“Yeah, just . . .” Cal reaches for it. I break the seal. It’s his report card, his birth certificate, and something else. “Mom doesn’t want to wait in long lines on the official day,” he says. He sounds a little embarrassed.
“You got a B in Reading and Composition,” I say, digging into his report card. “I got an A in Reading and Composition.” I smile, remembering. The reading was easy, and the composition—it was like putting together capsule reviews for books at the library, which I already do almost every day. Did. Past tense. Mrs. Jablonsky said I had a “real facility” for it. It was fun to be good at something without even trying hard. I was looking forward to Reading & Comp II.
“You wanna come up with me?” Cal says.
“Where?”
“School.”
“Sure,” I say, because I have nothing else to do. And I like school.
But then we get there, and I immediately regret it. Really, I would’ve been better off plunging a Beautification Committee lawn sign into my heart.
Cal
The secretary at Marina Pacific Middle School wears hiking boots and a plaid shirt under suspenders and shakes hands like he’s aiming to take my forearm right out of its socket. Even his fingers are muscular. When he pulls the registration materials from my hand, he pulls me right over. I snag my elbow on the edge of a pointy metal desk as I fall. The secretary and nurse—Nurse Meg—help me up. Jeanne Ann watches from a safe distance with her arms crossed, like nothing here is passing her inspection, including my fall. Nurse Meg escorts us through the teachers’ lounge toward a first-aid kit, smacking her gum and her flip-flops as she goes, introducing us to anyone we pass, including a speed-walker in squeaky shoes who comes to a screeching halt when he sees us.
“Hello, Principal Dan! We’ve got our first casualty of the year, and the learning hasn’t even started yet,” Nurse Meg announces.
Principal Dan strokes his moustache as he gives my cut the briefest inspection. “The patient will survive,” he declares. He’s not much taller than Jeanne Ann. I have a perfect view of the bald spot at the top of his head.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I say. Nurse Meg has run ahead and returned with a bandage.
“That’s the spirit.” Principal Dan whacks my back. “Take his leg while you’re at it, Meg.” He laughs at his joke, gives us the once-over, and asks what we’ve got on our summer reading lists.
“Um.” I sneak a sideways peek at Jeanne Ann, who’s faced anywhere but in our direction. “Morse Code: The Essential Language?”
“Oh! Interesting. The whole world is texting, and you go the other way. A nonconformist. I like it.” He rubs his moustache again. “And you”—he turns his spotlight on Jeanne Ann—“what’s grabbed you lately?”
Jeanne Ann is practically painting the office walls with her shoulder, she’s leaned so far away from Principal Dan. She hasn’t uncrossed her arms since we got here. “I don’t read anymore,” she mumbles.
Now Principal Dan crosses his own arms. He slides his narrowed eyes to me, like we both know there’s something very wrong here. If only he knew how wrong. “Don’t read anymore? That’s not going to work,” he says. “Step into my office.”
His office looks like a garage sale, it’s so jammed with mismatched furniture and lamps. We sit. He talks. I nod at everything he says so Jeanne Ann won’t have to. I accept his “best of” books list. He must keep a stack of this list in his desk, because it’s typed and ready to go.
“Okay, so I have a promise from you both, do I?” I nod one last time. “And what part of the neighborhood will you be reading in? Where do you reside?” he asks, standing.
“The ugly part,” Jeanne Ann answers under her breath.
“Down in the Marina, near the piers,” I correct.
Principal Dan looks back and forth between us again, as if trying to figure out the match.
“And you came by today to check out the campus, suck up to the principal?” He smiles.
“Drop off registration forms,” I say.
“Yes! Right! You won the organized parent lottery.”
Jeanne Ann’s chin looks like it’ll never come up again.
“But I’m afraid there are no shortcuts with registration. You’ll still need to get in line on July fifth. The photographer will be there. You don’t want to miss your moment under klieg lights!”
He walks us out. “He’s way nicer than my last principal,” I say to Jeanne Ann, crossing the street. And the school wasn’t as scary as I thought it’d be. I was expecting hallways with smashed ceiling lights and blaring metal music.
“He was nosy,” she says, stopping.
“A little,” I say. “But kinda funny.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” Her eyes are glassy, and even as she’s banging out the “ha’s”, she’s sinking, like each one is air out of a balloon. She lands in a cross-legged position on the curb. I sit beside her. We don’t say anything. She stares at the signage over Marina Pacific Middle School like she hopes it’ll burst into flames with the power of her mind. 56 DAYS TILL SCHOOL STARTS! The countdown number keeps getting replaced, like a baseball scoreboard. Except more ominous.
“I miss my books,” Jeanne Ann says, her voice almost a whisper.
I should’ve never asked her to come on this errand.
“Which ones?” I say.
She pauses, looking up for the first time in a while. “The Secret Garden. Everything was dark and everyone was dead or sad. And then, poof, a garden, hiding in plain sight, sun, magic . . .” She goes to cover her smile but places her hand on her heart at the last second, like she’s taking a pledge. “I’d give my right arm for a Treasure Island or a Three Musketeers. Oh, and Superfudge. Most people give up Fudgy in, like, third grade. But I reread him every year. Fudgy has no filter.” She looks directly at me, speeding up: “I Capture the Castle. That’s the one I read with Mom the whole way here. The main character lives in a falling-down castle and is basically starving, but she thinks poverty’s romantic. She sits in the sink and nibbles biscuits for dinner . . .” Jeanne Ann pulls a bunch of clover out of a crack in the sidewalk and sprinkles it over her face.
“You sound like you’re talking about friends.”
She sighs heavily.
“We have libraries in San Francisco, you know,” I say, in defense of my city.
“Yeah, at the top of a very steep hill, wrapped in razor wire probably . . . I could ride my bike to four different libraries in Chicago. I lived at the library. Every day after school, weekends . . . I was practically raised there.” She lifts her head. “We couldn’t fit my bike in the van . . . I’m never going to read a book again. Mrs. Jablonsky doesn’t even know where I am.”
“Who’s Mrs. Jablonsky?” My voice sounds high and probably jealous. Jeanne Ann’s never mentioned a Mrs. Jablonsky before.
“My fairy godmother.”
“Really?”
“There’s no such thing as fairy godmothers, Cal.”
“Sure, okay, but there are nice people . . .”
“She was a librarian, where I volunteered. I read under her desk. She said I was ‘indispensable,’ and here I am, vanished, without a word.”
I gesture to the sign we’re trying to incinerate with our minds. “The school will probably have a good library.” Jeanne Ann should have a Mrs. Jablonsky here.
“You’re too optimistic, Cal. You need to think worst-case scenario.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the most likely one.”
“You don’t know that for sure. Any librarian is going to love you. You’ll probably be deputized or something.” The way she’s looking at me, I know this is coming out wrong. Like a parent giving a “believe in yourself” lecture to a kid who stopped listening ages ago.
Jeanne Ann
It’s not safe for children out here. Your mom knows b
etter. There are places to go.
Call 555-223-0000.
—The Marina Beautification Committee.
I find it tucked under the windshield wiper when we get back from my not-future school. It’s handwritten instead of typed like the signs jammed into the grass. I place the note on Mom’s pillow. I wait till nine p.m., hoping to talk about it, but fall asleep. Hours later—I think it’s hours—I wake. Outside, a car drags its fender across broken glass. That’s what it sounds like. After it passes, I listen for breathing. I turn toward it. “Mom?” I whisper.
“Yup.” She sounds wide-awake. I flip over. She’s reading one of her cookbooks by flashlight; I think she’s been writing in the margins.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
And that’s it, the whole conversation. Not Did you see the ‘It’s not safe for children out here’ note? Not How are you, Jeanne Ann? Not We’re moving in with Sam, week after next. Just dead air. I’m afraid to ask why she’s taking this so far, and she’s not volunteering to tell me.
The next time I’m awake, it’s morning, early, and she’s gone. There’s a sock sitting unnaturally upright on her pillow where the “get out” note from the committee used to be—I peer inside. A slip of paper sits on top of coins and bills. Lots of bills. Tips is all it says on the slip.
I shake the sock, listening to the jingle, feeling the weight.
Now I wish I’d asked questions last night. Is she really working? Where?
JUNE 27
Cal
“Too early,” Jeanne Ann mumbles, cranking the window open a crack. It’s 6:30 a.m. I’m making her van a regular pit stop on my way to work.
“You were up. I saw the shades move before I knocked.”
She tumbles out in the overalls she wears night and day. A friend would suggest she change. A friend would mention that she smells like the inside of an old shoe. A friend would bring a bar of soap . . . if he had the guts.
“I was sleepwalking,” she mumbles.
“Really?”
She throws her arms up, like it’s the dumbest question in the world, which, I guess, it is.
I slap a newspaper into her hands. “I’ve brought you the classifieds.”
“I don’t read classifieds.”
“You should. I read them all the time . . . I mean, I used to read them, with my mom . . . before . . .” Jeanne Ann is scratching her head and only half listening, so I speed on. “She says you can know the personality of a city by its classifieds.” I don’t add that they’re guaranteed to make her laugh, and Jeanne Ann could use a laugh.
She runs her sleepy eyes over my bandaged chin, across my Greenery T-shirt, down to my hands.
“What?” I say.
“Too peppy, too early, too weird.”
I hide myself behind the paper, bringing it to just below my nose.
“Why do you keep coming out here? What do you want?”
I start to say “I want to help,” but stop myself after want. What can I say that won’t infuriate her? I stay hidden behind the newspaper and don’t answer.
“My mom just got a job. We’ll be moving soon. So . . .” she says.
“That’s great.” I pull the newspaper down. “Wait, I thought she already had a job.”
“She did. She does.” Jeanne Ann whips her face away, chin up, done discussing it.
I stick my head back in the paper and scan for something, anything. “Here’s a good one,” I say. “‘Woman seeks roommate, fit vegetarian who can reach hard-to-dust places; no dogs, flying animals, perfumes, or night-crawling; near G.G. Park. Fifteen hundred a month with three-thousand-dollar deposit.’” I laugh. “Flying animals. What does that mean? Seagulls, butterflies, monkeys? See how good these are?”
Jeanne Ann grabs the paper and begins reading at high speed. She slaps it back into my lap when she’s done.
“That’s the cheapest it gets.” She backhands the van, then does some calculations on her fingers. “Fifteen hundred. Mom’ll have to work a hundred fifty hours to earn enough for a month’s rent. Then another three hundred hours to earn enough for the deposit. That’s like twelve forty-hour weeks. That’s a quarter of a year. And then she won’t be able to afford a second month’s rent or food or clothes or books . . .”
“Whoa.” I roll up the paper. Jeanne Ann pats the pocket at the front of her overalls. I think she’s got money stashed in there. But I doubt it’s thousands.
She drops into one of Sandy’s chairs and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.
At this rate, we’ll be neighbors for a long time.
I should say something . . . but not that. I know not that. I look out over the green, the bay, and back to the vans. I forgot to put money in their meters today. “Wanna come over?” I ask.
Jeanne Ann
“I can’t go to your house, Cal.” This is his second invite of the day. He’s come back, after his afternoon shift at Greenery, with more unwanted good cheer.
“You can leave if you don’t like it,” he says. He’s tugging on my arm.
I strangle a cackle. As if I’m not going to like it. As if I’m not going to want to stay there the rest of my life. “Not happening,” I say.
We’re standing at the intersection, on the van side of the street. I’m gaping at his glassy Rubik’s Cube. The walk sign has gone on and off three times since we got here.
“We’ve got couches, a full fridge. Well, sort of full. Actually, there may not be anything but old takeout. But I could get it full.”
I stomp back toward the vans. He runs around to my other side and blocks the path.
I shove him backward. Not hard, but he loses his balance and almost falls. I’m too tired for all of this. I had a nightmare after Mom and I had our not-chat chat last night—she and I kept downsizing: from a van, to a minivan, to a sedan, to a hatchback, to a motorcycle. It was terrifying. And now: $1,500 for a month’s rent? That’s absurd. We paid $450 in Chicago. Did she know it would cost this much to live here? Did she even check? I feel like a yo-yo: twenty-four hours ago, I was sure she didn’t have a job; twelve hours ago, I was sure she had one; five hours ago, I was sure it didn’t matter. There’s no point in saving up with rent that high.
“You’re coming around too much. Just—leave me alone, okay?” I say. “You’re—it’s not helping.” I’m being mean. I know I’m being mean. But I can’t help it. I’d like to swing an ax and take down anything in my path.
He makes a weird sound in his throat and steps back. I’ve never seen blood drain faster from a face. His arms go limp as yarn. I get why his mom gave him the leather jacket: thicker skin.
Now I feel bad. But I’m too tired to feel bad for someone else.
I throw my hands over my head and bring them down slowly over my face. “Caaaaaaal.”
“You should see the bathrooms, at least,” he says, quieter than before, but still pushy.
“I know I should see your bathrooms.” I’ve imagined them. A million times. “But I just can’t. Okay?”
“But why?”
“You don’t get it.” Why would he?
Cal
I really don’t get it. I will try to get it. I will do anything to get rid of this heavy feeling. I skulk back an hour later, with pretzels from home she probably won’t accept.
Jeanne Ann’s rolled down her window and folded her arms over the lowered glass, leaning her head out like she’s been waiting for me to come back. That’s what I’m telling myself.
I hold out the pretzels. She rolls her eyes toward the sky. I pull the pretzels away like I wasn’t really offering so much as floating them under her nose. I glance down the block, like I’m interested in the view down there. One of her neighbors, the bike messenger who always walks like it hurts, like one leg is partially asleep, is adjusting the coat-hanger antenna mounted unicorn-style t
o the front of his van.
“You’re learning,” she says, squinting at me.
I stand there for a minute, just staring at her, while she scoops peanut butter from a jar and takes mouse-sized bites of it. This would be adorable if I weren’t worried about how much she has left and where her next meal is coming from. I think Sandy gives her food. But what if his luck runs out too? He seems solid, but then, he’s out here, so . . .
“What happens in public school?” I ask.
She looks at me over her spoon, like I’m asking a trick question. I’m not. I’m just approaching from another direction. I think.
“You learn stuff,” she says.
“Do the teachers call you by your name?” I scratch the Band-Aid on my chin, step closer to the van.
“No.” She kicks her feet onto the dash. “They call you by your Social Security number, which gets branded on your forehead at registration.”
I feel my eyes bulge, then relax. “Very funny. There were only three hundred fifty kids in my old school, kindergarten through eighth grade. The teachers knew my name and my call sign, which was my favorite animal.”
Jeanne Ann almost drops her spoon, swinging her legs down. “Your call sign?”
“Yeah, we all had one. It was like the thing that symbolized each of us.”
“You’re kidding me.” She’s smiling so big, and I’ll do anything to keep her just like this.
“Mine was the emperor penguin.”
She bites her lip to stop herself from laughing. Also adorable.
“They’re the ones that guard the unhatched eggs while the mom goes to look for food,” I continue.
I edge closer and rest my elbows on the open window frame.
“Don’t tell anybody at middle school about your penguin thing, okay?” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Definitely don’t.”
“Out of a thousand students at this school, how many do you think will be truly hideous?”
She sits up straighter. “Cal.” She’s looking at me seriously now. “You gotta stop catastrophizing. They’re not going to chase you down with pointy erasers. There were hideous kids at your old school too, right? They’re neon-obvious and all the same, everywhere. You’ll just walk the other way . . . Or, um, waddle . . .”
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