25. Noodle
The next morning, I find Todd on the front step with a scraping tool in one hand and a mask over his face.
“Sir? Mr. Aarons? Uh…Dad?”
He stops as soon as he hears my voice. It’s hard to read his expression behind the mask, but I’m guessing he’s smiling. He’s always smiling.
“I think we can stick to Todd for now, kiddo,” he says with a wink. He lifts the mask from his face and plunks it down on top of his head. “Time enough for all the rest once Ravenna decides whether or not she’s staying.”
I was right about the smile, which is good, but I don’t like that last bit. I never meant for Mom to come here forever. I just wanted her to help out Chloe for a little while.
“Todd,” I say, rolling his name over my tongue to see how I like it. It feels fine. Not great, but fine. “Can you give me a ride somewhere?”
“Well, now. That depends.” He tries peeking over my head to the inside of the house. He’s looking for my mom, but he won’t find her in there. She slipped out back to smoke a cigarette and play on her phone a while ago. Todd got up early and immediately started doing all kinds of things around the house—fixing the rattling air conditioner in the kitchen, painting over the burn mark by Theo’s bed, and now scraping all the rust off the front door—but Mom just keeps trailing around looking sad.
At first, I thought she might have been sad because of all her memories coming back, but mostly I think she just hates this place. She used to look exactly like that when I was a kid, as if something in the air smells bad and she can’t escape it.
“She’s playing Candy Crush,” I offer. “I peeked at her phone. She’s on level eleven thousand or something.”
Todd’s smile starts to droop at the edges. Before it can get too far, he tosses the scraper aside and rubs his hands together. The sound is dry and crackly, but not in a bad way.
“In that case, the best thing we can do is go for a drive. A long one. She always plays Candy Crush when she’s not feeling well.”
I hesitate. “If she’s not feeling well, shouldn’t we stay and look after her?”
Todd steps back as if there’s a monster standing right behind my shoulder. “No way, kid. If you want my advice, the best way to deal with a woman like your mother is to give her space.”
“Space?” I echo.
“She doesn’t like being backed into a corner.” He clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “She’s like a wild animal that way. In a lot of ways, come to think of it. She says too much responsibility makes her feel trapped.”
I want to point out that wild animals have lots of responsibility—that they have to eat and fight and take care of their young to make sure they survive into adulthood—but I don’t.
“Does that mean you’ll take me to visit Zach?” I ask.
“Isn’t that the guy who’s Chloe’s boyfriend?” Todd says, his brow furrowed.
“He’s my friend, too,” I say.
I must talk louder than I mean to because Todd raises his hands with a chuckle. “Sure thing, kid. He’s a friend of the whole family.” As if just now noticing the book in my hand, he nods down at it. “You guys in a book club or something?”
I glance at the copy of Wuthering Heights and curl it closer to my body. I don’t want to talk about what I’m doing—or why—so I say the first thing that pops into my mind.
“He lives in the woods,” I say.
“The woods?”
“Way up the mountain.”
Todd blinks. “Are you pulling my leg? Did your brother put you up to this?”
I shake my head. Theo is a good brother, and I like him third best to Chloe and Gummy Bear, but he doesn’t always see what’s going on around him. I doubt he knows anything about Jasper and Chloe and their books.
“Zach said I could come to him if I needed anything.” I hold up the book. “I need him to help me with this.”
Todd takes one more peek inside the house. When he doesn’t see anything but Gummy Bear sprawled out on the living room floor, he nods once. “Okay, kid. Sure thing. We’ll drive up into the mountains and find your friend.” As he starts trotting down the front porch steps, I can hear him mutter under his breath, “With any luck, Ravenna won’t even notice we’re gone.”
“Aloysius!”
As soon as Todd pulls his car into the dirt parking lot of the survival school, Zach comes running out to greet us. I think he must be in the middle of working because there are a few other people in camouflage standing around, but that doesn’t stop him from dropping everything to see me.
That’s the thing I like best about Zach. Him and Chloe both. They never make me feel like I’m being annoying when I need extra help. I sometimes feel as if the whole world could be on fire, but Chloe would still be standing in the kitchen and asking us what cereal we want for breakfast.
I know that doesn’t sound like much, but when your dad leaves and your mom leaves and the teachers just keep passing you around school because they don’t know what else to do with you, breakfast matters.
Zach squats down to my level, his nose crinkled up with worry. “Is something wrong, Aloysius? Are you hurt? Is Chloe?”
He says this last bit with a sharp note that makes me feel like I came to the right place.
“I’m okay. She’s okay.” I cast a quick look over his shoulder, where the camouflage people are loading a bunch of camping stuff into a backpack. “Are you busy? I didn’t think—”
Todd clears his throat from somewhere above me. “Sorry for the intrusion, but he was determined to see you. Said something about a book he needs help with. Homework, probably, so it’s no use asking me. I was never much of a scholar. Flunked English lit twice, if you want the truth of it.”
I set my jaw. As if I’d drag Todd all the way up here for something as silly as school.
“It’s not homework,” I say. “It’s about Jasper. And those notes he and the dead lady wrote to each other.”
Zach springs up to a standing position at once—and then he does the thing I like about him, the thing that makes him so much like Chloe. He nods at Todd in a way that seems to magically get rid of him, ushers me to where the other camouflage people are, and gets me comfortably settled on a log—and all without making it seem like he’s done anything at all.
It was the same when he found me at the bottom of those rocks a few weeks ago. I was just lying there, trying not to cry, pain shooting like lava up and down my leg, and there he was. If he hadn’t smelled so much like dirt, his hands warm and strong as he straightened my bone and made a sling to carry me down, I might have thought he was a guardian angel.
Then again, maybe guardian angels are like that.
“Everyone, this is Aloysius Sampson,” Zach says as soon as he hears Todd’s car start crunching its way back down the road. He promised to get me home later, so I don’t have to worry about Todd coming back up here and ruining things. “He’s the young man who turned me into a local hero a few weeks ago. I owe him big time. I can’t even walk into the drugstore now without everyone coming over to shake my hand.”
I’m pretty sure he’s only saying that to be nice, but the camouflage people seem to get really excited over it. They pat me on the back and tell me how tough I am, and then ask Zach all kinds of questions about what kind of wood he used to frame the splint, and could you also use a canoe paddle if you had to, and how does canvas compare to Gore-Tex when it comes to manufacturing a sling?
He laughs and answers their questions, but not before first handing me a pouch of energy gel. He’d had some in his pockets when he rescued me and made me suck on one to keep up my strength, and even though it sounds weird—edible slime in a Capri Sun pouch—I kind of like them.
As soon as he’s done talking, he checks his watch. “Right. So everyone has their coordinates, yes?”
The camouflage people nod.
“Then I’ll send you out a few minutes early. Remember—speed is important for this exercise. The longer you leave your partners out there, the more likely they are to die of exposure.” He winks at me just in case I’m worried about that dying part. I’m not, though. He explained his job to me—about how he trains pilots to save themselves and their teams if they should accidentally crash—so I know this is just pretend. “Aaaand, go!”
I suck the last of the energy pouch down and watch as the men and women head off into the woods on their training exercise. To be honest, it’s kind of making me want to be a pilot when I grow up. The idea of being crashed and alone in the woods for a few weeks sounds nice, just so long as you have Zach to teach you all the things you need to know about finding food and escaping bad guys.
“Shouldn’t you go out with them?” I ask as soon as we’re alone together. “To keep them safe?”
“Nah. We’ve got this whole place rigged with deer cameras. My boss can watch everything on his computer.” He sits down on the log next to me and pulls out an energy pouch of his own. “Does your sister know you’re spending the day with me?”
See what I mean about how nice he is? Instead of asking me if I have permission to be here or making me feel like I’m bothering him, Zach makes it sound like we planned this whole thing together.
“No,” I admit. “I’m supposed to be with my mom and Todd.”
He’s careful not to look at me as he finishes his pouch. “But you don’t want to be?”
I shrug and kick at the dirt with my good foot. “Todd’s okay, but my mom tries too hard. And then she doesn’t try enough.” I pause. “Does that make sense?”
He nods. “Yeah. It does. Your sister said something similar.”
I nod back, echoing his movements so he knows I know we’re on the same page. I also say the thing that’s been causing my stomach to tie up in knots.
“Chloe’s mad that I called her.”
“Not mad,” he corrects me. “Just worried, I think. She’s afraid you need something she can’t give you.” This feels like an awfully heavy conversation, so I’m glad when he gets up and tilts his head toward a tent that’s been set up off to one side of the parking lot. “How do you feel about discussing this while we make a fishing net out of old parachute cord?”
“Um…amazing?”
He laughs in that special way of his, like Santa Claus before he got old and ate too many cookies. “Then grab those crutches and lead the way, little man. I think you’ll like untying all those knots.”
As I settle into the pile of blankets Zach set up in the tent for me, I can overhear him call Chloe to tell her where I am and not to worry. Even though I don’t mind, I pretend I didn’t hear anything when he returns with a pile of knotted-up ropes and dumps them in my lap.
“Before we can make a net, we need to get at least ten feet of unbroken cord,” he says. “Get those tiny fingers of yours to work.”
I’m happy to have something to keep my hands busy while we talk, so I start poking and prodding until I find a loose thread.
“Can you really catch fish when you’re all done with this?” I ask as he settles next to me and starts whittling a long, curved stick. “Like, the kind to eat?”
“That’s the goal, anyway. Survival at all costs. You’d be surprised how delicious a meal is when you’ve had a hand in every part of it, catching, killing, and cooking it.”
I know I’m supposed to be talking about Chloe and Jasper’s book, but this is a way more interesting subject. I’m not like Theo, but listening to Zach is almost like reading an adventure story.
“How did you learn to do all this stuff?” I ask. “Like, knowing which plants are safe to eat and how to catch animals and disguising yourself to blend into the trees?”
“Well, now,” he says, sitting back in his chair and extending his long legs in front of him. “That’s a pretty big question.”
I hold up the pile of knots. “That’s okay. This is gonna take me forever.”
He laughs his Santa laugh again. “Fair enough. Most of this stuff I learned from my dad. He was a big fan of the great outdoors. When I was your age, we used to go camping together for weeks at a time.”
“Your dad?” I repeat slowly. Saying those words makes me feel a little lost, but not sad. I don’t remember meeting my own dad, even though he technically belongs to both me and Theo. Trixie has a different dad, and so does Chloe, but none of us really care. When all you have for a father is a blank space, it’s easy to pretend he’s the same blank space for everyone. “What’s he like?”
Zach stops to think about it for a second. “A lot like me, actually. Tall. Rough around the edges. Good with his hands. And he enjoys his solitude, but only for a little while. He can spend a month in the wilderness, but then he comes home and spends the whole next month taking my mom out dancing. He calls it life-life balance.”
I like that. Life-life balance.
“All the men in my family are outdoorsy that way,” he adds, watching me out of the corner of his eye. “You could say it’s in our blood.”
“Books are in my blood,” I’m quick to respond. “In mine and Chloe’s, anyway. Theo says reading is for people who don’t have Minecraft, and Trixie would rather talk to people than read about them, but Chloe and me are the same.”
Instead of shooting me down, like lots of grown-ups might do, Zach nods. “I agree. You two are very similar.” Then he does the thing all grown-ups do and tries to sneak one past me. “That’s why you came up here today, isn’t it? Because of a book? Because of Jasper’s book?”
Since I like Zach and I like undoing these knots, I decide to play along. “Kind of, yeah. I stole one from the cabin the other day.”
Zach doesn’t blink—not even once. “You stole one?”
“Yeah. I should’ve asked first, but I was afraid he’d say no, so I took the book he was talking about. The one about the lady—Wuthering Heights.”
Zach blows out a long breath that feels like it’s not mad. I can tell for sure that he’s not mad when he laughs. “You sneaky little devil. I didn’t even notice that one on the shelf. Where did you find it?”
“It was just sitting there with all the other books.” I find a tricky knot and concentrate on it until it’s all the way gone. It must take a while, because when I look up, it’s to find Zach watching me with an expression I can’t understand. “I don’t think he reads that one very much. It was the dustiest of all of them, and the pages aren’t bent at all.”
“Did you bring the book with you?” he asks.
“Yup. It’s full of the writing. I thought you and Chloe might want to see it.”
He’s quiet again, and this time I don’t have a tricky knot to distract me, so I have no choice but to listen to the silence. Eventually, he says, “Can I ask you a question, Aloysius?”
Anytime someone says that, they’re going to ask you the question no matter what. But Zach’s my friend, so I say, “Sure.”
“Why did you bring the book to me instead of Chloe?”
This is a good question—an excellent one, in fact, and I like that Zach knows to ask it.
“Because this will give you a good reason to take her bowling again. You don’t have to bring us this time if you don’t want to. Theo only gets in the way. Most days, he’s a really good brother to have around, but not when you want to be alone.” I pause, eyeing him just as much as he’s eyeing me. “And you want to be alone with Chloe, don’t you?”
At first, I’m afraid he’s annoyed I asked, but he eventually shakes his head. “No, I won’t do it,” he says.
“Do what?”
“Get upset with you for saying the thing we’re all thinking. You and Chloe have that in common, too. You cut straight to the heart of the thing. As a man who spends a lot of time avoiding the unnecessary busyness of the world, you have no idea how much I appreciate that quality.”
I can tell he’s telling the truth, so I set my pile of knots aside and fish the book out of my backpack. I read a little of it when I first brought it home, but I don’t think it’s for me. Everyone seems to talk in really long sentences, and it takes them forever to get anywhere.
As soon as I put the book in Zach’s hands, he breathes out long and slow. His hands move over the cover almost like he’s petting Gummy Bear.
“This is really real,” he says, but in a voice so low that I’m not sure whether or not I’m supposed to hear it. “So everything Jasper said is true.”
I return to the tangled knots, pretending I don’t see as he flips open the cover and his eyes start moving over the pages. Even though I don’t like the book, I did manage to make it through the first chapter, so I know what he sees when he reaches the first section with the writing.
I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling, to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate, equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again.
If you read nothing else of these pages, please read this,the pretty handwriting says. I know you think you’re the Heathcliff to my Catherine, and that the only path left to you is a dark and gloomy grave, but it isn’t true. Please let yourself be loved again. Please find love again. The best thing you can give me now is a promise that your life will be as full and rich as you deserve.
I don’t know much about the books or the writing or what happened to make Jasper such a sad old man, but I do know that this message is meant for him. Also that it didn’t come true.
I used to be afraid of Jasper and what he might do when I accidentally threw Gummy Bear’s Frisbees over the fence, but he showed me the closet where he keeps them all so I’m not afraid any more. He apologized and said I could take back as many of them as I wanted, but I’ll probably leave them there. I think he likes having all those colorful stacks of plastic in his house.
It’s kinda like holding on to that old copy of Wuthering Heights for years and years but never actually reading it. He likes knowing how close he is to the things that make life brighter, and he likes being a few steps away from happiness. He also likes not ever actually getting there. It’s okay, because I understand. I understand a lot more than anyone thinks.
Because what happens if you reach the thing and you still aren’t happy? What happens if you try to do better, but no matter how much of yourself you put in, you’ll never be what the teachers and bosses and people in the grocery store want?
“He didn’t read this, did he?” Zach asks. There’s something in his voice that feels heavy. “He didn’t live the full and rich life she tried to give him.”
“No, he didn’t,” I agree. I find another tricky knot and start in on it. Then I say the thing that brought me all the way up here in the first place—the thing I’m hoping Zach can help me with. “But I think maybe, if we try very hard, we can still get him there.”