The Year They Fell Page 2

  My house was like two and a half blocks from Sunny Horizons Preschool. I rode my scooter past the playground just about every day. Like a boss. Sunny H had changed since we were there. The faded blue awning with the yellow sun still hung above the entrance to the school. But years back, the people in charge decided that it was more important for kids to be safe than to have fun. So now the play area was all soft and round. The huge oak we used to run around and climb up was now just a stump. Dad said the tree got some kind of virus and they had to put it out of its misery. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

  I know it’s pretty sad that thirteen years later I still missed preschool. I get it’s not normal. But it was never normal. I mean, who else makes the only real friends they’ve ever had when they’re four? Guess I’m not really made for groups. I’m not sporty enough for the athletes, or smart enough for the brains. I’m not artsy enough for the other artists, or weird enough for the weirdos. I went through a phase where I tried to be black enough for the black kids, but I felt like a fraud and they knew it. But of course having white parents wasn’t enough to make me blend in with the white kids either. So I was lost somewhere in the middle. But back at Sunny Horizons, Josie and Jack and Harrison and Dayana and I were all already different. We weren’t one thing. We were everything. And somehow that made it work.

  I always knew I was different. It wasn’t like Mom and Dad could hide it from me. No one could look at us and think, He came from them. But they always told me skin color meant nothing. I was their son. Mom explained how hard they tried to have a baby the regular way. They did a bunch of shots and operations, and spent almost all of their money—that’s how much they wanted a kid. But nothing worked, so they brought me home when I was two in what they call a closed adoption. Mom and Dad never got to see my original birth certificate, or even learn the name of my birth mother. I wondered about her sometimes, but the law said I couldn’t find out who she was until I turned eighteen. Laura and Phillip Gallagher were German-Dutch and Irish and they were the only parents I ever knew.

  Mom said even though we were a family, it was important for me to hold on to my “culture.” She would try out “soul food” recipes she’d found online and Dad would play jazz and hip-hop in the car. We’d have “African American Pride Night” where they’d rent movies about people like Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, and Madea. I never told them how uncomfortable those nights made me feel. Mom used to complain that there were no other black kids my age in the neighborhood. She set me up on playdates with Dayana Calderón, whose father had met Dad at work or something. Dayana didn’t look anything like me, but she was born in Costa Rica and her skin was darker than their other friends’ kids. The problem was, Dayana didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Spanish. I don’t remember much about those awkward playdates except feeling like Mom and Vanesa were watching us like pandas in the zoo.

  So I discovered drawing. And comics. A place where people who are different can be heroes, where a group of freaks and oddballs can become a superteam and save the world. Every good comic starts with an origin story. But not every origin story ends with an ordinary loser becoming a costumed crusader fighting for truth and justice. Sometimes, an origin story is just about how a lost boy finds people who change his life, and how a bunch of very different kids get put in a room by their parents and become something bigger.

  Dayana only really knew one English sentence at first. Jack was always sick, and when he was in school, he spent most of his days in time-out. Harrison was full of worries and fears. It was Josie who brought us together. And it was Josie who kept us that way.

  I’ve been told that most people don’t remember much from preschool. But I have my drawings to remind me. They’re sort of like a record of our time there. Mom kept them all. At least all the ones I didn’t give to Josie.

  In my first week at school, we were all playing hide-and-seek on the playground. Josie put a finger to her lips and silently showed me how to get up to the lowest branch on the big tree. She bounded up there in three seconds and when I struggled, she reached down and pulled me up with her. We sat there together and watched everyone run around below us. It felt so good to be up there with her. When we got back to the classroom that day, I drew a picture of Josie and me in the tree. I wanted to show it to her, but I was too scared. So at snack time, I walked over to her cubby and slipped it into her Yankees backpack. After that, I drew another picture every day. Sometimes it was of her or Jack or a squirrel on the playground or all five of us. I’d drop it into her backpack when she wasn’t looking. She never mentioned the drawings to me, but I saw how she’d run to her cubby at the end of school. Like she couldn’t wait to open it.

  Dad took to calling us the World’s Cutest Gang: “The Sunnies.” We may have been cute, but we operated like the Hells Angels or any other badass gang. The Sunnies stuck together. We didn’t let anyone else in. And we were not afraid to fight for each other. Like when Jack got really sick the week of preschool graduation. Everyone thought he wouldn’t be able to leave home to be there. As the legend goes, Josie, Harrison, Dayana, and I decided that if Jack couldn’t be at the ceremony, then we wouldn’t go either. We did it together or not at all. Nothing our parents said would change our minds. Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Clay offered to host the graduation in their backyard so Jack could come outside and we could all graduate together. I’ve gone over my drawings from that day a lot of times. In a lot of ways, it was the beginning of the end of “The Sunnies.”

  The Clays and the Rebkins and the Calderóns—these were Mom and Dad’s friends. As my parents told it, when they started trying to have a baby, they had moved out to the suburbs. Dad scored a civilian accounting job at the local army base, Fort Benson, and Mom found work as an ER nurse. They were pretty isolated until I came along, so my school gave Mom and Dad their social network. The four families came from different places, but they were all young parents and they formed a group, just like we did. They’d stick us kids out in the yard to play while they’d hang out and drink wine and laugh. At some point, they all decided they needed a couple of days in the sun without us around. So they called in babysitters or grandparents and they flew someplace warm for a long weekend. Which instantly became a tradition; after that first trip, they went away together every year. And it all started at Sunny Horizons.

  There’s one part of preschool graduation I don’t need drawings to help me remember clearly. We were sitting near the pool in Josie’s backyard. Mom tried to take a picture of Dad and me, but he insisted she be in it. Mom hated having her picture taken. She always avoided it, but Dad said she’d be sorry one day when there were no photos of her at all. He handed his camera to Harrison’s father, Bobby.

  Bobby squeezed us together. “Hey, Arch, you psyched you’re gonna be a big bro soon?”

  I felt Mom and Dad stiffen behind me. Before Bobby could take the picture, Jennifer grabbed her husband by the sleeve and dragged him off so they could fight. Mom and Dad shared a weird look and she reached into her bag and handed me an oatmeal raisin cookie and a juice box. And that’s how I learned I was going to be a big brother. In the six months since they’d discovered the news, Mom and Dad hadn’t been able to find the right time to tell me they were having a baby.

  “Is this baby going to be adopted, too?” I asked.

  “No, kiddo. Your mom is pregnant. You know what that means, right?”

  “I thought you couldn’t have a baby like that. You said your tummy had a boo-boo.”

  “We thought so, too, sweetheart. It just … happened. I don’t know why. Even the doctors say it’s amazing. Maybe it’s because you got me ready to be a mother.”

  “I was just here to get you ready?”

  “No! No, of course not. I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean that being your mom … I don’t know … Phillip?”

  “This is going to be a great thing, pal,” said Dad. They each took one of my hands.

  I kept looking at Mom’s belly, picturing
the baby inside it. “What color will his skin be?”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other again. “He’ll be white,” said Dad. “Like us.”

  They did their best to say the right things. They’d only love me more. I’d always be their first. Nothing was going to change.

  Everything changed.

  The baby in Mom’s belly turned out to be my little brother, Lucas, who was a miracle before he was even born. Once out in the world he was the best infant and the cutest toddler. He slept like a dream and talked early and he ate all his veggies. Dad’s prayers had been answered. Lucas had this thing called coordination that somehow escaped me entirely. He could kick a soccer ball with both feet and throw a baseball harder than I could by the time he was four. He didn’t need glasses to see things that were far away. His palms didn’t sweat when a grown-up talked to him. He had Dad’s red hair and blue eyes and Mom’s smile. Everyone said so.

  It’s a total bummer when you realize your baby brother is cooler than you are. He had more friends. Girls texted him. Coaches begged him to be on their teams. And the worst part of all—Lucas was a great kid. He wasn’t all cocky like some of the athletes. He pretended to look up to me, even though I knew that wasn’t possible. Why would he? He’d ask me to have catches with him or play Call of Duty, and never rubbed it in my face after crushing me in both. He didn’t make fun of my drawings or ask why I never had a girlfriend.

  Life would’ve been so much easier if Lucas were a dick. At least then I could’ve hated him. At least then being jealous would’ve been acceptable.

  * * *

  After Sunny Horizons, Josie, Jack, Dayana, Harrison, and I headed to River Bank Elementary for kindergarten. And we stayed friends for a while. We’d always been such different people, but it didn’t really matter. Until it started mattering. I was the first to see the little cracks. Jack picked everyone else to be on his team for kickball; Harrison’s mom cancelled playdates while she was going through her divorce; Josie hung her backpack in her classroom lockers. My drawings stayed in my sketchbook. As the years went on, the cracks grew. Somehow when we walked out of Sunny Horizons, it’s like the spell holding us together was broken.

  It’s a freaky thing, watching your friends change from a distance. Like that time-lapse photography where the buildings stay the same, but the clouds and the people race by. Jack, who’d always been small and sickly, hit a growth spurt and hulked out. Dayana spent middle school wearing pink, sparkly skirts, but showed up in high school in oversize black T-shirts and combat boots. Harrison started busing to math classes at the local college. Josie … well, Josie is a whole different thing.

  I’m sure I changed, too. But not that much. I still wore glasses and read comics and rode my scooter. I still only felt right when I was drawing. I thought about girls and sex, and sex with girls. But I never got anywhere close. And besides, there was only really ever one girl who mattered.

  I tried to keep the gang together, but it was already too late for the Sunnies. I don’t think the others even noticed. And if they did, they didn’t seem to care. When the five of us were first drifting apart, I’d see one of them in the hallway and we’d talk or walk home together. But after a while we started running out of things to say to each other. So then it turned into a quick “hi.” Before long it was just a nod. And then, finally, nothing at all. By the time we finished our junior year of high school, I guess you could say we were pretty much strangers to each other.

  Until the day our parents fell out of the sky.

  3

  JACK

  The life drained from Josie’s face. Her mouth drooped open. Her arms turned to rubber. She fell back against the wall and her knees collapsed.

  “Jo?” I tried to yell over the music, but my voice came out like a whimper. “Jo…?”

  A minute ago, Jo had commanded the living room. Pouring drinks, dancing on the bar, flirting with her boyfriend, directing the DJ. This was her party. Her world. Now my twin sister was a puddle on the floor.

  I finally found my voice. “Get away from her!”

  Dayana kept cursing and crying and saying how sorry she was and how beautiful my parents were.

  “Shut up! Stop. Stop talking so I can think.”

  Get Josie out of here. The one clear thought in my head. Get her somewhere safe. Her dress was riding up her thighs, so I leaned over to tug at the bottom, and that’s when I got a close look at her eyes. Fixed. Empty. The black parts swallowing up the green. I didn’t know if Dayana was telling the truth about Mom and Dad, but Josie was gone. And I was alone.

  I scooped her up into my arms. I hadn’t carried her like this since that time on the softball field four years ago. Back then I could barely lift her. Now I hardly felt her weight at all. All around us, the party went raging on.

  Her best friends didn’t even notice she’d gone down. All those worshippers, trading loyalty for selfies and perfect parties. Feeling important because she let them be around her. Now they were too busy getting wasted and hooking up to even move aside for us. But if I was good at anything it was making people move out of the way.

  Archie put his hand on my shoulder and I almost took a swing at him. “What happened to her?” he asked.

  Earlier that night, Josie had found me alone by the keg in the backyard. When I stayed inside the party too long, bad things started to go on in my head. The music, everybody yelling at once, flooding my brain with noises and information. My girlfriend, Siobhan, kept trying to have “a talk.” I couldn’t concentrate on a word she was saying so I gave up and came outside for air.

  Josie had slid open the glass patio door, sneezing as she walked outside. “I always get sick when I’m stressed out,” she said.

  I handed her a napkin and she pushed it away. “I thought we understood our roles on planning the party,” she snapped. “I do the heavy lifting and you lift heavy things.”

  “What’s wrong?” I went back over the assignments she’d given me. Keg, snacks, cups. I’d written it on my right hand so I wouldn’t forget anything this time.

  “Did you invite Archie Gallagher?”

  Oh. I could see inside where Archie was nursing a beer by the snack table. Harrison stood next to him. I know I didn’t invite him. “I didn’t think he’d actually show up. Did he bother you or something?”

  “No. No, it’s not like that. It’s just … tonight’s supposed to be perfect. I need it to be.”

  “You want me to throw him out?”

  Cody appeared at the door and smiled at her through the glass.

  “It’s fine,” Josie said, making herself smile back at Cody. “I’ll be fine.”

  She’d been planning this party all junior year. Maybe even longer. She’d decided who would be there, what they would eat and drink, what the DJ would play, even how they would hashtag the event. Both our names were at the top of the invites, but Jo ran the show. I moved the furniture and rolled up Mom’s expensive rugs, carried the kegs to the yard, chatted up neighbors, and traded football stories with the cops to make sure we wouldn’t get shut down. She’d never risk giving me more responsibility than that. And that was fine. I knew my role.

  When I was about eight, I found one of those sonogram pictures the doctor took of Mom’s stomach when she was pregnant. Fetus A—Josie—was facing forward, looking straight at the camera. Fetus B, on Josie’s left, was curled up and turned toward her. They found out later that the way we were stuffed in there kept me from getting all the nutrients I needed. But Dad said it just looked like I was waiting for her to tell me what to do.

  I looked down at motionless Josie in my arms. Archie was still blocking our path. And now Harrison was there, too. They were the only two people in the party who’d noticed.

  “Did she pass out?” asked Archie.

  “It’s very hot in here,” said Harrison. “She looks flushed.”

  “Can I get her water? I think I should get her water. Where is the water? All I see is beer and—”

  A tho
ught sliced through my head. Their parents were on the plane, too. I pushed that aside and used Josie’s legs to shove Archie and Harrison out of the way. Then I carried her upstairs and punted open the door to her bedroom.

  Josie’s room was one massive collage of wall-to-wall pictures of Josie with her friends. Thousands of smiles and duck lips and peace signs. So forced and phony. I eased her down onto the bed and propped fluffy white pillows under her head. Jo’s eyes were open, but she didn’t look at me or at anything else.

  “We’re going to figure this out, Jo. I promise.”

  I slammed open her laptop, typed in her password, and googled plane crash. 56,500,000 results. A jumble of words and images. Like all fifty-six million results were on the screen at the same time. Plane crashes in Germany, in South Korea, in Salt Lake Fucking City. What island were they on? What island were they flying to? Aruba? St. Something? Shit, I wrote it down somewhere.

  I dug through my pockets for the paper where Mom wrote her instructions, but all I could find were two dimes and an empty gum wrapper. Why hadn’t she just texted them to me? What was the name of the island? Something with an A … Antigua? Plane crash Antigua. Nothing within the last year. Anguilla! Mom said they were flying to one island and then transferring to one of those little puddle jumpers. She hated flying, especially small planes … Plane crash Anguilla. First result.

  I squeezed my eyes. Locked them in. Focused. One word at a time. If it’s hard to concentrate, try harder, Dad used to say. I know you’re smart. You’re my son. But you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t apply yourself. Don’t listen to those labels from your teachers. Labels are excuses for being lazy.

  “Six Americans Dead in Offshore Plane Crash.” I gripped the laptop until my knuckles turned white. The bass was thumping downstairs. The ceiling fan whirred over Josie. My heart beat in my ears. I tried to read the full article, but my eyes jumped all around. Words popped off the screen …