THAT AFTERNOON, I walk home from the bus stop full of worry because now I’m supposed to go ring the doorbell of that new neighbor girl.
It never works out when your mom forces you to be friends with someone. In second grade, my mom did PTO stuff with Kyle Keefner’s mom, and made me come along so I could play with Kyle. They’d have coffee in the kitchen while Kyle pinned me to the floor of the playroom and stuffed the yellow heads of mini LEGO people up my nostrils. “See? Didn’t I tell you it’d be fun?” she’d say on the way home. Yeah. Thanks, Mom.
But I did promise to obey Mom’s command to go say hi to this girl. So I stop at the curb in front of her house to try to get up enough courage to go ring the bell, get the whole thing over with . . . when I see something weird.
There’s this giant pine tree that grows between our driveway and theirs. And all the way up near the top, its branches are rustling. I see a flash of bright red.
At first I imagine some kind of weird parrot or something. But then there’s a human arm, in a red T-shirt, grabbing for a branch. Then two dirty purple sneakers, scrambling by the trunk.
What do I do? Shout “Hello, welcome to the neighborhood” up the tree, where she’s dangling, now? What if I startle her and make her lose her balance?
Better just tiptoe past.
I’m about to do that when she shouts, “Who’s down there?”
I clear my throat a couple of times, then call up into the branches, my voice all croaking and weird: “You should probably try not to fall. Also, my mom told me to say hello to you.”
I cringe. Was that okay?
Nothing from her. No response.
Just as I’m turning to go, and feeling really stupid, the voice calls back. “I’m not falling. And why do you care what your mom tells you?” The purple sneakers and stork legs struggle even higher, up into the very topmost branches.
She’s climbing way too high. My heart pounds. “Hey, seriously. You could fall! What are you trying to prove?”
The whole top of the tree is bending and swaying now. One purple-sneakered foot flails off a branch, then scrambles back on.
I hold my breath as her hand reaches out and touches the tip-top branch. There’s a whoop of glee. “I see it!” she shouts.
“See what?” I shout back.
A face appears, up high between the branches, pale, but beaming. “The ocean! I see it!”
“Just . . . don’t fall!” I turn to go. “Oh—and welcome to the neighborhood!” I add, in a way that probably doesn’t sound too welcoming.
I can’t watch this. If she goes splat, she goes splat.
Back in my room, I pass the time until dinner by flipping through a stack of vintage Weird Mysteries comics. And I try not to look out my window at that pine tree. In fact, I close the curtain.
Mom’s late—big surprise—and Gramps is at the kitchen table, reading the business section and rubbing stinky ointment into his bum shoulder. He’s always either at that table reading the news, or in his recliner watching weird TV shows, and grumbling the whole time. Gramps has had some money and health troubles. He had to sell his farm last year and move in with us, and he can get pretty grumpy.
It’s hard for Gramps to do a lot of things now—including dinner prep, because he has Parkinson’s and his hands are starting to shake. He says that nowadays, because of his shaky hands, the only food prep he’s good at is salting or peppering things.
Because Calvin usually has sports practice after school, and Mom’s always working, and Gramps’s hands shake, dinner prep usually means me. I set the table around the newspaper, pull out a frozen lasagna, stick it in the oven, and wash some lettuce. Then I go outside and feed the chickens.
I glance over my shoulder, back up the drive—there’s no sign of a splatted human under the pine tree, so that’s good. If I were homeschooled, the last thing I’d do is risk my life climbing up a tree just to stare at the ocean. I’d be in my room, having fun, reading comics. But, instead, I have to go to a big prison of a middle school. And make dinner. And do a million chores. And put up with Gramps. And Cal.
Mom gets home late, and she’s so pooped from all the real-estating and accounting, she doesn’t even notice we’re eating lasagna that’s frozen in the middle. Calvin scoops all the good melted-cheese bits from around the edges. Then he says with an evil grin, “Hey, Mom. Stannie got called up on stage at assembly this morning in front of everyone, and he totally lost it.”
“Hush!” Mom cuts him off. “I know all about that already. Leave your poor little brother alone.”
Cal scowls, and shovels in some more lasagna. I don’t say anything, but come on. Poor little brother?
The rest of the meal, Gramps grumbles about how he should’ve bought this stock, or could have bought that property, until Mom says, “Okay, Dad, enough complaining.” She points at him with her fork. “It’s too stressful to think that way. I’m reading this wonderful book about being more mindful in the moment. It’s called No More Woulda-Shoulda-Coulda.” She looks around at all of us, smiling. “Pay attention, Stanley. This might be helpful to you about lowering your anxiety. The book says to practice mindful living. Notice every moment. Live in the present tense, enjoying the beauty of the here and now. It’s a very Buddhist-like philosophy. Isn’t it beautiful? No more woulda-shoulda-coulda.”
Cal snorts. “Yeah, like you live in the moment. You live in the office!”
Mom’s smile droops. “You have a point there, bucko,” she says.
Gramps takes another sip of his beer and shakes his head. “Shoulda been a Buddhist,” he says.
After cleanup, we all move to the TV room. Gramps grumps at the news anchor from his recliner while Mom works on her laptop. I’m doing math homework, with Albert Einstein curled up on top of my feet. Calvin’s on the couch, chucking a football up in the air, over and over.
“So help me, if you smash something . . . ,” Mom murmurs from behind her laptop screen. But Cal just keeps whipping the ball at the ceiling.
“Breaking news from Uganda,” says some lady on the TV news, a hand on her earpiece.
And we all freeze.
When my dad first started this new travel job, Mom taped a giant paper world map on the living room wall for Cal and me so we could track him. Red pins show all the places Dad’s been, on his “midlife crisis mission to save the world,” as Mom calls it. And one single green pin marks where he is now. The map’s totally pockmarked with red pins.
“This just in,” the TV person says. “A massive explosion near government buildings in Kampala has resulted in evacuations, and early reports of casualties are coming in. . . .”
Nobody moves. The football stays in Cal’s hands. Then all four of our heads swivel simultaneously to look at that world map. All of our eyes focus on the location of the one, small, green, pin.
Mom’s eyes widen, and then she starts typing furiously on her laptop. “Just wait a minute. Let me call up your father’s latest schedule. Wait. Wait.”
Red Alert.
Red Alert.
On the television the smoke is still billowing from the airport in Kampala. Mom is still tapping furiously on her laptop and jabbing at the buttons on her phone. “Wait!” she says. “I’ve texted him. Wait!”
So we wait. I rub my clammy hands on the knees of my jeans and try to calm down. My eyes are riveted onto the news.
On the screen, the black, billowing smoke footage has changed to a scene of ambulances and police across the street, and dirty, dazed people milling about. Some type of scuffle and screaming breaks out behind an on-the-scene reporter.
“Principal Coffin would say they need to file out of there quickly and orderly,” says Cal, clutching the football tightly, his voice low and quiet.
Woop, goes my stomach. Woop.
Tap tap, go Mom’s fingers, flying on her laptop.
“Wait!” Mom finally shouts. “He’s not even in Kampala right now. . . .” She exhales a gush of air. “He left there . . . two weeks ago!?” She rubs her eyes; they look bloodshot and bleary. “I totally forgot about moving that stupid pin!”
We all let out a whoosh of air we didn’t realize we’d been holding.
That’s how long my dad’s been away from us. So long that he could be anywhere on that big stupid wall map. So long that we’ve stopped remembering to even keep track.