Three Little Words (2 page)

Fariza has chosen an oversize red T-shirt, baggy cargo shorts and neon-green Crocs. From the first day, kids are allowed to choose their own clothes. Megan says it makes them feel more in control. Sid vaguely remembers loving a hand-knit red sweater with a spaceship on the back, and he still pays attention to what kids choose out of the clothes cupboard. Looking at Fariza, he thinks how much she looks like a little boy in an older brother's hand-me-downs. Most of the girls who come to stay at the house gravitate toward skirts and shirts that are too tight and too short. They paw through the clothes cupboard, pouncing on bright colors and anything that sparkles. When Tobin first arrived, he traded his Walmart jeans for a men's kilt, which he wore with an assortment of wrinkled plaid shirts. Sid waited for him to get beat up, or at least bullied, but it never happened. Not to his knowledge anyway. He figured it helped that at fifteen, Tobin was six foot six and tattooed like a Samoan warrior.

“You and Fariza waiting for an ark, Chloe?” Caleb says as he and Sid shuck off their shoes by the front door.

“Might as well be,” Chloe says. “Megan said it was okay to get out the stuffies. I thought maybe it would make Fariza feel better. I tried reading to her, but she won't sit close enough to me to see the pictures. Which means I couldn't do her hair or nails either.” Chloe jumps up, causing an avalanche of animals. Fariza cringes deeper into the cushions.

Sid looks down at the pile of books on the battered wooden coffee table. All his old favorites:
Where the Wild
Things Are, Peepo, Mr. Gumpy's Outing, Blueberries for Sal
. After Megan rescued him, all he wanted to do was sit beside her on the old green corduroy couch and trace his fingers over the pictures as she read. Over the years he has read to his share of kids. Some frightened, some angry, some inconsolable. Some of them couldn't sit still for very long, some of them fell asleep while he was reading, some of them sucked their thumbs, some of them smacked the books with an open palm or sucked on the corners. No matter what they did, Sid just kept reading.
Mr. Gumpy
owned a boat and his house was by a river.
He wants to tell Chloe that she should be more patient, but she's already pulling on her shoes, babbling about being late for dinner, and how Irena, her grandmother, will kill her if she doesn't set the table. Patience is not Chloe's strength. Sid looks over at Caleb, who raises his eyebrows.

“Irena runs a tight ship,” Caleb agrees. Chloe's grandmother is a legendary island matriarch: stern, demanding but also, in Sid's experience, intelligent, kind (to him anyway) and an awesome cook.

“Everything okay out here?” Megan says from the kitchen doorway. Her round face is flushed and sweaty, her khaki shorts wrinkled, her T-shirt stained. She wipes her hands on her shorts, leaving a trail of flour. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” Caleb says. “Just Chloe racing off like she's got a bee in her bra.”

Sid snorts. Chloe blushes and glares at him.

“It's been a long day,” Megan says. “Chloe, I'd never have gotten my work done without you. Are you sure you won't stay for dinner?”

Chloe shakes her head. “No thanks, Megan. I told Mom I'd be back.”

Sid squats down in front of Fariza and peers into her eyes, which he expects to be brown. Instead, they are as green as a stick of celery. She turns away and buries her face in a panda bear's belly, but she seems more shy than frightened now.

“She won't talk, you know,” Chloe says. “All she says is please and thank you.”

“I know,” Sid replies. “I don't mind. Kind of a nice change. She can talk or not. Doesn't matter to me.” He straightens up and pats the flamingo's head.

Chloe slams the door on her way out.

“What's that about?” Sid says to no one in particular. He's used to Chloe's emotional storms—they've been friends forever—but lately she often seems on edge or angry or upset. He wants to ask why, but he knows better than to ask a question when he's afraid of the answer. He has learned the hard way that nothing stays the same, no matter how much he wants it to.

“Women,” Caleb says.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Megan asks.

“Nothing.” Caleb laughs and puts his arm around Megan. “Can't live without 'em.”

“You got that right,” she says. “Sid, wash your hands and then set the table, please. Maybe Fariza could help you.”

Sid nods. Another one of Megan's theories is that helping out around the house makes kids feel better. Sid's specialty is laundry. Collecting it, sorting it, folding it, putting it away. He hates ironing though. Not a good job for a daydreamer, Caleb said after Sid burnt a hole in one of Caleb's good shirts.

“Yo, Fariza,” Sid says. “You wanna wash up first?”

Fariza blinks her huge green eyes and then slides off the couch and scurries past him, dragging the flamingo behind her. When he comes into the kitchen, she is hiding behind Megan, shifting the flamingo from hand to hand.

“She's had some bad experiences with boys,” Megan says.

Who hasn't? Sid thinks as he gets the cutlery out of the drawer. Chloe and her girlfriends are always talking about how lame guys are, and he stills feel the sting of Tobin's absence. He circles the table—knife, fork, spoon; knife, fork, spoon. Cloth napkins folded in triangles to the left of each fork. Water glasses at the tips of the knives. Fariza has come out from behind Megan. He can feel her watching him as he moves around the table. He puts a hot-pink napkin at one place, and a glass painted with the Little Mermaid.

He points and says, “That's your place, Fariza. And here's a chair for your friend.” He pulls up an extra chair, and Fariza seats the flamingo on it. Its head flops forward onto the table, like a guest who's had too much to drink. “Thank you,” Fariza whispers.

“You're welcome,” Sid replies, bowing slightly.

It's All Good

C
aleb says that Sid's the only teenager on the planet who doesn't look on summer vacation as an opportunity to sleep all day, stay up all night and spend as much waking time as possible away from adults. Sid knows he is lucky not to have to find a summer job. Caleb pays him to help out on the boat, and since Sid's material needs are minimal—art supplies and the occasional movie and burger in town—he is able to spend his days doing the things he loves: drawing, riding his bike around the island, swimming with Chloe in Merriweather Lake, which is a half-hour bike ride from his house. He and Chloe have a lake ritual: they race back and forth across the lake (Sid always wins), they have a handstand contest in the shallows (Chloe always wins) and then they lie on the sun-warmed rocks and eat salt-and-vinegar chips and talk. Mostly Chloe talks and Sid listens. After a morning spent drawing, Sid welcomes Chloe's chatter. Without her, he would probably sink even further into the world he has created on the page. A world he has been inhabiting since Megan first sat him down at the scarred kitchen table and gave him crayons and a piece of paper.

Now, every day after breakfast (Cheerios on weekdays, scrambled eggs on Saturdays, waffles on Sundays), he takes his place at the table, his pens and pencils laid out neatly in front of him, his sketchbook open. Before he begins to draw, he always gazes out the window at the cove, noting which fish boats are at the government wharf, how many cars are lined up for the next ferry, whether the eagle, which he long ago named Eric, is in its nest at the top of the fir tree near the dock. Only when he has scanned the view, does he start to draw. He knows he's a bit
OCD
—he even read a book about it to make sure he's not completely crazy—but he's not an obsessive hand-washer or anything. His routines don't hurt anybody. He has learned to be flexible when he has to be. He knows Megan and Caleb worry about it, but he figures it's better than worrying about whether he's doing drugs or fighting in the ferry parking lot after too many beers. Lots of their foster kids have been way more trouble than he is.

Today, a week after her arrival, Fariza is sitting beside him at the table, her flamingo in her lap and the remains of her Cheerios in front of her. She and Sid had named the flamingo one rainy afternoon. Sid came up with name after name—Frank, Fritz, Fanny, Frieda, Ferdinand, Fitzroy, Finn, Freya, Francine. None of them got a nod from Fariza. He tried again—Flora, Floyd, Frodo, Fiona, Fred. When he said
Fred
, Fariza nodded and smiled.

“Hey, Fred,” Sid says now. “How's it going?”

Fred, of course, is silent, as is Fariza.

“Good Cheerios?” Sid says to Fariza.

She nods.

“I'm gonna draw now, Fariza. We'll read later, okay?”

Fariza nods again, clears her bowl from the table and sits down next to Sid again after making Fred comfortable on the couch. She points at Sid's sketchbook, which is open to a fresh page.

“What?” he asks. “You want to see it?”

Fariza nods and turns the pages back to the beginning of the sketchbook.

Sid has never shown his work to anyone but Tobin, whose one-word comment was “Disturbing.” He suspects that Chloe—and lots of the foster kids over the years—would sneak a peek if he left the book lying around, so the sketchbook is either with him or locked in a cedar trunk in his room with the dozens of other black hardcover sketchbooks he has filled over the years. Always the same brand as the first one Megan bought him. Always the same size. Always coil-bound. The key to the trunk lives on a silver chain around his neck.

Sid inhales deeply as Fariza strokes the first page of the book. What could be the harm in showing her? he thinks. It's not like she's going to talk about it. And it's not really that disturbing. At least he doesn't think so. He had been hurt by Tobin's comment—more hurt than he ever let on.

“So, I started this story about a year ago. It's about a village called Titan Arum, in a place called the Uncanny Valley.” He clears his throat. Talking about it is hard—harder than drawing it, almost. “Titan Arum is named after a huge plant that grows in the valley. The flower can be as much as nine feet tall. Way taller than Caleb. And it smells really, really bad, like a super-stinky fart,” he says. Fariza places her hand over her mouth and giggles. The sound is almost shocking, as if a kitten had barked. “But there's only one person in the whole village who can smell it and that's him.” Sid points to a small skinny figure dressed in a striped T-shirt and baggy shorts. “He's the main character. His name is Billy. No one believes that the big flower smells, so the townspeople think he's crazy.” He stops again, not wanting to tell her about how badly Billy is treated, how hungry he is, how alone. He doesn't tell her that Billy is the only character who never has a speech balloon above his head. He figures Fariza doesn't need any more encouragement not to speak.

“Anyway, so the book is about Billy's, uh, adventures in the Uncanny Valley.” He flips forward quickly to a blank page and tears it out of the book. Fariza watches as he neatly sections the page in half—two rectangles, one on top of the other—and sets it in front of her.

“Colored pencils or felt pens?” he asks. “Take your pick. Or I can get you some crayons.”

Fariza stares at the paper, but she doesn't move to pick up a pen or pencil.

“Want me to start you off?” Sid asks. Fariza nods and watches as he picks up a black pen and draws in the top box. A small female figure with curly hair materializes on the page, sitting on an oversize couch. Next to her is a smiling flamingo, all gangly neck and crossed spindly legs. Above Fred's head is the puffy cloud of a speech balloon. Sid uses felt pens to color the girl's skin brown, her T-shirt red, the flamingo pink, the couch green. At the top of the page, he prints
The Amazing Adventures
of Fariza and Fred.
His printing is small and precise, like something you'd see on a blueprint. He slides the paper back to Fariza, who smiles and picks up a pencil.

Every morning after the breakfast dishes are done and before they sit down to draw, Fariza helps Sid sort the dirty laundry, solemnly dropping the whites in one pile, the colors in another, after carefully reading the washing instructions on the labels. The whole process slows to a crawl as she searches for labels on ancient shorts and threadbare shirts, but Sid never rushes her. He folds clean towels while she works. Cleans the lint trap on the dryer. Pairs up socks. She reads well for an eight-year-old, he thinks as she holds up a silky blouse of Megan's and points at the label.
Dry Clean Only
, it says. She shakes her head and puts the blouse to one side.

“Good call,” Sid says. Fariza nods and keeps sorting, frowning when she can find no label. Even without a label, though, she knows what to do.

“She's done that before,” Sid says to Megan one morning as he and Fariza arrange their pens and pencils on the table.

“Done what?” Megan asks. She is sitting on the green couch reading a cookbook, her half-glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“Laundry.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Megan replies.

Megan makes a rule of never telling Sid the histories of the kids who come to live with them.
If they want to
tell you, they can
, she always says.
They're not my stories
to tell. And besides, it's best to draw conclusions about
people from your own experience of them, not from a case
history some overworked social worker wrote after a long
hard day
. Not that Megan has anything against social workers—she was one for many years—she just wants Sid to get to know the kids on his, and their, own terms. She doesn't knowingly take in violent kids or kids with drug and alcohol problems, although many of her charges come from homes where violence and substance abuse are the norm. Some kids want to talk about what has brought them to the island; others don't. No one ever pushed Sid to talk, and he isn't usually inclined to pry. Even though Sid knows Megan probably won't tell him, there's something about Fariza—her silence, probably—that makes him want to find out what happened to her. If he ever does ask Megan about it though, it won't be with Fariza in the room. He'll have to be careful. Her silence makes it so easy to forget she's there.