CHAPTER 30

SIX OF CHAD’S FRIENDS ARRIVE ON MONDAY AFTERNOON after school lets out. For them, he leaves his room. They bring him a new backpack and another bag of stuff. I recognize a couple of them from school and say, Hi, how are you? A few mumble hello back, but the others walk off. I’m not surprised. They’re the troublemakers from the regular classes who’ve tripped me and called me names ever since kindergarten. All of them are in the class below anyway. Two used to be in my class until one flunked fourth grade and the other flunked the year after.

My heart squeezes when they stand in our front yard talking. After a while, they go upstairs and I try to listen to what they’re saying, but they don’t seem to say much. Sometimes they explode into laughter loud enough to hear downstairs, but I don’t hear Chad laughing. I can’t imagine him ever laughing again after he tried so hard to protect Brandon and failed.

But maybe he doesn’t need me to help him. He has other friends.

They leave before dinner. Chad asks to have his food brought upstairs, and Dad sends me with a plate of the spaghetti and meat sauce that I cooked. Even though Dad makes dinner most of the time now, I offered to do it tonight so he’ll stop being mad at me. My brothers’ bedroom, hardly larger than mine, smells sour and sweaty from the crowd of boys who were cooped up there. Two empty and crushed bags of Doritos lie in the middle of the floor. I pick them up and drop them into the trash can next to the double desk. Bags of clothes and toys remain piled up beside the radiator, and the backpack is under the bed. When I tell Chad I made the dinner, he sticks out his tongue but takes the plate anyway.

Dad and I eat in near silence. Despite my effort to help out, I think he’s given up on me. I still don’t know what’s going to happen, if I’ll have to go to summer school or get to go to Montreal, and where I’ll be in the fall. So before he finishes eating the last strands of his spaghetti, I ask him.

“We’re not sure yet,” he answers. “We have to sign you up for summer school. But your teacher’s going to see if you can retake the tests you didn’t pass. If that’s the case and you pass, you can leave for Montreal right away and go into regular classes in the fall.” He raises his voice. “With counseling and a behavior contract.”

“I’ll pass them this time. I promise.” But will Mami want to have me after all the trouble I’ve caused? And if I go, how can I help Chad get to Brandon—if Chad even needs me and if there’s something a kid like me can do?

I’m just a weird girl. Not a superhero. I have no special powers. And Chad can get his own friends to help.

I scrape the hard plastic tabletop with my fingernail. “Do you think Mami will come home sooner? Like if I go and talk to her?”

Dad pushes his chair back from the table and releases a long sigh. “I hope we can work things out.”

“I told her we needed her here.” I pick off a piece of rice stuck to the table. “But she wouldn’t listen to me.” I promise myself to keep trying, as soon as I get to Montreal.

“She has to make up her own mind. And apart from the money, music means a lot to her.”

I think of all the time Dad spends in the pantry. And the times he played with Mr. Elliott, which got us into this mess. “It means a lot to you too.”

He nods slowly.

I go into the pantry for the banjo that now belongs to Chad. Maybe he’ll want to bring it with him when he goes to see Brandon. And he’ll need to take it with him when the lady from the county comes to send him to Iowa or put him in the foster home. It doesn’t sound like he wants to go to a foster home any more than he wants his brother alone in the hospital. I wouldn’t want to live with a bunch of strangers either, no matter how loving they’re supposed to be.

My father’s hand on my shoulder makes me jump. I scream.

“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping back into the kitchen.

“You freaked me out.” Carefully, I lift the banjo by its skinny neck.

“Where’d you get that?”

“It got blown out of their house and landed in our tree.” I carry it out to Dad. “Look, not a scratch. I’m giving it to Chad, but I’m not sure he knows how to play.”

Dad takes the banjo and examines it on all sides, turning it like he’s roasting a pig on a spit. “His father said he started to teach him.”

I put one hand on my hip. “Really?”

“That’s what Big Chad said.” Dad hands the instrument to me. “Take it to him. I’m sure he’ll be glad to have it.” My father touches my shoulder, and this time I don’t flinch. “That was very thoughtful of you. Rescuing it.”

“See? I don’t just think of myself.”

“No, you don’t.” He gives me a faint smile.

“Were you and Mr. Elliott friends?” I ask Dad, because he called Mr. Elliott Big Chad the way a friend would do. But a friend wouldn’t have snitched to the police.

“We liked to play music together,” Dad says. “But that doesn’t mean we were friends.”

“What’s the difference?” Mr. Internet said friends are people who have interests in common with you. He told me to get involved in things other people like to do. Like riding bikes and making videos of them on their bikes.

“Friends care about each other. And help each other because they care.”

I still don’t get it. Enemies don’t play music together. When Mami and Dad stopped playing music together, Mami left. “So if you weren’t friends, what were you?” I lean the banjo against my leg, with the heavy bottom part on my toe of my sneaker.

“Acquaintances. Acquaintances may work with each other or share one or two things in common, but that’s it.”

“So they don’t care about each other or want to help each other?”

“Right.”

I think through all the people I wanted to be my friends. Like Melanie Prince-Parker, who didn’t want to be my friend. Antonio, who said he was my friend and Chad was trouble. Antonio really did seem to care about me, but now I don’t know if the police are looking for him because of the party and if I’ll ever see him again.

Chad.

I’m not sure I can count on Chad being my friend. Or if he can count on me being his friend because I’m not helping him get to Brandon or stay out of a foster home where he’ll have to live with strangers.

“Do you feel bad for what happened to Mr. Elliott? Because you called the cops on him?”

Dad sighs. “He and Lissa put two boys in danger.”

The night of the party I asked Dad what he planned to do about Chad’s back. Does that make me responsible too? “Maybe I should have called.” And if I’d called earlier, maybe Brandon wouldn’t have gotten burned.

But maybe Chad would have been inside and gotten burned. Or maybe the house wouldn’t have blown up, and no one would have gotten burned.

Dad rests his hand on my shoulder. I can tell he’s thinking too. “You should have told me sooner. But no. This wasn’t something for a child to do.”

I bring the banjo upstairs and knock on the bedroom door. When Chad doesn’t answer, I knock louder. Then I jiggle the knob, but the door is locked. Finally, I hear a dull “who is it?”

“Kiara. I have another present for you.”

“More clothes?” A pause. “Or little kids’ toys?”

“No.” I pluck a string and listen to the powerful twang until it dies away. “Way better than that.”

The door clicks open. A bitter smell assaults me. “Where’d you get that?” Chad asks. The room is dim, lit by only one small lamp, and Chad squints in the light of the hallway. He doesn’t smile.

“It was blown into one of the oak trees, so I got it down for you.”

Chad twirls the banjo like Dad did. “That’s my dad’s.”

“He can’t use it now. His fingers got melted off in the fire.”

Chad’s face goes pale. I glance at the empty plate of spaghetti next to the bunk bed. Thinking about Mr. Elliott’s melted fingers makes me queasy too, and I realize I said the exact wrong thing to Chad.

He seems to recover, though. “Hey, I got a surprise for you.” He leans the banjo against the double desk and waves me forward.

“You’re playing for me?”

“Nope.” Chad flips a desk chair around for me to sit. Then he slides the backpack from under the bed. It scrapes along the floor like something heavy is inside. He reaches in and takes out a six-pack of beer. Without the beer, the backpack lies flat. He twists one can from the plastic ring, pops the top, and hands it to me. Then he grabs another for himself.

I stare at the gold can.

His friends sneaked him beer in the backpack.

“Drink up,” he says. He takes a long swallow.

I hold my breath and peer into the hole with one eye while squeezing the other shut.

“That’s not what you do.” He chugs the rest of his, the way I saw the kids at the party do it, and crushes the can beneath his sneaker.

“I don’t want to.” I set mine on my brothers’ desk.

“What’s wrong? You too good for it?” He leans forward, snatches the can from the desk, and pushes it toward me.

I take it, just to get him away from me. “You’re not supposed to be drinking. That’s why you wrecked the bike and Josh beat you up.”

“I know you’re not going to beat me up.” He belches into my face and I shrink from the musty odor. “’Cause if you do, I won’t be your friend.” His tone is high-pitched, taunting me.

“I don’t want to get sick like you did.”

“It’s not so bad. And the buzz is great,” he tells me.

“Dad says you were learning the banjo.” I try to change the subject, wanting to tell Chad what music means to me and how I loved hearing the chatter between his father’s banjo and my father’s guitar.

“Yeah?” He lifts the instrument, tunes it, and begins picking with his thumb, index, and middle finger. He plays slower than Mr. Elliott, which makes the tune sad but also melodious. After about a minute and a half, he stops and says, “That’s the only song I know, ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown.’ And I don’t know it too good.”

I don’t think his father tried very hard to teach him. Even Dad played faster than that when he took his turn on the banjo.

“Did your dad learn when he was a kid?” I ask.

“Nah. He was already grown up.” Chad sets the banjo on the bed behind him. “I don’t remember him playing when I was little, but he went away for a while and when he came back, he was really good.”

“When he went to jail, you mean?”

Chad shudders. “H-how do you know?”

“It was on TV. Three years, from 1996 to 1999.”

Chad swears under his breath.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, ready to ask more but not sure how without making him madder.

“What? Your dad a jailbird too?” He taps the bunk bed frame. “That why your brothers way older than you?”

It does explain the gap between him and Brandon, but not between Max and me. “Nope. He had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” Seeing Chad’s puzzled expression, I add, “Cancer of the cells that make up part of the immune system. He wasn’t supposed to have kids afterward on account of the treatments.” I didn’t intend to tell Chad all this, but now I can’t stop.

Maybe it’s because I’m in the room where Eli and Max first discussed why I turned out the way I did.

“The chemicals. When chemotherapy destroys the cancer cells,” I explain, “it can also cause genetic mutations.”

“Whatever. You sound like science class.” Chad points at my can. “Go ahead, drink it. I wanna see what you look like drunk.”

I stare at him, open-mouthed. Actually, I stare at his untied sneakers and behind them, the other cans of beer.

“Get it? Science class? Experiment?” He’s taunting me again. I know it. “I bet you’ll be reee-al funny.”

I shake my head, so hard my neck cracks.

“If you drink the whole can, I’ll be your friend.”

His eyes bore into me like someone who knows all my secrets. I set the can on the desk again. “No.” I glance up at him and back to the floor. Friends care about each other, I tell myself. Anyway, he’s leaving and so am I. I can’t help him, and I can’t be his friend.

I stand and step toward the door. “I’m not doing any more things that are wrong just so I can have friends.”

“Suit yourself. I’m not letting good beer go to waste.” He scoops up the can and chugs the rest before I leave the room.