Where I'd Like to Be

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  I was in a horrible mood. How could I be friends with Murphy if she was going to be friends with Logan Parrish? The very thought made me feel irritable up one side and down the other. She was sitting on the front steps that very minute, waiting for him so they could make some stupid plans that would probably cause Logan to wiggle his eyebrows some more. I hated to even think about it.

  Ricky Ray leaned his head against my arm. “Maddie, Maddie, oh, won’t you go get the books?” he pleaded in a sing-songy voice. “It makes me so very, very, very happy to look at the books.”

  I couldn’t deny Ricky Ray anything. “Okay,” I said. “But not all afternoon. I’ve got things to do. Important things.”

  Ricky Ray just smiled. Nothing made him happier than to look at my scrapbooks of cutout pictures, and since he was the only person I ever showed them to, it was like we had a little club together. I knew I could trust Ricky Ray to treat the books with the proper respect. Even though he was only six, he was careful with things. One of the first times I’d ever noticed him, he was trying to repair an ant hill he’d stepped on by accident. He would never mess up anything if he could help it.

  I guess you could say I’d sort of adopted Ricky Ray. Or maybe he’d adopted me. After I’d been at the Home a couple weeks, I started walking around the big circle every afternoon, looking at all the buildings and wondering how long it would take me to save up to buy my own house. I pretended each step I took earned me ten dollars. One afternoon, I heard a little voice behind me say, “Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five . . . ”

  I turned around and saw a blonde-haired kid with bangs flopping in his eyes, his expression as serious as a preacher’s. “What are you doing?” I asked, not mad, just curious.

  “Helping you count,” he said. “Sometimes you count out loud when you’re walking; that’s how I know that’s what you’re doing. What are you counting, anyway?”

  “Footsteps, dollar bills, a down payment on a brick house with a white fence around the front yard.”

  “You don’t have to buy a house. You can come live with me and my mama when she comes to get me. She won’t mind a bit.”

  Ricky Ray started walking again. “Thirty-six,” he said. “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight . . . ”

  We got up to four hundred and forty-two that day. At the end of it, Ricky Ray said, “We could get bunk beds, when you come to live with me and my mama. You can even have the top one.”

  There was something about him—the way he flicked his bangs out of his face with a shake of his head and looked at me with his straight-ahead smile, like he just knew one day we’d be living the high life at his mama’s house—that made me want to pull him into a big bear hug then and there. Instead I said, “You can have the top bunk, that’s okay.”

  His face lit up. “Cool!” He started running toward the Children’s Dorm. “See you tomorrow!” he called. “Maybe we’ll get up to five hundred!”

  And that’s how me and Ricky Ray ended up adopting each other.

  “Here,” I said, throwing two black-speckled scrapbooks onto Ricky Ray’s lap after I got them from my room. “I hope you’re happy now.”

  The Book of Houses and the Book of People were the only two scrapbooks I kept anymore. I used to have a bunch more, including the Book of Animals and the Book of Nature, but when I moved to the East Tennessee Children’s Home I became so busy with other activities that I didn’t have time to keep up with all of my books. Looking for pictures to cut out can eat up your whole day if you’re not careful.

  Ricky Ray pulled the books close to his chest and wiggled in his seat. “Come on, let’s do a story.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I snuggled next to Ricky Ray on the couch and opened the Book of Houses, breathing in deep its wonderful, papery smell, just as good as a library book’s in my opinion, maybe better. “See that one?” I said, pointing to a contemporary home in the Victorian style. “I found that in Saturday’s real estate section. I love it so much. Just read the description: ‘Master bath with Jacuzzi, cathedral ceilings, eat-in kitchen, and many more must-see amenities!’ ”

  Ricky Ray pulled open the Book of People to his favorite page. “She’s going to live in that house,” he said, pointing to a very tanned model in a black bikini with a boa constrictor wrapped around her shoulders like a mink stole. “That is the best house for her. Her name is Crystal.”

  Ricky Ray always named the girls in the Book of People Crystal. Crystal happened to be his mama’s name, if anyone cared to get psychological about it.

  I leafed through the Book of Houses, seeing if there were any other new pictures Ricky Ray hadn’t seen. He liked to be kept up to date. “Oh, look at this one,” I said. “It’s a 1930s-style bungalow with hardwood floors and ceiling fans. I found that on Sunday.”

  But Ricky Ray was too busy looking for his other favorite cut-out people to pay attention to my attractive bungalow in the “Great, Great Location!” “Here’s the first one you ever cut out, back at Mrs. Estep’s house,” he said, pointing to a picture of a teenage girl in platform shoes that was on page one of the Book of People. “That was after Randy Nidiffer taught you how to do your own books.”

  Ricky Ray had memorized practically every story about my life that I’d ever told him. I figured that was Ricky Ray’s way to make it sound like we’d always known each other and that all of my stories were his stories too.

  “Randy Nidiffer was like a brother to you,” Ricky Ray continued as he leafed through the pages. “You sure wish he would write you a letter.”

  “I decided I don’t care anymore about that,” I lied, rubbing my finger across a ranch-style house to make it stick better to the paper. “It doesn’t matter so much anymore.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good,” Ricky Ray said. “I sure miss him, though.”

  “You never even knew Randy Nidiffer, you silly thing,” I said, leaning over and poking him in the belly.

  “I know. But I miss him anyway.”

  I chewed on a cuticle, a habit Corinne was trying to break me of. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me that Randy Nidiffer had stopped writing. Maybe you shouldn’t expect boys to write you letters, even though it sure would have surprised me if Mr. Willis had quit clipping out the baseball statistics from Sunday’s paper to send me April through October. But I had to admit when Randy’s letters stopped after only two, it felt like a piece of me had withered and died on the vine. Randy Nidiffer had always felt like home to me.

  Randy Nidiffer had been the only other foster child at Mrs. Theresa Estep’s house when I lived there, right before I came to the Home. He had wavy, golden-brown hair that spilled over his forehead and freckles everywhere you could see. He made terrible grades and talked back to adults whenever he got the chance. He refused to dress for gym, he stole ice-cream sandwiches from the case when the cafeteria ladies had their backs turned, and he smoked cigarettes.

  The secret of Randy Nidiffer was that he was a great artist. To the best of my knowledge, no grown-up had ever discovered this about him. After I’d lived at Mrs. Estep’s house for a few weeks, Randy started showing me his sketchbooks. I remember being startled by his pictures of hands, which looked so real I once had a dream they came alive and started brushing my hair with a silver-plated hairbrush.

  He also made notebooks using cut-out pictures from magazines and newspapers, and he had stories for every picture he’d ever cut out. “Now this boy here,” he’d say, pointing to a picture of a boy clipped from a cereal ad, “his name’s Thomas Lee Oakwood, and he’s no good. He used to be good, but no matter how good he was, his brother was always better, at least on the surface of things.” And then he’d point to a picture of a boy who looked like he was dressed for Sunday school. “His brother’s name is Cameron Lee Oakwood. Everybody loved Cameron so much, but they had no idea that sometimes he stole money off his daddy’s dresser and that he’d pawned some of his mama’s silver at the Bull’s-Eye Pawn Shop down on Bristol Road.”

  When I fir
st knew Randy, all his notebooks were of people. I was the one who gave him the idea for a book of houses. Mrs. Estep had dragged us to the Food Lion along with her two scrawny boys, but Randy and I chose to sit on a bench beside the gum ball machines instead of trailing her past the produce and the Deli Fresh Meat Counter. A rack of glossy real estate magazines stood next to our bench, and I picked one up to look at the pictures of the pretty houses. I’d always lived in houses that were run-down and crooked and wore an unhappy look about them. The houses in the real estate magazines were cheerful and new, and the scent of fresh lumber seemed to come right off the pages.

  “These would be real pretty in a notebook,” I told Randy. “These could be where the people in your other notebooks lived.”

  After that, Randy and I collected real estate magazines whenever we could, and we spent almost every afternoon cutting out pictures. We made the first Book of Houses, and I started on my own Book of People and several other books as well. Mrs. Estep thought we were crazy. “Don’t leave your magazines near them kids,” she’d tell anyone who would listen. “They’ll cut ’em all to pieces.”

  • • •

  Now Ricky Ray flipped through my latest Book of People, pointing out all the different Crystals that he found there. “This Crystal has blonde hair and this Crystal has black hair . . . ,” he went on in his little-boy drone. I pulled him over onto my lap and rested my chin on the top of his head. All the time I wished I was twenty-one so I could adopt Ricky Ray for real and live in a friendly, white house with green trim and a big backyard for playing ball in. That was the right sort of place for a little boy like Ricky Ray.

  “I don’t know why you won’t believe me!” Logan Parrish’s voice came crashing into the hallway. “There’s nothing to do in this town or this county, and the people here are morons. You’re going to have to run away to Johnson City if you’re looking for something to do!”

  “Well, let’s go then,” Murphy said, walking into the common room. When she spotted us on the couch, she said, “Don’t tell me it’s the famous Ricky Ray right here in my very own dorm!”

  Ricky Ray looked confused. He was just a little boy and didn’t understand people joking around, even when they were doing it in a nice way.

  “I bet he’s helping Maddie with her homework,” Logan put in. He grabbed the Book of People out of Ricky Ray’s hands. “What is this? Paper dolls?”

  I held out my hand and gestured for Logan to give me the notebook, barely containing the urge to pull out every last piece of his hair. He must have sensed I was reaching my limit, because he handed it right over.

  “But really,” he said, sounding serious. “What is that, Maddie? An art project?”

  I shrugged. “It’s hard to explain.”

  Murphy sat down next to me and tapped a finger on the Book of Houses. “May I look?” she said in the politest tone I’d yet heard her use. I shrugged again, and Murphy took the book from me.

  She turned the pages slowly, which made me nervous. I was afraid she’d say something that would ruin the Book of Houses forever. People can do that, you know. They can take the things you love and twist them around with a few words so you can’t bear to ever look at them again. That’s why I hardly showed the books to anyone if I could help it. I had to protect the things that meant something to me. I put my arm around Ricky Ray and pulled him closer.

  I was afraid for the both of us.

  Murphy started shaking her head, still looking at the book. “This is so great,” she said. “This is really, really neat.”

  She looked up at me. “Where did you get the idea for this? I love these houses! I can’t wait until I live in a real house again.”

  I nodded. I understood what she meant. I couldn’t wait to live in a real house either. And one way or another, some day not too far away I hoped, I would.

  Chapter 6

  A beam of light played against my eyelids, sending red streaks through a dream I was having about an old brown dog of Mr. Willis’s named Gus. When I opened my eyes, I saw Murphy sitting up in her bed, grinning a big grin, a flashlight in her hand.

  “Let’s build a house,” she said, aiming the light in my face again.

  “Cut it out with the flashlight,” I hissed. “I’m halfway blind from it already.”

  Murphy put the flashlight directly under her chin, turning her face into a ghoulish, glowing mask. “Don’t you think building a house is a great idea? It may be the best idea anyone has ever come up with in this room, although that’s probably not saying much.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about building a house,” I said, sitting up and pulling my knees to my chest. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  Murphy pointed the light at a pile of books next to my bed and ran it up and down the spines. “Let’s see, I count nine, no, ten library books there, which means you know how to use a library card. We’ll go to the library, check out some how-to books, and we’ll have a house built in no time. A small house. I helped my parents build an adobe hut once in New Mexico, when they were studying the Hopi Indians, so I already know a lot about it. Believe me, Maddie, human beings have been building houses for thousands of years. Anyone can do it.”

  “I don’t know, Murphy.”

  “Okay, maybe not everyone can do it,” Murphy said, training her light on Brittany and then Kandy. “I’m not saying they could do it. But we could, you and me.”

  She turned the flashlight on me again. “Say you’ll do it, Maddie.”

  There was something in her voice, almost like she was pleading.

  How in the world could I say no?

  The next morning we were on our way to the Elizabethton Public Library, with Ricky Ray, Logan Parrish, and Donita right alongside us. It was a beautiful late September Saturday, the sky high and blue, the trees beginning to show their colors.

  It would have been a perfect day, if not for the fact of Logan Parrish. Asking Logan along wasn’t my idea, you can be sure about that.

  “Hey, Logan, have you ever heard Maddie’s ghost story?” Murphy asked a few blocks away from the library. Donita, who’d heard the story on several occasions, groaned, but Ricky Ray grabbed my hand and said, “Tell it again, Maddie!”

  So I did. I was happy Murphy wanted to hear it, especially since I wasn’t sure she’d been as impressed as she should have been the first time I’d told it to her.

  The minute I finished, Logan asked, “So why don’t you still live with your grandmother? How come you’re at the Home?”

  “Granny Lane got the diabetes and her eyes started going bad,” I said, sounding like I was reciting from a script. “Everyone thought it best that I stay with people more able to meet my developmental needs.”

  Murphy put her hand on my shoulder. “Why are you even bothering to answer that question?” she asked. Then she turned to Logan. “It’s absolutely none of your business why Maddie is here, or why any of us are. That’s personal information.”

  Logan Parrish turned red as a sunset, which I found very satisfying. You could tell he didn’t want to do anything to get on Murphy’s bad side. He kept looking at her with a dopey grin every five seconds it seemed like, and it was starting to get on my nerves. I wished he’d go fall in love with somebody else.

  “What did the ghost look like, Maddie?” Ricky Ray asked, same as he always did, tugging at my shirt. “Weren’t you scared?”

  “I was just a baby, so even if I had seen him, I wouldn’t have remembered,” I explained. “But I didn’t see him.”

  “I’d be afraid that ghost was going to track me down,” Donita said. “We ain’t that far from Roan Mountain. He could find you, check to see how you were doing.”

  “He wouldn’t hurt her, though,” Murphy said, turning to face Donita. “Why would he hurt somebody whose life he saved?”

  “A ghost is a ghost, friendly or not,” Donita said. “Whichever way, I bet Maddie don’t want to shake hands with one in the middle of the night.”


  Donita was going to the library to check out a book on dolphins for a science report. When Corinne heard that Murphy and I were going to the library, she told Donita to scoot along with us. It was fine with me, but Donita didn’t look any too happy about it. From what I could tell, Donita hadn’t warmed up to Murphy one bit over the past few days.

  The Elizabethton Public Library used to be the Elizabethton Post Office, back in the old days when they made post offices in the beautiful style of high ceilings and gleaming floors. Once everything turned modern, though, they built a new post office over by the Wal-Mart. The new post office had gray linoleum and ceilings of regular height, and it was hard to get too excited about going over there to buy stamps if you should need some, which I rarely did.

  On the other hand, I was always in need of books to read since I read through a stack or two of them a week, so I was happy that they turned the beautiful, old post office into a library.

  The minute we walked in, I went to straight to Mrs. Dugger, the head librarian, and asked her where the house-building books were. Mrs. Dugger didn’t blink an eye, but marched us right over to the shelves featuring books on home repair and the like. I like a librarian who doesn’t ask too many questions and respects your privacy.

  Everyone but Donita, who’d gone to find dolphin books, grabbed handfuls of books with titles such as Designing Your Own Home and Contemporary Home Plans and lugged them over to one of the long, oak tables by the reference section.

  “This one’s got a lot of house plans in it,” Logan said, flipping through the pages of one of his books, “but I don’t see any directions for how to build the house itself.”

  “That’s easy,” Ricky Ray said. “You just get hammers and nails and wood. Everybody knows that.”

  “I think it’s a little more complicated than that,” Logan told him in a superior tone of voice. “Although you have the basic idea, I guess.”

  Murphy stood up. “I’ll go see if they have any books with instructions. We’ll probably need several different books if we’re going to figure out how to build a house.”