“Maybe we should pick out all the places we want to go,” Teddy said, “and then we can try to make a route around the mall that gets us to all of them eventually. That shouldn’t be hard since it’s just a big square.”
So we went down the hallway to the left and made a beeline for the pet store. I held on to my money right up until we got to the crafts store, where I bought a new sketchbook and some nice colored pencils.
“I didn’t know you liked to draw,” Teddy said.
“She’s real good, too,” Felicia told him. “She drew me a picture of JW that I put up on my wall.”
“Could you draw me something?” Teddy asked.
“Maybe,” I said as I handed my twenty-dollar bill to the woman at the register. “I’m not that good.”
“I bet you are, though,” he said. “You don’t gotta, but I’d love to have one of your drawings.”
I blushed.
The cashier handed me my change — enough to get a slice of cookie cake from the Cookie Palace next door — and we headed out of the craft shop. We’d barely taken a few steps when I heard someone calling after me.
“Nola!”
I looked over my shoulder and my jaw nearly hit the floor. Brian was walking toward me, a big smile on his face. He looked about a million times better than he did last time I saw him. His hair was neat and his clothes were clean, and there was just a warmth about him that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Hey,” he said, reaching out and giving me a quick hug. Then he noticed my friends. “Hi, Felicia. Hi, Teddy.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I came with some of my friends,” he said. “Ty and the others are looking at video games right now, but I don’t have any money, so … Are y’all about to get cookies?”
“Not me,” Teddy said, sounding glum. “I’m allergic to the stuff in cookie cake. I tried to sneak some chocolate chips the other day, but they made me break out and Mama noticed.” He pointed to a few of the zits on his face.
“Which stuff are you allergic to?” Brian asked. “Like, milk or the chocolate?”
“Yeah, both,” Teddy said. “And everything else.”
“Come on,” I said to Brian. “You can have some of my slice.”
I ordered a big slice of chocolate cookie cake, then me and Brian sat down on a bench to split it while Teddy and Felicia headed to the bookstore.
“Where you been?” I asked. “I ain’t seen you in a while.”
“Oh, you know, just with friends,” he said, spearing a piece of cookie cake on his plastic fork. “I’ve stayed at Ty’s place a few times. At Donnie’s place, too.”
“So you ain’t been home?” I asked.
“Just to get more clothes once,” he said. “But I haven’t been there hardly at all in a couple weeks, I guess. How are my brothers doing?”
I chewed on my bottom lip a second before answering. “It’s … hard to say. I don’t hardly see Canaan no more. And every time I do, he’s with Peter and Andy.”
Brian made a face. “I thought he hated them.”
“I did, too. Guess we were wrong.”
“Well … What about Kevin? How’s he?”
“He’s come over for dinner a few times,” I said. “But he doesn’t say nothing, so I can’t really say how well he’s doing…. You really oughta go home and see them, Brian.”
“I know.” He looked down at his lap. “I just … I needed to get out, Nola. I couldn’t take it anymore. Taking care of everything was just too much pressure, you know?”
I nodded, but the truth was, I didn’t. I had no idea what Brian was going through. I couldn’t imagine having one of my parents leave without saying good-bye, or the other being so heartbroken she didn’t do anything but go to work and go to bed. As much as I wanted Brian to come home and help his brothers — maybe talk to Canaan about what a jerk he was being — I couldn’t really blame him for staying gone, neither.
For a second I thought about telling him what I’d found out about his daddy. About the waitress, Sarah Clarke, that he was living with in Bunker. But before I could get the words out of my mouth, Felicia was hurrying out of the bookstore with Teddy behind her, hollering at me.
“We gotta go,” she said, grabbing my arm.
“We’re supposed to meet Mrs. Hooper at the front entrance at three,” Teddy said. He held out his wrist so I could see his bright blue watch. It was 2:57.
“We gotta go,” Felicia repeated, tugging on my arm. “Mama will worry if we’re late.”
“Oh, okay.” I stood up, and so did Brian. I gave him one more hug and said, “Hopefully I’ll see you soon.”
He nodded. “See you later, Nola.”
And then I let Felicia pull me away.
Mr. Swift was taking the boys camping.
I’d been jealous all week, wishing I could go, too. I’d never been camping before. Never even slept in a tent. And normally I went anywhere the boys did, but this time, I hadn’t been invited.
“Daddy says it’s a men’s-only weekend,” Kevin told me the day before they left. “We’re going down to Kentucky Lake. And we’re gonna fish. And we’re gonna roast marshmallows and see all sorts of animals. But don’t worry, Nola. Daddy says there ain’t bears. At least none that’ll eat us. So we’ll come back and tell you all about it.”
But the day they were supposed to leave, Canaan showed up on my front steps, asking if I wanted to go to the playground.
“I thought y’all were going camping,” I said.
“Not no more,” he said. “Dad left this morning. He and Mama were arguing and he said he needed some space and the trip is off.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too. I was looking forward to camping. Kevin’s real upset, though. More than me and Brian are.”
Richard was in the living room, sitting on the couch. He stood up and walked over to the doorway where I was talking to Canaan. “Tell you what,” he said. “Y’all might not be able to go to Kentucky Lake, but there’s no reason you can’t camp. Canaan, go tell your brothers to come over here after dinner tonight. And make sure it’s okay with your mama if you stay out.”
“What are we doing?” Canaan asked.
“We got plenty of backyard,” Richard told him. “And I got a tent.”
So that night, Richard pitched his old green tent in our backyard. Then we walked down to the woods behind the duplex and found an empty space to light a fire. Richard did that, of course. The only time we were allowed by the fire was when we had marshmallows speared on the end of long sticks.
Richard told us ghost stories, too. And when it got late, he put out the flames and walked us back up to the tent, which was big enough for all four of us to climb in, our sleeping bags side by side.
“I’ll be in the house,” Richard said. “So will Nola’s mama. If y’all need anything, just come get us, all right?”
We all nodded and he smiled before zipping up the tent.
My sleeping bag was between Canaan’s and Kevin’s. It didn’t take long at all for Canaan and Brian to fall asleep — they both snored, too — but Kevin and I stayed up a little bit longer, whispering.
“I really like Richard,” Kevin said. “He’s real nice. And I’m glad he helped us camp because I was real sad when Daddy said we weren’t gonna get to this weekend. And this is better than Kentucky Lake anyhow because you got to camp with us. Nola, do you think your mama is gonna marry Richard?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so.”
“Me too,” Kevin said. “I want Richard to live next door all the time, not just visit, and I want him to let us camp more. And to make marshmallows. And if he marries your mama, then he’d kind of be your daddy, even though not really. And I think he’d be a nice daddy to have.”
“I think so, too.”
Kevin jabbered on and on, and I fell asleep to the sound of his sweet, soft voice.
I was gonna be a junior bridesmaid at Mama and Richard’s
wedding, which meant I had a lot of responsibilities on my plate. Like on Sunday, when we got up early and headed to a bridal store a few hours away, in Indiana. Mama had already checked out the ones closer to home, but she hadn’t found anything she liked. But the store in Indiana was supposed to have all sorts of dresses, so we had high hopes.
“What do you think of this one?” Mama asked, gesturing to one of the wedding dresses on display.
“I like it,” I said. But, to be honest, they all looked pretty much the same to me. They were all white, all poufy — what was the difference? I was much more interested in the bridesmaid dresses. At least those were different colors and designs.
“Maybe I’ll try it on,” she said. “Go ahead and keep looking at the bridesmaid dresses, and I’ll go find a salesperson.”
I walked around the store, looking at all the mannequins and racks full of hangers. Mama and Richard had already picked their wedding colors, and Mama said the bridesmaids would all be in coral pink. I’d already found a few I really liked, and I was excited to show them to Mama after she’d tried on the wedding dress.
“Nola,” I heard her call a few minutes later. “Can you come here?”
I found her poking her head out of a dressing room. She smiled and opened the door a tiny bit so I could squeeze through.
“Can you come help me?” she asked, turning her back toward me and handing me the clips the saleslady had left her with. All the try-on dresses were real big, so you had to clip them in the back to make them look all right.
“Sure.” I put the clips in place and stepped back so Mama could turn from side to side to pose in front of the long mirror. “I like it,” I told her. “You look real pretty.”
“Thank you, baby,” she said. But then she sighed. “I don’t know, though. I don’t think it’s the one. I’m starting to get stressed about this. We really didn’t leave much time to plan the wedding — and we only have four weeks left.”
“So y’all picked a date?” I asked.
“Yep. Just yesterday — August eighth. We already booked the church.”
I felt a lump rise up into my throat. It felt like I’d swallowed a Ping-Pong ball. “August eighth?” I repeated.
Mama nodded, still facing the mirror and smoothing her hands down the dress.
“The day of the circus.”
In a lot of places, the circus would stick around for a whole weekend. But not in little old Besser County. We were lucky for the traveling to circus to come every five years, and they never stayed more than one day.
“Oh.” Mama turned to face me, her hand covering her mouth. “Oh, baby, I forgot that was the same day. I’m really sorry.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said, even though I felt like crying. Deep down, I knew the boys and I probably wouldn’t go to the circus like we’d planned for so long. But I’d held on to this little shred of hope. This idea that maybe, somehow, everything would work out. Mr. Swift would come back, Brian would come home, Kevin would talk again, and Canaan would be Canaan again. Then we’d go to the circus, just like we had a few years ago, and it would be just as fun as it was then, even if we were a little too old for it.
But if the wedding was on August eighth, that meant there was no chance I’d be going to the circus with the boys. That little bit of hope was gone.
And it hurt.
It hurt more than it should have. More than just finding out I wasn’t going to the circus. It felt like I was losing something. Not just the boys — something bigger. This was my last summer living next door to the Swifts, and everything had fallen apart. The one thing I’d held on to was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Mama said again, reaching out to stroke my hair. “That’s the only day we could get in August —”
“It’s fine.” But my voice broke. I cleared my throat. “It’s fine. I’m too old for the circus, anyway.”
But I could tell she still felt bad. After she tried on a few more wedding dresses and had me try a couple of coral-pink bridesmaid dresses, we left the store empty-handed and drove back to Kentucky. Once we got back into town, she drove to Rocky’s and bought both of us ice cream sundaes.
“What are you gonna do about dresses?” I asked, picking at my ice cream with a plastic spoon. To be honest, I wasn’t very hungry, but it would’ve been rude and wasteful not to eat it.
“A friend of mine from work bought her dress at a store in Nashville. I’ll see if I can get a day off this week to go down and look. You can come with me, if you want. We can go eat at the Rainforest Cafe afterwards.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
Mama opened her mouth, like she was gonna say something else, but then her cell phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her purse and fiddled with the buttons for a second before looking up at me again. “Richard and I have a surprise for you, if you’re up for it.”
“Sure,” I said.
“He just got off work, and we’re meeting him there.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
We finished our sundaes and said good-bye to Edna before climbing back into the car. Then Mama started driving down the highway, right into a sunset so bright I had to put a hand over my eyes. We drove out into the country, where you only saw a house every mile or so. Finally, Mama turned off the road and headed up a long gravel driveway.
A minute later we were parked next to Richard’s truck, and I was staring up at a brick house. It wasn’t real big, just one floor — but it was definitely bigger than the duplex — the whole duplex, not just our side. The yard was full of trees, and I could see the edge of a lake way out in the backyard.
“Where are we?” I asked, even though I thought I knew.
“This is going to be our house,” Mama said. “We made an offer last week, and the owners accepted. We can move in next month — right after the wedding.”
I stared at the house: at the black shutters on the windows, at the porch swing, at the little chimney on the roof — which meant there must be a fireplace inside.
“Come on,” Mama said, opening her door. “We can go in so you can see all of it.”
The inside was just as nice — maybe nicer — than the outside. The floor was all hardwood, and the walls had just been painted white. There wasn’t any furniture, so the whole place felt really big and open. Especially the living room. There were lots of windows looking out of the yard and, like I’d expected, there was a fireplace in the far corner.
“What do you think, kiddo?” Richard asked, walking out of the kitchen with a big smile on his face.
“It’s real nice,” I said. And I meant it. The house was beautiful — just like the houses families lived in on TV.
“Your room is this way,” Mama said, taking me by the hand and leading me down the hallway. “You have the best view.”
My new room was almost twice the size of the one I slept in now. It even had a walk-in closet. But the best part was the window that looked out over the backyard. I could see the lake and hills behind it. And beyond that were thick woods. The window was facing west, so I had the perfect view of the sunset.
“Isn’t it great?” Mama said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s beautiful…. Can we afford this place, Mama?”
She laughed. “Well, we’ve been saving for a while. And we got a pretty good deal, so … yeah. We can.”
“Wow,” I murmured.
“Also, Richard and I have been talking,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to where Richard stood, leaning against the door frame. “We were thinking …”
“Once we get moved in,” Richard said, “how would you feel about getting a dog?”
“R-really?” I stammered.
“You’ve wanted one for years,” Mama said. “But we didn’t have space. Now we do.”
“Can we get a husky?” I asked. “Or a pug? Or both?”
Mama and Richard both laughed. “We’ll see,” Mama said. “Let’s go take a walk outside before it gets too dark.”
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The new house really was perfect, and the more Mama and Richard talked about their plans, the more excited I got about moving here. About my room, the lake, a dog — it was amazing. Except one thing.
While we walked around the big yard, I couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t any houses close by. Which meant no neighbors. No kids my age living next door. No more Felicia and Teddy.
No Swift brothers.
In just a few weeks, I’d be leaving the boys. Sure, we’d still see each other at school, but it wouldn’t be the same. And just then, looking up at the house with Mama and Richard, I realized that I couldn’t leave the boys like that. I’d be miserable knowing I’d abandoned them when they were still so hurt. I had to fix things before I left.
I had to make Mr. Swift come home.
* * *
I walked over to Teddy Ryan’s the next day, and for the first time in my life, I actually rang his doorbell.
Mrs. Ryan answered. She was dressed in shorts and a loose T-shirt, her black hair was pulled back, and there was a slight glisten on her skin, like she was sweating.
“Oh, hello, Nola,” she panted. “Sorry. I was just getting a workout in. Come on in. Teddy’s in his room.”
I’d never been inside the Ryans’ house before. It was very neat, so clean it almost made me uncomfortable. Like I was afraid I’d mess something up just by touching it. There wasn’t a TV in the living room. Just sofas, a few bookshelves, and a nice stereo system.
“Just down the hall,” Mrs. Ryan said. “If y’all need anything, I’ll be in the spare room.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Ryan.”
Teddy’s door was open. He was sitting on his bed, reading a beat-up paperback of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He didn’t even hear me walk in the room, so after a second, I cleared my throat real loud. He jumped and looked up, big hazel eyes staring at me through thick glasses.
“N-Nola,” he stammered. “Hi.”
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“That’s okay,” he said, sticking a bookmark between the pages of his book. “What are you doing here?”
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