Chapter 10 The World
The World
The morning that I leave for The Adventureverse, my dad makes breakfast.
I almost cry, and I’m not sure why.
Making breakfast isn’t some special tradition in our house. It doesn’t remind me of my childhood or my mom. And pancakes don’t usually make me cry. So, I don’t know what’s happening.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
He looks up from his fruit platter, scanning my forbidden sausage and cheesy eggs enviously. Since his diagnosis, I’ve been strict about his no-salt, no-fat, no-processed-food diet. “While you’re gone?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
He spears a banana slice and pops it into his mouth. “I feel like I need to remind you that I did somehow manage to survive thirty years before you were born.”
I roll my eyes. “But you weren’t sick then.”
“I’ll be fine, hon.” Dad points his fork at me. “I’ll be better when you come home rich.”
I refuse to allow him to deflect. “And you’ll go to the hospital if anything happens? And you won’t cancel your doctor appointments?”
He laughs. “Which one of us is the parent, again?”
I stamp my foot beneath the table. “Dad, I’m serious! You’re stressing me out.”
His head falls to one shoulder as he regards me. “I’m going to be fine, I promise.”
“You can’t promise that,” I insist, driving a sausage link around the perimeter of my plate using a knife.
“I can promise anything I feel like promising,” he says. “I swear, I will be careful. Plus, Rommel called me this morning.”
Yumi’s dad? Surprised, I ask, “Rommel Panganiban?”
“How many other Rommels do we know?”
I shrug. He makes a good point.
“Seems like Yumi told Rom and Jubylyn about everything.”
“Everything?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t investigate. I didn’t want to…What do the kids say now? ‘Blow up your spot’?”
My face scrunches. “I think you’re about twenty years too late with that.”
“Whatever. I don’t know how much they know. But they did seem to think your relationship was real, and they were taking it surprisingly well.”
“Huh. That’s good, I guess.” I hadn’t bothered asking Yumi what she was going to tell her family. There’s been enough to coordinate and worry over in my life, I don’t have the bandwidth to handle hers, too.
“I thought so.” He exhales through his nose, amused. “Yumi told them about my condition, too. They offered to check on me and take me to the doctor while you’re gone.”
My eyes whip up from Sausage-apolis 500. “They did?”
“Yup. Apparently, Yumi made them a calendar of my appointments.”
I frown. She did? “How did she know when they were?”
My dad pointedly stares over my shoulder, and I follow his gaze to the obnoxiously color-coded whiteboard calendar on our fridge.
“Ah,” I say.
He crosses his arms. “So, don’t worry about me while you’re gone, all right? You’ll have plenty on your mind.”
I’m temporarily buoyed, knowing that Yumi’s protective parents have been sicced upon him. No one on the planet is more trustworthy; if they said they’d make sure Dad was okay, then he will be.
But when Anxiety closes a door, It opens a window. And then It waits until you’re in bed to ask if It actually locked that door earlier. You should probably go look. And while you’re at it, you might as well check that the stove is off.
“Am I making a mistake?” I ask the sausages.
His brows knit together in concern. “What, by eating? Do you feel nauseous?”
“No, no.” My focus drifts to the blue bag on the couch. “Doing this. The Adventureverse. What happens if they find out we’re lying?” More pressingly, how am I going to deal with Yumi actively despising me to my face?
His shoulders lift. “I don’t know, honey. If we could tell something was a mistake before we did it, nobody would ever make a mistake.”
“You’re no help,” I grumble. “Aren’t you supposed to know things?”
Dad laughs. “Who told you that?” He smiles at his empty plate. “Your mother would have thought that was really funny.”
It’s a bittersweet consolation, but I’m happy to have it anyway. “Well, what would she have said about this?”
“Mom?” he asks, and I nod. His face scrunches up, faux offended. “She knew even less than me.”
We both laugh.
He props his chin on a palm, looking up at the ceiling, and attempts a real answer.
“I don’t know what she would have said. I think she might’ve just pawned the whole situation off on me.
” Voice wistful, he adds, “She would’ve been thrilled you’d be on the show, though.
Probably jealous you got to meet that smarmy host man. ”
I gasp. “JSP is not ‘smarmy.’ ”
Dad nods. “He is.”
“Mom would divorce you for saying that,” I joke.
“She would. But lucky for me, she’s stuck with me forever.” He waggles his eyebrows. “You know, you could always—” Dad’s eyes go wide. “Oh! Wait!” He rockets to his feet and shuffles off to his room-slash-closet.
“What’s going on?”
He waves me away, standing on his bed to reach the shelf above his clothing rack. He brings down an old box held together at its aging seams with several layers of packing tape. The logo on the box is unreadable, but it looks like a burial place for ancient computer tech or perhaps a fax machine.
Setting it on his bed, he undoes the flaps and sticks his hand comically far in, a magician reaching into the shadow realm of his top hat and pulling out a rabbit. Whatever he finds is small enough to be hidden between his palms when he returns to the table.
“Open your hands,” he commands.
“Is it a bug?” I say, obeying even as I lean the rest of my body away warily.
“Yes, Noelle, I’ve been keeping a bug in a box above my bed for this very moment,” he says flatly. “Of course it’s not a bug. Why would it be a bug?”
“I don’t know,” I say, ready to make a snarky comment just as a small, hinged ring box drops into my hands. “What’s this?”
“Open it. I bought it for your birthday, but…” He trails off as I lift the box’s lid.
A delicate globe-shaped pendant with a gold chain sits on a pillow of plush velvet. I slide a finger underneath, lifting it gently to examine the pendant.
When I say it’s globe-shaped, I don’t mean round.
I mean it is literally a mini globe, no bigger than my thumbnail.
The stand is made of a yellow gold that pierces through an iridescent blue orb—Earth, obviously.
The planet is cut in half horizontally by a gold stripe, indicating that it could be opened like a locket if you got the ball off the stand.
“Wow, this is so pretty,” I say, spinning the world on its axis with ease. “Ooh, fidgety.” I smile up at my dad, unsurprised to see tears in his eyes. It’s not unusual for him to get weepy over a birthday present. It’s not really unusual for him to get weepy over anything. It’s part of his charm.
“Yeah.” His gaze won’t find mine, roaming the floor, the table, and the necklace instead. “I hope you like it.”
“I love it,” I say easily, opening the clasp and securing it around my neck. “Thanks, Dad.” I spin the pendant again.
“It’s, uh…I was going to joke earlier that you could bring your mom’s ashes on the show to meet that smarmy host man, but I realized”—he pauses, gesturing at the necklace—“I guess you really can.”
My throat tightens, hand closing around the globe and stopping it mid-spin. “Mom’s ashes are in here?”
He nods, staring at my fist. “Yeah. I thought you might want to take her to college with you. But now you can take her on your guys’ show.
I didn’t get that shape because of Adventureverse, though.
” Clearing his throat, he grabs my plate and stacks it on his with a clatter.
“It’s a world because you were her world. I guess.”
I swallow, gripping tighter until the metal digs into my skin. “Oh.”
“Well,” he says, suddenly chipper as he gathers our utensils and carries everything to the sink. The water squeals on. “I’m glad you don’t think it’s too cheesy.” He shoots me a smile, and it’s not forced, exactly. But it is on purpose.
I swallow again. And again. “No, it’s perfect. I, I…” I feel the fog coming on, like a cloud passing over my thoughts. Stay here. I have to stay here. The sharp bite of the necklace grounds me enough to say, “I don’t want to lose it. Should I leave it here? What if I lose it?”
My dad turns, wiping his hand on a dish towel. “Sweet girl.” He chuckles. “Take it with you. It fit less than a teaspoon of ashes. You’ll basically be carrying around her toenail.”
I fake gag. “Eugh, you didn’t have to say it like that.”
His guffaw is too self-satisfied. “Plus,” he says, face softening like ice cream on the boardwalk. “I like to think that your mom would love it if you lost her on The Adventureverse. Don’t you?”
Would you like that, Mom? I ask silently, opening my hand and gazing down at the world. Using my thumb, I send it spinning again. I don’t need an answer from her, though. I already know. “Yeah, I guess she would, huh?”
Nodding, he says, “When your mom and I were in high school, she visited Brazil. Did I ever tell you this?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, so she went to Brazil. Over the summer, I think. And she came back with this”—he encircles one wrist with the other hand—“this bracelet. I forget what she called it, but it was just a ribbon with something written on it. She brought a few home for our friends, and as she tied them on our wrists, she told us to make a wish. She said that when the bracelet fell off, that wish would come true.”
“When did yours fall off?”
“Oh, I have no idea.” His head tilts. “I just looked up one day and it was gone. Your mom was so excited.”
“But did your wish come true?” I ask, enthralled.
He smiles, his eyes distant, somewhere in the past. “Of course. I had her.” Then he returns to his body and smiles at me, too. “And I have you. So, maybe when the necklace falls off, your wish will come true, too.”
“Dad,” I whine, slapping the table. “Don’t make me cry right before I leave! Not allowed!”
He walks over, leaning down to give me a hug. “Sorry, kiddo. You know I can’t help it. I’m a crier.”
“I know,” I say into his shirt. It smells like laundry detergent. “The car will be here any minute.” My words are muffled by the fabric.
“I know,” he echoes, planting a kiss on the crown of my head and resting his chin there. Pulling back, he says, “You should probably get dressed.”
My mouth drops open. I look down at my outfit, a blue tank top under a blue windbreaker and lightweight blue joggers. “Did you think I was just wearing this to breakfast for fun?”
His face lights up. “But look, you stopped crying.”
The doorbell rings and I feel my heart jump straight into my throat. Crying would actually be better right now. We walk into the living room together, stopping where my bag rests on the couch.
“I’ll get the door. You make sure you have everything.”
“No,” I say quickly. I know if I take everything out to look through it again, I’m bound to forget to repack something. The perfect weight of the bag settles against me as I sling one of the straps over my right shoulder. “I’m ready.”
“Oh, okay.” He looks unsure. Same, Dad. “You and Yumi have each other’s backs out there, all right?”
“We will.”
“You’re gonna crush it, honey. And tell that smarmy host man that if he lets anything bad happen, I’m coming after him.”
I pull him into another hug. “I’m not telling him that.”
“That’s probably for the best,” he says, smoothing my hair. “Love you, Noe.”
“Love you, Dad.”
“Be good?”
“I will.”
Dad trails me to the door. “Come home safe to me.”
“Always,” I promise, grabbing the knob and starting to turn it.
He stops me with a hand on my shoulder. Gently, he plucks the pendant of the necklace off my shirt and leans down to press his forehead to it. In a whisper, he says, “Elena, you take care of our girl, hear me?”
And I swear there’s a veil between universes that lifts at that moment. When my dad hugs me goodbye, I feel my mom in it, too.