Seven Times They Chose Him. The Last Time, They Lost Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Seventh Mark
On his twelfth birthday Zack watches his father drive his brother to Disney World, finds his sketchbook torn up in the dog's crate, and calls the aunt who says she has been waiting since he was nine.
On the morning of my twelfth birthday, Dad put a blue suitcase in the trunk while our neighbor watched over her hedge.
It was my little brother's suitcase, the one with the airplane tag.
My own was still in the hall closet.
"Orlando, buddy," Dad said, when he saw me on the porch. "The cardiologist thinks a trip would be good for your brother's spirits."
"Okay," I said.
"We'll do something for you when we're back. Next weekend, I promise."
"Okay."
He ruffled my hair and I let him.
My brother came out the front door with the dog's leash in his fist.
His name is Dylan, and he was adopted when he was five.
He took the porch steps two at a time, ran down the driveway, and clipped the leash on our golden retriever so she could say goodbye to the car.
"Easy, buddy," Dad called. "Your heart."
Mom came out behind him with a plastic pill box and pressed it into Dylan's hand.
Dylan put it in his pocket without opening it.
Nobody said anything about that, so I didn't either.
Dylan looked up at me from the driveway.
He is ten, and I had never seen him look sorry about anything.
That morning he did, and I didn't know why.
"Happy birthday, Zack," he said.
"Thanks. Have fun."
I meant it, mostly.
Dad backed the car out, and the neighbor lifted one hand at me over the hedge and looked away.
Mom stayed on the porch and slid an arm around my shoulders.
"Tonight is just us, honey," she said. "Giovanni's. Your favorite. I already booked the corner table."
"You don't have to."
"Of course I do. You're my easy one." She kissed the top of my head. "You'd never hold any of this against us, would you? You're such a good boy."
"No, Mom."
"I knew it."
At three o'clock Waffle started to throw up on the kitchen floor.
Mom was on her knees beside her in a second, with her phone already at her ear.
She had eaten the foam out of her bed, Mom said. It was bad, and the vet said to come now.
"Order a pizza, sweetheart. I'll be back in an hour. Two at the most."
"What about Giovanni's?"
"Oh, Zack." She was looking at the dog, not at me. "She could die."
She carried Waffle out to the car in both arms.
I stood in the kitchen and listened to the engine fade down Fenwick Lane.
Then I went to find the bed.
It was in the dog's crate in the laundry room.
On Tuesday Mom had told me she'd looked everywhere for my sketchbook and it must be lost.
White foam spilled out of the corner of the cover, and under the foam were paper scraps with pencil lines on them.
I pulled out one piece the size of my palm.
It was the left eye of a heron I had drawn in June.
The rest of my sketchbook was in there too, torn into strips, packed in flat around the edges so the foam would sit softer under a dog.
The sketchbook was my aunt's gift for my eleventh birthday.
I had one page left, and I had been saving it.
I stood there holding the heron's eye for a long time.
I wasn't angry yet. That came later.
What I felt was tired.
I went upstairs and opened my closet door and looked at the inside of it.
There are seven pencil marks there, in a column, with a date next to each one.
The first mark was from first grade, when I played a tree in the school play and nobody came.
I got the pencil off my desk and made the seventh mark, and wrote today's date beside it, and put the pencil down.
Then I went to the kitchen and picked up the landline, because I didn't trust myself to text.
I knew the number by heart, though I had never dialed it.
It rang four times.
"Dot Gooding."
"Aunt Dot," I said. "It's Zack."
I heard a chair scrape on her end.
"Hi, Zachary." Her voice was very steady. "Happy birthday. Are you hurt?"
"No. I'm calling to ask if I could come live with you."
I said it the way I say everything, so politely I almost thanked her for listening.
She didn't answer right away.
"Say that again, slowly," she said.
"I'd like to come live with you. I know it's a lot to ask. I'll be good. I'm already good."
"Zack." She breathed out. "I've been waiting for this call since you were nine."
I didn't understand that.
"Where are your parents?"
"Dad took Dylan to Disney World. Mom took the dog to the vet."
"And you're home by yourself. On your birthday."
"Yes."
A car door shut on her end.
"I'm at a craft fair two hours away, but I'm leaving now," she said. "Don't pack anything yet. Don't call your mother. Don't say a word to anyone until I get there."
"Okay."
"Zack, tell me one thing. Did she do something to your sketchbook?"
I hadn't told her a word about the sketchbook.
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