The House That Wasn't There

by Elana K. Arnold

  Then Mr. Rivera continued. “WATER . . . who else picked WATER? Let’s see . . . Beck! You can be Alder’s WATER partner. And FAMILY? Great! Oak, you and Alder can team up. That’s perfect! You two can investigate family trees.”

  Mr. Rivera chuckled at his own joke, but Alder did not join in. Any excitement he’d felt over being paired with Marcus escaped from him like air from a leaky balloon.

  “You all get the point now, right? Each of you, find three different people, one for each word you chose.”

  The class sat quietly, looking at each other, until Mr. Rivera loudly clapped.

  “You’ll have to get up! Move around! Talk to each other. Let’s go!”

  And then chairs scraped the linoleum as they were pushed back, and the room filled with the loud chatter of kids yelling back and forth—

  “Sebastian, which words did you choose?”

  “Did anyone else choose TEETH?”

  “I can’t believe I chose BACTERIA,” groaned Cynthia, who had suggested it in the first place. “There aren’t any poems about bacteria.”

  In the end, almost everyone found the matches they needed, and then Mr. Rivera helped the few stragglers shift their lists so that no one was left unmatched.

  “You see,” said Mr. Rivera when they had finally settled back at their desks, a very loud twenty minutes later (during which Alder had had nothing to do, since Mr. Rivera had used him as the example and he was already matched up), “the group of us is like that list of words. We may seem separate and unattached, and maybe some of you don’t know each other well yet, but we are connected, we are intertwined. For the next nine months, at least!”

  Mr. Rivera probably meant for that to sound uplifting and exciting. But to Alder, looking over his shoulder at Oak and, beyond her, at Beck, it sounded more like a threat than a promise.

  At home, however, Fern waited for him. Sleepy, warm, a fuzzy orange puddle on the foot of his bed. She looked up when Alder came into the bedroom, and when he placed his hand on her back, she began to softly purr.

  Alder scooped her up and held her against his chest. Her head fit just perfectly under his chin. He sank down onto his bed and leaned back against his pillow.

  Fern fell back to sleep, a pleasant floppy weight. But Alder’s eyes were open. From where he lay on his bed, he had a good view of his front yard and, now that the walnut tree was just a stump, of Oak’s, too. Walking home from the bus stop, he’d felt Oak walking about five paces behind him, but she didn’t rush to catch up, and he didn’t slow down to wait for her. She’d gone up the driveway to her house without a word to Alder, which he thought had been rather rude, even though he had no desire to speak to her. And by the time he’d gathered Fern and peered out his window, it was to see Oak and that woman leaving the house again, climbing into their car and driving away, leaving the construction workers up there on top of the garage, shooting the framework of the new second story with loud nail guns.

  There were stacks of construction materials on the neighbors’ driveway, boxes and boxes of shingles and rolls of black paper, covered in plastic to protect them. It could be neat to be a construction worker, Alder considered, to use your hands to build something that didn’t exist before you started.

  But, he thought, his eyes flicking to where the walnut tree used to stand, sometimes building something new meant destroying something old. That Alder didn’t like. Not one bit.

  Then Alder saw something . . . sort of a flicker, a shimmer, where the old tree had been. It looked to Alder like an extra-shiny patch of air. Probably it was just a reflection off his window, or off one of the windows next door. He stood, Fern still tucked under his chin, and walked toward his window to take a closer look.

  It was still there, the shiny spot, hanging in the sky like a window without a frame. And the longer Alder stared at it, the more unsettled he felt.

  Alder rubbed Fern’s forehead with his thumb. He blinked, and when he looked again for the shiny patch, he couldn’t see it anymore.

  But though the strange optical illusion had disappeared, Alder’s unsettled feeling hadn’t.

  It was a feeling deep in his gut that something was wrong. Something was torn. Something that was meant to be together wasn’t.

  Fern awoke and stretched, and one of her tiny, sharp claws ran across Alder’s arm, scratching him.

  “Ow,” he said, but he barely felt the pain from her claw before he forgot it. Because he realized what was wrong. Something was missing.

  The other kitten. Fern’s brother.

  “Siblings shouldn’t be separated,” he said out loud, suddenly, urgently. And he knew it was up to him to set things right.

  When Mom got home, Alder was waiting for her on the pink couch. Fern was sharpening her claws on the rug.

  “Don’t let her do that,” Mom said.

  Rather than get into a debate about why cats need sharp claws, Alder picked up Fern and set her on the coffee table. Now was not the time to let Mom focus on the downside of pet ownership.

  “Mom,” he said, “I have something serious we need to talk about.”

  Alder’s mom, who had been unlacing her shoes, looked up. It was sort of funny—her hair falling forward, her shoes half undone, the wide-eyed expression on her face. “What’s the matter, Alder?”

  “Take your shoes off first,” he said. He couldn’t have a conversation with her like that.

  She kicked them off and joined Alder on the couch. “Is it school?” she asked. “Is it a problem with Marcus?”

  Sometimes, his mom was irritatingly perceptive. But none of that was what Alder wanted to talk about. “It’s Fern,” he said. “I think she misses her brother.”

  Mom sighed—relieved or annoyed, Alder couldn’t tell. “Baby,” she said, “Fern is a cat. She’s fine.”

  Alder shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, and he picked his words carefully. It felt really important that Mom understood. “It’s just . . . Mom, they’re siblings. I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful. I’m really glad you let me get a cat. And it’s not that I’m just trying to get a second one! It’s just . . . well, earlier, I had this feeling. You know? Like, I knew something suddenly. I knew that it wasn’t right to split up siblings. And Mom, if we keep Fern away from her brother, I think I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life.”

  For a couple of minutes, his mom didn’t say anything. She just sat next to Alder, her mouth scrunched up tight. Fern leaped from the coffee table onto the pink velvet couch, landing squarely between them. Absentmindedly, still thinking, Alder’s mom ran her hand down the kitten’s back.

  At last she spoke. “We don’t need two cats,” she began.

  “It’s not about needing another cat,” Alder interrupted, but his mom held up her hand to stop him.

  “Let me finish,” she said. “We don’t need two cats, but I can see that you need this. Okay. We’ll go back for Fern’s brother.”

  Alder was so excited that he jumped up and whooped loudly, startling Fern, who puffed up and hissed before jumping off the couch and diving under the coffee table. Then, as if realizing she had overreacted, she stuck out a hind leg and began to casually lick it.

  “Come on,” Alder said, and he ran to grab his mom’s purse.

  “Okay,” his mom said, going to put her shoes back on, “just don’t say that I never did anything for you.”

  But when they got to the kitten corral at the pet store, only two kittens remained—the black and the tabby. And the girl who’d helped them wasn’t there either; in her place was a translucently pale young man, no older than twenty, with a name tag that read “Volunteer” and another that read “Stan,” who seemed very interested in something on his phone.

  “Excuse me,” Alder said, “what happened to the orange kitten?”

  “What?” Stan said, not looking up from his phone.

  “The orange kitten,” Alder said. “Where did he go? Is he in another cage?”

  “Oh,”
said Stan, looking up at last from his phone. “No, that kitten got adopted earlier today.”

  “That’s good news,” Alder’s mom said, dropping her hand on his shoulder, squeezing it.

  It didn’t sound like good news to Alder. “Who adopted him?” he asked.

  “Sorry, little man,” Stan said, smiling. He shoved his phone in the back pocket of his jeans. “We aren’t allowed to share that information. How about a different kitten? These are both pretty cute too!”

  Alder tried not to cry as he shook his head and turned away. He had failed Fern, and he had failed her brother. They were separated. And now they’d probably never see each other again.

  Chapter 8

  “What will you name him?”

  Oak sat cross-legged on the rug in the front room of her new house that felt, suddenly, a lot more like home. In the little diamond of space between her legs, curled into an appealing circle of orange fluff, was the reason why.

  “Walnut,” Oak answered.

  “Walnut?” said her mother, who sat nearby. “That’s adorable.”

  Gently, Oak placed her hand on Walnut’s fur. Immediately, he began to purr. “I can’t believe you let me get a kitten,” Oak said. She looked up at her mother and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Hey-y,” said her mom, smiling back. “That’s the first real smile I think I’ve seen from you since the move.”

  Oak nodded.

  Mom stood up and placed her hand on the top of Oak’s head, just as Oak had her hand resting on Walnut’s back. “Bedtime soon, okay?”

  Oak nodded again and her mom’s hand moved away, and Oak heard her footsteps as she headed into the kitchen to finish up the dishes from dinner. Normally, that was Oak’s job, and Oak was extra grateful to her mom for taking care of it. She didn’t want to disturb the kitten.

  But after a minute, he woke up anyway, stretching his two front legs, unsheathing his whisker-thin claws, and yawning, his pink barbed tail uncurling, his needle-sharp tiny teeth gleaming white. He wandered around the room, sniffing the legs of the couch and the bottom row of books. Watching him explore the books, she found it a little bit easier to accept the fact that her mom had undone all her work of arranging the shelves in a rainbow.

  When Oak had returned home from school that day, it was to find that the cookbooks were with the cookbooks. The novels were with the novels. And some of the shelves had been repurposed entirely, holding things like picture frames and candles and little decorative carvings. Oak’s book rainbow was gone. All her work, disappeared. It had stung, Oak could admit to herself now, with Walnut beside her. Neither Oak nor her mother had mentioned it, but Oak had been angry. Her feelings had been hurt.

  She glanced up at the wall clock; it was eight thirty. That meant only five hours had passed since she had gotten off the bus and walked back down Rollingwood Drive to find the construction workers still atop the roof and the shelves rearranged into their mundane categories.

  “Let’s go run some errands,” Mom had said at that moment. Oak had groaned and whined about having just gotten home and needing to do homework, but the truth was that she didn’t want to be with her mom right then. She wanted to be alone with her anger about the books. But her mom, it turned out, was in one of those weird moods when she just insisted on Oak going with her. After another minute of whining, Oak recognized it was no use, and she’d dumped her backpack just inside the door of her bedroom and reluctantly followed her mom to the car.

  First to the gas station.

  Then to the grocery store.

  Then to the optometrist to pick up Mom’s new glasses.

  Then back to the grocery store because they had forgotten to get milk.

  Then a stop at the drugstore so Mom could pick up a prescription—a boring long line there, but at least Oak noticed the display of DNA test kits near the counter, which gave her an idea for the school project.

  And finally, to a coffee shop for fresh-roasted coffee beans because, Mom said, “The first thing to find in a new town is the best place for freshly roasted coffee.”

  The coffee shop was in a little strip of stores that also included a dry cleaner’s, a yoga studio, and a pet store. Mom had gotten her bag of coffee beans and they were walking back to the car when Oak saw the sign on the pet shop’s door: CAT ADOPTION FAIR ALL WEEK!

  “Mom,” she said, and pointed.

  Mom read the sign. “Oak, honey,” she said, “we’ve been through this before. We aren’t pet people.”

  “No,” said Oak. “That’s not what you said. You said we aren’t dog people. And anyway, I don’t see why you get to decide what kind of people we are.”

  They were in the middle of the parking lot, and Oak found that she had stopped walking. Mom stopped too, and she rubbed the top of her nose, up close to her eyes, as if Oak was giving her a headache.

  “Baby,” her mother began, “we’ve been having such a nice afternoon together. Let’s not spoil it, okay?”

  A nice afternoon? It was as if her mom hadn’t even noticed how Oak had been dragging her feet, how she had hardly said a word, how she’d been a totally unwilling participant in this afternoon of boring chores. Just like she hadn’t noticed Oak’s book spine masterpiece.

  Oak could have said all of this. But instead she said, “Mom, you might not be a pet person. But I am. Let’s go look at the kittens. Please?”

  Mom sighed. She tucked her bag of coffee beans into her purse and said, “Okay, Oak, fine. We can go look at the kittens, if you really want to. But remember, we are only looking. Okay?”

  Oak grinned, but she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t making any promises she couldn’t keep.

  Inside the pet store, off to the right, was a plastic-walled play structure. Oak made a beeline for it, her mother calling after her, “Just looking! Remember!”

  Peering into the enclosure, Oak spied two sleeping kittens, a black one and a calico, lumped together. And then she saw a third kitten—orange and white striped—sitting alone, tail curled around its paws, looking, Oak thought, rather lonely.

  Mom had caught up to her.

  “Mom,” Oak said, pointing at the orange kitten. “See?”

  “That one’s been sort of mopey since last night,” said a bored-looking young man, whose name tag read “Stan.” He sat on a stool near the enclosure and his thumb flicked up on the screen of his phone.

  “How come?” said Oak, crouching down to peer through the clear plastic enclosure at the kitten’s face.

  “His sister got adopted yesterday,” Stan said. “Maybe he misses her.”

  “I don’t think cats miss each other,” Mom said.

  “Did you ever ask one, ma’am?” Stan said.

  This Oak’s mom didn’t seem to have an answer for, which was very unusual indeed.

  Stan stood from his stool and scooped up the kitten with one hand. He offered it to Oak. “Want to hold him?”

  Oak did.

  “He sure seems to like you,” Mom had said at the pet store, squatting down next to Oak. She reached out to stroke the kitten; he was light orange and dark orange stripes all over, with a little white patch just beneath his chin.

  “He reminds me of one of those vanilla-orange ice cream bars,” Oak said.

  “Those used to be my favorite when I was a kid,” Mom said.

  “Really? I’ve never seen you eat one.”

  This Mom didn’t answer either. She scratched the kitten’s white patch. She stood up. Then she did something that Oak couldn’t have expected. She turned to Stan and said, “So, how do we adopt him?”

  That was the first time Oak had heard the kitten purr, as soon as her mom had said that. She still couldn’t believe, five hours later, watching the kitten exploring their living room, that Mom had changed her mind. And now, here they were—Oak and Walnut—and Oak made a silent promise that she would try not to complain so much—not about the move, not about the bookshelves.

  Because even though she missed their place in San Fran
cisco, and even though she missed her friends and her school, if her parents hadn’t made her move to Southern California, maybe even if they hadn’t moved into this house, she never would have met the kitten—the tiny orange-and-white fluffball of a kitten—who was now her own.

  “Oak,” Mom called from the kitchen, “let’s call your dad before you get ready for bed. You can tell him about the cat!”

  “Sure!” Oak stood up. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Walnut was trying to jump up onto the window seat in the front window, but he wasn’t quite big enough to manage. Oak lifted him up and placed him on the wooden bench. “Just a quick look,” Oak told the kitten. “Then let’s go say hi to my dad.”

  The kitten’s white whiskers radiated out from his little orange muzzle like sunbeams. His ears twitched forward as he looked through the window, and he lifted one paw and scratched at the glass.

  What was he looking at? Oak bent down and angled her head so that she was looking in the same direction as the kitten. Oak couldn’t see much, but she’d heard somewhere that cats could see in the dark. Walnut made a funny little sound in his throat—like a meow crossed with a purr—and he scratched at the glass again.

  “What is it?” Oak asked. And that’s when she saw it: a flicker of movement between her house and the neighbors’. It came and went so quickly that she thought it might have been a hummingbird. No—it couldn’t have been a hummingbird . . . they wouldn’t be flying around at night. She squinted her eyes a bit and tried to see the movement again.

  “Oak,” Mom called. “Come say hi to Dad!”

  Oak scooped up the kitten and headed to the kitchen. “Wait until you meet my dad,” she said to Walnut. “You’re going to love him.”

  Maybe it was the addition of the kitten to the household that put Oak into such a generous mood; whatever the reason, when she headed off to school under a wide, gray sky, thick white clouds way up high, she resolved to make the best of her new situation. So when she heard her neighbor trudging behind her, up the hill toward the bus stop, Oak stopped and waited.

  “Hello,” she said, and she even smiled.