Suddenly, Kathy’s words from Principal Schwartz’s office ring in my ears: She’ll beat this disease. Eve’s a fighter.
I am a child. I know nothing about anything. And even less about everything.
Walt raps on the passenger-side window, grinning like a maniac, pressing the Reds program against the glass.
“Look!” he yells. “Just like your stick figure book!”
In something reminiscent of a preschooler’s homework, Walt has drawn the most glorious stick figure diagram in the history of stick figures, or diagrams, or basically anything ever. It’s a thousand times better than my “stick figure book.” Not one bit anemic. Three figures stand in front of explosive fireworks. Each one has multiple arrows pointing to various objects on, or around, their bodies. The figure on the left is taller than the others. He’s standing next to a truck, and has something draped around his neck. Above his head, written in all caps, it says MY FRIND BEK. Little arrows indicate the truck is UNKLE FILL, and the object around his neck is CAMRA. The figure on the right has giant muscles. Above his head, it says WALTER. An oblong object in his right hand is labeled MOWNTAN DO, and a square in his left hand is marked COLOURFUL CUBE. The figure in the middle is me. Above my head, it says MY FRIND MIM. I have crazy big shoes, labeled SHOOS (X-TRA STRAPS). I’m wearing sunglasses, labeled accordingly, and a backpack, labeled BAKPAK. On the ground next to me, there’s a stick labeled MIM’S SHINY—my lipstick.
We’re holding hands, smiling from stick ear to stick ear.
I read once that the Greek language has four words for the word love, depending on the context. But as I step out of the PT Cruiser and tumble into Walt’s perfectly huggable arms, I think the Greeks got it wrong. Because my love for Walt is something new, unnamed, something crazy-wild, youthful, and enthusiastic. And while I don’t know what this new love has to offer, I do know what it demands: grateful tears.
I cry hard.
Then harder.
Then hardest.
Behind me, Beck’s voice is a salve. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Beck, and we tell each other stuff.”
I pull back from Walt, wipe my eyes. “What?”
“Umm. Hello? She’s pregnant?”
I grip my backpack, and tilt my head, and—damn it, there’s my cute face again. It will be my undoing. “Oh yeah. That.”
“Oh. Yeah. That. Mim, that is pertinent fucking info. Also, it explains a lot.”
“Such as?”
He looks up at the top of the mansion’s high stairs, where Kathy has just walked through the double-door entrance. “Such as a certain disdain for a certain stepmother, for which a certain someone snapped at a certain someone else when that certain someone else brought it up in the back of a certain truck. You know of which certain instance I’m referring to, certainly?”
I hold back a smile. “You know—I think my best course of action is to just let the ridiculousness of that sentence marinate.”
He throws one arm around me, one around Walt, and leads the way toward the stairs. It’s a communal walk, full of life, love, and the pursuit of Young Fun Now. I am—north to south, east to west—globally slain.
“So you like the drawing, Mim?” Walt asks, cradling the program like a newborn.
Beck leans into my ear. “He worked on it the whole way over here. Kid was beyond pumped to show you.”
This Walt-Mim-Beck mobile sandwich makes me wonder if there’s some kind of reverse Siamese twin operation. Or . . . triplets, as it were. “Walt, it’s an absolute masterpiece. I love it. Every twiggy inch.”
We’re forced to let go of each other, as simultaneous stair-climbing is basically impossible, not at all conducive to Siamese triplets.
“So,” says Beck. “Brother or sister?”
I don’t answer at first. I can’t. I’ve written the word, probably said it hundreds of times in other contexts. But never out loud, as it applied to me. I look Beck in the eye, and say it. “Sister.”
“Nice. They have a name picked out?”
“Isabel.”
Beck stops three steps short of the landing. I look back at him, and see something lighter than a shadow pass over his eyes. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Uh-uh. Out with it, Van Buren.”
He takes one more step, pauses, runs his hand through his hair. “Last night, at the hotel—you may have mentioned her name.”
“What?” I look to Walt, as if he might offer some assistance. And by assistance, I mean resuscitation. CPR. The Heimlich. Those electric pads that literally shock your life back into its skin. Walt has his head buried in the Reds program. Probably not the best candidate for electric shock, come to think of it. “When?”
“During your . . . I don’t know what to call it . . . episode?”
Sometimes my brain hurts. Not a headache. A brainache. Chalk it up as just another in a long line of Mim’s medical mysteries, but right now, my brain hurts like hell. I take the last three steps, imagining my blackout and the host of private thoughts I might have announced: internal monologues, theories meant for no one but me, words that put the utterance of my unborn sister’s name to shame.
And then Beck’s hand is in mine, and my brainache subsides. (In place of the pain, curtains rise on a lavish Broadway song and dance, Rodgers and Hammerstein in their prime.)
At the top of the stairs, we are greeted by a rainbow-colored sign next to the entrance.