Eight Keys (19 page)

We knelt on her couch, watching out the window.

“There they are!”

It was Franklin who noticed the box, pointed to it. Diana seemed puzzled, but opened it. Then she looked surprised and excited, and lifted Tommy out. Franklin was peering up and down the street, probably for me. He didn’t look up, though, so he didn’t see me. I giggled. For the first time in ages I thought about Franklin and actually felt happy, like laughing. Even without me, Franklin was out there, being Franklin.

We watched them walk away.

“Are you friends with her?” Caroline asked. “Diana?”

“No, but Franklin is.”

“Why would you give her a kitten, if she isn’t your friend?”

“I don’t know.” I paused. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

We both turned back into the room and sat for a minute, in our own thoughts.

“Hey, Caroline?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you come over to my house? Maybe tomorrow? I want to show you something.”

Caroline came home with me the next day. We went up to the room of questions and she read the walls for a long time. Then we sat on the floor. “What was in the other rooms?”

“Well”—I counted on my fingers—“there was a room about Mom, a room about Dad, a room about Uncle Hugh, a room about me and Dad together, Dad’s library, a room about believing, an empty room, and this.”

Caroline thought for a few minutes. “I’ll be right back.”

She returned with several sheets of paper, a marker, and a roll of masking tape from the library desk. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

“What?”

“I don’t think we’ll solve this. I think we’re supposed to join in. That’s what the message says to do. What do you want to ask?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fine, I’ll start.” She knelt and wrote:
Why did Elise get a room full of questions?
She taped the paper to the wall.

“Your turn.” She handed me the marker.

“I don’t know what to write.”

“Start with something easy.”

I thought and
still
didn’t know what to write.

Caroline took back the marker. She wrote,
Why do we have boogers?
and taped it up.

I laughed. “Do you really want to know the answer?” (Franklin probably knew it.)

“No.” She laughed, too. “But it’s a good question. Oh! I have another.” She wrote and didn’t let me see, then she hung the paper:
What would you put in your pocket if people had pockets like kangaroos?

“Aren’t those pouches?”

Caroline taped up a fourth paper:
What’s the difference between pockets and pouches?

By this point we were both giggling again.

Caroline handed me the marker. “Go on.”

I wrote,
Why is the sky blue?

“Good one,” Caroline said as I added my question to the wall. “Now things we actually want to know.”

She wrote:
Why do I hate getting sand between my toes?

I thought, then wrote,
Why do beets taste so gross?

Caroline laughed, and then became serious. “Okay. Real ones now. About things that matter.”

I wrote:
Why did I get an empty room?

And:
Where did all the keys come from?

Then:
Will Franklin forgive me?

Caroline looked at that, crossed it out, and wrote,
How can I show Franklin that I still want to be friends?
She squeezed my hand for a second, then let go.

I walked around the room, reading old questions that I hadn’t looked at yet.

Then I came to this one:

What will my Elise be?

“Would you watch Ava for an hour?” Annie found me on the porch, waving to Caroline as she left with her mom.

“I don’t know how.”

“Don’t be silly. You play with her all the time. She’s been fed and changed and just needs someone to be with her. I want to run to the store with Bessie and we’ll be in and out quicker without her. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t know it would be okay. And just in case, my cell-phone number is on the kitchen counter.”

“Okay,” I said. She handed Ava to me. She’d grown since she’d come to live with us.

Maybe Annie could see that in me, too, and not just Ava. Maybe that was why Annie wouldn’t have left me alone in the house with Ava three months ago, but it was okay now.

Aunt Bessie and Annie left.

“Hi, Ava,” I said, imitating Annie’s gentle Ava-voice. “How about we go ride in the swing?”

I carefully pushed her legs through the openings in her swing, sat her down, buckled her in. Then I set the pace of the swing and stepped back. Ava was smiling, so I guess it was a good idea.

“Why are you here, Ava?”

Ava burbled.

“Why are you here, in my house?”

“Ous.”

“Anyway, now I think it’s good you’re here.”

“Goo?” she asked.

“Yes, goo.”

That night, I collected all my messages from Dad.

There were seven.

I spread them out in a circle around me on my bedroom floor. They all seemed to be about deciding what was important in your life.

But there had been eight keys, and only seven messages, so what was that empty room for?

I could only imagine.

And then I realized: that was the point.

I knew what the eighth room was for.

It was for
me
to decide.

It could be whatever I needed it to be, whatever I wanted it to be.

And the truth, I suddenly understood, was that so could I.

Settling Up with Friends and Foes

The next morning I got up really early for a cooking project. Then Uncle Hugh drove me to school. I waited by Franklin’s locker with a thermos of milk-free hot cocoa and an envelope.

When the bus kids started streaming in, I looked for Franklin. He seemed kind of gloomy.

“It’s for you.” I held out the thermos. “And this,” I added, handing him an envelope. “You don’t have to read it now. When you want to.”

He took the envelope and the thermos and put them on the top shelf of his locker. I started to leave, but then I turned back and asked, “Do you hate me?”

Franklin took a minute to answer. “If I hated you, I would have turned you in.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, “We have a puzzle to finish, you know. I can’t do it by myself. Uncle Hugh had to move it for Thanksgiving, but we should finish it before Christmas so Aunt Bessie can use the table for dinner.” Franklin didn’t say anything. “Well, anyway, read the note, if you want to.” Then I managed to walk away.

Inside the envelope was a list:

Later, I thought I could see the shadow of a hot-chocolate mustache on Franklin’s upper lip.

I was sitting on the porch in my winter coat, waiting, when Franklin came by. I’d been hoping he would.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

He sat down next to me.

We don’t hug, so I knocked a light fist against Franklin’s shoulder. Then we sat there for a few minutes, watching our breath curl and disappear in the cold air.

“So … you good?”

“I guess so.”

“With me?”

“I don’t know.”

Why should he be? I took a deep breath. “I have to tell you some hard stuff.”

“Hard stuff?”

“Yeah, like what’s been up with me lately.”

“Oh … go ahead.” Then Franklin waited, in his usual Franklin way, ready to listen.

“At the beginning of the year, I started to feel embarrassed about some of the things we did together. I didn’t like getting made fun of at school. But even before school started, something felt different, even when we were by ourselves.”

“I embarrassed you?” Franklin asked.

I nodded. “I thought that some of the teasing and stuff would go away if I wasn’t so close to you. So I tried to show that I wasn’t. I’m really sorry that I did that.”

“How sorry?”

“Really, really sorry. More sorry than I’ve ever been, about anything. I want to be friends still, even if—and I know maybe I blew it—even if it won’t be the same.”

Franklin thought for a while. I picked up a stick and started tracing the cracks between the wood slats of the porch.

“I was really mad at you,” Franklin said finally. “You went from being the person who was nicest to me to the person who was meanest. Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on?”

“I didn’t know that was what was going on. I had to figure it out.”

“What about Caroline? Are you still going to be friends with her?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I really like Caroline. And what about the people you’ve been hanging out with? Are you going to hang out with them still?”

“Probably.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve been thinking, because of the things Dad left me … the rooms and the messages. We have plenty of room for people … in our lives, I mean. Especially the ones who make us be the people we want to be. Because I really missed you, but I also missed … who I used to be with you … before. Do you know what I mean?”

He nodded.

“Do you remember when we pretended we’d found a cure for cancer?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we could really find one?”

“Maybe, if we tried hard enough.”

“That’s how my dad died.”

“We’d need a time machine, too, then?”

I nodded.

Franklin did some more thinking. He said, “Can I have more cocoa now?”

“Sure.”

“No milk,” he reminded me.

“I know.”

We went inside and Franklin picked out some cookies and candy canes while I made the cocoa. Then we worked on our puzzle. There was a lot left, but we worked until all the stars were in place.

In the morning I visited my own, faraway locker and then went back to meet Franklin at his.

Suddenly, Amanda was there. Amanda, who had left me alone for weeks. She was
furious
.

“Listen, Scab-Picker. What you did is not okay with me. You stole my best friend!”

I stared at her. I knew what she was up to: a big fight in public, with her as the victim, to make me look like the jerk.

“I didn’t steal anything!” I shouted. “Caroline is
sick
of you. She’s sick of you because you’re mean and disgusting and horrible. I don’t know why anyone would want to be friends with you. You don’t even care about Caroline. You only care about having people to follow you around so that you look cool. But you are really a big-time loser, and I’m not going to let you make me feel bad anymore.”

Amanda looked like she’d been punched. It was even more fun to say all that stuff to her than it would have been to punch her.

I waited for her to yell at me. But she didn’t. She just walked away.

Maybe that wasn’t the end of it, but even though my heart was racing, I wasn’t scared of her anymore.

“Nice,” Franklin said.

“Thanks, Franklin.”

He spun the dial on his lock, and we headed to class.

Keeping the Keys