Dad hides behind me. I feel his breath on the back of my head.
Haze looks at the ceiling. He points at the missing plaster. "I could fix that for you if you wanted. I'm pretty good." He looks at me. "I work with my uncle's construction crew in the summers."
"Our whole roof leaks," I say. "If you fixed the ceiling, it would only leak through again." I reach back for Dad's hand. I know I need to comfort him, reassure him, so he doesn't get all worked up. His hand feels ice cold, but he's home and he's alive; that's all that matters.
"Well," Shelby says, her voice a little too loud, "I'd love to hear some more violin music. Mr. Papadopoulos, would you play something for us?"
CRAZY GLUE: She thinks your dad's crazy and deaf.
LAUGH TRACK: (Laughter).
Dad steps out from behind me, hugging the violin to his chest. "I found it. I thought I lost it, but I found it in the maze of quadraphonic sound." He turns around to face the mirror again, and tucks the instrument under his chin. He lifts the bow, hesitating for a minute, then plays his music, and he sounds so—so...
CRAZY GLUE: Sane. The word is sane.
AUNT BEE: I forgot he could play the violin.
SEXY LADY: You should play, too, Jason. You'd be so hot.
Looking at Shelby and Haze, I smile and shrug. They smile, too, but I catch Shelby checking out the broken mirror, and I know she's thinking my dad broke it. I know she's thinking he's so crazy.
Chapter Twelve
I'M SURPRISED at how comfortable it turns out to be with Haze and Shelby and my dad. Maybe because they're used to dealing with difficult parents themselves, they aren't freaking, and Dad just seems calmer with the violin. He uses it like a shield. As long as he has it in his arms or on his lap, he's quiet; when he gets nervous about the Furies, he plays, and he feels better. Maybe the meds are starting to work, too. Maybe he really will be okay.
CRAZY GLUE: And maybe you won't have a bad dream and maybe
you won't wet the bed and maybe...
LAUGH TRACK: Shut up!
CRAZY GLUE: Are they allowed to say that? That's not in their script.
Shelby and Haze offer to order Chinese take-out. I try to protest, but they insist.
CRAZY GLUE: Yeah, we all notice how lame your protest is.
AUNT BEE: He's starving, poor boy.
Okay, so I don't put up much of a fight. Who can resist? We have sweet and sour soup, fried rice, beef and broccoli, moo shu pork, Kung Pao chicken, and lots of egg rolls and oolong tea.
Dad eats so much, I'm sure he's going to get sick since he's unused to so much food, but except for a few burps he holds it all in.
It's almost midnight by the time we've finished eating, and even though I tell them they don't have to stay, Shelby and Haze insist on spending the night with us.
LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh!
Haze, Dad, and I will sleep in Dad's king-size bed and Shelby will sleep in mine. I show Shelby my room.
She looks around. "All right! I like it. You sure like the color blue, don't you?" Before I can say anything she says, "Who took all the pictures in here? Your mom?"
I have black-and-white photographs of Greece on the walls all around the room. Most of them are of Crete, where my dad's family is from. I go over to the wall. "I did these. My mom mostly liked photographing faces." I point to one of the photos. "This cave here is supposedly where Zeus, the Greek god, was born. There's another cave where he's supposed to have been born, too, but I like this one because it's not all touristy the way the other one is. I love caves. I love black-and-white photos of stones, like stone walls and these rocky mountains, and the caves. Oh, and I love taking pictures of snow. It's all about light and shadows with black-and-white film and snow. It's really cool. I only use film. I don't do digital. My mom has—had a darkroom in our basement. I haven't been down there since..."
I turn from the pictures and see Shelby just staring at me. She has this look on her face that I don't understand.
SEXY LADY: She thinks you're hot.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
CRAZY GLUE: Goob. You talk too much.
"Well," Shelby says, "I love these! I didn't know you were an artist."
"Oh no—I'm not. I just..." I shrug.
"You're an artist, like me. No wonder you're so sensitive."
"I am?"
"Well, yeah," Shelby says in this voice that makes me wonder if she's annoyed with me. Maybe she doesn't like sensitive.
SEXY LADY: Maybe she does.
Haze comes to the door asking for more blankets and I leave, but I don't want to. I kind of wish I could stay the night there in my room, with Shelby.
CRAZY GLUE: Aw, how sweet. Is it love or is it indigestion?
LAUGH TRACK: (Laughter).
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: I just have one word to say: Pee!
I try to stay awake all night. I'm lying between Haze and Dad, and I know if I fall asleep and have that suffocating/drowning dream, I'll wet the bed, and both Dad and Haze will get wet. What would Haze do, I wonder? How would I ever live it down? I'd have to run away. I imagine myself in Greece with Dad. Would it be easier to take care of him in a cave somewhere? My mind drifts to Shelby. I think of her lying in my bed beneath all the glow-in-the-dark stars my mom and dad and I stuck to the ceiling when I was younger. I had insisted they be accurate, just like a winter sky, with Orion, the mythological hunter, directly above my bed. I wonder if Shelby is staring at them now, thinking of me. Does she like me? Do I like her?
CRAZY GLUE: Dumb question.
I like how sure she is about everything. I can't imagine what that would feel like, to be so sure.
AUNT BEE: You sound so sure in your Dear Mouse letters.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: He's faking it. It's all a sham.
I return to thinking about Shelby and they're the last thoughts I have before I fall asleep. I guess I was too exhausted to pull an all-nighter. I'm unconscious until morning. I awaken to the smell of coffee and maybe bacon coming from below. For a moment I forget where I am and I think my mom's in the kitchen cooking breakfast the way she always used to do. I roll over and smile to myself. Then, when my leg kicks up against someone else's, I open my eyes and see Dad still asleep beside me, and everything comes back to me. The radio is playing softly on the chest of drawers and the violin is propped up against the chair facing him so that he could keep an eye on it through the night. When I see this and remember how Dad wouldn't go to bed until he had set the violin just so in the chair, I feel a deep sadness. Then I remember Haze and my fear of wetting the bed, and I freak. I spring away from the spot where I'm lying and feel around for any soaked patch.
"What are you doing, Pope-a-Dope?" The loud whisper comes from behind me.
I flip myself in the other direction and find Shelby staring at me from the doorway with one of my blankets wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair appears to have doubled in thickness overnight. It sticks out all over her head, a fat nest of a mess. I try to look relaxed, calm, now that I know I'm safe, no nightmare, no wet patch.
CRAZY GLUE: Oh yeah, you look real calm there, goob.
"I uh—was still dreaming—uh, I think. So, you've been cooking breakfast?"
She scratches her head. "Must be Haze." She yawns and stretches.
I check the clock on the chest of drawers. It's six thirty.
I climb out of bed, careful not to wake Dad, and follow Shelby downstairs to the kitchen. She stumbles on her blanket a couple of times, but I steady her from behind.
"Thanks, it just takes me a while to wake up in the mornings," she says the second time I catch her.
SEXY LADY: I bet she's doing it on purpose just so you'll catch her.
We reach the kitchen together and find Haze and Pete standing over the stove.
"Hey, what's going on?" I ask. "Pete, when did you get here?"
Pete glances up. "Haze came by and got me this morning." He flips the bacon frying in the skillet with a fork one by one, carefu
l not to splatter.
"Mmm, bacon," Shelby says, shuffling to the table and flopping down in a chair.
"Don't get too excited," Haze says. "It's soy bacon. Pete, the Buddhist, is a vegan."
"It's just after six thirty. What time did you get up?" I ask Haze.
"Yeah, well, I don't sleep much, you know? Sooo, I was up at four and I called Pete just to talk, and he said to come get him, so I did. Then he suggested we go to the twenty-four-hour Safeway and pick up a few things." He opens the refrigerator and I see a gallon of milk, two loaves of bread, peanut butter, two kinds of jelly, some broccoli and cauliflower, and a store-bought chocolate layer cake.
CRAZY GLUE: Jackpot!
"Wow! I don't know what to say. I—I—thank you."
Pete holds out a spatula with a pancake on it. "Somebody get me a plate for the pancakes. The first ones are done."
Haze shuts the refrigerator and reaches for a plate. "Those are vegan pancakes, everybody, so don't start salivating yet."
"Coffee," Shelby says. "I need coffee." She lets go of the blanket she has wrapped around her and holds out her arm, her hand poised to receive a cup. Glad to be useful, I step over to the sink, grab the mug I had given her yesterday, and pour her a cup from the Mr. Coffee maker. I place the mug in Shelby's hand. She mumbles thanks and sits straighter, scooping the blanket back around her. Her eyes look puffy, and she opens them just enough to see.
Haze sets a bottle of maple syrup on the table, and noticing Shelby, he says, "Whoa, that's a lot of hair there, Socks. You poke your head in a cyclone or something?"
Shelby scratches her head, then scoops her hair up and twists it somehow, grabs a wooden chopstick left on the table from last night's take-out, and stabs it into the wad of hair. Amazingly, it holds. "There," she says, "you happy?" She leans forward and takes a sip of her coffee.
"Cool." Haze nods.
"Anyway," Shelby says, pointing her pinky at me, "Jason's hair isn't much better. Ever think about getting a haircut there, dude?"
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. It's such a pain to cut my own hair and after a while I figured it was just easier to let it grow out, so I did, and now it's grown to my shoulders. Before I can respond, Pete says, "Order up." He places two pancakes and four slices of soy bacon on a plate and sets it down on the table. "There you go, Pope-a-Dope. You first; it's your house."
I don't know what to think.
CRAZY GLUE: Don't look at us. Neither do we.
AUNT BEE: Just eat and be thankful.
I see the jar of coffee, a carton of orange juice, and a bowl of fresh apples, bananas, and pears sitting on the counter. I shake my head. "You guys hardly know me and"—I swallow—"and look what you've done. I don't know how I'm ever going to repay you. I don't even know why you'd do all this for me and my dad. I don't understand."
Pete slaps my shoulder and shakes it. "You're one of us, man."
"I am?" I feel a flush of pleasure spread across my chest.
"Sure. We look after one another, don't we, guys?"
"Wuh-huh," Shelby says, nodding.
"Hey, are you kidding, man?" Haze joins in. "We're having a blast. Your father may be nuts, but at least he likes you, right? Right? My dad, whoa! I'm just sooo glad to be out of the house." He takes the second plate of food Pete holds out to him and sets it on the table. "Come on—eat up before it gets cold."
Shelby grabs the plate and drags it toward her. "Great, I'm starving," she says. She picks up a slice of bacon and bites into it. She shrugs. "Not too bad."
"Man, you sure can scarf down a lot of food," Haze says. "You should have seen her last night, Pete. Total pig-lady."
I sit down next to Shelby and pour some syrup on my pancakes. I close my eyes and take a bite. Vegan or not, it's delicious.
CRAZY GLUE: Too bad we're just a figment of his imagination. Why don't we get to eat anything?
I open my eyes and all three of them are staring at me. Did I just say that out loud?
"What? What?" I look at them, worried.
They laugh.
"It's just I've never seen someone enjoy his food so much," Pete says. He sets the third plate of food down on the table and Haze sits down.
"All right, I'm looking forward to this, man," he says. "It's freezing in this house." He rubs his hands together. "Gotta stoke."
I look at Pete and Haze, still in their jackets and with their hats pulled down over their ears, and Shelby, my blanket wrapped around her, and I'm embarrassed. "Sorry about the cold, guys."
"Yeah, no probs, no probs," Haze says, nodding and shuddering at the same time. He stuffs a whole pancake into his mouth and the syrup runs down his chin.
"That's so gross!" Shelby says, wrinkling up her nose. "Try eating like a human, why don't you."
"Grouch," Haze says, getting right up in her face.
Shelby swats him away.
Pete comes over to the table and sits down with his plate of food and a mug of tea. I remember that he was supposed to have had the intervention with his father last night, so I ask him how it went.
Pete nods and takes a sip of tea. "It went okay. What can I say? We had the intervention coach there, and my mom and my two brothers and I, and then my dad's parents and his sister and brother. We each told my dad how his doing drugs was affecting us, so he's crying the whole time and saying how sorry he is and that he's going to stop; he doesn't need to go into rehab, blah, blah, blah."
Shelby smacks her coffee mug down on the table and some of the coffee sloshes out. "What? I hope you told him to get his ass in rehab, and fast. He so doesn't get it, does he? You told him, didn't you? You told him he's out, right?"
Pete shrugs. "Yeah, we told him. We said we loved him, but he either went with Charley, our intervention coach, right away to rehab, or he was on his own. We said we would have nothing to do with him until he got clean." Pete stares into his mug of tea and his faraway expression makes me think he's reliving the whole intervention scene.
Shelby slaps him on the back. "Way to go."
Haze says, "Sooo, did your old man go, or didn't he?"
Pete looks around at the three of us, his face blank; then a smile spreads across his face. "He's in. Went into rehab last night around nine."
We all slap his back and congratulate him.
I'm pleased for Pete; I really am.
CRAZY GLUE: But...
But I feel strange. I know it's a good thing his father's in rehab, but he's in an institution. They'll lock him up. Maybe they'll tie him down. He won't have any control. No. I don't like that. If anyone ever tries to take Dad from me and put him away, I'll kill him. I'll just kill him.
Chapter Thirteen
LAST NIGHT when I heard my dad tuning his violin, he stretched the strings so tight I thought they'd all bust. They made little screeching and scritching sounds that set my teeth on edge. This morning, sitting with Shelby, Haze, and Pete around the kitchen table, I feel like that violin, only my strings are loosening, unwinding from the pegs, and I feel strange this way. I feel that maybe it isn't safe to laugh, to let go of my vigilance over my dad, and myself, but I can hardly help it because it feels so good. It just feels so good.
The four of us finish our breakfast, and then everyone prepares to leave for their own homes to get ready for school. Shelby and her bicycle are hitching a ride with Haze and Pete in Haze's van.
I tell them I'm going to stay home with my dad, and Shelby says, "You know you can't exactly lock him inside the house all the time, so what are you going to do, stay home every day and guard him? You need a better system, Jason."
I don't feel like fighting with Shelby, whose family can afford a private nurse to look after her mother, so I just wave her out the door, thank them all again, and head up to my dad's bedroom with a cup of hot coffee in my hands. He's still asleep when I get there and I'm glad. He sleeps as little as I do, so I'm glad he's getting some rest. I leave the coffee on the bedside table along with the two pills he's supposed to ta
ke each morning. Then I go to my room to work on the Dear Mouse letters. I'm not sure when I'll find time to take my laptop to the library to send them, but I know I'll have to or someone might notice that every time I'm missing from school the letters stop.
CRAZY GLUE: Yeah, and then you'd be up to your neck in some major doo-doo.
Exactly.
Dear Mouse:
You little puke face! Why don't you show yourself ? When I find out who you are, I'm gonna shove...
CRAZY GLUE: I thought you deleted all of those kinds of letters.
Yeah, me too. I sure didn't mean to save that one. I delete it and move on to the next one.
Dear Mouse:
My best friend copies everything I do, and I mean everything. She dresses like me and talks like me and even laughs like me. She got a job at the same place I did, even though she doesn't even like horses, and she blamed a big mistake she made on me, so I got fired. I could tell the boss that she did it, but she so sucks up to him she's like the favorite, and I know the boss wouldn't believe me. We've been friends since always and we have lots of fun hanging out together when it's just us, but around everybody else she's such a phony. She competes with me for grades and attention and stuff, and now she's taken my boyfriend. She didn't even like him until I did. Now they're all over each other. I told her how I feel and she acts like she gets it, but then she does something else, so I know she doesn't. What's scary is that I think she's better at being me than I am. What should I do?
Cloned
Dear Cloned:
Here's a clue. She's not your best friend. She's not even your friend. She's a soul stealer. I mean, a little imitation might be flattering, but it doesn't seem like she even thinks about your feelings. It's all about her. Sounds like she doesn't really know herself and so she has to glom on to your life. She's a vampire just sucking the lifeblood out of you. Anyway, get a better friend. So what if you've been friends for always and sometimes have a good time. Dump her! Oh, and shell never make a better you. You're the original.
Mouse
I'm in the middle of rereading my letter to see if it makes sense, when I hear the doorbell ring and loud banging. I figure it's one of the neighbors coming over to complain because my dad is awake now and in his room playing the violin. Since our house is a townhouse, we share a wall with our neighbor and they must be hearing the music.