18. Talking Points

TALKING POINTS

At this point in the story, the boy does some things that are questionable, if not illegal. And I am maybe a little to blame for that.

And so, Olka, are you.

Having decided to enlist Ginny's granddaughter, the pair needed to find a way to contact her. "I'll bet her number is in Ginny's file," the boy told Maya-Jade, remembering that this was how I was going to find you. "I've seen them in Mrs. Winston's office. They have one for each resident."

"Are we allowed to look at the files?" Maya-Jade looked nervous. "I'm on my school's Honor Committee and we're supposed to have ‘integrity even when no one is watching us.'?" She made air quotes again.

He had no idea what an Honor Committee was, and he was pretty sure breaking into the office would be against its rules. But again he thought about you hiding the coats. It wasn't legal, but it had been right. It had not occurred to him before that those two things might not always be the same.

"Isn't it, like, honorable, if we're doing this to help someone?"

Maya-Jade tapped her finger against her chin and then broke into a grin. "Yeah, it is," she said.

With Etta on bed rest and the Person from Corporate still snooping around for that second person to send to the Garden now that I'd proven my faculties were intact, it was surprisingly easy to steal the files. While Maya-Jade stood lookout, the boy walked into Etta's office and opened the cabinet and found Ginny's file under KOONG , right between JENKINS and KRAVITZ . Lydia Koong's number was on the first page.

After Maya-Jade and the boy called Lydia, who had had no idea that Dickie had been moved, Lydia called Ginny. When she got no answer, she called the front desk and asked an aide to visit Ginny's room and have her call Lydia. But even then Ginny was barely speaking. So Lydia immediately called Etta, but Etta was at home on bed rest, so she was transferred to the Person from Corporate. Lydia demanded an explanation, and when the one given didn't meet her standards, she threatened to pull Ginny from Shady Glen if the Person from Corporate didn't arrange a meeting with the two families. This put the Person from Corporate in quite a pickle. Whatever points she had won by moving Dickie to the Garden so quickly would be undone if she lost a longtime resident in a deluxe suite. But she also had no desire to allow a family conference. To placate Lydia, she agreed to ask Dickie's family for a meeting, banking on the fact that Dickie's son, Jimmy, would refuse. Jimmy had been happy to move his father to the Garden, partly because he believed the relationship with Ginny was, in his words, "plain wrong."

But the Person from Corporate hadn't banked on Jimmy's wife answering the phone, and she agreed to the meeting.

Now the Person from Corporate was in a worse pickle, so she passed that pickle to Julio. "You fix this," she said, and when Julio responded that he was just a physical therapist and this had nothing to do with him, she said, "Well, it does now."

Julio in turn summoned the boy and Maya-Jade to the kitchen for a little meeting. Tempers were high, so Leyla served larger-than-normal slices of baklava.

"This has your fingerprints all over it," Julio said, pointing at them with his own fingers, sticky with honey.

The boy kept his mouth shut. But not Maya-Jade. She confessed, "Yes, it was, and it was the right thing to do."

The boy shot her a look. In his experience, admitting to something generally led to more trouble, but it was too late. Julio was already demanding that they come to the meeting tomorrow and explain how they had accidentally caused this mess.

"It wasn't an accident and we did nothing wrong," Maya-Jade said. "The people who moved Dickie did. We just reported it."

"I'm not going to even ask you how you got ahold of Mrs. Koong's granddaughter, but the meeting is tomorrow morning and I expect you two to be there and say you made a stupid mistake all by yourself and that'll be the end of that. Comprende?"

The boy nodded solemnly, hoping none of this would get back to the social worker, or Mrs. Winston, who didn't believe in third chances, and would certainly see this as his third strike. They'd tried. What more could they do? "Comprende," the boy replied.

But Maya-Jade did not comprende. "It's perfect," she whispered excitedly as they hurried out of the kitchen. "If we're at the meeting, we can make our case about why Dickie and Ginny should be together."

"You want us to talk to the adults?"

"Not talk to them. Debate them." Maya-Jade grinned. "I was champion of my debate team."

Of course you were, he thought but had the sense not to say. For better or worse, they were in this together, and he was relieved that she seemed to know what to do.

"We can prepare our argument after work. Can I come to dinner at your house?" Maya-Jade asked.

The boy thought of asking his aunt to make another portion of rubber chicken so he and Maya-Jade could cause more trouble. He shook his head. "Can we go to yours?"

"I'm not supposed to have people over because my mom is immunocompromised."

In the end they decided to stay late at Shady Glen. Leyla made them each a plate and let them sit on stools in the kitchen. "I think what you're doing is sweet," she said, giving them an extra helping of chocolate cake and telling them they could have all the ice cream they wanted.

Maya-Jade had an iPad with her and she logged onto the Wi-Fi, explaining that they had to find "reputable sources."

"What are those?"

"Like research papers from actual scientific journals. Statistics from government agencies. Stuff that's true."

"How do you know what's true?"

"Like you have to look between the lines, see who's saying what. Like, pretend there's a study that says that eating chocolate chip cookies for every meal is good for your health."

"I'd agree with that," he said.

"But what if the study was paid for by Chips Ahoy? Or Mrs. Fields or some other company that makes chocolate chip cookies? They're like bending the truth, and then it becomes like propaganda."

"Oh," he said. Maybe Maya-Jade acted like a know-it-all because she did know it all.

"Oh my God," Maya-Jade said, giggling. "Here's a study about romantic relationships in assisted-living facilities." She scanned the screen. "Ew!"

"What?"

She tilted the screen toward the boy and read aloud: "?‘Intimate relationships among senior citizens can improve physical and mental health.'?" She paused. "Old people. Doing it!"

"Gross!" the boy cried, and they cracked up.

After they calmed down, they got back to work. The time flew by, and the boy remembered how much he had once loved school, back when new ideas seemed to flicker on in his brain like a row of lights until everything was bright and colorful. Back when he had completed homework and extra credit and teachers had stapled handwritten appendages to his report cards that said things like Alex is one of the brightest and most curious students I've had the pleasure of teaching.

But switching schools midyear, as he often did, made it hard to keep up. In one school they'd be doing fractions, which he'd already done, but in another they'd be halfway through a unit on geometry that was totally new to him. He began to fall behind. And then one of the schools made him repeat fifth grade, which was embarrassing because he didn't need to repeat, but they insisted he hadn't completed enough days to advance to sixth grade.

After that, he had started to hate school. Half the time he was bored and checked out. The other half he was lost and checked out. The repeated year meant that he was bigger than a lot of the other students, and now teachers regarded him like he was a threat because he'd started puberty. And even the nice ones, who weren't scared of him, looked at him not like he was a kid to be taught but—similar to how Minna felt with her children—a problem to be solved. Or, in his case, passed off like a hot potato to the next school.

But tonight he didn't feel like a problem. He felt like a fixer. A smart kid. He had to admit, he liked meeting this version of himself. He knew it wouldn't last. Nothing in his life had. But still, he liked it.