My Tiki Girl (16 page)

Joey leaves us to go back to his cave to get his jacket.

“He’s seventeen,” Jonah says once Joey’s crossed the stream. “I didn’t know he went to your school. He never said. He has an older sister—Constance—in a wheelchair who is real smart—she goes to college in New Hampshire, where she’s studying to be a doctor. They were in a car accident when they were younger. Their mother—one of the nurses in that picture—died. Constance is paralyzed, and Joey went headfirst through the windshield, which is how he got that scar. He says his brain got bruised and it made him sick in weird ways. Like he’s kind of slow about some things. And he has these bad headaches. He can’t look at bright light. Sometimes he pukes when he rides in cars or buses.”

“Motion sickness,” I say. Jonah nods, then keeps talking.

“His dad is the only one who got out of the accident okay, but he drinks bad. He’s a bottler at Elff. He used to drive a delivery truck, but he got a DUI ticket, so now he helps the elves fill the bottles and put caps on them. Joey’s dad can get mean when he drinks, especially since Constance went away, so Joey stays in the cave whenever he can.”

“Wait,” Dahlia says, interrupting Jonah, who is talking ninety miles an hour he’s so excited. “Joey told you all this?”

Jonah nods. “Pretty much. Some of it I figured out.”

“I can’t believe that accident thing Heather told us was actually true,” Dahlia says to me.

“Me neither,” I say, more sure than ever that Joey and I were destined to meet.

Leah lights a cigarette, her eyes fixed on Joey when we present him to her in the living room. Joey keeps his eyes down on his shoes, just like in school with me.

“Joey’s staying for dinner. Is that okay, Mom?” asks Jonah.

Leah nods.

“We’re having meat loaf,” Leah says, more to Joey than to Jonah. “Are you hungry?” she asks the strange boy. He looks up from his shoes and smiles at her. She can’t help but smile back.

Joey has three helpings of meat loaf. Jonah just eats salad, but doesn’t get much of it into him because he’s the one doing all the talking.

He’s telling Leah all about the cave and the dolls Joey makes from trash he picks up.

“I hear he’s also making some kind of fancy drum,” Dahlia says, and Joey’s eyes meet mine for the first time.

“It’s incredible. You should see it,” I say. “It’s covered with these carved dancing animals. Incredible. You’re an artist,” I say to Joey, and his scarred face flushes.

“Hey, he should be in your band!” Jonah practically shouts.

Dahlia shoots me a look.

“Can you play the thing?” she asks Joey.

He just nods.

“Well, why the hell not? Every decent band has a drummer. Maybe you and your magic drum will be just what The Paper Dolls need. What do you say?”

“Don’t know. . . .”

“Sure you do. You know. Just say yes. Right, Maggie? Tell him. Tell him how great we are.”

I smile at the String Man. “Please,” I say.

He nods. “Okey-dokey.”

“It’s decided, then,” Dahlia says. “Meet us after school with your drum and we’ll head over to Troy’s. He’s gonna love it when we show up with you. Man, oh, man. I can’t wait to see his face.”

Joey eats a can of cling peaches in heavy syrup while Jonah tells us about all the odd jobs Joey does.

“That’s where he gets all the dollar bills he keeps in the cave, right, Joey? You’re a hard worker, aren’t you?”

Joey nods.

Jonah tells us he has his regulars, the people who pay him five bucks for shoveling their walks after a winter storm, the lonely old ladies who invite him in for lemonade or hot chocolate when he’s through. He mows lawns mostly, rakes yards, hauls trash to the corner of the street. He built a stone wall once and knows how to fix small engines—lawn mowers, chain saws, weed whackers.

“You taught yourself everything you know, right, Joey? Tell them,” Jonah coaxes, but Joey just nods and smiles, content to let Jonah be his spokesperson.

Joey’s no dummy, that’s for sure. All those people who call him a retard are totally clueless. Jonah says he can even do a little plumbing, a little carpentry. He doesn’t mess with electricity, though—that, he says, could be dangerous.

Leah, who has said almost nothing during dinner, gets up from the table and lights a cigarette, leaning back against the red formica counter near the sink. She’s staring at Joey, blowing smoke in his direction, while he looks down at his empty plate.

I think he’s kind of handsome in a way. I mean, if you don’t think about the scar, which is pretty much impossible. His light brown hair is all shaggy and keeps falling over his eyes. He jerks his head back from time to time to move the hair. He’s as tan as Troy, and his eyes are deep brown, like chocolate Tootsie Pops. If I wasn’t totally in love with Dahlia, I might develop a secret crush on Joey. But I’d never act on it. I don’t want to kiss him or anything like that. What I want (and I know this is weird) is to hike up the leg of my jeans and show him my own scar. To say,
See, we’re twins, you and I. We know each other in a way no one else can.

“It’s him,” Leah announces at last. “No doubt about it.”

“Him who?” Dahlia asks.

“The smiling dog,” Leah answers. “Joey is the smiling dog.”

At his name, Joey looks up from the table. He turns immediately to Jonah for an explanation.

Jonah looks from Joey to his mother, finally asking, “What will his name be?”

Leah puts out her cigarette in the sink and walks up to Joey. She studies him, taking his face in her hands, running her fingers along his thick purple scar.

“This scar is like a river,” she says. “A great and powerful river. A river that crosses countries. That doesn’t care which side it’s on.

“Your name will be Rio,” she tells Joey, “after the Rio Grande.”

Joey smiles up at her as she holds his head in her hands.

We’re all silent now, because Mother Mary has spoken. She’s opened up our world, added another key player. There is no way Joey—Rio—could even begin to comprehend the importance of this, just like there was no way for me to understand the night she named me LaSamba. Only by looking back can we realize that these are the moments that change everything.

15

The phone wakes
me from sound sleep. I’ve had my own line in my room since seventh grade, when my mother got fed up with me tying up the phone talking to Sukie all the time.

I glance over at the digital clock. 6:15 A.M. It’s gotta be Dahlia. No one else would call me at this hour. Hell, no one else would call me, period. But when I answer, I hear I’m wrong.

“Hey,” Sukie says. “Did I wake you?”

“Kind of,” I tell her. Why on earth is she calling me at six in the morning? Is it the end of the world or something? Or did she hear Dahlia and I were at Troy’s the other day and she’s calling to say,
How could you?

“What’s up?” I ask.

“I was just thinking of you. Thinking about today. How hard it might be.”

Today? We’re surprising Troy by bringing Joey to band practice, but how would she know that? And what does she care?

“Hard?”

“Yeah. The anniversary. I can’t believe it’s been two years.”

I draw in a breath. How could I have forgotten? I’ve been so busy with Dahlia and the band that I haven’t even noticed the date. November 7. The accident was exactly two years ago today.

“Sometimes,” Sukie says, “sometimes I feel like she’s just away on vacation or something, know what I mean? Like she’s going to come back anytime now and we’ll all go out for ice cream and it’ll be like she never left. Like you and I never stopped being friends.

“Remember that game we used to play where we walked all around your house holding little mirrors? We didn’t look straight in front of us, or down at our feet, just at the reflection in the mirrors in our hands. And they were angled up, to make it seem like we were walking on the ceiling. Like there was this whole other landscape than the one we were used to. Just wide-open space, and we had to step over doorways and light fixtures. Remember?”

I did. It was a silly game. Something we invented by accident.

“It’s like that, Mags. Like we’ve been walking on the ceiling and I’m just waiting for your mother to show up and tell us to cut it out and come back down. Does that make any sense? Or am I just being stupid? Mags?”

“I’ve gotta go,” I tell her, and hang up before she can say anything else, before she can hear that I’m crying.

Breakfast is awful. My father forgets the waffles in the toaster, which is turned up all the way, and they burn. His eyes are red and puffy like he’s been awake all night. Neither of us says anything about what day this is. We’re trying to pretend it doesn’t matter, I guess. That it’s just a day like any other. I’m going to school and he’s going to work.

“I have band practice tonight,” I tell him. “We have a new drummer. I’ll be home late.”

He just nods absentmindedly, staring in disbelief at the charbroiled waffles, not even asking me anything about the band or our new drummer.

“What’s eating you, anyway?” Dahlia asks when I meet her on the soccer field at lunch.

“Nothing,” I say.

“So,” she says. “Like I was saying, I think the best thing to do is to just show up with Joey this afternoon. Just walk into Troy’s like Joey being with us is the most normal thing in the world. He’ll flip his freaking lid!”