Best Friends Through Eternity (5 page)

BOOK: Best Friends Through Eternity
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Dad rushes for the door. “Put your boots on. Here,” he says, grabbing our coats and throwing me mine.

Luckily, as we get to the car, Mom pulls up in the van.

“She ate a hamburger and feels sick,” Dad calls to her as she climbs out. “We’re going to the hospital.”

“What! Why did you do that?” Her eyes open crazy wide. Sparks seem to fly from them.

“I wanted to try a burger just once before I died.”
Whoops. Did I say that?
She doesn’t seem to notice, anyway. “Mom, I don’t need to go to Emergency. I have homework. Can we just stay home?”

She takes a breath, feels my forehead. “No fever.” Her mouth crumples as she tries to decide.

“She had the runs,” Dad tells her.

“Only once. I’ll tell you if I feel sick again. You know waiting rooms are cesspools for germs.” The last sentence is inspired, and it pushes her over the edge.

“Paige is right about that. Let’s go back into the house, Tom, and wait.”

My father’s bottom lip buckles, but he nods. Mom leads the way, hanging her coat up in the hall closet and continuing into the kitchen. She slumps down at the table.

“Well, okay then. I guess I’ll start supper.” Dad begins getting stuff from the fridge, his usual cooking routine, only he slams the door and drops things.

I sit down beside Mom. “Dad told me about Kim.”

Mom looks at me, her mouth dropping open.

“I saw her obituary on the Internet. Is that why we’re vegetarians?”

After a moment, her mouth closes. “Yes,” she finally answers. “We started Good Foods Market just after, too, so we could make sure people would have safe food.”

I look back into her blue eyes, eyes that always remind me that she isn’t my real mom. “When did she have the bad hamburger?”

Mom grabs my hand tightly. “You don’t remember the last time you saw her?”

I shake my head.

“It was on your seventh Gotcha Day.”

Cold fingers tingle down my spine. “I remember! We had a barbecue to celebrate.” No one knows our exact birthdays so our parents celebrated the day they took us from the orphanage. Kim and I were adopted around the same time, so we celebrated together.

“She became sick immediately.”

“From the burgers Dad cooked?” I grip her hand back.

“Mrs. Ellis bought them from a good butcher.”

“But I didn’t get sick.”

“Maybe you didn’t eat yours. You were always such a picky kid. Or maybe yours was cooked right through.” Mom shrugs.

“People don’t usually die from bad meat,” Dad explains as he chops mushrooms at the counter. “Little kids, old people with—”

“Weakened immune systems,” I finish for him.

“Right.”

“Oh my gawd,” I whisper. “It could have been me.”

“We felt very lucky. Too lucky.”

“So we didn’t visit her.”

“Your mom and I did, but she was so sick, she didn’t know anybody,” Dad says. “Hospitals aren’t good places for young children. Your visiting would not have helped.”

I pull my hand from Mom’s. “It would have helped me.”

“We didn’t do the right thing, then. I’m sorry.” Dad stares down at the mushrooms as if they were responsible. “We were just a mess.”

“We intended to tell you. Someday. Once we got our own heads around it.” Mom shrugs. “And then too much time passed.”

It explains a lot.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says softly.

“I get it.” And I do understand, but somehow I still feel lied to and cheated.

“Seriously, is your stomach okay?” Dad asks. “Why don’t we go to the walk-in clinic, just in case?”

“I’m fine.” I try to smile but can’t.

He hands Mom a cup of tea, giving me a sideways glance. Then he goes back to his chopping. I can smell onions frying and see a stack of white cubes piling up. Dad is making my favorite—tofu stroganoff. He puts a large pot of water on to boil for the egg noodles.

Mom asks me about my day as we wait for supper and try to act normal.

I tell her about Cameron and Vanessa breaking up. She only knows them vaguely from hearing about them and seeing them at school occasionally. But I tell her again how good-looking Cameron is and how all the girls like him. “Mom, he flirted with me, but he instantly made a move on Jasmine.”

“You’re all so young. Maybe he’s attracted to both of you. He can’t help that.”

Dad begins serving supper. On Mom’s plate, the stroganoff over the noodles looks creamy delicious.

He delivers my plate. On mine, the steaming rice is plain and white.

“Aw, come on, Dad. I haven’t been to the bathroom since I came home. Can’t I have some stroganoff?”

“Absolutely not. You have to rest your digestive system.”

“You can have leftovers tomorrow for lunch,” Mom says, touching my wrist.

“Great.” I taste my rice. Bland as its color, as my life has been. “You know that Jazz can only spend lunch hours with Cameron? And I have to pretend she’s volunteering at the library with me or she’ll get in trouble with her folks.”

“Don’t they like Cameron?”

I swallow my dry rice. “They don’t know him. It’s just, he’s a Westerner, and Jazz thinks they’re shopping for a husband from India for her already.”

“If Cameron is such a Casanova and goes along with her deceit, maybe he’s not such a prize. Jasmine might be better off with a boyfriend her parents select.”

Dad comes back on a statistic about divorces, and we have a discussion on romantic versus arranged marriages.

We had this same discussion last time, except, a few days later, there was a news story on Indian women who had been duped into marrying guys who were only after their dowries. Their families arranged those marriages.

After the revelation on Kim’s death, it turns into a cozy evening, apart from the dry rice supper, and it’s only afterward when I am on the computer looking up something for my history homework that I remember that Kim’s parents had asked for donations to the Kidney Foundation. What does that have to do with
E. coli
?

RETAKE
:
Tuesday Morning

N
ext morning Jazz knocks at our door, something that didn’t happen last time. “Sorry I’m here early.” She walks in, breathless. “I just couldn’t stay at home a minute longer. My parents were talking about my grandmother finding a suitable boy for me.”

“But they don’t even know about Cameron.”
How have I changed fate?
I wonder. The last time I lived through Monday, I didn’t eat the stupid hamburger and fries, wasn’t sick, ate a good supper. Oh man, then I got up, had cereal on my own and headed out early. I met her at her house, and we left right away. This morning, Mom insisted on taking my temperature, quizzing me on my bathroom episodes and serving me a digestion-friendly breakfast. “Why would your parents want a husband for you now?”

“I’m turning fifteen in February. They say I don’t have to
get married right away. I can get engaged and still finish school.”

“What about college? Can’t you stall them at least? Tell them you need to concentrate on school.”

“I’m not allowed to have an opinion at my house. They think I’m becoming rebellious. That’s exactly why my uncle took my cousin Beena to India last year. I just had to get out of there, or I was going to blow it.”

I frown, then point to the kitchen. “Want some breakfast? Granola with chia seeds? It will keep you regular.” I raise my non-eyebrows at her.

“Is that what you had?”

“Nah. I had organic goat yogurt. I have to be gentle to my intestines. On account of my burger and fries yesterday.”

Jazz chuckles at that one. “Thanks, I’m good. I ate a breakfast bar.” It felt nice to distract her for a moment, but now her brow wrinkles. A dark ridge forms between her eyebrows.

“I’m sorry.” I hesitate. “Do you want to talk to Mom or Dad about the India thing?”

“No. They can’t do anything.”

I shrug. “Maybe they can call Children’s Aid.”

“And Children’s Aid will take me away from my family. How can I turn my back on them? Live with strangers. Oh!” She stops then and covers her mouth. “Sorry.”

“No worries. It’s different for me. I never knew my birth family.”

“Didn’t you ever want to find out about your real parents?” Jazz asks.

“Mom and Dad are real. They’re enough. I don’t need more.” It’s what our adoptive parents wanted us to think, we knew that instinctively, but of course both Kim and I always wondered,
Is my mom pretty? Is my dad strong?
We dug that hole to China all the time. Mom never liked it when we did.

“Let’s just go.” Jasmine hands me my coat from the closet.

I slip it on, step into my boots and grab my backpack. We walk side by side without saying anything for a while. I won’t even try talking Jasmine out of seeing Cameron. Right now I have to agree that he is her last chance for real love. How sad is that?

“So you’re going to visit your grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles.” I try to put a different spin on her trip away. “It must be great to know your whole family history like that.”

We’re nearing the schoolyard, the last block.

“You could try to trace your family, too, you know. I’ve heard your mom say anytime you want to go back to China, she would take you.”

“Yeah, but …” I stop. Jazz’s whole face begins to emit a glow. Her mouth stretches into a smile that almost reaches her ears.

From the blacktop, Cameron waves.

“You wave, too, in case anyone’s watching,” she says under her breath. “We’re keeping us a secret till we’re more sure.”

In case Cameron wants to go back to the witch.
I wave and grin just as broadly as Jasmine. A group of guys stand around Cameron. Are they bad-mouthing his ex, just the way the girls are Cameron?

We head straight in to our lockers.

At the other end of the hall, I notice a few of the second-string volleyball team—Gwyn, Emma and Zoe. They’re talking in low voices. Gwyn looks our way and gives us a hard stare.

“Looks like your relationship’s not that big a secret,” I warn Jazz.

She smiles sweetly. “Hi, Gwyn. Heard you played a great game last Friday.” M.M. Robinson won 34–28. Nothing unusual about that; they always win.

“Thanks,” she sneers. How does Jazz know how Gwyn played? We weren’t at the game.

The bell rings and I head to English class homeroom, which, my luck, I share with Emma, Gwyn and Vanessa. This is the day Mrs. Corbin decides to start our Shakespeare study for the year, and ironically the play she chooses is
Romeo and Juliet.

She starts by showing us a list of famous quotations used in everyday life that come from the play. The line appears on the screen at the front with a page number, and she calls on various people to read out the passage the quote comes from.

The lines are interesting, but some of the kids stumble over the passages and that gets boring. Emma nudges me in
the back and gives me a folded piece of paper. “Pass this to Vanessa,” she whispers. “Don’t look at it.”

I turn around quickly. I don’t want to pass their silly note. Why can’t they just text each other like usual? But last class, Mrs. Corbin confiscated Emma’s phone. Guess she learned her lesson. And because I didn’t say no immediately, the paper now hangs between my thumb and forefinger. I listen as Gwyn reads the passage where Juliet asks about what is in a name and wince. Where was she back in grade four when we were taught about expressive reading?

Emma pokes me in the back, hard. “Ow,” I call out.

“What’s that note in your hand?” Mrs. Corbin asks.

“I … I don’t know,” I answer, dropping it to the desk like it’s on fire. I sound like all those other stupid girls and hate myself for it.

“Open it up and read it to the class, then,” Mrs. Corbin says.

I scrunch up my mouth and unfold the paper, once, twice and three times, slowly, delaying to try to think of some way out of this. It’s too big a paper to chew and swallow. I curse Emma in the long moments, as nothing comes to me. I read the note to myself first.

Vanessa,

Can you believe it? Cameron’s going out with Banana. We saw him make goo-goo eyes at her this morning.

Emma

What! They think I’m going out with Cameron! Of
course, it makes sense since he winked and blew a kiss at me in class yesterday. And we waved at each other this morning. Hadn’t I hoped I was the one he was calling on Monday?

“We’re waiting, Paige,” Mrs. Corbin says, arms folded across her chest.

“It’s not appropriate to read out loud,” I say in desperation.

But it works.

“Very well. You may throw it in the wastepaper basket. Since you all like writing notes so much, you’ll be happy to know your assignment is to read the first act of
Romeo and Juliet
and summarize it in one page. It is to be turned in tomorrow. You can start on that now.”

There are groans, but I feel my skin cool to its normal temperature. A temporary reprieve. Vanessa will find out between the next classes about me being Cameron’s supposed chosen one.

I’ll be the one the volleyball team will want to beat up.

“Way to go, Banana,” Emma says as she jabs me in the back again, hard.

BOOK: Best Friends Through Eternity
10.57Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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