I pulled myself out of bed, and found Joseph in his usual spot at the kitchen table.
Hey, I said.
He kept chewing.
At the base of the dishwasher, Mom’s high black heels tilted against each other, kicked off her feet. Her jewelry glinted in a little pile inside one of the shoes. Most likely this meant she’d stayed up after they returned, to make tea and sit in the orange-striped chair and stare out the window.
I opened the refrigerator and looked inside. The evening with Joseph replayed itself in my mind. A little chuckle bubbled up.
While serving myself an orange juice, made from Florida oranges, picked by workers plagued with financial worries, fruit piled in trucks that drove overnight across the country, I sat down at the kitchen table across from my brother and started a monologue about the previous night that ended in the retelling of the pink Pegasus pen joke.
While toasting and eating my waffle, the circle split into small indented squares formed in a factory in Illinois, each square equipped to hold the maple syrup collected and boiled by a hardworking family in Vermont who had issues with drug and alcohol addiction, I made the joke again. I made it at the sink, while we were washing our dishes. It was my job, as annoying younger sibling, to beat that joke to death. Each time, I spluttered the sentence out and held my body still, waiting for that tickle in my throat, the uncontrollable overtake.
Joseph didn’t laugh once. His mouth a line, while he watched me slap the table.
It was a one-time thing, he told me, going to grab his backpack.
Our respective schools extended down the same block of Wilshire, so we rode the bus together as usual, several rows apart. Outside, men stood on a billboard ledge pushing up rolls of paper to construct the shape of a woman’s giant chin. Clusters of teenagers stood at a fence around Fairfax High. I’d stopped waving to passengers in cars by then-I’d grown suspicious of people and all the complications of interior lives-so I sat and watched and rode and thought, and as soon as the bus doors opened, we all rolled out the door and split apart like billiard balls.
In third-period Spanish, I settled into my seat behind Eliza. As our teacher started to hand back last week’s quizzes, I moved in close, to whisper in her ear.
I had an a
She turned to smile at me, distantly. She had an iridescent star sticker attached high on her cheekbone.
How was your weekend? I asked.
While our teacher roamed the aisles, Eliza’s eyes moved past my face and out the open doorway. The late- morning sun was turning the hedges outside the classroom a steely helicopter green. When I went over to her house, her father, on breaks from doing stock-market work at home, would sometimes bake a batch of cupcakes to clear his head. Each little chocolate muffin packet burning through with fullness.
We were thinking of a movie, Eliza said. But everyone was tired, so we stayed home and played Yahtzee instead, she said. She yawned, out the doorway. Excuse me, she said. It was fun, she said.
I drew a star on my desk, in pencil, and then crossed it out with slash marks. Mrs. Ogilby returned my quiz. B plus. I’d missed the past-perfect conjugation of “to go.” Everyone in my quiz was going in the present.
Was that guy George there? Eliza asked me, sliding her quiz into her notebook pocket.
Where?
At your house? she said. With your brother?
I sat in, closer. George? You mean George Malcolm? I said. He’s over all the time, I said.
She sighed. Her cheek glinted in the light.
He’s like my second brother, I said. Except I could marry him.
Eliza ran a finger along the pencil moat on my desk. He seems nice, she said.
He hates Yahtzee, I said.
What?
Just he said that once, I said. He finds it despicable.
Excuse me? Rose? He said what?
Going, going, going, I said.
My presentation was due in fifth-period current-events class. We were supposed to write on something in modern society that we valued that was not around in the time of our grandparents, and then read a paragraph or two aloud. I went after a girl talking about the advantages of mountain biking, and before a guy who had a whole three-part cardboard presentation on the treatment of malaria.
I cleared my throat. Ahem, I said. My paper is on Doritos, I said.
The teacher nodded. Nutrition is important, she said.
This is not about nutrition, I said.
I held up my page.
What is good about a Dorito, I said, in full voice, is that I’m not supposed to pay attention to it. As soon as I do, it tastes like every other ordinary chip. But if I stop paying attention, it becomes the most delicious thing in the world.
I popped open a supersize bag-my one prop-and passed it around the room. Instructed everyone to take a chip.
Bite in! I said.
The sound of crackling. Eliza giggled in the back. Her parents did not allow her to eat Doritos. I was her drug dealer, in this way.
See? I said. What does it taste like?
A Dorito, said a smartass in the front row.
Cheese, said someone else.
Really? I said.
They concentrated on their chips. That good dust stuff, said someone else.
Exactly, I said. That good dust stuff.
What I taste, I said, reading from my page, is what I remember from my last Dorito, plus the chemicals that are kind of like that taste, and then my zoned-out mind that doesn’t really care what it actually tastes like. Remembering, chemicals, zoning. It is a magical combo. All these parts form together to make a flavor sensation trick that makes me want to eat the whole bag and then maybe another bag.
Do you have another bag? asked a skateboard guy, licking his fingers.
No, I said. In conclusion, I said, a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.
I bowed a little, to the class. Eliza clapped. The same skateboard guy, reeking of pot, asked if I had any Cheetos to compare. Please? he begged. If the teacher allows it, I said, maybe we can take a quick field trip as a class to the snack machine? The class was up and at the door before she could protest. We spent fifteen minutes in a huddle, pushing all our quarters into the slots, tasting every bag available, reading unknown unpronounceable ingredients aloud. Sure, sure, said the skateboard guy, chewing. When I concentrate, it’s all different, he said. He closed his eyes. Eliza hugged me three times, her hands dusted with ranch-flavor powder. We returned to the room buzzing, and after class, the teacher called me over and handed me a printout of the food pyramid, telling me I did a good job but it was important that I eat protein as a growing girl. Thank you, I said, and she dipped her head, and we both nodded in admiration at her helpfulness.
20
Joseph had a test to re-take after school, so I took the bus home by myself, stopping at the small magazine- shop on Melrose at Fairfax to buy my usual bag of chips as a celebratory finale to my paper. The streets were quiet as I strolled. Fewer cars on the road in the middle of the day. A man with a leaf blower steered clumps of grass into the gutter.
I came home to another delivery from Grandma. A long slatted box containing a gray folding chair and a
