My father loved my mother? I guess it made sense. They had to have loved each other once. But why wouldn’t she tell me anything? How could I be almost twelve years old and not even know his name?
I needed to get to Densdale and meet him so he had a chance to love me, and I would have a chance to love him too. To do that, I needed money, which meant getting out on the roof and collecting some toys.
That was not going to be easy.
I had already been in Grandma’s room longer than I meant to. I couldn’t waste any more time; I needed to get out the window and onto the roof. Mom and Grandma could be home at any minute, and I still had to collect as many toys as possible. Taking a deep breath, I sat on the sill and swung my legs outside.
The light glared off the lighter parts of the roof and made my eyes ache and blur, even though it wasn’t a very bright day. The area right below the window was flat, but it was so close to the edge of the roof that one misstep would send me two floors down to the ground. If I kept close to the wall for a few feet, I’d be surrounded by the taller peaks of the roof and safe from falling. But I had to get that far first.
The roof creaked as my sneakers touched down. I kept myself from peeking at the sheer drop a few feet to my right, and focused on the colorful toys scattered around me.
Some of the Frisbees and kites must have flown a long way to get there, because there weren’t enough kids in all our neighborhood to supply so many. Some were old and long forgotten, but some were brand-new and shiny. A few of the kites still had their tails in one piece.
Slow and careful, I moved across the roof, placing my feet on the nail holes to keep the strong beams underneath me. A few more feet and I’d be safe. In some places, the iron roofing had rusted and worn through until it looked like eyelet lace. Mrs. Cuthbert was right about the house being run-down. The roof was a rusted mess. It sure would not do much to stop a speeding satellite. Or a falling kid.
A bug took a sudden interest in my face, tickling my cheeks and trying to hide in my nostril. I pushed it away and sneezed it out, but it flew right back in. Doing my best to ignore it, I pushed on, slow and steady, until I reached the safe little valley between the roof mountains.
When I found a toy worth saving, I stuffed it into one of the plastic supermarket bags I carried in my pocket. Once a bag filled up, I tied it off and left it to be collected on the way back.
By the time I reached the edge of the safe, flat bit of roof, I had three bags full of moneymaking material. But it wasn’t enough. The most I could raise out of all that was a few more dollars.
I pulled another bag from my pocket and stuffed in a toy plane with intact propellers, and a pair of golf balls that had rolled down the slope into the mini gutter between the two sections of roof. Calliope didn’t even have a golf course.
I tried shinnying my way up the nearest bit of roof but slipped back down. Farther along, I gave it another try—carefully this time, because the rusted patches were the worst there. The rust scraped and stung my skin through my jeans, and my feet had no place to grip. I worked my way around the entire edge and struck out everywhere.
The almost-empty plastic bag dangled from my hand. My head throbbed from frustration and disappointment. A person shouldn’t have to try so hard just to get a parent.
I collected the bags and made my way out of the safe valley and back onto the last few flat feet to the window. My sneakers slipped on the flaky paint as I tossed the bags through the window. Clutching the sill, I hoisted myself up. It was a lot higher than it had seemed on my way out. I held on and walked my feet up the wall, but a board was frayed and the edge crumbled under my shoes.
Falling would be nothing compared to the world of trouble I’d be in if I had to call for help. I had to do this myself.
Looping my arm through the window, I kicked my leg up as high as I could. Puffing hard, I maneuvered myself inside—but my pant leg caught on the crumbly board on the way in.
I reached down and tugged at my jeans. They stuck fast. So did my sleeve. When I tried to rip my arm loose, I almost fell out the window.
Grunting from the effort, I pulled my arm from inside my clothes and wriggled free of my sweater. On the third yank, a great tear opened up in my jeans, but my leg was un-snagged. At last, I dropped off the sill and onto the floor of my grandmother’s bedroom.
“And what do you think you’re up to, young lady?”
I flinched, and my pulse thudded hard in my temples. “Uh, collecting toys. For…” Pant. Gasp. “Charity?”
Grandma lifted her brows. “Oh, really? Let’s donate them to charity, then.”
Whether she believed me and wanted to help, or didn’t and meant to call my bluff, I would lose my bags. Before I could make my mouth work, she had collected them all and was on her way out of the room.
“Grandma, wait.” I jumped up from the floor and ran after her.
My foot caught on the torn piece of my pants. I stumbled and managed to stay upright, but then my toe snagged on a loose bit of carpet.
That floor was a lot harder than it looked.
* * *
• • •
Mom patted my shoulder from the backseat of Grandma’s car. “It’s not that bad. Six weeks and you’ll be good as new. You can get all your friends to sign it.”
I glanced down at the bright pink cast on my left arm. I only had one friend who mattered, and he wasn’t talking to me. And if he had been, he’d have died from laughing after everything I’d said about him and broken arms. Not that I was capable of feeling embarrassment anymore. Having a flustered fairy for support in the ER had cured me forever. Despite her panic, Mom had taken the time to grab her wings and wand before we left the house.
“Just in case there’s a sick child who needs cheering up,” she’d said.
There was. Me. And the wings hadn’t helped at all.
Grandma pulled her old Chevy to the side of the road behind Martyn’s Drugstore. “One stop, then we’ll get you home so your mother can spoil you.”
Mom always made me chicken soup and garlic bread when I was sick or hurt, even if I couldn’t eat them. She got fidgety and kept me where she could see me, sleeping on the blow-up mattress in my room if she had to. Grandma reckoned I got better faster just to get some time on my own, but that wasn’t true. Okay, it was a little bit true. But mostly I liked it.
Grandma gave my leg a pat, hopped out of the car, and grabbed my bags from the backseat. As the toys disappeared into the huge yellow collection bin, I slumped back and groaned.
Mom leaned forward and wrapped her arms around my neck, her mouth right next to my ear. “Please don’t ever, ever climb out on that roof again, okay? You might have gotten yourself killed. I couldn’t bear that.”
Technically, it was Grandma’s tatty carpet that had been my undoing. Nothing had happened on the roof at all, except I’d torn a pair of perfectly good jeans and snagged a sweater. But I figured Mom wasn’t in the mood for technicalities. It didn’t matter much now, anyway.
Game over.
Goodbye, Densdale. Goodbye, usable arm. Goodbye, Dad.
Hello, satellite.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
I stared straight ahead, watching a cat strut across the parking lot like a general checking out the troops. My wrist throbbed in my lap, my fingers fat and useless.
As we pulled out to the street, a weird contraption wobbled past. It took me a minute to realize I was looking at a man and a bicycle-powered rickshaw half hidden beneath a long coat that flapped in the breeze as he pedaled.
“Old Mr. Bones,” I whispered.
“Silly old fool. You’d think he’d be home by dinnertime,” Grandma muttered, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited for him to pass.
“He’s not an old fool,” Mom said. “He gets the elderly to appointments for nothi
ng and gives free rides to little kids at the fair. He’s lovely.”
Grandma sniffed. “Lovely old fool, then.”
He didn’t look lovely. He looked mad at the bike pedals and the world in general. The bike went pretty fast, though. Maybe fast enough to get to Densdale if we had a tailwind—and for only a dollar.
“How do people even hire him?” I asked.
“Usually see him parked outside Humphries’s Gift and Guzzle on West Street. He sits out there all day waiting for Mack’s Saloon to close,” Grandma said.
West Street was an easy walk from our place.
I stared out the window all the way home, thinking, planning, and feeling just a little bit hopeful.
It was almost dark when we got home from the hospital, but not too dark for us to see that a lot more than my arm had changed. Our whole front yard, for instance.
Grandma stood in the middle of our path, turning a slow circle with her mouth hanging open.
“My roses. What kind of criminal would do this to a person’s roses?”
Instead of our wild and messy front yard, we had a mowed lawn with two perfectly weeded strips of garden and neatly trimmed rosebushes lining the path. I thought Grandma might cry. They had been ugly roses that grabbed your socks when you walked past, but they had been her ugly roses.
While Grandma groaned and stared, I spotted a slip of paper taped to our front door. Before she noticed it, I hurried up the step and pulled it down.
You’re welcome.
AC
Mrs. Cuthbert.
Mom signaled me to hand her the note before Grandma saw it, and crumpled it into a ball in her fist. She held her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shhhh!”
Grandma marched around the back of the house, cursing and hollering for us to follow.
In the backyard, the gnarly old oaks and elms, as messy as ever, drooped and swayed in the breeze. The grass reached to my waist and caught my feet as I hurried to keep up.
Grandma petted the concrete birdbath, with its fuzzy moss. “At least it’s still beautiful back here. This was Abigail Cuthbert’s work, I’ll bet you anything.”
Trying to sound cheerful, I said, “It’s not so bad. It’s quite pretty out front.”
“Pretty? Pretty! Where is the nature in that mess? My poor roses. She jailed them.”
“They’ll grow back fast. Don’t worry,” said Mom.
They certainly had seemed to stretch out over the path in a hurry last time.
“Not fast enough. They worked with the fairy theme. They—they looked woodsy and natural and beautiful.”
“They’re still pretty now. It’s fine. Don’t get all stressed.” Mom patted her shoulder, but that just made Grandma madder.
“I’m telling you. This is war.”
It might be war, but I had my own battles. Grandma would have to fight that one on her own.
* * *
• • •
After dinner, Grandma clattered the dishes in the sink and stomped around the kitchen like she meant to squash an ant army. The news on TV didn’t help.
“Invaded where now?” she muttered. “Have to blow things all out of proportion and cause a kerfuffle, don’t they?”
I stopped scratching under my cast with one of her old knitting needles and stared laser beams at her. Feuding grandmas had no business judging other people.
She huffed and shrugged. “Course, if they went around calling people kleptomaniacs first, well, that’d be a different matter.”
Someone knocked on the door, and Mom hurried off to answer it. Usually, she made me go, but being excused from regular duties was one benefit of having a broken arm.
On TV, the news anchor cleared her throat.
“Now for the latest on XR-26. Barry Cardogan, spokesman for NASA, has today explained the difficulty of predicting the outcome of the satellite’s reentry. While predictions are expected to become more accurate as time goes on, there will be no way to estimate an exact landing time or zone. Here is Melissa Carpenter with more.”
I held my breath as the camera switched to a pretty blond lady and a short, mostly bald man. “Mr. Cardogan, what does the lack of an accurate prediction mean for the public?”
The bald man nodded as the reporter spoke, and he took a deep breath as she finished. “Well, Melissa, XR-26’s orbit is deteriorating in the way we expected, but I simply can’t tell you with any precision where or when it might come down, although we may get better predictions closer to the time. It’s important to remember that even if it were to come down in a populated area, the chances of it hitting anyone are tiny. No one has ever been hurt by space debris.”
I clenched my good fist until my knuckles ached.
The worst, the very worst, thing about the satellite was that there was nothing to be done about it. NASA had no way to say for sure it wouldn’t land near me. I couldn’t negotiate with satellites, or outthink them, or outrun them. So I would concentrate on finding my dad, because I could do something about that.
Mom’s voice echoed down the hallway, rising and falling in a friendly sort of way. A man answered her on the way back to the kitchen.
“So there’s nothing we can do?” Mom sighed as Nickel’s dad, Officer Bugden, followed her into the kitchen. Nickel would be tall like him one day, but hopefully Nickel would have more hair and slightly less tummy. Officer Bugden turned and saluted me. I grinned and waved back with my good arm.
“Evening, Shirley,” he said, nodding at Grandma. “I’m sorry, ladies, but ‘false imprisonment of roses’ isn’t a criminal act. Maybe we could call it trespassing, but what proof do you have it was even Abby Cuthbert?”
“This crime has her fingerprints all over it!” Grandma thumped the countertop with her fist.
Officer Bugden grinned. “Not literally, it doesn’t. I’m sorry, Shirley.”
Grandma sighed. “Can’t argue with the law, now, can I?”
Nickel’s dad leaned with his hand on the dining table. “You can, but it’s probably best if you don’t, all things considered. This isn’t the first I’ve heard about this little feud between you two.”
Grandma grinned and fiddled with a plate of fairy cupcakes.
“I had a very similar conversation with Mrs. Cuthbert a few days ago. Seems she had an unexpected shower and some sheets go missing off her line and turn up on your roof.”
“They blew down the next day, good as new except for a bit of dirt,” Grandma huffed, picking up the biggest cupcake and holding it out.
Officer Bugden grinned. “Lucky for you, I don’t consider cupcakes to be a bribe.” He took the cake and turned to me. “What’s this I hear about you breaking your arm, little miss?”
I covered my cast with a cushion. “Don’t tell Nickel.”
He sucked in some air through his teeth. “Bad news, kiddo. He already heard from Jason Purcel, who heard it from Sarah Michaels, who heard it from Jenny Bristow, whose mom was in the ER with an attack of appendicitis today.”
There had to be a law against parents passing on gossip, but if the cops couldn’t even arrest rogue-gardener neighbors, it probably wouldn’t help.
“I better mosey on. But do me a favor, ladies. Have a stern word with that roof of yours, will you? You see a lot in this job you’d rather never see again, but seeing Abby Cuthbert soaked to the skin and red as fury is beyond the call of duty.” He tipped his hat and made for the door.
“Seems to me,” Grandma said as she took her spot on the sofa beside me while Mom saw Mr. Bugden out, “that if the law doesn’t care about trespassing and reckless gardening, Abigail Cuthbert better watch out.”
The “law” hadn’t left yet and yelled back from the porch, “I’m gonna go ahead and pretend I didn’t hear that, Shirley!”
“Oops,” said Grandma with a grin.
Nickel didn’t show up at school until after lunch the next day. All through our afternoon classes, I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn’t work. I peeked at him from behind my books and made drowning-fish faces without any sound coming out.
When it was the same on Friday, I knew I had to say something. The Densdale Lagoon get-together was only a day away, and even if I could take the rickshaw, it would all be so much easier with Nickel’s help—and his allowance.
I made my move during afternoon recess.
Clutching a marker, I waited at Nickel’s locker for him to pick up his backpack, the way he did every afternoon. “Hey,” I said.
He didn’t turn around. “Hi.”
“I, um, wondered if you’d like to sign my cast.”
For a whole minute—I counted every second—he didn’t move. I’m not sure he even breathed. “I thought you were too clever to break your arm,” he said at last.
I held out the marker. “Please?”
He signed his name, capped the pen, and handed it back to me. “There.” He pulled his backpack from his locker and closed the door.
When he turned to leave, I tugged at his sleeve with my good hand. “Wait. I wanted to apologize.”
Nickel sighed. “I hoped you wouldn’t.”
Confused, I let his arm go. “You don’t want to be my friend anymore?”
He stared at a spot on the floor as far away from me as possible. “I wanted you to make up with me sometime when you didn’t need me to help you get to Densdale tomorrow.”
I took a step back and swallowed, hard, because he was right. Horribly, disgustingly right.
No one had ever been a worse friend than me.
I watched his hunched-over back as he walked away.
* * *
• • •
The next morning, the wind ruffled the kitchen curtains while Mom dished out pancakes for breakfast. I hoped old Mr. Bones rode in any weather.
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