Saving Montgomery Sole Read online

  “Good girl.” Momma Jo looked down at the box, then up at me and Mama Kate. I guess we were both sniffing a bit. “Soooo … we’ve had a good talk. I figure we can take a break and say we will continue this conversation on a future date. Yes?”

  “Sure.” I went to pop off the counter to grab a plate, but Mama Kate had me in a bear hug.

  Then Momma Jo had me in a bear hug.

  Then Tesla came downstairs in her workout outfit, likely lured by the smell of cheese, and I guess then we had a really long, kind-of-cheesy family bear hug.

  And then I had probably the best pizza I’ve had in forever.

  * * *

  Five slices later, I went upstairs to go online, to find Thomas and tell him what the heck was going on, and I sat down on the bed and there it was.

  The cross.

  The cross!

  What?

  I just about to lose my crap when I looked up and Tesla was standing in the doorway.

  “You can have it,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “You didn’t,” I said.

  “Yes I did,” Tesla said quietly.

  She had these jammies on. We have matching ones. From Christmas. Pink for her and blue for me. With the feet and the trap door in the back. She normally never wore them.

  I wondered how much Tesla could hear me talking with the moms downstairs. Maybe it was just as scary for her, having a sister freaking out.

  Tesla ran her toe in an arc over the floor. When she’s sad, my sister looks like me. When she looks sad and when she’s not jogging, our shared genes shine through.

  “You can have a cross,” I said, feeling like more of a jerk than one would ever imagine possible. “You can do whatever you want. I mean, who am I to say…”

  “I don’t want to be a Christian,” Tesla said, leaning into the doorway. “I just wanted to see what it was like. Like an experiment. Because other people do it and because I didn’t know what it would be like to talk to God.”

  “What was it like?”

  “It was okay, I guess.” Tesla scanned the debris of my room. No doubt wondering whether she would eventually discover her don’t-have-to-clean-to-be-cool gene.

  “Well,” I sighed, “as long as no one was hurt.”

  You’re one up on me, I added silently to myself.

  “Yeah,” Tesla mumbled, her chin to her chest, “I did use it to pray to win against the Gophers.”

  I picked up the cross. This one had smooth edges. The same mashed-up face, though.

  I looked over at Tesla.

  Geez, I didn’t even know she had another big game. Was it a play-off?

  “How’d it go? I mean, did you win?”

  Tesla frowned. “We lost,” she said, sinking to the ground.

  “Sorry,” I said, lowering myself across from her.

  Tesla started lightly pounding the floor in front of her with her fist, like she was flattening a pancake. “It was stupid. You have to train to win, not pray. Anyway, we’ll win next year.”

  It was like I was standing on the business end of a batting range with no bat. Just lots. And lots. Of balls.

  Flaming balls of You were wrong, Montgomery.

  Nice one, Montgomery.

  Way to misread everyone and everything, Montgomery.

  Way to go.

  Oh and did I mention you’re an amazing sister? That’s right because you’re not.

  Apparently you can be someone who spends a lifetime on the Internet looking up stuff and still not know crap about the world around you.

  “Okay, well,” Tesla said, scrambling to her feet. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Do you want the cross? I mean, you can have it. Even if you don’t want to pray to win. It’s cool.”

  “No,” Tesla said, shaking her head.

  “Okay, well”—I stood and walked over to my desk—“I’ll put it in a drawer for you. In case you want it for later.”

  “Or in case you want it for later,” Tesla said.

  “Right.”

  I listened to her little foot pads as she walked back to her room and shut the door.

  Then I opened the drawer again and looked at the cross. I took the Eye off my neck and shut it in the same drawer.

  14

   Time travel

  I wonder all the time if I were to meet a version of myself in the future or the past whether I would want to talk to myself. It would be tempting to tell past-me all this stuff I know now, but then again I would probably screw up the time continuum by saying anything. Maybe I could just say something really simple, like “Relax, it’s not that bad.”

  I don’t know if I would believe me. It would probably depend on the timing.

  After my “vigil adventure,” as Momma Jo called it, instead of having Pizza Night, the Sole family started To-Be-Continued Night, where we talk about what’s going on at school, still over pizza. Sometimes this devolves into this general Q and A, where my moms just ask me a million questions, but sometimes it’s nice to just talk about what’s going on in our lives.

  Once in a while, instead of grilling Tesla and me, Mama Kate and Momma Jo tell us about stuff that they’re finding hard.

  Which is kind of interesting.

  Momma Jo misses playing sports, but she doesn’t like the women who run the sports teams in Aunty. She says they are all wimps.

  Also, some of the people on Tesla’s soccer team are jerks. Like this one girl Tammy, who told everyone that Tesla was a boy’s name.

  “Um,” Momma Jo said, “it’s a supercool name of a supercool scientist-inventor, so they can just be quiet.”

  “Just tell them it’s the name of a fairy,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Tesla noted.

  * * *

  I’m not sure if talking about school makes it suck less, or if seeing the Reverend White’s failed rally for hating homosexuals inspired a little optimism in me.

  I did wonder about Percy for a while after I saw him running out of the building that night. Thomas heard from someone in his English class that he’d been paid by the Reverend White to put up the crosses at school. Hey, cashmere ain’t cheap, darling, as Thomas would say.

  I thought of saying something to him, but then the next time I ran into Percy in the halls, I realized I kind of didn’t care.

  It’s just a cross.

  I’ve basically quit Yoggy cold turkey since Tiffany headed back to Michigan. I did try, for a while, to keep my Yoggy habit going, but it’s just not the same without her there.

  I hope she’s happier now. I also, greedily, am hoping she’s somewhere continuing her research. Though she’s probably not.

  The girl who works at Yoggy now is obsessed with carbohydrates. Now all the fro-yo is carb-free.

  Which to me is hilarious because it’s like, is it really carb-free or is it carb-free based on Tiffany’s labeling system?

  Who knows?

  Either way, the new girl is, like, a size two blonde who wears flip-flops and has, like, a zillion tan lines. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t give me any free toppings.

  In other news, it turns out Matt Truit has some sort of major heart condition. I overheard Madison Marlow telling the Parte twins that it’s a genetic thing. They found it when they were doing tests on him in the hospital.

  Madison said her mom said it was because Matt’s parents were originally from Los Angeles.

  Apparently, according to Madison’s mom, people from Los Angeles are prone to heart conditions. Because they all do drugs.

  Now Matt can’t play basketball or football. He did end up in the play, last minute. I guess they got Coach Choreographer to figure out some less stressful fighting moves for him.

  Probably some light slaps.

  One day we were walking down the hall and Thomas was wearing this big pink daisy lapel pin, and I saw Matt point it out, but then he just didn’t say anything else.

  And I didn’t say anything, either.

 
; * * *

  After my Reverend White run-in, the Mystery Club took a brief hiatus.

  Partly because Thomas was up to his well-sculptured eyebrows in production stuff for The Outsiders and partly because I was feeling a little burnt out.

  After all that had happened, I kind of wanted everything to feel normal and not so mysterious for a bit. For two weeks I didn’t even look up mystery stuff on the Internet. I just watched reality TV and cooking shows, with a possible goal of trying to figure out how to make my own gelato.

  Sometime around the end of November, Naoki suggested we start up again and invite Kenneth to a meeting. She wanted to try table-tipping. Naoki looked it up and apparently it’s supposed to work better with four people.

  Naoki: OK? Cuz if you’re not comfortable. We don’t have to. Totally no big deal.

  Me: It’s cool. Let’s do it.

  Table-tipping turned out to be kind of a flop, but it was fun to try. Thomas pointed out that we were more “desk-tipping” than table-tipping. Kenneth added that it was possible Mrs. Dawson’s desk was too heavy to tip. Naoki thought maybe Mrs. Dawson’s snow globe collection, which we were afraid to take off the desk, was throwing us off balance. I noticed you could throw the whole thing by just moving the table with your knees. We gave it a 1.5.

  A week later, I called a special meeting to discuss the Eye. Core members only.

  “Not because of anything against Kenneth,” I explained as we all filed into Mrs. Dawson’s classroom that afternoon.

  “I kind of owe you guys, I think. I mean, I didn’t talk about the Eye with you when everything was happening, even though I said I would. So it’s kind of a makeup session,” I said, sitting on a desk, placing the Eye next to me.

  Naoki was mostly interested in the incantation. She called it a crazy cosmic haiku (although the syllables didn’t match up). At the opening of the meeting, she wrote it out on the chalkboard.

  In sight

  not see

  black light

  not be

  “‘In sight,’” Naoki whispered, “‘not see.’ Like a riddle. What is in sight but not seen?”

  “What did you actually see with the Eye on?” Thomas asked.

  “People I hated.” I shrugged.

  “And you would see it and … what?” Naoki looked at the Eye catching sunlight on the desk. It looked kind of menacing now.

  “Something would happen to them. Something bad. The girl at the soccer game disappeared, you know, over the edge of the stands. Matt stopped talking.”

  “Didn’t he have a heart attack?” Naoki asked. “It’s, like, stopping.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you really saw anything other than what you already knew,” Thomas said.

  “Your point?”

  Grabbing a piece of chalk, Thomas grinned. “Really,” he said, sketching out the text on the whiteboard, “what you’ve purchased is Eye of What You Already Know.”

  “The Eye of Assumption,” Naoki chimed in. “The Eye of Preconception.”

  “Or we could say that the Eye really wasn’t so much an eye, because I didn’t see anything with it,” I said.

  “Well”—Thomas’s grin grew so big it hit the sides of his face—“that’s what you get for $3.99.”

  “Wow,” I gasped in mock amazement, “how long have you been waiting with that one?”

  “At least an hour.” Thomas patted himself on the back.

  “It was $5.99,” I said.

  “Fine.” Thomas stuck out his tongue.

  “You’re both so silly,” Naoki sighed happily.

  I slumped. “I mean, maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, but I have to say, it was … nice. It’s like, I expected so many of the people at this school to be crappy. And with the Eye, it felt like I could do something about it. But I guess that’s not really knowing, you know, per se.”

  “Not really,” Naoki agreed.

  “So once you know you may or may not have a loaded weapon at your disposal, what do you do?”

  “You should throw it off a cliff,” Thomas said.

  “Someone could find it and pick it up,” I pointed out.

  “Well, they won’t know the incantation thing, right?”

  After extensive haggling, Naoki remembered that the original ad had a different stone in it.

  “You said it was clear, right? Or white? So maybe this isn’t the Eye of Know,” she said. “Maybe it’s something else. You should return it and get the real one.”

  “Buyer beware,” Thomas tutted.

  “Well, the other option is we just hide it,” Naoki added. “At least this way you don’t have to worry about someone else finding it.”

  After the meeting, Naoki gave me a little hug.

  Naoki said she thinks the Eye is just another part of my Internet searching. It’s not the end; it’s just another one of the many mysteries out there. It’s a lesson, she said, part of my overall quest for knowledge.

  “It’s like what T. S. Eliot said about exploring.” Naoki stretched her hands high above her head and closed her eyes. “At the end of it, what you know is you.”

  “That sounds awesome,” I said.

  So I wrapped up the Eye and sent it back to Manchester. Fortunately I still had the address on the packaging under my bed. Because I had had the foresight not to clean my room. Point for me.

  I added a note that said I thought I had the wrong Eye and would love to get an actual Eye of Know if they had one. I hope maybe someday they’ll send me one. Until then I’ll just keep looking.

   Me.

  For my birthday a week later, my moms got me a new laptop and driving lessons. For more, faster web surfing and for possible future exploration outside the Internet.

  I also got a hundred dollars to buy new clothes. Which I’m thinking is possibly a good idea.

  I mean, Momma Jo’s clothes are comfy, but there are other clothes out there.

  Maybe even new clothes.

  Tesla, who is now MVP of her soccer team, gave me this picture she took of me and her from a year earlier, at this picnic or something.

  If you look close, we’re like jumbled puzzles made up of the same pieces. Something in our eyes and noses. Our messy habits. Our crooked smiles. I never noticed how our smiles are alike before.

  I told Mama Kate, and she laughed, then said, “You should smile more. I love your smile.”

  “It’s my smile,” Momma Jo said.

  I smiled extra big. “Nice!”

  The first thing I opened on my brand-new laptop was an e-mail from Kenneth with a link to the craziest thing I have ever seen on the Internet, a site about people who actually drill holes into the tops of their skulls to increase brain blood flow. To improve psychic powers. That’s what trepanation is!

  Me: Dude. I can’t believe there is a video of someone drilling a hole in her head on the Internet.

  Kenneth: Look up speaking in tongues. Great videos.

  Me: Ok. You look up “levitation” and “dog.”

  Kenneth: Good idea.

  For the night of my birthday, Thomas’s dad lent him the car, and Naoki and Thomas and I went out to this part of the desert off the highway that’s right by this great big canyon. We got there just as the sun was setting in this way it does in the desert, with a million weird and crazy colors. You would never find them in a “sunset” palette at the Home Depot.

  And we got out of the car.

  And we watched the sunset, feeling good the way you do in California when everything is so beautiful.

  “This is officially the coolest thing to happen on my birthday,” I said.

  We all stood on the edge of the horizon, like the end of the world before it dips down into vastness, and we put our hands in the air and breathed in.

  And my eyes got wide, and I tried to just take in all the world in front of me in that moment.

  I looked at the sky and let my brain go soft like a sponge.

  I tried to absorb all that is the big, strange universe, a
nd all the strange mysteries in it.

  Including me. Mystery me.

  “Pretty amazing, huh?” Naoki mused, her hands stretched open, her eyes closed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  Acknowledgments

  This novel would not exist if it were not for the many people who have supported me through this and other lofty endeavors.

  Thank you to Sam Hiyate and Ali McDonald at The Rights Factory.

  Thank you to the magical Charlotte Sheedy. Thank you to my incredible editors Connie Hsu at Roaring Brook and Lynne Missen at Penguin Canada. And to copy editor Christine Ma. Thank you to the incredible Eleanor Davis, Katherine Guillen, and Andrew Arnold for the gorgeous cover. And to all my writer friends for their support and advice, with special thanks to Daniel Heath Justice.

  Thank you to all my queer families, work and play. Thank you to all the queer parents out there, who are fighting the good fight, loving the good love, every day.

  The concept of the Mystery Club was sparked on a porch during a meeting with Toronto’s one and only Science Club, which has marked so many. Thank you to all its members: Suzanne, Christine, Ali, Sorrell, Carolyn, and Lindy.

  The voice of Monty first appeared on a bus in Portland, Oregon, on a trip I took with Heather Gold, who has my heart and has given me more support than I could have ever imagined possible.

  Finally, thank you to my parents, who banked and inspired this book of spells.

  ALSO BY Mariko Tamaki

  This One Summer

  (You) Set Me On Fire

  Emiko Superstar

  Skim

  Fake I.D.

  True Lies: The Book of Bad Advice

  Cover Me

  About the Author

  Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian writer. Her works include the graphic novels This One Summer (Printz Honor and Caldecott Honor Book) and Skim, both with Jillian Tamaki, and Emiko Superstar (DC Comics), with Steve Rolston. Her first YA novel (You) Set Me on Fire was published by Penguin Canada. Mariko lives in Oakland, California. marikotamaki.blogspot.com. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Roaring Brook Press ebook.