Stealing Our Way Home

by Cecilia Galante

  But I can feel Dad tense under me. “I will find money,” he says firmly. “And I’m not going to talk about this in front of your sister. Both of you need to go home now and let me take care of things.”

  Jack opens his mouth as if to say something else, but Dad beats him to the punch. “Jack, please. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  Jack closes his mouth.

  “Go home.” Dad leans down and kisses the top of my head. “See if Nibs needs any help in the garden. Maybe Mr. Thurber will be back.” I look up and smile at him. His eyes look sad. Worried.

  “I’ll see you later, baby,” he says, tweaking my nose. “Everything will be all right.”

  But everything is not all right with Jack. Usually when we’re on Route 30, he rides right next to me, making sure that he’s on the outside, closest to traffic, but now he rides way up ahead, like I’m not even there. I watch and wait, but he doesn’t turn around or check over his shoulder. He just keeps moving ahead, getting farther and farther away.

  I pedal faster, but when I do, my bike chain starts making a loud clicking noise. I don’t know anything about bike chains, but every time I hear the sputtering noise, I slow back down again. Please turn around. Please, Jack. Slow down and look at me.

  It’s getting hard to breathe. The sun is directly overhead, beating on the pavement. Route 30 is nothing like Lake Road. There are no trees for miles. Just long, endless fields of grass on both sides of the long, hilly pavement. Plus, there’s not a cloud in sight. It must be ninety degrees at least. I wish I’d worn my Red Sox baseball hat. I wish I was a boy so I could take off my T-shirt and wrap it around my head. I wish Jack would turn around. I wish …

  I wish.

  I can hear a car coming up behind me. My fingers tighten around the handlebars as I guide the bike off the side of the road and onto the soft, gravelly edge. Up ahead, Jack disappears around a bend. No! Don’t leave me! The car is getting closer. I clench the handlebars until my knuckles turn white, trying to keep the bike steady. One awkward lurch and I’ll fall right into the ditch next to me. Tips of long grass brush against my calves. A mosquito flits against my neck and then buzzes along the edge of my ear. I reach up to swat it away.

  Whoosh!

  The car flies by. My bike teeters and then wobbles like a windup toy. The handlebars go right and then left and then somewhere in the middle. Somehow, I stay upright and the bike doesn’t fall over, but tears roll down my cheeks as I steer the bike out of the gravelly edge and back onto the road. They keep coming as Route 30 turns into the quiet shade of Lake Road and then, as I realize Jack is nowhere in sight, they stop.

  I don’t care if he’s upset with Dad. And I don’t care if he never talks to me again. He has no right to just leave me like this. Mom must’ve told him a hundred times that he has to always keep me in his sight whenever we go out on the road together. Always. When I get home, I’m going to walk right up to him and punch him in the shoulder. Hard.

  I pedal furiously, cruising down Lake Road as fast as I can. Tall pine trees on both sides of the road fly by in a blur, and the breeze snaps like a sheet against my face. Suddenly, the bike sputters one last time. The gears lock with a quick lurch, and then they stop altogether.

  I’m in the air for about three seconds before I hit the ground. A sharp pain shoots through my right knee, and I grab for it with both hands. My bike is behind me, the front of it twisted at a weird angle. Next to it is the chain, lying in the dirt like a black snake. I sit for a minute, panting. Stunned. My knee feels like it’s been ripped off. I lift my hands slowly off the top of it and look. A quarter-sized flap of skin has been peeled all the way off in the middle. The skin around it looks burned. Scaly patches of pink, rubbed raw. Blood trickles from all of them. I bite my lower lip and rock back and forth. Little sounds come out of my mouth—unh, unh, unh—without me even trying. It’s at least another mile to the house. How am I going to get this dumb bike back there all by myself?

  “Pippa?”

  I jump at the sound of my name and whirl around. Shelby steps out from behind a pine tree on the other side of the road. Her green T-shirt has been knotted in the front, and she’s pulled her hair up into a ponytail.

  “Are you all right?” she asks in her funny accent. “I saw you fly off your bike back there, and I came runnin’. Are you hurt?”

  I nod, glancing down again at my knee. Her cowboy boots make a crunching sound as she walks over and the tassels sway like little bells. She squats down next to me. “Can I see?” Her ponytail hangs down between us as she leans in close. She smells like suntan lotion and sunflower seeds. “Ugh,” she says, grimacing. “You ripped the skin clean off. That’ll leave a scar, probably. But a good one. A story scar.” I must look confused when she says that, because she rolls up the sleeve of her T-shirt and points to a mark on her arm. It’s lighter than the rest of her skin and shaped like a kidney bean.

  “This is a story scar,” she says. “I got it from a dog who knocked me to the ground when I was real little and tried to bite my arm off. The only reason he didn’t is because a nun who was on her way to church came runnin’ across the street and wrestled him off me.”

  My eyes widen. A nun? Wrestling a dog?

  “See?” Shelby grins. “It’s a good story, isn’t it? And because of the scar, I’ll never forget it. Now you have one, too.” She nods. “A scar and a story.”

  Some story, I think to myself. My dumb brother leaves me behind on our way home and I wreck my glittery bike. How exciting.

  Shelby looks down the road. “I’m pretty sure I saw your brother go sailin’ past ’bout ten minutes ago. He didn’t feel like waitin’ around for you, huh?”

  I shake my head.

  “I guess brothers can be like that.” She gets back up and walks over to my bike. “Although, I wouldn’t know. I don’t have any.” I want to ask her if she has any sisters, and I want to ask her what she was doing in the woods, and if she really does hate mayonnaise like it says on her shirt, but of course I can’t. She bends over and picks the chain up out of the dirt. “Lordy, no wonder you went flyin’ off this thing. Your chain here fell clear off!”

  I smile a little, mostly because she talks funny and also because Jack will kick himself from here to China when he finds out about all this later. Serves him right. And he won’t be getting any more help from me when it comes to finding out information about Shelby. I’m done being nice to him.

  She examines the chain in her hands, peering at the links up close. “You mind if I fiddle with this for a minute?”

  I shake my head as she gets down on her knees and holds the chain up alongside the bike. “I think your chain’s too long,” she says finally. “Okay with you if I take out some of the links and then put it back on?”

  I nod, watching her nimble fingers move along the chain and snap off three of the links. She grunts a little as she reattaches the remaining links and then tugs the whole thing once, like pulling a rubber band, to test it.

  “All right,” Shelby says, moving over to the bike. “Let’s get this thing back on and get you home so you can fix up that knee.”

  A tiny river of blood has snaked its way down to the middle of my leg. It’s already started to dry, the edges crinkling a little like dried paper.

  But it doesn’t hurt as much as it did before.

  In fact, I think to myself as Shelby settles me on the handlebars and gets on the seat behind me, it hardly hurts at all.

  I’ll go back for Pippa. I will.

  But right now, if I don’t pedal as hard as I can, until the muscles in the front of my legs start to shake and burn, until the noise inside my head settles down, I will explode.

  You’re just going to have to trust me, Jack. Dad’s words hammer in my ears as my wheels race along Route 30. Trust him? After he’s been getting up every morning and putting on a shirt and tie and leaving to go to a job that doesn’t exist? No wonder the electricity has been turned off. No wonder his credit card
didn’t work. There’s no money left! What if Pippa and I hadn’t shown up today? How much longer would he have gone on pretending that he was selling cars? And what exactly has he been doing instead? My eyes burn, thinking of him sitting behind his old brown desk, staring into space, drawing little circles on his desk calendar.

  Although he was on the phone today. So maybe he’s been making some calls. But to whom? Who do you call when your wife dies and your business flops and you run out of money? If you’re Dad, the answer is no one. Not Grandma and Grandpa Kendall out in Wyoming, not Mom’s big brother Uncle Leon, who lives in Florida, not even Reverend Jim from church, who came and sat with us at the house for two whole days after the funeral, until Dad finally told him to go home. Even after we first found out that Mom was sick, Dad didn’t want anyone’s help. “I can handle it,” he told Grandma Hession, who came out anyway and stayed until Mom finally told her to go home.

  And he did handle it, I guess. He hung a big calendar chart on the front of the fridge that listed all of Mom’s doctor’s appointments and chemotherapy sessions. After those stopped working and Mom had to go into the hospital, he made sure he got there every single day to spend time with her. All while still working at the car lot and getting Pippa and me up for school every day and making sure we ate dinner and showered and did our homework. It was like he had extra arms or something and just carried everything for as long as he could. And then, when Mom died, he kind of let go, I guess. Maybe his arms just got too tired, holding everything up for so long all by himself. Maybe he just had to sit down again and take a breath.

  I pedal harder, grateful for the ache in my legs, the shortness of breath in my chest. It keeps the tears at bay. I will be the person he can turn to while he takes a break. I’ll do whatever it takes. I don’t care. I can get a job mowing lawns or washing dishes at Perry’s Restaurant in town. I’ll even get down on my hands and knees and scrub the floor every night with a toothbrush if I have to. Just until we get back on our feet. Until Dad has rounded the bend again. We can do it, I think to myself, braking so hard in our driveway that the bike nearly falls over. I stand there for a minute, panting.

  We can.

  Three-quarters of the way back down Lake Road, I stop my bike and stare. Someone is riding Pippa’s bike. And it’s not Pippa, because she’s sitting in the middle of the handlebars, clutching both of them for dear life. The only thing I can see of the other person is a pair of pink cowboy boots.

  My stomach nose-dives.

  I get back on my bike and race toward them.

  “Pippa!” I shout, waving an arm over my head. She deliberately turns her head in the other direction. Behind her, Shelby’s head appears. She puts a hand on Pippa’s back and brakes as I pull up next to them.

  “What happened?” I wince, looking at Pippa’s knee. It’s all busted up. There’s blood everywhere.

  “Her chain fell off,” Shelby says coolly. “I fixed it, and now we’re pedalin’ back.”

  “Her … you … I mean … How … ” Not one of the questions in my head can be formed into a coherent sentence.

  “Listen, she’s hurtin’,” Shelby says, sidestepping my shocked expression. “We need to get her home so she can get this knee fixed up and bandaged.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I say quickly. “Here, why don’t you ride my bike and I’ll take her the rest of the way? I mean, you’re probably tired, right?”

  “Actually, I’m fine.” She says “fan” instead of “fine.” “We’re almost there anyway.” She leans forward. “You okay with that, Pippa?”

  Pippa nods, still avoiding my eyes.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go, then.”

  I fall in next to Shelby, pedaling as slowly as she does as we move along the rest of Lake Road. I look at the trees on the other side so that she can’t see my flushed cheeks or the way I keep biting my lip. Now I’m not only a stalker, but I’m also a total jerk, leaving my little sister behind like that, and not being around to help when she got hurt. I sneak a peek at Pippa, who’s staring down at her knee like I’m not even there. I know she’s steamed. And she has a right to be. Leaving her on Route 30 was a stupid move. A selfish one, too. I didn’t even look back at her, to check like I usually do. Not once. Mom would be so disappointed.

  “Pippa,” I say.

  She’s busy with her knee, pressing the scraped side of it with the tip of her finger.

  “Pippa.” I make my voice louder. “Don’t touch it yet, okay? We need to clean it first, get all the germs out.”

  She stops and looks in the other direction. It’s a deliberate move. Another door closing.

  I move my bike in closer, so that I’m slightly ahead of Shelby, and lower my voice. “Listen, Pip. I’m sorry. I really am. You have every right to be mad at me, but I promise I won’t do that again. Ever. Okay?”

  She doesn’t turn her head. Doesn’t even blink.

  Shelby does, though. She speeds up a little, flicking a glance in my direction, and then shrugs, like she’s making an excuse for Pippa’s silence.

  “Thanks for helping her.”

  “Sure.” She sidles a glance at me.

  “I thought you were at work,” I hear myself say. “At Murphy’s?”

  Shelby nods. “I’m just there ’til noon, and only on Mondays and Fridays. Mrs. Murphy was goin’ to take me home, but I told her I’d walk the rest of the way when we got to Lake Road. That’s how I saw Pippa.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.

  “You’re the little blue house up there, right?” Shelby asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s cute. I like the cat shutters.”

  “My dad made those for my mom,” I say without thinking. “She used to love cats.”

  “She doesn’t anymore?”

  I look ahead, wishing I could stuff the last sentence back into my mouth. “She died. In April.”

  It’s the first time I’ve said the words Mom and died out loud. To someone other than myself. I don’t like the sound or the feel of them. They have sharp, jagged edges and they drag along the soft parts of my mouth.

  “Oh.” Shelby bites the side of her thumb. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” My nose prickles, thinking of all the people who said those exact same words at the funeral. I’m sorry. How awful. I’m sorry. How sad. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  Besides being annoying, it was confusing, too. Why were they sorry? They didn’t have anything to be sorry about, and neither did I. Losing my mother was not a sorry kind of thing. It was bigger than sorry. Much, much bigger.

  “So y’all live with your dad, then?” Shelby asks.

  “Yeah.” What a strange question. Who else would we live with?

  “I think I saw him last night while I was out on the dock. Gettin’ out of a blue car?” She slides another glance at me. Her eyes are pale green, like celery.

  “Yup, that’s him.”

  “He looks nice.” She sounds wistful.

  “He is nice.” Up ahead, I can see the lilac bushes in our front yard, the corner of our yellow mailbox behind them. How did we get here so fast?

  Shelby stops pedaling when we reach our driveway and puts her feet on the ground. “Home sweet home, Pippa.”

  “C’mere, Pip.” I swing a leg off my bike and kick out the stand. Then I reach for her, putting my arms around her back so that I can carry her inside. But she pulls away from me and kicks at me with her good leg. “Pippa!” I stand back, rubbing the arm she nailed. “Come on! I’m just trying to help you get off the bike!”

  She stares at me deliberately and then hops off by herself, wincing as her bad leg comes in contact with the ground.

  Shelby smiles, watching her hobble toward the house. “She’s a tough lil’ cookie, huh?”

  I nod.

  “I think she was really scared, bein’ alone like that. ’Specially after she fell and all.”

  I stare at the ground.

 
The front door slams.

  “She doesn’t really … talk?” Shelby asks.

  “No. Not since … everything happened with my mom.”

  Shelby nods, as if understanding this perfectly. “Well, good for her. People talk too much anyway.” She raises her hand and starts back down the driveway. “See y’all later.”

  And just like that, she’s gone.

  The bathroom is upstairs, which means I have to hop up the steps using my good leg. It takes forever. I can only do one step at a time, because every time I move, my ripped-up knee throbs. I jump up another step and wince as the ball of pain behind it pounds and pulses.

  I want Mom.

  My hands are holding the railing so tight that my wrists hurt. Another jump. And then a third. By now, my knee hurts so badly that I wonder if there is a tiny, separate heart on the inside of it, beating with pain. I put my head down on the railing.

  I want Mom. I want Mom. I want her arms around me, and her soft voice in my ear telling me everything is going to be all right, that all we have to do is put a warm washcloth over the torn-up skin and rub a little ointment on it and I’ll be good as new again.

  I clench the banister and hop up another step. And this time, as fire shoots through my kneecap, I realize that nothing will ever be as good as new. Not ever again. The thought of this forces a sound I’ve never heard before out from the back of my throat. It sounds like a goat bleating and a baby crying, and even though it scares me, I hang on to the railing and let it go.

  “Pippa!” Jack bursts into the house, staring up at me. He looks frightened, like he did at the car lot, but the sound in my chest just keeps coming and coming, like water from a tipped-over jar. Jack bolts up the steps and grabs me, sliding one arm around my back and the other underneath my legs. “It’s okay, Pippa,” he says, barreling up the rest of the steps and kicking open the bathroom door. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here.”