Greta shrugged, wilting. “We’ll have to talk to him.”
“And tell him what?”
“The truth!” She pushed past him and dropped the grocery bags on the table. “We haven’t done anything wrong, so why are we the ones sneaking around?”
Ash nodded, setting down the apples and the bag of canned soup.
“We tell him the truth, and what happens, happens,” Greta said.
“Okay.”
Greta lay in bed that night rehearsing the conversation, choosing her words. Ash had a job interview lined up. Maybe they could ask for more time. She dreaded it but also felt a tiny bud of relief. Their dad had left. They hadn’t wanted him to, but he had. So if that meant Elgin Doyle kicked them out, or phoned the police or social services or whatever people did when parents left, that’s what would happen.
Ash found her scrubbing refrigerator shelves the next morning.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I thought we were going to the library today.”
“No. We need to talk to Elgin and get that over with. I just didn’t want to go too early and wake him up.”
“Old people always get up early, Greta.”
“I don’t know about this one. The only time I hear him is during the night.”
Ash watched her for a minute before lighting the oven. Then he pulled out the crisper drawers and rinsed them in the kitchen sink. Condiments—the only color in the stark fridge.
They waited until noon to climb the staircase between the two suites and knock on the door to Elgin’s suite. Greta positioned herself slightly in front of Ash, prepared to do the talking. They knocked again. No answer.
“Maybe he’s still sleeping,” Greta said.
“How do we know when this man sleeps? Let’s try the doorbell.”
They walked around to the front of the house and rang the doorbell. As Greta raised her hand to ring it again, the floor behind the door creaked. She cleared her throat and clasped her hands in front of her.
The door opened an inch and stayed there. Greta squinted and leaned forward. She could make out the shape of an eye.
“Uh, hi, El—Mr. Doyle. We’re your tenants from downstairs,” Greta said, pretending she wasn’t talking to a nearly closed door. “I’m Greta, and this is my brother, Ash.”
The door swung open. “Oh, hello there.”
Greta’s mouth opened and closed. An elfin face, with thinning gray hair swept upward, like he’d slept on it wrong. His arms hung from a sleeveless undershirt, his bowed legs lost in a pair of fluorescent orange shorts—the kind runners wore in the eighties—that puffed out around his nearly hairless thighs. Black dress socks were pulled halfway up his calves, and the look was completed by a pair of sturdy leather oxfords.
Gone, whatever words she had rehearsed. They regarded each other.
“Mr. Doyle.” Ash stepped forward. “Can we talk to you about February’s rent?”
“Certainly. Come inside, please.” Elgin stepped back from the door and motioned them forward.
Greta didn’t move. Ash poked her in the back, nudging her on. She could feel him beside her, so she stepped into the entryway. Then she forgot about Elgin’s lack of clothing. Warm, humid air, like being dropped in the middle of the Amazon. Green leaves bursting from everywhere. All signs pointed to a hydroponic pot-growing operation, but all Greta could see were ferns, spider plants and the round, stumpy leaves of rubber plants. Foliage covered the surface of every ledge, shelf and tabletop. Elgin motioned to the living room, toward a flowered couch and two recliners. “Have a seat. I was expecting…that woman.”
So he, too, had been terrorized by Patty.
“Sorry if we interrupted you”—while getting dressed, Greta silently added. “We don’t mind waiting.” They settled side by side on the couch.
“No, no.” Elgin perched on a nearby recliner. “You haven’t interrupted anything.”
Even more disconcerting. “Mr. Doyle—” she began.
“Elgin, please.” He said it with a hard g. Mystery solved.
Greta wanted to unzip her sweater, but she wore only a tank top underneath, and she didn’t want to show that much skin in front of him. Especially with him being so bare. She started to sweat, struggling to extract enough oxygen from the moist air.
“Warm, isn’t it?” Elgin said. “If I set the thermostat to a regular temperature upstairs, I’m told it’s cold in the basement. I don’t want my tenants to suffer.”
Greta didn’t have the heart to tell him the basement felt like a refrigerator anyway, despite the sauna upstairs.
“It gets uncomfortable for me too,” Elgin continued, glancing down at his bare arms and legs, “which is why I dress light. You don’t mind, do you?”
Greta and Ash shook their heads in unison.
“Your feet don’t get too warm in those shoes?” Greta asked. Or too heavy for his skinny legs to haul around?
“This pair has my best orthotics,” Elgin said, lifting a foot. “Helps my back.”
Bizarre but logical, all of it. “Elgin”—Greta cleared her throat—“we don’t have rent money to give you today.”
His caterpillar eyebrows kinked in the middle, like his back had just gone out. “No?”
“You see, we’re still in high school…” Greta began.
“And our dad and stepmom were paying the rent…” Ash sighed, having to acknowledge his dead-to-him father and never-existed stepmother.
“But they…left.” Greta nodded firmly—nothing more to say.
They all sat in silence for a moment, looking at each other.
“They left?” Elgin asked. “And when will they be back?”
“We don’t know if they’re coming back. They…took off, left us.” Ash spat out the last words.
Elgin’s eyebrows stayed kinked. “Just abandoned you?”
Greta fought the urge to cry, hearing it stated so plainly. She nodded.
“Well.” Elgin sat back in his chair and rubbed his sagging knees. “What are you going to do?” So much for the adult taking charge of the situation.
Greta found her voice, grateful he hadn’t asked why they’d left. “We’re applying for lots of jobs.”
“I have an interview this afternoon,” Ash added.
“So”—Greta said, glancing at Ash—“we’re hoping you could give us a little more time to come up with rent for February.”
“But you’re still in school. How will you earn enough to support yourselves?”
Elgin had voiced what Greta already knew in her gut. It was impossible. The whole crazy plan. But what else?
“Our aunt will be coming back from Arizona near the end of March,” Ash said, “and we know she’ll help us. We already left a note under her door for her to call us ASAP.”
They both slumped back on the sofa as Elgin looked them over, two kids dragged into the principal’s office.
“Well”—Elgin finally nodded—“let me know when you have the rent then. I’ll have to…” He trailed off, then muttered, “She might…”
Greta and Ash looked at each other and stood before Elgin could change his mind.
“Thank you. Thank you.” They tripped over each other as they scrambled for the door. Outside, the air stung their skin, stabbed down their throats and into their lungs. Greta looked at Ash’s flushed face and laughed. He shook his head.
Later that afternoon, Greta met Ash at the door as he left to catch the bus to his job interview.
“Go get ’em, Tiger,” she said.
Ash shot her a look.
“Remember, they’ll probably ask you why you want to work at Freddy’s Fries,” she said. “Think of something good, like you really like helping people.”
“Stop. Please. It hurts.”
After an hour and a half, Greta heard the door swish open, the only sound in the quiet basement. “Hey.” She set down the stack of old newspapers she’d been sorting in the living room.
“Hey.”
“How’d
it go?” So casual.
“I think it went okay.” Ash took off his coat and headed for the bathroom.
“What kinds of things did they ask you?”
“You know, previous job experience, what’s the most important part of customer service. Stuff like that.”
Greta inwardly cringed. “And what did you say?”
“I’d rather not repeat the whole interview. I did my best.”
Greta went to bed early that night to think. Waiting. Always waiting for results. Waiting to hear about the job. Waiting to hear from their dad. Waiting for Aunt Lori to get back from Arizona. Waiting to see who would be in her classes the next day—the first day of the new term. Her stomach twisted thinking about that, without the made-up daytime chores to distract her. A sick feeling trickled from her chest downward. She’d used up whatever got her through the last part of the previous term—hiding, skipping classes, faking every communicable virus known to humans—and crossed the finish line on fumes.
It was a far cry from November, after she’d been Sporty Spice and floated around on a cloud with Rachel and her friends. Greta remembered how, after Priya’s party, Rachel had leaned in close at her locker and said, “So Dylan’s been asking about the girl who was Sporty Spice.”
“What about his girlfriend, the redhead?”
“Angela? That’s over. You interested?”
Was that even a question? “Maybe.” She’d tried out one of Rachel’s coy looks.
“You should come to his basketball games. Matt plays on the team too.”
“When’s the next one?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up.”
So she had sat with Rachel in the bleachers, red marks on her arm from Rachel squeezing it when the score was close. Watching how great Dylan’s biceps looked in his basketball jersey, feeling a burst of something every time someone called his name. Rachel drove Greta home afterward, with Matt in the front and Dylan in the back seat next to her. He did an impression of their coach that made her laugh. They swapped stories about their stepparents. Dylan’s stepdad wore a pair of socks at least three times before throwing them in the laundry. Greta told him about Patty’s toilet-paper rationing.
On the drive home after the second game, Dylan had stretched one arm behind her and slid his other hand onto her knee. The only light glowed from the dash. In the front, Rachel and Matt skipped between radio stations. Dylan leaned in and kissed her on the cheek but didn’t pull away again. He kissed her mouth, his arms, his body, around her. When they’d stopped in front of her house, he’d said, “Matt got the key to his parents’ cabin at Pigeon Lake. Want to come to a party on Saturday night?” She’d said yes before he’d even finished the sentence.
Now, just a few months later, Greta felt unbearable panic at the thought of having to see Dylan, Matt or Rachel every day. In a hallway she could duck away with the crowd, or in the bathroom, wait it out in a stall. But in class every day? Walking in front of them. Feeling their eyes on her back. Noticing how they intentionally ignored her. Partner work. Group work. No. If finishing high school meant going through that every single day, she’d leave. It was a small price.
Greta wrapped the blanket tighter, rolled away from the steady window draft and waited for morning.
SEVEN
“It’s minus thirty-eight degrees today, with wind chill,” Ash told Greta as she stumbled into the kitchen. Even with the oven blazing, she felt the invasion of a hundred tiny currents seeping through the cracks of the basement suite.
Every current stood in solidarity with her, protesting the start of the new term. She’d radiated misery, and winter had joined her. I’m here. It pressed in on the house and prickled the air. Air this cold sought vengeance.
Greta eyed Ash as they stood in the entryway, preparing to catch the bus. She wound a black woolen scarf around her neck, up over her mouth, until it touched her nose. Then she zipped up her parka and pulled the hood over her head, leaving a narrow slit for her eyes. For one second, she thought how this would impress Roger—always on her about dressing for the weather—and then scoffed at herself. Roger didn’t even care that they were running out of food. The right choice of outerwear didn’t matter now.
Ash zipped up his coat and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“Bundle up, Ash.” She sounded like Roger. “It’s minus thirty-eight. Put something on your head. You’ll need gloves too.”
He shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
“You cannot will your skin not to freeze and fall off. Here.” She dug through a box of mittens, scarves, tuques. “Here’s Dad’s hat. Put it on.”
“But it’s got a pom-pom.”
“So? Take it off before you go inside.”
Ash headed for the door. “No, thanks.”
“Fine. Freeze.” She followed a step behind, choking back more words.
The air stung the skin around her eyes and singed her nostrils. Ash grimaced too and quickened his pace. Down the path and onto the sidewalk. Past one house, two houses. Greta heard his sharp intake of breath and looked over to see him pressing his bare hands against his ears. Half a block down, he stuffed one hand back into his coat pocket and held the other against his forehead, his face pained. The woolen fibers of her scarf frosted white from her breath and stuck to her nose. Through her gloves, her fingertips numbed. By the end of the block, Greta struggled to blink, her eyelashes starting to freeze together. Ash’s face looked gaunt and white—a sun-bleached skeleton. His ears glowed tomato red, standing out from his newly shorn scalp. The cold burned.
She stopped abruptly at the end of the street, the thought coming before the words formed.
“What?” Ash asked, his mouth stiff and tight.
“Our bus passes expired on Friday—the end of January. We can’t take the bus.”
They stood in silence, each one following that thought to a dead end. They didn’t have money to replace both passes. Only one. And even one would take all their money. No way they could walk to school—not even with all the pom-pom tuques in the world. The air pierced their skin through their jeans, numbing their thighs.
“Let’s go back,” Greta said.
“I can’t feel any part of me.” Ash nodded and strode back toward their house. Greta jogged to keep up. Then Ash started to jog, and she fell farther behind, each step shooting sparks through her numb toes. Her boots seemed made of paper.
Inside the basement, Ash fell against the closed door and gasped, suffocated by the cold. He blew on his fingers and pressed his palms to his ears.
Greta flopped on the couch, thick in her winter gear, before bolting up again. “What about Nate? We could ask him for a ride.”
Ash’s eyes flickered toward Nate’s house and the evil outdoors. “Yeah. Okay. Just a sec.”
“I’ll go catch him.” Greta charged up the steps and found Nate in his driveway, attempting to start his yellow Volvo.
The car made a thick chug sound before dying. Then again. The third time, something caught and the motor turned over—clunky, painful. Nate unplugged the engine block heater from an extension cord trailing from the garage. He spotted Greta. “Rebus doesn’t like the cold,” he said, blowing out a cloud of frosty air. He wore an orange tuque with a black pom-pom, tufts of hair jutting out from beneath it. Greta noticed ice crystals forming on his eyebrows.
“Can we get a ride?” she asked. “Our bus passes expired, and we don’t have the money to buy more.” After what he’d seen of their family, she was sure he could handle this level of honesty.
“No problem. I wondered why you didn’t ask sooner.”
She sat in the front, and Ash hunkered in the back. Nate reached past the steering wheel and turned up the heat. But Rebus didn’t really have heat. Not truly. More like blowing around air a degree or two warmer than outdoors. Even so, Ash’s face was a nearly human color by the time they got to school.
In the school parking lot they wove a path to the door, stepping in snowy grooves flattened by
tires and footsteps. They each meandered on their own path. Greta watched the back of Nate’s head, how he didn’t pull the tuque off before walking through the back entrance.
“Nate!” she called.
He turned and waited for her, trailing behind him in the busy hallway. “If you’re not doing anything at lunch, why don’t you sit with us?”
He smiled, his teeth even whiter than his pale skin. “Okay. I’ll find you in the cafeteria.”
“Check the dark corners.”
He laughed and walked away. And then it was real. Every minute another step up a bald cliff face. By the end of the day, she would either fall to her death or triumph at the top. “Ash.” She grabbed his arm as he started past her. “Let me see your schedule.”
He pulled it, crumpled, out of a binder and showed her.
“You’re in math this term too,” she said. “If I need you to, will you drop your class and take it with me? I’ll know whether I need you to after today.”
Ash frowned. “I was hoping to take art during that block.”
“Please, Ash. I’m asking nicely.” I’m begging.
Her fingers pinched his arm. Ash looked down at them and then back to her face. “Why do I have to take math with you?”
Tell him. “Just say yes. Please.” She could do it with him sitting beside her.
“Okay.” He waited for Greta to drop her hand before stepping back. “See you at lunch.” She watched him walk away still rubbing his arm.
You can do this. Terror plus nausea. Nauseous terror. It swirled through her, a noxious gas, as she walked to social studies. Three classes. Just three classes to get through.
At the door of the classroom, she paused and surveyed it, front to back. A few familiar faces from her other classes but not Dylan, Rachel or Matt. She chose a desk near the back, where she could see everyone coming through the door. The teacher, who looked younger than Greta, rifled through a stack of papers at the front, obviously stressed. Greta watched the clock, waiting for the class to begin so she would know for sure.
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