Chelsea was older than Lizzy and liked to treat her younger cousin like something between a pet and an old doll. Not the kind of doll a girl pampers or cherishes, but rather the kind of doll that’s expendable, the off-brand doll she can experiment on and not care if she messes it up.
For the last few months, Lizzy had been spending most of her Saturdays at Chelsea’s house while Lizzy’s mom was working at the hospital. And recently, Chelsea had decided to make Lizzy her project. Chelsea and her mom, Lizzy’s aunt Patty, had lengthy conversations, right in front of Lizzy, about how to fix her wardrobe and her hair and her skin and essentially make a new, improved young woman out of her.
Lizzy certainly didn’t want to be anyone’s project, and she realized that the whole idea was really just a thinly veiled way for her aunt and her cousin to openly pick her apart in the guise of constructive criticism. Lizzy knew what they thought about her and her mom. She saw the way Chelsea and Aunt Patty looked down on her mom when she dropped Lizzy off, wearing her hospital scrubs and no makeup. Lizzy knew what Aunt Patty was thinking at the end of the day, when her mom, worn out from her shift, came to pick up Lizzy and bring her home.
It’s so sad, but that’s what happens when you can’t keep your man.
So yesterday, when Chelsea dropped those fashion magazines in Lizzy’s arms, she knew what her cousin was really saying.
Here you go. Better do your homework, unless you want to end up like your mom.
The worst part of it, though, was that sometimes Lizzy feared that her aunt and her cousin might be right. Lizzy loved her mom, but she saw how sad she got when her dad didn’t come by like he’d said he would. She’d heard her mom crying in her room afterward. Lizzy didn’t want to end up like that. She was scared of ending up like that.
Everything had been so much simpler a year ago. A year ago she’d have gone outside to say hey to Ryan, just like she used to. She and Ryan had been friends since they were little, like diapers-little.
But they weren’t little anymore, and a year made a big difference. A year ago Lizzy’s dad was still around. A year ago she didn’t have to go to Aunt Patty’s house every Saturday while her mom pulled a weekend shift at the hospital. A year ago she never would have done anything so stupid as try to flirt with Ryan Hardy using fashion magazines.
Try as she might, Lizzy couldn’t stop replaying the horrible encounter over in her mind, the attention to detail that served her so well in school now providing achingly perfect recall of every agonizing moment. It was as if once she started, she couldn’t stop herself. After she’d shown him the first picture, she just had to show him the second, and would have shown him more, picture after picture, making a bigger and bigger fool of herself …
If Ryan hadn’t gotten so annoyed that he’d just turned and walked away from her.
She wanted to be mad at him, but in truth he’d done her a favor. Like the mercy rule in Little League baseball, he’d put her out of her misery.
Lizzy heard her mom stirring in her bedroom and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Hey, Mom,” Lizzy said quickly as the door opened.
“Hey there, sweetie.” Lizzy’s mom rubbed her eyes. They were puffy, and one side of her face was pink from where it had been smushed into the pillow. “My word, I was really out,” she said with a little laugh as she ran her fingers through her bedhead.
Wow, does she look like a wreck. No wonder …
Lizzy shut her eyes to block the rest of it out. She hated letting that stuff in her head, hated seeing her mom through her aunt’s and cousin’s eyes.
Lizzy’s mom went into the kitchen and checked the fridge. Unsatisfied, she came back out and looked at Lizzy, closely. Lizzy was afraid her mom would see the red crying splotches on her face.
“You know,” her mom said, as if coming to a big decision. “I could just murder a cheeseburger tonight. Whatd’ya say?”
Lizzy didn’t really want a burger, but her mom was trying to do something special. Bonding time or whatever.
“Sure,” she said. “That sounds great.”
WELCOME TO CLIFFS DONNELLY
Ryan came in through the kitchen. He could hear the TV in the den. It was one of his dad’s shows. He could tell right away by the sound of men arguing.
His dad had been watching shows like this a lot lately. Men in suits, sitting around a table and yelling at each other. Always, they were yelling. Even when they agreed, they still yelled. They were always angry, these men in their suits—angry at all the people who were ruining everything for the rest of us. Ryan wasn’t exactly sure who was doing the ruining and less sure about how they were, in fact, doing it; mostly the men in suits seemed to blame people in other countries or people who lived here but looked like people who came from other countries.
They were the kind of men his dad would have once dismissed—stuffed shirts, he used to call them. Men with tough words but soft hands and pudgy, pink faces. Men who weren’t worth listening to.
But now his dad was listening, and Ryan didn’t understand why. All those shows did was make his dad angry, too. Sometimes Ryan would pass by the den and overhear his dad muttering back at the TV, growling “What a mess” and “Whole country’s going down the toilet” in a dark voice that didn’t sound like his own.
And Ryan knew his dad wasn’t the only one.
About a mile from Ryan’s house, on the side of the road at the edge of town, was a simple white sign with black lettering that was supposed to read, in an official yet friendly font:
WELCOME TO CLIFFS DONNELLY
POPULATION: 22,177
Cliffs Donnelly. It was a strange name for a town, if for no other reason than it begged the question, why not just call it Donnelly Cliffs, or even Cliffs of Donnelly? According to one of Ryan’s teachers, Mr. Earle, the original name of the town (back when it was first incorporated in 1835) was supposed to be Clifton Donnelly, after the two most prominent families in town, the Cliftons and the Donnellys. But then the Donnelly family decided to bribe the town sign maker into cutting out the Cliftons altogether. Unfortunately, the Donnellys, while devious, weren’t all that punctual, and by the time they got around to bribing the sign maker, he’d already carved the first four letters, Clif, and thus the town of Cliffs Donnelly was born.
That was what Mr. Earle said, anyway. Though you could never really be sure with him. That man sure knew how to tell a story. Ryan did know one thing for sure, though. There weren’t any cliffs in Cliffs Donnelly.
Of course, while Ryan was sure that Welcome to Cliffs Donnelly was what it said on the sign at the northern edge of town, here on the South Side someone had taken a can of black spray paint and traced over the i, one f, the o, one n, one l, and the y, so that all you really noticed on the sign was:
If only.
It was fast becoming the town’s nickname. Because there was always another factory closing down, another business moving away, more people out of work, making the town a bit emptier than it was before.
People on both sides of town were now starting to see Cliffs Donnelly as a place where “if only” had gone from a joke to a lament. People who used to say things like “If only I hadn’t blown out my knee in high school I could’ve gone pro,” or “If only I had practiced guitar more I could have been a rock star,” were now saying, “If only the factory hadn’t shut down I could’ve kept the house,” and “If only I didn’t have to choose between health insurance and the gas bill.” Of course these people always knew they’d never go pro or be rock stars. But that had always been okay because they also knew that if they worked hard and lived right, things more or less would work out. Only they weren’t working out, not anymore.
And it was making people like Ryan’s dad angry.
Ryan loved his dad, but lately he didn’t like being around him much. Not so long ago they used to hang out a lot. They used to watch TV together all the time. Old movies, mostly. Ryan and his dad hadn’t watched a movie together in months.
&
nbsp; Ryan went upstairs and found his mom in Declan’s room. Declan was asleep in his crib, and his mom was reading one of her books in the rocking chair. She was always reading when she had a spare moment. Or doing a crossword in pen. And she could do the daily Sudoku crazy fast. She was by far the smartest person Ryan knew.
“Too smart for this family,” Ryan’s dad used to joke. Back when he used to joke.
“Hi, honey,” she whispered. “Finished up Mrs. Haemmerle’s lawn?”
Ryan nodded. “Finally,” he sighed, his body sagging against the doorframe.
“Hungry?” She started to rise.
Ryan waved her off. “I’m good, Mom,” he said softly, wanting to leave her to her reading. Soon Declan would be up and then there’d be a whirlwind of dinner, laundry, bath time.
Ryan helped with Declan where he could, but there was no way around it; the kid just didn’t like him. Wouldn’t let Ryan hold him, wouldn’t even let Ryan near him just in case Ryan might try to set him down next to an electrical outlet with a handful of silverware.
Ryan peeked into Declan’s crib. His little brother was lying on his back, his arms spread out and his legs splayed open like an overturned frog.
Declan stirred, crinkling his nose in an irritated baby scowl.
Even asleep he doesn’t like me, Ryan thought.
By the time Ryan had taken a shower and changed, Declan was awake and his mom was downstairs with him, making dinner.
Ryan came down to help set the table. Then his mom sent him into the den to call his dad to eat.
He found his dad asleep in his chair, a frown on his face as if he could still hear the arguing men on the television. Ryan shook him gently on the shoulder. “Dad? Dad?” he said.
Ryan’s dad opened his eyes narrowly.
“Dinner, Dad,” Ryan said.
His dad blinked and took a long breath, nodding that he’d be there directly.
It was quiet during dinner, except for Declan, who was still too young to be affected by uncomfortable silence. Ryan’s parents filled the spaces with some small talk about the meal, and how Ryan’s dad would probably be working late all this week.
That wasn’t news, as Ryan’s dad had been working late most nights. Though he didn’t talk about it much, Wilmette Stamping, Tool & Die was in trouble. For as long as Ryan could remember, factories had been closing down all over the area and relocating to Mexico and Asia. Ryan knew there was talk that the Wilmettes’ factory might be the next to go.
“Did you take care of the Wilmette lawn this weekend?” Ryan’s dad asked him.
Ryan nodded. “Saturday.”
Ryan’s dad took a business envelope out of his back pocket and handed it to Ryan. His dad claimed to have no idea how much Ryan had charged his boss, having made Ryan negotiate his fee directly with Mr. Wilmette. “That’s between you and Mr. Wilmette,” his dad had said. “It’s your business.”
Ryan’s dad was still looking at him after Ryan put the money away. “Did Haemmerle’s today, then?”
“Yeah,” said Ryan.
“She still not paying you?” he said, asking in that way adults do when they already know the answer.
“It’s okay, Dad.”
“Doesn’t sound okay to me,” his dad said, spearing a baby potato with his fork.
“Doug …” his mom said softly.
“He can answer, Karen.”
Ryan looked directly at his dad, but not too directly. “As you say, it’s my business.”
Ryan saw the muscles tense in his dad’s neck. Parents always tell their kids to stand up for themselves, but they never mean for their kids to do it with them. And Ryan was pushing it double by using his dad’s words back on him.
Doug Hardy stared at his son for a long moment. Then he slid back his chair. “All right,” he said with a dismissive growl as he got up and went back into the den.
WILMETTE STAMPING, TOOL & DIE
Quiet is louder in a big house. And Ernest’s house was a big house. Ernest’s mom came from a big family and had wanted a big family, too. Both his parents had. So they built a huge house, with a huge yard, the kind meant to be overrun with lots of kids—kids who would yell and play and dirty up the rug.
But there had only been Ernest. Just Ernest. Small Ernest.
After dinner Ernest brought his dad some coffee, like he did most nights. His dad thanked him in a distracted way, absorbed so deeply in his work that Ernest was surprised his father even realized he’d entered the room.
Ernest’s dad ran the family business, Wilmette Stamping, Tool & Die. It made, well, pieces.
Every machine, whether it’s a toaster or a tractor, an alarm clock or a jumbo jet, a dishwasher or a pacemaker, is made up of a bunch of little parts, little pieces that have to fit and move together perfectly for the machine in question to work. Individually the parts themselves never look like much. Just funny shapes with holes and wedges, curves and angles, nothing to take note of, really.
As long as the machine in question works.
Wilmette Stamping, Tool & Die was established in 1945 by Edgar Wilmette, Ernest’s great-grandfather, who had been a machinist and engineer with the Air Force. He was good at making these little pieces. And so was his son, Grandpa Eddie. And so was Ernest’s dad, Eric.
So good that Wilmette Stamping, Tool & Die now boasted over two hundred employees on a sprawling industrial center spanning two and a half acres, complete with its own dedicated traffic light for that easy-to-miss turnoff for State Route 41.
After Ernest gave his dad his coffee, he went up to his room. He read some, then got ready for bed and packed his bag for school tomorrow. The art set was sitting on his desk, right where he’d left it after coming home from Grandpa Eddie’s, kind of like it was waiting for him. He had a feeling that it was more than just an old, forgotten toy. That maybe it, too, was a piece of something, and that it just needed to be matched with other pieces. New pieces.
And then things would start working again.
THE WALL
Rod Serling Middle School was built in the 1930s. Three stories tall, the building was shaped like a giant rectangle, with a large courtyard area in the hollowed center.
Originally, the idea had been to set a row of windows along the perimeter of the courtyard with large glass doors installed at either end, thereby allowing the courtyard to open up as a pass-through. Several decades, two name changes to the school, various budget concerns, bureaucratic squabbles, and one glazier strike later, the notion of such a walk-through courtyard was but a distant memory.
Instead, a dreadful compromise had been reached: The side near the school entrance had the large glass doors that opened into the courtyard, but the other side did not. Instead, a hideous, concrete, cinder-block wall managed to clash equally well with both the surrounding glass windows and the building’s original brickwork.
Young Winston Patil spent every morning looking at that ugly cinder-block wall until the five-minute bell prodded him on to Mr. Earle’s class. Winston was the new kid. His family had moved to Cliffs Donnelly over the summer. And every morning before school, as he walked in the front doors, he’d find himself drifting toward the courtyard windows, where he would just stand and stare intently at the barren, concrete eyesore.
And imagine.
MR. EARLE
Mr. Earle was Ryan’s favorite teacher. But then, he was a lot of kids’ favorite teacher. He was cool the way adults often thought they were but really weren’t. He was cool because he didn’t try to be. In fact, in a lot of ways, Mr. Earle was really kind of dorky. His dress shirts all had bold, striking patterns, thick stripes or busy plaids, and his chinos were always ridiculous statement colors, like salmon or sky blue. He even had a chartreuse pair.
He was tall and biracial and kids were always asking him where he was from, ethnicity-wise, even though you weren’t supposed to do that. Mr. Earle made a game out of it, however, and never claimed the same cultural heritage two times in a row. Some days he
said he was Irish Dominican, other days Polish Colombian or Welsh Kenyan or Creole Hawaiian. Ryan suspected these different ancestries were “teachable moments” meant to subtly suggest that they were all Americans, and it shouldn’t matter, anyway. Though maybe he was also trying to trick his students into looking at a map or a globe once in a while.
Ryan’s sixth-grade class had Mr. Earle for English and homeroom. Not that homeroom was an actual class; it was really just a bookmark in the day, a place to put kids who were either waiting for or had just finished lunch. Most of the time homeroom was a chance to get some homework done or, if your teacher was mellow enough, talk and hang out with friends.
Except on Mondays. Mondays were Council Days.
Council Days were designed for kids to get the chance to air out their opinions on various issues. Teachers were encouraged to give each week a special topic—bullying, peer pressure, stress—but Mr. Earle went for a less direct approach. He knew that if you got kids talking, the rest would take care of itself, but that if you tried to manipulate the conversation, the kids would invariably clam up.
Mr. Earle also had an ace up his sleeve: He could talk. The man was a master storyteller. So whenever the conversation petered out, Mr. Earle always had a story to fill the silence. It didn’t matter if it was an old fairy tale or a Greek myth or the plot of a thick Russian novel or something that happened to his crazy roommate in college; Mr. Earle could suck you in and have you hanging on every detail.
“Today,” said Mr. Earle, “I thought it would be fun to talk a bit about folklore.” He was walking around the room, weaving between the desks. “Who can tell me what folklore is, exactly?”
No one answered. Mr. Earle waited patiently for a moment and then did what they were all waiting for him to do.
Call on Lizzy.
“Okay, Lizzy? Care to help us out?”
Lizzy always knew the answer. “Folklore is the collected myths or stories of a particular area.”
A Drop of Hope Page 2
