Cornerstone (20 page)

The phone rings in the kitchen and Garrett picks it up.

“Hello?” he says. Pause. “Hello?”

He pauses once more and then runs through the Reese’s family joke: “For Sean hit one, for Mark, two, for Brandon, three.” He pauses again. I think of Jen being on the other end, holding her breath and waiting to say hello.

“For Garrett, hit four.” he says. Pause. “Hello?”

My heart sinks, knowing Jen is probably doing her little cheerleader giggle in the phone, acting all shy and sweet. But then, Garrett says, “Last chance to pick a number or I’m hanging up.”

I realize that it’s either not Jen or she’s too chicken to say a word to him. I put my pillow over my smiling face as I hear him hang up the receiver. Even if Garrett’s not in my league, at least he’s not in Jen’s either.

Seconds later, someone is tapping the arm that is holding my pillow in place. I erase the smile and pull the pillow back. Garrett is leaning over me, his face upside down. We’re foreheads to chins.

“Good morning.” he says.

“Hi.” I say. I should want to slam my pillow in his face. I should want to hate him. Or at least, not care about him. But when he grins, I’m still ice cream on a radiator. I sit up, angry with both of us.

“If you want a shower, you should hit it now.” he says. “It’s eight and we’ve got an appointment with the Addo in an hour. Remember?”

Of course I remember. It’s only the outcome of my entire life at stake. My big, fat destiny. As clear as it was to Garrett that he should be one of the Contego, it’s pretty crystal to me that I’m not. Ugh. My mom is right. It would be stupid to follow a crush into a war zone.

“
We
have an appointment? What do you mean
we
?”

“I’m taking you to the Addo’s. We’ll go on to school afterward.”

I just groan. I’m supposed to meet the Grand Pooba of fate and then, for a finale, scurry off to school so I’m not tardy for science. None of this makes a lot of sense and I grumble about it all the way through my shower and while I use my cast to pop the stitches on another shirt sleeve and fumble with trying to dry my hair.

My mom is on the couch downstairs, hunched over a stack of copy paper. I stop at the far end from her when I’m ready to leave. Garrett goes out to warm up the car. My mom’s too absorbed in her writing to look up.

“We’re going.” I tell her.

“Okay.” she says, her pen still moving, her eyes still on the page.

“I’m going to tell the guy to forget about it.”

“Okay.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?” I stare at her, trying to burn an extra eye hole in the side of her head, since neither of the two she has will look at me.

“It’s not up to me, Nali.” Her voice is on a tight rope. “Or him. It’s all up to you.”

“But you told me you wanted me to...”

“It’s not up to me.” she says again and that’s when I notice. The paper in her lap, filled with names and stories, is smeared and running like blue winter branches all over the page. However long she’s been crying, the paper is soaked and it has holes in it where she kept moving her pen, digging through the layers, trying to keep writing despite her sadness.

She’s my mom. We’ve only ever had each other. I won’t do this to her.

“It’ll be okay, Mom.” I tell her. “I’ll make the right decision.”

“I just want you to know I love you.” she says. “No matter what.”

~ * * * ~

We pull out of the driveway and Garrett turns off the radio instead of turning it up.

“You ran out of my room last night.” he says.

“No I didn’t.” I say, trying to make my voice sound natural. It doesn’t really work. I look out the window so I don’t have to look at the soft shingles of his hair. Or the way his shirt clings to him. Like I want to. Whatever. I punch down anything inside of me that tries to float. “My mom was sick.”

“I didn’t want to lie to you. Everything I told you last night was accurate, but...”

“It’s fine. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about my mom so you can keep her safe.” I hold my mouth straight and solid, even though the edges try to crumble into a frown. It’s what I do before I cry but. I. Will. Not. Cry. I grind my toes into the bottoms of my shoes and bite the inside of my cheek, the one opposite of Garrett, in case he’s looking.

“Nalena, it was accurate, but it wasn’t everything I should’ve said.” I hate how his voice melts me. I bite harder and push against my sole until I feel my toe pop a new hole in my sock.

“It’s fine.” I tell him. “Really. It’s all good.”

“Come on. Don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at all.” I add a shrug. Nice touch.

“I’m going to be able to drive a truck through the hole you’re making in your cheek.” he chuckles. I release my cheek and glare out the window. He doesn’t say anything else, which is even more infuriating. I want him to explain himself and apologize and beg for my forgiveness. Instead, he steers the car back in the direction of school and mine and my mom’s apartment, but we turn into one of the trailer parks on the way.

Valley Estates. It is known as Smelly Mistakes at school. The nickname came from a mishap with a garbage collection agency that refused to pick up the trash for three weeks, after the park had lapsed on payment. I laughed when Jen first told me the story, relieved that I wasn’t a kid from there. But when I became
The Waste
, even the kids from Smelly Mistakes got booted up a notch and the whole nicknaming thing wasn’t such a crime to them anymore.

Unfortunately for Smelly Mistakes, the nickname is pretty accurate, even though trash collection resumed its regular schedule. The park itself can pass as a landfill, full of decrepit single-wides that have been rotting there since the late sixties. Lots of them have American flags for window curtains, messed up siding, and yards so overgrown that the trailers seem hidden in them like rotten Easter eggs. One trailer has a display of huge stuffed animals, all missing their eyes, right out in the open, on the front window sill. There are even more animals leaning through the rails of the uncovered wood porch, so rain soaked and weather-faded that the things look more like pools of puppies and bears than toys. I think one was once an elephant—the trunk hosing down the front steps like it’s reaching out for help on its own.

We turn onto Hellman, which is now just
Hell,
since someone has blacked out the rest of the name with spray paint. The new name seems a more accurate description anyway.

Garrett pulls into the driveway of a single wide that looks as bad as any of the others, except that it is sitting length-wise across two lots instead of lined up, forward-facing, like the rest, so there is more of it’s bad to see. It is dingy white with an even dingier yellow pinstripe running down the length of it. Rickety fiberglass steps lead up to the bare front door in the middle. At least there are no stuffed animals.

“This is it.” Garrett says. We get out and I let him lead the way up to the door. Our hands dangle free at our sides. The stairs rock like a balance board, but Garrett doesn’t seem worried about the steps falling over like I do. He knocks the usual thump-dada-thump-thump and pushes open the unlocked door.

“C’mon.” He reaches back and takes my hand without asking for it. A trillion tiny synapses fire through me. I should let go. I should be working harder at hating him for using me. I just don’t want to.

Right off, I see that there’s a million weird things about the inside of this trailer, but the most noticeable is that the whole thing seems to be one huge kitchen, with two closed doors at the far right end, side by side. There are no partitions, just a huge yellow room that is so brightly white and yellow that I feel like I need to squint for the first sixty seconds. The walls are canary-artificial-banana-sunshine-lemons yellow. The countertop and the appliances are all white. The floor is off-white with lemonade diamonds.

The table, which runs the length of the entire sprawling kitchen, is probably larger than the one used at the Last Supper. There must be at least twelve chairs on each side and the entire table top is covered in one continuous yellow linen cloth, under a clear plastic cover.

“Addo!” Garrett calls. It sounds like he is announcing us at a frat party, not at some holy man’s house. I touch his arm but Garrett seems to take the gesture as something it’s not and pulls my hand closer. I fight the tickle of a smile. I really hate myself. Garrett shouts again, “Hey Addo, you’ve got company!”

One of the back doors opens with a toilet flush and a man steps out, wiping wet streaks from his hands onto the front of his gray sweatshirt.

“Company! Fabulous.” he says.

The man is chubby, but only in the middle. He has a deep brown mushroom cap of hair that doesn’t cover his ears. Knowing he’s a wise man, and with hair like that, I expect him to be wearing a flowing monk robe, but instead, he’s wearing gray sweat pants, bunched up just under his knees. His glaring white knee socks are strapped into brown leather sandals. I’m embarrassed the second he catches me looking at them.

“I call these my Jesus slippers.” He grins, raising one foot in the air. I smother a laugh even though Garrett doesn’t.

“Isn’t that, uh...” I stop, realizing how rude I might sound without meaning to at all. The man doesn’t just laugh, he guffaws and chortles and busts a gut. I’ve never heard a laugh as full of laughter as his.

“Do you mean disrespectful? Blasphemous?” he asks. “Like Jesus, Jesus, bo-beesus, banana fanana fo-feesus, me-my, mo meesus...blasphemous to Jesus?”

I just stand there like an idiot, not sure what to say to this strange man. He seems more of a wise guy than a wise man. After all, he just Name-Gamed a third of the Trinity.

“Uh, yeah.” I manage to squeeze out. The man giggles.

“I doubt that Jesus ever minds his name being said. I sure wouldn’t. Especially when it’s this funny.” He giggles again, placing his foot back on the floor.

While I am still speechless and blinking at him, Garrett introduces us.

“Addo, this is Nalena.” he says.

“Nice to meechya, Nalena. You can call me Larry. Or Addo. Or Addo Larry. I’ll answer to most things, so it’s up to you, really.”

“Okay.” I say. I decide on just Addo in my head, since it sounds more holy. And I know this is supposed to be a Holy Thing I’m doing. Even though the Addo seems less holy than my socks and his kitchen-trailer seems more screwball than anything else.

“Not much of a talker, are you?” he giggles. This whole thing seems so ridiculous—from the blazing yellow kitchen, to the food smear on his sweatshirt collar—that I can’t help but smile at him. “Tea?”

“We’ll both have some.” Garrett says. Addo raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, so you think I’m letting you stay?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I suppose I can. This once.” Addo shrugs. He pours a cup of hot water from an electric kettle, plugged into the wall. He loads a tea ball and drops it into the cup that he hands me.

“I’ve got the Contego sign.” I blurt.

“Let it steep a bit and then we’ll see.” Addo motions to my cup. “A Cusp might be fun in my golden years. I assume your mother knows? What did Evangeline have to say about it?”

He says my mom’s name so easily, as if he knows her better than I do. It shocks me and while I start to sputter an answer, Garrett answers the question instead.

“It involved vomit.” he says.

“I bet it did.” Addo laughs. I take a drink of tea, watching this strange little man. “The Alo are born Alo for a good reason. No balls for fighting.”

I nearly spit my mouthful of tea across the table. Instead, I choke, and Garrett claps me on the back.

“Sorry, sorry.” The Addo apologizes with a grin. “It is your parents, after all.”

“Just my mom.” I cough. “I don’t have a father.”

“Not true.” he says. “We all have fathers. That’s the way things are. Even if Roger hasn’t earned any awards.”

“You know my father?” I ask.

“Indeedy.” Addo hums over the rim of his tea cup. The steam curls around his face. He lowers his cup and points to mine. “What do you think of the tea? I think it’s not bad, if you’re not expecting much.”

“What do you know about my father?”

“Hmmm.” He says. “What do
you
know about your father?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, I know more than that.” Addo says. Then, all he does is hum and thump his fingertips on the table.

“Would you tell me about him?” I ask.

“Certainly.” he says. “After you drink your tea.”

It strikes me as incredibly rude, teasing me with a father I’ve never even known. I pick up my cup and slam the contents. I have never even seen my father, aside from the five-by-seven frame in the living room, and for this wise guy to tell me I have to drink my tea before he’ll dish his details, is infuriating. Even so, I instantly realize how stupid my decision is. The tea is so hot, it sends sparks down my throat. My uvula shoots up in flames. I’m back to choking and Garrett pounding me on the back. My stomach is a fire bomb.

“Well, then, let’s have a look.” The Addo sounds delighted as he grabs my cup. “We don’t have to check to see if you’re impulsive.”