The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,112
other hand, have.
There are a lot of things like this now, things that Travis and I understand that Deena does not. Like French. And imaginary numbers. Deena failed algebra and has Mr. Goldman again, but Travis passed the final exam, so now he’s in geometry with me. Mr. Goldman and Travis are friends now, and when they see each other in the hallway, Travis gives him the peace sign and says, “Right on, dude,” like everything that happened between them the day he hit his head on the doorknob is now just a joke for them to laugh at together.
Travis goes to all his classes this year, not just math, which means no more Dairy Queen or anything else for Deena in the middle of the afternoon. She isn’t happy about this. She says it’s hard to get through a full day of school, now that she’s gotten so used to taking breaks. But it isn’t like she can go anywhere without him; there is nowhere to go and no way to get there, so sometimes she doesn’t come to school at all.
Her father sent her a television for her room for Christmas, and when I go over to her apartment after school to give her her homework, she is usually sitting up in bed watching MTV, sometimes eating ice cream. She makes me a bowl and we watch videos together for a while. I like watching videos, and I wish we had cable so we could have MTV too, but after watching them for an hour, I get sick of them. But Deena can just sit there all day, no problem, going back and forth between MTV and soap operas with her remote control.
When she does come to school, she doesn’t pay attention. She acts like she’s listening to the teachers when they talk, taking notes, but really she is drawing flowers in vases or using her calligraphy pen to write things like “Mrs. Fredina Rowley, Mr. and Mrs. Travis Rowley, Deena Sobrepena Schultz Rowley, Mrs. Deena Schultz Rowley.” When the teachers ask her questions, she looks up, startled, as if she isn’t sure where she is, and says she doesn’t know.
I wake up late on a Saturday and come out to the front room to see Samuel in his beanbag, his eyes open, my mother kneeling at his feet. Various objects surround them on the floor: the radio, plastic measuring cups, a box of plastic wrap, my mother’s winter coat. She stands up when she sees me, the glitter hat crooked on her head. “Evelyn,” she says, her hand on my arm. “Look what he’s doing.”
I look at Samuel. He is sitting in his beanbag, eyes glassy, mouth open and drooling.
“That’s really neat, Mom.”
She slaps me on the shoulder, hard enough to hurt. “Just wait. Wait.”
We both stand there for maybe half a minute, watching Samuel sit. But then, slowly, his arm begins moving upward, his hand dangling in such a way that his E.T. finger appears to be pointing at the kitchen.
“See?” she says, moving toward him. “See?” She follows the line from his finger to the telephone on the kitchen wall. She picks it up and walks toward him, stretching the cord behind her. “Telephone. This is the telephone.” She looks up at me, the glitter hat still crooked on her head. “He knows.”
I look back at Samuel. His eyes are staring over our heads, at nothing. I’m not sure about this, and I don’t know what to say. But again his hand moves, his finger this time pointing in the direction of the brown love seat in the corner of the room. My mother nods quickly at him and gets behind it. “Give me a hand with this,” she says.
I hesitate, putting the phone back in its cradle. “This is kind of making a mess.”
She snaps her fingers, the way a rude person would call a waiter at a restaurant. “Just do it, okay?”
I get on the other side of the love seat, and we push it toward him, the wheels snagging on the carpet, two cats still asleep on the cushions, going along for the ride. When we get it within arm’s reach of Samuel, my mother gets back down on her knees. “This is a couch, Samuel. You pointed at a couch.” She presses his fingers against the upholstery. “Couch.”
His eyes remain blank, still as a doll’s. But then his hand rises again, his finger pointing maybe at the television set, or maybe