“I have a phone.” But I don’t know how to text, or even my own phone number. How can I admit that? Heat rises to my cheeks, and for a moment I want nothing but my mother, want to throw my arms around her and say, I need you, I was wrong.
The moment passes. I stiffen my spine. “It’s new, so I haven’t memorized my number yet. Can you give me yours?”
“How’s it been?” Mom asks when she’s done telling me about the prodigious flowers and spiders at her friend’s house in Melbourne, and I’ve told her about Erika and Clint and the home renovations—but not about Mireya, the phone, or the doll.
“Fine.” I curl up on a kitchen chair with the cordless receiver that Dad and Erika call a “landline” against my ear. “There was way more Glare flashing in my face on the plane than there is in this house.”
“It’s not making you anxious?”
Mom’s voice, wispy and tentative with distance, brings it all back—the trickle of the creek, the stink of red clay. I try to think about that instead of the phone in my backpack, or the conundrum of how to receive messages from Mireya, which is a little anxiety-making.
“No. It’s kind of funny, actually, to see Clint walking around the house with his nose in a Glare-box. This morning he bumped into the kitchen island and changed direction without looking up.”
Mom chuckles. Feeling encouraged, I say, “And Dad—it’s on his wrist, in his ear, in his car. He keeps twitching like he’s getting these invisible signals, and out of the blue he’ll say stuff that doesn’t mean anything.”
She outright laughs now. “He sounds like a secret agent.”
We go on that way, making fun of the behavior of Glare-mesmerized people, me silently reassuring her I won’t get sucked in.
But through it all I hear Mireya saying, Maybe you’re better off, and I hear the doubt in her voice, and I’d rather be laughing with her. I’m the girl defined by the things she wasn’t allowed to have, the girl being smug about the things she wasn’t allowed to have, and who wants to be friends with that girl?
My chili is a hit, and Dad asks for seconds. I jump up to fill his bowl, my cheeks flushing, while Clint and Erika argue about whether Clint’s too young to watch a movie that combines Frankenstein’s monster and vampires.
“When I was your age, I wanted to read The Exorcist, but Mom wouldn’t let me, so I read Frankenstein,” I say, hoping to end their stalemate by suggesting an alternative. “The monster isn’t scary once you get inside his head.”
Clint looks blank, like the book’s not on his radar, while Erika says, “You read the original Frankenstein? Pretty heavy, isn’t it?”
“Hedda’s always read way above her grade level.” Dad digs into his chili. “What were we discussing on your last birthday—Crime and Punishment?”
“I don’t have much to do on the ranch besides read.” I droop my head to hide the blush spreading from my face to my chest at my dad’s praise.
“Maybe you’ll be a lit professor. I can just see that—you in an office lined with books.”
His phone vibrates on the table, and he starts tapping it, while Erika says warningly, “Mike…”
“I know, not at the table, but this is Verdon. Big game studio exec,” he says in my direction, and continues tapping. None of us speaks. Clint’s knee jiggles the table leg.
Finally, Dad darkens the phone, finishes his chili in three gulps, and stands up. “Back to the salt mines. Can you folks hold down the fort? Erika, do you have a plan for that, uh, block barbecue thing? It’s potluck, right?”
Erika nods too quickly. “On it.”
“Awesome.” He pats her shoulder, blows a kiss at me and Clint, and grabs his briefcase from beside the door. Then, just as quickly as he arrived forty-five minutes ago, he’s gone.
Clint immediately pulls out his tablet. Erika says in a tired voice, “We don’t use our devices at the table.”
“He did.” Clint pushes his tablet away. “All I want is to get to the next level.”
He’s playing games, just like I did. “Games are all about getting the players hooked, right?” I ask Erika. “Mom says she felt like a drug pusher when she worked at Dad’s company.”
Erika ruffles Clint’s hair, looking a little uncomfortable. “Games give the players incentives to keep playing, yes. As you can see from Exhibit A here.”
Too late, I remember that Erika herself works part-time marketing Dad’s games. I change the subject. “Do you know if a boy named Ellis still lives on our street?”
“Ellis Westover? I see him out mowing the lawn. Was he a friend of yours?”
“Yeah. His sister was…” I trail off, realizing I don’t know what became of the babysitter after she blinded herself with drain cleaner. It’s like asking what happened to Snow White after happily ever after—or, in this case, horribly ever after.
“I didn’t know he had a sister.”
Erika must not have been around then. “He did—does.” I’m not going to walk up to Ellis’s house and knock, but Mireya must know him. Maybe she can help—if I can figure out how to “message” her.
“Erika,” I say, “I can cook stuff for the block barbecue. I like cooking. But I’m wondering, could you maybe help me with my phone?”
Erika gets up and starts clearing. “What kind of help?”
Dusk has fallen, and I smell grilling from the neighbors’ yard. While Clint runs upstairs to play his game, I hold out the palm where Mireya scrawled her contact info—a phone number, but also some kind of address. “Mireya says I can text her or reach her this way. She doesn’t like to ‘do voice.’”
Erika examines the palm. Her expression is neutral, but I sense the tiniest opening and relaxing, as if she no longer sees me as such a frightening unknown.
“Your mom would want you to call Mireya on the landline.” Her voice is neutral, too, not a hint of sarcasm, but I can tell she doesn’t think much of Mom’s rules.
“Yeah.” There’s no point in lying. All of a sudden I feel a desperate need to get this over with so I don’t have to spend my life wondering what happens if I take a single puff of the metaphorical cigarette.
I look straight at my stepmother. “Mom says the whole reason she let me come here is that I have to start taking control of my own life. Making my own choices.” It’s not a lie.
“But…” Erika seems confused. “Mike said the phone was just for emergencies. He said you wouldn’t want to use it.”
“A phone’s just a tool, right?” I remember what Dad said about the Glare. “I can use it a few times without getting hooked.” I lower my eyes. “And… Mireya wants to send me something tonight.” Something I need to know about.
When I glance up again, Erika’s face is still quizzical, but it’s not a brick wall. “Learning might be tough on the phone. I have a spare laptop you can use. But don’t tell your dad just yet, okay?”
I zip my lips.