Sincerely

  I blew out my cheeks and shook my head, feeling stupid and embarrassed, even though no one had seen me, and I went into the living room. Dad wasn’t in there anymore, but the light was still on. I looked through our shelf of movies, but there wasn’t anything that I felt like watching so I just turned on the television and flipped through the channels. Saturday night is not a good night for television. Thursday is much better, but finally I found reruns of old shows playing on one of the cable stations. I pulled an afghan that my grandmother had made off the arm of the couch and curled up under it. Grandma used to knit a lot, but that was a long time ago. Now she has arthritis in her fingers. I hated the idea of getting old. My mother worried about the lines around her eyes and about Grandma living alone in Florida. The afghan on the couch is wearing thin. It has a brown stain in the center from when Haley spilled her Coke. Mom always tries to fold the afghan so you can’t see that part.

  After a couple of episodes I was starting to feel pretty tired. The television looked blurry and I couldn’t concentrate on what the people were saying. I turned off the light and turned off the television. The screen faded to black and the room became dark. I wondered if Haley and Jennifer were still telling ghost stories. If they were, I couldn’t hear them. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator in the next room.

  Sometimes it’s hard for me to fall asleep, especially nights when I have a lot to think about. I would lie awake listening to Haley breathing in the next bed and wish I could fall asleep so easily. Dad once said I should try counting backward from one hundred when I can’t sleep. Sometimes that works, but usually it doesn’t. A lot of times I start counting, but get too distracted thinking of other things. That night, even though I was really tired, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jessie, and how maybe she’d gotten home and called up Lindsay or Amy and gone over to one of their apartments instead.

  I don’t know how long I was awake, but I must have fallen asleep at some point because I woke up when I heard voices. For a second I couldn’t remember where I was, but then I felt Grandma’s afghan on top of me. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out the wall unit and the coffee table. In the dark it looked like everything in the room had changed colors. It was all in different shades of blue. I strained to hear who was talking.

  I heard my mother’s voice. “How can you do this, Jack?” she said.

  “Oh, Andrea, don’t act like this is a surprise,” Dad said.

  “We can’t even afford a divorce,” Mom said. “We’ll have to take the girls out of private school. Do you really want to do that, Jack? Do you really want to do that to your own daughters?”

  Dad said something I couldn’t make out. Then I heard my mother again. “Dammit, Jack!” she said, and something fell to the floor.

  “Keep your voice down,” Dad said, but he sounded like he was yelling too.

  I thought I must have still been dreaming. There was no way my parents were talking about getting a divorce. I once heard that if you pinched yourself in a dream it wouldn’t hurt, so I pinched my arm. It didn’t hurt too much. My heart was beating faster. I pinched myself again, harder. This time it hurt a lot. My eyes felt hot. I could feel the tears beginning to fall. I wished I could just fall back asleep. People fight all the time. My parents had fought before, and they had always made up. When I woke in the morning, they would have forgiven each other.

  I heard their bedroom door open, and then the front door opened and closed. A few moments passed. I wondered if it was Mom or Dad who had left. Maybe it was just Dad taking the garbage to the compactor chute down the hall. Any second and he would be back. I took a deep breath and held it. If he came back before I needed to take another breath, then everything would be okay.

  I held my hand to my mouth to try to hold my breath in longer. My chest tightened and the back of my throat burned. When my head started to feel light, I let the air out and started breathing normally again. In and out. In and out. The front door stayed closed. Please come back, I thought. Please. A few minutes later I heard footsteps moving toward the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and closed, and the footsteps started again, moving closer and closer to me. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. They stopped and I could feel someone watching me. It is hard to pretend to be sleeping when you are actually crying. Finally I opened my eyes.

  “Mom,” I said. In the darkness her skin looked like the milky blue-white color of skim milk. It matched all the furniture.

  “What are you doing in here?” Mom said. Her voice was soft and crackly.

  “Haley and Jennifer are having a campout in the other room. I wanted privacy,” I said.

  “Where’s Jessie?”

  “She had to go home,” I said.

  Even in the darkness I could tell Mom was surprised, but she didn’t say anything about it. She just said she was sorry for waking me up. I could tell she had been crying too. I had only seen my mother cry three times before. Once when she stepped on a tack that I had accidentally left on the floor. She had to get a tetanus shot and she was mad at me for a week. The other two times were when she fought with Grandma.

  “Are you and Daddy really getting a divorce?” I asked.

  My mother sighed. She motioned for me to move over. I moved my feet up, and Mom sat next to me and pulled my legs onto her lap.

  “Oh, Sophie, I’m sorry you had to hear all that. We never would have been so loud if we’d known you were out here. It’s nothing for you to worry about. Just forget that you heard it.” But there was no way I was going to be able to forget what I had heard.

  “It’s all my fault,” I said.

  “Oh, no, that’s ridiculous,” Mom said. “It is never the kids’ fault when their parents have problems.” But I knew my mother was wrong. Maybe I would be the first kid in the world to actually cause her parents’ divorce.

  “You don’t understand,” I told her. “It really is my fault.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mom asked.

  “I’m the reason that Daddy was in a bad mood. I’m the reason he was angry. Jessie and I took Haley and Jennifer down the block to the big building. We got locked in the stairwell, and Haley told him. Now he’s mad at me. He’s just taking it out on you.”

  “It’s been a rough night, hasn’t it?” Mom said. She rubbed my legs through the afghan. “But Daddy isn’t angry with you. We were fighting even before you came home from trick-or-treating.” I turned away from Mom and took a deep breath. I know it didn’t change the fact that Dad wanted a divorce, but at least no one could blame me.

  “Will we really have to change schools?” I said. Mom leaned forward and gathered me in her arms. She pulled the afghan around both of us. Even though it’s old and worn out and has a brown stain on it, it’s still the best blanket in the house.

  “We were fighting, sweetheart,” Mom said. “Sometimes you say things you don’t mean when you fight. You know, like sometimes you tell Haley that you hate her. I say things like that to Daddy when I’m mad at him. It doesn’t mean that it’s true.”

  “But you could get divorced, right?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I promise that you and Haley will stay at Victor no matter what. It will be okay, Sophie. I promise you.”

  “I’m scared,” I said.

  “Don’t be scared,” Mom said. “Maybe nothing will even happen. Daddy and I have a lot to figure out, that’s all.”

  When I was younger and my mother told me everything would be okay, I believed her. The thing about getting older is you start to realize that even your parents don’t always know how things will turn out. I had thought that as I got older, I would be able to understand things better, but I just felt more confused and alone. I couldn’t stop being scared no matter what my mother said.

  “You shouldn’t tell me not to be scared,” I said. “That’s a really dumb thing to say.”

  “You’re right,” Mom said. “I just don’t want you to worry.”

&nb
sp; Mom looked so sad and sorry, and I felt bad about what I’d said. Sometimes I don’t know whether to feel sorry for people or to be upset with them. “Are you going to go back to bed?” I asked.

  “Maybe I’ll sleep out here with you,” Mom said. “Is that okay?”

  You know that feeling when you really want to stay wherever you are but you know that you can’t—like when you wake up in the middle of the night and your bed feels wonderful and warm but you really have to pee? I wanted to stay sitting exactly as we were, wrapped in Grandma’s afghan with Mom’s arms around me, but my nose was all stuffed up and I felt uncomfortable, too.

  “Can you do me a favor first?” I asked Mom.

  “Anything,” she said.

  “Can you bring me a tissue?”

  My mother laughed and hugged me tighter. Then she got up to get a box of tissues from the hall closet. She came back. I blew my nose and then lay down in her lap to go to sleep. Sometime during the night I heard the front door open and Dad’s footsteps move from the front hall to his bedroom. But I didn’t call to him or even open my eyes. Mom didn’t move either, so I don’t even know if she was awake and heard him come in.

  Seven

  THE NEXT WEEK at school Ms. Brisbin took everything off the back bulletin board and put up a giant map of the United States. She said we should write the names of our pen pals on the states where they lived. Some people didn’t know exactly where to put their pen pals’ names, but luckily mine was easy. Everyone knows where California is, and I knew that Redwood City was in northern California. I had looked it up on the Internet. So when it was my turn, I wrote “Katie Franklin” on the map very neatly, and then I drew a little picture of a redwood tree next to her name. They’re a special kind of tree that grows in California—I knew that from the letter I’d gotten from Katie and from the research Ms. Brisbin made us do.

  Ms. Brisbin made us look up all kinds of stuff about the states our pen pals were from. She gave us a list of questions to consider, such as what kind of climate the state had and what important landmarks there were. She said the questions were just starting points and we should feel free to use our imaginations and research the things that we thought were interesting, and then write reports about what we had learned. I didn’t spend much time on it. I took the questions Ms. Brisbin gave us and went to Mom’s computer to download information about California. There was a Web site of California facts. I learned that the state bird is a quail, the state flower is a poppy, and the capital is Sacramento. I wrote a few short sentences about California. My handwriting looked messy and I knew I wasn’t going to get a good grade, but I didn’t really care.

  Ms. Brisbin had also made room on the board to display the letters we got from our pen pals. The board was filling up quickly but I kept forgetting to bring in Katie’s letter. It had come on Monday. The only mail I ever get is on holidays and my birthday, and even then it is usually just a card from Grandma. She sends a check too, but my parents always make me put it in the bank to save for when I’m older.

  Katie’s letter was on pink stationery. I don’t think it was custom made like mine was, because it didn’t have her name on it. It looked like the kind you can buy in a card store. She had put confetti in the envelope, and because I wasn’t expecting it, I accidentally spilled it on the floor in the front hall.

  Mom was standing next to me as the confetti drifted to the floor. The light from the window hit it and it sparkled on the way down, as though the individual flakes were diamonds. “Oh, Sophie,” Mom said. I knew she didn’t care that it looked pretty.

  “It’s not my fault,” I said. “How was I supposed to know that was in there?”

  “Just clean it up,” she said, and she walked into her office and closed the door. Of course she was allowed to close the door whenever she wanted.

  I would have cleaned it up even if Mom hadn’t told me to, but first I wanted to read Katie’s letter. Haley was still at ballet, so I had my room all to myself. Usually the first thing I do when I get home is take off my uniform skirt and put on a pair of jeans, but I sat on my bed and read the letter twice before I thought about changing.

  Dear Sophie,

  Sorry I haven’t written yet, but thanks for your letter.

  Things here are great. My class just won field day at school. For the final game we had to climb this rock wall to get a red flag, and then drop the flag down to our partner, who would run to the finish line. I was partners with my best friend, Jake. We split it up so I did the first part and he did the second part because I’m a better climber and he’s a faster runner. Actually Jake is the fastest runner in the whole sixth grade, just so you know. Of course he was the first person to the finish line so my class won. I was so excited that I lost my balance on the rock wall and fell to the ground. My teacher ran over and totally thought I had broken my leg. I just said, “Do we still win?” She said we did, and my leg was fine anyway.

  I’m supposed to tell you some stuff about California. Well, I live in a city called Redwood City. It’s named after redwood trees. There are a lot of them in California. In fact, there’s a forest full of them called the redwood forest. Sometimes my dad takes my sister Julie and me to a part called Big Basin and we have campouts. But there are all different kinds of trees in Redwood City, not just redwood trees, so I’m not really sure why they named the whole city after them.

  I visited New York a couple years ago. I would really love to go again, but if we want to go to a city we can go into San Francisco, which is also really cool, and it’s only about a half hour away from our house. There are a lot of things in San Francisco that you’ve probably heard of, like cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge. If you are ever in San Francisco, you should let me know because I could probably meet you there.

  Well, I hope you are having fun in New York and I hope you write back to me soon.

  Sincerely,

  Katie

  P.S. I’m sending you my school picture from last year. I would send you one from this year, but they didn’t take them yet and I look the same anyway. Please send me a picture in your next letter.

  I hadn’t seen a picture when I’d opened the envelope, but maybe it was still in the envelope, or maybe it had fallen onto the floor with all the confetti. “Sophie,” Mom called from the front hall. “I thought I told you to clean this up.”

  “I forgot,” I said.

  “Well, do it now,” she said. I opened the envelope wider and saw Katie’s picture was still inside. I knew I didn’t have time to look at it carefully, but I pulled it out to look at it quickly and could see that she had blond hair pulled back into a ponytail and straight teeth that probably didn’t need braces. Then I put the letter and the picture back into the envelope and into my desk drawer for safekeeping, and I went to clean up the confetti. When I got there, Mom was sitting on her knees picking it up off the floor.

  “I said I would do it,” I said. I hoped she wouldn’t punish me just because I’d forgotten. Lately it seemed like I was forgetting a lot of things. It was hard to concentrate on anything that I had to do. At school I was worried about Jessie, and at home I was worried about my parents. I watched everyone so carefully that sometimes it seemed they were doing everything in slow motion. Every movement seemed to mean something, but I didn’t know what it was. When I had time to myself, I tried to figure it out. If Jessie passed me a note during class, did that mean she was still my best friend? If Dad touched Mom’s shoulder, did that mean they had decided not to get a divorce? When he went out for some fresh air, did he really leave because he hated her? It was so exhausting to try to make sense of everything and still try to act normal.

  I got down on my hands and knees and helped Mom pick up the rest of the confetti. They were just little squares of silver and gold, but I decided to save them. Mom gave me all the confetti she’d picked up, and I put it all in an envelope. I would keep it in my desk drawer along with Katie’s letter. “But I’m warning you, Sophie,” Mom said. “I really d
on’t want to see that all over the floor again!”

  • • •

  By the end of the week most kids had gotten a letter from their pen pal. Lindsay claimed she had received a second one, but there was only one letter from her pen pal on the back bulletin board. I wondered what Lindsay wrote to her pen pal about New York. She probably wrote about all the clothing she bought at Bloomingdale’s.

  Ms. Brisbin said during our free periods we could get up and read the letters on the bulletin board to see what other kids’ pen pals had written and learn about the places their pen pals came from. During the week I read all the letters on the bulletin board over and over again. I practically memorized some of them. It was strange to imagine all these other kids in other schools—their stuff was up on the bulletin board at Victor, but I would never meet them.