The wooden clock in the kitchen seeps over the dinner table, its rhythmic clanking echoing in my skull along with the scraping utensils and the distant hum of the fridge. Mom’s chicken stew is tasty, and bits of hot pepper flakes she sprinkled on top practically leave scorch marks as they dribble down my throat, but I barely notice it.
I’m thinking about the principles of design Mrs. Colton went over today in art class, and how the scene in front of me would look if I painted it. Where would the emphasis be? On the clock? At the head of the table? On the carefully prepared food? Where would the movement flow? What patterns would be repeated?
“How’s school going?” Mom asks halfway through dinner.
I look at Nathan. Nathan looks at me. “Fine,” he says.
She smiles and leans toward me. “Meet any pretty girls today?”
I cough on the pepper. “Not yet,” I choke.
“Better hurry, or you’ll end up like your brother,” Dad says with a gruff chuckle.
Nathan’s cheeks flare up. He looks down at his plate.
When Dad finishes eating, he says, “Saturday’s the company dinner. Richard Franklin’s kid plays the cello.” He pauses. Emphasis.
Nathan boasts, “Well, I was first chair last year in the Evergreen Middle School orchestra, and the orchestra is going to perform a piece I’ve written this year.”
(Stretching the truth a bit there—Nathan did write some piece of music, but the orchestra teacher only said he’d “consider putting it on.” But he did get first chair.)
Dad doesn’t react to Nathan’s bragging. Instead, he asks Mom, “Got your good dress back from the cleaners?”
Mom nods. “I got a few other things cleaned too. Some sets of church clothes, and—”
“Sure it still fits?” Dad asks.
The heat and silence fill every space of the kitchen. Finally, as Dad stares unblinkingly at his wife, Mom looks down at what’s left of her bowl of stew. Downward movement. “It will fit,” she says.
Dad looks at me. “What sports do you play?”
Again: I don’t play any sports. That’s not why he’s asking. “I run long distance, I play shortstop, and I’d show you my bilateral kick if I remembered to bring my soccer ball.”
Dad’s eyes narrow. “Uh, bicycle kick, bicycle,” I stammer, but he raises his head, and I freeze.
Upward movement.
He downs his water in one gulp and places the glass, very gently, on the table. He stares at me, unblinking. I don’t move. Nobody moves. Only the clock moves. “This is what all that art stuff gets you?” he asks me. “No common sense. Nobody’s impressed by artists.”
Nathan’s elbow slides off the table, sending his spoon plummeting to the floor. “Something you want to say, little pig?” Dad asks his eldest son. Pattern.
“No,” Nathan grumbles. “No, Father.”
Pigs like to roll around in their own slop and make huge messes everywhere they go. But I’d still rather be a pig than a goldfish. At least people care enough about pigs to eat them.
“Our little pig,” Dad says. “You get everything handed to you because you’ve got brains. But sometimes you can’t get by with just brains. You’ve got to work hard. You don’t know that yet.”
“I know some things,” Nathan whispers.
Dad raises his head again. Outward movement. “Like what?”
I hunch into my chair, folding into myself. Nathan looks down at the table. “I know none of our family ever visits us,” he whispers.
I grip the edges of my chair. Nathan’s gone too far, and judging by how he actually inches his chair away from the table, he knows it too. Dad goes deathly still. Mom says to me, “Why don’t you show us what you’re painting—”
“We have no family.” Dad’s words cut across the ice like a chainsaw. “It’s just us. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it’s always going to be. Family, family, family. Aren’t I enough family for you, little pig?” He grabs his empty glass of water and gazes into it like it holds the answers to some abstract puzzle. Abruptly he stands up and fumes out of the kitchen, his shadow lurking behind.
Dad always shuts down whenever someone, usually Nathan, brings up family or the past. Millions of Coles in the world, even one or two at Evergreen, and none of them are related to us? I don’t know if we have any grandparents, or aunts or uncles or cousins. All I know is Dad refuses to talk about them, and Mom’s not offering any answers.
Mom goes to the fridge and returns with a glass of orange juice. She places it in front of Nathan, wringing her hands. He stares at it for a few seconds, then downs it in one gulp and walks upstairs. He sort of looks like . . . how I look during CvC season.
Pattern.
Mrs. Colton says, “Life imitates art.” I wonder if she had her own 16 Werther Street growing up, and if she ever made her own cretpoj out of it.
I stare at the last page of my old sketchbook, brush in hand, trying to put all those highfalutin principles of design to use and come up with at least a rough draft of a face.
Who should it be? What face could I paint that will change the world? I spend so much time thinking about who to paint that I don’t paint anyone.
Maybe the problem is I don’t want to paint a face. Maybe I’m forcing it. Maybe I should go back downstairs and paint the dishes in the sink, or open my window and paint Big Green again.
I don’t want to give up. Not yet. I don’t want to run away from every problem.
Right when I’m about to start on the oval-shaped outline for a head, any head, my sketchbook gets snatched out of my hands and held above my head.
Crap.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Nathan dangles all my work from the past year over my head carelessly, like he could toss it out the window any second. “I wanted to say hi.”
“Hi,” I whine. If I play up how irritated I am with the interruption, Nathan will go easier on me. Hopefully.
My brother tosses the sketchbook in the corner of my room, then he starts pacing back and forth. “Y’know,” he says, “I was thinking. I wonder if you’ll still be able to paint your little paintings after CvC. How can you get your mystical inspiration if everyone hates you? Where’s the beauty of the world or whatever?”
I don’t say anything.
“Of course,” he continues, hopping onto my bed and bouncing up and down, “that’s assuming you, my little Colette, don’t do more tasks than me. Which, let’s be real here, you won’t.” He starts attempting tricks as he jumps, almost falling off the bed with each rotation of his body.
Now, I’m a lot of things. According to Dad I’m a goldfish, according to my almost-computer password I’m a coward, and according to Connor I’m the nicest guy in the world. But one thing I’ve never been is reckless. I’m a survivor. I always look out for myself.
Except now. Now, because I am a complete moron, I say, “I’ve done one task already. How many have you done?”
He stops bouncing.
I take a deep breath. “I’m sure you’re still going to win.”
Nathan walks over to my closet, right where my church clothes are kept. He fishes around inside the pants pocket. “Huh,” he says. “You gave them up.”
“How did—”
“I always knew,” he says. “At least I did after you still had underwear after the Great Cottage Cheese Incident. Haven’t you figured it out yet, Al? I know everything about you. You can’t surprise me. So you gave up your most prized possession. So what? That was the easiest one. Did you dump them in the trash? The garbage can’s probably all Day-Glo now.”
“I gave them to someone. That’s what the rules say we have to do.”
A snicker cuts across Nathan’s throat, then it rips into a full-on cackle. “Are you serious? You actually gave someone your underwear? A real, living human being took your underwear? The rules say give up, not give away. You could’ve thrown them in the fireplace for all I care.”
Speaking of fire, that’s what’s spreading across my face right now.
“We’re on the honor system,” Nathan continues. “Remember? Mutual secrets? You’re so stupid, Al. I can’t believe you got someone to take your underwear!” Hyena’s laughter surrounds me, cuts into my blood.
“Oh yeah?” I ask, rearing up for a fight. But I’ve got nothing. Burned again by exact wording.
Nathan rests his hands on his knees, almost dizzy from laughing so hard. “Anyway, that was the easiest one. You won’t be able to do anything else. I’ll breeze through mine like nobody’s business, like usual.”
Time to change the subject. “What’s your most prized possession?”
“None of your business. But you’ll know when I give it up. Did you find my paper yet?”
My back goes stiff, and Nathan laughs. “Excellent,” he says. “Remember, you’ve got to actually take the paper, not just find it. Yes, young Padawan, you’re more than capable of getting that paper out of the vending machine without taking it apart or smashing the glass. I promise.”
When Nathan leaves my room, I don’t go for my sketchbook right away. I sit at my desk, thinking. Is this what a little confidence does? Makes you turn stupid? Into a stupid goldfish?
By my keyboard is Zack’s “fortune.” If fortune cookies want to ask questions, they should ask good ones, not ones about where babies come from. They should ask, what’s your most prized possession? What would it take for you to give it up? They should ask, how do you break into a vending machine? (Or they could tell you how. That’d be fine too.)
I need some water after this whole mess of an evening, so I head downstairs. There’s low talking from the living room. I peer around the corner and Mom’s on the couch, her cell phone in her hand, a muted TV in the background. She’s speaking to the person on the other end, probably Denise, one of her friends from church. (Denise has kids around my and Nathan’s age, but Nathan scared them off years ago.) I can’t hear most of what she says, but one phrase really sticks out:
“I’ve lost it all.”
When I shift my feet, the floorboards creak. She looks up, mutters a hasty good-bye to Denise, and watches me from across the room. “You should be in bed,” she says.
“I got thirsty,” I say.
She folds her hands over her lap. Standing in the living room doorway I remember how she smiled at me when I came home with a gold star for a great drawing, and how she laughed when I told a knock-knock joke I overheard at recess, and how she hugged me when I fell and scraped my knee. Her face had fewer lines then. I also remember how light a sleeper she is, how she hears everything that goes on between me and Nathan, how she’s backed away from me, left me raw and naked against the hawk’s talons. How all the glasses of orange juice in the world can’t wash down the acid brewing below our throats.
A fortune cookie should ask, what makes somebody disappear? What makes them accept a painful situation, shut down, retreat away from the people they care about? How do you bring someone you love back from the depths?
Can you?
“Get some sleep,” Mom says. “Tomorrow’s another day.” She smiles a worn smile and turns back to the TV.
I’ve lost it all.
I stand there for Lord knows how long, watching her, zonked out in front of the news. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just watch.
Emphasis.