NOT LONG AFTER THAT, I’M READING ON MY PHONE AS I walk through the lobby doors toward the bus stop. Dad was long gone (of course, he was), and Mom has sent me home to get her fresh clothes and do some laundry. The air is warm and hints at the summer yet to come. Part of me wants to see if I can find Dad, lurking somewhere around the hospital, but I don’t. Why pour salt in that wound? Plus, Mom will sort out how to get the divorce papers from him. Somehow.
Layla’s sent me fourteen texts since yesterday. I write her back, telling her all about Chris’s injuries and recovery plan.
Her reply comes in immediately.
Layla: So, remember how I was supposed to check on the website clicks and money coming in after Eddy and co boosted it?
Kit: Yes …
Layla: You’re up to a million hits and we’ve made three thousand dollars so far.
Kit: SHUT UP!
Layla: Not even lying. I’ll go over it with you later. Are you working tonight?
Kit: Nope. I’ve got to catch up on homework for the next few days. My next shift is on Wednesday.
Layla: Okay, I’m off tonight too. Text me if you want to hang out.
She texts a smiley face back, and I’m about to put my phone away, but Jett’s face appears on my screen.
“How’s Chris?” Jett asks when I pick up.
“Awake, alive, and telling me I should take his place as the Red Knight.”
“Glad to hear it,” says Jett. I can practically hear him grinning. “Can I come get you? My mom is making fancy grilled cheese.”
The bus pulls up as he says it, but it’s already crowded. It belches stinky smoke, and somehow the thought of riding the bus to my empty house, with its cooler full of melting ice and disgusting food, is just too much for me right now.
“I could eat grilled cheese.”
“Be there soon,” says Jett.
He pulls up in his mom’s minivan fifteen minutes later and honks twice, and I open the passenger door. “Thanks for the ride,” I say, pulling the door closed behind me. “Nice wheels.”
“Dad’s taking the bike out, so I got stuck with the van again.”
“Well, I appreciate the chance not to barf on your bike. Again.”
A pained look crosses his face. “You have a terrible sense of humor,” he says, and smiles. “You know that, right?”
“That’s what friends are for.” I laugh.
Which is apparently our new motto, and a great big fat lie.
JETT’S MOM LOOKS NOTHING LIKE MINE. WHEREAS MY MOM looks tired and crumpled, like a tissue that’s been used up and thrown away, Jett’s mom is still glamorous. She was a model before she went to college, and she’s tall and thin, and her hair always looks like she’s just come from a Brazilian blowout. Even when she’s wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a cardigan with holes in the elbows.
She sits at their kitchen counter, a cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other.
“Hello, Kit,” she says as I walk in. She puts her book down and comes over to kiss me on both my cheeks, which makes her that much more glamorous and European. “I hope you are hungry.” She gestures to a plate piled high with grilled cheeses. White cheese flecked with herbs and peppers oozes out of them.
My stomach rumbles, reminding me I’ve not had more than coffee and cold pancakes today.
Jett takes my backpack and puts it on the living room couch.
“Be right back,” he says, taking the stairs two at a time. From upstairs there’s the thump of a kid jumping out of a bunk bed and then a bunch of feet pounding around.
Jett’s mom glances upstairs and smiles. She looks just like Jett when she does that. “‘Let’s have lots of kids,’ I said to my husband. ‘I want a houseful of naughty boys.’”
“Be careful what you wish for?” I say, smiling back.
“Always,” she says. “Come here. I want you to see this.”
I sit down next to her and she pushes the book she’s reading toward me. It’s as large as a coffee-table book and ragged at the edges. Pieces of paper are shoved into it, and they stick out of the top, bottom, and side. I open it and run my fingers over the handwritten Russian words. Kids in red and blue bell-shaped coats, Easter eggs, farm animals, and many other drawings cover the pages.
“What is this?”
“It’s a book of stories,” says Jett’s mom. She pushes her glasses up her nose and runs her hand over a page, caressing it lovingly. “In Russia, when I was growing up, there were not very many books. My mother would take me to the booksellers near Gorky Park. We would read what was there and then pass them on; but there were more kids who wanted to read than there were books. So we would share. My mother, like so many others, would copy stories into books like this. We’d pass these books around and draw pictures in them. This one came to me via a friend in Europe. Her mother gave it to her. I’m going to document it as part of a larger project I’m working on.”
“It’s so pretty.” I turn another page. “What’s this story about?”
“That is a fairy tale, about two children who find a house made of plums—”
“‘Hansel and Gretel’?”
“Something like that,” says Jett’s mom. She reads a few lines in Russian, the words lilting off her tongue. When she stops, I turn another page.
“Is it hard to be away from your family?” I say as I look at all the handwritten stories and pictures.
Jett doesn’t talk about the Russian side of his family. All I know is his mother went to Australia on a student visa and met his dad there, and they moved to America before Jett was born.
“There are not many of them left,” she says, wrapping both hands around her cup of tea. “My mother died when I was your age, and my father passed away when I was a university student.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, kicking myself for bringing up bad memories.
“It’s nothing to be sorry over,” says Jett’s mom with a sad smile. “They were wonderful people, but it was their time.”
Silence stretches between us, and I turn another page. Upstairs, more footsteps pound around.
“What’s your project about?” I ask as I come to a particularly beautiful page. Colorful statues resting on the top of spectacular onion-domed buildings look on as children ride winged horses through the snow.
Jett’s mom takes a sip of tea. “I’m still figuring that out, but I know I want to use books like this to talk about how sometimes things aren’t ideal, but you find a way; you get creative, and you have a network of people to help you.”
It’s a little bit like what I’ve learned from my time as the Girl Knight. Which is—of course—way less important than people bonding together to share literature and stories in an authoritarian culture where such things are tightly regulated. But still. Take the lessons where you can.
Before I can ask any more questions, two of Jett’s younger brothers race down the stairs and swarm the plate of grilled cheese.
“Hi, Kit!” shouts Feliks, an energetic third grader with a gap where his front teeth should be.
Jett’s other brother, Marc, a fourth grader, doesn’t look up from the book he’s reading as he sits down at the table.
I wave and take the oozy half of grilled cheese Feliks offers me. Jett’s mom hands out napkins, while Feliks and Marc eat apple slices and burp the alphabet.
“Charming family I have, I know,” says Jett, coming down the stairs holding his youngest brother, two-year-old Aarav, who’s clearly just woken up from a nap. His curly dark hair is plastered to his forehead and he hides his face on Jett’s shoulder when I wave to him.
Jett hands Aarav to his mom, who’s wisely covered her book of stories with a plastic bag. The baby nuzzles into his mom, and she sings to him softly in Russian while she hands out juice boxes.
Jett grabs a plate. “We’re eating outside,” he calls out as he jumps into the scramble for grilled cheese. He emerges with two full triangles and one half-eaten one.
“Sorry,” he says, appraising the half-eaten one.
“No worries,” I say, through a mouthful of sandwich. I grab two cups of lemonade and follow him outside.
When he closes the sliding door behind me, the noise of the house recedes. We sit side by side at a picnic table. It’s suddenly, awkwardly, hugely not quiet in the way that it can be only in the suburbs on a weekend in the spring. Meaning there are lawn mowers going, some music from a garage down the way, and the shouts of kids playing down the street.
Jett doesn’t say anything.
I don’t say anything.
I take a bite of grilled cheese, savoring its buttery, melty goodness.
“So, you’re not allowed to ask me about how the Girl Knight and Friends documentary is going. Because it’s top secret for now,” Jett finally says through a mouthful of sandwich.
“Chris might never ride again,” I blurt out at the same moment. My voice is thick with snot and unshed tears.
“Oh, Kit.” Jett pulls me into a side hug. “I’m sorry.”
“I mean, not riding isn’t the worst thing ever. I know that. But I’m so angry. Do you know why he was so distracted and fell?”
Before I can stop myself, the story about meeting my dad, and him trying to apologize to Chris, and what he said to me comes out in a rush.
Jett sits there for a moment, processing things.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. For a moment, it’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him about everything else—the Castle saying no and how I’m lying to everyone; the tournament I’ve somehow got to make work so I can become a Knight and pay for college; my mom’s money troubles; the divorce; Chris’s hospital bills—but I just stay quiet.
“What’re you going to do?”
I shrug. “I’m not going to see him again. I don’t want him in my life.”
“What do you want from him?” Jett drops his arm from my shoulder, like he’s just realized it’s there.
I take a shaky breath. I’ve been asking myself the same question all day.
“What I want is a dad who does more than pop into our lives when it’s convenient for him.”
“I’m sorry,” says Jett. “I think I lucked out in the dad department, so I can only imagine how hard this is for you.”
His dad is at the library right now, but he’s the best kind of dad. Interested, reliable, funny. Comes to kids’ soccer games and does stuff like offer to take Jett on trips to India, so Jett can fulfill his dream of volunteering at schools there. I would be lucky to have a dad half as good as Jett’s.
“It’s okay.” I finish my grilled cheese. “I think the trick with my dad is to not let the past overwhelm me too much. Keep looking ahead. He’s been gone so long, it’s not hard to imagine a future without him.”
“That’s a good plan.” Jett nods and stands up. “Want me to drive you home?”
I take his offered hand and get up too. “Can you drop me off at the Castle so I can pick up Chris’s car? I’ve got to go to the laundromat. Our washer’s broken again.”
My hand stays in Jett’s for a moment, but then he drops it like it’s crawling with medieval vermin. He looks like he wants to say more. Or hug me again. But we settle for a silence that’s clammy and uncomfortable in a wet-bathing-suit-when-you-get-out-of-the-pool kind of way.