The House That Wasn't There

by Elana K. Arnold

  But nothing. Frustrated, Alder sighed. He felt his gaze harden back into normal.

  There—just in his periphery—a flash! Could it be that the shimmer had moved over there? Alder turned his head to pinpoint what he’d seen out of the corner of his eye.

  Oh. It wasn’t the shimmer. It was the front window of Oak’s house, and the movement he’d seen was Oak herself, peering out, watching him.

  Alder lifted his hand in a wave. Oak stared at him, and though they were separated by the length of the yard and the pane of her window, Alder had no problem at all reading her expression.

  Without a wave in return or an acknowledgment of any kind, Oak turned away.

  Falteringly, Alder lowered his hand. His stomach felt sick again. “Idiot, idiot, jerk,” he berated himself, and he headed back inside.

  “Alder,” his mom called from the kitchen, “you’ve been moping around all weekend! How about we start a new puzzle—does that sound like fun?”

  Alder shook his head. He didn’t feel like doing anything.

  “Well,” said his mom, “why don’t you look through that box of books and craft stuff I brought home from the donation fair? Maybe you’ll find something interesting.”

  Alder didn’t feel like looking at books, either, but Mom said, “Either you find something to do or I will,” so he begrudgingly made his way to the box.

  The next morning, Alder waited outside Oak’s house so he could apologize. He’d even brought her something from the book box, as a sort of peace offering. He waited for what felt like a long time, but when Oak still hadn’t emerged five minutes before the bus was due to arrive, Alder had no choice but to head for the corner.

  “Just one tree kid today, huh?” said Faith.

  “I guess so.” Alder began to head up the aisle.

  “Did you kids ever find that house?” she asked.

  Alder stopped dead in his tracks. “What did you say?”

  “You know,” Faith said. “You’re in number Eleven. Tree girl lives in number Fifteen. But where’s the missing house? Where is number Thirteen? Did you find it yet?”

  She was joking around. Alder could tell from her smile, the loose and happy tone in her voice.

  “No,” he answered slowly. “Not yet.”

  By the time Mr. Rivera called the class to order, Oak had not arrived. This was particularly inconvenient for Alder, as they jumped right into their interdisciplinary project and he was supposed to be paired with her today.

  “It’s tough to go it alone without your family,” Mr. Rivera said, mustache twitching.

  “Huh?” Alder said, confused.

  Mr. Rivera tapped the open page in Alder’s notebook, which was headed with the word Family, followed by a hodgepodge of notes.

  “Oh,” said Alder. “Right.”

  Mr. Rivera wandered away, making encouraging jokes and checking on progress as he went up the aisle.

  The least he could do, Alder thought, was make some progress in Oak’s absence. But before he even looked at his notes, he found himself immediately distracted by that phrase . . . the least he could do. It was a funny thing to aim for, wasn’t it? The least that someone could do? Why not aim for the most that someone could do? Or, maybe, the middle amount?

  Alder had always liked language and words. Maybe it was something he’d gotten from his dad. Writing songs, after all, is about playing with words and the ways they fit together, with meaning and rhythm and rhyme.

  Alder shook his head to clear it. Here he was, allowing himself to focus on the wrong thing. He was supposed to be focused on family, and yet he was thinking about . . . well, actually, he was thinking about family. His family. His dad.

  He laughed a little. Wasn’t that funny? That he tried to think about one thing and then found himself thinking about another thing, but then it turned out that the other thing really was the first thing after all? He wished he had someone to share that with. Glumly, Alder looked around. He wished Oak were here.

  It took Alder three attempts to approach Oak’s lunch table before he finally went through with it.

  The first time Alder tried to approach their table, he couldn’t even bring himself to slow down as he passed it. He just kept walking, as if he suddenly saw someone on the far end of the cafeteria who was waiting for him.

  On the second pass, Alder did manage to slow down. Oak wasn’t there, of course, but the others were—Cynthia and Miriam from his class, and the twins, who were in the other fifth grade class and whose names, he realized, he didn’t know. He even cast a friendly smile in the table’s general direction, but none of the girls seemed to notice. They were all leaning forward, looking at pictures on one of the twins’ phones. Alder didn’t mean to peek—he knew that was rude—but he couldn’t help but notice the picture that was up when he passed, of the twins and a third, younger kid and a couple of grown-ups, with a big basket of fruit, maybe apples, in the photo as well.

  On the third pass, Alder forced himself to stop walking when he had reached the table. He counted down—three steps, two steps, one step—and then he brought his right foot up to meet his left, and he stopped, just behind the twin with bangs.

  “Hello, Alder,” said Cynthia. “This is the second time you’ve passed our table. Do you need something?”

  He felt an enormous wave of relief that Cynthia had only noticed him circle the table twice.

  “Actually,” said Miriam, sipping orange juice, “it’s his third.”

  Miriam.

  Alder cleared his throat, though it didn’t need clearing. “Hey,” he said. “I was just . . . wondering . . . if maybe I could sit here? With you?”

  He watched the four girls look at one another as if they were taking a silent vote. It couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but it felt like ages before Cynthia said, “Sure. Why not?”

  It was, Alder knew, a rhetorical question, and he threaded his legs over the bench and sat down. “Thanks,” he said, and opened his lunch.

  The girls returned to the photos on the phone.

  “So how many different kinds of apples did you get?” Cynthia asked the twins.

  “Just three,” said the twin holding the phone, the one with bangs. “There were five kinds in the orchard, but our baby brother got cranky before we made it to all of them. And Cameron says we picked more than we could ever eat anyway.”

  Ah. The other twin was Cameron. One name down, one to go.

  “I brought some to share,” said Cameron, unzipping her backpack. “And Carmen labeled them so we’d know which is which.”

  Bingo, thought Alder, feeling rather pleased with himself. The twin with bangs was named Carmen.

  Well. Cameron and Carmen. That was confusing. He almost made a smart comment, but then decided at the last moment not to. Maybe he’d just listen for a while.

  Cameron pulled a half dozen apples out of a paper bag, two of each kind. A little piece of masking tape was stuck to each apple: Fuji; Honeycrisp; Opal.

  “Does anyone have a knife?”

  No one did. Here was something Alder could do. “I’ll go ask the cafeteria lady,” he offered, jumping up.

  The best she could offer was a dully serrated plastic butter knife, but it was better than nothing.

  “Thanks!” Cameron said when he returned, and she began slicing up the apples. When they had been cut into uneven wedges and sorted by type, everyone dug in.

  “Let’s all try one kind at a time,” suggested Carmen, so they all reached for an Opal piece. Alder bit into the sweet, crisp fruit.

  “It’s really good,” Miriam said, and everyone nodded, including Alder.

  “Next, let’s try Honeycrisp,” said Cynthia.

  It was at least as delicious as the Opal. But better even than the tasting, Alder felt, was the tasting together.

  Finally, they all reached for a slice of Fuji. And then Alder heard from behind him, “What’s going on?”

  He turned, with a cheekful of apple. There was Oak.
r />   Chapter 18

  Alder sure did look comfortable at her lunch table with her friends, thought Oak. He had his lunch spread out in front of him and was chummily tasting apple slices, presumably from Carmen and Cameron’s trip to the orchard.

  “Oak!” said Miriam. “We thought maybe you were sick.” She scooted over to make room.

  “Dentist appointment,” Oak said, stepping over the bench and sitting down. She let her backpack fall on the floor between her feet.

  “Want to try some apples?” Carmen offered.

  Oak shook her head. “I’m still kind of numb.” She rubbed her cheek; she had to remember not to bite herself, the dentist had said. Who had to remember not to bite themselves? she had thought, but now, numbed as she was, she had to admit that it was sort of tempting.

  “Sorry,” said Cameron, biting crisply into a slice.

  “Hi,” Alder said from across the table. It was the first word he’d spoken to her.

  Now, Oak had a decision to make. Doing her best not to chew on the inside of her cheek, she considered: Should she tell the others what Alder had said, about how he’d been embarrassed to sit with them last week, because they were all girls? Should she tell him to go sit somewhere else, that maybe they didn’t want to sit with him?

  She could. She could be mean. It would feel good, even, to be mean, and Oak was in a bad mood already from the dentist.

  Alder looked at her, then down at the table, like he was waiting for her to do it. Waiting for her to tell him she didn’t want to sit with him, that none of them did. He even started gathering together his lunch stuff.

  And then Oak had a flash of memory: Walnut and Fern cuddled together, wound up in yarn.

  “Hey, Alder,” Oak said, and her voice sounded mostly sincere. “I’m glad you’re sitting with us.”

  Alder looked up, wide-eyed. It was kind of funny, how surprised he looked. Now Oak smiled.

  Alder smiled back cautiously. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me the other day.”

  And then the table felt comfortable again, like a cloud had been sitting on top of them but now a fresh breeze had blown it away.

  “So, did you get a pumpkin?” Oak asked the twins.

  “Three of them!” said Cameron. “Each of us got to pick one. Gordie picked the biggest—even Dad couldn’t carry it. We had to use a wagon.” She reached across the table for another apple slice.

  “Oh,” said Oak, pointing at her sweater. “You’ve got a hole there.”

  “I know.” Cameron sighed. She poked at the hole. It was just above the elbow, on the inside, a sort of jagged, smallish hole in the loosely knit tomato-red sleeve. “And this is my favorite sweater! I wear it practically every day in the fall. It happened when we were picking apples. A branch caught it.”

  “It wouldn’t be hard to stitch that closed,” Alder said, comfortably munching another apple slice.

  “Yeah, if, like, I knew how to knit,” said Cameron.

  “Alder does,” said Oak. “Maybe he could fix it for you.”

  “Alder?” said Cameron. “You knit?”

  “I mean,” said Alder, “Not really. A little.”

  Oak could tell from the expression on his face, the way he twisted his lips together and looked down at the table again and at the bit of apple in his hand, that he did not want to talk about knitting.

  “Could you teach us?” said Miriam. “I’ve always wanted to know how to knit.”

  Alder mumbled something unintelligible.

  “What?” said Cynthia loudly. “Speak up!”

  Alder cleared his throat. “I guess I could try. I could show you the basics sometime. If you really wanted me to.”

  “When?” said Cameron. “I don’t want this hole to get bigger.” She waved her arm in Alder’s direction, as if to illustrate the urgency of the matter.

  “I don’t know . . . maybe you all could come over after school sometime?”

  The table began comparing schedules: Cameron and Carmen weren’t available until at least Wednesday; Miriam was free tomorrow and Thursday, but not Wednesday; Cynthia had swim practice until six p.m. every afternoon, Monday through Friday, so she couldn’t arrange anything until the weekend.

  “Just bring some knitting stuff to school tomorrow,” suggested Oak. “You can show us how to knit during lunch.”

  She could tell from Alder’s expression that he did not like that idea. Of course he didn’t; if he’d been weird about sharing a lunch table with girls, he probably wasn’t going to be terribly keen on the idea of knitting with them in front of the whole school. But Oak found that she didn’t want to take it back. Actually, she was really warming up to the idea of a lunchtime knitting circle. If Alder wanted to sit with them—if he really meant it—then this was a way he could prove it.

  “I don’t think I have enough knitting needles for everyone,” Alder said, rather weakly, Oak thought.

  “That’s okay,” said Cynthia, gathering up her scraps from lunch. The bell was about to ring. “We’ve got a ton of old knitting stuff from when my mom decided she was going to learn a few years ago. She gave up after a week, but I know where she stashed the supplies. I’ll bring a bunch of needles and yarn tomorrow!”

  Oak smiled. Just like that, it was settled.

  “Hey,” said Alder to Oak that afternoon, as they waited for the bus to arrive. “Listen. I’m sorry about the other day. I was a jerk.”

  Oak shrugged. “Everyone’s a jerk sometimes,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Alder. His hands twisted his backpack straps. “I just—I used to sit with my friend Marcus every day.”

  “Marcus?” said Oak. “You mean Beck’s best friend?”

  Alder winced. “Yeah,” he said.

  Now Oak felt like a jerk. “Well, never mind about all that. Listen, do you want to come over? You could bring Fern. We could work on our project . . . and talk some more about Mort.”

  “Sure,” said Alder. “Yeah, okay.”

  When they got off the bus, he told her he’d be over soon, and Oak went inside. She set down her backpack on the mud bench and slowly kicked off her shoes. Wandering through the rooms, she looked around her house, trying to see them the way a stranger might. She took in the plain white walls; the predictable furniture; the bookshelf, arranged the way bookshelves usually are. Compared to Alder’s house, with the clutter and the color and the chaos, Oak’s was dreadfully boring.

  Well, there was nothing she could do about that now, though she was going to insist on buying some paint for her room. Maybe she could at least set out interesting snacks. And the thought of food made her stomach rumble. She’d skipped lunch because of the dentist, and now it was catching up with her. Also, her mouth was finally un-numb, and that was definitely something to celebrate. She’d make something yummy to share and, she decided with a flash of inspiration, she’d fix a tea tray for the kittens, too!

  First, she poked her head into her mom’s office.

  “Hi,” she said. “A kid from school is coming over to work on a project.”

  “Lovely,” said her mom, looking up from her computer and blinking as if she’d spent too many hours staring at it. Oak started to leave, but her mom called out, “Bring me a cup of tea, would you?”

  Oak said she would.

  There was some smoked salmon in the refrigerator, and cream cheese; she would made little finger sandwiches for herself and Alder, and she would cut little triangles of the salmon for the kittens, arranging them on a saucer. She set to work, humming. When all of that was done, she put on the kettle to boil.

  On she hummed as she wiped down the counter, waiting for the kettle to scream. At last it did. Oak poured out a pot of tea for two, and enough cream for four. There were some strawberries, which the kittens probably wouldn’t like, and some heart-shaped tuna treats, which she knew for a fact that they would. She filled a small bowl with each.

  It was then that Oak realized that she had been humming the song from the other day
—the song from Alder’s dad’s record. She thought about that as she arranged the food and tea things on the table in the front room. She thought about it as she made a mug of tea and delivered it to her mother in her office.

  “Thank you,” Mom said, and this time when she looked up, she focused for a moment and smiled, which was nice.

  Oak smiled back.

  “Who’s coming over?” Mom asked.

  But before Oak could answer, there was a knock on the door. “Gotta get that,” said Oak, and she closed her mom’s office door so she could work in quiet.

  On the porch, in Alder’s arms, Fern was arching her back, struggling to break free. Alder was struggling just as much to hold on to her.

  “Hey,” said Alder.

  “Hi,” said Oak, grinning. “Your cat looks worked up about something.”

  “Yeah,” said Alder, and he carried the kitten into Oak’s house, setting her down as soon as Oak had shut the door. He rubbed a mark on his arm, where he’d been caught by one of the kitten’s claws. “She’s really interested in that spot by the tree stump. When I walked over here, she went pretty wild trying to get down.”

  Oak knew exactly the spot Alder was talking about. She nodded. “I’ve seen Walnut staring out there too,” she said. This was something she wanted to talk about more, over tea. “Come on. I made snacks.”

  Alder came right in, kicking off his shoes when he saw the pile by the door and dumping his backpack on the entry hall floor. But Fern skulked. She sniffed corners and arched her back, careful as she explored the new landscape. Walnut trotted in from the kitchen, spied Fern, and meowed happily. Then Fern mellowed right down.

  The kittens purred and rubbed their faces together, as if it had been ages and they were glad to see each other. Oak and Alder watched them together. It felt really good to see how happy the kittens were to see one another. And Oak was glad that she had decided to be nice that afternoon in the cafeteria.

  “What’s all this?” Alder said, appraising the food on the coffee table.

  “The snacks I made,” Oak said, and before she could stop him, Alder had reached into one of the bowls, picked up a heart-shaped tuna treat, and popped it into his mouth.