Lost and Wanted(72)

“I’ve been asking forever, but my mom always said no. And then we were just walking by a place, weekend before last, and my dad surprised me. He’s been wanting another tat—he had the design in his phone—and so we just went in and did both. It’s three fish.”

Simmi looked at me in her strange way—as if she could see me wondering where her father’s new tattoo was located.

“It’s because he’s Pisces. And it’s perfect, because of surfing.”

“Cool,” I said. “Well, let’s go get Jack.” I turned to check and saw that she’d fastened her seat belt without being reminded.

“Ready?”

“You didn’t say the safety word.”

“What?”

“We had to have a safety word, at my old school. You weren’t supposed to go home with anyone unless they said it, even if you knew them.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well—I think that’s a good system, but your dad didn’t say anything about it. You want me to call him?”

Simmi considered. “No—I know I’m supposed to go with you.”

I thought of asking what the word was, and didn’t.

“Anyway, my mom’s the one who made it up—it’s in Latin,” she added. “I’m probably the only person who remembers it.”



* * *



—

We had quesadillas for dinner, and talked about Harry Potter. Jack and I had gotten only as far as volume three, and it annoyed me that the scenes Simmi was narrating came from later in the series. Jack looked so transfixed, though, that at first I didn’t interrupt.

“The way to defeat a Boggart is to fight him with a partner,” Simmi said. “It has to turn into its enemy’s greatest fear, right? But if there are two people, it can’t decide which fear it’s going to become. It gets confused—sometimes it goes back and forth.”

“I think J. K. Rowling might have gotten that from another writer, named George Orwell.”

    “Probably he got it from her,” Simmi suggested. “She’s really famous.”

Jack turned to me. “Got what?” There was something heartbreaking in his expression, revealing his urgent desire to keep up with the conversation.

“The idea,” I told him. “In one of Orwell’s books there’s a room where you find your greatest fear—whatever it is.” I felt stupid the moment I’d said it. Room 101 was likely to be an interesting concept only if your greatest fear hadn’t yet materialized in your life. But if Simmi made that connection, she didn’t show it.

“It’s just like that! Mine is spiders.”

“Spiders eat mosquitoes, though,” Jack said. “Mine is being locked in and not being able to get out.”

“Jack once locked himself in a bathroom at his cousins’ house,” I explained.

“Hey!” Jack said, embarrassed, but Simmi wasn’t paying attention.

“What’s yours?” she asked me.

“What?”

But I was stalling. As I child it had seemed to me that most children (including my sister) worried about their parents dying, and I remember feeling guilty about my lack of concern in that department. It was my own death—not the dying itself but what came afterward, the complete and permanent cessation of my own consciousness—that terrified me.

Now that dread is magnified because of Jack, and eclipsed by an even greater one, of losing him.

“Clowns,” I said.

Both Jack and Simmi giggled. “Clowns?”

“Don’t make fun of me!”

“That can’t be your biggest fear,” said Jack, who knows me better than I sometimes like to admit.

“It is,” I said. “I hate their makeup.”

Jack picked up his plate from the table. “Can we go set up our sleeping bags?”

“You don’t need a sleeping bag,” I told him. “You have your bed.”

“I want to sleep on the floor.”

    I hadn’t been sure whether Simmi would want to sleep in Jack’s room, or on the sofa bed in the living room. I offered her both options, while Jack watched her anxiously, clearly not having considered the possibility that Simmi might want her own space.

“I’ll sleep in Jack’s room.”

Jack looked relieved.

“But if you’re not going to use your bed, maybe I’ll sleep in it?”

“Okay!”

I was annoyed again, although I tried not to show it. Had Simmi just manipulated my son out of his own bed, or was it natural that she should be dominant in their friendship? She was, after all, a year older than he was, and a girl, and it was nice that they got along so well. They went off to set up the sleeping bag while I half cleaned up the kitchen, and then got distracted by email.

At about eight, I suggested that they start getting themselves ready for bed. Simmi said that she needed a shower, and so I offered that she could use my bathroom while Jack took his shower downstairs. In the bathroom she asked if she could borrow a shower cap, moisturizer, and some cleanser for her face. I didn’t know whether Charlie had introduced beauty products early, or if all eight-year-olds now required a separate facial cleanser, but I was able to locate all of these items. I handed them to her along with her towel.