Strays Like Us

by Richard Peck

  I nodded.

  “Maybe someday your mom will – ”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You know why I told you? It hurts to say it out loud. You know why I did?”

  “Because we’re two of a kind?”

  “I don’t know about that, but I told you something I wouldn’t want anybody else to know. Not anybody.”

  “Well,” he said, “I…appreciate it.”

  “I leveled with you.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That was good.”

  “So you can level with me. It’s not your grandpa who has pneumonia, is it? It’s not Claude.” Could I always tell when Will was lying, or was it just this one time?

  He tried to get out of it. He looked all around the kitchen ceiling before he said, “No. Grandpa’s okay. Not okay, he doesn’t know where he is, but he doesn’t have pneumonia. It’s not him who has it.”

  “Then who?”

  The doorknob rattled, and Aunt Fay came in from the back porch. I wouldn’t have recognized her if I’d met her at Marshalls. Her face was gray, and her eyes were red and swollen. She usually looked tired, but this morning she was way past that.

  She leaned back against the closed door. Will was coming out of his chair. “How is he?”

  “He’s breathing a little easier,” she said. “He’s getting some rest.”

  Will sat back down, and Aunt Fay watched us both.

  “I was fixing to tell Molly,” Will said to her.

  She gave him a long look, and said, “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “It’s my dad who has pneumonia,” Will said. “He didn’t send me here. We came together, on a bus. We been sharing the spare room upstairs at Grandma and Grandpa’s since we got here. Except he was so sick last night they didn’t want me in the room.”

  Part of me knew every word just before he spoke it. I remembered Thanksgiving night when I went over there and –

  “We came here,” Will said, “because my dad got sick. He lost his job and got sicker. Then we ran out of money, and he came home and brought me with him.”

  “Pneumonia,” I said. “You said he’d had it before.”

  “That’s right.”

  Aunt Fay was behind Will’s chair now. She had a hand on his shoulder, and it always meant something when she did that. She didn’t touch you for nothing.

  Time passed, and nobody said anything. You could have heard bees if it was summer. Way in the distance a train hooted, and you only ever heard that at night. I chanced a look at Will, and his eyes were full to overflowing.

  “You want to go on home now?” Aunt Fay said. “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to go,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve had my say.”

  “That’s it?” Aunt Fay said. “That’s what you wanted Molly to know?”

  He nodded. Then he went on home, and it was just the two of us.

  “You told me his dad was in jail,” I said.

  “No I didn’t. I said that’s what they say.”

  I could have asked her more, but not while she was looking at me like that. Maybe I didn’t want to know. I’d said I couldn’t be twelve any longer, but I still was.

  “I’ve got to get me some sleep,” she said, “or I’ll break down on Christmas Day.”

  She moved as slow as I’d ever seen her, limping out of the kitchen and up the hall, still in her peach pantsuit from last night. She went in the living room to get on the couch because she’d never get in her bed during the day.

  §

  New Year’s Eve came, and that was the time Mrs. Voorhees taught me to play gin rummy with her bed for a card table. But we didn’t play for money. I wasn’t that dumb. Then it was January, and now I could say I’d been here since last year.

  I saw even less of Will than I had before Christmas, so I was slow to notice something happening to him. We both turned thirteen that winter, but it hit him harder.

  It must have been coming on him in stages, but I didn’t notice till February. Then I couldn’t believe it. I looked up at him one day, and I was looking up at him. He was taller than Nelson Washburn. I looked down, and his new gym shoes were like boats. He couldn’t have gotten three weeks of wear out of those cowboy boots. Blond though he was, you could see a whisper of whisker under his nose. His neck was filling out, and I thought he had a cold he couldn’t shake off before I realized his voice was changing. Girls stopped looking over his head.

  One day he was the Little Match Boy, and the next he was a guy. It was amazing. But I saw him mostly from afar. His new legs gave him a long stride, and he was always striding in the other direction. Nowadays he had lunch over at Nelson’s table.

  I figured it out in math class one day. You have to have something to think about in math class. It struck me that Will and I never had been two of a kind. I was the only one sent here by somebody who couldn’t keep me and didn’t want to. We weren’t strays like us. I was just a stray like me.

  Will came here with his dad. Maybe his dad was a secret in the attic. I suppose I thought he’d broken out of jail. But Will had more family here than I did. He had a stake in this town. He’d been easing in all along. By high school he’d be another Nelson Washburn, just not so rich and stuck on himself. Besides, these things are easier for a boy. Will would belong here, and I’d only hang on the edges and watch.

  It was pretty sad, but now that I was thirteen, I liked sad stories. I just wished they weren’t about me.

  ∨ Strays Like Us ∧

  Eleven

  Something woke me in the middle of the night, some sound from the street. It wasn’t morning yet, and I was glad. There was going to be a test in science, and I was in no hurry. The house below me felt empty. Aunt Fay hadn’t been home when I went to bed.

  I woke again in the daylight, and the house was still empty. Down in the kitchen I put on a pot of coffee for her when she got there. As I was making my lunch to take, her car pulled into the garage. She came in the back door as gray-faced as at Christmas. “Are you going to be late for school?” That was small talk, and she didn’t make small talk.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  She sat down in her coat, and I poured her out a mug. Winter had gone on too long, and the wind went right through you.

  “Fred died.” She took the mug in both hands. “Will’s dad.”

  I just stood there. I hadn’t thought about death. How could he die with Aunt Fay on his case? It wasn’t real to me. Will’s dad wasn’t real. I’d never seen him.

  “He died in the paramedic van on the way to the hospital. Will was in the van with him. I followed in my car with Wilma and Claude because we couldn’t leave Claude. Then by the time we got to the emergency room, it was all over.”

  I couldn’t think what to ask first. “Did you know?”

  “Every step of the way. He’d come home to die.”

  She’d forgotten the coffee. “You know, I remember the day he was born. I watched him grow up. You know that apple tree out in the back of their house? He fell out of it one time and cracked the bone in his elbow. Claude had their car at work, so I drove Fred to the hospital for an X ray.”

  Her hand was at her mouth now, and I hardly heard the words. “I was thinking about that today. I was thinking how the last time I took him to the hospital, I could bring him back.”

  She broke then. Tears streamed down under her glasses, over her hand. She was so tired after all these months, more months than I knew. Aunt Fay strangling on her sobs to keep them back was like the end of everything. I thought the kitchen floor would crack open and swallow us whole.

  In a blurry voice she said, “You go on to school.”

  “Can you get some sleep?”

  “I’ve got to get over to Wilma.” She was pulling herself together, trying to. “And I want to clean up Fred’s room. It’s – I want to make it right for Will. Go on to school. Don’t make me tell you again.”

  §

  I don’t remember the science test. Then after school when I was comin
g down the steps in a crowd, Will was waiting out by the street. He hadn’t been in school, but now he was watching for me. And what was I going to say? I’d never had a dad to lose.

  “You want to walk over to the park?” he said in his new crackling-deep voice. It was cold, and the park was in the other direction.

  “Sure.”

  It wasn’t much of a park. The water tower for the town was in the middle of it, and some picnic tables were dotted around. But I saw why we’d come. Nobody was there. We sat up on a picnic table with our feet on the bench.

  “Your aunt Fay wanted me to come find you,” he said after a while.

  “She’d want you to get out for some air.”

  “She wanted me to tell you about how my dad died. She said it was my story to tell.”

  “I know he died in the van,” I said, trying to be careful. “You were with him.”

  “He had AIDS.”

  My hand grabbed the table because I thought it was rocking. When I looked at Will, he wasn’t looking at anything.

  “Shouldn’t he have been in a hospital before now? Couldn’t they – ”

  “Not here. Your aunt Fay drove him up to see a doctor at the clinic in” – he named a town up the road on the other side of the river. “She took him up there two or three times in the fall when he could still travel. I went with them once. We couldn’t take him to the hospital here. Except last night when he was dying. Word would have gotten around.”

  Still, I couldn’t get this into my head. They’d been hiding Will’s dad in their house because he had AIDS.

  “They rent,” Will said.

  “What?”

  “Grandma and Grandpa don’t own their house. They rent. They couldn’t take the chance the landlord would throw us out if he knew.”

  “So they said your dad was in jail?”

  Will’s elbows were on his knees, his chin on his balled-up fist. “If you’ve got somebody in jail, people don’t ask.”

  I guess that made sense. It was one lie instead of many.

  The wind came up, swirling black leaves. I wanted to give Will something. I wracked my brain until I thought of what it was.

  “My mother was an addict. A druggie. She probably still is.”

  “My dad was a user too. Not a lot, but when he could get it. It was only a part of him, and I thought it didn’t matter.”

  I felt the anger rising in Will. It blew out of him in one sharp blast. “They had a good time, didn’t they? Your mom. My dad. They had a good time, and they didn’t care.”

  “They didn’t know,” I said. “They never thought it could get them.”

  We sat there for a long time before he said something I didn’t catch. “What?”

  “I said he was the best dad in the world. He was fun. See, I never wanted anything from him. Not even the dirt bike. I just wanted him. But for months now I’d wake up every morning, and there’d be less of him there. He couldn’t do anything for himself. He couldn’t keep himself clean. Your aunt Fay had to – I’m not going to remember that.”

  I took a chance and said, “Then it’s better now that it’s over?”

  “It’s not over,” Will said. “It’s just started. Now people will know.”

  §

  He wasn’t in school on Friday. At lunch I went upstairs to the library. It was just the end of the second-floor hall with a door. There was no room to browse and not that many books. Ms. Lovett was in there, being librarian over lunchtime. She looked nicer on the days she didn’t wear black. I’d been wishing I could look like her when I was older.

  “What can I help you find?” Her big eyes looked up from a stack of workbook pages.

  “Do you have anything about AIDS?”

  She glanced at the shelf. “No, they wouldn’t have anything here. Have you tried the public library?”

  I panicked. The wind went out of me, and I couldn’t breathe. Why was I bringing this up? It was like I was spreading the word. Like I’d betrayed Will. The McKinneys had been so careful, and now I was running my mouth. Why hadn’t I gone to the public library in the first place? I didn’t go there anymore since Tracy, but so what?

  “I’ll try there,” I said, and I couldn’t wait to get away from Ms. Lovett. “It’s for science class,” I said, but she knew I was lying.

  After school I had to go to the rest room, the famous rest room where I popped Rocky Roberts last September. Somebody was smoking in the next stall, but I knew it wasn’t Rocky. I hadn’t cured him of smoking, but I’d cured him of smoking in here.

  When I was at the sink, Brandi Breathwaite came out of that stall. Both the other sinks were free, but she sidled up next to me and pushed her face in my mirror. She had a lot of bounce and big hair. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up a cheerleader. I’ll tell you who Brandi was. She was one of those girls sitting next to Will and me in the auditorium on the first day, the one who put out her hand so I wouldn’t sit next to her.

  “Hey, Molly,” she said, digging in a bag and bringing up the dirtiest hairbrush I ever saw. I knew everybody in school now, at least by name. But I was never ready when anybody knew me.

  She leaned forward and grinned into the mirror to scratch a fleck of tobacco off a tooth. “So what have you got to tell me about Will McKinney?”

  I was bent over the sink, rinsing soap off my hands, hurrying now.

  “You think it’s a secret?” she said. “Please.” Now she was putting on a lot of red lipstick, brighter than Jungle Red. Her hair and face filled up the mirror.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Was I going to have to pop her one? She was bigger than Rocky.

  “Forget about it,” she said. “Everybody knows. Will McKinney cut school yesterday, then showed up to meet you afterward. Are you kidding me? Everybody saw.”

  I went weak in the knees. That’s all she meant? She thought Will and I were boyfriend-girlfriend? That was it? I was so relieved I could have kissed her, almost.

  “He’s cute,” she said. “It’s like I just noticed. He’s cute.”

  “Yeah, he’s pretty cute,” I mumbled.

  She glanced my way, wondering what he saw in me.

  “Of course he’s no Nelson Washburn,” she said.

  Like she could ever get near Nelson Washburn. With that hair and all that paint on her mouth? Please.

  “Nelson likes Selena Schmidt,” I said, picking out of the air a girl who sat behind me in math. I wasn’t good at girl talk, but good enough to fool Brandi.

  “You’re kidding me,” she said.

  “Common knowledge.”

  She had somebody she wanted to tell this to, so she was jamming all her stuff into her bag. But I was out of there before she was.

  The relief washed over me all the way home. People weren’t going to find out that Will’s dad died of AIDS. Even if it got around among the grown-ups, kids at school wouldn’t hear about it. They never paid much attention to grown-ups anyway, or what they said. So Will wouldn’t have to pay for what had happened to his dad. That’s what I thought because that’s what I wanted to think.

  ♦

  They buried his dad on Saturday afternoon. It was early March, and the sun came and went. The McKinneys rode in the funeral car behind the hearse. Aunt Fay and I followed in the Dart. We pulled off the gravel and waited for the undertaker’s people to lift the casket out.

  Then as Will and his grandma were helping Mr. McKinney out of the funeral car, somebody pulled up and parked behind us. A tall man walked past, a long gray overcoat flapping around his legs. “That’ll be the preacher,” Aunt Fay said. “The mortician arranged for him. He cut it close.”

  He went up to the McKinneys and tried to shake Mr. McKinney’s hand.

  “Did you ever go to church?” I asked Aunt Fay. There was a church on every corner in this town.

  “I never had the clothes for it,” she said, “and I always worked Sundays.”

  When they started down the slope, helping Mr. McKinney al
ong, Aunt Fay and I got out of the car and followed. The McKinneys owned a cemetery plot on the side of the second hill. It may have been the only thing in the world they owned. We stood in a little knot beside a patch of fake grass where the casket rested. There weren’t any flowers. With the outdoors around them, Mrs. McKinney and Aunt Fay looked smaller than they were, hunched in their winter coats. I watched the back of Will’s neck. He never flinched or wavered while the preacher spoke words the breeze carried away.

  Then it was over, and we were coming back up the slope to the cars. The empty hearse moved away, and the funeral car crept off behind it. But Aunt Fay sat behind the wheel with her hands in her lap. She and Mrs. McKinney wouldn’t break down in front of Claude and Will. But it was just us now, so I didn’t know. Her face had been carved out of stone all afternoon.

  “There’s things they can do now for what Fred had,” she said finally. “But he didn’t have insurance. And I didn’t know enough. I couldn’t even keep him comfortable.”

  She looked away out her side window, out across the tombstones. “If I’m useless,” she said, “who am I?”

  ∨ Strays Like Us ∧

  Twelve

  Spring came in a hurry here, before I knew it. The wind softened, and I felt the year revolving under my feet. Bare branches began to bud, and I remembered the heavy green shade of the trees, last summer when I’d come.

  I’d only catch glimpses of Will – he left early for school – but there was something set hard in his face. The coach put a softball team together, and Will went out for it. He did a lot of work around the McKinneys’ house too, spring clean-up. You’d see him up on their porch roof, taking out the storms and putting in the screens. He kept moving.

  Aunt Fay said she didn’t like Claude’s color, and the change of seasons unsettled him, so she was over next door at the McKinneys’ as much as before. I could have gone with her now. They’d buried their secret. But I didn’t because they were hurting over there, and I shied away from that.

  I was a little lost and drifty, so almost every time Aunt Fay went to Mrs. Voorhees’s house, I tagged along. “You ought to learn how to give me a shot,” she said, “so I can fire Fay.”