All the Impossible Things

by Lindsay Lackey

  The whole place felt like an adventure.

  “My,” said Ms. Anders, eyeing a collection of cartoon-character cookie jars on built-in shelves outside the kitchen.

  Jackson laughed. “My is right. The house was my mother’s. We moved in to care for her the last year of her life. When she passed, we stayed. And despite all our best intentions, we haven’t gotten around to redecorating.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—I’m just impressed,” she said. “That’s quite a collection.” Ms. Anders’s lips puckered like she was embarrassed.

  Jackson clapped her on the back, booming a bass-drum laugh. “You’re welcome to them! You’d be doing us a favor. I keep telling Cee we should sell them on eBay.”

  “Nobody’ll want those,” Celine said, shaking her head. “Let’s take Ru—Red up to her room before we sit. I’m sure she’s eager to see it.”

  “Great idea,” Ms. Anders said. She smiled encouragingly at Red. “I’ll wait down here.”

  Celine led the way up the creaking staircase. The air upstairs was warmer and didn’t have the same freshness as the piney living room. The faint scent of rose perfume conjured a sudden memory of Red’s grandmother. Gamma had roses everywhere. On dishes and towels and bedspreads. On little glass bottles of perfume. Red used to love rearranging them on top of Gamma’s dresser, sniffing each one.

  “That’s Mama and me,” Jackson said, his voice jolting Red back into the hallway. He pointed to a picture hanging among a constellation of smaller framed photos. A woman with thick glasses and Jackson’s curved nose and miles-wide grin had her arms wrapped around a little boy with an afro that matched hers. The photo was yellowing around the edges, like it had been held and looked at and loved almost as much as the boy himself.

  Red snuck a glance at Jackson as he smiled wistfully at the photo. She’d never had a Black foster parent before. She’d lived with a Latino couple once, and the house mother of one group home was Korean American, but most of the foster families had been white.

  Jackson caught her looking at him. “Can’t imagine me with that much hair now, can you?” He lifted off the baseball cap, revealing buzz-cut hair that was graying at the temples, and winked.

  Red swallowed a smile and shrugged.

  “This one is yours,” Celine said, opening a door at the end of the hall. “I tried to keep the dogs out in case you’re allergic.”

  “I’m not,” Red said as Gandalf pushed past Celine into the room and began sniffing around.

  Celine shook her head. “Good thing. Gandalf is no respecter of persons, as you can see.”

  Red stepped in after the dog. The room was surprisingly normal, considering the rest of the house. The walls were a soft gray, and the furniture buttery yellow. The top of the dresser gleamed, and Red smelled the citrusy tang of furniture polish. There was a stack of books on top of it, and Celine’s face lit up when Red touched their spines.

  “Those are for you,” Celine said. “Ms. Anders said you enjoy reading.”

  She did. In fact, The Mom would get mad at Red for reading too much, and used to take books away as punishment. Red turned from the stack, suddenly feeling prickly. Nobody had ever picked out books for her, like they knew her, knew what she’d like. Scowling, she faced the antique double bed situated under a large window that looked out over the backyard.

  Red startled. Two large copper eyes were staring at her through the window.

  “Oh,” Celine said, spying the creature on the other side of the glass. “Billie wanted to say hello, too.”

  Billie. The thing staring at her had a name. And two floppy black ears framing its long white face.

  A goat. There was a goat outside her window. Her second-story window. Red’s brain hiccuped these facts together. “It’s in a tree?”

  “Billie’s a Moroccan goat,” Celine said, as if that explained everything.

  The black-and-white goat was standing on a thin branch of the oak tree behind the house. It had ventured out so far, Red was amazed the wood hadn’t snapped under its weight. A few browning leaves were disappearing into the goat’s mouth as it stared at them, chewing chewing chewing.

  “Is he gonna fall?” It seemed to Red like one wayward gust of wind could shake the goat right off.

  Jackson said, “Nah. She’s amazing. She hasn’t fallen once.”

  “They really are incredible climbers,” Celine said. “I’ll show you pictures later. I have a book about the tree goats of Morocco downstairs. You might see twenty of them in one Argania tree.”

  Billie bleated, her pink tongue darting out from between her teeth, like, Quit talking about me. Red chewed her lip.

  Celine was watching her. “Do you like your room okay?”

  It wasn’t her room. Just another room in a long line of rooms she’d had to sleep in. She shrugged. Nodded.

  Celine said, “The furniture was Nicole’s—Jackson’s daughter—when she was young. But it’s your room, so you can decorate it however you’d like.” She pressed her fingers into the slope between her neck and shoulder on the right side. “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Green.” A cold draft blustered from Red’s skin. She could have said anything. Blue, yellow, pink. But green? Green was the truth, and she tried not to hand truth out too easily.

  Celine’s hair danced around her face for a moment. She caught some, tucked it behind her ear, and glanced at the closed window. She smiled at Red again. “Green! Well, there’s not a lot of that here, is there?” She crossed her arms. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

  No no no. Red didn’t need a room with green. Not at this house.

  “No, it’s okay. I like it like this.”

  Celine waved a hand. “If my girl wants green, she gets green.”

  My girl.

  For a moment, Red was swirly and feather-light. Then she shifted her weight between her feet and clenched her fists around the summery breeze of Celine’s words. I’m not yours, she thought. I’m not, I’m not.

  Outside, the branch beneath Billie’s hooves shuddered and bowed, but the goat did not fall.

  Dear Mom,

  447 days.

  I wish you could come back sooner. I hate it here.

  I lost my closed-door privileges, so I have to change clothes in the bathroom again. The Mom got mad at me for screaming. She didn’t get mad at her son for making me scream, though. The boys have a bet to see who can give me the biggest welt from pinching my arms. Winner gets all the Halloween candy next month.

  Oldest Boy is going to win.

  He keeps sneaking up on me or chasing me home from school to pinch me. Today he woke me up with a pinch. I wore short sleeves to breakfast, but The Mom just looked at me, then told me to put my dishes away like everything was normal. I know she saw the bruises.

  I am not trying to worry you. I can take care of myself. I just wish you could get out sooner. I saw a TV show where a prisoner got out early because of good behavior. Is that true, or just a TV thing?

  I wish it was true. I miss you.

  Love,

  Red

  Chapter

  5

  “Come on, Fezzik! Don’t be such a—oof—diva!”

  Jackson recoiled as a small, shaggy donkey tried to head-butt him in the stomach again. He—Jackson—was attempting to get the donkey into a fenced arena behind the barn. The donkey—Fezzik—was the last of the animals from the barn to make his way to the arena, and he didn’t seem happy about it.

  Red was straddling a thick branch of the oak tree outside the bedroom window, watching the action below. It was the tree Billie had been in two nights ago, when Red first arrived. Now the goat was in the arena, munching her way through a pile of veggies, hay, and oats with the other goats. The Grooves were rearranging hay bales, setting up tables, and wrangling the animals into the arena, preparing for that day’s Groovy Petting Zoo.

  The Groovy Petting Zoo was what Red had seen a sign for on the highway with Ms. Anders. The black-and-white goa
t on the sign was Billie herself, it turned out. And the turtle was actually an enormous tortoise named Tuck Everlasting. Tuck for short. Celine and Jackson had introduced Red to Tuck the day before, along with the rest of the goats, a cranky llama named Lancelot and a less-cranky llama named Merlin, two horses, Alfonzo and Flicka, a bunch of chickens who looked more like feather balls than birds, three rabbits, and Fezzik the donkey.

  Red had never been around horses or llamas or a giant tortoise before. In the last three years, she had been in a few foster homes with dogs or cats. One even had a guinea pig. But the closest she’d ever gotten to farm animals was reading Charlotte’s Web.

  She was nervous at first, especially because the bay horse nickered and stomped when Red came into the barn. But Celine had spoken softly to the horse and shown Red how to feed him apple slices from the flat of her palm. The animals responded to Celine like the dogs had that first day. They seemed eager to be near her, their heads turning as they watched her move around the barn. If she told them to do something, like step back from the gate so she could get into their stalls, they would.

  It didn’t take long for Celine’s ease to calm Red’s nerves, too. Red even laughed when Billie, Goat, and Gruff, the three goats, ate oats from her hand, their velvety lips tickling her palm.

  Jackson beamed. “You’re a natural. They love you!”

  Except for Lancelot the llama. He spit at Red before she even got close. Merlin wasn’t as wary as Lancelot, but he didn’t seem too eager to be Red’s friend, either. Jackson said they were guard llamas, and took their job of protecting the goats seriously.

  “They’ll warm up to you,” Celine had promised. “You have to earn a llama’s trust.”

  Now, watching from her tree, Red could see Celine patting Lancelot’s long, shaggy neck. Like the other animals, Lancelot was relaxed with Celine and allowed her to lead him into the arena without complaint.

  The Groovy Petting Zoo was open every other Saturday afternoon, June through November, weather permitting. Jackson said he and Celine had started rescuing animals a few years ago, after they got married. His daughter, Nicole, helped them out before she and her husband moved to Seattle. Aside from zoo days every other Saturday at the farm, the Grooves held zoo events to raise funds for all kinds of community things, Celine told her, like children’s programming at the library and their church.

  That was how they decided to become foster parents. They’d taken the zoo to a foster care fund-raiser in Denver that summer. Red remembered that fund-raiser, though she hadn’t visited the petting zoo. The Mom’s boys hadn’t wanted to go, and Oldest Boy faked a stomachache so they could leave and play video games at home.

  Even though Celine had shown her how to feed the horses that morning, Red wasn’t interested in helping with the petting zoo. It was a family thing. And they weren’t Red’s family. Since Jackson had said Red could help out with the zoo as much as she wanted, she opted not to help at all.

  Gandalf stood beneath the oak, looking up at her. The dog’s tongue bobbed as she panted, and she let out a quiet wuff every now and then.

  “Go away,” Red said, shooing the furbeast.

  Gandalf just looked at her like, Come down! Like, Play with me! Red sighed and ignored her.

  It was late October, but the weather was warm and bright. The grove of aspens in front of the house still had yellow leaves and the distant patches of scrub oak were turning red. Though the air was cool, the sun toasted everything. Red stared across the sweep of golden fields behind the house. The Grooves lived outside Bramble, which was far enough east of Denver that the mountains looked tiny. Just a thin strip of jagged teeth along the horizon.

  Red ran her hands over the notebook in her lap. The cover was battered. Its corners were wrinkled and strips of the green patterned paper had been torn off to reveal the brown cardboard beneath. Several layers of tape hugged the spine, holding it together.

  The notebook was fat with wavy, stained pages. More than once, Red had had to rescue it from the snow or mud, where foster siblings had tossed it. She used to hide it under her mattress, but when The Mom’s three boys found it, she’d started carrying it with her all the time.

  There weren’t any foster siblings to worry about at the Grooves’, but she couldn’t break the habit of carrying it around. What if Ms. Anders came back and said there’d been some mistake, and Red had to leave? What if the Grooves decided they didn’t want her?

  No. It was better to hold on to it.

  She lifted the cover. It always opened to the same page. The page covered in tape that held down the shreds of torn paper she’d collected from the bushes and grass and rocks that day at the park.

  Gently, she tried to smooth out the collection of ragged papers. Their edges curled up, like they were trying to fly away from the page, but the tape held them fast.

  The writing on each of the scraps was a little smeared and faded, but Red didn’t need to see the words to know what they said. She’d read them so many times, she knew every one by heart. There were words missing, of course. A lot of them. Words written on scraps that she hadn’t been able to snag before the wind blew them away.

  The holes left by those missing words made the puzzle that much more difficult, but over the years, Red had grown used to their absence. She filled in the gaps a thousand different ways in her own mind, but she knew she couldn’t make everything fit together perfectly. Not yet, anyway.

  Not until her mom got out of prison.

  A goat bleated, and she squinted toward the petting zoo arena. Billie was bouncing around, knocking into the other goats. Lancelot nipped at her, clearly irritated. Billie ignored him, bounded toward the chickens, scattering them. Then, with another happy bleat, she jumped onto Tuck’s shell, just like the goat by the sign on the highway. Jackson and Celine laughed, and Celine looked up toward Red’s tree, shielding her eyes from the sun and grinning.

  Red pretended not to notice.

  Chapter

  6

  “There’s a Brownie troop coming at two.” Celine was scanning the petting zoo reservations on her tablet. “But it’ll be a quiet day.” She looked at Red. “I’m sure the Kapules will stop by so you can meet Marvin. I can call our church youth group leaders, too, if you want. See if some of the kids would like to come out.”

  Red puffed a sigh through her lips and shook her head, pulling her ham sandwich into pieces.

  Celine clicked off the tablet’s screen. “I thought you’d like to meet some of the kids you’ll be in school with. Maybe it will make Monday easier.”

  Red shrugged. All of her first days at new schools blurred together. There’d been a lot of them, and they’d never been very fun. But they were just something she had to deal with until her mom came back and they started their real life again.

  Celine’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Red, sweetie, you’re allowed to have an opinion. Our family talks about things.”

  A whoosh of air ruffled their hair as Jackson opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen. Red dropped a few chunks of sandwich on the floor for Gandalf and Frodo while Brontë and Limerick scurried to greet him.

  “Fezzik is still in a mood,” he said, dragging the baseball cap off his head.

  Celine frowned. “What’s gotten into him?”

  Jackson shrugged. “The animals seem a little off this morning. Maybe a storm is coming or something.”

  “It’s not mine,” Red blurted. They both looked at her, confusion lifting their eyebrows.

  “What’s not yours?” Celine asked.

  Red dropped the last of her sandwich onto the plate. “You said our family, but this isn’t my family.”

  A stack of mail on the table fluttered. Celine and Jackson exchanged a quick look, and Celine laid her hand over the papers.

  “We want it to be,” Jackson said, taking a cautious step forward.

  “No!” Red stood up. “I have a family! My mom is my family!”

  “Of course she is,” Celi
ne said. She held up a hand, palm out, like she did when soothing a startled horse. “We just—”

  “Can I go upstairs?” Red interrupted. Her hair danced around her face and she pulled in a breath, trying to still her blustering emotions.

  Celine pressed her lips together, exchanging another look with Jackson.

  “Yes, Red. You may,” she said.

  Red hurried out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Gandalf followed her, pausing at the bottom of the staircase and looking at her questioningly.

  Red rolled her eyes. “Come on, then.”

  The dog bounded up the stairs and followed Red to the bedroom.

  Red watched from the window as a group of little girls in matching brown uniforms arrived a while later. They chattered and danced around until Jackson and the lady they came with finally got their attention. She could hear Jackson’s deep voice as he gave them information about the animals.

  She turned from the window, sinking down against the headboard. Gandalf was stretched out across half the bed. Her dark eyes followed Red’s movements and she huffed a sigh that made her lips balloon a little.

  “Quit looking at me like that. I’m not going out there.”

  The dog yawned and smacked her chops. Laughter filtered up from the arena. Red resisted the urge to turn around and spy on the activity. Instead, she picked up the green notebook again, opening it and carefully turning past the page of collected scraps.

  At the top of another page, in handwriting that looked like it was dancing, was the word IMPOSSIBLE. She ran her fingertips over the inked letters, feeling the gentle dents they made in the paper. Under the word was a list.

  Flying

  Going to the moon

  Climbing the world’s tallest mountain

  Bumblebees

  It went on for more than a page. Red remembered the day Gamma had written the list. Red had woken to the sound of her mother and Gamma fighting again, but by the time she came into the kitchen, her mother was gone. Gamma was forcefully cheerful, like she always was after they fought. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was playing on the ancient CD player, and Red knew instantly that Gamma was in a mood. She once said she only listened to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony when her emotions were so big, they started leaking out. Beethoven gave her feelings somewhere to go.