+. weird, world.
annnnnnd some more post-weird, world stuff:
Diego looked out over the swaying expanse of conifers and furs-the occasional oak a brighter splash of red and orange amidst the deeper emerald hues-and drew in a breath that made his ribs ache. It smelled clean and fresh out here; the way the pine stung his nose was almost antiseptic. It was a cool fall, and the sharp breeze bit at the corners of his eyes, whipping away the tears as soon as it created them. He blinked furiously in the glare of the sun and marveled that he had even come to be standing in such a place: on a sturdy, weathered deck in the middle of a forest in Maine. Tonight, and tomorrow, and every night for the following week he would be sleeping in a spacious guest room in a house large enough to be called a mansion but so welcoming and comfortable the label ‘home’ suited it far better. He had never been here before, had never known the man who had designed the place. And yet the moment he had laid eyes on it he had felt reassured and… something else. It was the warm rush you felt when a stranger’s dog approached you with enthusiastic and unabashed joy; the slightly thrilling tingle of deja vu as if from some half-remembered but vital dream; the sense of peace a devout pilgrim experienced at the end of a long journey.
And yet, it was also nothing so grand or dramatic. It was just a sense of belonging, of family and roots and mellow contentment. The man who had built this sprawling home had clearly loved it, from the staircase to the attic to the deck Diego now stood upon. He’d loved the trees-the sun room had even been built around one rather than fell it-and the small lake at the foot of the rocky slope. That love had left a mark anyone could feel, no Empathy required. Diego had never been anywhere that felt so real and peaceful. He fully understood why it held such importance for Charlie; why the entire family gathered here rather than anywhere else in the world.
The door behind him swung open and a swarm of children dashed out. He turned to watch with a grin as Billie dodged around the much taller Amari and snagged Scout by the back of her shirt with a very beastly roar. “It! It!” she crowed triumphantly. “Scout’s the monster now!”
“Nuh-uh!” Scout argued. “I’ve got the charm, remember?” She pointed at the seashell medallion around her neck-Diego recognized it as one of Gloria’s-and crossed her arms in a no-nonsense way. “So I’m immune to monster bites! Right, Dom?”
Dominic nodded, his short dreadlocks dancing. “And since you tried to bite her, it bounced back at you-so now you gotta be monster again. That’s the rules.”
“But I’ve been the monster forever,” Billie complained, entirely her mother’s daughter. “I’m tired of being the monster. Someone else be the monster now.”
“Monsta!” little Peter said enthusiastically, lifting his skinny arms and bouncing on the tips of his toes. “I be monsta!” His thick glasses were so smeared with greasy fingerprints it was a wonder he could see out of them at all.
“Rocky, you’re not fast enough,” Scout said, exasperated big sister written all over her. “Okay, Bills, I’ll be monster. But only if you BEAT ME DOWN THE STAIRS!” And off she sprinted, legs pumping and arms wild, closely followed by the others, a streak of blonde hair and red shirt.
Peter, determined not to be left behind by the older kids, tried to give chase. Only to trip over his own feet and crash to the deck, palms skidding and chin bumping the wooden planks. Diego was moving before the boy fully understood what had happened, and was picking him up just as the first wail of pain and fright started climbing in pitch and volume. “Ay, kiddo,” he said calmly. The worst thing right now would be to shout or show too much concern-Peter was more frightened than hurt, and his tears didn’t need further encouragement. “Your feet didn’t know what you wanted to do, huh? Happens to all of us sometimes. There, let’s assess the damage…” There was an ugly but shallow scrape on the quivering chin and a splinter in the right palm. “Ah, that’s not bad at all. You’ve got the family luck, kiddo. Let’s go inside and put some Band-Aids on these war wounds, yeah? That sound good?”
A teary nod answered that question, and Diego lifted the toddler to his shoulder with one easy movement. Peter promptly clutched a handful of shirt in his uninjured hand and sniffed loudly, shaky breath catching on a hiccup.
Genny and Akiko were sitting at the kitchen table, a teapot between them, when he stepped inside. “Everything okay?” Genny asked, wide-eyed, as they passed.
“We’re just fine, aren’t we, kiddo?” Diego said. “You should see the other guy.”
“T’other guy,” Peter parroted solemnly.
In the bathroom Peter sat on the lidded toilet, tiny sneakered feet swinging, and watched Diego rummage in the medicine cabinet with bleary but trusting eyes. “Looks like you’ve got a big choice to make, Peter,” he announced. “Do you want a plain Band-Aid, like the kind grown-ups use, or do you want a Ninja Turtle Band-Aid?” He held out the boxes for the boy’s serious perusal. After much deliberation, Peter finally pointed at the latter. “Good choice. And I bet you want one of the purple guy, huh? He’s got glasses just like yours.”
“Donatello,” Peter said as Diego dabbed his chin with a wet washcloth. “Tha’s his name. He’s smart.”
Not for the first time Diego marveled over how small children often struggled with grammar and basic pronunciation and yet could also remember dozens of oddly-named cartoon characters. “Now let’s take care of that splinter.”
“Gonna tweezers?” Peter said tremulously, face pale and lips pouted. “Don’t like tweezers.”
“It’s a good thing I’m here, then, because you know what? I don’t need tweezers. Hold your hand flat just like this, okay? Now don’t move, and watch this… Abracadabra!” Diego waved his hand over Peter’s and the splinter zipped out as if a metal filing drawn to a magnet. “Easy as that! Do you want a Band-Aid there, too?”
Peter nodded with a watery smile.
“There. Good as new. Feeling better?”
Another nod. “‘ank you, Uncle Dee.” He held out his knobby arms and Diego smiled around the twist in his heart-there was so much innocent trust and gratitude and admiration on the little boy’s face, made all the more touching by the colorful Band-Aids and the smeared Coke bottle glasses. He leaned forward and accepted the hug as the gift it was. Peter smelled of sweat and dirt and crayons and last night’s shampoo-pure child. And even though he was no true kin of his, he still called him ‘uncle’, still gave him ready hugs and believed him when he said things would be alright.
How had he ever gotten here? From apathy and fear and guilt-to Uncle Dee. To someone people loved rather than hated. To a man with family, with roots, with a place where he belonged.
“Okay,” he said when Peter finally pulled away. “How about we go find someone else to play with? Maybe Dani or Lucy are doing something fun?”
Akiko caught his eye as they trooped past again, Peter’s unbandaged hand in his. He felt the tendril of concern and only smiled in response, knowing she had to have felt something of what had washed over him in the bathroom. “Do you know where the girls are?”
“Downstairs, I think,” she said. “With Ben.”
“That little boy sure does love him,” Genny said over her teacup after they were gone. “Well, they all love him. He’s so kind to them. Patient and understanding. Never hesitates to get right down at their level.”
“Those who have survived the worst often give back the best,” Akiko replied quietly, lifting the teapot and refilling her mug. “As you know, Gen. You were telling me about the trip to the museum?”
“Fiasco, you mean. Pascal-he’s the one who smuggled all of the tadpoles into the downstairs bathtub at the home last month, said he was going to grow his own frogs-decided he was going to slide down the staircase banister like he’d seen in cartoons. So the security guards are yelling, and Alberto is trying to catch him at the bottom before he ricocheted into some priceless dinosaur skeleton, and the rest of the children are just cheering him on like a bunch of English football hooligans.”
Akiko laughed. “That boy sounds like a handful and a half.”
“Alberto loves him,” Genny said with a rueful smile, fingers at her temple. “I do, too, to be completely honest. If someone doesn’t come along in the next month or so and snatch him up, I’m afraid we might do something rather reckless. Like adopt him ourselves.”
“Dom and Lucy could always use another brother,” Akiko said guilelessly. “Should I put the kettle on again?”
Two floors below, Ben, Dani, and Lucy were sitting amidst a wide array of musical instruments. Dani was staring at sheets of music with great interest while Ben, Lucy settled in his lap, demonstrated the different notes the strings of a ukulele produced. “La la laaaaa!” Lucy sang off-key but with gusto. Her round face was turning pink with effort, her blue eyes screwed shut and her hands clenched into fists.
She looked up when Diego opened the door and burst into a thousand gigawatt smile-she was always wreathed in grins, but she seemed to reserve an especially enthusiastic one just for him. “Deeeeee-ago!” she said in her perpetually sing-song voice, waving energetically. “We’re making music! Come make music, too!”
“Oh, hey,” Ben said, looking up and noticing Peter’s freshly bandaged war wounds. “Everything okay?”
“Just a minor fall,” Diego said. “Is there room for both of us?”
“Yeah, yeah, lots of room,” Lucy said, wiggling in Ben’s lap. “Peter, come sit with me. I can share.”
“Oof, watch where you’re digging your knees, sweetie,” Ben winced.
Lucy was the complete inverse of her brother Dominic-where he was black, she was white. Where his dark hair was dreadlocked and ended just beneath his ears, hers was a silky curtain that fell almost to her waist, strawberry blonde and stick-straight. His eyes were amber; hers were blue. While Dominic was lithe and had proportions that promised future muscle and athleticism, Lucy was short and stocky and well-rounded, with dimpled knees and wrists and soft, stubby fingers. And while her brother would one day learn to drive a car and live an entirely independent adulthood, Lucy would most likely always live in the home of her adoptive parents-because Lucy had Down's Syndrome and in some ways would always be an inquisitive, playful girl.
But Peter wasn’t paying attention to Lucy’s offer. His eyes were firmly locked on the piano in the corner.
“You’ve got eyes like saucers, bud,” Ben said. “See something you like?”
“That’s a piano,” Diego said. “Want me to play something?”
Peter stared up at him, mouth open. “You piano, Uncle Dee?”
“I do piano, and guitar a little, too.”
“Like Daddy?”
“Ah, your Daddy’s much better with the guitar than me.”
“I wanna piano,” Peter said, tugging on Diego’s hand.
He let the boy pull him to the bench, then helped him onto it beside him. “Okay, kiddo, so these are the keys and down here are the pedals. Sometimes you have to push down on the pedals and press the keys at the same time to make certain sounds.”
“Can’t reach,” Peter said plaintively, swinging his feet.
“Good thing you’ve got a lot of growing coming,” Diego said reassuringly, patting his back. “Next growth spurt will set you right, don’t worry. The keys on this end make higher notes, and the keys down here are lower. This is called a scale.”
“Pretty,” Peter said with a grin, watching his fingers dance over the keys.
“A piano can make all kinds of music. Movie music. Pop music. Classical-” he played a quick riff from Beethoven. “Jazz. Rock. New music, old music. Loud or soft.” He slipped smoothly into an old lullaby his mother used to sing when he was sick. “The sound each key makes is called a note, and each note has its own symbol.”
“See, Peter?” Dani said, walking over with a handful of sheet music. She selected one booklet and set it on the tray. “These are notes, and these are chords.”
“This line right here?” Diego said, pointing. “Sounds like this.”
Peter’s mouth hung open in a perfect ‘O’, and his eyes looked even bigger magnified behind his thick glasses.
“Ohhh, I know that glazed look,” Ben said, leaning over and ruffling Peter’s sandy hair with one hand, the other steadying Lucy, who was clinging to his back monkey-style. “Amari had that look when he first saw Sailor Moon, and Scout when she saw Indiana Jones. Someone’s just found a great passion.”
His small hands looked even smaller over the yellowing keys-his armspan was such that he could only reach a bit more than half of them. But as Diego and Ben watched, he stood up on the bench, leaned over Diego, and copied the line that had just been played, faltering once and only because the key was too far out of reach. And then, while Lucy hummed tunelessly to herself, he started playing the lullaby. It wasn’t perfect, but again: only because he couldn’t reach the pedals.
“Like tha’, Uncle Dee?” he asked, all innocence.
“Yeah,” Diego said with a laugh. “You got it, kiddo. You’re a quick study.”
“Quick study,” Peter parroted. “Tha’ good?”
“It’s good.”
Diego looked out over the swaying expanse of conifers and furs-the occasional oak a brighter splash of red and orange amidst the deeper emerald hues-and drew in a breath that made his ribs ache. It smelled clean and fresh out here; the way the pine stung his nose was almost antiseptic. It was a cool fall, and the sharp breeze bit at the corners of his eyes, whipping away the tears as soon as it created them. He blinked furiously in the glare of the sun and marveled that he had even come to be standing in such a place: on a sturdy, weathered deck in the middle of a forest in Maine. Tonight, and tomorrow, and every night for the following week he would be sleeping in a spacious guest room in a house large enough to be called a mansion but so welcoming and comfortable the label ‘home’ suited it far better. He had never been here before, had never known the man who had designed the place. And yet the moment he had laid eyes on it he had felt reassured and… something else. It was the warm rush you felt when a stranger’s dog approached you with enthusiastic and unabashed joy; the slightly thrilling tingle of deja vu as if from some half-remembered but vital dream; the sense of peace a devout pilgrim experienced at the end of a long journey.
And yet, it was also nothing so grand or dramatic. It was just a sense of belonging, of family and roots and mellow contentment. The man who had built this sprawling home had clearly loved it, from the staircase to the attic to the deck Diego now stood upon. He’d loved the trees-the sun room had even been built around one rather than fell it-and the small lake at the foot of the rocky slope. That love had left a mark anyone could feel, no Empathy required. Diego had never been anywhere that felt so real and peaceful. He fully understood why it held such importance for Charlie; why the entire family gathered here rather than anywhere else in the world.
The door behind him swung open and a swarm of children dashed out. He turned to watch with a grin as Billie dodged around the much taller Amari and snagged Scout by the back of her shirt with a very beastly roar. “It! It!” she crowed triumphantly. “Scout’s the monster now!”
“Nuh-uh!” Scout argued. “I’ve got the charm, remember?” She pointed at the seashell medallion around her neck-Diego recognized it as one of Gloria’s-and crossed her arms in a no-nonsense way. “So I’m immune to monster bites! Right, Dom?”
Dominic nodded, his short dreadlocks dancing. “And since you tried to bite her, it bounced back at you-so now you gotta be monster again. That’s the rules.”
“But I’ve been the monster forever,” Billie complained, entirely her mother’s daughter. “I’m tired of being the monster. Someone else be the monster now.”
“Monsta!” little Peter said enthusiastically, lifting his skinny arms and bouncing on the tips of his toes. “I be monsta!” His thick glasses were so smeared with greasy fingerprints it was a wonder he could see out of them at all.
“Rocky, you’re not fast enough,” Scout said, exasperated big sister written all over her. “Okay, Bills, I’ll be monster. But only if you BEAT ME DOWN THE STAIRS!” And off she sprinted, legs pumping and arms wild, closely followed by the others, a streak of blonde hair and red shirt.
Peter, determined not to be left behind by the older kids, tried to give chase. Only to trip over his own feet and crash to the deck, palms skidding and chin bumping the wooden planks. Diego was moving before the boy fully understood what had happened, and was picking him up just as the first wail of pain and fright started climbing in pitch and volume. “Ay, kiddo,” he said calmly. The worst thing right now would be to shout or show too much concern-Peter was more frightened than hurt, and his tears didn’t need further encouragement. “Your feet didn’t know what you wanted to do, huh? Happens to all of us sometimes. There, let’s assess the damage…” There was an ugly but shallow scrape on the quivering chin and a splinter in the right palm. “Ah, that’s not bad at all. You’ve got the family luck, kiddo. Let’s go inside and put some Band-Aids on these war wounds, yeah? That sound good?”
A teary nod answered that question, and Diego lifted the toddler to his shoulder with one easy movement. Peter promptly clutched a handful of shirt in his uninjured hand and sniffed loudly, shaky breath catching on a hiccup.
Genny and Akiko were sitting at the kitchen table, a teapot between them, when he stepped inside. “Everything okay?” Genny asked, wide-eyed, as they passed.
“We’re just fine, aren’t we, kiddo?” Diego said. “You should see the other guy.”
“T’other guy,” Peter parroted solemnly.
In the bathroom Peter sat on the lidded toilet, tiny sneakered feet swinging, and watched Diego rummage in the medicine cabinet with bleary but trusting eyes. “Looks like you’ve got a big choice to make, Peter,” he announced. “Do you want a plain Band-Aid, like the kind grown-ups use, or do you want a Ninja Turtle Band-Aid?” He held out the boxes for the boy’s serious perusal. After much deliberation, Peter finally pointed at the latter. “Good choice. And I bet you want one of the purple guy, huh? He’s got glasses just like yours.”
“Donatello,” Peter said as Diego dabbed his chin with a wet washcloth. “Tha’s his name. He’s smart.”
Not for the first time Diego marveled over how small children often struggled with grammar and basic pronunciation and yet could also remember dozens of oddly-named cartoon characters. “Now let’s take care of that splinter.”
“Gonna tweezers?” Peter said tremulously, face pale and lips pouted. “Don’t like tweezers.”
“It’s a good thing I’m here, then, because you know what? I don’t need tweezers. Hold your hand flat just like this, okay? Now don’t move, and watch this… Abracadabra!” Diego waved his hand over Peter’s and the splinter zipped out as if a metal filing drawn to a magnet. “Easy as that! Do you want a Band-Aid there, too?”
Peter nodded with a watery smile.
“There. Good as new. Feeling better?”
Another nod. “‘ank you, Uncle Dee.” He held out his knobby arms and Diego smiled around the twist in his heart-there was so much innocent trust and gratitude and admiration on the little boy’s face, made all the more touching by the colorful Band-Aids and the smeared Coke bottle glasses. He leaned forward and accepted the hug as the gift it was. Peter smelled of sweat and dirt and crayons and last night’s shampoo-pure child. And even though he was no true kin of his, he still called him ‘uncle’, still gave him ready hugs and believed him when he said things would be alright.
How had he ever gotten here? From apathy and fear and guilt-to Uncle Dee. To someone people loved rather than hated. To a man with family, with roots, with a place where he belonged.
“Okay,” he said when Peter finally pulled away. “How about we go find someone else to play with? Maybe Dani or Lucy are doing something fun?”
Akiko caught his eye as they trooped past again, Peter’s unbandaged hand in his. He felt the tendril of concern and only smiled in response, knowing she had to have felt something of what had washed over him in the bathroom. “Do you know where the girls are?”
“Downstairs, I think,” she said. “With Ben.”
“That little boy sure does love him,” Genny said over her teacup after they were gone. “Well, they all love him. He’s so kind to them. Patient and understanding. Never hesitates to get right down at their level.”
“Those who have survived the worst often give back the best,” Akiko replied quietly, lifting the teapot and refilling her mug. “As you know, Gen. You were telling me about the trip to the museum?”
“Fiasco, you mean. Pascal-he’s the one who smuggled all of the tadpoles into the downstairs bathtub at the home last month, said he was going to grow his own frogs-decided he was going to slide down the staircase banister like he’d seen in cartoons. So the security guards are yelling, and Alberto is trying to catch him at the bottom before he ricocheted into some priceless dinosaur skeleton, and the rest of the children are just cheering him on like a bunch of English football hooligans.”
Akiko laughed. “That boy sounds like a handful and a half.”
“Alberto loves him,” Genny said with a rueful smile, fingers at her temple. “I do, too, to be completely honest. If someone doesn’t come along in the next month or so and snatch him up, I’m afraid we might do something rather reckless. Like adopt him ourselves.”
“Dom and Lucy could always use another brother,” Akiko said guilelessly. “Should I put the kettle on again?”
Two floors below, Ben, Dani, and Lucy were sitting amidst a wide array of musical instruments. Dani was staring at sheets of music with great interest while Ben, Lucy settled in his lap, demonstrated the different notes the strings of a ukulele produced. “La la laaaaa!” Lucy sang off-key but with gusto. Her round face was turning pink with effort, her blue eyes screwed shut and her hands clenched into fists.
She looked up when Diego opened the door and burst into a thousand gigawatt smile-she was always wreathed in grins, but she seemed to reserve an especially enthusiastic one just for him. “Deeeeee-ago!” she said in her perpetually sing-song voice, waving energetically. “We’re making music! Come make music, too!”
“Oh, hey,” Ben said, looking up and noticing Peter’s freshly bandaged war wounds. “Everything okay?”
“Just a minor fall,” Diego said. “Is there room for both of us?”
“Yeah, yeah, lots of room,” Lucy said, wiggling in Ben’s lap. “Peter, come sit with me. I can share.”
“Oof, watch where you’re digging your knees, sweetie,” Ben winced.
Lucy was the complete inverse of her brother Dominic-where he was black, she was white. Where his dark hair was dreadlocked and ended just beneath his ears, hers was a silky curtain that fell almost to her waist, strawberry blonde and stick-straight. His eyes were amber; hers were blue. While Dominic was lithe and had proportions that promised future muscle and athleticism, Lucy was short and stocky and well-rounded, with dimpled knees and wrists and soft, stubby fingers. And while her brother would one day learn to drive a car and live an entirely independent adulthood, Lucy would most likely always live in the home of her adoptive parents-because Lucy had Down's Syndrome and in some ways would always be an inquisitive, playful girl.
But Peter wasn’t paying attention to Lucy’s offer. His eyes were firmly locked on the piano in the corner.
“You’ve got eyes like saucers, bud,” Ben said. “See something you like?”
“That’s a piano,” Diego said. “Want me to play something?”
Peter stared up at him, mouth open. “You piano, Uncle Dee?”
“I do piano, and guitar a little, too.”
“Like Daddy?”
“Ah, your Daddy’s much better with the guitar than me.”
“I wanna piano,” Peter said, tugging on Diego’s hand.
He let the boy pull him to the bench, then helped him onto it beside him. “Okay, kiddo, so these are the keys and down here are the pedals. Sometimes you have to push down on the pedals and press the keys at the same time to make certain sounds.”
“Can’t reach,” Peter said plaintively, swinging his feet.
“Good thing you’ve got a lot of growing coming,” Diego said reassuringly, patting his back. “Next growth spurt will set you right, don’t worry. The keys on this end make higher notes, and the keys down here are lower. This is called a scale.”
“Pretty,” Peter said with a grin, watching his fingers dance over the keys.
“A piano can make all kinds of music. Movie music. Pop music. Classical-” he played a quick riff from Beethoven. “Jazz. Rock. New music, old music. Loud or soft.” He slipped smoothly into an old lullaby his mother used to sing when he was sick. “The sound each key makes is called a note, and each note has its own symbol.”
“See, Peter?” Dani said, walking over with a handful of sheet music. She selected one booklet and set it on the tray. “These are notes, and these are chords.”
“This line right here?” Diego said, pointing. “Sounds like this.”
Peter’s mouth hung open in a perfect ‘O’, and his eyes looked even bigger magnified behind his thick glasses.
“Ohhh, I know that glazed look,” Ben said, leaning over and ruffling Peter’s sandy hair with one hand, the other steadying Lucy, who was clinging to his back monkey-style. “Amari had that look when he first saw Sailor Moon, and Scout when she saw Indiana Jones. Someone’s just found a great passion.”
His small hands looked even smaller over the yellowing keys-his armspan was such that he could only reach a bit more than half of them. But as Diego and Ben watched, he stood up on the bench, leaned over Diego, and copied the line that had just been played, faltering once and only because the key was too far out of reach. And then, while Lucy hummed tunelessly to herself, he started playing the lullaby. It wasn’t perfect, but again: only because he couldn’t reach the pedals.
“Like tha’, Uncle Dee?” he asked, all innocence.
“Yeah,” Diego said with a laugh. “You got it, kiddo. You’re a quick study.”
“Quick study,” Peter parroted. “Tha’ good?”
“It’s good.”