Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe

by Coriell, Shelley

  Duncan looked so little-boy hopeful.

  “You believe this time it will work?”

  “I have to.”

  Duncan’s soul was way too old. It had seen too much, but I couldn’t undo it. Instead, I wrapped him in my arms and let him feel the pounding of my heart.

  A few minutes later Mrs. Moore walked in with a plastic grocery bag filled with clothes. On top sat a picture of Duncan hugging a red butt-ugly bear. “Did you get enough?” she asked Duncan.

  He shifted me to his side and looped his arm around my waist. Perfect fit. He pointed to the five bags he’d set on the counter. “Hetta said you could make at least five scarves.”

  “Five?” She raised her hands, the trembling so bad I could hear her bones clacking. “I think I may need a few more skeins of yarn.”

  I pointed to my own little pathetic bag of yarn I’d left near the kitchen table. “I got six and an extra set of needles.”

  Duncan looked like he wanted to kiss me and never stop, but that wasn’t an option. Mrs. Moore picked at the oozing sore on her arm.

  “You ready?” Duncan asked his mom.

  “You . . . you found a place?”

  “Yeah. In San Diego. Supposed to be a good one.”

  “And we can afford it?”

  “They’ll work with us.”

  Hetta, who’d been standing in the kitchen doorway the whole time, walked in and took Mrs. Moore by the arm. “I’ll get her in my car.” Hetta stared at me hard. “You take care of things in here.”

  Duncan brought me into his arms and rested his chin on my head.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Where are you going to go?” Duncan couldn’t stay at the radio station anymore. He was seventeen, a minor, and the police knew about his situation.

  “I’m taking the bus to San Diego with Mom. I’ll stick around for a few weeks until I’m sure she’s not going to run off to Stu. Friends and family aren’t part of early in-house rehab, but I want to be close by.”

  “To make sure she doesn’t run?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. I need to be there for her. For me. Does that make sense?”

  When people you cared about needed fixing, you wanted to be close by. I thought of Grams on the porch swing and Mom on my old play gym. At least they were on the same property now. “Yeah, it makes sense, but that doesn’t mean I like it.” I stood on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on his lips. “I’ll miss you.”

  His face fell.

  “What?”

  “Valentine’s Day. Our date. I’ll miss it.”

  “We can celebrate when you get back.” Go with the flow. Keep rocking.

  He didn’t look reassured, but his gaze softened. “At least I can give you your Valentine’s Day present before I go.”

  That melted butter feeling zinged through my veins again. Duncan was beyond nice, and he was mine.

  He ran down the hall and came back with a small box covered in wrapping paper with pink cabbage roses and tied with pink yarn. “I borrowed the wrapping stuff from Hetta.”

  “I can tell.” I slipped off the yarn and pictured Duncan’s grumpy, frumpy neighbor. “She’s the one who taught your mom to knit?”

  “Yeah, she’s kind of been there for both of us.” Someone in his corner.

  With the yarn off, I tore the wrapping paper and found a Velveeta Cheese box. “In case I need some eggs and cheese on toast while you’re gone?” I asked.

  “Ha-ha.”

  I took off the lid, and my teeth caught my bottom lip. Duncan had given me one of his treasures. “I love it,” I said when my mouth agreed to work. “Let’s plug it in and give it a try.”

  He dug through a kitchen drawer, bowed, and handed me a pencil stub as if it were a royal scepter. I stuck it into the best Valentine’s Day present in the universe, a pencil sharpener painted with a glittery crown, one fit for a queen.

  As it whirred, I pictured his hands taking the broken sharpener out of the garbage, those same hands fixing it and carefully painting it with gold and red glitter paint. Duncan did the best with what he had. He went with the flow. He rocked with life’s punches.

  “She’s ready,” Hetta said from the doorway. “You better get going before she changes her mind.”

  In the driveway Mrs. Moore sat in the front seat of Hetta’s old car. She looked like she wanted to jump out of her skin. Something told me it was going to get worse before it got better.

  “You going to be okay?” I asked Duncan.

  Duncan paused before he nodded. “I already talked to my first-period teacher, and she’s going to make sure I get my assignments and talk to Lungren about doing my JISP when I get back.”

  I nodded. “She likes to help.”

  “Yeah.” He reached for his scarf, but it wasn’t there. “Tell everyone at the station I’m okay.”

  Nod.

  “Man, Chloe, I’m going to miss you.” He grabbed my hands, holding tightly as if we were standing in crashing waves. He studied our intertwined fingers, and I knew what he was thinking. Getting close to someone and giving them a piece of your heart made letting go that much harder. Each time one of my brothers left for college, I had another gaping hole. As our hands melted together, I realized the perfect gift to give Duncan, something to show I cared. The first day of kindergarten Grams had given it to me, and this past August, I’d given it to my brother Zach when he left for med school.

  I raised Duncan’s hands to my lips. First I kissed one palm, then the other. “When you feel lonely, I’ll be there.”

  Duncan stared at his palms and wrapped his fingers around my kisses.

  THE DEL REY SCHOOL’S STUDENT POPULATION INCLUDED TWO Brads, fourteen Bradleys, two Bradfords, and one Bradshaw, and according to the fire investigator, each claimed to know nothing of the fire that raged through the radio station. What’s more, the investigator had made samples of all of their voices, and when he played them for me, I shook my head.

  “None of them sounded like my Brad,” I told him. My Brad. The love scribe. The VHP. The possible firebug. “I’m sorry.”

  The fire investigator straightened the edges of the stack of papers that had grown over the past two weeks since the fire. “That’s okay, Chloe.” He pointed to the digital recorder. “This isn’t the end of things, we’ll keep looking and keep making voice recordings, and eventually we’ll find him. This is a serious crime, and the person behind it won’t go unpunished.”

  Fire Guy escorted me out of the guidance-center meeting room, and in the lobby I ran into Clementine, who was obviously waiting to listen to Fire Guy’s Brad “bites.” The former GM of KDRS 88.8 The Edge looked at me in a way that screamed, Criminal!

  For the past two weeks, she’d glared at me and whispered snide things when I walked by. Picture Brie with a nose ring. And as with Brie and the stupid Mistletoe Ball thing, I felt horrible. No, I hadn’t personally torched the radio station, but one of my callers, a brokenhearted boy named Brad, may have.

  As I passed Clementine in the guidance center lobby, I wanted to grab her hands and apologize for the 751st time, but it wouldn’t help. All of my apologies had gone unheard. I’d e-mailed Clem, called her, and even left a basket of beets tied with a purple bow in front of her locker. No joke. I spotted them later, basket and all, in a hallway trash can.

  Grams said I needed to do a better job of listening. I heard loud and clear. Duncan may not blame me, but Clem and the rest of the radio staff held me responsible for the death of KDRS. They still wanted nothing to do with me. The next step, the conscientious act of internalizing and acting on what I heard, was much more difficult. Every hair on my head stood upright at the thought of sitting by quietly and allowing the radio staff to shun me. I wanted to joke and smile my way back into their hearts. But like Grams, I needed to accept that there were times when I needed to give up control, to let go. Holding on could be dangerous for me and those around me.

  That afternoon I walked into the lunchroom with a heavy heart. Mer
cedes sat at table fourteen with a few of her brainiac friends. Brie was, as usual, MIA. Last week I heard the first wave of Brie whispers, something about my former BF wigging out and seeing a therapist during her lunch break, but I didn’t join the sea of jellyfish. I’d been on the stinging end far too long.

  Taking a seat at table three, I took out my lunch. I ate slowly, listening to the burrs of various clans. I had nowhere to go, no people to talk to, not even Duncan. The calm mask of my face almost split. I hadn’t heard from him since he took his mom to the drug rehab place two weeks ago. I figured he was worried about his mom, trying to keep up with school work, and didn’t have money for a long-distance call.

  But he could have charged the call to me. If he cared?

  No. I wasn’t going to hammer my heart. I was going to be patient, to trust that Duncan was going to take care of what he needed to take care of. Then he’d come home to Tierra del Rey and me.

  The days dragged and built up like sluggish clumps of seaweed in a slimy inlet.

  Another week went by. And another. They were quiet weeks, weeks when I listened to my heart. It told me I missed Duncan, horribly, but unlike the old Chloe, I didn’t hop in my car and hunt him down because I needed reassurance. He needed to be there for his mom. I accepted that, although it didn’t stop me from going to his duplex every day after school to see if he’d arrived home. Hetta, the cabbage-scented neighbor, would stand in the driveway scowling at me.

  Until today. When she found me knocking on Duncan’s door, she popped her head out her living room window.

  “I heard from him yesterday,” she said, and my heart zigged, then zagged. “He wired me money to pay the rent on this old dive.” Hetta rested her thick arms on the windowsill. “Looks like our boy’s coming home soon.”

  Soon. What a wonderful four-letter word. “Did he say how his mom was doing?”

  “Nah. You know Dunc. He doesn’t talk much.”

  Yes, I knew Dunc, and I missed Dunc, and I couldn’t wait until Dunc came home. I lingered on the doorstep as if my presence would hasten his return. This is what my caller had been talking about all those weeks ago. When you cared for someone, you wanted to be with that person all the time.

  Hetta scratched at her double chins. “Hey, you got a minute?”

  I have 10,24?. “Sure, why?”

  “I got a knot in a skein of yarn, and with these old fingers, I can’t get the damn thing out. Got myself a big mess.”

  Did I know about messes. When Hetta left the window and opened the front door, I didn’t hesitate.

  Space-wise, Hetta’s house mirrored Duncan’s, only it was stuffed with stuff: lumpy furniture, wall hangings, fringed lamps, and baskets of yarn. She pointed to a basket near the sofa. On top sat a messy wad of blue yarn. One slow knot at a time, I started to untangle the mess.

  Within an hour, I had the string untangled, and with the ends free, I started rolling the yarn into a tight, neat ball. How nice if I could do the same thing with all the loose ends floating in my life: Duncan, the fire, Brad, the radio staffers, my JISP, Grams and Mom, and Brie.

  Hetta looked up from a recliner, where she sat knitting something that looked like a sweater for an octopus. Clicketyclick-etyclickety. “Ever knit?” Hetta asked.

  I shook my head. Mom stitched hearts, and Dad stitched feet. Grams? Hah.

  Clicketyclicketyclickety. “Wanna learn?”

  From the overflowing yarn baskets I picked out Converse orange and white. After one hour, I’d knitted two uneven inches.

  Hetta stroked her chins. “A little rough around the edges, but you’ll find your rhythm. You’ll get faster, and your stitches will even out.”

  My stitches evened out, and life moved on. A cleanup crew removed the blackened shell of Portable Five, but there was no talk of erecting a new portable in its place. According to Ms. Lungren, who I talked to last week when I handed in my weekly JISP report, the future of 88.8 The Edge was in limbo. Grams settled into our house, but it was far from peaceful. Last week Grams bought a three-wheeled bike to ride to and from her old trailer park to visit Noreen, and the next day, the front tire had gone mysteriously flat and the tire pump was “missing.” Mom looked suspiciously guilty. However, yesterday I caught Grams and Mom heading out the door to go to Brad Pitt’s new release.

  One Sunday in late March the doorbell rang. Of course it wasn’t for me. No one stopped by to chat these days. Some days the lack of anyone remotely resembling a friend was tortuous, other days it was only mildly excruciating.

  A few minutes later, Grams popped her head through my bedroom doorway. “For you.” The blue in Grams’s eyes twinkled like the sun on the Pacific Ocean at sunset. “Someone with a smokin’ hot heinie.”

  I tossed my knitting needles on the bed and tore out of my room. Was Duncan back from San Diego? Was his mom okay? Did Grams think Duncan had a nice butt? Did it bother me that my eighty-two-year-old grandmother was still looking at guys’ butts? I laughed as I raced down the stairs, then skidded to a stop.

  “Hi, Chloe.” The fire investigator waved his digital recorder. “More Brads.”

  We sat at the kitchen table, and he set the recorder between us. “We extended the search to neighboring high schools, and we may have a lead,” he said. “I want you to listen to four voices, and let me know if any sound like the caller you know as Brad.”

  When he played number two, my blood stilled. “That’s him.”

  He replayed the voice. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive. Ask Clementine. I’m sure she’ll back me up.”

  He nodded. “She already IDed number two as the caller known as Brad.”

  I leaned forward. This was the first good news I’d heard in weeks. “So go talk to him.”

  Fire Guy took a notebook from his file. “We have talked to him. He admits he’s the Brad who called.”

  I jabbed my finger at the digital recorder. “So arrest him.”

  “We can’t. On the night the radio station burned down, Brad was with his school’s chess club at an out-of-town tournament. There’s no way he could have placed and ignited the liquid accelerant used to torch the station.” He opened his notebook and sighed. “So, Chloe, if the other voices don’t sound familiar, I need to know: Are there are any other people who may have a grudge against you or KDRS?”

  I hadn’t been to Brie Sonderby’s house since last December, before she started the horrible, ugly rumor about me and my retired guidance counselor and a fungus crown. To my shock, her house had undergone a massive makeover, and not a glamorous one. Weeds choked the circular drive, and a fine, gritty layer of beach sand covered the front entryway. But the real shocker: a For Sale sign hung in the front yard.

  When I knocked, Brie’s mother answered the door.

  “Why, Chloe, it’s been ages!” Mrs. Sonderby said as she hugged me. Like her home, she looked drastically different. Brie’s mom had always been model thin and impeccably dressed. Today she wore rumpled sweats and an extra thirty pounds. “We’ve missed you. How are you?”

  I was rocking when life hammered me, but not totally down.

  “Okay.”

  “And Mercedes, we haven’t seen her, either. How’s she?”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to her lately.”

  “It’s sad, isn’t it? Growing up? Changing?” Mrs. Sonderby’s lips curved in a nostalgic smile. “You three used to be thick as thieves. Gosh, remember shopping for prom dresses last year? You had everyone in stitches with that neon-orange number.” Her eyes grew unnaturally bright, and she turned away. “But that was a long time ago, huh? I’m sure you’re here for Brie. Let me go get her.”

  “Yes, please.”

  Brie’s mom hesitated in the hallway. “Is this about the fire at the radio station?”

  I shook my head. That was between Brie and the fire investigator. Brie and I had something else we needed to talk about. Technically I needed to talk. She needed to listen.

  “The fire inve
stigator was here yesterday and talked to us.” Mrs. Sonderby rolled the hem of her sweatshirt. “Just so you know, Chloe, there’s no way Brie could have started that fire. She was with me that night.”

  “I didn’t think she did it,” I said. Brie wasn’t a villainess. She might be hurting or angry, and that might cause her to do bad things, but she wasn’t evil. I could never have been best friends with an evil person.

  “And you know what else, Chloe?” Mrs. Sonderby continued, her smile growing. “I’m glad you’re here. You could always make her laugh.”

  Operative word. Could. I wasn’t exactly a walking laugh machine these days, but I had brought a little Chloe cheer in the recent past. I remembered the times I’d made the staffers laugh: Duncan in the storeroom, Clementine over beets, stuttering Frack, quiet Haley.

  As for Brie, I couldn’t remember the last time I heard her laugh. Not a real laugh, one that came from a sunny place in her heart. When I looked back on it, the weeks leading to the Mistletoe Ball were low on the laughter scale for my trio. I figured it was because of midterm exams and the hustle of the holidays and winter-break trips. But the shift had already taken place. I hadn’t been able to make Brie laugh much then, and I wasn’t sure if I could make her laugh now. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. It wasn’t my job to make sure the whole universe kept smiling.

  Today I wanted to say something, and I needed to make sure Brie didn’t just hear my words, but listened.

  When Brie walked in, she looked like a ghost: chalky skin, pale hair unbound around her face, soundless feet, and thin, so thin she looked as if a morning breeze off the ocean would whisk her away. This was a shadow of my best friend.

  “Um, hi.” I tried to catch her gaze, but she stared out the window. “Looks like you’re moving.”

  Brie nodded.

  “If you need extra hands, my dad has some students at the university who could help. They helped Grams move. Did a great job. They even set up all her electronic stuff. You know how uptight she gets about her screens.”

  Another nod.