“Not too much,” I managed to gasp out as she came up behind me. “Please.”
I felt her fingers moving through my hair right before a comb followed.
“Only a little,” Mayra said as she leaned over to look in my face.
I kept my eyes away from hers, choosing to look down at the curve of her neck instead. She had very pale skin. There weren’t many freckles or anything on it, either. I had a weird desire to touch it.
“I promise,” she said. She touched me right underneath my chin and pushed against it until she turned my head to look back at her.
Looking people in the eye was never something that came easily to me. It always felt so…confrontational. Sometimes it was unavoidable, but I still tried to keep my eyes away from others whenever possible. It just wasn’t comfortable.
There was still a smile on her face when our eyes met.
“Just a little,” she said again. Her eyes were intense, and I flinched a bit. “Okay?”
“Just a little,” I whispered back.
Sitting completely still, I closed my eyes and waited for her to be done. She pulled the hair away from my head in little bits. I would hear the snip of the scissors, and then she’d move to the next part. I tensed only a little at the sound when it came close to my ears. There was a strange feeling of unreality, like this was all just a dream, and I was still asleep, almost ready for the alarm to go off and wake me to get ready for school. I turned my head a little and looked at Mayra.
She was standing in the kitchen where my mother had cooked dinner. She was standing on the parquet flooring I had helped my dad install—making sure all the little wooden pieces were lined up just right. She was in the house where my grandparents had lived when I was born. It was just weird.
“All done!” Mayra announced. “Do you have a mirror?”
“Upstairs,” I said.
“Do you want to go look?” She seemed nervous, and I wondered what she thought of being here with me, which made me realize something.
“No one has been in the kitchen since Mom died,” I said, “except for my Uncle Travis.”
Mayra took a half step back, and I heard her gasp. I stood from the stool and moved around her with my eyes on the ground. Once in the upstairs bathroom, I turned my eyes to the mirror over the sink. My hair was noticeably shorter. When I turned my head to the side and looked at it more closely, I determined it wasn’t as short as the lady who usually cut it would have made it. Actually, it was better—less of a change but still a little shorter so I didn’t have to worry about it getting too long. I was smiling when Mayra appeared in the mirror behind me.
“Is it okay?” she asked. “I didn’t take much off.”
“It’s…just right.” I looked at her eyes in the mirror and smiled back at her.
“Great!” she exclaimed. “Anytime you need a haircut, Matthew, just let me know.”
“You’d do it again?” I asked. I could kind of wrap my head around her doing it this time. After all, she was here. I was here. And I needed a haircut. Could I consider the idea of Mayra Trevino actually coming here again with the intended purpose of shortening my hair? I couldn’t fathom it.
“Of course,” she said. “I like cutting hair.”
I dropped my gaze from the mirror and thought about it, but I still couldn’t see her coming back here and doing this again. Mayra moved up beside me, and I leaned forward on the sink, grasping the edge of it tightly. If I let go, I might run. She was right next to me.
“You don’t really like things to change very much, do you?”
“No,” I whispered.
“It’s really okay, though?” she asked. “Your hair, I mean?”
“It’s really okay.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“You just did,” I reminded her. “That was a question. Did you mean it to be rhetorical?”
Shit, shit, shit.
I shut my eyes a second. I was pretty sure that wasn’t an appropriate response. I remembered the school counselor’s voice in my head.
“Focus and concentrate, Matthew. Try to think about the response before you say it. Is it appropriate for the situation? Does it fit the theme of the discussion?”
Mayra mashed her lips together, and I felt my shoulders tense up a bit.
“I was going to ask you if you didn’t think something was okay, would you tell me it was?”
“Yes,” I said truthfully. “At least, probably.”
“Is your hair really all right?” she asked again. Her voice was full of concern and anxiety. “You can tell me if it isn’t—I can change it a bit or at least know better next time.”
“It’s really okay,” I told her. I watched my hands curl around the edge of the sink. My knuckles had gone white.
“I’m going to get going,” Mayra said as she put her hand on my shoulder.
“I’m itchy,” I said.
Mayra laughed.
“That would be from the hair I cut off, you know.”
“I know. I need a shower.”
“Well, I’m definitely going, then.” Mayra snickered and headed back downstairs.
I watched Mayra walk through the front door, waving as she left. I shook my head to clear it and then took a quick shower. My head stayed in a bit of a fog for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t a bad fog—just strange. I felt a little lighter or something. I cleaned up the hair on the kitchen floor and decided to do a load of laundry as well.
Dumping the dirty shirts and pants into a laundry basket, I took them downstairs to the washer. I checked everything that had a pocket, just in case I left something in one, which I almost never did. If something did get left in a pocket—like a tissue or something—and it ended up shredded and clinging to everything, I had to wash the clothes all over again.
I grabbed my jeans from yesterday and reached into each pocket in turn. Front right, back right, back left, front left. I didn’t get past back right because there was some paper in there. I pulled out the lottery ticket that had been shoved at me as payment for my bumper.
I sighed. I was glad Travis didn’t have any problems tracking the guy’s license plate and all that. I took the ticket, folded it neatly in half, and put it on top of the dryer while I went through the rest of the clothes and started the machine. I picked up the ticket and went to the kitchen to find some dinner.
I tossed the ticket into the kitchen trash can and then started rooting through the freezer. I didn’t really want another heat-and-eat dinner or something out of a box in the pantry. I was still a little bit chilled from the rain before, so I definitely wanted something warm.
Mayra Trevino was in my house.
She gave me a haircut.
I ran my hand through my hair and thought about how it felt when she was touching it. It was good. It felt good and weird. It felt weird now because it didn’t take my fingers as long to get through it. It still wouldn’t stay down—it was all over the place—but I was used to that.
I realized I was still smiling and decided to make shepherd’s pie. I got out a bag of potatoes, peeled and cut them up, then put them to boil while I picked out a bag of frozen vegetables to go with it. I found some garlic bread, too, and decided that might round it out nicely.
When the potatoes were done, I placed everything in a casserole dish and stared at it. It was enough to feed an entirely family. A family I didn’t have any more.
Not quite true.
I had my aunt and uncle. I tried not to rely on them too much, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. With the dish in the oven and the timer set for exactly thirty minutes, I pulled my cell phone out of my backpack.
“Travis, I need help.”
I hated asking. I did it rarely, and when I did, I always felt like shit for it. He had already done so much for me, and I was asking for more. My fingers gripped the phone.
“What is it, Matthew?”
“They won’t let me take out a rental car because I’m not old enough
.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Travis mumbled under his breath. “I didn’t think about that, Matthew. I’m sorry. I’ll come get you and take you home. You can use Bethany’s car for a few days—she’s still in Hong Kong.”
“You don’t need to get me,” I said. “I got a ride home.”
“Oh yeah? Did the body shop guy take you?”
“No.”
There was a bit of a pause on the phone. Outside the window, two squirrels were running around the big pine tree. Their tails twitched as they chased each other in and out of the branches.
“Well, are you going to tell me who took you home? Focus, Matthew.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I guess it made sense that Travis wanted to know how I got back here. “Mayra Trevino took me home.”
“Who’s that?”
“A girl from my school.” I thought about it and decided he was going to want more. “We’re in ecology together. We have a project we’re starting this week about bees. I’m supposed to go to her house tomorrow to work on it. It was raining, and she saw me on the road, and even though she parked on the wrong side, she moved, so I got a ride with her, and she cut my hair.”
“Whoa!” Travis shouted into the phone. “Did I just hear you right? You have a girlfriend?”
“She is a girl,” I said. The word he used—girlfriend—didn’t quite hold meaning for me. “I’m not sure if we’re friends or not.”
“She cut your hair?”
“Yes. She said it needed it. I was going to wait until the end of the month.”
“Does she work at a salon or something?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Well, where did she cut your hair?” I could tell by the tone of Travis’s voice that he was getting a little frustrated. I obviously wasn’t giving him the information he wanted, but I didn’t know what he wanted, so I wasn’t sure how to fix it.
“In the kitchen.”
“At the house?”
“Yes.”
“Your house?”
“Yes.”
Travis whistled into the phone.
“I think that counts as a friend, at the very least,” he said. “Joe’s not been over, has he?”
“No, we go to his house or Uptown to do stuff. He’s never been here.”
“Damn.” Travis whispered again. “Well, I want to hear more when I get there, okay? I’ll bring Beth’s car over, and you can drive me back.”
Travis arrived a few minutes later and ate most of my leftover shepherd’s pie. He did less cooking than I did, and his wife, Bethany, traveled on business a lot. She worked for a textile company. He was also a really big guy and could pack it away. He was taller than me by a couple of inches and had curly hair. He and my dad looked a lot alike, both with dark hair and bright blue eyes. I looked like my mom.
“So tell me more about this girl,” Travis said between mouthfuls.
“Mayra Trevino,” I said. “Her eyes are brown.”
He looked up from the plate and tilted his head to one side.
“That’s all you got?”
“Oh, um…” I stammered. I didn’t really know what to say about her. “I sat behind her today in ecology.”
“I thought you sat by Joe.”
“There was a new kid,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to think about it too much and bring the memory back. “He was in my seat.”
“Did you take it okay?” Travis’s tone was guarded.
“No.”
“Shit—I’m sorry.” Travis ran his hand through his hair. “I’ll call the school again, okay?”
“I thought they wouldn’t discuss me with you,” I reminded him. “I’m eighteen, and there isn’t any guardianship or anything.”
“Well, they can listen even if they won’t talk!” Travis said, raising his voice, which made me flinch. “I’ll call that Jones guy myself. He obviously hasn’t read your IEP or your 504 plan. He was supposed to talk to Mrs. Heath last semester. He shouldn’t be putting you through that shit.”
“Please don’t,” I said quietly.
“Why not?” Travis snapped back.
“Because,” I said as I took a deep breath, “I’m already going to have to deal with the hit-and-run guy. I can’t do both at once. It’s too much.”
With a huff of air through his nose, Travis conceded. He picked up his plate and fork and put them in the sink. I followed him and washed them both, put them away, and then I cleaned the sink. Travis knew if he washed them, I would just get them out and wash them again. We had an understanding.
“If your mom had passed a few weeks earlier, I would have become your guardian. I could go to that school and give Jones shit, then.”
“Travis,” I whispered. I felt my whole body seizing up on me.
“Sorry, kid.” Travis looked at me and sighed. “It’s just that…if I had more direct ties to you legally, I could do more for you.”
“You do enough,” I told him again. We’d had this same conversation twenty-four times. “I’m eighteen. Everything’s in my name, and I’m okay.”
“No, you aren’t,” he mumbled. “You need to go back into therapy. You had fewer attacks on that medication.”
“I don’t have any extra money for more prescriptions, and the therapy isn’t covered,” I reminded him. “Making up for what Medicaid won’t pay for Megan’s care is expensive enough. I can get back into it after I graduate. Once I’m at college, the financial aid stuff will kick in, and I’ll be able to afford it.”
“I told you I’d pay for it.”
“And I told you I wasn’t taking any more of your money. You can’t spare it, and you’re already helping with Megan.”
“I still can’t believe they didn’t give me her guardianship. You shouldn’t have to deal with all of this.” He was whining, but it wasn’t meant to be mean or anything. Travis fought to have both of us put under his care, but I proved to the courts that I was high-functioning enough to do it on my own.
“I should be her guardian,” I said. “She’s my sister.”
“Your older sister,” he emphasized.
“Only physically.”
We stared at each other for a minute. We’d been at this impasse before.
“I’m doing all right, Travis,” I told him. “I mean, I’m not really much more fucked up than I was before. I’m doing as well as can be expected for someone who lost two parents within three months, and it happened less than a year ago. All my other issues are just icing.”
“Icing!” Travis snorted.
I ran my hand through my hair again, which reminded me of the haircut.
“You shouldn’t be alone here,” Travis said. He knew this argument was a lost cause, too.
“I’m not selling the house.”
“You wouldn’t have to.”
“Travis,” I growled.
“Fine, fine.”
“I want to stay here,” I said. I looked at him until he finally nodded. He knew this was a subject on which I would not budge. I wanted to be independent. I wanted my parents to know I could take care of myself and Megan without becoming a burden to Travis and Bethany. “The meds I take now work well enough. Megan’s SSI covers her stuff, and the other supplemental income I get is enough to pay the bills. I’ll take care of the issues at school, too.”
“If you went to that other school in Cincinnati, the resources would be better. Bigger school, bigger budget, and more kids like you. They had that whole separate class for kids with Asperger’s”
“I didn’t want to change schools when I started high school, and I certainly don’t want to change now. There are only three months left!”
“I know.”
“I’m all right, Travis. Really. Even the social worker said so when she checked on me last week.”
Travis sighed and nodded.
“If anything else happens in that class, I’m talking to Jones,” he told me as he dropped the keys to Beth’s Civic in my hand.
I drove him bac
k to his place on the other side of town. We didn’t talk much more. I wondered if the idea of talking to Mr. Jones might have put him off. I wondered if Mr. Jones taught when Travis went to school there. Travis was my dad’s younger brother by twelve years, and it wasn’t that long ago that he was a student at Talawanda High.
“Take care, kid,” Travis said as he got out of the car. “I still want to hear more about this girl.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
As soon as the word was out of my mouth, I knew I had fucked up.
Mayra drove me home and saved me from the rain.
She brought me my book bag.
She gave me a haircut.
I hadn’t said thank you.
Shit, shit, shit.
I couldn’t let it go. I had to fix it.
Just when I thought the day was turning into a win, I blew it.
Lose—again.
Chapter 3—All the Reasons I’m a Disaster
The short, panting breaths coming out of my mouth were making me all dizzy and light-headed.
I sat in Bethany’s car in the driveway of Mayra Trevino’s house. I came here to thank her, but I couldn’t get out of the damn car. Every time I tried, my insides felt like they were going to pop right through my skin and splatter over the cement.
I didn’t understand myself at all. She had been in my house, and it hadn’t caused any reaction like this. She’d been close to me, touched me, cut my hair. Why couldn’t I walk up to her house and say thank you?
My hand grasped the handle of the car door, and I tried again. The result was the same. I dropped my elbows onto the steering wheel and put my face in my hands. I slowly shook my head back and forth while I growled and swore at myself.
Giving up on talking to her but still insisting on correcting my infraction, I turned the car back on and drove Uptown to the Hallmark store to look for a thank-you card. At least I could put it in her mailbox. I was pretty sure I could handle that. Thinking about it didn’t seem to upset me.
None of the cards said “Thanks for the ride” or “Thanks for the haircut.” I found some cards that just said “thank you” on them in gold script with the card all blank inside, so I bought one of those. Then I sat in the car for thirty minutes trying to figure out what to say. I wrote a few words, then tore the card up and went back inside for another card. The cashier gave me a weird look, but I ignored her.