“It’s settled, then.” Debbie bobs her head down like she’s putting a period at the end of a thought. “I don’t ever want to go through this again.”
“You won’t, Debbie,” I say. “We promise. Right, Tobin?”
“In the name of Bigfoot science, I find this punishment cruel and unusual for the following reasons—” he starts, holding out his fingers to make the list.
I poke him hard with my elbow.
“Ow,” he mumbles, then sits back down in his chair and folds his arms.
“Tobin?” Debbie says again. “I hope we understand each other.”
“Yeah, okay,” he says with his chin on his chest.
After a hot, bubble-less bath with the same old boring bar of Irish Spring and a plain blue washcloth, I spend the rest of Sunday afternoon in my room. Another penalty doled out during the judgment phase of our kitchen table trial.
I reread all the letters from San Francisco five times each. I have eight now. Two more from Erika Vass and one from Shelley H. and one from Melanie, too. Erika had her summer dance recital and Melanie’s mom had the baby. It was a girl. Melanie says it screams all night long so she’s started wearing cotton balls in her ears.
While I’m rereading Miss Cotton’s letters, Charlie knocks softly on the door. I slip the letters in the drawer of the night table.
“Come in,” I call.
Charlie comes in and sits down next to me. He hands me a book.
“I ordered this for you at the store.”
I look it over, front and back.
“Thanks, Charlie,” I say.
“It’s supposed to be a good one for a girl your age,” he says.
It has a cat and a mouse on the cover, and it’s called The Cricket in Times Square.
“I love cats,” I tell him.
“I also want you to know that when I lay down rules, I expect you to follow them.”
“Yes, Charlie.”
“The rules aren’t to ruin your fun. They are for your safety and what I think is best for you.”
“I know it,” I say, feeling the lump coming up in my throat. “And I really am sorry.”
I want to tell him it was all Tobin’s fault anyway. He was the one who had to go running into the woods after that thing in the pouring rain. All I wanted to do was make a break for the house and hide under a warm blanket until the thunder stopped rumbling.
But I don’t tell Charlie any of it.
Mostly because it would make me sound like a big fat chicken.
“It won’t ever happen again,” I promise him.
“I hope not,” he says.
I fold down page fifty-five of my book and go to the bedroom door to listen. After hearing the faint sounds of the news on the television in the living room, I tiptoe over to the big trunk at the end of the bed. I wrap my fingers around the edges and inch the top up little by little. It gripes and groans until it finally gives way.
I stop and take a deep breath before I push the lid all the way up and back against the bed. I stare at all the carefully folded piles, afraid to touch anything.
Children’s clothes, toys, games, and stuffed animals carefully placed in perfect rows. The cedar escapes into the room and penetrates the air.
I know they’re hers.
I know it without even asking the question.
The lump starts up in my throat again, and I quickly close the lid. Making sure it’s shut tight so the memories don’t escape, and so the sadness stuck in my throat can’t suck me into the quicksand.
Sadness quicksand that’s deep and scary.
So deep and scary that I’m afraid one day I won’t be able to come back from it.
We finally make it to Friday.
The very last day of our sentence.
It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I’ve actually had fun hanging out with Charlie at the store all week. He even taught me how to ring up customers on the cash register. I have to stand on the step stool to reach it, but still, I feel very grown-up doing it.
Today, though, is our very last day, and our official parole starts at exactly 1700 hours, which is really five o’clock, which is exactly the time when Charlie locks the green door at Bigfoot Souvenirs and More.
Until that time, and not a minute sooner, I’m assigned to EXOTIC JERKIES OF THE WORLD, unpacking and sorting and stocking. Charlie just added wild boar and Tibetan yak to his already-disgusting collection of shriveled-up meat in a bag.
The bell on the door rings.
“Good morning!” Charlie calls, like he always does to every single solitary person who passes through that green door. But this morning his voice sounds weird on the last word.
Tight.
He clears his throat.
“Hello, Delores,” he says, and clears his throat again. “Lem,” he calls to me.
I pop my head up and peek between FINE CUISINE and BIGFOOT SCHOOL SUPPLIES.
It’s her.
Delores Jaworski. The one who drove me here from San Francisco. The one I beat at the alphabet game when I spotted the Q on a liquor store outside Redding.
I wonder if she remembered to bring an order of Mr. Chin’s fried egg rolls like I asked her to.
I set down the packages of jerky and step up to the front counter, where Charlie has been busy doing his accounting work in a green spiral notebook.
“You remember Miss Jaworski?” Charlie nods in her direction, his lips stuck on his teeth like he brushed them with Super Glue instead of the Colgate in the bathroom drawer.
“Yes, hello,” I say.
“Good morning, Lemonade.” She smiles warmly, holding her hand out to me.
I take her hand in mine, and she shakes it softly. Her fingers are bony and cold. She looks like the women do in San Francisco in her fancy red dress with black polka dots and black high heels. Her hair is twisted in a tight knot at the back of her neck, and she has on crisp red lipstick that knows exactly where it’s supposed to be and stays there. All she has in her other hand is a bunch of papers and a large envelope.
She must have forgotten the egg rolls.
“I came to check up on you and see how things are going here,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, looking at Charlie.
“Things are going just fine here,” Charlie tells her, his lips still glued against his teeth.
“You’re working in the store?” She looks at Charlie with confusion. “Do you earn money for that?”
“No, we’re being punished—” I start.
“We, ah…” Charlie clears his throat. “We had, ah, just a bit of a mishap, and the kids are helping out in the store as a consequence.”
“Oh?” She looks back at me.
“In our defense,” Tobin calls from the high ladder where he’s dusting the wooden Bigfoot with a feather duster, “it was in the name of cryptozoological research, which makes the offense highly debatable.”
I laugh nervously.
“That’s Tobin,” I tell her.
She smiles. “A friend of yours?”
“Yes,” I say, looking back at him. “He is my friend.”
“Tobin,” Charlie calls. “Come and say hello to Miss Jaworski.”
Tobin hops off the ladder and walks up to the counter, twirling the feather duster with one hand.
“Bigfoot Detectives Inc.,” Delores reads off his safari hat, as always strapped tight under his chin.
“That’s right.” He digs his card out of his khaki shorts. “I handle any and all of Willow Creek’s Bigfoot needs. Well, me and Lemonade now.”
BIGFOOT DETECTIVES INC.
Handling all your Bigfoot needs since 1974
Tobin Sky: 555-0906
And Lemonade Liberty Witt, Assistant
She examines the card.
“He needs that back,” I tell her. “It’s his only one.”
“Oh.” She smiles again, handing it back to Tobin. “Here you go. It’s so nice to meet you. And Lemonade, I see you’re getting used to Will
ow Creek after all.”
“She’s my assistant,” Tobin says.
“Yes, I saw that on your, ah, card there.”
He slips it back into his pocket.
“Well, I will get right to the point of my visit,” Miss Jaworski tells Charlie.
“Please.” Charlie motions to a stool near the counter.
“Thank you,” she says, sliding onto the edge of the stool. “This was all a very sudden arrangement and somewhat temporary at the time we made plans. However, now someone has come forward to request guardianship of Lemonade.”
Charlie doesn’t say anything, his lips slowly slipping off his teeth.
“What does that mean?” Tobin asks, looking at me.
“I—I don’t—” I start.
“Well, an option has come up, and I’m here to talk with Lemonade about that,” Delores Jaworski tells Tobin.
“Who is making the request?” Charlie asks.
“Mary Cotton, Lemonade’s fourth-grade teacher,” she says, then turns to me. “She completed the paperwork, Lem. She would like you to come and live with her permanently.”
“She did that?” I ask.
“Yes, honey, she sure did. She’s put in a formal request to have a home study done to make sure she’s suitable, which I’m sure she will be. So I’m here to let you know the request has been made and to talk about what our next steps might be.”
“And what if I feel it’s in Lem’s best interest to stay here with us in Willow Creek?” Charlie asks, pressing his lips into a tight line.
“Oh…well, of course you are her legal guardian and her only living relative, so it’s absolutely appropriate for her to remain here if you think that’s in her best interest. However, Miss Cotton would be a wonderful guardian for Lem, and this option would allow Lem to return home.”
Home?
“And…due to her age, Lem’s opinion should also be considered in the decision. That being said, I guess…I mean, from what I understood, she has already made her decision. She told me she wanted to stay in San Francisco with all her friends and remain in the same school. And now she can—”
“Well, maybe she’s changed her mind,” Tobin interrupts, his voice getting louder.
Delores Jaworski turns to me, leaning down so we’re eye to eye.
“Lemonade, how are you feeling about living here in Willow Creek with your grandfather?”
Grandfather.
“She can’t leave!” Tobin exclaims before I even have a chance to open my mouth. “We’re too close to making Bigfoot history. She can’t leave….I—I need her.”
Then he turns to me.
“Tell her you’re not leaving,” he insists, his eyes getting red around the edges. “Tell her!”
When Charlie locks the green door at Bigfoot Souvenirs and More, Tobin and I are finally sprung, our sentences complete. But it isn’t the celebration I expected it to be.
“What are you so mad about? I didn’t tell her I wanted to go,” I say to Tobin in the backseat of Jake on the way home.
“You didn’t say you wanted to stay.” He points an accusing finger in my direction.
He’s got me there.
Charlie’s been especially quiet since Delores Jaworski left a manila envelope of papers on the counter before heading back to the city.
“And you’ve said all along that you’re leaving here one day, right? Isn’t that what you’ve said? Blowing this fruit stand?”
“Popsicle stand. It’s a Popsicle stand,” I remind him.
“And now here it is! The perfect opportunity for you to go back to your precious life in the city.” Tobin stares out the window.
“I told you, I didn’t say I wanted to go.”
“Well, you didn’t tell her you wanted to stay. I’m sorry I ever even made you my assistant.”
“Is that right? Well, I’m the one who found the prints to begin with. If it wasn’t for me, you’d have nothing.”
“Stopping in the middle of an expedition to hog down another Twinkie and then stumbling onto prints doesn’t give you any bragging rights, let me tell you. You would never even have heard of Bluff Creek if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Maybe if you’d made me partner to begin with, it would have given me a reason to stay,” I say.
He turns his head from the window to face me.
“Does that mean if I promote you now, you’ll stay?”
I think about it. He waits. I see Charlie glance at me in the rearview mirror, waiting for an answer too.
Everyone is waiting for an answer.
Even Delores Jaworski, who’s on her way home to San Francisco.
But I don’t have one.
“See!” Tobin sighs loudly, shifting in his seat and staring out the window again. “Just like I said.”
Charlie’s eyes are on the road again.
I lay my head on the back of the seat and watch the blurry solid white line along the edge of the highway.
Elizabeth Lilly Witt.
Why did you have to leave me?
That night I can’t sleep.
It feels like everyone in the world is mad at me. Like everyone in the world hates me.
I turn over and look at the clock. It’s after two in the morning.
At home, when I couldn’t sleep, Mama would get up and make us warm, bubbly milk on the stove that we would sip from big mugs at the kitchen table, and then she’d let me crawl into bed with her.
Miss Cotton would probably do that too.
It would be nice to be back home. I could go back to dance class with Erika Vass and start back up in Girl Scouts, which meets every Thursday at Melanie’s house. I almost have enough credits to earn my Junior First Aid Badge.
I flip onto my right side, then onto my left, but I just can’t get comfortable. I fluff the pillow and readjust one more time. The bed feels harder than the ground did on both expeditions put together.
I reach over to click on the lamp next to my bed. I stare at the trunk, then push the covers back and crawl over to it. I put my hands flat on the lid and press my nose to it.
Cedar chips and musty wood.
I start on the lid again, pulling it upward as hard as I can, trying not to make any noise. When it finally wiggles free, I lift it all the way up and back against the bed.
I stare inside.
One by one, I pull out every last item in the trunk. The baby clothes, perfectly folded and yellowing with age, a pair of metal roller skates, a tarnished silver rattle, the Elvis Presley concert T-shirt from the show that Mama and Debbie saw in the city, a pair of used-to-be-white baby shoes, and a small box with red and blue and yellow ribbons for first place, second, and third in track and field, softball, and dance. Each item placed inside with special care. Each item holding another story about Mama.
I pull out one treasured memory after another. Until I get to the very bottom, where I see an old stuffed blue bunny that’s seen better days.
Its fur is gone in some spots, with only bare threads keeping it from bleeding out its stuffing. It’s wearing a battered pink ribbon around its neck.
I breathe the bunny in deep. Hoping it might still smell like Mama. Like the disinfectant soap she washes her hands with at work, Suave strawberry shampoo, and her Avon perfume all mixed together.
But all the bunny smells like is musty trunk and cedar.
She’s gone.
Gone from me and gone from the trunk, too. Far from the memories stored away inside. I hold the bunny close and breathe in the cedar.
When the tears start to roll down my face, it’s just one, then it’s two, and then it’s too many to count. I can’t breathe. It feels like I’m never going to breathe again, like the tears are never going to stop.
I’m drowning.
Sinking in sadness quicksand.
And no one will ever find me.
“Mama!” I cry into the bunny’s matted fur. “I don’t know how to be here without you. I need you back, Mama. Please tell me what to do.”
The bedroom doorknob turns, and the door creaks open. I scramble to my feet, wiping my face and hiding the blue bunny behind my back. Charlie, in his plaid pajamas and suede slippers, stares down at me. He glances around the floor at the messy piles of clothes, toys, and ribbons.
I brace myself for the yelling. The judgment. A new sentence.
I wait for it, wiping more tears and trying to find my breath.
“Can’t sleep either, huh?” Charlie asks softly.
I shake my head.
“Hard day,” he says, like it’s a fact instead of a question.
I try my best to swallow the lump down, but it’s so big now it feels like it won’t ever go down again.
“When your mom was your age and she couldn’t sleep, we used to heat up some milk together.”
I wipe my nose across the length of my forearm.
“You did that?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
“Together?”
He nods. “You can bring Rainbow if you like.”
“Who?”
He juts a chin toward the blue bunny behind me. “That’s what she called her.”
I stare down at the floppy blue stuffed animal in my hands.
“How ’bout it? A mug of warm milk?”
I look back up at him.
“I’d like that,” I say.
He holds out a hand toward me. A big hand. Rough, with straight nails and one very special silver ring. The hand is strong and tough, but kind.
A hand saving me from sinking in the quicksand. I guess there is someone looking out for me, making sure I don’t drown.
Charlie.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yes,” I tell him, and slip my hand into his.
Tobin is a no-show for breakfast again the next morning. This time my stomach feels all twisted up inside about it too. And after I finish my sticks and seeds and bark, the twisting gets worse, and then the sweating starts, and I feel like I might even throw up.
Before I leave for the Bigfoot Headquarters, I set Rainbow right on top of my pillow. Then I pin my name badge to the front of my shirt. It’s hot in the garage this morning, and I find Tobin sitting at the desk with the green receiver in his hand.
Lemons Page 12
