I know the script. The next move is mine: Stick out hand. Shake. Say hellos. Look up. Smile a lot. The first face I look up at is Barbara MacMillan’s. She’s a short, round, friendly-faced woman with shoulder-length brown hair. She has a big smile. When she talks, her words kind of march. Mrs. Craig had said she taught nurses how to nurse. Maybe part of her teaching is giving orders, and that’s why she talks like she does.
I am right about the balding guy. It’s Dr. Dan MacMillan, her husband.
A boy, brown as a roasted peanut, who looks like he’s a little older than me, comes around the doorway and stares at us.
“This is our son—Pablo,” Mrs. MacMillan announces, putting her hands on the boy’s shoulders and moving him toward us. “His adoption was official four years ago yesterday. We still celebrate every year.”
“Hi.” Pablo is almost a whole head taller than Anna, which makes him a head and a half taller than me. His eyes are like round black olives, darker than Ben Silverman’s, and his smile is quick and white. His dark brown hair is long on top and falls down on his forehead in curly strands. He has on cutoffs, a sun-melt yellow tie-dyed T-shirt, and sandals.
“Where’d that come from?” Pablo points to the lump of wet fur that I’m holding.
I just stare at him. Mrs. Craig steps in. “That’s a kitten that Sara saved from the storm.”
“Just what this neighborhood needs, another stray,” Mrs. MacMillan says, still holding on to Pablo, like if she let go, she’d lose her balance or him. “The block is full of them. Kittens everywhere. Let’s all go into the dining room, shall we?” She ushers us in, looking long and hard at the cat as I pass by.
“Keep it?” Anna begs, patting the kitten’s head.
“It might be somebody’s pet, honey. Or maybe its family is looking for it—we don’t know. I think we should just put it outside and let it find its way home.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have a home,” I blurt. Didn’t she just call it a stray?
Mrs. MacMillan glances over at Mrs. Craig, then smiles at me.
“Well, you’re right. I don’t know if it has a home or not. The neighborhood is overrun with kittens no different than this one. But it appears you girls have taken a liking to it—” She frets a moment and does a hem-haw thing. “Mmm. How about this. You can keep it, but it has to stay outside. And if you could, try to keep it out of my garden.”
Outside? I stare at her. Has she looked around? What if the storm comes back? The kitten could drown. Or get hit by a car or eaten by a dog. Still, I nod, clinging to the kitten. “Can we dry her off real good before she goes out?”
“Of course. Let me get a rag, though. Don’t use the towel.”
“We’ll sneak her in later,” I whisper to Anna as Mrs. MacMillan races off to find a rag.
“Sneaker,” Anna agrees. I grin. Anna has just named the cat.
“It looks like things are going to be fine,” Mrs. Craig says as we all round the table. “Let’s take a moment, before I leave”—she stops to check her watch to be sure she has time for whatever it is we’re taking a moment for—“and tell the girls about your upcoming move.”
Upcoming move? What move?
Mrs. MacMillan returns with a torn-up towel and hands it to me. Anna and I sit beside each other at the dining room table. I don’t make any move to put Sneaker outside, but no one says anything.
“Juice, anyone?” Mrs. MacMillan holds up a pitcher of orange juice.
Anna and I nod.
“It was too noisy in the car to really explain the situation to you girls,” Mrs. Craig began, glancing this time at the clock on the wall, “but the MacMillans are moving to South America. Dr. MacMillan is part of a team of surgeons called Doctors Without Borders that goes there every year for six months to help sick children and perform surgeries on those with deformities.”
South America? Anna and I are moving to South America? I barely know where that is.
“Isn’t that pretty far from here?” I manage to say. How will Daddy find us?
The whole room grows the kind of quiet that makes people cough in church. Any good feelings I might have start to slip away.
“Oh, honey. I didn’t mean that you and Anna would be moving too. Just the MacMillans.”
Like I said before, we’re learning not to get too attached to places or people.
“Not us?” Anna hangs her head. I can tell she likes the MacMillans. Except for the Silvermans, this is a first.
“With everything that’s going on with your mom and dad, this really wouldn’t be the best time to go out of the country. In the meantime,” Mrs. Craig adds, standing up like she’s readying to go, “the Silvermans said that they might be able to fill in until I find another family who can take you girls—that is, until we hear more about what’s happening with your parents. How does that sound?”
Anna glances at me and looks down at the floor again. The news about the Silvermans is good. I look around. The house seems nice enough. It has carpet the color of sand, which feels warm on my feet. The front room has the biggest brown couch I’ve ever seen. It’s like three couches in one. Good thing it’s here and not at the Silvermans’. Ben could hurt himself moving a couch like that.
Books are everywhere. Shelves and shelves of them. Some standing. Some with the covers facing out. Some tipped over. I look at them, wishing I could read them. Anna and I love books. Pictures line the walls, like windows to another world, a world of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, friends, birthdays, weddings, and—I stare at Pablo’s picture—adoption.
The house is friendly enough, I tell myself. We’d just have to not get too used to it.
The kitchen, meanwhile, smells of Ms. Thistleberry’s soup. I wonder if Mrs. MacMillan buys from her too.
“Does that sound okay to you girls? Staying here for a while, then going back to the Silvermans?” Dr. MacMillan asks.
I shrug and nod for both of us. The silence that fills the room suddenly feels like a living, breathing thing, and Anna fidgets.
“Now that that’s cleared up, how about a tour of the house? Then we can all have lunch together,” Mrs. MacMillan chirps brightly.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Dr. MacMillan says, holding the door open for Mrs. Craig. “Unless you’d care to join us.”
“I really should be getting along. I have another call to make.” Mrs. Craig gives us both a quick hug. “You girls take care, okay? I’ll call you early in the week to see how things are going. And Barbara has my number if you need to talk to me.”
I nod, not wanting her to go. Not yet. But she leaves. Wishing doesn’t always make things happen.
“Do you want to see your room?” Pablo looks from me to Anna.
Anna leans close to my ear. “Hide Sneaker,” she whispers as we head for the stairs.
I grin.
“Ah-ah. It’s not nice to whisper when others are around,” Mrs. MacMillan says behind us. “No keepers of secrets in this house!”
Keepers of secrets. Ha. The name fits Anna and me better than any of them know.
* * *
That night, after a dinner of mashed potatoes, salad, corn on the cob, and roast beef, I slip a slice of meat into a Baggie I find on the counter and head upstairs. Curled up in bed, I lie awake staring at the millions of stars outside the window, wondering which one’s the wishing star. I pick out one that looks promising and wish long and hard that Daddy will come and get us.
Even though she has her own bed to sleep in, Anna crawls in with me. Mrs. MacMillan comes in and lingers near the door.
“Is there anything I can get you girls? Water? A blanket?” she asks.
I shake my head and turn back to the stars. They hold what we want, not her.
As Mrs. MacMillan goes over what we might do the next day, she turns on a fan to cool us. Anna has already fallen asleep. Even the wind outside has settled down.
Not me, though. Not yet. Mrs. MacMillan leans down and kisses the top of my head. When she leaves the
room, I slip from under the covers and tiptoe to the closet, where Sneaker is hiding, and give her the meat from dinner. While she eats, I wonder if I should let her out.
Is Mrs. MacMillan right? Does Sneaker have a home? Am I keeping her from a family that’s out searching for her, just like Daddy might be searching for us?
I tuck the kitten in bed with us. She licks her whiskers and smells like roast beef. “Tomorrow we’ll look for your family,” I tell her.
A bright slip of moon smiles through the window. Beside it, a star burns brightly. Closing my eyes, I make one more wish, then fall asleep.
CHAPTER 8
I WAKE THE NEXT MORNING with the same question Anna and I always have when we get placed in a new home: What do we call the foster parents? Mom? Dad? Neither feels right. Dr. and Mrs. MacMillan? Yuck. Barbara and Dan? I sigh. Some grown-ups, like Ben and Rachel, don’t mind kids calling them by their first names. Others think it’s rude. Which would it be here?
Anna’s side of the bed is empty. I get up. I hear Pablo coming up the stairs, humming.
“Have you seen Anna?” I ask, following him down the hallway toward his room.
He shakes his head. At his door, he turns around to face me, bracing his arms against the frame.
“Uh-uh. My room’s off-limits. You can only come in when I’m here or when I invite you. I don’t want anyone messing with my stuff.”
Behind him, I can see Anna messing with his stuff. I doubt he invited her. She turns the strange stump of wood she’s holding upside down. A shivering, rolling, rainlike sound drifts through the room.
“Like that,” Pablo said, taking the stump from Anna and marching her out into the hall. “What are you doing in here?”
Anna reaches up to grab the stump of wood. When she does, Pablo pulls it away and catches her by the arm. Wrong move. Before I can call out, her teeth find their mark.
“Hey!” Pablo jerks back his hand. A full moon of teeth indents marks his arm, then disappears. “What did you do that for?”
Anna’s eyes narrow, and a sort of growl comes out of her. I see Sneaker pawing at the covers on Pablo’s bed. It all makes sense to me now. Sneaker got out, Anna went to Pablo’s room to get her, saw the noisemaker, and got distracted—
“So, what is that thing that Anna was playing with?” I ask.
Pablo holds up the piece of wood and turns it over to make the soft shivering sound again. “It’s a rainmaker from Chile, which is where I come from.” He looks back and forth at us, his dark eyes dancing. “Who do you think made all that rain yesterday?”
“Yeah, right.” Like he can really make it rain. Still, maybe things happen differently in Chile. Maybe he really can make rain.
“All you need is a magic stick,” he answers, tossing the rainmaker onto his bed.
If only it were that easy.
He hesitates a minute, then picks it up and hands it to Anna. “Okay, play with it if you want.”
Anna holds it like it’s made of glass. The sound of rain seems to calm her.
“So, your real mom and dad. Where are they?” I ask, following him and Anna down the stairs. I feel Sneaker brush against my foot as she dashes past.
“Hey, how’d that cat get inside?” Pablo grabs at Sneaker and misses. When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, he opens the door, and she runs out.
“My birth parents live in Chile, though I’ve never met them,” he answers, closing the door. “I lived in an orphanage there until the MacMillans found me. They’re my real mom and dad now. I’ve lived with them for four years. Dad fixed my lip on one of his trips to Chile. Now no one can tell it was deformed.”
I had noticed the tiny scars around Pablo’s mouth, but I thought a cat had scratched him.
“They brought me back with them to America,” he adds. “I like it here, and I like my American parents.”
“Do you ever miss your other mom and dad? You know, your birth parents?” I prod.
We had passed through the family room and were heading for the kitchen. Dr. and Mrs. MacMillan were out on the back porch, drinking coffee.
“Miss them?” He frowns and leans on the counter in the kitchen. “I guess I don’t think about it that much. I didn’t know them, so what’s to miss?”
I look away. What’s to miss? How different feelings can be. I’m about to ask Pablo if he ever thought he’d see them again, when I see Anna’s and my clothes hanging up to dry in the laundry room. My jacket! Mama’s letter! Her picture! What if they were found, or worse, ruined?
“Why? Do you miss yours?” Pablo looks at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer. But all I can think about is my jacket and Mama’s letter.
“Yeah,” I say in haste. “But maybe it’s because I know who they are.”
He nods and follows my gaze, then seems to guess my thoughts. “You don’t need to be worried about your jacket. Mom sewed the lining.”
“She what? Did she sew it before or after she washed it?” Could she have found Mama’s letter? Did she read it?
“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
I rush over and pull my jacket from the hanger. My worst thought comes true. The letter and Mama’s picture are gone. I slump on a chair, letting the jacket fall around my legs.
Pablo looks at me, frowning. “You sure are attached to that jacket.”
Dr. and Mrs. MacMillan come in from the porch and grin at us. “Well, well! Look who’s awake. And hungry, I bet.” Mrs. MacMillan ushers us all out to the back porch, where a table is set with fresh fruit and toast for breakfast.
Anna sits down by me and whispers in my ear, “Mama’s letter?”
I look away, not wanting to answer, not wanting her to know that Mama’s letter and picture are gone. How could I have let the jacket out of my sight?
Anna pulls off Abby’s arm and uses the hand as a spoon to scoop up fruit. When the fruit falls off the hand, she spears it and then puts a whole chunk of fruit in her mouth.
The MacMillans watch without saying anything.
Forks clink against plates. Around us, birds chatter and hop from one branch to another. Across the yard, three crows start to argue. A plane lumbers low overhead, drowning them out.
I tilt my head. The sweet fruit juice rolls to the back of my throat and I swallow.
I go for another bite and look over at Dr. Dan’s hands. Smooth. Long fingers. So different from Daddy’s thick, calloused hands. Behind Dr. Dan, I see three drums against the wall.
Dr. Dan looks to see what I’m looking at and smiles, raising his eyebrows and giving that look people get when they figured something out. He looks back at me. “You play drums?”
I shake my head. “My daddy does, but his drums aren’t like those. Daddy uses sticks. He plays guitar, too.”
I look over at Anna, who nods.
“Well, the drums we have are called Kungas, or conga drums. They’re from Africa. I got them on one of my trips there.”
Pablo gets up and sits behind them. “Drums can sound like heartbeats,” he says, making a soft thumping beat with his fingertips, “or they can sound like rain.” He makes like ants crawling over the top of the drums.
“Or it can sound like thunder,” Pablo says, raising his hands up and bringing them down in a wild beat that gets my heart pounding.
“Want to make a rainstorm?” I nod so hard my chin jiggles, but when I look at Anna, she shrinks back like someone’s going to hit her.
“Come on, Anna. It’ll be fun!” I reach for her hand and pull her up from her chair.
“You sit here,” Pablo says to me, patting a stool next to him, “and you, Anna, sit here.” He pats the stool on the other side of him.
“Each of us has a different pattern. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you. They’re not hard, so don’t freak out, okay?”
We both nod.
“Anna, your pattern goes like his.” He pats his right hand twice on his drum, followed by his left hand, which he also pats twice. While he pats, he says h
er name. “An-na. An-na.”
“An-na, An-na,” she whispers, tapping her drum. I hold my breath. She’s doing it! She’s playing the drum.
“That’s it,” Pablo says, nodding for her to keep going. “You are the important beat, Anna. You keep us on track.
“Now you, Sara. Your beat is this.” He turns his attention to me and taps on the drum. “On, pause, Wis-con-sin. On, pause, Wis-con-sin.”
I try to match his beat, but it’s hard with Anna tapping out her beat.
“Keep trying. You almost have it,” Pablo urges. “Just say, ‘On, pause, Wis-con-sin’ over and over while you tap, and when you say ‘pause,’ don’t hit the drum.” He plays it along with me to help me pick up the beat.
I finally get it.
“Now I’ll add my beat. ‘Mis-sis-sip-pi, go. Mis-sis-sip-pi, go.’ ”
It takes a second, and then something magical happens. A gentle rainstorm fills the patio. I look over at Anna. Her head is tipped back and her eyes are closed. She has a little smile on her face. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her looking so normal. So at peace.
When the storm ends, Mrs. MacMillan and Dr. Dan clap wildly. Pablo gives us a high five and we head back to the table feeling all pumped up.
Pablo leans back in his seat, resting his head against the top of it. I lean my head back, but it doesn’t even come close to touching the top of the chair.
“We made a good team just then.”
Dr. Dan nods. “That’s sort of like how I feel about the doctors that I work with. We all bring a different skill to the job at hand and help make a difference in someone’s life.”
He pauses and glances at me. “You look thoughtful, Sara. What are you thinking about?”
“Animals,” I answer, and he leans in toward the table and smiles.
“Any particular ones?” His eyebrows shoot up.
I nod. “The ones that were used to make those drums. Daddy says the top of the drum is called a head, and that the ‘skin’ on the head is the skin of a cow, and the thick string holding it to the wood is made from pig gut.
“It used to make me sad to hear him play his drums, because I knew animals died to make it, but he said that the spirit of the animal and the tree cut down to make the drum stay with it, and that playing the drum honors them.”
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