The Other, Better Me Read online

  “Fifty-five minutes left,” Ms. Del Rio calls out.

  I need to write something . . . anything. I pick up my pencil and press the tip against the empty page:

  I live on the street behind the library. My momma works at Gregoria’s Trattoria, which is a restaurant on Highway 17. Gregoria makes the world’s best manicotti and meatballs. There’s just the two of us at home because my daddy got deported before I was born. Even though we don’t have any photos of him up in our house, sometimes I think she still misses him. Come to think of it, Ms. Archambault doesn’t have any photos of herself from back when she was famous, so I guess photos don’t always mean so much.

  I can feel Kiana watching me. When I peer at her, she cocks one of her eyebrows.

  “Is it okay?” I ask quietly.

  Kiana taps her chin. Last year, I told her it makes her look intelligent, so she does it a lot now. “I guess,” she whispers. She scoots her chair over and leans toward me. “It’s not exactly about you, though, right?”

  “Is too!” I hiss. I reach over and tap Nick on the shoulder. “Read this.”

  He scans the page. “It’s good,” he murmurs. “But it’s not really about you.”

  Kiana makes a happy sound like someone sucking on chocolate.

  I give Nick the stink-eye. He sinks into his chair like a puppy caught peeing on the carpet.

  Kiana leans back in her chair. “There’s other stuff you could write about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, how you’re teaching a kindergartner to read. That shows you’re either super nice or super gullible. I haven’t decided.”

  “Lola even does different voices for all the shmorpels,” Nick adds. “It’s really funny. No wonder Tiffany wishes Lola could be her sister.”

  Kiana frowns. She’s met Tiffany, and clingy kindergartners aren’t her favorite type of human. “I think you just like writing about other people,” she tells me.

  “I do,” I admit. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  I don’t know how to explain. It’s easy for me to write about people I understand, and I get Tiffany. She’s only half my age, but I can already tell the kind of grown-up she’ll turn out to be. It’s how I feel about Kiana and Nick too, like we’ve been friends for so long that I can tell what they’re thinking before they say a word. The person I don’t really know is . . . me.

  But maybe that’s because I’m different from them. How can I know myself when I’ve never met one of my parents? I don’t even understand Momma these days. Today, she overslept and made me walk to the bus stop alone. Last week, she dozed off at the kitchen table and didn’t even realize it. The week before, I had to vacuum the house because she hadn’t gotten around to it in two weeks.

  I’m not complaining. I can walk to the bus stop by myself, just like I can vacuum. I even sort of like seeing the dust getting sucked out of the carpet and emptying the canister into the trash can and knowing all that dirt is gone. It’s the same reason I like washing the dishes after every meal. But most of all, I like passing the dishes to Momma to dry. Because that’s the way we’ve always done it. The way we used to do it, anyway.

  If Momma can change in the space of a month, who’s to say I won’t change too?

  “The way you talk about yourselves,” I say, pointing to their pages, “it’s all about how you fit into your families . . .”

  My voice trails off, but I can tell they get it. My situation’s just different from theirs.

  Kiana coils her hair around a finger. “So what do you want to do about it?” she asks gently.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s not like I can ask my daddy what he’s like.”

  “Why not?”

  I hesitate. “Uh. For one thing, he lives on the other side of the world.”

  “Australia’s a long way,” agrees Nick.

  “If you’re calling him, what difference does it make?” Kiana replies.

  “I don’t have his number,” I explain. “I don’t even know exactly where he lives.”

  Kiana tilts her head to one side. “So what? My dad tracks down bad guys with multiple aliases. Unless your dad is an international criminal mastermind, I bet we can find him.”

  This isn’t the first time Kiana has talked about looking for my daddy. She brings it up almost every year. Usually, I shake my head or change the subject because I can tell how excited she gets just thinking about it, and I don’t want to tell her no.

  But something feels different now. I’ve waited years for my daddy to contact me. Just a letter with a photograph would do. Even a postcard. Maybe it’s time to stop waiting. Maybe it’s time for me to track him down instead.

  After all, he’s a part of me, whether he’s here or not.

  4

  Shiny Books

  “Four hundred and eighty-three,” I say as I climb aboard the bus.

  Donald, the afternoon bus driver, gives me a fist bump. “Dead right,” he says.

  Donald likes to start every ride by counting down the number of bus journeys he has left until he can retire. I’m not a detective like Kiana, but I’ve got a hunch Donald doesn’t completely love his job.

  The bus ride home is a lot like the ride to school. I read to Tiffany, Tiffany stares at the pictures, and Nick explains the long words so he feels involved.

  After a couple minutes, we take a left on Highway 17. It’s the main road that runs all the way through North Myrtle Beach and down to Charleston. Nick told me that if you go in the other direction, you can follow it almost all the way north to Washington, DC. When I found that out, I asked Ms. Del Rio if we could do a class trip to our nation’s capital. Mallory laughed at me. Then Ms. Del Rio showed me a map of the East Coast, and I realized why Shoreline Elementary doesn’t do field trips to Washington, DC. Actually, I’m kind of glad. Sharing a bus with Mallory for fifteen minutes is already too long. Imagine what it’d be like for hours and hours!

  From the pictures I’ve seen, North Myrtle Beach looks very different from Washington, DC. Momma says our town is like a sandwich. The bottom slice is where the land hits the ocean and high-rise hotels and apartment buildings tower over the beach like they’re keeping guard. At the top of the sandwich is Highway 17, which runs parallel to the ocean a mile inland. It’s lined with restaurants and stores and mini-golf courses and anything else the tourists need. They stay in rental homes and hotels stuffed between the highway and the ocean. During the summer, they keep the beaches crowded and the restaurants full. But in October, we get our city back again.

  I think everyone loves fall in South Carolina. It’s not like it is in most of the library books I read, all crunching leaves and clear, crisp nights and roasting marshmallows over an open fire. Here, fall is warm and sunny . . . unless there’s a hurricane, in which case it’s terrifyingly windy and wet. Like when Hurricane Matthew came barreling through and we had to nail plywood boards over the windows. For me, it’s the season of weekend swims while the ocean is still as warm as the air outside and the beaches are empty. Because the tourists are mostly gone, Momma doesn’t even have to work overtime shifts at the restaurant. I like that best of all.

  When we’ve gone a couple blocks on Highway 17, I take a break from reading to Tiffany. She understands because we do this every day. As we get close to Gregoria’s Trattoria, she and Nick and I shimmy up to the windows on the right side of the bus and wave like crazy. Just like always, my momma is standing behind the giant window next to the restaurant’s main door. She waves right back at us. Frankie, Gregoria’s grown-up son, is next to her. When he’s not off work feeling sick, he pulls the craziest faces I’ve ever seen. In all the years we’ve been passing the restaurant, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him make the same face twice.

  I follow Momma with my eyes until I can’t see her anymore. It’s always a little sad, this moment: losing sight of her, knowing I won’t see her again until almost bedtime. She says it could be a lot worse. If she worked for anyone other than
Gregoria, she’d probably have to stay until the end of the dinner shift, and I wouldn’t see her until the next morning. But she’s been working for Gregoria since I was tiny, and Frankie always lets her go home as soon as things calm down.

  I hang out with Ms. Archambault after school. I’m totally old enough to be home alone, but Momma says Ms. Archambault likes having company. Seems to me, Ms. A gets all the company she needs from her friend Ned, but I don’t mention that. I know the real reason Momma wants me over there is so I get all my homework done before she gets home. Besides, I like company too.

  I knock once and open Ms. Archambault’s screen door. It doesn’t creak like ours. Way to go, Ned! I walk through to the kitchen, where she has left a PB&J on a plate on the table. It’s so perfectly put together, it looks like something out of a magazine. Which is funny, because so does Ms. Archambault. She’s old, but she has short, swoopy gray hair that always looks perfect. She never wears makeup, but Momma says she’s the prettiest woman in town, and most everyone agrees. Especially Ned.

  She glides into the sparkling-clean kitchen and gives me a quick hug. She smells of cocoa butter. “Happy Friday, Lola.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, because I’ve got a mouthful of sandwich.

  “Get on with your homework, okay? We’ll leave in an hour or so.”

  Ms. Archambault teaches yoga at the fitness center on Friday afternoons. She calls her class Silver Sirens. Momma says that translates to “beautiful old women,” but I notice there are just as many men there, and they pay way more attention to their teacher.

  After I finish my homework, I head to the spare bedroom. I spend so much time at her house, Ms. Archambault asked Momma to leave a couple sets of clothes on the dresser for me. I change into my favorite shorts and blue tank top and join Ms. A on the porch. She’s wearing yoga pants and a blue tank top.

  “We match,” she says. “You copying me, Lola?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “Smart girl.”

  She locks her front door and grabs the soft leather satchel and yoga mat at her feet. We walk to her golf cart at the side of the house and climb aboard. I could walk to the library in five minutes, but then I wouldn’t get to ride in Ms. Archambault’s golf cart. She has won awards for it. No joke. It’s a rainbow of metallic colors and spiral decals. Every inch is festooned with fairy lights, and she always switches them on when she’s driving. When I’m with Ms. A, I feel famous because everyone turns to watch us.

  “Don’t forget,” she tells me. “Class finishes at six. Five fifty, if you want to see the corpses.”

  “I’ll be right over when I’m done,” I promise.

  “Done talking to the librarian, you mean.” Ms. Archambault honks her horn and waves. She does this whenever she sees someone she knows. Because she knows quite a lot of people, the horn gets a good workout.

  “Jayda’s smart,” I say. “We talk about books.”

  “And homework.”

  “She likes to help me sometimes.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ms. A winks at me.

  Note to self: Adults clearly talk to each other a lot.

  Second note to self: I need to watch what I tell them.

  Ms. A hangs a left into the library parking lot. Then, before I can ask her not to, she turns on her speakers and blares out this tune called “Ride of the Valkyries.” It’s a super loud piece for orchestra by this dead composer named Wagner. Ms. Archambault says she plays the music to be ironic. I don’t know what that means, but the whole world turns to look when we arrive.

  Which seems to suit Ms. Archambault just fine. Probably because she used to be a celebrity. I’m not even kidding. None of the kids at school know who she is, but their parents do because she used to be in loads of TV commercials. Sometimes people from out of town recognize her and point and shout stuff like, “It’s the Q-point Queen!” or “It’s the Dashpad Dame!” Ms. Archambault says these are brands that went out of business after she appeared in their commercials. She sounds mighty proud of killing off their products.

  She pulls up in front of the library and cuts off the music. My ears are still ringing. “Six o’clock,” she says sternly. “No later.”

  “Got it,” I say, hopping out.

  The public library is a little like my school, all nice and new and shiny. There’s even a pretty pond with a fountain out back. If I’ve got a lot of homework, I sometimes sit at the tables at the back of the library so I can stare at it. Ms. Archambault calls this “meditating.” Momma calls it “procrastinating.” When they explained what the words mean, I decided I like Ms. A’s version best.

  I walk through the sliding doors and enter the kids’ room. Jayda, the children’s librarian, sits cross-legged on the floor and loads books onto a wheeled cart. When she sees me, she reaches up and gives my hand a nice, warm squeeze.

  “My favorite fifth grader!” she coos.

  Jayda’s really cool, and she knows everything, which makes my homework go quicker. Okay, yes, so Ms. Archambault was telling the truth about Jayda helping me with homework. But Ms. Del Rio is always telling us to use “every available resource.” Since Jayda is the best resource around, I’d be crazy not to use her.

  “Homework?” she asks me.

  “Not tonight,” I say.

  “Good. Then you can help me reshelve the books.”

  Geez. I walked right into that one.

  We load up the carts and wheel them to the shelves. When I first started coming to the library, I couldn’t reach the top shelf. Now I’m looking right at it. Jayda says if I get any taller, she’ll make me dust the top.

  “What are your parents like, Jayda?” I ask.

  Jayda’s used to me asking random questions and seems to like it. “Well, my mom is super organized and loves animals—she’s a nurse—and my dad is silly a lot of the time, but he really cares about stuff. He’s an English teacher.”

  “Who are you more like?”

  She motions for me to pass her a book. She straightens the corners of a few pages before she slides it into place on the shelf.

  “I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle, really,” she says. “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Everyone seems to be a mix of their parents. Could I work out what my daddy is like from the differences between Momma and me? Like how she thinks it’s important to iron her work clothes, even though she’s hidden behind a bar all evening, while I prefer my T-shirts when they’re already rumpled. Or the way she likes movies that make her cry, and I’m all about comedies. Am I more like my daddy? Would I be even less like Momma if he’d been around all these years?

  “Another book, Lola?”

  “Oh, right.” I pass her an anthology of Greek myths. It’s really heavy.

  For the next twenty minutes, she asks me all about my week as we put books back onto the shelves. I work out where they need to go, and she slides them into place. She always double-checks herself too. She says a misshelved book is almost as bad as a lost one.

  I tell Jayda about my bus book club. “Sounds like a great idea,” she says.

  “You’re a librarian. You have to say that.”

  She twists like a pretzel to reach the bottom shelf. “Still, it promotes dialogue.”

  “Huh?”

  “Makes everyone talk. Open up. Share ideas.”

  “Oh.” I hand her another book. “It doesn’t make everyone talk. Mallory Lewis just makes fun of us.”

  Jayda studies the number on the spine. “Why?”

  “Because she’s mean.”

  “Why is she mean?”

  “How would I know? Some people are just mean, right?”

  She moves some of the books around so that one of the covers faces out. It’s got a puppy on the front. I bet someone checks it out before the library closes today.

  “Come with me,” Jayda says. “It’s time for your reward. For helping me.”

  I like the sound of that, so I trail along after her. She stops beside her d
esk and points to a stack of shiny new books.

  “I think you’ll like this one,” she says, taking a book from the pile.

  The cover shows a picture of a girl in a pale blue shirt and long skirt. An ordinary girl in old-fashioned clothes. But there’s something about her face and the way she’s standing that make her look strong and determined. “She looks like she could stand up to Mallory,” I say.

  “Oh, she could,” says Jayda, nodding. “She’s like your alter ego.”

  “My what?”

  “Your long-lost twin.”

  I almost laugh. “I’m not that brave.”

  “Bravery comes in many forms. Taking the time to learn about someone is a form of bravery.”

  I pick up the book. I love the shiny cover and the new-book smell. But something’s missing. “Where’s the bar code? I can’t check it out without a bar code.”

  “It’s not a library book. It doesn’t even come out until next January. It’s what publishers call an ‘advance copy.’”

  “You mean, I’ll be one of the first people to read it?”

  “Sure will.”

  I turn it over in my hands. I’ve never read a book before everyone else has. Wouldn’t that feel like being in on a secret? I give Jayda a big hug. Then I see the clock on the wall behind her.

  It’s 5:48. I’m going to miss the corpses!

  “I’ve got to go,” I say. “Bye!”

  I turn on my heel and run. One of the librarians at the front desk coughs loudly as I scamper by, but I keep on going.

  Maybe the girl on the cover is rubbing off on me already.

  5

  Counting Corpses

  The fitness center is a block away from the library. It only takes me a couple minutes to sprint there. Once I’m inside, I speed walk instead, because Ms. Archambault says it’s dangerous to run along the hallways.

  For April Fools’ Day last year, everyone in my class shared a “strange but true” fact. The rest of the class had to guess if it was true or not. Mallory told us that speed walking is an Olympic event. Because Mallory said it, we knew it had to be a lie. Even when she promised it was true, no one believed her. She got real angry then. When I got home, I looked it up on YouTube. She was right. It is an Olympic sport, although looking at those men and women strutting along the streets like they were desperate for a porta-potty was still pretty darn funny.