“Now move along!” said the screechy silhouette. “Or I’ll send the dog out.”
“Let them be,” said the warm-water woman. “And your dog wouldn’t scare anyone anyway. He weighs less than a loaf of bread.”
Gran and Maisie moved briskly along the sidewalk, and as they did, Gran caught a glimpse of two separate doghouses, nearly identical, on either side of the narrow burgundy house. In each doghouse there was the tiny face of a tiny dog—they seemed to be twins—and both seemed bored beyond tears by the bickering of the women in the windows.
The back and forth continued between the two voices until Gran and Maisie were long gone.
As soon as they saw the playground of Carousel Elementary, Maisie ran to it as if she’d been going there all year.
“Wait,” Gran said, but she had already disappeared into a winding, zebra-striped tube. Only her feet were visible.
Gran found Maisie’s teacher, a young woman with a heart-shaped face and bronze skin. “That’s my sister,” he told her. “The one going the wrong way on the slide.”
“I noticed someone new,” the teacher said. “It’s been years since we had a new family in town. She must be Maisie. And you are?”
“Gran,” Gran said. He was instantly soaked in sweat. He’d never tried his new name before.
“Gran?” the teacher repeated.
“Yes,” he said. He waited with dread to see how the heart-faced teacher would react, but she simply said “Got it” before turning her attention back to the playground.
Gran walked on, feeling reasonably good about how that had gone, and soon saw an unusual man. Across the street and going his way, there was a grown man riding a child’s dirtbike. The man was wearing a tanktop, shorts, long black socks and bright orange sneakers. His legs and arms were covered with blue tattoos, and following him sullenly was a pitbull the color of mud.
“Sup,” he said to Gran.
Gran had never seen a grown man on a child’s dirtbike before. The men where Gran used to live usually wore suits, or at least dress shirts, and he rarely saw them out and about like this in the middle of the morning; usually they were at work. Gran was thinking about this man, and about the town, when he saw his new school.
Carousel Middle School was very old and sat atop a ridge that seemed to be falling away beneath it. The building had been made of gray and purple and pink bricks that alternated as if the bricklayers hadn’t been able to gather enough of any one color, or couldn’t decide on any logical pattern. The whole building leaned heavily toward the downward slope below, giving the impression it would fall at any provocation.
Gran entered the building, and nothing happened. That is, this is not a story where the schoolmates of the protagonist are cruel to him. This is a story where the classmates ignore the protagonist altogether. But there didn’t seem to be any reason why. At first, when Gran entered the school and made his way around the hallways and through his first few classes, he figured it was because he was small.
Gran had never been especially small before. In his previous school, he was average-sized. But now, in Carousel, Gran felt like he’d shrunk. Sometime between when he’d left his old school and arrived at this one, either he’d shrunk five inches or everyone else had grown that much. He was now the shortest boy in his class, and probably the skinniest, too.
But no one said anything about this. No one called him any names. In class, when they passed papers back to him, they said nothing. When he asked where the bathroom was, they only pointed. When he bumped into a large boy whose baby-blue shirt was far too small—it looked more like a bib—that boy said nothing at all. He brushed Gran away as he would a spiderweb.
Even the teachers barely addressed him. They spoke to the classes generally, but when the bell rang to announce school was out, Gran was absolutely sure no one had said his name all day.
“How was school?” his mother asked.
Though she was in a wheelchair, her legs withered and arranged in a tight double S, Gran’s mother seemed to be everywhere at once, moving around the first floor of the new house with great speed.
“I am definitely the queen of school,” Maisie announced, and pretended to jump rope, without a rope.
Gran told his mother that his school was fine, and told her, also, that no one had said anything to him all day.
“Stop that, Maisie,” Gran’s mother said, and wheeled herself over to him. She tilted her head sympathetically and, at a loss for words, she simply pulled him onto her lap. Tired and confused, he allowed it. Maisie went back to jumping rope without a rope.
When Gran’s father came home from work, he looked tired and confused, too. He usually spent five minutes at the sink, washing the grease from his hands, but this time went straight for the living room. “Hello, my loves,” he said, and sat heavily down on the couch. Maisie climbed onto his lap and he wrapped his arms around her. His hands were still clean.
Gran’s father turned Maisie around so she faced out, toward Gran and his mother, then he moved Maisie’s arms and legs as if she were dancing. He pumped her arms up and down, kicked her legs out like she was a marionette. Watching the two of them, Gran could forget his father was there, controlling her, and for a moment it looked like his five-year-old sister was an expert dancer, her limbs flying around like a showgirl’s. Gran laughed, his mother laughed, and Maisie screamed with joy for a full minute.
Then she threw up.
Maisie threw up more than the average person. More so, certainly, than anyone else in the Flowerpetal family. She threw up in cars, and on swings, and always when Gran’s father tossed her around. But still she loved to be lifted and swung; the throwing up was just part of it, the part where it was time to stop playing and clean up.
“I’ll get the mop,” Gran said.
The Flowerpetals always did something unusual when it was time to clean up. They did it together. Gran couldn’t place when this started, but as far back as he could remember, they had been cleaning up Maisie’s vomit together. The job got done faster that way, and was actually kind of fun.
“What do I see here?” Gran’s father said, examining the pink-and-green puddle on the floor. “Looks like spinach. And pears. And gummy bears. Wait, did I just write a poem?”
They all laughed, and the job was done in minutes. All that was left was to open the windows and light a candle. Maisie always opened the window. Gran’s mother usually lit the candle. Gran’s job was to take the garbage, now containing Maisie’s latest output, outside.
“First vomit in the new house,” Gran’s father said when Gran returned.
“Now it’s officially a home,” Gran’s mother said.
Maisie loved the attention. She wasn’t embarrassed at all.
When the Flowerpetals had lived near the ocean, their apartment had four rooms—the living room, the kitchen (which really was just an extension of the living room), the bathroom, and the bedroom, which they all shared.
And because the apartment was small, they had all participated in just about everything happening inside. If Gran’s mother or father was cooking, they all helped in some way. If someone started cleaning the apartment, everyone joined in. It was hard to avoid—there was nowhere to hide.
This new house, with two stories and seven rooms, was cavernous by comparison. But there was still work to do. Gran’s father had begun building a ramp for Gran’s mother, from the front door to the driveway. The incline was not so bad as it was—she could manage—but he wanted it to be easier. There was also the matter of the sinks and the counters. They had to be lowered. And then the cabinets underneath had to be removed—otherwise Gran’s mother had nowhere to put her legs.
“Let’s start with the bathroom,” he said.
But there is a sadness that courses through a house where money is uncertain. From the bedroom he shared with his sister, after she was asleep, all that first week and the next, Gran would hear his parents talk quietly about money.
His father did not hav
e a job like some jobs—where an adult is paid a salary, steadily, dependably. Instead, Gran’s father was paid each afternoon for the work he did that day, and was not sure whether or not he would get work the next.
From what Gran could gather, his father had been told that Carousel needed a mechanic, but when they arrived—after moving a thousand miles—he was told the local auto shop didn’t have much work after all. People were giving up their cars and trucks. Gran remembered seeing the grown man riding a boy’s dirtbike. There wasn’t enough money in the town to pay for repairs to old vehicles, let alone buy new ones.
When Gran’s father did not get work, he was at home when Gran got home from school, and the nights were long. His parents’ murmuring sometimes turned to hissing, and sometimes fell to yelling.
On days when their voices became loud, Gran would look to Maisie, sleeping across from him, and wonder if she could hear what he heard. She never did wake up, but she turned left and right and kicked the covers from her, as if wanting to get free.
Then, one morning, Gran’s father’s car was gone.
“He went looking for work,” his mother said. “He heard about something a few hundred miles south.”
“So why are we here?” Maisie asked.
“He’ll be back this weekend,” Gran’s mother said. “Get your jackets on. It’s supposed to be colder today.”
Every morning, Gran and Maisie walked up the hill, past the burgundy house, where they heard the two women arguing over the issues presented on their lawn signs. Gran and Maisie walked past the twin dogs and their exasperation with the bickering, past Dr. Walter Woolford, who was against Propositions P&S and for Propositions M&H, and past Phyllis Feeley, who was for Propositions P&S and against Propositions M&H. Every day Gran saw the same man riding the dirtbike, followed by the same sullen pitbull whose fur was the color of mud.
Gran would drop off Maisie at her elementary school and continue on to his own school, the purple-and-gray one slanting from the ridge, where no one knew his name.
Or rather, they knew but did not care.
It was the Monday of his third week when his name was first spoken by a teacher. Until then, they had preferred not to do roll call, so Gran had simply shown up, and because he never raised his hand in class, he was never called on, and his name was never uttered.
Until this certain Monday three weeks in.
It was then that Ms. Rhapsod, his homeroom teacher, made an announcement.
“It’s come to my attention that some of you have nicknames you’d like to use,” she said. “Greta Rose Nagel informed me today that she wants to be called Greta R-N, for example. So if there’s anyone else who wishes to amend or shorten their name, let me know. I’m not especially patient when it comes to such things. Once I put your nickname or whatever it is down on this attendance form, that will be it, period. I’ll send the change to all your other teachers and that will be that. No going back.”
This was the moment that Gran had been waiting for, but it was very different than what he’d envisioned. He hadn’t expected it to be so public and so final.
“Anna Applegate?” Ms. Rhapsod said. “No change?”
Anna shook her head.
“Nathan Delacroix?” she said. “You want to be Nat or Nathan-D? Something like that?”
“No thanks,” Nathan said.
Gran knew his name was coming up. Flowerpetal was dangerously close to Delacroix. And even closer to Esterhaus and Estrada. His shoulders tensed as those students’ names were called.
“Granite Flowerpetal?” Ms. Rhapsod said. Saying his name, her neck snapped back as if she’d just smelled something rotten. There were a few snickers and scoffs.
“Stop,” she said, and the snickering and scoffing ended. She looked at Gran as if seeing him for the first time. “Where’d you come from? Have you been in this class all year?”
“Yes sir. I mean, ma’am,” Gran said. “I mean, most of it.”
For a moment she seemed almost apologetic. Then she returned to her businesslike manner. “Name change for you, Granite Flowerpetal?”
Gran’s skin burned and his heart rattled.
“Back at my old school they called me Gran,” he managed.
“Okay, Gran it is,” Ms. Rhapsod said, and made a note on her attendance sheet.
After the nickname session, no one had said anything to Gran for the rest of the period. In the hallway after class, no one made jokes, no one seemed to be gossiping about him. The bell rang, and when he sat down for his first-period class, he seemed again to be invisible. A state of being which, for the time being, he welcomed.
It wasn’t until midway through the second period, health class, that he found the note in his textbook. It was on a standard piece of notebook paper, folded in half. The handwriting was small and precise and rendered in black. He was no handwriting expert, but he knew that most of the boys in his class had crazed and jagged handwriting, while the girls’ writing was loopy and precise. This note was of the second variety.
Dear Granite/Gran,
I understand why you’d want to change your name from Granite. But why change it to Gran? Don’t you realize Gran sounds like you’re a grandmother? A twelve-year-old boy shouldn’t be called the same thing I call my grandmother. Which is Gran.
Question of the day: Why didn’t you just change your name to Grant? That’s a real name.
Signed,
Your classmate.
Gran’s face tingled. His stomach tied itself into braids. He looked around, suddenly sure that the writer of the note was close by, watching him.
But no one was looking at him.
He turned back to the note, read it again, and knew it was correct. He hadn’t thought of the best solution to the problem. Grant. Of course. Grant would have worked far better than Gran. And now he had to live with Gran in every class, the rest of the year.
There would be more snickering. More scoffing. Probably some pointing, staring, laughing and ridicule.
But none of that happened.
No one said anything the rest of that day. The next day, Ms. Rhapsod went back to her usual way of not calling attendance, and the rest of the teachers, who never called attendance in the first place, continued in their usual way.
Even the students who had snickered and scoffed the first time they heard the name Granite Flowerpetal seemed to have forgotten about Gran’s full name, and his nickname, too. They never scoffed again. They never snickered. In fact, they never noticed him. Never looked at him.
No one did.
No one spoke to him.
Which led Gran to wonder if he was, in fact, real.
How can a person be real when four hundred and twelve other people, his fellow students, could not see him?
The days went on, and finally Gran, at the end of his first month in Carousel, walked out of the school and into the bright morning, and was so overcome with the idea that he might not be real that he thought he might be able to walk through walls.
How could he be sure he couldn’t walk through a wall? He had never tried it. So he walked around the side of the school, to a spot where he thought he was alone and unseen. Then he squared his shoulders and walked three quick steady steps toward the building. When most people would have stopped, he continued.
The pain of bricks against one’s head cannot be overstated. Given that bricks are quite solid, walking into them truly hurts. Anyone who has walked into a structure made of this material—bricks—will tell you this.
Gran was on the ground, holding his head, feeling the slippery blood on his hands, when he heard a voice.
“You just walked into a building.”
It was a girl’s voice. Gran lifted his head, and through his blood-matted hair he saw that it was a dark-eyed girl from his third-period history class. He remembered her because, next to him, she was the shortest person in the class, just a hair taller than Gran. And every day she wore the same thing: heavy brown boots, usually dirty, jeans, a T-sh
irt—always bearing the face of an older woman with glasses and her hair in a bun—and a flannel shirt tied around her waist. Gran had wondered who the old woman on her shirt was; she looked familiar. But he did know who the girl wearing this shirt was.
Her name was Catalina.
Catalina Catalan.
“Here,” she said, and dabbed at the blood with a cloth.
When Gran could see clearly again, he saw that the cloth was a shirt, the flannel shirt she usually wore around her waist.
“Thanks,” Gran said. “Sorry about your shirt.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I turned it inside out first. The blood will be on the inside, where it belongs, right?”
Gran didn’t know what to say.
“You’re Gran, right?” she said. “You got my note?”
It took Gran a second to connect this actual person in front of him with the anonymous note he’d received. His stomach collapsed like an accordion.
“Were you looking for a door?” she asked.
The note had been unkind, but here she was, talking to him, which seemed a brand of kindness. He decided he preferred this, talking to someone who had judged him cruelly, to not talking to anyone at all.
“No, I…” He knew he couldn’t explain it without seeming insane. “I’m new here,” he said, hoping that might explain it all.
“That explains nothing,” she said, and stood. Then she made a huffing sort of sound that seemed to mean she was ready to leave.
“Get up,” Catalina said, and held out her hand.