Right as Rain Page 8

  “Make yourself at home,” Dacie says. So I pull up a chair at one of the computers in the living room to look up all the things I’ve told my brain to remember, like who the Mirabal Sisters are, and how to eat a tamal.

  Then I check to see if Dr. Cyn has added anything to her blog about marriage and grief because even though I want Mom’s big fresh start in New York City to be working, I don’t think it is yet.

  I’m reading that finding ways to remember him is important. Looking at photographs and sharing happy memories might help, or finding a way to honor him. But even reading about remembering makes that feeling rise on up and I log off.

  “Rain? Want to help me with these dishes?” Dacie is calling from the kitchen.

  She hands me yellow plastic gloves and shows me how to plug up the sink with soapy hot water. There’s a big mixing bowl and a small one, measuring cups and spoons, and glasses still frothy from milk.

  Dacie hands Frankie a broom and dustpan, and I turn the water hotter. It feels good, burning even through the yellow gloves. I scrub hard at the big mixing bowl with the rough side of the sponge, and then I scrub the glasses. Steam rises up from the sink and settles on my face as I bend over and scour hard, trying to get rid of every last speck on a cutting board that has years of discolored slices across the plastic surface.

  “That’s OK, now, Child,” Dacie says. Her hand is light on my back. “You can’t expect it to go back to good as new.” She takes the cutting board from my hands and starts drying it with a green dish towel. “But this’ll do.”

  I nod, then wash the measuring cups and pass them to Dacie, who dries and puts things back where they belong. Then I drain the sink and watch the suds circle down and settle on the bottom of the sink with a layer of bubbles.

  Before we leave, Dacie signs our community service logs, and even though I only really helped out for sixteen minutes of washing dishes and wiping up, she signs for the whole hour we were there.

  “Thank you for coming,” Dacie says. “And please come back.” Her smile sends out those crow’s-feet from the corners of her eyes, and I know what that means.

  I say goodbye to Ana, who is still bent over her drawing. She looks up and waves. “See you tomorrow.”

  And that feels good. That no matter how the day goes tomorrow, whether I have to write a poem, or if I get in on a big class laugh, or if Mr. Meathead says something else that gets right under my skin, at least I have track practice to look forward to, running with Frankie and Ana and all the other girls through Washington Heights.

  When we’re walking down the long hall, I glance at some of the old Polaroid pictures thumbtacked to the bulletin board. There’s one of Alia and Jer holding a big platter of orange-frosted cookies and underneath it says, Halloween Party. Then there’s one of Frankie with her arm around another girl. They’re wearing track uniforms and both are laughing so hard the picture is kind of blurred. I don’t recognize the girl in the picture from the team today.

  Underneath the photo it says, Frankie and Reggie, first track meet.

  I remember the purple marker Reggie across my homeroom desk, and the note that Frankie snatched fast from me today in English class, and the name at the bottom of her heart.

  “She’s my best friend,” Frankie says. “She used to be in our class. Before you got here.” And the way she says it tells me that she doesn’t want to say anymore. She pushes open the heavy wooden door and opens the latch on the gate to the street.

  The whole walk home I’m wondering if my parents’ bedroom door will be open when I get there, and where Reggie went, and if that’s her real name, and if Izzy got my letter yet. I have three chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven wrapped in a paper towel in my book bag and I wonder if we have milk in our brand-new refrigerator.

  The dominoes men tip their caps and say hola and hi as Frankie and I bounce up the three steps to our building.

  “Dacie’s is cool. I think I’ll go back,” I say before I start up the steps to the third floor.

  Frankie doesn’t say anything. She’s unlocking the mailbox farthest to the right but before she pulls out the mail she calls, “Hey.” I turn back and she walks up to me with her right fist clenched tight and I’m thinking she’s going to punch my lights out for taking Reggie’s seat in Ms. Merrill’s homeroom class, but instead she bops her fist up and down three times in the air in front of me.

  “Secret team handshake,” she says.

  She bounces her fist again and I match it with mine and then we’re clutching palms and raising our arms up and waggling our fingers on the way back down and ending with a fist bump, a full-body spin around, and a head nod.

  “Not bad,” she says, then grabs her mail from the mailbox. “See you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 16

  Anniversary

  Their bedroom door is closed, but I’m feeling really good from track practice, and meeting Ana, and Ms. Dacie’s, and the secret team handshake, and I want to creak it open and tell my dad all about everything, but I’m afraid if I do I’ll see his off-by-a-button flannel and then I’ll have to feel that remembering rising up and ruining all the good feeling I have.

  Mom’s unloading groceries into the refrigerator and telling me about this great new market that just opened up by the hospital and how they have organic produce and we just might have to use our new oven tonight.

  “There’s something about a brand-new, fully renovated kitchen that feels clean and fresh,” she says. “Look! The manuals are still in all the appliances.” She pulls an instruction booklet from the top shelf of the refrigerator before she slides in a half gallon of milk.

  Then she looks up. “Well,” she says, “tell me about track! And community service!” She’s putting red-leaf kale into the crisper. That’s Dad’s favorite to grow. Easy, and plentiful, and downright delicious, he always used to say, popping a still-sandy leaf in his mouth straight from the garden row.

  We used to have this rule that for exciting news you had to wait for the whole family so that no one got to know first, and the teller would only have to share the story once so they could make it really good and not leave out any of the details. It already feels a little bad that I have exciting news to share at all and now if I wait for my whole family I’d be waiting forever.

  What I really want is to tell Guthrie. He would love Ms. Dacie’s.

  I look at the closed bedroom door again and I take a big breath and walk over quietly on the balls of my feet. I knock lightly and Mom closes the refrigerator and stands up. I knock again, louder.

  “Dad?”

  There’s rustling, and Dad clears his voice. “Yeah?”

  “Can I come in?”

  More rustling. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”

  I open the door slowly. He’s propping himself up on two pillows, like it’s only a really bad cold and congestion he has, and if he just keeps upright and drinks lots of fluids, it’ll clear up in a few days. There are three books and a newspaper scattered across the bed, and I wonder if he’s done the word scramble yet or if he saved it for me. An empty plate and glass sit on the nightstand and he reaches over them to click on the bedside lamp.

  “Hey there,” he says. “I was just feeling a little tired, so I . . .” but I don’t want him to explain because I already know what he’s feeling tired of. Tired of how heavy his heart is and tired from carrying it around all day. And tired of watching Mom use her heavy heart as momentum, throwing its weight ahead and letting it drag her forward and forward, not looking back for him because she can’t.

  “Track was great,” I blurt. “I’m only running one event at the city championship meet, the 4x100m relay, because I’m technically a last-minute alternate, but we’re going to win,” I say. “And we have a secret handshake.”

  He scooches over and I sit next to him on the edge of the bed. He’s wearing a different shirt and his hair looks like it’s been washed, but it’s still sticking up all wild.

  “Well, that is the best
news I’ve heard in a long time,” he says.

  The same music starts up in the alley and the notes ping back and forth off the buildings. Dad rolls his eyes and does a funny little dance. Then Mom comes in and sits next to me on the bed and Dad sits up taller and crosses his legs like a little kid in school ready for story time.

  I tell them all about Mr. Meathead and how Frankie, Amelia, and I smoked our whole class, running like girls. Then I’m describing Coach Okeke and Ana and Ms. Dacie and all the kids there and how nice they are.

  “And you wouldn’t believe how overgrown her garden is. You can barely see the raised beds beneath all the weeds. Oh! And I brought back some cookies.” I unzip my bag and pull out the paper towel that Dacie handed me on my way out the door. They are still warm and gooey and falling apart just the way I like them.

  Mom hustles off to the kitchen, but comes right back with three glasses of milk, and Dad has a smudge of melty chocolate on his lip that makes Mom and me giggle.

  “What?” he says, and even though he knows what, he pretends he doesn’t and smears even more chocolate on his mouth the next bite. Then for a minute, he’s my Dad from 354 days ago, making a goofy face and pushing his chocolaty lips out toward me. “What? I can’t kiss my own daughter on the forehead?”

  I scream and giggle and swipe at him with a pillow. Chocolate smears across the brand-new white pillowcase. “Oh!” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me I had chocolate on my face? I’m so embarrassed!”

  We all laugh and finish the cookies and chug the milk and I show them the secret track team handshake.

  “You have to stand up for the last part.”

  I pull the covers off Dad and grab his hand. He stands up and I’m surprised when I see his jeans. It must feel weird and uncomfortable to have on regular daytime clothes in bed, and I’m wondering if he really tried today. Really tried to get up and take a shower and go outside and turn on his computer and check to see if there are any companies who need a contractor to help with renovations. But then he just couldn’t. Not yet.

  “You start with a fist, like this.” I show them all the moves of the secret handshake and how you spin your whole body around at the end.

  “Here, try it with Mom. I’ll judge.”

  They stand there face-to-face for eleven seconds without saying anything, and for all those seconds I wonder if this is the longest they’ve looked right at each other since that night, and if they’re thinking about the track team or Dacie or the new refrigerator or what we’ll have for dinner.

  Or if they’re always thinking about Guthrie.

  Then Mom raises her fist and starts bopping it three times. Dad joins in and then they’re spinning and their fist bump is a little off, but they remember all the parts.

  For five seconds, I think maybe all they needed was a team handshake. And now maybe they can start talking in quieter tones and not getting so frustrated and maybe we can all go to a museum or a restaurant or a big Broadway play, and they could be that one out of four.

  But that’s when I pull out the paperwork from Coach Okeke. It falls open to the team’s calendar and right there on June fifteenth in big block letters with lots of exclamation points is city championships!!!!

  We all see it at the same time and no one is laughing anymore, or doing any team handshake. Dad sits back down on the bed and Mom hustles off to the kitchen with the milk glasses and I can hear her drop them in the sink. The running water makes her seem two miles away, even though she’s just six steps from us.

  The city championships meet was supposed to give my parents something to do, together, like they used to, something to watch, and cheer. And it’s on the worst day. The day we all wish we could just skip over and never see again ever. I wish the whole June fifteenth square of every calendar would just erase and everyone would go to bed on June fourteenth and wake up on June sixteenth so that we wouldn’t have to figure out how to stop that terrible feeling from rising up harder than it usually does.

  Even Dr. Cyn says that this day will be the toughest.

  “Sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t have to—”

  Dad reaches out and rests his hand on mine. Then he folds the calendar over so we don’t have to look at that day. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Don’t ever be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

  I shove the papers back in my book bag and I try to smile at him before I leave, but I just want to crawl in with him and hide my face in the chocolate-smeared pillow and forget about blinking back the tears that burn behind my eyes.

  I hear him say, “You’re going to win that race, Rain.” But I can’t look back at him, propped up on his pillows with his outside clothes creased and wrinkled and given up on and twisted beneath the covers. Because he doesn’t know. It is my fault.

  Chapter 17

  That Night

  I tried to wait four whole minutes between each time I pressed the light on my digital watch beneath the comforter to check the time. I counted out perfect seconds in my head, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, and tried not to peek.

  12:34 . . . 12:38 . . . 1:02 . . . 1:06 . . . 1:10 . . .

  Until the phone rang at 2:41. It rang four long rings. Four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand. I kept counting, thinking that if I could just keep count, keep track of the minutes, that everything would be OK.

  But counting out perfectly even seconds never kept anyone safe. And that’s a fact.

  Chapter 18

  One and Only

  Now that I know who she is, I’m seeing little signs of Reggie everywhere. A poster board project about the water cycle in our science classroom has her name on it, and even though Mrs. Baldwin tried to cover her name with a white sticker label on my used classroom binder, you can still see Reggie peeking through. I wrote Rain on the new label in black marker, tracing Reggie’s R, but I couldn’t make my name stretch as long as hers to cover it all up. She still has a locker in the sixth-grade hallway with her name spelled out in blue star stickers across the metal. I wonder why she left before the end of the year, and I wonder if her mom got some new fancy job and they had to leave all their furniture behind too.

  I don’t know how to tell Frankie that I can’t be on the track team and that I definitely can’t run in the city championships on June fifteenth, so I do what Amelia does when she thinks she can’t get something out. I jot it on a piece of notebook paper—I can’t be on track anymore. Sorry.—and pass it to my right. Frankie grabs it quick when Mrs. Baldwin is looking the other way.

  She writes something and passes it back. Too bad. You’re running.

  No, I’m not. I hand it back.

  This time, she just crosses out what I wrote and leaves the note there on her desk like she doesn’t even have time for this.

  And even though it feels good that Frankie’s starting to be nice to me again, introducing me to Dacie and helping me with community service, and not glaring at me, I know she wants me to race so she has a shot at winning the relay. And I know that when I quit, Frankie will go back to glaring at me.

  They’ll probably have to change the secret handshake too. Which sucks. And I don’t even care if I’m not supposed to use the word sucks, because it’s been feeling pretty good to have fourteen other hands that I can bop and bump, and do a complete turn around, wiggle, and nod with.

  Amelia is tugging on my sleeve and raising her eyebrows like What?

  I whisper, “I’m quitting track.”

  “Alr-r-ready?”

  Someone behind us giggles and Mrs. Baldwin looks over. Then she tells us to get in our groups of three to share the hearts we created yesterday.

  Frankie and Amelia slide their desks toward me and we’re back in a triangle, with our notebooks out.

  “You’re not quitting,” Frankie states, like it’s up to her.

  “Yes, I am,” I say back, matching her tone, because it’s actually my decision and not hers, and she doesn’t know anything about why I can’t run.

  Amelia
raises her eyebrows again. She wants to know why.

  “The city championships. I just—can’t run that day.”

  Her eyebrows are still up, and now Frankie’s are too.

  “It’s just a bad day for me,” I say. “A really, really bad day.”

  “Th-th-that’s wh-why you should run,” Amelia starts, but then she writes the rest in her notebook and passes it to me. You told me running empties your brain. Sounds like a good activity for a bad day.

  I don’t respond.

  “Sorry,” I say to Frankie.

  “Whatever,” she says.

  And just like that Frankie’s back to hating me.

  Mrs. Baldwin kneels down by our group and asks us a couple of questions about what’s on our notebook hearts. I tell her about Vermont and Izzy and all the things that are high up in my heart, but I cover the small letters at the bottom with the palms of my hands.

  When she stands back up, Mrs. Baldwin announces that “Poetry is born of feelings,” and she tells us that we can write things on our hearts that are important to us, but also things that make us feel other emotions, like anger, or sadness, or missing.

  That feeling rises on up and even though I don’t want to ever see that day again, my hand starts writing in tiny letters down by Guthrie’s name, June fifteenth. Amelia presses her lips together and lowers her eyes like she understands now how hard that day must be.

  Mrs. Baldwin starts showing us how to take one thing from our notebook hearts and turn it into a poem.

  Most everyone in the class is excited about poetry because poetry means no rules. No sentences, no periods, lines can be short or long, or anything you want. But I like rules; they make me feel safe and contained and that’s why no one should sneak out or break curfew, and that’s why I don’t write poetry. And that’s a fact.

  Amelia slides her notebook to me again. I still think you should run.