Gem & Dixie

by Sara Zarr

  The ragged children on the page ate fried dough and listened to poor men talk about being poor and how they wanted to kill the other men, who were making them poor.

  I pushed my feet against my backpack, reassuring myself it was still there.

  On my way to lunch I stopped by Mr. Bergstrom’s office. Mostly I wanted to show him everything was fine, like I’d said when Dad came. And to see his face again. His door was open but he was on the phone. He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and said, “Hey, Gem, if you come back later, I’ve got some time.”

  “It’s okay.” I stood there while he listened to whoever was on the phone, cradling it against his shoulder. I imagined never coming into his office again, never sitting down across from him.

  He looked at me over his glasses. “Hang on, sorry,” he said to the person on the phone. Then, to me, “I need to talk to this guy about something I should keep confidential.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Come back after lunch?”

  “I can’t . . . I shouldn’t miss class.”

  “Not even PE?” He smiled that smile, the one that made me think I could be all right.

  “Not today.” I left his office, waving a small good-bye. Maybe if he hadn’t been on the phone, I would have told him more, asked him a question or something, but it didn’t work out that way.

  In the cafeteria, I picked up a brownie along with a turkey burger. I held a five-dollar bill in my hand. When I got to Luca, he said, “Burger’s on the program, but I do gotta charge you for the brownie.”

  “I know,” I said. I gave him the money.

  “You seem better today. You’re not yelling at me.”

  “I didn’t yell at you.” My face got warm. Like with Helena, I wanted him to remember me well.

  “Okay, your voice didn’t yell but your words did.” He caught my eye while making change and smiled. “Hey, don’t get upset. I’m kidding you, sort of. Don’t worry.”

  “Thanks for talking to Mr. Bergstrom. I know you didn’t have to do that.”

  He waved my thanks away. “No problem.”

  I pushed the change back at him. “Here.”

  He laughed. “I can’t take that.”

  “Give it to Lucia.” I pointed to the pictures of his kids taped to the register.

  “I can’t.” He put the change on my tray. “You have a good afternoon, Gem.”

  I looked around the cafeteria, nervous. Every minute that passed was a minute Dad could be back at the apartment, looking for what he’d left, a minute Dixie could be calling him, a minute she could be talking to Mom. Still, I didn’t want to rush anything. And I wasn’t sure, not completely, of what I was doing or going to do.

  I wanted to see Dixie first.

  I took my tray over to Denny and Adam’s table, empty except for them, and sat right next to Denny and across from Adam with my backpack on. I picked up a dollar from the change Luca wouldn’t take and held it out to Denny. “Thanks again.”

  “You already paid me back.”

  I pretended I’d forgotten, shrugging the shrug of people who are never short of dollar bills to see what it felt like. “Do you want a dollar?” I asked Adam.

  “Um, no.” He glanced at Denny and then cleared his throat. “Dude, let’s go sit with Martin and those guys.”

  Denny’s zits got extra red. I met his eyes and ate my turkey burger. He muttered something to Adam that I couldn’t hear. Adam had put one hand on either side of his tray and made like he was going to stand up to go when we all heard my name shouted across the cafeteria.

  “Gem!”

  Dixie was striding over, her phone in her hand. Something had happened, I could tell. Maybe I’d already waited too long.

  “That’s my sister,” I told Adam.

  “Yeah, you said.” He stared at Dixie, at the way her body moved every time she put a foot down on the linoleum—her unique tough-soft bounce. His neck flushed.

  “What are you looking at, Johnson?” Dixie said when she got to the table. Adam got up with his tray and disappeared. Then Dixie widened her eyes at Denny like, Go away, and he left, too.

  Dixie stuck her phone in front of my face. There was a text from Dad.

  hey I left something at the apartment and mom won’t let me in. text me when you get home and coast is clear so i can pick up

  “What should I say?” she asked, sitting next to me. “I’ll just say okay and pretend I don’t know, right? Like we said?”

  I took a bite of my brownie. It was gluey and too sweet. What I’d eaten of the burger was already cement in my stomach. Sweat trickled down my back even though the cafeteria was chilly, as usual.

  “Did you tell Mom?”

  She frowned. “No! No.”

  I believed her. Because her doing that—showing me the text right away and asking what she should do—it told me that things were different now. And if they were, if she looked to me to be the big sister again the way I thought I wanted her to, then I’d have to consider that before deciding exactly how to handle the next moment, and the one after that.

  “Ask him what it is,” I said. I wanted to see how he’d lie, and I wanted her to see it. To prove my point one more time.

  She hovered her thumbs over her phone, then typed. In a few seconds, his reply came.

  just some business papers and stuff

  Dixie showed me.

  “I told you,” I said quietly.

  Then he added:

  it’s important tho. how soon can i get? can you leave school early?

  “He probably just doesn’t want to say anything about it over text,” Dixie said, but without the urgent defensiveness she’d had the night before.

  “Dixie . . . here.” I reached for the phone; she pulled it back. “Fine, you do it,” I said. “Call him. Ask.”

  The warning bell rang. People began to get up and file out of the cafeteria.

  Dixie stared at her phone a few seconds, then sent another text. “I asked if I could bring it to him. Instead of him picking it up. I asked him where in the house he left it.”

  The cafeteria was almost empty, and the final bell rang. I stood with my tray, aware of the lumpy lightness of my backpack. “He’s going to lie,” I said. “He won’t want you to touch it or see it. He won’t want you to know what it is.”

  Her phone buzzed and she hunched away from me so I wouldn’t try to read over her shoulder. I threw out what was left of my brownie, bused my tray. “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” She shoved her phone into her pocket and stood, heading for the door.

  I followed her. “He lied.”

  “It wasn’t even him.” She walked faster and then threw her body against the cafeteria door where it exited to a courtyard with picnic tables.

  I tried to catch up with her, worried she’d buckle and tell him we’d found it. I got close enough to grab her jacket. I yanked it off one of her shoulders and took the phone out of her pocket before she could stop me.

  “Don’t, Gem!” She flailed and grasped but I saw the message anyway.

  maybe I didn’t leave it there after all. need to check around here first. forget it and never mind ok? i’ll get in touch in couple days after mom calms down lol

  She succeeded in getting the phone away from me. “Don’t. Do that.” Her voice shook. She straightened her jacket. “If Mom hadn’t gone so crazy on him last night, he probably would have explained everything.”

  “We were with him for however many hours from the time he got to school yesterday. He could have explained it anytime.”

  “He wanted Mom to be there.”

  “Dixie, he—” I stopped myself. It didn’t matter. None of this mess with Dad mattered. I didn’t even care how he got the money or why he got it or what he planned to do with it, wrong or right, illegal or legit. I didn’t care about any of that.

  She was waiting for me. Waiting for me to tell her what we should do, like when I’d have the paper bag packed full of picnic stu
ff for our games. Survival rations.

  Where are we going? she used to ask.

  And I was the one to tell her.

  I slipped my backpack off, checked to make sure no one was around, then stepped closer to her. “Look,” I said, and unzipped the backpack just enough to show her what was inside.

  She peered in, then moved away from me, glancing over her shoulder and all around. “Why’d you bring that to school! You said we were putting it back under the bed! The bag was there this morning when I looked. You said—”

  “Come with me.” I zipped the bag up, slung it over my shoulder.

  “Wait,” she said. “Come with you where?”

  The assistant principal would come through on her postlunch sweep of the campus any minute. I didn’t have time to outline to Dixie something she should already understand. I crossed the courtyard, away from her and toward where the fence opened to the street, my heart in my throat, worried I’d made the wrong decision. If I’d gone with my other plan, I would have had a head start and it would have been hours before she, or anyone, figured out what I’d done.

  “Where are you going?” Dixie called after me.

  “I don’t know.” I kept walking. I needed to get off the school grounds.

  “Gem, wait. Wait!”

  A bus to downtown was a block away, headed toward the stop in front of the school. I turned to Dixie. “Let’s get on this bus,” I said. “Let’s just get on this bus and . . . talk.”

  She looked angry, betrayed. “Why should I?”

  Because Mom said I had to look out for you; because of the picture in my bag of us, you in the stroller, me pushing you along; because, right now, this is the chance.

  I glanced at the approaching bus.

  And because if you don’t, you’re going to call Dad and tell him what I’m doing.

  “You trust Dad more than you trust me?” I asked. “Which of us was always there for you?” The bus heaved to a stop in front of us. “Get off at the next stop if you want. I just want to talk to you.”

  The doors sighed open. I stepped on and tried not to move too quickly, act too desperate, be afraid. Dixie hesitated long enough that the driver leaned over and said, “I’m on a schedule, hon.”

  Dixie climbed on after me. The doors hissed closed. We lurched forward.

  12.

  WE SAT in the back. Dixie didn’t get off at the next stop, or the next, or the next, but she refused to look at me. There were only a few other people on the bus, all clustered in the front.

  “Okay, so talk,” Dixie finally said.

  I put my hand in my pocket, felt for the edges of my pack of Haciendas. “If Dad doesn’t check back on the apartment for a couple of days, like he said, then we have some time.”

  “Some time for what?” she muttered to the window.

  “Time. Time to decide, or . . . whatever we want.”

  She turned to me. “Decide? We already decided. We decided to leave it where it was and pretend we hadn’t found it.”

  “I said ‘for now.’ That’s what I said.”

  After a second she said, “You’re really stupid, Gem. You know that, right?”

  Stupid would have been if I’d left the money at home with Dixie when I’d gone to school that morning.

  “I mean, you think you’re going to start some new life and Dad’ll just let you take it and you’ll live happily ever after?”

  “I don’t think that.” Not the ‘happily ever after’ part. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  She looked away again. “And what about Mom?”

  I didn’t want to think about Mom or talk about Mom or worry about Mom. Mom should have been the one worrying about us, like Mr. Bergstrom had been trying to tell me, and I didn’t fully get it until I watched her throw away the food, until I saw her disappear on us once again when we needed her most.

  “Mom isn’t going to change.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said, though she didn’t argue. “I mean, you can’t go anywhere. She’ll freak out if you don’t come home. She’ll call the cops.”

  “You actually think that? I don’t think she’d even notice for a while.”

  Dixie laughed. “I know she’s not perfect, but she’d notice if you weren’t there, Gem.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Definitely.” She slid the bus window open a couple of inches and put her face near where the air came in.

  “Can you text her for me?” I asked. “Tell her I’m staying with a friend tonight?”

  “What friend?”

  “Say Helena. Say whatever. She won’t know who I’m talking about anyway.”

  Dixie was already reaching for her phone.

  “And tell her you’re staying at Lia’s tonight or something,” I added.

  This made her pause. It was a little more insurance, I told myself, keeping her with me, knowing whether or not she was talking to Mom or Dad and what she was telling them.

  “What am I doing tonight?” Dixie asked.

  The bus got deeper into downtown, the touristy part, the convention center and the piers. If I’d been alone, I would have kept getting on buses all day and all night, until I was in another state. But I couldn’t take Dixie that far away from home, not if she didn’t want to go.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, honest. “We’ll get off at the next stop for now.”

  Dixie tapped her fingers on the side of her phone, then typed out a message and sent it. “Okay. I told her.”

  We landed on the pavement of a busy street, everyone moving with purpose and confidence. I spun in a slow circle on the corner while Dixie waited for me to tell us what we were doing. “Come on,” I said, and led her down toward the water. We could sit and watch the boats and ferries and gulls.

  “I’m starving,” Dixie said.

  “There’s food down there.”

  I found her a coffee shop where she could get a toasted, buttered poppy seed bagel the way she liked. I used to make that for her for an after-school snack, and for lunch in the summers when we were at home together while Mom worked.

  We walked a little, then sat on a bench near the ferry dock. “Did Mom reply?” I asked.

  Dixie shook her head and unwrapped enough of her bagel that she could take a bite.

  A ferry, slow and huge, like a floating office building, was coming in from one of the islands. “Remember when we used to play runaway?”

  She chewed, her eyes fixed on the water. “Yeah, I remember,” she said. “Not like I’d forget.”

  “Pretend this is like that. Only we’re not trapped in the apartment. We can do anything we want.” I knew how naive it sounded, how naive it was, but I needed a little more time to work out exactly what I was doing. Also, the ten-year-old in me really wanted it to be like that, even for a little while.

  Dixie’s phone went off. She passed it to me after reading.

  just woke up. that shit knocked me out

  “At least she’s not pretending she was ‘tired’ or something,” I said.

  “It’s not such a big deal. Everybody takes pills.”

  “No they don’t.”

  I was holding the phone when Mom’s next message buzzed through.

  my back is still killing me and I wonder if you can get me a little more? maybe drop it by before you go to lia’s

  I handed Dixie the phone and watched the ferry move into its berth. Mom and Dad were both making this easy for me. Dixie put her bagel down on the bench and stood. “I’m calling her.”

  “Dixie—”

  “I’m not going to tell her anything.” In a second she was talking to Mom. “You should probably just try to get to the doctor, Mom,” she said. “No one has anything.”

  Pause.

  “I know. But there’s—”

  She glanced at me and moved a few feet away.

  “It’s not that easy!”

  She hugged herself with one arm and stared at the ground, listening.

  “I’m sorry�
� Yes, I am! . . . Then go to the doctor. . . . Did you even ask? . . . Sorry. I’ll try. Sorry.”

  She didn’t come back to the bench. Instead she moved closer to the water and leaned on the railing there. I picked up what was left of her bagel and went to her. “Here.”

  “You can have it.”

  I tore off a chunk and threw it at a cluster of gulls in the water. They flapped and dived, then looked to me for more. I threw piece after piece at them until it was gone.

  “I want to go home,” Dixie said suddenly.

  “Why? No.”

  “Yeah, this is dumb.”

  “You shouldn’t have called,” I said. “She makes you feel guilty for stuff she does.”

  She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and crossed the street, away from me, back toward where we’d come from. I followed, walking fast, my backpack bouncing a little on my shoulders.

  “Can’t you see how messed up that is?” I asked.

  “She just needs . . .” Dixie couldn’t finish the sentence. Then she walked on as if she was trying to get away from me.

  We were on a steep hill now with our backs to the water. I let myself fall farther behind. Maybe I should let her go, I thought. Everything would be easier without her anyway. If we were going to abandon each other, this was as good a time as any.

  The practical part of me argued no, this was not as good a time as any, because now I wouldn’t have my head start if she chose to tell Dad or Mom. But it wasn’t only that making me chase after her.

  “Dixie!”

  She slowed.

  At least I could see what was so wrong with our family. Dixie didn’t have that yet. Glimpses, but not the whole picture. Maybe that was one last thing I could give her, one last way I could take care of her. Playing the runaway game one more time.

  “One night,” I said when I’d caught up to her.

  She finally turned. We were both breathing heavily from the climb. I found myself smiling.

  “Let’s have this one night,” I said. “We’ll go to a fancy hotel. We’ll order room service. You’re right. My idea about leaving is dumb. I’m . . . I’m probably overreacting like I always do, but let’s have a night and tomorrow we can go home and put the money back exactly like it was. Let’s at least get something out of it.” I don’t like that I manipulated her that way. Maybe that made me no better than Dad. “And Dad will come whenever, and if he figures out there’s a little missing, what can he say?”