“Templeton?” says Nellie.
“Templeton,” I affirm. I have heard it from three different people now, and that is how many sources Mrs. Lasserstein says you need before you can put a fact in your research paper.
“The rat in Charlotte’s Web?”
The Kyles laugh at Nellie because we are sixteen, and she is not remembering Charlotte’s Web from her childhood or reading it aloud to a younger sibling but is actually studying it with her supplemental reading group. But the Kyles should not laugh at her. One, because it is mean. Two, because we all read at different levels, and different does not mean smart or stupid, and everyone has their own strengths as well as their own challenges. Three, because Charlotte’s Web is a good book regardless of how old you are. But mostly, four, because she is right.
“Yes,” I tell her and the Kyles. “A rat. Exactly.”
Because I have also confirmed that River Templeton is that Templeton. His father is Nathan, not Duke, but only because Duke is his grandfather. I have only one source on this rather than three, but since the source is River himself, that makes it a primary source rather than a secondary source, and sometimes you only get one of those. You could also interview his father, but of course he did not come to school. You could also interview his father’s father, but he would not grant you an interview. I know because Mama tried. A lot.
What happened was that I saw Mab in the hallway looking weird.
“One,” I said, and she did not even look up.
“One!” I said louder, and many other people looked up, but Mab did not.
“One,” I came up and said in her ear, and her head snapped over to me, and her eyes met my eyes and told them something was terrible. “Something is wrong?” I guessed.
She nodded.
“You feel sick?”
“No.”
“You thought of something sad?”
“No.”
“You got a bad grade on something?” This was a stupid guess because Mab never gets a bad grade on anything.
“That’s him.” She pointed with her chin at the walking-away back of someone. I could not see his front, but I still knew who she meant because there was only one him we had discussed recently: the new person living in my library.
“He is a kid?”
“He came with his family.”
“He is Track A?” I asked even though I was pretty sure because otherwise how would Mab know?
“Sure. He’s not from here.”
“Some people who are not from here also are not Track A,” I said.
She did not say anything because that was true, but that was not her point.
“Was he mean?” I guessed. She looked at me for the first time in the conversation. I looked away.
“No. He was fine.”
“What is his name?” I asked.
Mab’s expression was hard to identify. Closest was proud. She looked proud of me. Like I had finally asked the right question.
“River,” she said.
“River?” I wrinkled my nose. It was a weird name.
“River Templeton.”
She made big eyes at me, so big I had to meet them, and then I had to look away.
“Are you making a joke?” I asked because Mab is often making a joke, and it is hard to tell.
“It is a sick joke,” she said. And first I felt relieved and then I felt strange because one, it was not funny, and two, she did not look like she thought it was either.
That is when I got my other two sources.
“Alex Malden,” I called to him politely. “Can you tell me the full name of the new student in your class please?”
Alex Malden looked at me like I am weird but said, “River Templeton?” His voice went up at the end like a question, but his question was not whether the new student’s name was River Templeton. He knew the new student’s name was River Templeton. His question was why I was asking, why I was asking him, and why I am so weird.
No one knows the answers to these questions, so I turned to Petra.
She started nodding before I could even ask the question. “For real, sister,” she said, and she meant me, even though we are not sisters, because my sister is like her sister which makes us like sisters too. That is the transitive property which I learned in geometry.
“Maybe it is a different Templeton,” I said.
“Wait’ll you see him,” Mab breathed all in a rush.
But I could not wait. I watched the back of the student weave off down the hall and then into the bathroom, and then I could not go in the bathroom because it was the men’s room and I am not a man, so I stood right outside the door. When the door opened and the front of the new student was behind it, what he looked was surprised, probably because I was a girl and not a boy and also probably because I was standing so close he could not get out.
“Excuse me,” he said which was polite.
I did not want his eyes to look in my eyes, but I did want to see his face, so I looked and did not move.
“I … have to get past,” he tried, and I saw what he meant, but I still did not move.
“Can you … um … scoot over a little?” he said, and that is when I saw what Mab meant about him. He had the same eye shape and the same lip shape. His nose spread out the same way from his cheekbones. The same lines, but less deep, came down from his nostrils to his mouth which raised at the corner in the same way. It was confusing. It is true I have only ever seen that face before in newspaper clippings and on the computer, but I recognized the sameness anyway.
So he would not see me or see me seeing him, I looked back at the ground and asked him my questions.
“Did you just move into the library?”
“Yes.” What he sounded was surprised. He is new so he did not yet know what a small town Bourne is or how fast word travels around it. “Why?”
I did not want to tell him why. “Is your name River Templeton?”
“Yeah.” Again, surprised with a little bit of something else. “Why?”
“Is your dad Duke Templeton?”
“No,” he said, and then he added, “My dad is Nathan. Why?”
“Do you know Duke Templeton?”
“Yeah, he’s my grandfather,” he said. And he did not ask why.
That is when I knew all I needed to know, so I let him out of the bathroom, turned, and went back to my class.
“I don’t get it,” Nellie says, which she does not need to because it is obvious. “River is a weird name for a boy.”
“Not River.” Kyle R. looks and sounds scrunched-up which means exasperated. “Templeton. Like Duke Templeton.”
Nellie’s face stills shows confused.
Nellie is usually confused—that would be rude for me to say out loud, but it is okay for me to think because it is just a true fact—so she might not be smart enough to know who Duke Templeton is, but she might also never have been told. Lots of Bourne parents do not tell their children what happened because it is hard to say to your baby girl, “Baby girl, you are real dumb. It is not your fault, but it also cannot be changed,” and it is also hard to say to your baby girl, “We needed the jobs so we did not mind for a while that we were all being poisoned.” A lot of parents never told their children what happened. They did not want them to know, or maybe they just did not want to talk about it.
As a contrast, my mother has talked about it every day for the sixteen years I have known her which is my whole life. She has shown me and my sisters her notes for the lawsuit so many times that when the grandson of Duke Templeton walks out of the boys’ bathroom at Bourne Memorial High School seventeen years after what happened happened, I recognize him in the blink of an eye without even meeting his.
My mother calls Duke Templeton the AIC of Belsum Chemical which stands for Asshole in Chief, and this is probably accurate but technically wrong because really Duke Templeton is the president and CEO.
“You know that abandoned plant on the other side of Bluebell Park?” I say to Nellie.
She shakes her head no even though it is the biggest building in all of Bourne, and she has driven by it at least 11,680 times which is twice a day for sixteen years, and since her birthday was in May, that is an underestimate.
“There is an abandoned plant on the other side of Bluebell Park,” I begin again. “It belongs to Belsum Chemical. They turned the water smelly and brown and said it was still okay to drink, and then they turned the water very bright green and said it was not okay to drink after all or even use or even be near, but by then it was too late.”
“Wow,” Nellie says, “I don’t remember that.”
“Because you were not born yet.”
“Oh.” She frowns. “Did they say sorry?”
“They said sorry like when you punch your sister, and she yelps, and you are glad it hurt her because she is annoying, but your mom says say sorry, so you say sorry, but you do not really care, and she knows it.”
“I don’t have a sister,” Nellie says.
“They said sorry, but they did not mean sorry,” I clarify.
“How do you know?”
“I know they did not mean sorry because they did not do anything to make it better.”
“What did they do?” Nellie asks.
“They left,” I say. “They did not do anything.”
She thinks about it. “Except send you their grandson.”
Nellie probably does not understand what she means, but this is a good point. Mab said who he was, but Mab did not say the most important things which are what is River Templeton doing at Bourne Memorial High School and why is he living in my library. It does not seem possible that Belsum Chemical sent their grandson to live with us. But I cannot think of a thing which does seem possible instead.
After-school tutoring is canceled because, Mrs. Radcliffe says, “What with everything.” I do not know what her words mean, but what her actions mean is Mab can leave school with me. On the way home, we stop at her friend Pooh Lewis’s apartment because even though Pooh Lewis’s eyes work, her legs do not, which means it is not accurate to say she cannot read without a reader (Mab), but it is accurate to say she cannot read without a librarian (me) because Pooh can read but only if there is a book already in her home.
I have chosen for her a book about King Philip II of Spain because King Philip II of Spain had a wheelchair, even though it was the 1590s and even though really he could walk if he wanted to, and that makes him a good subject for Pooh who also uses a wheelchair and also was born a long time ago and also can read without help but pretends she cannot.
But before I can give the good news about the book, Mab opens Pooh’s front door and calls in, very loud and happy about it, “You were wrong.”
“So what else is new?” says Pooh Lewis. I look at her face to see if she is mad or sad about being called wrong, but she does not look like she minds. “About what?”
Mab tells her about the moving vans at my library and how there was a new student at school and how that new student’s name is River Templeton.
Pooh Lewis says, “Oh!” She claps her hand over her mouth which means surprise or shock, but I can see under her hand that she is smiling which means happy which is weird. When she stops smiling and holding her mouth, I think she will ask what is he doing here or what does it mean that River Templeton has moved to Bourne or what happened when he was introduced at school. But instead she says, “So! What does he look like?”
“That’s what you were wrong about.” Mab is bouncing a little bit. “When you said real life isn’t like the movies anywhere? He looks just like a movie star. It is exactly like the movies out there.”
Pooh Lewis makes a noise like a squeal and claps her hands. “That handsome?”
“Not handsome. More like…” Mab does not finish saying what she is saying.
“What? What?” Pooh is very impatient. I know how she feels.
Mab says, “Well lit.”
Pooh says, “Well lit?” because she does not understand what Mab means which makes me feel better because I also do not understand what Mab means.
“Glowing like,” Mab says. “Shiny.”
“Greasy?” Pooh is guessing because Mab does not make sense. “Radioactive?”
“Healthy,” Mab says. “Whole.”
“Ahh,” Pooh says to show she understands. “Well, sure. He must be rich.”
Which makes me feel glad to have something to contribute to the conversation. “It is not accurate to ascribe a correlative relationship between being rich and being pretty,” I inform them. Mr. Beechman is very big on the difference between correlation and causation.
“I don’t know what that means, honey,” Pooh Lewis says, “but being rich has everything to do with being pretty.”
“There are many ugly rich people,” I point out.
“Name one,” Pooh Lewis says.
I cannot name one, but I cannot name any rich people, ugly or pretty.
Pooh Lewis says, “If you have money, you can get your hair curled or straightened, darkened or bleached, thickened or removed. You can get the fat taken off your ass to fill in your wrinkles. You can get your teeth pushed in if they’re pushing out, straightened if they’re crooked, whitened if they’re beige. Clothes, nails, shoes, jewelry.” She waves all up and down herself. “You can replace the whole damn thing if you have enough money.”
This is a weird thing to think about. I do not have any money. But if I did, there are a lot of other things I would do with it.
But Mab is not thinking about that. “He’s sixteen,” she says.
Pooh Lewis snorts like a horse. “You’d be surprised what rich people let their kids do.”
But Mab is shaking her head no. “It’s more like he’s been … I don’t know—”
And Pooh Lewis fills in the end of her sentence. “Drinking clean water?”
I do not know what this has to do with being rich or being pretty or being River Templeton, but Mab’s eyes get big and Mab’s cheeks get red and Mab whispers a whisper and her whisper is this: “That’s it, Pooh. That’s what it is. That’s it exactly.”
I look at my sister’s face, but I cannot say if she is happy or surprised or mad. Mrs. Radcliffe says these are very different emotions, and it is easy to tell them apart if you remember to look. And even though happy, surprised, and mad are like the points of an equilateral triangle—all far apart from one another—I think Mab might be all three.