Carry Me Home

by Janet Fox

  One wish. One crane. Start with the first.

  It was such a big wish, Lulu’s wish.

  Right then, that’s what Lulu knew she needed. She had to make those cranes. In her spare minutes when she could, she’d make a thousand paper cranes. She could pray, sure, like she had in church, but this was something she could do, with her own two hands. Because she had to make her wish come true.

  But what if her wish was so huge, so ginormous, that even one thousand paper cranes wouldn’t do the trick? What would it take? Two thousand? Ten thousand? This big ginormous wish that felt impossible because it was so desperate?

  What would it take?

  21 Way Before

  LULU KNEW that some people cried a lot. And some people didn’t.

  Her second-grade teacher, Miss Walton, cried when she laughed, and she cried when she read something beautiful out loud, and she cried when one of her students cried. She cried when she was happy. She cried when she was sad. She cried when she was given a thank-you card. She told the class she cried at a TV holiday special, and she cried at the evening news.

  One day on the playground, Miss Walton stopped all the kids who were hollering and running around and gathered them together and pointed to the sky. The sandhill cranes were flying overhead, returning to the north country from their winter in Brazoria in Texas. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of giant birds, calling and crying their warbling chant. All the kids, even the rough and tumble, were speechless.

  “They go as far north as Canada,” Miss Walton said in a soft voice. “They fly in such large numbers, like a giant family, a social group. They do that for survival. For each other. Listen to their call. Just listen. Like they’re keening.” When Lulu looked her way, Miss Walton was crying. Miss Walton cried a lot.

  Lulu looked the word up later. Keening was the action of wailing in grief.

  Lulu was not someone who cried. She wasn’t sure why. Sometimes her chest hurt with keeping the crying locked inside, but lots of times she just didn’t want to cry. So she didn’t, even when others did.

  Lulu didn’t cry when her daddy told them about mama being sick. She didn’t cry later, either, when it got worse. She didn’t cry when she and Serena stayed that month with Aunt Ruth, and she didn’t cry when Daddy packed them up in the Suburban and left Texas.

  Crying just wasn’t her way.

  22 Now

  MISS BAKER handed out preliminary grades the next morning. When she came to Lulu she said in a soft voice, “You would have an A except for that missing test.”

  She meant the test that Lulu hadn’t made up like she could have after school because she’d been too busy taking care of Serena.

  The test that she’d missed because she was late, last Thursday. The disappearance morning. Now it was six days later and still no Daddy.

  Six hard days.

  Lulu was angry again, really angry. And then, she realized, she was scared.

  That made her think about angry Aunt Ruth, still living in the house down the street from Lulu’s old house. Lulu wondered whether Aunt Ruth was worried about Lulu and Serena, since they hadn’t said good-bye when they left early, early in the morning, as that was part of the plan. They’d locked the door to the mostly empty house with the yellow globe light, and driven away with Daddy in the Suburban, leaving it all behind.

  Leaving Aunt Ruth behind. Angry, scared, worried Aunt Ruth.

  Angry, scared, worried Lulu.

  Daddy hadn’t ever said what to do if he went missing again. Instead, he’d said, “It won’t happen again, Lu.”

  Well, it had. And just like when he’d gone missing the first time, Lulu had been stepping up, but this time it was harder and scarier, because back then at least she’d been in a house even if the house had been angry Aunt Ruth’s.

  How much longer? When should she tell someone? When would he come back to them? When?

  And who? Who could she trust? Who could she lean on? Was it enough to make a wish, to make a thousand paper cranes?

  How could she find answers to all these questions?

  Where are you?

  23

  AFTER SCHOOL on Tuesday Lulu met Jack in the hallway.

  “C’mon,” Jack said, leading the way.

  The gym was deserted, and Lulu parked her backpack and coat on a chair before following Jack slowly up the stairs to the stage.

  “It’s my first time on a stage,” Lulu said. “It feels… weird.” All that empty space. “How does it work? I mean, where’s the audience?”

  “They’ve got chairs and stuff that they put up for the performance. Now, when you do the tryouts, you’ll have a mic and the three teachers will be sitting right there.” Jack pointed. “It’s important to know that because you don’t want to look at them.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You want to look right up there.” He pointed to the back wall where the plaques to the winning basketball teams hung.

  “Why?”

  “It’ll make you feel less nervous,” he said. Then he shrugged. “That’s what I do, anyhow. Plus, once the lights are on you in the performance, you won’t be able to see the audience. So you practice looking back there.”

  Lulu turned to Jack. “How often have you done this?”

  Jack smiled. “I’ve wanted to be in theater since I was five.”

  “Wow.”

  “But you can sing.”

  “In my bedroom. In church,” Lulu said. “But…”

  “You’ll be fine. Okay, then. What’s your song?”

  “Pardon?”

  “What’re you going to sing? You can sing whatever you want. Though I recommend a show tune.”

  “Oh. Right.” Lulu hesitated, thinking about the songs that she knew. “What if I don’t know any show tunes?”

  “Then, try something upbeat. Like…,” and Jack hummed something Lulu had never heard before.

  The song that popped into Lulu’s mind then was definitely not a show tune. And it wasn’t upbeat in the way Jack meant. But it was hopeful.

  And she knew it by heart. She’d hummed it in her mother’s hospital room. She’d sung it endlessly after her mother… Over and over, as if it could’ve saved her from something dark. Over and over and over. And ever since.

  “Okay. I know something.” Lulu cleared her throat.

  She closed her eyes. She began to sing, so soft at first she could barely hear herself. She slipped inside the song, deep, quiet, a hymn, but hers. With each word her voice grew. With each word the song echoed until it filled the room.

  ’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free

  ’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

  And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

  ’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

  “Whoa!” Jack said “Whoa!”

  “What?” Lulu’s eyes shot open, the dream interrupted. She was horrified. What had she done?

  He stood, facing her, his arms outstretched. “You… your voice… that is… I’m sorry. I mean, I couldn’t help it. You sound like, you sound like, like…” Jack flopped around the stage like he couldn’t stop. And then he began to dance. “Like this!” he shouted. And his flopping turned into something else.

  He danced with grace and with pure joy. He danced.

  It was magic.

  Like a dream.

  Lulu had never seen anyone dance like that. Like he could fly. Like he meant it. Like he couldn’t not dance. He was graceful, his arms and legs stretched as if they were fluid. He was on point, pulling himself together and up and up, tighter and tighter, then releasing like a spring. Turning, turning, turning.

  She began to sing again, and he danced to her song.

  When she finished the song, he finished the dance. She and Jack stopped, and faced each other on the stage, staring. He was panting. She was breathless.

  He straightened. “Okay, then.”

  “Okay.”

  They picked
up their things. Lulu felt as if she’d just been to the moon and back.

  As they turned out the lights to the gym Lulu thought she caught a flutter of movement behind the stage curtain, but when she looked again the stage was bare and still.

  They reached the door to the outside world.

  “You’ll be good. For Friday.”

  She nodded.

  “Listen, we could try that again. That same deal. I mean, if you want. At the tryouts. Friday. You sing, I dance.” Jack’s face was flushed. His eyes shone bright.

  She nodded again, hugging her backpack to her chest. “I’d like that.”

  24

  LULU WAS late to after-school. Serena was in tears.

  Lulu tried to hug her but Serena pulled away and put her head down on the table and sobbed. Her shaking head was haloed by origami creatures.

  “Look,” Laurie said. “I really need to speak with your dad.” She had her hands on her hips.

  Lulu nodded.

  “Like, tomorrow.”

  “He’s sick.”

  Laurie squinted. “As in…”

  “Flu. He’s got the flu. So he’s home in bed and can’t come.”

  “Can he write?”

  “He’s really sick.”

  Laurie threw her hands in the air. “I’m sorry. Sorry he’s sick. Don’t be late tomorrow. They’re gonna have my head. I don’t do this job for kicks. You know this is for college credits, right?”

  Lulu said, soft, “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, it is, and if I get a bad report because one of my students is not being properly taken care of, it could mean I don’t get credit.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lulu said.

  “Whatever.” Laurie’s face was flushed, and she put her hand on Serena’s head, smoothing her hair. Serena stopped sobbing and settled. “I hope your dad feels better. I really do. But please get me that note.”

  Lulu bent and retrieved Serena’s pack and shoveled her origami creations—birds, frogs, dogs—inside. “C’mon, Reenie. It’s okay.”

  Serena got up, shrugging off Lulu’s touch, but she went with her out the door and down the street.

  Twilight was falling. Late September. The days were short and getting shorter.

  Halfway back to the RV park Serena said, her voice choked with tears, anger, and, yes, fear, “It’s not okay. It’s not okay at all.”

  25 Before

  THE FIRST yard sale was for the big stuff. The TV, sofa, dining set, that kind of thing. Extras. What seemed like extras. Especially later.

  Daddy sat at the kitchen table that night counting the money. Aunt Ruth sat next to him, tallying against the bills.

  “There’s no way, John. This isn’t even—”

  “Ruth. Not in front of the girls.”

  Aunt Ruth turned. Lulu stared her straight in the eye. Aunt Ruth’s gaze narrowed to slits. “You girls should be asleep. With no talking.”

  The second yard sale was a little more of a challenge, but Lulu treated it like an Easter egg hunt. Find just the right thing. Put it on the table in the garage with a sticky tag. Price it just right.

  The third yard sale was when Aunt Ruth took Serena to the mall so Lulu could sell most of the toys. When they came home Serena had a meltdown.

  Daddy sat at the kitchen table under the yellow globe light and stared down at the tabletop, still littered with piles of papers. That table and the three chairs around it were about the only things left in the house besides the mattresses. The house sounded hollow, like a drum, so Serena’s cries were amplified.

  “John, I told you. They’re going to take the house. They’ll come after you—”

  Daddy stood up and said to Lulu, “You and Reenie go with Auntie Ruth, now. To her house, now. I’ll come get you later.” Daddy’s eyes were so bright they were practically headlights.

  Aunt Ruth, her own eyes narrow slits, said, “Now, wait just a minute—”

  Daddy kissed Lulu’s head and added one more word. “Later.” Then he walked out of the house. His truck screeched away.

  When he came back after a month, he was driving the Suburban; his truck was gone. The Suburban was maybe ten years older than the truck and had some rusty patches. But he acted like it was the best vehicle in the world. He acted like everything was back to normal. He’d bought the Barbie for Serena, secondhand, but in decent shape.

  Aunt Ruth stood in the front yard, her arms folded tight over her chest as Daddy hugged the girls over and over. Serena wouldn’t let go of his leg as he hobbled around pointing out the high points of his new vehicle.

  “Will you look at that classic? Only eighty thousand miles on that baby. And wait’ll you see what I’ve made inside.” He’d tricked out the car with a kind of sleeping place for Lulu and Serena in the back, and a place for him to sleep across the back seat, with room to store other gear they’d need so they could camp out in nice weather.

  “You’ll like camping out,” Daddy said. “Seeing the stars every night. Listening to the crickets. Making memories.”

  Lulu crawled around inside, patting the makeshift mattresses and examining the built-in storage. When she came out, Serena and Aunt Ruth had gone inside the house. Lulu stood next to her father with her hands on her hips and said, “When?”

  “When what?” Daddy said, looking north toward the building thunderheads, puffy and pink and orange and deep gray in the dark blue sky.

  “When are we leaving?” She felt like she’d grown a thousand years older in that one month while he was gone.

  He looked down at her. “When does school end for the summer break?”

  26 Now

  WHEN THEY woke the next morning, a half inch of snow dusted everything. It had gone from Indian summer to early winter overnight. Serena said nothing as they ate their cold Pop Tarts in the dark, huddled inside their puffy coats, the snow covering the front window. It was so cold inside the Suburban that Lulu could see her breath.

  Still no Daddy.

  * * *

  “Montana,” said Deana with a dramatic sigh, when Lulu got to school and everyone was talking about the early snow.

  The other girls, and boys, too, were all wearing boots. Deana’s were topped with a fur ruff that matched her princess coat. Lulu’s sneakers were soaked and her feet felt like blocks of ice. She stood next to the heater until the bell rang. She thought about Serena’s sneakers and Serena’s feet and how cold Serena must feel. She thought about what she would do about boots and wondered whether the Lutherans had any boot giveaways.

  She thought about Daddy.

  She thought about what she ought to do now. Almost a week, and not a word, not a peep.

  Last time it had been a month, and they’d gotten through it. But last time Lulu and Serena were with Aunt Ruth, in Aunt Ruth’s honest-to-goodness house in warm-hot Texas, and not in an RV park in a Suburban with coming-on-winter in Small Town, Montana. Alone. And with almost no money.

  Maybe over the weekend, at the library, she could do an Internet search for her daddy. Maybe she should go to the police.…

  But, no, not the police. She didn’t trust the police. Lulu wasn’t going to let them—the grown-ups in charge—separate her from Serena, which is what she knew they would do. And they’d put them each in some home somewhere—most likely, not even in this town, or together—and that home wouldn’t be home because there would be people there who didn’t love them or even care much except about the money that they got for fostering (or that’s what Lulu knew, that’s what she’d overheard from Aunt Ruth, and from kids she knew in the past, and she was pretty sure Aunt Ruth didn’t want them, not at all), and if that happened Lulu might never see Serena again, and Daddy would come back to the empty Suburban in the RV park and ask, “Where? Where are you?”

  Like Lulu asked to the dark night now, every night now.

  So, no. Lulu was not going to let anything get between her and Serena. She just had to keep figuring out the details.

  Daddy used to say, b
efore he went off that first time, right after the whole thing started, “One day at a time, girls. One day at a time.”

  That’s what she’d do. Take it one day at a time. One detail at a time. Checking the Internet at the library on Saturday would be okay, and that gave her a small glint of hope.

  But first, she had to fake the note from Daddy so she could walk Serena home and not get Laurie in trouble.

  Then, she had to find boots.

  Miss Baker’s voice broke through Lulu’s thoughts. “… starting the writing team program next Monday. I’ll be pairing you up with your partner.”

  Quiet groans rose through the classroom, and quieter whispers, as friends hoped to be paired with friends and not with “her” or “him.”

  At lunch, Jack plunked down across from Lulu and then didn’t move, except to slowly slide his milk onto her tray, staring straight at her the whole time. “That was awesome, that thing yesterday,” he said at last.

  That thing where he danced and she sang and they had been somewhere else entirely and she’d been someone else entirely, even for those few minutes. That magical thing they’d made together. That magical thing they were going to try and make happen again, the next afternoon, at the tryouts.

  Lulu nodded, and because she was pulled for that moment out of thinking about the other stuff, she smiled. Then the other stuff crowded back in. “I need a favor.” Detail one.

  Jack, his mouth filled with cornbread, nodded.

  “I need you to help me write a note.”

  He wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Sure. No problem.”

  Lulu slid the paper across the table. It was blank white, and she held a black pen. “I’ll dictate, okay?”

  He squinted a second, then shrugged. “Okay.”