Outside In

by Sarah Ellis

  “I’m looking for ideas.”

  Lynn jumped in. “How about a preschool?”

  “Are you kidding?” Celia hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. “When’s the last time you were in a preschool? First of all, they are seething with disease. Second of all, all the kids are armed. Have you ever been strafed by stacking plastic doughnuts? Third of all — ”

  Lynn was never to know the third hazard of preschools because at that moment Blossom stepped around the corner of the school.

  Lynn’s whole inventory of internal organs went into freefall.

  Blossom didn’t bother with hello.

  “Larch needs you to visit.”

  You’re safe. Where were you? Where are you now? Are you mad at me? I’m sorry. I’ve missed you. Do you need me to visit? What happened that day?

  Any of these would have been more sensible than what actually did tumble out of Lynn’s mouth.

  “You got your hair cut.”

  “Larch needs you to visit right now.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll come.”

  She was a few steps away when she heard Celia.

  “Lynn?”

  Kas and Celia were looking at her with question marks for faces.

  “Oh. Sorry. This is my friend Blossom. Her brother … Look, can we talk later?”

  They both nodded.

  “Go,” said Kas.

  “Text me,” said Celia.

  A bus airbrake-farted, and Blossom began to run. “Come on. We can catch it.”

  They sprinted down the sidewalk, Lynn’s pack bouncing on her back, and swung onto the bus. Blossom flashed a bus pass.

  A haircut and a bus pass. What was going on?

  There were no seats. They negotiated their way through the strap-hangers. Lynn could see how good Blossom was at disappearing. She slid through the standing crowd without touching them, like a cat slipping through a forest. Lynn’s glasses fogged up. She tilted her head back to try to see Blossom, to read her.

  What bus were they on, anyway? She tried to read the street signs through the double fog of her glasses and the misted bus windows. The tinny sound of headphones, a woman who smelled like an ashtray. And Blossom. Ordinary clothes. Short hair. Feather hair. Blossom who did not meet her eyes.

  They got off in a neighborhood Lynn did not recognize. On the walk through the narrow maze of dead-ending streets and cut-throughs, Blossom remained silent and remote.

  Questions built up in Lynn’s head until she thought it would just crack open, like a watermelon dropped on a sidewalk.

  She had to let one out.

  “Did the reservoir people come?”

  “I don’t know. We left right away.”

  “I don’t think they did. The code is still the same.”

  “Oh.”

  Maybe you could come back. Maybe it’s not too late.

  But she couldn’t say that.

  ≈≈≈

  The house was narrow and tall, bordered by a picket fence that had been green many rainstorms and sun-bakings ago. Inside the fence was a chaos of plants coming and going, to and fro, galloping tall and crazy, collapsing and dying. There were two cats on the fence, one in each of three front windows, one in a window box, and cat shadows and mewings in the garden jungle. Several greeted Blossom and did figure eights around her ankles.

  The front door opened and an old woman stepped out onto the narrow porch. She was about the size of a ten-year-old. She looked like somebody you would meet in a fairy tale, the woman at the market selling a cow or some magic beans. Her metal-gray hair was braided, wound around her head like a pastry or Princess Leia. Her clothes were in layers. Dress? Shirt? Cardigan? Shawl? Her eyes were bright and sharp. In one claw-like hand she held a cigarette, delicately, as though it might shatter. In the other, a cane.

  “More people dropping in! Blossom! And a newcomer. Come along, we must all have a glass of sherry.”

  Lynn looked at Blossom. Sherry?

  Blossom gave a small nod.

  “We would like to visit but we have to study for an exam. We’ll come up and see you later.”

  The fairy godmother’s face lit with a broad smile.

  “Yes, you must study very hard. Young women must not neglect the sciences. They are fundamental.” She turned and went back inside.

  A cracked concrete sidewalk led to a backyard. Lynn’s first impression was of a junkyard, until it resolved itself, like an optical illusion, into a condominium development of miniature dwellings. Wooden crates piled high like blocks, some lined with blankets, some with tattered plastic door flaps. Some were shingled. Some, like leaky condos, were covered in blue tarps.

  And everywhere, tails were twitching, ears flicking, long bodies stretching and eyes — amber, emerald and sapphire — judging the arrivals.

  Blossom reached for a basement door.

  “Blossom. Stop.”

  Blossom froze, her back to Lynn.

  “Where are we? What are you doing here?”

  Blossom turned. She looked around the garden and then up into the air where the raindrops hovered, waiting to fall. Then she pointed to a couple of plastic lawn chairs.

  “All right. Wait till I get a rag.”

  Blossom sopped up the beaded water and they settled into the chairs, side by side like passengers on a plane. Cats nosed their feet and stretched up to the armrests.

  Blossom didn’t need more questions. She simply began.

  “On that day …”

  Whap! A cat flap in the basement door flew open, and Catmodicum flew out. Other cats scattered to the four winds, protesting. Catmodicum jumped up onto Blossom’s lap.

  “Tron was the one who got the news. One of the jumper guys sent him a message. Then it was time for the plan. We have always had the plan. Fossick and Tron packed all our saves. Larch was very unhappy so I just sat with him. Then Tron’s friend with the truck came. The plan was always that we would go to Rainey’s. Just-in-case Rainey.”

  As Blossom spoke, the cats came oozing back. Catmodicum peeked out of half-closed eyes and did not move.

  “But Larch is miserable. He can’t abide change. We’ve tried to make it as like to the Underland as we can, but the light comes from different places and the smells are different. He asked for you so I came to find you.”

  Lynn waited for more. She waited for blame or anger, questions or more of the story. Nothing.

  “Okay, let’s go in.”

  Catmodicum accompanied them.

  The basement was the Underland transported, shipshape and spare. There was the work bench, the cardboard furniture, the maps on the wall and the dandelion-haired boy curled in an armchair, eyes downcast, rocking forwards and back. He wasn’t dressed in a suit and tie, but in a stained tracksuit. Artdog was glued to the side of the chair.

  Lynn stood in front of him.

  “Larch?”

  He stopped rocking and looked up — not at Lynn but at the wall behind her.

  “The visitor came.”

  “Oh, Larch, of course I did. I … well, I lost track of you for a while but now I’m here.”

  “The toilet sucks the water down. Larch doesn’t like it.”

  Blossom sighed. “Fossick is going to get you the other kind.”

  Lynn glanced at the work bench. There were no tubes.

  “What new worlds have you made?”

  “Larch doesn’t care to make them in this place.”

  “That’s too bad because the other day when I was on the bus I thought what a good tubeworld it would make. It made me think of you.”

  There was a pause. “What is on buses?”

  Blossom opened her eyes wide.

  Lynn thought fast. “Men and women in suits with briefcases, baby strollers, boys with long legs like Tron sticking the
m into the aisles, maybe a wheelchair, maybe a suitcase, maybe an octopus.”

  Larch shook his head. “An octopus is silly.”

  Then he gave a huge jaw-cracking yawn, leaned back against the chair and fell abruptly to sleep. Catmodicum jumped up to join him.

  “Come on,” said Blossom.

  Outside they stood silent on the cracked patio. Lynn pushed some sand into one of the cracks with the toe of her shoe.

  So, was that it? They were together. They had a place to live. End of story. Blossom obviously didn’t want her here. She should just leave.

  There was a clanking in the side path, the sound of a slippery crash and a loud “Strewth!”

  Fossick. If only she had been able to make a getaway before she had to see him.

  The front half of a bike appeared, followed by Fossick carrying a large bag of cat food and kicking an equally large box.

  “Lynn!”

  “Larch asked for her,” said Blossom. “He’s asleep now.”

  Fossick paused. He met Lynn’s eyes. “The visitor.”

  “I’m … I’m just going,” said Lynn.

  “No, wait. Wait until Larch wakes up.”

  He slid the cat-food bag to the ground and tried to jump over the box but got tangled with his bike, which went crashing against the fence. “Your visit was obviously meant to be. I need four hands to help.”

  Blossom grabbed the box and Lynn took one end of the cat-food bag. They hefted their way up rickety back stairs and through a rusty screen door into the oddest kitchen Lynn had ever seen.

  There were cat-food dishes everywhere. On the floor, on the table, on the counters, on top of the fridge, even on the stove. At every dish there was a cat.

  Were these the same cats as outdoors in the kitty condos, or another whole batch? Was it even possible that there could be so many cats?

  At the base of each of the bottom cupboards there was a rough, semi-circular hole.

  Lynn turned to Fossick. “What’s with that?”

  “The cats started to scratch at the door for their cat food and Rainey just let them and they scratched right through.”

  “Now that you’re here, can you fix them? Cupboard doors are probably an easy find.”

  “I could, but Rainey likes them that way. She likes not having to open her cupboard doors and what does it matter?”

  “More lovely guests!” Rainey appeared from the hall. “This is how it used to be. A house full of graduate students. Now, what shall it be, sherry or tea?”

  “Tea, I think,” said Fossick. “I’ll make a pot as soon as I stow these things away. Girls, I banish you from this place. I’ll bring the tea outside.”

  As Lynn edged around the cat paraphernalia toward the door, Fossick put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Be truly welcome hither.”

  The garden chairs had become occupied by several cats each. Blossom tipped them off to the tune of much complaining. She still wasn’t meeting Lynn’s eyes.

  Lynn remembered that first meeting, sitting under the tarp at the lake, asking Blossom questions, trying to figure her out.

  But everything she wondered at this moment seemed like a pretzel question.

  “Who is she? Who is Rainey?”

  “She’s just-in-case Rainey. She always kept some things of ours in her basement. She knows Fossick from long ago when they were both professors at the university.”

  Lynn did a fast recalibration of Fossick.

  “A professor! Get out! What did he teach? Shakespeare?”

  “No. Physics.”

  “And what about Rainey?”

  “Something called metallurgy.”

  “Are you going to live here now?”

  “Yes. At first it was just in case. But when we arrived it was a mess here, sad and dirty. There were dead things. Rainey had fallen and hurt her leg. She wasn’t eating properly and she was muddled. Sometimes she thinks she is in a lab. She needs us. She needs something called round-the-clock care. We can do that. We’ve never minded about clocks because of Larch. This is our work now.”

  Lynn scurried around in her mind for another safe question.

  “Where’s Tron?”

  “He’s in Europe.”

  “Europe!”

  “With homeless soccer. They fixed it, those citizen soccer people, those sponsors. He’s in Paris, France, Europe.” Blossom seemed to unbend a little. “Fossick says that it’s natural for Tron to leave and find his own home now and be his own person. But I still hate it.”

  Lynn fished around for something comforting to say. While she fished, Blossom retreated again. “He left a few days after we … moved.”

  Tron, not such a safe subject after all. The jump, the photo, the protest, the accident. There was nothing left for a real question that could avoid that string of events. There was nothing left but silence. Silence and the distant whistling of a teakettle.

  She had to reach Blossom before Fossick and Rainey appeared.

  “Blossom?”

  Blossom finally met her eyes. She had a direct gaze like a baby or an animal.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Blossom did not say, “It’s all right” or “No problem.”

  A heavy cat jumped into Lynn’s lap. She gasped. It had huge paws with … six toes. It began to knead her leg, purring with the sound of a small lawn mower. Blossom continued to stare at Lynn, and something changed behind her eyes. The purring increased in volume, the lawn mower hit a patch of thick damp grass, and Lynn felt sharp claws just about to pierce her jeans.

  It didn’t quite hurt, not yet.

  Blossom gave a small nod and a smaller smile, and there was a slight shimmer as the world righted itself.

  The six-toed cat, sensing a shift in the universe, celebrated by digging its claws right through the denim and into Lynn’s leg.

  “Yow!” Lynn tipped him off her lap and rubbed at the wounds. “Which one was that?”

  “Florio.”

  “Do they all have names?”

  “Just Mister Mister, Flex, Thomas, Peka, Ginger, Ptah, Coco, Smollet, Yoda, Spork, Harriet, Phoebe, Louis, Einstein, Miaow-Man, Moneypenny, Lady Jane Grey, Nimbus, Zoe, Sebastian, Lydia, Bob, Dorian, Ginger, Sasha and Kootenay.”

  “How did she get so many?”

  “She said that after five or so there’s no reason to ever say no to a cat again.”

  “Wow. She must seriously like cats.”

  “Actually she says that she would much prefer a dog. She’s delighted to have Artdog here. When she was working at the lab she just got a cat as a placeholder until she could stay home with a dog.”

  “She prefers dogs?”

  Blossom nodded.

  “She has seventeen or maybe it is twenty-four cats and she prefers dogs?”

  Blossom nodded again.

  “Blossom?”

  “Hm?”

  “That is absolutely and totally one hundred percent crazy.”

  Blossom’s microsmile spread across her face like cartoon fire, running up a fuse toward a stick of TNT and exploding with a grin, a hiccup and then a full-on, no-holds-barred, nose-running belly laugh.

  Lynn was one short step behind.

  And then it was one great huge tumble of laughter — at too many cats, at citizen world, at the surprise of a friendship that hit an iceberg but was saved before it sank, laughter at laughter itself.

  Fossick and Rainey appeared, balancing cups and plates and a teapot, backing through the screen door. As they made their way precariously down the steps, the basement door opened as well. Larch took one tentative step into the yard, a boy in a baggy blue fleece with a red silk tie neatly knotted around his neck.

  “Larch!” said Rainey. “Come join us. We are, it seems, having a party.”

  Larch shook his
head. “It is not the right outside.”

  Fossick gestured grandly from the steps, endangering the teapot. “The climate’s delicate, the air most sweet, fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing the common praise it bears. Catmodicum and Artdog have braved the out of doors. Perhaps you will tomorrow.”

  “Will the visitor come again?”

  Yes or no. Larch always needed yes or no, nothing in between.

  Lynn glanced at Blossom. This was her question to answer.

  Blossom tilted her head and appeared to consider.

  Cats shifted. Everything shifted.

  Then she grinned. “Yes, she will.”

  About the Author

  Sarah Ellis is the author of sixteen books for young readers, including The Baby Project and Odd Man Out. She has won the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, the Violet Downey Book Award, the Governor General’s Award, the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. Her books have been translated into French, Spanish, Danish, Chinese and Japanese. She is a masthead reviewer for the Horn Book Magazine and was recently writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library.

  In 2013 Sarah was nominated for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, children’s literature’s richest prize. She was also honored with the 2013 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

  Sarah teaches in the mfa program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Vancouver.

  Other Books by Sarah Ellis

  Odd Man Out

  • Winner of the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award • Shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award • Shortlisted for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award

  “… a thoughtful and often funny book of a boy on the verge of adolescence challenged to think … in a different way.” — School Library Journal

  “… beautifully written: clever, funny, and hauntingly sad.” — Vancouver Sun

  “… a determinedly individual and warmly affectionate family story about a boy who finds strength in new understanding of both the present and the past.”