Where We Belong

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  I stared at them for what seemed like a long time.

  Then I slipped them out of the box and started building.

  Just a basic house at first, but pretty soon, I decided to give it three levels.

  Then I got really into it and sort of lost track of my surroundings, like I’d always used to.

  Then I was almost out of cards, and I didn’t want to stop. I mean, I really didn’t want to stop. It was like it had gotten under my skin again, into my blood, and I needed more decks of cards. And I needed them fast.

  I was so caught up in the feeling that I didn’t realize Paul was standing over me with two sandwiches on plates. I could smell the smoked turkey, and I hadn’t had any breakfast. But still, all I wanted was more cards. More risky drops.

  “Wow,” he said. “You’re good at that.”

  “I haven’t done it for years.”

  “Must be something like riding a bicycle.”

  “This is nothing. I used to build ranches with a ranch house and a barn and sheds and corrals…”

  “Why?”

  “Just to kill the time, I guess.” I dropped the last card, and the whole thing held. But there was nowhere left to go with it. “My dad had just died, and I guess I was needing something to be compulsive about.”

  “Sorry. I think that sounded rude. I just always wondered why people do things like that. You know. Things that…”

  Rigby trotted in, her tail going. Paul and I both saw it about to happen. But he still had a plate in each hand, and I didn’t dare reach across the card house. Even the wind of a sudden movement could bring it crashing down.

  “Rigby, no!” he said.

  She froze in place, her wind-producing nose not two feet from my construction project, and looked up at his face with what I swear was the most wounded look. I guess she wasn’t used to being yelled at. Since she never did a damn thing wrong.

  “Good girl,” Paul said. “Stay.”

  She did.

  But she didn’t sit. Because nobody told her to. She stood there swinging that massive tail, and on about the fourth swing, it worked up just enough of a wind.

  I saw a card in the second story collapse, and then there was that moment. That frozen split second of time. It’s so short, you could convince yourself you imagined it, but I’d decided a long time ago to go the other way and convince myself I hadn’t.

  Cards fluttered everywhere, some off onto the hardwood floor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing. Don’t make her feel bad. It was coming down sooner or later, anyway. They all do.”

  I scooped up the cards on the table, then went after the ones that had landed farther away.

  “I think that’s what I was about to say a minute ago,” Paul said. “But I’m not sure, because it wasn’t a very clear thought. But I think I’ve always wondered about things like card houses and sand castles. And ice sculptures. So much time to put into something that’s destined to undo itself.”

  I sat down on the couch and counted the cards out really fast. Fifty-one.

  I got down on my hands and knees and fished the last one out from under the couch. The Queen of Hearts. That felt meaningful, but I was probably being dumb.

  “Here’s how I look at it, though,” I said, sliding the deck back into the box. “I figure that’s true of everything. You get born, you build all this stuff. Buy houses and cars and save money. Then you die, and it’s all right back down to the ground again.”

  “Not always. What about if you build a bridge? That stays up.”

  “Maybe for a while after you die. But not forever. Sooner or later, they’ll decide it’s unsafe, and they’ll tear it down and build a newer one. Build a real house; eventually, it comes down. May take hundreds of years, but it’ll go back to the ground again. Card houses are just faster is all.”

  He sat down on the couch and set our sandwiches on the coffee table. I took a huge bite of mine. My stomach was so empty that it turned a little when the food hit it. But it was a good sandwich. It was always hard to save half for Sophie, because I was always hungry for all of it and more. But I always did.

  “That’s a depressing theory,” he said.

  “Not really. I mean, not in my head. In my head, it’s just the opposite. Some people never do anything, because they’re so afraid it’ll get undone again. They get overwhelmed by the fact that nothing lasts. Then there are the brave people who do all kinds of stuff, anyway. Even though none of it is forever. I want to be one of those people. That’s why I build card houses. Or why I used to. Before Sophie came along. Or maybe it was partly because it was the very last thing I did with my dad before he got killed. But that’s only part of it. The other part of it was what I said before.”

  We ate in silence for a few minutes. I finished my half of the sandwich in only about three more bites. It was good while it lasted.

  Like everything, I guess.

  Then he said, “You sure you’re not a forty-year-old midget?”

  “Believe me. There are parts of me that are completely fourteen.”

  “They don’t show.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then it’s still working.”

  I saw that deck of cards on his coffee table maybe ten more times that year. But I never opened the box again.

  PART TWO

  The Part When I Was Fifteen

  1. Fishwinner

  For reasons I can’t explain after the fact, I expected a little hoopla.

  It was my first day of summer vacation. After one full school year in the new place. Which, frankly, was a lot harder than in the old place. Because it was a tiny school. I thrived on huge schools. There was no way to get lost in a high school with a grand total of 300 students in all four grade levels.

  It’s pretty unavoidable, at close range, that they’d find me a bit weird for their taste.

  I found Sophie and my mom at the breakfast table. My mom was shoveling in rice and beans left over from dinner the night before. Sophie was sitting in front of hers and focusing on something else entirely. I have no idea what. Something in the air. Something I would never see.

  We were in a new place. A real place. It was something like a guesthouse. One bedroom, but incredibly small. But my mom was thoughtful enough to share the bedroom with Sophie, leaving me the foldout couch. Doesn’t sound like much. And it wasn’t. But at least she didn’t ask me to share the living room with my sister.

  I really don’t care much about the size or fanciness of my living space. I’m not picky at all. Just so long as I have something that’s mine.

  I sat down at the table.

  “Breakfast?” my mom asked.

  She sounded half asleep.

  I knew it was self-defeating to hope for much, but I thought she should be happy for me. She knew it was my first day of summer vacation. I felt the way I figured Paul did when he told me what he was going to do with his retirement, after paying the price for forty-five years.

  I wanted a little fanfare. Hell, I wanted a freaking parade.

  “Leftover beans and rice is hardly breakfast,” I said.

  “I’m afraid it’s that or nothing.”

  “Nothing.”

  No reply. No interest.

  I looked at Sophie, who seemed to be communicating nonverbally with something hovering in the air over the breakfast table.

  “I see Sophie chose nothing, too.”

  Still no reply.

  After my mom paid the rent on that place, we were left with almost no money. She walked to work and back, because gas was out of our price range. She’d bought a huge bag of rice and five pounds of dried beans, and that just about strapped us till the next payday. I was getting pretty tired of rice and beans. The paycheck before that, it’d been pasta. I’d gotten pretty tired of pasta.

  “At least she gets school lunch,” I said. “She does still get lunch in the summer-school program. Right?”

  “What?”

&nbs
p; “School lunch. For Sophie. She still gets it in the summer. Right?”

  “Well, of course. What do you think, they just starve the Special Ed kids all summer?”

  “Pardon me for caring,” I said under my breath. Then I glanced over at the clock on the microwave. “She’s going to be late. The van’ll be here any minute.”

  My mom’s head shot up. She looked at the clock, too.

  “Oh, shit!”

  Then she clapped a hand over her mouth and looked at Sophie. Why she should worry about Sophie picking up bad words, I couldn’t imagine. Sophie had never picked up any words at all, in seven years. Except Hem. And that had something to do with extreme motivation. It wasn’t likely to repeat itself anytime soon.

  My mom stormed into the bedroom and came out a minute later with Sophie’s socks and shoes.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I said.

  No reply.

  I stopped at the door and looked back. My mom was on her knees on the rug, putting on Sophie’s sneakers.

  “Happy summer vacation to me,” I said. Wondering, even as I said it, what the point might be.

  “You seem happy enough for yourself,” she said. “I guess you don’t need any help from me. Which is good, because I’m having a crappy morning.”

  I sighed and walked out. I hadn’t even gotten the door closed behind me when I saw Mr. Maribal pull into the long driveway. Mr. Maribal was the Special Education van driver for the school district. He seemed like a patient man, but sometimes I wondered if that was more on the outside.

  Usually he honked. But since he saw me, he just waved.

  I stuck my head back in.

  “Van’s here.”

  “Then why didn’t he honk?”

  “Because he saw me see him.”

  She came thundering over to the door, practically knocking me out of the way. Looked down the driveway.

  “Way to take my word for it,” I said.

  She waved to Mr. Maribal. Then she said to me, “Walk her down there if you’re going for a walk, okay? I have to get ready for work.”

  “Sophie,” I said. “Come on. Van’s here. Let’s go.”

  Nothing.

  Not that I expected much. I mean, it was Sophie. She seemed okay with the concept of getting into the van and going to school. But that didn’t mean she was ready to go on nothing but requests.

  I walked back to the breakfast table and took her hand.

  In the old days, she would have yanked it away again. But she’d been calm ever since we came to town. And she particularly clung to me, because I was the one connected in her mind to Hem.

  I led her out of the house and down the driveway. I heard the door slam behind us.

  “She’s in a mood,” I said to Sophie, who, of course, paid no mind.

  Mr. Maribal was out in the driveway by the time we got there, opening the side door. It was just a normal-size van, like the kind a soccer mom would drive. There were only seven Special Ed kids in the whole district.

  I lifted Sophie into her seat, then watched as Mr. Maribal buckled her in. He liked to do the seatbelts himself. He had a strong sense of responsibility. Or fear. Or something.

  “Morning, Reggie,” I said. “Morning, Ellen.”

  We were the third stop.

  “Morning!” Reggie said. “Morning. Morning. Morning. Know what I saw? It was… Um. Know what it was? I saw it. This morning. Just now. It was…”

  “What, Reggie?” I tried to sound encouraging.

  I was never sure about his situation. I thought he was ASD, but he might’ve been developmentally disabled. All I knew is that he was exactly the opposite of Sophie when it came to words.

  “I forgot now,” he said.

  Mr. Maribal slid the van door closed with that satisfying thunk.

  “Bye, Sophie,” I said.

  Nothing. Then again, as much as I’d expected.

  Reggie launched into a string of “Bye, Sophie’s sister. Bye! We’re going to school now! See you tomorrow, Sophie’s sister.”

  I waved until they were gone, then walked the rest of the way down the driveway and started puffing up the hill into town. It was hard, because I was hungry. As usual. That made it hard to put out much energy.

  I was thinking it might be nice if Sophie were more talkative, like Reggie, because I would feel more connected to her. Then I decided it was one of those things that would be nice for an hour or two and then hell for the rest of eternity.

  I wasn’t really sure why I was walking into town. I knew in my head I was looking for that stuff Paul described. Walking into town and reading the paper and drinking a double espresso and maybe getting a scone or something. But Paul had money in his pocket.

  Still, I was determined to find some of what he’d described. Maybe I could go to the coffeehouse and read one of the communal papers, at least.

  A car pulled up beside me and slowed almost to a stop.

  I heard “Happy first day of vacation.” I recognized his voice immediately.

  Rigby’s head was sticking out the back window. I walked to the car and wrapped my arms around her huge head and kissed her good morning. Then I stuck my head through the passenger window in front, which Paul had powered down.

  “I kept waiting for my mom to say that this morning. Seemed like a simple enough thing.”

  “Never happened, huh?”

  “Never happened.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  I sighed. “I have no idea, really. I wanted to have a vacation sort of a day, so I was walking into town. Like you do in the morning. But I don’t have the money for pastry and espresso, so it’s all kind of a joke. I’m just trying to make this morning different and good, I guess. What about you? I thought you walked into town in the morning. Where are you going?”

  “We’re coming back. Rigby and I went fishing at dawn.”

  “Ooh. Nice. Catch anything?”

  He reached down for an oddly shaped wicker basket with a lid. It was sitting on a blue tarp on the passenger-side floor. It had a leather shoulder strap and a leather strap to latch it closed. But it wasn’t latched. He lifted the lid. Inside were five beautiful fish, silver, with shiny bellies and a rainbow of color glinting along their sides, lying side by side and on top of each other in perfect stillness.

  “Trout?”

  “Yes. Rainbows.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “That’s an odd question. I’m going to eat them. Pretty much right now.”

  “For breakfast?”

  “You’re not much of a camper, are you?”

  “Not much of one, no.”

  “It’s a classic camper’s breakfast. Freshly caught trout cooked over an open fire. Because dawn and dusk are the best times to fish for trout, anyway. I’d invite you to see what I mean, but you probably already had breakfast.”

  “Actually, no.”

  “You weren’t hungry?”

  “I’m starved. I’m always starved. Breakfast was just so horrible, I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.”

  “Jump in. You’re in for a treat. Careful not to step on the fish.”

  I held the basket of fish on my lap while he drove, just to be safe.

  I lifted the lid once and looked in. Their wide, glassy eyes stared into nothing. I thought it was sad how just this morning, they were swimming free in a lake or a stream, thinking everything was fine. That it was going to be a great day, just like every other day. And then this happened.

  Then again, everybody has to eat. And I was part of everybody.

  The fish were still whole when he carefully lifted one onto my plate with a spatula. He’d only gutted them, cleaned the insides under running water, then dried them with a paper towel and brushed them with olive oil before broiling.

  “Is he going to be staring at me like that the whole time I’m eating him?”

  Actually, his eye had gone milky white under the broiler. But it was still an eye. On my plate. Aimed at
me.

  “I forgot you’re new at this. Tell you what…”

  He picked up a fork and a steak knife and made one quick move that separated the whole top filet from the rest of the trout and slid it down onto the plate. Then he grabbed the tail in his fingers, holding down the bottom filet with the fork in just the right place. The whole fish skeleton lifted up, taking the head with it. Leaving the two perfect filets steaming on my plate.

  It was a big fish, maybe thirteen or fourteen inches long when the head and tail were still on. It was more food than I’d seen waiting for me—and only me—on a plate in a long time.

  “Thank you. It’s weird when something watches you eat it.”

  He had a kitchen trash can that opened when he stepped on a pedal, and I watched as he dropped the fish skeleton in. It reminded me of cartoons I saw as a kid—just like what the cartoon alley cats always pulled out of the trash.

  “Under the broiler is not the same,” he said. “I’m thinking about getting an outdoor grill. But even with a gas grill, it’s not the same as a wood fire. I miss camping. Part of me wants to go again, but I’m too old to sleep on the ground.”

  He crossed back to the stove to serve up his own breakfast.

  The smell was heavenly. It was making my stomach cramp and growl.

  “What about one of those camp cots?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Still, I think Rigby’s too old to sleep on the ground, too. She’s already getting a little arthritic. I’ve had to put her on medication for it.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. Well. I didn’t make a big point of it. I know neither one of us wants her to be old. What are you waiting for? Dig in.”

  “I didn’t want to be rude.”

  “Nonsense. Eat it before it gets cold. Watch out for small bones. Oh. Here’s some salt and pepper.”

  I pressed the side of my fork down on a filet, but it was clear that it would fall apart at the slightest touch. That I could just flake off a bite. I did. I popped it into my mouth. Half excited, half nervous.