Seven Clues to Home

by Gae Polisner

  “Lukas?”

  “Yeah?”

  She finds my fingers with her fingers again, but this time I know it’s on purpose, because she squeezes them, which isn’t exactly helping my brain from feeling like it may be on actual fire. And so then I’m really thinking about maybe kissing her, but something else happens. For some dumb reason, tears almost come into my eyes. I squeeze them away, feeling super glad it’s dark and she can’t look over and see me too well.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know you don’t have wishes. I just want you to, Lukas. That’s all. Because you deserve them.” I nod, working to keep any full tears from escaping, which I’m usually pretty good at, but also I’m not feeling as tough as normal tonight, probably because of everything with Rand and Mom. “But until you do, do you want me to tell you mine?”

  I nod again. “Yeah, I would,” I say.

  “Okay.” She lets go of my hand and sits up, making me sit up, too, and the sleeping bag falls down from our shoulders. She bends her knees up and wraps her arms around them and stares again into the sparkling sky. “So, no making fun of me, because I know it sounds corny, but it’s also mathematically possible, like, probability-wise, so under your rules, it isn’t a waste of a wish.”

  “Okay, tell me, then.”

  “It’s simple,” she says. “One perfect wish that could easily come true.”

  I sit beside her, listening to her breathe and watching the stars, which seem to be moving around in some weird way, all together and too fast, spinning and winking and changing places like the whole sky has gone crazy and its job is to actually make me feel dizzy, but maybe I’ve just been staring at them for too long.

  “Here it goes, then. I wish we could always be friends.”

  For a second, everything stops and is quiet in the best way, and I feel steady again, like we’re just here, both of us part of the dirt and the earth and the ground. Then a dog barks, and someone yells for someone else from a window, and a train whistle blows, sharp and loud, and blows again, and it’s a long, sad sound at night, in the dark, like this. Way sadder than in daytime, so it sits like a rock in my chest, because it reminds me of all the people in the whole wide world who are still waiting for someone to come home.

  I blink in the bright sunlight on the sidewalk outside of Vincent’s Pizza, trying to figure out if I am dreaming or not. Am I really holding Lukas’s second clue in my hands?

  I’m not mad anymore, not at anyone. In fact, I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.

  I think I’m giddy.

  But now the problem is, I have no idea what the clue means.

  Half up, half down,

  What’s old is now new.

  Ask for her by name,

  8-4-3-2.

  I look up and down the street—there are barrel planters every few feet, overflowing with purple, red, and yellow blossoms, and more flowers in baskets hanging from the streetlamps—and then I look up into the sky.

  Well?

  I wait for you to say something, but all I see is the sun, pretty much directly above, so it must be close to noon. I figure it’s been over an hour since I left, and if Davy stopped crying and Isabel stopped jumping, my parents will start turning their thoughts to me again.

  I should have grabbed my phone. At least I could check in, maybe buy myself a little more time. Lukas and I never left our clues that far apart. So if the third clue is still there, it’s got to be around here somewhere.

  If I could just figure out what half up, half down means.

  Port Bennington isn’t rich or fancy or anything, but it’s not as small a town as you might think. There are five elementary schools, two middle schools, and one huge high school. Tourists come only to this part, though, the pretty part with the nice sidewalks and flower boxes, but in the summer there’s sure a lot of touristy activity, filled with lots of people who like boats and water.

  You know I never liked the water the way you do.

  The people here are in no rush to go anywhere fast, eating ice cream, holding two, three, four designer shopping bags, wearing dressy shorts and high-heel sandals and T-shirts printed with really creative slogans like PORT BENNINGTON.

  I know, right?

  And if you couldn’t tell the tourists by what they are wearing, Lukas always says, you can tell who the out-of-towners are by how rude and inconsiderate they are, how they walk down the sidewalk, chatting, licking their cones, pointing at things in the window displays, three and four across, so no one else can get by. Like those three, up there by the green truck.

  They are walking so obnoxiously slow, too.

  But, anyway, everyone has to slow down when they get about midway up the street, because good old historic Main Street is basically on a twenty-five-degree angle. And about halfway up, it starts to feel like you are climbing a mountain, which is exactly how I feel right now.

  I step off to the side and try to stand in the shade, but there’s not much and it’s boiling hot out. I don’t even have a hat or sunglasses. I’m probably getting a sunburn, and my mother will be mad. Lukas would always be brown by this time of year, and he never wore sunscreen.

  Never wears. Never wore.

  Knowing his handwritten note is in my back pocket lets me imagine him, but just for the tiniest fraction of a second. Then I rub it away and concentrate on all the people busy with whatever people who are not busy tend to do.

  Outside of Grayson’s Florists, a lady in a yellow smock is watering the planters.

  A little farther down, a mother is begging her toddler to stop whining and get up off the sidewalk.

  There is a family of four, about halfway up the block, trudging toward the fudge shop, and none of them look like they need any fudge.

  About halfway up.

  And halfway down.

  Oh my God. Oh my God. That’s it.

  I did it.

  That’s what you meant, isn’t it?

  Lukas wanted me to walk out of Vincent’s and to stay on Main Street. To head this way. Up from the pizza shop. But it’s not enough.

  What did he mean by half up?

  Halfway to what? Halfway to where?

  You need a beginning and an ending point to know where the middle is.

  I don’t know where, but I start walking, anyway. In fact, I start running, which, in this heat, is not such a good idea. I run all the way to the top of the block. Then all the way down, I start back up again. Up. Straight up.

  Nobody turns to look at me, or wonder why this just-turned-thirteen-year-old kid is running up and down Main Street like she’s cross-training for the Ironman. Or just lost her mind.

  My shirt is drenched. Finally I stop, lean against a cool brick wall of the Port Bennington Savings and Loan, and take the clue out of my back pocket.

  I unfold it like it’s made of glass.

  Half up, half down,

  What’s old is now new.

  Ask for her by name,

  8-4-3-2.

  But this whole town is old, Lukas.

  That’s not going to help. And who is her?

  No, if anything is going to help, it’s going to be the numbers, of course. Lukas would know that I’d understand numbers. But I don’t.

  Eight thousand four hundred thirty-two?

  There must be numbers around here somewhere. Addresses?

  The fudge shop—where I see the family of four inside, cooling off in the air-conditioning—is at 119 Main Street. The dry cleaner’s across the street is number 120. Even on one side, odd on the other. But not anything anywhere close to eight thousand.

  8-4-3-2.

  Okay, so these numbers can’t have anything to do with an address. I doubt he’d want me to add them together; that would be too-easy math. But I do it, anyway.

 
Seventeen.

  Still, it can’t be an address. The first number on this block is 100, and the numbers are going up.

  Two men in ties are patting their faces with the backs of their hands at the exact same time.

  A kid flies by on a bicycle, going downhill against traffic.

  A rich lady, all dressed in white, is walking her so-tiny dog that looks like a rat.

  And all I can do is stand here, sweating, and hope something pops out at me.

  8-4-3-2.

  I got nothing.

  How did I go from giddy to miserable in less than fifteen minutes? My heart can’t take this. I shouldn’t have done it. This is not how it was meant to be. The riddles were never supposed to make you feel bad. They were supposed to be fun. Lukas wouldn’t have made it this hard on purpose, because he’d have been here to point me in the right direction.

  I’m hot.

  I’m thirsty.

  I let my knees buckle, and I slide my back against the wall till I’m squatting, and holding back my tears.

  I just want to go home.

  “Are you all right, young lady?”

  When I look up, it’s the lady with the rat dog. She seems nice, and I instantly feel bad for thinking that about her dog, even if up close, it looks even more like a rat.

  I scramble to my feet and wipe at my face at the same time.

  “Oh yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Is there anyone you can call?”

  Before I can tell her I don’t have my phone, she is holding hers out to me. It’s all blinged out with green rhinestones, but so what?

  “Thanks,” I say. “I guess I could call my dad, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’d feel better than leaving you here on the street, crying.”

  “I wasn’t…” But, of course, I was.

  “Go ahead. Just call.” Her little dog sits down and pants, and they both turn their heads, as if they are giving me my privacy. “It’s not locked,” she adds.

  “Thanks.”

  I press the telephone icon at the bottom, and a keypad appears on the screen.

  Underneath the numbers are sets of three letters. Under the 2, there is ABC. Under the 3, DEF.

  It wasn’t a building number or address. Lukas was spelling something!

  8-4-3-2.

  Under the 8, there is TUV.

  Under the 4, GHI, and under the 3, the only vowel is E.

  The word THE comes to me.

  But there’s still another number: 2. And under that, the letters ABC.

  Not THE.

  THEA.

  I think I know the name Thea.

  It’s the lady who owns the shop where Lukas’s mother brings their old clothes and stuff sometimes. I went there with them once. It’s a consignment shop on Main Street. Halfway up the block, halfway down, and right across the street from where I am standing right at this very moment. I almost drop this most bedazzled cell phone.

  “Oh, hey, look, thank you. Thank you, anyway, but I just remembered something. Something really important. I don’t need to use your phone, but thank you, anyway. You are very nice. And so is your dog. Your dog is really cute.” I’m blabbering and stammering, and I thrust the phone back into her hands. “I gotta go.”

  But I do remember to look before I dart across the street. I lift my eyes to the sign I hoped would be here, and there it is:

  ANGEL’S ANTIQUES AND CONSIGNMENTS

  When I push open the door, a little bell over my head jangles, a whoosh of cold air greets me, and my relief is so much more than I’d let myself believe could be true.

  I found where Lukas put the next clue.

  We did it.

  By the time I reach the big picture window in front of Angel’s, where Thea works, I’m sweating, not just from the heat, but because I’m thinking about the pendant I bought for Joy again. What did Justin say this morning? Nothing ruins a friendship like declaring your undying love?

  I am not doing that, though. (Am I?) I just know Joy likes nice hearts.

  Still, as I think about it, my stomach twists, and twists some more about the note. My words there, the way I rewrote it this morning. Maybe I should rip it up and start again, write what I always write: Happy birthday, Joy. From your best friend, Lukas. Because even that night, watching stars, Joy had said, I wish we could always be friends. She didn’t say, I wish we could be more than that. I wish you could think of me that other way.

  A drip of sweat slides down by my ear, because I also keep remembering how she squeezed my fingers under the sleeping bag that night, but I shouldn’t think about that now.

  There’s a weird, muffled noise, someone yelling my name, and that someone is waving at me through the big front window. Thea, I think, but it’s hard to tell with the glare.

  “Hold on a second!” I say, because my phone is buzzing inside my pocket. It’s Justin, texting to say they’re heading out on the water, so I may not be able to reach him. “Be good,” he writes, but I probably should text that to him. He needs to remember it more than I do.

  “I will be,” I text back, anyway. “Saw Jairo. He says hi.”

  I shove my phone away and stare down the hill toward Vincent’s, using the bottom of my T-shirt to wipe the sweat from my face and neck. I could have made this a lot easier if I hid all the clues in one place. But I wanted this one to be special, since it’s our fifth one ever, so it needed to be the kind of thing you remember even when you’re old.

  You should trust me on this, Justin had said, but he only knows how him and his friends are with girls, girls they’re not even friends with in the first place. Girls you like from the get-go, then kiss, then decide a week later you don’t like so much after all. That’s nothing like Joy and me.

  Another night I’ve been thinking about—a recent one—comes back to me, even though I’ve been trying not to think of it too much. It was only a few weeks ago. We were watching Coraline at Joy’s house, and when the “One, two, three!” scene came on, Joy grabbed my hand and buried her face in my shoulder, even though she’s seen the movie a whole bunch of times already. And when she finally let go, she left her hand sitting there on my knee.

  I swear, it nearly burned a hole through my jeans.

  After a few minutes, she realized it was there, I guess, and said, “Sorry!” and moved it. Even if I didn’t want her to. I should have told her to keep it there.

  I shake my head at my own stupidness and pull the door open, relieved for the cool, musty distraction of Thea’s.

  This is just some of what you see if you walk into Angel’s Consignments: ugly lamps with yellow shades and nautical bases; ugly pillows with shiny braided ropes and dark stains, propped on mustard-and-red plaid armchairs with all their threads sticking out; wood and metal stools and tables, some in good shape, others kind of broken; books everywhere; boxes and boxes of doorknobs and glass drawer pulls and old-looking hardware and tools; pink and red and amber drinking glasses, with raised dots on the outsides like Braille, which someone’s great-grandma must have used; a whole shelf full of tin policemen and tin carousels and tin circus clowns with dogs, waiting to be wound up to bark and clap and spin and march across the floor; and an old suit of armor that never leaves the corner, a rainbow of bright-colored feathered thingies wrapped around its neck. Boas. That’s what Thea once told me they’re called.

  There are also cabinets full of jewelry made of clunky fake (I’m pretty sure) diamonds, and pink and yellow plastic stones, and whole racks of raincoats and fancy dresses, with beads and sparkly sequins, and men’s sweaters and suits that have all started to smell kind of funky. And underneath them, along the floor, all sorts of shoes that have been worn before, from ladies’ heels, to kids’ sneakers, to men’s dress shoes like Dad used to wear when he left for work in the mornings. Everywhere you look, t
here is something old waiting to be something new for someone.

  “Well, hello, Mr. Brunetti!” Thea appears right next to me out of nowhere, making me jump out of my skin. “I thought I saw you outside!” she says, taking hold of my shoulders. Her breath smells sweet and powdery, and she studies me with her purple-blue eyes. “How the heck are you? Haven’t seen you or that beautiful mama of yours in eons. How is she? And what brings you into this stuffy old place on a gorgeous summer day?”

  That’s a whole slew of questions, so I’m not sure which to answer first. I like Thea, but she sure can talk too much. She knows us because this is where we brought all of Dad’s stuff after he died. Not right away, of course, because we wanted to keep it around to remind us of him, but then it just started to feel sad, plus we needed the money, plus we were selling the house, so Mom was ready to get rid of it all. Suits. Shoes. Watches. Boxes of the true-life biographies, and war and history books he liked to read. That was back when we lived in our own house, with a view of the water, but only from the attic if you went up there. Justin says Dad said he and Mom were going to open up the attic and make it their bedroom one day, but that was before he got sick. Back when he still worked for the bank in the city, and we had enough money to buy stuff we didn’t absolutely need.

  Justin remembers it all, but I don’t, because I was not even six when we moved to the rentals so Justin and me could stay in our schools. Which is most important, because otherwise it would have been even worse for Justin, and I wouldn’t have been best friends with Joy.

  Anyway, because we were still little back then, Mom had to take us everywhere with her, including Thea’s. So we took trip after trip here, dragging his things that had value. Once, when Mom came in with the box of Dad’s shiny dress shoes, Thea said, “Are you sure you want to get rid of these, Melissa? Maybe the boys want to—”

  But Mom cut her off. “No point in that, Thea. What good will it do any of us to keep holding on to his shoes?”