“Well,” Momma Jo said, “they’re probably praying because their parents pray as part of their religious practice.”
“Why don’t we have a religious practice?” Tesla cried.
“We don’t need one,” I snapped.
“Maybe we do need one,” Tesla snapped back.
“I’m going to get dessert,” Mama Kate said, and she picked up her plate and pushed out her chair.
“I don’t want any.” Tesla pouted.
I watched Mama Kate disappear into the kitchen, kind of bent over a bit like she was searching the floor for a lost quarter.
“Why don’t you just chill out?” I hissed.
“Why don’t you just mind your own business?” Tesla hissed back.
Momma Jo looked at my black and blue stars. “Montgomery. Enough. Tesla. There are lots of things that different families do differently. This is one of them. Some people eat certain dishes, some people wear different clothes, some people go to church, some people have two dads…”
“Who has two dads?” Tesla huffed.
“Elton John’s kids,” I piped in, my mouth still partly full of fries.
“Shut up, Monty,” Tesla barked.
“Ricky Martin’s kids,” I added, pointing another fry at Tesla.
“Mon-teeee!” Tesla jumped out of her chair and pointed an angry finger at me across the table. “Shut up!”
“Montgomery,” Momma Jo said, her voice like a hammer. A slightly tired hammer.
In the kitchen, pots and pans rattled. I could just see Mama Kate, leaning on the counter.
“Excuse me,” I said, slamming my knife down on the table, which was louder than I wanted it to be. “First of all, how come she gets to tell me to shut up? Second, how come Tesla gets to act like a little brat just because she’s not allowed to pray? Maybe there are bigger things than soccer games, Tesla. And just because everyone in this stupid town thinks you should pray, Tesla, doesn’t mean you have to do it. Grow up!”
“Shut up, Monty!”
“You shut up!”
“Enough!” Momma Jo banged the table with her palm.
There was a crashing sound in the kitchen, plates fighting in the sink.
“I’m outta here.” And, of course, by “outta here” I meant, “I’m going to my room.”
Because, at sixteen, I can’t just charge off into the sunset. Just to my room. A place to contemplate why it is I shouldn’t yell at my sister. Even though she is being an idiot.
Tesla is the only person I currently know who’s been a kid with two moms her whole life, too.
And most of the time she’s the dumbest person I’ve ever met.
Like, why does she want to pray now?
I tried to imagine Tesla standing in whatever it is they call that space by the soccer field where the teams sit, with all her friends. And her friends being like, “We should all pray.” Maybe there was even some kid who told the other players that our moms don’t pray because they’re lesbians.
How stupid is it to have to explain why it’s so much more complicated than that?
I lay down on my bed and looked at the ceiling.
Mama Kate’s parents are really religious. Evangelicals. Believers in the Second Coming. When we were little, they would give Tesla and me religious-type stuff all the time. Like, for our birthdays they would send us books like Good Christian Girls tucked into the covers of regular books. They slipped little gold crosses into birthday cards signed, Jesus loves you. Once they sent us cards of Jesus where you could shift the card and he would look up at the sky, the thorns on his head twinkling.
Tesla was so little when most of this was happening. She’d just fold them up into her dollhouses or cut them into snowflakes. She called them “man cards.”
When I was little, I thought Jesus was, like, this person my grandparents knew. Like a great-uncle. Great-Uncle Jesus from Kansas.
Typically, as soon as they were unwrapped, Mama Kate would swoop in, take the presents away. Promise to take us to the store and get us something else. Then she’d go into the kitchen, sit at the table, call her parents.
“Yes, but I’m asking you to stop, Mom. Yes. I know. Okay, well, we don’t do that in our family. Yes, I do have a family, Mom. Dad, I’m not talking about it. No. Yes, I do, Dad. Mom. I’m going to hang up now. I do love you. Goodbye.”
While Mama Kate talked, I would sit outside the kitchen door, my fingers tucked under the metal threshold that separated the carpet from the tile, and wait for her to hang up the phone. Then I would go in and make sure she was okay.
The room was always so quiet and still after those phone calls. I could feel the fridge and the lights vibrating under my feet. “Mama?”
Sometimes she’d wipe her eyes with the corner of the tablecloth or her sleeve.
Sometimes she’d look at the ceiling. Sometimes there would be tears when she looked at me. “Hey, sweetie. Do you want a snack?”
Why is it so earth-shatteringly scary to see your parent cry? It’s like the worst weapon in the world. Like the worst kind of kryptonite. “Is everything okay, Mama?”
“Oh. Sure, sweetie,” she’d say, her voice all wobbly. “I’m just sad. Not too sad. But sad.”
Once when I was six, after a really bad phone call, Mama Kate went to bed and didn’t come out for dinner. So I made her a heart of Rice Krispies treats, which I stuck to her door, piece by piece. Because you can do that with Rice Krispies treats. Kids at school did it all the time.
Of course, most kids at school weren’t dealing with a particularly nasty infestation of ants. Who apparently love Rice Krispies treats.
“Don’t worry about it,” Momma Jo said, even though ants are one of her least-favorite things. “You tried to do a nice thing, so it’s okay. Weird but okay.”
That whole week it was Momma Jo, not Mama Kate, who came and picked me up from school. Because Mama Kate was feeling bad, she said.
It was the first and only time I ever dreaded seeing Momma Jo. Because it meant something was wrong.
It wasn’t always that bad. Mostly, Mama Kate would just get a little sad and then we’d have frozen yogurt together.
Sometimes we would just get a spoon of frozen yogurt and share it. Mama Kate said ice cream was the best treat when you were feeling bad because you could just feel everything melting away.
“I am going to stop them from calling,” I told her once, not sure how I would do that. “I’m going to take all our phones.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Mama Kate said. “Just eat your fro-yo. See how it’s sweet on your tongue? Then gone? It’s like magic.”
* * *
There was a knock on the door. Momma Jo’s knock. Two hard raps.
“Monty?”
“Yeah?”
She opened the door a crack. “All right. So. No one should tell you to shut up. Yes? But we’re a family. We need to support each other. Tesla’s your little sister and sometimes she needs the big-sister kind of support.”
“Okay,” I said, not moving from my prone position on the bed. I’d wedged myself between many rejected sofa pillows, removed from the living room over the years, to form my bedroom nest.
Momma Jo leaned on the door. “Tesla’s game is at four thirty. I want you to be there. Montgomery? Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll go.” Still not moving. Still like a log. In the wrong, yes, a little, but still offended. So. Not moving.
“Okay,” Momma Jo said, slowing closing the door, possibly waiting for some movement. “Good night.”
Sometimes when Tesla and I are fighting really bad, Momma Jo will tell me the story of how Tesla and I used to hug all the time. Like, I used to hug and carry her around the house, her feet dragging on the carpet. I don’t know when we stopped.
I kicked some cushions off the bed and rolled onto my back. The house was quiet. Just a little bit of a murmur from the TV downstairs. I grabbed the stone from my bag and the card from my desk.
>
In sight
not see
[flip]
black light
not be
Not be?
Not be what?
Not be dealing with all this crap anymore, maybe.
Dangling the Eye in front of me, I could see my face in the stone.
Eye know, I said to my dangling reflection.
And then I just felt ridiculously dorky, so I put it around my neck and tried to pretend I hadn’t just been sitting in my bed talking to a rock I ordered on the Internet.
6
Breakfast was power pancakes with this weird nutty wheat thing that actually makes my stomach a little restless, so I only had three.
That morning I’d IM-ed with Naoki about the Eye of Know and about healing crystals, which was something Naoki’s mom was super into, and Naoki was going to do a whole thing on it at our next Mystery Club.
Naoki: Was talking to my mom. Is your Eye thing made of onyx?
Me: Don’t think so. Don’t know what it is.
Naoki: If you bring it again, I’ll bring my necklace my dad gave me. It’s onyx and obsidian.
Me: Cool!
Healing crystals!
While Tesla was screaming about her socks, I took the Eye off my neck and let it dangle in the sunlight. A black hole.
It wasn’t a bad-looking stone. Maybe it would end up being just a nice piece of jewelry or something. Maybe it was onyx. That would be nice.
“Mama!”
“Tesla, you are responsible for your own two feet!”
I slipped the Eye of Know into my bag and bolted down the stairs.
* * *
It was “Support Your Clubs and Teams Day” at school, so the front steps were flooded with club and sports reps, rallying support. Cheerleaders were handing out flyers for upcoming club frivolities. A girl from the Dramedy Club dressed in a fifties skirt was trying to get more kids to sign up for auditions.
“There’s a make-out scene,” she called coyly to a group of boys at the bottom of the steps, twirling her skirt for extra make-out-possibility emphasis.
I wondered what Thomas, Mr. Patron of the Arts, would think of that.
First period, Kenneth White clomped in after the bell rang and sat in the front row, right corner.
“Mr. White?” Mr. Deever, sweating in a cable-knit sweater, wandered over to the chalkboard and tapped it with his ruler.
“Yes, sir?” Kenneth said, barely moving a muscle beyond the ones in his lips.
Deever tapped the board. “Care to answer one of these for us? Help us out?”
Kenneth uncurled himself from his seat. It looked as if it took effort. Guy was frickin’ tall. “Yes, sir.”
Clomp, clomp, clomp.
Surprisingly, Kenneth White’s handwriting was tiny. Like typewriter tiny. It was like watching a computer solve for “x” on the chalkboard.
Then he handed the chalk back to Mr. Deever and clomp-clomped back to his seat.
Stone-faced.
Deever surveyed and whistled. “Well done, Kenneth,” he marveled. “You have impeccable penmanship. The students of Jefferson could learn a thing or two from you, I think.”
Kenneth’s face was still as ice. “Thank you, sir.”
Then he folded his arms across his chest and, presumably, stopped breathing.
It’s like watching a robot, I thought, singing myself a little song in my head. Kid robot! Kid Christian Robot! Fighting sin and doing math! KID ROBOT!
“Miss Sole!” Mr. Deever barked, banging his stick on the chalkboard. “Care to join us?”
Handwriting and personality—art of reading a signature
In English, I overheard Madison Marlow saying the Reverend White was setting up a new church in California, and he was scouting out locations. Someone else said they heard him on the radio.
“I thought he got sued,” Miffy said. “Right, Madison?”
“That’s right. My mom says he’s fighting it because it’s his freedom of speech,” Madison said, tapping her nails on the desk. “It’s not right the way people on the so-called right have made freedom a crime in this country.”
“You don’t say,” I whispered.
Apparently, the Reverend White was spreading the word about the “plague.”
“My mom said, if there’s a plague, it’s probably in California,” Madison continued. “My mom says it’s nice to have a little spirit back in the state.”
Also, Madison thought Kenneth was an albino.
“Totally.” Miffy nodded. “He has that albino look, you know?”
Wow, I thought, so much insight in English class today. It was a little hard to take in all at once.
Still. I made a mental note of two new possible topics.
Albinos: characteristics or special powers?
Head shape and personality
“Can I help you, Montgomery?” Madison snapped, narrowing her gaze, making me I wonder if her mascara-gooped eyelashes would connect and fuse her eyes shut.
“You could cut someone with that gaze,” I wanted to tell her.
“Oh I’m just sitting here,” I said instead, randomly flipping through the pages of my book. “You know, looking up stuff about darkness, in my cool rock T-shirt.”
I did get a look at Kenneth on my way to chemistry. I couldn’t tell from the back if he was an albino or just really blond. It was hard to get a close look at him generally because he was usually up and out of class before I even got a chance to look at his face.
At lunch, we laid Naoki’s onyx necklace and my mystery stone out on the lawn.
“It doesn’t look like the onyx,” Naoki said. “It’s weird, because they’re both black, but the Eye looks darker.”
“I know,” I breathed.
Thomas leaned over and peered at the two necklaces. “Naoki’s will go better with a blazer,” he said finally, “mostly because it doesn’t have a string for a strap.”
“Yeah, it said it would have an adjustable strap,” I said. “I think it said it would be leather.”
Thomas sniffed. “I’m all for mystery but I have to say, that’s what you get for buying something from one of your weird sites. Next thing you know it will be tinfoil hats.”
“Hey, if you’re in for the mystery, you’re open to any and all possibilities,” I countered.
Honestly, for someone obsessed with superheroes and astrology, Thomas could be such a cynic sometimes. “I’m just offering my aesthetic opinion,” Thomas said, pressing his fingers into his chest in a very moi? pose. “I leave the science of this to you two.”
“It’s a cool name,” Naoki added. “The Eye of Know.”
“Well,” I said, sinking just a tiny bit, “it’s not really letting me know anything yet.”
Naoki picked up her necklace and strung it back around her neck. “Well, even if it isn’t onyx, and even if nothing has happened yet, you should wear it,” she said. “See what you can see.”
Then she popped up off the blanket and raced to fit in flute practice before class.
“Did you even know she played the flute?” Thomas marveled, watching Naoki as she skipped back to school.
“She’s a mystery,” I said, folding what was left of my French fry lunch into my mouth.
“Oh.” Thomas turned and pressed his hand onto mine. “Speaking of which, I don’t think I can come to your soccer game adventure. I’ve got a date.”
I raised an eyebrow. “With The Butcher?”
“With The Soprano,” Thomas said, straightening his shirtsleeves, which I noticed were looking especially ruffled today.
“Mob?” I asked.
“Puh-lease,” Thomas scoffed, lying back with a dramatic harrumph. “As if we date mobsters.”
“We?”
“He’s an opera singer,” Thomas said, rolling onto his side and patting the grass next to him. “Now, let’s enjoy some sun before we go back into your version of the lion’s den.”
“Okay.”
We lay back on the grass and discussed how the date might go depending on how good-looking and old the guy turned out to be. The sky was that pulsing electric blue that it is here. It’s this unforgettable, I’m-so-blue-it-hurts blue that I’ve always found kind of ridiculous. It’s blue like nail polish for club kids. Anyway, today I wasn’t really minding it.
You could hear kids blasting music from their rides in the parking lot.
Bump, bump, waaaaahhhhh.
“Hey!” a voice called.
I tipped my head up. Somewhere in the glare of the sun stood Matt, twirling a football on one finger. “Nice pants, Thomasssss.”
“Thanks.” Thomas kept his head tilted back into the sun. We could hear the crunch of many feet on the crispy grass. It was Matt plus posse. I sat up.
Matt tossed a football backward over his shoulder, and some kid dove to catch it. “Where did you get them? Oh my gosh. Was it H&M?” Matt pressed the tips of his fingers to his shoulder. In this sort of girlie pose, I guess. The boys behind him snickered.
“Why do you ask?” Thomas sat up and popped his sunglasses up on top of his head.
“Oh,” Matt lisped, “I’m just soooo curioussss. The fabric is fabulous. Ssssso luxurious…”
Thomas’s face was like a mannequin’s. He has this expression he can hold—it’s like a supermodel’s face when they walk down the runway. Like an I’m fabulous, what are you? face.
Matt’s lips were twitching with glee.
“You know … I think my sister has the same pair,” he said, the words sliding thick off his tongue. “What a stunning coincidence.”
One of the boys behind Matt slapped his knee and jogged in a little circle, like it was so funny he needed to run it out. Thomas shrugged.
“I see,” he said. “Well, your sister has great taste, then.”
I looked up at Matt, just standing there. Smiling. He winked at Thomas, turned on his heel. Started walking away.
Matt. Somehow the Matt Truits are not the people we’re being saved from, but the people we’re supposed to, like, aspire to be. Maybe only because it means you won’t have to get crapped on.
“Your sister’s fat ass would never fit into these pants,” I said.
“I heard that, Sole,” Matt shouted over his shoulder.