The Encyclopedia of Me (27 page)

“What's going on?” I said. I was trying to sound casual, but I was suddenly scared. “Did something happen?”

Dad cleared his throat. He looked really upset.
OMG
, I thought. Maybe Lex died from some mysterious complication! Maybe Seb did something crazy! It took only about ten seconds for one of them to talk, but in that ten seconds, I made about twenty-seven deals with fate that were like, “If Lex is not dead, I will drink eight glasses of water a day and feed the hungry and donate all my shoes to homeless people and sign up to give my kidney to science or whoever wants it or needs it, unless they just want it for creepy weird reasons, like they want to collect it in a jar on their shelf.”

“. . . Tink?” Mom said.

“Is it Lex?” I said. I could hardly squeak out the words. “Is he dead?”

“No! Dead? NO. He's asleep. Those painkillers will do that, plus all the trauma he's been through,” said Mom. “Poor kid.” She sighed.

So then Dad said, “You may notice that it's really quiet around here.”

“Yeah, where IS Seb?” I said. I cocked my head, like that would make me hear better. Nothing. No video games. No muttering. Nothing.

And Mom said, “Actually, Seb is going to stay in respite care on the weekends for a while.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” Then, “Wow.”

Dad smiled, or tried to. “We're just trying it,” he said. “See if it gives us a breather, OK?”

“OK,” I said.

“It was a hard decision,” said Mom. “But Charlotte says . . . And you were so adamant. And you were right about . . . Anyway, we just think it might be better for you. For all of us. For a while.”

Mom and Dad stared at me, like they needed me to clap or yell or something, so I said, “Good call.” It was all I could think of. They nodded. Mom reached across the table and held Dad's hand. I looked at their hands, lying there on the dark wood.

My ears felt funny and fuzzy, like there was a tiny trumpeter in one of them who was blowing a horn gently in a victory song, and in the other the sound of something breaking. It was so quiet that I wanted to bang the wall, just so Seb would yell at me, but he wouldn't, because he wasn't there.

I cleared my throat. “Respite care is a weird name. It sounds like something that happens when you're sick or quarantined or something. Like a TB clinic in the Alps.”

“I know,” Mom said. “It doesn't really fit, does it?”

“No,” I said. I leaned against the wall and traced the pattern of the hole that Seb had made with his foot one day, thanks to karate. It was a long time ago. The hole felt fragile, like the wall itself was made of paper. “Seb's not sick,” I said. “He's just kind of tiring sometimes.”

“Yep,” said Dad. “He's intense, that's for sure. But some of the greatest thinkers in history were like that, intense.”

“I know, Dad,” I said quickly, before he could get going on his favorite speech. “More human than the humans.”

“Right!” said Dad. “You know, Tink. On one of these weekends, maybe we can go camping. You and me. You never get to go, usually. And we have all the equipment, even though Seb's not into it anymore. I thought maybe you . . .”

“Yes!” I said. “Sure. I mean, I'd like to.”

Mom laughed. “You're your father's daughter,” she said.

“Sure am,” I said.

It was so quiet, I could hear the clock on the mantel ticking. I didn't even know it ticked. Mom and Dad were still staring at me.

“Mom?” I said. “I hate ballet. I quit. OK?”

She looked at me and blinked about three times. “OK,” she said finally.

I turned around and went into my room. I opened the blind and then opened the window wide so all the cool, dark night air flowed in like water. I took a big breath of that, but I didn't hold it. I just let it right out again.

Then I started to write.

See also
Autism; Eels; Kai; Kissing; Respite Care.

A feeling of slow sadness that sometimes overwhelms you and makes you feel out of control, like the sadness is a huge river rushing through your net, and in order to be happy again, you have to catch just one fish in your net, but the river is so wide and huge that catching the fish seems impossible.
129

I don't feel like that right now. Right now I feel just happy. Straight up, simply happy. But sometimes I feel woe. Definitely.

The opposite of woe is joy. If I had two puppies, I would call them Woe and Joy and then I would write picture books about their adorable antics and mad misadventures.
Woe and Joy
is just a really good title, you have to admit. It's also fun to say out loud. Try it.

As in “Ex,” but better. Because it's shorter. So it's more text-friendly. Which makes it cooler. Think about it! It's hip to use short words when longer ones would do. So “X” is the new “Ex.” You read it here first.

For example, “I am an X-dancer.” That means I don't have to dance anymore. Ever.

Which is so exciting, I sort of feel like dancing.

See also
Ballet; Irony.

Pictures taken of your bones using radiation.

We currently have a series of four X-rays of Lex's leg taped to the kitchen window so Mom can frequently examine them and frown, and then nod. “Healing,” she says, and reaches out her finger and traces the thick white lines that mark the places where the bones are knitting themselves back together. They look like cracks to me, but apparently they're patches. I guess it's sometimes hard to tell the difference.

See also
Aaron-Martin, Sasha Alexei (Lex); Tragedy.

A musical instrument that looks like a kids' toy that involves bonking metal keys with a stick that has a ball at the end. The xylophone is to the keyboard what the ukulele is to a real guitar. I recently found out that people play these for real, and not just when they are two years old and do not yet have the finger control to play the piano. If I were going to play any instrument, I think the xylophone would be the most fun, if only because people would be all, “What? Isn't that a kids' toy?” Then you could hammer out some Beethoven or Pearl Jam or something and knock them sideways with your brilliant musicality.

X
is for “xylophone” is one of those things that I always think of with the letter
X
, because it was up on a poster on my bedroom wall when I was a little kid.
X
is a weird letter if you think about it, because it's only pronounced like an
X
sometimes and other times it might as well be a
Z
. Why not spell it “zylophone” if that's the way you're going to pronounce it? That's what I want to know. It's like
X
isn't really itself, it's just a different-looking thing that's pretending to be something it's not.

I am the girl equivalent of the letter
X
. Or I was. I mean, for a while I felt like I was
X
and Freddie Blue wanted me to be a
Z
, and so all I wanted to do was be
Z
. Because she was a
Z
, and what
Z
s cared about was being popular above all other things. And the truth is, I don't care if I'm popular or not. I'm just a skater kid with an Afro and I type better than I write.

Don't worry, I know what you're thinking, especially if what you're thinking is “What? The human equivalent of the letter
X
? You are as nutty as a Snickers bar, kiddo.”
130
I feel the same way.

See also
Afro; Boarding, Skate; Ukulele.

The art of stretching your body around into strange shapes and trying to pretend that you aren't passing wind, when you are. Because it is impossible not to. Your body just can't twist like that without something having to give. It's physics!

It's new!

It's . . . family fun!

Except only Mom and Dad actually do it. Lex and I try. Sort of. I mean, we'll be in the room, but mostly we just look at each other and make faces. Which, in a way, maybe does more for us than yoga would. It's like rolling our eyes at yoga is now our thing. You know, a brother-sister thing. We are united in our hatred for yoga!

Seb, of course, refuses to even hear about it.

I don't blame him.

Like all the bizarre things this family does, the yoga was Charlotte Ellery's idea. It's meant to keep us calm and build up our chakras or whatever against the negative energy we might accumulate inside us if we feel conflicted about the respite care. When Charlotte Ellery starts talking about chakras, I wonder if she shouldn't have to call her university and give back her degree, because seriously, I don't know if autism counselors should spend that much time talking about something as flaky as a chakra. Especially when I don't know what a chakra really is.

A lot of movie stars do yoga to stay thin. I read about it in
Everybody
magazine, or rather, I used to read about it back when I read
Everybody
. Come to think of it, that's probably why Dad does it. I don't think it's doing much for family harmony, frankly, at least not as much as Charlotte Ellery was hoping.

See also
Ellery, Charlotte;
Everybody
Magazine.

Curdled milk.

Mom makes homemade yogurt. This is the most disgusting thing in the world. Mom says it's amazing, miraculous health food that just may SAVE YOUR LIFE. When I feel like being really extra healthy, or even just ALIVE, I'll choke some down for breakfast, just because maybe she's right. Most of the time, I do anything to avoid it.

Andrew Young is Freddie Blue Anderson's new future boyfriend. He may or may not know this yet.

Andrew Young wears big black-rimmed glasses that would look geeky on anyone else, but he makes them look hip. I've noticed more and more boys are getting these glasses and most of them look pretty dorky, so I guess boys are just as susceptible as girls when it comes to trends.
131
He is new at Cortez this year. He says he came from New York. Everyone assumes this means that he is better than they are.

Andrew Young isn't my type. At all. Because my type is Kai. And no one else.

But then this happened.

It was three days away from the Zetroc Prom. This is Cortez Junior's annual backward dance, where girls have to ask boys, and the prom happens in September instead of June.

“Gulp,” I said, pointing at the Zetroc poster in the hall.

“What?” Ruth said. “You're not nervous about asking Kai, right? That's totes ridic, Tink! You know he'll say yes! I asked Jedgar.” She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you were just really good friends or whatever.”

“We ARE,” she said. “I don't
like
him–like him, I just wanted someone to go with who wasn't gross. And he's cute-ish!”

“Sure,” I said. “I guess.” I did NOT think that Jedgar was cute, but maybe that's because I'd known him since I was two. It is hard to find someone cute when you knew them at a time when they still drank from a bottle with a nipple.

“But actually,” Ruth said, “he's already going with someone else.”

“He is?” I said. “WHO? I mean, that sucks.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I don't think I like him anymore. Not that I ever did! I totes didn't! We're just friends! AND I thought we could make a mock doc about the whole dumb thing. ­Anyway, I asked Brendan Carstairs and he said yes, but I don't want to go with him because I
like
-like Andrew Young now. He's dreamy. Don't you think he's dreamy?”

“Uh,” I said. “I guess. Why does everyone like him? I don't get it. I like his glasses. Is it the glasses?”

“That's because you love Kai,” she said. “So you don't notice anyone else.”