Counting Thyme (2 page)

THIS IS IT

DAD SAID OUR APARTMENT BUILDING WAS PREWAR AND IN A
good part of town, but I was skeptical. After eight months of Val being sick and getting better, then worse, then better, then worse again, I knew how to be skeptical.

In this case, I wondered exactly what
prewar
meant. Was the building so old that everything was peeling and crumbling and falling apart? Or was it super old-fashioned, with a pull string overhead for the toilet? Mrs. Bellweather had shown us pictures of bathrooms like that in social studies, to illustrate how far civilization had come so we would be grateful for our high-efficiency toilets with their push buttons and clean porcelain bowls.

We turned onto 87th Street, where the buildings were sandwiched together like books on a shelf. The trees were bare, the sidewalks slushy and gray. There wasn't a scrap of green in sight.

Our taxi stopped in front of a four-story brick building with a windowless black door and a row of trash cans out front, behind a wrought-iron fence. Up above, a rusty
metal fire escape clung to the red-and-brown bricks, leading nowhere.

This can't be it,
I thought just as Dad clapped his hands and announced, “This is it!”

Dad was our Official Family Cheerleader. He was the opposite of skeptical. He even had a sign over his desk that said “Open for Possibilities.” Before he left San Diego, he'd been selling me hard on New York with slogans on sticky notes in my lunch:

Take a Bite Out of the Big Apple!

The City So Nice They Named It Twice!

Standing on the sidewalk, I was still skeptical. The air was so cold we could see our breath, and the light was fading fast. Thanks to the time zone difference, it was already six o'clock. Which meant it was three o'clock back at home, the exact time we would have started Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's. It had always been my job to snap the green beans.

Mom watched the cabbie unload our bags, counting to make sure nothing got left behind. She made him check the trunk twice just to be sure, even though the rest of us were chattering with cold. Grandma Kay had warned me that New York would be chilly, but she didn't say it would be
freezing
.

“Let's get you inside,” Dad said, swooping Val into his arms. He rubbed his beard against Val's cheeks, making him laugh. I wished he would hug me, too, but I was eleven and I was supposed to be tougher than that, so I grabbed my suitcase and followed them through the front door.

Cori and Val and I waited in the foyer while Dad went
back out to help Mom with the rest of the luggage. Next to me, Val eyed the shadowy staircase. “It looks spooky,” he said.

“That's no big deal for Batman, right?” Cori flapped Val's cape, and he smiled a little.

When Mom and Dad came back, we grabbed our bags and Mom and Cori took the lead. Dad asked Val if he needed a lift, but Val shook his head. “I'm not tired. I can do it myself.” He stood up straighter, like a soldier reporting for duty. He did the same thing every time we pulled up to the hospital.

“Let's count the steps together,” I said, and he smiled and slipped his hand into mine.

We followed Mom and Cori while Dad brought up the rear, dragging the rest of the bags like a cart horse trailing a royal procession.

“One, two, three,” Val counted as I bumped my roller case up the steps.

Step,
thump.
Step,
thump.

The sound was like a heartbeat, with Val counting out the time as we climbed. There were two apartments on each floor. Ours was all the way at the top. Apartment 4B. “The penthouse,” Dad joked. I nodded, but it wouldn't have mattered if we were in a fancy New York building like the ones I'd seen in the movies. The only house I wanted to sleep in was three thousand miles away.

“Four B,” Val said. “That's like the green train and the orange train put together. That would make it . . .” His brow furrowed.

“The
brown
train,” Dad said, and Val cracked up. I didn't know how they could be making jokes about the subway. We were about to see the place we had to live in for the very first time, the place we were supposed to call home. An impossible idea.

On the third-floor landing, I heard a creak and looked around. A pair of hard gray eyes stared back at me from the door to apartment 3B.

I jerked Val to a stop, and Dad ran into us from behind. “What is it?” he said.

“There's a man.” I pointed at the crack in the door, at the guy watching us. What kind of a person spied on other people like that? He had to be a weirdo of the highest order.

Dad looked, and the door clicked shut.

“Was that the boogieman?” Val asked.

“No, buddy. That's just Mr. Lipinsky. He's a little particular, but he's completely harmless. Promise.”

“What's wrong with him?” I asked.

“He looks sad,” Val said.

Dad smiled. “Let's just say he's set in his ways. He leaves the occasional note. Sometimes he thumps on his ceiling. But it's fine, really. He just might take some time to get used to us.”

I wasn't convinced. “But what about—”

“Thyme,” Dad said. “It's going to be all right. Let's just focus on getting settled in, okay? How about I show you your new room when we get inside?”

The last thing I wanted was to settle in, but I said okay.

Dad liked to believe that things would get better. He'd said the same thing about our middle school bus driver back home. Charles was as old as the bus, and extra cranky in the mornings. If you didn't sit down within 2.5 seconds, he'd shout, “I haven't got all day here!” I know because Shani and I timed him with her new watch, which had a very reliable second hand. The funny thing was, it's not like there was anywhere else Charles had to be. He was the
bus driver
. Dad thought things would get better with him, too, but Charles never got any nicer.

Mr. Lipinsky wasn't happy about us moving in? Fine. That made two of us.

The apartment was even smaller than I'd expected. There was no living room or dining room, just a single narrow space with windows at one end that overlooked the street. Our old brown couch and Val's Lego table were in front of the windows, opposite the TV. The rest of the room was full of moving boxes, with our dining table buried in the middle of the pile. Past that, a big square cutout looked into the kitchen and a dimly lit hall led back to the bedrooms. I squeezed the handle of my roller case, wondering how many people had lived in this place before us.

Cori went straight to the windows to look for more landmarks from her tourist guide. Mom set her bags down and got out her list and her phone. Dad started helping Val take his boots off, a process that involved goofy voices and could take well over ten minutes.

“Help! I'm under attack,” Dad exclaimed as Val giggled.

“We don't have time for this,” Mom said, looking at her list. “We need to order dinner.”

“There's always time for . . . Captain Stinky Toes!” Dad said, dancing Val's feet through the air. Dad was already caught up playing with Val. Clearly, he'd forgotten about showing me my room. Mom said his brain liked to go on vacation, but I think he just liked to take a break from all the lists sometimes.

I rolled my suitcase down the hall, trying not to think about how much I loved my room at home. How the walls were the perfect shade of blue, with pictures of sea horses and waves and me and Shani . . . Anyway, those pictures weren't there anymore. They were in storage with the rest of our stuff. Dad had said they needed to rent our house while we were gone, to help pay for things, but Mom had cut him off before he could explain what things. She didn't want me to worry about it. But worries have a way of finding you, no matter how much you try to avoid them.

I passed a tiny kitchen, which looked like something you would have on a boat rather than a house. Next came a bathroom with black and white tiles on the floor. Then a room that wasn't much bigger than a closet, with Val's Lightning McQueen bed taking up most of the space. That left two more doors. The one at the end of the hall was open, and I could see the corner of Mom and Dad's rainbow-colored rag rug on the floor. Which left one door for me and Cori. A knot of worry tugged at my chest.

I pushed the last door open. There were two twin beds inside.

Cori walked up behind me, took one look at the room, and said, “Oh, no. This is
so
not happening.” She shouted for Mom and stood there glaring at me, as though I'd had something to do with the way the rooms were set up. Ever since Cori started high school, she'd done her best to avoid me at all times, like being in middle school was contagious or something. This new Cori didn't talk to me. She hung out after school at one of her million clubs and wore eyeliner that made her look like an owl—though, thanks to Dad's genes, a very tall, long-limbed owl.

“I didn't know, I swear,” I said, but she just rolled her owl eyes like she didn't believe me. But she should have known better. Of course Mom hadn't told me.

Mom walked up. “What's the problem?”

“Duh.” Cori waved at the beds.

“If that's supposed to be a question regarding sleeping arrangements, yes, you two are sharing a room. Thyme, you're on the right. Make sure you only use the dresser. Cori's on the left. She gets the closet, okay?”

I nodded. Cori's mouth fell open. “You have
got
to be kidding me.”

“No, I'm not kidding,” Mom said. “In fact, you girls should be glad we managed to find a three-bedroom on such short notice. We're very lucky.”

“Lucky? This is the unluckiest day of my life,” Cori said.

“Think before you say that,” Mom warned, and Cori
froze. Mom was small enough to walk right under Dad's arm without ducking, but when she and Cori argued, Mom always seemed like the tallest person in the room. That was one of her superpowers, along with list-making.

“Sorry,” Cori said, though she didn't sound very sorry at all.

“You girls should get unpacked,” Mom said. “Dinner will be here soon.”

“Did you get a turkey for Thanksgiving?” I asked.

Mom sighed and ran her hand through her hair. She'd cut it short over the summer, but it looked good—dark and wavy, unlike my dead straight, boring brown flyaways. “We're ordering in from a pizzeria,” she said. “They have whole grain pasta for Val.”

Then she left, and Cori fixed her owl eyes on me. “Don't think that just because we have to share, you can put your little-kid junk all over the place.” That was the other thing about the new Cori. Avoiding me wasn't enough; when she did talk to me, she had to be mean, too.

While Cori went to get her bags, I unzipped my suitcase and pulled out a calendar. It was a gift from Shani. She called it the Calendar of Us. Inside were pictures: us on her trampoline, us at the pool, us on the first day of middle school with our matching red shoes. We hadn't planned it, but that kind of thing happens when you've known someone your whole life.