by Sarah Dooley
She shook her head. “It’s not even yellow.”
“But it was. We’re going to live here.”
Lanie tugged me hard past the Sun House, through the factory’s front gates. “Come on. We’re going to find this whistle and get home before we get caught.”
“But I want to go in the Sun House. We’re going to live there!”
“Shut up. Let’s just check for the whistle and we’ll go home.” Her teeth started to chatter. “I don’t want to live there. It’s creepy and they’ve never fixed it back.” She pulled her hand loose from my grip and ran on ahead, feet scattering gravel across the weedy front lot of the factory.
“Lanie, wait!”
“No! I want to get this over with so we can get out of this creepy place!” Her voice echoed funny and I looked over my shoulder like there might be more than one of her talking. She tried the door of the first building, but it was locked and we both whooshed out a sigh of relief. The windows were broken and only darkness stared back at us through them. I wasn’t sure I wanted the door to open.
“You’ll want to live there once you see it,” I insisted, picking up the conversation as though there hadn’t been a pause. “It’s so warm inside, Lanie. It’s got so many rooms, we could each have our own. And Orange Cat’s there. Please come and see!”
Lanie looked at me in surprise, then jogged toward the next building. Her feet made echoey noises against the tin siding of the buildings, and I hummed to cover it up. Lanie looked ready to say something but then she tried another door and we both leapt back when this one swung open with a shriek of metal.
We slid to a halt and my hum died in my throat. Despite walking here in the dark, despite Lanie’s efforts at the doors, neither one of us had anticipated actually getting a door to open.
Inside the building loomed darkness. Lanie shivered and hugged herself. I hung back behind her. Despite our bickering, we scooted closer to each other in the dark. Her hand found mine and I squeezed it.
“Do you—do you think it came from in here?” she asked hesitantly, her voice a little smaller than before.
“I don’t know which building it came from,” I admitted. “I think maybe the Sun House.”
Lanie didn’t even look at me. “You’re not making any sense,” she said flatly. “The Sun House doesn’t have a whistle.” She was shivering in her pajamas and her purple sweatshirt. I realized too late that I should have at least made her put on a coat.
“Should we go in?” I asked, just as the wind made the door shriek again.
“I think maybe we should go back in time and rethink this plan instead.” Lanie stomped one foot and backed up a step. “Forget this!” She spun in the gravel and began trotting toward home. Now that I was alone, the gaping doorway seemed darker than ever. The night was suspiciously silent. I thought bizarrely that if this was where I was supposed to go, the whistle would have blown again.
Several feet ahead, Lanie stopped, dancing from foot to foot, looking back over her shoulder. Beyond her I could make out the shapes of the fence line and the overgrown trees that had only been saplings when we lived here. The Sun House loomed darker than the darkness of the sky, and it, too, was silent, no whistle to speak of.
“Liv,” Lanie said in a tiny voice. “Please. Please, let’s get out of here. It’s creepy.”
She was right. It was creepy, worse than cough syrup, worse than wet slippers. I followed her back across the crumbled sidewalk to the factory gate and she tugged me with her past the Sun House without slowing down.
“But we have to stop!”
“No! You’re being stupid! We aren’t going to stop!” Something about her voice made me fearful and sorry, way inside. My eyes cast toward the Sun House, toward the sign that had blown down off the rail and now lay facedown on the porch.
I tugged at Lanie, hard. “Just read the sign.” Suddenly taken with the desire to know for certain what it said.
“I’m going home!”
“Please, just read the sign—”
“Let’s go,” she pleaded, her eyes flooding with tears. It had been years since I had made my sister cry in anything other than frustration. I had a hunch our peace agreement had not survived our midnight journey. “This was really stupid. Please, let’s go.”
“Okay,” I whispered finally, eyes drifting hopelessly toward the sign on the porch. It stayed upside down, out of reach. Beyond it lay a house that, according to my dreams, contained my Orange Cat. But he was mad at me, anyway. I patted her awkwardly. “Okay, Lane.”
“Okay,” she repeated in a shaky voice. “I’m never listening to you again.” Yet she clung fast to my hand as we ran back the way we’d come, cutting a frightened path through a quiet night.
Chapter 10
“My brother, Otis Andrews, always says the same thing.”
This was Mrs. Rhodes, insisting that I sit down for a hot breakfast even though I ate at home.
“But I’m really not hungry!” I explained. I was busy scanning Mr. Raldy’s rental section for any 4 BR, 1 BA ads.
“Excuse me! Was I finished talking?”
“No, ma’am,” I squeaked, having discovered already that it was far better to let Mrs. Rhodes finish her stories than to interrupt her.
“Thank you. Ahem. Like I was saying. My brother, Otis Andrews, always says he isn’t hungry, and then I make him sit down and he eats four or five pieces of toast and an egg before he even starts to slow down. Now, does that sound like ‘not hungry’ to you, young lady? Does it?”
“No, ma’am,” I repeated, sighing as I reluctantly took the bagel she insisted on handing me.
“Is your brother . . . you know . . .” Jamie asked. His eyes slid to me and away again quickly. I wondered what Mrs. Rhodes knew that I didn’t, because I didn’t understand quite what he was asking. Bristol, in her warm colors, stopped eating and looked up as if she understood and wanted to know the answer.
“My brother is a lot of things,” Mrs. Rhodes said briskly. “He has a boatload of artistic talent. He has autism. And he has the loudest snore of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“That’s what I have, autism,” I said faintly. “Your brother does, too?”
“Yes. But the more important question is, do you snore as loud as Otis Andrews?”
I giggled in spite of my sleepiness and my bad mood. “No, ma’am, I hope not,” I said.
Three bites into the bagel, I managed to slide it into the trash without being caught, or so I thought until Mrs. Rhodes tsk-tsked at me. But she didn’t say anything else.
G was sticking close to me this morning as if she sensed my mood. At last she handed me her Velcro strip with a picture of a girl yawning on it.
“Yes, I’m sleepy,” I said in an undertone, hoping Mrs. Rhodes wouldn’t pick up on it.
No such luck. “And why is that, dear?” she asked.
“No reason,” I said sharply.
“Good. I hope you weren’t breaking any rules last night. I saw a silhouette that looked much like you on my neighbor’s back porch last night, but maybe I was only dreaming.”
My eyes widened huge. “You live on Probart Street?”
“My dear, whoever said anything about Probart Street?” she asked, then tsk-tsked again, and I knew I’d been caught.
“Livvie, you’ve done it now,” I said. Then, “Are you going to tell Tash? ’Cause she’s still real mad at me for yesterday.”
“Are you asking me or Livvie?” Mrs. Rhodes said gently. Then answered, “No, I won’t tell Natasha. I imagine she has quite enough to worry about without my adding to the list.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by this, so I settled myself at the table. I was very curious about this idea of Otis Andrews having autism.
“Was he always like that?” I asked. It took Mrs. Rhodes a moment to figure out what I was talking about.
“Oh, Otis?” she asked after a moment. “My, yes. He painted from the very first day he was old enough to hold on to a paintbrush. Befor
e that, he painted in his own drool on the high chair.” She shuddered. “I never particularly liked that habit, but you know, you just can’t stop an artist.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust, but refused to be distracted from my question.
“I meant have autism. Did he always do that?”
“Did he always have autism? Yes, I believe he did. Of course, they didn’t call it that at first. They called it ‘slow,’ which was quite incorrect, as he could think circles around me even as a baby. But autism seems to be something you either have or you don’t, like blue eyes or a crooked chin.” She tugged her own crooked chin and smiled sideways at me.
“Me, too,” I said. “I’ve always had autism, too.”
“I do not like that word,” Michael said with sudden stress in his voice. “We don’t use that word in this classroom, okay?” He walked out of the kitchen before anyone could answer. I could hear him in the next room, banging the cabinets while he looked for his science magazines with the pictures of the snakes, glossy and smooth. I knew he would sit and stroke their scales until his pressure went away again.
“Michael, too,” I confided. “But he doesn’t like it and I don’t blame him.”
“Well, why on earth do you say that?”
“It makes life pretty crazy,” I explained, and downed the last of my juice.
“I’ve got news for you, sweet Livvie,” Mrs. Rhodes said, whisking the crumbs off the table with a napkin. “Life’s pretty crazy, even when you don’t have autism.”
“But you have a brother with autism and that’s the same thing. You had to deal with your brother growing up and you had to keep him out of trouble, right?”
“He was the best big brother anyone could ask for,” Mrs. Rhodes said briskly. “Both growing up and now.”
“He’s your big brother?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he was younger.”
She shook her head. “Older by two years.”
“But you take care of him.”
She shook her head matter-of-factly as though this had no bearing on anything. “That’s what siblings do,” she said. “They take care of each other. You take care of your sisters, don’t you?” She walked out of the kitchen to help G, who was having trouble wiggling out of her sweatshirt. I was left in the kitchen by myself, watching the sink drip.
“Don’t you?” I asked, very quietly, so nobody but myself would hear. “Well, Livvie? Don’t you?”
But nobody answered.
A few minutes before lunch, I slipped away. Only for a second, and I knew better, but it wasn’t anything bad this time. Natasha wasn’t in class, she should be coming back from lunch, and all I did was stand in the hallway until I saw her coming.
“Are you loitering, Livvie?” She saw me before I intended her to and I didn’t quite have what I wanted to say planned out.
“I was waiting for you.”
“Again?” She sounded tired. “We talked about this.”
I hummed, stopped myself. “Do I take care of you?”
She tilted her head, puzzled. “What do you mean, bug?”
“Mrs. Rhodes says siblings take care of each other. She takes care of her older brother, who has autism like me. She says he takes care of her, too, because that’s what siblings do. Do I take care of you?”
I counted six separate emotions as they flitted across her features, but I couldn’t label any of them. Then her shoulders slumped and a sigh went out of her and she pulled me into her arms.
“Of course you do, honey” was all she said.
I still had this funny feeling in my stomach, like maybe she was making it up. But she turned me around and headed me back through the double doors before I could ask anything further.
“Lost one,” she called to Mrs. Rhodes, who was helping Mr. Raldy with Peyton’s feeding tube.
Mrs. Rhodes paled when she realized what Natasha meant. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Oh, my, Livvie, I’m going to put a bell on you, my girl, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Get over here.” She grabbed me in an uncomfortable hug and then looked at me. “Why do you keep doing this to me?”
“It wasn’t to you. You were busy. I knew Natasha would be walking by and I had a question.”
“Olivia Owen, I have known you for forty-eight hours and you have given me forty-eight brand-new gray hairs.” She squinted in a funny sort of way. “There is a rule. It might be a new rule and it might not, but it is a rule from this point on. You are not to leave this room without telling an adult. No, not telling, asking. And getting permission and filing a flight plan for exactly where you will be going and exactly when you will be coming back and then you will not be taking detours. And that, young lady, goes for leaving your house as well. Do we understand each other?”
I had begun to rock and hum as she spoke, feeling the nervous energy pouring off her, but Natasha nudged me and I responded.
“Yes, ma’am.” Point taken, no matter how nervous it made me.
“Thank you,” Natasha said to Mrs. Rhodes.
“Thank you, sweetie.” Mrs. Rhodes gave Natasha a pat and it seemed to me suddenly odd that the two of them—the mid-sixties substitute teacher and the sixteen-year-old junior in high school—had something in common.
Peyton squealed and Mrs. Rhodes turned her attention back to my classmate as G approached me.
“Stop being stupid,” her Velcro strip said, but I understood how she meant it and I didn’t get offended.
“I’m trying,” I whispered urgently. “I’m really trying, but I just can’t seem to get a handle on it!”
For some reason, G thought this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard, and she bounced onto the sofa with her face in her hands, giggling gleefully. Although I didn’t get the joke, I smiled uncertainly at her and took a seat next to her, waiting for my teachers to work out the problem with Peyton so they could join me at the worktable.
As the day wore on, though, I found that I could not shake my thoughts of the issues Mrs. Rhodes had brought up about her brother. Was I helpful to my siblings? Maybe not, judging from Natasha’s guarded reaction. And maybe it was okay, I thought, not to be so helpful to Natasha—after all, she was older than me.
But Lanie was younger, just like Mrs. Rhodes was younger than Otis Andrews. Wasn’t I supposed to be a big sister to Lanie and help her out as much as possible?
One thing was certain, I thought as I met Natasha at the corner of the school that afternoon. I was definitely not going to ask Lanie. After last night’s adventures, I wasn’t sure I was tough enough to take whatever answer she would give me.
At home, I found Gray Cat asleep in the center of the small kitchen table. Brushing her off with a scolding, I scooped her up almost immediately and apologized.
“You’re not supposed to be on the table, okay?” I said, scratching her cheek the way she liked best. She crooked her head sideways and began to purr, reluctantly at first, but gaining strength when I headed her toward the bedroom and her food bowl.
I had barely unpacked my real estate catalogs when a noise drew my attention from down the hallway. In Natasha and Lanie’s room, I found Lanie standing in the center of the room looking around.
“Why does she do this?” she asked me. “Why does she pick up my stuff and put it away? I’m going to pick up my stuff and put it away, if she just gives me a minute or two! She always complains that I never clean up my room, but then she never gives me a chance! She just does it for me like she’s my mother or something! What is her problem?” She stomped her foot, hard, and it struck me again that a sixteen-year-old and an eleven-year-old should not be sharing a room.
Wordlessly, I turned and wandered back down the hall toward my room. I learned long ago not to interfere with my little sister when she was already upset. But the problem of her living situation—and the reason for it—plagued me again as I tried to settle down with my real estate catalogs.
Of course her living situation paled in comparison to our col
lective living situation, I realized as I stopped myself from counting down the days. Knowing the actual number of days we had left only made them go by faster, and it was already going to take every single one of them to find the perfect vacant home in Nabor-with-an-A.
I opened my real estate catalog and immediately closed it. My hands felt restless and began the finger play they remembered from that night waiting on the empty bus bench in the rain. I didn’t know why, but I was too impatient tonight, too restless and distracted, to work on my catalog. Since Simon and Karen had begun to work extra shifts, the impossibility of affording a house was starting to interfere with my ability to plan one for us.
Instead, I flipped open the rental section, scanning for the right number of bedrooms and bathrooms. There was one, but I recognized the word “Probart” and I knew that wasn’t right. In a different ad, I recognized “Pendleton,” but the numbers didn’t match up. Perhaps the Sun House was being rented through a different catalog, I thought. Perhaps my own catalogs were useless.
I went to bed early and woke several times in the night, each time more wide awake and restless than the last. I reached for Gray Cat in the night, but she got tired of playing my teddy bear and began to fuss each time I woke her, so I finally stopped. For the first time since he’d died, I itched to sneak out and visit Orange Cat’s grave, but Mrs. Rhodes had laid down some very specific rules about leaving the house, and I was not about to break them.
I wanted to go to Natasha, but something I didn’t have words for stopped me.
So I thought of going to Lanie, but that wouldn’t work, either. Forcing myself to stay in bed, I stared at the ceiling and counted dots in the ceiling squares till morning while the trailer made night noises around me: creaks with every breeze, the starting and stopping of the electric vent, and dripping from the sink in the bathroom, where a night-light glowed softly through my open bedroom door.
Morning came slowly and by gentle degrees of daylight, and it never developed fully because the weather had changed overnight. Heavy clouds buried the sky and the temperature continued to drop, even as day arrived. I would need two sweaters today. Maybe even a blanket. I had nine to choose from.
