by Susan Lubner
“Why do you have to be so colorful?” I asked. Charlotte must have smiled when I said that. Her eyes turned into two sparkly green lines before she covered them up with the dark glasses.
“No one in a million trillion years is going to recognize me under all this,” she said, staring into the mirror. “I wouldn’t even know I was me.”
“We have to go,” Joss said. “It’s nine thirty. We have to set up.”
Charlotte lifted the sunglasses off her eyes and propped them on her head. She pulled me into a hug. “I’m going to miss you a lot,” she said to me. “Thank you for everything.”
“I’m going to miss having a roommate,” I said.
“Don’t forget about me!” Joss threw her arms around both of us.
“NEVER!” Charlotte and I shouted.
“And I won’t ever forget you, either, Smoky.” Charlotte broke away from our hug. “Look!” she said, pointing at the pile of Cozy Cat blankets. Smoky had curled up in a ball and was snoozing on top of the stack.
“How cute is that?” Joss said.
I took some pictures with my phone. “This is awesome publicity,” I said.
Charlotte scooched down and kissed Smoky’s head.
“So, Smoky is staying here?” Joss asked.
I explained how Charlotte and I had discussed Smoky last night because I wasn’t positive if she had considered him her cat or mine. “You found him first,” Charlotte had told me. “Plus, he’s used to it here.”
I thought that was really nice of Charlotte to say that. I wasn’t entirely sure she was right about him being my cat first or not, but she was right that it was probably best for Smoky not to be uprooted again. That counted the most. Plus, there was the bus ride home to consider. Would he be allowed on? Would he need a ticket?
“Fudge and Waffles would miss him,” Joss said.
“And Reuben?” I asked. We cracked up because Reuben wouldn’t miss Smoky one bit, and we all knew it.
Joss and I gave Charlotte one last hug before we left. “Don’t miss your bus,” I told her.
“I won’t,” she said. “I’m leaving here at ten thirty.” She pulled the blankets out of the closet and folded them up, laying the afghan across the bottom of my bed and the other on top of the books piled on my desk.
When I closed the door to the apartment and we booked it to the diner, my heart rolled into a tight, heavy ball. It stayed that way, taking up too much space for a while.
By ten o’clock, there was already a crowd in front of the diner. A table was set up on the sidewalk with free hot chocolate, coffee, and Bibi’s awesome sticky buns. At the end of the table, far from the food and drinks, were the cat blankets and some shelter decals that we had fanned out.
The door of Franny’s van was open, and a bunch of carriers full of cats and kittens were on display. Joss and I had put a cat blanket inside a few of them so everyone could see how perfect they were. The cats looked cozy curled up together on the knitted squares. A few kneaded their little paws into the soft stiches and purred. Franny had put a blanket over her shoulder and held one of the bigger cats up against it.
There was a long line for the blankets and one almost as long to see the cats.
“Look how precious,” Ms. Santorelli said, peering into the van. She was one of the first to arrive and had ordered two cat blankets—one for her sister’s cat who lived way up north in the part of Maine everyone called the County, and a second one for her own cat in case the yellow sweater Joss had knit didn’t work out.
“The cat blankets are a hit!” Joss’s mom said. She was there with Elle. “Good for you, girls.”
Mr. Sols poured himself a cup of hot chocolate. “I think we might need to take one of these beautiful cats home,” his wife said to him, petting the one Franny was holding.
“Yes,” Elle said to her. “Do it, they need homes.”
Even though we were super busy, I kept looking over toward the alley for Charlotte. A half hour into our event, I glanced up just in time to see the back of her. I thought I saw her hand wave slightly, right before she turned out of sight.
I was surprised by the panic I felt filling up the back of my throat. I guess until right then I hadn’t let myself think too much about what could happen when she finally went home. My brain was a knot of spaghetti. Charlotte promised she’d never tell where she’d been hiding, but what if she had no choice? What if those four green leaves had been lucky? And now what if, just like Charlotte, that luck was gone, too?
CHAPTER
24
JOSS RECOUNTED THE CAT BLANKET MONEY FOR the tenth time. “We have more than two hundred dollars already,” she said as she stuffed the bills back in the money jar. “Some people are just giving us donations and don’t even want a blanket.”
“Score!” Cooper said to her. He shoved a sticky bun in his mouth.
“Hey. That’s your third one,” Joss told him.
He shrugged his shoulders and took another bite. “Is there a limit?”
“Yes. And you reached it two buns ago.”
Mom poked her head outside. “Looks like all’s well out here. You need anything?” she asked.
Maybe it was the way the sunlight hit her face, or it was because of the uneasiness I was feeling about Charlotte being gone, but Mom looked extra tired. She squinted at me. “How you doing on coffee and stuff?” She pushed the door open with her shoulder and waddled over. Mom carefully dumped a plateful of sticky buns onto the half-empty tray. “Here’s the last of them,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Tired.” She smiled and went back inside. I felt a pang of guilt. If it wasn’t for the event, I’d be working right now instead of her. Maybe Joss should handle everything out here so I could take Mom’s place and she could go upstairs and rest.
Pretty soon the free refreshments had run out and the crowd had dwindled to just a few people. All the cats and kittens were back in their carriers inside the van.
“Look here! We have six applications for adoptions!” Franny waved a fistful of papers at me.
Anyone who wanted to adopt had to apply first and be interviewed, kind of like they would apply for a job. Franny first made sure they would be good pet owners before she’d let an animal go.
“I am super proud of the two of you. Get over here.” She pulled us into a hug.
As Franny smooshed the two of us up against the itchy plaid cape she was wearing, I was thinking there had been a lot of hugging going on today. Sad hugs when we said good-bye to Charlotte, and now happy hugs. I was feeling somewhere in between sad and happy… glad our event went well, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Charlotte. Especially with her face staring at me all morning from the poster on the diner door.
Franny un-hugged us. “You two are dynamos! Now which one of you is going to head back to the shelter with me and help unload all these cats?”
“I will!” Joss announced.
“You can come, too, if you want,” Franny said to me.
“I’m going to help out in the diner. My mom needs a break,” I said.
After Franny and Joss left, I folded up the table and leaned it against the outside of the diner. I carried in the empty tray and thermoses. I saw Mr. Sols and his wife eating at one of the tables and waved.
“How’d it go?” Dad asked.
“Really, really good. We made almost three hundred dollars!”
“Anybody take home a cat?” Sid asked me. I told him about the possible adoptions.
“That’s fantastic,” Dad said. He was busy at the grill. “You going to help bus, now?”
“Yup.” I dropped the stuff by the sink and washed my hands. “Where’s Mom?” I asked, heading back out front to clear tables.
“Isn’t she up by the register?” Dad ducked his head so he could see through the open space above the griddle. “There she is,” he said. “You okay, honey?” She was sitting at the far end of the counter on a stool. “You go home. Lizzy’s ta
king over now.”
“Yes, okay.” Mom smiled at him, but I could tell something wasn’t right.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, running to her. Bibi must have noticed because she came over, too.
“Stella,” Bibi said, “you feeling all right?” But Mom didn’t answer. She had her hands on her belly.
“Henry,” Mom whispered. “Oh,” she said, and moaned. Her eyes were glassy, and I saw a tear slide down her cheek. “The baby is coming.”
“Mom!” I hollered. “DAD!” I screamed. My father looked up, and I heard the spatula clank when it hit the floor. Then Mom groaned. Her face was all distorted. “Oh,” she said again. But this time it was much louder.
“Call 9-1-1!” my father yelled to Sid. He raced over to Mom and me. “All right, Stella, all right. It’s all going to be all right,” he kept repeating. He put his arm around her and brought his face close to hers.
Sid rushed over with a glass of ice water. “Here you go.”
Mom shook her head no before she moaned again. I stuck my hand out for her to hold, but instead, she leaned forward and held her belly tighter. “It’s coming. Now. Right now!”
People in the restaurant were staring. A couple of them had smiles on their faces. Because they didn’t know. They didn’t know the baby wasn’t supposed to be coming now. They didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to feel happy and excited. But most of the faces knew not to smile. The ones with panic in their eyes. The ones who knew us, and that this baby was coming six weeks too soon.
“No, no, no, no…,” my mother whispered. “No. It’s not time.” Mom looked at me. She was breathing heavily.
I heard a siren. It sounded far away, but in minutes it was right outside. The blue cruiser lights flashed inside the diner. The light turned Dad’s face blue. Just like last time. Officer Hodge and Sergeant Blumstein burst through the door.
“The ambulance is almost here,” Hodge told my father. “Don’t you worry, Stella. We’re going to make sure everything is all right.” He saw that my mother was shivering. He took his jacket off and dropped it over her shoulders.
A bunch of customers jumped up. They helped Bibi and Sid pull tables and chairs out of the way to make room for the stretcher someone would be rolling in any second.
Mrs. Sols kneeled next to Mom. “Breathe, Stella, breathe,” she said. “That’s it, dear.” Bibi pulled the elastic off her ponytail and tied back my mother’s hair, which had fallen across her face.
Dad and Mr. Sols steadied her as she slid off the stool and brought herself to the floor. She was crying.
“MOM!” I screamed. Another siren was blaring. This time, I knew what it meant. This time, I knew what was coming. I felt my legs shake, and I grabbed the edge of the counter.
“Let them through,” Dad told me when the EMTs arrived. Bibi moved me back and out of the way. “Help is here,” Dad said to my mother. “It’s all going to be okay.” His voice cracked. I knew it had because he wasn’t sure that it would be okay. How could it be? I didn’t want to watch them wheel her away. I still hadn’t forgotten the first time I had had to see that. So I did the only thing I could think of. I ran.
Out the diner, past the flashing ambulance, down the alley, I raced up the stairs to my room, and closed myself inside my closet. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my back against the wall. My heart pounded, and I took big gulps of air to stop myself from crying. I didn’t want to make noise if anyone came looking for me. I didn’t want to be found. I should have known this was coming. I should have begged Charlotte to stay.
I hopped to my knees and swiped my clothes to the side. I tapped the flashlight on my phone. Where had she drawn herself? I scanned the little hole where Smoky was hiding. I looked from one end of the wall to another. I double- and triple-checked the bedroom window. Where was she?
There! A teeny pair of hands gripped the sill. A few spikes of her red hair. Two slivers of emerald green peeking out between her fingers. I leaned in, shining my flashlight closer to the wall. I checked for the four-leaf clover tattoo above her tiny thumb. You can still think of it as that if you want to, she had told me. But it wasn’t there. I wanted it to be. I wanted her to protect me. I wanted her to promise me that my mom would never leave me again the way she had after the accident.
My phone buzzed. A text from Dad.
In ambulance with Mom. Where’d you go? Find Bibi. She’ll take you to the hospital. She’s waiting in diner. Xxx
I wasn’t going to the hospital. I was staying here.
I tried not to think about the last time Mom had gone in an ambulance. The last time I had been in a hospital was the night we had lost the baby. But that night, I had lost something else, too.
For months after the accident, Mom didn’t care about anything anymore. Not the diner. Not Dad. Not me. I wanted it to stop. I wanted a sign that things would be all right… a promise that all the awfulness would go away. More than a pink sky or a frozen puddle, more than anything in the world, I had just wanted my mother.
I shined the light on my closet wall. My parents smiled at me. Charlotte had done a great job drawing Waffles and his one eye. As if on cue, I heard him bark and scratch at the closet door. I let him in and hugged him close to me. He licked the tears on my face.
The light from my room was enough to brighten the inside of my closet. I saw the mural again, all at once. It was me, Mom, and Dad—the cats and Waffles. Charlotte hadn’t drawn them, but I saw Bibi and Sid, too. They were there, like always. It was sunny-side up eggs, stacks of pancakes, and happy customers. Our porch in the sky. No car accident. No lost baby. No mother who slept all day. It was just the good parts.
My heart stretched so big it seemed like all the little things inside it could come spilling out. I didn’t need to depend on luck that everything would be okay. I just needed to look around me to know it already was.
I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, and the door in the hallway swing open. Waffles barked.
“LIZZY! You here?” Bibi hollered. I covered up Charlotte’s art with my clothes.
“I’m here!” I shouted. “In here.” Bibi came into my room. She didn’t even ask why I was sitting in a dark closet with my dog.
She reached down and touched my face. “Hey, sugar,” she said.
“Can I go see my mom, now?” I asked.
“Of course you can.”
Then she held her hand out and I took it.
CHAPTER
25
MOM COUNTED OUT CHANGE TO A CUSTOMER AND knocked the cash drawer shut with her hip. Even with all the talking, order shouting, and register ringing, Ava slept on in the baby sling against my mother’s chest. I kissed the top of my sister’s velvety head and gently squeezed her tiny foot, all snug in a Joss-knitted pink bootie.
She had weighed only four pounds fifteen ounces when she was born—a sweet bag of sugar! Bibi had called her. Ava had had to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks. But, besides being a little peanut, she was perfectly healthy. Today, she was two months old exactly, and was eight pounds already!
“What time is it?” Joss asked, scooting by me with a fist full of forks.
“It’s only two thirty,” I said. “We still have an hour until we need to be at the shelter.”
I couldn’t wait to be finished with work, because today was the day Charlotte was “meeting” us for the first time, at the Community Lodge for Cats & Dogs. Molly and Ethan had yet another birthday party to go to, so she was having a special day alone with her dad. And her parents were letting her adopt a cat!
Charlotte and I had been texting every day. She knew all about Ava, and I knew about her mom and dad. They weren’t getting back together. But since they’d split up, they’d stopped fighting. And sometimes, like after the twins’ basketball games, the whole family would still have dinner together.
When asked, Charlotte had told her parents sort of the truth about where she’d been… staying in a truck… keeping herself hidden… eating most
ly sandwiches. She had kept her promise and left me out of it.
I stood in front of the specials board fixing a smudged letter. It looked like the soup of the day was vegetable mice instead of vegetable rice. “Ew…,” I said.
“Hey, don’t knock vegetable mice soup until you’ve tried it,” Sid joked from the counter.
Our updated menus wouldn’t arrive for another couple of weeks, and I had posted some of the new stuff with the specials in the meantime.
Mostly, the menu was the same. But Mom had added whole wheat pancakes, avocado toast, sweet potato fries, a quinoa and kale side, and fruit smoothies. And courtesy of yours truly, we had also added two permanent sandwich specials: What a Gouda Baby, in honor of my sister, Ava… baby Gouda, baby Swiss, baby lettuce, and shredded baby carrots with sprouts and honey mustard, all “swaddled” in a wrap. The other one—So Happy to “Meat” You—was secretly in honor of Charlotte… corned beef, salami, and a “secret” sauce—yellow mustard and chopped-up pickles.
“That’s a lot of info you managed to squeeze on that board,” Mom said to me.
“Fascinating!” my father yelled my way in his Spock voice. Then in his regular voice he added, “I don’t know how this place would run without you.” He took a big slurp of his smoothie while he scrambled eggs.
Dad had started drinking smoothies after the baby was born. I’d seen Mom sneak a handful of kale into the blender when he wasn’t looking. But when she wasn’t looking, I’d caught Dad dropping in a scoop of ice cream more than a few times. Even though we still tried to get Dad to eat healthier, we found out that his heartburn was because of a whole different reason. It had started when Mom got pregnant, but it stopped the day Ava was born. It turns out that for some people, when they’re hoping for something bad enough, “butterflies” in the heart can be mistaken for heartburn.
“Sweet little darlin’,” Bibi said to Ava on her way to deliver a plate of toast.