CHAPTER 19

AFTER MS. LATIMER DRIVES OFF, I GO TO THE BACKYARD AND pretend I’m playing in the cypress trees next to the bayou where Rogue used to play before her mother left. Now that it’s the middle of May, the oak tree’s leaves have finally burst from their buds, making a canopy of green that nearly blocks out the sun. Like the trees of Cajun country. Like the posters on my bedroom wall.

I hear the afternoon bus’s squealing brakes, and a little later Brandon comes out of his house with his box of wrestlers. “Have you seen my brother?” he asks.

“No. Is his bike there?”

Brandon crosses the street, peers into the garage, then disappears from my view. I guess he’s checking inside the garage, blocked by his family’s van in the driveway.

He skips across the street to the park, where I wait for him. “No bike. But his school stuff is there.”

“He must have gone riding. Ever seen his tricks?”

“Yeah. They’re the best.” Brandon flashes his missing-teeth smile. “He says he’s gonna teach me when I’m bigger.”

Brandon and I play wrestlers in the park. From time to time he glances toward Washington Avenue, and around five thirty, women’s voices from his backyard interrupt our tag team match. I don’t see anyone because the garage is in the way. A green station wagon is parked on the street in front of the house. The quieter voice sounds scratchy like Mrs. Mac’s, but I miss many of the words. The other person’s words I make out.

We have a lease, hear? A lease. Take us to court for this mess—which we’re cleaning up—and we’ll take you to court for the car accident. Say you were drunk and paid us to cover it up . . .

I squeeze the wrestler tight, as if The Rock could keep me from running across the street to defend Mrs. Mac. She wasn’t drunk that night. She gave me a book and tried to help me.

You have no right to sell the house right out from under us.

Mrs. Mac is selling her house?

Chad rounds the corner on his BMX bike and rides toward us with his front wheel spinning in the air, at the level of his face. He wears no helmet. Antonio gave him an old helmet, but he always leaves it at the track, underneath a jump where several of the kids leave theirs.

His brakes squeal. “Wassup, Bran-my-man?” He holds out his palm for Brandon to slap. When Brandon slaps it, Chad laughs and says, “Harder. Put some muscle into it.”

Brandon winds his arm behind him and slams his little palm against Chad’s.

Chad laughs again. “There you go.” He musses his little brother’s hair. Then he cocks his head toward the voices. “What’s going on?”

Brandon shrugs.

“I’m here. You can go in now,” Chad tells him. But Brandon shakes his head. When Chad speaks again, his voice is low and shaky. “No one messed with you?”

“Nuh-uh,” Brandon mumbles. “But there were too many bags, so—”

Chad cuts him off. “I’ll take care of it.”

He pushes his bike across the street. A skinny woman who must be Mrs. Elliott pops out from behind the garage. “Where the hell have you been?” she screams. “That old lady’s gonna kick us out because of the mess you left!”

Brandon’s lip trembles, and he lowers his eyes to his tag team battle. He makes the Miz action figure pound in Kristal’s head while John Cena jumps on her feet, pushing them deeper into the mud.

I glance back to the scene across the street. Chad’s mother grabs a handful of his T-shirt and drags him inside. I don’t see Mrs. Mac.

“Chad gonna get a whuppin’,” Brandon says softly.

“Because of . . . the bags?” What bags, I wonder. Could they be moving again? Is Mrs. Mac kicking them out?

“’Cause he’s late. He’s always late.”

“He should get to ride his bike.” It’s the only good thing in his life. He said it himself. He’d even risk a whuppin’ to ride.

Which is more than I’d do for my videos. Or to stay here with my friends this summer.

I hear someone call my name. It’s not Brandon, with his click-clack of wrestlers hitting each other and occasional “Bam” and “Pow” under his breath.

I twist around. Mrs. Mac sits on the concrete platform at the other end of the park. She lifts her head from her hands and says, “Come here, Kiara.”

I tell Brandon to stay where he is, and I go to her. I take a seat on the bench a few feet away, pull my knees to my chest, and wrap my arms around my legs. “What is it, Mrs. Mac?” I ask. I wonder if she’s upset because of the way Mrs. Elliott yelled at her.

Mrs. Mac lets out a long sigh. “I wanted to let you know. I’m moving to Philadelphia next week.” She tells me she’s going to live in what’s called shared housing, but it sounds like a commune of old people. They grow their own food, cook and eat together, don’t drive, and live in a way that sustains the environment. It sounds kind of cool, like someplace I’d want to live if I got old and turned into a bad driver. “Will you tell your dad?” she says.

I check my wristwatch. “He’ll be home in less than an hour.”

“My sister needs her car back. And . . .” Mrs. Mac clears her throat. “Your dad and I aren’t on the best of terms right now.”

I think of my dismantled computer. “Yeah, he and I aren’t either.” I run my fingernail along the cement platform. “What did you do?”

“Be a buttinsky.” She winks at me.

“What’s a buttinsky?” I repeat the word in my mind because it sounds so funny. Butt-in-skee.

“Someone who meddles in other people’s business. People don’t seem to like it much.”

Suddenly I feel hot all over, my mouth so parched I can’t swallow. I guess Dad didn’t like her telling him that I have the same thing that Temple Grandin does. He still thinks I’m just immature and miss my mother and can’t control my temper.

I don’t want Mrs. Mac to feel like it’s her fault when she tried to help me, so I say, “Dad’s been having problems. Because of Mami leaving.”

“I know.” Mrs. Mac pats my knee. I twist away.

“I told her she should come back.” A loose strand of hair tickles my nose. I try to blow it to the side. “But she and Dad are making me go to Montreal for the summer.”

“You should spend time with your mother.” Mrs. Mac pushes the hair from my face. “Yasmín misses you.”

“No, she doesn’t. She left without me.” My mind returns to my brothers’ conversation. “Maybe she got tired of me acting up all the time.”

“That’s not the reason. Her job was only supposed to be for a few months.”

I cut in. “Which turned into another few months.”

“And you were still in school.”

“I’m not in school now.” But Mami doesn’t know that! Dad didn’t tell her because if he did, she’d really hate me.

I swallow, and it feels like bits of glass in my throat.

“You still have the tutor, don’t you?”

My gaze drops to my sneakers. “For two more weeks. I don’t want to go.”

“Your mother wants to see you. She said when I talked to her—”

“When did you talk to her?” Does Mami know everything, thanks to Mrs. Mac’s being a buttinsky?

“Oh, I don’t remember, dear. Sometime before the accident.” Mrs. Mac reaches out her hand, and this time I scoot back before she can touch me. I don’t like her taking Mami’s side.

“Why were you and Mrs. Elliott arguing?” I ask to change the subject.

“Have you seen my backyard?”

“Not in a while.” I remember the honeysuckle that Mrs. Mac used to grow there, its sweet smell, and how she used to wear its flowers in her hair. Once when my parents went away for a concert tour, she made me a crown of honeysuckle and let me put on one of her dresses, and she and Mr. Mac called me their nature princess. After Mr. Mac died, the bushes turned brown, and so did the rest of their garden. Then she moved out and Chad’s family moved in.

“You should see it.” Mrs. Mac points toward her house. The one she’s leaving forever and maybe even selling. “I asked her to clean it up. That’s when she started screaming at me.”

“It’s not you. She’s mean to everyone.” I press my lips together. Just like I can’t tell Dad, I can’t snitch about the drugs to Mrs. Mac because she’s a buttinsky, and the Elliotts and the people they work for may even track her all the way to Philadelphia, where a bunch of old hippies would be no match for a drug gang.

“I’m going to miss you, dear Kiara.”

I blink a few times. Dirt in my eye. “I’m going to miss you too.”

“Things have been hard for both of us,” Mrs. Mac says. “I wish there was more I could have done.”

“You gave me that book. About the lady like me who has a talent for understanding animals.” I survey the park, the sun setting pink and purple overhead, Brandon playing in the pile of dirt in the opposite corner where the sandbox used to be. A squirrel skitters across a branch of the oak tree and stops above us. I stare at his fluffy white underbelly and his tiny paws touching his nose, as if he’s praying.

Mrs. Mac holds her arms outstretched. When I don’t move, she says, “Can I get a good-bye hug, dear?”

“Sure.” Slowly, I embrace her.

“Sometimes it takes time to find your place,” Mrs. Mac says, not letting me go. “But you’re a special person, and I know you’ll do great things.”

“Special?” Like the special classes they may put me in?

Or the special powers that the X-Men have?

I rest my head on Mrs. Mac’s shoulder, feel her damp crinkly blouse against my eyelids. “Special is good,” she says. “You may not understand it now, but one day you will. And then”—she lowers her arms and kisses the top of my head—“the world will be a better place because of you.”

“Like that lady in the book?” I can’t tell her I haven’t read a word since the day I first met Brandon in the park. The torn dust jacket still marks the place in chapter three where I quit.

“Yes. Like Temple Grandin. But whatever you do, it will be something all your own.”

Now I have to finish the book to find out what she did so I don’t try to do the same thing.

I give Mrs. Mac a weak wave as she walks toward her borrowed car, filled with the last of her boxes. Her words echo: The world will be a better place because of me?

I figure out the equation in my mind.

In one column: Five music videos with over a thousand hits total. Five bike videos with nearly five thousand hits total. I guess if people watched, the videos made them happy.

In the other column: One knocked-out tooth. At least it was a baby tooth. One ruined birthday cake. A lot of pulled-out hair. One bloody nose and sweater. One busted friendship between a buttinsky and a dad who won’t face the truth.

One worn-out and angry mother.

One broken family.