Dirty Little Secrets (15 page)

“Did your mom make it?” TJ asked.

“No,” I said. “I did. It was a Girl Scout project—I even got my sewing badge for doing it. My mom used to make quilts a long time ago—she was a really good sewer, and she showed me what to do.”

I squeezed the bear's tummy and looked at the small brown stitches that ran the length of his side, thinking about the nights Mom and I had sat with our heads bent over the effort of making the stitches that held him together as tiny and uniform as possible.

“Here,” Mom had said softly, taking the floppy, unstuffed bear from my lap. “Just put the needle in a little ways, like this.” I could feel the warmth of her body straight from the shower, and her wet hair tickled my chin as she bent over our work. We sat in a cleared space on the living room couch, piles of newspapers and scraps of quilting fabric surrounding the small, folding TV tray that held our supplies. “You want to try?”

She handed the brown fabric back to me, the needle sticking up at an angle. “Just put your finger behind the fabric where you want the stitch to go,” Mom said, watching my fingers as I worked. Beside her tight, tiny stitches, mine looked like something that would have held Frankenstein's monster together. “That's good. Just try to get them a little bit closer together.”

I tried to concentrate even harder, wanting my stitches to match hers so she'd be proud of me. “You mean like th—? Ow!” I cried, the sharp end of the needle making a searing stab at my finger.

“Oh, let me see,” Mom said, pulling my finger into her lap. She dabbed at it with the edge of her shirt. “I think you'll live.” Mom smiled at me. “Congratulations. You are now an official member of the top secret quilting society.”

I dabbed at the mark in the middle of my finger. “What's that?” I was mad that I'd done something so stupid and wrecked what we were doing.

“Hold on a minute,” Mom said, and jumped up to rummage in the big tote bag she kept next to the recliner. “I know it's in here somewhere.” She pawed through material and thread, and dug way down to the bottom. “Aha! I knew I'd seen it,” she said, and held out something small and round.

I took it and held it up to the dim light. It was like a tiny metal hat with dents all over the top and a pretty painted blue picture of windmills all around the base. “What is it?”

“Lucy Tompkins! Are you telling me that you don't know a thimble when you see one?”

I shrugged, trying to keep her in a good mood. I held it back out to her. “It's pretty.”

Mom laughed. “It is pretty,” she said, and took it back to look it over more carefully. “It was my mother's, and she gave it to me when she taught me to sew. You put it on your finger like this.” She popped it on the end of her pointer finger. “And then the needles won't stick you.”

I gave her a small smile. “Cool.”

She held up my injured finger and set the little thimble on the end. “Now it's yours,” she said.

It took a little while to get used to wearing it, but I didn't poke myself again.

I hadn't thought of that thimble in years. Somewhere, in some box or bag or green bin, was an antique thimble that I'd probably never see again.

TJ held out his hand for the bear. “So, do I get to keep him?”

I held Teddy B. a little tighter. He was physical proof that things hadn't always been this bad. “You know what, T? Let's find something else for you to keep. I think I'm going to hang on to this for a while.”

“Fine,” he said, and started grabbing things out of the box again.

I tucked Teddy B. into the front of my jacket and bent down to see what else was in the box. On one side my name was written in black marker that flowed with my mother's handwriting.

Taking a handful of soggy papers out of the box, I could see they were a mix of kindergarten drawings, report cards, and those meaningless paper certificates you get for completing a reading program or passing Tadpole swim lessons at the Y. Mom must have put everything in here to save for when I got older. And now everything was destroyed. She had fifty plastic bins in this house full of pristine crap—why couldn't she actually put something meaningful in them? Like a special silver and blue thimble? Or my childhood?

I was scraping the pieces of cardboard off the soggy rug when I heard a yelp and a crash, as a large stack of books and papers toppled to the floor. “TJ! Are you okay?” I jumped up and ran over to him.

He was sitting on the floor surrounded by an avalanche of books. “I'm okay,” he said, but I could tell by the wetness around the edges of his eyes it hurt more than he let on. “I'm sorry.” He frantically tried to pick up some of the books. “I didn't mean it, really. It was just an accident . . . I turned around and my shoulder hit the stack and—”

I remembered saying those exact words so many times to Mom as she screamed at me to be careful. In her world, there was no such thing as an accident, just people who didn't pay enough attention. I bent down and grabbed TJ's face in my hands. “It's not your fault, okay?” That's what I always wanted someone to say to me. “Come on, let me feel where the books got you,” I said. Even though it had just happened, I could feel the start of a big bump on his head behind his right ear. “No blood,” I said. “But I think your mom should take a look.” I stood up and held my hand out for him.

“No,” he whined. “I don't want to go. We're not done yet.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But if I send you home broken, your mom's going to be really mad at me. If I find anything cool, I'll put it in a pile for you.”

TJ touched one finger to the growing lump on his head. “You won't even know what's cool,” he grumbled. “You'll probably throw out good stuff that I want to keep.”

“I know what you like, don't worry about it. You need ice on that, so let's go. I'll walk you home.”

We picked our way back through the dining room and into the front hallway. “Hold on, I need my books,” he said, and picked them up off the floor. “Don't forget to save the other ones.”

“They're yours,” I said. We opened the door and stepped out into the biting air. It was unusually cold, for which I was undeniably grateful. We hurried across the street to TJ's house, his Christmas tree still sparkling in the window.

His steps slowed as we approached the porch. “
He's
still here,” he said. “That's his ugly green car. He used to go home early, like right after dinner, and now they sit around watching TV and stuff.”

“You don't like him?” I asked.

TJ shrugged as much as he could with his arms wrapped around three huge encyclopedias. “He's okay. He's always trying to get me to go and play ball with him. I keep telling him I hate playing ball, but he won't listen. Plus, Mom's always busy now—not like she used to be.”

I nodded, not pushing it any further. I knew how hard it was not feeling welcome in your own house.

The door was locked, so I rang the bell as TJ stood on the bottom step. His mom opened it with a glass of wine in her hand. “Oh hi, Lucy,” she said. “Was TJ with you? I thought he'd gone down to the Callans' house to watch TV.”

“Well, he's been helping me move some things around. He said you wouldn't mind.”

“Of course not,” she said, smiling at me. “I just hope he wasn't a bother.”

“No, he was fine,” I said. “But some books fell and hit him in the head. I think he might need some ice.” I grabbed TJ's arm and guided him up the stairs.

His mom ruffled his hair and inspected the spot he showed her. “It looks okay, but you're right, it probably does need ice.” She pulled back and looked into his face. “So what were you doing over there that caused books to fall on your head? I hope you weren't running around and making trouble.”

“Oh no,” I said quickly, “it's not his fault. The books . . . they were where they shouldn't have been, and he was just walking by them. Really, he didn't do anything wrong.”

“If you say so,” she said. “I'd hate to think of him over there making a mess.”

I looked at TJ, but he didn't seem to think that was funny. Maybe it didn't look all that weird to him. Kids were sometimes strange that way. “No, really,” I said. “He was great. I hope his head is okay.”

“I'm sure he'll be fine. TJ, say thanks to Lucy for putting up with you.”

“Thanks, Lucy,” he said. “Don't forget about my stuff.” He held his books up to his mom. “They have so much cool stuff over there. Lucy gave me these encyclopses so I can learn about everything that begins with these letters.”

“Wow,” she said. “You got some real treasures.” She backed into the house. “Thanks again for having him.”

“No problem,” I said.

As the door closed, I could hear TJ talking a mile a minute. “They've got a whole box of these books, and Lucy said I could have them all. Can I keep them in my room?”

I stood on the porch for just a minute, looking through the filmy curtains at the colored lights twinkling on the Christmas tree branches, before I turned and walked down the steps to my house.

As I reached the end of TJ's driveway, my heart started pounding, and I broke into a run. Our house was directly across the street from theirs, but it had never looked so far away. Especially with Sara's car parked in our driveway.

chapter 13

6:30 p.m.

I stuck my foot out to stop the front door from shutting and tried not to look like I'd been running. Sara was still standing in the hallway, so I knew she hadn't seen anything.

“Hey,” I said, hoping the panic I was feeling was well hidden. Unlike Phil, who had to be dragged back, Sara came over a couple of times a week—not because she cared about me, but because she wanted to make sure she was still Mom's favorite. “What're you doing here?”

“It's still my house too, in case you forgot,” she said, sounding more like Mom every day. “Where were you? The door wasn't even locked. Anybody could have walked right in.” As far as I was concerned, anybody did.

“Oh, I just had to run across the street for a minute. Babysitting stuff.”

Sara nodded slowly, like she was trying to decide if I was telling the truth. “Well, I called Mom at work to see if she wanted to meet up for dinner, but they said she was sick.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Some sort of nasty flu thing.” I coughed a little for emphasis. “You should probably get out of here before you catch it. I'm sure we're contagious.”

She held up a shopping bag. “I brought over some Chinese to make her feel better.” Sara stepped back and looked into the living room, but Mom's recliner was empty. “Where is she?”

I leaned to the side to block her access to the kitchen. I could feel the thoughts whirling through my head as I tried to come up with something that would get her out of here as quickly as possible. If Sara thought that something was going on, she'd call 911 in a second. Sara went along with Mom's philosophy that there was nothing wrong with the house that a little straightening wouldn't fix. Mom wasn't one of those hoarders, she was a saver—saving the planet one stack of newspapers at a time. Now that everything was “eco” and “green,” they had even more backup. It was like she wasn't even standing in the same house that I was.

“Uh, Mom's in my room,” I heard myself say. “She was so sick I let her sleep in my room all day.”

“Well, I'll just stick my head in and make sure she's okay,” she said. She took a few steps toward the hallway.

“No, wait!” I said, almost shouting. She couldn't get any farther or it would be over.

She turned around and stared at me. “What?”

“Uh, just be careful when you go in there,” I said, my words coming out just as the plan was forming in my head. “Because of all the puking, I mean.”

That stopped Sara cold. “Puking? You didn't say anything about puking.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, feeling the idea take shape. “Puking on everything. You know, puking, fever—that's what the flu is all about. I just now got her cleaned up.”

I could see Sara gag a little from the image. If there was one thing she couldn't stand, it was other people's bodily functions, and puking was pretty high on the list.

She turned back toward the front of the house and thrust the bag into my hands. It smelled like pot stickers, and my stomach suddenly started growling. Apparently the eggrolls from earlier were getting lonely down there. “Just tell her I came by, will you?” Sara pulled her coat tighter around her neck. “She is okay, right?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, starting to relax. “There's really nothing for you to do.” True, in more ways than one.

“It's freezing in here. Is the furnace out again?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Phil needs to come over and deal with it.”

“Want me to send Mark over tomorrow? He's pretty good with that sort of thing.”

Sara and her boyfriend-fiancé-whatever, Mark, seemed to have worked out a pact to pretend our house was normal. He'd never spent any real time here, but he'd helped out a couple of times when things were broken, so he was more than aware of what he was dealing with. It made me wonder how she'd done it, because unless she was really good at hypnotism, he was a great actor. Or he was just stupid. “No,” I said. “The space heaters are working okay. I've got one in my room.”

“Be sure you keep it on so Mom doesn't get too cold.”

I followed her to the front door, trying to ignore the irony of that last statement. “Yeah, I will. I'm sure she'll be okay in a couple of days. Well, I'll see you later.” I could feel relief flooding my body as she put her hand on the knob.

Sara's eyes drifted around the big pile in the front hallway to the boxes I had sitting out on the floor by the recliner. “What's all that about?”