The Winner's Game(7)
Cade seems surprised that I just called myself—and the pager—boring. “So change it,” he says.
“I can’t just give it back to the hospital and ask for another one.”
“No. I mean change it. Paint it or something. Make it less boring.”
“Can I do that?” I admit, I feel dumb posing that question to my little twerp of a brother, but it’s really more of a rhetorical question.
“You’re asking me? I’m eleven. But if it’s your pager…” He leaves the thought blowing in the wind, perhaps hoping it will land somewhere fertile and take root.
It does.
I stare at Cade for several seconds, and then at the pager, and then again at Cade. “You know what?” I say eventually. “I am going to change…the pager. Stay here.” I get up and leave the room without saying another word. In a few minutes I return downstairs with six or seven bottles of nail polish, all different colors. Cade doesn’t have socks on, so he quickly tucks his feet beneath himself to hide his toes—I painted them once before with alternating pink and purple, and his friends still tease him about it. For the next twenty minutes I methodically dip and dab until a colorful picture begins to emerge on the pager’s black plastic shell.
“Who is it going to be?” Cade asks as a face takes shape on the front of the pager, with pearlescent highlights flowing down the sides and back.
“Just a face,” I tell him. “A friend. Someone to look back at me until I get my heart.”
In the end, my enamel friend has sparkly orange hair, lavender eyes, hot-pink lips, and French-vanilla teeth. The final touch is a ruby-red heart on the pager’s lower-right corner, where the figure’s chest would be.
“I think I’ll call her Page.”
“Pretty cool,” he says when I give him a closer look.
“Yeah,” I reply, feeling a sense of pride in what I’ve done. Then a horrifying thought occurs to me: “Dad’s going to kill me.”
“Nah. He’ll only be mad for a minute. He won’t yell at you anyway. You’re off-limits, at least until after the transplant.”
Cade’s right. Dad and Mom let me get away with just about anything, because they don’t want to upset me in any way. It’s kind of nice, but I know it drives Bree and Cade crazy sometimes, because they don’t get away with anything.
I lower Page and absently reply, “Yeah…until then.”
I’m about to get up and head to my room, but a muffled cry from the other end of the house stops me. “Was that…?”
Cade looks worried. He whispers, “I think they’re fighting again.”
A few seconds later a door slams shut, then it slams shut again. In no time at all, my father comes striding through the living room, tailed by my mom. He’s fuming. She’s crying.
He’s headed for the closet to grab a jacket. She’s maneuvering to the front door to block it.
Neither of them seem to notice us on the couch, so we just sit there, watching the drama unfold. If we had popcorn, this might feel like a movie. And the script would go something like this:
MOM
(crying)
I can’t even talk to you without you blowing up! All I said was it’d be nice if you helped out a little more around the house.
DAD
But the way you said it! It’s like you’re constantly accusing me of being lazy! Do you know how hard I work for this family?
MOM
(Tears streaming down her face;
she doesn’t bother wiping them away.)
I didn’t say you don’t work hard!
DAD
You insinuated.
MOM
This is so stupid! I should be able to ask for a little help without you blowing it out of proportion. I can’t do it all myself, Dell.
DAD
And I can’t have you nagging me every time I sit down for five seconds to rest, just because you feel like something needs to be done that very instant.
MOM
Except if I didn’t ask you, it’d never get gone. Or I’d end up doing it myself, which is usually what happens.
DAD
(pulling on his jacket, huffing loudly)
Are you going to get out of the way? I can’t be around you right now.
MOM
(somewhat sarcastically)
Right. Just like you can’t be around me when we go to the beach, except for (She drops her voice to mimic his.) ‘as many weekends as I can break away.’ Admit it, you could stay longer if you wanted to.
DAD
Is that was this is all about? You pick a fight with me about putting my shoes away because you’re mad about the beach house?
MOM
No, but you are being really selfish with your time. It’s our daughter, Dell. You should be around more than just a weekend here and there.