The Boy on Cinnamon Street

by Phoebe Stone

  My grandma and grandpa end up buying me the dress with the green silk underskirt and the net overlay and, best of all, the crown of rosebuds and violets. When we get home, I hang it up on a hook on the wall right opposite the couch. That’s the place where most normal people have a good cable TV with maybe a 36 x 48 inch screen that gets 120 channels, but where we have nothing but a blank wall. My grandma does not like large television sets or cable TV.

  Grandma and Grandpa are ready to go out to the sushi restaurant. Grandma has on one of her 1950s vintage dresses. “Doesn’t this look like the dresses we saw today?” she says. “Things just come back around, don’t they? Honey, we’ll see you in a couple of hours. Be positive.”

  They leave, waving and shutting the door behind them, and suddenly a kind of snowy sunset loneliness settles in around me. I’m flopped on the organic couch with my stupid child’s-size-12 feet on the coffee table. I’m sitting here being positive, staring at the light moss green Thumbelina dress that is hanging before me on the wall like an impossible dream.

  Chapter

  Eight

  It’s nearing the end of March, and we’ve had more snow. Record snowfall this year. Anything living seems to be buried under an avalanche. Reni and I have made no progress with the pizza stalker. I haven’t seen Benny anywhere. It has crossed my mind that Newton Mancini may have left me the note. He had delivered the pizza the night before and it’s possible we didn’t see the note that night. I’m thinking, what do I know about Newton? Well, my grandma is friends with his mom and she says Newton has diabetes. And I know they call him the Valentine Man at school because on Valentine’s Day, every girl at South gets a valentine card in her locker from Newton. Even the teachers and the librarians and the secretaries. So this could very well be Newton.

  This afternoon my grandma is watching that movie Thelma and Louise again. My grandma and grandpa watch that movie a lot. It was my mom’s favorite movie. I think she named me Louise because of it. It’s a really dumb movie because in the end Thelma and Louise drive off a cliff and die. Always at the end, Grandma and Grandpa press their heads together and they both start in with the big crying festival.

  Today when the phone rings, Grandma stops the video, and Thelma’s face is caught in a strange blur just at the edge of the cliff before they drive off it.

  I pick up the phone. It’s on a small table next to the couch. “Hello,” I say.

  “Hello, Louise, it’s your dad. How are you doing, sweetheart? Miss you.”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “In school? Doing your homework?”

  “Yup,” I say.

  “My stepdaughter, you know her — Dearie — she says seventh grade is a bust. Tough stuff, I guess. Is that right?”

  “Yup,” I say.

  “Well, you hang in there, kiddo. You’re gonna knock ’em dead. Okay? Miss you,” he says again.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Hey, is your grandma there? I’d like to talk to her. She needs to put the house on Cinnamon Street up for sale. It shouldn’t be sitting there empty. It’s up to her. Have you rented it yet? I mean, if you and she don’t want the house, you could sell it to me. I’d be glad to buy it. I want to be the first person to know. Okay? After I buy it, I’ll get it rented that very day. We should take care of this, honey. Like grown-ups. Right? So let me speak to your grandma.”

  “Grandma,” I say, “it’s my dad. He wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m about to take a bath, Louise. My bath is ready,” my grandma says, and she walks away down the back hall and closes several doors.

  “She’s taking a bath,” I say.

  “You tell her to call me. We need to talk. She doesn’t call me back, Louise. We need to clear this up. And you’re coming to the city to see us sometime soon, sweetheart. Right? We’ll pick you up at the airport. Dearie really enjoys your company. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “All right, then?” he says. “Okay?”

  “Yup,” I say.

  “We’ll talk soon. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say and I hang up the phone.

  When Grandma comes back in the room, she’s got cream on her face and it’s thick and white and it looks like a mask. Her hair is pulled back really tightly in a hair clip, like that hair clip is holding all of her together. Like if you took off the hair clip, everything about my grandma would scatter.

  She rewinds the video now, the movie of Thelma and Louise. It makes a fast hissing noise. We see Thelma and Louise backing away from the cliff. Away. Away. In superfast motion, they take back everything they did in a frenzy until we get to the beginning again, where Thelma and Louise look like two normal smiling housewives. Now my grandma zips the old-fashioned portable TV back into the suitcase where she keeps it on a shelf. Then we both sit there on the couch, staring at that stupid suitcase. Soon my grandma throws her arms around me and rocks me back and forth, back and forth. I have a feeling the rocking is comforting her, while all it does is make me very very dizzy.

  Chapter

  Nine

  Grandma wants me to take the laundry down to the condo basement. I’m like, “Oh, Grandma, I’m so tired. I got too much sleep last night. Can’t Grandpa do it?” Grandma pulls a stuffed canvas bag out into the middle of the kitchen and hands me the pull string like she’s offering me some big fat dog on a leash that I have to go walk.

  “I’ll do it if I can move to Cinnamon Street. Can I?” I say. Grandma closes her eyes and bites her lower lip.

  I pull the laundry bag out the door and down the long hall. I’m thinking about that book Benny had in his pocket that day I saw him at the antique show. It was called On the Road by Jack somebody or other. I’m thinking to myself, This is a must-read.

  They have this little condo library downstairs in the basement by the washer and dryer. There’s a shelf of paperbacks that people have brought down to share or to donate. I look through them now, hoping to come across Benny’s book, but all I find are paperbacks like The Butcher’s Curse and The Bloody Grinding Ax and stuff like that. Judging from their choice of reading material, I’m wondering if all the tenants in this condo are secret psychopaths and repressed killers. Judging from the readers’ tastes around here, Henderson may be sitting on a bestseller.

  Grandpa is down here in the basement, reading the newspaper. Grandpa just loves this basement. Grandma calls it “his lair.” She’ll go, “Go get the old fox out of his lair, will you. It’s dinnertime.”

  I’m looking around at all the books on some lower shelves now. I’m humming and trying to decide whether I should wear my new green net and silk dress to Annais’s opening at the Plow and Chaff Café in a few weeks. We need to think of a way to invite Benny to the party. Then, if he’s going to be there, wouldn’t it be advantageous for me to be wearing a drop-dead-beautiful prom dress? Of course, I will have read the book On the Road and I can go, “Oh, you mean Jack Kangaroo? Oh, yeah, I met him last year. He’s very cool.”

  Come to think of it, Henderson has probably read the book and I can ask him what it’s about and then I won’t even have to read it.

  So I call Henderson on my cell, which doesn’t always work down here in Lost Laundry Land, but I don’t want to go back up to the apartment cause my grandma is flying all over our place today, washing curtains and going at secret corners with her vacuum cleaner. She’s got this ancient vacuum cleaner that she’s been using for fifty years and it looks like a flipping anteater to me. It’s got this long plaid snout and you get the feeling when that thing is on, nothing is sacred or safe from its mighty sucking ability, not even your own thoughts.

  I brush away a nice spot for myself and then I boost myself up on the folding table next to the dryer and pick up my cell. The stealthy fox goes past me with his reading glasses perched on his forehead, saying, “Pal, I’m gonna go check the mail and I’ll be right back.” Grandpa is also wearing an earpiece from his phone in his ear. He wears this black bulky stupid thing constantly, but
it is sooo lame because he never gets calls from anyone.

  When Henderson picks up, I go, “Hey, Hen, it’s me.”

  And Henderson says, “Thumb!”

  “Have you by chance read this book called On the Road by Jack Karo-something? Benny McCartney had the book in his pocket and I was wondering what it’s about. In case I see Benny, can you give me a quick rundown?”

  “I have read it,” he says. “My sister Annais adores the book. It’s like her bible. You’re planning on seeing Benny M?”

  “Well, it’s a plan that hasn’t materialized. Yet,” I say.

  “Peculiar,” goes Henderson, “Strange. Bizarre. Unfathomable. Baffling.”

  “Blah blah blah,” I go. “Why is it Annais’s bible?”

  “There’s this teacher at North who is really into Jack Kerouac. He makes everybody in his class read On the Road and memorize pages and pages of it.”

  “Oh, is Benny in his class?” And then a second later I say, “Is Annais in his class?” Henderson doesn’t answer. Then my cell starts beeping and blinking and carrying on like crazy cause the battery is low and it needs to be recharged and then, boom, it dies.

  Grandpa shuffles by me, still hopefully wearing his cell phone earpiece. He’s carrying a small pile of letters. He sets them on the table next to me and nestles back in his chair and starts reading the newspaper again. So with nothing else to do, I start counting the dust bunnies on the top of the dryer and then I reach for the letters and flip through them. I am sure they will all be for Grandma. She’s big-time popular with a huge set of gloomy-looking eighty-year-old granola-crunching wish-I-wuzzers.

  On the top of the pile is a letter addressed to me. Me? Louise Terrace. Me. (Yes, that’s me. The minute I was born I was given my mom’s last name.) I pick up the letter and look at the return address. It says Coach Jay Tull, South Pottsboro Middle School. Coach Tull has written me a letter? What?

  Immediately, I grab the letter and rip open the envelope. I begin to read a nicely typed formal-looking letter with an official signature at the bottom. It says:

  Dear Louise Terrace,

  I am writing to you in the hope that you will reconsider your decision to quit the South Pottsboro Girls’ Gymnastics Team. This was a great blow to our winning average, and your absence was most heartfully felt. I would recommend you drop by my office to discuss this decision and to talk about the possibility of your imminent return. My office hours are posted on my door.

  Sincerely yours,

  Coach Jay Tull

  I look over at the space down here where my balance beam used to be. I used to come down here and practice all the time. Now I am thinking about Mrs. Stevenson, who bought that beam at the yard sale. It actually took four very large dorks to carry it away in that snowstorm, it was so heavy. Who were they? Maybe I could track them down and bully them into bringing it back. This letter from Coach Tull is causing me considerable confusion and agony. Perhaps the coach does not understand my situation. If I go back to the team, I can expect to enjoy an extremely short life span. I may not make it out of seventh grade at all, I mean, considering the charm and power and size of Merit Madson.

  In my mind I quickly write back a million letters to Coach Tull … saying things like Dear Coach Tull, What are you, crazy? Can I count on you to handle my funeral arrangements in the near future?

  Why does Merit Madson hate me so much? Obviously because I’m stunted in my growth. I’m immature, undeveloped. Small. Terribly childish-looking. Unable to grow. Over-the-top dorky Thumbelina, princess of the flowers, stuck in the bud stage never to bloom.

  Chapter

  Ten

  I decide to Google Benny McCartney and to stop this dopey waffling. A long list comes up on my computer. It seems there’s a Benny McCartney with white hair who runs a bank in Omaha, Nebraska. There’s another Benny McCartney who’s a librarian in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and there’s a teenager in Alaska named Benny McCartney who just won a dogsled race by a slim margin. Then my stupid laptop crashes. I hate my computer. It used to be Grandpa’s, and I have to use his password to get on the Internet and so I’m always having to type in “Old Hot Cat” and it sucks.

  I need to do something about Benny. I need to get a North Pottsboro phone book and look up his address. Then maybe I’ll write him a letter in which I will mention that book Down the Road. Better yet, I’ll give the letter to Reni. And she can stick it secretly in his locker.

  I go to bed earlier than usual and miss watching Nova on TV with Grandpa. Ha ha. His favorite show, my biggest pain. I fall right to sleep because I have finally decided I am going to write something to Benny in the morning.

  In the night I dream I go to my house on Cinnamon Street. Benny McCartney is standing in the doorway at the back of the house. Everything is dark. The tree next to the house casts a tangled web of shadows across Benny’s face. He’s holding the key to the house. He swings it in his hands and then he unlocks the back door and I go in alone. A feeling of terror creeps over me. The lights are on in all the rooms. They are too bright. My eyes hurt. I walk from the kitchen into the dining room, the living room, and then I come to the downstairs bedroom. The door is shut and I don’t want to open it. No, I keep on saying. No, I am not going to open it. No. No. No.

  What a dumb dream. I wake up out of it trembling when Grandpa’s alarm goes off in their bedroom next to mine. Grandpa meant to set the alarm for 8:30 in the morning and instead he set it for 3:08 in the middle of the night. Grandma says she’s gonna kill him, but then I hear them giggling and laughing in there, so I guess Grandpa will still be around in the morning.

  When I get up at seven, I look at the card and envelope I was going to use and I decide my letter idea is totally lame. I can’t even be sure of the name of the book. Maybe it was In the Road and not Down the Road. After that dream, do I even want to send any letter? For Reni’s sake, I decide to ask Henderson, who is so good with words, to write something for me. Even though it’s early, I text him. “Please, Hen?” I write.

  He texts me back. “OK, Thumb.”

  So after school I go over to the South Pottsboro Public Library and there Henderson is, leaning over a pile of books. He must be working on a sad “treatise” (his word for “report”) because his face, which usually has a wondrous stargazing look about it, today has, I don’t know, maybe just a blank look about it. Henderson slides a paper across the table at me. It says:

  Dear Benny,

  I hope I will not bore you

  With how totally, totally I adore you.

  The cute way you have of talking,

  The funny way you have of walking.

  Please do not feel that I am stalking

  You.

  Love, Guess who???

  “Wow, Henderson,” I go, “this is awesome. I’ll buy you a latte. Or a double latte or whatever you want, unless you get another free gift certificate, in which case I will definitely help you use it.” Henderson usually welcomes all writing requests. He wrote one of the letters for Reni to Justin Bieber, but we think it got stuck with the other four in the lost and missing mail warehouse in Teaneck, New Jersey.

  “You baffle me, Thumb,” he says, looking out the window at the snow falling. Clearly the snow is bothering Henderson or else it’s something earth-shattering he’s discovered about black holes or dying galaxies. I don’t want to tell him that the note he wrote doesn’t capture what I’m feeling. This Benny feeling is something else. Something really baffling.

  Henderson is wearing his favorite green and gray flannel shirt that has been washed and washed so many times, it makes him look like an overly fuzzed teddy bear. A volcano-loving, poetry-crazed flannel teddy bear in wire-rimmed glasses. Every Christmas, he gets flannel shirts from everybody, even Annais, and he gets so happy about it. The weird thing is, I had another strange dream last night in which Benny delivered a pizza to my door, wearing one of Henderson’s plaid flannel shirts. I mean, this is just off the map.

  I sit down next to
Henderson and lean my elbow on the library table. Soon we start talking about the possible crush and the pizza note. I don’t tell Henderson about Frosty the Snowman and how much I did truly love him when I was six years old even though he melted at the end of the movie. I don’t tell Henderson how much I wanted to squeeze and hug that snowman and how I even wanted to kiss his funny crooked mouth. I usually can tell Henderson anything, but I don’t want him to know how mixed up I am about all this. I don’t want him to know how lost I feel. Like I’m in a blizzard.

  But Henderson is very sweet and listens quietly when I say, “It’s possible I’m in love with Benny. I mean, there is something pulling me toward him. It’s really strong. Reni says it must be love. Reni thinks so. Reni’s sure.”

  “My sister actually doesn’t know very much about love,” says Henderson. “She harbors hope for this Bieber character.”

  Henderson stretches his hand across his face and then he sighs. And I think again about that note from Benny that said, I am your biggest fan. Those words are beginning to make little ripples and tugs on the wheels of confusion inside me. Frosty the Snowman dances across my closed eyes for a moment. He smiles and tilts his head. Then he disappears over the horizon. And I look up and see that in South Pottsboro, it’s snowing outside again.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  My luck or what, Grandpa is getting into scrap-booking. “He’s very adaptive for his age. Most seniors resist new hobbies. It’s all in your attitude,” Grandma says, doing a string of windmill stretches in the kitchen.

  In the living room, Grandpa has these old photographs strewn across the coffee table. He’s got these packages of sparkles and sprinkles and different colored pens to use for emphasis.