Ms. Dacie sees me tapping the eraser of my pencil against my temple at one hundred twenty beats per minute, and sits down next to me.
“I don’t really write poetry,” I tell her.
She pulls a purple pen out of her curly gray hair and says, “Sure you do.” Then draws six long dashes across my page.
“Just six words,” she says. “Start there. See what happens.” Then she walks off to check on the kids in the kitchen.
I stare at the six purple dashes, and my brain is immediately calculating words about Izzy.
——————
I try a few out in my brain first to see how they sound. Then I jot them in a list on my page.
Izzy is my best friend ever.
I miss Izzy. She misses me.
Then Ms. Dacie is back and asking me all about Izzy. What does she look like? What kinds of things did you do together? When did you meet? What do you miss most? What’s your favorite memory? And I’m telling her all about the tree house and our sleepovers and how she’s always been there for me, since kindergarten, and how I didn’t cry once about moving until I hugged her goodbye.
“Now try another six words,” she says. “Describe a memory. Don’t worry if it’s a complete sentence or not.”
Tree fort sleepover. Please no squirrels!
Goodbye to her was hardest ever.
There for me after that night.
Even she doesn’t know my secret.
I scribble out the last ones, even though they’re the only ones that kind of sound like poems to me because poems are always mysterious and hard to understand and make people say oooo or ahhh after reading the last line.
Dacie points to the scribbled-out ones. “I wouldn’t throw those out just yet,” but she doesn’t ask me about that night or my secret or anything, which is good, because I wouldn’t have told her anyway.
Then she tells me about a couple of different kinds of poems that she thinks I might like. A haiku, where I have to count the exact syllables per line, which sounds more like my kind of poem, and a way to rhyme that has rules and a pattern that I could follow. I’m excellent at rules and patterns.
“And if those don’t feel right, you can always give yourself a number. Try writing that many words, or that many syllables, or that many lines. Make up the rules,” she says. “Then follow them.”
I nod and say thanks and all of a sudden poetry isn’t feeling quite so impossible.
An hour passes fast and Ms. Dacie signs our community service sheets and hands Ana a plastic bag with foil-covered plates that she takes from her refrigerator. “I made your mom’s favorite last night, and have just too many leftovers to tackle by myself,” she says. “Pass them on for me?” Ana takes the bag and thanks her and they both nod like they’re sharing a secret little message too.
Ms. Dacie walks us out. There are fliers on the bulletin board about an art camp here this summer, and a study group for the SATs. When I see Frankie and Reggie’s track meet picture I try not to feel bad, but I can’t help it.
Ms. Dacie sees me looking and puts her hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “We miss our Reggie, don’t we?” she says. “Change is hard.”
And that’s a fact.
We’re all standing on the stoop looking over the tangled garden when Dacie breathes out big and says, “I’m afraid I have some hard news about change too.” She pushes her purple glasses up on her nose. “I received news that the funding for Ms. Dacie’s House is ending,” she tells us. “And I’m not sure how long I can keep this old door open on my own.”
“What?” Frankie snaps. “How can—who took it?”
“Change is hard,” she says again, and pats Frankie’s shoulder.
“That sucks,” Amelia spits out in one whole piece.
Ms. Dacie chuckles and says, “When you’re right, you’re right. This sucks.” It feels weird hearing a grown-up say sucks, but that’s the best word to describe it.
She tells us we can talk more about it tomorrow and hands us each one of Amelia’s peanut butter Hershey’s Kiss cookies. “Maybe this can help sweeten your walk.”
When Dacie closes the door, a big lump rises up in my throat and I can’t help but think about Dad’s closed bedroom door and how all the people that make me feel good and OK are closing big, heavy doors right in my face.
Chapter 21
Wash Cycle
There’s yelling on the other side of our apartment door, and it’s climbing up and up. Before I can make out any of the words, or stick my key in our dead bolt lock to let myself in, I turn right around and hop down the stairs two at a time, and head back out the front doors.
Even though I know my parents will worry, like really worry, when I’m not home on time, because when a kid is missing it’s serious business, and they of all people know that, I head back to Broadway, down the five stairs, and into the café with the good hot chocolate.
I order a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream from the same backward-baseball-cap barista. He slides the hot chocolate across the counter to me in a big blue mug, and then punches a hole in a little card and hands it to me. The card says Frequent Flier.
“I’ve seen you here before,” he says. “Your tenth one’s on us.”
I slip the card into my book bag. “Thanks,” I say. And it makes me feel 6 percent better, knowing that I’m a regular somewhere. Like I might have someplace that won’t close its door on me.
I’m worrying that my parents will be worrying when they realize I’m late, but I also want them to stop yelling at each other, and maybe giving them something to figure out together, like where I am, will make them have to think like a team.
I sit in the same seat I sat in before, and I even recognize two of the people from when I was here last time. One is looking through a big stack of papers and reading the same sentences over and over again to himself. I think he’s an actor and practicing his lines. He makes small gestures to the open air, and the steam from his coffee swirls from his mug. The other is a woman who leans forward over a textbook, writing notes in the margin and highlighting big blocks of text.
Everyone else is busy typing on laptops, reading, and sipping hot drinks.
I take out my notebook and I pick the number twelve, because I used to live at Twelve Cloverfield Lane, and twelve is a good, even number. Then I make twelve dashes across my page just like Ms. Dacie did.
————————————
I calculate a few lines about Izzy in my head and list them in my notebook.
This one time we laughed so hard milk came out our noses.
I haven’t laughed that hard, or much at all, since that night.
Then I try doing the rhyming pattern that Dacie taught me. She said that I could use ABAB or AABB to help me keep lines organized. A rhymes with A, and B rhymes with B. It sounds hard, but it’s more like a math problem, so I think I could probably do it.
A: I wonder what Izzy is doing now.
B: Maybe she’s in the tree house thinking about me.
A: While I’m here in the café wondering how
B: Poetry is supposed to be.
I kind of even like that one a little. I try another and another and before I look up to see that some people have left and some new ones have come to take their seats, I’ve written all these lines about Izzy and other things, and I don’t know if any of it is poetry, but it feels OK and not all loosey-goosey, even if most of it is crossed out.
A: When you feel all jumbled, go for a run.
A: It’s more than just exercise and fun.
B: It empties your brain,
B: At least if you’re Rain.
A: Everything was different before,
A: Now my dad’s stuck behind his door.
B: Nobody knows the whole truth of that night,
B: I just wish my parents would stop their fight.
I even try one of those haikus, counting out five syllables in the first line, then seven, then five, like Dacie taught me.
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Best place to sleep is
a tall tree fort with your friend.
Hard can be OK.
When I look up next from my notebook and out the window of the café, I watch all the legs passing by on the sidewalk and I immediately recognize two shoes—ripped, dirty sneakers, plastic bags shoved into holes and taped over, the same loose socks sinking down to the floppy tongues. And I don’t know why I stand up and leave my notebook and pencil and book bag and hot chocolate and everything and rush out the door and up the five steps, but I do, and then I’m calling, “Nestor!”
He turns slowly and squints his eyes at me, then smiles and waves. “New Rain,” he replies. He’s a little hunched over, hobbling back toward me, still favoring his left foot, and all of a sudden I kind of panic and I don’t know why I called out to him in the first place.
If there were any homeless people in my town in Vermont, I didn’t ever see them, but here, you do. You see them sitting or sleeping on benches, beneath old sleeping bags on the street, collecting bottles from garbage cans, pushing carts, and huddled at bus stops, and in the subway stations. Some talk to themselves or preach to a pretend audience on the street, big long sermons that I only catch a few words of because I hustle past fast.
As he gets closer to me I feel scared. Not scared of Nestor, because I talked to him before, and he was nice and funny at the church, but scared that he doesn’t have a home, and what that could do to you, and scared that I can’t do anything about it, or think of anything to say once he gets within talking distance.
“This your stomping ground now?” He points down the stairs to the café.
“They have good hot chocolate,” I say.
Then I don’t even know why I do it, but I ask him if he wants one. “It’s on me,” I offer, which makes me feel kind of bad because he’s an adult and I’m just a kid.
He looks down the stairs and into the window. “I haven’t been down here in a dog’s age,” he replies. Then he nods his head and follows me down the steps, hanging tight to the railing.
I’m wondering if by a dog’s age he means seven years, which is one year in human years, or if he means the average age of a dog, which varies depending on the breed, but is probably around ten to thirteen years. Either way, that’s a really long time, and I wonder where he’s been instead.
The bells on the door chime when we walk in and everyone glances up from their laptops and books and looks at Nestor following behind me through all the tables and up to the counter. I can tell they’re trying not to stare, but they’re not very good at it, because I see them raise their eyebrows and peer over their screens. They didn’t stare when it was just me.
They’re staring because Nestor doesn’t fit here. He doesn’t smell like coffee and pages, he smells like weather and rot, and it’s hard to ignore it when you’re in a small space like the café.
I order him a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and the barista pushes the buttons on his screen, steams the milk, and takes my money, and punches my frequent flier card.
Then we sit at my table and I’m wishing I hadn’t asked him down here because I can’t think of one single thing to say and I don’t even really know him and I’m sure my parents will be worried soon, and would be really mad if they ever found out I was talking to a stranger, especially a stranger like Nestor.
The people at the two tables closest to us have moved away and even though I think they’re overreacting, or should at least fake it and stay put so they don’t make him feel bad, I kind of wish I could move away too. But before I can wish that too long, Nestor says, “A poet, are you?” and taps my notebook with his finger.
I cover my page with my arm. “Not really. I have to write something for school.”
“Looks like you’ve got a good start there.” His voice rumbles just like I remember from the church kitchen, and I wish I could ask him anything without it being rude, like what happened or what didn’t happen to make him like he is, and where he sleeps at night and if he gets cold.
The barista comes over to clear mugs from the table next to us and asks if I’m OK and if I know this man. “Do your parents know you’re here?”
The answer to all of those questions is actually no, but I just nod my head, and the barista tells me that he’ll be right here behind the counter if I need anything.
“I can take this hot chocolate to go,” Nestor says. I want to say OK, but then I look outside, and even though it’s bright out and people are walking by in short sleeves, I know that when the sun goes down it’ll get cooler, and that makes me feel bad because even if it’s not Twelve Cloverfield Lane, I have a home, and even if it doesn’t have two inches of foam, I have a bed too.
“It’s OK,” I respond. But I keep my eye on the barista and I can see he’s keeping his eye on me and that makes me feel bad but better too.
“Bet you wouldn’t believe I used to work here,” Nestor says.
And that’s a fact.
I take a sip of my hot chocolate, which is now cold chocolate, and shake my head no way.
“Back then it was a Laundromat.” He points to the far wall. “The washing machines were lined up there. And the dryers here.”
I try to imagine the café back then, but it’s hard because I’ve never even been in a Laundromat before. We had our own washer and dryer in our house in Vermont, and there were brand-new machines with the instruction manuals still in them behind the hall closet door in apartment thirty-one when we got there.
He takes a noisy slurp from his mug, and a little chocolate sticks on the gray stubble of his unshaven lip.
“I guess you couldn’t really call it working,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows because I want to know the story, but I don’t want to pressure him to share more because it obviously ends with him not working here, and wearing dirty socks and fall-apart shoes.
“I had a deal with the Almonte family, who owned the business.” He takes another slurp and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
“The neighborhood had just started changing. People were moving in with money to spend, so the Almontes started a delivery service for $1.25 per pound of laundry. I delivered the clean, pressed, folded clothes to the newly renovated apartment buildings, and the Almontes let me toss my own clothing into the smaller loads for free.”
Then he starts to chuckle a little. “I still love thinking about what those rich people would think if they knew their clothes were swishing around with mine.”
I laugh too because he’s laughing and because it’s pretty funny to imagine, but the wooden café chair is starting to feel uncomfortable, and I shift my weight a little because I’m not sure if I’m rich and I wonder if we’re one of those families moving in, because apartment thirty-one is newly renovated.
“It kept me clean and dry,” Nestor continues. “And sometimes I’d even get a delivery tip to tuck in my pocket. Not a bad deal.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Too much change. The people moving in wanted to start their own businesses, and things got too expensive for a lot of the people already here. The Almontes lost their shop. And I lost my deal.”
He wraps his hands around the warm mug, and I look around the café. I wonder if all these people lived here when this was the Laundromat, and if their clothes swirled around with Nestor’s, and if it makes them feel weird knowing that they’re drinking chai lattes and eating almond croissants where the Almontes’ washing machines used to be. Or maybe they just moved here, and didn’t know that this was ever anything but a café. Maybe they’re new like me.
I look quickly at my watch and realize I’m now officially twenty-three minutes late, and I wonder what my parents are doing.
Now I wish I had never just hustled off, even if they were fighting, because now I’m worrying. Worrying that they’re worrying. And worrying that maybe Reggie Muñoz had to move like the Almontes had to move, and that maybe Dacie will have to move too.
And I like cafés, b
ut the only things that should be in Ms. Dacie’s House are Ms. Dacie and her art supplies, and cookie ingredients, and college tutors, and bookshelves, and Polaroid photos, and event fliers, and records, even if they’re old and sometimes skip, and the stickers on the door, and all the mismatched kids that go there every day.
“Change is hard,” I say, because that’s what Dacie said, and it feels right to tell Nestor that now. “I’m sorry.”
He looks up from his hot chocolate. “Let me give this poetry a try. I was pretty good with words way back when.”
Even though I don’t want him to see my poems, I slide my notebook over. He reaches for my pencil and taps it against the tight gray curls on the side of his head, then he scratches something quick on the page, closes the cover, and passes my notebook back.
“I still got it,” he says and snaps his dry fingers.
That makes me laugh, and he gets to laughing too. A few people look up from their laptops to see what could be so funny. And that gets us both laughing even more, I think because we both might be imagining their clothes getting sudsy with his in the same washing machine.
I look at my watch and tell him I have to be getting home, and the second I say home I feel terrible and sorry all over again. He tips his head back for his last sip, we put our mugs in the dirty dish bin, and he follows me out. Everyone watches us walk by, and I want to yell that he was here first and to quit staring, but instead I give my knuckles a good crack and walk up the five stairs to Broadway.
“Thanks for the hot chocolate.”
“Anytime,” I say, even though I kind of doubt we’ll ever have hot chocolate together again.
Then I watch him walk down the sidewalk, favoring his left foot, and I wish I could do more.
I open my notebook to his page and head toward 152nd Street, reading as I walk, swerving around the outdoor seating of the bar next door, the shelves of fruit stretching from the market, teenagers flying by on short bikes, their knees pumping high to their chests, and through the different beats and rhythms blasting from car windows.
Right as Rain Page 10