“Great,” Saint Sarah says. “Team, let the games begin!”
We turn to go. Farooq moves away so there’s no evidence he’s been standing there the whole time. Except for the residue of his presence dripping over me.
How do you wash off what cannot be seen?
? ? ?
We win. I cry crocodile tears of joy to cover the real sadness of it all, and now there’s a permission form for Mom to sign to let me go to the regional game, next weekend, in Chicago.
Muhammad goes out again as soon as we get home. Mom is still out, so I Google-Earth Jeremy’s address, as I usually do when I’m alone. This time it’s for nostalgia’s sake, I tell myself.
A stash of candy is spread around me on the bed. Auntie Fatima was right: Goodies rock, especially because the winning team got to divvy up and take the leftovers home.
I’m eating a happy-face lollipop and admiring the turquoise-framed door on Jeremy’s split-level bungalow when my new cell phone rings, jolting me with its novelty. It’s my first cell phone call. Ever.
Tats. How in the world did she get this number?
I ignore it at first but then begin to wonder what she has to tell me that’s so important on a Saturday night.
My threshold is five minutes, I tell myself. I’ll let her talk for five minutes.
“Yes?” I ask. “How’d you get my number?”
“Your brother texted it to me this morning,” Tats says. “Are you sitting down?”
“Yes,” I say.
“So guess who I’m sitting across from? At Wishbone’s?” she asks.
“Yes?” I ask, zooming in and out on the number 132 on Jeremy’s door. There’s a red Volvo in the driveway.
“Matt. He’s with his mom and dad. And I’m with my mom and dad. He nodded. At me!” Tats says. “I took a bathroom break cause I just had to tell you. Can you believe it?”
“Yes,” I say. How can she handle being in love with two guys at one time?
“Okay, I have to go back out there because, really weird, when I got up, I noticed his mom smiling at my mom. What if they start talking?” she says. “All right, I’m on my way back. Oh my God!”
“Yes?” I ask, mildly interested.
“They are talking. They’re looking at the menu together. I’m going to die,” Tats says. “Actually, I’m just going to calm myself down. I’ll call you back. Are you up late?”
“Yes,” I say, marveling at my ability to rely solely on this most simple word for our whole conversation.
I zoom out and switch to map view. From our condo, Jeremy’s house is about five minutes away: walk down one straight, main road, turn left and then right, onto a quiet, leafy street. Across from this big, natural green-zone space with a lake. I wonder if he goes there often.
“Okay, if I can, I’ll call you tonight. If I can. And, Janna, before I go, are you still mad at me? For talking to Jeremy?” she asks.
“Yes!” I say. Finally, a yes I really mean. “What do you mean, talking to Jeremy? About what?”
“Janna, I couldn’t help it. Jeremy knows all about it.”
“About?”
“You. He’s highly aware of you now.”
My mind freezes. “WHAT?”
“I’ll have to fill you in,” she says. “And it’s not bad, Janna. It’s actually really good—you’re going to see. Oh God, Mom’s waving me over. Bye!”
I close Google Earth. Now that he knows about me, it feels like I’m cyber-stalking.
MISFITS
Tats called three times on the home line, while you were sleeping,” Mom says when I enter the kitchen. Her freshly colored hair is tied up in a ponytail, and she’s scrubbing the cupboard doors. “She said your cell phone is off.”
She pauses, sponge mid-swipe. “I left the earrings on the dresser for you. Did you see them?”
I nod. “You sure you don’t want them?”
“No, they’re not me.” She resumes cleaning.
I call Tats back while assembling my weekend breakfast: chopped bananas, peanut butter, yogurt, and granola. One of the variations of Dad’s power breakfasts. Fuel your ambition with assertive foods was his message some time last month. It came with three recipes.
Muhammad is on his laptop, in the dining room, scrolling through job postings.
I stir my ambitious glop, standing and watching over his shoulder. Dog walker?
I call Tats again at her home number this time. It rings and rings.
Braille translator? Perfume sniffer?
“Muhammad?” I ask.
“Yeah?” he says, pausing on the posting for carbon manager to read the specs.
“Where are the philosophy jobs?” I ask. “Isn’t that what you’re studying?”
He turns to me and grins. “There is no job called philosopher, dear sis.”
“As if I didn’t know that,” I say, redialing Tats’s cell. I tilt my head to secure the phone between my ear and shoulder, and taste a big spoonful. I put too much peanut butter in, and my teeth find it difficult to wade through and locate the banana chunks.
“I’m just taking something for a year,” he says. “How does furniture tester sound? For La-Z-Boy?”
“It sounds awesome if it means you’ll stop hogging the whole table with your stuff,” I say, plunking my bowl down in the one tiny space free of paper.
I dial Tats’s home number again. In case I missed her being in the bathroom or something.
Come on, Tats, I think. Pick up and give me the goods. Last night I went over some scenarios and got almost giddy—a strange sort of giddy that was speckled with big drops of fear. But the feeling of possibility is intoxicating. Jeremy and Janna even sounds good together.
This could be the start of something exciting, scary, cozy, delicious—if I ever get through to Tats.
I call Tats’s cell phone one last time, in case maybe she was in the bathroom or something, right at that precise time when I called earlier thinking she had been in the bathroom or something before that point in time. The power breakfast is getting soggy, but I can handle it, when possibilities exist.
Absolutely no answer—but still, doesn’t rule anything out.
I put the phone down and realize, by the intense way Muhammad is scrutinizing me, that I have the remains of a dreamy smile on my face.
“Yes? May I help you?” I say, my mouth newly unstuck from peanut butter cement. “Don’t you have a livelihood to pursue or something?”
“By the way, your friend Tatyana called a minute before you got up,” Muhammad finally lets me know. “I told her you were sleeping, and she said not to call her back because she was going to her grandparent’s cottage. She’ll be back late tonight. Won’t see you until Monday at school, she said.”
“Thanks for telling me. Now,” I say. “Thanks, Muhammad.”
“No problem,” he says, missing my sarcasm as usual or ignoring it in that philosophical way of his. “It’s the least I can do when you’re doing so much for me tonight!”
He smiles at me—that smile again, a mixture of gratitude and hope and desperation.
“Sheep shearer, that’s your next job,” I say. “You can become a sheep shearer.”
MONSTER