Paper Things

by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

  “That girl serving tonight — she someone you know?” he asks.

  I nod. “Keisha. Sasha’s new BFF. Do you think she saw me?”

  “I doubt it. You ducked out of there pretty quick, and she wasn’t really looking at the faces of the people in line.”

  I sure hope Gage is right. The last thing I need is for word to get out that I eat at the soup kitchen. People would start asking uncomfortable questions, and it would probably be just a matter of time till someone thought to check in with Janna. Not to mention the fun Keisha, Linnie, and Sasha would probably have gossiping about me being dirty, smelly, and someone who eats with the homeless.

  West comes out when we’re nearly done eating. “Hey, man,” he says to Gage, and they do some elaborate handshake thing. “Hey, Ari,” he says to me.

  “Hi, West,” I say around my last bite of apple pie.

  “Listen, Gage . . .” he begins, sounding a little nervous, which of course makes me nervous, too. Is he going to tell us that we can’t stay here tonight?

  “What’s up?” Gage asks, and I can tell that he’s trying hard to sound nonchalant.

  “There’s a new supervisor on tonight,” West says. “I don’t think I can sneak you into the storage area with him on watch. You’ll have to register.”

  “But Ari isn’t old enough, remember?” says Gage.

  “I’ll leave her age blank when I fill out the paperwork,” says West. “It will look like an oversight.”

  I frown. “Gage and I will have to sleep in separate rooms?”

  West nods. “You’ll be OK, Ari. The girls who come here in the middle of the week are typically well behaved. They know they’ll be asked to leave if they’re not.”

  “But what if someone under eighteen wants Gage’s bed?” That’s the rule at Lighthouse; anyone between eighteen and twenty has to give up his or her bed if a minor needs it.

  “Then he’ll have to give it up,” West says. “But if I know Gage, he’ll figure something out and be back for you in the morning.”

  I look at Gage. He looks so tired. Like he can’t take one more step tonight. “It’ll be OK,” he says. “It’s only one night. If it comes to it, I’ll just crash at Chloe’s place.”

  I hold his gaze, trying to see if he’s lying to make me feel better, but I can’t tell.

  I shrug. What choice do I really have?

  I gather up our trash and follow the guys inside. Gage goes into West’s office to check us in. I’m left in the living room with a group of five teenagers: two girls and three boys. I sit down at the table that’s off to the side and try to become invisible.

  As I wait for Gage to be done, I think again of Keisha and of how she and Sasha seem to have become best friends in no time flat. How was it possible that Sasha could ditch me so quickly and become best friends with someone she’d barely spoken to till a few weeks ago?

  I’m reminded of a math game we played in third grade called Mingle. We’d all stand and buzz around one another like bees, mumbling; “Mingle, mingle, mingle.” Then, when our teacher called out a number, we had to quickly form ourselves into groups of that number. It was a way of explaining division and remainders. If you weren’t fast at grabbing friends, if you didn’t get into a group of two, or three, or four, you were a remainder.

  Now that school’s nearly over, there seems to be a game of Mingle going on. Kids know who will likely go to Carter, to Saint Anthony’s, or to Wilson. They’re grabbing one another and holding on, counting on an alliance when they get there. Sasha and Keisha have found one another; Catherine McCauley, another girl headed to Saint Anthony’s, has grabbed onto Linnie. But I don’t have anyone. Right now, I’m a remainder.

  Eventually Gage and West come out of the office, and it’s time for us to find beds on our separate floors. I want to ask West if there’s really a bed for Gage or if they’re just going through the motions for my benefit, but I don’t dare. Besides, I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

  West and Gage stay behind on the second floor, and I give Gage a quick hug before I turn to head up to the girls’ floor. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen at seven for breakfast, B’Neatie,” Gage calls after me.

  I nod but don’t turn back. I’m afraid he’ll take one look at my face and know how scared I am to sleep on the third floor without him in a room full of strange girls.

  Even though there can’t be more than seven girls in the room — the maximum is eight, and West assured me there was a bed for me — it sounds like there are about twenty girls in there. I enter the room slowly, taking in as much as possible as quickly as possible and trying to find an empty bed.

  “Hey, there!” one of the girls says, spotting me. She’s blond and pretty, maybe a few years younger than Gage. But definitely older than me. Most of the girls are a lot older than me, I notice. The next-youngest girl seems to be about fourteen, and she’s sitting on a bed with two older girls who look just like her. Sisters, I bet.

  “Hi,” I say quietly, making my way over to a bed that seems to be empty. I set my backpack down on it cautiously, half expecting someone to yell at me and tell me I’m taking her spot. But no one does.

  “You here by yourself?” the blond girl asks.

  I shake my head. “My brother is on the boys’ floor. He’s eighteen,” I add, somehow feeling a bit safer for having said this.

  The girl nods. “Well, if you need anything, just ask. I’m Cassie. I’m here most nights, so I know the ropes. This here is Delia, and that over there is Jordanna. And those are the O’Riley sisters.”

  The other girls mumble greetings, and I relax a little, settling back on my bed and opening my backpack. This isn’t so bad. If I can tune out the sound of the girls’ chatter, I might even be able to finish my report before lights-out, which is at ten.

  I’m scribbling away in my notebook and flipping through the pages of Little Women when the youngest O’Riley sister comes over to my bed. I look up at her and smile, not wanting to seem unfriendly, but then I look back down at my book, hoping it’s clear that I’m trying to work. But the girl just stands there, not saying anything. I try to ignore her, but it’s hard to concentrate with her hovering in front of me. What does she want, anyway?

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  I look up again. She’s pointing at my Paper Things folder, which I took out of my backpack to get to my report. A few pieces of furniture and two of the people — a teenage boy named Alex and the toddler in the snowflake sweater, who doesn’t have a name yet — peek out from the sides of the folder.

  “Oh, nothing,” I say, opening the folder a crack and sliding the clippings back inside.

  I’ve barely closed it again when the girl snatches it up.

  “Hey!” I say, reaching for it. But she turns so that it’s too far away.

  “Cool!” she says, flipping through the folder. “Are these, like, paper dolls or something?”

  Her sisters gather around to see what it is she’s found, and soon Cassie and Jordanna come over, too.

  I stand up and try to grab the folder back, but the girls block my way.

  “What is all this stuff?” Cassie asks, laughing.

  Now they’re picking out their favorites and passing them around. My heart feels like it’s lodged in my throat. “Please give them back,” I say. But my voice is a squeak.

  “What happened to him?” says Delia, holding Miles so everyone can see. “The adventures of Tape Man,” she says, flying him around like he’s a superhero or something.

  I want to scream, “Give him back!” but I know this will only make them all more curious. So I smile like a stupid mannequin. . . .

  “Look!” says one of the O’Riley sisters. She’s drawn earrings on one of my teens, long dangly earrings.

  The girls laugh, and suddenly everyone seems to have a pen. “I’ll take her!” someone says, and grabs Natalie. “Ooh, give me him!” another girl says, snatching Alex from the pile. Soon everyone is doodling on my Paper Things, ad
ding eyeglasses, tattoos, earrings, and other things that I can’t bear to think about.

  Hot tears burn my eyes. Gage! Where’s Gage? I want to scream out his name, like a little kid would cry Mom! But he’s not here — and even if he were, it’s too late for him to do anything. My Paper Things are already ruined.

  “Hey, kid, don’t look so grim,” Cassie says to me. “We’re just having a little fun.”

  She hands me the people she’s defaced — Mandy and Tamara and even little Nicky — and the other girls follow suit until I have everything back. Clearly the fun has worn off for them.

  I stuff my Paper Things back into my folder numbly, trying not to look too closely at any of them. Four years of collecting and imagining and caring. Gone. Just like that.

  I shove the folder in my backpack along with my unfinished report and my notebook and climb into bed, not even bothering to take off my uniform. Lights-out isn’t for another half hour, but I don’t care.

  Right now, I don’t care about anything.

  I stay awake for hours, listening to the sounds of the other girls in the room. They don’t seem like bad girls, I think dimly as their conversations wash over me. They talk about school and boys and which shelters have the comfiest beds or the best breakfasts. They probably didn’t mean any harm when they drew all over my Paper Things, and it wasn’t exactly like I was shouting at them to stop.

  But whether they meant harm or not, they had no right to do what they did, and I can’t help thinking that I hate each and every one of them.

  Eventually, my eyes get heavy and I drift off to sleep. But it’s a light sleep, and that turns out to be a good thing, because suddenly in the darkness I hear Gage’s voice. At first I think I’m dreaming, but then the actual words penetrate — just barely distinguishable through the thin walls.

  “My sister is upstairs,” Gage says to someone. “Can you make sure someone tells her?”

  I bolt awake, grab my backpack, and fly down the stairs. Gage is opening the front door when I call out his name.

  “Ari!” he says, then quickly lowers his voice. “What are you doing up?”

  “I heard you talking,” I say, slipping my backpack onto my shoulders. “I figured you were leaving.”

  “Yeah, the room filled up. But I thought we agreed you’d stay here?”

  I give him a look that says, Don’t even try to talk me into staying.

  “Grab that blanket,” he says, pointing to one that has been unfolded on the couch.

  I nab it and we’re out the door. The night is frigid, and within minutes I can’t feel my feet, but I know better than to complain. Besides, I am too tired to do much more than follow Gage up the hilly roads. This time he doesn’t race ahead of me. He holds out his hand, and I take it.

  At this hour, the city is much darker than I have ever seen it before. I look up as we walk and see stars. With the stars overhead and Gage’s warm hand holding mine, I feel safe and protected and I know that everything will turn out OK.

  Soon I realize that we’re headed toward Chloe’s. Just as I’m starting to worry that she might be upset to have us knock on her door in the middle of the night, we stop in front of her forest-green car.

  “Where are we going?” I start to ask, wondering when Chloe gave Gage her car keys. But Gage doesn’t answer. Instead, he takes a long, thin piece of metal from his back pocket and uses it to unlock the car door.

  “Thank goodness her car is so old,” Gage says as he opens the driver’s-side door. “You can’t do this on new cars. They’ve got computer systems and alarms.”

  I stare at the open door, still trying to make sense of what’s happening.

  “C’mon,” Gage says, motioning for me to get in and crawl over to the passenger side. “You’re letting all the cold air in!”

  As I slide into the seat, I think about the kid Chloe pays to protect this car. I sure hope he’s sleeping right now.

  I’m expecting Gage to do something to the ignition and drive us somewhere — Briggs’s place, maybe, or Perry and Kristen’s — but instead, he reclines his seat as far back as it’ll go and settles in. And I finally get it. We’re sleeping in Chloe’s car.

  I recline my seat, too, and cover up with the blanket. I’m cold to my bones and worry that Gage must be even colder without a blanket. But without a key, it’s impossible to turn the heat on.

  I try to share the blanket.

  “Nah, I don’t need it. Let me teach you a trick,” he says. “Close your eyes and picture a little candle in your belly.”

  I look at him like he’s crazy, but he just nods. “Go on, do it.”

  Slowly, I let my eyes droop closed and then think of a candle in my belly, just like he said.

  “Concentrate on the flame,” he says, his voice soft and warm in the cold, dark air. “Imagine the flame growing bigger, stronger. Feel the heat move from your belly to other parts of your body. Down your arms and legs, into your hands and feet. Now feel it moving up your neck and warming your face.”

  I do what he says, and holy moly, it actually works! I do feel warmer, like a little flame is moving through my body. I only shiver when I stop concentrating.

  Between the late hour and the fact that we just walked across half the city, you would think that Gage and I would fall right to sleep, but neither of us does. We stare up at the sky through the moon roof of the car. I wonder what Gage is thinking — if he’s wishing he weren’t so full of pride that he could just go and knock on Chloe’s door, or if he’s upset at having to give up his bed at Lighthouse for some stranger.

  My own thoughts swirl around, drifting from my ruined Paper Things to Sasha and Keisha and Linnie and on to Daniel and the Eastland traditions and Carter. Eventually, though, they settle on one thought, and I find myself speaking in the dark.

  “Did you know that Dad dated Janna before he married Mama?” I ask Gage, my voice sounding loud in the silent night.

  “What? No way,” he says. “What makes you think that?”

  I tell him about Janna’s scrapbook, about the pictures of Janna and our dad.

  “How do you know it was Dad? You never even met him.”

  “It was, Gage,” I say. “It was the same man as in Mama’s wedding pictures. It was someone who looked exactly like you.”

  “Weird,” he says, though I can tell that he doesn’t fully believe me. I can’t really blame him; I saw the pictures, and I can still hardly believe it myself.

  And then something occurs to me, something that feels so right that I wonder if this was why my brain was fixating on those pictures. “Maybe some of Janna’s grouchiness, some of her having to be better than Mama, has more to do with Dad than with you.”

  Gage grunts, but I can practically feel the wheels in his head working away, turning over this new information and trying to make sense of it.

  After that, he’s quiet for a while — so quiet that I wonder if he’s fallen asleep. But then he speaks up. “I know you’re looking forward to us having our own place, and I am, too. But West was telling me about this group house that we might be able to move into. It’s called a stability house, and you pay only a small amount of rent, with the rest of your money going into a savings account to help pay for a future apartment. And the program lets you take classes or even attend college so you can find an even better job.”

  I haven’t heard Gage this excited since he got his job at Jiffy Lube.

  “Who else would live in the house?” I ask.

  “The family house is filled right now, but they’re trying to put together a new house with eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds.”

  “But I’m only —”

  “West is working on getting you a room in the house, too.”

  I think about living in a house like that. It wouldn’t be like having a real apartment, one you can decorate, one where you can spread out your things and leave them, one where you can stand in front of an open refrigerator door and know that all the food inside is yours for the taking
. I’m not even sure you’d have privacy. The stability house sort of sounds like the shelter, only there would be the same people every night.

  I think of the girls back at Lighthouse and my folder of ruined Paper Things.

  “It sure would solve a lot of problems,” Gage says.

  I want to be as excited as Gage sounds, to reassure him that I’ll be happy anywhere as long as we’re together. But I’m filled with doubts and fears. “What will I do on nights when you want to go on a date with Chloe?” I ask. “Will I stay at the house by myself? And what will I tell my friends? I can’t exactly invite them for sleepovers at a group home.”

  Not that I have any friends anymore, I think. And maybe Gage thinks that, too, but he’s nice enough not to say anything.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If we come to it.” Gage sighs. “But it sure would help things if Chloe could stop thinking of me as homeless.”

  I raise myself up on my elbows. “You’re not — we’re not homeless,” I say.

  But Gage is quiet. So I say it again: “We’re not homeless.”

  “Think about it, Ari. What does it mean to be homeless?”

  I think of the people that I pass on the streets, the ones who are huddled against buildings or standing on curbs, asking for money, sometimes talking to themselves. They’re homeless. I think of the girls at Lighthouse who drew all over my Paper Things and talked about which shelters had the nicest beds. They’re homeless, too. But then I think of Reggie, and Omar, and the young family with the baby.

  “Homeless people are people who don’t have homes,” I say slowly.

  “Right,” says Gage.

  Like us, I realize.

  In the morning, before the bell for homeroom, I do something I’ve never done before. I sneak into the cafeteria for free breakfast. Janna always insisted that we start the day with a good breakfast, even when Gage swore that he wasn’t hungry, that his stomach didn’t want a thing. And then, when we were living with friends, I’d eat whatever they ate for breakfast: Cheerios at Briggs’s, frozen waffles at Chloe’s. Lighthouse gives the kids granola bars and juice in the morning. But this morning I’ve had nothing, and I’m starving.