Chapter Five Kiersten
Chapter Five
Kiersten
While the good, civic-minded mothers of Hollin Terrace Elementary and Middle attended the PTA meeting, Kiersten ran errands and felt guilty.
Growing up in a small town had given her a deeply ingrained sense of community responsibility.
There was a special circle of hell reserved for freeloaders who didn’t sign up for a shift with the volunteer fire department, take their turn mowing the Lutheran church cemetery, or serve on the Bergen farmers’ elevator board.
She tried to push these thoughts away as she dashed to Costco and the grocery store to lay in supplies for the impending road trip to Pennsylvania for Matt’s baseball tournament.
Then she girded her loins for one final chore before picking the boys up from school and hitting the road.
She’d been dreading this all week. She’d even cleaned the toothpaste-encrusted hellhole the boys called a bathroom as a procrastination tactic to avoid this task. But now, after her conversation with Matt, she couldn’t delay it any longer.
She took a deep breath, ate four Ghirardelli chocolate squares to fortify herself, and logged into PowerSchool to check her children’s grades.
Kiersten was always telling her sons not to use the word hate. But she hated the student grade portal with the white-hot fury of a thousand burning suns.
In the olden days when she was a kid, report cards provided moments of pride mixed with terror and disappointment four times a year when her parents opened the white envelope that came in the mail from school and learned that she had an A-plus in English, but also a C-minus in Algebra.
But now, thanks to technology, PowerSchool allowed her to have these terrifying and disappointing moments multiple times each week.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her laptop and eased into things by starting with Matt, who personified all the oldest child stereotypes.
Diligent. Hardworking. Responsible. Her shoulders relaxed as she looked at a short column of grades in the nineties.
No tests yet. Just graded homework assignments, all completed and turned in on time. She moved on to James, then Johnny.
And finally Luke.
Squinting through one eye, she scanned the columns as her stomach clenched. A string of zeroes denoted missing homework assignments. After only a few weeks of school, he’d already managed an F in math. A D in science. A C-minus in English and social studies.
She slammed the laptop shut and tried to identify the emotion that ravaged her body every time she checked the portal.
Not disappointment. Or even anger.
No. It was fear. Flat-out, heart-pounding, adrenaline-pumping fear.
Fear of a future she couldn’t predict and didn’t fully understand. A place where the old occupations had fallen away and new ones had yet to materialize.
A future where only those kids who turned in their homework on time and did well on standardized tests would survive.
A future where kids who got B’s and C’s lived in shipping containers in a Blade Runner–style dystopian hellhole where they served AI Robot Overlords in plutonium mines on Mars and ate dehydrated bread pellets and Soylent Green.
She suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to down a bottle of whiskey or smoke a pack of cigarettes, even though she rarely drank and never smoked.
Instead, she opened the pantry, hunching her shoulders as she prepared for a soup can or a cereal box to fall on her head from the crammed shelves above.
She stepped on a stool and reached for the top shelf, where she found the box of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies she’d hidden from her husband and the boys in case of an emergency such as this. She ripped it open and popped a cookie into her mouth.
It wasn’t fair that Luke, who was just as smart as his brothers, had to work twice as hard to get half as far. It wasn’t fair that his brain was wired in a way that made every moment he spent in school miserable and difficult.
It wasn’t fair, but it was also a fact.
She stuffed another cookie into her mouth.
She needed to spend more time working with him at home. She needed to read aloud the books assigned for his English class. She needed to sit beside him and make sure he not only completed his assignments but actually remembered to turn them in. She needed to create a system.
But she also needed to make dinner, do laundry, and drive four boys to ten different games, practices, and activities between the hours of 3:30 and 8:30 p.m. every day after school. And on weekends.
So when exactly was she supposed to quiz him on the periodic table? When they stopped at a red light? Because that was the only time they could realistically squeeze it in.
Plus she had three other kids who also needed her time and attention. Like Matthew, a deep thinker and quiet perfectionist who had a harder time making friends.
And James, the social butterfly who tended to be attracted to the rowdiest kids in his class.
And then Johnny, who had less athletic ability and was having a hard time finding his place in the world, which meant he needed to try all the sports, plus every activity from LEGO Robotics to Scouts to chess club to Odyssey of the Mind as he searched for his “passion.”
Because as a modern mother, she was expected to help her children find their passion, preferably in time to write a compelling essay about it for their college applications.
She ate four more cookies, then printed the list of missing assignments. She would sit down with Luke on Sunday night and try to get a handle on things. If they worked hard, they could get his grades up before the end of the quarter.
They. As in she and Luke together. She would be repeating sixth grade as a forty-two-year-old woman.
She reached for another cookie. Shame flushed her cheeks as her fingers brushed the crumbs at the bottom of the empty bag.
Stop.
She crumpled the bag. This needed to stop right now.
How much did she weigh? Did she even know anymore?
She hadn’t seen the scale since the move. It had become one of the many mysterious objects that disappeared into a packing box in Minnesota but had not yet emerged on the other side of the moving black hole here on the East Coast.
She tossed the cookie bag into the trash and headed for the unfinished part of the basement, a no-man’s-land of unpacked boxes, in search of the bathroom scale. They’d shoved everything in here after unpacking the essentials like underwear, pots and pans, the Nintendo Switches, and the TV remote.
Her gaze roamed over the canyon of cardboard stacked almost to the ceiling, each box labeled with her husband’s messy print or her own neat cursive.
She frowned as her gaze came to rest on four boxes in the far corner, behind the hot-water heater, marked with unfamiliar handwriting.
She moved closer. A thick layer of dust covered the boxes, and they looked older than the packing boxes that held the rest of their belongings. They must have been left behind by the old couple who’d sold them the house.
They were lovely people, Henry and Myrtle DiLorenzo, the grandparents of her husband’s best friend from college. He’d grown up in this area and helped her and Garrett find a place to live.
They’d brokered the deal without using a real estate agent, and the DiLorenzos had asked less than market value because the house hadn’t been updated since it was built in the 1960s.
They’d replaced the roof and windows and appliances as needed.
But everything else remained the same. Tiny kitchen and tiny closets. Popcorn ceilings. Wood paneling.
The old couple had been told their home would be torn down if they put it on the market, so they were delighted to sell to a family with children who planned to live in it instead of demolishing it.
Now Henry and Myrtle lived a few minutes away in a retirement village. Kiersten had intended to pay them a visit and bring a housewarming gift, but of course, she hadn’t actually found time to do this yet.
Another thing to feel guilty about. But now she’d have to pay a visit, if these boxes belonged to them.
She crouched on the cold concrete floor and unfolded the cardboard flaps. Dust rose in the air, making her sneeze as she peered down at a neat stack of large hardback books covered in green and cream-colored leather.
A wave of nostalgia washed over her as she removed the one on top and ran her fingers over the letter C embossed on the cover.
Encyclopedias.
A flash of recognition made her smile. Her grandparents had owned a set just like this. As a girl she’d sat on the floor for hours, looking at the pictures and reading about Africa, bats and cougars, Lichtenstein, Mount McKinley, and zebras.
She lifted the volume into her lap and opened it.
Her breath caught in her throat.
What in the world?
The inside of the book had been hollowed out, the pages cut away.
Instead of words, she found a book hidden between the covers of the encyclopedia.
Her heart pounded inside her ears as she removed the small book from its hiding place inside the larger one.
A black leather-bound volume with the word Diary embossed across the cover in gold. A thin black strap with a tarnished lock ran across the front. She pressed the tiny gold button on the lock and tugged gently.
It remained locked. Shut tight.
She leaned back on her haunches, chewing on her lower lip.
Who did this belong to?
She put the locked diary back into the C encyclopedia and removed the rest of the volumes from the ancient cardboard boxes, stacking them in alphabetical order, A through Z.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she began to open each volume, starting with A. She broke into a smile.
There, inside the hollowed-out center, she found a key, threaded onto a blue ribbon.
Fingers fumbling with excitement, she rushed to lift the cover on the next volume. The letter B.
A pang of disappointment stabbed when she found pages of smooth encyclopedia paper describing Babylon, bacteria, Barcelona, and bonobos.
She scrambled to open the rest.
M had been hollowed out and contained another small black diary. The next volumes contained regular pages . . . until she got to the letter S. That one contained another diary.
She opened the last volume, WXYZ, and felt her mouth drop open.
Cash.
Gently, she brushed her fingers over a thin wad of ancient bills, held together with a rubber band.
What the heck?
She slumped back on her heels, staring in wonder. Could those nice old people who used to live here have been geriatric drug dealers?
Only one way to find out.
She inserted the key into the lock, opened the first diary, and began to read.