by J. S. Puller
Aunt Lisa walked in just in time for me to close the cabinet and make a big show of holding up the puzzle.
She seemed to accept that.
Deflating a little, I walked back over to the carpet and lay down on my stomach. I spilled the pieces on the floor and started to turn them over, upside down so I was looking at the brown, cardboard backs. I’d put together the puzzle so many times it would be too easy any other way.
My phone vibrated, and I slipped it out of my pocket. Nicole was texting me back, finally:
Miss you too. How’s your family doing?
I had no idea how to answer her. Not without getting emotional, anyway. So I put my phone away and started putting together the puzzle.
Even without the picture to help me, I still managed to finish in about five minutes.
“Show-off,” Uncle Toby said, glancing over at the plain, cardboard square in front of me.
I took out my phone again and snapped a photo of it. Maybe this is what I would have to send Nicole tomorrow morning. It seemed to summarize my summer perfectly. A big, blank stretch of nothing. And it would be a way around answering her question.
As I started to break down the puzzle again, I heard a sound. At first, I thought it was a Cubs fan screaming thinly from the stadium seats on TV. Certainly, that’s what Uncle Toby seemed to think, because he didn’t stir an inch. But I knew that sound.
It wasn’t a baseball fan.
It was a floorboard.
I picked up my phone and started tapping the screen with my thumbs, pretending I was sending a text. But the screen was blank, a smooth black surface, a dark mirror that showed me what was happening over my shoulder.
It showed me a tiny, nearly eight-year-old boy as he crept down the hall, his footsteps almost lost beneath the sound of the crowd singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
TJ was wearing jeans and an old, ratty T-shirt with a picture of the Chicago flag on it—four red stars between two pale blue stripes. He moved with care. He knew which boards were the noisiest and which wouldn’t make a sound. Expert precision. In a way, it looked like he was dancing, skirting from one side of the hall to the other. When he hit the living room, he dropped down to all fours, sliding along the bottom of the wall, just beneath the height of the couch, so Uncle Toby couldn’t see him.
When he got to the front door, I wondered what he would do. There was no way to open it without being seen. He waited. And waited. And waited some more. I was absolutely sure that he was stuck. Until I heard Aunt Lisa over by the table, going over her project materials.
“Toby,” she called.
“Yes, bubbeleh?” Uncle Toby said, glancing over his shoulder toward the table. I cringed at his nauseating pet name for her. It was the Yiddish equivalent of “baby cakes” or “sugar lumps” or something like that, and the last thing I wanted to hear was them getting all lovey-dovey.
But them getting mushy was all that TJ needed. The second his dad’s back was turned, he bolted, grabbing the door and opening it just enough to slip out. He rotated the handle before he closed it again, so the bolt didn’t make a sound as it slid back into place.
It was so fast, I would have missed it, if I’d looked away from my screen.
“Can I get your opinion on something?” Aunt Lisa continued, missing the whole thing.
“Sure,” Uncle Toby said.
“Hey,” I said, sitting up on my heels. “Would it be all right if I went outside for a little bit?”
“Of course,” Aunt Lisa said.
At the exact same time, Uncle Toby said, “No.”
There was a moment of silence, before she came padding over to the couch, her hands firmly planted on her hips. “Toby…”
“It’s not safe, bubbeleh,” Uncle Toby said.
“It’s Oak Lake,” she said. “No place safer on Earth.”
“Not after Chancelor—”
“We can’t let Chancelor dictate the rest of our lives,” she said. “Or ruin how we feel in our own home.”
“I’ll stay between Keating and Downey,” I said, getting to my feet. I was losing time. I had only seconds, I knew it.
“She’ll be perfectly safe, Toby.”
Uncle Toby looked back and forth between the two of us but seemed to know he was outnumbered. “Oh, all right,” he said. “But be back as soon as the streetlights come on. And take your phone with you.”
Aunt Lisa laughed. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Leah’s addicted to that thing.”
“Am not,” I said, but already I was shoving it into my back pocket as I rushed for the door.
“Don’t forget, the code to get back in is—”
“One-seven-zero-one,” I said. “I know!”
I heard Aunt Lisa tsking and muttering behind me, but I didn’t look back.
I took the cement stairs two at a time, racing as fast as I could.
TJ couldn’t have gotten far.
Could he?
Outside, it was a warm and humid evening. So humid that I immediately felt a sheen of sweat on my face. In the distance, thunder rolled.
Violet’s weather forecast was super wrong.
It was going to pour.
But I turned my back on the storm and hurried along the sidewalk. I remembered the direction Violet had pointed when she told me about how TJ was sneaking around, so that’s the way I went. It was only a block or so before I spotted him.
He was walking differently. Around the apartment, he moved like a zombie, shuffling his feet, looking anywhere but forward. Now he moved with purpose. There was a lightness to his step. I wouldn’t call it skipping or anything like that. But it wasn’t a shuffle, that was for sure.
Nothing so heavy.
For a second, I thought about calling out to him.
Maybe he would tell me where he was going.
Maybe he would share his secret.
But maybe he wouldn’t.
No, I decided. Better not to let him know I was there. Not yet, anyway.
Better to see how he acted when he thought he was alone. Maybe that was my first step to helping him.
Or maybe I was just completely lost and making up the rules as I went.
TJ was so far beyond the limits set by Keating and Downey that I guess he sort of figured he was safe. That no one was going to come after him. He didn’t look back, didn’t check over his shoulder. He just kept walking down the sidewalk, uninterested in the gathering storm.
We made our way past bumper-to-bumper cars, crammed together so tightly against the curb that it was no wonder Violet guarded her dad’s space the way she did. Rows and rows of town houses. Beautiful, green trees, shivering their leaves in the wind. But then, suddenly, we rounded a corner and we were in the city.
Not Chicago proper. No skyscrapers or freeways or giant metal beans.
Not the kind of city you saw in pictures and in the opening credits for the nightly news.
The quieter city. Softer.
A milder version.
I heard the train rumbling overhead on a high, metal track. Sparks crackled and died beneath its wheels, in the shadows of the station. The streets suddenly had stoplights. Crosswalks. Awnings. They were lined with small shops rather than homes. There were more than just kids out, hanging around. Grown-ups—wearing steely gray and blue suits, carrying briefcases and messenger bags—passed without really noticing one another, walking in a chaotic jumble that somehow managed to avoid collision. It was only a few blocks, but it felt like another world completely.
One that Uncle Toby didn’t think was safe.
But not TJ.
He didn’t show any fear.
He just kept walking.
Good for him. Being afraid was a waste of energy. Like crying.
I was suddenly so proud of my tough, little cousin.
I continued to follow, at least half a block behind. With all the people racing to and from the train station, I had to bob and weave between them in order to keep my eyes
on TJ. He was so small that the crowd threatened to swallow him up.
He passed under the wide tracks, rounding a few rows of bike racks, mostly empty now. When he started to turn, I pressed myself against the side of the stairwell, leading up to the train platform. Between the spokes of the railing, I could just see him, if I stood up on my tiptoes. He moved through the bike racks and into the dark shadows against the wall of the station.
“Hey, little man,” a gruff, unfamiliar voice said.
“Hey, Morgan!”
For a second, time seemed to stop.
That was TJ. My cousin still had his voice after all. He spoke! I felt a ridiculous rush of excitement and had to clamp my hands over my mouth to keep from yowling. Control yourself, Leah. But all the same, it was such a victory.
He spoke.
He spoke!
But who was this Morgan?
How had he broken the spell? I knew it was completely unfair, but all of a sudden, I felt kind of jealous. I was supposed to be the one who managed to get through to TJ. I had all kinds of plans and suddenly… it was someone else.
Someone clearly more special than I was.
Carefully, I edged my way around the stairs and under the tracks, squatting down behind a bike that looked like it had been locked on the rack for years. The metal on the frame was orange and rusted. The tires flat, completely deflated. And there was a spider that had made itself a lovely web between the handlebars. Spiderwebs were supposed to have healing properties. I’d read that on Wikipedia. And it seemed to be true, as I watched my cousin transform through the silken threads of the web.
Sitting on a plastic milk crate, in front of the little doughnut shop built under the tracks of the train station, there was a man who I could only assume was Morgan. I couldn’t tell how old he was, exactly, but he seemed kind of ancient. The top of his head was bald and splotched, but there was long, stringy white hair running in a rim around it. It hung over the canvas band of a visor, featuring a glittering, pink doughnut with blue and purple sprinkles. Under his apron with a matching logo, he was wearing a shirt that had probably once been white. Now it was yellowed with age, sagging under his armpits.
“You going to bring me something good today?” Morgan asked, looking up at TJ with a wide grin. One of his front teeth was cracked and jagged.
“Hope so,” TJ said, raising one shoulder all the way up to his ear.
“Good,” Morgan said. “I can’t wait.”
Across the street, someone slammed a car door.
TJ yelped, dropping down to the pavement at Morgan’s feet, curling his head to his knees.
“Hey, hey,” Morgan said, touching TJ’s back gingerly with the tips of his crooked fingers. “Just a car, little man. Just a car.”
I wanted to rush over and drop down beside him, holding him in my arms like Uncle Toby.
But TJ surprised me.
He sat up, all on his own. Swallowing hard. He was still kind of scared, but better now. Getting less and less afraid by the second. What a tough, little guy.
He could control it!
He could control it?
But what was… it?
“Don’t worry,” Morgan said. “I get that way sometimes, too. Loud noises are the worst, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” TJ said, shrugging his shoulder again. Slowly, he pulled himself up to his feet, smoothing down the front of his shirt. “I’ll see you later, Morgan, okay?”
“See you later, little man. Might even be a doughnut in it for you.” He winked.
“Thanks!”
Morgan held up his hand. He was wearing a plastic glove. Without hesitating, TJ gave him a high five before he turned and ran back around the bike racks, continuing down the sidewalk.
What in the world?
I stood up quickly and stumbled after him, throwing a swift look over at Morgan. He was smiling, shaking his head a little bit as he stood, slipping two fingers through the handle of his milk crate and swinging it back behind the register in front of the display of doughnuts.
A man wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey stopped beside the little shop, chatting on his phone as he examined a menu board with prices.
“What can I get for you?” Morgan asked, peeling off his glove.
No time for questions.
Even if there were a million of them.
TJ was half a block ahead of me when he stopped. I pulled myself behind an enormous plastic recycling bin, crouching down. TJ opened the door to a storefront and slipped inside, letting it slam shut behind him.
I looked up at the sign:
SQUEAKY GREEN COIN-OP LAUNDROMAT
Why would TJ go there?
His apartment building had a washer and dryer in the basement.
And TJ certainly didn’t do laundry.
Slowly, I came out around the recycling bin and moved closer to the door. It was made of glass, so I could see inside. There were rows of washing machines running across the Formica floor. And on the far side, the entire wall was made of dryers stacked on top of dryers. A couple of people were going about their business inside. A woman my mom’s age, sitting on top of a machine, flipping through a magazine. Two guys who looked like underwear models, standing beside one of the dryers, arguing about something. And a lady with hair teased up to roughly the size of a house, daintily separating her light clothes from her dark clothes on a small table in the corner, her fingertips ending in enormous red talons.
I didn’t see TJ.
Should I go inside?
I don’t know why I hesitated. I guess because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. And it was more than just breaking Aunt Lisa’s rules. TJ had gone there thinking he was alone. How would he feel if he saw me?
Would he ever speak again?
To me?
To anyone?
Two steps to the door. Three back. Another step forward. Two steps back.
I couldn’t make up my mind!
Which, I guess, meant it had to be made up for me.
A crack of thunder, louder than before, echoed across the sky. And suddenly the heavens opened up.
Fat, heavy drops started to fall, pelting my head and shoulders.
All around me, the people coming and going dug into their bags and briefcases, pulling out umbrellas that snapped open to the tune of a beating drum.
I grabbed a newspaper from the recycling bin and held it up over my head, using it as my own umbrella, but I was already drenched, my fake blond curls stuck against the sides of my face.
I had to get back to Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa’s. They thought I was only down the block. If I didn’t come running inside after a few moments in the rain, they’d start to suspect I went beyond Keating and Downey.
And if they suspected me, they might suspect TJ, too.
I couldn’t do that to him.
Before I took off, though, I grabbed my phone. It slipped in my wet hands, but I managed to get it unlocked, and I took a picture of the sign over the coin-op.
For research purposes.
Doing my best to shield my head from the rain, I started to run, hurrying back to the safety of Oak Lake’s town houses and trees. All around me, people were rushing this way and that. The only stillness I could see was Morgan, leaning against the countertop of his little doughnut shop under the train tracks, watching the rain fall with a distant sort of look in his eyes.
I wondered what he was looking at.
The same thing TJ looked at when he was staring off into space?
Maybe.
But I didn’t bother trying to figure it out. I was too excited by my new discovery:
He was talking.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Have you ever heard of Squeaky Green Coin-Op?”
I had to wait more than twelve hours before I was able to ask.
Twelve hours that nearly drove me bonkers!
Although I left the laundromat and buzzed myself back into the apartment without so much as a single question, I found that a part of
me was still lingering on that sidewalk, staring through the glass door, looking for TJ. What was he doing there? What did that place give him? Why did he speak to Morgan, when he wasn’t talking to his own family? Was there someone else he was talking to? Would he ever speak to me or any of us again? And what could I do in all of this?
The questions continued whispering in my ear all night long, the unfinished story keeping me wide awake. The kind of awake that made you angry at your pillow.
Not that I was ready to let myself get angry.
In the morning, I noticed that TJ had slipped back inside without being caught. I wondered what time he’d gotten back in. Probably sometime after he knew Uncle Toby and Aunt Lisa would leave the living room, but before they would check on him in bed. Smart kid. He sat at the breakfast table, moving his scrambled eggs around on his plate, without actually eating a bite.
His voice seemed like a distant memory.
Had I dreamed it?
I didn’t think so.
Fortunately, I knew exactly who to ask for information about anything in the neighborhood.
Violet raised both of her eyebrows at my question. She was sitting in her lawn chair, her long legs stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. She’d been working on another list—apparently, a list of all the materials she’d need for her high school applications, even though it was still a year until she had to start applying. But when I asked, she paused. “Squeaky Green Coin-Op?” she said. “Yeah, I know it. The place down on Frank Street, right? Between the hot dog stand and the shoe store.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s been there for decades.” She shrugged. “What about it?”