Where We Belong (10 page)

It was time to see how much of a monster I’d just created.

We all three stepped up onto his porch, and I knocked.

The door swung wide, and Paul looked down at all three of us. Rigby wagged hard, whipping Sophie with her tail, but Sophie didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even flinch.

Without a word, he reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Peered in and pulled out two five-dollar bills.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

His head came up fast.

“Rigby got a piece of licorice. I really hope that’s not bad for her. It was an accident. I promise I’ll be more careful next time. If you let there be a next time. But I understand if you don’t trust me with her now.”

I waited. It felt like a long wait. I wanted to look at his face, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Actually… I trust you more now.”

My eyes came up to his, and then I quick looked away again.

“How? Why?”

“Because you told me. You didn’t have to tell me. Now I know you’ll tell me the truth even if you don’t have to. Even if I would never know.”

“I hope it’s not bad for her. Is it bad for her?”

“She’ll be fine.”

He handed me the two bills, took the leash, and led his dog inside. Then he closed the door.

I winced, and waited.

Nothing.

I looked down at Sophie. She was still in the same sit. In the same spot.

What would she do when I walked home? Would she try to stay on the neighbor’s porch forever? Would we have to wrap her up and drag her, kicking and screaming, home?

I took three or four steps, then looked back. Sophie was rambling after me. Not quite as fast as she had when Rigby was with me. Not quite as anxious to catch up. But she was following.

I opened Aunt Vi’s gate, and she tumbled past me into the yard and took her usual spot by the fence. Crouched down in the grass and waited for the next time she’d see Hem.

My mom was in the kitchen, her face over a steaming cup of tea. Like it was a facial, not a drink. Her head snapped up when she saw me there.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It went fine.”

“Where is she?”

“Right where she always is.”

I watched all the tension drain out of her face. Well, not all of it. The extra tension. I watched her slip all the way back down to baseline tension. Which was bad enough.

Instead of looking relieved without it, she just looked tired.

“So… tomorrow…” she began. Like a question when you don’t dare ask it.

“She can come with me again tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Sure. She was fine. She was good.”

“Oh, my God. That would be great.”

She took a big gulp of tea, and then seemed to drift away in her head. Like she was following that great thing to Great Thing Land.

“Where’s Aunt Vi?”

“Napping.”

“She does that a lot.”

“Well…” she said. And then her face twisted into something like a smile. “She hasn’t been the same since Charlie died.”

This little snort of a laugh burst out of me. My mom quick put a finger to her lips to stop me. I sat down at the table, and we looked at each other, and then the laugh burst out again—out of both of us—and we had to swallow the noise of it.

Oh, I know. It sounds terrible. It wasn’t funny that Charlie died. We didn’t mean it like that. It was just that Vi said that so much. It was just funny to hear somebody else say it. Well, no, it wasn’t. It probably wasn’t funny at all. I think it was just our way of letting off a little of that tension.

My mom looked at me, and she had a look on her face I hadn’t seen for a long time.

“I feel hopeful,” she said. “I don’t even remember the last time I felt hopeful.”

I thought, I can’t tell her. I just can’t. I have to let her have the hope for a little while longer.

I got up from the table and went into my room. Well. Everybody’s room. And I sat on the bed. And I thought, No, that’s wrong. That doesn’t work. Then she’s just stuck in that place she calls a fool’s paradise. And that’s not the same as hope. That’s pathetic.

I went back to the kitchen, my heart feeling like it was down somewhere in my large intestine. I sat down at the table with her, and she picked up on the bad news right away.

“What? What is it? Just say it. Hurry.”

“He’s moving.”

I could hear her swallow.

“The guy with the dog?”

“Yes.”

“He’s moving?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“In four weeks.”

A long silence. Long, long, long. And ugly. Like if you took our whole lives for the past few years and strained out everything we wished had never happened, what you’d have left over in the strainer would feel just like that silence. Really that bad.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

I said, “You ask me that a lot.”

I didn’t say, “I wish you would stop.” I didn’t say, “You’re forty. I’m fourteen. If you can’t figure it out, it’s hardly fair to hand it off to me.” But I’m sure a little of what I didn’t say came through all the same.

“
The Bell Jar
,” I called out. “Sylvia Plath.”

“I have a copy of
The Bell Jar
?”

Nellie’s voice sounded soft and far away. I peeked around the end of the shelf for about the hundredth time. She wasn’t smiling, and I was trying to figure out how to get her to. But it’s hard to make book titles sound funny.

“You do.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have my hand on it.”

“I honestly didn’t know that.”

“I honestly think that’s why we’re doing this.”

Bingo. She smiled. And looked up and caught me looking. I disappeared behind the shelf again.

“You know, we’re never going to make it through four hours of this,” she said.

“I’ll make it.”

“I won’t. I’ll die of boredom.”

“How long have we been doing it?”

“An hour and fifty minutes.”

“I don’t think that’s long enough.”

“I’m dying of boredom.”

“Well,” I said. “I don’t want you to die.”

“I’m ordering a pizza.”

I stepped out from behind the stacks and looked at her straight on. She already had the phone at her ear.

“And then we finish?”

“How about two more hours next Sunday? Wait.” She held a finger up in my direction. “Hi. A large… yes, delivered… Nellie’s Books… Wait. I know what I want on it, but I have to see what my friend wants… Yes, I’ll hold. Angie. What do you like on your pizza?”

“Um. I don’t know. Anything, I guess.”

“Okay. Anchovies, pineapple, and jalapeno peppers it is.”

Then she looked at my face and burst out laughing. I wondered what she’d just seen there. I could only imagine.

“I’m kidding. I’m a vegetarian. So I’m having mushrooms, green peppers, and olives. You want pepperoni on your half?”

“No, I’ll have it the way you’re having it. But if we finish next Sunday, won’t they be out of order again by then?”

“We can’t finish today, anyway. It’s a lot more than four hours’ work. I’ll just have to put them—hello? Yes. Mushroom, bell pepper, and olive. Large, yeah. And make it double cheese. Okay, thanks.” She flipped the phone closed. “Twenty minutes.”

“Should we work till it gets here?”

“No way.”

“You’ll die of boredom.”

“Correct.”

Then I knew why Nellie hadn’t done the inventory in all this time. How I’d saved her by saying I’d show up and call out the titles. Because, left on her own, she would never do it. She would just keep on knowing she should. She didn’t want to do the inventory at all. She just wanted it to be done. Those are two very different things.

I started feeling like if it was ever going to get done, I had to be the one pushing it. And suddenly, it seemed very important that it get done.

She reached under the counter and pulled out my big book on the Himalayas. Held it out with the cover facing me, like she had the first time. It melted me. Just like before.

“Sit,” she said. “Read.”

I took it in my hands. And yes, my hands shook a little this time, too. But it wasn’t just the book, or the picture on the book. Well, I don’t know what it was. A lot of different things, I think.

I slipped off my shoes and sat cross-legged, like last time. But I left the book closed and just stared at the cover. All of a sudden, I was in Tibet, but not by myself. All of a sudden, it was Nellie, too, walking alongside the row of prayer wheels, and reaching her hand out to spin them around. Always spinning to the left, never to the right. And I was walking behind her. Also spinning. And it was like a different country than it had been before, when I was alone. Alone is a whole different thing. This time, when I saw Annapurna rising up in the distance, spindrifts of snow blowing off its peak, I put my hand on her shoulder to get her attention and pointed. As if to say, “You have to see this, too, Nellie, but I’m too overcome with the sight to speak.” And then she squeezed my hand… which was still on her shoulder… because Annapurna was so beautiful. Because it was too beautiful for words.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

It jolted me so hard, the book almost ended up on the floor. I’d forgotten she was there. Well, there in the bookstore. I’d been so busy thinking of her there in Tibet.

My heart pounded until it felt like it was about to break loose. I wanted to ask, “How personal?”

“Um. I don’t know. I guess.”

“Are you being abused at home?”

“Abused? What do you mean? Abused how?”

“Hit?”

“No. I don’t get hit. Why did you ask that?”

“It didn’t escape my eagle-like powers of observation that the first time you came in here, you had a fat lip. With just a butterfly bandage on it. When it probably could have used a couple of stitches.”

My heart slowed down. Some.

“It healed, though,” I said. I touched the scar. It wasn’t really healed healed. Just scabbed over. “And my tooth was loose, but now it’s tightening up on its own. No, I’m not being abused at home. Sophie did that. But not on purpose.”

“Oh. Sophie.”

“Yeah. And that’s completely different. Right?”

“Well. It is and it isn’t. It’s still just as bad a situation for you. It still hurts.”

I looked down at the book. Opened it up. Turned pages I hadn’t read. Looked at pages I didn’t see.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t, really. I hated moments like this. And yet, underneath all that hating, I liked the fact that she wanted to protect me. It was almost like… it was almost as good as Nellie giving my hand a squeeze.

“How are things at the new school?” she asked.

I had moved the book off onto the rug, pretty far away. So I wouldn’t get any grease from the melted cheese on it. I was still staring at the cover.

“Mff,” I said, because my mouth was full.

“Sorry.”

I chewed and swallowed as fast as I could, but it was hot.

“Sort of surprisingly okay.”

“Kids aren’t giving you a hard time?”

“No. Why would they?”

“I don’t know. They always did with me. My dad was in the military, and we moved around a lot, so I was always the new kid. And the other kids were hard on me. Maybe it was just me.”