by Susan Lubner
“Accidently burned down,” Joss said. “Don’t forget that part.” She reached into the closet and patted Charlotte’s shoulder. “I mean, he obviously wasn’t living in it anymore,” she added.
“Wait!” I said, remembering what my mom had told me that morning about desperate people doing desperate things. I explained about the insurance money. “Maybe your mom’s client burned down his own house!” Especially if Bibi was right about the fire being set on purpose.
“Did you see anyone?” Joss asked.
“How could she? She was in the closet!” I said.
But Charlotte was shaking her head no. “And I definitely would have heard if someone had come in the house. I heard you two talking on the front porch. Why do you think I went to hide in the closet?”
“Oh,” Joss and I said together.
“Maybe he started the fire from the outside of the house?”
“In broad daylight?” Charlotte asked.
“That would be dumb,” I said. “Not that burning your own house down isn’t dumb in the first place. And illegal!” I added, quoting my mom. “But still, I think it’s just a major freaky coincidence that you tried to light a fire and then the house burned down.”
None of us said anything because it was major freaky.
“That is a pretty awful coincidence,” Joss finally said.
Charlotte’s lip quivered. “It probably was me. See why I can’t go home?” she whispered. She leaned her head against the closet wall and shut her eyes. “I’m going to be in so much trouble.” A tear slid down her cheek.
“Well, you can stay here as long as you want. As long as you need to,” I said. “Until we know what really happened with the fire.” My heart bloomed like a bouquet of flowers inside my chest at the thought of my good luck charm possibly staying until the baby was born. But I tried to squeeze out that sunny scenario. I slammed that door closed on my brain. It wasn’t nice to be happy about something that was the cause of someone else’s unhappiness.
“Don’t worry,” Joss said. Then she looked at me. I could tell she couldn’t think of something else to say to make Charlotte feel better and wanted my help.
I picked up Charlotte’s hand. “Did you draw this, or is it one of those transfer tattoos? It looks so perfect,” I said.
“I made it,” she said. She took a green marker out of her bag. “With this. You want one?” she asked, pulling off the top. It was the kind of ink that didn’t rub off. The kind Mom used to write my name on the inside of the clothes I took to school for gym and to summer camp. Permanent ink. Another sign? That the luck Charlotte would bring was permanent, too?
“Pick a design,” she said, handing Joss her journal—the one I had seen in Dad’s truck.
“Wow. You’re amazing!” Joss said when she opened it up. She flipped through the pages. “Look at this.” She held Charlotte’s journal up for me to see.
“I can draw whatever you want,” Charlotte said.
I looked up to see animals and faces and bugs and flowers. Some were just little pictures, but some were whole scenes with so much color and detail I didn’t know where to look first. It was like everything beautiful in the world in every color on the pages. “Wow,” I said. “This is really, really good. You’re so talented. Do you want to be an artist when you grow up?”
“You don’t have to be a grown-up to be an artist,” Charlotte said.
“True,” I told her.
“Can you do a tiger in a tree like the one you drew here?” Joss pointed to a page in the journal.
“Of course,” Charlotte said.
Joss rolled up her sleeve and held out her arm.
“I’ll have the same as you,” I said to Charlotte.
“That’s so boring,” Joss said. “No offense, Charlotte,” she added. “It’s just that her art is unbelievable. Look what you have for options!” she said to me.
But I didn’t care about options. I could only think about how extra lucky it had to be for this good luck girl to personally decorate my hand with my own four-leaf clover.
CHAPTER
12
WHEN CHARLOTTE FINISHED OUR TATTOOS, JOSS pulled out her knitting stuff.
“Knitting 101. Ready?”
“Whoa,” I said, “those are weird looking. And kind of fat.”
“They’re circular needles. And the thicker the yarn, the fatter the needles, so…” Joss handed them to us. “It will be much faster and easier to knit the sweaters in a tube shape. Plus, you only need to learn the knit stitch and not the purl.”
“You’re teaching me, too?” Charlotte said.
“Of course! The more the merrier.” We rummaged through the bags of yarn. I chose a green ball, the color of a celery stick, to match Smoky’s eyes.
“Let’s see, Smoky,” I said, holding the yarn by his face. Charlotte and Joss each chose different shades of purple.
“FYI,” I said, “to reach our goal of raising five hundred dollars for the shelter, we have to sell about fifty sweaters.”
“That’s a lot,” Charlotte said.
“It’s seventeen sweaters each. Well, sixteen and two thirds technically, but I rounded up for obvious reasons. If we knit one, sometimes two a day,” I said, “we might be able to have them done in about two weeks.”
“That doesn’t sound bad,” Joss said.
“Actually, you could probably finish your seventeen in just a few days,” I told Charlotte.
Charlotte looked down at the floor. I waited for her to say something like, I won’t be here that long. But she didn’t. She just said, “Probably.”
“Okay, watch,” Joss said to us. “First, let’s cast on.” She unrolled some yarn from her ball. Right away Fudge and Smoky pounced at the strand. “Hey!” Joss said. “Knock it off, you two.” Each time any of us unraveled yarn, Fudge and Smoky went nuts at it.
“Sorry, boys,” I said, tucking a cat under each of my arms and locking them out of my room. “Where were we?” I picked my needles back up.
“Wrap the yarn like this and make a loop. That’s just a slip knot,” Joss said. She watched to make sure we did it right. “We need to cast on forty-eight stitches. I’ll show you how. Then, we’ll add a marker.”
“What’s a marker?” I asked.
“This.” Joss reached into her bag and pulled out three little rings. Each had a red knitted rose hanging from it. “We’ll slide one of these onto our needles. It marks your spot so you’ll be able to tell when a round ends and begins.”
“Sounds good to me,” Charlotte said. “But what’s a round?”
“It’s basically like a row, but since we’re using circular needles, it’s called a round.”
Even with my previous, though pretty awful history with knitting, I still wasn’t sure what I was doing. I watched Joss closely. I noticed Charlotte, who had never knit before in her life, was catching on fast. “You’re good,” I said to her.
She laughed. “I haven’t really done much yet.”
“Well, you don’t look confused. That’s a good sign for a rookie.”
“Thanks,” she said.
After some more instruction and practice, we were all knitting away. Joss checked regularly to make sure we weren’t messing up and helped us when we did. “Stop when you’ve knit twenty rounds. I’ll show you how to do the holes for legs. Or I’ll take over and you can start a new sweater,” she told us. “I’ve got plenty of extra needles.”
“Okay,” we answered at the same time.
We didn’t talk much since we were busy concentrating. But this seemed way easier than knitting for a human. There weren’t many knitwear options for cats. I didn’t have to master any of the tricky stuff, like thumbs or sleeves or pockets, which would have totally thrown me off my game.
When I was halfway through my first sweater, I got up to turn on my bedroom lights. By the time Charlotte and I each had a finished product and Joss was a quarter way through her second, the sun had disappeared completely.
&nb
sp; Joss’s phone lit up. “Whoa, I have to leave. It’s almost five o’clock. My dad is here to get me,” she said, gathering her yarn. “You guys seem to have the hang of it. Text if you need help.” She opened the door just as Mom was about to knock.
I kicked my closet door shut so Charlotte was out of sight.
“Hello there, sweeties!” Mom said. Fudge strolled in with her. Waffles, who’d been asleep on my bed, picked his head up, then bounced over to my mother for a greeting.
“Hello. And good-bye!” Joss said. She looked back over her shoulder at me. Her eyes were like two silver dollar pancakes. She glanced my mother’s way to make sure she wasn’t watching before she mouthed OMG to me.
“Bye, Joss,” Mom said. Then to me, “How was your day? Did you get what you needed in Portland?”
“Yes. We got great stuff.” I gathered some of the yarn to show her.
Fudge went straight to my closet door and rubbed against it. Waffles sniffed at the floor in front of it.
“You know I’ve noticed the two of them have been spending a lot of extra time in your room lately.”
“You have?” What else was she starting to notice? My throw pillows and my afghan missing from my bed? The junk that used to be on the floor of the closet piled on my desk?
“Yes, haven’t you?” she asked me. “Waffles usually sleeps in our bedroom at night. I think maybe Fudge and Waffles are looking for more of your attention since Smoky moved in.” She looked at me. Was she waiting for an explanation?
“Maybe,” I said. I picked up Fudge and sat with him on my bed, distracting him with a piece of yarn. Waffles whined at the closet door.
“Listen to Waffles. He sounds jealous of the attention you’re giving to Fudge, too. What’s the matter, silly poodle? You feeling insecure with a new cat in the house?” Mom scratched his head, and Waffle’s tail swished against the floor.
I took a deep breath because it felt hard to breathe.
“Anyway,” Mom said, “did you eat the rest of the lasagna?”
“Um… I can’t remember.”
“How can you not remember? Either you ate it or you didn’t.”
Charlotte. “Oh, that’s right, I did. Sorry,” I said.
“Not to worry. I’ll figure something else out. I’ll call you when it’s ready. By the way, your favorite dad brought you cookie dough ice cream for dessert.”
“Yum!” I said, before my mom left and shut the door.
“You’re so lucky you have a nice dad,” Charlotte said in the saddest voice, from inside the closet.
She was right. I didn’t need any luck from her for that.
“My dad used to be nice. But now he doesn’t really care about any of us anymore,” Charlotte continued.
I opened my closet. Waffles bounced on Charlotte, licking her face. “Your dad does care,” I told her. But how did I really know that was true? I had never even met him before. I just couldn’t imagine my dad not caring.
“Well, he should act like he cares.” She nuzzled against Waffles. “I mean, I can’t picture my dad not living with us anymore. But I guess he can.”
A little while later when I sat down at the kitchen table, I didn’t feel much like eating my dinner, never mind my favorite ice cream. Charlotte’s sadness had my brain in a ball of spaghetti, all tangled up again with a batch of new worries.
I thought about her and her broken family. I wondered about runaway daughters and dads. I didn’t believe that Charlotte’s father was leaving because he no longer loved her and her brother and sister, but she totally believed it. And with Charlotte gone, her mom and the twins had two reasons to feel heartbroken. I felt sad for them. Because I knew how much it hurt to miss someone you loved. Even if they never meant to leave you behind.
CHAPTER
13
THE NEXT MORNING, SID SHOWED UP AT OUR apartment with a paper bag. Since I was taking Smoky with me to school, Dad didn’t want me stopping into the diner with a cat to pick up the breakfast he was making for Elle, Joss, and me.
“Here you go, Lizzy,” Sid said when I opened the door. “Bon appétit. And good luck with your cat sweater thing.” He turned and headed back down the stairs.
“Thank you,” I called after him. I unrolled the top of the paper sack. The bag was warm, and the smell of egg and cheese drifted up my nose and made me feel hungrier than I already was. The extra breakfast sandwich I had Dad make for “another friend” was in there, too. I brought it back to my room for Charlotte, who was still asleep. For a split second, I thought how lucky she was not to have to get up and go to school. Then I remembered why she was here.
I propped the sandwich against the closet wall so she (a) couldn’t miss it and (b) wouldn’t roll over and squish it.
In the kitchen, Smoky meowed. I bent down and poked my finger between the metal bars of the cat carrier and tickled his cheek. He sniffed my hand.
“It’s okay, sweetie. You’re only in here for a little bit. You get to come to school with me, you lucky boy.” The cat meowed again, and I felt a jolt of guilt that he was locked up. While I waited for my ride, I sat on the floor next to him and ate my breakfast, treating him to small little bits of egg and cheese.
The radio in Elle’s car blasted a bunch of metal noise.
“Hey, Smoky, buckle up,” Joss said, turning down the music.
“Hello, handsome,” Elle said to him.
“Breakfast, anyone?” I dropped the two sandwiches into the front seat as we drove off.
“Thanks,” they said.
“Elle, look,” I held my cat sweater up. “This is the one we’re going to model on him.” Smoky let out a meow, and we laughed at his perfect timing. He sniffed at the door to his cage, and I patted his velvety nose with my finger. “You can’t wait, can you?” I asked him.
Joss twisted herself around as much as her seat belt allowed her to. She pulled a yellow sweater out of her backpack and held it up. “I knit another one last night. This is for Ms. Santorelli’s cat. She said she wanted a bright color.”
“Nice,” I said.
Joss stuffed the sweater back in her bag and unwrapped her sandwich. She took a huge bite. “This is so good,” she mumbled with her mouth full.
A few minutes later, Elle pulled into the school drop-off lot and stopped. “See ya,” she said, as Joss and I slid out of the car. “Good luck, Smoky.”
We thanked her for the ride, and she drove off.
“We’re lucky we got permission to bring him in,” Joss said.
That was true.
East Thumb had only two schools: Central Elementary, K through sixth; and Central High, seventh through twelfth. Most sixth graders from bigger towns had a different teacher for every subject, but at Central Elementary, except for art, gym, and computer, we had one teacher for all the subjects. And we had a principal that was cool enough to allow a cat to visit.
“Do you think Smoky needs to wear a visitor’s badge?” I asked.
Joss laughed.
In class, everyone wanted to see the cat.
“Give him some space, please! He’s not a circus act.” I pulled the carrier behind my knees to give Smoky some privacy.
“Quit making him nervous,” Joss said to everyone.
“Where’s the sweater?” Cooper asked. “How come she’s not wearing one?”
“It’s a he,” I said. “And he’s not wearing it yet because we’re going to demonstrate how to put one on your cat.”
“I don’t have a cat,” Zoe said.
“I know you don’t. But you can always get a sweater for someone else’s cat. Or better, adopt a cat for yourself. They have plenty at the Lodge,” I said.
“My mom’s allergic,” she told me.
I shrugged.
“But I’ll get one for my cousin’s cat,” Zoe said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Ah! Our little guest of honor has arrived.” Ms. Santorelli knelt down and smiled into the carrier. Her dangling bead earrings, that she made
herself, swung slightly, and the glasses that she was always looking for were propped on the top of her head, like a headband in her awesome chin-length hair.
“I love this idea,” she said to Joss and me. She had already told us that our cat sweater fund-raiser for the Lodge was a perfect example of kindness. Because of us, she had created a giant “Heart the World” idea board in our classroom. She wanted the board to inspire the rest of the class to come up with their own ideas on how they could “spread around love and compassion to others.” She was participating, too. She was going to make and sell “Beads for Bread” bracelets and donate the profits to the East Thumb food pantry.
“Where’s your cat sweater poster for the board?” she asked us. “I want it up as inspiration. Let’s see in the next few days if we can fill up our board with some other great ideas!” she hollered out to the class.
“We’re still working on the poster,” I told her. “I’ll bring it in tomorrow.” With all the knitting and stuff with Charlotte, I hadn’t had time to make one.
“You two, wait right over there,” she said to Joss and me as she pointed to the front of the classroom. “After morning announcements, you’ll tell us all about the wonderful way you are helping out the animal shelter and sending love into the universe.” She walked to her messy desk just as the morning bell rang. Everyone but us sat down.
The vice principal droned on over the PA system about what time the science club would meet, and what was on Monday’s lunch menu. He recapped Friday night’s high school football win, which most of us had seen firsthand. I yawned.
“Has there been any more news about the fire? Like, who set it?” Joss whispered to me.
“I haven’t heard anything.”
Ms. Santorelli looked over at us and put her fingers to her lips.
When the announcements ended, Ms. Santorelli said, “All right, take it away, girls.”
Joss spoke first. “For the past year, Lizzy and I have been spending time at the Community Lodge for Cats & Dogs helping out. We mostly do stuff like play with the cats, and fold laundry.”
