Piecing Me Together(10)

Her voice.

The way she says, “How precious is that?” when she looks at my bookshelf.

My books are stacked by height and turned so that the titles can easily be seen. I pull a book off the shelf and hand it to her. “I’ve had some of these books since I was in fourth grade,” I tell her.

Maxine strains to get up from the sofa, and walks over to take a closer look at my bookshelf. There are plaques on the top shelf. Some small, some big. All of them have my name front and center. “Wow. You’ve got a lot of trophies,” she says. “You are quite the scholar. That’s great.”

I smile.

We talk for a while about which teachers are still at St. Francis and how things have changed. I ask Maxine if she liked St. Francis. She says, “I loved it. High school was a great experience for me. Enjoy it. It goes by fast.” We talk more about her experience at St. Francis, how she was the senior class president and how she was on the debate team.

“Were you a student in Woman to Woman?” I ask.

“No,” Maxine says.

So she’s never been at risk for anything?

“But when Mrs. Parker called me, I really wanted to be part of it. It’s my way of giving back, I guess,” Maxine says. She takes her phone out of her pocket, looks at a text message on the screen, and puts it away. “Mrs. Parker always looked out for me. She was the one who convinced me to go to Guatemala.”

“You’ve been to Guatemala?”

“And Ghana,” she says. “I was in the study abroad program at St. Francis. You’re a junior, right? Isn’t this the year students get nominated?”

“Yes, but—well, I don’t know when that’s happening,” I tell her. “They haven’t announced the nominations or where the trip is yet. I want to go.” I don’t tell her how I went to Mrs. Parker’s office, thinking she had good news for me, but instead it was about Woman to Woman, about her. Turns out nominations don’t happen till after winter break, so I still have a chance.

“You really should do it,” Maxine tells me. “Traveling changes you. It opens you up in ways you’d never imagine, and it makes you appreciate home.”

“Really?” I ask. “Seems like the more you travel, the more you’d want to leave Oregon. Other places sound so—I don’t know, so much bigger, more diverse, more everything.”

“I think everyone dreams of leaving home, but trust me, the cliché is true: I’ve been a lot of places and there really is no place like home.”

Part of me thinks it’s easy for Maxine to say this because home for her has probably never been a tiny two-bedroom house with a leaking roof.

E.J. comes into the living room. “Max, I thought that was you!”

“E.J.!” I throw a pillow at him.

“Just came to get something to drink. Calm down.” E.J. walks into the kitchen.

“Hey, E.J.,” Maxine says. “How’ve you been?”

My mentor knows my uncle? I’m not sure how to feel about this.

“I’m good, I’m good,” E.J. says. “You know, still working on my music. Trying to finish this demo with Jon.” E.J. comes back into the living room, a can of soda in his hand. “Speaking of Jon—”

“Let’s not,” Maxine says.

“He told me what went down today, but you two are going to get back together. You always do,” E.J. says. He cracks the can open.

“I don’t know about that,” Maxine says.

I wonder what went down today and if it went down while Maxine was supposed to be with me. Did she stand me up because of some drama with her boyfriend?

E.J. gives Maxine a hug. “Well, it’s good to see you. Hope it works out.” He looks at me. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“It’s okay.” Maxine yawns long. “I need to get out of here anyway.” She stands and walks to the door. “It’s nice meeting you, Jade. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”

“Nice meeting you too. Thanks for the gift. I can’t wait to make something.”

As soon as I close the door, I go to my room and say to E.J., “Tell me about Maxine.”

He gets up and walks back into the living room.

“Didn’t you just meet her? Why you asking me?” He turns the TV back on to his murder mystery.

I grab the control and turn the volume down. “E.J.— ”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“I don’t know her like that. I mean, I only know her because she’s on and off with my boy Jon. Sometimes she comes to a show I’m deejaying, or when I go over to Jon’s to make beats, she’s there. But they broke up today, so I doubt I’ll be seeing her anymore.”

“They broke up today?”

“I’m trying to watch TV, Jade.” He takes the control from me and turns the volume back up.

I know the kinds of guys E.J. hangs out with. They’re the kind Dad tells me to avoid. The kind E.J. says, “Just because I hang out with them, doesn’t mean I do what they do.”

I’m regretting saying yes to this mentorship program. So far my mentor has stood me up because of some drama with her boyfriend and shown up in the middle of the night with gifts like that’s supposed to make it all better. All of this has me wondering, what have I gotten myself into? Has me wondering, what is this woman really going to teach me?