17. A Best Thing

A BEST THING

The boy was quiet for a long time after I finished speaking. I could hear his legs swinging back and forth, back and forth, scraping against the carpet. I could almost hear the wheels of his mind turning at the thought of Olka's bravery, risking her life to save some coats.

The social worker's question came back to him. What was the best thing he'd ever done?

He hadn't done a best thing. He hadn't been able to. No one had invited out his better self. Or maybe they had and he hadn't accepted.

After he left my room, the boy marched to Vivian's and knocked on the door. Vivian answered with a frown, and the boy remembered how she'd called him a criminal in front of everyone. He fought the urge to run and asked if Maya-Jade was there, making sure to think the hyphen between the two names this time as he spoke.

Maya-Jade emerged from the bathroom. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was red.

"She's been like this all day," Vivian told the boy. "So oversensitive."

The boy saw Maya-Jade blanch at the insult and he felt a pang of sympathy for her. Rich or not, lucky or not, everyone hurt, he guessed.

"What do you want?" Maya-Jade asked. She sounded not so much mad as sad.

"I want to help," he said. "I want to help you with Ginny and Dickie."

An hour later, the boy and Maya-Jade sat in the activities room with a sheet of paper in front of them.

It was blank.

They had agreed to work together to help Dickie and Ginny, but after a brainstorming session that had been more like a brain drizzle session, they still had no idea how to do it. Maya-Jade had already asked Vivian for help, but her grandmother had refused, saying that she never meddled in other people's affairs.

They thought about going to Etta, but she was still at home on bed rest. They thought about going to Julio, but he was too overwhelmed with being sort of in charge during Etta's absence.

"We could go to the TV news," Maya-Jade suggested. "Maybe they'll do a story about it."

"That's a great idea," the boy replied. "Do you know anyone on the TV news?"

"No. Do you?"

"Nope."

They returned to the blank page.

"Can you ask your parents for help?" the boy asked. This, after all, was the kind of thing regular parents were supposed to help with. And Maya-Jade seemed like the kind of person who had a regular mom and dad who helped with school projects and packed healthy lunches in those fancy boxes with tiny compartments.

She said no, tightly, with no room for discussion.

"We're going to need some grown-up to help us." The boy thought for a minute. "Wait, what about the granddaughter?"

Maya-Jade snapped her fingers. "Lydia! That's such a good idea. Why didn't I think of it?"

"Um,'cause you're not the only person in the world with good ideas maybe?" He was kidding and not kidding at the same time.

She seemed to get that, because she looked down. "I know I can be a know-it-all."

He shrugged. "It's okay to be a know-it-all if you don't think everyone else is a know-it-nothing."

"I didn't think you were a know-it-nothing, I thought you were…" She clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Just say it."

"Mean."

He shrugged again. "Maybe because I was mean."

"Or maybe I was just oversensitive. My therapist says I'm trying to control things because my life feels out of control."

"How?" He felt that way too, a lot, but he didn't think people like Maya-Jade did.

"My mom has breast cancer and I have to spend the summer hanging out with Vivian."

"Your mom has cancer? Is she in the hospital?"

"She was in the hospital for her lumpectomy but only for the day, and she goes once a week to an infusion center for chemotherapy, but it's not a hospital, more like a regular doctor's office. And after that she'll go somewhere else every day for radiation."

"Oh," the boy said. It sounded scary, even if it was just in a regular doctor's office.

"The cancer is stage 1B," she continued. "Which means it hasn't spread, and has a ninety-five percent cure rate and all that." She spoke like she was giving an oral report at school.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Is that why you're volunteering here for the summer?"

"Yeah. I usually spend the summer at sleepaway camp. And I was so excited about this year because the twelve-year-olds get to do a play, but when I got there, I kept having panic attacks. I was convinced my mom had died and no one had told me."

The boy didn't know much about panic attacks, and he wondered if they felt like when his feelings were so loud he couldn't hear anything else. That was how it had been on the day of the Incident.

"It's stupid. She was fine, just kind of tired and nauseous. Like Nana said, I'm oversensitive. But I fell during one of the panic attacks and split open my elbow." She tapped where the bandage had been, the scab now a pink scar. "So they sent me home."

He remembered the bandage. It had been new when she'd put him on bleach duty. So she must've only just got sent home from camp. He wished he could go back in time and have this information. He would've been nicer to her.

"I'm sorry you got hurt and sent home and that you had panic attacks."

"Thank you." She paused. "My therapist says it's a normal reaction to trauma. I have abandonment issues because my birth mom gave me up, and then I was so worried about losing another mom that I got all triggered and freaked out. But when I got home, I was still kind of being what my mom calls ‘intense,'?" she said, making finger quotes. "And she was too tired from the chemo and didn't want me ‘underfoot,'?" she said, making them again. "So that's why I got sent to Camp Vivian." She stuck out her tongue. It was the first time he'd seen her do something that seemed actually kidlike. "Not because I'm a do-gooder but because I'm a big giant wuss who no one wants to have around. So there, now you know."

She put her hands on her hips, defiantly, as if daring him to agree. But he didn't think she was a wuss. He thought she was just a person, and maybe even a person he was starting to like.