Livvie Owen Lived Here (14 page)

But Lanie was younger, just like Mrs. Rhodes was younger than Otis Andrews. Wasn't I supposed to be a big sister to Lanie and help her out as much as possible?

One thing was certain, I thought as I met Natasha at the corner of the school that afternoon. I was definitely
not
going to ask Lanie. After last night's adventures, I wasn't sure I was tough enough to take whatever answer she would give me.

At home, I found Gray Cat asleep in the center of the small kitchen table. Brushing her off with a scolding, I scooped her up almost immediately and apologized.

“You're not supposed to be on the table, okay?” I said, scratching her cheek the way she liked best. She crooked her head sideways and began to purr, reluctantly at first, but gaining strength when I headed her toward the bedroom and her food bowl.

I had barely unpacked my real estate catalogs when a noise drew my attention from down the hallway. In Natasha and Lanie's room, I found Lanie standing in the center of the room looking around.

“Why does she do this?” she asked me. “Why does she pick up my stuff and put it away?
I'm
going to pick up my stuff and put it away, if she just
gives
me a minute or two! She always complains that I never clean up my room, but then she never gives me a chance! She just does it for me like she's my mother or something! What is her
problem
?” She stomped her foot, hard, and it struck me again that a sixteen-year-old and an eleven-year-old should not be sharing a room.

Wordlessly, I turned and wandered back down the hall toward my room. I learned long ago not to interfere with my little sister when she was already upset. But the problem of her living situation—and the reason for it—plagued me again as I tried to settle down with my real estate catalogs.

Of course her living situation paled in comparison to our collective living situation, I realized as I stopped myself from counting down the days. Knowing the actual number of days we had left only made them go by faster, and it was already going to take every single one of them to find the perfect vacant home in Nabor-with-an-A.

I opened my real estate catalog and immediately closed it. My hands felt restless and began the finger play they remembered from that night waiting on the empty bus bench in the rain. I didn't know
why, but I was too impatient tonight, too restless and distracted, to work on my catalog. Since Simon and Karen had begun to work extra shifts, the impossibility of affording a house was starting to interfere with my ability to plan one for us.

Instead, I flipped open the rental section, scanning for the right number of bedrooms and bathrooms. There was one, but I recognized the word “Probart” and I knew that wasn't right. In a different ad, I recognized “Pendleton,” but the numbers didn't match up. Perhaps the Sun House was being rented through a different catalog, I thought. Perhaps my own catalogs were useless.

I went to bed early and woke several times in the night, each time more wide awake and restless than the last. I reached for Gray Cat in the night, but she got tired of playing my teddy bear and began to fuss each time I woke her, so I finally stopped. For the first time since he'd died, I itched to sneak out and visit Orange Cat's grave, but Mrs. Rhodes had laid down some very specific rules about leaving the house, and I was not about to break them.

I wanted to go to Natasha, but something I didn't have words for stopped me.

So I thought of going to Lanie, but that wouldn't work, either. Forcing myself to stay in bed, I stared at the ceiling and counted dots in the ceiling squares
till morning while the trailer made night noises around me: creaks with every breeze, the starting and stopping of the electric vent, and dripping from the sink in the bathroom, where a night-light glowed softly through my open bedroom door.

Morning came slowly and by gentle degrees of daylight, and it never developed fully because the weather had changed overnight. Heavy clouds buried the sky and the temperature continued to drop, even as day arrived. I would need two sweaters today. Maybe even a blanket. I had nine to choose from.

At least it was Saturday and I didn't have to freeze my way through a day at Nabor High School. The building and everything in it was ancient and, Bristol and Robert liked to joke, the heating system had been built before winter was invented. It was usually freezing cold in the building, except on the rare days the heat kicked on properly, and on those days, it was sweltering and stuffy.

Since the trailer didn't like to stay warm, I sat with my feet on the vent and my blanket over my feet, so the heat was trapped. Lanie liked to complain that I was stealing all the heat, but this was my bedroom and I didn't care what Lanie thought right this second. I was too cold to care.

Mom found me on the bedroom floor, catching
the heat with my blanket and still counting the holes in the ceiling. I felt sluggish and sleepy today.

“Good morning, Livvie-bug,” Mom said, kneeling beside me. “What are you thinking about?”

“Good morning, Karen. I'm thinking about how many holes are in the ceiling. Why is it so freezing out today?”

Karen laughed. “You haven't been out yet. How do you know it's freezing out?”

“ 'Cause it's freezing
in,
” I explained. “I was so cold last night, I dreamed about seeing my breath. That's pretty cold.”

“That is pretty cold.” Karen slid down the wall beside me and looped an arm around my shoulders. “So, what's the deal, kiddo?”

“The temperature dropped.”

Karen looked at me like she wasn't sure if I was being sarcastic or not. “That's not what I meant, bug.”

“What did you mean?”

“I mean your sisters are moping around the house, and they're mad at each other, which
never
happens because Natasha doesn't get mad, hardly. What's going on?”

I moaned softly and leaned my head on Karen's shoulder. “I don't know. I'm so tired, Karen.”

She stroked my hair for a minute.

“Did you sneak out with Lanie the other night?”

I puzzled it out for a moment. Understood. “Did Mrs. Rhodes tell you?”

“She wants you to be safe.”

“Lanie heard—” I was nervous about saying it anymore, because this was the part where people stared like I was crazy. But it was still the truth and the truth was still what I was supposed to say. “She heard the whistle, too. We wanted to check.”

“Oh.” My mother's voice was a little higher than usual with stress and maybe like she had tears hidden in there somewhere. She sighed and squeezed me. I wondered if she was mad, but she said, “Did you find anything?” and that was all.

“No. Lanie made me come home. The sign fell off the porch rail.”

“What sign?”

“I don't know.”

Karen sighed and I felt her shaking a little against me, not like she was shivering but like she was catching her breath, as if she had run somewhere.

“That's all?” she said at last.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And you won't do it again, Livvie. Right?”

“Yes, ma'am—I mean—no, ma'am.”

“Because you said that last time.”

“This time I promise.”

“Okay.” She rested her head on my shoulder for a minute, then stood. I let her go and listened to her walking back into the kitchen.

I sat for longer than I intended, longer than my usual Saturday schedule would allow. For some reason, my schedule felt off today and that felt all right with me. Saturday mornings were reserved for alone time with my real estate catalogs, but this morning, I couldn't bring myself to face the pictures in the catalogs with their neat, even windows and their pretty curtains that probably didn't come with the houses, anyway.

I couldn't bring myself to face our own home, either, when our days in it were numbered. I had to get out. But Orange Cat's grave was lonely in the autumn daylight. We'd marked it with a stone on which I'd painted Orange Cat's name and age, but the paint washed off in the subsequent rain and now Orange Cat was remembered with just a cold gray stone. There was litter nearby from the neighbors. I picked it up a piece at a time and ran it back into the house to put in the trash. At some point, without really thinking about it, that's where I put my real estate catalogs, too. My heavy notebook made a thunk when I dropped it on top.

I stood there for a minute, looking into the trash
can, every bit as reverent as I was at Orange Cat's grave. The notebook didn't mean much now, not with the sign outside the Sun House, but it knew my hands so well that I couldn't help reaching in to touch it one last time.

Simon went out before lunch and came back an hour later looking a good bit happier than he had in days.

“Found a good one,” he said. “Clear over on the other side of town, just off Pendleton Street. It couldn't hurt to look.”

“A rental?” Lanie sat up straighter, looking much more cheerful than she had moments ago, moping at the table, not looking at Natasha or me. “Can we go look now?”

“As soon as everyone finishes eating.”

All eyes turned to my lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich with three bites taken out of it. Swallowing with difficulty, I glanced around at my family and quickly dumped the rest of the sandwich in the trash.

“I'm finished,” I volunteered.

It was rare the whole family squeezed together in the Tercel, and when we did, it was a tight fit. Driving across town, I registered, took a lot less time than walking. We got there at one and parked in front of a small gray house with an even smaller
porch. The house had a friendly face, but of course it was nowhere near as big as the houses in the Neighbor real estate catalogs I had thrown away this morning. The yard was mostly dirt, but you could tell there would be grass later when the weather was warm and the winter had passed.

Simon lifted the planter on the front porch to reveal the key. “Landlord said we could unlock it, look around. Then contact him if we're interested. He was the first pet-friendly, kid-friendly person I talked to, and the price really isn't that bad for a house this size.” He said it like the house was big, but I was mentally counting windows.

“It might not have enough rooms, Olivia,” I whispered, “so don't get your hopes up.” Humming my way up the front steps, I followed my sisters into the living room.

“Good, sturdy structure,” Simon said.

“And clean,” Karen added with hope in her voice. My parents got good over the years at making even the most dismal home seem suitable, in case it was all we could find.

But I didn't like the ceilings, hanging too low. Simon had to duck to get from the living room to the kitchen and I didn't think he would remember to do that at midnight in his boxers, so I could imagine several nights of bumped heads and rising tempers.

“I don't like this place,” I announced.

“Bug, give it a chance,” Natasha said quickly. “Come on, let's go check out the bedrooms.” Her eyes on my parents were nervous.

My suspicions were correct: There were only three bedrooms. That meant Natasha and Lanie would still have to share if we moved in.

“But this won't work,” I protested as Natasha began outlining which room would belong to whom while Lanie darted from room to room, checking views out of windows, planning contents of built-in bookshelves before we could even be sure they would be ours. “This is three BR, one BA. That's not big enough.”

“I like it,” Lanie said, ignoring my assessment. “Our bedroom is huge!”

“You don't have a bedroom here yet,” I protested. “Tash, I don't like it.”

“Okay, try to be specific. What don't you like about it?” Natasha, also ducking to get through the doorways, sounded more open than Lanie to my critique.

“You guys would still have to share a room. And the ceilings are low and it's not very friendly. I don't like it. It has gas heat. We would have to keep it cold.”

“How do you know it has gas heat?”

I pointed impatiently to the closet beside the bathroom. “Gas furnace equals gas heat.”

“You notice the oddest things, you know that? I mean, you don't know not to wear your slippers in the rain, but you notice in a glance whether or not a house has gas heat. How do you do that?”

I shrugged impatiently. “I guess different things just seem important to me than they do to other people.”

“No kidding,” Lanie called from the bathroom, where she was standing in the tub, no doubt imagining showers to come.

I used to be like Lanie. As recently as last week, in fact. Ordinarily, I loved looking at vacant houses with signs in their yards. They were so hopeful when we met them, each with a slightly different set of promises to make. I loved to walk through the empty rooms, listening to the echo of my footfalls, knowing it would be muted later by the presence of boxes, then clothing, odds and ends of furniture, and the voices of my sisters and the comforting sounds of living.

This house being on Pendleton Street, I should have loved it more even than the others. But something was wrong with the idea of this house. It was too small for our family, which felt bigger by the day as I grew taller, as the pressure got more insistent. And it wasn't the Sun House, so it wasn't going to do.

Lanie was staring at me with a puzzled expression on her face.

“Who died?” she asked flatly when I met her gaze.

It took me a moment to work out what she meant. “Do I look sad?”

She nodded uncertainly. “You do.”

I did something then that I didn't do very often: I made my facial expression into a lie. Forcing a smile at Lanie, I stretched out a hand for her. “This one's too small,” I said as she uncertainly took my hand. “Let's start looking for another.” I pulled her with me onto the front porch and began scanning the lawns for a sign.