by Lisa Graff
“Like a what-do-you-call-it,” I said, picking up my cards again. “In the newspaper sometimes.”
“An obituary.” Mrs. Finch nodded. “Yes, it’s very similar to that. But in this case they don’t put the story in the newspaper. They print up dozens of copies, as large as movie posters sometimes, with the person’s photo right at the top. And they plaster them all over the city—near churches, on storefronts, even on telephone poles. They stay up for weeks. So no matter where you go, you can remember the person and think nice things about him.”
I picked up the four of spades and studied it. I wasn’t sure about putting up movie posters all over town with Jared’s face on them, but it was a start of an idea anyway. “You think I can come up with something good like that for Jared?”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind, Annie Z.,” she said, and she got up from the table. “How about another cup of tea? I think the water’s ready.”
“Thanks,” I said, and she started pinching leaves out of her jars. “If I really do have Ebola, I’m gonna have to come over here all the time for more tea.”
Mrs. Finch plunked the metal infuser into the cherry teapot and then came back to the table and sat down. She put two fingers on top of her pile of cards, but she didn’t pick them up—she just sat there. Then finally she turned her eyes to me and said, “Annie, I think it’s time for you to close your umbrella.”
When she said that, I turned around and looked behind me, because I thought maybe there was someone else in her house named Annie who was holding an umbrella. Either that or she was bonkers. Because I definitely didn’t have an umbrella. It wasn’t even raining.
“Um, what?” I said, turning back around.
“Here’s what I think,” she told me, and she said it in a way that made me think she wasn’t nutso, but I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure about that. “When it’s raining, you put up an umbrella, right? So you won’t get wet?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Guess so.”
“But say you’re out walking for a long time, holding your umbrella high up in the air to protect you against the rain. If you’re too busy worrying about not getting wet, or just thinking about something else entirely, you may not even notice that it’s stopped raining. So there you are, with your umbrella still open above you, and there’s no more rain at all. You may not be getting wet, but you’re missing the sunshine.” She put her hands on the table, palms up, like she was about to say something really important. “Annie Z., I think all your worries are like an umbrella for you.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Except for that doesn’t make any sense.”
She smiled. “Well, if you spend all your time worrying,” she said, “and thinking about helmets and Band-Aids and Ebola and gangrene and bee stings, then you won’t have time to think about Jared, will you?” She gave me a look like she was checking to see if that was right, and I didn’t nod or anything but I guess she could tell I thought maybe that sort of made sense just a little bit, because she went on talking. “It’s easier to be worried than to be sad. At least I think it is. So you use worrying as a sort of protection.”
I took in a deep breath and thought about it. I wasn’t sure she was right, but I wasn’t sure she was wrong either.
“Maybe,” I said.
She nodded slowly, thinking some more, I guess. “Well,” she said after a few seconds, “that’s just the thing. You don’t need that protection anymore. Because the sun is starting to shine again. It’s coming out slowly, but it’s coming. And if you keep up your umbrella, then you’re not ever going to see it.”
I blinked one eye at Mrs. Finch, the right one, and I kept it closed, because that was the face I made when I was feeling quizzical. “Well, so,” I said, and I said it real slow because I was still thinking out the words at the same time as I said them, “so how do I stop worrying?”
Mrs. Finch picked up her cards finally and looked at them. She switched two of them in her hand. “Perhaps it’s time to stop reading that medical book of yours,” she said, putting a king down in the pile.
I scooped it up. “My book? But I just got it back.”
She shrugged. “How about this, Annie? If you promise to stop reading it, then as a treat I’ll pick up some chocolate chips at the store and you can come over tomorrow afternoon to help me bake cookies. I’ve been meaning to try out my new oven.”
“Aren’t cookies bad for your cholesterol?”
Mrs. Finch raised her eyebrows at me.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll stop reading the book.”
“Excellent.”
“But only if you put up your fish pictures.”
She squinched her mouth over to one side. “Nathan’s photos?” she asked.
“That’s your umbrella,” I told her.
She sighed, one hand around her empty teacup. “Oh, Annie, I don’t know….”
“I’ll stop reading my book if you put up a fish picture. Just one.”
She closed her right eye and looked at me for a while. I guess she was feeling quizzical too. “All right,” she said at last. “I’ll do it.”
“Good. Let’s go pick the photo. It better be a big one.”
She laughed. “Okay, Annie Z.”
“And you know what else?” I said.
“What’s that?”
I put down a card in the pile, facedown, and smiled at her real big. “Gin,” I told her.
eighteen
We put the fish photo up at one end of the living room, so you didn’t see it right when you walked inside but you could still get a nice good look if you knew it was there. Mrs. Finch let me pick what one to put up, and I chose the big bright clown fish one because I liked his stripes.
Mrs. Finch smiled when I picked that one. “That was Nathan’s favorite too,” she said.
I hammered in the nail at just the right spot. Mrs. Finch let me do it by myself because I told her my dad let me use his hammer all the time. That was sort of a lie, but I didn’t hurt my thumb or anything. When the picture was up, we walked to the other side of the room to make sure it wasn’t crooked.
“You know, Annie Z.,” Mrs. Finch said, putting a hand on my shoulder, “that looks pretty nice. I’m glad you made me hang it up.”
“You think you’ll ever put up the rest of them?” I asked her.
“Maybe one day I will. But for now one seems like enough.”
And I thought that made some sense.
“You feel your umbrella closing yet?” I said.
She thought about it. “Maybe just a smidgen.”
After that I went home, but I told Mrs. Finch I’d come back at two o’clock tomorrow for cookies. The whole way home I thought about how I could just keep reading that green book if I wanted, and not do my part of the deal. Mrs. Finch would probably never know, and then I could look up more diseases. But then when I got upstairs, I saw Jared’s door across the hallway, closed tight as always, and I figured if I really did have an umbrella like Mrs. Finch said, well, I might as well try to close it.
I found the big green book where I’d hidden it in my shorts drawer, and I got out a clean piece of stationery—the kind with the kittens on it that Rebecca had given me for Christmas—and I sat down on my bed to write a letter.
Dear Mrs. Harper,
Here is your book back, which you didn’t know I took but I did. I’m sorry. That was not a nice thing for a Junior Sunbird to do. And I’m sorry about the lying. And for the hosing. Those weren’t nice Junior Sunbird things either. I think maybe I’m not a very good one.
Sorry.
Your friend,
Sincerely,
Your friend,
Annie Richards
Then I tucked the letter inside the big green book so that just the Dear Mrs. Harper part was sticking out the top. And I walked next door and put the whole thing inside the Harpers’ mailbox. It just barely fit.
After I closed the mailbox door, I stood on Mrs. Harper’s lawn for a second with my ey
es closed, trying to feel if maybe I had an imaginary umbrella that had gone closed a little bit. But I couldn’t tell for sure. Then I tried to feel if I had real Ebola, but I couldn’t tell that either.
Right about dinnertime the phone rang and I answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hey, sweetie.” It was Mom. “How are you doing?”
I shrugged, even though you weren’t supposed to shrug over the phone. Mom usually got mad when I did that, but this time she didn’t say anything.
“I just wanted to let you know that I have to stay at work late tonight. I probably won’t be home until after you’re asleep.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You’ll tell your dad?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. And sweetie?”
I tucked up the edge of my arm-scrape Band-Aid to see how my scab was coming. Still pretty scabby. “Mmm-hmm?”
“I love you, you know.”
There was a pause after that, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to say. But just when I could tell Mom was getting ready to hang up the phone, I thought of something.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Can you take me to get a present for Tommy’s birthday on Friday? He invited me bowling.”
She didn’t answer.
“Mom? You still there?”
“You know, Annie,” she said after another second of waiting, “I just don’t think I’m going to get a chance to do that before Friday. Why don’t you make him a nice card or something?”
“But I think he wants walkie-talkies,” I said. My forehead felt hot. I put my hand up to feel if I had a fever from the Ebola, but I couldn’t tell.
“We can talk about it tomorrow, all right?”
“Fine.”
“Night, sweetie.”
“Night.”
For dinner we had pizza. Dad ordered olives and pepperoni, even though I hated olives. I told him that, and he said he forgot, which didn’t really surprise me much.
“Dad?” I asked, when there was mostly only crusts left in the box.
“Mmm?” he said, still chewing. He was reading a magazine while we ate, which Mom always said was not good table manners.
“Can you take my temperature?” I asked, picking the last four olives off my slice of pizza. “I think I have Ebola.”
Dad just nodded, so I ran upstairs to get the thermometer from the medicine cabinet, and when I got back, Dad placed it under my tongue, just the way Dr. Young did.
“I’ll be right back to check,” he said.
But when the thermometer beeped a minute later, Dad wasn’t back yet. I kept it under my tongue for five whole minutes, watching the clock over the stove. Finally I took it out and checked it myself.
Ninety-eight-point-six. Exactly normal.
I found Dad in the living room watching TV.
“Dad,” I said from the doorway. My voice was pointy little icicles.
“What?”
I waved the thermometer at him. “You were supposed to come back and check my temperature,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”
I just rolled my eyes and headed back upstairs, careful to wipe off the thermometer with rubbing alcohol before I put it back in its case in the medicine cabinet. If I got swept away in an avalanche that second, Dad would probably forget to care.
nineteen
The next afternoon Mrs. Finch opened her front door with a big smile.
“Right on time!” she greeted me. One of the buttons was open on her ugly blue grandma sweater, and I could see her stripy blue-and-green blouse peeking out from underneath, but I didn’t tell her. I sort of didn’t want her to fix it. I liked her that way, one button off. “Did you keep your part of the bargain? Are you ready for cookie baking?”
“Yep,” I said with a nod. “I’m ready.” Ever since I’d written that letter to Mrs. Harper telling her I’d stolen her book, I kept waiting for her to yell at me about it. Probably she’d storm over to my house angry as a scorpion and tell me I was out of the troop for good, and make me hand over my outfit and my three measly badges too. But that hadn’t happened yet. Maybe she was out of town.
“Well, come on in,” Mrs. Finch said.
She led me through the house to the kitchen. But when I got there, I froze still as a statue. Because Mrs. Finch wasn’t the only person in her house.
“I don’t think there are any ghosts in here, Mrs. Finch.” It was Rebecca, and she was closing the lid on the fish-shaped cookie jar. “It’s probably safe to put cookies in there.” Then she looked up and saw me. “Oh,” she said. And just the way she said it, I could tell she hadn’t been expecting me either.
Mrs. Finch looked at me and then looked at Rebecca. “Yes, I suppose I should explain, shouldn’t I?” She bent down and started rummaging around in a bottom cupboard. “You see, I just happened to be talking to Rebecca’s mother on the phone yesterday, and I remembered that Rebecca was a big fan of haunted houses. And as you know, my house may very well be haunted. Aha!” she cried, pulling out two baking sheets. She stood up. “So I thought she might like to come over and bake cookies in one. I suppose I forgot to mention that you would also be here, Annie Z. I do apologize to both of you.”
I rolled my eyes at her. It was a good thing Mrs. Finch wasn’t a professional spy, because she was a terrible liar.
“Now that we’ve cleared that up”—she clapped her hands together like we were having a sleepover party—“let’s get baking, shall we?”
Rebecca was chewing hard on one of her braids, and I would’ve bet ten whole dollars she was trying to decide which was worse, baking cookies with me or leaving the haunted house once she finally got in it.
She stayed.
“Okay,” Mrs. Finch said, handing Rebecca the bag of chocolate chips. “Rebecca, why don’t you read the ingredients, and Annie, you can make sure we have everything we need. I’ll get out the mixing bowls.”
Rebecca did an eyeball glare at me for a full twenty seconds, but then she started to read off the back of the bag. “Flour,” she said. She sounded like she was reading the ingredients for rat poison.
I sighed and monkeyed up onto Mrs. Finch’s counter to dig through her top cupboard. I wondered if Rebecca would ever stop hating me.
“Careful now, Annie Z!” Mrs. Finch cried just as I located the flour.
“Sugar,” Rebecca read.
“Brown or normal?” I asked.
I could tell she didn’t want to answer me, but probably she figured that if she didn’t tell me the right kind of sugar, the cookies wouldn’t taste good. “Um…both,” she said.
When we found all the ingredients, we started mixing everything up in bowls. I let Rebecca break the eggs, even though that was my second favorite part, because I knew she liked doing it too. I caught her glancing at me sideways when she was cracking the last egg into the bowl, but when I tried to smile at her, she looked away real quick.
“So, Rebecca,” Mrs. Finch said while Rebecca started dumping the flour mixture into the bowl with the eggs. I stood there pretending I was helping. “How long have you been a paranormal enthusiast?”
“Huh?” Rebecca said. Which was exactly what I was thinking.
“How long have you been interested in ghosts?”
“Oh.” Rebecca whacked the bowl with a spoon to get out the last of the flour. “I dunno. A long time, I guess.”
“Personally,” Mrs. Finch went on, “I’m not sure I believe in any of that, but I suppose you never know. Which are the most interesting to you, ghosts or poltergeists?”
Mrs. Finch was doing a good job trying, but I could tell that Rebecca was busy figuring out in her brain how long cookies took to bake so she could go home. She was staring at her spoon real hard. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “They’re both good, I guess. I think we add the chocolate chips now, right?”
While I was wrestling the bag of chocolate
chips open, I tried to shoot Mrs. Finch a just-give-up-now look, but she ignored me.
“So then, Rebecca, what are your hobbies?”
Rebecca didn’t answer for a while, just watched as I poured in the chips. Probably it was only a couple seconds, but I couldn’t stand the quiet anymore.
“She does ballet!” I said. It came out a little louder than I wanted.
“Well, that’s lovely.”
“And piano playing too!” For some reason I couldn’t stop being loud. Rebecca’s face was turning red as she watched me pour the chips into the cookie dough, so I tried to make my voice more quiet. “She’s a real good piano player,” I told Mrs. Finch.
Mrs. Finch nodded at me but didn’t say anything.
I sighed.
Mrs. Finch was stirring the dough up with a wooden spoon, but it was too thick and the chips weren’t mixing in. “Looks like we’ll have to go in with our hands,” she said. “Anyone feel like getting a little messy?”
I almost said I’d do it, because that was my number-one favorite part of baking cookies, when the dough got up in the in-between parts of your fingers and you couldn’t even get it out with washing—there was only one way to clean it up, and that was licking. But I decided better and didn’t say anything so Rebecca could do it instead.
But she didn’t say anything either.
“Really?” Mrs. Finch said. “Neither of you wants to do it? I always thought that was the best part when I was a youngster.” She looked at both of us, but we only stood there, silent as weeds. “All right then,” she said, rolling up her sleeves. “I guess I’ll have to go in myself.”
“Wait!” Rebecca hollered, just as Mrs. Finch had the tippy tip of her pointer finger aimed for the dough. I figured she finally came to her senses and was going to volunteer. But I was wrong. “Annie should do it,” she said.
Mrs. Finch still had her hands stuck like frozen fish sticks over the bowl. “Oh?” she said. She looked at me, but I didn’t say anything.