Say That Again

by Sasson, Gemini

  “Doing what?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Just looking.”

  “You stay right here. Don’t go anywhere, you understand?”

  Wishing she’d hurry up and go, Hannah nodded.

  As soon as her mommy was gone, Hannah took Franklin from her pocket, kissed him on the head, and put him in the gerbil cage. She almost pulled him back out when another gerbil started squabbling with him. Soon, however, they were sniffing each other and getting very friendly. Hannah pressed her forehead to the glass, watching. What were they —?

  “Hannah?”

  Hannah froze at the sound of her mother’s voice. It took her a few moments to realize that the banging in her ears was the sound of her own heart. She took a step back, her breaths coming in shallow pants. Her knees were shaking. She sucked in a lungful of air, held it, then let it out.

  “Hey, I saw a squeaky toy on sale and thought Echo might like it.” Jenn tipped the basket to show Hannah the bones and squeaky, then bent down alongside her to peer into the cage. “Oh my. Looks like they’re trying to make babies. I wonder if they know they have a boy in there with all those girls? They usually separate them.” Straightening, she pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You know, he looks just like Franklin, don’t you think?”

  Did she know? Was she waiting for her to tell the truth? Should she lie? Could she?

  Hannah grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled toward the cash register.

  They got all the way through the grocery store and back home before Hannah’s elaborate ruse threatened to unfold.

  —o00o—

  “Mom?” Maura held the kitchen door open for them. “Franklin’s gone.”

  Jenn set the sack of groceries on the kitchen table. “Are you sure, Maura? He’s not just hiding under his bedding?”

  “That’s the first place I looked. I even looked under Hannah’s bed and dressers, in her closet, and all the rooms upstairs.” Maura’s eyes slid to Echo, who was running circles around Hannah, his rear end wiggling like Hannah had been gone for months, not mere hours. He had the new squeaky toy, a pink elephant, in his mouth. Squeak, squeak, squeak. She narrowed her eyes at him. “When I was walking by her room, I stopped to check on him, and Echo was lying on the rug next to the cage. The door to the cage was open. The dog is tall enough to reach it, you know.”

  Jenn’s mouth slid into a frown. “Ohhh, Echo. You didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?” Hunter entered the kitchen. He searched through the closest sack. “Did you remember to get the turmeric? I was going to make that new recipe tonight. Thought we’d try something new and exotic.”

  Echo poked his nose at Hannah’s pocket.

  Is he in there? I smell him. Can I see? Where did you go? Can I come next time?

  Hannah pushed his nose away. “Stop it, Echo,” she mumbled.

  “It appears Echo may have had a snack,” Jenn informed her husband. “As in small, furry-tailed rodent appetizer.”

  “No, really? He was with me almost the whole time — except for those few minutes I stepped outside to take out the trash.” Emptying a grocery bag, Hunter placed the vegetables in the refrigerator. “Maura, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just now figured it out. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “Help your mom bring the rest of the groceries in.” He shook his head at Echo. “We’ll form a search party once they’re all put away. Meanwhile, I’ll put Echo in his crate.”

  They were all blaming Echo for something Hannah had done. Guilt ate a hole in her stomach. She hung her head. This wasn’t going like she’d planned at all.

  An hour later, after they’d scoured the house, Hunter declared Franklin officially lost. No one seemed mad at Echo, though.

  “Did you forget to shut your bedroom door when we left, Hannah?” Jenn asked her.

  She shrugged. Well, she didn’t actually forget. It was all part of the plan. But she didn’t think they’d suspect Echo of being the cause for Franklin’s disappearance. If they chose to believe that, though ...

  As long as they didn’t punish Echo for it, everything would be all right. It was done. Franklin was at the pet store now. Safe from Patrick Mann.

  —o00o—

  Monday morning, Jenn went in to see Hannah’s teacher. Returning the empty cage, she explained the unfortunate incident.

  “It’s all right, Hannah.” Her teacher patted her lightly on top of the head. “These things happen.”

  Inwardly, Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t look like she was going to get in trouble. Either Mrs. Ziegler really believed what her mother said, or she was just being nice and underneath she was really mad. Hannah could never tell.

  Three days later, a white mouse appeared in Franklin’s cage. Afraid for him, Hannah went home and told her parents what had really happened to Franklin. Echo was forgiven, but her mother scolded her for not telling the truth. Later, when Hannah went down the stairs to get a drink of milk before bedtime, she overheard her parents talking as they sat on the couch in the living room.

  “You can’t honestly believe her, Hunter.”

  “How do you know she didn’t see that boy do something to the gerbil?”

  “Because she told her teacher she didn’t. How do you know she didn’t make the whole thing up?”

  “Why would she do that, Jenn?”

  “Maybe she just doesn’t like this Patrick kid. For all we know, he looked at her wrong, or cut in line in front of her. It could be one of a million things.” There was a long pause, and then her mother spoke again. “You knew I didn’t want her to go to school with other kids. She wasn’t ready for it, Hunter. It hasn’t even been two weeks and already she’s making up stories trying to get some other kid in trouble. We need to nip this in the bud before it gets any worse. I’m going to speak to the school psychologist tomorrow.”

  “Jenn, don’t. Not yet.”

  “Give me one good reason why.”

  Faustine in her arms, Hannah peeked around the doorway. The only light in the room came from the glow of the TV. They had the sound turned off. She was afraid to go up the creaky stairs while they were quiet; they might hear her.

  “When I was little, about her age,” her father began, “I ran away.”

  “You never mentioned that. How long were you gone?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Most of a day, I think.”

  Jenn rested her head on Hunter’s shoulder. “Why did you run away?”

  “Mostly because I couldn’t cope with what happened to my dad and grandfather. When I watched the tractor roll, crushing both of them ... it was more than I could deal with. But also because my mom had sort of ‘checked out’. She was pregnant with Cammie then, dealing with my dad’s messed up financial affairs ... She was doing the best she could, but being the kid, I wanted her — the adult — to fix everything, and she couldn’t. It sent me into a spiral of emotional shock. And I felt ... no, I believed somehow the accident was my fault. That I should have stopped him before the tractor slid. That Mom was mad at me. Although that was probably just transference. Really, I was mad at myself — and angry at the world in general. So I ran.”

  “Are you afraid that’s what Hannah will do?”

  “I’m saying kids cope in unpredictable ways. They’re more complicated than we realize. There’s a lot going on under her quiet exterior. And there’s no telling what she may do next.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I can’t take much more excitement. Days like this, more than anything, I just want her to be normal. Like Maura.”

  Hannah stopped listening. She’d heard enough.

  Carefully, she tiptoed up the stairs. In her room, she climbed under the covers with Faustine. Sadness filled her, weighing her down. She wanted to draw far into herself, somewhere dark, where she could be alone ...

  Sitting up and pulling a throw from the foot of her bed, Hannah dragged it over to the closet and opened the door. She sank to her knees, scooted in, and burrowed in the far corner
behind a pile of shoes. The dress with sunflowers on it that Gramma Lise had given her after she got out of the hospital hung down, brushing the top of her head. If she moved it, it would be out of the way, but this way it partially hid her in case anyone looked in there for her. She crouched into a ball and tugged her blanket to her, but it caught on the door.

  As she began to unravel it so she could close the door, a black face appeared in the crack of light between the door and jamb. Echo’s orangey-golden eyes gazed at her soulfully, as if asking if he could come in with her. His whiskers twitched as he sniffed her shoes.

  Hannah patted the floor next to her and Echo squeezed himself between her and the wall. The blanket was just big enough to cover them both. Except their heads — they had to breathe.

  She didn’t remember waking up later, or putting her jammies on, but in the morning she woke up in her bed, Echo asleep on his braided rug beside her.

  For a few minutes, she was sure it was a Saturday, but then she heard Maura taking a shower.

  No, darn it. It was a school day.

  —o00o—

  Hannah had been calling her Dr. Lemon until she saw her name on the wall outside her office at the school that day — Dr. Cynthia P. Liming. Close, anyway.

  For the better part of an hour, Hannah held out, not saying anything as Dr. Liming asked her question after question. Dr. Liming even offered her some paper and crayons and told her to draw pictures of whatever she wanted. So Hannah drew shapes and patterns: squares divided into more squares, and then circles in rows that from farther away took on the appearance of other shapes, like triangles. The whole time, she wondered if not saying anything was as bad as lying.

  Eventually, it occurred to her that if she told Dr. Liming everything, they just might let her stay home from school.

  It turned out to be a big mistake to tell Dr. Liming that the sparrow outside the window told her about the principal, Mr. Sloan, visiting Mrs. Ziegler’s room every day after school and pulling the blinds.

  That afternoon, when her mommy came to pick her up from school, they went straight from her classroom to Dr. Liming’s office. Hannah was told to wait at a low table in the adjacent room while her mommy talked to Dr. Liming. The door between the rooms was made of frosted glass and Jenn hadn’t pulled it shut tight, so it was still open a crack — which meant Hannah could both see and hear them.

  Dr. Liming sat behind her desk, two paper notepads and a computer tablet before her. Elbows planted on the armrests of her big chair, the psychologist steepled her fingers together before her. “I’m concerned that Hannah may be having, well,” — her voice lowered in volume — “delusions, Mrs. McHugh.”

  Meanwhile, Hannah busied herself drawing circles inside of circles inside of circles.

  “Delusions?” Jenn leaned forward in her chair. “Like what?”

  “Does she tell you that animals talk to her?”

  “Well, yes, that’s why I suggested she see you.”

  By now, Hannah was adding color to the circles. She couldn’t make her fingers work as fast as her brain, but she tried. She needed more colors than the sixteen that were in the box. And the crayons were fat nubs. There was no sharpener. It was hard to make the colors go where she wanted them to.

  “Has she said anything else to cause concern?” Dr. Liming said more quietly. As if Hannah, fifteen feet away, couldn’t hear.

  Bored with her patterns, Hannah started on something else. This one would be special. Different from the others.

  “Concern?”

  “Obvious untruths, Mrs. McHugh. Things that would cause you to be concerned for her safety or your family’s.”

  “It’s not like ... Look, she’s not a danger to anyone. I just think her imagination is vivid, that’s all. I think she thinks she hears them talk to her. That she imagines it.”

  “And you consider that ‘normal’?”

  “I’d be worried if she didn’t have an imagination. You know, I get that Hannah is different, Dr. Liming. But you have no idea how far she’s come in the past few years. The fact that she’s even been talking to her teacher, or you, is monumental. It’s going to take time for her to learn to fit in. There are going to be bumps along the way, I get that. But having you suggest that she’s some borderline paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies isn’t going to float. You need to go back and study your textbooks. She’s a highly intelligent five-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome. That doesn’t make her a freak who you need to slap labels on so you can shove her aside.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that. Far from it. I just thought we should discuss this in more detail, so we can make the right choices.”

  “Choices? What do you mean? Hunter and I spoke to both the principal and the teacher before the school year started. We all agreed that the resource classroom was the best place for her. Mrs. Ziegler told me not two days ago that she’s doing just fine — except for the gerbil incident. But come on, she’s five. Five-year-olds have a different way of reasoning, right?”

  After pushing her tablet away, Dr. Liming said, “I think you and Dr. McHugh should discuss whether public school is the right place for Hannah right now. You might want to consider a private tutor. I’d suggest a special school, but the nearest ones that deal with her specific needs are in Lexington. In time, when her social skills have improved and her ... her imagination is more under control, maybe she could re-enter the local school system.”

  This was going well, Hannah decided. Telling Dr. Liming everything was finally working just like she’d figured. Maybe tomorrow she could stay home after all?

  She colored a few more circles, then stood up to eye the picture from a little farther away. Not perfect, but she was pleased with it for her first try.

  “No,” Jenn said. “You are not getting rid of her that easily. She hasn’t hurt anyone, she doesn’t disrupt class, she follows rules, and she gets her work done. Hannah will stay in school.”

  What? Hannah flipped around. No!

  She glared at them through the crack. This couldn’t be happening. What had gone wrong?

  Dr. Liming craned her neck sideways as she spied Hannah. She got up from her giant chair and opened the door to look past Hannah. “What is that on the table, Hannah?”

  A picture, she thought, like all the rest. Was this woman really that stupid, or just playing dumb to make her feel better because they’d been talking about her?

  Jenn retrieved Hannah’s latest artwork from the little table. She looked at it for a long time before placing it on Dr. Liming’s desk. “It’s a bird.”

  Not just ‘a’ bird, Hannah thought. A penguin. A little blue penguin. Couldn’t they tell? Maybe she hadn’t drawn it as well as she’d thought.

  Flipping her reading glasses down, Dr. Liming brought the paper close to her face to study the detail. “This is ... amazing. It’s not just a crayon drawing. She’s done it with dots. Like the pixilation in a photo.”

  “Hannah, this is beautiful.” Jenn smiled at her daughter before turning to Dr. Liming. “So, do you still think she doesn’t belong here?”

  “Mrs. McHugh, it appears I was, quite honestly, mistaken. I’d say Hannah is gifted in ways we don’t yet know. In fact, I retract my earlier suggestion. She should stay in Mrs. Ziegler’s class. I’d like to continue to meet with her, however.” Sitting back down, she swiped a finger across the screen of her tablet and began typing away. “Maybe we could allow her to sit in on Miss Wellington’s art class?”

  Hannah pressed her palms to the seams of her jeans. The last thing she wanted to do was come here and ‘talk’ to Dr. Liming again. She wanted to rip the picture from her desk and tear it up.

  This had all gone terribly, horribly wrong.

  —o00o—

  All that night and the next morning, Hannah dreaded going back to school. Maura no longer escorted her to her classroom, so she took as long as possible to walk there. In less than half a minute, the bell would ring. She planned to linger outside the do
or until the last possible second, but something caught her attention.

  Standing in the nearly empty hallway was Mrs. Ziegler, shaking a finger as she spoke sternly to Patrick Mann. “I saw you this time, Patrick. You cannot treat animals that way. If you had a tail, I’d swing you from it right about now. Go on to Mr. Sloan’s office. March!”

  Patrick Mann sneered at Hannah as he stomped by.

  Turning to watch him go, Hannah shifted the straps of her backpack and felt Faustine slide to the left.

  “Let’s go inside, Hannah.” Mrs. Ziegler held an arm toward the door to the room. “Class is about to start.”

  Hannah stepped inside the classroom. The bell clanged just above her left shoulder, sending a jolt of adrenaline through her heart. Eight pairs of eyes turned to gawk at her.

  If Patrick Mann had finally gotten in trouble and Mrs. Ziegler believed her now, why didn’t she feel any better about being here?

  chapter 20: Hunter

  Flexing his fingers on the handle of the knife, Hunter drew the blade toward him. The fibers of meat separated and little curls of steam rose up from the pot roast. “What did she say?”

  Maura held her plate out as Hunter piled a second helping on it. Across from her, Hannah speared her carrots with her fork one by one, alternating left and right, as she took them from the row she had created between her meat and potatoes. She’d also molded her mashed potatoes into a mountain range, of sorts. Hannah was always the last one done at dinner because she had to arrange her food into works of art. Lately, her creations were becoming more elaborate.

  “Turns out that little boy, Patrick Mann, was teasing the class mouse after all.” Jenn filled Echo’s water bowl at the sink and then sat down. “Mrs. Ziegler caught him doing it.”

  “So, our little Hannah here was right about Franklin, then?” Leaning back in his chair, Hunter patted his stomach. He was stuffed full. A little well of pride bubbled up inside him. Hannah had done the right thing, even if her solution had been a little extreme. Then again, what did they expect from a five-year-old?

  “Appears so.” A smile broadened Jenn’s cheeks as she reached over and patted Hannah’s wrist. Flinching at her touch, Hannah went on stabbing her carrots. “Honey, I don’t know how you knew, but the important thing is those animals are safe because of you. Next time, you make sure and tell us everything, okay?”