Counting by 7s

  He next shoved a frozen meat loaf, which was supposed to be low in calories, into the microwave.

  The box claimed it served three people.

  He was trying to diet, but he always found himself eating the whole thing.

  Dell then maneuvered around his heaps of junk, and took a seat on his patio furniture, which he used indoors in his living room.

  He was surprised people didn’t realize that a decent chaise longue was much easier to move, yet still as comfortable as a couch.

  Most outdoor recliners had wheels for mobility, and you could hose off the cushion if you spilled a bowl of salsa—and who didn’t on occasion?

  Under ordinary circumstances Dell would have turned on the TV to some kind of reality show, and after consuming the meat loaf and enough wine, he would have fallen asleep, usually with his mouth open, which inevitably served as a spout for pink-tinged saliva.

  The saliva would have stained regular furniture, but it went right through the plastic weave of the lawn chair, which was another plus.

  Dell would wake up hours later and if he had the energy, make his way through the maze of his possessions to his bedroom, where he would crawl into a sleeping bag.

  This was another one of his lifestyle choices.

  Once a year he dropped the sleeping bag off at the dry cleaner’s. Forget the sheets and blankets and comforters and duvet covers! Modern life provided enough challenges without throwing in making the bed.

  But tonight Dell didn’t fall asleep in a small puddle of drool. He lay awake in his sleeping bag, which he believed had the smell of a brown bear (a mix of wet fur and dead leaves and empty wine bottles), thinking about the events of his day and the genius kid.

  Chapter 12

  I had a plan.

  I’d been walking to Mr. Dell Duke’s office for my appointments, but now that I knew Mai and her brother would be there before me, I wanted to get there early.

  So I went online the following week and ordered a taxi to pick me up at the curb when school was over.

  This was a very brave and daring act for me.

  I waited in front of the sign that said SEQUOIA GIANTS, and the taxi arrived right on time.

  I believed we were off to a good start.

  I pulled my wheeled luggage to the cab door and leaned in through the open window as I said:

  “I would like the number of your taxi license and to see proof of your compliance with brake and headlight adjustment requirements.”

  The driver’s name was Jairo Hernandez, and he had been driving for Mexicano Taxi for seven years.

  I was nervous, but he seemed nervous as well.

  He did not appear, however, to be someone who would kidnap me and cut me up into small pieces.

  After I reviewed his paperwork (which took considerable effort on his part to locate), I got into the backseat.

  As we pulled away from the curb, he picked up his phone and his radio handset and talked to someone (maybe back in the office?). His voice was low.

  He didn’t realize that I am fluent in Spanish, as it was the language I learned after English.

  This is what he said:

  “At first I think I’m picking up some kind of little person going to the airport—because she has luggage. But then I get closer, and I see it’s just a girl. I’m telling you, man, it’s some kind of undercover sting operation. She asked for all my paperwork! I would have stepped on the gas and sped off, but she was leaning in through the window. This is harsh, my friend. If a kid can ambush you outside of a middle school, what’s next?”

  Two things.

  I had never been in a taxi before.

  And I had never ridden in a car with a complete stranger.

  I was suddenly an explorer and a risk-taker.

  I could feel my heart pounding. It felt good. A smile spread across my face.

  I was on my way to see a new friend.

  Granted, the person in question was two years older than me, and looked to have some anger management issues (as well as a brother who had discipline and authority problems).

  But no living thing is perfect.

  All scientists know that.

  When we arrived at the school district administration parking lot, and I had paid the negotiated fare, with the addition of an eighteen percent tip, I felt very pleased because I had done this all myself.

  I looked Jairo Hernandez right in the eye and said:

  “Never let someone tell you that you can’t do it.”

  And then I shut the car door.

  I was speaking about my own achievement, but from the look on his face, I think he believed that I was talking about him.

  As I came around the corner, I saw Mai sitting on the top stair outside the entrance to Dell’s office.

  Maybe I was imagining this, but I thought the teenaged girl looked happy to see me.

  I quickened my pace while still maintaining control of my red case with the 360-degree spinning wheel option.

  When I got to the trailer, I was able to say what I had been waiting all week to spring on her:

  She said my greeting had perfect inflection.

  I had learned eighty-five Vietnamese phrases over the last seven days, as well as a great deal of verb conjugation.

  Now I tried some more of them out on her.

  Mai was incredibly impressed—not just that I could say these things, but also because she spent two weeks trying to teach a friend’s mother four words of Vietnamese and had not succeeded.

  So this effort was worthy.

  The time flew by.

  We conversed, at first in English and then in bits of Vietnamese.

  I usually found so-called “small talk” boring.

  I like “large talk,” which is more about theories and concepts, mixed with facts and known quantities.

  But we didn’t have any problem finding things to say to each other, because right away Mai wanted to know about the garden behind my house.

  All that greenery had intrigued her.

  I told her about some of my plants and gave a simple explanation of a few of my backyard botanical experiments.

  And then the next thing I knew, forty minutes had passed and the trailer door opened and Dell Duke appeared with Quang-ha at his side.

  The counselor’s eyes widened at the sight of us together.

  He wanted to know how long I’d been out there and what we’d been talking about.

  Dell Duke was not as friendly as I would have thought. And I got the idea that maybe he wanted to push the Nguyen siblings right down the stairs.

  His smile was stiff and awkward as he said:

  “All right then. It’s time for Willow’s session. Good-bye, kids.”

  I insisted on keeping the door to the trailer open so that I could watch as Mai and Quang-ha receded into the distance.

  At the last moment, just before the pair turned the corner to head down the block, Mai looked back and waved toward the trailer.

  The door was angled, so I felt certain that Mai couldn’t see me.

  But she knew that I was there.

  Suddenly I had a strange lump in my throat.

  I had a new, older friend. A girl from high school.

  She felt like a protector.

  It was some kind of magic.

  I settled into the chair and listened to Dell Duke.

  Today I wasn’t going to take tests.

  He said that we were going back to word games.

  This time, he would say an industry, and I would say “long-term” or “short-term” projected financial growth.

  I explained to him before we started that I had very little knowledge of economics.

  I really considered this study a social science, not a hard science, and I wasn’t interested in the squish
y stuff, so I had stayed away.

  But he didn’t listen.

  He was prepared for our session and had a clipboard covered with scrawled notes.

  I could read upside-down pretty easily and I saw right away that he lacked organization of any kind.

  His lists had stuff crossed out and then arrows and all sorts of redirection to bubbles of messy thought.

  I decided to ignore it.

  The first thing he said was:

  “Pharmaceutical companies.”

  Dell had instructed me to answer “high growth,” “medium growth,” “no growth,” or “eroding market.”

  This was a really crummy game.

  I thought that pharmaceutical companies were probably always growing because more medications were constantly being developed; and the field of medicine was so rapidly advancing.

  That was just a fact.

  So the answer would have to be “high growth,” especially with an aging population.

  But I said “eroding market” because I decided that I wanted to play the opposite game.

  I just didn’t tell him.

  I was going to see if he was paying attention.

  But what was sad was that he never caught on and shouted “You’re playing the opposite game.”

  He just kept writing down my junk.

  On my way home I evaluated my situation.

  Being a Sequoia Giant had been a colossal disappointment.

  But going to the new school led to seeing the round-headed counselor, and that enabled me to meet my new friend, Mai.

  School was better since I figured out that all I had to do to get out of P.E. (and the violent sport of volleyball) was say I had a migraine headache.

  I claimed that I was going blind from the pain, and I then got sent to lie down in the nurse’s office.

  I knew that the nurse, Miss Judi, liked me because we discussed things like flu outbreaks and the statistics behind spontaneous nosebleeds.

  So by the time I walked back up Citrus Court to the front door of our house, I was very happy.

  Chapter 13

  jairo hernandez

  A pilgrim is a traveler going to a spiritual place.

  Jairo looked over at the paperwork on the seat next to him. His license. His vehicle inspection infor-mation.

  When he started driving a cab, it was only supposed to be a temporary job.

  And now years had passed.

  Jairo picked up his radio and told the office that he was going on break.

  He then drove straight to Bakersfield College, where he picked up a brochure for the Career Pathway program, which was a continuing education opportunity for people over the age of thirty.

  He was going to investigate the requirements to be a medical technician.

  The girl he picked up that afternoon had rattled his mobile cage.

  He realized that she was some kind of shaman when she said:

  “Never let someone tell you that you can’t do it.”

  She was a blinking warning light.

  And Jairo paid attention to signs.

  For the first time in his career, Dell thought about his work when he went home that day.

  Fate had delivered Alberta Einstein into his life and he had to figure out a way to take advantage of that.

  Maybe she could make him smarter?

  It certainly appeared as if she could improve his financial situation.

  One thing was for certain: With her in his life, everything was happening so fast!

  Chapter 14

  The next week I went online and ordered a cab from Mexicano Taxi again. In the special comments/requests box I asked for Jairo Hernandez.

  He was on time and had his license and vehicle inspection records ready for me on the front seat.

  I checked them again because I think it’s important to always be thorough.

  As Jairo pulled away from the curb, I noticed two things.

  The first was that he had just gotten a haircut. The second reveal was more alarming.

  Because his hair was shorter in the back, I could now see a nevus on his neck.

  This means I saw a mole.

  But not a regular-looking mole. It had, in my opinion, the signs of trouble: It was asymmetrical and it had flecks of red and blue on the broken edges.

  One infant in one hundred babies is born with moles. I doubt that’s fun for the parents.

  Who wants a spotty kid?

  But almost all moles appear in the first twenty years of a person’s life.

  And that is why if a new mole appears, or an old one changes into something else, attention needs to be directed to this area (medically speaking).

  I didn’t want to alarm Jairo Hernandez.

  But there was a real possibility that he might not be aware of this bad-looking mole, because it was on the back of his neck and he couldn’t see there very easily.

  So while we drove across town to my appointment with Mr. Dell Duke, I stared at his skin issue.

  And I felt compelled to write the following on an index card:

  You need to have a dermatologist perform a punch biopsy on the mole (nevus) on the back of your neck. If it is not too much of an invasion of your privacy, I would very much like to look at the pathology report. I will be taking a taxi next week at this same time. This is important, so please do not take this medical suggestion lightly.

  Willow Chance

  I handed him the message when I got out of the taxi.

  Mai and I were able to talk more easily now in Vietnamese.

  I had effectively mastered the tones and accent by obsessive listening at night to audio lessons designed for state department employees.

  You could download the sessions if you had a password, which was not hard to get if you knew what you were doing.

  It was like we had a secret language, because on the school property no one else but Quang-ha spoke Vietnamese.

  We walked around the buildings and the parking lot, still half looking for Cheddar, but really just talking.

  We were both interested in botany, and I tried to explain some of the things I knew without sounding like the host of the Discovery Channel.

  We were sitting under one of the few trees out in front of the main school district office when I said to her, in Vietnamese:

  “You are my new best friend.”

  Mai was silent. I knew that she had many friends at school, and that her friend Alana was the one she considered to be her closest friend.

  I was just a little kid, and I realized that I had overstepped.

  What kind of person only knew someone for a few weeks and said something like that?

  So I added:

  “Since I just started at a new school, you’re right now sort of my only friend, so that makes the distinction perhaps not much of a difference.”

  And that made Mai smile.

  Chapter 15

  roberta & jimmy chance

  In American Sign Language, the motion for the word parents is to follow mom with the sign for dad.

  Roberta Chance was finally at her doctor’s appointment.

  It had been over a year since she’d first seen a small dimple on the left side of her chest.

  She was going to bring up the little dent during the exam, but Dr. Pedlar saw it before she even had a chance.

  The next thing Roberta knew, she was being sent to the Bakersfield Imaging Center just down the street.

  They wouldn’t even consider making an appointment for the future.

  They wanted her over there now.

  It was only three blocks away, so Roberta left her car and walked over.

  The medical technician at the imaging center seemed to know that she was coming, but the woman didn’t smile when she handed her
the lavender smock.

  And most everyone smiled at Roberta because she had that way about her.

  It wasn’t until she put back on her street clothes after the ultrasound that it occurred to her something was wrong. That was when the doctor asked her to come to his office.

  Because wasn’t she already in his office?

  Did he mean someplace where he did bookkeeping or ate take-out food for lunch?

  Roberta followed Dr. Trocino down the narrow hallway and into a small room with framed pictures of pink angels.

  On the doctor’s desk was a vase filled with silk flowers that might have once looked good, but now were dusty and faded on the side that faced the window.

  It was there, sitting in an upholstered chair that felt moist, like someone might have peed in it and the whole thing never dried right, that the doctor told her the news.

  Her dent was a tumor.

  The physician’s mouth was moving and she could hear what he was saying, but it didn’t mean anything because this wasn’t happening to her.

  Someone else was in the chair.

  And then the doctor stood up and said he’d give her a moment to herself and that she should call her husband.

  Jimmy Chance operated heavy equipment, which is how he and Roberta had met.

  Just out of high school, they’d both signed up for an introductory class to get a commercial driver’s license.

  Roberta was the only girl taking the course, but Jimmy would have noticed her even if the room had been full of beauties, because she was open and confident.

  But he was really attracted to her because Roberta was happy and that showed.

  Now, as he left work to meet her at the medical center, he felt like he was the sick one.

  What did it all mean? They said that the surgery needed to be scheduled immediately. Her voice was so dull on the phone.

  The only other time he’d heard Roberta sound that way was when the man in the fertility clinic had said they couldn’t have children.