Parrotfish (13 page)

She shook her head. “I want you to act like you give a damn about me, but that obviously isn’t going to happen, is it?”

I was embarrassed for Russ that he was being insulted in front of two schlubs like us. He had to get mad; what else could the guy do?

“Look, Kita, I’ve tried to be whatever it is you expect a boyfriend to be, but I’m obviously not perfect enough for you. Maybe you should find somebody who is.”

“Or maybe just somebody who’s more emotionally mature than a twelve-year-old!” Kita shot back.

“That’s it!” Russ yelled. “I’m sick of you ragging on me all the time! So I’m not perfect. Boohoo. Neither are you, Kita!
Neither are you!
”

Sebastian and I broke down the equipment, pretending we were invisible. In another minute, Russ was headed out of the auditorium, barking a few last nasty words back at Kita. Once he was gone, the fight went out of her and she slumped down onto the arm of a chair.

“Did you and Russ just break up?” Sebastian
asked her, managing not to sound too pleased about it.

“Is that what it looked like?” Kita asked.

“Did to me.”

“Well, I guess we did, then.” She didn’t seem 100 percent happy about the idea.

“I’m sorry,” I said. And then, lamely, repeated myself. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

“I know, but . . .” But what?

Sebastian was hard at work, not just packing up the video stuff, but also plotting the course of my life. “What you guys really ought to do is go out and get some coffee or something. Kita needs somebody to talk to.”

I looked at him in panic. “Your mother is picking us up any minute, isn’t she?”

“Well, she’s picking
me
up, and I can take all the equipment. But you live close enough to walk home, don’t you?” His eyebrow was trying to send me a signal of some sort, leaping around the left side of his forehead.

“Would you mind, Grady?” Kita said, looking up at me sadly. “I don’t really want to go home alone right now. My mother could pick us up later and drop you off at your house.”

“Well, I guess I could, but”—I turned to
Sebastian once more—“maybe we could all go, and Kita’s mother could drop you off . . .”

Sebastian shook his head sorrowfully. “I wish I could, but I have a trig test tomorrow, and I’ve barely studied. I have to get home.”

Right
. Did Sebastian even take trigonometry? My hands were so sweaty, I could barely hold onto the camera case. We all carried the equipment outside and stacked it in the back of Mrs. Shipley’s waiting Volvo. She and Sebastian both waved their little hands at us as they drove away, leaving me alone with Kita Charles.

It was only two blocks to the August Moon diner, but they were the longest two blocks I’d ever walked. Kita was dragging her feet a little, and I kept walking too fast and getting ahead of her, then realizing it and dropping back. But walking right next to her, banging elbows, made me kind of light-headed, so then I’d speed up again and leave her behind. If anyone had been watching, they would have thought my cruise control was broken.

Finally, we slumped into a booth at the diner.

“I’m sorry, Grady,” Kita finally said. “I shouldn’t have made you come with me. You probably just want to go home.”

“No, I don’t!” I assured her. “If you want to
talk or anything, I’m here. I mean, I’m glad to be here. I mean, I’m not glad you broke up, but . . .”

She sighed. “I shouldn’t have been so mean to Russ. He’s a nice guy, and he tries to do the right thing, but somehow we just don’t work together. We’re too different—we get on each other’s nerves.”

I couldn’t imagine Kita ever getting on my nerves. We ordered coffee and fries, then sat in silence until the coffee arrived.

“You must think I’m terrible, don’t you? A spoiled brat,” Kita said.

“No, I don’t! I’ve always thought you were really . . . really nice.” I’d almost said “wonderful,” but at the last minute I managed to switch to the most benign compliment possible.

“I used to think I was a nice person, but lately . . .” A tear rolled down her cheek.
Lord, save me
.

The waiter plopped the basket of fries and a small bowl of ketchup in between us, unaware of the drama taking place before him. I handed Kita my napkin, even though she had one in front of her too. “You
are
a nice person, Kita. You’re a great person. You’re probably my favorite person in the whole school!”
Whoa, back up. Too much information
. “I mean, you know,
except for, like, Sebastian.”
Shut up! Shut up!

“Thanks, Grady,” she said, smiling a little. “I like you too. Are you and Sebastian a couple or something?”

“What?” I could feel the heat spreading across my face and imagined the scarlet color that came with it.

“I wasn’t sure if . . . you know . . . if you were into guys or girls now.”

I reached for the coffee cup to disguise my embarrassment. “Well, no. I like girls. I always have liked girls, only now I like them as a boy, I guess.”

She nodded. “That’s good.”

“It is?”

“Sure. Now you’re a boy who likes girls
and
understands them. How many of those are there? In my experience, not many.” She looked into my eyes and grinned as she toyed with a long french fry, flopping it around in the ketchup before finally bringing it to her mouth and chopping it in half.

“Well, I don’t know if . . . some people wouldn’t . . . I mean, not everyone thinks . . .” I had no idea what I was even trying to say. She had me hypnotized, my eyes following the dancing potato.

“I like you, Grady,” she said, clearly, so there could be no mistaking it. She took the uneaten half of her french fry and held it in front of my mouth. “Let’s share.”

I opened my mouth and let her put the fry inside it. I wasn’t at all sure I’d be able to chew and breathe at the same time with her looking at me like that. But somehow I managed to live through the most astounding moment of my life so far.

S
ebastian called two minutes after I got home. I hadn’t even had a chance to answer my mother’s questions about why the filming went so late.

“Who gave you a ride home?” she asked as she handed me the kitchen phone—the old kind that was still tethered to the wall—then stood there, watching me.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said, but she didn’t move.

Since the main living areas were still on display, Dad and Charlie were in the kitchen too, staring at a basketball game on the small TV on the counter. Laura was spending the night at her friend Mira’s house, so at least she wasn’t there to spy on me.

“So what happened?” Sebastian screamed at me. “Where did you go? What did she say?”

“I can’t talk right now, Sebastian. I just got home, and—”

“What do you mean, you can’t talk? This would never have happened if I hadn’t set it up! I had your back, just like Napoleon and Pedro! You owe me details!”

“I know, I know,” I said, then let my mind drift.

       KITA: [brandishes a golden fried potato] I like you, Grady. Let’s share.

       GRADY: [tongues the french fry, nibbling it out of her fingers] Whatever you say.

       KITA: I say, the hell with Russell Gallo. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for all my life. You’re my twin, my perfect match.

       GRADY: And you’re mine, Kita.

       KITA: Feed me, Grady. Feed me. [opens her mouth]

       [GRADY picks up another fry, dips it in ketchup, and twirls it into Kita’s chin, spewing ketchup across her face and blouse.]

       KITA: [wiping red goo off herself] Grady! Look what you did! You ruined everything!

       [GRADY crawls under the table and curls into a fetal position.]

Jeez, even my imagination couldn’t come up with a decent outcome for me and Kita. The actual evening hadn’t been
that
bad.

The phone in my hand was chirping. “Grady! Tell me!”

My mom had finally left my side and was folding laundry on the kitchen table; I turned away from her. “We shared a french fry,” I whispered.

“A what? A french fry? Is that code or something?”

“Look, why don’t you come over tomorrow? We’ll talk about it then.”

He sighed. “You have
got
to get a cell phone. What time should I come?”

“Say, eleven. I want to sleep in.”

“Fine. I’ll be up at dawn, waiting.”

“Don’t expect much, Sebastian. It was really just a french fry.”

I hung up and turned around to find my mother staring at me. “What was ‘just a french fry’?” She obviously thought I was speaking a secret language too.

I sighed. If only there were something to tell. “It’s nothing. I went to get something to eat with this girl I know. Kita Charles. She just broke up with her boyfriend, and she needed somebody to talk to.”

“I never heard you mention her before. Did you just meet her?”

“Yeah, sort of. I know her boyfriend. Her exboyfriend.”

“Uh-huh.” She examined me quizzically. “I went to the window when I heard the car in the driveway. It looked like there was an Asian woman driving.”

“That’s Kita’s mother. She’s Japanese American.”

“So, Kita is Japanese?”

“Partly. And partly African American.”

“Really? Well, I imagine she does need friends—I’m glad you’re helping her. I keep reading about how difficult it is for those kids.”

“What kids?”

“Kids who are half in one culture and half in another. It’s hard for them to know which one to identify with.”

“Kita has lots of friends,” I said. “Of all kinds. She doesn’t even need me. I just happened to be around when she broke up with her boyfriend.”

She smiled at me. “You’re a good . . . kid.” What a laugh. She thought I was doing Kita a favor or something. She had it all backward.

The game must have finished up: Dad turned off the TV. “So, what did they have to say about the decorations when they dropped you off?” he asked. Even after all these years, he liked to hear what everybody thought of his efforts.

“Well, Kita said ‘wow’ about fifteen times. Her mother seemed a little bit confused by it all.”

“Tell ’em to come by on Christmas Eve for the big show!” he said, undaunted. “Which reminds me, tomorrow is costume-fitting day, in case any seams or hems need to be let out or anything. So your mom has time to fix things.”

Charlie stopped on his way to the stairs. “I don’t want to do that Tiny Tim thing this year, with the crutch and everything. I’m too big.”

That was certainly true. Even last year Dad could barely carry him on his shoulders, and Charlie hadn’t gotten any smaller with another year’s worth of sitting on the couch inhaling Cheez Doodles.

And it’s not as if we really put on
A Christmas Carol
anyway—that would be way too much, even for Dad. We dressed like Dickens’s characters, and we ate turkey and pudding—chocolate pudding, not plum pudding made with suet and brandy like in the original. But the rest of the show was mostly in mime. We were miked to the outside, but the scripted lines were few and mostly belonged to Dad, which was fine with the rest of us. It’s true that ending the show with Charlie on a chair shouting, “God bless us, every one!” always got a big cheer from the crowd, but maybe that was just because the whole thing was over and the parents could finally get their
kids to go to Grandma’s house for
their
dinner.

Dad, of course, looked crushed. “But how will we end the show without Tiny Tim?”

“I’ll still
say
it, if you want, but I feel stupid limping around with that crutch and pretending to be a baby.”

“But it’s a
show
, Charlie!” Dad begged.

“Look, Joe,” Mom said. “We’re all getting a little bit tired of doing this every year. You can’t expect the children to be as excited about it as they used to be when they were younger.”

“Why not?” He really didn’t know. Mom and Charlie and I looked at each other, none of us able to say what needed to be said.

“It’s late,” Mom finally said. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Charlie and I tore up the stairs so we didn’t have to see that sad, confused look on Dad’s face another second.

At a quarter to eleven the next morning, Sebastian’s mother’s car pulled into the driveway. I opened the door with a piece of bacon in my hand.

“Ooh, can I have that?” Sebastian said, taking it from my fingers. “Haven’t had bacon in ages. Oh, and my mother wants to know when to pick me up. Am I staying all day?”

“Sure. I can drive you home later.”

He ran back to give his mother the message. She was swaddled in a fur coat that made her head look even smaller than it really was. She stuck her head out the window and yelled to me, “I think one of your teddy bears has fallen over!”

“Thanks!” I said. “I’ll put it back up later.”

“I’ll do it!” Sebastian said, and ran right over to set Pooh in an upright position again. His mother backed out, smiling and waving. She did seem quite pleased by our friendship. And I had to admit that I was too. Sebastian wasn’t Eve—he could never replace the friend I’d had since I was a little kid—but he’d proved himself to be on my side when I needed a friend, which was a lot more than I could say for Eve, or anyone else for that matter. Except Kita.

Sebastian was happy to sit at the kitchen table and eat a few more pieces of bacon while I finished the eggs Mom had made for me. He seemed fascinated by my rowdy family—Mom and Charlie arguing, again, about why he couldn’t have a dog for Christmas, Dad spouting lines of dialogue from the Christmas script to remind himself when to say what (“Sit you down before the fire, my dear . . .”) and Laura, running in the back door and then shrieking from upstairs half a minute
after getting a phone call from some mystery male.

Still yelling, Laura came pounding down the stairs like a much larger person. “Mom! Mom! He asked me to the dance! I’m going to the dance!”

“So, that was Jason, I guess,” Mom said. She was obviously on the inside regarding Laura’s current hopes and dreams.