by Sarah Dooley
At least it was Saturday and I didn’t have to freeze my way through a day at Nabor High School. The building and everything in it was ancient and, Bristol and Robert liked to joke, the heating system had been built before winter was invented. It was usually freezing cold in the building, except on the rare days the heat kicked on properly, and on those days, it was sweltering and stuffy.
Since the trailer didn’t like to stay warm, I sat with my feet on the vent and my blanket over my feet, so the heat was trapped. Lanie liked to complain that I was stealing all the heat, but this was my bedroom and I didn’t care what Lanie thought right this second. I was too cold to care.
Mom found me on the bedroom floor, catching the heat with my blanket and still counting the holes in the ceiling. I felt sluggish and sleepy today.
“Good morning, Livvie-bug,” Mom said, kneeling beside me. “What are you thinking about?”
“Good morning, Karen. I’m thinking about how many holes are in the ceiling. Why is it so freezing out today?”
Karen laughed. “You haven’t been out yet. How do you know it’s freezing out?”
“ ’Cause it’s freezing in,” I explained. “I was so cold last night, I dreamed about seeing my breath. That’s pretty cold.”
“That is pretty cold.” Karen slid down the wall beside me and looped an arm around my shoulders. “So, what’s the deal, kiddo?”
“The temperature dropped.”
Karen looked at me like she wasn’t sure if I was being sarcastic or not. “That’s not what I meant, bug.”
“What did you mean?”
“I mean your sisters are moping around the house, and they’re mad at each other, which never happens because Natasha doesn’t get mad, hardly. What’s going on?”
I moaned softly and leaned my head on Karen’s shoulder. “I don’t know. I’m so tired, Karen.”
She stroked my hair for a minute.
“Did you sneak out with Lanie the other night?”
I puzzled it out for a moment. Understood. “Did Mrs. Rhodes tell you?”
“She wants you to be safe.”
“Lanie heard—” I was nervous about saying it anymore, because this was the part where people stared like I was crazy. But it was still the truth and the truth was still what I was supposed to say. “She heard the whistle, too. We wanted to check.”
“Oh.” My mother’s voice was a little higher than usual with stress and maybe like she had tears hidden in there somewhere. She sighed and squeezed me. I wondered if she was mad, but she said, “Did you find anything?” and that was all.
“No. Lanie made me come home. The sign fell off the porch rail.”
“What sign?”
“I don’t know.”
Karen sighed and I felt her shaking a little against me, not like she was shivering but like she was catching her breath, as if she had run somewhere.
“That’s all?” she said at last.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you won’t do it again, Livvie. Right?”
“Yes, ma’am—I mean—no, ma’am.”
“Because you said that last time.”
“This time I promise.”
“Okay.” She rested her head on my shoulder for a minute, then stood. I let her go and listened to her walking back into the kitchen.
I sat for longer than I intended, longer than my usual Saturday schedule would allow. For some reason, my schedule felt off today and that felt all right with me. Saturday mornings were reserved for alone time with my real estate catalogs, but this morning, I couldn’t bring myself to face the pictures in the catalogs with their neat, even windows and their pretty curtains that probably didn’t come with the houses, anyway.
I couldn’t bring myself to face our own home, either, when our days in it were numbered. I had to get out. But Orange Cat’s grave was lonely in the autumn daylight. We’d marked it with a stone on which I’d painted Orange Cat’s name and age, but the paint washed off in the subsequent rain and now Orange Cat was remembered with just a cold gray stone. There was litter nearby from the neighbors. I picked it up a piece at a time and ran it back into the house to put in the trash. At some point, without really thinking about it, that’s where I put my real estate catalogs, too. My heavy notebook made a thunk when I dropped it on top.
I stood there for a minute, looking into the trash can, every bit as reverent as I was at Orange Cat’s grave. The notebook didn’t mean much now, not with the sign outside the Sun House, but it knew my hands so well that I couldn’t help reaching in to touch it one last time.
Simon went out before lunch and came back an hour later looking a good bit happier than he had in days.
“Found a good one,” he said. “Clear over on the other side of town, just off Pendleton Street. It couldn’t hurt to look.”
“A rental?” Lanie sat up straighter, looking much more cheerful than she had moments ago, moping at the table, not looking at Natasha or me. “Can we go look now?”
“As soon as everyone finishes eating.”
All eyes turned to my lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich with three bites taken out of it. Swallowing with difficulty, I glanced around at my family and quickly dumped the rest of the sandwich in the trash.
“I’m finished,” I volunteered.
It was rare the whole family squeezed together in the Tercel, and when we did, it was a tight fit. Driving across town, I registered, took a lot less time than walking. We got there at one and parked in front of a small gray house with an even smaller porch. The house had a friendly face, but of course it was nowhere near as big as the houses in the Neighbor real estate catalogs I had thrown away this morning. The yard was mostly dirt, but you could tell there would be grass later when the weather was warm and the winter had passed.
Simon lifted the planter on the front porch to reveal the key. “Landlord said we could unlock it, look around. Then contact him if we’re interested. He was the first pet-friendly, kid-friendly person I talked to, and the price really isn’t that bad for a house this size.” He said it like the house was big, but I was mentally counting windows.
“It might not have enough rooms, Olivia,” I whispered, “so don’t get your hopes up.” Humming my way up the front steps, I followed my sisters into the living room.
“Good, sturdy structure,” Simon said.
“And clean,” Karen added with hope in her voice. My parents got good over the years at making even the most dismal home seem suitable, in case it was all we could find.
But I didn’t like the ceilings, hanging too low. Simon had to duck to get from the living room to the kitchen and I didn’t think he would remember to do that at midnight in his boxers, so I could imagine several nights of bumped heads and rising tempers.
“I don’t like this place,” I announced.
“Bug, give it a chance,” Natasha said quickly. “Come on, let’s go check out the bedrooms.” Her eyes on my parents were nervous.
My suspicions were correct: There were only three bedrooms. That meant Natasha and Lanie would still have to share if we moved in.
“But this won’t work,” I protested as Natasha began outlining which room would belong to whom while Lanie darted from room to room, checking views out of windows, planning contents of built-in bookshelves before we could even be sure they would be ours. “This is three BR, one BA. That’s not big enough.”
“I like it,” Lanie said, ignoring my assessment. “Our bedroom is huge!”
“You don’t have a bedroom here yet,” I protested. “Tash, I don’t like it.”
“Okay, try to be specific. What don’t you like about it?” Natasha, also ducking to get through the doorways, sounded more open than Lanie to my critique.
“You guys would still have to share a room. And the ceilings are low and it’s not very friendly. I don’t like it. It has gas heat. We would have to keep it cold.”
“How do you know it has gas heat?”
I pointed impatiently to the closet
beside the bathroom. “Gas furnace equals gas heat.”
“You notice the oddest things, you know that? I mean, you don’t know not to wear your slippers in the rain, but you notice in a glance whether or not a house has gas heat. How do you do that?”
I shrugged impatiently. “I guess different things just seem important to me than they do to other people.”
“No kidding,” Lanie called from the bathroom, where she was standing in the tub, no doubt imagining showers to come.
I used to be like Lanie. As recently as last week, in fact. Ordinarily, I loved looking at vacant houses with signs in their yards. They were so hopeful when we met them, each with a slightly different set of promises to make. I loved to walk through the empty rooms, listening to the echo of my footfalls, knowing it would be muted later by the presence of boxes, then clothing, odds and ends of furniture, and the voices of my sisters and the comforting sounds of living.
This house being on Pendleton Street, I should have loved it more even than the others. But something was wrong with the idea of this house. It was too small for our family, which felt bigger by the day as I grew taller, as the pressure got more insistent. And it wasn’t the Sun House, so it wasn’t going to do.
Lanie was staring at me with a puzzled expression on her face.
“Who died?” she asked flatly when I met her gaze.
It took me a moment to work out what she meant. “Do I look sad?”
She nodded uncertainly. “You do.”
I did something then that I didn’t do very often: I made my facial expression into a lie. Forcing a smile at Lanie, I stretched out a hand for her. “This one’s too small,” I said as she uncertainly took my hand. “Let’s start looking for another.” I pulled her with me onto the front porch and began scanning the lawns for a sign.
Chapter 11
The air outside was crisp and colder than it should be, two days before November. Lanie’s hand in mine was warm and I remembered her being little, remembered the last time I felt bigger than her. Some years had passed since then.
I started to pull her toward the Sun House, but she pulled back just as insistently.
“Not a chance,” she said with a shiver. “Uh-uh.”
So we headed right instead. Little rocks rolled under my shoes and made it difficult to walk as fast as I suddenly felt I needed to. One street over from Pendleton was Probart. I tugged my sister in that direction, terribly curious about something Mrs. Rhodes said the day before.
The angle of the back porch meant it had to be the house on the left. The house’s left, that is, not mine. It didn’t take long to find them, either. It’s not every day you see a sixty-five-year-old substitute teacher playing Ultimate Frisbee with her brother in the yard.
“Go long!” she shouted, and Otis Andrews did, sprinting the length of the yard to grab the Frisbee out of the air.
“Yes!” Mrs. Rhodes squealed, jumping and clapping for her brother. I felt an odd sort of giggle bubbling up in my throat. I was pretty sure there was a rule about teachers and Frisbee and I was pretty sure she was breaking it, but I didn’t have the words for it just yet.
“I’ve still got it, sis!” Otis Andrews announced in a proud sort of voice.
“That you do!” She was laughing. “Me, on the other hand . . .”
“Aah, come on, sis, you gotta try it!”
“All right, all right!” She winced and braced herself as he threw the Frisbee back. I noticed that it moved in a gentle pattern, exactly into her hands. I thought maybe that had more to do with Otis Andrews than with Mrs. Rhodes.
“Is her name ‘Sis’?” I whispered to Lanie.
“I don’t think so,” she whispered back. “I think that’s her brother. Do you know these people?”
“Oh. That’s Mrs. Rhodes, my new substitute teacher, and her brother, Otis Andrews.”
“Oh, well, see, he’s calling her ‘sis’ like ‘sister.’ ”
“Huh.” That made sense, I guess. Crouching behind the porch railing, we watched them playing in their yard like two little kids.
“Do you think they know we’re watching?” Lanie asked after a minute, and Mrs. Rhodes called from the yard, “Of course we do! We’re old, not blind!”
Despite her words, I thought I saw Otis Andrews jump a little, and I suspected he hadn’t been aware of us till then. The Frisbee stopped almost in midair, the way it sank into his grip, like he had called it.
“Well, hello there,” he said, walking toward us.
“Hello.” I felt my eyes get funny and slip away from him, not sure where to look.
“And how are you this fine afternoon?”
Since it was freezing cold, without even the decency to snow, I wasn’t sure what he meant by “fine,” but perhaps it was just something to say, like the chipped paint on the porch railing was just something for me to look at.
“Doing well, thank you,” I said automatically, Natasha’s manners drilled into me for years became habit. “And yourself?”
“Why, I’m splendid.” From some people, it might have sounded trite, just something to say, but the way he said it, I believed him.
“You’re very good at Frisbee,” Lanie said politely, while I hummed softly, just under my breath, hoping Otis Andrews wouldn’t notice.
“Are you nervous, dear?” Mrs. Rhodes asked, noticing my humming just like she noticed everything. I kept humming without answering, because I didn’t want to admit it and I also didn’t want to lie.
“We were looking at a house,” Lanie said. “She didn’t like it, though.”
“Oh, are you moving?”
“We got evicted.” Lanie’s head bobbed up and down. I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to tell people you got evicted, because usually they got embarrassed and stammered a lot and looked away. But Mrs. Rhodes just smiled.
“We’ve had those months, haven’t we, Otis?”
Otis Andrews nodded politely. “And how,” he agreed, although I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
“Would you like to play Frisbee?” Otis Andrews asked. “It’s an original Wham-O forty mold, 1978.”
“I’m not very good at Frisbee,” I said tentatively, and hummed.
“We should be getting back,” Lanie said quickly. “We were just looking for For Rent signs and we wandered a little far.”
“House you were looking at wasn’t up to par, then?”
“It was awesome,” Lanie said at the exact same time as I said, “It was terrible.”
“Houses are like that,” Mrs. Rhodes said, not at all confused by our split reaction. “Picky about who they like. The trick is finding a house that likes the whole family. Right, Otis Andrews?”
“Quite right, sis.”
“Well, you two young ladies have a fabulous day,” Mrs. Rhodes said, and she waved us on our way, although I suspected she would stand at the corner and watch till we made it back safely.
We hadn’t gone even a block when Lanie spotted Karen walking quickly down the sidewalk.
“Girls!” she hollered when she saw us. “Where have you been?”
“Looking for For Rent signs,” Lanie said with a blush. “We didn’t mean to go so far.” She cast me an accusing glance.
“We were at a For Rent sign!” Karen said in exasperation.
“I don’t like that one,” I said faintly. “And I remembered that my teacher lived on Probart Street and I wanted to see.”
“Your—the new sub?”
“Mrs. Rhodes and her brother.”
Mom put her head in her hands for a moment. “Oh, Livvie, Lanie. You girls just can’t go bothering a teacher at home!” She began leading us back the way we’d come, toward Mrs. Rhodes’s house.
“They were outside, Mom, it’s okay,” Lanie said. “They were playing Frisbee.”
Mom seemed to take this account with a grain of salt, a phrase Tasha used to mean I doubt it. “Whatever they were doing,” she said sternly, “you can’t just go barging into their personal
lives like that. And, Livvie, how many times lately have you been told not to leave our sight without asking?”
“But I took Lanie.” I glanced at Lanie and back at my mother, confused. “I didn’t go alone.”
“Lanie is not an adult. She’s an eleven-year-old child. She’s not allowed to wander off, either, Livvie, so you’re definitely not allowed to take her with you! We talked about this just this morning and you made a promise! Livvie, you can’t go breaking promises like this! How can I trust you?”
“Livvie, you broke another rule!” I hollered, and Lanie’s face got red.
“Hush, they’ll hear you.”
“Who’ll hear you?” I asked, although my wording didn’t sound quite right.
“Mrs. Rhodes and Otis Andrews.” Indeed, we were nearing their house.
They had taken a break from Frisbee to flop onto the lawn furniture, looking relaxed, although there wasn’t a speck of sun in the sky.
“Why, hello again,” Mrs. Rhodes said pleasantly as she saw us approaching. Standing, she extended her hand to my mother. “Vesta Rhodes. Olivia’s new substitute, although I imagine she’s told you that.”
Mom smiled weakly. “I’m Karen Owen,” she said. “I’m so sorry if they bothered you.”
“They were absolutely no bother,” Mrs. Rhodes said briskly. “You have lovely children. Why don’t you come over tomorrow and not be a bother again? We have brunch on Sundays at ten-thirty.”
Karen looked a little surprised, but Mrs. Rhodes’s gaze was kind.
“Well . . . that would be lovely,” Karen said uncertainly.
Otis Andrews stood suddenly, refusing to make eye contact with my mother. He gave me a crooked smile, so like his sister’s. Nodding at me, he said, “I like this one, she’s a funny one, this one.”
Mom smiled at him, a look of realization dawning as Otis rocked from foot to foot. “That she is,” she agreed.
Walking back to the rental house, I waited for my mother to fuss at me some more, but instead she only wrapped an arm around my shoulder and squeezed. She had to reach up to do it. I was taller than her, which I thought was an awfully strange thing, since she was a grown-up and I felt very far from it.
