“But—”
“I’m not interested in Willow’s little field trip, and I don’t care what she thinks of James Wickerton,” she said. “Maybe he’s a billionaire, maybe he’s not. I really do not have the slightest interest in wasting one more minute of my life on James Wickerton.”
“Because he might not be filthy rich? You were obsessed with him when you thought he was.”
“I was obsessed with him when I thought he might like me, but that clearly isn’t the case,” she snapped. “I was just curious. I mean, what’s this billionaire kid from New York doing here, anyway?”
“Come along then.” I really didn’t want to do this without her. “Please? Don’t make me go with them by myself.”
She shook her head. “I’m sure they’ll tell me all about it tomorrow. You have fun now.” She wiggled her fingers good-bye and turned, walking up her driveway without another word.
I didn’t have to wait long before Willow pulled up in her mother’s Lexus, with Wynn riding shotgun, the music blaring.
I climbed in the back.
“Where’s Reesa?” said Willow.
“Not coming. Can you just drive me home?”
“Oh, come on. It’ll only take a few,” she said. “Besides, I need a latte.”
“Me too,” said Wynn. “Tall, with a shot of caramel.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Willow singsonged.
A few minutes later she pulled up in front of Bensen’s, the gourmet market. “If you’re stopping here for lattes then just take me home after. I really have to be there by . . .”
“Four o’clock. I know,” said Willow. “This is our final destination, anyway. So chill.”
She turned off the ignition. I followed them into the little coffee bar, where they ordered their lattes. While the barista was making them, Willow took me by the wrist and led me around the corner to the produce section. She stopped by the onions and pointed across the store where the fresh-squeezed juices were.
“There’s your billionaire,” she said.
His back was turned to me, but I could tell it was James. He was wearing an apron. Not bright green like Lennie’s. It was light blue, same as the walls and the shopping carts at Bensen’s. As I slowly walked toward him, he dipped a mop into a bucket and pushed down on a lever to squeeze it out, then slapped it to the floor. He was oblivious to the small audience behind him—Wynn had joined us with a latte in each hand. A white cord ran from his ear to his pocket. He was mopping to the beat.
I had walked slowly closer, and when he finally turned, there was surprise, even delight in his eyes, at seeing me. He pulled the earbuds out.
“Ivy. What are you doing here?”
“Wh-what are you doing here?” I stammered.
“Uh . . . mopping?” His gaze flicked to where Willow and Wynn stood sipping their drinks, then nervously back to me. “Someone dropped one of those half-gallon containers of OJ. Didn’t even tell anyone, so it got stepped in and carts rolling it all over the place. Big mess.”
He leaned on the mop pole.
“So, you, um . . . work here?” I said. “As a janitor?”
He pushed the mop away and looked at it, like it had magically appeared in his hand and he had no idea how it got there. “No.” He laughed. “Not a janitor. More like an errand boy. Stacking shelves, unloading trucks, carrying groceries to cars. Occasional mopping.”
“Oh,” I said. It all sounded perfectly reasonable, except that he’d never mentioned it before.
“No food prep, though,” he said. “I absolutely draw the line at wearing a hairnet.”
He was trying to be funny, and I wanted desperately to laugh or smile but I couldn’t seem to make the muscles of my face move. Not with Willow and Wynn watching and judging and . . . I tried to swallow but couldn’t. It was like being onstage again and I froze. An audience of two—two miserable, horrible friends I didn’t even care about—and I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t budge. I dropped my gaze to the pocket of his apron. There, stitched in white, was the name JIM.
I didn’t hear them walk up beside me until Willow’s hand was on my shoulder. “You’ll have to excuse our friend,” she said to James. “She may be in a state of shock. She thought you were a multibillionaire!”
“You really had her fooled,” said Wynn.
I stood paralyzed, like someone was shining a giant spotlight on me. I kept opening my mouth to say something but nothing came out.
I could only stare at the stitching on his pocket: JIM, JIM, JIM, JIM. What had Lennie called him? Jimbo. The janitor? No—errand boy. Stacker of shelves. Why hadn’t he told me? He knew everything about me. I hadn’t held anything back.
“Ivy?” James stepped toward me.
Willow pulled me away. “Maybe you should leave her alone now. You’ve done enough damage.”
James let the mop clatter to the floor and stepped over it, coming closer as Willow continued to pull me away. “You thought I was a billionaire?” he said. “That’s why you liked me?”
It felt like I’d been slapped. I shook my head. “No, that’s not . . .”
“After all you went through with your family—” He tore his apron off. “I thought you were different,” he said.
I watched him turn and storm away from me, my vision closing in like a tunnel. Then I was in Willow’s car again and she was gunning the engine, tearing out of the parking lot. She and Wynn were talking over each other. “. . . mopping . . . what a loser . . . can’t believe . . . who does he think . . . poor Ivy . . .”
Then Wynn was shaking me. “Where do you live? We have no idea how to get there.”
I pointed, and said “turn here” a couple of times. When I saw the Save-a-Cent coming up, I told Willow to stop. “This is good,” I said.
“You live here?”
I didn’t answer, just pushed myself out of the car and stumbled across the parking lot toward the wooded area next to our neighborhood. I couldn’t find the walking path that cut through it, though. So I just pushed my way into the brush. Branches scraped my bare arms, but I didn’t care. I didn’t . . . Where was my jacket? I stopped and dug around in my bag, but I must’ve left it in Willow’s car.
“Shit,” I said, then laughed at myself.
Losing my stupid jacket is what I can finally speak up about? Brilliant, Ivy. Just brilliant. Stand there like a fucking idiot in front of James and let him think you care if he’s rich and don’t say a fucking word and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I mouthed the word, repeating it soundlessly because as pissed off at myself as I was, I still wasn’t the girl who said “fuck” out loud. And that really made me laugh. Everything that had happened—losing my house and my piano and my best friend and my boyfriend, my parents fighting and the food bank and . . . and . . . I was still going to watch my language?
My mind darted and swirled around the frantic conversation in my head as the tree branches tore at my arms and clothes. The strap of my bag got caught and I couldn’t get it unstuck so I shoved it from my shoulder and left it there. I stumbled and fell forward, my hands and knees slamming into the ground. I cried out from the pain and then I . . . I just rocked back onto my heels, then sat and cried.
Tears ran down my face, and my body convulsed with shuddery gasps. I didn’t remember ever crying like this before, so out of control. I couldn’t make it stop as I replayed the past few weeks—had my life really fallen apart so thoroughly in that little bit of time?
My hysterics finally turned into minisobs and hiccups, and I stood up, wiping my hands on my skirt and my nose on my sleeve. My bottom was soaked and my knees were stinging. The skin exposed through my torn tights was scraped and bleeding.
I searched the ground for my bag and finally found it hung up in a tree directly behind me. About three feet away from where I stood was the path.
I’ve totally lost my mind.
I stepped onto the path and started walking toward home, and t
hat’s when I heard it: the distinctive rumble of a school bus.
The twins’ school bus.
Four o’clock, oh, my God, I was supposed to be home at four o’clock. I pulled my not-a-phone out of my bag to check the time. It said 4:12. Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. I ran as fast as I could, tearing down the path and bursting from the woods onto the playground. There were kids on the swings—kids who rode Brady and Kaya’s bus!
I ran toward then, shouting. “Did Brady and Kaya get off the bus? Did the driver let them off?”
They stared up at me like startled little fawns stuck in a car’s headlights. Nobody answered so I shouted again. “Brady and Kaya Emerson? We live over there.” I pointed to Turd Tower. “Did they get off the bus?”
One of the boys shook his head nervously. “I . . . I don’t think so,” he said. “They can’t get off without a grown-up ’cause that kid’s retarded.”
“He’s not . . .” I started to correct the boy, to explain that we don’t use that word anymore. That he’s mentally disabled. That he’s special and wonderful and . . . I just shook my head and ran from them, sprinting for the road, my feet pounding on the gravel until I reached the bus stop, crying and gasping and . . . there was no bus. I ran up Jackson Boulevard, hoping the driver might be lingering at the next bus stop, or the next. But it was gone. The bus was gone.
I limped back to the house and pounded on Carla’s door, hoping maybe she’d seen the bus arrive and had the kids with her. But the windows of her apartment were dark and she didn’t answer. I looked toward Lennie’s house. His Jeep wasn’t there.
The bus driver probably wouldn’t have handed the kids over to him, anyway.
I was really crying now, not for myself but for Brady, who must be so scared. And for Kaya, who would be scared, too, and mad. She would never forgive me for this, for ruining everything once again.
I let myself in the back door as the phone rang in the kitchen. I lunged for it. “Hello?”
“You’re there?” It was Mom. “I just got a call from transportation. They said nobody was there for the bus!”
“I wasn’t here. . . . I was late. . . . I . . .”
“Ivy!” Mom said sharply. “The bus driver had to take them back to school. I’m leaving work now to pick them up. And you better hope this hasn’t scarred your brother so badly he’ll never ride the damn bus again, because I don’t know what I’m going to do if that happens.”
“Mom, I . . . I . . .”
“One simple thing, Ivy. That’s all I asked, and you couldn’t even do that?”
I stammered to answer her, but I couldn’t find any words—only the shuddery hiccups that remained from my cry. Then I heard a click on Mom’s end and a few seconds later, a dial tone.
My mother had hung up on me.
I returned the phone to its cradle and walked toward the front stairs so I could be waiting for them when they got home. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror on the door. Scraped arms, torn tights, muddy skirt. I couldn’t let Brady see me like this.
I watched out the window from my parents’ bedroom, which was in the front of our apartment. When our car pulled up, Mom and Kaya got out, but Brady wouldn’t. I heard Mom pleading with him. “Come on, buddy, it’s okay. It’s safe.” The bus driver must’ve said it wasn’t safe, and he thought that meant it was never safe here. Mom turned and looked up toward the apartment. It was one of those all-hands-on-deck moments, and my hands were inexplicably absent.
Lennie drove up then, parking his Jeep along the road in front of his house. He got out and waved and Kaya rushed over to him, and then he and Mom were talking low and . . . Lennie leaned into our car. Like that was going to help.
Then I couldn’t believe it. Brady got out of the car. He was smiling and holding his arms out to Lennie. Lennie lifted him up, then sat him in the grass and took him by one hand and one foot and . . . gave him an airplane ride. Once around, so he wouldn’t get too dizzy.
But I did. I got dizzy, watching Lennie save the day, while I sat there helpless and pathetic and wrong, wrong, wrong about everything. And everyone.
THIRTY-THREE
Mom found me asleep on top of her bed in my mud-caked skirt. She shook me awake, a look of horror on her face.
“Mom.” My voice was raw. “What’s wrong?” I’d forgotten for a moment what I must look like.
“What happened to you?” Then a more panicked expression came to her eyes.
“No . . . I . . .” How could I explain my breakdown? “I fell, in the woods . . . I . . .”
“Oh, sweetie.” She gathered me in her arms. Everything hurt when she touched me, but I didn’t want her to let go. I just wanted to cry on my mother’s shoulder and let her take care of me.
And she did. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
She led me down to the bathroom and filled the tub, helped me peel off my clothes without taking too much skin along with them, and gently washed the dirt from my wounds. She spoke in the soothing tone I remembered from before the move, not the sharper more harried one that had replaced it lately.
“So what happened?” she asked softly.
“I just, I got home late—my ride left me by the Save-a-Cent, and I walked through the park. Only I couldn’t find the path and I got tangled and fell, and . . . and then I heard the bus, and . . .” I started to cry again.
“I’m so sorry I yelled at you. I was on a deadline at work. . . . If I’d known . . .” Her own eyes filled with tears and she reached for the corner of a towel to wipe them away. “Look at us. We’re a mess.”
I cry-laughed, nodding. “We really are.”
“Okay, finish cleaning up. I need to check on Brady and Kaya. They’re still outside with Lennie.” She got up. “You know, maybe we were wrong about that boy. The twins adore him.”
When the bus unloaded in front of the school the next morning, I pushed against the flow of students going in to head the other way—toward the back parking lot. I stood where James always parked his car, waiting until the first-period bell rang. But he didn’t show. I waited again outside Mr. Eli’s room.
Reesa must’ve thought I was waiting for her, because she stopped halfway down the hall and pretended to tie her shoe. When she looked up and I was still there, she dug around in her backpack for a while. Wow. She really did not want to talk to me. Join the club. Reesa, James, even Lennie . . . nobody could stand being around me. I was like poison. Poison Ivy.
I snorted at my own joke and went into class. Reesa finally came in a second before the bell rang, so there wasn’t a moment to talk to her even if I wanted to. Instead, I spent most of my morning classes drafting a letter to James, in case he showed up but refused to speak to me. At least I could shove it into his hand and hope he’d read it. I tried to explain everything—how Reesa thought he must be a member of this wealthy Wickerton family from New York that she found online. How I didn’t care. How I was glad he wasn’t. How I didn’t want a boyfriend who could go places and do things that I couldn’t do. I was just surprised that he’d never mentioned a job. I would’ve felt better about my own circumstances if I’d known about his.
But I never had a chance to give him the letter. There was no sign of James all day, not even in our secret room, where I’d left an especially long note after English class. I started to worry that he was gone for good, not just the day. But his books were still there. He wouldn’t leave without his Shakespeare, would he?
At home after school, I searched my room for the Charcoal Hut receipt James had written his home phone number on. I took the phone to my room and pressed my shaky fingers to the buttons. It rang nine times, and I was about to hang up when someone finally answered.
“Hello?” An elderly woman’s voice.
“May I speak to James, please?”
Silence.
“Ma’am?”
“May I ask who’s calling?” she said.
“It’s Ivy Emerson.”
There was a muffled
sound on the other end, like her hand was covering the phone as she spoke to someone. It had to be him. She wouldn’t have asked my name if it was a wrong number. Right?
She came back on. “I’m sorry. He’s not available at the moment.”
“Oh. Um, could you please tell him . . .”
Click.
I stared at the dead phone. My first instinct was to call back. I pressed my finger to the redial button, but let it go and placed the receiver in its cradle.
It rang almost immediately.
I swooped the phone to my ear. “James?”
“No. It’s me.” Mom. “I’m picking the twins up from school today and taking them directly to Brady’s therapy appointment, okay?”
“Oh, yeah, okay.”
She rattled off some instructions for me, something about starting supper, and I heard her but I wasn’t listening, because all I could think about was that James was at home. The woman who answered the phone had spoken to someone before telling me he wasn’t there. That he wasn’t available. I flipped open my laptop while Mom was still talking, and typed the phone number I’d just called into the search window. Wasn’t there some kind of reverse directory where you could put in a phone number and find the name or the address?
“Ivy? Did you hear a word I just said?”
“Yeah, Mom. I’m just doing some . . .” I caught myself before another lie came out. “I’m just searching for something online, for an address,” I said.
She let me go as I hit the RETURN key and the name IDA MCDANIELS popped up with a Belleview address. I typed her name into another search window and found an obituary, not for Ida but for a man named James A. Robertson
Then everything started falling into place. The cemetery. The tombstone where James and I sat on the bench. James Aloysius Robertson. And J.A.R. . . . from the Shakespeare book. I searched the obituary for any mention of James. It noted grandchildren but didn’t name them. Just a sister, Ida McDaniels, and a daughter—
Sheila Wickerton.
I went back to the listing that showed Ida’s address: 845 Clayton Street. I quickly mapped it, hoping it wasn’t too far to get to on my bike. When the directions popped up, I scrolled down to see the total distance. Seven miles.
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