Free Mind Games by Jeanne Marie Grunwell

followed by: "I go back to Russia now."
    There is at least one good thing in America more than pizza, I like to believe, and that is me.
    When I cannot bear to hear one more time that Babushka still wants to go back, finally I throw harsh words back at her. "You want to leave me? Then go!"
    The next day, she goes.
    To heaven, G tells me.
    Perhaps. But if it is not like Russia, Babushka will not find happiness there, either.
    Kathleen and Claire tell me they make prayers for my family in their Catholic church. So, too, pray those nice people at temple. Those same people who say pepperoni is bad to eat. I tell them that is not why Babushka died—because she ate the wrong thing. They say oh, no, of course not. Please do not believe that.
    I wish I could believe that. They do not know I am thinking a much worse reason for her to leave me.
    Brandon says do not blame myself that Babushka has gone. I yell at him to go away from me. He is not like Babushka. He stays.
    I whisper my prayers in the quiet of the night as I touch the Star of David, so warm against my chest.
God, I ask, do you hear me? Babushka, do you hear me?
    No one answers me.
    When Mrs. Parrot says in P.E. class that we cannot have jewelry, I will not play if I must let go this necklace.
    Brandon is mad at me because our team loses. "Your grandma would not like the way you're acting," he says to me.
    "You do not know my babushka," I tell him. "You never talk to her once."
    He shows me the definition of ESP: The process of accumulating knowledge that cannot be gained by the use of our five known senses.
    "I know you," he says. "That's enough."
    "How? How is that enough?"
    Brandon shrugs his bony shoulders. "Am I wrong?"
    He is not wrong. Babushka would hate that I do not play. She would hate that I cannot think of her and smile.
    "I wish I make you meet her," I tell Brandon. "She like the way in that faculty-student game you jump so high to make every rebound."
    "Thanks," he says. And then he smiles. "My mom used to say I could touch the sky."
    "You are her star."
    He looks at me. "I told you she called me that?"
    "No."
    "Well," he says. "Well."
    Perhaps I do bad on the ESP test. But I always do know—Brandon is a star.

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Conclusion
Brandon Kelly
    M Y GRANDMA ASKED ME THE OTHER DAY IF I' M STILL mad she made me do this stupid science project. I told her I'm richer. My foul shot's better. I guess I'm not mad.
    Thing is, when Marina's grandma died it made me super mad. Marina's a nice girl and all, but right then I wished I never met her. I don't care how much my foul shot improved.
    I didn't want to hear about dying. I didn't want to hear Grandma say those words again. There wasn't so much difference between the library, you know, and Mercy Hospital. Plastic chairs your legs stuck to, janitor mopping the halls, cafeteria smell in the air. People all around but oh so quiet.
    It was like going back in time. And don't try and tell me that's not supernatural.
    Marina says her grandma died of a closed-up heart. Maybe she meant heart attack and got her words messed up. That's really what a heart attack is, you know, when your arteries get all hard and close up. You don't get any blood to your heart and it just stops. Ma told me that once.
    But I had this flash of intuition that Marina meant about how her grandma was always thinking of Russia and wanting to go back and feeling sad inside her heart, because things here were so different and all.
    I can see how that could kill a person.
    If I could go back, I would. Back to Baltimore, back to two years ago. Seems like all I can think about
sometimes.
    I wish Michael could believe in the Tooth Fairy till he's eighty. I wish he could grow up thinking somebody's always going to take care of him and love him, and do magic to take away the hurt. Michael's seven years old, and he already knows there's no Tooth Fairy.
    Ma was the Tooth Fairy. I wonder if Darius knows he's supposed to take care of that now.
    My heart feels