by Sarah Dooley
I wasn’t sure exactly when our friendship started to fade. Maybe when she said her first sentence that made sense to our parents. Maybe when Natasha started to understand her. And then there was the matter of the neighbor girl in one of the places we lived. The neighbor girl was my age, but she acted different. And Lanie liked her better.
By the time Lanie began speaking in clear, complete sentences to the people around her, she had stopped making sense to me. And it was as if she had forgotten I had ever made any sense to her.
“Try not to fall off any more chairs,” Lanie said nastily as I climbed out of the car at my school. I stuck my tongue out at her and slammed the car door. Even though she thought she was too old for things like that, I still saw her stick her tongue out as the car pulled away. She would be riding with my father as far as Neighbor’s city limits, where her science and mathematics middle school was located. Her stupid Bentley mouse had helped her win a scholarship last year.
I stayed exactly where Simon left me until I saw Natasha pull up on her bike. Locking it to the rack, she slung an arm through mine the way we always did. We strolled through the courtyard, me hopping when necessary, stepping over book bags students had dropped in their rush to play horseshoes and four square and to huddle in groups to talk. I didn’t like the way they looked at me as I passed—a fake smile here, a nervous look there. The problem was, they were always looking. I stuck my hands in my pockets and worried the lining of my sweater until the threads came loose in my fingertips. I clenched and unclenched my joints, starting with my shoulders. Rolled my head around in a circle on my neck. Hummed a little to myself, the same note over and over.
“Why so stressed today?” Natasha asked as we approached my classroom door.
“Stupid Lanie,” I replied. “She’s got Livvie all upset.”
“She doesn’t mean anything,” Natasha answered. “She’s eleven. That’s why she’s so mean. That’s what eleven-year-olds do.”
“You weren’t mean when you were eleven,” I pointed out.
“I was to Lanie,” Natasha confided. “A million years ago, you know.”
“Uh-uh, it was not a million years ago, it was five.”
Tash smiled. “I know. It just feels like a million.” With a sympathetic wave for my substitute teacher, she left me at the classroom door.
Mrs. Paxton was one of those substitutes you’d rather they would substitute for somebody else. Today was her fourth day and she was finally confident enough to smile, the kind with too much lipstick all around it, instead of scrutinizing me like I was about to attack her. Something about her behavior made me think my reputation preceded me, but she managed not to say it. She only patted me uncomfortably. She was a skinny lady with hair that was so white-blond it made my eyes feel dizzy. I moved away from her by several steps and watched her frown.
My school was a funny place. It had classrooms for the other kids, the ones who attended regular subjects like algebra and art. Instead of a classroom, we had this whole wing of our own, like maybe what we had was catching, which wasn’t true except for Robert, who always had a cold. He liked card tricks and was pretty talented, according to Mrs. Paxton. To me, his tricks were flat. I could see how they were going to end from the start.
Our wing held two classrooms and no teachers. I think that said something about our wing. Word around the school was that we were so awful to our subs, they all ran away. By some accounts, we chased a couple of them clear out of the subbing profession. At least we managed to hang on to our classroom assistant, Mr. Raldy, for what it was worth. Mr. Raldy was exactly eight months from retirement. I knew because he kept a countdown written on the calendar on his desk, and Bristol, who could read best, liked to keep us all updated. Mr. Raldy was a tall man with a ring of white hair and almost none in the middle. He wore patterned sweaters and he had a hard time hearing us. Having Mr. Raldy was like having a picture hanging on the wall, keeping watch over us; he was not a man who interacted much.
I was not very good at friends, but that was okay because Georgia was. She called herself “G” because it was easiest to say, and that’s all she said, all day long. “G. G. G.” Not because it was her name but because it was her favorite letter. I liked that, because G was my favorite musical note. G always thought it was funny when I told her. She laughed and laughed when I told her I was going to sing G.
Besides Robert, Bristol, G, and me, there were two other kids in our classroom. Michael was skinny and quiet and got mad really easy, kind of like me, only all he ever talked about was snakes. Still, me and him were a lot alike, just the way Robert and Bristol were a lot alike. They were both what Robert’s mother called “social butterflies.” Bristol’s thing was colors, but she didn’t like to paint with them. She liked to wear them. Red and orange and yellow—her warm colors, she called them—on happy days, and green and blue and purple—her cool colors—on sad days. When Bristol was wearing cool colors like today’s blue sweater, I knew to stay out of her way. When she was wearing warm colors, she hurt my eyes, so overall I didn’t spend much time with Bristol.
There was also Peyton, who was silent. I was curious about Peyton. Most of us had been in class together since preschool, but Peyton had only joined us this year and she hadn’t made any moves to get to know us. She used a wheelchair that I was pretty sure ran on batteries or something, because she just had to push a switch with her chin to make it move. Only she wasn’t very interested in doing that and usually somebody else had to do it for her. Peyton had long hair that was the absolute prettiest color of brown. It made me think of warm earth in summer. I wanted to run my fingers through it, but the one time I did, way back in August, Mr. Raldy thought I was hair-pulling and took away my real estate books. I kept my distance from Peyton these days, just to be safe.
When I hobbled into the classroom, G galloped up to me with her short hair bouncing. Everything about G was short and bouncy.
“What’s up, G?” I asked, slinging an arm around her shoulder. G beamed at me and snatched a picture off the key chain on her belt loop. She slapped it onto a strip of Velcro and handed it to me. I squinted at it. It was a picture of a TV.
“It’s only Monday,” I said, disappointed. “We can’t do that today.”
She nodded vigorously and pointed to the sub. Then to Robert and Bristol, huddled in a corner, whispering. A slow grin slid onto my face. Robert and Bristol had a lot of talents, but one was that they could usually convince the sub of just about anything they wanted. How was she to know we didn’t usually watch our reward movie on Mondays? Or that we hadn’t earned a reward this week? Mr. Raldy was good about not ratting us out to the sub. Took too much energy, I think.
Ripping “movie” off the Velcro strip, G replaced it with a cartoon picture of a girl laughing. I grinned back.
“Me, too,” I agreed. “In fact, that makes me very happy. That’s just what I need to get over the frustrations of last night and this morning.”
“What frustrations?” Bristol asked, even though I wasn’t talking to her. I glared at her a little, but I still answered. Hobbling forward to shove my book bag into my cubby, I explained about the broken mug and the glass in my foot, then about my fight with my sister.
I didn’t tell them about the factory whistle because it seemed like a lie, out in the daylight. But I did ask Michael, who had awesome hearing, whether he heard anything funny last night.
“I heard a lot of funny things,” he told me. “I heard the channel seven news guy. He’s funny. I heard the channel seven news guy and the channel sixteen news guy. I switched back and forth between the two of them. They were both making jokes about the president. The president and the—and the—and the Congress. I heard a lot of funny things. What did you have in mind?”
“I didn’t mean funny like it made you laugh. I meant funny the way my sister means it, like funny-weird.”
“Funny means it makes you laugh.”
“Okay, well, did you hear anything weird last night?�
��
“I heard a lot of weird things. My dad snoring. My sister talking on the phone to her boyfriend. She made smoochy noises. That was very weird.”
“Michael, focus!” I stepped into his line of vision and he blinked up at me.
“What should I focus on?”
“Did you hear a whistle last night?”
“My aunt Jacob whistles. I hate when my aunt Jacob whistles.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t have an aunt Jacob! Now pay attention!”
“I do too, kind of. I have an aunt Jenny and an uncle Jacob, but they do all the same things at all the same times, so it makes more sense to refer to them by fewer names. That way I’m not wasting my own time, which is better spent with snakes. Aunt Jacob means Aunt Jenny and Uncle Jacob, both of them together. They both whistle. I don’t like when they whistle. It makes my ears feel weird. See, weird. Not funny. Funny would mean my ears laugh, and my ears don’t laugh. They just buzz a little bit when my aunt Jacob whistles.”
“Michael!” I stomped my foot. I felt like my own ears were starting to buzz a little bit. “What I want to know is whether you heard the factory whistle at the paper mill last night!”
There was a sudden silence in the special education wing. Silences were rare in this end of the building, and suddenly I felt very embarrassed. Just how loud had I been talking?
“The factory doesn’t have a whistle anymore,” Michael said logically.
I backpedaled quickly. “Okay. Okay. I was just checking. I guess I dreamed it.”
“You dreamt about the factory whistle?” Bristol asked. “That’s funny.”
“No, it’s weird,” I corrected her impatiently.
G tapped my arm and handed me her Velcro strip. The pictures were of a girl sleeping with an empty thought bubble above her head, and a happy giraffe.
I smiled at G. “You had the giraffe dream again?” She had this recurring dream about a giraffe laughing and walking on a tightrope. Sometimes I wished I could be G for just a day.
She nodded with a big grin and rolled her eyes.
“I wish I could borrow your dream, G. Mine was weird.”
She patted me sympathetically, then skipped off to her desk to set it up for the day. G had a very specific routine she went through before she could start her morning work. She had to have everything just so. Sometimes, when I thought of it, I felt bad G had to have a desk next to mine. Even though they were study carrels and she couldn’t see my mess from her chair, I thought maybe she could sense it because it was so noticeable. My desk was littered with forgotten worksheets, half-colored coloring sheets, stickers Miss Mandy had let me earn that the subs weren’t sure how to use right, and the parts of the newspaper left over after I cut out my real estate ads.
The real estate ads themselves, I pasted neatly in my blue notebook. The pretty houses gazed out at me from the pages, windows empty with promise.
There was one other thing on my desk, and I kept this in the center, although my mess was harder to contain when it was pushed around the edges. Facedown in the center of the study carrel was my picture of Orange Cat, the only one I hadn’t put in a box and made Karen hide in the closet. I kept it close in case I needed to see him, but facedown because I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye.
Orange Cat had been gone two months and I had looked at the picture only once. The day he left the world, I stared at his eyes in the photo, eyes so orange they were warm to look at. Sunset had nothing on Orange Cat. Orange Cat was a baby when I was Lanie’s age. He was three years and two weeks when he slipped out the door after one of my tantrums and never came back.
I didn’t look for him soon enough. I was upset before he left, about something stupid like toast crumbs in the butter, but it was nothing compared to how upset I was once I realized he was gone. It was the closest I had come to losing hair in years. I just couldn’t believe that I couldn’t go a couple of minutes back in time, if I really thought about it hard enough, and close the door more carefully. I melted down on the kitchen floor and by the time I found myself again, it was after twelve and Simon put me to bed, no arguments.
The next day was too late. All the orange had gone out of my life. I found Orange Cat three days later, dead on the road, proving what I hadn’t wanted to admit that night on the floor. When Orange Cat left, he didn’t mean to come back.
The back of Orange Cat’s picture was blank. It wasn’t the kind that had the date printed on it, but I remembered the day the photo was taken. It was a day in late April last year, the day Lanie brought home her stupid Bentley mouse. Orange Cat and I spent that day discussing the new house rules, amending them to include not eating pet mice. Every time I opened my bedroom door, he went stalking into the back end of the house, sniffing along the crack under Lanie and Natasha’s bedroom door, tail flipping madly. Natasha took the photo under the door crack, back before I accidentally broke her camera. Orange Cat’s eye and nose were visible peering under the bedroom door, looking for a mousey snack. I wanted him to peek at me like that so bad, I couldn’t stand to look at the picture anymore.
I tapped the photo hello, but did not turn it over. While the other kids ate breakfast, I waited at my desk, flipping through my real estate ads. One of the houses looked prettier than the others. It was big, and too dark, maybe green or blue. I wasn’t sure because the picture was in black-and-white. I liked it. If we could move into it today, we could own it like the Sun House and paint it yellow.
I thumbed reverently through my notebook, revisiting the older ads, the ones of houses I was sure must have sold by now, because I didn’t know how they couldn’t—they were so beautiful. Still, I liked to look at them. I liked to imagine me and Natasha and Gray Cat, and maybe even Lanie and her mouse, inside. I liked to picture us having room to spread out, room for Lanie and Natasha to have bedrooms of their own instead of sharing.
My foot was throbbing and the guilt, mingled with the stress of the night before, made me rock in my chair, back and forth at an even rate. Sometimes I had to rock to alleviate the pressure in my head. If I pulled my hair, I would get a sticker taken away and if I lost all my stickers, I wouldn’t get today’s real estate section from Mr. Raldy’s paper. So I rocked instead, back and forth, faster and faster. I began to feel a gentle rhythm inside my brain, keeping pace with the rhythm of the motion of my body. The rocking made it possible for my brain to time out, to quiet. The rocking was peaceful, like the smooth worn surface of the mud mug I would never touch again. It was like putting on my slippers in the morning, like wrapping a warm sweatshirt around me. I felt safe when I was rocking. The rhythm soothed me.
I rocked and hummed for so long that I almost didn’t notice Mrs. Paxton standing beside me. At long length, she patted me on the shoulder, jarring me rudely out of my rhythm.
“You’re full of energy today,” she said uncertainly. “You must be feeling happy.”
I didn’t have a word for what I was feeling. It was too tangled up with a half-imaginary factory whistle and the pretty house in the real estate section and the facedown photo in the center of my desk.
“I guess,” I said gently, patting her in return. “That must be it.” She must have believed me, because she beamed.
The morning dragged because it wasn’t structured. With Miss Mandy gone and Mr. Raldy half asleep at his desk, nobody knew exactly when they were supposed to do anything. G tried to keep everyone on track with her picture schedule, but mostly the subs just smiled thinly at her and got a craft out of the closet for us to do. We were champs at glue and glitter. We never cooked anymore, and we studied the calendar sporadically, if the sub remembered at all. We hadn’t done money in weeks.
I waited till ten, then past ten, then past eleven, but the speech therapist never came. Schedule changes made me anxious, but Miss Mandy used to talk about being flexible, so I took several deep breaths and kept calm. After lunch was the movie, and today the couch was full. This was a major problem, but I determined quickly that the
re was nothing to be done. Bristol and Robert both crossed their legs till their knees touched, taking up a whole extra spot. I surveyed the sub, but she did not look interested in helping me. Sometimes it just depended on which adult was in the room.
I could tell Mr. Raldy knew what was happening, but he was big on “letting the sub be in charge,” which meant he refused to intervene unless the sub asked him to. I tried to sit on the ottoman, which was the only place left that wasn’t a folding chair, but it rolled too easy and it didn’t have a back to sink into. Finally, I squeezed myself between the sofa and the wall, humming G notes over and over until Bristol and Robert shushed me. Occasionally G popped over the edge of the sofa upside down, grinning at me, but eventually she stopped and I could hear her snoring softly on the sofa.
Mrs. Paxton found me asleep in my hiding place at three and rushed me on my way, book bag slung over my shoulder and banging my back with every step. Natasha waited at the corner to see that I made it safely to Karen before she biked away.
Karen walked up grinning and full of energy, not like this morning. “Hey there, Lovie.”
“Hi, Karen.”
“How was school?”
“I had to sit behind the couch.”
Karen’s head tilted at this, and she opened her mouth to speak, but just then, a silver Jeep Liberty pulled up to the corner and Lanie hopped out, waving good-bye to her classmate Casey. A red ribbon waved from Lanie’s hand and Bentley squeaked and rattled in his cage. When Lanie saw me, her smile turned off and her forehead wrinkled up. She let a ten-dollar bill—her prize money—wave in front of me before she jammed it in her pocket, in case I was thinking about taking it. She kept the red ribbon in sight, of course.
“Might have been blue if he hadn’t been so sleepy,” she said pointedly. Then waved, all smiles again, as Casey’s car pulled away. My gaze trailed after the shiny silver Jeep, which I knew belonged to just Casey’s mother. Her father drove a black Ford pickup. I wasn’t sure how a family could ever get to the point where each parent had their very own car.
