The Book of Unknown Americans(31)

She pulled out her notebook. “Say it again.”

I did, and she wrote it down.

“You liked that?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Can I see?” I held out my hand.

Without hesitation, she gave me her notebook. On the page that was open, she’d written, “Wet snow is hard. Light snow is soft.” Her handwriting was small and tight, and she pushed down so hard with the black pen she was using that she made indents on the paper. Everything was centered—one line at a time—down the middle of the page. At the top, way up in the margin, she had written her name and address. I kept reading.

Close the door behind you.

Mrs. Pacer is room 310.

My room is 312.

How much does the bus ride cost?

What is the name of the bus driver?

Look at the bus driver’s badge.

Crystal.

The school bus is free.

The city bus is not free.



I flipped back a few pages and read:

This is Newark, Delaware.

Delaware is 3,333 kilometers from home.

I feel the same today as I did yesterday.

I handed the notebook back to her. “What happened?” I asked.

“What?”

“Was it a car accident?”

“When?”

“Sorry. I mean, what happened to you?”

“I fell. I was on—” She stopped. “It’s long.”

“It’s a long story?”

She shook her head. “A long thing. Of wood.”

I racked my brain. “A bat?” I hated it when I didn’t know what she was getting at. I wanted to show her that I could follow her. I wanted to be the one person that it was easy for her to talk to.

“A ladder,” she said finally.

“Oh, a long thing made out of wood. Right. You were up on a ladder?”

“I broke two”—she held up two fingers—“of my ribs.”

“And you hit your head?”

She lifted a flap of hair and showed me a scar, pink and waxy like a gummy worm, behind her ear.

“Does it still hurt now? Like, can you sleep on it?”

“I get headaches.”

“So that’s what the sunglasses are for.”

“Yes.”

“Do you even remember it?”

“I was on the …”

“Ladder,” I filled in.

She nodded. “And then I was in the hospital. I don’t know where I went in between.”

“Well, someone must have taken you to the hospital.”

“I mean … I lost myself. In between.”

“Oh,” I said, and then I just sat there, because something about that idea—that you could be one person in one moment and then wake up and be completely different—punched me in the gut.

“You don’t ask me how I’m feeling,” Maribel said. “I hate it when people … ask me that.”

She’d told me that before, but I didn’t point it out. I just said, “It probably gets old, huh?”

“I want to be like everybody else.”

“Yeah,” I said, because I knew just what she meant. I’d spent my whole life feeling like that. Like everybody else was onto something that I couldn’t seem to find, that I didn’t even know existed. I wanted to figure it out, the secret to having the easy life that everyone else seemed to have, where they fit in and were good at everything they tried. Year after year, I waited for it all to fall into place—every September I told myself, This year will be different—but year after year, it was all just the same.

I didn’t say anything in response to Maribel that day. We moved on to another topic. But later that night, when I was lying in bed, I realized what I should have said, because for her at least it would have been the truth: “You shouldn’t want to be like everybody else. Then you wouldn’t be like you.”


ONE DAY I walked back from her place to find my dad sitting on the couch, watching television. He had his sweat-socked feet up on the coffee table and a bottle of beer in his hand. Usually he didn’t get home until later, so both of us were surprised to see each other.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He sat up, startled. “The diner closed early today. Not enough customers in the afternoons anymore. Aren’t you supposed to be at soccer?”

I tensed. “I was,” I said.

“You’re not wearing your soccer clothes.”

“Yeah.” I scrambled through excuses in my head. “My clothes were dirty, so I borrowed someone else’s stuff.”

“This is someone else’s? This? What you’re wearing?”

“Well, I had to give it back after practice, so I changed into my regular clothes again.”

“You gave dirty clothes back to someone?”

I nodded.

“Who?”

I said the first name I could think of. “Jamal Blair.”

My dad pushed out his lips. He was sitting on the couch, twisted to look at me. “I never heard that name.”

“He’s good. He’s a midfielder.”

My dad squinted like he was studying me with X-ray vision. I tried to stand as still as possible.