan from losing his temper.

“Kissing,” Sam says.

“Kissing is first base,” Ryan says. “And we already know you’ve kissed. We’ve seen you!”

“With tongues!” Sam says. “And I thought holding hands was first base.”

“No, holding hands is like . . . stepping up to the plate. It doesn’t really count as a base.”

“Oh. Well, then, I got to first base,” Sam says.

“And how was it?” Ryan asks sarcastically.

“Pretty amazing, actually. Even when she stuck her tongue in my mouth.”

Ryan squeezes his lunch bag into a smaller ball. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true!”

“No, I believe it happened. I just can’t believe it happened to you first!”

“Why not?” Sam asks, all offended.

“You and Molly are, like, the two biggest Goody Two-Shoes in school, and now she’s slipping you the tongue!”

“Don’t say it like that! You make it sound so cheap.”

“Cheap?” Ryan laughs.

“Leave him alone,” I say. “I’m happy for you, Sam.”

“Thank you, Noah. At least you still know how to be a good friend.”