After Zero Read online

  Faded handwriting follows the rhyme:

  Happy Birthday, Elise! A little something for your college fund.

  Love,

  Granny P

  Granny P? The P must stand for Pileski, but my mother has never mentioned her. Then again, she never mentions any relatives. She doesn’t speak to them for whatever reason, and they don’t speak to her. By the looks of it, though, they’ve tried to speak to me. At least one has. Granny P must have given up on a granddaughter she never heard from.

  Tucked in the card is a hundred-dollar bill with a tear at the corner. Of course. That’s the only reason my mother stashed this card. She cares about the money, not my birthday. She must have forgotten about this bill, or else she surely would have spent it by now.

  I close the card and slip it back in the envelope. I can see how hard my mother tried. She really, really tried to cover all the bases. No birthday cards in the mail. No family contact. No television. No public school. No access to the internet or her password-protected laptop. But she messed up. She let me be friends with Mel, that day when Mrs. Asimakos came to our door with cookies, a new-to-the-area smile, and a daughter my height. My mother saw no choice but to let them in.

  After their half-hour visit, she told me I could go to Mel’s house some days after lessons. Mrs. Asimakos wouldn’t mind, she said, and it would be good for me to play with someone my own age. She must have been pretty desperate to get me out of the house, desperate enough to accept the risk that Mel might introduce me to things she’d been keeping from me—television, the internet, public school. Birthday parties.

  She must know I’ve figured it out by now. Could that be one reason she let me go to public school—she realized there was no point in trying to keep birthdays from me anymore? She’s still never mentioned them, never said the word birthday in my presence. She pretends that neither of us knows the concept, and because she pretends, I pretend. And we go on pretending. I put Granny P’s card back in the envelope. Who knows how many other birthday cards have come for me over the years, long since recycled? The thought makes my teeth scrape together. I reach for the box to check for more cards, but a car door slams outside.

  I spring to my feet. Through my mother’s window I can see the station wagon in the driveway.

  And a black feather on the sill, like the one at Miss Looping’s window.

  The front door screees open. I shove all the papers and envelopes back into the shoebox, except for Granny P’s card. I slip that beneath my shirt. Then I push the box under the bed and skid out of the room and down the hall. I hear my mother slinking up the stairs—see her foot on the landing—as I slip around the corner into my room, onto my bed, just in time.

  Just in time to realize I left her door wide open.

  Chapter 6

  Things could be worse. You could be…

  •Homeless

  •Covered with acne

  •A peasant in the Middle Ages

  I lift my pencil and admire how long my list is getting. My tally has been staying at zero all day so far, so I need something else to work on. I think for a minute, then add:

  •Stuck in quicksand

  •On crutches with a broken leg

  •In trouble for snooping in your mother’s room

  I’ve managed to avoid my mother since yesterday, and she hasn’t mentioned anything—yet—about her door being open. Maybe I’ve lucked out and she thinks she left it open herself. At the same time, I want her to see the ripped seam. I want her to know I found the card. I want her to know…

  The lunch bell interrupts my thoughts. I close my notebook and get up off the toilet before other girls start pouring in. At least I don’t have to go back to French class. Mrs. Bebeau wanted us to practice conversational French for the last five minutes, so I grabbed a bathroom pass like my life depended on it. I should probably return the pass now, but Mrs. Bebeau might still be in the room when I get there. I decide to leave it in the stall “by accident.”

  As I emerge from the bathroom, the air rumbles with voices and the scratching of Styrofoam lunch trays. Students with flyers hover outside the cafeteria doors, and most days I’m quick enough to get by unscathed, but one girl pounces, shoving a flyer in my face. “Hey there, join our team!” I take the flyer so she’ll leave me alone and stuff it in my bag without looking at it. I hustle away and turn left toward the library, passing Miss Looping’s classroom. The door is closed, but I peek in the window at Miss Looping’s desk—where Beady should be but hasn’t been for two days now. I wonder if Miss Looping has told the principal yet. What will he do? Will he even care? He must have bigger things to worry about than a missing stuffed bird.

  I walk on, maybe a little too fast, until the familiar double doors and sign come into view. QUIET IN THE LIBRARY. I like knowing there are some things I can count on, like these block letters and lunch with Bernard Billows and the librarian.

  “Elise.”

  I hear my name before I reach the doors.

  I halt and turn. Mel is walking toward me. Why isn’t she at lunch? At least Sylvia and the others aren’t with her.

  “I wanted to see if you joined a team or club yet,” she says.

  I hesitate. It’s not a question, technically. It doesn’t warrant a response, technically.

  “I was thinking of trying track. There’s an open practice after school today. Maybe it could be something for us to do together.”

  I adjust the straps on my backpack. Mel and I used to race each other in her backyard for fun. We’d joke that we were training for the Olympics, when really we just wanted to feel our hearts hammering. I never thought about running on a team.

  “And maybe tomorrow, if you’re not doing anything, we could go for milk shakes or something. Hang out.”

  She wants me to do track with her and get milk shakes. Maybe I’m still her best friend. Maybe I should go along.

  “Sylvia’s having a sleepover later that night. You’re invited to that too.”

  Why does she have to ruin it?

  I don’t know why she likes Sylvia. She talks too loud and has mascara clumps and makes fun of the lunch ladies.

  “Can you come?” Mel crosses her arms, waiting. “Come on. You’re not going to sit at home on a Saturday night, are you?”

  I keep adjusting my backpack straps until they’re too tight.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t get it. You used to talk all the time at my house. What happened?”

  I let go of the straps. I want to prove her wrong, to tell her that she’s lost it and nothing’s changed and I’m the same as before. That she’s the crazy one, not me. That she’s the one who acts different at school. Since when does she care so much about being part of a group? Even here in the hall, just us, she isn’t the Mel I know, the Mel who used to say she’d rather have one close friend than a hundred acquaintances. I see right through this fake Mel, this “school Mel.” I’d like to tell her that.

  But if I talk to her here and not at lunch, she’ll make a big deal out of it. She’ll never stop asking questions. I made that mistake before, during the second week of school, when she came up to me in the courtyard, just her. No one else was around, and it felt like we were hanging out on her front steps again, and my muscles loosened and my throat opened and the bubble popped and I started talking like I used to. I don’t know why the bubble pops when I’m alone with her. It’s selective like that.

  I could go that route again now, talk to Mel, tell her what I found in my mother’s room yesterday. Ask her if she’s met the new kids, Fin and Conn, or if she thinks a stuffed bird could fly out a window.

  But if I want to curb people’s questions, I need to be consistent. Because I know what they’re thinking: If I can speak at one point, shouldn’t I be able to speak at any point? It’s only logical.

  But nothing about this feels logical. I’ve b
een telling myself it started as a choice, a plan, back in September…but what about the heart thumping and the muscle stiffening and the throat tightening? The bubble? I didn’t plan for that. How can I tell Mel that this is feeling more and more like a force beyond my control? She’d never buy it. No one would. That’s why I have to be consistent. It’s the only way to stop the questions.

  At the same time, I want Mel to stop looking at me like that.

  I wipe my forehead. I could always shrug again. That’s a good fallback.

  But with the way she’s staring at me, I suspect a shrug won’t satisfy her.

  “Just tell me, Elise. Why are you so quiet all the time?”

  That word.

  She won’t stop looking at me. How can I make her stop? There’s only one way. I have to say something just this once, so her eyes will stop drilling through my head.

  “I have nothing to say,” I blurt out. There. That should appease her. At least she can’t argue with that.

  I wonder if my words are true.

  “Nothing to say?” She frowns. “It’s been, like, seven months since school started. You’ve had nothing to say for seven months?”

  Consistency. Be consistent.

  “Forget it.” She throws up her hands and turns away. “I’m done.”

  I study the ground, listening to her footsteps fade. I’m not sure what troubles me more: that everyone wants an explanation from me, or that I don’t have one.

  I sit in the library and stare at my notebook. People want to know why I don’t talk. So do I. I almost wish I’d experienced some traumatic event, or lost a loved one, or been physically abused or something, just so I could have an excuse. Like in those novels in the library, with descriptions like “So-and-so hasn’t said a word since the earthquake took her family,” or “After watching his twin fall from a cliff, So-and-so won’t speak to anyone.” Heck, I’d even take the little mermaid’s excuse—that I made a bargain with a sea witch.

  But I’ve never met a sea witch. And the most traumatic event I’ve experienced was a bee sting. And the only “loved one” I’ve lost was my father, when I was too young to remember him or understand what it means to be killed by a drunk driver. And no one has ever laid a hand on me.

  I open my notebook and count on my fingers: I, have, nothing, to, say. I scratch down five tally marks. I stare at them and chew on my pencil until I taste metal.

  The nice thing about zero marks is that your mind has no words to cling to, to shudder at, to regret, to replay over and over in your head. But now these five words will replay over and over for the rest of the day, the rest of the night.

  I put my notebook back in my bag, finding the flyer I stuffed there. I uncrumple it.

  Got pent-up energy? The track team needs more runners!

  I nibble on a hangnail. Track. Running. If I have to join something, maybe I wouldn’t mind track. Mel might be there. And if I run every day, maybe I’ll be so exhausted by bedtime that I’ll actually sleep. And if being on the track team can keep me busy, distracted, maybe the rest of the school year will go by faster. Because right now it’s taking forever.

  • • •

  The first thing I learn at track practice is that Green Pasture has the worst track team in the league. Coach Ewing doesn’t show her teeth when she tells me this, so I’m guessing she’s not too proud. But she says I might as well know.

  “Hmm, you’re small.” She looks me up and down. “What event do you wanna run?”

  I shrug.

  “Are you a sprinter or a distance runner?”

  I shrug again.

  “A woman of few words, eh? We’ll train you for the mile race to start.”

  I find myself in a clump of girls, running once around the track and then out onto a road that leads through quiet neighborhoods, led by one of the co-captains, Beverly. Mel’s in the clump too. She joined the team after all. So did Sylvia, Nellie, and Theresa. I shouldn’t be surprised. Mel can’t do anything without that group now. When she said track was something we could “do together,” of course she didn’t mean just the two of us. And now that I’m on the team with her, she hasn’t so much as glanced my way.

  Forget it. I’m done. Maybe she meant it.

  But it’s fine, it’s okay. It’s no reason to quit when I’ve barely started. Besides, there’s no talking here. Everyone is concentrating so hard on breathing in and out, trying not to wheeze too loudly or fall behind, willing themselves to keep moving even though they want to collapse and curl up like babies.

  It turns out Fin is on the track team too—she must have changed her mind about softball—but she isn’t doing the three-mile run with us distance runners. As we left the track, I spotted her doing shot put and javelin with the throwers. And as we jogged by the soccer field, I saw Conn practicing with the soccer team. I guess neither of them put off joining something like I did.

  In through the nose, out through the mouth. That’s how Coach Ewing said we should breathe. And don’t swing your arms from side to side. That’s bad form. Keep them moving straight, forward and backward. Don’t make fists. That causes tension. Relax your hands, and touch your thumbs to your middle fingers. After the first mile, everyone except me seems to forget these things. Even the two eighth graders who flew past us all in the first minute are lagging now. I heard someone whisper that they’re sprinters and that sometimes they join the long-distancers to show off. But now it looks like they’ve used up all their energy while the rest of us, or at least most of us, have saved some for the last two miles.

  I decide that I like track. It’s an individual’s sport. None of that teamwork like in soccer or basketball or field hockey, where you have to call out to your teammates and work together and rely on other people to pass you the ball. In track, I’m my own team. Me and my legs and my lungs. And my thoughts.

  At first I don’t know if I should pass people, even though the sprinters did. But some girls are going so slow that I’ll be stuck behind them forever if I don’t pass. So I breathe in deeply and overtake one girl, and then another. As I pass Mel, I think she hates me a little more. But that feeling of passing someone, sweeping by them, makes me feel like I’m going somewhere, making progress. It assures me I’m not running in place.

  “Jeez,” one girl huffs behind me. “For someone so short, you’re surprisingly fast.”

  I guess she’s right that it’s surprising. I have to work harder than the long-legged girls.

  But I already know what it’s like to work harder than others to do something that comes easily to them. I think of the cafeteria, the class discussions, the bubble—and then I run a little faster.

  Chapter 7

  I’m in no rush to see my mother, so I take the long way home through downtown. I bike past the bank and the post office and the Laundromat, slowing in front of the new pastry shop. Sticky buns, croissants, and muffins fill the window. The scent of bread and cinnamon tugs at my nostrils. My stomach rumbles. I guess track practice can work up an appetite. I peer through the glass. Patsy’s Pastries doesn’t look busy—there’s a woman browsing and a clerk sorting scones behind the counter—so I lock my bike to a rack at the corner and go inside. I head for the counter, but a display case catches my eye. I move toward it, scanning all of the cakes organized by occasion: weddings, baby showers, graduations, christenings, bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs. Birthdays.

  I pause at the birthday cakes. In front, a Barbie doll’s torso rises out of a half-dome cake. Across the gown, ribbons of icing spell out Happy Birthday, Princess! I wonder if this one is chocolate or vanilla. Not that I remember the difference. I haven’t tasted cake since Mel’s tenth birthday party, the last one I ever went to. Mel eventually forgave me for ruining her seventh birthday—it doesn’t take long to forgive at seven years old—so I snuck to her next couple of birthday parties. But Mel’s school friends, the ones she had before Sylv
ia and the gang, started to get on my nerves, giggling about things that happened at “recess” or “gym class” and making fun of teachers I didn’t know. And Mel kept asking why I went to her birthday parties but never invited her to mine. So I stopped going. And I told her the truth, because I hated lying to her.

  “She doesn’t celebrate birthdays at all?” Mel gaped. “Not even her own?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Mel thought for a minute and then brightened. “Maybe she’s a Jehovah’s Witness.”

  “A what?”

  “I have a family friend who’s one. They don’t celebrate birthdays.”

  For a magical moment I thought that I’d found the answer—that my mother’s birthday avoidance wasn’t about me at all.

  Then Mel mentioned that Jehovah’s Witnesses are some kind of religious sect. My mother isn’t religious. I still remember the day a pair of missionaries came to our door and asked her if she believed in God. “Once upon a time,” she replied, and shut the door in their faces.

  I glance at the other customer in the shop: a woman in a business suit, about my mother’s age, looking at a Sweet Sixteen cake. I try to picture my mother in a business suit. I can’t. I try to picture her here in Patsy’s Pastries buying me a cake. I can’t.

  “What can I get you?”

  I look up.

  The clerk is smiling at me across the counter. It’s such a simple thing, ordering a muffin. And yet, here I am looking at the shelf of pastries behind him, tilting my head like I’m still deciding.

  “How about one of our sticky buns? They’re fresh out of the oven.”

  I nod. I wanted a muffin, but this is easier. And the sticky buns do look tasty. He picks a bun off the shelf and rings me up. I fish some money out of my pocket. “Enjoy,” he says, and then goes off to help the businesswoman. I don’t look back at the doll cake.

  As I turn and bite into the sweet dough, I think, This is happiness.