Boggle is Awful.
Not because I’m not good at it. Actually, it seems like maybe I’m too good at it. Jennifer, it turns out, is about 1,781 times more competitive than I realized. And she and Michael never lose, that’s the family story, the kind of myth of the Watsons. They take on, like, all their kids at the same time, their neighbors, their friends, whoever, and they don’t lose.
Until now.
We agree that I can write down my words instead of shouting them out, and when I bust out INCONSEQUENTIALLY for eleven points, it’s all over. James high-fives me.
Unbelievable, he says.
I had that, I say. Last round.
He laughs, but he’s the only one laughing. On the other side of the table, Jennifer has a bona fide pissed-off expression on her face, though she’s trying to hide it under smiles. Michael seems shell-shocked. I think he had me down as some kind of retard because I was deaf.
Have you applied for colleges? says Jennifer. She has stood up and walked away from the table, almost like she can’t bear to look at the Boggle cubes now that she has lost. I am seeing a whole new side of her—there is a hardness in her stance now, in her eyes.
I shake my head.
But your—Shaylene, she homeschooled you?
I nod.
Okay. Well, the first thing we’ll need to do is check out what you know, and then have you take the SATs. Summer, I mean the CPS, is going to put us in touch with some people in Alaska.
I shrug.
Let’s take it one step at a time, huh? says Michael. You want to watch some TV? he asks me.
I look at the clock on the microwave. It’s late—past eleven. I unfold my hands like pages. Do you have any books?
James nods. I have some textbooks, a [ ]. A biography of Monet. James is a fine art student, I learned that when we were playing Boggle.
Jennifer shakes her head.
Michael holds up a finger, like, wait. He goes into the bedroom and comes back with a thick book. A History of the Arab Peoples.
No fiction? I ask.
They wince, like they’re failing a test. Maybe they are. Sorry, honey, says Jennifer. We’re not really novel people.
Not really novel people, I think. I didn’t know such a thing was possible. Even Shaylene usually had a mystery or a romance in her hands, when she wasn’t stitching Scottish insanity-landscapes. For the first time I realize how sheltered my life has been.
Speak for yourself, says James.
Oh yeah? says Jennifer, a glint in her eye, and I see the shared history, the deep love between her and her son. What was the last novel you read?
Moby Dick.
You did that for school.
So? It’s still a novel.
You didn’t even finish it. You googled the CliffsNotes.
I start to stand up. I’m sleepy, I say.
Of course, of course, says Jennifer. We’ll get you a book tomorrow. What do you like? Harry Potter?
I stare at her. Wizards. Crones. A shiver runs through me. What is with people who don’t read novels? I mean, what kind of life is that? I read them, I say.
She waits for me to say something more, but I don’t, so she just nods eventually. Okay, well, we’ll go to the bookstore, you can pick something.
We’re allowed out? I say.
We’re allowed to do anything we want, she says. We’re a family.
Yeah, I think. Sure.
That night, I lie in my bed in the spare room and I can’t sleep. I run through scenarios in my mind, fantasies, trying to lull myself into sleep, tell myself a story. A lullaby. This is something I have always done—when I was younger, like I said ages ago, I would fantasize that my mom was not my real mom, that my real mom was a queen, and one day I would meet her. That I was special, in some way.
Now I know this was the most stupid-ass fantasy of all time, because I know the reality now of my mom not being my mom, and it sucks.
So instead I imagine the opposite:
I imagine:
I mean, none of the stuff that has happened to me in the actual world, since I know the Dreaming isn’t real, because if it is, then I have gone totally and utterly mad, and I don’t like to get too close to that thought, because it’s like a fire and it burns.
This is not helping me to sleep.
I imagine:
That my mom is still my mom and we still live in Scottsdale, and every weekday apart from Friday, when Mom’s not working, we do school stuff, and then every Friday we go to the baseball cage and then we get ice cream for dinner and nothing ever changes and everything is always awesome.
It doesn’t work. I lie there wide awake for most of the night. But at some point I must fall asleep because one moment I’m looking at the ceiling of the rented apartment and wondering if I could actually just run away to Mexico on my own and start a totally different life, and thinking about what I could possibly do there, I mean being deaf and all—
and the next moment I’m—