by Jenn Bishop
“That’s awful.”
I would have said the same thing yesterday. Maybe I did. But now it sounds like a bunch of words, like that thing you have to say. My house is gone. All my stuff is gone. It just is. Awful is what happened to the people at the campground.
“He lost all his stuff, too,” I say. “Nobody knows how long we’re going to stay here. It’s not like my mom and dad know anything about tornadoes.”
“Can I turn around yet?”
I open up the package of underwear. “Just a sec.”
“I can’t really believe it either, you know? My mom had the news on. Every channel is covering our town. So crazy.”
“You can turn around now.”
She twists around on the bed, still cross-legged. “My mom was talking about organizing a fund drive for food and clothes. You know, for the victims.”
The victims. There’s this weird feeling in my throat, and it doesn’t go away when I swallow.
“That’s a nice idea,” I say. “But food and clothes are kind of easy. I mean, people can borrow from friends or go to the store to get that. I feel bad for the people that don’t have a place to stay. We’re lucky we have the McLarens.”
Kiersten leans in toward me, lowering her voice. “And super lucky you get to stay with Avery.”
“Right,” I say. Super lucky I get to stay with Avery, who talked baseball with my dad and offered to play ninja turtles with Cammie, but who didn’t say one thing to me at dinner.
“Have you heard from Gabriella?” Kiersten asks.
I shake my head. “She doesn’t have my number.”
“She asked me for it,” Kiersten says. “Anyway, we were chatting last night. She was really worried about you and your house. And she feels bad about the Avery thing. What was she supposed to do? Say no?”
Yeah, I think, although part of me isn’t sure how that would’ve worked. Would that have seemed rude? Hurt his feelings?
I remember when the lights went out in the bathroom and what Kiersten said—actually, what she didn’t say. “What would you have done if Avery asked you?”
Kiersten picks a piece of cat fur off the bed and rolls it between her fingers.
“Kiersten!”
“I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
“Do you like him, too?”
“No.” This time she’s too quick with the reply.
“Kiersten!”
“Only a little. I can’t help it! I wish I didn’t. But it’s…it’s just how I feel, you know? How am I supposed to change how I feel?”
I shrug.
“I was going to tell you. I was. But—I mean—does it really matter? I think I like Naveen more anyway. Actually…” Kiersten puts together an outfit with one of those loose T-shirts and a pair of capris. “Maybe this is a sign. You and Avery, staying in the same house.”
“A sign?”
Kiersten twists a strand of hair between her fingers, like she’s thinking really hard. She’s always the one who sees all the cosmic connections the rest of us never do. She was the first one who noticed that Mr. Cohen, the history teacher, and Ms. Roosa, the math teacher, were dating.
“I saw something online that said you never know who you truly are until you’re faced with a challenge. Maybe this is it! The hardest thing you and Avery have ever faced.”
Maybe this is a sign. Me and Avery.
“I don’t know….”
Someone knocks on the bedroom door.
“Yeah?” I say.
Mom opens the door. “Kiersten and her mom need to get going.” She takes a quick look at me. “Cute dress! Maybe we can make Kiersten our family stylist. It’d save me a lot of time.”
“I’m game,” says Kiersten.
I roll my eyes. Mom’s never been into shopping, not like Kiersten’s mom. She’s still standing in the hallway, tapping her fingertips against the doorframe, while I hand back Kiersten’s shoes. “Come on, girls, let’s wrap it up. It’s been a long day.”
As we’re heading down the hallway, Kiersten spies Avery’s wide-open bedroom door and heads straight for it. Before I can stop her, she’s dragging me in behind her.
Avery is sitting on his bed with headphones on, typing on his laptop. At least he has that since it was in his mom’s car. All our computers are gone.
“Let’s go,” I say to Kiersten. “Your mom’s waiting.”
She doesn’t budge. “No way. Let’s see how long it takes him to realize we’re standing here.” She taps her foot on the ground. Quietly at first, then louder. What if he’s messaging with Gabriella?
Kiersten flails her arms like a tap dancer and that finally gets his attention.
Avery slides his headphones off his ears. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting Maddie. Hey, I’m real sorry about your house.”
“Thanks.”
“So, my mom and I were talking about how it sucks that we all missed out on this big thing that every sixth grader gets and, on top of that, we have this awful tornado. It’s, like, welcome to seventh grade with a side of natural disaster. Anyway, she’s going to call the rec center tomorrow to see if they could do something special to make up for the dance: a big pool party for our whole class.”
“Sounds better than another dance,” Avery says.
I’d have to get a new bathing suit. And talk Mom into finally letting me shave my legs.
“Kiersten! Maddie! Come on, girls!” Mom shouts from downstairs.
“Sorry, gotta go,” Kiersten says. I wave goodbye—actually wave—at Avery. What the heck is wrong with me?
Kiersten and I head down the stairs. She makes it look so easy—just popping into Avery’s room like that.
When we get to the living room, Kiersten’s mom is talking with Avery’s parents and mine. She gives me a squeeze. “Anytime you need a break, you just let us know. We’re happy to have you come stay at Casa Wiley.”
“Mom, we’re not remotely Spanish.” Kiersten shakes her head.
“The offer still stands,” Mrs. Wiley says.
I say goodbye to Kiersten and her mom and head back upstairs.
Avery’s bedroom door is propped open. I can hear him tinkering with the guitar we found in the tree. I know I should pop in and say hi and that I’m sorry for blowing up at him earlier when he was only trying to help.
But it’s so much easier to walk past, right into my room, and close the door.
Through the wall I listen to him tuning the guitar.
Months, Mom said. Months.
On Monday morning, Mom’s hand on my shoulder shakes me awake. “Up and at ’em, Mads.”
I roll over onto my back, blinking. Sunlight peeks through the sides of the shades, still drawn. “Did I sleep through my alarm?”
“Sure did, kiddo. It woke up the rest of us, though.”
“Sorry.” I sit up in bed and rub at my eyes. Across the room, Cammie’s bed is already empty.
“Your brother’s downstairs having breakfast with Peg,” Mom says. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let you sleep in a little. Work off the exhaustion from yesterday.”
Sunday was the last day to clear off anything we wanted from the site—my old house. Mom, Dad, and I were out there all day, while Cammie got to hang out here with Peg. Tough life. Well, maybe not. Peg’s probably still adjusting to having a rambunctious six-year-old in her house. My arms and back ache from all the heavy lifting—and what do we have to show for it, anyway? I found the Tupperware with my winter sweaters that Mom had packed away. Whoop-de-do.
I slide my legs out from under the sheets. Mom’s already dressed for work: black pants and a silky shirt with flowers on it. Did she pick those up at the store last night when she ran errands? “You’re going back to work already?”
“Life goes on, even though we’re not at home. I’ve got patients to see at the hospital, and your father has clients who expect him to get his work done. The house…”
As she swipes a piece of hair behind her ear,
I notice that her wrist is bare. That silver watch she always wore to work is missing. She must not have found it yesterday.
“Stuff with the house will move at its own pace,” Mom says. “It’s not something we have a lot of control over right now. But our lives—think fast!” She tosses me a pair of Kiersten’s jean shorts.
I reach out just in time to catch them.
“Our lives don’t slow down. Summer marches on, right, Mads?”
I hop down from the bed. “Right.”
—
“I’ve got it,” I shout, almost tripping on a loose shoelace as I sprint up toward the yellow tennis ball. I reach out my racket, and the ball ricochets off it. But not across the net. Not to the other side, like it’s supposed to. Instead, it hits the high metal fencing surrounding the tennis court with a clang, then falls to the ground. Bounce, bounce, bounce.
“Oops.”
Downcourt from me, Kiersten laughs. So do Shalane and Wren, the two girls we’re playing against. The two girls who are creaming us. Thank goodness it’s just camp and there’s nothing at stake, or I wouldn’t be laughing, too.
Owen Miller, one of the counselors, jogs by, blowing his whistle. Our signal for lunch. Finally! Kiersten and I walk over to the coolers, where they’ve packed in all our lunch bags. I reach for the blue lunch sack Peg lent me and toss Kiersten her orange one. We head over to the picnic tables under the trees.
Kiersten and I have been going to the Hitchcock Parks-and-Rec summer camp ever since we were in second grade because our parents both work. The activities were exciting when I was eight. Trampoline day! Zumba! Learning magic tricks! But by the time we were in fifth grade, it had totally lost its cool factor. At least, I have Kiersten with me. Everything is better with Kiersten.
She cracks open the top of her blue Gatorade and takes a big gulp. “Oh man, I still haven’t told you about that movie I watched over at Gabby’s house last night. It was so unbelievably scary. So there’s this house in the woods, right? Except nobody can see it. Only these three friends who stumble upon it in the forest…”
I munch on my tuna and apple sandwich. Why didn’t Kiersten and Gabby invite me to come over and watch the movie?
“That ending! I don’t know how I kept my eyes open, but I did. Maybe because I was clutching Gabby’s hand the whole time I was screaming.” Kiersten laughs. “Maddie?”
Gabby’s hand? Are they suddenly that good of friends? In my head, I see Gabby and Kiersten on the couch together, Kiersten ducking her head under a blanket during the scary parts.
“Maybe you’re braver than you thought.” I take another bite of my sandwich.
“Maybe.” Kiersten stares past me, like she’s thinking of something. “Speaking of brave…how’s it going with Avery on the other side of the wall?” If her eyebrows were raised any higher, they’d disappear behind her bangs.
I wish I could tell Kiersten that she was right about me and Avery. That the tornado bringing us into the same house was a sign. Or even that we were fighting and driving each other crazy, which is what always happens when two people are secretly in love.
But none of that is true.
I lean toward Kiersten so no one else at our table can hear and lower my voice. “When I went to take a shower this morning, he was in the bathroom.”
“Doing…?”
“I don’t know! The fan was on. And I think I could hear water running. So, taking a shower, I guess? Thank God I knocked. I don’t know if he locked the door or not. That would’ve been awkward!” I’ll need to lock the door all the time when I go to the bathroom from now on. There’s no way I can leave it up to chance. Avery’s probably the kind of person who would knock first, but you can never be too sure.
“Okay, so you almost walked in on him in the bathroom, but what else? You’ve been living in the same house for more than twenty-four hours, and that’s the best story you’ve got for me? Come on, Maddie!”
I shrug.
The truth is, since we’ve been in the McLarens’ house, Avery and I have been sort of avoiding each other. Besides the meeting we had the first night about how we were going to share all the household responsibilities, initiated by Mr. McLaren—I mean Frank—we’ve kind of done our own things.
That first night, Avery and Frank devised a system for how three families were going to share one house for the summer. Shower schedules, chore charts, meal planning. Avery’s mom and dad are in charge of Monday and Wednesday dinners, Peg and Frank for Tuesday and Sunday, and Mom and Dad for Thursday and Saturday. Friday night is for takeout or leftovers. Frank even has the fridge and pantry subdivided so nobody finishes someone else’s milk or favorite cereal. He and Avery got everything figured out, all the way down to the DVR.
What this all means is that I know Avery’s schedule by heart. Daily chore: garbage and recycling. Dishwasher duty on Monday and Wednesday. Eight-thirty morning shower. (I don’t think I’ll forget that again.)
It doesn’t mean that we’re back to talking to each other.
“Maddie, you need to be brave. Me and Gabby, we were talking about it last night and—”
“Why were you and Gabby talking about me?”
“Because you’re my friend. What’s so weird about that? Anyway, what Gabby said was that you can’t be all freaked out about him all the time…like he’s some magical unicorn.”
I roll my eyes.
“I’m serious, Maddie. I think she’s right.”
I bite into a pear, juice squirting down the sides of my mouth. I wipe it away with my hand.
“He’s only a magical unicorn if you treat him like one. He’s a boy in your house. One who uses the bathroom like the rest of us. Just talk to him. Like normal.”
Like normal. Like it’s that easy. I finish off the pear and toss the core toward the nearby trash can. It misses.
Owen passes by our table, bouncing a tennis ball on his racket while walking. I’m not sure Kiersten or I could do that successfully, even if we practiced every day for an entire summer.
“Hey, Maddie. Hey, Kiersten. You ready to get back out there and serve like the pros?”
“You know we’re like the polar opposite of the Williams sisters, right?” Kiersten grabs her racket, and I grab mine, so we can do our routine.
We clink in the air. “Terrible Tennis Twins!”
Owen shakes his head at the both of us.
“Hey, at least we own it,” Kiersten says.
—
That night, right after dinner, Cammie and I take over Peg and Frank’s office to work on a missing-dog flyer.
“A little lefter.”
I drag the photo of Hank to the left on the monitor.
“No, more righter!” I drag it the other way.
“Stop! Stop! It’s perfect.”
It’s actually not quite centered, but I don’t tell that to Cammie. It’s a missing-dog flyer, not a school project. Nobody’s grading it.
Cammie sure enjoys ordering me around. He chooses the border (dog bones) and the font (I have to talk him out of Wingdings). The only things I get to do are typing the words and deciding the right spelling. Better me than Cammie. He’s good with our last name, but half the time he mixes up the m and the n and writes “Canerom.”
“Ready to print it?” I ask.
Cammie nods. I look for the button to turn on Peg’s snazzy printer, and we both watch as our test print comes shooting out.
The image is so sharp it looks like the real Hank is staring right back at us. His tongue’s the littlest bit slobbery. Not too much, though. Not like Kiersten’s dog, Pepper, who’s basically a saliva machine. In the picture we used from Mom’s cell phone, Hank is wearing a bow around his neck. Janice and Darlene, the ladies at the fancy dog salon where Mom takes him, always put a bow on him when they’re done, but it never lasts very long. Hank would go tearing through the yard, and then we’d find the bow strung up in a bush a few days later and wonder exactly how it got there.
Do Janice and Darle
ne even know Hank’s missing? They say he’s their favorite dog, and okay, maybe they say that to every dog owner, but I always believed it. And from the wag of Hank’s tail while he was getting groomed, I think he believed it, too.
I’m sorry, Hank, I think, staring into his big brown eyes. I should have made sure you had your dinner. I should have made sure I found you before I left for the dance. I should’ve—
“Maddie?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re going to find him, right?”
I clear my throat and do my best job of imitating Mom, who’s found a way to sound positive without making any real promises. “We’re going to try.”
“I miss him.” Cammie’s voice gets real quiet. “Sometimes before I open my eyes in the morning, I think I can smell him. And I try to pet him in my bed when I wake up in the night.”
Even though the McLarens’ cats would definitely go berserk if Hank appeared out of nowhere, sometimes I think I smell him, too. Or hear the jingle from his collar bell, like he’s right around the corner, just out of sight.
I hug Cammie and ruffle his hair.
The thing I don’t tell Cammie is that if anyone had found Hank’s collar, they would have called us by now. It’s been three days since the tornado and Dad has already called everyone we know. His cell phone number is listed on the dog tag, too. Dad always answers his phone. Even when he’s driving and he’s not supposed to.
We print out twenty posters to start, and I place them in a plastic zipped folder Peg gave us so they won’t get bent or crushed in Cammie’s backpack, which somehow survived the tornado. Cammie and I pass through the kitchen. Avery has his laptop out on the table. He’s playing a computer game. Again.
“Do you think Avery wants to come?” Cammie asks.
I hear Kiersten’s voice in the back of my head. Just talk to him. But I can’t. Even though he’s right there in front of me. “I doubt it.”
Peg and Frank are out on the front porch, having their after-dinner drinks. Peg pushes up the brim of her hat. “Where are you folks off to?”
“The library,” I say.
Frank fishes into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. “I think a book came in for me. Would you mind picking it up?”