She brings her bicycle to a stop at my curb and knocks her head back, emptying her soda can. “Here,” she says, holding the can toward me. “For your house. While you still have one.”
I narrow my eyes at her and knock the empty can into the street.
• • • 49 • • •
“What are you going to do?” The words reach out the very next afternoon and tap my shoulder, gently. Gus has just dropped me and Irma Jean off after school, and I’m standing in the yard, staring up at my house.
When I turn, I find Irma Jean standing beside a figure—the one twirling her wig around her finger.
Her house is quiet, because her parents are surely at City Hall, which is also where Gus has gone almost every day for the past week. Everyone from Serendipity Place is trying to work something out, as though their words are actually hammers and wrenches with the power to fix this problem.
Irma Jean slides an old beat-up brown paper bag from her backpack. She pulls out a brownie as thick as two stacks of playing cards. “Go on,” she says. “I was saving it for an after-school snack. Now you can have it.”
The brownie makes my mouth water like a hose with a hole in it. Irma Jean doesn’t think words at the City Hall are strong enough to save us. She wants to bribe me into telling her my secret plan.
I stare at Irma Jean’s feet to keep from looking at her hopeful face. The grass is beginning to sprout green around the feet of every single figure. March feels like a fragile blue egg—only, instead of a bird that’s crawling out, it’s spring.
“Gus seemed like he was in an awful big hurry today,” Irma Jean presses.
“Triple pickups,” I say. “Spring cleaning’s started.”
“Is he still trying to get the money for the fines?”
“Yes,” I sigh. “Yes, he’s still trying to get the money for the fines.”
“Do you think he’ll get enough?” she asks, quietly.
Her words poke straight into my doubt. “Probably not,” I admit.
Irma Jean shrinks. She uses the toe of her right sneaker to scratch her left ankle. I watch her toe move up and down over the white circle, thinking about how glad I’ll be when it finally gets warm enough to wear shorts.
“Bet you’ve got another idea,” she whispers. “Come on—tell me. I wish—” Irma Jean’s voice gets real far off. “I wish I could help, you know?”
“You do?”
Irma Jean nods. “Honest.”
“Okay. Okay, maybe,” I say. “You could be my cover while I’m gone.”
“Gone?”
I nod. “To California.”
“California?”
“My mom’s in California,” I remind her. “Everyone says so.”
“But what good is she going to do?” Irma Jean asks. “Are you sure she wants—” She stops short. “I mean, she left. Why would you think she’d want to see you now?”
A hard little lump of anger glows hot inside my chest. “She can help me,” I insist defensively. “Besides, I write her letters all the time.”
“Yeah, but does she answer?”
I make a face at Irma Jean that shows how much her question hurts. “Chuck told me this story about how he and Mom once tried to hitchhike, when they went out to change the world. So I’m going to hitchhike out to California,” I explain.
“No, you’re not,” Irma Jean says, her mouth hanging open.
“I’m going to hitchhike out to California. And I’m going to bring Mom back so she’ll help me stand up to that committee. Nobody in this whole world is braver than my mom, Irma Jean. She could stare down poisonous snakes. And when she was young, she wanted to change the world. If anybody can scare that stupid House Beautification Committee away, change things for the better, it’s my mom.”
Before Irma Jean can argue with me, I say again, “You can cover for me.”
Irma Jean starts to turn a sickly green, right above the spot where her jean jacket hugs her neck. “I can?”
“Sure,” I say, motioning for her to follow me toward my front door. “You can pretend I’m over at your house. For a little while. Then, after I’m long gone, you can let Gus know that I’m okay. That I’m with my mom.”
“I don’t know,” Irma Jean moans.
She’s still whining as we weave between the figures that have completely crowded our front lawn. “I don’t know, Auggie,” she says again as she follows me inside my house.
I toss my books on the front hall table and head straight for the closet, in search of supplies for my trip. But the door is locked. Like always. Like I should have known it would be. But I give it a good kick just the same.
I head for Gus’s room, where I tug his ancient suitcase out from behind his shoes. It’s been so long since Gus has taken a vacation anywhere that when I open it, I find a dead spider who’d managed to crawl in through a crack. I dust her cobweb out with my hand, then drag the suitcase up to my room.
“This is so dangerous, Auggie,” Irma Jean insists as I start tossing my early spring sweaters inside. “What if you get hurt?” she presses. “What if something happens?”
“Something will happen if I don’t go, Irma Jean,” I say, snapping the suitcase shut. “We’ll lose our house. So will you. So will everyone in the neighborhood.”
As I stomp down the stairs and out the front door, Irma Jean admits, “I don’t like this.” All the way to the corner, she whimpers like a left-behind dog.
“Irma Jean!” I snap. “I don’t care if you like it or not. I can’t do anything without a plan, all right? And getting my brave mom is my plan. So maybe it’s not the most perfect plan in the world. But it’s all I’ve got!”
• • • 50 • • •
Irma Jean’s eyes are still pleading with me as I turn away. I throw my thumb right into the air to let all the drivers know that I need a lift. Instantly, tires squeal to a complete halt. Before I even look to see who’s stopped for me, I tell Irma Jean, “I’ll be back soon.”
I’ve only started to reach for the door handle when a pair of hands clutches me by both shoulders and yanks me away.
“Hey,” I moan as Irma Jean waves for the truck that’s stopped to take off down the street again.
“You have to know how risky that is,” she snaps at me.
“I have to do something,” I shout. “We’re going to be homeless, Irma Jean. All of us. I have to go get my mom. She’s the only person I know who can fix this.”
“Here,” Irma Jean says, reaching into her backpack. She pulls out a wad of dollar bills.
“What’s this?”
“My birthday money from my grandma and my aunt and uncle. I’ve been carrying it to school to keep Cody Daniel from stealing it. Use it as bus fare.”
I feel a grateful ball of tears swell in the back of my throat.
“You think it’s enough to get to California?” she asks.
I’m not sure it is, but she’s so sweet to give me her birthday money, I nod like it’s all I’d ever need in the world. I hug her a thank-you.
I head down to the corner bus stop. I sit on a bench, waiting, feeling as serious as a math teacher. I begin to wonder how I’ll ever get to the West Coast. But then I figure if I keep changing buses, one after another, stop after stop, I’ll get there.
When a bus sighs at the curb, I hoist my suitcase up the steps and slam some money into the slot. I hurry to a seat before the driver can question me.
I ride toward the edge of town—a quiet, lonely section where weeds grow up around the corners of abandoned factories and boarded-up filling stations, while the neon lights of liquor stores flicker angrily.
The bus ambles past the half-burned-out letters of a sign flashing VACANCY and a motel with a pool so filthy, it looks like a lake of motor oil.
We ride until a green CITY LIMITS sign looms large at the end of a broken sidewalk.
I figure this must be a good place to change buses, head from one city into another.
My suitcase bangs against my
legs and the edge of the bus seats as I walk down the aisle toward the door. I’m still ready to find my mom. But I’m nowhere near California. Knowing how long it’s taken to get to the edge of town makes California feel as far as the North Pole.
My heart pumps. I don’t know when another bus will come by. What happens when I need to sleep?
I stand at the bus stop for what feels like months, feeling tiny and alone. The world is enormous around me, filled with shadows and mysteries and dangers.
As I tremble, terrified of the who-knows-what that lies ahead, a white car screeches to a stop next to my curb. And a man gets out and heads right toward me.
• • • 51 • • •
“Auggie!” Chuck shouts. As he stares at me, standing there with my suitcase, he begins to look like the kind of uptight preacher who would get after me for anything—not like someone who ran off with my mom, with the half-baked notion of changing the world.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I know I haven’t quite crossed over the city limits yet, but I feel a little like we’re at the absolute end of the universe.
“Irma Jean came looking for me. She told me she gave you bus fare, but she got so worried, she asked me to come track you down. I’ve been driving to every single bus stop I could think of trying to find you.” He’s so relieved, he’s actually panting. “Irma Jean wouldn’t tell me what you were doing. Get in the car, Auggie. Tell me what this is about.”
“You can’t stop me,” I tell him. “I’m going to get my mom. You know her better than anyone around here, except for maybe Gus. You told me yourself how brave she is.”
“You think your mother’s going to fix this mess?” he asks. His face softens, darkens when he repeats, “Your mother.”
“She’s in California, so I’m going to California. She stood up to some dumb old snake, and she can stand up to that committee.”
“This has gone too far,” he mutters. “Come on. You want to see her? I’ll take you to see her.”
He slips the suitcase from my hand and puts me in his car. We drive down a narrow dirt street, snaking sideways so that the city limits sign remains behind us, but we don’t ever leave town. We sort of straddle the line, one set of tires in Willow Grove, the other set outside, as we go farther and farther down the road.
“Chuck?” I ask, my blood speeding like a race car though my ears. “Where—where is she? Have you always known?”
By the time he finally stops, the whole world is trying to get dark. Kind of like the earth is so tired, her eyes are drooping shut.
“She was going to come back,” Chuck says. He cuts the engine, but his headlights still wash over an old wrought-iron gate.
“Chuck?” I croak again, my heart throbbing like a finger that’s been smashed in a door. “Chuck?” This can’t be right. It can’t. Because he didn’t stop at a house. We’re at the opposite of a house. We’re at a cemetery. Mom can’t be here. She can’t.
“She was going to come back,” he repeats, opening his car door and stepping outside.
“Back?” I repeat, stepping out, too. The wind’s picked up a little, and it starts pulling my braids around and pushing Chuck’s black coat back from his sides.
“We left together,” he says, eyes on the sky as he takes a couple of steps toward the gate.
“Off to change the world,” I say, my voice thick with fear. For some reason—maybe because I’m ready to leave this place—I drag my suitcase out with me. Its weight tugs so hard against my body that it feels like a rock dragging me underwater.
“No, we’d come back from that adventure. Not that it was really that much of an adventure. This trip—when we left for California—this was later. You had just been born.”
“You were with her when I was born?” My voice cracks as I ask, “Are you—are—”
Chuck looks at me with shock. I figure he can see my hope floating around inside me, the same way you can see minnows swirling just under the surface of a lake. “I’m not your dad, Auggie.”
“Then who—who—Gus would never say—who—”
“Don’t think Gus ever really knew what to tell you, Auggie. Your dad was somebody who passed through town and then left, quick as he came. Even your mom never really said much about him. People used to think it was me. Maybe they still think it’s me. I wish I was, Aug. More than anything. But I’m not.
“Having you, it changed her,” Chuck says. “She wanted so much to be better. For you. After she had you, she was prettier than ever. More mature looking, I guess. She had started to get decent work close to home—modeling work—like that billboard she did for the dress shop. And she thought if she went to California, she’d get even more work. Better-paying work. Doing something big. As a real model. We all agreed that she should go.
“You were a baby, though, so she hesitated. Even though she wanted to go so badly. It was so obvious. Her mouth practically watered over the idea of California. As brave as she was, she wasn’t sure, because of you.
“We’d already had so many adventures together, I thought, ‘Why not one more?’ So I said I’d go with her. All the way to California. Made it to the coast because this time we did have a plan: I’d get some crummy job, support us so she could spend all her time chasing her dream. We couldn’t take you, though, because we wouldn’t have time, not for a little baby. So we left you with Gus. He said he’d take care of you. And I’d take care of your mom. Just until she got started. When she had her own steady work, her own money, she’d come back for you.”
“She gave me Gus’s name because she needed to dump me,” I challenge. “She needed to make sure Gus would take me.”
“She wanted to tell Gus she was sorry for all those wild times,” Chuck corrects me. “She wanted to show him that she loved him. Gus taking care of you was supposed to be temporary.”
“Gus never told me this.”
“He wanted to,” Chuck says, taking a step toward the cemetery gate.
No, no, this can’t be right. No, I think. No.
“She got work. Like we all thought she would. In California. Things were going so well. She had enough money to find a real nice place of her own. She wanted me to stay in California, quit my crummy job, and take care of you. Said she’d pay me to look after you.”
I keep staring, my throat dry and my chest heaving as though all the air in the world isn’t enough.
“She would have come back,” Chuck says, still edging closer to the gate.
“Why—why didn’t she?” I ask, but I know. Because of where we are. I already know.
“She got this job—catalog work—and she had to fly out for the shoot. Once the shoot was finished, she was going to come get you. Bring you out to California. I was busy moving her things into her new place. Setting up a room for you. But the plane—a private plane—they loaded it with too much stuff for the shoot. It was too heavy. The plane—just—it crashed.”
I’m shaking. The suitcase slips from my fingers, hits the ground, pops open.
“But you had a plan,” I say dumbly, snatching at anything I can to try to make this story untrue.
“We had a plan,” Chuck agrees. “Not like the time we set out to change the world. It was a good plan. It was working. Her plan got snatched out from under her.
“I brought her ashes back,” Chuck says. “Gus was so torn up, he couldn’t deal with a big funeral. Could hardly deal with losing her right when she’d really started to get herself together. It was too much. So we scattered her ashes here. The two of us. On the line between leaving and not leaving. Because that was kind of where she lived, you know? Between wanting to go and wanting to come back to you. She didn’t give you up, Aug.”
“Why would Gus let me believe she was still alive?”
“Because you—when you were real little, you’d point to your mom’s billboard, and Gus would say, ‘That’s your mom.’ And it would happen more and more: you pointing to your mom, and Gus saying, ‘That’s her, shining up there like a sta
r in the sky.’”
“Shining,” I repeat.
“His tale started growing,” Chuck goes on, “taking on a life of its own. Anytime somebody would hint at the truth of where your mom was, he’d pull them aside and tell them, ‘Not yet. She doesn’t know yet.’ After a while, you know, it was like we needed to believe she was still alive, just like you did. Everybody in Serendipity Place. And me, too.
“The story was for us, Auggie, as much as it was for you. When any of us talked about her like she was still alive, then our bright shining star hadn’t fallen. We needed her to be real. We needed to think that somebody from the old neighborhood really was out there shining like a star.”
A lonely tear trails down my cheek.
“My life changed the day I helped Gus scatter her ashes,” Chuck admits. “Maybe, I thought, I could help other people who were straddling some line. Help them make a decision that would change the course of their lives. That was the day I decided to walk inside Hopewell. The day I decided to become a minister.”
“But I write to her,” I continue to protest. “I send her things. She sends me things back. That’s proof that she’s still alive. I don’t care what you say.”
“You need proof?” Chuck asks. His voice is soft, but his words are something you’d say to a person who’d accused you of lying.
Not lying, I want to tell Chuck. Just mistaken. You’ve made a huge mistake. About all of it. She can’t be gone. Not now.
“Gus has your proof,” Chuck says. He scoops my spilled clothes into my suitcase and tosses my things back into his car. Chuck pulls a cell phone from his pocket and calls Gus. He tells him we’re on our way. He tells him I need to see the closet.
“The front hall closet?” I ask. “The closet Gus keeps locked?”
Chuck eyes me sideways, and we retrace the path I took across town. The longer the quiet drive stretches on, the tighter my skin feels.
When we get to my house, Gus races to Chuck’s car and throws open the door, relief washing down his face like a waterfall.
The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky Page 13