Carry Me Home

by Janet Fox

  It was awfully early so she went to the food pantry because she knew it was open, and thought she could find something more to eat, plus get warm.

  Most of the food was canned or dried, but there were a few fresh things from time to time. Today they had carrots again. Lulu took a bunch of those plus a couple of juice boxes and a handful of granola bars. She couldn’t take anything that might spoil and she could only carry what would fit in her pack.

  The man was there, the one she recognized. She tried to avoid him but he saw how little she had taken and stopped her.

  “You need help?” he asked, not unkindly.

  Lulu put her best new-found acting skills to work. She squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “Nope.” Then she paused. “Maybe you can tell me where the social services office is.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Corner of Eighth and Main. But they’re closed weekends. Holidays, too.”

  Disappointment flooded Lulu, but she smiled and said, “I figured they would be. Just need to visit them next week. After the holiday.”

  He nodded. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

  It wasn’t good, and she wasn’t really sure why he’d said so. But she still smiled, and went on her way, her pack holding her food and all those newly made paper cranes.

  The social services building was a low brick structure set in a block of similar nondescript buildings. It was solidly closed. No cars were parked out front. There was no way Serena would be there now. Disappointment surged through Lulu.

  Lulu bit her lip. Was Serena scared? Was she lonely and worried? Was she still sick—or worse, even more sick?

  Stuck to the inside of the glass in one second-floor window of the building were paper hearts and flowers. Did Serena spend time in that room? Was that where other lost or rescued children spent time, too? Maybe a bunch of children showed up in that building at the same time and Serena had made friends. Or was that room just an office of someone who liked hearts and flowers and therefore must be a nice person who looked after Serena?

  Oh, Serena. Lulu thought her heart would break.

  This was Lulu’s fault. She hadn’t done things the right way. Laurie was right. Hiding their predicament wasn’t the best way to handle things. She should have asked for help. She should have searched for Daddy even though she didn’t know where to begin. Even though she’d thought that would be a bad idea. Even if she’d thought it was hopeless. But she could have asked for help from someone.

  No, that was the trouble, wasn’t it.

  After what happened with Mama, and then with Daddy disappearing that first time, and then with Aunt Ruth, Lulu didn’t trust any grown-up enough to ask them for help. That had been the trouble, the trouble that she’d felt for such a long time that it was a part of her.

  She felt it since the doctors looking after Mama had let her down.

  Since her daddy had gone away that first time and left her and Serena with Aunt Ruth.

  Since she’d overheard Aunt Ruth talking about what was to be done with Lulu and Serena.

  Since the incident at the drill site.

  Grown-ups were not to be trusted, she was sure of it. So she hadn’t. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. It was why she stood up. Why she stepped in. Why she…

  “Lulu?”

  Startled, she whipped around. “Deana?” The last person she expected to see.

  “What’re you doing here?” Deana asked.

  Lulu hesitated. “I was kind of hoping they’d be open. Even though it’s Saturday, I was just kind of hoping.”

  Deana looked past Lulu at the building. “Oh!” Then she said, as if she’d never seen the place before, “Social services. How come?”

  “Just… stuff. What’re you doing here?” Lulu asked back.

  Deana shrugged. “I wanted to get out of the house and I just started walking. I got kind of lost in thought.”

  “Oh.”

  They stood like that, shuffling on the sidewalk, until Lulu said, softly, “Want to walk to the park?”

  The public park was a grassy meadow, now brown and frosty, dotted with almost-bare trees and rough wood picnic tables, and there was a small playground. It was usually quiet because there were so many outdoor places around this Montana town for folks to choose from—streams and mountains and hiking trails and bike paths—but Lulu thought the park was beautiful, even now in the fall with the leaves coating the ground and the chill in the air.

  Deana tilted her head as if she hadn’t heard right. But then she said, her voice very small, “Sure.”

  47

  BY THE time they walked the seven blocks from the social services building to the park Deana had started to talk again, chattering as she always did. But she wasn’t chattering about clothing or her friends or even their writing stuff. She was chattering about her life.

  Deana was an only child. She had a black-and-white cat named Oreo. Her mom was not a great cook, but her dad was. She wanted to be an actress someday, and she loved to sing. She liked to ski in the winter and hoped for lots of snow. She was bored being alone, playing by herself on that Saturday morning so she went for a walk. She’d ended up on the corner of Eighth and Main and there was Lulu.

  Lulu listened, and didn’t say anything, except, “I love singing, too.”

  At that Deana chattered on about this music and that music and how much fun the play at school was going to be.

  So when Deana paused—by this time they were sitting side by side on the swings because the playground was empty—and asked, “What about your family and stuff?” Lulu was taken aback.

  But then she said, and it surprised her to say, especially to Deana, because it was the first time she’d ever said those words out loud, “My mama died.” She paused, and added, “A year ago.”

  There was a long silence that hung in the air like slow-falling snow. Like leaves, suspended. Then Deana said, her voice a hush, “I’m so sorry.”

  Lulu took a deep breath. “Thanks.”

  Then another silence. “What about your dad?” Deana said.

  “He’s…” and Lulu couldn’t finish. She waved her hand in the air.

  “Yeah,” said Deana, with a heavy sigh. “I get it. My dad is hopeless, but so’s my mom. Neither one of them really listens to anything I say.” She scuffed the dirt with her toe. “Maybe,” she said, with a funny note in her voice, “maybe I talk too much and that’s why they don’t listen.”

  “My dad does,” Lulu said. “Or, when he’s around…”

  “The trouble with dads is they get so busy trying to keep all the balls in the air. Trying to make a living. Trying to make everyone happy. Or that’s what mine says.”

  “Right,” Lulu said uncertainly. Was that what her daddy was doing? Trying to make everyone happy? Out somewhere trying to make a living? Was the work he’d been doing since they got here not enough? Were Lulu and Serena a burden, making his life harder? Is that why he left?

  Or did he leave because of the same kind of sadness he’d felt the first time he left? Or… had they finally caught up with him, the people in Texas that he owed all that money to, and was he running away from them again?

  Lulu’s chest tightened. She had to try to breathe.

  “You have any brothers or sisters?”

  “A sister,” Lulu said, and closed her eyes.

  “I wish I had a sister. Someone to talk to. I mean, I have friends, but they don’t really understand everything because they just… don’t,” Deana finished. “You know?” she said, shyly, glancing at Lulu.

  Lulu nodded, swallowing hard. “I know,” she whispered.

  There was another long silence. The sun was high; it was almost noon. The wind blew and the trees shed more and more leaves, leaves that twirled and turned and danced to the ground around them.

  Lulu opened her backpack and reached inside. “I’ve got carrots. And granola bars.”

  “Oh!” said Deana. “Cool!”

  They each ate one carrot and one granola
bar and drank one juice box, and though Lulu knew that would leave her less for later she didn’t care.

  As Lulu was closing her pack one of the paper cranes flew out. A bright blue crane. It flew out, swish-boom, like it needed to fly.

  “Ooo!” Deana said. The crane landed at her feet. Then she whispered, “That’s so awesome.” She bent and picked it up and turned it in her hand. “Did you make it?”

  Lulu nodded. Then swallowed. “You can have it.”

  “You mean it?” Deana looked like she’d never been given something so precious, and that made Lulu happy.

  Deana began to talk about the play again, and music, and some of the weight pressing against Lulu’s chest eased away. Just to talk about something else. Just to hear Deana chatter on about something else other than family. Just so Lulu could sit still and not talk and try not to think in the warm sun and cold wind and whirling leaves.

  The sun slid sideways, toward the west.

  Deana said, “I heard you practice.”

  Lulu stopped swinging on the swing. “What?”

  “I was there. When you and Jack practiced before the tryouts. I was thinking of practicing too and so I was behind the curtain and watched you guys.” Deana turned the paper crane in her fingers. “I knew then.” She paused. “You’ve got a really great voice.”

  Lulu swallowed.

  Deana stood up. “Listen. My mom and dad are probably both gone now. Dad is working, and mom has probably gone shopping. You want to come to my house?”

  A house. A real house. Did Lulu even deserve to be in a real house? She’d let her mama down. She’d let Serena down. She’d even let her daddy down, because she hadn’t looked for him, hadn’t searched him out, had, she suddenly realized, just now realized, in some part of her heart given up believing he’d ever come back, and that her standing up was more than important. It was essential. It was the only thing that mattered.

  But she’d failed. Serena was gone.

  “Okay?” Deana asked, watching Lulu.

  “Um…” she said.

  “C’mon. We can have cookies and I can show you my LOL Fashion Dolls. I’m collecting them all. Do you have any?”

  Fashion Dolls? Lulu thought of Serena. “You mean Barbie?”

  “The actual Fashion Dolls,” Deana said. “LOL, of course.”

  Lulu shook her head. “I don’t… know.”

  “Really? Gosh, we’ve got to find you one, just for you! C’mon, you can look at mine. Decide which one you want to buy. Or, hey. I can give you one to start.” She shrugged. “My mom’ll buy me another.” Deana stood up. She chattered the whole entire walk, all about her dolls, their names and everything and which one she wanted Lulu to have.

  When they reached Deana’s house, Lulu’s breath got stuck in her throat. The house had two stories. It was so long Lulu couldn’t see through the manicured autumn-colored shrubs to the far corner. It looked like something out of Ye Olde England—or the pictures Lulu had seen of Tudor-style cottages—with wood and stucco. The front door was decorated with dried corn and a couple of pumpkins. The back door was decorated by a doll who was supposed to look like a harvesting farm girl, complete with pitchfork.

  The whole house reminded Lulu of a fairy-tale princess house.

  Lulu stood on the threshold of the back door and stared down the long hallway. It was bright and clean and… home.

  Lulu had had a nice house once upon a time. A nice home. It was small, way way smaller than this, but it was nice, with its warm yellow globe light. This was something else, something grand, something she’d never even dreamed of living in, and Lulu couldn’t.

  “Deana. I’ve got to go.”

  “Really? You haven’t seen my Fashion Dolls collection yet. I wanted to give you Royal Bee.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “Oh.” Deana looked at the floor, and shoved her hands in her pockets. The paper crane, sticking out of her coat, slid out silently, winging softly to the floor. Like it wanted to fly again. “Okay. See you next week.”

  Lulu watched the blue crane. There it lay, on the floor. She was ready to pick it up. Ready to take it back if Deana didn’t want it. Deana didn’t seem to notice, one way or the other, and that broke Lulu’s heart a little.

  “Okay,” Lulu said, and stepped outside the fairy-tale princess house into the cold, wan sunlight of late afternoon, back into her reality.

  48

  LULU MADE her way back toward the library. The wind was biting, snaking right through her puffy coat, up the sleeves and down the collar. Her mind twisted like the leaves that whirled around her.

  Deana had a home, a nice home. Parents, too. Lulu had nothing now except the pack on her back.

  Her daddy had left, for the second time, left her and Serena without a word, left and hadn’t come back to the Suburban in which he’d hauled them to Montana and away from the only home they’d ever known. Now even the Suburban was gone and Lulu, walking alone down the sidewalk in a biting Montana wind, shifted without warning from sorrow to anger.

  “Sometimes people who are angry are really just scared,” she had told Serena. Now Lulu thought, Sometimes people who are scared get really, really angry.

  Lulu stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. She felt like she was one of those instant teakettles and what was inside her went from still to boiling. Even her skin got hot, so hot that she yanked the pack from her shoulders and opened her coat. As she did, a pale gray crane flew out from the top of the pack, landing on the sidewalk among the yellow aspen leaves.

  Lulu stared at the crane, her blood boiling, her heart pounding, and then she raised her foot and crushed the crane.

  She twisted her foot back and forth, and when she lifted it again, the crane was a gray paper ruin.

  Lulu blinked. She swallowed, hard.

  The heat inside her simmered, then settled, then lifted into the late afternoon sky, dissipating as suddenly as it had arisen.

  Lulu knelt down on one knee on the cold concrete. The crane’s neck was broken, its wings shredded. Lulu’s heart hurt. She felt like the crane. Broken.

  A single sob escaped her before she swallowed the rest.

  She touched the gray paper, as if it was a real bird, a baby robin maybe, fallen from the nest, or a cardinal that had smacked into the window as they sometimes did back in Texas. Lulu tucked the tips of her fingers underneath the broken wings.

  She lifted it and tried to straighten the wings, but only succeeded in adding another crease.

  Lulu handled the crane gingerly and returned it to the pack, laying it on top of the other cranes, snuggling it among them, a tiny hurt thing among colorful wings that gathered around the damaged gray bird, nestling it like a cradle, and Lulu’s heart ached.

  49

  WHEN LULU arrived back at the library, it was near to Saturday closing time. She figured she’d do what she did in the morning—hide in the bathroom until all was quiet and then climb back up to the bell tower.

  Only she didn’t figure on running into Ms. M.

  “Lulu!” said Ms. M, as Lulu was moving through the downstairs sections. “I missed you at the laundromat this morning!”

  Lulu turned. Right away she called on those new-found acting skills again. She put on a bright smile. “Hi, Ms. M!”

  Ms. M stood still and watched Lulu, a little wrinkle forming between her eyes. “You okay?”

  “Oh, sure!”

  Ms. M nodded very slowly. “Are you looking for a book? It’s almost closing time.”

  “Oh, gosh, is it? Yes, I need something for the rest of the weekend. Something funny.”

  “Come with me, then.”

  Ms. M gave her a couple of choices and Lulu picked one, checked it out, put it inside her pack, and, as she did, another crane flew out of her pack. Like it wanted to fly, too.

  This one was orange.

  Ms. M said, “Oh!” and bent and picked it up.

  Lulu’s breath caught.

  “This is lovely, Lulu,”
Ms. M said, and reached to hand it back to her.

  “You take it,” Lulu said fast. “For good luck.”

  Ms. M smiled. “Yes. I know that story.” Then a strange look passed over her. “Are you making lots of these?”

  “Oh, some,” Lulu lied. “A few.”

  Ms. M hesitated. “You sure you want to give this one up?”

  Lulu nodded. She’d already decided, after the car, after Deana. If Lulu made the cranes, they counted, no matter where they ended up.

  From the back of the library, someone turned out the big overhead lights. Ms. M said, “I guess it’s time to go home.”

  “G’night,” Lulu said, and, after another bright smile, made her way outside.

  First she walked down the street to the next block, then turned the corner and walked to the end, then turned back to where she could see the library’s parking lot. She watched Ms. M get in her car and drive away. Lulu waited a little longer behind a big old cottonwood, in case. She hugged her puffy coat tight around her chest as the wind began to pick up again, and at last Lulu walked back up the block and around to the back of the library.

  Where she waited in the growing shadows. Hoping beyond hope that the cleaning ladies were regular, even on Saturdays.

  They were.

  50

  LULU LET herself sleep late. The stacks of last week’s newspapers, spread out, made a pretty decent mattress so once she had fallen asleep—which was hard, again, with all those thoughts about Serena and her daddy and how Lulu had failed everyone and especially herself—but once she fell asleep she actually slept. The library was closed Sundays. And Monday was a holiday so it was also closed then. She’d have the whole place to herself, all day long for two whole days. It felt like a good dream, spending an entire two days in a place filled with books and no one telling her what to do, even if another part of her was trying to figure out what to do and trying not to be afraid.

  She discovered an abandoned charger in the break room that fit her iPod perfectly, which was good since she’d left her own charger in the Suburban, so she charged it up, and was able to listen to her favorite music again. She went from room to room, from section to section, exploring books. She pulled books out from the shelves just to see what they looked like inside, things with titles like New Kid (because that’s what she was) and My Life As An Ice Cream Sandwich (because it sounded fun). She spent most of her time in the children’s room, reading picture books, one after another.