Mick
Jade’s not in English class today. It shouldn’t make any difference, but it does. I stretch my legs out under her chair and let myself get comfortable. I haven’t done that since we broke up.
“Jade…Jade Nelson?” Mr. Ubu looks up from his attendance sheet. “Does anyone know where Jade is?”
Lily Crouse says, “She just texted me. She was in a car accident.”
I sit up straight. Everyone turns around and starts talking. It’s an excuse as much as anything, and Ubu knows it.
“Class. Class!” He presses his hands down in front of him like he’s demonstrating how to do a push-up.
“Jade is still capable of tapping out a detailed message. Clearly, this was not a catastrophic accident. Now settle down. And Lily, put your phone away. You know the rules.”
He starts writing on the board. I lean over to Lily. “What happened?”
She shakes her head. “I think it’s Gavin. She said she has to take him to the hospital.”
That’s all I get before Ubu claps chalk dust off his hands and faces the class again.
He’s wrong. Just because Jade can still text doesn’t mean she’s okay. I know her. She could be gushing blood from her brain, and she’d still make sure she didn’t have an “unexplained absence” on her record. She’s dying to get into nursing school.
Dying.
I warned her mother about that crap car of theirs. I can’t believe it ever passed inspection. The muffler’s held on with duct tape, and I’m not even exaggerating. I walked home in the freezing rain one night rather than get in that death trap.
Mr. Ubu says, “Turn to chapter four.”
Gavin is four.
I should have called. I should have gone around and seen him, taken him to the playground or out for an ice cream or something.
What does Jade mean by an accident? How bad of an accident?
My eyes sting. It would be so lame if I started to cry.
I tell myself Quinn’s right. I had to walk away from them. I couldn’t be going back to their place all the time. Gavin already went through that once when his dad left. I couldn’t let him get his hopes up again. It’s like that thing they say about pulling off a Band-Aid. Do it fast. It’ll hurt less in the long run.
That’s what I tell myself, but as soon as class ends, I’m out of there like a shot.
I try Jade’s cell phone. She doesn’t pick up. No answer at her mother’s either. I’d call Gavin’s preschool, but I don’t remember the name.
The bell rings for second period. Math. It’s midterm review today. I can’t miss it. I’ll try Jade again later.
I head straight to class. If I hadn’t had to walk by the door to the parking lot, I bet I would have made it. Instead, I grab Anwar and ask him to tell Mr. Lawson I have to go to the hospital. At least I’m not lying about that.
Luckily, it’s my day for the car. I gun it to the children’s hospital. The whole way there, I’m hunched over the wheel with these pictures flashing in my mind. It’s like I’m watching the lead-in to the five o’clock news. A paramedic pulling a little kid’s body out of a smashed car. Heart-wrenching close-up of a stuffed kangaroo by the wreck. The reporter shaking her head and doing her best sad face. “The name of the victim cannot be identified until next of kin have been notified. And now over to you, Ted.”
I park with one wheel up on the curb and run through the hospital’s emergency entrance. The waiting room is half empty. I look around. I don’t see them.
That’s either a good sign or a very bad one.
The security guard says, “Yes?” I turn and stare at him. I’m trying to come up with a way to ask the question I want to ask without making an idiot of myself.
“Can I help you?” he says.
At that exact moment, the sliding door opens and there’s Gavin. A nurse is pushing him in a wheelchair. His arm is wrapped in a big bandage. Angie, his mother, is right behind him. She’s holding Kanga. That seems kind of funny to me. The kangaroo survived too. I almost laugh.
“Mick,” she says. Jade looks up from her cell phone. Gavin jumps out of the wheelchair and runs right at me.
“Careful!” I say. I don’t want to hurt him.
The nurse says, “A remarkable recovery.”
Angie laughs, then nods at me. “You can pick him up. Don’t worry.”
She points at the bandage and whispers, “It’s mostly for show. Although heaven knows I wish I’d listened to you about that damn car.”
She puts her hand on her throat and manages not to cry. She’s a nice lady. I feel bad for her. Since her husband left, all she does is work.
I hoist Gavin up, and he throws his arms around my head. I can barely see. He’s sticky. He smells like grape juice and pee. I really really missed him.
“Mick,” Jade says. I move Gavin’s wrist from my eyes and look at her. I almost forgot she was here. “You’re so sweet to come,” she says.
“You okay?”
“Oh. Yeah. Fine.” She waves a hand. “More worried about you-know-who than anything.”
Gavin says, “Who?”
We all say, “Nobody.”
Angie’s on a double shift at the adult hospital, so I take the others home. It’s like having a chimp in the car. If Gavin weren’t strapped into his car seat, he’d be banging his head on the ceiling.
He’s babbling away about preschool and the crash and the cop and the nurse. Everything is, “Know what, Mick?” or “Guess what, Mick,” or “That’s the truth, Mick.” He must have used my name thirty times.
Jade leans against the passenger door and wiggles her eyebrows. “Someone’s happy to see you.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” I say. “I’m so glad he’s okay. I mean, so glad you’re both okay.”
“We are now,” Jade says.
We pull into the building’s parking lot. Jade gets Gavin out of his car seat. She flinches when she picks him up.
“Here,” I say. “I’ll carry him.” I kind of forgot she was in the accident too.
They live on the fourth floor and, as usual, the elevator’s not working. I’m huffing by the time we get to the top of the stairs.
“Can you come in for a while?” Jade says.
Gavin bounces up and down in my arms. “Yes, yes, yes!”
No getting out of it. “Just for a minute,” I say.
Jade opens the door. I’ve always liked the smell of their place. She and Angie drink a lot of ginger tea. There’s something about it that seems kind of Christmasy or something. Today, though, it just seems sad. It’s like it was going into going into Nanny’s house after the funeral and smelling her perfume.
Gavin drags me into the kitchen. He wants a snack. “Just be careful what you give him,” Jade says. “There’s a list of stuff he can’t have on the cupboard door.”
“Okay, bud, what’ll it be?” I plop Gavin onto the counter and look at the list. It’s, like, a page long. I don’t have time for this.
Chocolate. Coffee. Aged cheese.
“What’s sodium nitrate?” I say.
Jade’s in the living room, putting Gavin’s jacket and shoes away. “Something in hot dogs and salami.”
Artificial sweeteners. Chicken livers.
As if a preschooler’s going to want chicken livers for a snack.
“MSG?” I say.
“It’s a spice or something. Sort of looks like salt. They put it in Chinese food.”
No Chinese food. Now that hurts.
“Sulphites?”
“You don’t have to worry about them. They’re in red wine.”
I point my finger at Gavin and say, “Keep out of the red wine, buddy.” He rolls his eyes so he looks drunk. Or, at least, so he looks the way a four-year-old thinks someone looks when they’re drunk. He cracks me up.
I call out to Jade, “So what can he have, then?”
“How about a peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich?”
She couldn’t just tell me that in the first place? I remember why she used to irritate me.
I get out a couple slices of bread, smear one side with peanut butter and load the other side up with jam. Just the way he likes it. We have a little snicker over that. Gavin loves thinking he’s getting away with something.
I put the sandwich on his Batman plate and cut it into four triangles. He sits on the counter, eating and talking, while I put everything away. They might not have much money, but Jade and Angie are neat freaks.
“Okay, bud,” I say. “Got to go.”
Jade is leaning against the kitchen doorway, smiling at me. I hope she didn’t see how much jam I gave him. She’s changed into that old plaid shirt of mine.
“You do?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve got History starting soon. I have to run.”
Gavin starts to whine, but Jade stops him. “Now, now, GooGoo. Mick’s right. School’s important,” she says.
She kisses me on the cheek. I ruffle Gavin’s hair, then race off to class. I really don’t want to miss it. Dalma’s going to be there.