Kathryn Erskine - Mockingbird

I look up at the wood on the bottom side of the table.

It’s not finished wood.

It’s raw wood.

Like Devon’s chest.

I touch it. It’s rough. I rub my finger across the wood back and forth harder and harder until a splinter cuts me. I hit the splinter back.

There is a drop of blood on the wood now. It is red and it spreads… seeping into a crack and bleeding across the unfinished wood.

Like Devon’s chest.

No! I rub the wood harder and harder to try to erase the blood but it won’t go away.

Caitlin!

I press my finger against the raw wood and rub faster and faster and it hurts but I don’t care because I want to stop the blood but it’s still there and I can’t make it stop!

Caitlin!

I can’t stop it!

Caitlin! It’s Mrs. Brook calling from somewhere and I feel pulling on my arm but I yank my hand free. No! I have to erase the blood! I have to. I have to! I HAVE TO!

I can’t see or feel or hear anything except for some screaming far away.

I HEARD YOU HAD A TRM AT school today, Dad says.

I stare at the covered chest in the corner. TRM, I say, hmm. That Reminds Me. I know he doesn’t mean that kind of TRM. He means the Tantrum Rage Meltdown kind. But I don’t want to talk about it.

He sighs. Caitlin honey —

My finger hurt, I say. That’s why.

I think it was more than your finger.

Also I bumped my head on the table during the TR — when my finger hurt. So it was my finger and my head. Both. That’s two things. I continue counting in my head. Three, four, five, six.

I hear Dad’s voice but I focus on counting. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. And thinking about stuffed animals. And I want Red Dog so I get up and walk down the hall to my room which is thirteen and a half steps — more if you take little tiptoe steps so you don’t step on any of the seams in the wood. I look across at Devon’s room and wish wish wish I could go in but I know I can’t.

I hear Dad saying my name but he is in another world right now.

Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.

I push my door open and wade through the clothes and books and papers and pencils and yarn and stickers on my floor and go to my bed where there are one hundred and fifty-three stuffed animals including key chains and Mc-Donald’s Happy Meal toys but the one I want is Red Dog and he is sleeping under the bed with my purple fleece blanket because Dad is too loud — thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine — and I get under the blanket with Red Dog and we go to sleep while I am still counting.

When I wake up I’m hungry. I look at my Elmo clock. Elmo says it’s almost six thirty. I step out into the hall and look at the door across from mine. It’s Devon’s. Dad keeps it closed since The Day Our Life Fell Apart. I can’t open it because Dad always says when the bathroom door is closed you don’t open it and when a desk drawer is closed you don’t open it and when an envelope is closed you don’t open it unless it has your name on it. So I don’t open Devon’s door.

I wish I could go in though. I wish I could go in and say, Devon I’m hungry, and he’d grin so his dimples show and he’d say, You and me both, and we’d go find Dad and order pizza because it’s Thursday and we’d eat warm drippy extra-cheese pizza in front of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. That reminds me how hungry I am so I go find Dad.

He’s sitting on the sofa staring at my charcoal pencil stain on the carpet.

It’s six thirty, I say.

Dad doesn’t say anything.

It’s six thirty. Time to eat, I tell him, in case he has forgotten what six thirty means.

He still doesn’t say anything.

It’s six thirty.

He stares at the stain but at least he says something. I’m not hungry.

It doesn’t matter, I tell him. It’s six thirty.

He sighs. Okay. I’m glad you’re feeling better now. I’ll get dinner ready.

Just call the pizza guy.

He shakes his head.

It’s Thursday.

Let’s eat what we have here.

But it’s pizza night.

No Caitlin.

I cross my arms. I don’t want that yucky spaghetti casserole again.

Okay. He gets up slowly like he is a very old toy running out of batteries. I’ll see what we have.

We have Pop-Tarts.

That’s not exactly a healthy dinner.

We have a bag of salad you can eat.

His lips turn down at the ends. I don’t like salad. And we don’t have any dressing.

Yes we do. Applesauce.

So we eat Pop-Tarts and salad with applesauce. Only I pick the salad stuff out of my applesauce and make a pile of green leaves on my napkin. And I keep my applesauce and Pop-Tart totally separate because I don’t like food mixing together or colors running into each other. It’s too hard to see what you have to Deal With if things start blurring together and getting mushy and turning into each other.

We sit at the kitchen table where I can’t see the TV which isn’t on anyway. It’s too quiet without Devon. Right now I wouldn’t even mind watching Fox Five News with the lady who talks so fast and so loud you can’t hear what she’s saying. All you can do is watch her really big hair moving around and wonder how many spiders make their nests in that thing.

Dad sniffs and I don’t want to hear him crying again so I have to be like the Fox Five News lady and fill up the silence. I wish we could have pizza with Devon, I say. It’s even Thursday. Pizza day.

Dad stops eating. Me too. He puts his hands together and his fingers grip the backs of his hands hard. He looks at the picture on the wall between the kitchen and living room and stares at it for a while. It’s Devon in his Scout uniform at a moving-up ceremony.

Is that his Life picture?

Dad tilts his head at me. This means he doesn’t Get It.

Life. In Boy Scouts. Remember? Devon?

Oh. He looks back at the photo of Devon. Yes. That’s when he made his Life rank in Scouts.

And Eagle comes after Life.

Dad nods and sighs. He wanted very much to make Eagle.

From my seat at the kitchen table I can see the corner of the living room where the chest sits. That’s his Eagle project.

Yes, says Dad. It was.

He can’t make Eagle if the chest isn’t finished.

Dad swallows hard even though he’s not eating anything. He gets up from the table and leaves the other half of his Pop-Tart and his salad stuff too.

I don’t feel hungry anymore so I put my plate in the dishwasher. I have to scrape Dad’s plate before I put it in the dishwasher. Then I sit down and draw like I do all the time. Devon says if I went a whole day without drawing I would probably die. But that will never happen because I can’t go a whole entire day without drawing.

Dad sits back down on the sofa and stares at the pencil stain on the carpet.

I HATE RECESS EVEN THOUGH Devon says it’s supposed to be my favorite subject and there is no recess once you get to middle school so enjoy it now. But I can’t enjoy it because I’m surrounded by sharp screaming and it’s too bright and people’s elbows are all pointy and dangerous and it’s hard to breathe and my stomach always feels really really sick. I stand and put my arms around me like a force field and squeeze my eyes almost closed to try to shut everything out. It doesn’t work. I still feel like a Fake Item Box that Mario is going to run over any minute now. I start sucking my shirt cuff that’s sticking out of my jacket sleeve.