I think of Mirabel’s report from the bar when he tried to buy a round, when Tom said beer was the best thing on the menu, when Nathan started to share a pint with the guys before my mother kicked him out. “Why would someone pretend to drink?”
But that’s not what he’s talking about. “My dad wants anyone who comes by the house to see him drinking water straight from the tap.” And I remember that from when we were there, how shocked Monday and I were. “But he’s faking it. It’s bottled. He gets Hobart Blake to make a run into Greenborough once a week. He brings back a bunch of those giant five-gallon jugs and hooks them up under all our sinks. My dad doesn’t drink the water. He doesn’t even shower in it.”
I knew it! And I still can’t believe it.
“I was thinking I could take pictures,” he offers.
My head is spinning. Maybe Mama’s been approaching this all wrong for years now. She’s been looking for evidence that’s two decades old, proof of intent to harm and recklessness in the planning stages before the plant even opened, but it’s hard to find things that have been buried for twenty years, especially if you’ve already been digging for sixteen. What if, instead of looking back and then, we started looking here and now?
But River’s still talking. “I tried his birthday, mine, my mom’s. Their anniversary. I even tried the days before and after their anniversary in case he forgot. But it’s none of those.”
“What?” I try to refocus on him.
“His laptop,” he explains and when that doesn’t do it, “It’s password protected.”
“Oh.”
“But his phone isn’t.”
“His phone isn’t what?”
He reaches over, I think to touch my cheek, but instead he pulls the magic coin from behind my ear. “Password protected.”
I wait before I reply to make sure he’s saying what I think he’s saying. “You’ll look on his phone?”
“Yeah.” He sounds slightly nervous, but only slightly.
“For us?”
“Yeah.” A little more sure.
I breathe out and can’t breathe in again. “What if you get caught?”
“What can he do? Ground me? It’s not like I’m getting invited to lots of parties, hanging out with tons of friends, going to all the good clubs.”
I try to smile, but my face is frozen. “Won’t it feel like a betrayal?”
He looks at me. And then he takes my hand. I feel it all the way up into my chest. “I think it would feel like a betrayal not to.”
Two
Mab comes home and has two pieces of news, and she says they are very exciting, and she is all panty and red and cannot wait to tell.
The first piece of very exciting news is Nathan Templeton pretends to drink tap water but actually drinks bottled water, and River is going to take pictures of the bottles and also look on his father’s phone for more evidence.
The second piece of very exciting news is River’s parents went to Ivy League colleges and so did his grandfather so River is probably going to go to one too.
It is a very disappointing afternoon because these are the two most boring pieces of exciting news I have ever heard.
Everyone in Bourne drinks bottled water, and everyone in Bourne knows the Templetons are liars so all aspects of the first piece of news are the opposite of exciting which is dull, predictable, or depressing, and this is all three.
“Ho hum,” I say because that is what people do in books when they think what you said is not interesting.
“Don’t you see?” Mab is so excited she is wiggling which is not a facial expression but a whole-body expression. “We can prove Nathan Templeton isn’t really drinking the tap water.”
“Not drinking the tap water is not illegal,” I regret to inform her.
“We can prove he’s making a big show of drinking the tap water—and showering in it, doing his laundry, washing his vegetables—but really it’s all lies.”
“Pretending to use the tap water is also not illegal,” I tell her.
“Subterfuge!” Mab insists.
“Ho hum,” I repeat.
And no one except Mab cares where anyone else goes to college. Only the people who also go there are impressed, and you already know them so they will be evaluating you on your other merits or lack thereof anyway.
But talking about where other people are going to college is something people do care about, and it is contagious like yawns or strep throat, so Mama gets mad at me for not doing my homework, and the person whose fault that is is River.
“Monday,” she says while I am cutting up a box that pasta came in. “What are you doing?”
“I am cutting up a box that pasta came in,” I tell her although I do not know why since that is obvious from looking at me which she is.
“You need to do your homework,” she says.
“Lie.”
“I’m not playing a game,” Mama says. “You need to do your homework and get into college.”
“I am not doing my homework because there is no point,” I tell her, “and I am not going to college.”
“Of course you are,” Mama says.
“Which?”
“Both.”
“There is no point doing Spanish homework because I do not speak Spanish,” I explain patiently, which is nice of me because we have already had this conversation many times. “There is no point writing an essay about what Emily Dickinson meant when she wrote, ‘I heard a Fly buzz—when I died’ because if she meant to be understood she would not have written something so impossible and untrue.”
“Oh, Monday”—Mama closes her eyes—“it’s so true.”
“If she were dead, she would not hear anything. Or write any more words.”
“Well, it’s poetry,” Mama says, like that is an excuse to not make sense. “What did you write in your essay?”
“I did not write anything in my essay because there is no point in doing my homework, but if I were going to do my homework what I would have written is ‘Emily Dickinson means for me, the reader, to be confused. I am. So she has done her job. And so have I.’”
“What does Mrs. Lasserstein say when you hand in essays like that?” Mama asks although I do not know why because she knows the answer.
“Mrs. Lasserstein says I am being too literal, but there is no such thing as too literal. Literal does not come in degrees. That is like being too seventy-seven point four. That is like being too bicycle.”
“Monday, you do not know everything.”
“There are many things I do not know,” I agree.
“Just do your homework. I’m not arguing with you about it.”
“Lie.”
“You’re being too literal.”
“There is no such thing as too literal!”
Mama has two plans, a first-things-first plan and a then-save-the-world plan. Her first-things-first plan is to win a class action lawsuit against Belsum and make them pay for what they did. You would think this would be an easy goal to achieve because so many things are obviously true facts. It is an obviously true fact that our water used to be clear and then it was cloudy and smelly and then it was green, but Belsum said water did not need to be clear, odor-free, and colorless to be safe. It is an obviously true fact that my father did not use to have cancer and then he did, but Belsum said he ate a lot of red meat and felt a lot of stress, and that was probably why. It is an obviously true fact that a lot more babies were born with birth defects than before Belsum came or than in towns where Belsum is not located, but Belsum said we were eating chemicals in our food and putting chemicals on our lawns and wearing chemicals in our clothes and sitting on chemicals in our sofas, and probably those were the chemicals that were causing our problems and not Belsum’s chemicals at all.