by Sarah Dooley
While the note was being delivered, the rest of us scrambled to make the classroom right. Michael busied himself hanging pictures of snakes, since he couldn’t think of anything prettier to look at. G helped Mrs. Otis get the chips and the cups out on the table. Even Robert helped, thrilled by the privilege of standing on a chair long enough to hang the banner he and Bristol had written in marker on giant paper:
WE’LL MISS YOU, TASH!
Otis Andrews had read it out loud to me while he and Peyton drew swirls and sparkles around the letters, Otis sliding the paper under Peyton’s marker while Peyton squealed with delight at the colors. Peyton hadn’t stopped gazing at our new volunteer since his arrival. She got so excited making the banner that she moved her chin and her chair followed Robert all the way to the wall to hang her artwork. Now that the banner was hanging, she was watching Otis Andrews spin his Frisbee on his finger. She kept looking at me and back at the Frisbee, like, Are you seeing this?
I ventured closer and touched just the very end of her soft hair. “I see it, Peyton. It’s very cool.”
The door banged open and I spun from Peyton to find Tash, sandwiched between Bristol and Mr. Raldy, with her eyes going from the banner to me and back to the banner again.
“What did you do?” she asked with sparkly eyes like she wanted to cry, but maybe not in a bad way. Used to be, when Tash came to my classroom, she said, “What did you do?” and it meant What trouble are you in?
I looked around at my classmates, the ones I didn’t used to feel at home with. Michael had never stopped darting around the classroom, pressing pictures of snakes onto the wall with Scotch tape. It was beginning to look like we were living in a jungle or the snake room at the zoo. Bristol and Robert and Peyton were all beaming at their banner, while G laid out napkins at the place settings in the kitchen.
“I didn’t do anything,” I admitted. This time it was true. “I only told them you were leaving and the rest is their fault.”
Tash laughed and hugged me. Then hugged each of my classmates in thanks, just as I had done.
Funny thing, though. They let her hug them. It made me want to hug them all again, but I figured they’d had enough hugs forced out of them for one day.
We settled at the table with Tash right at the corner by the sink, the corner that was usually mine. I scooted my chair down carefully to make room for my sister, and she let me heap her plate with chips and a giant spoonful of cream cheese. Tash ate more chips than anybody, which made me think maybe she felt happy, like when I ate too much popcorn because movies were fun.
“Are you happy you’re leaving?” I asked her while she helped Mrs. Rhodes clean the plates off the table. It struck me as wrong that she should help clean up the plates when the party was for her in the first place, so I took them from her and finished. I noticed the look she and Mrs. Rhodes exchanged.
“Liv, I really am,” Tash said in answer to my question. Then she added quickly, before my feelings could get hurt, “I’ll miss seeing you at school, though. It’ll be different only seeing you at home.”
I thought of the looks she’d had on her face the few times she did see me at school. Embarrassed. Uncertain. Sad.
“I think I’m happy, too,” I told her. “I like how happy looks on you best.”
She hugged me closer than all the others, and whispered something in my hair. I stepped back so I could hear it and she met my gaze with a wide smile.
“Thanks. You’re a good sister, Livvie.”
Bright orange streaks worked their way up from the sunset by the time we reached the trailer to finish packing. Gray Cat firmly protested the idea of being packed, but I tricked her into her carrier with catnip and latched the door securely behind her.
“I’ll take her,” Natasha said, urging Lanie out the door in front of her. They had been in the middle of a heated argument that had a lot of smiles in it, for an argument. Natasha shouldered the strap of Gray Cat’s duffel carrier and edged her out the door. “I know you have stuff to do!” she added over her shoulder.
But Lanie looped around, shouting, “Wait!” She began banging about the kitchen, checking cupboards to see that they were empty, so I figured I had a few moments before I had to finish up. Galloping out the door behind Natasha, I cut through the side yard and plunked myself on the ground next to Orange Cat’s grave.
“I made you a memorial,” I said. “It’s on Pendleton Street, where we lived way back when. I’ll come visit you there, okay?”
No one answered and the air stayed still, but I think maybe the sunset got oranger for a moment.
“I love you, too,” I promised.
Lanie came banging out of the house, startling me into action. With a last kiss blown toward Orange Cat’s grave, I galloped back into the house. I heard car doors slamming outside. Karen and Simon were trying to convince one last pillow to fit in the trunk, as Lanie and Natasha slid into the backseat, elbowing each other for a spot, but leaving space enough for me.
I closed all the doors in the house and locked all the windows, then ran each faucet one last time as if I could wash away the last of us. In this manner, I paced around the house, completing each of my leaving rituals with reverence. There were things that had to be done to make a house not ours anymore. It seemed so foreign, each time we moved, that this was the last time my hand would turn this hot water faucet with the missing H, that I would never again peer through the gathered dust of this particular window. It made sense to spend just a minute with each of these house parts I would never see again.
At last, all my rituals were completed except one, and I was ready. I even had the pen. It felt heavy with importance in my hand.
But I stood a moment, waiting. I wasn’t sure for what until it happened. The whistle blew at exactly six o’clock, so quiet I knew I was the only one who could hear it. Just as it did, my eyes caught something purple on the kitchen counter, rolled halfway up under the microwave.
Stepping closer, I picked up my sister’s purple pen. Then let my eyes wander to the white wall behind it. Something was written there in purple, and I knew all the words, but my brain took a moment before it pieced them all together.
Lanie Owen Lived Here, the wall said.
I smiled at my little sister’s message for a moment while my throat closed up with an emotion I knew I wouldn’t find on a flash card. At last, without writing anything, I dropped the pens on the counter for the next kid. As the whistle faded, I ran for the door, picking up speed as I hit the top step. In the car, my family waited. It was just after six and past time to head home.
