Stealing Our Way Home

by Cecilia Galante

  My heart plummets into my stomach as he keeps rummaging around inside the pillowcase. “What’s that?” I ask as I find my voice again.

  “Just a few things I—” His forehead creases. “Damn it.”

  “What?”

  Dad closes his eyes. “Nothing. I just … I had a—you know, something to cover my face. I must’ve dropped it when I was rushing around the house, grabbing my stuff.”

  What stuff? I want to ask him but I can’t. I’m too scared.

  Dad gets out of the car and opens the trunk. I can hear him tossing things around—Plish! Plam! Plunk!—and then the heavy, final thud of the trunk slamming shut again. He opens his side of the car and slides back in, holding some kind of silky blue thing.

  “Dad, please.” I can feel a sob in my throat.

  He shoves the blue thing into his pocket and reaches inside the car, gripping the sides of my face with both hands. “You get in the backseat of the car and stay there until I come out.” His fingers tighten around the back of my head. “I never should’ve asked you to come, buddy. I’m sorry. Stay here. I’ll take care of everything, okay? I promise. Just sit tight.”

  And before I can blink, he’s slammed the car door and disappeared.

  During dinner, I find out three things about Shelby that I didn’t know before:

  1. She’s allergic to eggs and shellfish.

  2. She met Nibs the first day she got here, after an exploding oven sidelined Shelby’s aunt and uncle, who were supposed to pick her up at the airport, and Nibs offered to go instead.

  3. Her mother and father (who she calls Momma and Pops) are getting a divorce.

  The eggs, shellfish, and exploding oven topics don’t seem to bother her much. But when the subject of Momma and Pops comes up, Shelby stops chewing and drops her eyes. Her smile fades as she mumbles something I can’t hear.

  “What was that?” Nibs asks.

  Shelby tugs at her earlobe. “I said that’s why I’m here,” she says to her plate. “You know, in Vermont. Instead of Texas.”

  Now Nibs stops chewing. “Because of the divorce?”

  Shelby nods.

  Nibs sidles a glance at me, and I wonder if she wants to ask Shelby what her parents’ divorce has to do with her being here, too. Maybe they all needed space? Or maybe Shelby just wanted to get away for a little while?

  But Nibs doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead, she stands up, and with the tip of her shoe, shoves a log farther into the fire. “Sometimes it’s good to get away from home,” she says. “Being in a new place can help you see things differently. Give you a new perspective on just about anything.” Red sparks fly up like miniature fireflies, and a sizzling sound drifts out from underneath the logs. It’s almost dark, except for a few pale clouds on the horizon, which sit like empty benches in the sky. The crickets have started to chirp, and somewhere in the distance an owl hoots.

  Nibs looks up from the fire. “Who’s ready for s’mores?” she asks, reaching for our plates. I nod and grin as Shelby claps her hands. Nibs laughs. “You two stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Shelby’s sitting on a blue rock three over from mine. She looks over at me as Nibs goes inside and twirls a strand of hair around her finger. “So what grade are you going into?”

  I hold up four fingers.

  “Fourth?”

  I nod.

  “That means you’re how old?”

  I hold up ten fingers.

  She raises her eyebrows. “You’re only ten?”

  I nod.

  “Wow. You must be smart. I didn’t start fourth grade until I was eleven.” She rolls her eyes. “Momma held me back in first grade. I didn’t take too well to the teacher.”

  I stare at her flip-flops, wondering what “didn’t take too well to the teacher” means and where her pink boots are. I wish I could ask her if I could try them on. See what they feel like. I’ve never worn shoes with heels.

  Shelby squints at me, as if trying to see something up close. “You ever talk out loud?”

  I shake my head.

  “To anyone?” she presses. “Ever?”

  In response, I reach around and pull out my notebook.

  “Ohhhh, you write stuff down?”

  I nod.

  “Is that what you’re goin’ to do in school?”

  I nod.

  “Your teachers okay with that?”

  I shrug. I don’t know if they’ll be okay with it. This has never happened before.

  “Well.” Shelby looks into the fire. “I guess they’ll have to be, won’t they? It’s not like they can force you to talk.” Her face tightens in the light of the flames. Shadows flicker across her neck and arms like camouflage.

  “Graham crackers, chocolate bars, and marshmallows, anyone?” Nibs bangs open the screen door and reappears with her arms full. For the next hour, as darkness settles over us like a blanket, we toast our marshmallows on sticks, stuff ourselves with s’mores, and stare up at the stars. Nibs lights her pipe and points out the Big Dipper, and tells Shelby about Mr. Thurber and how Mom saved him as a little baby heron back before we were even born, but after that it’s mostly quiet. For a long time, the only sounds are the crackle of the fire and the soft lapping of water against the shore. I can feel my eyelids starting to get heavy when suddenly, out of nowhere, Nibs says, “You know, I moved up here from the South too. Long time ago.”

  My eyes fly open. I remember Mom telling us once that Nibs was originally from South Carolina, but that was all she ever said about it.

  “Why’d you move?” Shelby asks.

  Nibs opens and closes her lips around the stem of her pipe. It reminds me of a fish, gasping for breath. Even in the shadows, I can see her eyes change, like a shade being drawn. “I needed to go somewhere and start fresh,” she says slowly. “Get a new perspective on things, like I said before.”

  I arrange my arms behind my head so that I’m more comfortable. This is the first time I’ve ever heard Nibs talk about anything personal. Actually, except for the fact that she’s a teacher and likes to garden, I don’t really know anything about her personal life at all.

  “And did you?” Shelby asks.

  Nibs wrinkles her nose. “Did I what?”

  “Get a new perspective on things,” Shelby says.

  Nibs pulls again on her pipe. Tiny puffs of smoke drift from the corners of her mouth, and the clean, spicy scent mingles among the firewood. “It’s been thirty years,” she says finally. Her voice is soft. “I guess if it hasn’t changed by now, it never will.”

  Shelby nibbles on a nail. “So is that a yes or a no?”

  Nibs smiles. She stands up and winces as something in her knee cracks and pops. “Maybe it’s a little bit of both.” She turns her pipe over, tapping the bottom of it gently so that the contents spill into the fire. “Well, ladies, it’s time to turn in.” She points at me. “I promised your father I’d have you in bed by nine.” She looks at her watch. “It’s a quarter of. We have fifteen minutes to keep me an honest woman.”

  “Good night,” Shelby says, waving. “And thanks. I really appreciate you askin’ me.”

  “We’ll do it again,” Nibs says. “Sleep well.”

  It’s darker inside our house than it is outside. “Lord,” Nibs says, feeling along the wall for a light switch, “you should try to at least keep one light on when you leave the house, Pippa. Especially at night. It’s like a tomb in here.”

  I hold my breath as the sound of her clicking the switch echoes throughout the room. “This light doesn’t work?” she asks finally. I shake my head. “How about the kitchen?” She steps carefully around the furniture, holding her arms out in front of her, and then flips on the kitchen switch. Nothing.

  “Pippa?” Her voice floats through the dark house. “Sweets, why don’t any the lights work in the house?”

  I shrug.

  “You’ve probably got a blown fuse.” Nibs opens a cupboard and takes out a glass. “That pipe always dries my th
roat out. Let me get myself a nice glass of water and then I’ll go downstairs and check the fuse box.”

  I stand in the doorway, watching her make her way over to the kitchen sink. A half moon shines through the window just above it, illuminating the faucets and the silver basin. Nibs turns the handle on the right, but nothing comes out. She frowns and tries the other one. Nothing.

  She turns around, staring at me through the watery darkness. “Pippa,” she says. “The water’s not working either.” I look down at my shoes. I didn’t know the water wasn’t working, but I feel guilty for some reason, like I’ve done something bad.

  “Honey,” she says, coming toward me. “You’ve got no electricity and no water. What’s going on?”

  I already have one leg over the front seat of the car as Dad gets out, and I drop down into the back of the car as he shuts the door. BAM! I jump at the noise and press my hands over my ears. Squeeze my eyes shut. Will not hearing or seeing anything in the next ten minutes mean it won’t happen? That it isn’t real? I arrange myself inside the narrow space between the seat and the floor and curl up into a ball. Is Dad inside yet? What will he say when he goes in? How long will it take?

  “Mom.” Her name comes out of my mouth in a sob. In all these months, I’ve never once talked to her out loud. Why would I? She’s not here. Reverend Jim told us at the funeral that she was with God, waiting for us in heaven, but I’m pretty sure heaven is just some made-up place that people tell you is there to try to make sense out of everything and keep things all nice and pretty. Sort of like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Stupid, dumb stories that people created to try to explain things they don’t have the slightest idea about. The only thing I know for sure about Mom is that she’s not here with us anymore, which means there’s a good possibility I’m just talking to the wind. Still, right now, it’s all I’ve got.

  “Mom. You’ve got to help me. Please. He’s doing this for you and I don’t know how to make him stop. Please help me. Please show me what to do.”

  I wait, holding my breath. The air inside the car is stifling, the seat upholstery itchy against my face. He wouldn’t pull out a gun, would he? He doesn’t even a have a gun! Mom was the one who taught me how to take a hook out of a fish’s mouth, because he couldn’t stand to look at them that way, flopping around on the dock with a piece of metal stuck inside their cheek. Maybe he has a fake gun. Something that looks just real enough so they can’t tell the difference.

  “Mom.” My voice cracks. “Please.”

  I don’t know what I’m waiting for exactly, or what I hope might happen, but nothing comes. No brilliant idea, no comforting message, not even a feeling—an inkling—that she’s heard me.

  Instead, Ben pops into my head. I think about how much I miss him. And how mad I was when he said that we were still the only big news in town. I think about the way his face looked when I called him a big, fat idiot, and how I told myself I didn’t care, because at that minute I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me. But what I didn’t realize until just this moment is that hurting Ben yesterday was a hurt on top of a whole other line of hurts—ignoring him all these months, not calling him back, even brushing him off at the funeral, when he tried to shake my hand outside of the church. I didn’t mean to do that, either; it just happened. Calling him an idiot yesterday was the last straw. Even I know that. Which means that when we start school on Wednesday, I’m going to be totally on my own. For the first time since second grade. No Mom. No Ben. No nothing. I’ve got nothing left.

  Suddenly, I’m pushing my way out of the car and racing across the parking lot toward the Middlebury Bank.

  The front door is slightly ajar, which means that I don’t make any kind of noise going inside. There is a tiny foyer just inside the door, almost like the one in the funeral parlor, all done up in rich red carpeting. A globe-sized lamp with gold spindles coming out on all sides hangs from the ceiling, and a full-length mirror has been arranged on the wall behind it. I catch a reflection of myself—wrinkled blue T-shirt, khaki shorts, chin-length, raggedy brown hair—and for a split second, my breath catches in the back of my throat. Is that really me? Am I really here?

  Then I hear Dad’s voice. “Yes, ma’am. That’s right.”

  It’s coming from the room directly to my right. My heart is throbbing in my ears, but I take a step back slowly, trying to angle myself behind the wall that leads into the room while trying to see into it at the same time. All I can make out is the floor, which looks like white marble of some kind, and three large windows with white drapes along the far wall.

  “You can read it again, if you need to.” Dad’s voice drifts out of the room again. It’s muffled, but it sounds firm and relaxed at the same time, as if he’s at Lowe’s talking to a salesman about lawnmowers or potting soil.

  I sidle a little to the right. Before I faint, I just need to make sure …

  His back is to me, but I can see some kind of blue mask pulled over his head, fastened with bits of Velcro. Tufts of hair stick out from the bottom of it like strange fingers. A lady with blonde hair and red lipstick is stuffing stacks of bills into the pillowcase. She does not look scared. On the contrary, her lips are pursed tight, and she’s squinting her eyes at Dad. She moves slowly, deliberately, as if she has all the time in the world.

  “Hurry up,” Dad says. “I don’t have all day. Let’s go.”

  The lady clenches her jaw and tosses the money into the bag a little faster. The cubicle next to her is empty. That must be where the man with the limp sits. I glance behind me suddenly, looking for him. What if he just went to get a coffee somewhere? What if he walks through that front door again in the next two seconds? What will Dad do then? What will I do?

  “Come on.” Dad takes a step toward the lady. “Move it!”

  The woman pauses, giving Dad another dirty look. “You won’t get away with this,” she says coolly. In her hand is a stack of bills wrapped with a blue cuff.

  “I didn’t ask you to say anything,” Dad says tersely. “Just keep going.”

  The lady bites her lower lip, shoves the money with the blue cuff in the bag, and pushes it across the counter. “That’s everything.”

  Dad grabs the pillowcase and raises his left hand. My stomach flip-flops when I realize there’s no gun, and every muscle inside my body freezes. “Thank you for your time,” he says. “You have a good day, now.”

  He keeps walking backward, just staring at the lady. She keeps glaring at Dad, as if daring him to try anything else.

  Dad walks backward until he reaches the foyer. Then he nearly falls over me as he lurches for the door. That’s when I see the mask up close. It’s my Batman one, from upstairs in the attic.

  “Jesus,” he hisses, grabbing my arm. “You practically gave me a heart attack. Let’s go!”

  He holds on to me as we race down the steps, past the rhododendron bushes and the neat sidewalks, across the wide, smooth driveway, letting go only when we reach the car. It’s at that moment, two seconds before we get into the vehicle, when I’m the most terrified, sure that the guy who works there will reappear suddenly on the sidewalk, or the woman will come bursting out of the building, or a police car will come screaming into the driveway.

  But nothing happens.

  It’s as quiet as the lake in the morning.

  Still as a funeral parlor.

  And when Dad shoves me into the front seat and tosses the pillowcase on the floor next to me, I realize that another moment has gone by and still nothing has happened. He rips the Batman mask off his face and gets into the front seat. The car roars to life, and he backs up so fast that I fall forward, catching myself with both hands against the seat, and then tip back once more as he presses down on the accelerator. We shoot out onto the street and fly down the length of it, pausing only to make a sharp right-hand turn.

  It takes us five minutes to get back on the highway and for Dad to settle the car in between a tractor trailer and a green Jeep Cherokee. He’s going
at least ninety miles an hour, but he tells me to take my seat belt off and crawl into the back and watch for cop cars. I do what he says, plastering myself against the back windshield, frantically looking, but I don’t see any cops. Not a single one.

  Ten minutes later, we reach the exit that will lead us back home.

  The traffic is thinning out by now. The light is fading from the sky. In the distance, the green mountains loom like giant shoulders. Somehow, my heart is beating more slowly. My breathing is back to normal.

  Still no cops. In fact, hardly any traffic at all, except for an old, rusted pickup with an enormous woman behind the wheel, and a blue Mercedes driven by an old man in a straw hat. The woman, who keeps looking at something down in her lap, barely notices as we fly by, but the old man peers out his window at me. I shrink down, sure that he knows, positive he’s a plainclothes policeman.

  After thirty more minutes, Dad pulls off at an exit called Weston. He glances at me in the mirror as he drives the car down a narrow, poorly lit road for a while, then steers it into a Friendly’s parking lot.

  “What’re you doing?” I ask, glancing at the restaurant out the window.

  “I’m starving,” he says, catching my eye. “How about a decent meal before we head home?”

  I stare at him dumbly. “You … you want to eat?”

  He nods. His eyes still have a little bit of that wild look to them, as if some part of him is missing. As if something has been torn out. “You’re not hungry?”

  No, I’m not hungry. In fact, I don’t know if I’ll ever be hungry again.

  “Didn’t.… ” I stare at the floor, as if searching for the words down there. “Didn’t Pippa make sandwiches?”

  “I want a real meal,” Dad says. “No offense to Pippa, of course. I haven’t had a decent, sit-down dinner in months. And neither have you. Let’s go in there and get ourselves some meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy and big ice cream sundaes for dessert. What do you say?”

  The thought of meatloaf makes me queasy. And yet the idea of being able to sit down in front of a plate that doesn’t have a peanut butter sandwich or a hot dog on it doesn’t seem so terrible all of a sudden. “What if there’s someone in there?”