Trevon Gaines sat at his little breakfast table, an open can of corn centered on a place mat, a spoon handle sticking out of the top.
Evan said, “Can’t you eat?”
Trevon said, “No, sir.”
“But it’s yellow.”
“All my food is yellow. And orange.” Trevon was at last wearing new eyeglasses, having dispensed with the ones he’d taped at the hinge. He knuckled the new pair up the bridge of his nose.
It took him a few seconds to lift his stare from the can, and Evan was reminded once again of his goals for the day: 1. Make more eye contact with folks.
Trevon looked at Evan for as long as he seemed able to manage and then looked away again. “So that’s my only job now? To repay you? I find someone else in trouble like me, and then I tell them to call you?”
“That’s it.”
“But that doesn’t repay you . It just pays someone else.”
“Well,” Evan said. “It helps me keep repaying what I owe.”
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s okay,” Evan said. “I don’t always get it either.”
Cat-Cat emerged from his spot beneath the curtain, struck a bellicose pose, and hissed at Evan.
Evan said, “Why does your cat hate me?”
“Cat-Cat doesn’t hate you. He’s just moody.” Trevon blinked a few times and then scratched at his elbow a little too hard, his fingernails raising flakes of dry skin. “I wish I coulda saved them.”
His breath hitched in his chest, and he closed his eyes, pressed the side of his head with his palm, and started murmuring to himself.
Evan couldn’t make out the words, but he knew what Trevon was saying.
We don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself. We don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself. We don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself.
“Trevon? Trevon? ”
At last he opened his eyes.
“I’m proud to know you,” Evan said.
“Thank you.” Trevon’s eyes darted away uncomfortably. “Thank you for everything.”
“Maybe,” Evan said, “it’s okay to cry now.”
“No , that’s not what Mama…” Again Trevon trailed off, squeezing his eyes shut. But he pulled himself together, bobbing his head. “I hafta take the bus to meet Kiara. She called me from her connection in Houston, and I told her. I told her everything—’cept about you. She was … I never heard her cry like that. I never heard anyone cry like that. And it’s just me she’s coming home to now, and I’m worried…”
“What?”
“I’m worried I’m gonna disappoint her. ’Cuz…’Cuz … I know I’m special, but I don’t know how to act normal.” His voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. “And that can be frustrating for people. I don’t want to be frustrating for her, ’cuz I’m all she has left. And what if…”
Evan waited, gave him the space to fight the thought to the surface.
“What if I’m not enough?” Trevon pushed the can of corn away. “What should I do?” His eyes implored Evan. “I don’t know what to do.”
Evan thought of Trevon’s neatly made bed, his stuffed frog, the scrawled list of goals for the day.
“Just be yourself,” Evan said. “Because who else can you be?”
Trevon stared at him, his eyes wide.
And he smiled.
* * *
It took three different buses to get to LAX and traffic was bad, but Trevon didn’t mind so much ’cuz he could look at the different cars on the freeway and see all the people making different faces and guess what they were feeling.
It was a good game to teach him about how to read social cues, and the social cue from the woman driving the white Range Rover next to them said she didn’t like her husband in the passenger seat very much.
He couldn’t wait to see Kiara ’cuz she was the oldest and the sweetest and his favorite and she always understood him better than anyone. But then he felt bad ’cuz here she was flying in from helping tribes in Guatemala and the first thing he’d done was make her cry over the phone.
The bus hissed up the ramp to Arrivals, and then it got all lurchy-like, people honking and cutting each other off and one guy flipping the bird, which wasn’t a hard social cue to read, not at all.
They finally stopped by Terminal 4: International Arrivals, which was also named Tom Bradley, which was dumb ’cuz if you were gonna name a airport terminal after a football quarterback you’d think you’d bother to spell his name right.
Trevon hesitated after they stopped, and the bus driver stared at him and said, “Didn’t you say this was your stop?” and Trevon said, “Yeah,” but still couldn’t get his legs to move. The bus driver said, “It’s your dollar seventy-five, pal,” and started to close the doors but Trevon stood up and said, “Okay. I’m ready to go,” and the bus driver said, “I’ll alert the L.A. Times ,” and let him out.
Trevon walked over to Baggage and waited by the elevators, and people kept coming down and down like there was a people-making factory on the floor above, and he was getting tired of waiting and the Scaredy Bugs were starting to dance around in his tummy and then he realized they weren’t the Scaredy Bugs, not anymore, but the Muddy Waters.
And then, before he could clear his head, there Kiara was riding the escalator down, holding a hand over her mouth and waving at him. And then she was running over to him, crying and saying, “Tre, honey, honey—” and he said, “Welcome home. I’m sorry it’s only me and not … and not Mama.…”
Mama.
MamaMamaMamaLeoUncleJoe-JoeAuntieTishaGran’mamaAisha—
And his face was bent to her shoulder and he was holding her and she was holding him, patting his back and saying, “That’s it, Tre. That’s okay. I’m here. I’m here now. We still got each other. You just let it all out now. You just let it all out.”