A Field Guide to Getting Lost, page 6
Sutton had almost finished assembling the pyramid part. There was something really satisfying about engineering—the results of her work were coming to life right in front of her. If the pieces didn’t fit together correctly, she could see it right away and try again with a different approach. “Who did you leave behind?”
“I had two older sisters who were already married, and they stayed with their new families. Some cousins are still there. My grandmother came over about a year after we did.”
Mrs. B looked very far away, but she and Sutton were both yanked back to the present when Moti leapt off the couch, skidded across the coffee table, and scattered the building plans on her way to the sliding door.
“Moti!” Sutton threw her body in front of the in-process cat condo before Moti could run straight through it.
Mrs. B chuckled. “Would you open the sliding door, dear? You know how Moti and Freckles refuse to be kept apart.”
Sure enough, there was Freckles on the other side of the glass, waiting patiently while Moti boinged in front of the door like she was on a trampoline. As soon as Sutton cracked the door open, Moti shot out onto the balcony, then herded Freckles inside.
Mrs. Banerjee reached for her phone. “I’ll let Mr. Wong know Freckles is here.” As Mrs. B texted, Sutton thought about a younger version of her neighbor saying goodbye to her father as he went off to a country she couldn’t even imagine. Maybe Mrs. B really did understand how she felt. And when Mrs. B was a teenager, there wouldn’t have been any Internet.
“How did you stay in contact with your dad and your brother? And your family in India once you were here? Because you couldn’t email, right? Or video chat, or…”
Mrs. Banerjee laughed. “Oh, we managed to get along in the dark ages before the Internet. But it was hard. We wrote letters—real ones, on paper, with stamps!—and they took a long time to travel across oceans. We made occasional phone calls, though they were very expensive and we paid by the minute, so they were always rushed. Ultimately, I guess, we relied on our memories, and our love, and the knowledge that we would be together again eventually.”
A few years ago, Sutton’s grandmother had given her some stationery—with penguins, of course—and Sutton had buried it in the back of her closet with the rest of the penguin junk people gave her. Who was she going to write a letter to, anyway? But maybe she would dig it out. She didn’t know how many stamps it would take for a letter to get to Antarctica. Probably so many they would cover the envelope.
“You look like you need some golden milk,” Mrs. Banerjee said.
Sutton left the cat condo half-built and went to sit next to her on the couch. “I think I need to learn how to make it,” she said. “Can you give me instructions from here? I’m super careful with the stove.”
Mrs. Banerjee put her arm around Sutton and held her close for a minute. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”
Sutton followed Mrs. B’s instructions step by step; cooking was basically science too. She warmed the milk and measured out the spices and drizzled the honey. She was slowly pouring the steaming yellow liquid into mugs when a knock at the door startled her. A few drops splattered onto the counter as Sutton’s dad poked his head in.
“How are my two favorite ladies?” he said. He was super sweaty from his run, and he had this goofy grin on his face that he’d had a lot lately, ever since he started dating Elizabeth.
And Sutton couldn’t help but wonder—was it true? Were she and Mrs. B still his two favorite ladies? After her dad came home early from that fancy date, he’d never made a big announcement. But he probably hadn’t had enough time to go through with whatever he was planning before Elizabeth’s son had his allergic reaction. Sutton had seen her dad with Elizabeth at the MoPOP, heads close together, hand gentle on the small of her back. She was definitely moving up the ranks of favorite ladies.
“We’re doing all right, dear,” Mrs. B said. “I don’t know how I’d get by without Sutton here.”
Maybe Mrs. B was only saying that. Or maybe she really needed her. But it was starting to seem like her dad was doing fine without her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Luis
The sniffling started before Luis even got home from the corner store.
He did his best to hide it from his mom as she hovered over him. She kept her hands in her pockets, and part of Luis wondered if she had an EpiPen lurking there in the folds of her skirt, in case she needed to jab him in the thigh with lifesaving medicine on a moment’s notice.
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said. And he was. It was only sniffles—he hoped. “I got my markers! I’m going to go work on my book, okay?”
They weren’t very good markers—his mom had been right about that. The convenience store had a terrible selection of art supplies. But that hadn’t really been the point. He’d gone on a (mini) quest and been successful! The ideas for Penelope’s next adventure were starting to flow. He’d gotten unstuck!
He sniffled and then froze, wishing he’d been able to control his nose until he’d reached his bedroom.
“Luis?”
Oh no. If she thought his quest had made him sick, his mom would never let him leave the house again. But all his writing inspiration was out there in the outside world. He couldn’t create something great and full of adventure if he was always stuck inside!
She came over and took his face in her hands. He tensed and prepared himself for all the reasons he could never leave the house alone again. Instead, she kissed him on the forehead. “You’re getting so grown up,” she said. “I’ll try not to get in the way too much. I just worry.”
Luis hugged her tight. Of course she worried. He worried too. But he was done letting it keep him from adventures—his own or Penelope’s.
The trouble was, before he could figure out how Penelope and her friends were going to expose their Alistair Academy foes’ newest dastardly plans, Luis was in full-blown immune-system freak-out. It wasn’t an emergency room situation. It was a tissues/allergy medicine/humidifier situation. But it was impossible to hide from his mom. Especially after he sneezed six times in a row.
“It might just be a cold,” he said when she appeared in his doorway, holding the fizzy vitamin C drink he downed by the gallon during cold-and-flu season. She pursed her lips; she didn’t believe that. Neither did he. But he took the drink and smiled like he believed.
It wasn’t enough. She crossed her arms and gave him The Look. The Look that meant you better get in bed right now, mister, or we will have words once the swelling has gone down enough for you to pay attention.
Luis took a gulp of the drink, then sank into his bed. His mom nodded like she’d won that battle and pulled his door mostly shut behind her. Not all the way shut, though. She would be listening.
It was funny—the first time Luis had a peanut reaction at school, his mom was ready to pull him out and move them to a completely sealed-off house in the middle of nowhere. Luis had argued—with help from his grandparents—that he loved school; and Queen Anne Hill; and their cozy, cluttered little house; and he could go to school and be safe if he was careful. He didn’t want to live in a bubble that kept him away from the world.
Sometimes he felt like he was trapped inside a bubble anyway—moving through the world, maybe, but not able to really reach out and touch anything. But Penelope Bell could. She was unstoppable.
Luis hopped from bed and reached for his notebook—new ideas were flowing and he had to get them on paper. He miscalculated a little, considering his fuzzy allergy brain, and crashed into his desk.
“Luis!” His mom was back in the doorway so quickly, Luis was almost sure she’d been camped out in the hallway. “Are you all right? What happened?”
Luis reached out to steady a stack of books threatening to topple over, then turned around slowly. “I wanted to work on my book?”
In an unfortunate bit of timing—all of it had been unfortunate, really—he then sneezed so hard that his knees buckled, and Mom hustled forward, shoving him into bed less gently than seemed reasonable if she thought he was so sick.
“You are staying in bed,” she said. “And I am going to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Then we are going to watch movies together for the rest of the day, do you understand me, Luisito?”
They wouldn’t really be grilled cheese sandwiches, though. The cheese-like ingredient would be made from rice milk. The gluten-free bread was basically cardboard.
But his mom was the real deal, and that was never going to change.
Once Luis heard her clanking around in the kitchen, he moved much more carefully and retrieved his notebook and his new pack of markers. The rice milk cheese took forever to melt, so he figured he had a good twenty minutes before the food was ready. That should be enough time to jot down all the ideas rocketing through his brain before she came back and made him rest.
* * *
“You have such an extraordinary imagination,” Luis’s mom said to him at bedtime, after he’d told her the latest in Penelope’s adventures. “You definitely get that from your dad, not me.”
Luis knew his dad had been an artist; one of his paintings even hung in the living room. But he wondered if he got his writing from his dad. “Did he tell stories?”
“Not like you do, but when we first met, he was always drawing comics. There’s a box of his sketchbooks around here somewhere. You remind me of him when you’re scribbling away in a notebook.” She kissed his forehead and turned out the light. “Sleep tight, love.”
Luis was exhausted. But even though he had been dozing off during the last movie of their marathon, suddenly he was wide-awake. His dad had been an artist. Not only that, but there were sketchbooks somewhere in the house.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sutton
After his shower the next morning, Sutton’s dad appeared in her bedroom doorway. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together like he was dreaming up some sort of wild, exciting plan. But really it was the same plan as every Sunday.
“Farmers’ market! Let’s roll, my favorite offspring!”
Sutton rolled her eyes, but she also sprang out the door ahead of her father. The South Lake Union Sunday Farmers’ Market was one of her favorite places, despite its location in the out-of-doors.
For one thing, the guy at the bakery booth always saved broken cookie pieces for her.
They stopped by Mrs. B’s apartment before they left to see if she needed anything. She was right where they’d left her, on the couch, with an ice pack on her knee.
“Why don’t you come stay with us for a few days?” Sutton’s dad said. “You can have my room, and I’ll crash on the couch. That way we can make sure you’re taken care of.”
“But then I’ll feel like a decrepit old lady,” she said, pulling Moti into her lap. “You are very sweet, Martin, but it’s not as serious as all that. You two go enjoy this glorious day! We haven’t had one like this in ages!”
“Oh, Seattle,” Sutton’s dad chuckled. “We’ve got to soak up every minute of sun, right?”
Sutton sighed on her way out the door. There was no point in telling her dad what she’d already told him a bunch of times. On average there were 152 sunny days per year in Seattle. More than 40 percent! And a whole bunch of cities got way more rain each year than Seattle, like Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Houston, and Miami! But when it was sunny in Miami, people probably didn’t shake their heads and say, “Gosh, we better go soak up that rare Miami sun!”
It was a short walk to the farmers’ market, where, rain or shine, the vendors set up their vegetables and fruits, plants and pastries. Botany wasn’t Sutton’s primary scientific interest, but she always enjoyed chatting with the farmers about how the weather had affected their crops, or how heirloom seeds produced a different sort of plant than hybrids, and what different fertilizers did to soil.
“Shall we divide and conquer?” her dad asked, looking over his list. “I get veggies, you get fruits, we meet at pastries?”
Sutton surveyed the maze of stands and walkways before them. She’d walked these aisles alone dozens of times. She would never get stuck like her bot, endlessly spinning around, unsure which way to turn. But something in her didn’t want to risk it.
She grabbed her dad’s hand. “Let’s stick together today.”
“Righty-o! A united front!”
It took three different stands to get all the veggies on the list. They were heading toward Sutton’s favorite plant vendor when a busker called out, “Hey, Martin!”
Sutton’s dad went to talk to the fiddler sitting on the sidewalk next to his open case, which held scattered coins and a few dollar bills. He looked sort of familiar, but her dad knew so many musicians around town that Sutton had no idea where this guy was from. She hung back, counting her money and figuring out if she had enough to buy the Orchidaceae plant she’d been saving up for.
She couldn’t ignore it when the fiddler waved his bow at her, though.
“Hey there! Sutton, right?”
She nodded and stepped closer to her dad.
“What instrument do you play?”
“The keyboard,” she said with a sly grin at her dad. It was their little joke. Whenever she was coding at the computer, she told him she was playing the keyboard, making her own kind of music.
“Awesome!” the fiddler said. “I bet you’re chock-full of talent. With a dad like yours, you’ve got to be musical!”
When her dad bid his friend goodbye (tossing a few bills in the case as he went), they headed toward Sutton’s favorite plant stand.
“I have enough to get the Cymbidium Orchidaceae, if Mr. Garcia still has it this week.”
“You know,” her dad said, “if you ever wanted to learn how to play the real keyboard…”
“I do play the real keyboard.”
Sutton liked music okay. There was a lot of math involved. She loved listening to her dad make music, even if she didn’t really love listening to the whole orchestra. And she admired musicians and how hard they worked to master their instruments. But she had never, ever felt the desire to learn an instrument herself.
“Señorita Sutton!” boomed Mr. Garcia as they appeared at his booth. “Cymbidium Orchidaceae, ¿sí?”
He led her to the delicate orchids arranged in the back of the booth, away from the curious hands of toddlers who might snap off a bud without realizing how much care and patience these finicky flowers required. Mr. Garcia went over orchid care at length, as though Sutton hadn’t been researching it for months already.
Finally she thanked him and they were on their way. After visits to the fruit, cheese, and sausage vendors, Sutton and her dad arrived at Just Desserts, where Mr. Calvin handed over a bag of broken cookie pieces with a big wink. “You get what you pay for,” he said, like he always said.
It wasn’t true. If she truly got what she paid for, she wouldn’t get anything. He gave the broken pieces away. But she wasn’t about to correct him.
Her dad paid for several pastries and was trying to figure out how to carry all the bags and also eat a bear claw while they walked back to their apartment, when another voice called out.
“Martin? Martin Jensen?”
Sutton didn’t know how people were always recognizing her dad, considering he sat in the third row of the enormous orchestra with his cello. From the look on her dad’s face, he sort of recognized the approaching woman, but couldn’t place how he knew her.
“Oh, Martin, how great to run into you! And look at your little one! She’s not a toddler anymore!”
Sutton bristled. She was almost ten. And tall for her age.
But the woman still felt the need to lean over with her hands on her knees, so her face was right in Sutton’s face.
“What’s your name again, honey?”
“Sutton,” she said. Then she took pity on her dad, who still seemed completely lost, and added, “What’s yours?”
“Oh, Sutton!” the woman said, speaking to her dad as though Sutton wasn’t there. “That’s right! I loved how you guys used Julie’s maiden name for the baby’s first name. So clever. Gender neutral.” Then as an afterthought, she said to Sutton, “My name’s Felicia, honey. Your mom and I were in a new-moms group together when you were tiny!”
“So good to see you again, Felicia,” Sutton’s dad said.
“Where’s Julie today?”
Her dad opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again, like the koi in the pond outside the pediatrician’s office. Her parents had been divorced for so many years that people rarely asked. People in their neighborhood just knew it was Sutton and her dad, her dad and Sutton.
While he looked for a diplomatic way to respond, Sutton took matters into her own hands. “Julie’s at the South Pole,” she said. “Nice to see you, Felicia.” Then she dragged her dad toward home.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Luis
After a restless night imagining what he might find in his dad’s sketchbooks, Luis was up early the next morning. He didn’t want to wake his mom, who had been giggling on the phone until late into the night, so he crept as quietly as he could out to the garage.
There was exactly enough room for the battered old Honda, and all around it, artfully stacked, were boxes and piles of stuff. He didn’t even know what it all was. He usually avoided the garage entirely and waited in the driveway for his mom to pull the car out.
There were boxes labeled BABY CLOTHES and FINANCIAL and one labeled CHINA, which Luis assumed meant fancy dishes, but his brain started to dance down a path where his mom had spent some part of her life in China and kept the memories of those weeks or months or years in that box in the garage.
Not everything was organized in boxes. A broken Crock-Pot, a shopping bag full of mismatched shoes, a winter sled, and an old-fashioned-looking steamer trunk were balanced in an artful pile. An exercise bike, several cracked and empty flowerpots, the car seat Luis outgrew years ago, and the crutches his mom needed when she sprained her ankle last fall made up another pile. At the top of that pile, Luis saw his treasure—a box labeled MATEO.
