The Things You Find When You Aren’t Looking

The first time Nat went to Harry’s house after school, she found a collection of magazines in the downstairs bathroom cupboard when she was looking for a roll of toilet paper. The magazines were wrinkly, and some of them were really old. They were pretty much all celebrity magazines. Her dad never bought these magazines or let her buy them, not that she wanted to. She’d seen the covers on the newsstands; she’d read the headlines. If she reached for one, he’d give her that look, let out a belly laugh and make a face and say something like, “If you want an interview, Nat-a-Tat, I’d be happy to give you one. Yep yep. Or even my ortograph.”

When she was little, she didn’t know how to pronounce “autograph” and now it was one of their inside jokes.

She liked having inside jokes with her dad more than she wanted to read the magazines.

Nat picked up the whole pile of magazines, took them out of the cupboard, and fanned them out on the counter. Some had pretty actresses on the front. Some of them were people she knew. Some of them were friends with her dad.

There were even some that featured XAN GALLAGHER.

Nat’s heart was beating funny in her chest. It felt like her blood was suddenly too watery, like it had turned into a whole ocean and was whooshing through her veins too quickly.

As though someone else was controlling her hands, Nat separated the XAN GALLAGHER magazines from the others and made a smaller pile of just those. Then she looked at the covers, one by one. There he was with his eyebrow up on one, two, three of them.

“XAN THE MAN.”

“THE RETURN OF XAN.”

“XAN COMES BACK.”

Nat wondered what they thought he was coming back from. XAN GALLAGHER never went away. He was always there.

She pulled one more magazine from the pile.

XAN GALLAGHER was on the cover, wearing a tuxedo.

The tuxedo had a wide, turquoise sash.

That was weird. Nat looked more closely.

It wasn’t a sash.

It was a baby carrier.

And there, with just a tuft of hair sticking out the very top, was her very own head.

Suddenly, Nat knew that if she opened up this magazine, she was going to know who her mom really was. Realizing that made her feel dizzy. She sat down on the floor, which was flecked with a gold pattern that sparkled in the light. She lay all the way down on it. The walls spun and then held still. She pressed her cheek against the sparkles and held her breath for three whole minutes, watching the numbers on her phone flip from 3:31 to 3:32 to 3:33. Then she let the breath out: 3:33 seemed like it should be lucky. Next to the time, the little weather icon showed a sun, which wasn’t even true. It was foggy.

It was almost always foggy here, just like in San Francisco.

Nat sat up again and put the magazine on her lap.

She needed to talk to someone. She wanted to call Bird (Mom) but she didn’t want Harry to hear her talking on the phone in the bathroom. He would think that was weird. Besides, she didn’t know what she would say.

“Are you going to be in there forever?” Harry yelled.

“Probably not,” she yelled back. “Maybe another minute though.”

“Weirdo,” he said. He tapped a tune out on the door. She could hear him breathing.

And then, finally, she heard his footsteps walking away.

The magazine smelled musty, like it had been read in the bathtub and put away damp. The date on the magazine was February 28, 2005. That was the day after her dad won his Oscar. The headline said, “XAN THE MAN IS XAN THE DAD: XAN’S NEW BABY MAKES HER DEBUT AT THE OSCARS.”

The idea of someone reading this very magazine in the bathtub, looking at photos of her dad and of her as a baby, made Nat feel terrible, like someone was rubbing Styrofoam against her teeth.

Superimposed over her dad’s smiling face, there was a smaller photo of him on a surfboard, wearing a very long, striped, knitted hat. He looked silly, which made her smile, but also made her feel embarrassed on his behalf. There is a word for that in German, which is fremdschämen.

“Fremdschämen,” Nat whispered.

Feeling fremdschämen for her dad was not a new feeling. It happened a lot.

She opened the magazine to the article. Her hands made the decision before her brain did, but as soon as her brain caught up, it made her slam the magazine shut again. She hadn’t read any words, but she had seen some photos. One of the photos was of her dad with a woman. The woman was beautiful and also familiar. Nat blinked. She had black hair that was blowing around her face, and she was smiling. Her eyes were behind sunglasses. Even just glancing at her chin and cheeks and the way her head was tossed back, Nat could tell she was famous. Famous people took up a different type of space in photos than people who weren’t famous. Also, they glowed.

This woman glowed.

She was definitely not a makeup artist.

She was someone who makeup artists made up. Is that the right term? she wondered. “Made up”? It was a little bit like they made a new version of the person they were working on. Her dad sometimes looked like a total stranger after makeup: an old man or a monster, or worse, a stranger.

Nat’s hands went cold and clammy.

“You are made up,” she said to the face in the magazine, then she looked away. She didn’t read any of the small print beside the photo. She closed her eyes, but she could still almost see the face, as though it had been burned into her retinas.

Her heart kept sloshing in a watery way, like it was murmuring a secret that it wanted her to hear.

“Are you my mother?” she mouthed to the magazine, and then she felt dizzy again and lay down on the floor. She was panting like a dog in the sun. She wondered if she was dying.

This was why her dad didn’t want her to read the magazines.

This was why she had to carefully separate her dad in her mind from XAN GALLAGHER.

Nat closed her eyes again and pictured herself underwater, bubbles rising to the surface, no sounds coming from anywhere except her own heartbeat. When she thought about hearts, she thought about blue whales. Blue whales were the biggest whales in the whole species. Their hearts were big enough that another, smaller whale—like a baby humpback or an adult orca—could easily swim through their gigantic veins.

She had been in the bathroom for a long time. Harry probably thought she was dead. She wasn’t sure that she wasn’t, but probably not. She could hear the TV was on now in the other room. Maybe he had even forgotten she was there.

Nat put the magazine down on the floor. She took the rest of the magazines and put them on the floor, too, separately from the one.

She nudged the rest of the XAN magazines with her foot and the pile spilled over messily, cover after cover showing itself to her.

“XAN GALLAGHER: SEXIEST MAN ALIVE THREE YEARS RUNNING”

“XAN THE MAN: HE’S WRITING A BOOK!”

“XAN LEADS PIPELINE PROTEST—BUT WHO IS THAT GIRL?”

She stacked the XAN magazines at the bottom of the bigger pile and put them carefully back in the closet. She put the one from February 28, 2005, right there on top of the pile, closed the door, and gave it a kick. The kick was so loud that the TV went quiet. Harry must have muted it.

He probably thought she was nuts.

Probably he wouldn’t want to be her friend anymore, and she needed a friend, she really did. She wanted to press a big “RESTART” button on this whole playdate. Even the word “playdate” was all wrong.

They were twelve.

They were hanging out, that’s all.

Or they would be, if she hadn’t spent the whole time in the bathroom.

She turned on the faucet so Harry wouldn’t think she was dead.

Harry knocked on the door. “Mom says I have to ask if you’re OK in there.”

“I’m fine,” she said, louder than she needed to. She laughed so that he would know nothing was wrong.

Harry knocked again, harder. “What?” he said. “Are you crying?”

“Coming!” Nat shouted, still running the faucet. “Just washing my hands!”

Then, without thinking about it, she opened the cupboard door again and took the magazine. She rolled it up and stuffed it down the leg of her jeans.

“What are you doing in there?” said Harry.

“I’m coming, I said.” She looked at herself in the mirror and there she was, the same as before.

She put her hand on the door handle and made herself turn it. She put a smile on her face. “Hi,” she said to Harry.

“Why are you making a face?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I do that.”

“OK.”

“Don’t be scared,” she said.

“I’m not!” he said. “Why would I be scared?”

Nat followed Harry back down the tiny hallway into the room that his mom had called the playroom.

Playroom/playdate, Nat thought.

Both were terrible words.

“Go down to the playroom!” Harry’s mom had said after she’d fed them a snack.

Harry’s mom seemed perfectly, quintessentially normal. The snack was some kind of orange cheese goo spread onto celery sticks, salty crackers, and chocolate chip cookies. It was the best snack Nat had ever eaten.

Harry was so lucky.

The “playroom” had a sectional couch that was bigger than Nat’s whole living room and kitchen combined. There was a TV that was connected to an Xbox, a PlayStation, and a Wii U. Nat felt flattened by envy. From the side, she probably looked like a piece of paper, that’s how flat she felt. Her dad didn’t believe in video games. He believed in being outside. He believed in fresh air and trees.

Nat liked those things, too. If she didn’t go to the beach every single day, she might not see the whales again. And the whales were a billion times better than any old Xbox. Even thinking about them made her heart feel lighter, floaty, like when you run down a hill really fast and your feet don’t even really touch the ground.

So why did seeing all this stuff make her feel so flat? She flopped backward onto the couch and folded her legs, origami-style, into her body.

“What are you doing?” said Harry. “Is that yoga?”

“Yes,” she said, because it was easier than trying to explain. “Ohmmm,” she said. “That’s meditation.”

“Okaaaaaaay,” he said. “You’re being super weird.”

“I’m not,” said Nat, and she crossed her eyes. “I’m just jealous of all your stuff. I don’t have any stuff. My dad is a minimalist.”

Something dark passed over Harry’s face. “My dad is a jerk,” he said.

Nat stopped smiling. She didn’t know what to say.

After all, Harry might have a lot of stuff, but he also had a dad problem.

She didn’t have a dad problem.

Not really.

Unless having a famous dad is a problem, which it was, in a lot of ways that probably Harry wouldn’t understand because to him having XAN GALLAGHER as a dad probably looked pretty great.

It was Harry’s dad who told the school that Harry was Harriet.

It was Harry’s dad who told them that Harry was a girl and must be referred to as “she,” even though Harry said he was a “he” and, as far as Nat was concerned, this should be up to Harry.

“Forget it,” said Harry. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He smelled like Doritos and laundry soap, which was weird because they hadn’t eaten Doritos.

“Did you know that all dogs’ feet smell like Doritos?” she said.

“I didn’t know you had a dog!”

“I don’t. But my best friend . . . I mean, my old best friend. My friend, Solly. She had a dog. Has a dog. She still has it.”

“Huh,” said Harry. “Doritos are good.”

“They smell like dogs’ feet,” said Nat. “How can you eat them?”

Harry rubbed his stomach. “I’d like some right now,” he said. “Mmmmmm, dog-foot chips! My favorite.”

They giggled.

The leather on the couch was cool and smooth under Nat’s hand. She rubbed her hand on it. “This is a really nice couch,” she said, which she knew was the wrong thing.

“I don’t know who my mom is,” she mouthed, but didn’t say out loud.

“I saw something in that magazine and I’m freaking out,” she added.

My mom is a makeup artist. She tried to believe that one, but now she wasn’t sure. She closed her eyes. She is, Nat told herself. She’s French. She’s a makeup artist. She loves whales. My mom is made up. Made up with makeup. She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to tell him though. She wanted to say something. She just didn’t know what, exactly, to say.

“Why are you moving your mouth like that?” Harry said. “You’re not making any sound. I can’t hear you.”

Nat shrugged.

“Do you believe in telepathy?” she said.

“What’s that? You mean like mind reading?” He snorted. “Duh. No.”

Nat flinched.

She decided right then and there that she wouldn’t tell Harry anything about her mom until he asked.

She knew he would never ask.

She picked up all four game controllers and laid them out beside her on the couch. “What should we play?” she said.

“Duh,” he said, like it was obvious.

She wasn’t sure she liked how he said “duh” all the time, but she knew you could like a person without liking everything about them. She tried to erase her bad thought about how he said “duh.” It wasn’t up to her to judge. That was another one of her dad’s things, the thing about never judging people. “People are weirdos!” he’d say. “Freaks and weirdos! All of us! It’s what makes us so great!”

Harry went to one of the game consoles and fiddled with it, then came back.

Being with Harry outside of school felt different; the atmosphere shifted around them. It was, she thought, like looking at the pavement in a heat wave. Everything felt shimmery and surreal, not like real life.

“What are you girls up to?” Harry’s mom materialized out of nowhere. She was carrying a hamper full of dirty laundry with the cat balanced on the top. “This cat,” she said, and laughed, putting the hamper down.

When Harry’s mom said “girls,” Nat felt something in her mouth that burned. She wondered if she might throw up. She swished the spit around in her mouth and swallowed. It tasted bad.

“Mom.” Harry frowned. “We’re playing video games, OK? Can you leave us alone?”

“Is that rude?” his mom said. “Harriet?”

“Don’t call me Harriet!” he shouted.

Nat couldn’t believe how fast he got mad. She’d never seen anyone get mad as quickly as Harry did, except for her dad, and that was just that one time.

“Your dad says . . .” Harry’s mom said.

Nat looked around; she wanted to crawl under the sofa and hide but there was only about an inch of space. There was no way that she would fit. She considered just running away. She could keep running until she was back at the Airstream trailer, where her dad was probably right now steaming twenty-seven pounds of shrimp. The shrimp here was really good. She wished she were there with him now, sneaking some shrimp from the basket.

Nat hadn’t known that it was possible to feel homesick for your own house when you were just hanging out with a friend after school.

“Don’t talk about it!” yelled Harry. “Can’t we just not talk about it for ten seconds?”

“I’m just trying to do the right thing here,” said Harry’s mom.

Nat glanced at the window, which was one of the half windows that people have in basements. She was eye level with the ground. She pictured herself climbing up and out and then crawling away, but she knew she wouldn’t. She wasn’t the kind of person to abandon a friend. “I—” she started.

“It’s your name!” his mom interrupted. She had a steely determination in her voice. Her words glinted like roofing nails. “Your father and I named you Harriet.”

“I don’t want to fight about this right now!” Harry yelled.

Nat cleared her throat. Both Harry and his mom stared at Nat like they’d forgotten that she was there. She was definitely there. She took a deep breath; it smelled like cat (which was nothing like Doritos) and leather. She thought about what she should say.

“Oh my goodness,” said Harry’s mom. “That was so rude of us. I’m sorry, Nat. We didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable!”

“Why do you call her Nat? That’s a boy’s name! If you call her Nat, you have to call me Harry,” said Harry. “She’s a girl! She doesn’t even look like a boy!” He looked at her. “Well, she does a little.”

“I’m a girl,” said Nat quickly. “I used to have short hair and people said I was a tomboy, but I was just . . .” She let the sentence trail away. It was too complicated in the moment to explain about her Tomboy Years. It had to do with her dad wanting her to hide her true self from the media, just like he did.

Except he didn’t. XAN GALLAGHER was XAN GALLAGHER, period. He wasn’t different when he was just her dad, he was just sometimes less jovial.

Nat tapped her fingers against her cheek, and then she looked at the cat, which—like her—didn’t seem to know where to go but looked like he wanted to run. The cat meowed.

You can just jump down, Nat told the cat telepathically, and he did. Cats were very in tune like that. Nat smiled.

The cat’s departure unbalanced the laundry, which spilled out all over the floor. Then it was like all the air rushed out of Harry’s mom at once, and she sagged against the door frame. “You’re right,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry.” Then she walked away, leaving the mess behind.

Harry still hadn’t said anything.

He seemed paralyzed. His mouth was open a little bit. Nat was tempted to stick her finger in his mouth. That’s what she would have done to Solly if Solly made that face. But Harry wasn’t Solly, so she didn’t.

Nat picked up one of the game controllers, the gold one.

Harry was still not talking.

Nat got up and pressed the reset button on the game, which had gone to sleep. “Ready?” she said.

Harry nodded.

He had freckles in a perfect arch that went over his nose. It looked like an upside-down smile, or a sad face, if you thought of it that way. Nat was starting to understand why Harry looked so sad all the time.

It was because of Harriet.

It was because his mom was trying to do the right thing, and by trying to do the right thing, she was doing the wrong thing.

It was because his dad wasn’t even trying to do the right thing at all.

Having a dad who did not understand about his Harry-ness must have felt insurmountable. “Insurmountable” was one of Nat’s favorite English words. There were some good ones, after all. It was a word that made her think of mountains too high to climb, glistening with snow and ice, sharply carving lines into the sky. Also, it contained the word “mount,” which made her think of the creepy bear head she had noticed hanging on the living room wall in the upstairs of Harry’s house, which they had to pass on their way to the stairs that led to the playroom.

The more she thought about it, the more insurmountable became reshaped as a headless bear in her mind.

She shivered.

Nat hadn’t explained to Harry about the words she collected—all kinds of words, from regular ones to foreign ones to made-up ones—and how they made shapes in her head, the foreign ones more roughly hewn than the English ones, which were so sanded down and polished by being spoken out loud so much around her that they were all uniformly smooth and sometimes not meaningful enough.

She tried to concentrate on the game.

She didn’t know how to play it, and her character kept dying. Harry’s didn’t.

Just then, he shouted “HEY” at the screen. She watched as his character fell down a tunnel.

“Watch out!” she said, way too late. “I don’t really know how to play this,” she added. “It’s harder than it looks.”

“It’s not hard!”

“Did I just die? How am I supposed to do this?”

“Argh!” he yelled. He stood up and started jumping up and down. “It helps when I jump!” he explained, even though she hadn’t asked. “It totally helps!”

Nat stood up and started jumping, too, her sock feet landing with gentle thuds on the thick carpet while her character re-spawned for the tenth time. The game played a jaunty, enthusiastic song.

Nat and Harry jumped and jumped in Harry’s basement. Nat was a little worried that the magazine in her jeans was a) showing or b) about to slide down and out the bottom of her pants.

How would she explain that?

She stopped jumping.

“Why aren’t you jumping?” Harry said.

“I got tired,” she said, sitting down.

“OK.” He sat down, too.

“When I was little, I saved all my fingernail clippings in a jar, because I didn’t want any part of me to get thrown in the garbage,” Harry said, for what seemed like no reason.

“What about your toenail clippings?” Nat’s character ran into a bad guy and evaporated. The game bleeped. Even the music sounded disappointed in her.

“Toenails are gross! I threw those out.”

“I’m glad you have such super-high standards,” she said. “Now I know we’ll be friends.”

“Duh,” said Harry, but he looked at her funny and then he shook his head. She wasn’t sure if that meant they were friends or that they weren’t.

“Unguim,” said Nat. Unguim was the Latin word for fingernail.

“Whatever,” said Harry. His character grabbed the giant diamond from the top of the turret and raised his hands in a victory dance. The video game played a jaunty tune.

“I won,” he said, but he didn’t sound as happy about it as Nat would have expected.