Center of Gravity Page 4

  I look at Dad and he nods, so I wheel my bike in.

  “For now,” Lila says.

  We’re on our way back to the house when Dad lifts the top off a big green garbage bin. His paper coffee cup bounces off a half-gallon milk container and falls into the can.

  I’m frozen in my tracks, like the concrete under my feet has turned to goo that’s got my sneakers stuck tight.

  “So, I’m thinking pizza for dinner,” he says. Dad could eat fast food for every meal. Mom said he has the palate of a ten-year-old.

  Lila makes a sad little whining noise. “But I bought stuff to make fish tacos for your first night.”

  I want to say that Dad doesn’t like fish. Or spicy food. But I can’t. I’m still back at the trash can. And the milk carton.

  Don’t do it, Tessa. I take a breath. You don’t need to look at that carton.

  Half-gallon milk cartons have bigger pictures on the back than the pints at school, with two kids instead of one.

  Two missing kids.

  Lost. Kidnapped. Stolen. Run away. Wandered off.

  Two kids that I cannot bring myself to leave in Lila’s trash can if I don’t already have them in my shoebox.

  I take the lid off the can, even as my brain screams at me to stop this right now. Right this minute, young lady.

  Do not pull garbage out of Lila’s can.

  Don’t do it.

  I have a moment of hope that the carton will have kids on it that are already in my collection. That lasts as long as it takes me to flick a banana peel away and turn the waxed cardboard over.

  I’m going to have to carry the carton inside with me. And wash it in front of Dad and Lila. I have a bottle of green dish soap in my backpack, which is still in the third-floor bedroom.

  Lila’s nose wrinkles when she sees me, and even that’s pretty. “What’re you doing?”

  I look at the kitchen sink. There’s a bottle of orange dish soap sitting behind the faucet. I test out the idea of using it on my milk carton, but I know right away that I can’t.

  I can’t.

  “Come on, Tessa,” Dad says quietly. “You don’t have to do this anymore.”

  Why did I leave my backpack up there? “I’ll be right back.”

  “Tessa.”

  I take the carton with me up the stairs. I’m aiming for casual. Like fishing old milk cartons out of the trash and carrying them around the house is no big deal. Nothing to see here, folks.

  I hear Lila whisper, her voice carrying up the acoustic stairs after me. “What is she doing, Gordy?”

  Dad shushes her as I hit the first landing.

  “But she can’t take garbage up to the baby’s room.”

  At least the truth about whose room it really is, is out. Dad says something I can’t make out as I open the bedroom door on the third floor.

  I’d put a plastic sandwich bag over the top of my soap bottle before we left Denver and held it in place with a hair tie. I had a vague idea that I might find myself with a milk carton on the road. I didn’t. But I’m glad I’m not going to have to try to get Dad to take me to the market tonight to pick up the right brand.

  “You really have lost it,” I say as I take the soap out of my backpack. “You know that, right? You really have.”

  The only sink between me and the kitchen is in the bathroom on the second floor. The bathroom next to Lila’s bedroom. I still can’t make myself even think Lila and Dad’s bedroom. And I can’t go in there.

  I go down the second flight of stairs to the ground floor. Dad and Lila are on the back patio. Sound carries around the house like magic, but I can’t hear them talking at all through the sliding-glass door.

  Dad’s dumping charcoal into a small black grill. No pizza, then. I start to go to the sink, to get my ritual over with before they come back in, but I stop when I see that there are bags of charcoal stacked against the patio wall. Lots of bags.

  Dad looks up at me as Lila takes the empty bag from him, puts it on the ground, and wraps her arms around his neck.

  Except for the kiss at their wedding and the hug when we arrived, I’ve never seen Dad and Lila touch. I look away now and turn on the faucet. My heart thuds in my chest as I carefully open the milk carton’s seams.

  Rinse in warm water. Add a single drop of soap. Then two more, because this carton is way bigger than the pints I bring home from school. Also, it stinks way worse. The scent of the soap filters up and smells like my mom.

  My fingers feel weird, like they’re not quite attached to my hands. I keep my face turned away from the sliding-glass door, because I can’t let myself see Dad with Lila when the kitchen smells like Mom.

  When the carton is clean, I pat it dry and carry it back upstairs. I pull my ballerina jewelry box from the suitcase Dad carried up earlier, and I sit cross-legged on the bed.

  Use Mom’s crane scissors to cut the two kids from the back of the carton.

  Whisper their stats.

  File them away alphabetically.

  “These are the last ones. I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Tessa?”

  I jump when Dad’s voice filters not up the stairs or through the door, but from the floor. Through a heater vent nearly under the bed.

  “Yeah?” I say back.

  “Dinner in fifteen.”

  He’s in the bedroom beneath mine. It’s not just Lila’s room. It’s his, too.

  “Tessa?” His voice is sharper, demanding that I answer.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  Dad does a good job of pretending he likes the fish tacos, even though for as long as I’ve been alive, he hasn’t willingly put fish into his mouth.

  I think they actually taste pretty good.

  “We could take a walk down to the beach after dinner,” Lila says.

  “Sure.” Dad starts to clear the table. All it takes is turning around and setting them on the sink just behind him.

  Lila looks at me. I realize that she’s waiting for me to respond to the beach idea. “Sure,” I say.

  “Great.” She pulls herself out of her chair with a little noise, her hand sliding over her lower back like it’s aching.

  “We can do these dishes,” Dad says, then looks at me.

  I stand up and move to help, but Lila waves us away. “Don’t be silly. You’ve been driving for days. I’ve got this. It’s good for me to move around anyway.”

  She starts water running and pushes a black plug into the drain to let the sink fill.

  And then she picks up the bottle of green soap that I left on the counter earlier.

  My breath catches, but before I can say anything, she squirts a stream of my soap—of my mother’s soap—under the running water.

  The smell fills the kitchen immediately. It overpowers the fish. It overpowers me. It smells like Mom. It smells like Denver. It smells like my house. I grab the bottle off the counter. “That’s mine.”

  “Oh.” Lila takes a step back from me.

  “That’s mine!” Louder this time. “You can’t use it.”

  “Tessa.” Dad puts a hand out for me, but I duck away from him.

  Can’t he smell her? Tears fall down my cheeks. I expect Dad to reach for me again, to open his arms and invite me in to make everything okay. Instead, he turns to Lila, who is staring at me with wide blue eyes, the way she might stare at a raccoon that’s wandered into her kitchen. A little disbelief. Some fear.

  Dad shakes his head and says, “I’m sorry, Lila. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

  I take the soap with me and run up both flights of stairs.

  FOUR

  There isn’t a lock on the bedroom door. I close it and then take my shoebox out of the cubby in the headboard and wedge myself into a spot on the floor between the foot of the bed and the closet.

  The box smells faintly of sour milk and dish soap. It’s almost pleasant, but not quite. I take the lid off and flip through the cards, saying the kids’ names in order.

 
; Christine Adams

  Craig Alphonse

  Richard Carlson

  Elizabeth Dixon

  There is something wrong with me. No one should get this upset about dish soap. No one.

  I get all the way to Erin Worth and then look at the bedroom door. I don’t hear Dad’s footsteps. I don’t hear any voices.

  He’s not coming to check on me.

  He’s probably busy making sure Lila is okay.

  I start with Christine Adams again. With each name, my heart slows. With each name, the angry energy drains from me. I lean against the end of the bed, my fingers brushing over the cards.

  * * *

  I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know, it’s nearly dark and my box has tipped over. The missing-kid cards are in a pile between my legs.

  I have no idea where I am for the first couple of breaths. It’s like waking up inside a dream. I stand up and move away from the mess, so I don’t step on any of the kids.

  “Dad?” It comes back to me slowly, starting when I see the baby’s crib. I am not at home. “Daddy?”

  “We’re going to figure this out.”

  I turn, still disoriented. Dad’s voice came from behind me, but he’s not there.

  “It’s the first day. Give her time.”

  I sink to my knees and move closer to the vent on the floor near the bed. While I’m down there, I start to pick up the spilled cards, automatically putting them back in order. Christine Adams. Craig Alphonse. Richard Carlson. Elizabeth Dixon.

  Dad’s in the bedroom below mine with Lila. I hear her voice, but it doesn’t carry as well as his does. When I have my milk-carton kids safely back where they belong, I crawl closer to the vent and bend nearer to it.

  “It was dish soap,” Lila says. “She completely freaked out over dish soap.”

  “The kind her mother uses.”

  “Used.”

  “What?”

  “The kind Maggie used.”

  There’s silence, and I wonder if Dad’s heart aches the way mine does right now. “Right,” he finally says. “Right.”

  Their voices lower, and even when I put my ear right on the vent, I can’t make out what they’re saying. Or not all of it. Just words that break through.

  * * *

  She says, “I missed you.”

  And then the tone changes. It takes a minute for me to realize what’s going on down there, and when I do, I sit up fast enough to bang into the bed behind me.

  I cover my ears with my hands and take a ragged breath.

  No. No. No.

  I stand up and back away from the vent, hugging my box to my chest. I can’t be here. I can’t be in this house right now. I look around the room, panic building like a wall around me.

  The only way down is past their bedroom and I can’t. I really, really can’t.

  There’s a sliding-glass door in the wall across from my bed. I pull it open and inhale deeply when cool ocean air hits me in the face.

  The balcony is about six feet wide. I shut the bedroom door and walk to the wall. It’s waist-high, and I bend over it, inhaling deeply.

  When I can breathe again, I walk to one corner, looking for a chair. There isn’t one, so I walk to the next. No chair, but there’s the top of a staircase that leads all the way down to the lawn.

  I’m gone before I even really decide to go, scrambling down the stairs and then running across the lawn to the sidewalk. I bring my box with me, because I don’t really have a choice.

  I hope that carrying it around doesn’t become a thing. I really can’t handle any more things.

  The house behind Lila’s is ginormous and looks haunted to me. It’s old and covered in ivy and windows with a thousand little panes.

  Across the street from that house is a grass bluff. Below it is the Pacific Ocean. It is spectacular. Gentle waves lap at the clean brown sand, and just seeing it makes the fist that’s clenched inside my chest let go.

  I stand there watching a giant ship on the horizon, all lit up like a Christmas tree. No crashing waves, like in the movies. Just a soft movement that makes me want to walk into it.

  The sun is sinking into the ocean, all orange and yellow, and most everyone has already gone home.

  I should go back, because when my dad realizes that I left he’s going to be pretty angry. At least, I think he is. Maybe he’ll let it go, since I’m Half-Orphan Girl and he just made me move to California.

  But first I want to get closer to the shore. Just for a minute. I want to feel the sand and the water. There’s a wide wooden staircase a few yards to my left.

  I’m nearly to the bottom, walking carefully in my bare feet, when a family passes me. The mom’s got a giant red umbrella over her shoulder, and the dad’s lugging a blue-and-white cooler. There are four little kids behind them, and they’re all as pink as my new bedroom walls. They must have been here all day.

  I push against the railing, then slide around it out of the way when I reach the bottom. One of the kids stumbles, and the mom swings around, nearly taking me out with her umbrella.

  “Come on, Lindsey,” she says. “Be careful.”

  If she hadn’t nearly knocked me over, I would never have noticed the backside of the staircase.

  The bluff is hollowed out back there, almost like a shallow, wide-mouthed cave. I forget about the family and take a step farther into the space. I have to squint to see in the dusk, but there are plastic milk crates in a half circle around a tipped-over old grocery cart that someone’s been burning wood in.

  There’s a cooler, similar to the one the dad just hauled up the stairs. Only this one is propped open and the inside is filled with stuff.

  I take another step closer to see, going all the way in. Comic books. Empty soda bottles. A canteen. A bag of marshmallows, closed with a wooden clothespin. A bunch of pulled-open wire hangers with the sticky black remnants of burned sugar on the tips.

  “This is a clubhouse,” I say.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  I turn on the ball of one foot toward the voice. Unfortunately, the ball of that foot had landed on a rock or something because pain shoots up my leg and my knee crumbles.

  I have time to see a boy silhouetted against the clubhouse’s opening before I fall. He reaches for my arm and keeps me on my feet. “God, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” I hold on tighter to my box.

  The boy tilts his head. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”

  “Um, yeah,” I say. “I’m new.”

  He’s tall. At least six inches taller than I am. He’s lanky to the point of being skinny, but he fills the clubhouse. I think he’s about my age.

  His skin is golden, and he has a head full of black hair that sticks up around his head in a tangle of wild curls. His eyes should be brown, but they aren’t. Even without a lot of light, I can see that one is a green. The other is bright blue.

  And they are both focused on my box of lost kids.

  I suddenly feel like I’ve been caught trespassing. Like I’ve wandered into a stranger’s house without being invited.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  I take a breath and make myself say, “Tessa.”

  “Tessa.” He says my name slowly, and my cheeks burn.

  “Theresa.” I have to say something or else I’m going to have to tunnel into the sand under my feet. “It came out Tessa when I was a baby. Just stuck, I guess.”

  “Tessa,” he says one more time. Then he points at my box.

  Before he can say anything else, I ask, “What’s yours?”

  “Jay Jay.” Jason, I wonder. Or James. Or Jacob. Or John. He must be able to read my mind because he says, “Joshua. Junior.”

  “Junior.”

  “Yeah. Well, I think my grandma didn’t want to have to yell my dad’s name at me every time I piss her off. So I’ve always just been Jay Jay.”

  And just like that, balance is restored. I can breathe again. “You piss
her off a lot?”

  He tilts his head from side to side, and his face cracks into a wide smile. “It’s how we do, you know?”

  I shift my bare feet in the sand. “You live with your grandma?”

  “Yeah.” He points over my shoulder. “Big house on the corner.”

  My eyes go wide, and I look that way, like I might be able to see right through the wall of the clubhouse, up over the bluff and across the street, to the house he must be talking about. The house just in front of the one Lila grew up in. “The Haunted Mansion.”

  “It’s not haunted,” he says. “But yeah. That one.”

  “My dad and I just moved in behind you.”

  “Oh yeah?” He sounds truly surprised.

  “Um. Yeah.”

  “So what are you doing down here?” he asks, changing the subject. Maybe hoping I won’t ask why his grandma doesn’t want to call him by his father’s name. Or why he lives with her and not his parents. Sharing something to balance things is one thing. Having to discuss it is something totally different. Not that I would ask anyway. I’ve only known him for a couple of minutes.

  So I say, “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  He looks at the box again, and my face is burning so hard I’m afraid it might spontaneously combust.

  “What’s in your box?” he asks. Not mean or threatening, just curious. I put it behind me, both hands holding it against the small of my back. Like maybe out of sight will be out of mind.

  Only, no such luck. He says, “Comic books? Cigarettes?”

  “What?” I stumble back a step. “No.”

  He laughs and fakes right, then tries to reach around me to the left. “Oh my God. Do you have a joint in there?”

  “No, I don’t have a…” I try to sidestep him, and I rap my shin on the edge of the shopping cart firepit. My box falls, and the cards inside flitter to the ground like wingless birds.

  The tears I’ve been holding back since—oh, somewhere in Nevada—fall down my face as I sink to my knees. Some of the little squares of waxed cardboard fall into the ashes of the firepit. I reach in, as carefully as I can.