Where We Belong

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  “Thought she’d lose her voice, and we’d all get a break.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. She didn’t really scream till her voice was gone. She sort of screamed herself to sleep instead.” Then we both just stood there, feeling awkward. Well, I’m guessing about him. But he looked awkward. “I’m really sorry for what I said to you last night. About your dog’s ears. I was tired and stressed out, and usually I’d think a thing like that but not say it. I don’t know why I said it. I don’t know why you even put up with all that stuff from me. And you were polite about it. I’m surprised you didn’t just kick me down the steps and slam the door.”

  Then I paused, finally halfway willing to hear what he would say back.

  “I let you talk because I liked what you were saying.”

  I made a face. It hurt my lip.

  “How could you have?”

  “I liked it because you were standing up for my dog. I liked that. You were championing her. Same reason I let you go on when you were reading me the riot act about your sister. That’s a good quality in a person. Standing up for someone who can’t stand up for herself.”

  “Oh.” Which was a stupid answer, but I was embarrassed, and I didn’t know what else to say. Then I had to say something, so I said, “It’s Saturday.”

  “It is. Thank God.”

  “You don’t work on Saturday.”

  “I don’t. Thank God.”

  “If you hate your job so much, why do you do it?”

  “Because I’m seven weeks short of retirement, and I can stand anything for that long. Even my job.”

  “So… you’re… home all day?” Obviously, I was trying to scope out what kind of day with Sophie it was going to be. I was hoping it might be less obvious to him.

  “Nope. Going to see my brother and his wife across town.”

  I thought it was weird that he would tell me that. It seemed like too much information. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would tell you where he’s going. He seemed like the kind who would just say, “Bye.” And, if you asked, maybe would remind you it was his life. Not yours.

  It seemed almost like he was really happy to be going to visit his brother, and he wanted someone to know.

  “Taking Rigby?” Sooner or later, I had to get to that, and we both knew it.

  “Nope. You’re in luck. Rigby’s going to wait here.”

  I breathed deeply. As though I hadn’t for a long time. I think he noticed.

  “Now it’s my turn to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong,” he said. “Maybe you could just get her a dog.”

  “Sophie hates dogs.”

  Then we both looked down at her, pressing her face up to the fence, trying to get closer to Rigby. I knew it must have sounded like a weird thing to say.

  “Hem,” Sophie said.

  “Her,” Paul said, directly to Sophie. “Rigby is a her.”

  Most people didn’t talk directly to Sophie, so that was interesting.

  “Hem,” Sophie said.

  That was honestly the first moment it hit me. Sophie was saying him. Really, now that I knew, it could be him or hem just as easy. Her pronunciation wasn’t perfect, but it was enough like him that I couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t gotten that on my own. Why a stranger had to figure it out for me. Then again, with as many words as Sophie had said in her life, Paul Inverness had heard almost as many of them as I had.

  I decided that was something I didn’t want to dwell on.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense, what I said about her not liking dogs. It’s true, though. She just likes your dog. Not dogs in general.”

  Another bit of silence, and then he shook his head. I could tell he was done with the conversation. He wanted out.

  He turned to go.

  “Have fun at your brother’s,” I said.

  He stopped. Turned back. Gave me the strangest look. It was actually sort of…suspicious. Like I must have had an ulterior motive in saying it. “Now why would you say a thing like that?”

  “I… oh. Um… I don’t know. Doesn’t everybody say things like that? You seemed like you were happy to go see your brother. That’s all.”

  “I’m not happy to go see my brother.”

  “Really? Seemed like you were.”

  “I have no idea why you would say that. I don’t even like my brother.”

  I wanted to say, “Then why are you going to see him?” But… not really, I didn’t. I wanted to think it. The conversation had taken a weird turn, and there was no way I was saying anything brave out loud.

  He looked over at me on his way to the gate. Gave me this look. Like the sudden weirdness was all my fault, and none of his own.

  I made a mental note not to get into any more conversations with Paul Inverness. Any more than I absolutely had to.

  I went inside to tell my mom the good news. That things were going to be easy for a while. For a few hours, at least.

  A few hours of peace is a lot.

  Depending on what you’re used to.

  I walked to the library, even though it was almost two miles away. It’s not that I didn’t have money for the bus. It’s that I didn’t have a lot of money, ever, and if I walked, I’d get to keep having it.

  It was a smaller branch than I was used to, because we were out in the suburbs now. When I stepped inside, my eyes went straight to the computer room. It had eight computers, which wasn’t even half of what I was used to. But there were only two people using them. I was used to twenty computers and a line.

  I walked up to the checkout counter. The woman there was only maybe in her early twenties, with hair that was blond but with a blue streak along one side.

  I showed her my library card.

  “We just moved. Can I use this same card here?”

  She blinked a couple of times, like easy questions were harder to answer than hard ones. Then she said, “It’s the same library system all over the county.”

  “Oh. Good. Thanks.”

  Not that I wanted to check out any books. I love books. But I never checked them out. I read them for hours, and looked at pictures in them, but I didn’t take them home, because I didn’t want them to get ruined. But I knew I needed a library card to use the computer.

  I started by sitting down at the reference computer for library books. I just sat there with my hands on my knees for a couple of minutes, trying to think. It didn’t really matter, because there were three terminals, and nobody was waiting to use any of them.

  After a while, I felt like there was somebody behind me, so I looked up and around. There was a woman standing over me, maybe forty, with long, straight hair. She had nice eyes.

  “Help you find something?”

  “Oh. No, thanks. I’m pretty good at using the system. I’m just trying to decide where I want to go today.”

  I watched her face for a minute. She was looking at me like that was funny.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I just like that. It sounded nice. Where do you usually like to go?”

  “I like travel. And travel books. And I like to look up travel photography and videos on the internet. But my favorite are big coffee-table books that tell you all about the places but also have lots of color pictures of them. Because then I learn about the place, but I feel like I can see it, too. But usually, libraries don’t have those, because they’re so expensive. I go all kinds of places, but my favorite is Tibet. So if I can’t decide, I’ll usually go to Tibet. I like mountains, so I also like India and Nepal and Bhutan, because they have the Himalayas, too. But I also like the Andes in South America, and the Alps. And I like Australia, because of the Great Barrier Reef. Even though that’s not a mountain.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Sounds like you know exactly what you want.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I knew what I wanted, all right. How to get it was the problem.

  She walked away, and I figured she couldn’t have cared less, and that I’d told her a lot more about what
I was looking for than she needed to know. I never have much to say unless I’m in a library or a bookstore, and then I say too much. I never seem to get the talking thing right.

  I was thinking maybe something new, so I started searching for Norway. Maybe someplace along the fiords or something.

  A minute later, she came back and said, “We don’t have too much with photos on the Himalayas, but we have the Lonely Planet books for Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan.”

  She’d knocked me out of my train of thought. I felt disoriented.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’ve read the Tibet one three times. And Nepal twice. Bhutan only once.”

  “Read? Or looked through? Because those books…”

  She held her hands apart, exaggerating about how thick they were.

  “Yes, ma’am, I know they’re big, because I read them cover to cover, and I know how much reading that is.”

  “Well. Wow. We could order something else from one of the other libraries.”

  “Uh. No, ma’am, that’s fine. I’ll just go on the computer.”

  It costs money every time they send a book from another branch.

  “You know there’s the Road Warrior database—”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m good at that. If I ever go to a whole new country, I’ll go back to that. But I already know all the facts it has for all the countries I just talked about.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Can I interest you in a job as a reference librarian?”

  I laughed, and it hurt my lip.

  “I think I might be a little young.”

  She put her hand on the top of my head for a second and then walked away. The whole time I was watching her walking, I could still feel that warm print where her hand had been.

  I settled in the computer room and surfed Norway for an hour, but nothing made me feel the way I wanted to feel.

  On the walk home, I passed a bookstore. New and used, both. It was called Nellie’s Books, and it looked kind of nice inside. Not like the big, new, modern kind of store with an espresso bar. Just books.

  I went inside.

  The woman behind the counter looked up at me and smiled. For some reason, that smile was almost like what I’d been looking for in Norway, except that didn’t make sense, because I could never travel to somebody’s smile. Then again, I’d never get to Norway, either. Who was I kidding?

  “Are you Nellie?” I asked. “Or is that just a name for the store?”

  Then I stood there dwelling on what a stupid thing that had been to say. Why did I even care? I didn’t, I’d just felt like I had to say something. But then I didn’t even know why. I thought, “Hi” would have been good.

  “In the flesh,” she said. “What can I help you with?”

  “I was wondering if you had any of those big, nice coffee-table books that are about travel.”

  “Any special place?”

  “Mountains are always good.”

  She looked at me a little funny when I said that. I guess because most people travel to a country, not to a shape of the ground.

  “I had something nice in the used section about the Himalayas,” she said. “Let me see if I still have it.”

  My heart jumped. If it was used, maybe I could even get it. But it was just one of those split-second thoughts. Those books cost big money, even used. Besides, they were way too nice to bring into my house.

  I followed her down a couple of aisles, watching her, but more from the corners of my eyes. So in case she looked back at me, it wouldn’t look like I was staring. She had hair like Sophie’s but a little browner, and her eyes were brown. I liked her nose, but I didn’t really know why. I couldn’t tell you one thing that was wrong with my nose, except for a few freckles, but all of a sudden, I wanted to trade it in for hers.

  Then she stopped and took a book off the shelf and held it with the cover toward me. I swear, my knees turned to butter. I felt like I might fall over. It had a picture on the cover that was so much like the first picture I’d ever seen of Tibet, it made my head feel foggy and far away, like this wasn’t really happening. It was like the place had followed me, and found me. It had the white temple with the fancy roof, the incredibly craggy and snowy mountains behind that, the smiley children in bright clothes, the prayer flags blowing in the wind. Well. It was a still picture, of course, so the prayer flags weren’t blowing. Except they were, and you could tell.

  Children in Tibet are always smiling in pictures. I think that might be part of how all this started.

  It had the word Himalayas really big on the cover, and in smaller letters it mentioned Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Northern India, and Northern Pakistan.

  “Can I see it?” I reached my hands out. They were shaking, and I think she noticed.

  I held the book in my hands for a minute. It was huge and heavy. I turned it over and looked at the price sticker. Fifty-five dollars, used. But you would really never know it was used. Except for one bumped corner, it was perfect.

  “Can I sit down and look at it?”

  “Of course.”

  She showed me to a nice stuffed easy chair. It was pretty far away from her counter, but I could see her from there, and she could see me. I sat down and slipped off my shoes and sat cross-legged in my sock feet, because I didn’t want to get her chair dirty. I opened the book between my knees.

  I looked up to see she was behind the counter again, reading.

  I turned one page at a time, my eyes mostly drawn to the snowy mountains. I’d never seen snow in my life. Not once. But I didn’t want to see it half plowed off a city street. I wanted to see it like that. Blowing off the top of a high mountain, or in cornices, or settled into the crags on those incredible peaks. I even wanted to see an avalanche. But only from a long, safe way away, of course.

  “Are you going to go there when you’re all grown up?” She didn’t even look up from her book when she asked it.

  I looked up from mine and stared at her for a minute.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s not the answer I was expecting.”

  She looked at me. I quick looked away.

  “I have to stay and help my mom.”

  “Forever?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “I hate to be a downer, but your mom won’t live forever.”

  “Oh. Then I’d really have to stay. Because if my mom wasn’t around to take care of Sophie, I’d have to.”

  Then I kicked myself hard, and waited for her to ask me who Sophie was and why I had to take care of her. She never did.

  I went back to turning the pages. The next one had monks in those orange robes.

  “Maybe you’ll make a lot of money and can pay someone to help your mom while you travel.”

  My eyes came up again. “I like the sound of that,” I said.

  I was hoping she’d say more, but she didn’t. So I looked through the book. It was exactly where I wanted to go that day. It was exactly where I wanted to go every day. I was already starting to feel like I didn’t want to put it down. I didn’t want to leave it here. What if somebody came in and bought it? I felt like it was mine. Or meant to be, anyway. It already felt really bad to think of it being someone else’s.

  “What draws you to the Himalayan countries?”

  Her voice made me jump.

  “Well. I saw this picture when I was little. It was a lot like the one on the cover of this book. It was just so different from any place I’d ever been. And everything that was different about it seemed better. I’ve never been in the mountains or seen snow. I don’t know. Everything was just right about it. Or maybe I just liked it because it’s on the other side of the world from here.”

  Then I sat there for a minute, wanting to erase that last sentence. I couldn’t, so I decided to add more.

  “Have you ever seen a Tibetan fox? It doesn’t look like any other kind of fox in the world. I swear, it looks like a cartoon. It doesn’t look like a real fox. It looks like a talking-fox character
somebody would draw wearing a smoking jacket, smoking a big pipe. Its face looks very sophisticated.”

  She smiled. That was good.

  I plunged on.

  “Did you know that half of all the different kinds of plants you can find anywhere in China are in Tibet? Four hundred kinds of rhododendrons. Not four hundred different kinds of flowers. Four hundred different kinds of that one flower. Over five hundred species of wild orchids. Four thousand different plants, and over thirty percent of all the birds you can find in the whole India subcontinent. And four hundred different kinds of butterflies. Did you know that?”

  She was looking into my face, so I looked away.

  “Are you reading that off to me?”

  “No, ma’am. That’s not in this book. I mean, not that I’ve gotten to yet. I just know it.”

  “Well, to answer your question, I think the only people who know that are people who work in Tibetan travel bureaus and you. And… please… I know I’m old compared to you. But I still think of ma’am as somebody more like my mother. Nellie. Please.”

  “Nellie. Sorry. I never know who knows stuff like that and who doesn’t.”

  She didn’t answer for a while, but she didn’t go back to her book, either. She was looking out the window. It was off to her left, and I couldn’t figure out if there was something out there or if she was just thinking.

  Then she said, “You know, it’s not what it used to be before the Chinese invaded.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “And tourism isn’t helping. Well. It helps. But it hurts, too. I heard the rivers are actually flowing with garbage.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s just a dream. I’ll never get there, anyway.”

  I folded the book closed and started to get up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t go.”

  “It’s not your fault if there’s garbage in the rivers.”

  “It’s my fault I brought it up while you were dreaming.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I just have to go home. I can’t travel, and I can’t afford this book, and I have to go home now.”