The House That Wasn't There

by Elana K. Arnold

  “Anyway,” said Oak, “it doesn’t really matter why they named him Mort, does it? What matters really is what the heck happened yesterday! There was a giant talking rat—”

  “Opossum,” interjected Alder.

  “A giant talking opossum,” Oak corrected, forcing herself to stay calm, “and we were in his house. A house that wasn’t there two seconds before, and a house that wasn’t there two seconds after we left.”

  “Yeah,” said Alder, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “What’s the matter?” Oak said.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Alder, “maybe . . . we imagined it.”

  “Imagined it together?” Oak was finding it increasingly difficult to regulate her tone.

  “Yeah,” said Alder. “Doesn’t that happen sometimes? Like, maybe we were both sick with the same virus? Or maybe we were both exposed to, like, the same toxin? Maybe we ate something weird. What did you have for lunch yesterday?”

  “Peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple,” Oak said. “I brought it from home.”

  “Oh,” said Alder, deflated. “I had the school pizza. Cheese.”

  Oak could see him struggling to come up with another explanation for what had happened, for what they had seen. She’d done the same thing, she supposed, while they were in Mort’s house; she’d thought maybe she had been struck by lightning and had fallen into a coma or something. But now they were back home, safe and sound, and it was clear they had been somewhere else. Oak was positively itching to figure out where, exactly, that was, and how they could have gotten there. Why didn’t Alder just want to admit it—they had experienced something extraordinary, something truly bizarre? Then they could try to figure out what had happened. And what might happen next.

  She opened her mouth to explain all of this, to make Alder understand, but just then they heard a car turn into the driveway.

  “We’ll talk about it later, okay?” said Alder. “That’s my mom. I don’t want her to know.”

  At least they agreed about something. “I didn’t tell my mom either,” Oak said. “No reason for them to worry until we figure out what’s going on. For now, we can tell your mom we’re working on our school project, okay? We probably should anyway.”

  Alder nodded and went to get his notebook from his backpack. “Family,” he said, flipping through the pages until he found his notes from class. He sat down on the floor, across from Oak, and rested his notebook on the coffee table. “We could start with the kittens,” he suggested. “They’re part of our families now, but they’re also related to each other.”

  “And that sort of makes us family, too, doesn’t it?” said Oak. “Not in-laws, but . . . something?”

  “Something,” said Alder, nodding. “It makes us something.”

  Chapter 15

  “You’ll never believe who I ran into at the library,” called Alder’s mom as she pushed through the front door. “Mr. Winderby. Remember him? From the yarn store that shut down last year?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Alder. “Mom—” He was going to introduce Oak, but she continued.

  “Well, he remembers you,” she said, shrugging off her sweater and setting down her purse and a box full of books near the front door. “He couldn’t stop going on about what a talented young man you are, which, of course, he didn’t need to tell me. Anyway, he and his wife are doing fine, he says, still knitting, and he says they’re thinking about maybe opening another storefront in the next year or—”

  Finally, Mom turned toward the living room and noticed that they had company.

  “Oh!” Alder’s mom said. “Hello!”

  “Hi,” said Oak.

  “Mom,” Alder said, “this is Oak, from school. Oak, this is my mom. Her name is Greta.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Oak, and Alder was impressed by her manners, the way she stood up and held out her hand.

  Alder’s mom shook it and smiled. “Nice to meet you, too,” she said.

  Then she noticed the unspooled yarn, and Alder watched her gaze follow it around the chair leg, under the couch, and to the orange sleepy lump of kittens tangled in it.

  “What’s this?” she said. “Two kittens?”

  “Mom,” said Alder, “it’s the craziest thing! Oak and her mom adopted Fern’s brother! Isn’t that amazing!”

  “That is amazing,” said Mom. “What are the chances?”

  She looked at them both with a big, wondrous smile, and Alder could tell that she was happy he had a friend over. Though they hadn’t really talked about it, Alder knew that she had noticed he’d been lonely, and that Marcus hadn’t been around at all.

  “And,” said Alder, “what’s even cooler is that Walnut lives right next door!”

  His mom looked confused.

  “I mean,” said Alder, “Oak and her parents bought the house next door. So Fern and Walnut—that’s the kitten’s name—they are neighbors, too. And—”

  Alder’s sentence petered out as he watched Mom’s expression shift—her wide-open smile at the wonder of the kitten coincidence faded away, and she looked, for a moment, almost angry. But then it was like a mask slipped across her features, sort of pleasant but rigid, as if it were Mom’s face still but also, oddly, a stranger’s.

  “The world is full of coincidences,” Mom said, and her voice, too, sounded like it was wearing a mask. “Oak, it’s nice to meet you. Alder,” she said, turning to him, “when you have a moment, will you help me with something in the kitchen?”

  And then she passed through the living room and disappeared into the kitchen, not even stopping to scratch Fern’s head.

  Alder felt itchy and uncomfortable as he turned back to Oak. He was embarrassed, he realized, by the way his mother was acting. It wasn’t like her to be cold to anyone, and especially not a kid, and double especially not a kid who Alder had over as a guest.

  Oak’s face looked normal, like maybe she hadn’t noticed that his mom had been rude to her. Oak didn’t know his mom, Alder told himself, so she had nothing to compare his mother’s behavior to. Probably he was the only one who’d noticed the way his mom had shifted.

  But then Oak leaned forward and whispered, “That was weird, wasn’t it?”

  Alder nodded, miserable. “I’ll be right back,” he said. And he followed his mom into the kitchen. There, he found her standing in front of the sink, her hands resting on the countertop. She stared out the window at the side of Oak’s house. Her eyes were unblinking.

  “Mom,” said Alder, a half whisper. “What was that about? Why are you being weird?”

  It was a long moment before Mom turned her head toward Alder, and when she did, he was shocked to see that her face was damp with tears. “I’m sorry, buddy,” she said. She wiped her face with her hands. “I guess I’m just not feeling well. That’s all.”

  Alder felt, in a rapid series of flashes, shocked and then worried and then scared. “Are you sick?” he asked. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Oh, no, no, it’s nothing like that,” Mom said, and she was herself again, suddenly, the person who took care of Alder, the warm tall force that made everything all right. She crossed the kitchen and took him in her arms, pulled him into an embrace. “I’m fine, Alder, really I am. The picture of health. I just had a . . . a moment, that’s all. It’s nothing. I promise,” she said, and she kissed his head.

  Alder pulled away a little so he could see her face. Her eyes were red, a little, but they crinkled up in the corners the way they should, in a smile. She didn’t look sick, and the strange impression that she was wearing a mask was completely gone. He felt his stomach unclench, and he hugged his mom again.

  “Okay,” he said, and then he stepped away. “What did you need help with?”

  “Oh,” Mom said, and she waved her hand as if shooing a fly. “It’s nothing. I don’t even remember. Go on, get back to work. You have an hour or so until dinner.”

  “All right,” said Alder, feeling comfortable again. “Is it okay if
I ask Oak to stay to eat with us?”

  “No,” said Mom. The word came out quickly, like a bark, like a bolt, and Alder flinched. “Not tonight,” she added, softening her tone. “I hadn’t counted on three for dinner.”

  “Okay,” said Alder, and he headed back to the living room, to Oak and the kittens.

  It was the first time Alder could remember his mom ever, ever saying no to inviting someone to stay for dinner.

  Though he returned to the living room and tried to make some progress on the “family” project, Alder’s heart wasn’t in it. He was embarrassed about how his mom had acted, and he couldn’t get her expression out of his head.

  Oak seemed to feel the change in the room. It wasn’t too long before she said, “Well, I’d better be getting home,” and Alder didn’t try to convince her to stay. She woke up Walnut by untangling him from the yarn, and he made a little mew of protest as she lifted him from where he lay, entwined with Fern. “Come on, little guy,” she said to the kitten, and then, to Alder, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  The next day was Friday, and Alder wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone, but especially not Beck. Once again, Beck had been sitting next to Marcus on the bus, and once again, Marcus had done that stupid thing where he lifted his chin in Alder’s direction as Alder slumped down the aisle toward the back of the bus. Marcus had learned that chin thing from Beck, Alder was sure, and it seemed like a little twist of the knife each time he did it. The knife being Beck stealing Alder’s friend.

  But when, at ten o’clock that morning, Mr. Rivera said it was time to work on their projects, there was Beck, looming large over Alder’s desk, his blond hair swinging forward as he stared down.

  “’Sup,” said Beck.

  “’Sup,” said Alder.

  “We’re water partners,” Beck said.

  “Uh-huh.” They might as well get this over with, and so he pulled out his notebook. He’d done as much of the water research on his own as possible, hoping not to have to spend too much time with Beck.

  He flipped open to the section labeled WATER.

  There, he’d made a list:

  Language Arts

  History

  Current Events

  PE

  Math

  Art

  Science

  And next to each topic, he’d begun to brainstorm things they could research about water. For math, he’d put down the word “Eureka.”

  Beck pointed to it. “Eureka? Like, the town?”

  “No,” said Alder. “Like, the word.”

  Beck had brought his chair over to Alder’s desk, and now he flipped around and sat in it backward. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What does Eureka have to do with water?”

  Beck even sat cool. “Do you know about Archimedes?” Alder asked.

  Beck shook his head.

  “Well,” said Alder, feeling a little glad that he knew something that Beck didn’t, “Archimedes was a mathematician in ancient Greece. And he was given a problem to solve, by the king. See, the king had hired a goldsmith to make a crown for him, solid gold. But when the crown was delivered, the king sort of suspected that maybe the goldsmith had cheated him. So he asked Archimedes to figure out if it was pure gold or if it was actually a little bit of gold mixed with another metal, like silver. But the problem was that he liked the crown, and he didn’t want Archimedes to mess with it, or, like, break it or anything.”

  “How do you spell Archimedes?” asked Beck, pulling out his phone.

  Alder told him, then continued. “Anyway, Archimedes didn’t know how to solve the problem. How can you figure out what something is made of if you can’t open it up and look inside? But then, one day, he was taking a bath.”

  “Do adults really take baths?” asked Beck, typing something into his phone. “The last time I took a bath I think I was like four years old.”

  “Yeah,” said Alder, hoping Beck wouldn’t look up and see how red he’d turned, “me too. But anyway, Archimedes wasn’t in his own bathroom or anything. He was in a public bathhouse. I guess that’s how everyone got clean back then. And he was getting into the bathtub, and he noticed how the water sloshed out. And he realized that the more of his body he put underwater, the higher the water around him rose up, and the more sloshed out. And he realized that he could figure out, using math and water, whether the crown was made of solid gold or whether it was silver with a gold coating. All he had to do, he figured, was weigh the crown and then see if a solid lump of gold that weighed the same as the crown sloshed out the same amount of water. If it did, then the crown was solid gold. If it didn’t, that meant the king had been cheated. See?”

  “Mm-hmm,” said Beck, but he was doing something on his phone—flipping through something with his thumb. Alder felt himself getting mad. Here he was giving Beck the perfect example of water and math for their project, and Beck couldn’t even pretend to pay attention.

  Alder heard his voice grow louder. “So anyway,” he said, “Archimedes jumped out of his bath and he ran—totally naked!—through the town. And he shouted—”

  “Eureka!” said Beck, looking up from his phone with a grin.

  “Um. Yeah. Eureka,” said Alder. I thought you didn’t know the story.”

  “I didn’t,” Beck said. He showed Alder his phone. “I just looked it up. But this article says that it probably isn’t true—that part about running naked through town yelling ‘Eureka.’ It says some other dude started telling that story, like, two hundred years later.”

  Alder took the phone and read through the article. Beck was right. “Oh,” he said, defeated.

  “It’s still a really good story, though,” said Beck, taking back the phone when Alder was done and sticking it into his pocket. “And it is about math and water. Great job, Alder. Let’s use it.”

  Alder grinned. And then he had an idea. Maybe, if he could get Beck to be his friend, then the three of them—him, Beck, and Marcus—could hang out together. It wouldn’t be as good as having Marcus all to himself, but it would be better than nothing. And Beck had offered to walk with him to the nurse’s office the other day. “Hey,” he said, “maybe we can get together again after school. You know, to work some more together.”

  Beck shook his head. “Cross-country club,” he said. “We’re doing a whole 5K today.”

  “Maybe we could sit together at lunch—” Alder started to say, but then Mr. Rivera stood up from his desk.

  “Okay, friends, time to rotate. Wrap it up.”

  And just like that, Beck was gone.

  Chapter 16

  It turned out that lunch from the cafeteria wasn’t actually as good as lunch from home, which was a disappointment. First, Oak had to wait in line to buy it, which took close to ten minutes. Then, as she made her way across the lunchroom with her tray, someone bumped into her and some of her tomato soup sloshed out of its bowl. Then, when she finally made it to the table where she sat each day with Cynthia, Cameron, Carmen, and Miriam, she noticed that they had all brought lunch from home today.

  “Word to the wise,” said Cynthia, unwrapping her sandwich. “Never buy lunch on Fridays. It’s always leftovers.”

  “Good to know,” said Oak. She tried the tomato soup. Not quite warm enough, and way too salty.

  “This weekend,” said Cameron, “we’re going apple picking!”

  “And pumpkin picking,” said Carmen, who had cut bangs, much to Oak’s relief. It had made Oak so uncomfortable to never quite be 100 percent sure which twin she was talking to.

  “Fun,” said Miriam. She’d brought enchiladas from home in a little glass dish, and she’d used the cafeteria microwave to heat them up. They looked way better than anything else on the table. “We’re going to go visit my brother in Arizona.”

  “You have a brother in Arizona?” Oak asked.

  Miriam nodded. “He’s eight years older than me, and he moved away to college two months ago. We haven’t seen him since he left.”

  “W
ow,” said Cynthia. “Do you miss him?”

  Miriam shrugged. “I guess so,” she said. “I don’t have to share the bathroom anymore, which is nice. And he says that now he has to share a bathroom with five other guys!” She grinned.

  Oak sighed, giving up on her lunch, and set down her spoon. As she did, she saw Alder, lunch bag in hand, scanning the cafeteria as if he were lost.

  “Alder!” she called, waving.

  He looked over in her direction, but when Oak motioned for him to come join their table, he looked away and wandered toward the far end of the room.

  “My parents are making me go hiking on Saturday,” Cynthia was telling the table. “Even though I told them I’m allergic to nature.”

  Everyone laughed, and Oak laughed along with them, but inside she was thinking about Alder. There was no way he hadn’t heard her.

  After school, Oak climbed onto the bus. There was Alder, in a window seat. She flopped down next to him. He looked up, surprised.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” he answered. He looked around, like he was searching for someone.

  “Are you saving this seat for someone?” Oak asked.

  “Um. No,” said Alder, but he looked like maybe he was.

  “I can move,” Oak said.

  “That’s okay,” said Alder.

  A minute later, they were on their way.

  “So,” said Oak, but she didn’t know what to say after that. She wanted to talk more about Mort and his house, but the bus wasn’t exactly the best place to speculate if they wanted to keep it to themselves.

  “Sew buttons,” said Alder.

  “What?”

  “Sorry,” said Alder. “It’s just an expression. Someone says ‘So,’ and then you say ‘Sew buttons.’” He shrugged. “It’s stupid.”

  “No,” said Oak. “It’s not stupid. I’ve just never heard it before.”

  Then she didn’t know what to say again. It was weird that she felt uncomfortable; it was just yesterday that they had been hanging out at Alder’s house, and just the day before that when they had found themselves in a secret house with an impossible host. Right now, it seemed equally unbelievable that they had been comfortable with each other yesterday as that they had met a talking opossum the day before.