“I don’t understand,” I said. “Neither of you knows anything about fixing up things.” I guess the parents in the made-up family we were pretending to be were also really handy.
“We’re smart. We’ll figure it out,” Dad said.
“You couldn’t even put together Zoe’s toddler bed,” I reminded him. “And that came with an instruction manual and pictures. You didn’t even need to know how to read.”
“Fair point,” he said. “But I think I learned a lot from that experience.”
“And how are you going to have time to fix up the house and do a job?” I said.
“Easy. I’m not going to get another job.”
“How’s that going to work?” I asked. Mom hadn’t cooked at a restaurant since I was born, and I was pretty sure we couldn’t live on what she made catering a few parties every month.
“Yeah, don’t you eventually need a job that pays you?” Jeanine said.
“We have savings. Plus, things are a lot less expensive out here, and your mom is going to start a business, so I’ll help with that. Tell them, Kira.”
“I’m going to open a restaurant!” Mom said, smiling her biggest smile, the one that goes all the way to the crooked tooth she doesn’t like to let people see.
“China Palace?” Zoe said, jumping up.
“I don’t think so, Zo Zo. I’m not going to serve Chinese food.”
“But I love Chinese food.”
“I know, but I’m going make food I like to cook. It will actually be the first restaurant in Petersville. Isn’t that exciting?”
“There are no restaurants? How does it even qualify as a town?” I asked.
“Of course it’s a town,” she said. “But think how amazing it will be to open a restaurant in a place where there aren’t any others.”
That wasn’t what I was thinking. What I was thinking was: What was wrong with the people who lived here that it had never occurred to anyone to open a restaurant?
We never did go inside that day. We just sat there on the ground till my parents gave up and told us to get back in the car. So I guess we won something.
Us: 1.
Them: everything else.
3
I didn’t tell anyone we were moving, not even Charlie. He and I spent the whole day together that Sunday after we went to Petersville, and I didn’t say a word about it. I couldn’t. Just like going into the house would have made it ours, saying I was moving would have made it true. So I pretended I wasn’t, and we played basketball till it got dark, practicing for the tryouts I’d never go to.
It helped that Charlie talks a lot, especially when he’s worried, which he was. Charlie could go on forever about our chances of making the basketball team. The closer tryouts got, the more he talked about them. He was like Jeanine in spelling bee season, but unlike Jeanine, he was totally psyching himself out.
“Coach Stiles hates me,” he kept saying that day as he shot and missed basket after basket.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“I know Raul told him the crickets were my idea.”
Last spring, Charlie and Coach Stiles’s son Raul had bought a hundred crickets from a pet store and released them in the ceiling over our classroom. The chirping drove Ms. Patel so crazy, she sent us all home at lunch. But somebody had seen Raul and Charlie go into the classroom super early that day so they were called to Principal Danner’s office. Under questioning, Raul came clean, but Charlie denied everything.
“What did you expect?” I said.
“He got, like, two days’ detention. Boo-hoo. But my dad doesn’t work for the school. I totally would have been suspended.”
“No way. It so wasn’t a big deal. Everybody thought it was funny.”
“Whatever. Stiles still hates me. No way he takes me.”
“He will if the team needs you.”
“He wouldn’t take me if I were LeBron James. It’s just like my dad says: don’t tick people off because nobody’s gonna miss a chance to get you back.” Then he hurled the ball so hard it slammed into the backboard and boomeranged right back to him.
Charlie’s father is full of these cheerful fortune cookie sayings like, “Getting what you want isn’t about what you do but who you know,” and, “Life’s not fair. Get used to it.” I know them by heart because he says the same ones over and over.
Bottom line: Zane Kramer is a nuddy. But you can’t tell your friend his dad’s a nuddy. That’s just something Charlie was going to have to figure out on his own. The problem was, Charlie wasn’t figuring it out.
It wasn’t his fault. You live with stuff long enough, it’s bound to rub off. It happens to all of us. What had rubbed off on me was a serious chocolate addiction. At least eating chocolate makes you happy. What was rubbing off on Charlie was the idea that everything and everyone was out to get him. I hated seeing him going down that road, but I didn’t know what I could do about it.
“Pass!” I called, running to the basket. Distraction wasn’t a long-term solution, but it had been proven to work in the moment.
Charlie threw me the ball. I jumped and tossed. Swish.
Charlie chased the ball down, then stood on the free throw line dribbling, his tongue peeking out above his lip as he eyed the basket.
Charlie, age four, tongue peeking out, planted in a tiny chair outside the Red Room popped into my head.
“Hey, remember the water table?” I said.
Charlie stopped dribbling and looked at me. “The what?”
“The water table. In the Red Room?”
“Oh yeah.” He grinned. “I loved the water table.”
“Yeah, me too. So did Charlotte K, remember?”
He whistled. “Charlotte K. I can’t believe you still remember her name.”
I will never forget Charlotte K.
The day I pushed Charlotte K—she’d been hogging the waterwheel again—she fell, slicing her head open on the corner of the water table. In seconds, her sparkly T-shirt was soaked
