Every Missing Piece

by Melanie Conklin

  “I want a fresh Toll House pie.”

  “Then maybe you can share some with your new friend,” she said.

  My mom is smooth like that.

  It’s not easy biking with a pie box on your handlebars and a dog on a leash, but somehow me and Frankie and the pie made it to the Jessups’ in one piece. As we walked into the woods, I kept my eyes peeled for anything weird hanging from the trees. Unfortunately, looking up like that meant I didn’t spot the twine strung between some trees until my foot was about to hit it.

  I twisted fast, juggling the pie box and Frankie’s leash and almost falling. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. If Diesel saw me, he was gonna kill me.

  Frankie pulled at her leash and whined. Her amber eyes were sure and steady.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Diesel Jessup can’t keep me from walking around my own neighborhood.” I gathered the pie box and Frankie’s leash and stepped around that booby trap like I had every right to be there. We were the welcome wagon, after all.

  I scanned the woods, wondering where to look for Eric. Back here? Or up at the house? I stopped to look around, but Frankie kept pulling me toward the old trailer, her tail wagging. We slipped around the side and found the door hanging open. Frankie yipped, and wouldn’t you know it, Eric popped his head outside like he’d been waiting for us.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  I tried not to drop the pie while Frankie tugged on her leash, struggling to get to him.

  He stepped down to the ground. “It’s okay. I like dogs.”

  I let her go, and she covered his face in kisses like the traitor that she was.

  When she finished, Eric looked at me. “What do you want?” he asked. The bruise beneath his eye had faded to a rotten yellow-green. Meanwhile, my mind was racing with all the questions I had, about where he came from, why he was here, who he was.

  I plastered a huge smile on my face and lifted the box. “My mom sent a Toll House pie.”

  “For real?”

  “Yeah. We’re the welcome wagon.”

  He took the box and cracked it open, taking a deep whiff. He started to smile, then shook his head. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Are you staying here or something?”

  “Yeah. For now.”

  He stared at the ground, scuffing his sneaker toe in the leaves, and I stood there wondering why he was out there in that trailer. If he was visiting the Jessups, wouldn’t he stay in their huge house? He had short hair, but if it was longer, bushy on the sides, and as dark as his eyebrows… he’d look a lot like Billy Holcomb. I got that goofy feeling in my guts like I was about to tip over the edge of something. It was the same feeling I got when I waited for a tornado at the bus stop: the creeping certainty that something terrible was about to happen.

  “I’m Maddy,” I said. “I live in the neighborhood. Your name is Eric, right?”

  I was waiting for him to say it. No, my name is Billy Holcomb.

  “Yeah,” he said. “With a C.”

  There was that bad feeling again, reminding me that I was full of nonsense.

  Behind him, the trailer door banged open and a skinny white lady with black hair and ratty jean shorts appeared. Her eyes narrowed when she saw me. “Who in blazes is this?”

  “Someone from school,” Eric said.

  She frowned. “Did you forget what we said about having people over?”

  “She brought us a pie,” he said, lifting the box.

  “Oh.” She gave me a tight nod. “Thank you, then.”

  “I’m Maddy Gaines. Nice to meet you.”

  Instead of introducing herself, she glared at me something fierce and reached for Eric.

  He jerked away.

  “We talked about this,” she said in a low voice. When Eric didn’t answer, she sighed. “Jessamyn’s making her famous dumplings tonight. You should come help.”

  Eric shook his head, his eyes fixed on the ground.

  “Look, I’m sorry I got stuck at work today.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever.”

  She fixed me with another glare. “Say good-bye to your friend and come on up to the house.” Then she headed into the Jessups’ yard without saying another word to me.

  Meanwhile, Eric stood there not talking, which made this awful buzz build up in my stomach.

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” I said, pulling Frankie back the way we’d come.

  After a minute, Eric jogged to catch up with us. He patted Frankie while he led us around his booby traps, not saying a darn thing. Of course I couldn’t think of anything to say, either—until I got to my bike and found the Jessup brothers standing on top of it.

  “Hey! Leave that alone!”

  Diesel lifted his foot to smash my tire. “I warned you not to trespass.”

  “I was just dropping off a pie. Let’s call a truce, okay?”

  “And if I don’t? What’re you gonna do, sic your dog on me?” He made a face at Frankie and she had the good sense to growl back at him.

  “Let her go,” Eric said.

  Diesel pointed at Eric. “You shouldn’t be talking to her, anyway.”

  Eric scowled but didn’t argue.

  “Please,” I said, even though begging Diesel made me want to barf. I loved that bike. Dad and I spent ages cleaning it up. We even repainted the body, which used to be pale pink but is now midnight blue. It had gotten too small for me, but I couldn’t give it up.

  Diesel stared at me for a second, then gave my tire a kick and walked off. Devin, the round middle brother, made a rude gesture, and the dirty-faced little one, Donny, spat on the seat. He wasn’t even old enough to tie his shoes, but he already knew the Jessup ways.

  As soon as they left, I hopped on my bike and pedaled away with Frankie running next to me. I was halfway down the road before I realized I hadn’t said good-bye to Eric, but when I glanced back over my shoulder, he was already gone.

  8

  UNKNOWN QUANTITIES

  “What do you think of paddle boats?” Stan asked on Saturday, a few days after my visit to Eric’s place. I was wiped out from staying over at Cress’s. As usual, we’d barely slept. We were too busy talking about Mia’s new boyfriend, who had texted her at dinner and gotten her phone taken away.

  “I don’t think of paddle boats at all,” I joked, swallowing a yawn.

  Mom made a face.

  “But sure.” I stabbed at the peas in my shepherd’s pie. “Paddle boating sounds fun.”

  Which it could be. They had these new swan boats at the science center. I’d seen them bobbing around on the water like giant bath toys.

  Stan looked up from consulting the newspaper. “Oops. Looks like the paddle boats aren’t open until April, but we could go to the observatory. They have a meteor show on Saturday.”

  “They do?” That actually did sound fun.

  “The Gamma Normids should be active this week. They’re the biggest show during March,” he said, which made me laugh. His pale cheeks pinked up. “What?”

  “Sorry. That sounds goofy, you know. ‘Gamma Normids.’ What’s next, the Beta Abnormids?” I cracked up, and wouldn’t you know it, Stan actually let out a laugh. He was usually so serious, writing in his notebook all the time.

  Mom was smiling so hard at the two of us that I had to take it down a notch. I didn’t want her expectations to get out of whack or anything.

  “I’m going to put my feet up for a bit,” she said. “Anybody need anything before I go?”

  “I’ve got it,” Stan said, hurrying to take her plate and cup before she could clear it.

  “Thanks, hon.” She pecked him on the cheek and I looked away fast.

  It didn’t make me mad, seeing them together like that, but it didn’t feel right, either. Like I was betraying Dad somehow, merely by watching it happen.

  Once Mom was gone, Stan came back to the table and spread his paper between us. “Want to help me with the jumble?” The word jumble is usu
ally my favorite. I love looking at those scrambled-up letters and waiting for my brain to sort them into the right order.

  But there was that darn barrier again.

  “No thanks,” I said, pretending not to see the hurt on Stan’s face. I should’ve been able to sit there with him. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But suddenly all I wanted was to go to my room and lie next to Dad’s picture so I could talk to him. It’s funny how missing Dad always seems to follow talking to Stan, like Stan is haunted by Dad’s ghost. Only Stan doesn’t know it.

  The observatory is a small white building with a weird metal dome that opens up to the stars like a sunroof, only I guess it’s more of a moonroof because it’s mainly open at night. I’d never been there before, but Stan told me all about it on our drive over. They had telescopes for viewing astronomical objects like the Gamma Normids meteor shower, which was winding down but should still have been fun to look at.

  “Going to the observatory,” I texted Dad as Stan and I walked across the parking lot. It felt a little strange telling him about our Stan Saturdays, but Dad would have loved the idea of looking at the stars. Maybe he wouldn’t mind that I was going with Stan.

  “How’s everything at school?” Stan asked out of the blue.

  “Pretty good.” I repositioned the gum in my mouth. I was trying to blow one last bubble before I threw it out.

  “Your mom said you met a new boy in the neighborhood?”

  I about choked on my gum. “Yeah. Eric.”

  “Is he nice?”

  I thought about Eric petting Frankie. “Yeah, he’s nice. Kind of weird, but nice. Like you,” I said, and immediately regretted it. I swear it’s like my mouth has a mind of its own sometimes.

  The barrier started to slide into place, but Stan just smiled. “You’re right. I am weird. I was a weird kid, too. I didn’t have many friends. I preferred collecting rocks.”

  I laughed, and he said, “No, seriously. Rocks are much better friends than most kids.”

  “You made friends with rocks?”

  “I did. There’s no shame in that, as long as you don’t expect the rocks to talk back. The truth is, we’re all weird. Every human being is an unknown quantity.”

  Stan called strangers unknown quantities. Like his new boss at work. He couldn’t say if he liked her yet. He’d have to get to know her first. I felt the same way about new teachers. It took at least a month until I knew if I liked them. That first week of school could be awesome, but it might not last. There were exceptions, though. I knew Miss Rivera was awesome the minute I met her. And then there were people like Diesel, who only got worse over time.

  “Some people are jerks, though.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Stan said. “People are complicated. The ones who don’t have many friends are usually the ones who need them the most.”

  That idea caught in my mind. I was pretty sure Diesel was a lost cause, but maybe Eric just needed a friend. He was probably in the woods right then, rigging up more booby traps.

  I paused at the doors to the observatory, taking in the curved metal ceiling, which looked taller from the inside. My gum went in the trash, and Stan and I went to find an open telescope. We started with the moon. Then Mars and Venus. By the end we watched for meteors burning up as they entered Earth’s atmosphere. Without the telescope, those streaks looked white, but up close they were a mix of every color. Plus, the sky was chock-full of stars. I mean every single inch. I’ve lain on our roof plenty of nights, but I’d never seen anything like this.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Stan said.

  “Yeah. I never knew all of that was up there.”

  “Exactly. What we know to be true depends entirely on our point of view.”

  I looked at him watching the sky through his glasses, and for a few moments, the barrier lifted. Not enough to go away forever, but enough to stand there together, staring at the stars.

  9

  BAIT & TRAP

  Diesel may have done his best to scare me off, but there was no way he was keeping me from talking to Eric again. I could smell their secrets the way Frankie smells a squirrel. She can’t always see them, but she knows they’re there, and she doesn’t give up until she finds them.

  On Sunday morning, after safety checks and a break-fast of pork sausage and eggs, I clipped Frankie’s leash and told Mom I was going to fetch her pie plate, even though it was one of those cheap aluminum pans that people usually toss in the recycling bin.

  “Have fun with your new friend,” she called as we went out the door, which made me frown. She had that tone in her voice like she knew what was up, but I wasn’t sweet on Eric.

  “Wish me luck,” I texted Dad.

  The closer I got to the Jessups’, the more my heart thumped. I told myself to relax, but as their house came into view, the blood rushing in my ears turned to the crash, crash, crash of the waves. Instead of leaving my bike in the ditch by the road, I pushed it behind the neighbor’s holly bushes and ran for the woods with Frankie galloping beside me, her ears flapping.

  When we got to the tree line, I pulled up short and scanned for enemies. The woods seemed quiet, like maybe no one was home. I pulled Frankie closer to the trailer, keeping an eye out for Eric’s booby traps. She gave a little whine.

  “Hush,” I said. “We don’t want to get caught poking around, now, do we?”

  Frankie beamed up at me, her tail whipping.

  I climbed a stump next to the trailer to look inside, but the blinds were drawn. My heart raced as I peeked around every edge. I could only see slivers of curtains, a bed, a mirror. Nothing useful, which made me feel kind of bad for spying. Not to mention what Mom would think if she found out. This was exactly the kind of thing she didn’t want me doing. But what if I was right? What if Eric really was Billy Holcomb and he needed my help?

  Before I could figure out what to do next, Frankie made her happy whine and Eric’s pale head popped around the corner of the trailer.

  I scrambled down from the stump. “Hey! I was just looking for you.”

  He frowned. “Diesel’s gonna flip if he finds you here.”

  “He’s jealous I’m winning the war is all.”

  “What war?”

  “It’s a ridiculous territory war, but I won the entrance to the subdivision in the sweet-gum battle, so he’s mad. I can’t use the pond, but he can’t leave the neighborhood.”

  Eric laughed and his whole face went from stormy to bright. “Diesel says you’re always in everybody else’s business. Did you really call the cops on him last summer?”

  My face went hot. I had called the police, but Diesel and his brothers had been shooting sparklers into people’s yards. They could’ve burned someone’s house down.

  “I don’t care what Diesel says,” I said, giving the stump a good kick. “He’s a jerk.”

  Eric stopped laughing, and I scolded myself for talking mess about Diesel in front of him. If they were friends, that sure as heck wasn’t going to get me inside that trailer.

  Meanwhile, Frankie was giving herself a conniption trying to reach Eric, so I let her go and she jumped on him, licking all over his face and his stick-out ears. I don’t know what it is about ears, but Frankie loves them.

  He rubbed her head and smiled. “I wish I had a dog.”

  “You should get one.”

  “My dad says dogs are good for two things: eating up all your food and giving you fleas.”

  “Frankie doesn’t have fleas! I give her special treats to keep the bugs off.”

  At the sound of her name, Frankie beamed at me, her long pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth like a yo-yo.

  “She’s a girl?” Eric asked.

  “Yep.” We got Frankie the year Dad died. Mom didn’t know Frankie was a girl when we named her, and by the time we figured it out, I decided a girl could have any name she wanted.

  “I need to get our pie plate back,” I said. “Do you have it?”

  “I think
so.” He stood up and looked at the saggy old trailer like he wasn’t sure about taking me in there, but then he made up his mind and led us over.

  The key to catching a squirrel is using a trap, which sounds harsh but isn’t. Dad and I had to use one once, for a young mama squirrel who’d built a nest in our garage. Dad would’ve let the squirrel stay, but it was too hot in the rafters for her babies to survive. We used peanut butter as bait, and soon she was back in the woods where she and her babies belonged.

  I’d baited my trap with the world’s best pie.

  Now it was time to see what I’d caught.

  I stopped to tie Frankie up, but Eric said, “It’s okay,” and held the door for both of us.

  My stomach swirled as I stepped inside.

  I’d expected it to be all dark and moldy in there, but someone had given the linoleum a good scrub, and the air smelled like fresh paint and pine cleaner. The couch looked new, too. Cute mismatched chairs circled the kitchen table, and a hand-painted sign hung over the sink: Life Is a Work in Progress. Other than some trash piled by the door, it was nice. The only weird things were these broken bowls lined up along the kitchen counters. The cracks were shiny, like they’d been filled with metal or something. Which was odd, but not any kind of clue.

  “Why are all these bowls broken?” I asked, picking one up. It was cold to the touch and surprisingly heavy.

  “Kelsey makes them,” Eric said.

  Kelsey. So that was the name of the woman I’d seen here before.

  “Is she your mom?”

  He gave me a stony look, so I tried again. “Does she sell these or something?”

  “Sometimes.” He went into the kitchen and opened the oven door. The inside was chock-full of pots and pans, including our pie plate. “We don’t bake much,” he said as he handed me the plate, which made me feel pretty terrible for wishing I’d kept the whole pie for myself.

  “Is Kelsey here?”

  He gave me a funny look. “No, she’s at work.”