The Genius of Little Things (15 page)

“I feel your pain, dude,” he said. “These oughta help.”

“Speed?” Darla’s voice came from the vicinity of a recliner facing the wall.

“Yellow jackets,” he said. “The real stuff with Ephedra. They don’t sell it over the counter anymore. The new stuff is all caffeine.”

“If they don’t sell it anymore then it can’t be legal. It’s speed and speed is a drrrrr-
ug
!” She was now peeking from behind the recliner.

“You smoked out with me.”

“That’s different. Pot is organic. Did you get Tyler stoned?”

On the word
stoned
, Mrs. Platt entered, as if on cue. Kel grabbed his mop and bolted. Darla hoisted her pregnant body out of the chair and waddled out. I was left holding the bag, literally. There was no way I could quickly stuff the pills in my pocket without looking suspicious. I considered tossing them onto the sofa and pretending I hadn’t even seen them.

Mrs. Platt collapsed on the sofa. It protested with a squeaky puff that was nearly indistinguishable from the sound of her sigh. She stared blankly at the midget brother infomercial. This allowed me to make a quick getaway. I took the bag of pills that I hadn’t asked for.

After four days on the night shift, I still had not informed Carl or Janet about my work schedule. My sin of omission became salient in the morning, during a brief interregnum between my shift and school. I found them sitting at the breakfast nook with two cell phones, a notepad, a box of tissue, and Janet’s sister, Fiona, between them. Janet’s typically well-coiffed hair was askew and her eyes were slightly puffy. For a moment all of the air seemed to be sucked out of the room. I know that’s impossible—although I once observed a science fair experiment that sucked all the oxygen out of a box—but that’s how it seemed.

I was in trouble. I was anxious. I made a list of grocery items in my head, starting with antacids.

Janet stood. “Tell us the truth. We deserve it. Are you in a gang?”

 “A gang?” Carl said. “Janet, that’s just silly.”

Throat lozenges, toilet tissues, Honey Bunches of Oats, soy milk…

Janet stood. “Where have you
been
at night?”

They were looking at me. “I work at a nursing home,” I said, meekly.

“There,” Fiona said. “Have I offered enough support? Can I go home and sleep?”

“Thanks for telling us.” Janet directed this to me, in a tone that indicated she wasn’t thankful. She sent her cigarette flying into the sink.

“You probably should have told us,” Carl said, in a gentler tone.

“That accounts for nights,” Janet said. “Where are you after school?”

“Nursing class.”

Janet made some puffing sounds that indicated she was appalled. “When do you sleep?”

“Weekends.”

“I used to live like that,” Fiona said. “Except I slept during the week and stayed up all weekend.”

“You were a groupie,” Janet snapped. “I don’t think that’s a good role model for him.”

“I was a music publicist,” Fiona said, as if she’d had this conversation a hundred times.

Janet pointed at me. “You have to quit.”

“We can’t make him quit,” Carl said.

“And you rode your
bike
. At
night
. When I asked you not to. How many nights have you been gone? Do you have any concern for anyone else? You skulk around here, write notes and never answer your phone. What are we supposed to think?”

Bananas, saline solution, tissues…

“He’s almost an adult,” Fiona said.

Janet folded her arms tight against her torso. “But he’s not an adult. We’re responsible.”

“I told you,” Fiona said. “You can’t make up for the past.”

Janet spun on Fiona. “When
you’ve
raised a kid, then come back and tell me how to do it.”

“Oh, lovely,” Fiona said. “So glad I rushed over here at the butt crack of dawn for a verbal spanking.”

“You didn’t raise me,” I said to Janet. Nobody heard me because I said it softly, and because a three-person argument had already started. I was going to be late for school, so I backed out of the kitchen and let them continue.

After I finished my morning business, Fiona was gone and Carl and Janet were waiting at the front door. My brain couldn’t sensor my mouth as quickly as it usually did. “I need this job!” I ran out the door, past the lawn sprinklers and the For Sale by Owner signs. It was the first time I had talked back to a FoPa, with the exception of the time I told the preacher that all religion was bunk, and in that case I had been calmly telling the truth.

FOURTEEN

Dear Carl and Janet,

In my working life I have been propositioned, berated, screamed at, lied to, scalded, cheated, proselytized, and demoralized. At Colonial Gardens, the only negative experience was being urinated on, and that’s because many residents on my wing are incontinent. The important point is, Colonial Gardens is by far the best place I’ve ever worked. The cost of tuition, room, board, and books at Caltech is nearly $50,000 a year. Even if I receive the maximum financial aid through loans and grants, I will still need to cough up nearly ten grand for just the first year. My dream has been, for years, to attend Caltech. I will need to keep this job in order to accomplish it.

Sincerely,

Tyler

I sent the letter in a series of text messages to Janet’s cell phone. They couldn’t deny me the chance to earn income. They were supposed to make my life easier, not harder.

I thought about what they might do to me and how I should respond. I thought about this in every class, except for three times. Two times were during Creative Soul, when Zoe did an interpretive dance in a very revealing top, and when she did a face-buzz vocal warm-up that involved humming and shaking her fist, which caused other parts of her to shake.

The other time I didn’t think about Carl and Janet was after German class, when I was ambushed by Jann-Otto and Annette-Barbel. The confrontation had the makings of a bloodless coup. They gravely made the case that I had fallen down on my duties. It was true. As the leader of German club, I hadn’t scheduled a meeting since the kick-off. I hadn’t planned to convene any more.

“If you don’t care about the club, then you should at least care about the German program,” Annette-Barbel said. She breathlessly informed me of budget cutbacks that would likely lead to the elimination of all underperforming programs.

I told them I would schedule a meeting in a few weeks.

“We figured you would say that, so we worked everything out,” Jann-Otto said. He handed me a sheet of paper with a list of bullet points.
How to Save German
. Under the headline was the first item.
Increase enrollment
. They were a verbal tag team, rattling off the agenda for carrying out their plan. There would be a party, with an Oktoberfest theme. Each of us would invite 50 students who were not already taking German. Jann-Otto would be delegating most of the responsibilities, in turn for the titles of social chair
and
co-chancellor. “I already put it on my application to Stanford,” he said.

I told them it was fine. I had already put German Club chancellor on my application. Whatever they wanted to do now would be irrelevant.

I was checking my messages at lunch in the courtyard when I heard a girl’s voice behind me. “Very un-cool, what you did to your parents.” It sounded like Rachel. Because I didn’t have any parents, I assumed the comment was not for me. I didn’t turn around.

“Not talking to me either,” she said.

I turned. Rachel stood with her hands on her hips. I dropped my pickle. It rolled under a nearby bench. Some jock kicked it under the next bench.

“Your mother called me this morning. She was wondering where you were.”

“Um, wha—?”

“I said I didn’t have any idea where you were. I thought it was interesting, to say the least. She was pretty upset. If I stayed out all night, my mother would have a fit.”

I tried to put it all together. Janet had called Rachel, which meant she would have dug into my Box o’ Crap to find Rachel’s number. Possibly she phoned other numbers in my box, like my old science teacher and Levi. And Janet may have passed herself off as my biological mother. This was so wrong. To top it off, Rachel blamed me for the call, which would have been maddening if I hadn’t been caught off guard by her green high-top sneakers. One lace on each shoe dragged on the ground. I had a momentary compulsion to re-tie them.

Rachel sat on the bench next to me and stared into my eyes. “Are you on drugs? You can tell me honestly. Consider me a person and not a reporter.”

“Wha—? No.”

“Because your mom thought you might be, and I have to say it’s kind of unnerving having that conversation at six in the morning.”

I needed to tell her two things—that Janet was not my real mother, and that I worked nights—but I couldn’t decide which order to say them in, because now I was distracted by Rachel’s hand, which gently rested on my forearm.

“At least you kept my number. I didn’t think you would. I’m glad you did.”

The bell rang. I picked up my stuff quickly and promised Rachel that nobody would call her house again. As I walked away, I thought I heard Rachel say,  “I don’t mind if
you
call.”

I kept my cell phone in my upper vest pocket all day. By the end of the day I had received no response from Janet. No text, no voice mail,
nichts
. So I sent another text.
We should talk
.

After school I went back to the house. Janet sat at the dining table, facing away from me. There was a sweating glass of wine in front of her. Her arms and legs were crossed tightly, as if she were a human washcloth attempting to wring herself out.
You can’t do anything to me because I’m emancipating.
This was at the top of the talking points I created during downtime in English lit class. The second talking point was,
my Box o’ Crap is private
.

I didn’t say any of this.

On the walk back to the house I considered what my BiMo might have done if I had started a night job without telling her. The conclusion I reached was, nothing. More likely, I would be the one questioning her for staying out all night. “I trust you, honey.” That’s how BiMo explained not hiring a sitter for me. I always told her it was all right, just leaving me alone like that. But it wasn’t all right.

Janet turned but didn’t look directly at me. “Fiona and Carl said to go easy on you. They think we should let you do whatever you want. Fiona always did what she wanted.
I
was the responsible one.”

She turned away and snatched the wine glass. She took a gulp, almost like she was using the glass to stop her mouth from saying anything else. She was still not looking at me. I decided to stay out of her line of vision. It just seemed like a good idea.

“I should have told you about the job,” I said.

“We can’t stop you from working but you need to find an earlier shift. And you have to cut back to part-time.”

I told her there were no openings on the second shift. It was the most popular and I didn’t have seniority. First shift was impossible because I had classes. And there were no jobs at Colonial Gardens with less than 38 hours a week. I crossed my arms, because that’s something that people do when they refuse to give in.

“Then we’ve reached an impasse,” she said. She stared at her wine glass for a long time. I had nothing more to say.

“You can keep working nights as long as you don’t endanger your health or your grades. If we see any signs of you falling behind, you have to quit.”

“Okay,” I said, not certain whether I’d won or not.

I couldn’t remember being scolded by my BiMo. It must have happened, though. This was what parents did, wasn’t it? My BiMo must have disciplined me, at least when I was very young. But I usually stopped
myself
from doing bad things. I did this to avoid turning her good mood bad, or her bad mood worse. Now, here I was, with someone not related to me who was making demands.

“And I’m driving you to work,” Janet said. “Don’t tell me I don’t have to do that. I know I don’t have to.” She made a gesture with her arm and accidentally knocked the glass off the table. It shattered on the tile floor. I made a lunge for it.

“Leave it,” she said.

“You’ll take me to work
and
pick me up?” She looked at me as if I had just started quacking.

“
Yes
. Both ways. And if I can’t, Carl will.” She started picking up the glass, less gingerly than I would have recommended.

“So I don’t have to leave?”