“Toy, remember, you can stay home if you want.” Dan swallowed hard as Taylor collected his book bag and library book and reached to open the car door. “You really don’t have to go to school.”
“I like to go to school.” Taylor sounded shocked at the prospect of missing a day of first grade. “I didn’t go yesterday, so I have to go today.” He’d been sick on Sunday and Monday and still looked flushed, but he didn’t have a temperature and insisted he wanted to go to school. This worried Dan to no end. . . not because Taylor seemed consumed by the events of the past few days, but because he didn’t. There was no way, Dan knew, that Taylor could have come through all that had happened since Friday night and remained unaffected. It didn’t seem healthy to continue normally, but every time Dan suggested staying home from school for another day, Taylor started to cry.
“But I like school!” Taylor had wailed into his cereal this morning. “I like it!”
“Fine,” Dan had agreed, because he hated being mean and he didn’t want to upset Taylor any more than he probably already was. “You can go.”
“Yet!” Taylor had shrieked, dashing to put on his shoes and find his coat.
Dan watched Taylor climb the steps that led into the school building. “Sac,” he said, “do you think I should have let him go?”
Sac didn’t move. He didn’t even take his thumb out of his mouth. He just slid his eyes over to meet Dan’s, knowingly. He sighed, a long, drawn-out, frustrated sigh. “He likes it,” he said.
“Yeah.” Dan sighed, pulling the car out of the parking lot. “Yeah, I hope so.”
In truth, Taylor did want to go to school. He needed to go to school. Ever since kindergarten, it had been his escape, the place where the only thing you needed to do to make everybody happy was to do everything right. Every morning, he’d walk through the doorway of his classroom and forget everything that was going on at home. He’d hang his coat on his coat hook. . . his own, the one no one else could hang their coat on. He’d sit down at his desk. . . the one that was his own, and no one else could sit in. His teacher would smile at him and say “Good morning.” And it would be a good morning. And a good afternoon.
Isaac hated school, and Taylor couldn’t understand it. School was the best place in the world. Ike doesn’t have to go today, he thought. I hope he’s happy.
Maybe he is, Taylor thought. Maybe he’s glad to get rid of us. Like Mommy. His stomach twisted. What if he doesn’t come back?
He will, Taylor thought, resolutely. He’ll come back. “He will come back,” he whispered to himself. “He will.”
Taylor opened the door to the main office and stood on his tiptoes to reach the counter, sliding his absentee note across the smooth laminate surface. “I wasn’t here,” he said. “I have to get an admit slip.”
“Yes, we have a record of a phone call.” The secretary squinted at the clipboard in front of her. “Your brother is absent, as well. . . he’s not going to be here today, either?”
Taylor took a deep breath. “He’s coming back.”
School was familiar, comforting. It always smelled the same, like radiators and disinfectant and that paint the kindergarteners used, the kind that flaked off the picture as soon as it dried, leaving faded smears of green or blue. You didn’t use that kind of paint in first grade, Taylor thought, making his way down a hallway lined with runny paintings of snowmen. You wrote the alphabet, instead.
“How do you spell alphabet?” Taylor had asked Isaac, once.
Isaac had scrunched up his forehead, thinking. “L-E-T-T-E-R-S,” he said, finally. “That’s how you spell it.”
Taylor paused outside the door to his classroom. He couldn’t ask his brother any questions anymore, not until Isaac came back. If he came back.
“Well! We’re glad to see you came back just in time for reading, Taylor!” His teacher, Mrs. Cauley, smiled brightly as Taylor came through the door. “Find your book and take a seat with your group. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Taylor did, glad to take his mind off of things for awhile. His reading book was green and blue. It was about a man named Mr. Fig. Mr. Fig had a magic hat. Mr. Fig had a magic car. Mr. Fig had a magic box, which looked just like a TV, but it wasn’t. . . It was a magic box.
“Who wants to read?” Mrs. Cauley asked.
That was another thing Taylor liked about school. . . reading aloud. When you read things in school, no one ever told you to shut up or complained that you read to slowly. That was something Isaac did that Taylor didn’t like. He didn’t like it at all.
I’ll show you, Ike, Taylor thought. Since you aren‘t here, I’ll read everything aloud, all the time, and you can’t stop me. It was a nice thought, and he was glad when Mrs. Cauley called on him.
“It was a fine day,” Taylor read, without hesitation. “ ‘Bzzz,’ said the bees. ‘We can fly up. See us fly up.’ Here was Turtle. ‘Mr. Fig,’ said turtle, ‘Mr. Fig. Oh no. Rabbit is not here. Where did Rabbit go?’”
Eventually, Mr. Fig located Rabbit by flipping through the channels on his magic box, and he and Turtle rescued rabbit from the cat who was chasing him. Then, everyone took a ride in the magic car, which turned out to be a magic flying car. “Oh, Mr. Fig,” said Rabbit and Turtle, “See us fly! See us fly in the magic car!”
By this point, someone else was reading, but Taylor was still intent on the story, leaning forward with his hands clasped, listening closely. If Mrs. Cawley found it at all odd that someone could be so enthralled with the ludicrous adventures of Mr. Fig, she kept it to herself.
As soon as he got home that afternoon, Taylor headed straight for the TV and began flipping through the channels. “I need the Ike station,” he told Dan. “I can’t find it.”
“The Ike station?” Dan was wandering through the living room, surveying the graham cracker crumbs that littered the carpet. He’d tried to clean the house that day, knowing that a social worker would probably stop by soon. He’d managed pretty well, too, considering that Zac wouldn’t let go of his hand as they trailed around the house. It was next to impossible to hold three containers of cleaning fluid and a large roll of paper towels under one arm without dropping something.
When Dan tried to run the vacuum, however, Zac started screaming, and house cleaning had been disbanded. Evidentially, Zac found roaring electrical appliances to be almost as scary as the cat. Dan didn’t entirely disagree. Still, he’d have to get those crumbs off of the rug somehow. Maybe he’d sweep them under the couch.
“The station where Ike is,” Taylor explained. “Which one is that?”
“Oh, Tay. . .” Dan sighed. “He’s not on TV, buddy.”
“Isn’t this a magic box?” Taylor asked, surprised.
“It’s a TV,” Dan sighed. “Not really magic.” He hoped Taylor wouldn’t ask how it worked, though, because as far as Dan was concerned, the TV was magic. When he envisioned it’s inner workings, the only thing that seemed to make sense to him was the image of a small colony of amazingly versatile actors, none more than an inch or so high, coming together to produce every program, commercial or music video pictured onscreen.
“Oh.” Taylor’s voice was small. “Oh, I see.”
“I’m sorry.” Dan sank down on the couch, Zac climbing into his lap. “I really am, but...”
Taylor shook his head sadly and switched off the set, listening to the last few crackles of static as they popped against the blank screen. “You can only be on TV if you’re in the TV, right?”
“In the TV?” Dan repeated.
“Yeah, those little people in the TV who are on all the shows,” Taylor sank down on the couch, resting his head in his hands for a second.
“Those little people,” Dan agreed.
“Yeah, but you can’t axe open the TV to see them, ‘cause they’ll die,” Taylor finished.
“They’ll die,” Zac added, quietly. “Like Ike.”
“He isn’t dead!” Taylor shrieked. “He’s coming back!”
“That’s right, Tay,” Dan agreed, even thought Nora had warned him he shouldn’t be making any promises. “He’s coming back.”
“I told you so.” Taylor stuck his tongue out at Zac, who narrowed his eyes back at him. Zac would have stuck his own tongue out, but he had his thumb in his mouth, and he didn’t want to take it out. His left arm still in a sling, he had only one good hand. He needed it for holding onto Dan.
“He’s not dead,” Taylor repeated, as if to convince himself. “He isn’t!”