Where We Belong

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  “Great job of packing me, Mom,” I said out loud, to no one.

  I carried the trunk out to the front door. Grabbed my best jacket out of the hall closet.

  On the little wood table by the door was the bag. It was a plain paper bag stamped with the Nellie’s Books logo and address. I threw the jacket over my arm and carried it all outside.

  My mom was nowhere to be seen.

  I sat on the stoop, feeling exposed. Like Nellie was about to swoop back down and want to talk to me or something. I hated talking. Hated it so much. Why did everybody always want to talk about stuff that was better left alone?

  I unlocked the trunk. I was going to throw the bag in without opening it and lock it all up again. But I just had to peek into the bag. I couldn’t stop myself.

  Inside was The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Which made me even more nervous. Now that it was mine. And a sealed envelope.

  I got this weird, dizzy feeling, like I was in some kind of time warp. How had so many people gotten so much done so fast? How could we go from living here to not living here while I was at Nellie’s? How could she put all this together and get my address and drop it by while I was running home? Or… well… while we were driving around in circles, I guess.

  It’s like we weren’t all traveling at the same speed.

  I couldn’t decide if I could bear to open the note or not. I felt equally strongly about seeing and not seeing what was inside. Then I decided I’d better look now, before my mom showed up again. It would be too late to change my mind for God only knows how long.

  I tore it open. Inside was a hundred-dollar bill, with a printed receipt wrapped around it that said, “Back pay for inventory work.” And then there was a long, handwritten note. Which—now that I was looking at it—I was absolutely sure I didn’t want to read.

  I just looked at the first line. Kind of squinted at it. I swear, I’m not making this up—I read it with my eyes half shut. Like I could see it and not see it at the same time. I just saw “Angie, I’m so sorry. I never meant to embarrass—”

  I quick shoved it back in the envelope. Before I died of embarrassment. The only thing more embarrassing than what I’d just been through could only be somebody pointing out how embarrassing it was.

  For a minute, I wondered if there was something wrong with everybody else in the whole world, or if it was me.

  My mom turned the corner at the end of the block, and I shoved the money deep down into my jeans pocket. Then I threw the book and the note in my little trunk and locked it again.

  I could hear, as they pulled up, that Sophie’s voice was getting broken and scratched. But she was still giving it all she had.

  I softened up the earplugs and got them in just in time.

  I put the jacket and the trunk in the back section of the wagon and got in beside my mom.

  She said something, but I didn’t make it out.

  “What? I have my earplugs in.”

  “I said, ‘Oh, the trunk.’” Much louder.

  “Yeah. Oh, the trunk. Just the most important things I own.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t have packed me. I should have been able to pack my own stuff.”

  “I told you not to go.”

  It hit me then that she was right. I shouldn’t have gone. I’d known it all along. But it was something I hadn’t been willing to give up.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  We drove without talking for a while. Sophie’s voice was beginning to crack. Everybody only has just so much voice. Even my sister.

  My mom was still going around in a circle. Which seemed so insane that I barely felt able to speak to it.

  Finally, when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I said, “Where are we going?”

  “No idea.”

  “Can’t we just park somewhere?”

  “I can’t think of any place far enough away from people that no one will call the police. I’m just going to keep moving till she stops.”

  “Then what?”

  “You’re asking too many questions. I need time to think.”

  “Sorry.”

  It was the middle of the afternoon. But all of a sudden, I woke up, even though I had no idea I’d fallen asleep. The car was parked in front of Aunt Vi’s house. Sophie was fast asleep in the backseat. My mother was nowhere around.

  I closed my eyes again.

  I felt a little better, because I figured she’d gone in to talk to Aunt Vi. Maybe they’d even work it out. Maybe we could stay here, at least for the night.

  I don’t know how long my eyes were closed, but when I opened them, I saw my mom in the side mirror. She was standing on the porch of what used to be Paul Inverness’s house.

  She was talking to Rachel.

  “What the hell?” I said. But quietly, so I wouldn’t wake up Sophie. That was hard to do once she’d worn herself down. But I wasn’t taking any chances.

  I jumped when the car door slammed. I looked over at my mom.

  “What was that all about?”

  She didn’t answer. Just started up the car and drove. I had to think how much I wanted to push for answers. On a day like that one, did I really want to keep hurrying the bad news?

  We didn’t go in a circle this time. We got on the freeway.

  “So…” I said, kind of testing. “Now can I ask where we’re going?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Now you may ask. We’re going to a lovely little town in the mountains. And we’ll start over there. If it’s as small as I think it is, maybe we can even rent a place that’s out of earshot from the neighbors.”

  “The mountains,” I said. Hardly daring to believe it.

  “It’ll be nice up there. You’ll see.”

  That’s when it hit me that my mother had no idea how much I loved the mountains. I’d really kept my inside life that much of a secret.

  “What mountains? Where?”

  “The Sierra Nevada mountains. Up near Lake Kehoe.”

  It took a minute to settle in. It fell into my brain like the pieces of a puzzle. Some assembly required.

  When it hit me, I yelled so loud, it’s a miracle Sophie didn’t wake up.

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “You wouldn’t! You can’t! You can’t be serious! He worked his whole life so he could have some peace and quiet up there!”

  “He doesn’t own the town.”

  “How can you think this’ll work? You think you’ll just happen to find a place for rent on the other side of a fence from his dog? This is crazy!”

  “We can at least try.”

  “I can’t believe you would do this. He’ll die when he sees us.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  It always boiled down to that. Accept my mom’s very bad ideas or think of better ones on my own. Always those two terrible choices.

  Neither one is any way to grow up.

  At least, not in my opinion.

  I kept my eyes closed for most of the ride out of town. I would have bet money I’d never manage to sleep, but then all of a sudden, my eyes opened, and we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was dark, and raining hard. And we weren’t moving.

  My mom had her arms draped over the steering wheel, her forehead down on her arms.

  I watched her for a minute, trying to shake myself awake. I watched the rain battering the windshield, huge drops that exploded into smaller drops on contact. The sky lit up, and I could see the actual webs of lightning on the horizon, the way they arced down through the sky.

  I looked over the seat at Sophie, but she was still asleep.

  When the thunder came, it made my mom jump.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” she said.

  “Yeah. What are we doing?”

  “Not much.”

  “Couldn’t you see to drive?”

  “I could see. It’s not that.”

  I could have asked, “What is it, then?” But that’s a pretty
obvious question. Once you’ve told somebody, “It’s not that,” you should be prepared to cough up the second half of the story. They shouldn’t have to ask.

  After a time, she said, “Maybe this is insane.”

  “Oh, it’s definitely insane.”

  Then she didn’t say anything for a long time, and neither did I.

  Finally, I got tired of waiting. So I said, “What else could we do? If we didn’t do that?”

  She laughed in a way that had nothing to do with any kind of funny.

  “Well, there you have the problem. That’s how I always get to insane decisions and irrational behavior. No backup plans.”

  “How far did we drive already?”

  “More than halfway.”

  The lightning electrified everything again, and my mom winced, bracing for the thunder. But it was a dud compared to that last time.

  “Maybe…” she said.

  And I already knew something bad was coming. And what it most likely was.

  I felt like maybe the Earth really was flat, and I’d sailed right off the edge without knowing it. It felt like falling. Like nothing was going to stop this fall. I’d been feeling that way since the bookstore. No bottom yet.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe we have to think about some things we took off the table a long time ago. And… you know. Maybe… put them back on the table again.”

  I couldn’t feel much of a reaction inside my gut, because there wasn’t much room for things to get worse.

  “I can’t believe you would do that. I can’t believe you would even say it. You promised. We both promised.”

  “We’ve got our back up against the wall here, kiddo. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s a promise. You keep a promise no matter what. You don’t keep a promise until it gets hard. What about me? What about if I make your life hard? Am I out the door, too?”

  “That is so not fair,” she said, her voice seething with this hurt anger. “This is not the same, and you know it.”

  “Why isn’t it? We’re both your daughters. That’s either forever or it’s not. That’s either no-matter-what or it’s not.”

  Another flash of lightning.

  She wouldn’t answer me. Sometimes when my mom was really upset, she’d lose her words completely. I never knew if she couldn’t find them at all or if she just didn’t like the ones she could find.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s not completely the same. I’m sorry. But we did make a promise.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  I hated to think that way, but I had a flash of a thought that she’d done that whole thing on purpose. That the hint of sending Sophie away was just a ruse to dump the next move off onto me. I pushed it down again. It might have been true. But it wasn’t helping.

  I said, “Maybe we could go to that little town where Paul lives. But there would have to be some rules. I don’t want you or Sophie going near him at all, because I don’t think he’d want that. But I get along with him pretty well. Maybe I could just tell him the situation we’re in. Maybe offer to walk the dog for free. And Sophie could come along on the walks, because he wouldn’t be there, anyway. And maybe she’ll just settle down and figure she’ll see Rigby again the next day. You know. The way she did at Aunt Vi’s. Do we have money for a place to stay?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “We could stay someplace for a little while. Or feed ourselves. Not so much both.”

  The heel of my hand was resting on the slightly crackly lump of Nellie’s hundred-dollar bill, still stuffed deep in my jeans pocket. I didn’t mention it. Not that I planned on withholding it. I mean, we had to eat. I just wanted it to be all mine for a little while longer. Before I gave it up for the good of the family. Like I always did.

  5. Gone

  In my sleep, I was replaying a moment of the Horrible Bookstore Fiasco. Just one endless, disgusting moment. I was standing behind the bookcase, knowing she was about to find me. To find out I was listening. Except, in the dream, the aisle was about as wide as a football field, and angled out into infinity. When I saw her face, there’d be room to pass her by a mile.

  Except I was frozen. I couldn’t move.

  Then she was there, at the end of the aisle, but she wasn’t exactly Nellie. More like Sophie, but grown up. And not ASD. Don’t ask me how I knew it was Sophie. I just did. She looked right at me, and her eyes took in everything. They were perfectly clear.

  A sound startled me awake.

  I sat up fast.

  Now for the bad news. There was no room to sit up. Turns out I was sleeping in the back of the station wagon, where I had no memory of ever going to sleep. I didn’t even remember climbing back there. My forehead hit the headliner, which was old and not very tight and didn’t protect me from the actual metal of the roof of the car. The spot I hit was the same spot I’d hit on Nellie’s counter.

  I fell back down again.

  “Ow,” I said under my breath. “Shit.” Even more quietly.

  The sound startled me again. It was a knock. Someone was knocking lightly on the back window of the station wagon.

  My first thought: It’s a cop. We shouldn’t be sleeping here. We’re in trouble.

  It was light out, and I could see the knocking person, but it was sheeting rain, and he had a slicker and hood on, so I could only see just so much. I could tell he was an older guy, maybe Paul’s age, but with a softer face and eyes.

  I sat up again, careful to slouch over and not hit my head. I looked around to the front of the car. Sophie was still fast asleep, strapped into her car seat on the passenger side in the back. My mom was asleep in the driver’s seat, which was leaned back almost flat.

  I opened the back window. It flipped up, like a hatchback. Well. I guess it was sort of a hatchback. It felt weird to sit up all hunched over like that. But I didn’t have too many choices.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Did we do something wrong?”

  “Not at all. I just saw you sleeping in your car, and I wondered if you had a tent. Sorry I woke you.”

  “Tent?”

  “You don’t have one?”

  I looked around. It was hard to see in the downpour, but we were in some sort of campground. I saw a couple of tents and a lot of trailers and motorhomes.

  “Um. No. We don’t have one.”

  “Thought that might be the case. We have three in Lost and Found that were never claimed. You’d be amazed how often people break ‘em down and then drive off without ‘em. You can borrow one if you want.”

  “Oh. Thank you. That’s nice. Only… I don’t really know how long we’re staying. When my mom wakes up, I’ll find out. I’m not sure if she’s going to wake up and get right back on the road again.”

  “Well, you let me know. See that big trailer with the picket fence around it? My wife and I are the campground hosts. So if you need anything, come by.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I probably should have said more. He was being nice. But I couldn’t shake the sleep, and I couldn’t shake the dream. And I didn’t even know where we were.

  He walked off in the rain, holding the edge of his hood out to protect his face.

  “What was that about?” my mom asked.

  “So you are awake.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you still made me handle it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just that he’ll loan us a tent if we want one.”

  “Good. Run catch him. Tell him we want it.”

  “I don’t have to run. I know where to find him. We’re staying here? Why are we staying here? Where are we?”

  “We’re right outside that little town.”

  “So why are we staying here?”

  “Where do you suggest we stay?”

  “In a… you know… place. With a roof. It’s pouring rain. Not exactly camping weather.”


  I leaned over the seat to see if Sophie was sleeping through all this. She was.

  “Roofs cost money. You got money?”

  I chose not to let on, right in that moment, that I did. “You said we had some money.”

  “I said we had enough to stay someplace for a little while or to eat, but not both. I’m thinking eating would be good. And I have to return the trailer. I have to drive all the way down to Fresno to return it. That’s the closest city where I can drop it off.”

  “You can’t return it. It has all our stuff in it.”

  “We’ll just have to move everything out. I’m paying for it by the day, kiddo.”

  “So you want to put all our stuff out in the pouring rain and live in a tent. And when the money runs out… then what?”

  “You know… I could work anywhere, any shift… we could live anywhere… if it wasn’t for…”

  “Stop. Do not bring that up again.”

  “I have to, kiddo. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I’m just sort of at the end of my…”

  Then she started to cry. Not just little tremors on the words, with maybe a tear or two. Full-on sobbing. “We’re homeless. Do you get that?”

  I could barely make out the words. But I got it. And all I felt was numb.

  I also got that if anyone was going to solve things, it would have to be me.

  I climbed out the back window into the rain. Ran to the trailer of the campground host. It was raining so hard, I couldn’t see much. But we were in a thick forest of evergreen trees. That much, I could see. By the time I ducked under his awning, I was already soaked to the skin. And cold.

  The door was wide open, so I just stuck my head in and said, “Hello?”

  “Oh,” the old guy said. “That didn’t take long.”

  “My mom says we’re staying. So I’m going to take you up on the tent thing. But I have to ask a big favor. I have to ask if I can borrow two. Because we have to get all our stuff out of that trailer so my mom can take it back.”

  He scratched his chin, which was bristly with short gray beard hairs. “I don’t see why not. They’re not doing anybody any good in the Lost and Found.”

  He ducked out the door, grabbing his slicker on the way out. Then he disappeared into the rain, slipping it on as he ran. When he got back, he was carrying two mismatched green stuff-sacks. One was maybe two feet long, the other closer to three feet. They weren’t so thick that I couldn’t just tuck them both under my arms.