An idea came to me then, one that would save me from choosing between James and Reesa. I took the stairs to the second floor, and sidled up to the supply closet door. The hall was still full of students getting to their next classes. I waited a moment, made sure nobody was paying attention to me, and slipped inside. The books were still stacked on the shelf in the secret room. I opened The Outsiders and found a new note:
Dally: Sexy or rude?
I knew he was referring to the character Dallas Winston, a friend of Ponyboy’s and the toughest of the greasers. In the movie, he was played by a young, dark-haired Matt Dillon. But in the book, he had blond hair and icy-blue eyes, just like James. That’s about where the similarities ended. Dally was dangerous. And rude. But, yeah . . .
Sexy.
I wrote the word down hoping James would know I was referring to him as much as Dally. Then I added:
Change of plans:
Meet me Friday, 8:00
King Theatre
I closed the book and laid it back on top of the stack. We were just going to listen, not perform. I could handle that, though the prospect of getting close to a stage still made me nervous. It sprang from a completely unreasonable fear that someone might pull me up there. But practicing with Molly was giving me confidence. With her at my side, and James, too, maybe I could stop caring what anybody else thought.
I laughed to myself. Yeah, right.
TWENTY-FIVE
“This whole supper cost less than ten dollars.” My mother swept her arm over the serving dishes she’d set out on the kitchen counter. I kept my mouth shut this time.
We ate buffet style, filling our plates and then gathering around the coffee table since the island in the kitchen only seated three. The food may have been cheap, but our dishes were not. Mom had stocked our kitchen cabinets with the antique bone china my father had given her for their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Each blue-and-white flowered dish was rimmed in gold leaf. She’d sold the glassware and silver, though, so our fancy plates were slumming it with plastic cups in assorted colors and a cheap set of cutlery that used to come out only for picnics.
“Looks delicious.” Dad picked up the carving knife and sliced into the roasted chicken, while mom poured the gravy into the antique gravy boat. It was the twins’ favorite meal, and one of mine, too. Mom was definitely pulling out all the tricks in her bag, trying to make it feel like home.
But it only made me miss my real home that much more.
“Chicken, on sale for only five dollars. The potatoes were a dollar a bag, right, Ives?” She hadn’t adjusted her calculation for the missing bag, but I didn’t say anything about that. “Carrots, about three dollars. A dollar or so for the herbs, butter, salt . . .”
I held up my glass. “Milk?”
“Oh. I forgot that. Extra for beverages.” She knit her brows together. “But still, not bad for a family of five.”
Despite my meltdown a few days ago, my parents continued to treat our family’s financial disaster like we were starring on some kind of reality show. Survivor: Poverty Island. Mom announced every penny she saved as if it was a golden nugget she’d panned herself. Finding chicken on sale at the supermarket? That was the equivalent of hunting down a wild turkey and plucking its feathers with her teeth.
Mom waited until we were halfway through our meal to announce her next big money-saving idea. “We’ll go to the food bank on Saturday. That’ll really help bring our cost per meal down.”
I dropped my fork and it clattered from plate to table. “I’m sorry, what?”
“The food bank,” said Mom.
“But . . . that’s for . . .”
Poor people.
“It’s for people who need a little help providing nutritious food for their families.” Mom took a delicate bite from her fork. “People like us. You don’t have to be completely destitute to take advantage of these programs. That’s why they’re there. To keep people from getting to that point.”
I picked up my fork and took another bite, but it didn’t go down so well. I couldn’t even believe we were in danger of not having enough food.
Kaya made a lake in her mashed potatoes, filled it with gravy, and floated a bit of carrot in the middle. She poked at it a few times, pushing it down and watching it bob to the surface. Then she smashed the side in so her gravy streamed all over her plate.
“Are we slum bums?” she asked.
We all froze and stared at her.
“Did someone call you that?” said Dad.
She nodded. “Sienna Goodwin. I was telling my class how we moved and the houses are real close together and we can play right on the street and walk to the Save-a-Cent. Sienna said that’s the slums and that makes us slum bums. Miss Fisher put her in time-out.”
I was already sitting on the floor, so it wasn’t far to fall when I slumped over sideways and laid my cheek on the carpet. Sienna was Willow’s little sister.
“Sit up,” Mother hissed at me, then said to Kaya, “You’re not a slum bum, sweetie.”
“But what is it?” Kaya didn’t look particularly upset by the whole thing. Only puzzled.
“It’s . . . well, it’s . . .” Mom stabbed at her potatoes, as if searching for the answer in their gravied depths. “It’s a not-very-nice name for people who are living . . . well, modestly.”
“What’s modestly?” said Kaya.
I lifted my head from the carpet. “She means poor. And you know what a bum is.”
“Someone who smells like pee?”
“Yeah,” I said, dropping back to the floor. “Someone who smells like pee.”
Mom scowled at me. “Bum is a not-very-nice name for a homeless person,” she said. “But we are not homeless. We have this very nice apartment, and this is not the slums. It’s an affordable housing community.”
“Slum bum,” said Brady. “Slum bum slum bum slum bum . . .”
Dad got right in front of Brady, to make sure he was paying attention. “No, Brady. We don’t say that. It’s a bad word. Kaya, do you have a good word for him today?”
We all turned to my sister, the keeper of new words. “He didn’t want a word today. He only wanted to say Lennie’s name.”
Brady’s eyes lit up. “Len-nie-Laz-ar-ski,” he said perfectly. “Lennie is my friend.”
I moaned into the carpet, ignoring my mother’s toe-nudging. My mistake, I realized, was in assuming things couldn’t get any worse than they already were. Because every time I thought that . . . they did.
Friday morning I rode my bike to school with dread hanging around my throat like a too-heavy necklace. If Sienna knew we lived in the slums, it was only a matter of time before Willow found out. I wished I didn’t care what she thought, but I did. Molly was right. It wasn’t that I couldn’t tolerate the bad opinion of one person. It was the multiplier effect. It was the fear of walking down the hall knowing that every single person you pass is laughing at you. Or pitying you.
I slunk to my homeroom, head down. Ashamed of how weak I was. The dread turned to a hard knot in my chest as I walked toward Mr. Eli’s room. Every time I saw a blond head, I thought it was Willow. She’d ask if it was true, what Sienna told her. Had we really moved to Lakeside? She’d have that something-smells-bad sneer on her face, like when Lennie tossed the potato to me, before it was “cool.” And Reesa wouldn’t be able to cover it up with some crazy story this time.
James was leaning against the lockers outside Mr. Eli’s room when I got there. He smiled and lifted a finger to his lips, which I took to be a gesture of secret-boyfriendliness.
I smiled back. I tried to say, Yes, I’ll be your secret girlfriend with my smile. I figured I might as well enjoy the last few hours before the Willow News Network destroyed me.
His grin widened. He mimed wiping sweat from his brow.
Reesa came up next to me. “What’s that all about?”
“What?” I hadn’t realized she was there. “What’s what all about?”
She nodde
d toward James. His eyes darted quickly away from me; then he waved to someone down the hall behind me. Someone who had no idea who he was.
“Oh,” said Reesa. “Never mind.”
Willow came stomping over to my locker before lunch, and I thought the moment of truth had come. I even felt kind of relieved, anticipating it. But all she did was thrust an orange envelope into my hand. “Here,” she said. “Mother insisted on mailing printed invitations. Yours came back. What’s up with that?”
I took the envelope and looked at it. It was addressed to me at our Westside house and stamped NO FORWARDING ADDRESS.
My heart thumped in my ears. Could she hear that? “Weird,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Did you move?”
“No. Of course not,” I said quickly. My mother had forgotten to put in the forwarding order and only realized it when we didn’t get a single item of mail for a few days, not even bills.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Oh, right. Yeah.” She hovered over me as I tore open the envelope and pulled out the invitation. It was beautiful, as expected, with an art deco illustration of a flapper on the front.
“It’s going to be amazing. We’re all going to that theater rental place on Saturday to pick out our flapper costumes. Meet us there at eleven o’clock. Okay?”
She didn’t wait for my answer but continued down the hall to bestow her presence on a pack of admiring sophomore boys.
I sank against the locker wall.
TWENTY-SIX
When I checked the secret room at the end of the day to see if James had gotten my note, the Outsiders book was gone.
A nervous feeling nagged at me, like maybe someone else had snuck in there and taken it. But when I got to the parking lot, his car was gone, too, so I retrieved my bike from the hedge and headed home. It was late September and getting cooler. The wind blew through my sweatshirt like it was made of gauze. Then a car passed so close, it sprayed muddy water all over me. I was fairly certain it was a red Jeep.
Cold and shivery, I left my bike in the yard. My fingers fumbled at the lock to the front door, too shaky to line up the key. It dropped on the steps, bounced once, and fell through the wooden slats of the porch to the dirt below.
I got on hands and knees and peered down at it. The crawl space under the stairs was muddy and dark. I’d have to shimmy on my belly to squeeze through the opening. I started to whimper just as Carla opened the door. The aroma of freshly baked cookies wafted out.
“Happens to me all the time,” she said. “Come on in. I have extra keys.”
“I’m all wet.” I stood and held my arms out.
She directed me to a rug inside the door. “I’ll get you a towel. What happened?”
“Got hit by a puddle,” I said, accepting the towel she handed me. “Can I use your bathroom?”
Carla pointed the way. I cleaned up and made friends with a gray cat that sat next to the sink, batting its paw at drops of water that fell from the leaky faucet. It followed me out to the living room.
“I see you’ve met Valentino.” She handed me a warm mug. “Chamomile okay? I was just making tea.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I sat and sipped, letting the warmth seep into my chest.
Valentino hopped onto my lap and dug his paws into my thighs like he was kneading dough. When my lap was sufficiently softened to his satisfaction, he lay down and rested his chin on my knee.
Carla watched the whole thing with amusement while she placed a plate of cookies on the table between us. “You are hereby officially blessed and deemed a worthy human pillow for His Royal Majesty.” She bowed her head and rolled her hand in the air, in that universal royal-majesty gesture that seemed unusually popular around here. I’d seen Lennie do it, too.
I rubbed the cat under his chin with one finger, and he purred. “He’s not very particular, is he?”
“Au contraire.” Carla gave me a long look, perhaps deciding whether or not she agreed with her cat’s endorsement. “He’s actually a very good judge of character. Used to pee in my ex-husband’s shoes all the time.”
“Really?”
Carla smiled at Valentino as he stretched on my lap and then curled back up again.
“Bad kitty,” I said.
“Actually,” said Carla, “I should’ve listened to Valentino and thrown the guy out with the shoes. It would’ve saved me a lot of heartache. And money.”
“Is that how you ended up . . .” I realized before I finished the question that it might be a rude one to ask, so I stopped myself.
“Yes,” Carla answered anyway. “That is how I ended up in Lakeside. But it was a choice I made, to live here. We had a house in Westside. I could’ve stayed there.”
“Why didn’t you?” I said.
She smiled. “It’s complicated.”
I hated when adults assumed that teenagers were incapable of understanding their complicated adult lives. Did they not remember high school at all?
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I’ve spent the past three weeks pretending I still live in Westside, trying to convince my best friend that I don’t like the boy she likes even though I do, and basically hiding who I really am from every single person I know. So I get complicated. What I don’t get is why someone would choose to live here if they didn’t have to.”
Carla’s eyes had widened as I was speaking. “Okaaay,” she said. “It’s like this. When I was married, my husband made the money and he made a lot of it, but it always felt like what we had was never really mine.”
She paused to take a bite of cookie, wiping a bit of gooey chocolate from the corner of her mouth and licking her finger. “We got divorced and I wanted to prove that I could take care of myself. I also never wanted to find myself in a position again where money factored into decisions of the heart. I stayed with my husband a lot longer than I would’ve because of the money, because of the nice house and the lifestyle we had.”
She put her hand to her chest. “I own this house. I paid for it with my own money. It’s mine. It’s not much, it could use a paint job . . .”
The look on my face apparently revealed my agreement on this point, because Carla laughed. “At least I know if a man falls in love with me, it’s not for the money. Or the house. Unless he really likes the color brown,” she said. “Maybe you can help me pick out a new color. And paint it?”
“I’d love to.” I sank back into my chair with exaggerated relief, and she laughed again.
“You and Molly, perhaps. And Lennie.”
I looked away from her smiling eyes. Petted the cat.
“Not Lennie?” she said. “So he’s not the boy you like who your friend likes, too?”
I nearly choked on the sip of tea I’d just swallowed. “Lennie? God, no. No.”
“Oh!” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I thought . . . well, he certainly seems to like you.”
“Excuse me?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“I’ve noticed that he’s completely infuriating,” I said.
She chuckled. “Of course he is. Because you like him, too.”
“Um, no . . . I really don’t.”
She shrugged and took a sip of her tea. “If you say so.”
“He’s a total pothead,” I said, “and a drug dealer, and . . .”
“Where on earth did you get that idea?”
“That’s what everyone at school says. . . .”
“And you believe everything you hear?” Her voice had taken on a slightly harder edge. “Last time I checked, the high school rumor mill wasn’t exactly a good source of credible information.”
“True,” I said. “But I saw him taking money from some guy in the stairwell and giving him a little bag. And people are constantly driving up to his house and handing him money in exchange for little packages. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. “And you know what’s insid
e those little packages?”
“Well, no, but . . .”
She stood and carried our tea mugs to the sink. “I’ve known Lennie since he was a boy, and I cannot believe he would ever do such a thing.”
Or maybe she just didn’t want to admit it?
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, not because I believed it. But she was obviously fond of Lennie and didn’t take kindly to me trashing him.
“Not everything is always what it seems to be,” she said, sounding just like Mr. Eli. “You should ask him about it.”
There was a rumbling in the distance; the twins’ school bus approaching. Mom had picked up some more hours at work this afternoon, so I was on Brady duty. I started for the door. “Thanks for the tea.”
“Anytime.” Carla pulled a key ring from the drawer and followed me out, unlocking the door to our apartment as I ran to meet the bus. The twins hardly stopped to say hi. They dashed right past me to Carla. I watched them circling her legs, telling her about their day. I’ll admit it, I was a little jealous. Even with them, it seemed, I was on the outside looking in.
Dad insisted on coming out to meet Molly and give her car a thorough visual inspection when she pulled up out front to pick me up for open mic night. I had asked him to please not grill her about her family or her favorite subjects in school or any of the usual dad stuff, so “that tire looks like it could use a little air,” was all he said.
Molly assured him we’d stop at a gas station on the way and top it off. Which we actually did. “Your dad’s really nice,” she said, then drove in silence the rest of the way to Belleview.
The King Theatre was on a city street that was busy by day, when all the employees from downtown businesses were buzzing around, but almost deserted at night—except for the people coming and going to hear music. We found a parking spot easily—though it took Molly a few attempts to parallel park the car.
“It’s a miracle I got my license,” she said, attempting to straighten out the tires without bumping into the car in front of us.
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