But when I look back at Agnes, it’s like nothing happened. Like she didn’t just pierce our fun, starry day by acting nuts.
“Why are you so weird sometimes?” I ask her. I say it gently, because I’m honestly wondering.
Her face is blank, like she doesn’t understand the words that came out of my mouth.
But then she says, “I’m just me, Mattie. And me is okay!”
It sounds like something a parent—or maybe a therapist—tells you over and over until you repeat it in your own head, and then out loud. It’s like the real Agnes isn’t in there for a second.
Agnes’s mom knocks later, and when she comes in, she and Daddy talk quietly in the kitchen. But it’s right next to the living room, where Agnes and I are watching videos of the night sky on YouTube, so I’m not sure why they think we can’t hear. Agnes keeps talking about the telescope she wants, but I’m concentrating on her mom’s voice. Mrs. Davis is saying that Agnes has a “social disorder” and “anxiety” that has gotten worse since they left Boston. Daddy asks when Agnes’s father is moving here, and Mrs. Davis says, “He isn’t.” That makes me sit up in my seat, but when I look over at Agnes to see if she heard, she starts talking louder. Then I can’t make out what her mom is saying.
I wonder what a social disorder is, and what exactly anxiety means, but if I ask with those words, Daddy will know I was eavesdropping.
Then Mrs. Davis comes into the living room and says, “Come along home, Agnes.” Just before he shuts the door behind them, my dad tells them that Agnes is welcome here anytime.
Sunday is nice because Mama and Daddy are both at home for once, and we “snuggle down” to watch a movie with hot cocoa and popcorn since it’s snowy outside. Daddy even makes Mama laugh twice.
But then Daddy gets a call from the office, and I wish he didn’t have to go. He leaves in a hurry after saying to Mama, “Thanks for understanding,” and she comes back to the living room with a smile on her face. I think since she has a job now too, she’s less upset when Daddy has to work.
She starts making dinner, and the pots bang together with happy clinks, and I ask her to play a game after we eat.
While we lay out cards for Double Solitaire, I say, “Anxiety means, like, when you worry about stuff, right?”
“That’s right,” says Mama, and I hear her being careful with her voice. “But there’s nothing for you to worry about, Mattie. We’ll be fine now that I’ve got a job at the bakery, and what’s happening with your grandmother is natural and . . .”
She stops talking because she sees that I’m staring at her with my mouth open. I was going to ask about whether people get therapy for anxiety, like even kids, but suddenly I’m not thinking about Agnes anymore.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Mama says. “I’m rambling.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I just don’t want you to think anything’s wrong. Everything will be all right.”
I hold back from telling her that she just put a lot more wrong in my head. “Okay,” I say.
“Where did that question come from, anyway?” she asks.
“Nowhere.” I nod and slap the table to signal we can start the game. We put aces in the middle and shuffle through our extra cards. While I line up my piles, I’m thinking about how small our apartment is. It seemed fancy at first, with the elevator and the doorman, but maybe we live here because we don’t have enough money to have a house in Pennsylvania. And what exactly is “happening” with Maeve? As we slam down our cards as fast as we can, I’m slower than usual, but Mama doesn’t seem to notice.
Chapter 13
On Monday morning, Agnes and I go down to the bus stop together. I notice that her door has a copy of the “I Have a Dream” speech and a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. on it. Doorman Will gives her a thumbs-up on the way out. “Knock ’em dead, A!” he tells her. Then he winks at me.
But as soon as we go through the glass doors, I lean to my left a little bit so it looks like maybe we just happen to be walking out of the building at the same time by coincidence. She’s carrying a big piece of rolled-up poster board with feathers sticking out of the top of it—her report about Billie.
Walking to the bus stop, I quicken my pace when I see blue-eyed Marisa in her tan-colored coat narrow her gaze at Agnes’s project.
I stand on the edge of the curb, and that’s when Finn comes up beside me.
“Sit with me on the bus,” he says. “I have something to show you.”
“Okay.” I feel my insides warm even though it’s freezing. I don’t look at Agnes to see if she overheard.
Josh Jensen’s twine ring is scratchy on my finger under my glove.
“Mattie!” Agnes’s voice is louder than it should be. I’m three feet away. Why does she shout like that? “I’m going to collect some pieces of Billie’s nest for my report. There are still a few here!”
I look behind me and see her poking at the place where she found Billie. With her free hand, she picks up a clump of leaves.
“Ew, sick!” Marisa shrieks.
Agnes stares at the pieces of nest in her hand. Then she looks at me. “Billie’s parents made it.”
“Are those feathers on your poster from that nasty bird? You’re gross, Rag-nes,” says Marisa, and I hear someone else muffle a laugh.
I point my eyes firmly at the ground. My shoulders tense up.
I stay that way for a minute, until the bus comes. I don’t look at Agnes again, and I half expect her to start flapping imaginary wings like she did after she saw Billie fly, but she’s silent.
Finn gets on the bus ahead of me and finds an open seat. I approach him slowly. . . . He smiles up at me. He still wants me to sit with him. I do, and then I notice that Agnes is already in the very front seat behind the bus driver with the box in her lap.
My shoulders relax as I count that we’re six rows apart.
Finn opens the small front pocket of his backpack and says, “This is what I wanted to show you.”
He takes out a pencil box with soccer balls on it, which makes me smile a lot. I’m into school supplies like highlighters and erasers and notebooks—and any boy with a pencil box instead of just a crummy backpack filled with loosey-goosey pens is cool.
Inside he has a red pencil with NC State Wolfpack logos all over it.
“Oh, that’s a nice color,” I say. “Too bad it has that silly wolf on it.”
“My uncle told me Tar Heels were all stuck-up,” says Finn, his smile growing. “But I still asked him to send one for you too.”
He holds up a Carolina blue pencil with my team’s Ram mascot on it, and my brain does a backflip, or three: Finn talked to his uncle about me. Finn had his uncle send a present for me, which is sort of from his uncle but is really from him. Finn just gave me a gift that reminds me of home, and it means he’s been listening to me and he knows me.
I take the pencil.
“Thank you,” I say, and it comes out all whispery, so then I make a big show of taking out my pencil box (white with yellow stars) and putting it inside very slowly and carefully. That way I don’t have to look at Finn again or say anything for a minute. It feels like my face is glowing, and that might be weird.
For the rest of the bus ride, Finn doesn’t speak, but I feel buzzy inside. When we get to school I glance up and see the back of Agnes’s head as she gets off the bus, I tell myself not to worry. I remember what she said to me on New Year’s Eve, out in the hallway: “Whatever happens at school, it’s okay.”
I hope she meant it.
Chapter 14
I watch Mr. Perl welcome Agnes from across the room. He gives her a high five that doesn’t touch her hand and then peeks into her rolled poster board.
“Wonderful,” he says. “We’ll give you some time to talk about this next week and then find a place of honor for your poster—real science!”
Agnes beams and settles into her seat. She’s on Team One, which is three desk groupings away from my team. I notice that when she sits down, sh
e touches her toes on the floor but points her heels up. Agnes carefully places one pencil and one eraser on the very corner of her desk. I keep my eyes on her, but she doesn’t look my way at all, and my hands start to get clammy.
The morning goes pretty normally. We’re learning about the agriculture of Pennsylvania, and I take lots of notes so I can do well in trivia later this afternoon. My team has moved into first place in the points competition.
At lunch I sit with Shari and Emily and Robin, and I guess Agnes stays with Mr. Perl to show him her project or something because when everyone gets back into the classroom, she’s at her desk already, reading a book. We haven’t made eye contact all day, and I wonder if it’s because I’m not looking at her or because she’s not looking at me.
“Trivia time!” says Mr. Perl. He puts on his funny flat hat, which he calls his “master of ceremonies garb,” and passes out the metal bells that you mash with your hand—one for each team.
The room is silent. Mr. Perl knows what he’s doing.
“Question one,” he says, making his voice rise like a game show host. “What is Pennsylvania’s top cash crop today?”
Ding—“Hay!”—Done.
Before I can even turn my head, Agnes has buzzed in, answered, and settled back into her seat.
“Correct!” says Mr. Perl. “Everyone, in case you haven’t noticed, Agnes is back. So bring your A game.”
Shari pouts, and Finn whispers to me, “No one else can win with her around.”
“She’s a freak of nature,” says Bryce.
“Team Four!” Mr. Perl’s voice booms over the room. “One-point deduction for talking during the game. Do it again and it’s a five-point deduction.”
Everyone goes silent.
“Question two: What city is the chocolate capital of the United—”
Ding—“Hershey!”—Done.
“Correct, Agnes!”
“Question three: Its crack became its most recognizable—”
My hand flashes out like lightning. Ding. “The Liberty Bell!” I shout.
“Mattie earns back the point lost by her team for talking!” says Mr. Perl. “Well done.”
One of Maeve’s Christmas ornaments is the Liberty Bell—it’s this huge bell from the 1700s that broke when it was rung—and I’ve always loved the little felt crack sewn into it.
Shari pats me on the back, and Finn gives me a big grin.
I look toward Agnes, but she’s facing the other direction, hand over the buzzer as she waits for the next question.
Mr. Perl asks ten questions today, and Agnes gets all but two of them—the one I answered and another about a groundhog named Phil that Lee on Team Two got. Lee stood up and made buckteeth and tried to make a noise like a groundhog—it was a weird shrieking. Everyone laughed, and he got the question right. Now I know why Team One was in the lead until last week . . . when Agnes was absent.
That afternoon, everyone at my table grumbles about how it isn’t fair that Agnes wins all the points for Team One. “It’s not just that she knows the answers,” says Diego. “It’s also that her hands are crazy fast. Who can even touch the buzzer?”
I think about how good she was at Solitaire. She is fast.
“She’s special,” says Bryce. I know he means it in the bad way. Then he says, “There’s a reason she doesn’t have any friends.”
And even though I could say something right then—I could say, “I’m her friend”—I don’t.
Chapter 15
After Bryce said the thing about Agnes not having friends, I got quieter and quieter. I wasn’t my new self at school. I wasn’t even my old self. I was upset.
And then as we were packing up to leave, Shari said, “Why do you wear that string on your finger?”
I glanced down at Josh Jensen’s bow ring, and I saw it through regular eyes. It looked dumb.
“Oh, I was just bored earlier and tied it on,” I said, trying to play it off. Then I pulled on one end quickly and it came untied, falling off my finger like a scrap on the table. I picked it up and shoved it into my backpack.
Shari looked at my face, but I just turned around because part of me felt like I was going to cry.
“Are you sick or something?” she asked me as we walked out to the bus circle.
“Yeah, I don’t feel very good.” It wasn’t a lie.
“Chicken soup and I’ll see you tomorrow!” she said, flipping her long braids behind her shoulder.
When we get off the bus in front of our building, Agnes walks a few steps ahead of me. My insides are churning, and I think that when I get into my apartment I might fall apart. My face feels like I’m going to—it’s all tight and wobbly at the same time. This is awful. Agnes and I didn’t say hi all day long, and even though that’s partly what I wanted, she must be so mad.
But as soon as we walk through the doors of Butler Towers, Agnes turns around smiling.
“Mattie, did you have a good day?” she asks, as if she wasn’t a part of it.
“Um . . . yeah,” I say.
“Great!” She runs up to Doorman Will and gives him a high five.
“Amazing Agnes!” he shouts.
She grins and dashes in front of me to push the elevator button. “I have an art project I think we should do today, since I don’t have Billie to watch—Joanie gave me some amazing supplies that she found thrown away in the art room.”
“Joanie?” I ask.
“The night janitor,” says Agnes. “She’s my friend, and she cleans up after we leave school.”
“Oh.” Agnes has friends all over. But none of them are our age. “Do you ever talk to any kids at school?” I ask her as we step into the elevator.
I think I see her stiffen, but I can’t be sure because her mouth is smiling.
“Mom says they don’t get me,” she says. “But you do! Hey, where’s your ring?”
She’s looking down at my bare finger, and I feel a pinch inside. “I untied it.”
Agnes’s eyes go wide. “But why?!” She looks more upset than I am.
“I don’t know,” I say, digging it out of my bag. “I still have it. Here.”
I show her the small piece of twine, and she opens up her palm. “I’ll fix it,” she says as I hand it to her.
When the elevator doors open, she bounds out into our hallway and stands in front of my apartment, like it’s already a given that she’s coming over.
And I guess it is.
Then things go back to normal between us, which is crazy. Agnes stops by her apartment to get watercolor paints to use with the funny-shaped brushes, rainbow markers, and pastel chalk that Joanie gave her. Agnes puts two jars of water and a layer of scrap paper down on the dining room table before handing me a thick piece of white poster board. “Mixed mediums,” she says. “Let’s work with all of these and see what we can do.”
Then she zeroes in on her own paper and dips right into the watercolors. I’ve never seen someone so focused on keeping the paints from mixing on the palette—she cleans her brush completely after each swipe—but she swirls the paints together on her paper and it ends up looking really cool and colorful.
“My dad says the sunset holds millions of colors in it,” says Agnes quietly.
“Is he an artist?” I ask. Because I think that would explain a lot.
“He’s a gentleman philosopher,” she says, and I have no idea what she means, but it sounds nice.
“Is he moving here soon?” I’m being nosy, but I’m also kind of playing detective.
“Yes,” she says. Then she looks confused for just a moment, but her eyes clear quickly. “I don’t know.”
I don’t ask any more questions because I can feel something around us now, a thickness, like there’s too much air in the room. Parent stuff can do this. I think about how Mama and Daddy have been making the air thick a lot since we moved.
Agnes and I don’t talk more while we work, but not in a bad way. Things feel okay, and as we make more art, the air evens o
ut again. By the time we’re done, I have chalk all over my pants and my sweater sleeves are covered in paint. When Mama sees us, she says, “Smocks next time, girls.” I glance over at Agnes and see that she’s covered in colors too.
Then we burst into giggles.
Before bed, I use Mama’s phone to call Lily. She and I have texted a few times, and I keep telling Mama that if I had my own phone I could keep in better touch, but no luck so far. Lily doesn’t answer, and I don’t want to leave a confusing message about Agnes, so I hang up without saying anything after the beep. Only I think I waited too long to hang up, so now she probably has one of those awkward voice mails where you can almost hear the person take a breath but it only lasts for two seconds so it’s even weirder than if they left no message at all.
I toss and turn—it’s hard to get to sleep. I just kind of want to figure things out. How can I be Agnes’s friend and keep my new friends at school too? I remember Daddy saying that when he has trouble sleeping he reads a book so he can stop thinking about whatever’s keeping him awake. Just as I’m about to reach over and turn on my light, I see a star shining outside my window. I move to the glass and there it is: Agnes’s signal.
When it flashes off a minute later, I think she’s saying good night. She’s saying it’s okay. And I crawl back into bed and drift into dreams.
Chapter 16
When Daddy says I have a phone call and hands me his cell, I feel relieved that Lily finally called me back—it’s been over a week. But when I say, “Hi, Lil,” the voice says, “Who’s Lil?”
It’s Shari!
I get nervous because this is my first new-friend phone call in Pennsylvania. Besides Agnes, I mean. She and I have reached an understanding. At least, I think it’s an understanding. We see each other mostly after school. I mean, we “see” each other at school, but we don’t talk until afterward. Agnes acts like that’s normal, so I’m pretending it is. Because what else can I do? Everyone at school pretty much avoids her, unless they’re making fun of her. She eats lunch in Mr. Perl’s room, beats everyone at trivia, and has a calm expression on her face whenever I risk looking directly at her.
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