“What does that have to do with anything?”
“She slapped me.” He lifts his head.
“Good.”
“I was trying to be nice.”
“Touch your own hair next time.”
“I’m just saying, things get—they aren’t always what they seem to be.” He’s mumbling into his shirt collar.
I am about to snap back, Some things are exactly what they seem to be—but here’s Sandy, returning from across the street, flip-flops smacking the pavement.
“Well, that worked,” he says, brushing his hands on his pants. He looks very proud of himself. “A public display of our common humanity. Can’t very well protest after a kiss with the enemy camp.”
“Who—?” I start to ask, but Sandy veers right, into the open grass, and away from me. He returns with a chipped ceramic mermaid. “This is the stuff they couldn’t sell. Freebies.” The yard sale, staged in the grass around the shed, was cleaned up in a hurry, and more than a few items are still on display. “Now they have to give it away or pay to have it taken to the dump.” He looks excited, like he’s going to score something of value.
“Great. Maybe they left a hat box full of cheeseburgers,” I say, uninterested in this change of subject. “Sandy, how do you know that woman?”
“Who?”
I point across the street, though I don’t think I should have to.
Sandy grins. “Oh, her?” He scratches at his beard. “She’s a neighbor deserving of love,” he says, like it’s a universally well-known fact.
Cal nods in agreement. They are edging toward each other, evening shadows crossing over their faces along with something else.
“Oh, come on!” I scowl at Sandy, then at Cal—they’re shoulder to shoulder like merged bobbleheads. “When did you and the lady start your—?” I make a kissing noise.
“That’s none of your business,” Sandy says, smiling, one eyebrow way higher than the other. He’s carrying his chipped mermaid like it’s a baby and walking toward his van. “I think I’m going to turn in early. Such a busy day.” He splits off from Cal.
“Wait!” I’m not letting him go without answers. I’m right behind him, at his side door, when I notice it: His wheel is no longer booted. The yellow clamp has been removed.
“Hey,” I say, mostly to myself, turning to see if anyone else sees it. I touch the tire. “Hey!” This time I’m louder: “Where’d the boot go?”
I turn to find Cal. He’s got his melting expression back on. I turn to Sandy. His raised eyebrow has crashed back down to meet the other.
Cal
It gets worse.
Sandy’s door slides open and the woman we joke is Sandy’s partner in crime—hair bandana, buckets—steps out, whistling.
“Who are you?” Jeanne Ann asks, like she’s been waiting a long time to ask this question.
I try to scoot Jeanne Ann away from the door, but she’s not having it, leaning instead toward the woman and the warm glow inside Sandy’s van.
“Who is she?” Jeanne Ann has turned to Sandy. I’m not entirely sure, but I can guess.
I pull my new middle school I.D. from my pocket and hold it out. A distraction. “Here . . .” I tap at it. “Remember how funny I look?” Jeanne Ann glances down briefly, annoyed. I reach quickly for my other pocket. I’d planned to save this for later, but—“Yours is so much better,” I say, thrusting it toward her. “See. Your eyes are wide open.”
That works.
She snatches the I.D.
Jeanne Ann
“That is a fine likeness,” Sandy says, leaning in quickly to admire the photograph, then nodding at Cal with what looks like surprise.
“How’d you get this?” I say.
Cal is taking his hands in and out of his pockets. He looks both nervous and pleased with himself. “Um. Remember when we met the principal—Principal Dan?” He waits for me to nod. I don’t. “Well, I talked to him. He knows about”—Cal rotates his head around—“and he wants to help.” Folded papers materialize from Cal’s back pocket. “We got three classes together too.” He holds the papers side by side. “Math, English, and PE. We can probably get more. He said we could have as many together as we’d like . . .”
I look past the papers to Sandy’s camper van. I’ve got a clear view of the interior now—a shiny two-burner stove, counter-height refrigerator and dishwasher, oval dining table with a plush red wraparound booth, ceiling skylight, suspended bed, a door marked LAVATORY. And dangling from the rearview mirror, a framed picture of a lady who looks a lot like the victim across the street.
I catch Sandy’s eye briefly. He looks away, says, “How does everyone feel about dessert? I’ll just hop over to Greenery, get us a full assortment.”
I feel Cal tug at my elbow again. “We don’t get as many elective choices as I thought we’d get, just Spanish and . . .”
I’m hearing their voices, but the tuning is off, like scratchy radio signals.
“Who’s the lady?” I point to the woman with the bucket and the bandana, now walking across the street.
Cal’s got his lips locked and tucked.
“That woman?” Sandy says. “That’s Priscilla.”
I shake my head, touch his tire with my toe. “And what happened to your boot?”
Sandy holds out a peach, dancing it back and forth. Did he pull that out of a hat? “Snack?” he says.
“What is going on?”
Nobody answers. Sandy sighs as he lowers himself into a lawn chair. Cal stays where he is, a few steps behind the table, arms locked at his sides.
“Priscilla is our cleaning lady. She cleans here and then she cleans”—Sandy pulls his mouth sideways—“across the street. At my house.” He indicates the green house with the hotel driveway. “My wife lives there . . . for now.”
The scratchy radio signal in my ears roars.
“And I paid for my parking tickets,” he continues. “The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency accepts major credit cards and removed the boot early this morning.”
If it’s possible to feel your own blood sloshing inside you like spilled milk, I’m feeling it now. I squeeze my I.D. between my fingers till the edges cut into my skin. The address on it reads: Greenery Restaurant, C/O Jeanne Ann Fellows, 1 Marina Vista Blvd., SF, CA. The school thinks I live at the restaurant? I turn toward Cal.
He blinks his long, translucent eyelashes at high speed. Sandy grins, but I narrow my eyes and he pulls the grin straight. It’s very quiet as I watch the cars stream by behind them. I run a finger over Sandy’s hood, examine the finger for dirt.
“You pretend to be homeless?” I turn to Sandy. “Does my mom know?”
“No, she doesn’t. And I don’t pretend—I never pretended to be anything. I do live out here, temporarily, until I hit the road.”
“You called meetings. You palmed money from people passing by. You—you complained about the neighbors across the street and sold them weird smoothies! You dress . . . badly.” I lurch forward and tug on his beard. “Is this even real?”
“Ouch. I call meetings because I want to keep tabs on you. I don’t palm money; I give it to people. I complain about the neighbors across the street because they are a spoiled bunch—I know this firsthand. My wife loves smoothies, and selling them is an excuse to give you money and for me to visit her. She isn’t pleased with me. I do not dress badly. I dress comfortably.” He uncurls my fingers from his beard. “Yes, real.”
“You have a bathroom!” I swing around to Cal. “He has a bathroom in his camper!” Cal looks like he’s mid-choke. He won’t meet my eyes.
And then I get it.
“He lives in the green house,” I say to Cal, more quietly, “next to yours.” The roaring in my ears turns into a high-pitched whine. “You knew?”
Cal
“You knew?” she
says again. It’s a terrible combination of words.
Jeanne Ann’s eyes are bulging. I step toward her anyway. “I didn’t know,” I say. “Not at first. And then I figured it out. Just recently. I know you’re mad. We just . . . you wouldn’t have let him help if you’d known. And you needed help.”
“You know I’m mad?” She raises her hands overhead, opens her mouth and lets out a sound, a howl crossed with a groan, that makes my teeth hurt.
I think she’s going to march away, but instead she slaps her school I.D. on the table.
“I don’t want this. I don’t want anything from you, either of you. Tell Principal Dan. No more fliers, no more food, no more visits, no more.”
“You’ll skip school?”
She shrugs like it’s no big deal. “You promised not to keep secrets.”
I did. I did. But I had to. “Wait.” I turn toward Sandy. “Tell her. Tell her why.” I swing back to Jeanne Ann. “Your mom wasn’t doing anything, so I—”
“Leave my mom out of it.”
“But you shouldn’t be out here!”
“You shouldn’t care so much.”
I step closer. “I thought you’d be happy—about the I.D., I mean. About that part.”
She smiles, but not the good kind. “‘Huzzah! You’re helpless! I told the principal. Now he pities you too. Look at all my good deeds! Now I can go to heaven! My name is Cal!’ That kind of happy?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it . . . I was trying to . . . Don’t you want to be rescued?”
Jeanne Ann
“Are you kidding?” I say to him.
Cal looks mortally wounded, but then steps closer anyway. “No,” he says. “I thought—I thought everyone wanted to be rescued.”
If he says more, I don’t hear it over the sound of my van’s door slamming behind me.
JULY 17
Cal
I visit Principal Dan the next morning and tell him the plan flopped. I don’t know how I made it up the hill to the school. Guilt weighs a hundred extra pounds. Principal Dan says, “A long shot is still worth a shot.” He hands me a memo with my assigned locker number while I’m there. He has one for Jeanne Ann too in a sealed envelope. I try to give hers back but he won’t accept it. “Worst-case scenario, you claim two lockers for seventh grade instead of one,” he says.
I unload thirty dollars’ worth of change in parking meters and outstretched paper cups on the slog home. Then I read my memo:
To: Cal Porter, 202 Marina Vista Blvd, SF, CA
Re: Lockers at Marina Pacific Middle School
Welcome, incoming seventh grader! We are pleased to inform you of your locker number. Lucky #45. The combination is 32-17-12. Don’t panic if you lose this or forget. EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL. In other words, your locker number is on file in the office. See you in 44 days.
—Principal Dan
EVERYTHING IS NOT UNDER CONTROL.
I rip it up.
. . . I tape it back together.
JULY 18
Jeanne Ann
I come close to Cal’s house, then veer off. I avoid the Carrot. I avoid Sandy.
Today I feel truly homeless.
The bars over the library door tell me it’s closed before I can get past the bowing trees to the sign that lists the hours. There’s the guy in the yellow raincoat and red rain boots, Gus, sitting on the steps, mumbling. Like always, he nods at me. I stop. Where does he sleep? He doesn’t have a van. I look at him. Really look. He has white hair and deep grooves in his forehead. He pats at the pocket on the outside of his coat like there’s something valuable in there. I look down at the pocket I’m always patting. I nod back.
I wander down to Greenery, passing the middle school—43 DAYS TILL SCHOOL STARTS! Inside the restaurant, waiters—servers—fold napkins, straighten tablecloths, dart from here to there. Everyone with something to do. They’ll open for dinner soon. The light is turning down in the sky.
I stand at the water’s edge, pick up a rock, and throw it in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge. It falls short by a mile. An actual mile. But the throwing feels right. Stupid bridge. “Stupid bridge!” I scream it and throw until my shoulder aches, and I start to feel less angry and more dumb.
Only when I’m standing in front of the Carrot again, arm sore, feet on fire, do I realize what I’ve done: I’ve walked away, blocks and blocks and blocks away. We could’ve been towed. I could be truly, truly homeless right now.
I bang a fist on the van’s hood. “Sorry,” I say. But I’m only apologizing to myself.
JULY 18
Cal
I’m staring into an empty soup pot in the Greenery kitchen, overhearing Mom and Mac assess my damage:
“He’s been like that all day,” Mac says. “I can’t get him to talk.”
“Well, that’s not really what I had in mind for him here,” Mom replies. “Has he been wearing his jacket?”
They’re behind the bakery counter, peeking into the kitchen through the swinging door that separates us.
“He looks . . . forlorn,” Mom says.
“I think something’s happened with the girl,” Mac says.
Nothing’s happened. Jeanne Ann hasn’t spoken to me in eighteen hours.
“Jeanne Ann? That’s too bad. What’d he do? I like her,” Mom says.
“Her van got towed, then there was the protest, and now something with school I.D.s.”
“Whose van? What protest?”
I don’t have to look to know Mac’s pointing out Greenery’s windows.
“The girl drives?” Mom gasps.
I hear Mac whispering.
“Oh!” Mom exclaims. “I had no idea. That poor girl.”
They tiptoe away. I resume staring into the empty pot. I feel just like it.
JULY 19
Jeanne Ann
I’m left with Bad Chuck—I mean Nathan, which sounds a lot like “nothin’” if you say it fast enough. I think I’ll stick with Bad Chuck.
We’re seated on a bench in the grass. Behind me, the van feels so impossibly small. Around me, the city is so huge.
Bad Chuck’s made his way to me from the shed, where his mom and a small group of women in blue are gathered. He says he “escaped” the Blueberries. “They are so mad about you. They don’t pay attention to me,” he says.
They’ve left all the unsold gardening stuff in the grass. For a beautification committee, they seem weirdly unconcerned with their own litter.
I watch Bad Chuck walk over to the tarp-covered box just outside the shed and kick it to show whose side he’s on. I appreciate the loyalty, even if he has chosen the losing side. He comes back hopping on one foot. “That hurt. But it still might be a spaceship.” He slips his hand inside mine. It’s warm and sticky with who knows what, but I find I don’t mind. A hand, even Bad Chuck’s, is a nice thing. This is difficult to admit, but there, I have.
“Don’t you want to see what it is?” he says.
“Nah,” I say. I don’t really care. It looks like a mid-sized U-Haul trailer, the kind you hitch to the back of a truck. If the Blueberries wanted to sell it, they should’ve uncovered it.
Bad Chuck tugs me to standing and I let him. I don’t have a lot of fight in me. He holds a finger to his lips and raises his knees to show we should move on tiptoes.
I smell it before we reach it. Bacon.
I groan. The timing is just super—like hail followed by sleet when you’re caught outside without a jacket.
Bad Chuck, watching me, sniffs, practically wiping his nose on the tarp. “I told you,” he whispers. “It smells like breakfast, but not cereal—the other kind.”
I step toward him, pulling on the tarp till I can see the rusty structure beneath. There are two wheels. A hatch in back, wide enough for a person. Two windows. A griddle. An
order window. Well, now the bacon makes sense. “It’s not a spaceship,” I grumble—and the smell is killing me. I hope the people at the dump come to pick it up quick.
JULY 20
Cal
“Cal! Cal? Have you seen my purse?!”
Mom races past the front door twice before she spots it. Then she happy-squawks, mumbles something, and climbs the stairs. I’m standing next to my desk, looking out the window, listening. Outside, across the street, Nathan is on top of the boxy cart thing, pumping his arms like he’s king of a castle. Jeanne Ann is on a bench nearby, reading a book—probably Superfudge, because that’s all she’s got. Occasionally she looks up to scowl.
“Found it,” Mom says, out of breath, leaning into my room. “It was right in front of me. You put it there so I’d find it, didn’t you?”
I shrug. “I always know where your purse is.” I flip closed my sketchpad. I don’t want her to see what I’m working on.
She eases into the room, perches on the corner of my bed.
“I’m late for work.”
“Yep.”
“There’s a tomato guy coming in. If I’m not there, Mac will buy too many of the red ones with the stripes. They’re the mealiest ones.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hey, Cal?”
I lean into the window. There’s something . . . Jeanne Ann is sucking on her finger.
“Mom!”
I think Jeanne Ann’s given herself a cut. A cut could get infected.
“What?” Mom leaps up from the bed, looking ready to dive on a grenade.
I want to run past her. “I have to get a Band-Aid,” I say. And antibiotic ointment. But it’s also true that I know I shouldn’t and that these things are not welcome. I know I need to stop. Or I need to not stop but come at it all differently.
“Mom!”
“What? Did you cut yourself?”
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