by Sarah Dooley
Natasha must have heard me, anyway, because she gave me a hug, loose and long. Then waved and walked back toward her class, drawing a shaky breath as she went and running her hands through her hair.
“She’s mad,” I said softly as she walked out of sight.
“I think,” Mrs. Rhodes said softly, “that you might have frightened your sister. And remember what we said about fear.”
I didn’t remember, but I nodded, anyway.
We headed back for the cafeteria, where Jamie was helping my classmates clean up their trays and wipe down the tables. Michael was standing several feet away, frowning.
“You put milk on my snake,” he accused as I approached.
“Nuh-uh, Livvie wasn’t even here, I wasn’t even here.”
“You made it spill.” He glared at the shrinking puddle and the rag in Jamie’s hand.
I felt worry. “Is your snake ruined?”
“It lived, no thanks to you. Snake pictures are paper and when paper gets wet, it bends and it gets easier to tear, so you could have killed my snake easy, and then I would have only had one hundred forty-seven pictures of snakes instead of one hundred forty-eight, and I wouldn’t have a single ratsnake. You suck!”
The term “ratsnake” made me shiver, and Michael’s anger made my eyes feel wet. Jamie patted my shoulder as he passed to usher Michael and the others out of the lunchroom.
The bell rang as I sat down and I automatically stood up again.
“No, sit, sit,” Mrs. Rhodes insisted, and she sat next to me, G on her other side. “The three of us are going to be late to gym today. We have some eating to do! Mr. Raldy and Jamie are perfectly capable of taking the class to P.E.”
It made me nervous to stay in the lunchroom after the bell, especially when it started to fill up with loud people. I ate fast and threw the rest away.
Velcro ripped as I finished. The cartoon face was smiling, the hand in the universal symbol for “OK.”
“You’re not mad?” I asked G.
Her next words were along the lines of “Never at Livvie.”
I smiled. That wasn’t true, but she was sweet for saying it. I hugged her tight for the second time that day, and we headed off to gym hand in hand. Mrs. Rhodes walked behind us, humming to herself. She was the only person I’d met other than me who hummed in public.
Natasha didn’t wait for me outside after school that day. It was Simon who picked us up today, still wearing his blue Walmart shirt with the smiley face on the pocket.
“Hey there,” he said as I climbed into the car. “How was school?”
“I’m not crazy, right?” I said by way of answer, and Simon closed his eyes for half a second and rubbed his stubble.
“That good, huh?” he asked with a sigh.
Lanie had taken the front seat this time, but she cast me a half-apologetic smile. I piled in behind her, dragging my full book bag behind me. I had spent an extra lot of time today pasting real estate ads into my notebook after gym.
“Where’s Natasha?” Simon asked, surveying the crowd for her.
“She’s over there,” Lanie said before I could, and I spun quickly and saw that she was right. Natasha had been watching me from the corner the entire time.
My stomach suddenly felt very sick and upset. Natasha had waited to make sure I was safe, I thought, but she hadn’t wanted to talk to me.
“I made her mad today,” I said, and began to hum.
“Oh my god, please don’t start humming,” Lanie said from the front seat. “Remember we’re in a peace agreement and this is one of those nice things you have to do for me.”
“I feel like I’m going to blow,” I said faintly. “I have to do something and humming is mild. That’s what Miss Mandy always said.” I worked my hands into my hair again.
“Yeah, it was so mild it chased her out of town,” Lanie muttered, and I hummed louder.
“Seriously, don’t start that,” Simon said. “I mean it, Livvie.” He drove a little faster. “Let’s just get ourselves home with no fighting and no humming and no hair-pulling, okay?”
I pressed my hands against my head instead and began tightening my joints as hard as I could, one after another. After a minute I noticed Lanie watching me in the mirror.
“What are you saying?” she asked when we made eye contact.
I hadn’t realized I was talking, or rather, mouthing silent words into the car.
“Sometimes scared looks the same as mad,” I said faintly. “That’s what Mrs. Rhodes said. I just remembered.” My eyes strayed to Simon.
“Who’s Mrs. Rhodes?”
“My new sub.”
“Gawd, you guys scared off another one?” Lanie bounced on her seat. “That’s, like, a record. I think I’m impressed.”
“Lanie,” Simon said in warning tones, but I actually thought it was funny what Lanie was saying. Then to me, “What’s the new one like?”
“Tougher than the others,” I said promptly. “She might stick awhile.” Simon laughed in surprise as though he hadn’t expected this type of assessment from me. “She gave me yogurt,” I added, “and she didn’t get mad when I—” I pulled up short. I had been about to say something about running to Natasha’s classroom, but suddenly it didn’t seem like a good idea to pass that on to Simon just when he was getting over being mad at me. “—when I got nervous,” I amended.
“Well, that’s a good sign,” he said. “Did she help you do your picture schedule?”
“G helped, too. I got scared, but G helped.”
“G’s sister goes to my school,” Lanie said unexpectedly.
“Really?”
“She’s a seventh grader, though. She doesn’t like me very much. She thinks I’m annoying.”
A part of me wanted to say, “You are annoying,” but I was pretty sure that didn’t fit into a peace agreement. So instead I said, “She must not be very much like G.”
The Tercel bumped uncomfortably into the drive. “I’ve got to go straight back out,” Simon said. “I’m stopping to see a house and then I need to pick up your mother. Lanie, will you help Livvie get her snack?”
“I don’t need help,” I said a little irritably. “I can get my own snack.”
“I want to see the house,” Lanie said promptly. “Where is it?”
“Anderson Street.” His answer made me whoosh with relief, glad that he hadn’t said Neighbor-with-an-E. “And if it’s a good one, I’ll show you later. Right now I need you to help your sister with her snack.”
“I can get my own snack,” I repeated.
“I don’t want to find out you ate half a cracker and called that a snack,” Simon said by way of explanation. “We’ll have to eat pretty late tonight. Your mom and I have a meeting at work before we can come home.”
I sighed. I hated late dinner. Natasha didn’t like sitting at the table with us all if she could help it, and a lot of times Lanie was too busy talking on the phone to her classmates to be bothered sitting with the rest of us, but at least we could have a dinnertime like an ordinary family, couldn’t we? Only Karen’s and Simon’s work often interfered with that.
“I’ll make sure she eats,” Lanie said with what I thought might have been an evil twinkle in her eye. I got a little nervous, but I kept my hum to a whisper.
Something stopped me going up the steps. The front door looked different somehow. I couldn’t focus on why till Lanie pulled a piece of paper off some tape above the doorknob and stared at it for a moment.
“What is that, what is that?” I asked, nervous enough it came out twice.
“It’s from Janna,” Lanie said with a mad face. “She wants us to leave her ugly chair when we go.” She crumpled it against her thigh with one hand while she unlocked the door with the other.
The inside of the trailer was cold and quiet and I knew that meant Natasha wasn’t home yet. Lanie bumped up the heat till it kicked on, then gave me an expression I recognized.
“Don’t bump it up any more,” she sa
id warningly.
“Aren’t we in a peace agreement?” I asked hopefully.
“Even people in peace agreements have to pay electric bills,” she said firmly. “No turning it up. Do you want crackers or Doritos for a snack?”
My eyes widened. “You’re going to let me have Doritos for a snack?”
“Only if I get to share. This is a peace agreement, after all!”
We settled ourselves on the blankets we kept on the living room floor, ignoring Janna’s ugly chair she was afraid we were going to steal. The TV set was old, but it went perfectly with the old VCR Natasha had found us at a yard sale. We had a few favorite videos each, plucked here and there on sale, mostly from the Walmart bargain bin.
As we settled in front of the TV, Lanie tugging a blanket for both of us off the back of the sofa, she looked at me funny. “Did you see what Dad was reading before you got in?”
“A newspaper?”
“It wasn’t ours,” she said, and I looked up, startled.
“What do you mean?” Thinking she was trying to say he’d stolen it or something.
“It was a Neighbor paper. With an E.”
Which might be worse. I thought about this for a moment. “We wouldn’t move there.”
“Maybe.” She sat for a moment. “I think it might be cool if we did. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to drive so far.”
“Olivia lives in Nabor,” I said firmly. “With an A.” My hands automatically went to the worn case of my favorite movie, Danny.
“Oh, god, not that again,” Lanie said with a groan, and it was clear that her patience with this peace agreement was wearing thin. When I looked at her, she was obliterating all traces of Janna’s note with her purple pen. Her face was stressed.
I felt a worried sort of feeling. “But this is my favorite. It’s what I always watch after school.”
“That’s the problem,” Lanie said with a loud sigh. “I’m bored of this one, Olivia. Don’t you get bored with anything?”
“I like things the same. I don’t like them different. I don’t like them different.”
Lanie looked sideways at me and took another Dorito. “There’s such a thing as too much ‘the same,’ you know?”
I wasn’t sure I did, but she looked ready to cry, so instead of answering, I put Danny back on the shelf. Three deep, steadying breaths and I was able to speak.
“You pick.”
She glanced sideways at me again. Then picked Danny and left the room.
Chapter 9
I wandered through the broken rooms as though I was looking for something. I knew when I found it. It was Orange Cat again, weaving back and forth among the bits of old furniture and the beams of lumber I hadn’t noticed my first time through.
“I’m dreaming again, aren’t I?” I asked Orange Cat, and he flattened his ears but didn’t hiss at me this time.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Did I break another rule?”
He wouldn’t make eye contact with me and I felt rare tears pooling up in my own eyes. “Livvie wishes you would look at her,” I whispered.
He swished his tail hard, then trotted, tail up, into the back bedroom, the one that had been mine. I followed with the tears beginning to slip down my face. I remembered this walk. Never mind I was only three when we left this house, I remembered the walk from the kitchen to the bedroom and the way it felt to be a part of this place.
I think I was too little, back at the Sun House, for my parents to know there was anything different about me. But now I was fourteen, I was too big to fit through the archways right. I could no longer sit on a closet shelf, all folded up like a rag doll, like I did when I was three. I was practically a grown-up, trespassing here.
Slowly, as I followed Orange Cat, I became aware of voices. They were whispering at first, but they grew in strength and seriousness as I wandered through the rooms. In each room I found more furniture to step over, more giant beams and boards of lumber scattered from the walls to trip my step. Orange Cat leapt lightly over them, but me, I was in trouble. I could hear the whistle even over the voices. I smelled water and something hot. Something was very wrong in this place.
He led me into the bedroom again and this time the plywood was gone from the windows, but the shutters banged and blew in the wind. Shutters? The Sun House didn’t have shutters, especially not with moons cut in them like these.
I reached for Orange Cat and he disappeared with one last, mournful look back at me. The tears came at last and I plunked myself onto one of the beams. I cried so hard for Orange Cat that I woke myself up in the dark, hugging Gray Cat so tightly that she hissed.
I was out of bed and halfway down the hallway when I remembered about Natasha being mad at me today. I stopped uncertainly, then thought about altering my course to aim at my parents’ room instead, but they were so tired when they got home last night and so stressed out, anyway, that I pictured waking them up and thought I saw them angry in the picture.
My feet chose a destination and I found myself in front of the drinking glass cupboard.
“Rules are rules, Olivia,” I whispered. Only this time I was so used to the whistle that if I heard it blow, I knew I would be able to keep from dropping anything.
I was right, too. When the whistle blew, I stayed standing perfectly still on my chair, drawing deeper and deeper breaths and trying to control myself.
But as soon as the whistle stopped blowing, I broke another rule. I put my feet in my socks and my socks in my shoes, because I knew better than slippers and I didn’t have any, anyways. No slippers. No mug. No Orange Cat. And Tasha wondered why I’d been so stressed lately! I pulled on my hoodie and made it halfway out the door before somebody grabbed me and I shrieked.
“Shush!” Lanie slapped her hand over my mouth. I yanked out of her grip and shrugged away into my own personal space.
“Livvie heard it again,” I said. “I’m not making it up!” I began to hum frantically before she could respond, wrapping my fingers in my hair. I knew her response was going to be an unpleasant one. Lanie shoved us out the door and closed it behind us, so suddenly I had to steady myself on her shoulder to keep from falling backward off the steps.
“Don’t wake Mom and Dad,” she whispered fiercely. “We’ll get in so much trouble if you wake them!”
“Then go with Livvie,” I demanded.
She shook her head furiously. “No!”
“Lanie, come with me! You can help me find the whistle!”
“I don’t want to find the whistle,” she said. “It’s scary.”
It took almost a second for what she said to sink in, but when it did, I stared at Lanie so hard I even forgot to hold on to my hair again. Sinking onto the top step, I pulled a reluctant Lanie down with me.
“You heard it,” I accused.
Now it was Lanie’s turn to run her hands through her hair, sighing loudly as she did. Looking up slowly, she made eye contact with me, and her facial expression was something so startling I was glad I didn’t have a name for it.
“I dreamt it,” she corrected me.
We sat like that for a full minute and then Lanie stood up and grabbed my hand. “Well, come on, then.”
“Where are we going?”
“To find it, dummy!”
“But I thought—”
“Come on before I come to my senses!” She yanked my hand and I had to jump down three steps to keep from falling flat on my face.
Despite her confidence, once we got past the trailer park gates it was me who took the lead. Lanie’s motions became hesitant, like she was frightened being out in the dark like this.
“Livvie, you know the way, right?” I asked, because I knew she wanted to. “Of course I do, or I wouldn’t be out here!”
“Livvie, you’re silly,” Lanie said, but she seemed comforted just the same. Still, she stuck close to me in the darkness. We walked quickly until Lanie slowed as we passed the house on Probart Street, the one with the useless black shutters.
“Did we . . .” She pulled up short. “We did, right?”
“We did. Come and see.” I tugged her toward the house.
“Wait, what are you doing? Hey!” She dug in her heels, but I pulled harder. There was a car in the drive and bikes in the yard, so I knew somebody was home, but it was just after midnight and the house was too quiet for anyone to be awake.
This one was easier to find than some, because, instead of writing it in my bedroom, I had written it in my favorite place in the house—the spacious back porch. I started thinking it had been painted over, but it turned out I was just looking too high. A girl could grow a lot in just a few years. At last I found it: Livvie Owen Live Here, inscribed forever in black ink, scratched deep.
“God, you even used to write on the walls back then?” Lanie whispered. She stuck her hands in her pockets. Her eyes darted left and right and she was already backing up.
“I write this everywhere,” I said impatiently. “I like the houses to remember me.”
“You spelled it wrong, you know.”
“How did I spell it wrong?”
“You left the ‘d’ off ‘lived.’ Anyway, houses don’t remember.” She grabbed up a pebble and scratched a d shape after my “live.” I added the d shape to my mental picture of what my favorite sentence looked like. Somehow I’d missed that shape when I first learned how to write my sentence.
On Pendleton Street, we started to jog, partly because we were cold and partly because it was darker out here, and creepier than the rest of the walk. At the end of the street, my feet slowed all on their own, and I tugged my little sister to a stop outside the Sun House.
“This is it,” I said in a voice like Mr. Raldy making an announcement, not quite loud enough, and a little bit wavering.
“The factory’s there,” she said, pointing, like I was a very small child. “What are you talking about, ‘this is it’?”
“This is the Sun House.”
Lanie wrinkled her nose. “I know that, dummy. We must have driven past here thirty or forty million times and you always point it out.”
“Just from the end of the street, not from up close. You need to see it.”
