JUNE 12
Jeanne Ann
Mom comes back from wherever the heck she goes in the morning, makes herself some instant coffee, and invites me to join her in our “primo” seats for the “afternoon feature.” Her words.
We sit with our backs against the Carrot’s front tire to watch the Bumblebee Seaside Summer Camp march across the ball fields. They surface like ants after lunch each day to play capture the flag in the area near the public bathrooms. There are only two counselors for twenty kids—all dressed in yellow-and-black T-shirts, a buzzing mob of Charlie Browns. Lots of shrill whistles and shouts to “stay inside the cones!” One camper—six or seven, high socks, mop top, finger up the nose—is trouble. Mom’s started calling him “Bad Chuck.”
Bad Chuck starts the game by kicking over the orange cones. Then he tiptoes beyond them, and, eyebrows up, sees which counselor he can get to chase him. “A delinquent in training,” Mom says. She would know. I’ve heard bits and pieces about her checkered past. Emphasis on past.
Today, neither counselor takes the bait. Bad Chuck punches his hips and sets off running—smirking like a maniac. He’s past the hot dog cart I’ve been ogling and halfway to the water before either counselor notices. Then he’s on the pier, pushing over rental bikes, including one holding a shocked tourist.
“Smug little tyrant,” I say, throwing down my book, standing. “Someone needs to wipe the grin off that kid’s face.”
“Go get’m, tiger,” Mom mumbles into her coffee mug, smiling. She likes this Bumblebee Camp routine.
We’ve been here four days, staring out to sea like a golden egg is going to roll out of the waves and land at our feet. Mom disappears for hours to do who knows what, leaving me with my books, ten bucks for food, and an order to lock the doors. I’m so sick of the four walls plus lid. I could go with her—but it’s a city. Not a petting zoo. I know what’s out there. And vacation is over. Time to get a job and a real bed. It was fine to sleep in the van on the way across the country. That was a vacation. But not anymore. Mom’s got a friend we can stay with—in an actual building—and I want to be there already.
She hands me half of a ten-dollar roast beef sandwich she picked up on her ramblings today and smiles. “Nothing to take care of but our backsides,” she sighs.
“A sandwich won’t enroll me in school,” I say.
“September is only two and a half months away,” I say.
I crane for a view of the vans behind ours, all still and quiet. Too quiet. Did they drop out of seventh grade? Is that why they’re stuck out here?
“Crapinade,” I mutter. It’s Mom’s phrase. A favorite—like, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I adopted it about forty-eight hours after we got here.
Mom calls someone who scratches at the same worry, over and over, a “grinder.” I am definitely grinding. But Labor Day is when school starts in Chicago. It’s gotta start around the same time here. And I’m pretty sure I can’t go without an address. I know I can’t check out a library book without one.
“Try to enjoy yourself, kid.” Mom chews on a corner of sandwich, looking freakishly satisfied.
She’s too happy to notice I’m not.
Bad Chuck clips a guy taking a picture of an ice cream truck.
“Enough already!” This I yell at Bad Chuck and Mom. I start running.
Cal
I’m in the driveway patching bike tires when a megaphone somewhere across the street booms, “Bumblebee on the loose!”
I’m supposed to be cleaning out the garage. Mom’s specific order was to weed through the clothes bins and keep an eye out for an old bomber jacket—some ex-boyfriend’s parting gift—that she wants me to have. It’ll give me a “new perspective on myself,” she says.
I’ve chosen bike repair in the driveway instead. Afterward, I’m going to feed the meters across the street.
When I stand, I can see the kid, the Bumblebee, tearing across the playing fields, running dangerously close to the water. He’s just a little guy. There’s somebody chasing him, but they’re not catching him. Not even close.
I think of my Franklin Delano Roosevelt portrait upstairs, just completed. Four-time president. Man of the people. Hero. Bow tie wearer. He wouldn’t be stopped by a mother who said “Don’t leave the garage until you’ve got something to show for it.” He would gather up his crutches and catch the kid.
I grab Mom’s bike. It’s two sizes too small but the first one I see. I’m practically kneeing myself in the face as I pedal across the street, dodge picnickers, and angle to cut the kid off.
He’s cheetah-fast, darting in one direction, then another, a blur of yellow and black. The quarters for the meters jangle in my pockets. The bike doesn’t give me much advantage in the bumpy grass. “Hey!” I abandon it and begin to run. This isn’t much better. I come within an inch of the kid, reach out, catch only air. He turns long enough to flash a smile. Ew. He’s missing his front teeth.
“Stop!” I hear someone else yell. Can’t tell from which direction. No wonder no one’s caught this kid.
The sweat in my eyes has started to sting. This is not how I thought the chase would go. The kid’s going to hurt himself.
I swerve right just as he brakes left, hard, and steps on a picnicker’s hand. “Hey!” the guy shouts.
Then we’re back out in the open green.
“You’re it!” the kid whoops over his shoulder at me.
It?
What?
Jeanne Ann
I’m running. I’m reaching. I’m gonna get the little punk—but then the weirdest thing: A hand shoots out from near the ground—almost too quick to see—and takes the kid down.
Bad Chuck crashes to earth with an “Awww, come on!” and, half a second later, a brown streak flies through the air and lands like a bundle of sticks on top of him.
I hear “Ow!” then: “Gotcha!”
Time slows as I’m falling. Someone’s foot has caught mine and—like a bowling pin—whacked me sideways onto the heap.
I land on a leg. Not sure whose.
Something wriggles under me. “Hey!”
My shin is screaming, but I silently peel off the pileup and limp a quick step back. The bundle of sticks—a kid about my age who didn’t consult a mirror before he left the house (brown pants, shirt, socks, and sneakers)—sits up. He’s got Bad Chuck pinned under his butt.
“He tripped me! He tripped me!” Chuck hollers.
The boy on top of Chuck rises, keeping one foot on the ground, the other on the kid’s chest. He brushes aside his sweaty blond bangs, but they just flop back over his eyes. “I didn’t trip you.”
“Whoa. You’re tall.” Bad Chuck gapes at him. “Like a giraffe!” He sounds gravelly.
“Very original. You’re short,” the bundle of sticks says. “Like a broken crayon.”
“You’re a menace to society,” I add, noting the grass stains on my knees. Those aren’t coming out with wet wipes and elbow grease.
Bad Chuck bends a smirk into a grimace. “Am not. He is. He tripped me.”
We follow Bad Chuck’s pointer finger: A few feet off to the right, an old guy sits crisscross-applesauce in a lawn chair, whistling. His eyes are closed and his hands—cupping his knees a second ago—have reached up to scratch his beard. It’s more like fur than a beard, really—across his cheeks, around his eyes, down his neck all the way to the top of a tie-dye T-shirt that reads JENIUS. He peeks open an eye and quickly closes it. I think he’s . . . homeless.
“You dirty rat.” A teenager in an oversized Bumblebee shirt jogs over, swinging a megaphone, pigtails poking from under her baseball cap. Bad Chuck’s smile grows when he sees her. “You bilious creature born of the sea muck!” she bellows into her megaphone. “Thank you, Sea Pirates”—she looks from me to the bundle of sticks—“for capturing him. Now he’s going to wa
lk the plank.” She’s really mixing her metaphors, but Bad Chuck cheers. The counselor lowers the megaphone and leans toward me. “We usually let him run till he passes out from exhaustion, but he usually stays inside the cones.” She pats Bad Chuck on the head, then squats beside him. “Ready?”
Bad Chuck sticks his tongue out at the bearded man who tripped him, then at us, then follows his counselor, rolling away like a commando evading sniper fire.
“So I chased him for nothing.” Even slouched, the bundle of sticks is really tall. Maybe six feet. My head would hit his armpit. A rail, like Oscar Wilde, my librarian, Mrs. Jablonsky, would say if she were here; she knows all the famous authors’ heights. When we’re settled, when I have something good to say, I’m going to write Mrs. J a letter.
The bundle of sticks turns toward me, finally brushing aside enough bangs. He stands a little funny, sort of sideways, like he’d rather not face me straight on. He’s got deep-set eyes, wide, that he blinks slowly. There’s something about the way he looks at me—studies me ear to ear, forehead to chin—I think he’s memorizing my face.
“I thought you were a counselor,” I say, noting his bow tie.
“Me? Nah. I’m nobody.”
A gust of foggy air blows me a little backward as it sweeps in from the water. “Me too.”
ADDRESSEE INCORRECT OR NO LONGER LIVES HERE, RETURN TO SENDER
From: Chicago Public Library, Sulzer Branch
Re. Notice of Overdue Books
Date: June 5
To: Jeanne Ann Fellows, 798 W. Wilson, Chicago, IL 60622
This is a notice to inform you that the following books, checked out on May 8, are overdue:
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Frankenstein
El Deafo
Oliver Twist
Nooks & Crannies
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Golden Compass
The Night Diary
Hatchet
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Lottery
The Phantom Tollbooth
The War That Saved My Life
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
A Long Way from Chicago
One Crazy Summer
The BFG
Howl’s Moving Castle
When You Reach Me
Pippi Longstocking
Swallows and Amazons
The Little Princess
Born Free
Ballet Shoes
The Penderwicks
The Saturdays
Brown Girl Dreaming
101 Dalmatians
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Merci Suárez Changes Gears
Redwall
The Railway Children
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A Little History of the World
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Way Things Work
Finance for Dummies
Your fine is 25 cents a book, per day, or $9.50 total. If the books are not returned within 8 weeks, you will be fined for their entire value. Please call this branch library if you cannot locate the missing items or if you need to renew. Thank you, The Chicago Librarians
Jeanne Ann,
I was almost happy to see this overdue notice for you and pulled it out of the sorter so I could add a personal touch. Where have you been? I don’t think you’ve ever missed an entire week before, or even a day . . . And, records show, this is your first overdue notice. What?! . . . Meanwhile, the place is coming apart at the seams without you. My candy bowl is overflowing. I’ve got no one to review the new releases. And the Help Desk Ladies are arguing about the ideal temperature in the stacks again; we always count on you to break that tie. I hope you don’t have a summer cold. Those are the worst. Remember when you raked through the library archives for ancient “common cold” remedies and found some? Nobody else would think to look, Jeanne Ann, nobody.
—Alphabetical Love, Marilyn Jablonsky (who’s considering reading the entire Stephen King canon, despite my fear of the dark, and needs your thoughts on this delicate matter)
JUNE 13
Cal
It’s her van. The van at the corner. The van at the front.
I raise Mom’s opera glasses and thumb the focus till the blurry smudge—parked on the street below—sharpens. Then I flip to a blank page and reach for a pencil, a deep shader. The streetlamp helps—night shadows are the toughest.
I’m finally getting to the detail work. It’s an orange Chevrolet Astro with a “Land of Lincoln” license plate, a giant outline of a happy face painted in black on the roof, and a Chicago Bears decal on the front left bumper. There are two occupants: the driver, who’s built like a refrigerator and owns three army fatigue tank tops (or hasn’t changed clothes since she arrived), and the passenger—twelve? daughter?—who scowls so hard, it’s like its own energy source—I can see it in the dark.
That’s the girl. From earlier. Shiny brown curls, snarled in places. A gray-green streak down the front of her overalls that I’d rather not think about. Royal chin. If that chin knows it’s living in a van, it’s showing no signs. It’s a high-on-a-hill-looking-down-at-all-of-us kind of chin.
But they’ve parked in the absolute worst place—at the front of the vans-in-residence line, closest to the intersection.
By “in residence,” I mean that these people are living in their vehicles. Sleeping, eating, fighting, watching TV, suntanning, admiring the bay view, hanging their clothes to dry on fenders. They use the public restroom in the adjacent playing fields for all their . . . um, private business.
The orange van is in the spot the police always tow. If she were just one spot back—where the guy in the red van is now—that would make all the difference.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
If she doesn’t move, it could happen.
While I’m sitting here, even.
Again.
My guts give a little kick. She needs to find a new spot.
I open my eyes. I scan the street for police cruisers, but they must be towing in another part of town. The night’s quiet. Just streetlamps, swishing trees, and a deep darkness where the bay is. Everyone’s inside.
I should turn off my lights, put down the spyglasses, get into bed.
. . . I’ve never seen a girl-in-residence. Only grown-ups.
2,138 miles between Chicago and here. I looked it up.
She’s a long way from home. If she has one.
JUNE 13
Jeanne Ann
One a.m. shadows are only slightly less creepy than twelve a.m. shadows.
Mom’s beside me in her sleeping bag, mumbling insults at the passing cars. They’re louder than ever tonight—at least it seems that way. “Mufflers, you idiots.” I take it as a good sign that she’s having trouble sleeping too. Finally. This is our fifth night.
The inflatable mattress beneath me sighs out its air.
I remember falling asleep to the sound of water lapping against rock. And—connected in a straight line to that thought is this one:
We are in San Francisco. And we are not going back.
I sit up and squint at the dark. I can just make out the frame of our bookshelf beside me.
Something appropriately bleak tonight. Dracula? The Shining?
I turn on the flashlight that lives in my sleeping bag full-time. Short Order, one of Mom’s cookbooks, stares back at me from the shelf; pancakes slathered in syrup.
I hop the sleeping bag to the front seat. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a stale cracker jammed between the front seat and seat belt clip. Mom’s between shopping runs.
A truck rumbles by, a four-hundred-wheeler by the sound of it. It sends shudders through the van. I hear a sniffle and then Mom’s sleeping bag unzips.
“Bathroom,” she announces. “Keep the doors locked,” and she’s up and out before I can say Wait!, slamming the door behind her.
I pull aside the window curtains to watch her go. She lumbers from the sidewalk to the grassy field, and on into blackness.
“Crapinade,” I mutter.
Of all the places we could’ve parked, Mom had to choose the actual end of the road. Where dry land stops. This family is not light on symbolism.
I wipe the window where I’ve breathed on it—then move to Mom’s side of the van, stepping over our jerry-rigged cooktop—a battery-powered toaster, formerly the cup-holder thing between the seats—and flop into the driver’s seat. This view is better. It’s of houses, mostly. A line of giants that goes for at least a mile. They’re bigger somehow in the middle of the night than they are in the day. Each has a straight-on view of the water. There’s a square one, like a giant glass Rubik’s Cube—right across the street. And next to it, a light green house, stacked like a fancy cake. It’s got a driveway lined with flower pots that looks like a hotel entrance—a car can enter from two directions—and an actual working fountain in the middle, lit from below.
In a house the size of those, there’s gotta be a spare bedroom . . . maybe a bathroom nobody uses . . . white towels that smell like flowers . . . fruit bowls filled with cherries, ovens that don’t leak black gunk like roof tar . . .
Mom returns, slips back into her bag.
“You okay?” she asks before she sets her head down. She reaches up and squeezes my arm.
No. “Yeah.” I want to tell her that everything feels more real at night, that her grand plan, our new life, is a box of rotten teeth. But I know I have to give it a chance, and this, the van, isn’t forever.
I fall back into the seat, turn off the flashlight.
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