MORNING
I’m hunched over my desk in homeroom, writing this before first bell because hopefully this is a turning point, and I need to record it while it’s still fresh.
I did it. I told Dad. It wasn’t too hard, actually. My parents have adjusted their work schedules so that at least one of them can be home at all times while the other is always available to walk me to school.
Dad was on Keri-walking duty this morning, and I figured it was now or never.
“I’m worried about Alistair,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
But there was a lot more than yeah in those yeahs. His eyes, his posture, his breath crystallizing in big clouds with each puff into the frosty air, they all told me that the first yeah meant Aren’t we all? and the second yeah meant We’ve really got to do something about this, don’t we?
“He’s having delusions, I think,” I told Dad. “He says he goes to a magical world. A place that grants wishes. I think he believes Fiona and Charlie are there.”
Dad didn’t slow his stride. He didn’t look at me either. School was visible through the trees in the distance, and he was treating it like a finish line in a race. “When I was a kid—” he started to say, but I couldn’t let him take one of his inevitable detours down memory lane.
“Please,” I said. “Not another one of your stories. I love your stories, Dad. They make me smile and they make me think, but—”
“I know,” he said. “They’re not about what’s happening now.”
“Yeah,” I said.
The meaning of my yeah could have filled a book.
Dad rubbed his hands together to warm them up and said, “There are things we aren’t telling you. Alistair is not in a healthy state. Mom and I know this. Rest assured that he has spoken to some experts. And he’ll need to speak to more. We’re working on finding the right fit.”
“He believes these things, Dad,” I said. “I can’t begin to describe what he believes.”
He stopped and pushed his head toward me like a curious bird. “Did he tell you he was going to hurt himself … or anyone else?”
“No,” I said, so glad that Dad was worried about the same thing I was. “But…”
He nodded, and said, “If he wants to talk to you, listen to him. If what he says worries you, tell us. But realize that you’re not going to solve things for him. Mom and I aren’t going to solve things for him either.”
“But you’re an expert,” I said.
“Not in this,” he said. “These are very specific psychiatric issues that I don’t have much experience with. But there are people who do. We’ll leave it to them. My job right now is to be a dad. You love your brother, don’t you?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
I would have said it a million times if I could have, but Dad started walking again and we were almost at school. “Then your job is to be a sister,” he said. “All you have to do is this: Listen. Have patience. And love.”
EVENING
Leave Alistair to the experts. As in psychiatrists. As in shrinks. As in the wackiest flavor of scientists.
Oh, glorious science. If my family had a religion, it’d be you. We celebrate Christmas and all that—because, come on, presents!—but when it comes to explaining things, we bow down to science. When it comes to fixing things, we worship science.
So science will fix Alistair. The science of psychotherapy? The science of prescriptions? Might work. I hope so, but I can’t say for sure. I can only say that in the past doctors would cut out parts of people’s brains to “cure” them. Oh yes, lobotomies were all the rage, and not so long ago. All in the name of science.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that science is wonderful, but I don’t always trust science. Because of those mistakes of the past. Also for personal reasons.
The personal bit goes back about two years. Late springtime. Or maybe it was an unusually warm day in early springtime. I remember I was in a denim jacket, not a down feather anywhere on my person.
Mandy and I were sitting on the swings in Hanlon Park, discussing whatever it was we discussed in sixth grade. Boys? I guess so. I had a crush on Sean Delaney back then, which is pretty insane considering what a rumor-spreading, rattail-having slimeball he turned out to be.
At some point, we got to talking about how middle school relationships are a bit like swings, all up and down, back and forth, which got us talking about middle school science, about pendulums and, I think, maybe … Newton’s Laws? Newton had laws about how things fall, fly, swing, spin around, and flip upside down in the world, right?
Yes, I realize I should’ve paid more attention during class.
Anyway, this all led to Mandy grabbing both of our backpacks—mine full of books and hers full of magazines—and placing them in the bucket seat of one of those swings designed for babies. Together, the backpacks probably weighed close to twenty-five pounds. That’s one chunker of an infant.
Next, Mandy stood in the gravel, pulled the weighted swing back, and held it about an inch in front of her nose. “The magic of science,” she said as she let it go.
You know what a pendulum is, don’t you, Stella? It’s usually a ball on a string that rocks back and forth. Businessmen often have little ones on their desks—don’t ask me why—but pretty much anything on a string, rope, or chain can be turned into a pendulum. A swing, for example. The thing about pendulums is that when you hold them and drop them, gravity will make them move. They swoop down, swoop up, and come back. They end up right where you dropped them from. Or almost as close. They slow down after a while because of … wind friction?
Okay, I may have forgotten some of the terms over the years, but the point is if you hold a pendulum in front of your nose, then drop it, it will swing out and swing back, but it won’t hit you in the nose. That’s science. And that’s what Mandy was doing. She was giving science a run for its money.
Hey, we get bored here in Thessaly. Isn’t a heck of a lot to do.
Where was I, Stella?
Oh right, Mandy dropped the backpack-baby-swing-pendulum. Then she closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, made her body go stiff as the thing flew down and up, the chains creaking as it went. Then it changed direction and came racing back at her, down again and up. I was tempted to dive in front of it, because it sure looked like it was going to plonk her right in the nose. But I didn’t, maybe because I trusted science or because I wanted to see what happened. Probably more of the latter.
Well, hooray science, because it stopped short of Mandy’s honker. By a sliver. The force of the movement even caused her hair to blow back like some supermodel standing in front of a fan at a photo shoot. I gasped. She winced. Then she threw up her hands and cheered, “Your turn!”
That’s how it goes with me and Mandy. Her first. At everything. The good and the bad. First slice from the pie, first cannonball into the cold swimming hole. Not that I’d call myself a follower, or her a leader even, but we fell into that routine long ago. Which sometimes works to my advantage. If Mandy had gotten plonked on the nose by the swing that day, then I would have called it quits. But since she didn’t, I was obliged to take my turn.
I stood in the exact same spot that Mandy stood, in her footprints in the gravel. I pulled the swing back, feeling the weight of it. “Not sure I can do this,” I said as I pressed the rubber to the tip of my nose.
“I can do it for you, if you want,” Mandy said. And she put her hands on the swing while nudging mine down. I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t stop her. I held my hands at my sides and closed my eyes and went stiff like she did.
“Okay. I’m ready,” I said.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Bam.
Oh, science. To go along with your lobotomies, you need to answer for the girl in the denim jacket who ended up writhing in the gravel with a bloody nose. That’s right. Booooo Newton and your lousy laws! Because that swing hit me smack-dab in the nose.
Truth be told, I didn’t actually see it hit me. My eyes were still closed at that point. But it felt like it probably feels when a gorilla punches you in the face.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Mandy cried as she came to my rescue. “You shouldn’t have leaned forward. Why did you lean forward?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to,” I babbled, and blood pooled in my hands, which were cupped over my nose.
“Why did you lean forward?” she asked again, rubbing my back.
“I didn’t,” I said, which I knew to be true and still know to be true. If anything, I leaned back.
Now, two years later, I will do what my dad asked. I will be a sister. I will listen. I will practice patience. I will love. I will let science take its shot at fixing my brother, but if science ends up plonking him in the nose, well then … screw science.