“You don’t need to be afraid. I just want to ask you some more questions.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said.
Not even close to the honest truth.
Officer D stood behind me and put both hands on my shoulders, clamping down hard, but not a mean clamp down. I didn’t want her to let go.
“Would you like to sit down?” Fran asked.
I shook my head. I was going to talk as little as humanly possible.
“I spoke with your father today.”
I sealed my lips tight.
“I asked him about the night your hand was burned.”
I was stone silent. I looked at her shoes. They were shiny orange red, like fire.
“His story is different from the story you told me when you were in the hospital.” She peered at my hand.
“What did he say?” I asked, breaking my silence.
“I can’t tell you, Jane. Just like I can’t tell him the story you shared.”
My chest loaded up with worry. What could Pop have said?
Flame-shoed Fran pulled some papers out of her purse. “These are notes from your initial interview, after the incident.”
I leaned again into Officer D’s chest and she squeezed my shoulders tighter.
Flame-shoed Fran sat down on the lumpy couch. “Jane, is there any information you perhaps forgot to tell us about that night?”
I shook my head again. I didn’t forget anything.
“Is there anything else you can add to your story?”
Another head shake.
“What was your father doing when your hand and wrist were burned?” Fran asked.
“I already told you that. It’s in your notes.”
Officer D gripped my shoulders tighter. “Jane, just answer the question. This is important to your case.”
My twitchy brain syndrome shifted into high power. Brain cells were whirling around faster and faster. I wanted social services Fran to go away. “He . . .” Now my fingers were starting to twitch. “He was resting a bit—”
“He was resting?” Fran interrupted me. “You didn’t mention that earlier.” She pulled out a pen and jotted some notes.
I gulped. Crud and a half!
“Well, I didn’t mention it because . . .”
Think. Think. Think.
“Because it wasn’t anything weird. Pop works hard at the warehouse. He rests on the couch every night.” I inhaled and kept going, remembering the story I told in the hospital. “So I went into the kitchen, and I turned on Pop’s music that we like to dance to when we make dinner.”
This was mostly the honest truth. Me and Pop did dance to music. Some nights.
“And Pop joined me when he was all done resting.” I turned my head and looked up at Officer D still behind me. She gazed back with her worried face.
“And then it happened just like I said before. I slipped and fell, and my hand landed on the stove, and it really hurt bad. Pop called nine-one-one right away, and then the cops and the medical guys came, and then I was in the hospital with Officer D and you. That’s what happened.” I rattled that story off my tongue fast and furious, and I wasn’t going to say anything else about it.
Flame-shoed Fran scribbled all over the notes in her lap. Then she put her pen down and exhaled slowly. “Jane, there’s a bit of a problem here. With two different stories from you and your father, I may need more time to sort this all out. You may not be able to return to your father as anticipated.”
My heart slammed against my ribs, almost hard enough to stop it from beating. What needed to be sorted out? What had Pop said?
“How much more time?” My hand and wrist pulsed with pain.
Officer D let go of my shoulders and turned me to face her. “We don’t know, Jane,” she said.
This wasn’t good. I swallowed a gulp of air because I felt tears coming into my eyes, but I couldn’t cry. If I started crying, I might let everything out, everything about what really happened that night. I couldn’t do that.
“Jane, are you sure you don’t want to tell us anything else?” Officer D asked. Her worry-parent-like face was begging me.
“No,” I answered quickly, too quickly maybe. “Can she leave now?”
Officer D and flame-shoed Fran exchanged looks. Fran returned the papers to her purse and rose from the couch, not saying anything else.
“I’m going to walk Fran down the path to her car, Jane,” Officer D said. “I’ll be back. We’ll go to dinner and record night together.”
There was no way I was going to record night. My brain had too much sorting to do. What record could I possibly break in this boonieville anyway? Kid with the most foster homes?
I flung Officer D’s soft brown blanket around my back and curled up on the couch. I thought I had everything in order. I was picking Pop up, like he picked me up. That was what we did. But now everything was going wrong. Now I had to do something to fix all this, something to get me back to Pop at the end of our twelve days. I had to see Pop and talk to him. I had to tell him what to say, so his story matched mine. If they matched, we’d be back together. Another successful twelve days. I was sure of that.
There was just one problem. They don’t allow visitors in rehab centers. They don’t even allow phone calls or emails.
I knew if I could just get to Willis, I would figure out how to see Pop.
But I needed to do it soon.
I only had eight days.
Day Five
Teaming Up
I must have had lots of bad thoughts swirling in my head because I dreamed of Misha that night. Misha, my sweet, soft bunny that me and Pop adopted from the animal shelter. She lived in our living room in a wooden, two-room hutch that Pop built. When we watched TV in the evenings, Misha would sometimes hop back and forth on our laps, and we would give her little pieces of apple. Me and Pop loved her lots. She was our third sock, a trio. Me and Pop and Misha. She made our family bigger, and I loved that a lot. I even wondered if maybe our family could grow more. Me and Pop and Misha and . . . maybe . . . but I knew I shouldn’t think thoughts like that. I had Pop. Pop had me. We both had Misha.
But then one day we didn’t.
We were having some bad me-and-Pop days. One night, when I went to bed, Pop told me he would put Misha back in her hutch, but he didn’t. When I got up the next morning, Pop was still crashed on the couch, and Misha wasn’t in her hutch. The door was wide open. I wandered all over our house, calling her name, looking in little hidey-holes where a bunny might snuggle in. Finally, I found her under Pop’s bed, lying stiff, a chewed electrical cord near her nose.
I opened my eyes and jerked upright on the couch.
I had a woozy, dizzy feeling inside me. It was probably from my Misha dream, or it could have been from worrying so much about social services Fran and about Pop and how I was going to be able to talk to him.
That wooziness continued as Officer D bandaged up my hand.
“You’re quiet this morning, Jane.” She turned my wrist, and I tensed up my belly tight.
“Just thinking about stuff, that’s all,” I said. “I need to be at the fire pit before breakfast.”
Officer D didn’t say anything else, and when she finished my hand, I pulled the same gray hoodie that I wore yesterday over my head and walked downstairs.
The morning air was crisp in this boonieville, and I sucked in a deep breath. It helped take away some of my morning dizziness. I was pretty sure Pop would tell me that the fresh piney scent was good for my lungs. Pop was a big lover of fresh air.
G was perched on a pew log at the fire pit with six other kids.
“Hi, Jane,” they all said together.
“Where were you last night? You missed record night,” Millie asked.
I kicked at one of the logs. “I wasn’t feeling too good.”
Honest truth.
“Now we’re just waiting on Loam and Dandy,” G said, tapping her pencil. She had a notebook open on her lap with three c
olumns drawn.
“Maybe Loam forgot,” Timmy Spencer said. He was doing more push-ups. Today his toes were propped on the log and his hands were on the dirt.
“He’s probably still asleep,” Mitchell Landau suggested.
G sighed and put her notebook on the log. “Jane and I will go find him. You guys can all begin filling out this chart with how much money your families can pitch in. We’ll be right back.”
I was happy to be alone with G for a bit. It gave me time for my questions.
“Hey, G, besides Officer D, who else goes into Willis each day?” I began.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m just curious about this Three Boulders place and how it works.”
That was one lame lie. G peered at me for a long spell as we shuffled along the path.
“A lot of people work in Willis: Loam’s dad, Branch Moonbeam; Preston Farmer; Amelia Spencer; Alan Stein—”
“Do they all drive their cars into town?” I interrupted.
“Some do, but some of them ride together. They use Old Red’s van.”
My brain had to sort that through. Could I stow away in the back of the van and get to Willis?
“That’s real smart of them to ride together.” I did my best to sound casually interested. “What time do they leave in the morning?”
G shot me another glance, and I could feel the rays of suspicion firing out of her eyeballs. “They leave pretty early most days, around six thirty.”
That wouldn’t work. Officer D would be suspicious if I got up that early. I kicked up a spray of pine needles.
There had to be a different way.
“Didn’t you tell me that some folks go into town to do shopping and get supplies and stuff?”
G shifted her backpack onto her other shoulder. “Yes, my mom helps with that on Wednesdays.”
Wednesday was yesterday.
Double crud.
This was such a crazy place with its laws and schedules. What if a person needed something on a Thursday or a Friday?
Going to Willis was crammed-to-the-top full of trouble, but I had to talk to Pop. I had to know what Pop told social services Fran. We had to get our stories straight.
It was time for the honest truth. If there was one person I could trust in this place it was G.
“Will you help me get to Willis, G?” I asked, my eyeballs pleading. “I have to talk to my pop.”
G fidgeted with her backpack straps. “Can’t you just ask Officer Dashell?”
“No. Nobody can know. I’m not allowed to see Pop when he’s in rehab. They never let me. Each time he goes they have to do an investigation. They ask us both questions. They make sure everything is okay between me and Pop—”
“Is everything okay?” She was staring at my burned hand.
“Of course.” I tucked my hand in my hoodie pocket. I’m not sure G believed me, even though it was mostly the truth.
“You could get in serious trouble.”
I nodded again. Believe me, I knew.
Stay out of trouble, Jane Girl. Trouble might keep us apart longer.
G stopped in the middle of the gravel road. She looked up at all the clouds in the boonieville sky. “Do you know what happens to folks who break too many of the laws in Three Boulders?”
I shook my head.
“They get told to leave,” G said. She picked up a handful of pebbles in the road.
“I don’t really live here, G. I’m only visiting, remember?”
“And I will only live here for a little while longer.” She bounced the pebbles in her palm a few moments. Then she stepped forward and hurled her pebbles up the road. Hard. Almost tripping on her long skirt.
“Okay.” She turned back toward me. “We’ll figure out a way to get to Willis so you can see your pop, and I’ll come with you.”
I wanted to kiss G. But I don’t do kissing.
G picked up another handful of pebbles, and I grabbed some too.
Side by side, we chucked our rocks high into the Three Boulders sky. They clinked together in the air, dropping to the ground as one team.
Me and G high-fived.
A Museum Quality Discovery
“Let’s get Loam and Dandy and finish our Three Boulders business before we work on the Willis plans,” G suggested as we continued up cabin row.
That sounded A-OK with me. Just knowing G was going to help me was like finding a piece of candy in my pocket, a super-sweet surprise.
“Here’s the Moonbeams’ cabin.” G pointed to the one with all the birdhouses nailed onto the porch railings.
She knocked on the door, and we waited. There was no answer. She knocked harder. Still no answer.
“Let’s just go in,” I suggested. “Maybe they’re still asleep.”
I half expected G to be shocked at that suggestion, but she shrugged and turned the doorknob.
“Hello?” she called. No one answered.
The inside of the Moonbeams’ cabin looked like G’s except there wasn’t any furniture in the front room, just piles of colorful pillows all arranged on the wooden floor in an arc, like a rainbow. These Moonbeams sat on the floor at home just like they sat on the dirt at church. They must not like chairs.
G peeked into one of the three inside doorways. She shook her head and tried the next door. We both peered inside. This was definitely Loam and Dandy’s room with two single mattresses on the floor, one with a black blanket and the other with a pink blanket. “They aren’t here,” G said. “Maybe Loam forgot and went to the dining hall.”
I was about to follow her when something caught my eye. The closet door was slightly open and something orange was on the floor. It looked like Pop’s stocking cap, the one that was missing. I moved to the closet and picked it up. It was Pop’s cap.
How did it get here?
And then I opened the closet door the whole way, and what I saw may not have solved the mysteries of the universe, but it did solve one of the mysteries of boonieville Three Boulders.
“Uh . . . G? Come here. You gotta see this.”
If it was humanly possible to make G’s frizzy hair go straight, seeing the inside of Loam and Dandy’s closet did the trick. She grew ten inches taller just staring into that closet. No words came out of her mouth.
“It’s the Three Boulders vortex,” I said. “Now you know where everything went.”
But this was not just a closet crammed full of missing items. This was different. This had taken some true dedication, and it was . . . beautiful.
Seriously beautiful.
Because inside the closet was a tall bookcase, and on every shelf the contraband was stacked and layered by color in perfect rainbow order. Red items on the top shelf. Then orange. Then yellow, and so on. If there was a world-famous rainbow museum, this bookshelf belonged there.
But G didn’t see it that way. “He’s a thief! Look, Jane! There are Millie’s purple gloves. There’s Mr. Carter’s baseball cap. Those blue hair bands belong to Mrs. Spencer. Oh, there’s an old People of Three Boulders journal!” She scanned every single shelf. “Jane! There’s that bottle of alcohol. He never—”
G couldn’t finish her thought, though, because in the doorway, elbow to elbow, appeared Loam and Dandy.
“What are you doing in our cabin?” Loam exclaimed.
G didn’t answer that question. She laid into Loam. “You stole all these things!”
Loam stepped forward, reaching out to touch G’s arm. “Gertie, I can explain.”
But G moved backward toward me. “How do you explain being a thief, Loam? You’ve stolen something from every person in Three Boulders and then blamed it on some nonexistent vortex.”
Dandy reached into the back pocket of Loam’s jeans and pulled out a pale yellow handkerchief. She flapped it in the air a few times and stood in front of the rainbow masterpiece, eyeballing the shelves. She wadded the handkerchief and placed it on the yellow shelf between a little rubber ducky and a candle, precisely filling in
a small gap. Then she spun two circles and clapped her hands.
“Dandy,” Loam said, “go find Mom in the dining hall. I need to talk to Gertie and Jane.”
Dandy pulled on her brother’s arm.
“Go. I’ll be there soon.” He hugged her. She clapped her hands again and left the little cabin.
I wasn’t sure if G was going to hurl or if she was going to lunge into Loam like an attack dog. She looked a little foamy around the mouth.
Loam plopped down on his mattress. “Dandy made that. The whole arrangement.” He pointed at the closet. “She’s been working on it for two years, ever since we came to Three Boulders.”
“But you took all those things, didn’t you?” G asked.
Loam nodded. His eyelids were saggy. “It’s kind of a long story.”
I sat down on Dandy’s mattress, ready to listen. I was getting that dizzy feeling inside again, like I had when I woke up from my bad-memory dream. G remained standing, her arms crossed. “I want the short version, Loam.”
“Before we moved here, we lived in Eugene. One day, we were in the Seven-Eleven, and I watched Dandy take this pack of gum off the shelf. She shoved it in her pocket. I knew I should have said something, but I didn’t because . . . because, you know, she’s Dandy, and she doesn’t—” He shrugged.
I knew exactly what he meant.
“I asked Dandy about it when we got home and that’s when she showed me her rainbow. It was under her bed in a long box she’d found in the garage. It was filled with colored items she had taken from our house, our friends’ houses, and even stores. I think her head works different, and when she sees something that she knows will fit into one of her rainbow holes, she has to have it.”
“Wait. Are you saying Dandy took all that stuff in the closet?” I asked.
Loam shook his head. “No, it was me. I started taking stuff for Dandy because I didn’t want her to get in trouble. Mom and Dad were worrying about her a lot. I wanted to help her. Her rainbows made her happy. She’s good at it.”
My eyeballs glanced again into the closet. Loam was right. Dandy was great at rainbows.
“But that’s wrong. No matter how pretty it looks or how much Dandy likes to make rainbows, you can’t steal stuff for her,” G said, but she didn’t sound quite so mad anymore, and she lowered herself down next to me on the mattress.
Mostly the Honest Truth Page 7
