by Bobbie Pyron
The girls are quiet for a second. Then Angel says, “Okay, so one hundred and sixty dollars. We’ve done that before. I think.”
I look at Mama. I do not want to say the next thing.
“Jewel also needs to put down a three-hundred-dollar deposit on the room she’ll be living in at Heartwell Manor,” I explain.
The whole room gasps.
“Four hundred and sixty dollars?” Alexa’s eyes are as big as hubcaps. “Are you serious?”
“We’ll never sell that much.” Angel sighs. Heads nod in agreement.
Carmen crosses her arms over her chest. “I’d rather have a pizza party anyway.”
This is not going well. I see everything I thought we’d done for Jewel and Baby slipping away. But I have to try.
“Look,” I say, “I know it sounds like a lot of money—”
“It is a lot of money,” Desiree interrupts. “And we don’t even know this person. Why should we use our brownie money to help her?”
I feel my nostrils flare like Mama’s. “All of us have needed help,” I say, glaring at Desiree. “All of us know what it’s like to be hungry and scared, but at least we have a roof over our heads, a bed to sleep in, and family.”
Karina stands. “Do I need to remind everyone of the Firefly Pledge? Especially,” she says, looking hard at Carmen, Desiree, and Alexa, “the part where it says, ‘to demonstrate kindness, compassion, fairness, and strength.’”
The room goes silent. No one will look at me or Karina.
Mrs. B steps up next to Karina. “Okay, time to vote. Remember, the vote has to be unanimous to pass. Raise your hand if you are in favor of donating our portion of brownie sales money to Jewel and Baby.”
I hold my breath as one, two, then three, four, five hands go up. I feel a knot growing in my throat. I need more votes than that.
“Oh, come on,” Fire moans. “It’s an old lady and a little dog!”
Desiree crosses her arms across her chest and looks away.
Dylan, who’s actually been playing quietly in the corner, pipes up, “It’s Toto!”
“Oh, whatever.” Desiree laughs. She raises her hand, and so does Alexa.
I watch as another hand and another and another hand goes up.
The only holdout is Carmen.
I look right at her. “Please, Carmen?”
She looks back at me for a long time. I use all my brainpower to make her raise her hand.
Carmen looks away. Slowly she raises her hand.
Mama beams. Mrs. B grins.
Karina nods. “The motion is passed.”
Fire whoops. “Yay for girl power! We’re going to raise them a million bucks!”
Behind the podium where no one can see, Karina takes my hand and squeezes it.
We spend the rest of the evening dividing up the boxes of Raspberry Swirls, Mocha Mints, Buttercrunch Blondies, Choco-Lots, Caramel Dreams, and Pistachio Surprise. Mrs. B gives everybody order forms too.
“We’re not going to have the luxury of time that we usually do with these order forms, ladies,” Mrs. B says. “We need to get them out and the orders back by the end of next week.”
Karina must see the look of panic on my face because she says, “In the meantime, we’ll sell outside of the usual places. That’ll be cash in hand.”
“Yeah, but we won’t sell enough at those places to raise that much money,” Carmen says.
Daria holds up her hand. “We won’t if we just sell brownies,” she says, speaking for the first time.
Phoenix snorts. “Well, what else are we going to sell?”
Daria looks at me and nods. “We’ll sell Baby and Jewel’s story.”
Karina’s eyes light up. “You hit the nail on the head. It’s the story of Baby and Jewel that will sell the brownies,” Karina finishes. “Not us.”
“And we need to tell their story to a whole bunch of people,” Fire says. “People who love brownies.”
But how?
Mr. Yee says from the back of the room, “Isn’t the monthly student assembly this Friday at Olympia Elementary?”
Karina nods. “That would be a great place to tell Jewel and Baby’s story,” she says. “I’ll get us on the agenda.”
“Who will do the telling?” Desiree asks.
All eyes turn to me. “Piper?” Karina says.
I shake my head. “No way I’m going up on that stage by myself in front of the whole school.”
“You won’t have to,” Fire says. “We’ll all go up on that stage with you. Right?” It’s not really a question, it’s a challenge.
Still, most of the girls look anywhere but at me.
Fire snorts. “What? Y’all afraid everyone’s going to figure out you live in a shelter?”
“It’s bad enough as it is,” Desiree says. “Getting called all kind of names.”
“It’s the one place I feel like a regular kid,” Phoenix explains.
It makes me mad, but on the other hand, I know how they feel. Being branded as homeless, like Ree says, makes people judge me and my family.
I see Mama and Mrs. B exchange a look.
Daria raises her chin. “So what? We may not have a house, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have family.”
“All that matters is what we believe about ourselves,” Karina says, looking each girl straight in the eyes.
She raises her voice, strong and sure. “We are Firefly Girls.”
Carmen grins. “We are somebody.”
Chill bumps race up and down my arms.
As one voice, we say, “And we can make a difference, when we shine our lights together.”
46
This Jewel
Ree sits beside the bed in the light-filled room listening to her friend Jewel.
This Jewel does not talk about the voices that whisper to her, nor does she talk about the visions she has in a world filled with angels and demons.
This Jewel does not look off somewhere Ree cannot see and recite poetry to the stars.
Instead, this Jewel looks deep into Ree’s dark eyes and says, “How did this happen?”
Ree holds her friend’s hand and listens as Jewel talks about her life before.
The music. The students. The small house with the light-filled windows, just big enough for her, Baby, and a grand piano.
She talks about doctors, confusion, hospitals, bills that couldn’t be paid. Darkness, hopelessness, suffocating sadness.
And then the letter from her sister, a ray of hope, “Come stay with me.”
“And Baby too,” Jewel says.
Jewel worries the edge of her blanket. “How did I lose my way? How did I forget this sister I loved?”
Ree takes her friend’s hand and smooths the worry from her fingers.
She thinks about her little brother. The little brother with the bluest eyes, the lightest hair, who looked nothing like her.
Every day she wonders and worries about what became of him after she left that place called home that was not a home, a place that was not filled with love and safety but hate and hurt.
Where is he?
If he saw her flying a sign on a street corner, would he know her?
If he saw her hitching a ride, Ajax by her side, on some lonely road, would he stop?
This Jewel squeezes her friend’s hand.
Ree looks into the faded blue eyes filled with hope, and fear.
“It’s okay,” Ree says. “It’s going to be okay now, for you and Baby.”
The two women, one old, one not so old, gaze out the window together and watch snow begin to fall.
47
The Edge of the World
I listen to the wind outside the window. Dylan lies curled into my side, warm as a puppy. In a few minutes, Daddy will get up and start heating water in the microwave for coffee. He’ll take a shower while Mama gets us up for school.
I slip out of bed and check my backpack for brownie order forms. I want to make sure I have plenty just in case I don’t hav
e a heart attack up on the stage and die right then and there. If I do drop dead onstage, well, I don’t know how Jewel and Baby will get back together.
But I’m trying, like Mama says, to look at the doughnut rather than the hole. All the good things, the possible things, the things to be grateful for.
First, after our troop meeting on Wednesday, Daddy came home practically walking on air. “I got a car!” he announced. He picked Mama up and twirled her around. “What do you think about that, Button? A car!”
Mama’s face lit up like Christmas day at the sound of her old nickname.
Dylan jumped up and down, clapping. “What kind of car, Daddy? A race car? A monster truck?”
Daddy picked up Dylan and hugged him. “Better than a race car and better than a monster truck,” Daddy said, grinning. “A free car.”
“Does it run?” I asked. How could a car that runs be free?
Daddy laughed. “Course it runs, Peeper. It runs great because I built the engine.”
Daddy told us his boss at work had this old car that wouldn’t run for nothing, but he told Daddy if he could fix it, he could have it. For free!
“So that’s why you’ve been working so many extra hours,” Mama said.
Daddy nodded. “I know it’s been hard, but it’ll be worth it. No more riding the bus everywhere, and,” he said, “we can even leave this city if we want. Look for better opportunities somewhere else or go back to Cyprus Point.”
Daddy stopped at the look on our faces.
“Or,” he said, clearing his throat, “we could stay, at least for a while.”
Now that Daddy has a car, he’s promised to take lots of boxes of brownies to sell at work.
Second, everyone in our troop who goes to church this Sunday will tell about what we’re trying to do to help Jewel and Baby. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a church or synagogue or a mosque,” Carmen said, “on worship days, people are always more willing to part with money.” Then she looked at me. “You have to be sure we all know the story to tell, though.”
I did. With Daria’s help on the computer, I wrote out Jewel and Baby’s story and made sure each of them got a copy.
Third, when we found Ree in the park yesterday, we told her about what all we’re doing to help Jewel and Baby.
“Tomorrow is a big assembly at school,” Fire told her. “There’ll be, like, close to a million people there.”
Ree’s eyes got big. “A million?”
Karina smiled. “Well, maybe not a million, but a lot. And Piper’s going to tell them Jewel and Baby’s story.”
“And then they’ll buy millions of boxes of brownies!” Fire crowed.
Ree looked at me. “You realize, don’t you, that if you tell them the whole story of Jewel and Baby, they’ll probably figure out you live in a shelter?”
I nodded. “We know. But we’ve got to raise that money for Jewel and Baby soon. If Jewel can’t go live at Heartwell Manor, nobody’s sure what will happen to her, but her case worker says it probably won’t include Baby.”
Ree shook her head. Then she said, “If you ladies are willing to give up your brownie money to help an old woman living on the streets, then by God, we can help too.”
“We?” Karina asked.
“That’s right,” Ree said. “I’m going to get the word out on the street. We’re all going to fly our signs for Jewel.”
“Do your what?” Fire asked.
Ree laughed. “Signs, little sister. The signs we hold up asking for help, for work, for money. We call that flying our sign.”
“I will personally make sure that every person out there gives some of their money for Jewel.”
“Don’t they need the money for food and stuff?” I ask.
“We’re all on the edge of the world,” Ree said. “Lots of us have fallen off that edge with no way to get back up. If we can help one of our own get back on solid ground, into a safe place, we’ll do it.”
Ree walked across the park with me, Ajax by her side like always. We didn’t talk but that was okay. It was a comfortable not-talking. I like that about Ree.
Then out of the blue, she said, “I saw Jewel yesterday.”
I stopped and looked up at her. “You did? How is she?” I wanted to grab her hand but knew better.
Ree smiled down at me. “Better,” she said. “Much better.” And then, very quickly, like it was a mistake, she brushed her hand against mine.
Ree touching me, something I never thought would happen.
Daddy singing—singing!—in the shower. Something else I never, ever thought would happen here.
The doughnut. The possible. Things to be grateful for. Maybe, just maybe, we really can get Jewel and Baby home together.
48
These Girls
Ree has always been of the opinion that dogs and animals in general were the best people she knew. Ree has always thought of humans as hard-hearted animals capable of causing more pain than joy. She has never, ever trusted humans the way she trusts dogs.
But now Ree listens to these girls—fierce little Fire; tall, serious Karina; and big-hearted Piper—tell her about what they’ve done and all they’re going to do to help an old woman they don’t really know and a little dog of uncertain pedigree.
These girls who don’t have homes themselves, these girls who have rarely been given a break in life, are determined to help Jewel and Baby find a home together.
These girls have hope. These girls believe they have the power to make a difference, even if it’s just for a woman and her dog.
Who is she, Ree thinks, to tell them otherwise?
Ree looks up at the sky and feels a V-shaped crack open in her heart, just like the V formed by the wild geese flying south overhead.
Who is she, she thinks, to say they can’t?
49
A Story to Tell
It seems like about a billion sets of eyes are looking at me sitting up here on the stage at school. I was so nervous about this that I couldn’t eat a bite of breakfast. Now my belly growls so loud, I’m sure they can all hear it.
Fire did. She pokes me in the side with her bony little elbow and grins. Karina, sitting on the other side of me, cuts Fire a look. I glance over at the other girls from Troop 423. None look exactly thrilled to be on stage.
“Next, Piper Trudeau and Firefly Girls Troop 423 are here to tell everybody about a special project they are working on,” Randall Christiansen, our student president, says. “Let’s give them our attention.”
He turns and motions for me to stand up.
I think my butt is superglued to the chair.
Someone in the audience giggles.
Karina and Fire put their hands on my back and push me up.
Randall smiles. “Knock ’em dead,” he says, handing me the microphone.
The rest of the girls stand and, like a swelling wave, we move into the spotlight. I look out at the faces looking up at me. Some look curious. Some look bored. Some look like they’re trying to figure out why in the world they should listen to what I have to say. I hear Mama’s voice from this morning say, “Everyone loves a good story, Piper. Especially one with a dog in it.”
I feel my friends behind me. I relax a little. I take a deep breath. “Hi, I’m Piper Trudeau and I have a story to tell you.”
“What kind of story?” some kid in the front says.
“A story about a dog and an old woman and brownies and making a difference,” I say.
“Can you believe we ran out of order forms?” Fire says for the millionth time as we walk home in the snow.
“I purely can’t,” I say.
Karina grins. “You’re a born storyteller, Piper.”
A smile lights up all my insides. I’ve always said my superpower was selling Firefly Gourmet Brownies, but now I’m thinking it might really be in telling a story.
Daria does a happy little skip. “Your mom’s going to have to get more forms and more boxes of brownies.”
Karina no
ds. “I’ll let her know as soon as we get home.”
My heart is not quite light enough to skip, though.
“I just hope everybody gets their order forms and money back by the end of the week,” I say. “We’re starting to run short on time.”
“Aw, don’t be such a wet blanket,” Fire says. “Everything’s going great. Jewel’s going to move to Heartwell Manor, Baby’s going to be her special emotion dog, and they’ll live happily ever after.”
I kick at a plastic bottle. “Mama talked with Jewel’s caseworker yesterday morning.”
“And?” Karina asks, eyeing me.
“And,” I say, not looking at them. “The hospital has agreed to keep Jewel for one week while her medication starts working again.”
“But?” Karina asks, stopping.
I sigh. “But, that’s the longest they can keep her there. If she doesn’t have a place to go by Thanksgiving, she has to leave anyway.”
“Where to?” Fire asks.
“Most likely to the emergency shelter,” I say.
“But if Baby is her emotional support animal, he can go there too, right?” Daria asks.
“No,” I say. “The emergency shelter has different rules for emotional support animals than service dogs.” I sigh. “It’s complicated.”
“All the more reason to tell their story the best we can, then,” Karina says.
When Daddy gets home from work, he grins and hands me a big wad of money. There must be a million ones and fives and tens, even a few twenties!
He laughs at my eyes, big as dinner plates. “Sold every one of those boxes of brownies, Peeper. I bet I can sell the same amount on Monday too if you can get more boxes.”
“How much is it?” I ask.
Daddy shrugs. “Don’t know. More than a little, I suspect.”
I sit down at the table, carefully separate the bills into stacks, and start counting. I gasp. I count a second time to make sure I’m right.
“Daddy!” I say. “There’s one hundred and thirty-eight dollars here!” I can hardly believe it. I quickly do the math in my head. “That only leaves us a little over three hundred dollars to raise.”