Where We Belong (15 page)

Except I was frozen. I couldn’t move.

Then she was there, at the end of the aisle, but she wasn’t exactly Nellie. More like Sophie, but grown up. And not ASD. Don’t ask me how I knew it was Sophie. I just did. She looked right at me, and her eyes took in everything. They were perfectly clear.

A sound startled me awake.

I sat up fast.

Now for the bad news. There was no room to sit up. Turns out I was sleeping in the back of the station wagon, where I had no memory of ever going to sleep. I didn’t even remember climbing back there. My forehead hit the headliner, which was old and not very tight and didn’t protect me from the actual metal of the roof of the car. The spot I hit was the same spot I’d hit on Nellie’s counter.

I fell back down again.

“Ow,” I said under my breath. “Shit.” Even more quietly.

The sound startled me again. It was a knock. Someone was knocking lightly on the back window of the station wagon.

My first thought: It’s a cop. We shouldn’t be sleeping here. We’re in trouble.

It was light out, and I could see the knocking person, but it was sheeting rain, and he had a slicker and hood on, so I could only see just so much. I could tell he was an older guy, maybe Paul’s age, but with a softer face and eyes.

I sat up again, careful to slouch over and not hit my head. I looked around to the front of the car. Sophie was still fast asleep, strapped into her car seat on the passenger side in the back. My mom was asleep in the driver’s seat, which was leaned back almost flat.

I opened the back window. It flipped up, like a hatchback. Well. I guess it
was
sort of a hatchback. It felt weird to sit up all hunched over like that. But I didn’t have too many choices.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Did we do something wrong?”

“Not at all. I just saw you sleeping in your car, and I wondered if you had a tent. Sorry I woke you.”

“Tent?”

“You don’t have one?”

I looked around. It was hard to see in the downpour, but we were in some sort of campground. I saw a couple of tents and a lot of trailers and motorhomes.

“Um. No. We don’t have one.”

“Thought that might be the case. We have three in Lost and Found that were never claimed. You’d be amazed how often people break ‘em down and then drive off without ‘em. You can borrow one if you want.”

“Oh. Thank you. That’s nice. Only… I don’t really know how long we’re staying. When my mom wakes up, I’ll find out. I’m not sure if she’s going to wake up and get right back on the road again.”

“Well, you let me know. See that big trailer with the picket fence around it? My wife and I are the campground hosts. So if you need anything, come by.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I probably should have said more. He was being nice. But I couldn’t shake the sleep, and I couldn’t shake the dream. And I didn’t even know where we were.

He walked off in the rain, holding the edge of his hood out to protect his face.

“What was that about?” my mom asked.

“So you
are
awake.”

“Yeah.”

“But you still made me handle it.”

“What did he say?”

“Just that he’ll loan us a tent if we want one.”

“Good. Run catch him. Tell him we want it.”

“I don’t have to run. I know where to find him. We’re staying here? Why are we staying here? Where are we?”

“We’re right outside that little town.”

“So why are we staying
here
?”

“Where do you suggest we stay?”

“In a… you know… place. With a roof. It’s pouring rain. Not exactly camping weather.”

I leaned over the seat to see if Sophie was sleeping through all this. She was.

“Roofs cost money. You got money?”

I chose not to let on, right in that moment, that I did. “You said we had some money.”

“I said we had enough to stay someplace for a little while or to eat, but not both. I’m thinking eating would be good. And I have to return the trailer. I have to drive all the way down to Fresno to return it. That’s the closest city where I can drop it off.”

“You can’t return it. It has all our stuff in it.”

“We’ll just have to move everything out. I’m paying for it by the day, kiddo.”

“So you want to put all our stuff out in the pouring rain and live in a tent. And when the money runs out… then what?”

“You know… I could work anywhere, any shift… we could live anywhere… if it wasn’t for…”

“Stop. Do
not
bring that up again.”

“I have to, kiddo. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I’m just sort of at the end of my…”

Then she started to cry. Not just little tremors on the words, with maybe a tear or two. Full-on sobbing. “We’re homeless. Do you get that?”

I could barely make out the words. But I got it. And all I felt was numb.

I also got that if anyone was going to solve things, it would have to be me.

I climbed out the back window into the rain. Ran to the trailer of the campground host. It was raining so hard, I couldn’t see much. But we were in a thick forest of evergreen trees. That much, I could see. By the time I ducked under his awning, I was already soaked to the skin. And cold.

The door was wide open, so I just stuck my head in and said, “Hello?”

“Oh,” the old guy said. “That didn’t take long.”

“My mom says we’re staying. So I’m going to take you up on the tent thing. But I have to ask a big favor. I have to ask if I can borrow two. Because we have to get all our stuff out of that trailer so my mom can take it back.”

He scratched his chin, which was bristly with short gray beard hairs. “I don’t see why not. They’re not doing anybody any good in the Lost and Found.”

He ducked out the door, grabbing his slicker on the way out. Then he disappeared into the rain, slipping it on as he ran. When he got back, he was carrying two mismatched green stuff-sacks. One was maybe two feet long, the other closer to three feet. They weren’t so thick that I couldn’t just tuck them both under my arms.

“You know how to set these up?”

“Not really.”

“Well, this one has a diagram. But they all work pretty much the same way. The poles are in sections, and you put them together. They fit together. And then you slide them through these loops on the outside of the tent. And then when you put the ends of the poles into these grommet holes, it stands up like a dome.”

I followed along on the diagram, and it looked easy.

“Thanks. I think I can manage that.”

“This one has a footprint. Like a tarp you can put down underneath to keep the bottom dry in the rain. So my advice is, sleep in that one. Put your stuff in the other one, but put things on the bottom that won’t get ruined if they get wet. If you have boxes, maybe stack them on top of more waterproof things.”

“Okay.”

It sounded like something a parent should take charge of. It made me wish I had a parent who took charge.

“If you have any trouble, come back.”

“Okay.” I started to turn. To go back out into the downpour. But I stopped. “How did you know we didn’t have a tent?” I asked him. I could hear my teeth chattering a little as I asked it.

“I didn’t, for sure. But you’re not the first family to show up in a campground with everything they own, and not quite prepared for camping.”

“Oh. I thought it was just us. I thought everybody else had it together.”

He laughed, one quick little snort. “Hardly.”

I turned to duck out into the rain again, but he stopped me with a word.

“Wait.”

I waited.

“I have to ask you something. I’m sorry, but I just have to. Are you safe? Or are you being hurt?”

I swear, I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t feel safe, no. And I got hurt every time I turned around. But it didn’t feel like he could be talking about any of that.

“Not sure I understand the question.”

He lifted one hand and pointed to his own forehead. My hand immediately went up to mine. It hurt to touch it.

“Oh. That.”

“That and the fact that you have that old scar from a split lip.”

“I’m safe. I’m not being hurt.”

“I
want
to believe you.”

“This,” I said, pointing to my forehead, “was my own stupidity. I reached down to get something I dropped and banged it on a counter. The lip was my little sister. But not exactly on purpose. I do get hurt sometimes trying to take care of her. But she can’t help it. She’s got ASD. That’s—”

“I know exactly what that is,” he said. I watched his eyes change. All the warm, open stuff flew away. What got left behind looked lost and sad. “My wife and I have a son who’s autistic.”

“How old?”

“Thirty-six.”

“He live with you in there?”

“No.”

“You’re lucky. You’re lucky he can live on his own.”

Even less warm and open. Even more lost and sad. “He doesn’t live on his own. He’s severely autistic. He lives in a facility where they know how to take care of people who have his problems.”

Just in that moment, I realized something. Two things, really. That for a minute, I’d liked this guy. And that I didn’t anymore.

“We’re not doing that,” I said.

“I wish you the best. My wife still has a little white line of scar on her chin. Nearly thirty years later, you can still see it.”

“I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for the tents.”

I ran all the way back in the rain. But… back to what? It wasn’t like this rented patch of dirt was any kind of shelter. It wasn’t really much of anything. But just at the moment, it was all we had. I had no choice but to think of it as home.

“You’re going to have to back up more,” I told my mom.

My teeth were chattering. I was soaked to the skin from putting up both tents in the pouring rain. Then again, I’d been soaked to the skin before I started on the tents. So I kept telling myself, once you’re soaked, you can’t get any more soaked. But it was only around forty degrees out. Which meant when night came, I might be seeing my first snow. Which would have been great through a window. Or in dry clothes. Neither of which seemed likely.

I wondered how many blankets we had.

My mom got into the car to try again to back the trailer right up to the flap of the big tent. The one with no footprint to keep it dry on the bottom.

I heard her shift the station wagon into gear. I could hear Sophie, awake now and still strapped into her car seat. But I think I was the only one who would have known what that sound was. She’d lost her voice completely. It sounded like a steady whisper. Like wind blowing hard in dry grass, but a little louder.

The trailer came back toward me, but not straight. It jackknifed a bit, heading off in the wrong direction.

“Stop!” I yelled.

She did.

“Just leave it right there.”

I decided it would be easier to move the tent into the right position than to try to get my mom to move the trailer into the right position.

I pulled up the tent stakes. Then I threw the trailer doors open wide. And I slid the tent so the open flap was right up against the back of the trailer. It didn’t help much. There was still a steady sheet of water pouring off the tent, and we’d still have to hand everything right through it. I didn’t stake it down again, because it struck me that we’d be filling it with lots of heavy stuff.

My mom climbed into the back of the trailer and grabbed a box.

“No,” I said. “Boxes last. I told you.”

“Oh. Right.”

She handed me my metal trunk. Apparently, she’d thrown it into the very back of the trailer, so I’d have more room to sleep in the car. I placed it off to the side of the tent, where it wouldn’t get buried.

“I’m getting soaked,” she said.

“Join the club. I hope we have a lot of blankets.”

“Some. I’m not sure what you mean by a lot.”

She handed me a plastic bin full of towels. I put those off to the side, too. It was dawning on me that almost everything would need to be where we could reach it easily. Which was sort of impossible.

“We’ll need a lot of blankets,” I said.

“They were always enough before.”

“It’s going to be cold tonight.”

“It’s practically summer.”

“We’re at a higher elevation. Do you really not get it that it’s colder in the mountains?”

“Oh. Right.” She handed me a cardboard carton. “I’m sorry. There’s really nothing much that isn’t a cardboard box. So I’m just giving you the ones with dishes and pots and pans and stuff first. The boxes’ll get soaked, but at least the stuff won’t get ruined. There’s some stuff in trash bags. That can go on the floor. But we can’t really stack much on them.”

I dropped the box right in the middle of the tent, which was already wet. I didn’t know if it was coming up through the tent floor or blowing and splashing in through the open flap. Or pouring off me. I couldn’t believe we were supposed to live like this for as long as anybody could imagine.

“Take Sophie with you when you go to take the trailer back,” I said.

“You’re not coming?”

“No.”

“Why aren’t you coming?”

“I need to get dry.”

“We’ll wait.”

“I don’t want all our stuff left alone. What if it gets stolen?”