The Rule of Threes, Marcy Campbell [short novels to read .TXT] 📗

My closet smelled like my jasmine hand lotion and like bubblegum wrappers and a little like old dusty things, like the smell from the boxes in the attic where my parents kept stuff from their own childhoods—their yellowing report cards and sports trophies. They went through those boxes with me once, reminiscing, but Mom got sad when she opened a container with a corsage Dad had given her and saw that the flowers had disintegrated, leaving behind nothing but papery brown flakes. My closet smell usually made me feel comforted and calm.

But not today. I was anything but calm. Were my parents planning to take this kid in, like a stray, like when we found Mittens eating out of a trash can in a parking lot? Who was the woman who’d dropped him off? And why hadn’t she kept him? Why was this boy here now? Where was he before? And was he staying??? He was NOT sleeping in my room!

My stomach felt all queasy again, like I’d eaten a bucket full of Olive’s Twinkies. I realized I actually hadn’t eaten anything for hours. I didn’t know if I’d ever feel like eating again.

I worked out the math in my head. The kid didn’t look much older than me, and it’s not like I didn’t know how babies were made. Ugh, yuck, so Dad . . . with some other woman who wasn’t Mom . . . I felt even sicker.

I heard soft footsteps enter my room. I peeked out the crack in my door and saw Dad’s legs.

This kid was what? My half-brother? Brother was such a foreign word, a word associated with other girls, like Olive and Rachel, but certainly not with me.

“I didn’t think I’d ever meet him,” Dad said, from the other side of my door. I could see he was still wearing his shiny leather work shoes. “His mother moved away just after he was born. She wanted a relationship, and I, obviously, didn’t.”

Dad was speaking quietly, like he was talking to himself, and that was fine with me because I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to hear it! Lalalalalala. I wanted to cover my ears, but instead I positioned my mouth by the crack in the door. There were things I needed to understand.

“How do you know he’s your son?” I asked. That would get him. This was all a mistake, never mind the fact that the kid looked an awful lot like my dad, okay? That was just a coincidence. Everybody has a secret twin somewhere, sometimes more than one, who’s not even related to them. I’d seen a YouTube video about it.

“We did a DNA test, when he was a baby,” Dad said.

I nudged the door open a bit more with my foot. I knew about DNA. We’d actually extracted some from a strawberry in science class last year, but it was weird to think of the same stuff inside me, and Dad . . . and that boy.

I could see all of Dad now, but it was shadowy in my room. There was no more halo behind his head like there had been from the kitchen light when I’d come home. Dad ran a hand over his face like he was trying to sculpt a new, less tired and helpless expression. It didn’t work.

“Oh, Mags,” he said, “so much has happened today.” He started pacing across my small room, three steps one way, then turn around, then back.

“His name is Anthony, but he goes by Tony. He showed up at his school, Bircher, and he was hungry and not looking so good, so Children’s Services went out to his apartment and found his mom, who was not doing well at all, and his mom gave them my name, which for the life of me, I can’t understand, since I didn’t think she wanted me to have anything to do with him. But I guess she was out of options. Then the social worker had to check out everything over here.”

It was like listening to Olive. I waited for him to take a breath, like I do with her, but got impatient. I pushed the door open some more, until we could see each other, eye to eye, his eyes brown and mine green. I had my mom’s eyes.

“How long is he staying?” I asked.

“I don’t know. His mom is going to get some help. She’s hoping to get him back soon.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“Drugs,” Dad said softly.

I picked at a loose piece of carpeting. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to. I wanted to, earlier, years ago actually, after I saw his mom in a store, and so I knew she’d moved back, and I saw . . . him . . . but, Mags, you were too young to understand.”

“And what about Mom?” I said. “What about your wife?” How could he act so cool and collected when this whole thing was insane!

If he didn’t like my tone, he didn’t let on. “Mom and I worked this out a long time ago.”

“How old is he?” I murmured.

“Thirteen.”

“That’s a year older than me! How could you and Mom not have told me all this time!”

Dad got up and moved closer to the hallway. He had his back to me when he said, “To be fair to your mom, she didn’t know until a few years ago, until—”

“Second grade.”

“Yeah, I guess . . .” Dad’s mind was working, like he was trying to count backward. He wouldn’t look at me. “Listen, this is hard for me, Mags. This isn’t . . . I mean, this isn’t an entirely appropriate conversation to have, and—”

“Appropriate? Geez, Dad, it’s too late to decide if it’s appropriate. It just is.”

I remembered the family meetings we’d had back then. All the talk of openness, the encouragement to ask them anything. How our family was like a three-legged stool, and we needed all of us in sync to keep it balanced. All I knew was they were having problems and thinking about a divorce. I didn’t know there was another woman in the picture.