“Caroline, enough.”
“You want to know if I’d be willing to lose two hundred pounds so that I can dance in formation and carry flags with you?” I’m hot with anger, which doesn’t help the dripping, but I make my voice quiet and controlled.
“Yes.”
I fix my eyes on Ms. Heather Alpern, because she’s supposed to be in charge here.
“Absolutely not.”
I’m supposed to go back outside to the bleachers to serve my sentence and do my civic duty, but I can’t. Instead I call Rachel and ask if she can take me home.
By the time we finish painting the locker rooms, it’s almost 5 p.m. The sky is thick with gray and the air is heavy, the way it always feels before it rains.
Through the wide window of Tams’s house, I can see a clump of kids, and I think, Great. This is why I don’t volunteer to pick Dusty up, because this right here is the stuff of nightmares. I can’t find him in a crowd, and my parents think Dusty’s too young for a phone, so it’s not like I can text him to say I’m coming, wait outside. The few times I do go get him, I usually wait in the car and blow the horn.
Because this apparently isn’t a one-on-one Tams and Dusty playdate situation but the ten-year-old equivalent of Coachella, this is what I do now. The rain pelts the windshield like gunfire. The clump of kids doesn’t move, so I honk again.
I wait a couple more minutes, and then I turn off the car and twist the rearview mirror so I can look at myself. The guy who stares back at me has seen better days. He’s still got a split lip, and an eye that’s fading from black and blue to violet, thanks to defending Jonny Rumsford. Super.
I search for anything I can use as coverage, for my face and from the monsoon. There’s an old jacket, which must belong to Marcus, wadded up on the floor below the backseat. I grab it and lunge out into the rain, jogging up the walk, jacket wrapped around my head. I can hear the mad chatter of a thousand high-pitched voices as I ring the doorbell. The door flies open, and I’m greeted by a blond woman with short-cropped hair. This, I think, is Tamara’s mom. She invites me in, and I say through the jacket, “That’s okay. I don’t want to bring all this water in. If you could just send him out.”
“Nonsense, Jack. Come on in.” She holds the door open wider, and the wind is blowing rain onto her and onto the floor around her, so I step inside.
“It’s really coming down,” I say.
“You’re telling me. They were supposed to be outside all day.” She laughs, but it’s laced with hysteria, and I can see how tired she is.
I’m hoping Dusty will yell hello or otherwise identify himself, but the kids all blink at me, and one of them says, “It’s like God is peeing.” And this must be some really clever ten-year-old joke, the kind you need to be ten to appreciate, because they all start laughing until they practically fall down.
The woman says to me, “Please take me with you.”
I laugh as I stand there, trying to seem calm and casual and Hey man, whatever. Meanwhile, I’m trying to find Dusty in the bunch of kids, but they all look the same. Skinny, short, ears that stick out. All the kids are wearing party hats and only a handful of them are obviously white. I feel a distant flicker of panic in my chest.
The woman says, “Do you want to stay for a bit?”
“That’s okay. Dusty and I have someplace to be.” I put my hand on the doorknob as a way of saying See? I say to the room, “Anyone who answers to the name Dusty better join me now.”
The kids stare at me. In that instant, the flicker of panic sparks into an inferno. If my brother is one of these staring, silent kids, he’s not letting on.
I look at the group of them and say in their general direction, “Come on, man. We don’t want you to be late.”
When they don’t budge, I zero in on the one who looks the most like my brother (ears that stick out, Adam’s apple that sticks out, copper-brown hair) and go, “If you’re worried about getting wet, I’ve got this jacket you can use.” And then, because it’s been a long day and I’m sick of being stared at, and because I’m telling myself This is bullshit. How can you not recognize your own brother? I do something I never do—I walk over, leaving big, dirty footprints on the carpet, and grab the kid’s arm before he identifies himself. And drag him toward the door.
The boy I’m holding on to is fighting me, and it’s then I look up and see this other kid walk into the room. He’s got ears that stick out and an Adam’s apple that sticks out and copper-brown hair, and he goes, “Jack?” And starts to cry.
The kid I’ve just, until this moment, been dragging away shouts, “Get off me!” Now the other party guests are buzzing, and one of the little girls is crying too. As I let him go, the kid practically spits at me. “Assface.” And starts shaking.
The woman squats down in front of him. She says in this soothing voice, “It’s okay, Jeremy. He was just joking around, but I think he realizes now that it wasn’t funny.” She shoots me a horrible look.
“Do you really think it’s funny to come in here and scare people?” This is from a little girl with red hair who may or may not be Tams.
“No, I don’t.”
I wonder how many of them know me and how many of their parents will hear about this. I feel like I’m going to be sick, and I almost walk out. Let Dusty find his own way home. Let my mom come get him. But it’s as if the floor is holding me there. My feet are like anchors. They won’t move. I just stand there, staring past the kids staring back at me, at the kid who walked in, the one who’s still crying.
“I’m sorry.” I say it directly to him a couple of times, but no one is listening. These kids could kill me if they wanted to. There are so many of them, and small though they be, fury is on their side.
An eternity later, the woman stands and says in this cold, cold voice, “That is your brother,” like I’m the world’s biggest child predator. She pushes Dusty toward me like she wants both of us gone, like Dusty, by association, is also guilty.
I’m not an assface, not in this way at least. I have a condition called prosopagnosia. It means I can’t recognize faces, not even the faces of the people I love.
I add, “They grow so quickly at this age. Makes it hard to keep track of them.”
And I grab the actual one-and-only Dusty and drag him outside. I throw the jacket at him, and he drapes it over his head, but it’s clear he doesn’t want to be near me, so he takes his sweet time coming down the walk. I’m soaked to the bone by now, but I hold the door open for him, and as he gets in he looks up at me with tears all over his face and says, “Why would you try to kidnap Jeremy Mervis?”
“I was only joking around.”
He is studying me the way he does my parents these days, like he’s not sure if he can trust me. “Fourth grade is hard enough without being known as the brother of a child stealer.”
My hands are shaking, but I don’t want him to see, so I grip the wheel till my knuckles turn white, and then ask him to tell me about the party. I can barely hear him over the sound of my heart as it goes BAM BAM BAM against the walls of my chest.
Rachel wants to know what happened. This is a person who has seen you through your very worst. When you met her, you were taking up two hospital beds after being rescued from your HOUSE. She has been there for you and loved you through everything, just like a mom, only she isn’t your mom.
I tell her I don’t want to talk about it, not now, and we ride in silence most of the way home.
In my room, I open my copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Even though she’s done a terrible, horrific thing, Mary Katherine doesn’t feel anything—no pain or remorse or emotion. Not even when the villagers trespass across her property and chant songs about her.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?