by Becky Citra
Robin had a sinking feeling that this was not going to be an ordinary project. Mr. Nordoff produced an ice-cream pail full of strips of paper. “I’ve written an image on each piece of paper. You may work alone or with a partner. I want you to represent your image any way you can. A poster. A model. Be creative. You have one week.”
Kim seemed to have forgotten she was mad. She poked Robin’s back. Robin’s stomach tightened. The poke meant Don’t forget we’re partners. Kim plunged into projects with an enthusiasm that usually ended up being a lot of work, but Robin couldn’t imagine working with anyone else. But what about April?
There were a lot of groans as kids took turns pulling out the strips of paper.
“Don’t tell!” said Mr. Nordoff, bouncing around like a kid at a birthday party. “We’ll all try to guess the images when the projects are finished.”
Robin felt Kim’s eyes burning into her back. Beside her, April was digging holes in her eraser with her pencil. She looked bored.
Robin put her hand up. “Is it okay if we work in groups of three?”
Mr. Nordoff frowned. “That never works. One person ends up doing nothing.”
“But—”
Robin sank back in her chair. Sweat prickled her back. The ice-cream pail went up and down the aisles. There was a lot of chatter mixed with groans. Then the pail stopped in front of April. She swept the bits of eraser into a pile and glanced at Robin. “If you don’t mind, I’ll work by myself.”
Relief flooded Robin. But she had to make sure. “I could ask again—”
“I like working by myself,” said April. She pulled out a piece of paper, read it with an expressionless face and said nothing.
Kim chose for her and Robin. Castles in the air, said the slip of paper. Robin frowned. What was that supposed to mean?
The bell rang and Kim said happily, “We can brainstorm ideas on the bus.”
“Sure,” said Robin.
She slid another glance at April. Her cousin had said she liked working by herself. She didn’t look upset. So why was Robin so sure that she was lying?
Chapter Seven
The next morning on the bus, Kim announced, “I looked up castles in the air on the Internet.”
“What?” said Robin.
“Castles in the air. Our project that we have one week to do. In case you’ve forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Robin’s eyes felt like they were stuck together. She had been awake most of the night, tossing and turning, worrying about Kim’s stupid birthday party. How was she ever going to get the nerve to tell Kim she wasn’t going?
“It’s an expression,” said Kim. “Mom’s heard of it.”
Robin looked at her blankly.
“Castles in the air. Oh, forget it.” Kim slumped back in her seat.
“Sorry.” Robin pulled her mind away from the party to easier ground. Kim always got in a flap about projects, and they always came up with something good at the end. “I’m listening now. Honestly.”
Kim dug a piece of paper out of her pocket. “I wrote it down because I wasn’t really sure if I got it.” She frowned. “It means something that’s not realistic.”
“What?” said Robin.
“Mom said it’s like when you have dreams, but they don’t have a chance of working out because they’re not realistic. That’s called building castles in the air.”
Both girls were silent. Robin made an effort to focus. “Poster or papier-mâché?” she said finally.
“Everyone does that. I want to do something different,” said Kim.
“Remember the last time we tried to do something different?” said Robin darkly. “Aardvark. Exactly six lines in the encyclopedia. We could have picked chimpanzee or leopard.”
“I bet it’s worth a lot of marks,” moaned Kim.
“We’ll go to the library at lunchtime,” said Robin. “Don’t worry. We’ll come up with something.”
“I give up,” said Kim. “We need to change topics.”
“Bryn and Kayla already tried that, but Mr. Nordoff said no,” said Robin. “He said to think of it as a challenge.”
The girls sat at one of the library tables, surrounded by a mountain of books about castles and the Middle Ages. Kim had rejected Robin’s last idea of building a castle out of cardboard and sticking it on a cloud made of cotton balls.
“What’s wrong with it?” Robin had demanded.
“I don’t know. I just don’t want to do that.”
For a fleeting moment, Robin wondered what April’s slip of paper had said. Did she really not care that she didn’t have a partner? Most of the fun of doing projects was working with someone. Robin had invited her to come to the library with them at lunch hour, but April had muttered something about talking to the art teacher and then disappeared.
“And when are we going to get together to work on this thing anyway? We can’t do it Friday because of my party.” Kim was sliding into a full-scale panic. “Maybe you can stay at my house Saturday night too?”
An icicle slid down Robin’s back. Saturday night was the overnight at the cabin. And Robin wasn’t going to be at Kim’s party on Friday anyway. Do it now, a voice whispered in her ear. Just tell her. I’m not going to your party.
“Do you think you could stay two nights?” Kim looked at her hopefully.
Robin swallowed. “Maybe,” she said.
That night Dad barbecued. Robin stood beside him on the porch in her down parka, her hands buried in warm oven mitts. “Why are we doing this?”
“Why not?” Dad poured a stream of red barbecue sauce across the steaks.
“It’s winter.” Robin stamped her boots to keep warm.
“Hey! You’re jiggling everything!” Dad stabbed one of the steaks with the end of a knife. “I think we’ll go for well-done tonight.”
Molly stuck her head out the kitchen door. “Mom wants to know how much longer.”
“Five minutes.”
“April says steak is gross,” Molly announced. “She says that cows have a right to live, just like us.”
“Scat, rat, you’re letting all the cold air in the house.”
April must have come out of her room at last, thought Robin. Her cousin had brought home a plastic bag of old magazines that the art teacher had given her and had shut herself up in the computer room as soon as they got home.
“Done,” said Dad, poking another steak. Hurly circled his feet, and he pushed him away with his boot. “I’d like to know who’s been teaching this dog to beg.”
“Dad?”
“Yup.”
“Did these steaks come from one of Kim’s family’s cows?”
“Yes. What’s the matter? You’re not going over to the other side too, are you?”
“No,” said Robin firmly.
At the dinner table, Molly turned down steak and munched her way through a baked potato and carrot sticks. Robin took a bite of meat and tried to decide if she felt guilty. Chew chew. Nope. Nothing.
Partway through the meal, the phone rang.
“I’ll get it!” Molly dived for the phone. “It’s Gran,” she reported. “Guess what, Gran? My tooth is coming out...a loonie, I hope...Here’s Mom.”
Robin swirled her milk in the bottom of her glass. This was an odd time for Gran to phone. She usually called around eight, when she got back from the hospital. She glanced at April. April had stopped eating and was staring at the phone.
“I see.” Mom’s voice was smooth. “I think I’ll take this in the other room. It’s a little noisy in here.”
It wasn’t noisy at all, thought Robin, unless you counted the clink of knives and forks. Even that had stopped for a few seconds, and then Dad started in on a story about a fox he’d seen while he was plowing.
Mom was gone a long time. Robin was scraping plates into the garbage, and Dad was dishing up tapioca pudding when she came back. She slipped into her chair and stared at her half-eaten dinner.
“Everything okay?” said
Dad.
“Ye-es. There’s been a bit of a complication.” Mom looked directly at April. “It’s nothing to worry about. The doctors want to do a little more surgery on your mother.”
“What do you mean?” said April. Her face went pale.
“They need to put in another pin.”
“Doesn’t sound too serious,” said Dad.
“No, it’s not. It’s just slowing things down a little. Frankly, I’m worried about Gran. She’s exhausted. It’s two bus transfers every time she goes to the hospital. I don’t mean that she doesn’t want to go,” she added quickly. “It’s just that she sounds so tired.”
Dad slid Mom’s plate away and set down a bowl of tapioca. “Why don’t you fly down for the weekend?”
Mom made a little humming noise. Robin could tell she was digging in her mind for complications.
Dad steamed ahead. “I’m off tomorrow morning. I could take you to the airport in Kamloops first thing, and you could fly back on Monday.”
“That might work,” said Mom.
“Otherwise you’ll just sit here and worry.”
“Can I go with you?” said April. “Please.”
“You can’t!” said Robin instantly. “We’re staying overnight at the cabin on Saturday!”
As soon as she said it, she realized how horrible it sounded. Like she didn’t care about Aunty Liz at all. And she did. “I mean—”
April gave her a frozen look. Then she turned back to Mom. “Please, Aunty Jen. She’s my mother.”
Mom glanced at Dad. He shook his head slightly. Mom said slowly, “Not this time, honey.”
“Please!”
“You just got here,” said Dad. “You’re just getting settled in at school.”
“I’d only miss a few days. I could make it up.”
“It’s not a good idea this time,” said Mom softly. She reached out for April’s hand. April pushed herself away from the table. With a small cry, she stood up and ran out of the room. A few seconds later, the computer-room door slammed.
Mom gave Dad a drowning look. “Are we being unfair?”
“If April goes with you now, she won’t want to come back,” said Dad. “And that’s going to create a whole new set of problems.”
Robin felt something cold and hard in her stomach.
Molly’s eyes widened. “Why won’t she—?”
“Shut up, Molly!” said Robin.
“Hey!” said Dad. “Enough of that kind of talk, Robin!”
“About this overnight at the cabin,” said Mom. “I’d feel better about it if I were here. I think the girls can wait until next week.”
“What?” said Robin.
“Agreed,” said Dad.
The notes of April’s saxophone drifted through the house. Robin pushed back angry tears and stirred her tapioca slowly. She took a big, steadying breath.
“It looks like fish eggs,” she said in a loud voice. “Now that’s gross.”
Chapter Eight
Robin dug out some of her Christmas bubble bath and retreated to the tub with a book. Three pages into her chapter, she could sense Molly hovering outside the bathroom door.
“Molly, scram.”
“You promised you’d play Madeline tonight. Nobody ever plays Madeline—”
“Ask April.”
“She’s in her room, and she locked the door.”
Robin squeezed a handful of bubbles and watched them seep between her fingers.
“Pleeeeeease.”
Robin made a huffing sound. “I want to read one whole chapter without being bugged.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Not there. I can hear you breathing.”
“I’ll be in my room. But don’t forget.”
Robin slid into Hatchet. It was great, about a boy who crashed an airplane in the wilderness. All he had was a hatchet his mom had given him, and he had to learn how to survive. Food, shelter, fire—easy problems. Robin sighed. She wouldn’t mind trading places with him right now.
When the water was lukewarm and Robin’s fingers had wrinkled up like soft raisins, she remembered Molly. Guiltily she pulled the plug and got into her dressing gown.
Molly’s bedroom door was three-quarters shut. “I’m here,” said Robin. “Sorry, Mol.”
“Shh,” said Molly in a cross voice. She was bent over her blue dolls’ bed. “Visiting hours in the hospital are over. You’ll wake Aunty Liz.”
Robin stared at the plastic doll tucked under a baby blanket. One eye was missing its eyelashes, the yellow hair was sparse in patches and the pink plastic face was crisscrossed with Pocahontas Band-Aids.
“I picked my most wrecked doll,” said Molly. “Do you think a real hospital would have Pocahontas Band-Aids?”
Robin swallowed her shock. “Um...why not?”
“Do you think that’s too many Band-Aids? April says that Aunty Liz has a lot of Band-Aids.”
Bandages, Robin mentally corrected. She bit her lip. Band-Aids were for small unimportant things—scraped knees and slivers. “I think you’ve got just the right amount.”
Molly gently pulled the blanket back. Pieces of white felt from her craft bin were taped around the doll’s legs. “These are the casts,” she explained. “Two of them, right up to her hip. And this is her...pelvic bone.” Molly stumbled over the unfamiliar word. “It’s broken in three places. That’s where the pins are. And the something bone is crushed. We’re also worried about her kidneys.”
Robin stared at Molly. “How do you know all that?”
“April told me.” Molly frowned. “I don’t know how to pretend the traction. That’s kind of like...pulleys. I need some string or something. Do you think traction hurts a lot?”
Suddenly tears slid down Molly’s flushed cheeks. Robin pulled her little sister toward her and wrapped her arms around her. “I don’t think it hurts too much,” she whispered.
Molly was shivering hard. “Will Aunty Liz get better?”
“Yes.”
“Why is April mad at everybody?”
Robin closed her eyes, trying to shut out the pounding in her head. “April’s not really mad. She misses Aunty Liz, that’s all. Like we miss Mom when she goes away.”
Molly said, “Dad says if April went away, she wouldn’t come back. Did he mean forever?”
“Not forever.” Robin squeezed Molly’s thin shoulders. “And besides, Dad’s wrong.”
“I’m not coming to your party.”
Robin had given Kim three whole days to change her mind and invite April. It hadn’t happened. And now, on the bus on the way to school, Robin told her.
“Pardon me?” said Kim coldly.
“I’m...not...coming. I can’t. Not if you’re not inviting April.”
There. Even Kim should get that.
She did. She stared at Robin in disbelief. Then she said, “Fine!” and turned her shoulder to the window. They rode the rest of the way to school in a silence as cold as icicles.
Robin thought the day would never end. It was well below zero outside, and Mr. Nordoff let everyone stay inside at lunch hour.
Lots of the kids worked on their projects. The room quickly became a sea of colored paper. Everyone seemed to have a partner except April who was working quietly at her desk, cutting pictures out of a magazine.
How could you work on a project with someone who wasn’t talking to you? Robin buried herself in a book, ignoring Kim and Bryn and Kayla, who were huddled in a corner of the room, giggling.
The hollow feeling in her stomach deepened when she got home. Mom had gone to Vancouver in the morning, leaving behind a big hole in the house. Molly flopped in front of the TV, and April retreated to the computer room with her magazines, a shoe box that Dad had given her and some poster paint. Robin headed out to the horse corrals to visit Kedar.
After supper, while she and April loaded the dishwasher, Robin said, “I could help you with your project. I won’t tell anyone what it is.”
She pretended she di
dn’t care what April’s answer was. She poured the dishwasher soap into its cup, her heart pounding.
April shrugged. “Sure. Mr. Nordoff said it’s supposed to be a secret, but it’s not a big deal.”
“We got castles in the air,” said Robin, relieved. “Kim says it kind of means things that aren’t realistic.”
“That one’s hard.” April sounded sympathetic, and Robin felt the tight knot in her shoulders relax. “Mine’s easier. Down in the dumps. How are you and Kim doing?”
Robin considered telling her that they weren’t doing well at all; in fact, they weren’t doing anything. “We’re still trying to decide what to make,” she said.
Robin followed April to the computer room and glanced around curiously. She hadn’t been in here once since her cousin had moved in. If you could call it moving in. April had hardly made a mark on the room. There were a few clothes laid neatly across a chair, her saxophone sat in front of the hide-a-bed and her duffel bag lay in a corner of the room, unzipped and still full of clothes. Robin was pretty sure the dresser drawers were empty.
The Welcome April poster looked dumb now. Embarrassed, Robin examined the shoe box which sat on the desk. April had divided the inside into halves and painted one half blue and one half black. “So what exactly are you doing?” Robin said.
She listened, impressed, while April explained her idea. In the black side of the box, she was constructing a miniature garbage dump. She had cut out tiny pictures of clothes, a refrigerator, a TV, cereal boxes and toys and had glued them onto a sheet of poster board. Then she had cut them out again carefully. “I’m going to stick them all together so they look like a pile of garbage,” she finished.
“Neat,” said Robin. She thought of the local dump where Dad took their garbage every two weeks. There was always lots of old stuff piled up. “Maybe you could find a picture of a couch,” she suggested.“I saw a couch that looked practically brand new at the dump once.”
“That’s a good idea,” said April. She tossed a pile of magazines on the bed. “You can look through these for sad faces. That’s what I’m putting on the blue side. Get it? That’s what down in the dumps means. Feeling sad.”