The Boy on Cinnamon Street

by Phoebe Stone

  He doesn’t answer. He turns carefully, listening to this weird Chinese music. “Grandpa,” I go. He smiles but then he makes a hushing motion and brings his arms out in front of him like he’s holding a huge beach ball. I’m sure we will hear from that lady downstairs any minute. She seems to know when Grandpa puts on his Tai Chi “duds,” as he calls them.

  I go in my room and I close the door. I am so freaked. What am I gonna do? There is no way I could ever say two words to Benny now. This is too huge. This has gone way beyond me.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  At the grocery store, Grandma tells me I can put whatever I want in the cart. “That’s called carte blanche,” says Grandpa.

  Grandma laughs, “Good one, honey bear.”

  Grandpa is pushing the cart. Grandma says he’s the kind of guy who always takes over the shopping cart at the grocery. She goes, “Some husbands follow their wives around looking dazed, but your grandpa takes charge at the grocery store.”

  In the dairy aisle, Grandpa starts making a truck sound. “Rummm, rummmm, rummm,” he goes, pushing the cart around me. And Grandma says, “Oh, he’s such a child.”

  And I whisper to him as he passes me, “Grow up, Grandpa.”

  We move to the cereal aisle, and Grandma and Grandpa are reading labels. “After we’re done, I’m going over to Reni’s. Okay?” I go, gently putting a puffy, airy, delightful package of Cheez Doodles into the cart.

  “Maybe you should go to the town offices and get your last name changed to Elliot,” says my grandma, looking over the tops of her glasses at me. Then she bumps her forehead against mine and rubs my nose with her nose.

  I look down at the Cheez Doodles. “Can I take these along? I’m starved.”

  “Sure, pal,” goes Grandpa. “But I was going to teach you some Tai Chi this afternoon.”

  I am thinking about Merit Madson and Janie Brevette. “Does Tai Chi have karate chops in it, where you get to knock someone to the floor and they beg for mercy?”

  “Oh no,” Grandpa says looking at me like he’s president of the Pottsboro Worrying Club.

  As soon as we’re through the checkout lane, I grab the Doodles and I’m history. The thing is, Reni has found out the actual address and phone number of Benny McCartney. This is very cool news. She got it out of Annais last night. Not in an open sort of way, but in a brilliant underhanded Reni sort of way. Reni is definitely chairman of the board of totally awesome, reliable, way cool best friends.

  I trolley over there and hop off right at Nutmeg. Thank goodness the trolley is free and it’s not a long ride from South P to North P. (Okay, so the old town planner has done a few good things in his life.)

  When I get in the door at the Elliots’, the smell of the house tells me in a weird way that I’m home. “I’m here, Reni,” I shout as I open the front door and climb the stairs toward her room. When I get to the top, I find Henderson lying on his back across the landing with his head drooping down on the last step. He has his hand over his heart and robot tears in his eyes.

  Reni is up in the hall and she calls out, “What are you doing? Mom, Henderson is dying and he’s in Thumbelina’s way. Move. She needs to get by.”

  “Wait,” says Henderson, “this is a great moment. My whole novel hangs on this scene. Bear with me, Thumb, I’m working out my plot. This is the moment when the dude realizes he’s really a robot. And this is the scene in which he realizes he will never be able to have the princess from Jupiter because of it. And he loves her.”

  “But he’s a robot, Henderson. What does a robot know about love?” says Reni. “Now move over.”

  “This is the tragedy of it,” says Henderson, sitting up. “Thumb, will you go over and stand in the doorway for one minute and be Zandra so I can see your expression as Zandra becomes aware of the death of the robot?”

  “Later, Henderson,” says Reni, “we are in a hurry. Please?”

  Part of me really wants to be Zandra for Henderson, even though Reni is totally annoyed. She pulls me along and I step around him and go into her room. And the whole time I’m in there I’m thinking of Henderson lying out there on the floor, dying of a broken heart. A part of me thinks Henderson is kind of … I don’t know, and of course at the same time, Reni’s right, he’s a major pain.

  When Reni’s ready to leave, I head back downstairs. Henderson is standing in the hallway and doesn’t say anything for the first time in his life. He just stands there looking at me. “Hey, Hen,” I go.

  I’m wondering if Henderson has been to a doctor lately. He is acting seriously off the wall. His eyes look big and soft and, for some reason, browner than usual, as if there’s a sadness in them that has made the brown deeper and more layered.

  Then Reni comes downstairs with her spotted-cow backpack already on her back. She’s wearing pink tights, a pink wool skirt, and a pink sweatshirt that says, BROTHER FOR SALE. WILL TAKE ANY OFFER.

  “Later, Henderson,” I shout as we go out the door. “We’re going to sell magazine subscriptions for Annais. Call me.” He just stands there looking tall and un-Hendersonly quiet, leaning his head against the wall and staring at me like I’m a puzzle with a piece missing.

  “What’s Benny’s address?” I say, ripping open the Cheez Doodles and offering the bag to Reni. She grabs a big handful and we both start going crazy chowing down. Reni’s eating even faster than me, and when I look over at her, I realize I shouldn’t have brought the Doodles at all. “Still down two pounds?” I say.

  “Yep,” says Reni, taking another humongous handful of Doodles. “This is just a breather. I’m down three pounds now.” Reni wants to lose twenty pounds before the Spring Fling Dance. She has bright orange Cheez Doodle fuzz on her cheeks and on the tip of her nose.

  We come to the corner of Cilantro just after Marjoram and then we make a quick left onto Peppercorn.

  “Does Benny live on Peppercorn?” I say.

  “Yup,” says Reni. “He actually lives at 152 Peppercorn Street.”

  “Oh,” I say and I feel a little tug of something weird. These tugs are starting to bug me. “It’s so near my old house. He lives near Cinnamon Street. I didn’t know that.”

  It has grown windy, and the sky is turning a cloudy dark gray. This seemed like a cheery neighborhood a few minutes ago, but now it has a gloomy, windy, abandoned feeling about it. I’m very nervous and I’m almost wishing we could turn around and not do this. Not yet.

  Reni looks so bright and pink in the dark stormy air and she keeps bopping along. We pass a couple of middle school kids playing Frisbee in the empty street. One of the kids is wearing a clown wig and a red clown nose.

  “I guess the circus came to town,” whispers Reni.

  “Ha ha,” I say, but then a shiver goes through me and I button up my jacket. We pick up the pace. Some of our papers blow away and we have to chase them. We hear a dog barking behind a fence. I hear the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance. A few blocks later, I turn around and I see the circus clown by himself now. His collar is turned up on his striped clown jacket and his face is tucked behind it in the darkness. “Is he following us?” I say.

  “I doubt it,” goes Reni. There are puddles of water everywhere and we have to jump over one that’s shaped like a mountain range, like Mount Everest melting.

  Finally we get to 152 Peppercorn.

  It’s a nice house. I mean, it has a glassed-in porch at the front with a screened porch above it. All the houses in this area are similar. That’s one of the things Grandma doesn’t like about our green house on Cinnamon Street. “They’re cheap tract houses from the 1940s war years over there. They aren’t well built,” Grandma always says. And then her eyes will fill up with tears and she’ll look out the window and won’t answer anybody. Not even when Grandpa goes and holds her in his old hairy arms for ten minutes.

  I don’t like the looks of this house. For some reason, I do not want to go up on the porch. I feel like running. Reni gets ready to knock on the gl
ass door. I stand on the sidewalk and then I want to turn away. I feel sick and I need to go home. Home. Where is my home? Which home? Reni, don’t.

  Reni knocks on the door and then waits and then pushes the bell. In a few minutes, we hear padded feet in slippers shuffling across the floor and then someone, a woman, comes to the door. She doesn’t really understand what we are trying to sell. She doesn’t care much about astrology magazines. She’ll show it to her son, she says. Okay. She takes the order form and closes the door.

  The whole time, I have been standing behind Reni, out of sight, but just as the woman closes the door, I look at her. Just a tiny, quick glimpse. I remember something. Mrs. McCartney’s face. She was in my house on Cinnamon Street. She was there.

  Reni and I stand in the darkening yard. The wind blows gray clouds over the rooftops, and cloud shadows stream across the street. When we turn around, the clown is sitting on somebody’s wooden fence opposite us. He’s mostly hidden by bushes and all I can really see of him are his big, dark floppy shoes swinging back and forth. We start walking faster. Then we turn on to Coriander Street.

  We hear more rumbling far away, spring thunder, and it makes me feel breathless. I am still trying not to think about Lake Mescopi and what my grandpa said. I am still trying and trying and trying not to remember riding in a rowboat with my mom. I’m trying not to remember the swirling water, the dark trees moving against the sky, the wind. I’m trying not to imagine the oars dipping into the water, the boat gliding forward, my mom and me sitting in the middle of the lake when it started to rain. We sat there in the boat together watching the rain hit the surface of the dark lake.

  Why did my father decide to leave my mother and me and go live in New York City and be Dearie’s stepfather instead? Is Dearie a better daughter? Is she smarter and prettier and taller than me? The rain started falling harder and harder. My mom pulled me against her. Her sweater was wet. Her arms were wet. I looked down at her shoes and saw that they were sitting in a pool of water at the bottom of the boat. We sat there for forty-five minutes in the middle of the lake for no reason at all until the sky quit raining and the sun came out and she rowed me to the grocery store and bought me a Fudgsicle.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  Grandpa comes to the kitchen this morning wearing a nerdy baseball cap that he got from the condo’s Lost and Found in the basement. It says on the front, DON’T EVER FORGET CHICKEN MAN.

  “Who is Chicken Man?” I ask my grandpa.

  “Don’t know,” says Grandpa, smiling and doing a dance. “Fits perfectly, though.”

  Grandma says, “Honey bear, you’re gonna catch something nasty one of these days and be sorry.”

  Grandpa settles the cap lower down around his ears. “I got something nasty when I caught you, and I’m still not sorry, baby doll.”

  Grandma rolls her eyes and puts her hands on her hips. Grandpa sits down at the counter and starts eating something that looks like somebody’s science experiment. Seriously.

  Then the door buzzer goes off for downstairs, and Grandma goes to the little speaker at the wall and calls out, “Who is it?”

  And a tinny, tiny cartoon voice calls back, “Mailman here. Package delivery.”

  “I’ll be right down,” says Grandma, flying out the door. She comes back a few minutes later all screechy and excited with a package in her arms. “A package for Louise!” she says.

  “For me?” I say, pulling up my recycled milk bottle socks that always slip down below my ankles. “What is it?”

  “A package?” says Grandpa. “From a boyfriend?”

  Grandma swats Grandpa with a flyer from the Organic Owl that she picked up when she was out in the hall. She says, “Honey bear, très uncool.”

  I look at the package closer. It has no return address. No sign of who sent it at all.

  “Aren’t you going to open it, pal?” says Grandpa.

  “Not in front of you, Grandpa,” I say, and I go into my room and shut the door behind me. Grandma and Grandpa just stand there as I close the door, looking baffled and curious, like two matching rabbits.

  I look at the package again. Hmmm. Nobody I know would send me anything. I’m basically on a solo mission here in South Pottsboro. I don’t know one single person who might send me a package unannounced, unless it would be Merit Madson sending me something spooky. Last fall when Torrie M’s house got papered, the gymnastics team first sent her a case of toilet paper, sixteen rolls, and a note that said, You’re full of bull, but we love you still! Great double saltos. See ya tonight!! They loved her double saltos, but they hated mine. I was just “tickled pink,” as Grandma would say. The gymnastics team was always doing stuff in the true team spirit, like going out for ice cream in a group or getting together and pushing, shoving, bashing, kicking, scaring somebody off the team for no freaking reason.

  I pick up the package and shake it. Pottsboro postal workers say you should not open mysterious packages; they could explode or something. Maybe I should just throw it out the window.

  Finally, I start pulling on the brown paper wrapping. I wish my grandpa was right. I wish a boy had sent me something. I suppose miracles do happen. Grandma says they do. She’ll go, “Well, it will take a miracle, but we’re coming in on a wing and a prayer.” If a boy sent me a package, I would fly over the freaking moon and die. Reni would have to write my obituary and I hope she would omit the part about how I once left a pair of my soaking-wet cross trainers in a box under the backseat in their car. Those shoes grew moldy and stank so badly that Mrs. Elliot had to have the car cleaned professionally.

  I tear off the front of the package and start working at the rows of Scotch tape, and finally I make an opening in the brown paper and I can reach in and feel the shiny smooth surface of a book. I slide it out and put it on my lap. It says, Thumbelina: A Fairy Tale. On the cover is a beautiful tiny girl standing among flowers … roses, violets, tulips, and lilacs. I open up the book and begin reading. “Once there was a very tiny girl who was small enough to sit in the palm of your hand and her name was Thumbelina.” A wave of something so sweet washes over me and I hold the book against me for a moment and close my eyes.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  I spot Reni and Henderson at the Pottsboro Pumpkin Mall. This mall was built on the site of an old pumpkin farm, so all the shops and restaurants in here have names like the Pumpkin Seed and PaPa’s Pumpkin and stuff like that. At Halloween, of course, this mall is ridiculous. That’s when Grandma and Grandpa come over here to represent the town planning board, dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.

  Reni and Henderson don’t see me yet, but I can see them at the Party Pumpkin Shop buying stuff for Annais’s art-opening celebration. Reni is carrying a bunch of birthday hats, and Henderson has packages of balloons in his hands. It’s not Christmas or anything like that, but Reni is wearing her goofy headband with the reindeer antlers that stick up. It’s so Elliot family funny. I just start laughing over here. Henderson keeps taking the antlers and putting them on his head. Henderson looks really dorky in the antlers.

  “Hey ho, Reni! Hen!” I say. Then I just kind of go over and hang with them, even though I’m only supposed to be here to get Grandpa a package of Tums.

  Henderson buys the balloons and hats and then we three sit for a moment on a bench installed by the town planning board across from the Party Pumpkin. This one is named the Bill Bentley Bench.

  “Word is out around North,” says Reni, “that Benny knows who sent the letter.”

  “Really?” I go. And then I gulp quietly.

  “Yeah, and he’s got this silly smile on his face when you see him in the hall.”

  “Really?” I say calmly, but inside, it feels like I’m falling off a mountain. I gulp again. “Are you sure he knows?” Then I think about the book I got yesterday. I even saved the sweet brown paper the package was wrapped in. There was no note inside, but I studied the way the sender wrote my name: Louise Ter
race. I noticed the way the letters were made, the cute way the E was tucked so close to the Rs. I usually can’t keep much from Henderson and Reni, so I blurt out, “Somebody sent me this sweet book.”

  “Oh!!! It must have been Benny! The pizza stalker!!! He strikes again!!! Oh my gosh. You’re so lucky! This proves it, and he’s so cute,” squeals Reni.

  “Gee,” goes Henderson, “you’re kidding. A book? Benny? I didn’t know he knew how to read.”

  “Wow,” goes Reni, elbowing Henderson. “Amazing. Incredible. How romantic to send you a book! What was it called?”

  “How I Survived My Frontal Lobotomy by Benny McCartney,” says Henderson.

  “Oh, never mind, you guys. I shouldn’t have told you,” I say. “Forget it.”

  Henderson takes the reindeer antlers off and puts them on my head. “There’s your crown, Thumbelina,” he says. And I smile.

  “Henderson will be so much happier,” says Reni, “when he finds out if he got accepted to that writer’s camp he’s trying for.”

  “Oh, I forgot about the writer’s camp. Is that what’s been bothering you?” I say.

  “Yep,” goes Henderson. “That’s what’s bothering me.”

  “Yeah,” says Reni, “he’s entered his application. He wrote this really long essay on bloodletting in the time of Napoleon. All the most talented kids in the country who want to be writers will be there. If you get in, it’s full credit for the last part of the semester. You have to take some tests early on and it’s a big deal.”