Read Between the Lines (16 page)

My dad gets up. He’s looking at them like he knows them.

“Crap. We need to get out of here,” Jack says.

My dad is striding toward them, his hand raised up like he wants to get their attention. But they bolt, running out the door. My dad hurries to the glass door just as it swings closed. He stands there, watching them run across the parking lot and jump into their car and take off. He stands in front of the glass, watching them go. He shakes his fist at them. “I know what you did!” he yells. “I’ll report you!” Then he gives them the finger. But they’re gone.

He keeps standing there, though, tapping his middle finger against the glass. It’s not like my dad. Not like him to make a scene. Not like him to give anyone the finger. I look over to see if my mom — the finger hater — sees him, but it’s too crowded, and all I can see is the top of her head poking up, trying to see what’s going on.

I get out of line and run over to my dad. Up close, he looks even more not right. Not himself. He looks . . . crazed.

“Dad?” I ask. “Are you OK?”

He’s still staring out the window.

“That was those boys from this morning,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“Thugs. They scammed me.” He says it so quietly. “They . . . pulled a fast one on me. I knew it. But what could I do? Those boys are bad. You stay away from them.” His hand reaches up to his chest. “They targeted me, those boys. Somehow they knew . . .”

“Dad? What’s wrong.”

“My chest feels funny,” he says. “I’m not sure —”

He clutches my arm with his other hand. So tight. I grab him, but he’s sinking to the floor.

“Walt!” my mom screams. She pushes her way through the people who have stood up to see my dad and me. “Walt!” she screams again.

But he only stares up at us. No, not at us. At the ceiling.

“Oh my God, Walt! Someone call nine-one-one,” my mom yells.

A bunch of people pull out their phones as my mom and I crouch down and try to loosen my dad’s shirt and lift his head up. My mom pats his cheeks. “Walt? Walt?”

She’s shaking.

A guy in a Little Cindy’s uniform pushes through to us. It’s the guy Dylan looked like he wanted to kill.

“What happened?” he asks, crouching next to my mom. His name tag says
DEWEY HARTSON.
Dewey. Now, that is one unfortunate name. I don’t know why I have this thought when my dad is on the floor, maybe dying. It just stands out. Everything does. Feet surround us. Black Converse. Bright-red running shoes. Silver ballet flats. That’s all I see. Colorful feet encircling my parents on the greasy floor.

“I think he’s having a heart attack,” my mom yells at Dewey’s face.

“Are there any doctors here?” Dewey calls out.

No one answers.

“Walt!” my mom says again, lightly tapping my dad’s face. His head is resting against her thighs now. She’s kneeling at his head.

“Maybe you should splash water on his face,” someone suggests.

“Someone get some water!” Dewey yells.

A girl who looks like she might be a senior runs over with a cup of water. My mom holds it to my dad’s lips and tips it up, but the liquid just dribbles down the side of his face.

My mom looks over at me. I reach for her arm. “Help’s coming,” I say. Which is probably the lamest thing I could possibly tell her, but what else is there?

Her eyes are filled with worry and fear.

I squeeze her arm. “He’ll be OK,” I say, pretending.

Dewey glances around desperately. “Did you call nine-one-one?” he asks no one in particular.

A boy holds up his phone. “They’re on their way. They’re asking a bunch of questions.”

“Give me that thing!” Dewey says.

The boy hands his phone over.

“Yeah. This is the manager. We’ve got a customer on the floor.” He studies my dad while the person on the other end asks him questions. It’s like he’s watching a hurt animal, not a person, the way he scrunches his face.

“I don’t know. Maybe two minutes ago? Yeah. Yeah. No, he’s not responding. Loosen his shirt more!” he says to my mom.

I help her unbutton it. My dad’s not wearing a T-shirt underneath, and sweaty black hairs pop out as soon as they’re set free. His belly is going up and down, which is a relief. But it seems to be doing so very slowly.

“Give him some room!” Dewey says. The shoes step back, leaving us like an island on the sticky tile floor.

“I hear sirens!” someone yells.

The crowd, oddly, cheers.

“Help’s coming,” my mom whispers in my dad’s face. “Hang on, Walt. Just hang on.”

Seconds later an ambulance pulls up outside the door, and three EMTs come running in. The crowd parts for them. One starts talking to my mom while the other two pull out instruments and things from their bags and slap them on my dad.

I stand up and step back, watching. Watching like this is a movie I fell inside of. But I can’t hear anything. My ears are ringing. My body is tingling. I don’t feel the floor under my feet. I just keep stepping backward until someone’s hands are on my arms, squeezing, and a faint voice is saying, “Whoa, sit down. Here you go. Give this kid some air.”

It’s Dewey. He comes around and faces me when I sit and asks if I’m all right. He has huge arm muscles and his shirt, I realize now, is way too tight. For some reason I think of my mom’s description of my dad when he was a hero all those years ago. Is this what she saw? Something like this? Is this what my dad used to be?

Behind him, I watch the EMTs bring in a stretcher. They surround my dad and carefully lift him up onto it. My mom hovers nearby and follows them.

He was so close, I think. He had the dream in his hand. I should have known something would keep him from having it come true.

Willy Loman. Willy Loman, I hate you.

“I have to go,” I say. I get up and nearly fall. I want to throw up. Dewey guides me outside and to the ambulance. My mom starts to get in after my dad, then turns and sees me, remembering I’m here.

“You can drive right behind us,” one of the EMTs tells my mom.

She nods and hurries over to me.

“Are you sure you should drive?” Dewey asks her.

She looks at him, foggy. Confused. Maybe she sees my old hero dad, too, when she looks at him.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “Yes. Come on, Stephen.”

I follow her to the car. She gets in on the passenger side. I take a deep breath and try to get a hold of myself. Focus. Breathe.

He is not Willy Loman.

He is not.

You did not make this happen.

He is not Willy Loman.

“Stephen,” my mom says. “Let’s go.”

Behind the wheel, things become more clear. Key. Ignition. Turn. Put in reverse. I pull out behind the ambulance, its siren blasting. The hospital is close by, thank God.

My mom is clutching the bar on the passenger side again. But this time, she is not tapping her fingers. This time, she is not willing me to slow down but to go faster.

“What was he doing?” she asks me. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“He just got up and hurried to the door. Who was he yelling at?”

“I don’t know,” I say again. I don’t know why I don’t want to tell her about the boys.

Thugs
, my dad said. Those guys did something to him. Something mean. Something bad enough to break his heart.

“Oh, Walt,” my mom says to the windshield.

“He’ll be OK,” I say. And I pray, pray, pray that’s true.

She shakes her head. “The world doesn’t want him to succeed,” she says, crying. “Why doesn’t the world want him to succeed?”

I don’t know how to answer. But all I can think is
Willy Loman
again. I can’t get him out of my head.

I see my dad standing at that window, and it seems he is not giving those guys the finger — he is giving it to the world. And right now, it feels like the world deserves it. The
world
broke his heart.

“He’s going to be OK,” I say again.

She reaches over and squeezes my thigh.

“He has to be,” she says.

“He will,” I tell her. I will not let him become another Willy Loman. I won’t.

I press harder on the gas pedal, and we race after the ambulance.

“Careful,” my mom says. “But hurry.”

We continue on, determined to save my dad, once a hero.

My dad, who deserves a chance to show the world it hasn’t won.

THE FIRST TIME I SAW THAT GIRL ON THE
wall, I knew she was bad news.

She stood there like she was on a stage of her own making.

The graffiti backdrop seemed just a little too perfect for the real world.

She twisted her cigarette prop expertly in her fingers. Not smoking it. I don’t think it was even lit.

She was only bad news because she wanted to be.

She seemed to want anyone who dared to walk down her side of the street to be afraid. To feel like they didn’t belong.

It worked.

She showed up after summer vacation. Maybe she’d been there all summer. I don’t know.

I only use the street to walk home from school.

But now it’s her place.

And all fall, she’s been letting me know it.

Her friends are like backdrops, too. Standing not next to but behind her. Looking where she looks.

Disapproving of what she disapproves of.

They are her handpicked backup dancers, with costumes just like hers:

When I walked down the street, she jerked her chin at me.

Let her eyes travel up and down my scrawny body.

Her mouth made a curled-up expression of disapproval.

Like I am not her kind. Don’t belong on her street.

The girls behind her made catlike noises to echo her body language.

She was right.

I am not her kind.

But maybe not in the way she thinks.

I couldn’t help watching her, though.

Because she was beautiful, even with the cigarette and the curled-up lip.

She stepped forward, twirling her cigarette.

Whatyoulookinat?

She said it loud and tough. Fast. Like the four words were one.

Whatyoulookinat.

Like a bully would say just before he punches you in the face.

Maybe she could sense, even on that first day, that I was looking at
her.

The her she seemed meant to be.

This
her.

Not the one at school.

There, she wears jeans and a hoodie that seems to swallow her.

Same as most of her actors.

They sit at a corner table in the caf at school.

Trying to be invisible like everyone else, besides the jocks and beauty queens.

There, she tries to hide. Blend in.

In the one class we’re in together, she slides down low in her seat.

Wears her hood even though it’s against the rules.

It’s the only trace of her rebellious side.

This
her doesn’t belong in
that
place.

I wondered if she recognized me from that place, too.

Is that why she curled her lip? And dared me to walk on her own turf?

Whatyoulookinat.

Maybe.

I almost stopped walking but tripped instead. My face burned.

The bones in my legs had turned to flimsy cardboard that couldn’t hold me up.

She smirked but didn’t laugh out loud. Too cool to let the sound leave her lips.

I walked faster the closer I got, knowing I should look down at the pavement as I passed.

Or at the sky.

Or anywhere but toward her stage.

My eyes didn’t care about
should
, though.

They crossed the narrow street to find her as I struggled with my cardboard legs. Forcing them to move one foot in front of the other.

Her hair was long and black and patent-leather shiny.

Her cigarette dangled dangerously from her left hand.