“And that nasty, stinky sauce,” Mayra added.
“But…there’s this Szechwan place that does eggplant in this dark, spicy sauce—”
“Eggplant is meant to be smothered in parmesan cheese and marinara,” Mayra interrupted. “It’s what it was born to do.”
“Italian food all tastes the same,” I remarked, and Mayra glared at me.
“That’s because you haven’t tasted my eggplant parmesan,” Mayra said. “Keep dissing Italian food, and I just might have to make it and force you to eat it.”
I couldn’t decide if it was a threat or a promise.
“What about wonton soup?” I traced the fish shape with the tip of my finger again.
“No!” Mayra screeched, which made me jump. “Now stop that! I do not like Chinese food!”
I tensed a little and brought my hand back into my lap. I was about to apologize, but then her words reminded me of something.
“Not in a box or with a fox?” I asked as I looked at her sideways. “Or on a train or in the rain?”
Mayra laughed.
“I do not like it here or there!” she said through her laughter. “I do not like it anywhere!”
She parked in my driveway and grinned at me as she leaned over the steering wheel.
“More project work?” she asked.
“I found an article on a website about global warming and the impact on hibernating bees,” I told her. “I was going to print out a copy, but Travis has the only printer. With my car still in the shop…well, I couldn’t go over there to print it out, but we can look at it on the computer.”
“It’s a plan!” Mayra said. She opened up her door and hauled her book bag out with her.
We spent the next couple of hours working on our project and some of the other homework we had. When we both decided we’d had enough, I pulled out two Cokes, two glasses, and eight ice cubes. I assembled the drinks and then carried them into the living room. I set mine down on the coaster and handed Mayra’s drink to her.
“I’m going to…um…pick up the garage,” I said as I stared at the glass on the table.
“I’ll help,” Mayra said.
“No,” I said as I shook my head. “I still feel bad for waking you up this morning. It won’t take me too long.”
Mayra agreed to relax inside while I grabbed a new plastic trash bag, a small Ziploc bag, and a pair of rubber gloves to clean up the mess. I was actually quite grateful for the Chinese food because it made me think of all the conversations Mayra and I had on the way to school, between classes, and at lunch. She really didn’t like Chinese food, and I still didn’t understand why. I was pretty sure if she just tried the right dish, she would like it.
It was enough of a distraction that I managed to scoop everything up into a new trash bag and toss it all back into the larger can pretty quickly and without feeling like I was either going to puke or freak out. I was going to have to mop as well, but I thought I would be able to wait until Mayra went home before I did that.
The only thing left on the floor was the small, folded paper ticket.
I swallowed a couple of times as I walked around it. It felt both innocent and ominous all at the same time. For a brief moment I understood why people bought them—it wasn’t because they thought they were going to win; it was the possibility of winning. How would they feel if they realized they had the winning ticket? What would they buy first? Would they donate a lot of it to charity? Give it to friends? Winning isn’t the attraction; the attraction is the opportunity to dream.
I picked up the ticket and held it between my yellow-gloved fingers. It had just a bit of duck sauce on the side of it, but it didn’t look like it was really messy or anything. I’d still eventually have to clean it with some Lysol wipes or something, though. I turned it around a couple of times, then slid it inside the little plastic Ziploc bag and sealed it up.
Like Schrödinger’s Cat, looking at the numbers would only collapse the waveform.
Mayra was just finishing her drink when I came back into the living room.
“Dad texted me, saying he was going to be late,” Mayra informed me. “So I’ve got some extra time. Do you want to watch TV or something?”
“Okay,” I replied.
“What do you have there?” Mayra asked as she nodded toward my hands.
“Nothing.” I quickly hid the plastic bag behind me, then kind of walked backwards into the kitchen and shoved it into the drawer next to the scissors.
Mayra narrowed her eyes and shook her head at me. She headed down the short set of stairs to the lower level and the family room with the television. She grabbed the remote and dropped onto the loveseat. I slowly walked over and sat down beside her on the other side of the small couch, determined to put all thoughts of dirty lottery tickets out of my head.
We found a repeat episode of MythBusters.
“I love this one,” Mayra said. “The whole bit where they just crash the car between the semis is about as inspired as destruction gets.”
I had to laugh.
We watched in silence until the commercials started. That’s when the phone rang. When I answered, it was Megan’s doctor on the line.
“Hello, Matthew,” Dr. Harris said. “I need to talk to you about your sister.”
“Is Megan okay?”
“She’s fine,” Dr. Harris said. “We just need to adjust her medication.”
Dr. Harris went on for a while about drug interactions and how this new treatment might actually make Megan more communicative. I had heard it all before. When the doctor was done, she got to the point.
“I’ll need you to sign a few forms,” she said. “Basically the same forms you have signed before, just with the different dosages. Should I send them to your uncle’s fax machine at work?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll look them over and get them back to you.”
“Thanks, Matthew. You take care.”
“Bye.”
I hung up the phone and saw Mayra watching me.
“Your sister?” Mayra asked.
I nodded.
“It was her doctor,” I said. “I have some forms I have to sign.”
I sat back down and stared at my hands in my lap. The last time we changed Megan’s medicine, she completely freaked out for about four days. She eventually settled back down, but the doctor had to adjust the medicine three times before she went back to normal. Well, normal for Megan.
“Matthew?”
“Yes?”
“Will you tell me more about your sister?”
I thought about it for a minute, finally deciding I wanted Mayra to know about Megan. I didn’t want to keep anything from her, and Megan was important.
“Megan is four years older than me,” I said. It seemed like as good a place as any to start. “I can’t really talk about her without explaining about me, too, though.”
“I’d like to know more about you,” Mayra confirmed.
I nodded to her.
“I didn’t understand that there was anything different about Megan until it was time for me to go to school. That’s when my parents figured out I was different, too, just not in the exact same way.”
I swallowed and twisted my fingers around each other.
“I guess I thought I would go to school with Megan. She went three days a week, and when she went, Dad would work from home or something while mom took her there. I kind of remember people talking about me starting school, and I just assumed I would attend the same school as Megan. I had it all worked out in my head. I was a little shocked on the first day when mom put us both in the car and then preceded to drop me off somewhere else.”
I let out a humorless laugh.
“Okay, shocked isn’t quite the right word,” I admitted. “I went ballistic. I never really had a breakdown before then because at home, there was already a very strict routine for Megan, and I just fit into it. It was the first time something unexpected happened to me. I screamed and I kicked, and I trie
d to bite the teacher, generally freaking Mom out. Mom’s freaking out made Megan freak out and…well, it was a mess.”
“I can imagine,” Mayra replied softly.
“Mom had to call Dad, who had to leave work to come and get me. I didn’t go to the first day of school, and Dad took me home, and we talked about it a lot. He told me what was going to be there and everything. The next day, he drove me to school and walked me to the kindergarten room. I managed to last about all of ten minutes after he left, which is when I ended up in the corner screaming. That was my first real panic attack.”
“Holy shit,” Mayra said with a sharp breath.
“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty, I guess.” I took a deep breath. “I saw a bunch of doctors then, and Mom was really upset. She kept saying I wasn’t like Megan at all—that she knew I was different from my sister. The problem was, she didn’t have any normal kids to compare us to. I would talk for the most part, just not the same way other kids my age did.”
I stopped talking for a minute and tried to figure out what I was supposed to say next.
“She thought you were okay,” Mayra said. “It must have been really hard on her to hear that you weren’t.”
“It was,” I said with a nod. “Megan didn’t talk at all until she was four, and then she only talked about clocks and time. They knew there was something wrong with her early on. Mom always thought I was all right.”
“Because you’re on a different part of the…what is it? The autism spectrum?”
“Yeah.” I remembered I was really supposed to be talking about Megan and tried to focus a bit more. “Megan gets upset when people touch her. I mean, really upset. I can tense up when I’m not expecting it, and it makes me kind of uncomfortable, but Megan screams and cries if you try to hug her or something like that. She doesn’t like new people either. It takes her a long time before she’ll let someone unfamiliar be in the room with her.”
“What does she do?”
“She usually just curls up on a chair and won’t acknowledge anyone,” I told Mayra. “Sometimes she gets more noticeably upset. She’ll start doing the same thing over and over again, like rocking back and forth.”
I felt myself tense up a little bit, and I glanced at Mayra sitting next to me. She was just looking at me with her head tilted a little to the side.
“Animals tilt their heads to expose their necks,” I said. “It’s a sign of deference.”
“What?” Mayra asked, obviously confused.
“Sorry.” I shook my head at myself. “Sometimes I just say random shit.”
We were quiet again for a minute, but Mayra didn’t break the silence. She just waited for me to go on.
“When Mom got sick, and we had to move Megan to the institution in Cincinnati, she pulled out most of her hair.”
“She what?” Mayra asked.
“She pulled her hair out, one strand at a time,” I confirmed. “She wouldn’t stop, no matter what they did. Eventually they had to keep her sedated when she went to bed.”
“Oh my God,” Mayra murmured.
I swallowed and waited for a minute before I heard myself say something I wasn’t planning on talking about at all.
“I’ve done stuff like that, too.”
“You pulled your hair out?” Mayra gasped.
“No…I, um…” I stopped, wondering if I really wanted to go there and decided I probably didn’t. My voice dropped. “Other stuff…I don’t want to say.”
Mayra shifted a little closer to me, and I felt my body seize up.
“It’s okay,” Mayra said softly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
I closed my eyes and tried to fight off the instant panic. I didn’t even know where it was coming from or if it was just because of my own stupid mouth. Talking brought on panic. That’s why I didn’t do it. I never made any sense, and I just made people think I was weird.
Right now, everything seemed so good with Mayra, and I probably just fucked it up. What if Mayra decided I was too strange to hang out with anymore?
Shit, shit, shit.
“Matthew, it’s okay…” I heard her saying through the haze that had become my mind.
I jumped when I felt her hand on my arm and pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I just…I don’t know what to do.”
I rubbed at the nail of my thumb with my other thumb three times and then switched hands. I kept my eyes closed and focused on the pressure against the nails, alternating back and forth over and over again.
“I play with my hands,” I heard myself say. “I don’t know why.”
“It’s all right,” Mayra said again.
There was more silence.
“Matthew, would it be okay if…”
“If what?” I asked.
“If I gave you another hug?” she finally asked.
I was still tense, and my body didn’t seem very willing to let that go. I tried to remember what it was like the last time she hugged me, and I didn’t feel any worse, so I nodded.
I felt the tips of her fingers on my shoulder, and then I felt them move around the back of my neck to grip my other shoulder. With her other hand, she reached across me and held on to the top of my arm. She tugged slightly then, bringing me a little closer to her. I was too tense and didn’t move much, so she shifted herself closer to me until I felt my head come into contact with her shoulder.
My eyes stayed closed as I inhaled the scent of her skin. I realized I was shaking and wanted to pull away out of embarrassment, but I didn’t. I just stayed where I was, and Mayra didn’t move either. After a few minutes, I reached one arm around her middle, and dug the other one between her back and the couch cushions.
“I’m sorry you’ve had to go through so much,” Mayra told me. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with all this shit when you shouldn’t have to. I wish there was something I could do…”
I tightened my grip on her a little and felt her do the same.
I don’t know how long we were like that, with me wrapped up in her arms on the couch, but it felt like forever and an instant all at once. At some point, exhaustion seemed to take over, and I ended up with my head in her lap.
Another episode of MythBusters came on—the channel we were watching seemed to be running a marathon—and we both just started watching it. I felt Mayra’s hand shift to my head, and she began to thread her fingers through my hair.
I couldn’t bear the thought of changing positions, so I just stayed that way on the couch until Mayra had to go home. The conversation had been difficult, but I felt relieved when it was over, so I considered the day a win.
Chapter 7—Let’s See How I Can Embarrass Myself Further
Our arrangement became routine.
Every day, Mayra picked me up and took me to school in her Porsche. We didn’t usually talk very much during that time because Mayra is a self-proclaimed “non-morning person.” During school, things were pretty much the same as always—I went to classes, saw Mayra during ecology, tried to ignore Justin Lords, and ate lunch with Joe. When school was over, Mayra drove me home.
Once we got to my house, we worked on our project or other homework, drank Cokes in the living room, then went downstairs and watched television. Mayra sat on the left side of the loveseat, and I would lie down with my head in her lap. She’d run her fingers through my hair while we watched either MythBusters, Big Bang Theory, or sometimes even Top Gear. I was pretty sure Mayra didn’t like Top Gear too much, so we usually watched one of the others.
I should have known it couldn’t last.
It was the following Thursday, and I had all but fallen asleep to the feeling of Mayra’s fingers in my hair when the phone rang. When I answered it, it was the body shop telling me my car was ready for pickup.
“Cool!” Mayra said when I told her. “Now you can get yourself around again.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed and nodded, trying to keep the feeling of dread that was washing over me from turning into some
thing worse.
I closed my eyes for a moment, barely hearing Mayra’s offer to drive me over to the shop. If she wasn’t driving me to school, would she still come over to the house? We had just finished up the last of our project—it was due the next day—so there wouldn’t really be a reason for her to be there. I might start getting to sleep earlier since I had been working late to get all my website work done. I could probably pick up a couple other website jobs to take up the extra time.
I didn’t want any other website jobs.
I wanted Mayra to come over, work on homework, and watch TV with me. I wanted to sit with her and feel her hands in my hair. I wanted to laugh at Big Bang Theory with her and talk about the crazy stuff that came out of Adam Savage’s mouth on MythBusters.
The very idea of her not being here anymore after school was absolutely terrifying.
“Matthew? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t think. I could barely breathe. I couldn’t imagine coming home alone after school again every day with no one there anymore to talk to or just sit beside. Usually when I knew something was going to change, I could come up with something to fill the hole but not this time.
My chest felt like it was collapsing, and I realized I was on the floor though I wasn’t sure how I got there. Mayra’s voice was ringing through my ears, but I couldn’t decipher her words. My own voice chimed into the mix, but I wasn’t sure what I was saying either.
Everything grew blurry and then went dark.
The next thing I heard was a list of numbers.
“One, two, four, eight, sixteen…”
My back and shoulders were achy.
“Thirty-two, sixty-four…”
My stomach turned on me. There was a nasty taste in my mouth, and I wondered if I had thrown up.
“One twenty-eight, two…um…two fifty-four…”
“Two fifty-six,” I corrected. “Five hundred twelve, one thousand twenty-four, two thousand forty-eight.”
“There ya go…come back to me, dude.” Travis’s voice was soft but still penetrating. “Everything’s okay. You’re home; I’m here; Mayra’s even here. Count with me, dude.”
I took a deep breath and continued reciting numbers. When I opened my eyes, Travis was crouched down on the floor next to me, and Mayra was standing behind him. Her eyes were red, and she was squeezing her hands together.