The Other, Better Me Page 4

  7

  Vesuvius

  I wake up before Momma again the next day. It’s Saturday, so I make brunch. That’s what you call breakfast when you’re not in a hurry and plan to get a lot of dishes dirty.

  My specialty is crepes. The secret is to let the batter sit for an hour before you pour it onto the skillet. Waiting an hour is really hard when you know you could make them right now and they’d probably taste okay. But Ms. Archambault has been teaching me to “embrace a Zen-like state of calm resignation,” which I think means learning to ignore my rumbling tummy. She says it’ll help me on my journey to “ultimate self-control,” which is another thing she talks about a lot whenever Ned’s around.

  While I wait for Momma to get up, I pack my bag for tonight’s sleepover at Kiana’s house. We do it every few weeks, so I’m kind of an expert at packing. After that, I curl up on Momma’s porch rocker and open the book Jayda gave me. Gently, so I won’t crease the spine.

  It has that never-been-read smell. Tiny fibers seem to come off the pages, reminding me that paper is made from a living thing. And it really is a living thing, this book. It’s about a girl named Hortense. She lives in England during World War Two. Her enemies call her “haughty,” which I guess is an English word for “arrogant,” but she’s not—she just says what’s on her mind. And she can silence anyone with a single, perfectly chosen line. Sometimes even just one word! Before I reach the end of the first chapter, I know that she’s going to come out on top, because she won’t accept anything less.

  An hour later, I’ve read six chapters and I don’t want to stop. Hortense thinks there’s more to her father’s work at the War Office than he’s letting on. I think so too. But the crepes are calling, and my tummy’s starting to answer.

  Momma’s still asleep, so I give myself the first batch. I add a little maple syrup and gobble up three of them in two minutes. Then I take a tray into her bedroom. She gets misty-eyed whenever I bring her breakfast in bed, which makes it totally worth it. She also says she loves my cooking, although I notice she always drinks the mug of coffee first.

  When we’ve both finished stuffing ourselves, Momma puts on her robe and joins me in the kitchen. I fill the sink with warm, sudsy water and scrub the dishes, just like I always do. It’s probably why I have wrinkly hands compared to Kiana’s. Momma takes the dishes from me and dries them with one of the two bright orange tea towels. Just like she usually does.

  “You’ll need to change clothes before I take you to Kiana’s,” she says, eyeing my tank top.

  “But Kiana’s mom gave it to me.”

  “A year ago, yes. It’s indecent, Lola.”

  Indecent. I’ve been hearing that word a lot since fourth grade ended. Far as I can tell, it means my belly button’s showing. I could point out that Momma’s belly button was showing too in some of those photos from back when she met my daddy. But there’s no use in arguing, not when I could be getting along to Kiana’s house.

  Hortense would be disappointed in me for giving in so easily.

  On the car ride to Kiana’s house, Momma says, “I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  Questions rattle around my head, but I shut them out. “It’s okay,” I tell her.

  “No, it’s not. I know you don’t need me the way you used to, but I should’ve been around for you.”

  I don’t know what to say. I do still need her. I hate that she thinks I don’t. “What about you, Momma? Are you . . . okay?”

  She peers at me from the corner of her eye. “Well, I clearly need to get more sleep. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and I can’t go back to sleep. Well, not until just before you need to get up, anyway.”

  “So you’re just tired?”

  Momma hesitates. “It’d probably help if I got back in shape too.” She chuckles. “I blame Gregoria’s food. It’s just too good.”

  “You could go to the fitness center. Most of the machines have a built-in TV!”

  She gives a low whistle. “No wonder we can’t afford to go!”

  We cross Highway 17, pass the sprawling post office building, and curl around the pretty new houses in different pastel colors that remind me of summertime. Every house has a little yard of scrubby grass because that’s about the only kind that’ll grow in the sandy soil. But Kiana’s house is different. It’s set back from the road and surrounded by towering pine trees. It can get dark inside on cloudy days, but there’s one room upstairs that always seems to be filled with light: her mom’s studio.

  Mrs. Richards is an oceanographic artist. That’s what it says on her business card. After every storm, she and Kiana and I go beachcombing. We pick up shards of cool-looking shells like sand dollars and olives and moon eyes and conches. Even driftwood and stones, if they’re interesting. Sometimes we find pieces of glass worn as smooth as pebbles. Mrs. Richards calls us her “flotsam fellows.” Every time she sells one of her pieces in a gallery, she takes us out for ice cream.

  Kiana has the front door open before I’m even out of the car. She grabs my hand and drags me into the house. Then she doubles back so we can wave goodbye to my momma.

  Kiana’s dad joins us on the porch. “Ready to eat?” he asks me.

  I’ve only just finished breakfast, but I say, “Sure thing, Detective Richards.”

  He smiles like I’ve just made his day. “Perfect!”

  Kiana holds me back as he heads inside. “Okay, for real now,” she whispers. “Do not mention guns.”

  “Guns?”

  “Shhhh!” She stabs a finger to her lips. “He’s been doing all these gun safety presentations at schools, and now it’s all he can talk about. If I have to hear one more time that kids and guns don’t mix . . .”

  “Planning to join us today?” her dad shouts from inside.

  We head on in and wash our hands in the large stone sink in the kitchen. Kiana’s mom joins us, and we take our seats. I really do feel like it’s my seat too. There are only three of them, so the last side of the square table is empty when I’m not around.

  We all hold hands, and Kiana’s mom says grace. Her dad says “Amen” almost before she’s finished and helps himself to a hunk of bread.

  “So how’s school, Lola?” he asks, slathering butter on the bread.

  “Okay, thanks, Detective Richards.”

  “You know, you can just call me Mr. Richards. It’s not like doctors want to be called Dr. So-and-So when they’re not at work, right?”

  “Actually, Daddy,” says Kiana, “I’m pretty sure they do like to be called Doctor, no matter where they are.”

  He thinks about this. “Well, yeah, I think you might be right.” He turns back to me. “Guess you should call me Detective after all, then.”

  “Uh, right . . . Detective,” I say.

  He rips the bread with his teeth. Kiana’s mom rolls her eyes.

  “Tell me something, Lola,” he says with his mouth full. “You ever seen a Glock twenty-six handgun?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Demetrius,” groans Mrs. Richards.

  “It’s a serious question,” he says, flicking his bread.

  I feel like I’m being attacked with crumbs. “No, sir. I can’t say I have seen a . . . whatever it was you just said.”

  “Good.” He swallows hard and leans toward me. “Want to see one?”

  “No, sir. Can’t say that I do.”

  “Good!” he booms. “That’s darn right. You don’t want to see one, touch one, mess with one, or anything else, you hear me? Guns are dangerous, Lola.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “Right. So you just be sure you don’t go touching your mom’s gun, okay?”

  “Demetrius!” cries Mrs. Richards.

  “My momma doesn’t have a gun,” I say.

  “Well, I’m mighty pleased to hear that. But just in case she does have a gun, you’ll promise not to touch it, right?”

  “Yes, sir. I promise I won’t go touchi
ng the gun my momma doesn’t own.”

  “Excellent!” He claps his hands together, crushing the remains of his bread. “I just hope you’ll remember that promise when temptation comes a-callin’.”

  Kiana’s mom rolls her eyes again. “Can we please let poor Lola eat her food?”

  Kiana says even though her dad is a detective, her mom is the real brains of the family. I think she may be right.

  After lunch, Kiana’s parents take us to play mini golf. There are dozens of putt-putt courses in North Myrtle Beach, which isn’t surprising, seeing as how it’s sunny and warm most of the year. They have names like Pirate Ship Voyage and Jungle Adventure. My favorite one is called Vesuvius. It’s named after this volcano in Italy that erupted a couple thousand years ago and buried a town in ash. The golf course doesn’t have burning ash, but it does have a volcano-shaped mountain that spews an orange waterfall that looks kind of like lava.

  We never keep score because Mrs. Richards doesn’t want to make Detective Richards feel bad about always coming in second, and Kiana doesn’t want to make me feel bad about always coming in last. They’re nice like that. But we always vote on “worst play of the day.” I think I’ve got it wrapped up when I lose three balls in a little pool that used to be red but has started turning green. But then Detective Richards steals the award when he hits his ball so hard, it flies off a hump, travels sideways, and knocks someone else’s ball right into the hole. Unfortunately, the ball belongs to a different family. They all start to argue about whether it should count as a hole in one. Someone says the words “act of God,” and Detective Richards says, “Thanks, but I’m really not that special,” and then the entire family starts laughing. So we start laughing too.

  It’s nice to laugh again. Momma hasn’t been doing much of that lately. Not like she did in those photos of her and my daddy. Ms. Archambault probably won’t be laughing much either, seeing as how she’s just lost a friend.

  I’m actually a little jealous of Kiana. It’s good to be the fourth member of her family, but I’d settle for being the third member of mine.

  8

  Genius Never Sleeps

  It’s a warm night, so Kiana and I put up a tent on the deck and make nests inside it. Then her mom sends us back into the house to brush our teeth because “oral hygiene is important, girls!” While I’m there, I slip into Kiana’s room and borrow her fuzzy rabbit. I’ve always liked rabbits. Kiana’s got about twenty stuffed toys and doesn’t really play with any of them, so she always lets me have this one when I come over.

  It takes us a while to get cozy in the tent. That’s the thing with nesting: You’ve got to make sure that every pillow and blanket is exactly where it needs to be. When we’re done, we spend a few seconds in total silence. Kiana’s mom told us to try it, and now we do it every time. Apart from the hum of a few distant cars, the evening is so quiet, we can hear the ocean. From this far away, it doesn’t sound like waves breaking against the shore. It’s more like listening to someone breathe when they’re perfectly relaxed.

  “Are you okay?” Kiana props her head on her elbow. “You’ve been kind of quiet today.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” I say.

  “What about?”

  “Lots of stuff. I saw this woman die yesterday. At Ms. A’s yoga class.”

  Kiana is still for a few moments. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. She fell asleep and never woke up. She didn’t have a heartbeat. But when I touched her arm, she was still warm.”

  “Hmm. I’ve heard it takes a couple hours for the body to cool down.” Kiana clicks her tongue. “Oh. Sorry. That was probably too much information.”

  I tuck the stuffed rabbit under my chin. “A little,” I admit.

  “Did you know her?”

  “Kind of. I know everyone in the class, and they know me because Ms. A never stops talking about me. The whole thing got me thinking about how someone can be around one minute and gone the next.”

  “Like your dad?”

  Actually, I wasn’t thinking about him. But I am now.

  Kiana turns on the flashlight but hides its glare beneath her blanket. “You should write to him.”

  “I told you: Momma isn’t sure where he lives.”

  “So we’ll need to do some detective work.” She shrugs one shoulder. “I bet we could, you know.” Detective Kiana can’t hide the excitement in her voice.

  I picture the photographs on Momma’s computer: the smile on her face as she stands beside my daddy. Would she want to hear from him again after all these years? Or would it hurt her if I looked for him, seeing as how he can’t even be bothered to tell us where he lives?

  “I’ll think about it,” I say. “Okay?”

  Kiana nods. “Sure.”

  She snakes her hand under the blanket and turns the flashlight off. My eyes had gotten used to the light. Now all I can see is an orange haze where Kiana’s head should be.

  She shuffles closer to me so that I can almost feel her breath against my forehead. I like these moments when we’re close and quiet. “Is that Mr. Bunny you’re holding?” she asks.

  “Mr. Bunny?”

  “Okay, Mr. Rabbit. Or Mrs. Rabbit. Or . . . whatever.”

  “Yes,” I say, stifling a laugh. “It is.”

  “Hmm. I should’ve given it a name by now, huh?”

  “Probably,” I say.

  “You would’ve named it just as soon as you saw it.”

  I snuggle the rabbit close and close my eyes. She’s right about that: I’d name everything right away. Because you never know how long it’ll be around.

  9

  The Other Me

  Just like every other day, school on Monday starts with the Pledge of Allegiance. Kiana leans into me slightly as we get to her favorite part. Then she surprises me by saying the proper words: “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

  I’ve never really thought about what those words mean, but today, they get me thinking. Why couldn’t my daddy get any of that liberty? Sure, he stuck around here longer than he was supposed to, but he was in love. At least, it sure looks that way in the photos. It doesn’t exactly feel like “justice” that they made him go away. Not for him, and not for Momma and me.

  Is there a Pledge of Allegiance in Australia? If there is, does my daddy ever think of this nation instead of his own? Does he wish he’d been born here instead of there? If he’d been American, he could’ve stayed. He’d still be my daddy today, instead of a man I’ve never met.

  “You can sit down, Lola,” Kiana whispers.

  “Oh. Yeah. Right.” I flop onto my chair.

  When she’s done taking attendance, Ms. Del Rio does her special clap and the classroom gets quiet. “Okay, everyone,” she says. “On Friday, you wrote all about yourself. But before you congratulate yourselves on a job well done, I should remind you that wasn’t this month’s project.”

  Some kids groan, of course. Because some kids always groan. Even if she told them the assignment was to sample a hundred types of chocolate, they’d whine about having to write down which one they liked best.

  “Now,” says Ms. Del Rio, putting on her serious face, “you ought to know that this month’s project is more challenging than the others. That’s why I don’t assign it until October, because it requires deep thought.”

  Mallory huffs. No need to think deeply to see that coming.

  Ms. Del Rio ignores her. “This assignment is called ‘The Other Me.’ Now that you’ve explained who you are, I’d like you to imagine who you might be if your life had taken a different turn. If you’d been born in a different century, say, or in Madagascar.”

  “Like a lemur!” exclaims Tobias. Tobias chose a lemur as his Patronus for the last assignment, so he knows he’s right. Since being right doesn’t happen very often for Tobias, I give him a thumbs-up and a wink. He winks back.

  “Well, yes . . . I suppose,” replies Ms. Del Rio, looking unsure. “Except I want you to
remain human. No animals this time. You can change age, gender, nationality, religion . . . anything, really. But I want this Other You to remain true to who you are as a person. What is life like for Other You? And as the final piece of the puzzle, how are you going to present this Other You to the rest of your classmates?”

  On Friday, most kids got started pretty quickly. Today, everyone seems confused. Not me, though. As Ms. Del Rio tries to answer questions, I start writing in my Thoughts of Pure Literary Genius journal.

  Other Me’s momma always walks her to the bus.

  Other Me’s momma sleeps through the night.

  Other Me’s momma smiles like the woman in the photographs I looked at the other night.

  My pencil hovers over the page. Another thought has popped into my head, but I don’t know how I feel about writing it. But this is fiction, so . . .

  Other Me knows her daddy.

  Other Me’s daddy is waiting for her when she gets home from school.

  Other Me’s daddy fixes house noises before they sound like imaginary ticked-off dogs.

  I stop right there. Sure, I wish these things could be true. But doesn’t it make more sense that Other Me would travel to Australia to see her daddy? Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere—I looked it up once—so when it’s winter in South Carolina, she could have summer again over there. That sounds pretty good to me. Plus, Other Me would get to explore a new country and visit the beach on a new continent.

  I can feel Kiana watching me from the corner of her eye. “On Saturday, you didn’t seem so sure about all this,” she says, pointing at my work.

  She’s right. I wasn’t sure. But with every sentence, I feel something changing inside me. I don’t know why my daddy hasn’t written or called us in seven years, but it’s time I found out. Hortense wouldn’t wait another day, and neither will I.

  “You really think we can find him?” I ask.

  Kiana nods super big. “Absolutely. It’s not like he disappeared off the face of the earth. He’s probably still in Australia somewhere.”