Mom covers her eyes, turns toward the wall, and, loudly but slowly, begins to count. “One … two …”
On three, sure that she is counting, I run to the living room and crouch beside the couch, shutting my eyes tight. With my eyes closed, I’m invisible.
The counting stops at ten. I hold my breath, and wait. And wait.
“There you are, Aubrey!”
I squeal and she scoops me next to her, squirming her fingers against my tummy. “You know, I can still see you if you have your eyes closed.”
“You hide now!” I say.
“Count,” Mom says.
I cover my eyes.
“One … two … three …”
After ten, I open my eyes, and look around.
The living room looks empty.
I check behind the couch.
I check in the coat closet.
She isn’t there.
“Mama! Mama!” I call softly. I peek around the dining room door. She’s not behind it. I look in the kitchen’s lower cabinets. She is not in them.
I wander, starting to feel panicked. Where is she?
I open the hall linen closet by the bathroom, but there are just sheets and towels. I pull back the shower curtain. No Mama.
I may cry. But this is a game, after all, so I keep looking. I open the door to Mom and Dad’s room. There is a lump under the covers on the bed, waiting. I yell as I jump onto it.
“Aubrey!” she says, laughing, but with hints of scolding in her voice. “Remember Savannah. Think of your sister.”
I snuggle against her.
“How about we sleep, too, while Savannah sleeps?” she asks. I have given up naps and that sounds boring, but Mom sounds so tired, and if she doesn’t play with me, it will be no fun.
“Okay, Mama, we’ll wait for Savannah,” I say, and close my eyes.
I think for a minute.
“Mom? You were playing, right? You weren’t sneaking to have a nap?”
Mom peeks her eyes open at me and smiles. “I knew you would come find me.”
Soon we heard the wet rush of moving water.
“There’s a river up here?” I asked.
“It’s below us,” Bridget said. We had to climb on steep rocks to see it, but she was right; on the other side of the rocks was a pleasant tumble of water. Bridget watched as I took my envelope for Jilly and found a way to climb down the rocks. I leaned over the river and placed the letter between two rocks, then climbed back up. Bridget and I watched until Jilly’s letter got swept away.
Bridget opened her backpack and took out sandwiches and water bottles. After lunch we sat quietly watching the water. I drew my knees up and rested my head on them.
After some time I said, “I need to find my mother.”
Bridget did most of the talking on the way down. She tugged my hand again, until I let go.
By the time we got back, our legs were sore, and it was starting to get cooler out.
“Want to have a sleepover?” Bridget asked.
“Okay. Where?”
“I don’t know. Want to camp out?”
“In the woods?”
“In our yards.”
We decided to camp out on Gram’s porch, because at least it had a roof if it rained, and if any animals came, we could go right inside quick. Bridget’s mom and dad said it was okay, so Gram ordered us a pizza and helped us set up blankets for padding under our sleeping bags. We watched the sky turn colors and become night. We watched the stars and fireflies come out.
Gram came out to say good night. She added, “I’ll leave the living room light on to shine through the window so it won’t be so dark. You girls sleep well, and by all means, call for me if you need anything.”
Bridget and I chorused, “Good night!”
At Bridget’s house someone had left on the outside light by the back door so that she could go home if she wanted to.
When Gram was gone, Bridget turned her sleeping bag to put her head on my stomach. She let down her ponytail so that her hair lay loose across my sleeping bag. I ran my fingers through it. I couldn’t help it, it was so shiny and flowy. When I stopped, I just looked up at the sky that I could see off the porch. I usually didn’t take time to look at the stars. Tonight it looked like someone had blocked out all the light with black cloth and made pinholes for it to shine through. Thinking of the sky that way made it seem small and close, different from the faraway blue of daytime.
“What’s going to happen when we go to school?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You must already have friends,” I said.
“Not really,” Bridget said. “Some, but I came here in the middle of the year last year, so mostly people already had friends. And now we’re moving up to middle school, so there’ll be different kids. I’m glad you’ll be at school with me.”
“I was afraid you’d have all these friends, and wouldn’t want to be my friend, too,” I admitted.
“You know,” Bridget giggled, “I was afraid you would make all these new friends and not want to be friends with me.”
And then we both laughed, our secret worries released and canceled out. It felt good to have Bridget there, to feel her against me. I wished to stay just like that forever, in the nice parts of summer we had shared, playing and, now, looking at the stars.
Dear Jilly,
I hadn’t really been helping anyone look for Mom. She’s the mom. It’s supposed to be her job to keep track of me, right? But maybe she needs help, and maybe she is waiting for me. I just don’t know how to help.
I start school tomorrow. I think you know what day it is.
Love,
Aubrey
“It’s my birthday! Get up, get up, get up!”
Savannah’s light body slams into mine, jumping, her knee bones and elbows bumping my hips and shoulders.
“Ow! Get off!”
“It’s my birthday! My! Birth! DAY!”
“I’ll get up later.”
“I! Am! Seven! Seven, seven, seven!”
An alarm clock rang.
I didn’t have an alarm clock.
I sat up. I was at Gram’s. She must have put a clock in my room. I groaned and lay back down.
Gram burst into the room, ran for the alarm, and clicked it off.
“Didn’t you hear the alarm?”
“Yes,” I mumbled into my pillow.
Gram snapped up the plastic shades, letting in the too bright morning.
“You have school.”
“I know.”
“Get ready.”
She left me alone.
I walked to the bathroom. I stood over the toilet, staring at the water, wondering whether I wanted to be sick. I decided I didn’t.
I brushed my teeth, got dressed, gathered my school things, and went downstairs.
Gram handed me two brown paper bags.
“One’s lunch. The other is blueberry muffins for the bus. You’d better go meet Bridget. The bus will be here soon.”
Gram followed me out to the porch. She felt like an opposing magnet behind me, pushing me invisibly away from her without touching me.
Bridget and her family were already outside. Apparently, the bus would pull up in front of her house. Mabel ran around, shouting, “School school school school!”
“Mabel’s going to preschool today,” her mom explained. “We’re driving her there later.”
I looked for something to say. “I brought us muffins.”
Bridget’s mom looked at me, her smile fading from cheerful to sad. “That was a good idea.”
“It’s coming!” Bridget shouted.
The bus rumbled up our bumpy road. It was already full of children.
“Bye, Bridgie!” Mabel shouted, not breaking the circle she was running. Bridget’s parents, her dad holding Danny, kissed Bridget’s cheeks. She boarded the bus, and her dad snapped a picture with his free hand. Bridget turned at the top step and called to me, “Come on, Aubrey!”
Gram kissed my temple and gave a gentle push on my backpack. “Have a good day, sweet.” Bridget’s mom set a light hand on my shoulder as I climbed onto the bus.
Bridget led us to the middle of the bus, where there was an empty seat. She paused so that I could move past her to the window and hopped in beside me. We put our backpacks where our feet should be, our feet on the vinyl seatbacks in front of us. We picked at our blueberry muffins, starting at the sugar-crusted tops and working our way down. Bridget turned toward the aisle a few times to join in conversations. After a lifetime of sitting, it felt, we pulled up to the school-bus drop-off.
“You ready?” Bridget asked.
I was still staring out the window.
“She didn’t say anything about her,” I said.
Bridget didn’t ask what I meant. She looked at me, then patted my bare knee. “Come on!”
We scooted off the bus and joined loose lines of kids parading to the school building. I didn’t know where to go.
“Go to the office,” Bridget said. “They’ll give you a schedule. We got ours on the last day of school.”
Bridget came with me to the office and greeted the secretaries. I mumbled my name and that I needed a schedule. One of the ladies behind the front desk handed one to me, then looked down at my name on the paper again, snapped her gum, and sifted through a pile of papers.
“This is for you, too.” She passed me a folded pink note.
“Uh, thanks,” I said. I opened the note. “I have a meeting with Amy Carlisle tomorrow,” I said. “Who’s that?”
“Guidance counselor,” the secretary answered, not looking up.
Goody.
Bridget and I left the office.
I focused on what I needed to do. I scanned the schedule: Homeroom—Language Arts, Ms. Engleheart, Rm 230.
“Where are you?” I asked Bridget.
She pulled her schedule out. “Math. Mr. Holt. Room one-twenty.”
I started down the hall, seeing lockers and wondering if we would hear about getting our lockers in homeroom. I hadn’t had a locker before. We passed rooms 118, 119, 120.
“That’s me,” Bridget said. “I guess I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Bye.”
Bridget went into the classroom and left me standing alone in the hallway. I mean, I wasn’t alone, there were tons of kids running around, but I didn’t know them, so I was alone.
I followed a few kids upstairs and found room 230. I didn’t talk to anybody and just slid into a desk attached to a chair. I took my ponytail out for something to do, but also so that my hair would fall over my scar. That way, it wouldn’t be the first thing everyone saw when they met me.
Most of the kids in the room were leaning against the desks, talking to each other. I could tell the leaning had something to do with showing they were cool. A lot of the girls had loose hair hanging in their faces. I was pretty sure they didn’t have scars to hide, too. Even some of the boys had longer hair. One boy was running around the room, kind of acting like a little kid. He grabbed a hat off someone’s head, an invitation for a chase, but the other kid just grabbed the hat back the next time the boy ran past. One of the girls shook her head as she watched him, sighing, “Marcus…”
The bell rang and the teacher came in—Ms. Engleheart.
“Sit down, everyone….” She nodded to the boy called Marcus to stop running.
Some people groaned as they realized they were stuck sitting in the front of the room.
Ms. Engleheart went through the homeroom business first. She called the roll, assigned locker numbers, took lunch registrations, made announcements. Then she switched to language arts business and handed out our textbooks.
“You won’t need these tonight,” she said. “Tonight you are going to do the classic first-day assignment. It will be a letter to me, to help me get to know you, and also to help you get used to writing after a sleepy vacation. Can anyone guess the assignment?”
A boy raised his hand.
“Mr. Cho?”
“How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” he recited.
“Excellent. Yes. For homework tonight, please write me a letter on the subject: How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”
Super. That sounded like the best assignment ever. I decided I hated Ms. Engleheart as the boy in front of me passed back the printed list of course expectations.
Dear Ms. Engleheart … I spent my summer vacation wondering where my mother is….
My mother … Dad … Savannah. I hadn’t thought of her, not since I had gotten off the bus. I hadn’t been thinking of my sister on her birthday but of other things, things that didn’t matter.
I hated myself a little, too.
“Bridgie! Bridgie! Listen to me about school!” Mabel shouted, running to us when we got off the bus.
“Later, Mabel,” said Bridget. “I want to hang out at Aubrey’s.”
“I’ll come!” said Mabel.
“No,” said Bridget. “Go away.”
“But I want to tell you—”
“No,” said Bridget. “I want to talk to Aubrey about school.”
Mabel scrunched up her face, burst into tears, and ran back inside.
“Go,” I said to Bridget. “Go be nicer to Mabel. I have to do my homework, anyway.”
As I walked to Gram’s, she came out onto the porch.
“How was it?”
“How was what?” I asked. My backpack was heavy with new-to-me but already-old-and-used schoolbooks. I held the bag low in front of me, kicking it as I walked.
“How was it? How was school?” Gram asked, looking concerned.
“School stinks.”
Gram sighed and followed me up the steps and into the kitchen. She’d fixed a snack of crackers and cheese.
“Your favorite,” she pointed out.
“I know,” I said. I consented to the snack idea and sat down, immediately feeling better as my teeth slid slowly through the soft orange cheese and then broke the cracker with a quick snap. Gram poured a glass of cranberry-grape juice.
“Lunch was okay?”
“Yeah, it was fine.”
“Did you sit with Bridget?”
“Yes.”
Gram sat down with her own glass of juice. “Now. Why does school stink?”
“Homework,” I said.
“Homework is normal,” Gram said. “What do you have?”
“I have reading and questions for science, a page of reviewy stuff for math, and a map to memorize for social studies.”
“You can handle all that.”
“And. And I have to write a letter.”
“A letter?”
“A letter: How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”
“Oh. Ohh,” said Gram again, understanding. “You can handle that, too.”
“I don’t want Mzzz Anglebreath to—”
“Mzzz Anglebreath?”
I shook my head, warning her not to get mad at me right now.
“You don’t have to tell her about everything you did this summer. Just pick one little thing to tell her. Tell her about, I don’t know, riding the train or meeting Bridget. She doesn’t have to know anything you don’t want her to, and you don’t have to write about anything you don’t want to.”
Just like you aren’t talking about her today, I thought.
“Gram?”
“What, sweetie?”
“Do you think you can take me to a toy store?”
“Yeah, we can go right now. I’ll get my purse.”
I had money, eighty dollars, in my sock drawer upstairs. But if Gram was willing to pay, that was better, because who knew when I would be on my own again and need it.
We drove to a toy store. Gram handed me a twenty and sat in the car so that I could go in by myself. I looked and looked, up and down all the aisles, and finally I decided on a board game. It came in a container the size of a shoe box, not a flat game box. The players were princesses, and you had to collect jewels for your crown by an
swering questions, and make your way through a forest. It cost $12.99. The most important thing was that it said on the side of the box Ages 8–12. The guy at the counter put it in a bag, and I went back to the car.
Gram didn’t ask what I had bought. She drove us home. When we got there, I went to the upstairs hall closet and got the green-and-blue-striped wrapping paper out, and wrapped the present on the floor of my bedroom. I carried it downstairs to the kitchen and set it on the table.
Gram had been at the counter having a glass of water. She put the glass down and left the room for a minute. When she returned, she carried a box wrapped in the same paper. She set it on the table next to mine.
“I’ve had it awhile,” she said.
I didn’t want her to say anything.
Savannah would walk in the door, see the presents. Shake them. Ask to open them now.
After dinner, Gram would say. Dinner would be frozen chicken fingers baked in the oven, and then white cake with pink frosting.
I fixed my eyes on the kitchen doorway, willing her to walk through it.
Try, Savannah, try. You might still be okay, if you want to be.
My eyes started to get swimmy. Gram set a hand on my shoulder.
“Aubrey,” she said gently.
“I just thought it would help, the present… so she would know … I didn’t forget.”
“She knows, darling. She knows.”
I looked at the two presents. “What should we do with these?”
“Put them in the attic,” Gram said.
I didn’t question her reasoning, but I scooped up the presents and carried them carefully upstairs.
Daddy stands in the doorway. Then he bursts into a big smile, rushing into the room and scooping me up in his hands and throwing me into the air.
“She’s here, Aubrey!”
“Who’s here?”
“Your sister! She was born! Just two hours ago! She and Mama are sleeping at the hospital, but come on, let’s get your shoes, we have to go see them!”
I hurry to get my shoes. I am happy. I am happy to leave the neighbors’ house, because they have a big, furry, barky dog and because the house smells like tacos even though no one is making tacos, but I am also happy because Daddy is so happy. I have never seen him this happy, this excited.
I grab a pink tennis shoe and shove my foot into it, but it is the wrong foot and Daddy has to pull my foot back out again and find the other shoe. When he stoops down to help me, he doesn’t bend his legs enough at first and ends up falling on his bottom. We look at each other and start laughing. I jump on him, knocking him down the rest of the way. He kisses my cheek and sets me back upright. “Hurry!” he reminds me. “We have to get to the hospital. You have to meet your sister!”
Love, Aubrey Page 7
