Strays Like Us

by Cecilia Galante

  “Nope.” I shook my head. “You can’t use the word ‘please.’ And raise your voice. You gotta sound like you really mean it, Delia. Try it again.”

  I went back over to the door. Open. Shut. I walked across the floor and tapped her on the shoulder. Delia hunched her shoulders at my touch and stared at the table. “Don’t do that anymore.”

  “Better!” I clapped my hands. “It’s so much better without ‘please’ in it! Okay, this time sit up straighter and try to say it a little bit louder. And look at me when you do it. Right in the eyes, like you’re not afraid.”

  “I think I’m good for today,” Delia said. “But thanks.”

  “Wait, what?” I knuckled her gently in the shoulder. “Come on, we’re just getting started!”

  “I know.” Delia hung her head. “I just don’t want to do any more right now.”

  I looked at her for a minute without saying anything. A big part of me wanted to push her, to tell her that the worst thing she could do right now was quit. But then I thought about how I’d felt on the unicycle. It was embarrassing, being so unskilled at something. Especially in front of someone else.

  “Okay. We can try again another time.” I nodded at the small wheel on the table in front of her. “You want to sand that? If you help, we can get these three things finished in half the time. Then we’ll go look at the sculpture in the corner.”

  “All right.” Delia took the sander and settled herself on one of the stools. She looked relieved and maybe a little bit grateful. “Thanks, Fred.”

  “For what?”

  “For, you know, wanting to help me.” Delia’s cheeks flushed.

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”

  She gave me a look, and I knew what I’d just said wasn’t true. At least not for her. It was a big deal. Maybe the biggest deal she’d encountered in a long, long time.

  I was about halfway through my candlestick when Delia asked me what my favorite subject in school was.

  “Science,” I said, without hesitation.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, really? I think science is one of the most boring things on the planet.”

  I snorted. “Science is a lot of things, Delia, but boring isn’t one of them.”

  “I always fall asleep in class.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “You’re missing out.”

  “On what?”

  “On everything! Like, you just mentioned planets. Did you know that Earth is the fifth-largest planet in the solar system? And that seventy percent of it is water?”

  “No.” Delia shook her head. “I didn’t know that.”

  “How about bones? You know anything about bones?”

  “Like our bones?”

  “Any bones,” I answered. “How about this? What’s the only animal on the planet with hollow ones?”

  “No idea.”

  “Birds!” I grinned. “How else do you think they’d get off the ground?”

  “Huh.” Delia looked at me curiously for a moment. “You know, you should think about joining the Middle School Quiz Bowl at school. You could compete in the science category.”

  “What’s the Quiz Bowl?”

  “Oh my gosh, it’s a huge deal. Everyone comes, even parents. There’s a trophy for the winning team and everything. They hold it every year, right before Christmas break.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s a huge quiz game for the middle school kids. All the questions are about science and math. There’s two teams and twelve rounds. Sometimes at the end of twelve rounds, the game gets tied, and it has to go to a lightning round. That’s what happened last year. The kids get really competitive, too. Probably because you have to try out for it to even get on a team.”

  “How do you try out?”

  “You have to take a test. Before Thanksgiving, I think. The three highest scorers in each subject get to play in the bowl. I’ve never done it before, but I think I’m going to take the one for math this year. I’m pretty good at math.”

  Delia’s eyes practically glittered as she spoke, and I could feel her excitement. It was weird, but I don’t think I realized how disappointed I’d been when I was called out of Mr. Poole’s Science Jeopardy game until just that moment. Coming so close to winning a class competition had been tough. Especially when I knew I was thisclose to taking the whole thing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It doesn’t really sound like my thing.”

  “Why not?” Delia rubbed her sander harder across her wheel. “You know that stuff you just told me about Earth and birds and stuff? Those are the exact kind of questions they ask in the bowl. You’d be perfect, Fred. I’m telling you. They’d love to have you on the team. Just think about it, okay?”

  “Okay,” I answered, knowing perfectly well that I wouldn’t. For starters, there was no way I was even going to be here to take the test or compete in the bowl.

  And I didn’t really care about any of that stuff right now anyway. There were bigger—and much more important—things I had to worry about.

  Of course, Delia didn’t have to know any of that.

  And I had no plans to tell her.

  Delia’s wheel was much smoother and cleaner than mine by the time we finished, and I might have been a little bit jealous if I wasn’t so relieved. Now I’d be able to show Margery that I’d actually done what she’d asked me to do and hadn’t just been messing around. It was almost four when we wiped the table down and set the sanded items on a clean cloth for Margery to inspect.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said as we headed over to the corner to look at the sculpture, “but you should probably go. After last night …”

  Delia’s face fell. “I know. I was thinking about that. Margery probably never wants to see me again after I lied to her.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just … she got real nervous when she realized your parents didn’t know you were here. I guess she just doesn’t want to be responsible if something happens. She’s got enough on her plate right now, taking care of me.”

  I closed my mouth quickly. I’d gone and done it again. Blurted out something totally personal without even thinking about it. I braced myself, waiting for Delia to ask me what I meant, why Margery was even taking care of me at all. But she didn’t.

  “Yeah, okay,” she said instead. “What if I left, though, and then came back? If you wanted me to, I mean. I could just have my mom drop me off. She wouldn’t care. And then Margery would know for sure that my parents were okay with it.”

  “That might work.” I shrugged. “You want to come back? Like for dinner or something?”

  “YES!” Delia practically shouted.

  I laughed. “Okay. Stay here for a minute. I’ll go in and call Margery and ask her.”

  “You think she’ll say no?” Delia winced.

  “I doubt it.” I threw my coat on over my shoulders. “She likes you.”

  “She does?”

  “Oh yeah.” I yanked open the door. “She told me last night that you were a cool cat.”

  “She said that?” Delia’s eyes got big. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.” I nodded at Toby and scruffed him under the ears. “You be a good boy now. Don’t jump on Delia. I’ll be right back.”

  I could hear the phone ringing from the front porch. “All right, all right, I’m coming.” I shut the door behind me and trotted into the kitchen. It was probably Margery, checking in to see how everything was going. I grabbed the receiver as it rang a final time and pressed it to my ear.

  “Everything is totally fine,” I said, sinking down into one of the metal chairs. “And Toby is behaving much better, too.”

  “Um, hello?” It wasn’t Margery.

  “Oh.” I sat up straight. “I’m sorry. Hello?”

  “Fred?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi, honey! It’s Carmella, from Children and Youth Services! How are you?”

  I stood up quickly and walked ov
er to the window. “I’m fine. Is something wrong?”

  “No, no,” Carmella said. “I’m just calling to see how things are going.”

  “Oh.” I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “How’s Margery? You two getting along?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great.” A pause. “Well, I wanted to touch base with you about a few things. Your mom’s hearing will take place in about three weeks. And from what we’ve heard, she’s planning to cooperate.”

  “Which means what?”

  “If she admits to what she did, she’ll get to go home. Telling the truth, combined with the fact that she will have already spent time in jail, will probably mean she only gets something like probation.” Carmella paused. “And it’ll give her the chance to bring you home.”

  My head nodded up and down like a jack-in-the-box. So far everything Mom had told me was adding up, except the part where she’d have to say she was guilty of stealing. It wasn’t like Mom to lie about anything, but if that was what she had to do in order to “cooperate” and get me back, I guessed it wasn’t a big deal. It was only a little white lie anyway.

  “They won’t give her a hard time, will they?” I asked. “I mean, about me going back to live with her?”

  “There will be a dependency hearing for that,” Carmella said. “We’ll all have to be there: me, you, Margery, and your mom. It won’t be in an actual courtroom or anything. But there will be a judge. And we’ll all have to tell him what’s been going on and how your mom is doing now. Then he’ll make a decision about whether or not you can go live with her again.”

  “Wait, there’s a chance she won’t get me back? How can that be?” I stood up straighter, my spine as rigid as a pole.

  “Oh, Fred, honey. It depends on what the judge sees and hears from us. Especially from you. He’ll want to make sure you’re being taken care of. Can you understand that?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t care about any judge. I didn’t care who he was or how important a job he held, or even that he had the power to keep Mom and me apart. I was as strong as he was. And if Mom was going to have to tell a little white lie to get back to me, I’d do the same thing. As long as we weren’t lying to each other, nothing else mattered. I’d already promised her that I’d do whatever it took to make sure we stayed together. And I would. I’d go in there and paint the prettiest picture possible—so pretty that even Carmella would shake her head and wonder why we’d ever been separated in the first place.

  “Fred?” Carmella said. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah. Is that everything?”

  “That’s everything,” Carmella said. “Unless there’s anything you want to talk about some more?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. It was good to touch base again, honey.You take care of yourself, you hear? I’ll call back next week to see how things are going.”

  “Okay.”

  “See you, Fred.”

  “See you.”

  I hung up the phone and stood there for a long time without moving. The tree branches in Mr. Carder’s yard made shadows on the kitchen wall, their long, spindly arms and fingers swaying back and forth like a ghost waving goodbye.

  I stood very still, watching them reach farther and farther as the sun began to set. When they faded again into nothing, I walked out of the house.

  I couldn’t remember anymore why I’d grabbed Mom’s jean jacket to wear that day, but I did recall putting my hand inside the front pocket, feeling a small bottle, and pulling it out. I could see through the orange plastic that there weren’t any pills inside, but that didn’t stop the panicky feeling from spreading across my chest. More and more, I’d been spotting empty bottles around the apartment: on Mom’s night table, wedged into the medicine cabinet, in the door of the fridge.

  “Fr—” Mom stopped cold as she came out of the bathroom, a hairbrush in her hands. Her eyes darted to the bottle and then up to me again, quick as lightning. Panic flashed across her face and then disappeared again. “Put that back, honey.”

  I held her eyes as I slid the bottle back into the pocket of her jacket. “Another one?”

  She reached up and started brushing her hair again. “It’s just Gwyneth’s, from work. She gave it to me so I could refill her prescription while she’s away on vacation.” She didn’t look at me as she talked. Electric static crackled through the brush. Her face was as pale as cotton.

  “Mom.”

  She kept brushing. “What?”

  “It’s really Gwyneth’s?”

  “Yes!” Still no eye contact. “Look at the label.”

  She was right. The label did have Gwyneth’s name on it. But the date said the prescription was a year old. “The label doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Of course it does!” Mom’s eyes darted across the floor. “It means it belongs to Gwyneth.”

  “You swear?” I hesitated. “To the moon and back?”

  The brush paused halfway down—so quickly that if I hadn’t been watching her so closely, I would have missed it. “Yes,” she said. “Now come on, honey. We’ve gotta go. If I’m late for work again today, Mr. McCormick will make my life more of a nightmare than it already is.”

  We walked the three blocks together holding hands the way we always did, and when we turned off Broad Street, Mom started singing one of my favorite songs, but something was off, and I could feel it, deep in my bones, where I kept things to myself. I knew what empty bottles meant. And I knew what outdated prescriptions meant, too. Still, I tried to convince myself otherwise. Mom had never lied when I’d asked her to swear on something. And swearing to the moon and back was serious business, something neither of us took lightly. It was a promise to tell the truth no matter what. No matter how hard.

  It was the first time in my life that I didn’t believe her.

  “She said no.”

  Delia’s face fell as I gave her the news. She put her phone on the table and stared at me. I waited to feel bad for disappointing her, or even to feel guilty about lying, but I didn’t feel either one. I didn’t feel anything at all. I just wanted to be alone.

  “She did?” Delia’s whimper was back. “Really? How come?”

  I shrugged, pretending to busy myself with the sculpture in the corner. “She just said it wasn’t a good night. We have a lot going on.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, Delia. That’s just what she said.” I didn’t mean to sound impatient, but the look on Delia’s face told me I wasn’t doing a very good job. “I’m sorry. Another time, though, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Delia looked back down at her phone and tapped the screen. “So I was looking at the school’s website while you were gone, and there’s like five or six pages of sample questions for the Quiz Bowl that I thought …”

  But I wasn’t listening. “Actually, you should probably just leave right now. Margery’s coming home early. If she catches you here again, we’re both going to be in trouble.”

  “Oh.” Delia withdrew her hand slowly. “Okay.” She shoved her phone into her back pocket and looked down at the floor. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around, then.”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t look at her as she walked across the room and put on her coat. And I only nodded when she said goodbye. But when I heard the door open and close behind her, I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly that I saw little pinpoints of light behind my lids. They zoomed this way and that way and then …

  “Fred?”

  My eyes flew open. I hadn’t even heard the doorknob turn. “Yeah?”

  “Did I do something?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Delia’s head poked through the door. Her eyebrows were raised like sideways parentheses. “You can tell me if I did. I’d rather know.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “YES!” I turned on her then. “JUST GO, ALL RIGHT?”

  She shut the door quickly. This time, it
stayed closed.

  The sculpture loomed in front of me like something wounded. Something beautiful and ugly and so deeply hurt that just then, looking at it again, I knew there was no possibility of ever putting it back together. Delia and I were kidding ourselves to think we could do anything that would make a difference, especially in a day or two. There was just no way.

  My eyes searched the tools on the wall behind it until they fell on a large wrench. It was at least as long as my arm, maybe even longer. I took it down off the hook. It was heavy. I had to hold it carefully with both hands.

  And then I smashed it against Margery’s sculpture. Once and then again and again and again until the very last spring fell to the floor, bounced and skittered into a corner, and rolled to a stop.

  I was out front, holding Toby by his leash, when Margery pulled up on her motorcycle. I knew I couldn’t prevent her from going into the workshop at some point, but I planned to stall her as long as I could. It wasn’t quite dark yet, and the stretch of sky overhead was the color of a bruise. Toby barked when he saw Margery and kept barking as she parked the bike and turned off the engine.

  “Hey there!” Margery grinned broadly as she took off her helmet and hung it on the handle of the bike. “How’s things?”

  “Pretty good.” I leaned forward as Toby strained toward Margery, instead of pulling back on the rope. I’d figured out he didn’t fight as hard when I did that, and it saved my arm from being yanked out of the socket. “You get that leash for Toby?”

  “You bet I did.” Margery opened a sack on the back of the bike and pulled out a bright blue cord. “This one has a soft collar, too, so it won’t bite into his neck.” She came over and showed me. “This loop attaches to the clothesline so he can run back and forth and up and down without anything yanking at him. It’s just temporary.” She bent down and scruffed Toby around the neck. “How does that sound, little guy? Huh?”

  She led Toby over to the clothesline and clipped the leash to it. We both stood there for a moment, watching him race up and down the length of the yard. Despite my nerves, I couldn’t help but smile. He looked so happy.