by Janel Kolby
“Is it raining? Your mother loved to hear the rain.”
I’ve been running my hands through the beads. “No, Dad. It’s just this.” I pick up a handful and let them trickle between my fingers.
“Ah,” he says. “I thought it was the rain. Then again, I imagine lots of things. You do, too, don’t you?”
“I guess.”
Three scratches on the tent.
Three.
“Mister,” King says from outside. “I’m going to the outlet. Want to come with?”
Dad looks at me. “Do we need bread?”
“Yes.”
King knows Dad sold bracelets yesterday. Best to change the money to food now before he trades the rest with Winterfolk for drink.
Dad smiles. “I’ll get groceries. How about that? You’ll have some good food for your birthday. Tomato soup, maybe. Heated. With bread and cheese. And you can work on the beads while we’re gone.”
“Sounds nice.”
King holds the door flap as Dad climbs out, and my eyes sting.
King pokes in his head. “You okay in there?”
I want to tell him again how I don’t want to leave, but I know he won’t listen to me.
I hold up the bag of beads. “Just fine.”
He tucks imaginary strands of fallen hair behind his ear. It’s what he can’t see that bothers him most. “We’ll talk when I’m back, okay?”
I get out the tray, separated by compartments, and drop a cornflower-blue bead in an empty square. “Sure.”
When he’s gone, I put the tray aside. Unfold my sleeping bag and lie down.
I slip my hand beneath my pillow and grasp my Fairy Tales book with the girl on the cover.
I pull the knit cap off my head and spread out my hair. I’d rather be a mermaid than a ghost.
I take out the book and stroke the mermaid’s hair. Long and smooth. Rising in the water.
Mom’s hair was like hers. I remember.
The water. The water.
Mom used to sing about the water.
And she’d hum in a way she said dolphins could hear.
An airplane flies across the sky window.
I see them, but they don’t see me.
3
“RAIN?” KING’S SHADOW APPEARS in the dark of night from the lantern glow on the other side of the tent.
I thought they’d be back sooner. Been hours since I sorted the bag. Read my book twice. Cleaned the tent again.
“I have some food,” he says.
My stomach growls. I didn’t eat the apple.
He unzips the tent and pokes his head in. “Rain?”
I roll across my sleeping bag. Turn my back to him.
The tent brightens as he climbs in. I hear him zip the tent behind. A paper bag crinkles when he sets it down.
“There’s bread and nacho dip in here,” he says. “Are you hungry?”
I pull my stocking cap over my ears.
He sets the lantern closer, then sits down on Dad’s sleeping bag behind me. “He’s with the Winterfolk. Saying bye, I guess.”
I’m sure he’ll be saying it till morning. I don’t mind. They’re his friends. Got to say good-bye to friends. After I cleaned the tent, I sat with my own friends.
I couldn’t tell them good-bye.
But they knew. Branch touched branch to spread the news. They’d heard everything.
Demolished. That’s what King said.
I watched the darkness spread across their leaves, and they whispered to me.
We’ll still have our roots. We’ll stretch them across the earth to find you.
King talks to my back. “Are you scared about leaving tomorrow?”
I tuck my hands under my pillow and hold on to my book. “The sign said leave by the thirtieth. We still have a full day before then. Why leave tomorrow?”
I need more time. To figure things out.
“Why not?” he says. “No point in staying.”
“No point in leaving.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder, and his warmth seeps all the way through me. Was it always this warm? “You don’t gotta be scared,” he says. “I know it’s long since you’ve been out. Too long, probably. But there’s nothing to worry.”
“I’m not ready to leave,” I say.
His fingers tighten on my shoulder, and I turn onto my back to look at him.
He scoots his knees up and rests his arms on top of them. “Naturally. Been five years. Long enough to forget what it’s like outside here.”
“I don’t think I’d know it.”
“You’ll know it again. And once we find a place, we’ll set up your tent. Won’t be any different.”
I draw up my knees and lean them against his. There’s that warmth again. “What would happen, you think, if they saw us? The city, I mean. If they really saw us. You think we could stay?”
King picks at a hole in his jeans forming on his knee. “See how I pay attention to this?” he says. “It only makes it worse.”
Another type of hole rips my stomach. “It’s too fast. I can’t leave knowing I can’t come back.”
His eyes tell me he’s weighing the thoughts that trip through his mind. He’s seeing me in those thoughts. All those possibilities.
“You wanna try it out first?” he asks. “Like practice?”
“You mean you’d take me to the city tomorrow? And come back? I can have tomorrow?”
“Can’t give you what’s already yours. It is your birthday.”
I almost forgot. The hole in my stomach gets smaller, and I hug my arms across me.
“Now, I know you’ve got that book under there,” he says. “Wanna read to me?”
I take the book out while he settles on the sleeping bag, and I turn to my favorite story.
4
THE WIND CARRIES SPIRITS of brine and seaweed, and I lick my arm below my shoulder to taste the salt.
Maybe today I’ll see the ocean.
The morning drum plays far and faint. My heart joins the drum and makes it louder. I open my eyes to the sunlight above. King should be here soon. When you hear Hamlet’s drum. That’s what he said.
I stretch my toes to the laundry bag at my feet. Extra full.
Dad’s watch ticks slower than the drum, counting one second to the next, never wanting to jump ahead to see what might come. He breathes in deep, but I know he’s not asleep. I know his eyes are just as open as mine to the new day.
The drum music stops.
Scratches outside the tent. Three. I jump to my knees.
King.
“You ready?”
I’ve been waiting.
I twist my hair up and pull on my stocking cap.
I unzip the door.
He turns his head to me, and my mouth tingles. I want to smile, because he’s in his black velvet blazer, hair tied back. But nothing about his extra-fine face is smiling.
I nod to let him know I understand. We’re not playing.
But he tugs the cuff of his sleeve, and I must smile.
Cuz he’s King.
“Do I look fifteen?”
He almost smiles back. He holds out a green rock, marbled in pink.
“My birthday present?” I take the rock and hold it to my ear.
Whispers.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
I kiss it. “Will you place it for me?”
I hand it to him, and he steps back to put it in the final spot of my fifteen-stones-wide path.
His eyes get serious again. He comes back and holds out his hand to help.
“One minute,” I say.
I crawl over my crumpled blanket and lean to Dad. Careful not to crush him.
His eyes close, and his cold ear numbs my lips.
“I’m going now. You’ll teach me the beads? Tonight, like you said?”
He pulls his blanket up over his shoulders and tucks in his hands.
I wait for him. I don’t expect him to agree, and I don’t expect a Happy Bi
rthday, but I do expect—
He nods his head. Just the down part, not the down and up. It could’ve been his head dropping as he falls back to sleep.
I pull his gray sweatshirt from our laundry bag and put it on over my tank top. The sweatshirt’s so big it falls to my knees like a dress would, but it has a pouch in front to collect things. I would wear my sweatpants, but they’re dirty, so I have on thick leggings with stocking feet.
“Got everything?” King calls.
I grab the pink sponge near my pillow and show it to him as I come out with the laundry bag. “Why do you want me to bring this?”
“Did your dad say anything?” he asks.
My stomach bunches up. I stretch it out, and my back unkinks one section at a time as my chest rises.
King looks away. He fixates on a squirrel halfway up a tree. The squirrel twitches its tail and freezes. King clicks his tongue at it, and the squirrel climbs down the tree—backward—and scampers through a bush.
I swipe King’s arm. “You scared him off. You owe him an apology.”
“Apology?” His jaw tenses. “You’re the squirrel-talker. I only talk to rats. How ’bout I apologize to a rat and ask him to pass it on?” He breathes out hard and shakes his head.
“What’s wrong?”
His eyes squint. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”
It’s not nothing, and we both know it. Today is special.
“Thanks for taking me.”
Sabbath howls in the distance. Shush, I tell him. This is none of his business.
King shifts his feet. “Do you got the book? Time it’s got returned. We made a deal.”
The book.
I drop the laundry bag next to our near-empty rain catch and jump back in the tent. I lift my pillow to the mermaid and tell her it’s time.
I zip up the tent when I come out, and King nods his approval at the book. The zipper snags at the top, a thread coming loose.
I blow soft on the thread and it wiggles alive. “You got a needle? I wanna fix it before it decides to unravel.”
“Yeah, no thread though. Have to get some.” King scratches three times on the tent again, but his scratches are rougher since this one’s for Dad. “Mister. We’ll be back in three or four hours.”
I pluck at the thread. “That’s not enough time for supplies. We should get some while we’re out. Thread and water, and . . .” I run my tongue over my filmy teeth. “Toothpaste.”
“Five hours,” he tells my dad.
I stretch time through my hands. I need more.
King actually smiles. “We’ll be back before dark.”
Above his head, the youngest of the tree leaves jump in the wind. They’re so easily entertained.
“Sit down,” he says.
This is it.
He’s gonna tell me we’re not leaving tomorrow. He’s changed his mind. This is our home, and it doesn’t matter who’s coming or what they take away. We’re not gonna leave.
He must see some sort of spark in my eyes, cuz he clears his throat and smooths the front of his blazer. “I mean . . . I need to show you something before we go.”
I sit on the ground while he picks out a short and sturdy stick. He sits beside me and draws a long oval in the dirt.
“What are you writing?”
“It’s not a letter,” he says. “It’s a circle. For your berries.”
He draws a line straight up that ends in a wall.
“This is the end of the Jungle.”
“Why are you showing me?” I ask. “Are you going to leave me by myself?”
He pauses. His forehead wrinkles. “Course not. Watch.” After the wall, the line turns and goes straight. He draws a rectangle and taps it. “Laundry.” Then the line goes up again. He draws another rectangle. “Food.” And another rectangle across from that. “Police.” The line continues up to another rectangle. “Library.”
He taps the library with the stick. “This is where you go if anything happens. Got it? For emergency.”
I trace the lines with my eyes and nod.
He erases the lines with his foot and hands me the stick. “Draw it.”
“I don’t—”
His eyes go stern. “Draw it.”
I take the stick and draw. Only I mix up some of the rectangles, and he has me draw it again. I get it right with a lucky guess.
I ask to draw it again. This time I dig the lines in my memory as I dig them in the earth.
He puts on his skullcap, black with a white cross, low over his eyebrows, then takes the laundry bag and throws it across his shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
Hamlet’s drum music starts up again from down the hill—second morning call for breakfast. Too far to see. I hope the hamsters get some oatmeal.
“If we have time, can we see the hamsters?”
He tugs my hand and nods up the hill. “Let’s go.”
I step to leave, and that’s when it becomes real to me.
I’m leaving.
I know we’ll be back, but I can’t help looking around to remember—my green tent and King’s below us nestled by our tall soldier trees with trunks laced in ivy. Maybe it’d be easier to pretend this is a dream, and when I wake up, I’ll be home again.
“You sure we’re not too early?”
“Nah,” he says, “we’ll get there when it opens. Won’t be anyone.”
I stop sleepwalking—almost drop the book. “But I need to see people. And the library. I need to see everything.”
“Watch out for the log.” He takes my arm and I step over it. “You will. It’s just I got a kinda surprise, you know. Can’t be no one there. Come on, now.”
“For my birthday?”
His mouth lifts at one corner. “Don’t go getting excited, it ain’t much.”
“But, still. A surprise. Will I get to see the Space Needle? Is it as sharp as one of your old needles, and does it really look like a spaceship? I can’t remember.”
“Don’t know how sharp it is, but used to have dreams it was a spaceship that broke, and the aliens couldn’t find a way home. Might see it, depending how far we get.”
My head turns back to our tents. Already gone behind the thick green bushes and trees. Some leaves coloring in orange and red.
We stop at the blackberries. Leaves rustle low through the thicket, and my heart beats fast.
Don’t seem like my bushes no more. Their canes arch above, twice the height of King, with toothed leaves and sharp spines that could tear into us both. A face pops into my head. Of a boy—nearly a man—with straight comb tracks in his blond hair.
King shakes one of my shoulders. “Just the squirrel. Remember? No one else.”
I eat a large blackberry, and the image goes. I swallow it whole. “I know.”
He tugs on his sleeves and slips through an opening I didn’t know was there.
“The squirrel says it’s okay?” I call out.
His hand appears through the bush, finds my arm. “Step in sideways and duck,” he says. “Watch the thorns.”
My legs don’t wanna go, but I tell them to, and then before I know—he’s somehow guiding me through, with two steps, three steps, four steps, five, and I’m on the other side without a scratch. Looks the same over here as it did over there. Nothing to be afraid of.
But I stay in back and follow his steps. He’s so big no one will see me.
Trains rattle on their tracks and blow their whistles far below. A jumbo cargo plane flies high over us, so loud my body rattles. When it’s gone, there’s the hum of the freeway. But all I see are trees, bushes, and grass. The sky surrounded by an umbrella of trees. For most of the life I remember. And I hope that’s all I see until we get to the top.
But then I notice other things. Garbage. Plastic bags caught in trees, wadded tissues, dirty cardboard, empty soup cans, and a long white-yellow thing that looks like a balloon with no air—blown up over and over again until someone gave up. I know what it is. King pretends not to see it.
He’s walking faster now. On guard. No one dares come to our side of the blackberries—they know it’s King’s. But this side is different. People come to do things they’re not supposed to. I know what a gun sounds like, and I know when a scream isn’t part of fun. I also know the difference between the ashy smoke from a warm fire and the sweet kind you hide from.
We pass a tree with another paper on it. King rips it off careful and shoves it in his pocket.
We climb now.
The hill is steep.
King’s hand drops to the ground to help him climb better, and I do what he does. I try to keep up but have to kneel a minute. King comes back down to me.
“Forgot you’re not used to exercise like this. We can rest. Not long, though. If you want your surprise.”
I pant hard. “Tell me . . . what it is.”
His eyes light up. “Not gonna spoil it now. What you thinking?”
I grab a branch above, pull myself to my feet. “Let’s go.”
He walks ahead. Up ahead. Toward the top of the hill, where a long concrete wall stretches forever. I’ve had dreams about that top, about climbing that wall. Nightmares, really. In my dream, I reach the top and look over to the other side. What I see is white, empty space. And I can’t figure if it’s a beginning or an end, and down below somewhere King yells for me to jump, so I do, but my feet never touch the ground.
“Come on!” he calls.
King goes over the wall every day. He leaves and comes back, so there must be another side. I keep my eyes up and chant each step.
To. The. Top.
To. The. Top.
To. The. Top.
King reaches the wall, and it’s taller than he is. The squirrel is there, too. His tail flicks. A question.
Yes, I tell the squirrel. I want to do this.
King flings the laundry bag over the wall. The bag makes a soft thud.
Proof the ground exists.
He jumps with his arms stretched up, and his hands slap and hold to the top. He does a chin-up and surveys. Then he kicks his right leg up, and his foot lands on the top. He pulls himself up and squats, motions with his hand for me while he continues to keep watch.
I can’t climb like that. But I walk the rest of the way and touch the slab. So cool on my hand.
The squirrel turns around in a circle.
“Aren’t you gonna tell him he’s done?” I ask.