by Susan Lubner
“It could have been a sign,” I said.
“The accident was not your fault—you know that, right? Even if that siren was a sign, how were you supposed to know that? And it wasn’t even your idea to go see a movie.”
“I don’t think the accident was my fault,” I said. “But now I look for signs that will give me a heads-up before stuff happens.”
“How do you know when you see one?”
“I feel it here.” I patted the place over my heart.
“What does it feel like?” Charlotte asked.
“It’s like a little pinch. Like butterflies, except in your heart, not your stomach.”
“It must be nice to know you can look for something out there,” Charlotte said, waving her arm above her head, “that can warn you to brace yourself.”
“Definitely,” I said. “Don’t you think life would be easier if you knew what was going to happen before it actually did? Like, take out all the surprises.”
“Yeah. Maybe just the bad ones, though. Not the good ones. That’s no fun,” Charlotte said. “Plus, it sounds like a ton of hard work, trying to figure out what everything means. Isn’t it tiring?”
I shrugged. I guess it did at times feel exhausting. But mostly it felt necessary. And safer. “I like having a heads-up for everything. Bad stuff so I can be prepared, and good stuff because if life stinks at the moment, it’s nice to know I have something to look forward to.”
“Maybe I should start looking for signs,” Charlotte said.
“You should.” I stared into the empty cup I was holding in my hands. “After the car accident, when my mom was really sad, I wanted to know if she would be okay. That’s when I started looking.”
“Where’d you look?”
“Sometimes the sky. Like, if the sunset was pink one day that meant Mom would be okay. Maybe not that very day, but eventually. Mostly I looked for signs in the puddle at the end of the alley. I’d leave the house for school and I’d say to myself, if the puddle at the bus stop is frozen, Mom will get happy again.”
“Was it frozen?”
“It took a while.”
“For it to be frozen? Or for your mom to get happy again?”
“Both,” I said. “It didn’t freeze until the middle of December. And Mom stayed sad until spring. But at least, according to the sign, I knew she’d be okay one day.”
“You got to look forward to it?”
“Yeah.”
Charlotte nodded. “Signs sound like hoping a little bit.”
“I guess. Except you get to pick what you hope for. A sign, it just is what it is. Like you. You were a sign.”
“Me?”
I reached forward and lifted her hand by her wrist. “I noticed this was a four-leaf clover the night I found you in my dad’s truck. I knew it had to be a sign that you were good luck.”
Charlotte tipped her head to the side like she hadn’t heard me right.
“Are you mad?” I asked.
“Why would I be mad?”
“I don’t want you to think that’s the only reason I helped you.”
“Why would I even think that? You helped me before you found me in the truck, right? You brought me food, and gave me your scarf.” Charlotte turned her eyes away from me. “But I’m not good luck,” she said. “Since you met me, a house burned down, your cat disappeared, and your dad had to go to the hospital.”
“The house burned, but you didn’t. My dad ended up being okay. I mean, my mom thought he was having a heart attack, and that wasn’t the case. And Smoky… I was scared when he disappeared that he’d be lost in the school walls. But he’s not. He found his way out.”
“Uh-huh,” Charlotte said. “But… this isn’t a four-leaf clover. That’s not what I drew. It’s 4 Greenleaf Lane,” she told me. “The address of the empty apartment. The building that burned.” She pointed in the direction where the apartment house used to be. “I drew it on my hand when I ran away so I would remember where to find it. It wasn’t ever meant to be an actual clover. Just four regular green leaves.”
It wasn’t a sign that she was good luck? I felt like I had swallowed a whole watermelon.
“Don’t worry, Lizzy,” Charlotte said. “If you think about it, it doesn’t change anything, does it? Everything still happened the way that it happened. And it does look like a four-leaf clover, right? You can still think of it as that if you want to.” Her words spilled out fast, like they were in a rush to make me feel better. I searched the trees for a branch bent in the shape of a smile, and then the dark sky for a cloud in the shape of something, anything to reassure me that it didn’t matter Charlotte’s clover wasn’t what I had thought it was.
“I’m sorry if you thought I could bring you good luck. I…” She stopped suddenly. Her eyes stretched wide. Her mouth opened as if she had hollered, “OH!” which she hadn’t. Then she said in a voice that was almost a whisper, “I’m sorry if you thought I could protect this baby.”
Those words sounded so awful I wanted to cover up my ears. It was like I had rolled my sadness and scary stuff and all of my problems into a giant ball and handed it off to Charlotte. Handed? How about chucked? Beamed? Did I really believe it was up to her to make sure my mom had a healthy baby? All because of a four-leaf clover that wasn’t even a four-leaf clover. The baby wasn’t due for another six weeks. How could I have expected Charlotte to stay that long, anyway? Away from her own family. I felt my face burn. I couldn’t look at her. I was such an idiot.
“I’m the one that should be sorry,” I said. “I just wanted… I hoped…”
“It’s okay to hope,” she told me. “I do that a lot, too.”
I nodded. I never realized it could hurt so much to breathe.
“Everything will be okay this time,” Charlotte told me.
“You can’t know for sure that it will,” I said.
“You can’t know for sure that it won’t. But you can hope.” And then she added, “So can I.”
Charlotte reached across and grabbed my hand. I squeezed it. She squeezed back.
Then we sat squished together, our hands still connected, staring out at the twinkling sky without saying a word until I finally asked, “Have you ever heard of refraction?”
CHAPTER
23
“WHAT’S REFRACTION?” SHE ASKED ME.
I explained about the sun shining into the front room of the apartment house and its light bouncing off the glass mirror or one of the glass doorknobs and onto the leaves.
“Oh. That started the fire?”
“Yes.”
“You knew this? When?” Charlotte asked. Her voice sounded calm, but her face looked like she was still processing everything I was telling her.
“I found out on Monday.” She deserved to know the whole truth.
“Monday?” she said. Her voice sounded rougher. I waited for her to be mad. Worse than mad. Furious. Boiling. Raging. Never wanting-to-have-anything-to-do-with-me-ever-again angry.
Her eyes closed slightly, and she tapped her fingers against her thigh. She turned her hand toward me so I could see the faded green leaves above her thumb. She tipped her head slightly and said, “You didn’t tell me because you thought I’d go home.”
“I know you probably hate my guts right now. I should have told you when I found out the night Sergeant Blumstein was here.” My heart was beating so fast I wondered if she could hear it. I didn’t want her to hate me, but I didn’t blame her if she did.
She shook her head. “I don’t hate you at all.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Charlotte pulled her head back slightly as if I had surprised her. “Because. I would have done the exact same thing,” she said.
My mouth fell open. “What do you mean?”
“If I had found you in my dad’s truck… if I thought you were good luck… if having you around could keep my dad from leaving me… us.… I wouldn’t have told you about the fire, either. I would do anything… anything… to get
my dad to stay.”
And she pretty much had. Running away was drastic. But so was hiding a person in your closet and keeping the truth from them so they’d stay there.
We both sighed. “I don’t know what do,” Charlotte said. “When I thought I couldn’t go home, I kind of wanted to. But I feel like as long as I’m away, my dad won’t leave.”
“It makes sense for you to go home,” I said.
“Does it?” she asked.
“You left so your dad would stay, but you’re gone. You’re still apart.” I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. “You still love your dad, don’t you?” I asked.
Charlotte sniffed and wiped her nose. With the back of her hand, she wiped at her eyes. “Yes,” she said.
“See,” I said. “Just because someone leaves doesn’t mean they stop loving you.”
Maybe it was the fresh air or the great view of the moon or the awesomeness of being up on a rooftop. Maybe Charlotte suddenly remembered that her father still loved her more than the bajillion stars above us… because she nodded her head yes.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“Okay,” I told her. And I meant it.
By the time the bell rang and we were in our seats, there was a short stack of small red hearts on everyone’s desk.
“What are these little hearts for?” Zoe asked, picking up her pile.
“We seem to be having some trouble filling up our board. I want to mention something important about what it means to ‘Heart the World,’” Ms. Santorelli announced to the class.
“What?” Cooper asked.
She pointed to the big heart in the center of the poster Charlotte had made for our Cozy Cat project. “Do you see how all these little hand-drawn hearts make up the one big heart? Well, little acts of kindness can add up and make a big impact, too, right?”
“I guess,” Cooper said.
Ms. Santorelli walked over to his desk, wrote the word help on one of his paper hearts, and pinned it to the board. “I saw you help Zoe wipe up that mess in the cafeteria yesterday,” she said. “Helping someone is ‘hearting the world.’” Kind of like what Bibi says about sticking your hand out when someone needs it, I was thinking.
“I get it,” Cooper said. “Good. Now I can quit trying to think of something big like a cat blanket or a port-a-potty.”
“It’s a port-a-cycle, jeez,” Zoe said.
“Sorry. I meant port-a-cycle.” Cooper wrote the word apologize on another heart and pinned it next to the one that said help.
Soon the little hearts filled in a lot of the empty space on the board.
Listen. Compliment. Smile. Share.
I sat at my desk tapping my pen while I thought about what to write.
Joss wrote the word wash. “I did the dishes last night, even though it was Elle’s turn. She had a test to study for.”
“That was nice of you,” I told her. But I still couldn’t think of anything to write on my heart. Until suddenly, the spaghetti in my brain wrapped itself around something totally obvious.
I thought about everything Charlotte and I had talked about last night on the roof. And the meaning of that heart-shaped puddle of spilled juice. It had been a sign. Not a sign of a defective heart… just one that wasn’t quite right… one that had been broken.
I put my pen down and carried my paper heart, still blank, to the board.
“That heart doesn’t say anything!” Cooper said as he watched me pin it up.
“Yes, it does,” I told him. It said a lot. Like why Charlotte left her home to save her family. And why I hid her, and the truth, to save mine.
“It says love,” I told him.
Ms. Santorelli had come up beside us. She saw the blank heart and smiled.
“That’s something all of us can do to pay it forward,” she said.
Then she wrapped her arms around me and squeezed with all her might.
I usually looked forward to Saturdays, but today Charlotte was leaving. I wasn’t looking forward to that at all.
We had decided that with the crowd we would draw for our fund-raiser, and Franny’s van blocking the view out the diner windows, it would be easy for Charlotte to slip away unnoticed.
Mom was at the diner with Dad, working today since Joss and I weren’t.
Charlotte had changed back into her own clothes, which I had washed for her to wear home. I handed her twelve dollars for her bus ticket.
“I’m going to pay you back. I promise,” she told me, stuffing the money in her pocket.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I pulled the directions to the bus station up on my phone and held the map up for Charlotte to see. “Just stay on Abbott all the way. It’s a ten-minute walk.”
“Thanks, but I know,” she said. “I got here, remember?”
“Sorry. I’m nervous,” I said.
“Me too,” she told me. “It’s going to be weird without my dad around. I probably won’t get to see him much anymore.”
“Remember what you said to me? That everything will be okay?” I asked.
“But I’m scared.”
I grabbed both her hands. “You’re the bravest person I know. You slept in an empty house and in a truck.”
Charlotte shrugged. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. “I was going to let you find it on your own, but I changed my mind.” She ducked into my closet and sat down.
“What is it?” I asked, peeking inside.
“Come in here.” She shifted over to make room for me, patting the floor beside her. The closet hardly had room for one of us, never mind us both. I squished myself into the small space next to her.
“I hope you like it,” she said. Charlotte swept my hanging clothes out to the sides so they parted in the middle like curtains.
The first thing I saw were the colors from one side of the wall to the other. A bajillion of them. Like, every single color that ever existed. Then I saw me, giant compared to everything else she had drawn. I was stretched out on my side. I was pink-cheeked, and my face was a mix of blue and red, purple and brown. Reuben stood on my hip wearing a Cozy Cat sweater.
“I drew sweaters on the cats before you switched over to blankets,” she explained. Fudge was there, too. He leaned against me, his face rubbing mine.
“Did you ever actually meet Reuben?” I asked her. Except for at night, Reuben spent most of his days under a bed or a chair.
“Not really,” Charlotte said. “I saw him a couple of times when I went to use the bathroom. I knew it was him and not Fudge because he always bolted when he saw me. But of course I’d put him in the mural. I wouldn’t leave any of your family members out.”
“Awww,” I said.
Behind me, Charlotte had drawn the diner. Above it was a pink sky and a smiling sun that looked like it was melting. Through the windows of the diner, people sat on stools at the counter. There were small plates of sunny-side up eggs, and their yolks were smiley faces, too. There was a stack of pancakes, glasses of OJ, itty-bitty forks and knives and napkins. I looked closer. On the pancakes, a little pad of butter was a melting sun that matched the one she had drawn in the sky.
I saw our rooftop porch, with a small bench, and two pots, filled with tomatoes hanging from bright green vines.
My mom stood on the top of the roof, cradling a baby. Standing beside her was my dad, in an apron so white it practically glowed. I hopped onto my knees and leaned in to touch it. Just white wall left untouched in the shape of the apron.
“How did you do that?” I whispered. Dad held a spatula above his head, like he was fist-pumping, Yes! I made it to the top! Waffles sat beside him, a dot of pink tongue hanging out of his mouth. I looked at my dog sound asleep on my bed. “Come see yourself,” I said to him. But he kept on snoozing.
“Do you like it?” she asked me.
“Like it? I LOVE it!”
“Did you see Smoky?” Charlotte pointed to an outside corner of the diner that looked like a hole in the wall. Smoky was
inside, next to a little TV and a small bowl of milk.
“He was watching TV all that time?” I asked.
“Who knows, right?” She laughed. “I’m there, too,” she said.
“Where?”
“Not telling. You have to find me.”
I looked where she had drawn my bedroom window, but I didn’t see her.
“Where are you?”
“Keep looking,” she said. “You found me before, you can find me again!”
My eyes wandered over and over the tiny drawings. A vase of flowers on a table, a napkin dispenser, the small OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign hanging in the window. I couldn’t find her.
“Hey!” Joss called out.
I poked my head out of the closet. “In here!” I said. Smoky followed her into my room.
“Hey, Smokes,” Charlotte said. “Hi, Joss.”
Joss carried some Cozy Cat blankets, which she set down on the floor next to my desk. “What’s going on in there?”
“Come see,” I said. I scooted out of the closet so she could get a look.
“Wow! Charlotte, you did that?” Joss asked. “Can I have your autograph just in case we don’t cross paths again before you become famous?”
“We are so going to cross paths,” I said. “We’re already trying to figure out a plan for how we’ll pretend to meet for the first time.”
“Make sure I’m there. I want to meet you for the first time, too,” Joss said, her eyes still wandering over the mural. “Now, I have something for you,” she said. She pulled Charlotte out of the closet and over to the mirror hanging above my dresser. “I looked through my stash of scarves for the one with the loosest stitches. You need good breathing holes because you’re going to have to stay covered up for a while. We don’t want you to suffocate.”
“Well, thanks.” Charlotte laughed.
Joss wrapped the scarf up Charlotte’s face, stopping just below her eyes. I shoved a hat over her head and tucked in every last piece of her red hair. I handed her an old pair of Mom’s sunglasses that I had in my desk drawer from Halloween.
