Dewey felt oddly pleased, like she'd just been made a member of a secret club. “Deal, ” she said, and tried to wink back, but ended up just kind of squinting. She wasn't very good at winking.
Twenty minutes later, Dewey felt the floor shake a little and heard stomping feet on the outside stairs. Suze was home. Dewey reached down and gripped the chair seat with both hands, bracing herself for what might come next. Suze had glared at her all morning in class. “It wasn't
my
idea, ” Dewey had wanted to say, but she had kept quiet.
Suze slammed the back door open and dropped her books on the counter. She stood by the stove for a second, looked at Dewey, then opened the icebox door. “We're out of Cokes, ” she said.
“I know, ” said Mrs. Gordon. “But I made Ovaltine. I saved some for you, on the stove. ” She pointed to the saucepan. “Why don't you pour yourself a cup, and then we'll show Dewey your room and get you girls settled. ”
Suze scowled and opened the cupboard with a bang, found a mug, and filled it from the saucepan, spilling some in the process. She did not sit down at the table, but drank it standing up. “Okay, let's go, ” she said when she was finished, and walked out of the room.
“Oh, dear, ” said Mrs. Gordon. She looked over at Dewey, who just shrugged and stood up. In the living room, Mrs. Gordon picked up the brown suitcase. “Suze's room is the one on the right, ” she said, pointing down the tiny hallway.
Dewey picked up her Erector set and stood beside the couch, holding the metal box in front of her like a shield. The box was bright red, brand-new, and very heavy. It was a little larger than her arms could comfortably encircle.
“Here, let me take that, ” offered Mrs. Gordon. “It looks like it weighs a ton. ” She put down the suitcase.
“No, that's okay, ” said Dewey. She clutched the box a fraction tighter, as if it were full of the last eggs of an endangered bird. “I've got it. ” She walked a few awkward steps, trying not to stagger under the weight of the box.
“Don't be silly. ” Mrs. Gordon reached out a hand and touched the edge of the metal box. Dewey didn't let go. Mrs. Gordon looked at her for a long second, then said gently, “Jimmy gave you this, didn't he?”
Dewey nodded.
“I thought so. Why don't you let me take it in and put it on the bed for you? I'd hate to have you drop it. ” She left her hand on the box but didn't pull any harder. “I'll be very careful. I promise, ” she added.
Dewey wasn't really sure if she could make it all the way to the bedroom. And if she did drop the box, it would never be the same. Mrs. Gordon was a scientist. Maybe she understood how important it was. Dewey eased one hand off. When she was sure Mrs. Gordon had the box securely, she let go with her other hand and followed.
Mrs. Gordon carried the box and put it down on the foot of the closer of the two twin beds. Its bright red metal looked out of place against the pink chenille bedspread.
“After you've unpacked, we'll figure out a good safe place where this can live, ” she said. “Maybe under your bed? I think we've got a piece of linoleum left over from putting in the bathroom floor. It ought to slide in and out pretty easily on that. ”
Dewey smiled, just a little. Mrs. Gordon did understand. Behind them, in the doorway, Suze sighed dramatically and thumped down the brown paper sack she had been carrying.
“What's in here, bricks?” she asked.
“Just books, ” said Dewey.
Suze unfolded the top of the bag. Dewey started to say something, started to shake her head no, then shrank away from the protest like a turtle pulling its head back toward its shell.
Suze reached in and picked up a book, riffling the pages with a thumb. “
The Boy Mechanic
, ” she said, snickering. “Why do you have
that
? ”
“They didn't make one for girls, ” Dewey replied. She held out her hand for the book, and after a second, Suze gave it to her.
The bedroom was small and square with thin plasterboard walls painted a waxy yellow. The paint was already beginning to flake a little in the corners, even though the whole building was less than two years old. The pair of twin beds, a nightstand between them, took up most of the space. At the foot of the two beds stood a pine dresser, painted a pale robin's-egg blue.
“Suze cleaned out the top two drawers, ” Mrs. Gordon said. “So those can be yours. ” She put Dewey's suitcase down at the foot of her bed, then sat on Suze's bed and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a blue cloud. Suze leaned against the window, her arms crossed over her chest.
“If it's okay, I'd rather have the bottom drawers, ” Dewey said. “I'm not as tall as Suze, and it's hard for me to stand on tiptoe, because of my leg. ”
“Oh. Oh, of course, ” said Mrs. Gordon. “I'm sorry, I should have thought of that. Suzeâlet's move your things up top again. ”
Suze walked across the room and started to pull things out of the bottom drawers, glaring at Dewey. So, Dewey thought. She'd wanted the top drawers to begin with. That made sense. Suze Gordon was the kind of girl who'd always want the top, whatever it was. She was one of the loud runaround kids at school, and bossy at recess, although nobody really listened. She'd probably be even bossier about her room. But Dewey was used to that. She'd lived in other people's houses most of her life, and boarders never got to make the rules.
Suze pulled an armload of clothes out of the bottom drawer and kicked it shut, then plopped them into the top one in a heap. She stared at Dewey. “So what's wrong with your leg, anyway?”
“Susan!” Mrs. Gordon said sharply. “What a rude question. Apologize to Dewey this minute. ”
Dewey looked up from her suitcase, a pair of rolled-up white socks in each hand. “It's okay. It's kind of better when people just ask instead of staring at me when they don't think I'm looking. ” She turned toward Suze. “It was an accident when I was a baby. My leg got broken in a couple of places. Papa says I was in the hospital for a month, but I don't remember. When I got out it wasn't broken anymore, but it was a little shorter than my other leg, so I have to wear a special shoe and I can't run very well. ”
She looked at Suze and waited for the other girl to look away first. When she did, Dewey walked over to the dresser and began to line her socks in an orderly row along the left side of the bottom drawer.
DRAWING THE LINE
SUZE WAS RELIEVED
to see that Dewey hadn't brought very many clothes. That made it feel more like she was here for the weekend, not like she was going to stay. Dewey only had two pairs of pants, dungarees and cords, and a couple of sweaters. The rest of her stuffâa pair of pajamas, underwear, and socksâonly took up one drawer of the dresser. A single left shoe, a white sneaker, sat next to it on the floor. One shoe. That was so weird.
That was all she'd brought, except for the sack of books. Most of them were the school kind of books, math and science. The sack also held some letters and a wooden cigar box and a Mason jar, both full of junk. Wires and batteries, string and rubber bands and springs, parts of an old clock, a whole bunch of screws and nails, and a pair of pliers. Junk.
None of it better get on my side of the room
, Suze thought.
“There's not a lot of extra space in here, ” said Mrs. Gordon, when Dewey had taken the last of her clothes out of her suitcase. “I'll take your bag out and store it with our things, okay?” A little closet-sized room, off the back stairs, was where Suze's roller skates, some boxes of summer clothes, and their own suitcases lived.
“Okay, ” Dewey said. She closed the brown leather lid and pushed the brass latches down until they snapped shut.
“Are you going back to work now?” Suze asked her mother. It was the second time in a week that she'd been home after school, which was strange, but kind of nice.
“Later on, ” Mrs. Gordon said. “I thought we could all have dinner together, this first night. After I've stowed Dewey's bag, I'm going to put a chicken in the oven. ” She turned to Dewey. “Do you like mashed potatoes? They're one of Suze's favorites. ”
“Yes, ma'am, ” said Dewey. “I like pretty much everything, except beets. ”
Mrs. Gordon laughed. “Well, good. That's at least one thing you girls have in common. ”
“Is Daddy coming home too?” Suze asked.
“He said he'd try, but I wouldn't count on it. He's been down at Anchor Ranch with X-Division all month, and that's miles away. My bet is if they can't hear the siren, none of them will stop working until it's too dark to see. We'll set him a place, but I suspect it'll just be us girls. ”
“Is there someplace I can put my books?” Dewey asked.
Suze looked at the bookshelf over her bed, where she kept her Oz books and
Treasure Island
and the fairy tales with Maxfield Parrish drawings. If she moved the book-ends, there might be room for a few more books. But she didn't want Dewey's books on her shelf. Besides, Dewey would have to stand on her pillow to reach. Suze shuddered and looked around the room. “I guess you can put them on top of the dresser, ” she said. “On your side. ”
“Don't be silly, ” said Mrs. Gordon. “I'll get a shelf for over your bed too, Dewey. For now, why don't you just leave them in the sack?”
Dewey nodded, and Mrs. Gordon picked up the suitcase and left the room.
But Suze had an idea. She used her foot to pull out a flat wooden box from underneath her bed. Inside were her art suppliesâcolored pencils, crayons, a compass, a ruler, a pad of paper. She peeled layers of loose drawings aside until she found what she was looking for: a small red cardboard box of colored chalk. In Berkeley, she had used it to draw hopscotch lines on the sidewalk. Since there were no sidewalks on the Hill, it had drifted to the bottom of the art box, useless.
Until now.
The floor was wood, the dresser was blue. Suze wanted a color that would show up against both. White would, but white was boring. She finally decided on yellow. That way if some got on the walls by accident, it wouldn't show.
Suze stood in the alley between the two beds, in front of the polished pine nightstand. She closed one eye, squinting and measuring, then, starting at the back of the stand, right at the wall, drew a straight yellow line down the middle, continuing the line down across the front of the drawer. It wobbled a bit on the round knob.
Behind her, she heard Dewey turn around and huff in surprise, but Suze didn't stop. She squatted, put the chalk on the floor directly under the knob, then bisected the length of the space between the two beds.
She was aware, peripherally, that Dewey had moved away from the dresser and was sitting on top of her bed, watching silently. Suze ignored her and continued the yellow line up the center of the blue dresser, ending with an audible tap of the stub of chalk on the yellow painted wall.
“You and your stuff stay on your side, ” she said, turning around to face Dewey. “Got it?”
Dewey was leaning against her headboard, her arms around her drawn-up knees. She looked at Suze for several seconds. “Yeah, I got it, ” she said. “Don't worry. I never color outside the lines. ”
Dinner was quiet. Suze watched Dewey eat. She even ate weird. She cut her chicken up into a little pile, ate it, then ate her peas, then her potatoes, keeping all the food on separate parts of the plate, not touching. Suze wanted to reach over with her fork and squash the peas into the potatoes, break the dam of gravy so that it would run all over Dewey's plate. But her mother was sitting next to her, chatting as if nothing was different, so she didn't. She gnawed on a drumstick and then, when she was sure Dewey was watching, mingled her own food into a slurry. Dewey said nothing.
A little before 7:00, Mrs. Gordon stood up. “I don't think Daddy's going to make it, ” she said. “We'll save him some leftovers. ” She cut off the other drumstick and a thigh and put them on a plate, adding a dollop of mashed potatoes. Then she covered the plate with wax paper and put it in the icebox. She poured the last of the coffee out of the percolator into her cup, and sat down.
“Will you girls be okay if I go back to the lab for a while? Not too long. An hour or two. What time do you usually go to bed?” She looked at Dewey.
Dewey put down her fork. “It depends, ” she said. “Most school nights, about nine. If Papa's home, he lets me read in bed for an hour or so. If he's at the lab, I sometimes read until he gets home. Or until I fall asleep. ” She folded her napkin in half and stood up, carried her plate over to the sink, and ran water.
Suze rolled her eyes. Little Miss Helpful.
“Nine. Okay, I'll try to be back by then, ” Mrs. Gordon said. She stacked her own plate on top of Dewey's. “Just leave the dishes, ” she said. “I'll do them when I get back. It helps me unwind, and gets the chemical stink off my hands. ”
“Okay, ” Dewey said. “Where should I do my homework?”
Was she always this good? Suze rolled her eyes again, although she had been thinking the same thing. “Dibs on the desk, ” she said quickly.
“Suâ” Mrs. Gordon started to say, but Dewey spoke first.
“Good. Then I'll take the kitchen table. That way I can spread my papers out. ”
The two girls looked at each other, but neither said a word.
Mrs. Gordon shook her head. “Well, I'm glad we got that worked out. I'm going to the lab now, where the explosives are carefully marked. It's probably safer there. ” She pulled her jacket off its hook by the door and put it on. “I'll be back in a little while. ”