Here in the Real World

Five

Ware hadn’t spoken a word the whole ride to the community center.

Over the years, he’d argued the point too many times already: He had plenty of Meaningful Social Interaction at school. Truckloads full. He had friends—Vashon and Mikayla. And by the way, why did she always act as if two wasn’t enough?

But sometimes he wanted to spend time alone. Sometimes he needed to. If that made him a disappointing son, well, couldn’t his parents accept their bad luck, having a disappointing son?

But now, standing at the registration desk, Ware wished he’d fought a little. Or a lot. He wished, actually, that he’d opened the car door and rolled out—at slow speed, onto soft grass, of course. He’d seen a kid do that in a movie once. The kid had broken her arm, but it had certainly gotten the mother’s attention.

Ms. Sanchez, the Rec director, who always looked as tired as Ware suddenly felt, began reciting the rules. “The community center is not responsible for lost or damaged items; the staff will not administer medicines . . .”

Ware zoned out—five summers he’d heard these rules—and scanned the room.

Nothing had changed. The concrete walls, chipped paint the color of Band-Aids, were hung with the same curling posters: SAVE A LIFE—LEARN THE HEIMLICH!; IDENTIFY POISONOUS SNAKES IN FLORIDA; and oddly, HOW TO MAKE THE PERFECT CUP OF COFFEE.

The floor was marked for the basketball court it used to be, and a hoop still hung at one end, although the basketballs had long ago been replaced with Wiffle balls after some big-muscled kid managed to hurl one through a clerestory window. You could still pick glass out of the floorboards underneath.

In back was the Art Hut, doubly misnamed since it wasn’t a hut at all and nothing close to art ever went on there, not if art was something you created yourself instead of “Trace your hand, add a red triangle.”

The place sounded just the way he remembered, too: the high-pitched roar of kids establishing the day’s alliances or battles.

Most discouraging, the air smelled exactly the same: feet, Lysol, and vaguely but insistently, vomit from legions of little kids staggering inside, tomato-faced after running around under a broiling Florida sun, heaving up lunch. Ware had done it himself. He felt his breakfast shift threateningly in his stomach as he remembered.

He saw only three other kids from his age group—they’d be Elevens this year—two boys and a girl. All three were the kind of kids who found the community center’s cavernous space an irresistible acoustic challenge. One of the boys caught his eye and whooped. The other gulped and let out a thunderous burp.

Ware raised his hand to half-mast with a nod, but inside, he felt the familiar contracting retreat of the thing that lived deep in his chest, which must be his soul.

Two weeks into the program, everybody was already knotted up into groups. Only two kids stood alone.

One was a tall boy he’d never seen before, whose neck rose out of his striped T-shirt like a periscope. After a full 360-degree scan of the room, the boy pretended to study the ant farm on a windowsill. Ware knew he was pretending because the ants had died off, probably out of boredom, a few years ago.

The other was a seven-year-old he thought of as Sad Girl. Sad Girl stood at the door and cried the whole first day she’d come two summers ago. Her silent tears had about killed Ware. Desperate to stop them, he’d swiped the prized unicorn puppet from a couple of older girls and brought it to her, but she’d only pressed it to her side and kept those streaming eyes glued on the door, her lashes clumped together and heavy.

Today Sad Girl was looking mournfully at a lump of Play-Doh on her palm. It was the same pinkish beige as the walls, and even from the registration desk, Ware could see it was crusty. The girl looked up, right at him, as if she had sensed him watching her. She tipped her palm so the clay fell to the floor. Ware nodded in sympathy.

His mom tore out a check, handed it over. “That’s for the full summer package—weekends, too.”

Ms. Sanchez wrote SUMMER PKG after his name the way Ware imagined a judge might write SENTENCE: DEATH. “Drop in any time you want. Just sign in at the door so we know the day’s head count.”

“Oh, he’ll be here every—” his mother started to say, but the director had leaped up to pull a kid out of a trash can.

“How much does this cost, Mom?”

“Oh, now, that’s not something for a child to worry about.”

“I’m not worried. I’ll pay you twice as much to let me stay home.” This was his new reckless self talking, since there were only forty-six dollars in his shoe box at home, but he was desperate.

“I have to get to work, but I’ll see you at dinner.” His mother dug into her tote bag. She pulled out a bus pass. “For July. The bus stop is right out front.” Then she came up with the first aid kit and a pack of antibacterial wipes. “If you touch anything . . .”

“Mom!”

She zipped the bag closed. “Try to have a good time, okay? Maybe you’ll make a friend.”

Ware gave up. He tightened his cheeks in something he hoped looked like a smile and nodded. Then he walked over to the cubbies and stuffed the first aid kit and the wipes deep into the back of one. He hung his backpack on a hook, feeling exhausted.

“Elevens!” Ms. Sanchez called from the side door. “Outside with Kyle for Rec-Trek. Tens, you too.”

Rec-Trek. Ware had almost forgotten. A dozen times around the building, first walking, then marching and skipping, and finally running at faster and faster speeds, until your head pounded and sweat poured down your back, followed by five circuits of free movement, which wasn’t free since you had to keep circling the building. Half an hour of mandatory exercise. A couple of years there’d been kids on crutches and once a boy in a wheelchair—even they only got to go a little slower. Ware sighed and started for the door.

“This place should have a real playground,” he complained as he passed the director. He was a little shocked he’d said it out loud, but she seemed too tired to take offense.

“This place should have a lot of things,” she agreed with a shrug. “Tell it to my budget.”

Six

Outside, Ware positioned himself far enough apart from the others that he could study the situation, but close enough that an adult would assume he was enjoying Meaningful Social Interaction.

The tall-necked boy slouched out with the Tens. He scanned the scene, and when his gaze found Ware, he wormed his way over. “I’m Ben. I haven’t seen you before. You new here, too?” he asked with an eagerness that reminded Ware of himself his first weeks here. He winced with the recognition.

“No,” he answered. “I’m old here.”

“Tens behind Elevens, single file,” Kyle—this year’s counselor—called, and the tall-necked boy drifted back.

Watching him go, Ware realized that he’d described it exactly—he felt old here at the Rec. Until this very moment, he hadn’t even known that old was a feeling, had thought it was just a wrinkled, faded way of appearing. But old was a feeling all right. Worn out.

He began to shuffle with the Elevens toward the giant oak at the corner of the property that marked the start of the circuits.

“Trek one, walk!”

Nothing had changed outside, either.

Over the side fence, he saw the pink bell tower of the Glory Alliance Church. Tuesdays, the odor of lasagna wafting out from their kitchen made Rec smell a lot better than usual. Friday afternoons, the air rang with choir practice. Ware liked to imagine that the thunderous hallelujah-ing was the soundtrack to a victory-against-all-odds movie, one that starred him surviving another week.

The Elevens turned the corner into the back parking lot. There, the Grotto Bar’s neon sign loomed over the fence, promising IC OLD BEER in blue letters beside a pink flamingo endlessly dipping its beak into a golden mug. Ware had tasted beer, and he couldn’t fathom why a human being, let alone a flamingo, would drink it, but he liked that the bar was there, too. On rainy days, colorful streaks rivered down the windows in the Art Hut from that neon sign. You see that? Wow.

He stopped, squinting his eyes at the sign, trying to re-create the rain slide of electric colors, until the Tens passed him and he had to run to catch the end of the line.

Rec-Trek’s third leg was alongside the city library. It would be to nice spend the day under those cool, dark ceilings, poring over book after book in the quiet. Medieval history had a whole shelf in there.

And then the line of kids, a dozen heads drooping in the heat already, trudged past the front of the community center, heading for the old oak again.

“Trek two, march!” Kyle yelled, like a warden to his prisoners.

The kids around Ware dutifully lifted their knees and surged forward.

But Ware stopped.

Because he was last in line, no one would notice if he slipped behind that tree, skipped a few circuits.

Ware’s old obedient self argued with his new reckless self for a few seconds. Then he darted.

Wedged between the massive trunk and the fence, watching the last of the Tens disappear around the corner, he felt giddy, electrified.

He gripped the limb above his head and swung himself up. Belly to the broad limb, he stretched his arms, his legs. Branching. He imagined sap rushing through his veins, fresh leaves unfurling from his fingers and toes.

He didn’t feel old anymore.

Too soon, though, he heard the thud of footsteps coming back around the building. He shimmied out farther into the green, way over the fence now, and closed his eyes in ostrich-logic until they passed.

Then he looked out. And nearly fell from the tree.

Someone had laid siege to the church.

Seven

The roof had been torn off, the walls half smashed. Their tops looked like crenellated parapets—he’d learned the term researching for his castle report; it meant notched like a jawbone missing teeth.

Ware dropped from the branch and flew across the overgrown lawn to the front steps.

One of the massive wooden doors had been smashed to splinters, the other lay canted out like a drawbridge half raised. Above his head, an iron pole jutted from the wall. Shards of glass below told Ware that the pole had held a light, but now it cast a pointed shadow down toward the doorway, as if ordering him inside.

Before he obeyed, Ware climbed the front steps and studied the shadow. Castle designers incorporated sundials on south-facing walls like this, public timepieces for the villagers.

He calculated. His mother had left at eight forty-five, so it was about nine now. He had nothing to draw with, but he’d skinned his knee dropping from the tree. Carefully, dipping up blood with his finger, he painted an I and an X at the tip of the shadow.

Then he scrambled over heaps of wreckage to the bell tower. In the light streaming down from the gaping top, where the spire used to be, a steel stairway winked all the way up like a promise.

Before he could climb, he heard the clink of metal hitting something gritty.

He ducked and peered around.

Through the back doorway, he saw a scrawny girl squatting in the backyard of the church beside a squashed slide. Flat ribbons of yellow hair splayed out under a saggy straw hat. She raised a trowel and stabbed the ground.

In his report, he’d learned the value of observing intruders from above before they saw you. Battles were won and lost in the watchtower, he’d written, and Mrs. Sprague had stuck a smiling light-bulb sticker beside the sentence.

He edged back into the tower and reached for the railing to climb up. As he grasped it, a couple of uprights broke off and clanged down the steps.

He froze.

“Hey!”

Ware poked his head out.

The girl stood in the center of the parking area, her hands on her hips. Mirrored sunglasses flashed silver above cheeks smudged with dirt. “What are you doing here?”

Ware clambered over the rubble to the doorway. He put his hands on his hips, too. “Nothing.”

“Well, this place is mine. You have to do nothing somewhere else.”

“So . . .” Ware liked the word so. So bought you some time in situations like these. “So . . . you don’t own this place. It’s a church.”

“Nuh-uh. Used to be. But now . . .” She swept her arm back over where she’d come from. “My garden.”

And Ware noticed what he hadn’t before: Dozens of big, squat tin cans with peeling labels, lined up among the smashed playground equipment. “A tin-can garden?”

The girl tipped her head toward the cans.

Ware walked down the steps to the parking area. He held himself tall as he passed the girl, and was relieved to see he had a couple of inches on her. Which was ridiculous—they weren’t going to fight.

He crouched to study the cans. All were labeled ChipNutz. A knee-high plant sprouted out of each. The plants looked feathery and brave at the same time. Ware wanted to brush his fingers over their tips, but he didn’t. He stood up. Beyond the cans were two rows of the same plants in the ground, chest high and sturdy.

“My garden,” the girl called behind him. “See. This place is mine now.”

It was the unfair way she claimed ownership that set Ware off. It made him want to claim something of his own. “Okay,” he called over his shoulder. When he’d reached the foundation, he climbed the back steps and spread his arms over the ruins. “I’ll take this.”

The girl followed him to the steps. “A wrecked born-again church? Who would want that?”

“If that smashed playground is your garden, then this wrecked church is my castle.” His new recklessness scared him, but he kind of liked it, too.

“Trek seven!” Kyle’s voice floated over the fence.

Ware startled. He didn’t have much time left.

The girl smirked. “Oh, yeah. It’s a castle all right. For sinners.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he called over his shoulder, and scrambled back up onto the ruins.

Eight

“Oh, I know what I’m talking about.”

Unbelievable. The girl had followed him. She drew right up to him, sharp chin out, and grabbed his hand.

Ware was so stunned by the hand-grabbing that he let her pull him to the middle of the wreckage.

There, a big container clad in fake stones stood almost as tall as he was and twice as long. Ware wanted to climb those fake stones to look inside, but the girl was still holding his hand.

He didn’t want her to be holding his hand, of course, but somehow he didn’t feel he should take it back, either.

As a compromise, he rose on his toes to peer over the top. The tub was full of wreckage, but through it, he saw that the interior was coated in glassy turquoise.

The girl dropped his hand and smacked the side of the vessel. “This here is a baptistery—a sinners’ tub. People line up, begging please, oh please, could the preacher dunk them because they are suffering so from how bad they’ve been. Then the preacher dunks them, clothes and all, lifts them back up, and woo-hoo, they’re born again, are all shiny and new, like pennies in Coke.”

“Huh,” Ware said. His hand was still warm from where she’d held it. It felt a little as if it might be glowing. “A magic tub.”

“No. No magic tub. ’Cause the very next week, they’re slinking into the Grotto, drinking the rent money, hitting their kids—same old stuff they used to do before they got dunked.”

Ware sneaked a peek at his hand. It wasn’t glowing, but it felt buzzy, as if it might be glowing inside. He put it into his pocket to preserve the feeling. “How do you know all this, anyway?”

“My aunt went here every Sunday till they gave up.”

“Gave up?”

“Ran out of money. Quit paying, back in January. And the bank kicked them out.”

“That’s what happened? Why’d they knock it down?”

“Walter says so nobody could camp here, do drugs and stuff.”

“Who’s Walter?”

The girl hitched a shoulder toward the Grotto Bar. “Bartender.”

“You know a bartender?” Ware gasped, before he could stop himself.

The girl grabbed her head and groaned.

Mortified, Ware changed the subject. “Wow. So, there must be a lot of great stuff in all this mess.”

“Nuh-uh. The church people came before the wrecking crew. They took everything good.”

“How do you know?”

“I watched. They took the cross out first, laid it down on a pickup truck. You notice a thing like that.”

“Trek ten!”

Ware’s head snapped up. He’d missed three more circuits.

The girl followed his gaze and then nodded. “You have to go.” She sounded pleased.

“I’m going.” As he passed her, the oddest thing happened.

In her mirrored glasses, Ware saw himself reflected. Looking back was the most pathetic kid in the world. You know a bartender? Unbelievable.

Nine

His mom’s car and his dad’s truck were parked in the driveway.

Good. He would tell them both at once, get it over with. Chin up, chest out, advance boldly. “I tried it. It was terrible. I’m not going back,” he practiced out loud on the front step.

A lizard jumped onto the last sun-warmed patch of cement beside him and began pumping its jerky little push-ups as if cheering his proclamation. Ware didn’t particularly like lizards, with their suction-cup feet, but you had to admire them, thermodynamically at least. A lizard craved the sun, but it didn’t need it. It ran just fine on hot or cold blood.

“I mean it. I’m not going back,” he repeated for the lizard. He unlocked the door.

A hushed murmuring leaked down the hall from his parents’ closed bedroom door.

Closed-door was their parenting style. He hadn’t minded when he was little, but now, more and more, he wished his parents would just straight-out tell him whatever was going on.

He walked down the hall and raised his knuckles to knock. Looking at his fist, he remembered: the garden-girl had held his hand.

No, that wasn’t accurate. She’d only taken his hand, not held it, and she’d seemed pretty mad at him the whole time. If he’d been wearing a leash around his neck, she’d probably have dragged him over by that.

He turned his attention back to the door.

And heard: “. . . one kid. And he turns out so antisocial. He offered to pay not to go!”

Ware dropped his hand. He leaned in.

“. . . now, with my mother sick. Why can’t we have a normal kid?”

Ware reared back. His face flamed, but the thing in his chest that felt like his soul shrank down cold, like the heart of a lizard deprived of its sun. He edged down the hall. In the kitchen, he sat at the counter and opened a game on the computer. The way a normal kid would do.

Finally, his parents emerged.

“What happened to your knee?” his father asked, his brows tented in worry.

“Nothing—it’s fine.” Ware stood. He cleared his throat.

“Was that a cough?” his father asked.

“No. Now, Rec.”

His mother opened a drawer and started rooting around. She retrieved a lozenge, extra-strength honey lemon, and began to unwrap it.

“I’m eleven and a half, Mom.” Ware groaned and pushed away the lozenge. He cleared his throat again. “So, Rec. I tried it. It was . . .”

His mother bit her bottom lip.

The sight of her anxiety hurt so much, he had to look away. “It was . . .”

He heard his mother gulp. The gulp undid him.

The terrible weight of it. The awful responsibility.

“It was . . . all right,” he said, his voice quavering only slightly. He looked up.

“See?” His mother sighed, her face relaxing.

His father smiled. “You just needed to give it a chance.”

And the thing in his chest uncurled just a little bit.

Ten

Next day, Ware waved to his mother from the drop-off space and took a couple of normal-kid steps toward the door. When she’d driven off, he stopped. Ms. Sanchez had said he could come in whenever he wanted, and he didn’t want to just yet.

He walked casually over to the oak, waited until no one was around, then tucked his backpack into the crotch of a branch and swung himself up. Just to see.

The girl sat cross-legged in the shade of three queen palms, surrounded by ChipNutz cans. It looked as if she was telling her plants a story. The palms looked like skinny old ladies in green hats, leaning down to hear the story, too, as if it was a good one.