by Beth Vrabel
“And you’re a fantastic mayor,” I said. Even though he was actually the first mayor I had ever met. And so far, all I had seen him actually do was visit a tree and drink milkshakes. But still, he had my vote. If I could, you know, vote.
Mayor Hank grinned, and I caught a glimpse of the boy again. He stood up and held out a hand to help me up. “You know, it’s pretty unprofessional of me, there. To share all that with you, especially since I heard you’re entering the contest. I hope you won’t make note of all that silly Gretel stuff.”
I crossed my arms and knocked him with a glare. “Mayor Hank! There is nothing silly about love. But I won’t write it down.”
As Mayor Hank got up and strode away, I realized I hadn’t smelled the Sinkville stink all day. “Mayor Hank!” I called to his back.
He turned, too far away for me to see his face. I rushed toward him. “You should tell her. Plan another picnic.”
He flapped his hand in the air like he was pushing away a gnat. “Too much time has passed.”
“She told us you don’t back down from things you care about. If you still like her, you should tell her.”
Kerica and Tooter wandered over as Mayor Hank left. She handed me the notebook, complete with an incredible sketch of the Sycamore. I quickly scribbled Mayor Hank’s words on the next page.
“This tree,” Kerica said, her eyes wrinkled, “it freaks me out. Did you know the Native Americans believed sycamores were cursed by evil spirits and that’s why they’re so twisted? That the trees suck up all that’s wrong? I read about it.”
“Of course you did,” I laughed and patted the spot beside me where Mayor Hank had been a minute earlier. Tooter curled up on my lap. Kerica sat down next to me, eventually leaning against the trunk but without the ease that Mayor Hank had. Even though it was still steamy hot outside, the air was cooler under the tree and smelled fresh as laundry straight from the dryer.
I got sunscreen out of my bag and spread it on my arms and face. I fanned myself with my sunhat since we were in the shade. “I’m sorry I never thought about what you and Gretel were saying. About how things used to be. That must be hard to think about.”
For a few seconds, I worried I had said something stupid. Kerica’s arms crossed and she half-turned from me. Then she huffed out of her nose and sat back. “It’s hard to think about how things were for my grandma. I mean, I can understand why she’s so set in her ways, you know? So closed off.”
I nodded.
“And things are so much better than they used to be. But they’re still hard.”
I put my arm around my friend. “Do you mean what you said earlier, about not fitting in?”
“Yeah.” Kerica shrugged. “It’s kind of tough to talk about.”
“First rule about being best friends: we can talk about anything. Like the fact that you’re an awesome artist. I didn’t know about that, either.”
“It’s not artwork,” Kerica said, her head drooping. “It’s just doodling. It doesn’t count.”
I pulled out the paper placemat I had folded and slipped into my back pocket with the notebook. I smoothed it on my lap. “Sure it does,” I said. “You just need someone to notice it. And soon the whole town will, too. Will you sign it for me?” I handed her my pen.
“Don’t be stupid,” Kerica laughed. “I’m not signing a placemat!”
“Well, don’t think of it as an autograph. Just write your name and phone number on it. Now that we’re officially best friends, we’re going to need some non-library talk time.”
“I’d like that,” Kerica said. She wrote her number, and I promised to call her that night.
“I’ve been thinking,” Kerica said after a long pause, “about your mom.”
“What about her?” I asked, my heart thumping for some reason.
Kerica shifted. “I saw the books my mom was pulling for her at the library.”
“About schools for the blind?” I snapped.
But Kerica shook her head, the beads in her braids clicking gently as she did. “No, not those.” She peeled bark off a fallen twig. “About depression.”
I bit my lip. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like I could say anything. In those two words, all that I had been feeling—being lost in other people’s stories—was gone. Only my story was left, a story about a girl on her own because her mom was too sad to be a mom.
“I’m sorry,” Kerica whispered, so softly I could barely hear her. This time, she was the one who shuffled closer to me. I let my head tilt so it fell against her shoulder.
“I just wish I could talk to her,” I said. And that my chin wasn’t so wobbly.
“Maybe she needs to be the one to talk first.”
Mrs. Morris and Kerica gave me a ride home that afternoon. James wasn’t home and Mom was resting. So I repeated in my head, Advocate for myself! and tackled the laundry. Mom used to stack our clean clothes in piles according to the drawers they went into. All the socks and undies on top, then pj’s, then shirts, then shorts, so we could just grab a stack and put them away. But some other people in this house could learn to advocate for themselves, it seemed. I stacked the clothes according to how I pulled them out of the basket. They were wrinkly from being in the basket too long, and I’m not so great at folding. I just sort of folded the T-shirts over and rolled the socks into balls.
“When did you start doing the laundry?” James grumbled when he got home a few minutes later.
“I put a load in this morning. Out of underwear again,” I shrugged, acting like me doing laundry wasn’t a huge deal when it totally was.
I pushed his stack of clothes on the coffee table toward him.
When he came back into the living room, he had a dust rag and some spray.
“Can’t let you have all the fun,” he said. “Pretty soon even you’re going to see the dust.”
I laughed and threw a sock at his head but of course he batted it out of the air. Next thing I knew, my head was covered by a shirt he had snatched from the basket. I pretended I was about to spray him with dust spray, and he tackled me. Tooter jumped on top of James and snarled, making both of us stop for a second. Then the dumb dog twirled in circles, like twenty times. All those clean clothes flew everywhere, but we were laughing too hard to care.
Both of us were smiling as we picked up the clothes and refolded them. That is, until James spotted Mom standing in the doorway. His smile vanished, his arms stiffened, and he shuttered up again.
Mom gave me a small smile and then headed back to her room.
A little later, when James’s bedroom door slammed shut and the house became too quiet, I went into Mom’s room. There was a medicine bottle on her nightstand with a glass of water beside it. Light seeped in through the cracks in the mini blinds. Mom was covered with blankets, a mound on the left side of the bed.
I crept into her bed, curling against her back and wrapping my arm around her. For a long time, she didn’t move. But after a while, she rolled so we faced each other. She pulled the blankets up over me, too.
I was still snoozing, somewhere between being awake and being asleep, when I realized Mom was talking to me in a hushed, whispery voice, “. . . doctor’s a couple weeks ago. I got some medicine. It should start working in a week or two. I’m already feeling a little better . . .”
I burrowed closer to Mom, snuggling my head between her face and shoulder.
“I’ve been blue before, but never this long. I’m so sorry, sweetie. I love you. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I whispered back, or maybe I just thought it as I fell back asleep.
When Dad came in and flipped on the lights, I couldn’t believe a whole hour had passed. Was this the way it was for Mom all day? Time passing by while her eyes were closed. I thought she’d be grouchy; she never had liked waking up. But she pulled me closer and squeezed. I knew she was smiling, even though I couldn’t see her face.
“Hey, sleepyheads!” Dad chirped. “Anyone want some dinner?”
/> We went to the Williams Diner even though it was a Tuesday and we never went out to dinner on a Tuesday. “Twice in one day!” Gretel said as I walked in. I just grinned as Dad’s face flushed. Guess he thought she was talking about him.
Mom and James stood transfixed at the door. “I know,” I whispered to them. “Sounds just like Grandma, doesn’t she?” They glanced at each other with wide eyes. They looked so much alike, I had to smile. I led them to the booth. “Miss Gretel, I think my mom could use a PB&J shake. Extra coconut.”
“Coming right up, Alice!”
Soon I was sipping my second shake of the day, thinking life in Sinkville wasn’t too bad after all.
And then Sandi came into the diner.
Chapter Ten
F or a while after I was born, Mom became a freelance writer. She traded journeying around the world with an internationally famous magazine for assignments from the local newspaper. At first, Mom hired babysitters and worked like she always had—interviewing her subjects face-to-face. But the salary was terrible and after paying the sitter, there was little left. So she did phone interviews instead, planning them around my naps and James’s TV time.
One day, Mom was interviewing a surgeon about a new technique in cardiac medicine. The interview was not going well. Mom had figured the phone interview would last about a half-hour, just long enough to describe the new method, but instead the surgeon had spent that amount of time and longer asking Mom questions about her background, her experience in journalism, and her methods of ensuring she was getting correct information from her sources before it was printed.
Mom knew she had to wind up the interview quickly as James began slamming toy trucks together at her feet. She frantically waved her hands in front of her and shook her head as James stood and came closer with a big grin on his slobbery face. The surgeon heard the clicking of the laptop keys suddenly stop and said, “Can you repeat back to me what I just said?”
“Um, let me check,” Mom murmured.
And that was when little James very politely, very courteously leaned into the phone and said, “In a moment, I’m going to need you to wipe my butt.”
The surgeon hung up.
That was the last day Mom wrote for a newspaper or a magazine. She used to keep journals for us, but she stopped writing in those, too.
Before Sandi and her mom came into Williams Diner, I thought about that. Maybe what Mom needed wasn’t a job like the work-from-home and cafeteria chef positions I had circled in that newspaper.
Maybe she needed to find stories and write.
“There she is!” Sandi shouted and pointed to me. “She’s the one whose dog assaulted me!”
James spit a mouthful of shake out onto the table as Mom and Dad gasped. “Is she talking about Tooter?” he laughed.
I felt blood rush to my face, making me feel like I was boiling from the inside out as every face in the diner turned to look at me. “It wasn’t an assault,” I said. “It was just a little peeing and growling.”
Sandi yanked her mom’s arm toward us. She was maybe a half-foot taller than Sandi, with the same bright blonde hair. Only where Sandi’s was pulled back into a smooth ponytail, her mom’s was in a tightly twisted bun. She wore a white suit with navy trim and it fit her perfectly. I had a feeling that’s not the type of thing you could buy off a rack at the department store.
“I understand that we have a situation,” she said in clipped tones.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Dad replied. He half-stood in the booth and put out his hand. “I’m Ted Confrey, and this is my wife, Dana.”
Sandi’s mom stared at Dad’s outstretched hand for a few uncomfortable seconds before taking it in her own. “Elizabeth McAllister.”
“Please, have a seat and bring us up to speed.” Mom gestured to the table next to our booth but Mrs. McAllister didn’t make a move to sit down. Just slightly behind her, Sandi crossed her arms and glared at me. She crossed her legs, I’m sure just so we could see the large Band-Aid across her shin.
“What is going on?” James snapped.
Elizabeth McAllister’s chin bopped into the air as she stared down at us, like the very sight of our family disgusted her. “What’s going on is that earlier today I was interrupted during a very important business meeting by my traumatized daughter.”
All of our heads—and I mean everyone’s head in the entire diner—swiveled to look toward Sandi, who looked triumphant, not traumatized.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dad said, obviously confused. “But I’m still not sure what that has to do with us or Tooter.”
“Tooter?” Mrs. McAllister snipped. “That’s what you call the beast that attacked my daughter?”
“There’s that word again. Attacked. Could you maybe expand on that a bit?” Uh-oh. Mom was getting mad. Her own chin tilted sky high.
“He peed on me!” Sandi burst in, pointing to her leg. “And growled at me!”
Again, James spit milkshake across the table. Across the diner, patrons half-coughed, half-laughed into paper napkins.
Elizabeth McAllister turned back to us and pointed at Sandi’s bandaged leg. “The dog also scratched her leg. It left a mark.”
“Every scratch leaves a mark.” There I go with the mouth diarrhea again. Dad stared at me with his mouth hanging open and James bumped my foot under the table. “He was just putting his paw back down,” I said a little softer.
Elizabeth McAllister crossed her slender arms and glared down at us all. I squirmed in my seat.
“Alice,” Dad said in his extra stern Dad-voice, “what do you have to say about this?”
I peeked through my lashes at Mom, who seemed to be keeping her mouth closed with a lot of effort. “Um,” I muttered, “Sandi was laying on the grass, so maybe Tooter was just confused . . .”
“Yeah, right!” Sandi snapped. “I think Seeing Eye dogs can see the difference between a lawn and someone’s body!”
Again people chuckled into napkins around the diner. James ducked so hair covered his face as Mom and Dad said, “Seeing Eye dog?” at the same time.
“You thought,” Dad half-laughed, “Tooter is a service animal? Hardly!”
Again everyone swiveled toward me. “Well, he does sort of help me . . .”
Mom’s voice was quiet, which made it even scarier than Dad’s booming voice. “Where exactly has Tooter been?”
“Just the library,” I said. “And the diner. We went to the lake, too, but Mr. Hamlin was okay with that.”
“Did you know about this?” Dad asked Mom.
She shook her head. Dad’s eyes narrowed at her.
Elizabeth McAllister’s already glaring eyes narrowed even further. I swear, it was like an unplanned staring contest. “So, you mean to say that not only is this animal assaulting my child, it’s masquerading as a service animal?” She turned and glanced behind her at Sandi, who was standing in the same crossed-arms, snooty-central stance. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
“But!” Sandi chirped, her arms dropping and voice whining. “I wanted a milkshake. You promised!”
“Hang on,” Dad said. “I’m sure we can resolve this.”
“We have nothing to resolve.” Elizabeth McAllister turned her back to us. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
“What about the milkshakes?” Sandi stomped behind her mom out of the diner.
No one talked the rest of dinner. Even Gretel just handed us our check without her usual chitchat. By the time we got home, the silence felt thicker than a wet comforter. Mom got out of the car, walked into the house, and went straight to bed. She didn’t even turn on the light in her room. Dad went to his office and closed the door. It was just James and me in the living room. And Tooter, of course. He tried to break up the tension by dragging his hind legs across the carpet and then letting out a long, loud fart.
James sunk into the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table.
“Are you mad at me?” I whispered.
“A little bit.” James shifted on the couch, rooting through the cushions for the remote. He found it, turned on the TV, and patted the seat next to him for Tooter. The dumb dog tried twice to jump up on the couch and missed both times. James bent down and scooped him up with a sigh. “But it’s not your fault. It just sucks. Mom was actually starting to look a little better.”
I hung my head. “I know. Now things are going to get even worse.”
“Maybe,” James shrugged. “Or maybe they’ll just change.”
“Speaking of change, have you noticed how different Tooter is lately?”
“You mean the way he pees on people?” James laughed.
“Not just that, like the growling, the way he drags his legs, and the way he can’t jump.”
James ruffled Tooter’s fur on top of his head. Tooter rolled onto his back for belly rubs. “He’s old, Alice. Older than you.”
I sat down next to him and Tooter. “Do you think they’ll take Tooter away?”
“Nah.” James rubbed Tooter’s belly. The dog growled softly under his breath, flipped over, turned in a circle, farted, and sat back down.
I squirmed in my seat, feeling the reporter’s notebook in my back pocket dig into my hip. “Do you still hate it here?”
James shrugged and flipped through the channels. “It’s not all bad.”
“Because of Sarah.” I drug out her name like a song note.
“Shut up.” But I could see James’s lips twitch.
“You like here. Admit it.”
He sighed and crossed his arms. “I don’t hate it anymore.”
“Knew it.”
James elbowed me in the side. “Don’t sweat the thing with Tooter. No one’s actually going to go after a dumb old dog for peeing on them. Sandi’s mom is just pissed. She’ll get over it.”
I smiled, and it felt like breaking through concrete; my whole body turned from rock to liquid there on the couch next to my brother. And I knew it wasn’t just my worry about Tooter that melted. For the first time in a long time, I thought maybe we’d all be okay.
