The Thing About Leftovers (16 page)

Mom was the first one
to leave the house on Friday morning because she had an important breakfast meeting downtown. She couldn't be late, she told Keene and me so many times that I was tempted to ask,
You don't think
we
make you late, do you?
But I didn't want to start a conversation that might make Mom late.

As usual, once she was gone, the house felt tense and uncomfortable, so I tried to be especially fast to get out of there. But I couldn't find my shoes. I tiptoed around, looking everywhere. I'd just opened the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink, where Mom had hidden my shoes once before, when Keene cornered me.

“If you're looking for the shoes you wore yesterday, they're gone,” he said.

“Gone?” I repeated.

Keene nodded. “From now on, any shoes that aren't put away are mine.”

“You took my shoes?”

“No, I found them—finders keepers,” he said casually, like he was just sharing the weather report.

“I'm sorry . . . I forgot . . . I . . . I was tired and . . . I just forgot,” I stammered. It was only then that I remembered leaving my shoes in the bathroom sink.

Keene nodded like he understood, but he didn't move to get my shoes. “You wouldn't want to wear them anyway—they're dirty.” He made a face.

Since I don't have a Lush Valley
collection
of shoes, but only a few pairs, losing one was a big deal to me. Losing a pair to Keene—for the sake of sheer meanness!—was an even bigger deal to me. But I decided to take it up with Mom later.

I said nothing more to Keene, just trudged back upstairs and put on my old moccasins. But before I left my room, I stopped to add to Keene's Dislike List:

18) Steals shoes—that don't even fit him!—just to be mean!!!

That made me feel a little better.

Keene was pouring coffee into a travel mug when I came back downstairs. “Do you need a ride?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said, and then I was out the door, thinking,
Take that!
No “sir” and no ride!
I thought I was punishing Keene, but it didn't take me long to figure out that I was the one I'd actually punished: I mean, I was the one who had to walk, and I was the one who was now going to be late. To school. Again.
Note to self: Punishing others by not allowing them to help you isn't a good punishment—for them.

I hurried past Zach's house, knowing he was long gone. And
all the while, I wondered if Mr. Moss would let me into science class or send me down to Mrs. Warsaw's office for a tardy slip. I figured the latter was more likely. Then I had an idea.

• • •

As soon as I got to school, I went straight to Mrs. Sloan's office, paused, and knocked on the open door. When she looked up, I said, “How's Judas?”

Mrs. Sloan's face went from smiling to confused, and then a light went on behind her eyes. “Oh yes, my cat. He's fine, Fizzy. Thank you,” she said. “Do you need a tardy slip this morning?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I admitted sheepishly.

Mrs. Sloan nodded. “Well, come in and sit down for a minute while I look for my pen and pad.”

I sighed, stepped into her office, and closed the door behind me. I dumped my backpack on the floor and dropped into a chair at the little worktable.

Mrs. Sloan got up and moved books and piles and files around on her messy desk until she found her pink tardy slip pad. She held it up as if to say,
Ta-da!

I nodded and said, “Um, there's a pen in your hair.”

Mrs. Sloan felt around in there and wrestled the pen from her curly hair with an aha! She brought the pen and pad with her when she sat down at the table with me, but she didn't do anything with them—like write me a tardy slip. Instead, she set them off to the side.

I knew the questions were coming, so before she could ask any, I asked one of my own: “Do you ever have overnight guests?”

Mrs. Sloan laced her hands together on the table. “Yes.”

“Do you ever wish they'd go home? Like maybe you don't want to make your bed? Or maybe you want to leave your dishes in the sink and stay in your pajamas all day? Or maybe you want to kick off your shoes and leave them right by the front door?”

“Sure.”

“Well, that's how it is when your parents get remarried,” I informed her. “You want your stepparents to go home after a while, or you want to go home, but nobody ever gets to go home again.”

Mrs. Sloan didn't react, didn't say a word, and didn't move a muscle, but something in her eyes hardened.

I thought maybe she didn't understand. “It's sort of like you've adopted a guest, because you have to be on your very best behavior . . . forever. But actually,
you
are the guest.”

Mrs. Sloan unlaced her hands, placed them on the table, and leaned forward just a little. “What makes you the guest, Fizzy?”

“I'm a kid,” I said, shrugging one shoulder. “I don't have a job or a house of my own. So I'm counting on somebody else to let me stay in their house, somebody who doesn't
have
to let me stay if they don't want to.”

“And by ‘somebody,' you mean your stepparents,” Mrs. Sloan said.

“Right.”

“What about your parents?” Mrs. Sloan asked. “Have you tried discussing this with them?”

I gave her a look like that was just about the dumbest idea I'd ever heard. “
No, ma'am.
”

“Why not?”

“Because that wouldn't be polite—it would probably hurt their feelings. My parents
chose
my stepparents—they love them.”

Mrs. Sloan leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Don't you think your parents love you, too?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“If they care about your feelings anywhere near as much as you care about theirs, then I think you should talk to them. There are more important things in life than manners, Fizzy.”

I stared at her. “You're not from around here, are you?”

Mrs. Sloan laughed and reached for her pen and pad. She wrote me a tardy slip, but before she handed it to me, she looked me deep in the eyes and said, “I'm so glad that we're becoming friends, Fizzy.”

• • •

As soon as she saw me through the little window, Miyoko jumped up from her desk and ran to open the door, before Mr. Moss even knew what was happening.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

Miyoko smiled and we both hurried to our seats, me tossing my tardy slip on Mr. Moss's desk on the way.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moss continued with his lesson, barely casting a glance in my direction.

Safe,
I thought, and I let my guard down a little.

That was a mistake, because when the lesson was over,
before he sat down at his desk, Mr. Moss turned to glower at me as he said, “Miss Russo, there are exactly eight days of school remaining, and I'd appreciate it if you were on time for every single one of them.”

I felt my cheeks heat up and tired-tears spring to my eyes as I nodded.
Don't cry,
I told myself.
The worst is over. The day can only get better from here.

But I was wrong. That afternoon, my locker jammed between gym and math class—and I couldn't go to math without my math book. I just couldn't. So I had to go down to the office, where they paged the school janitor. By the time I finally got my book and made it to Mrs. Ludwig's room, class was halfway over. The lesson was finished and everybody, including Mrs. Ludwig, was working quietly at their desks.

Both Miyoko and Zach looked up and smiled when they saw me.

I smiled back.

But Mrs. Ludwig didn't smile. She gave me a disapproving look over the top of her glasses and held out one hand.

I gave her my—
excused
—tardy slip.

She looked it over, unimpressed, set it aside, wrote on a notepad,
Page 265, section A, problems 1–30,
tore the paper free, and handed it to me, all without uttering a single word.

I settled at my desk, turned to page 265 in my math book . . . and had no idea how to do the problems on that page. I flipped backward, read the lesson, and stared at the example, trying to figure it out. But I couldn't.

Then I looked around the room, trying to tell if anybody
else was having trouble, but everyone was working steadily. No one looked lost. Like me.

“Keep your eyes on your own paper, Fizzy Russo,” Mrs. Ludwig said.

My heart kicked and began to race. “Oh no . . . I wasn't . . . I . . . just don't know how to do these problems.”

“Is that so?” Mrs. Ludwig said sarcastically, like
What a shocker.

I gulped and nodded.

“Then perhaps you'll be on time for our lesson tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

Mrs. Ludwig went back to grading papers.

Nope, she still doesn't like me,
I thought, feeling disappointed somehow.

Christine Cash took her paper up to Mrs. Ludwig and they did some whispering. Then Christine went back to her desk, got her chair, and moved it next to Mrs. Ludwig's at her desk, where they continued working together.

I wanted to move my chair up there, too, and have Mrs. Ludwig whisper math secrets to me. But since I obviously wasn't welcome, I stayed where I was, staring at my math book, willing understanding to jump off the pages and into my brain. But it didn't. So, after that, I just sat there trying not to cry, because getting a B on an assignment is one thing, but an F? I mean, at least a B says,
Hey, I tried.
Whereas an F is so far from perfect, it pretty much says,
Who cares? Not me.
How could I defend an F? Just the thought of trying made me feel sick.

When the bell rang, I got out of there as fast as I could. When I neared Mrs. Sloan's office, she came farther out into the hall to meet me, putting her warm, plump arm around me, and saying, “Come on, Fizzy. Come with me.”

I shook my head and whispered, “That's okay. I'm fine.”

“Please. Come,” Mrs. Sloan insisted.

I slumped into my usual chair at the worktable as Mrs. Sloan closed the door. “It looks like you might be having a tough day.”

“I'm okay,” I said, even as my chin quivered and tears rushed to my eyes.

“Did something happen in Mrs. Ludwig's room?” Mrs. Sloan guessed.

My head snapped up. “Why? Did she say something about me?”

Mrs. Sloan smiled. “No, but I just saw you come from her room.”

“It's not Mrs. Ludwig,” I said as Mrs. Sloan sat down with me. “I mean, she's not helping, but she's not the real problem.”

“What's ‘the real problem'?”

I didn't answer.

After a minute or so, Mrs. Sloan nodded as if I'd spoken. Then she said, “I've given your words this morning a lot of thought, Fizzy, and I want you to know I understand.”

“You couldn't,” I said, “not really.”

Mrs. Sloan folded her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, and said, “My mother died when I was a young girl and my father remarried rather quickly. It was . . . difficult.”

I was so relieved to hear this, to know that someone—anyone—understood, that the tears spilled out over my eyelashes and down my cheeks. But I ignored them and asked, “Did it ever get easier?”

“Not for a long time,” Mrs. Sloan answered honestly, “but yes, it did get easier. And better.”

I wiped my cheeks with my hands and then wiped my hands on my jeans. “When?”

“For me, things got easier slowly as I came to know my stepmother, as I learned what was important to her and what wasn't, what she wanted from me and what she didn't. But even then, things were still often tense between us. Until I moved out of the house.”

“What happened then?”

Mrs. Sloan smiled. “We missed each other. I think we were both surprised by this. I know
I
was surprised. And then I realized that at some point, when I was no longer expecting it or hoping for it, my stepmother and I had become family.”

“That's never going to happen with my stepfather and me.”

“Maybe not. But just because you feel that way doesn't mean it won't happen—I never thought it would happen either.”

“You don't understand,” I said. “He doesn't
want
me.”

“Do you want him?”

I lowered my eyes. “No, ma'am.”

Mrs. Sloan was quiet for such a long time that I had to look up at her to make sure she was still awake.

She was. “I like your necklace,” she said.

I touched the tiny cross in the hollow of my neck. “Thank you.”

Mrs. Sloan leaned over the table like she was about to tell me a secret. “My stepmother and I didn't want each other either. But, thankfully, sometimes God blesses us with people we never asked for or wanted—because He knows we need them, even if we don't.”

“I don't need my stepfather,” I insisted.

“I didn't think I needed my stepmother either, but I did, Fizzy. In so many ways. And even if you really don't need your stepfather now, that doesn't mean you won't need him later.”

“I won't,” I said. “I really won't.”

“What if your children need him? Fizzy, my stepmother was the only grandmother my children ever had. They adored her. And she adored them because they were the only grandchildren she ever had.”

“But he took my shoes!” was all I could think to say.

The first thing
I saw when I walked in the door at Dad's was a huge portrait of the four of us hanging above the fireplace. It wasn't a great picture of me, but I loved it anyway. I loved it because the four of us, in that picture, in that moment looked . . . like a family.

“Like it?” Dad asked.

“I love it,” I said.

“I love it, too,” Suzanne said, coming up behind us with Baby Robert in her arms.

We all stood looking at the portrait and I noticed we felt like family.
I
felt like family, standing there with them. I remembered what Mrs. Sloan had said then and thought maybe she was right. Maybe it was happening. Maybe we were becoming a family!

I was happy for the rest of the night. Happy even though meat loaf showed up on the dinner table, happy even though I came in dead last at a game of Scrabble—I was distracted by Baby Robert's cuteness. Just
happy
.

It didn't even bother me when Suzanne brought the pictures of me alone to my room to show me. They were good pictures—except for all the freckles—and I knew Mom would love them.

• • •

I was in bed watching my little TV when Baby Robert started crying. I turned the volume up and watched two more shows. That's how I knew that Baby Robert had been screaming for more than an hour, and that's when I started to think maybe I could help—I could try singing Miyoko's lullaby, “Nenneko yo.”

I got out of bed and followed the dreadful sound down the hallway to Dad and Suzanne's bedroom. The door was closed, so I knocked and waited. Nothing. I thought maybe they couldn't hear me over all the wailing, so I knocked again, louder.

The bedroom door flew open and Suzanne stood before me with Baby Robert in her arms. She didn't exactly look happy to see me.

“What?” Suzanne barked over Baby Robert's yowling.

“I heard the baby . . . ,” I said, looking past her, hoping Dad was in there and that he'd come to my rescue. But I didn't see him. What I
did
see was another picture, a little smaller than the one over the fireplace, only this one had just the three of them in it. The homesickness spread through my belly like an egg that had been cracked open.

“
What?
” Suzanne repeated.

I swallowed. “Nothing.”

As I started to turn away, the door practically closed in my face.

• • •

I found Dad downstairs in the kitchen, warming up a baby bottle.

“I'm calling Mom,” I announced. “I want to go home. I'm
going
home.”

I think Dad would've looked exactly the same if I'd hauled off and kicked him in the shin—surprised, confused, and very unhappy.

I picked up the phone.

“Wait,” Dad said. “What happ—”

“Robert!” Suzanne yelled from upstairs.

“Coming!” Dad answered, testing the bottle on his wrist. “Wait,” he said to me on his way out of the kitchen. “
Just wait.
”

Mom didn't answer the phone at home, so I called her cell.

• • •

By the time Dad came back downstairs looking for me, I was dressed, packed, and watching out the front window for Mom's car. A flash of lightning lit up the night sky.

“Fizzy,” Dad started just as Keene's car pulled to the curb. Why did that car always make me feel so
disappointed
—and nervous?

Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Mom's here,” I said, avoiding Dad's eyes. “I've got to go.”

Before Dad could say anything more, I was out the door and running as fast as my legs—and suitcase—would go. Wind rustled through the trees as the storm approached.

Keene sat in the driver's seat. Mom was beside him. They were both dressed up, like maybe they'd been somewhere fancy when I called. Before I even got in the car, I could tell that Keene was mad.

He didn't want to come and get me,
I realized. For a second, I
thought about going back inside Dad's house, but then I knew Dad and Suzanne didn't want me either.

I wondered,
What does it say about you when even your own family doesn't want you anymore?
I felt sure it indicated that there's something seriously, severely wrong with you. With
me
.

Even though I was trying my hardest to be perfect.

But since they'd stopped what they were doing and come all this way, and since big raindrops were starting to splatter down on me, I went ahead and got in the car with Keene and Mom.

Mom turned around in her seat and said softly, “Fizzy, honey,” and that was all it took.

I burst into tears. I don't know why Mom has this effect on me, but she does. Once, when I was eight, I wrecked my bike near Olivia's house, skinning my thigh. But I didn't cry. Instead, I hopped right up and told everyone I was fine. When Olivia's mom said that my leg was in bad shape and she needed to call my parents, I was a little scared, but still, I didn't cry. When Dad showed up to get me, I didn't cry then either. But as soon as I walked through the back door and saw my mom, I fell to pieces. “She was fine a minute ago,” Dad kept saying, like I was faking or something. I barely had any skin left on my thigh; I wasn't faking.

Anyway, once I started crying, I couldn't stop. I cried so hard and loud that eventually Mom stopped trying to talk to me, and instead just reached into the backseat and put her hand on my knee. Rain began pounding the windshield. I did that kind of crying where you make weird sounds that you never make otherwise and you can barely breathe.

By the time we got home, I could tell the anger had sort of melted off Keene. Now he just looked . . . uncomfortable.

It didn't make any difference to me. I kept right on blubbering as Mom hurried me into the house. My teeth chattered violently. I felt cold and wet right down to my bones. My body felt heavy, my head pounded, and my stomach sloshed around like an out-of-control Tilt-A-Whirl. I felt more homesick—for a place, a time, a family that didn't exist anymore—than I ever had in my life.

Mom took me upstairs, helped me out of my rain-soaked clothes and into my pajamas, tucked me into bed, and sat down beside me. Then she brushed my hair with her fingertips and said over and over, “It's going to be all right,” until I started to calm down.

But even after I stopped crying, I couldn't get hold of myself. My breathing was still funny—like hiccups or something, only not hiccups—and I kept shuddering.

“You're awfully warm,” Mom said then. “Do you feel all right?”

I opened my mouth—to say that I was fine—and promptly vomited all over my bed.

“Keene!” Mom shouted. “Keene!”

I blindly reached out, caught Mom's arm, and squeezed as I continued retching. I wanted to say,
No, don't let him see me like this!
Only I couldn't say anything at the moment.

Mom must've misunderstood the arm squeeze, because she responded by pulling my hair back and holding it.

I saw Keene's polished, black-tassel loafers step into my
room. But as soon as he'd had a few seconds to take in the scene, his shoes turned and carried him away—quick. I didn't blame them—or him.

“Keene!” Mom called sharply.

Keene's shoes reappeared in the doorway.

I raised up and wiped my mouth on my hand.

Mom let go of my hair and placed a strong arm around me. Then she said to Keene, “I need you to strip this bed while I get her into the shower.”

Keene didn't look like he wanted to, but he didn't argue.

Mom was sitting on the toilet lid in the bathroom, waiting for me, when I stepped out of the shower. She handed me a towel and said, “I've put fresh sheets and another blanket on your bed.”

“Thank you. I . . . I'm sorry,” I said.

“It's all right,” Mom assured me.

When I was back in bed, she said, “Now then. We'll talk in the morning—it'll all look better in the morning, you'll see.”

I nodded obediently. I knew Mom was wrong, but she was trying so hard.

“Sleep now,” Mom said. “Just sleep.”

I was listening to the rain, about to drift off to sleep, when I heard the phone ring. Somehow, I knew it was Dad calling. I felt like I should get up and tell him how sorry I was—for everything—but I was too tired to move. Mom's words echoed in my throbby head:
Sleep now. Just sleep.