I hung lots of flyers on my way to the ferry after school on Thursday. They said FOUND: BEAR STATUE, with our phone number and address. My cousin David picked me up in Lincoln, and we met up with Manny and Carlos at Carlos’s apartment to play video games. We stopped when we heard the raspado guy’s cart bell outside. I got mango and Carlos got jamaica. We don’t have a raspado guy on the island, but I could get shaved-ice drinks all the time once I’m at Lincoln Bay. We crunched ice all the way to the best comics shop in town.
I used to be super into comics, before it happened. The comics shop was one of my favorite things. My cousin Manny loves it, and Dad too, obviously. We don’t have a comics shop on Murphy either, but they get them sometimes at the used-book store. When I was in the hospital, people brought me loads of comics. Old ones, new ones, all the series out of order, and more copies of comics I already had. We took them home, two boxes’ worth, but I haven’t read them. I stopped working on Marvelo and Manxadon with Dad too.
Carlos offered to buy me a couple comics, and I tried to look excited. I picked up the two most recent issues of Scrapper Pang. I didn’t care if Scrapper would be able to salvage whatever he needed to save the augals on the dying planet, but letting Carlos buy the comics made him happy.
We took a bouquet of roses and carnations to my grandma, but she was out. I left them on her porch by a pot of geraniums with a mushy thank-you note in Spanish. She loves that stuff.
On the way back to the ferry, I asked Carlos to drive past Lincoln Bay Middle School. A kid drove a radio-controlled car around the empty parking lot.
“Was it amazing?” I said.
“What?”
“Middle school!”
The marquee out front said HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND, BULLDOGS! like they were all one big team.
“It was ten years ago. Middle school isn’t amazing. It’s middle school, bro.” Carlos laughed and tapped along to the radio on the steering wheel.
“Mom wants me to stay at Murphy School, but I want to go to Lincoln Bay like you did. I’m going to ask them if I can try staying with abuela so it’s easier.” Carlos raised his eyebrows.
“Say what now? You want to leave the island altogether? That’s a lot all at once.”
“Didn’t you like leaving Murphy and starting fresh?”
“Sure…but I didn’t move off the island until after high school. It’s not like a new place fixes everything. I didn’t have any game on Murphy, I still didn’t in Lincoln. I was a short guy who couldn’t sit still in both places. The schools are the same too.”
“I bet they don’t have a loom or a kiln at Lincoln Bay. I bet their principal doesn’t get everyone to try to cleanse their auras on Monday mornings.”
“Maybe think about staying at Murphy School. It would make Mom happy,” Carlos said. He didn’t get it. “Let’s get you back. It’s a school night.”
“I asked her to send the form yesterday. I want to go to Lincoln Bay.” I could change my mind and stay at Murphy School—it wasn’t like they ran out of space—but if I wanted to go to Lincoln Bay, we had to register before summer.
“How’s it going with the dreams?” Carlos asked. I shrugged. “Fig. You’re going to be okay.” I didn’t know if he meant with the dreams or middle school, but I nodded.
I thought Carlos would stop so I could hop out, but he paid the toll and drove up the ramp onto the boat. He wanted to surprise our parents for dinner. He dropped me off at the Murphy dock to pick up the Rooster. That’s what I started calling the truck, because of the painting on the side. He shook his head.
“If you get pulled over, I’ll keep rolling like I don’t even know you.”
I ignored him and climbed up into the Rooster. I closed my eyes and got ready to look at the bear. I could feel it behind me, as if it had been waiting in the truck the way Chuck waits for us on the porch when we all go out. The bear smelled damp, like a mildewy towel. I turned and looked at it hard, but the fear didn’t come. I exhaled. The longer I stared, the less it reminded me of the other bear and the more I remembered it was just a log.
I told the bear about wanting to move. He didn’t talk back, obviously, but I felt better saying it out loud. Carlos blocked my way out of the parking lot and pointed until I turned on the Rooster’s headlights. I followed him home, trying extra hard not to go over the yellow lines in case he was watching me in the mirror. After we got home, my brother came around to get a better look inside the truck.
“Whoa, Pops gave you that?” He pointed at the bear and climbed in for a closer look.
“No, I found it on the beach.”
“And brought it home? Why? Isn’t it heavy?” He gave it a little twist to test the weight.
“A friend helped. I’m going to find the owner and get rid of it. I can’t believe I found a bear.”
“Maybe you got the bear mojo or something. Sometimes stuff sticks. Like getting struck by lightning more than once. This isn’t so bad.”
“I guess,” I said, because he was starting to sound like a Murpher again, even though he’s been gone for years.
“That looks like a wishbone.” He pointed at the Y the bear held. “Can I make a wish?”
I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. No way would I tell him about Ethan.
“What do you need a wish for?”
“What does anybody need a wish for? To fix my problems.”
“You don’t have any problems,” I said. “You want to wish for that girl from the coffee shop to talk to you? Or for the B’s to win a game?”
“I don’t want to worry about money anymore.” He loves his job as an ecologist, but he doesn’t get paid much to save the planet. Carlos cleared his throat. “I wish for a big fat raise so that I can buy even more apple fritters for my growing baby brother.” He said it in an extra-deep, dramatic voice. He rubbed the bear’s head, winked at me, and laughed. “Let’s go eat.”
Usually dinner is Mom, Leti, and me. Sometimes my dad is there, but mostly he’s at work. It’s hardly ever all of us anymore, but it was that night. Mom was talking to one of her sisters on the phone, but she hung up to hug Carlos.
Carlos set the table and asked about the festival.
“I’m not doing it this year,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I guess I grew out of it,” I said. Dad squeezed Mom’s shoulder.
“How about you, Vivi?” Dad said. “You guys should do the singing human pyramid again. Musky was just talking about it yesterday at the lake.” Musky is one of Dad’s comrades. His real name is Paul, but Dad and the rest of the comrades call him Musky. I don’t know why.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “My human pyramid days are behind me.”
“I’ve got a new pen pal through school,” Leti told Carlos. “She lives in Scotland. They call elementary school primary school. And she’s not in third grade. They call it year four.”
“Tell him what they eat for snacks,” I said.
“Potato chips are crisps, and cookies are biscuits! Pen pals are awesome,” Leti said, and skipped back upstairs to finish her letter.
Dad offered to take us to the lake to stake out Marvelo. Carlos and Leti went, but I stayed home and cleaned the kitchen. Mom made goat cheese, even though we have about a million logs of it in the freezer already.
“This is for Brenda and Musky,” she said when she saw me looking. “I told them I would stop by tomorrow and install new window screens before it gets too hot. They’ve been getting butterflies in the house.”
“Screens and cheese?”
Instead of answering, she told me how her family came north. I scrubbed the lasagna pan. My tía Felipa says they came over the border from Oaxaca in my Grandpa Armand’s old Ford, because he had a job waiting at a silver mine in New Mexico. But Mom says Felipa’s memory is bad, and butterflies carried her over the desert border. The rest of the family rode in the sweaty old car with squeaky doors. Mom and her cat, Bigote, got a ride from wild yellow butterflies on the big blue sarape she still keeps on the chair in the corner of her bedroom. The butterflies noticed her squished between her brothers in the back seat. When my grandpa stopped for a break, the other kids played chase, but Mom ate melon on the sarape with Bigote. The butterflies came down from the trees and worked together to lift the sarape up.
“How many?” I asked, like I did the first time she told me. She shuffled around the kitchen in slow motion, like she was running out of energy before she could finish the day.
“A lot. A herd of butterflies,” she said.
“I don’t know if you call them a herd.”
“A flock? That doesn’t sound right. A group of crows is called a murder.” She hung balls of cheese wrapped in cloth on a rack over the sink.
“I don’t think it’s a murder either,” I said. She could say the butterflies sang, or twirled through clouds, or something else to put the wink in the story and let me know she’s messing with me, but she doesn’t. She said the butterflies were just heading the same way as the Jaramillo family.
“Why would tía say you rode in the car?” I used to like Mom’s stories, but when I was stuck in bed after the attack, I heard this one twice. She sat by my bed and talked more than she had her whole life. She retold stories about the island history—mermaids, greenhouses full of every kind of fruit you could think of, zebra cart races, and everything else. She told me what was happening around the island while I was stuck in bed—what the tamarin monkeys stole out of the community garden, the new wallaby babies riding in their moms’ pouches, and how many parrots were in the tree outside my window. She made up conversations for them. She told me about the time she tried to climb aerial silks for the festival and got tangled up so much, she needed help right in the middle of her act. People still gave her a standing ovation. She didn’t say it, but she was a star.
“Did you visit your abuela today?”
“She wasn’t home,” I said. “Carlos drove me by Lincoln Bay Middle. Did you send my registration papers?” She closed the pantry door.
“I filled them out, but I couldn’t find a stamp. I’ll mail them in the morning,” she said. I cracked my knuckles and took two deep breaths.
“What if I went to stay with abuela for a while like Carlos did? I’ll be going to Lincoln Bay next year anyway. It would be easier.” My grandma lived about a mile from the school. I could probably walk.
“Carlos was going to college. You’re twelve. Thirteen,” she said. I loaded plates into the dishwasher from biggest to smallest, the way she likes. “I thought you were still considering staying at Murphy School. You could keep working on the garden, and Vera Swackhammer is probably the best algebra teacher in the state.”
“I want to go to Lincoln Bay. And I want to live on the mainland. I never have bad dreams when I sleep at abuela’s,” I said. Mom frowned.
“You don’t sleep there that often.” She shook her head. She spent longer thinking about the butterfly story than she would about letting me move. “No. It’s bad enough if you’re on the mainland every day for school.”
“I don’t want to be on the island anymore,” I said, and her eyes got wide. She held on to the counter and watched me. I crossed my arms.
“You’re not old enough to make all your own choices, Newt. We would never see you if you lived in Lincoln,” she said. “The answer is no.” I turned the water off and left. Then I slammed my bedroom door and paced until the bunched muscles under my scar cramped.
Since Mom works on the island and her side of the family is in California, she doesn’t leave Murphy much. We haven’t been to California since I was in third grade, because it’s expensive, even to drive, and it’s a lot to ask for someone to watch Chuck and the animals. She’s never really seen eye to eye with my grandma here—Dad’s mom—so she visits only on special occasions. Dad runs errands after work in Lincoln to pick up medicine, the tortillas we like from the bodega on Spring Street, or noodles and fish sauce from Saigon Market. He doesn’t ever complain. I asked him if we could do anything to help Mom and abuela get along. He said if he knew how to stop people from bugging each other, he’d be rich and wouldn’t have to come home on the last ferry every night with an aching back, covered in plaster and paint.
I found cardboard boxes in the garage and packed books and games I could take to my grandma’s house, where nobody made up silly stories about butterflies or believed in magic bears. I packed old toys and comics to give away. If the island was a box I could close the flaps and tape it up with all the bad memories inside, I would do it.
I heard Dad’s truck pull up and Carlos’s car leave. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to take care of me if I was in Lincoln. I could see Carlos and my cousins more often. My grandma always smiles as soon as she sees me.
I wrote my name and what was inside on the boxes. I moved them into the hallway, where my parents would see, but Little Leti came upstairs first.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Packing stuff.”
“Why?” She shuffled through the comics across the floor to sit on my bed. I picked the whole pile up and dropped them into a new box.
“I want to stay with abuela for a while. But Mom won’t let me. Yet.” I watched to see if she felt sad or mad or surprised or anything, but she kept her face blank. I talked fast. “I’ll come back and visit. Or maybe you can come too? You’ll be at Lincoln Bay in a couple of years. They have a real basketball team. You could be a Bulldog.”
“Not even! Somebody will start a team on Murphy eventually. I’m going to live here forever,” Leti said. “You can’t leave. I would miss you too much.” She looked at the pictures on the corkboard over my desk: our cousin Gabi’s quinceañera, Ethan and me digging around in the cove, our friend Rocket in the hot springs, and a fishing trip with my uncles in the mountains.
“Everybody leaves sometime, Let. I’ll still visit. We can have Mastermind tournaments.” I thought Leti was looking at my old Scrapper Pang drawing, but she reached out for the cat ears Mom wore the year she and Gilda did a Marvelo and Manxadon fight scene to surprise Dad. Fireworks blasted when Manxadon threw the bad guy through a wall. Leti wasn’t born yet, but Mom warned me about the boom so I wouldn’t be scared.
“I’m going to the festival with Abby and Ramona, and then we’ll sleep over Ramona’s house. It’s going to be amazing.” She read the program from the year Ethan and I did the card trick. He almost pushed me into the orchestra pit, but it was still great. “Can I have your room if you leave? Yours has a better view. And I could write letters here.” She ran her fingers over the desk and looked out toward the pasture. I had Carlos’s old desk, bed, and dresser. Dad brought them from our tío Ed’s when he got a new set. Next they could be Leti’s, I guess. “Someone else will have to take care of the goats, though. I’m not doing it.”
She wouldn’t look at me as she left, but her face was blotchy like before she cried. I curled up on the bed. If I could hibernate until fall, when everything would be different, I would.