The List of Things That Will Not Change Read online

  “Bea, you have a fever. You should be resting.” This was at the beginning of fifth grade, when I was ten. Right after Jesse moved in with Dad and me.

  “Mom!” I was breathing hard from dancing.

  “What?”

  “Privacy?”

  She made a face. That’s what Mom thinks of privacy.

  “Dad just called,” Mom said. “Sheila’s on her way.”

  This is all part of the story about the sound of corn growing. Believe it or not.

  * * *

  —

  I’d stayed home sick, so my babysitter, Sheila, was picking me up from Mom’s apartment, instead of at school. Sheila picked me up on my “Dad days”—Mondays and Wednesdays and every other Friday. She also used to clean Dad’s apartment. And she walked our dog, Rocco.

  On Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other Friday, Mom picked me up at school. Mom cleans our apartment herself because she doesn’t believe in paying someone else to pick up your mess. Or your dog’s.

  Dad doesn’t believe in ten-year-olds going to PG-13 movies, and Mom doesn’t believe in cereal with more than three grams of sugar per serving. Dad doesn’t believe in curse words, and Mom doesn’t believe in going to school with a temperature above 98.6.

  Dad thinks anything below 100 is fine.

  Mom doesn’t believe in wasting money, but Dad says it’s fine to splurge once in a while. When he bought me a puffy purple swivel chair for my room at his apartment, Mom muttered about it, and I went online and found out it cost almost 200 dollars, and after that I felt weird.

  Dad believes in allowance for chores. Mom believes in free allowance and doing chores for nothing. But Dad’s allowance is a dollar higher. Confused? Welcome to my life.

  Sometimes when I’m dancing at Dad’s with the door locked tight, I slam myself into that puffy purple swivel chair and just spin. Everything is a blur, and my feet kick off the floor, shooting me around, and around, and around.

  At Mom’s, I do my spinning on my feet, with my arms stretched out.

  * * *

  —

  The doorbell rang, and I heard Mom let Sheila in. My temperature was only 99.3. Even after a lot of dancing, I couldn’t get it up to Dad-sick, so I knew I was going to school the next day. Thursday. Spelling-test day. I looked on my desk for my word sheet.

  I picked up my backpack and started throwing stuff in: word sheet, math workbook, planner, colonial-breakfast folder (with butter recipe), and the only barrette I had that actually stayed in my hair. Most of them fall straight down.

  Sheila knocked on my bedroom door, and I yelled “Come!” which is what Captain Picard always says on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sheila and I used to watch that show together at Dad’s. (Eventually, we streamed all seven seasons. That’s a lot of Star Trek.)

  Anyone would like Sheila—she has pink glasses and big hair, and she wears a lot of bracelets. And cowboy boots, even in summertime.

  “You’re sick?” Sheila said.

  “Mom-sick.”

  She nodded. Sheila got it, even though her parents were never divorced. They stayed married until they died.

  “Got your medicine?” Sheila said.

  “Yep.” I patted my bag.

  “Shall I set a course for Ninety-Ninth Street, Captain?”

  I tugged down the front of my shirt with both hands. “Make it so!”

  Sheila was the one who noticed that Captain Picard was always tugging on his uniform, pulling it down in front like he was trying to cover his stomach. She heard the actor being interviewed on TV, and he said it was because they made the costumes a little too short.

  I hugged Mom goodbye.

  “I’ll see you after school tomorrow,” she said, squeezing me. My face was mushed against her, so one ear heard the regular way, and the other one heard through her body. When we let go, I saw her see the rash on my neck, which itched.

  “Got your medicine?”

  “Yes!” I hated being asked things twice. Even by two different people.

  “Don’t shout at me, Bea.”

  “I’m not.”

  And Sheila said, “Let’s go, Captain.”

  * * *

  —

  The medicine is for my skin. I have eczema, which you probably haven’t heard of. Eczema is where your skin itches in a lot of different places, and when you scratch, you get these sore, rashy patches that people look at and wonder if they’re catching. Sometimes people ask if they’re catching, which is better than whispering about it.

  Eczema is not something that you get for a week and then it goes away, like a cold. It’s something you have until maybe you grow out of it, like my cousin Angelica’s stutter. Also, eczema hurts.

  At Dad’s, Sheila and I walked Rocco and made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. We were about to start an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when Dad came home.

  “You’re early!” I told him. Because he doesn’t usually get back from the restaurant until later.

  Dad came right over to the couch and put his palm flat on my forehead like he was checking for a fever. I waited. Sheila waited. We both knew what he was going to do.

  When he took his hand away, he pressed it against his own forehead and looked shocked. “Oh no,” he said. “I think I have a fever!”

  “Dad!”

  He kicked off his shoes. “Kidding. But you don’t seem hot. Tomorrow’s Thursday. Did you guys do spelling?”

  Sheila nodded. “I quizzed her.”

  She did quiz me. I didn’t get all the words right, even the third time, but she quizzed me.

  “Great.” Sometimes Sheila hung out with me and Dad until Jesse got home. But that night she blew me a kiss and left.

  * * *

  —

  In fifth grade, I had a spelling test every Thursday. My teacher, Mr. Home, was a good teacher. Mom said his head was on right. Mom remembers all the teachers she’s ever had, starting in first grade. She especially remembers the one who told her she didn’t have “a mind for math.” Mom became a math teacher. Now she teaches other teachers how to teach math.

  But even Mr. Home made mistakes. For one thing, he always called my best friend Angus “College Boy,” which Angus hated. For another thing, Mr. Home had lunch parties for spelling experts. If you were not a spelling expert, you were not invited.

  On the last Friday of every month, Mr. Home invited every kid who got a ten-out-of-ten on all of that month’s spelling tests to eat lunch in our classroom instead of the lunchroom. They played the radio, Angus told me, but I wouldn’t know about that because I have never gotten a ten-out-of-ten on even one spelling test. I told Mom I didn’t have “a mind for spelling,” but she looked mad and said that I should never say what my mind is not for.

  At the beginning of that year, Mom bought these cards that we looked at together, with the rules of spelling on them, like When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. That means when two vowels are right next to each other, you usually say them like the first vowel.

  But after I spelled relief r-e-l-e-i-f and got another seven-out-of-ten, I told Mom to forget me ever looking at those cards again.

  I thought Mr. Home should let everyone listen to the radio and eat lunch in the classroom on the last Friday of every month. I had written him a long letter about it, in the lunchroom, while everyone was having their first spelling party in September. But it had some bad words, and I didn’t give it to him.

  * * *

  —

  After Sheila left, Dad and I watched Star Trek.

  Then Angus called.

  “Are you better now?” Angus hated it when I wasn’t in school. We’d been in the same class every year since kindergarten, and he had never missed a day.

  “I’m probably better,” I said.

&nbs
p; “Good.” He still sounded annoyed. I smiled.

  “We just watched a really good Star Trek,” I told him. “Captain Picard gets hit by this light beam from a mysterious probe, and it magically transports him to a little planet. He gets totally stuck there. No one from his ship ever comes to get him, and there’s no way to get off the planet. After a while, he just has to deal with it. Luckily, it’s a really good planet to be on. Everyone is nice. He has this great life there. He’s married, and he has kids, and then he gets old and everything. And he learns to play the flute.”

  “The flute?”

  “Yeah. But in the end, Captain Picard finds out that he was never on that planet at all. The whole thing was happening in his mind. The light beam had some kind of brain virus inside it. The people on the planet made the probe and sent it into space because their world was about to explode, and they wanted someone in the universe to know who they were. The planet was already gone. But in his head, Captain Picard lived there for half his life. He had grandchildren!”

  “So he was on his ship the whole time?” Angus said. “Let me guess—for Captain Picard, in his head, decades went by, but in real life it was only like ten minutes.”

  Angus really is smart enough to go to college.

  “Yes!” I said. “He wakes up on the ship and he’s in complete shock. When they investigate the probe that hit him with the light beam, all they find is a little box, and inside is a flute. The very end of the episode is Captain Picard, alone, playing the flute while he looks out into space. Missing everyone he thought he knew.”

  “Wow,” Angus said. “That kind of makes me want to cry.”

  “Yeah.” I did cry. So you can see why Angus is my best friend.

  “See you tomorrow.” Angus waited, and then said, “Right?”

  “Right.” I was still thinking about how Captain Picard’s brain had grandchildren and learned to play that flute in ten minutes.

  It turned out I was lying about seeing Angus at school the next day, but I didn’t know it at the time.

  * * *

  —

  After I hung up, Dad sang “Happy Birthday” twice while I brushed my teeth. It wasn’t my birthday, but he likes to do that because once, a long time ago, the dentist told me that I should always brush for two rounds of “Happy Birthday,” and I told the dentist that it’s impossible to sing and brush your teeth at the same time. Dad laughed really hard.

  When I was in bed, Dad sat in my purple chair and rolled himself over to me.

  “Bea,” he said. “I have something to tell you. I hope it’ll feel like good news.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Jesse and I are going to get married.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “What do you think? I wanted to tell you before he gets home, so you can say whatever you feel like saying.”

  I had known Dad’s boyfriend Jesse for two years already, and he had been living with us for a couple of months. I loved Jesse. But I’d never thought about my dad being married to Jesse. Or anyone, except my mom.

  After a minute, I said, “It’s good, I think. I never want Jesse to leave.”

  Dad held my hand. “I don’t, either, Bea.”

  After Dad said good night, I went to my backpack and got out my green spiral notebook. The edges of the pages were all curled and dirty. I still carried it everywhere, but I hadn’t looked at my list in a long time.

  THINGS THAT WILL NOT CHANGE:

  1. Mom loves you more than anything, always.

  2. Dad loves you more than anything, always.

  3. Mom and Dad love each other, but in a different way.

  4. You will always have a home with each of us.

  5. Your homes will never be far apart.

  6. We are still a family, but in a different way.

  At the bottom of the list, I added:

  23. Jesse is staying.

  I got back into bed, not sleepy. After a minute, I jumped up again, leaned into the hallway, and yelled, “Dad! Are we having a wedding?”

  And Dad yelled back, “You bet we are!”

  In the beginning, it was hard for me to sleep at Dad’s new apartment. I had only lived in one place before. Now it was: Different room. Different bed. Different sounds. No Mom.

  Dad bought plants for every window and painted a new rainbow on the wall above my new bed. He bought my little orange couch (for sleepovers), and my puffy purple chair, and my red rug. He bought me new sheets, a new comforter, and two new pillows. He read to me every night.

  But at Dad’s, I woke up a lot. Sometimes it was my eczema itching. Eczema feels worse at night. But sometimes it wasn’t the eczema, and I didn’t know what it was. I’d get up and stand in the hall outside Dad’s bedroom, holding my pillows and listening to him snore. I liked his snoring. After a while, I’d go in, find the rolled-up sleeping bag under Dad’s bed, and spread it out on the floor. I liked the shadows on the ceiling of Dad’s room. As soon as I saw those shadows, I felt all right.

  That happened a lot of nights. He always left that sleeping bag under his bed so I’d know where to find it. Those first months at Dad’s, it was like I had to build a hundred bridges, from me to every new piece of furniture, every new lamp, every new fork, even the bathroom faucets and the lock on the door, until, slowly, all of Dad’s new things stopped feeling wrong.

  Jesse moved in with us two years later, at the beginning of fifth grade, right before Dad told me about them getting married. The things Jesse brought never felt wrong. They felt like presents.

  Jesse brought three old movie posters, a radio, his big blue coffee mug, and an old-fashioned telephone—the kind you dial by sticking your finger in a hole and dragging it. And he also brought his big sister, Sheila, who had already been my babysitter for two years. Sheila didn’t actually live with us, but once Jesse moved in, she came over a lot. (She still does.) Jesse likes to say that Sheila is a true Southern lady, and every time he does, she winks at me. They grew up in Arkansas, so I guess that means they’re both Southern.

  Jesse wakes up early. He usually has the radio on when I walk into the kitchen. By the time Dad wakes up, Jesse and I are already eating our double-toast. That’s what Jesse calls toast that’s buttered on both sides.

  Jesse knows it’s critical to bring a dessert with your school lunch, even if it’s just one little cookie wrapped in a napkin. And he agrees with Mom about not having other people clean up your mess. After he moved in, Sheila stopped cleaning Dad’s apartment, and Jesse made us a job wheel for chores, just like the one my all-time favorite teacher, Ms. Adams, had on the wall in second grade. Jesse made one job be “lick floor under table,” and that job is always Rocco’s.

  He loves walking Rocco. Rocco made at least four new dog-park friends the first month Jesse lived with us. I can’t even imagine a person (or a dog) who wouldn’t want Jesse around.

  I’m too old for a babysitter now, but Sheila is still at our place all the time. She says she comes over just to sit on our couch and look at Jesse’s happiness. He was a happy kid, she says. But he was a worrier.

  I’m a worrier, too. So that makes me love Jesse even more.

  The night Dad told me about getting married to Jesse, my hand itched like crazy and woke me up. It was because of the ring Dad gave me for my tenth birthday that summer, silver with turquoise. My eczema gets bad around that ring.

  The apartment was dark, but I could make out Rocco curled up in the hallway between the two bedrooms. I stepped over him and went into the bathroom, where I closed one eye before flipping the light switch.

  I held my hand under the faucet and let water run between my fingers, the hotter the better. Hot water on my eczema is the best feeling in the world, like every itch I’ve ever had in my whole life is being scratched in exactly the right spot. But afterward my skin g
ets dry and itches even more than it did in the first place. And sometimes it bleeds. So I’m not actually supposed to run my hands under hot water. Ever. Mom and Dad say hot water is a “five-second solution” because it only solves the problem for five seconds before making it even worse.

  Sometimes those five seconds are hard to resist.

  Closing one eye is something Angus showed me. When I shut off the water and flipped the light switch, the bathroom went black. I felt my way into the hall, and I couldn’t see anything there, either. But then I opened that closed eye, and I could see. Rocco reappeared on the floor, and I stepped over him again. Angus says it works because that eye stays adjusted to the dark. The first time I tried it, it felt like magic.

  In the morning, my temperature was 99.0, and my hand was bleeding, just a little, but Dad noticed. He made me take off my turquoise ring and he got out my ointment while I argued about wanting my ring back.

  Jesse was sleeping late for once, so I left him a note that said Congratulations, Dad and Jesse!

  It had one cross-out because first I spelled it congradulations. And I drew some wedding things, like flowers and bells. Dad told me the wedding would probably be in May, so I wrote, MAY!

  “Does Mom know?” I said.

  Dad nodded. “Mom and I talked about it yesterday.”

  I didn’t ask what I wanted to, which was Is Mom sad?

  Dad answered anyway. “She’s okay with it, Bea. Really.”

  When I walked out of Dad’s building, I saw the back of Lizette Ford, halfway down the block toward school. Lizette and I got into a big fight in second grade after I sneaked into the coat closet and took a root beer from her lunch bag and put it in my lunch bag. I had told Ms. Adams I needed to get my ointment from my backpack because my elbow was itching, but the truth was that I couldn’t listen to Lizette bragging about her root beer for one more minute. To make her be quiet, I had announced that I happened to have a root beer in my lunch, too. And everyone believed me right away. But then I realized that if I didn’t show up with a root beer at lunch, they would all know I had lied. What I needed to do was get a can of root beer before lunchtime, and there was only one place I could think of to find one.