Paper Things (11 page)

I pop the last bite of orange into my mouth and tuck the note into Daniel’s desk.

Here is the greatest thing about Head Start: little kids don’t care if your hair is greasy or if you smell a little bit (though I hope that the paper-towel-and-soap bath I gave myself between science and social studies helped with that). During circle time, four-year-old Omar will still leap into your folded lap. He will lean his head against your collarbone, so you can soak in the smell of his hair — not a baby-shampoo smell but a spicy cooking and hard-dreaming smell. He will trace his finger up and down your hand like a Hot Wheels on a racetrack, never noticing the dirtiness of your fingernails, the grime at your wrist caused by drying orange juice and lead pencil smudges. Or if he does, he won’t care about these things. He will lean into you and pull your arms around him so that you feel like the best and most important person in the world.

Omar and I are wrapped up together, listening to Fran read about a gopher that wants his hat back, when West slips into the classroom to talk with Carol. I’ve never seen West at Head Start before, even though he was the one who told me that Carol and Fran needed a helper, and I can’t help wondering if he’s here because of me.

Sure enough, Carol comes over and tells me that West would like to speak with me. Omar is none too happy about this, but Carol offers to take my place and Omar grudgingly agrees.

“Hey, kiddo,” West says, rubbing the stubble on his chin. Though he’s older than Gage, West is still pretty young — younger than any of my teachers. At Lighthouse, the kids are always trying to get his attention, especially the girls. I pull my arms in closer, in case the paper-towel bath didn’t do the trick.

“I haven’t seen you and Gage lately,” he says. “Everything OK?”

For some reason his question makes my lip tremble. I bite on it, hoping he didn’t notice.

No such luck. “Come out here,” he says gently, leading me into the front hall, where the kids’ pussy willows lean down to listen.

I shouldn’t have let on that anything’s wrong. It’s West, Gage says, who’s keeping me out of the foster-care system, keeping the two of us together. He understands how hard Gage is working to find us an apartment, and he knows Gage is doing the best he can for me — for us.

“Things are OK,” I say, trying to sound more optimistic — like Gage. “We’ve been staying with our friend Briggs.” I don’t mention Perry and Kristen or even Chloe. I want West to think we’re fine.

“Yeah?” he says. “Where’s that?”

“In the West End.” I smile. West and West.

He gets it and smiles, too. “Must be good, then. How’s Gage doing on the job hunt?”

“Hey, man!”

I look up. It’s my brother. He’s wearing his interview outfit: black pants, a clean white shirt, and a sport coat that Briggs has loaned him. He’s clean shaven, too; when did he find the time to shower and change? And since when did he have an interview today?

“You’re early!” I skip over to hang on his arm, happy to see him and relieved not to have to answer any more of West’s questions.

“Aren’t you looking dapper,” West says.

“Just came from a job interview.” Gage looks serious, and I start to squeeze his arm to console him, but suddenly he breaks into a grin. “I got it! I start at Jiffy Lube tomorrow morning.”

I let out a little yelp of happiness and throw my arms around my big brother.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were interviewing there today?” I ask, my voice muffled by his sport coat. “I would have spent every spare minute sending you good-luck vibes!”

“I didn’t want you to get your hopes up, B’Neatie,” he tells me, ruffling my dirty hair.

“I didn’t know you were mechanically inclined,” says West.

“Some. I used to own a car — a beater that I worked on all the time. But they train, too.”

Gage’s old car had been ugly as sin — covered in patches and four colors of paint. Janna had hated having it parked in front of the house, and I think she was hoping it would up and die one day. But Gage always managed to figure out what was wrong with it and find a way to make it work again.

I could still remember the day Janna took the car away. The night before, someone had called Janna and told her that Gage was one of the teenagers spotted at a house party across town. She’d been furious when she hung up the phone and had ordered me to get in her car, even though I was already in my pajamas. I got in the backseat and we drove around in the dark until we found the house — down a long dirt road — but we didn’t go inside. Janna just took the tire iron out of her trunk and removed his back wheel.

I’d heard them arguing the next morning — it was what they call a knock-down, drag-out fight, their worst ever. Gage had had to walk home; he’d been the designated driver for the evening and had spent half the night scrambling to find replacement rides for his friends who’d been drinking. But Janna didn’t focus on how responsible Gage had been; instead, she screamed at him for attending a party with alcohol in the first place and for letting his friends get drunk. “You’re just like your father!” she’d shouted, making it sound like the worst insult ever.

Gage had said some pretty nasty things back at that point, which was when Janna called Joe’s Salvage and had them tow his car away. Even if Gage could have figured out where she’d stashed the missing tire, he didn’t have the money to get it out of impound, so that was the end of Gage’s ugly car.

But now Gage will be working on
lots
of cars, and maybe he can even save up enough money to buy one of his own — not to mention he can now afford to pay rent! We will finally have our own apartment — our own beds
and
our own shower! Sasha, Linnie, and Keisha won’t have any reason to gossip about me then.

When I go to say good-bye to Omar and the others, I feel like I’m walking on air. How funny to think that a day that started off so terrible could turn into one of the best days ever.

One hot shower later, I’m sitting at the bar in Chloe’s kitchen with her and Nate. The song “All You Need Is Love” is blasting from Nate’s iPad, and a bouquet of sunshiny-yellow daffodils is sipping water from a clean spaghetti-sauce jar in front of us — Gage brought them for Chloe. Tonight we’re celebrating.

Gage is frying up pork chops and applesauce, which I haven’t had since we left Janna’s. He bought the pork chops and all the fixings to go with them, too: baby potatoes, broccoli with cheddar-cheese sauce, and sparkling cider! When the chorus of the song comes around, we all sing loudly. It might be true that the only thing we need is love — but a pork-chop dinner and a job at Jiffy Lube sure don’t hurt!

“To Gage’s new job!” Chloe says, and we clink mismatched glasses. My glass has a picture of Charlie Brown and a kite. Gage’s has a picture of a sailing ship. But my eyes rest on Nate’s glass, which has a picture of an airplane.

“It was the plane!” I say suddenly, remembering the wish I made on Reggie’s paper airplane with its
Jiffy
wing.

“What plane?” Chloe asks, and I explain about the airplane that Reggie made for me and how one of its wings hid an advertisement for Jiffy Lube.

“I made a wish and sailed the plane out the window at Perry and Kristen’s,” I tell Gage. “And what I wished for was that you’d get a job at Jiffy Lube — and you did! And I didn’t even know that you had an interview!”

“That sounds like one lucky plane,” Chloe says, her voice impressed.

“What are you talking about? It was my superior mechanical knowledge that got me the job!” Gage shouts from the stove.

Nate turns down the music and props his iPad up on the bar so that we can look at ads for apartments.

“Look for places in the East End,” Gage says. “It’s a lot closer to Carter.”

I force myself to smile. I love that Gage is so confident that I’ll get into Carter, but he doesn’t know about all the late homework assignments or the disappointed looks from the teachers. I’m not even sure he remembers that I haven’t been given a leadership role yet — and time is running out.

“To Carter,” Nate says, and raises his glass. I raise my Charlie Brown glass along with everyone else and we clink glasses again. I stuff my concerns deep down; I don’t want to ruin the celebration.

“How much rent can you afford?” asks Nate.

Gage tells him, and Chloe says that it will be hard to find a two-bedroom for that price.

“It’d be a lot easier to swing if there were two of us pitching in for rent,” Gage says. At first I think he’s talking about me, and I cringe; how the heck am I supposed to find enough discarded change to pay half the rent? But then I notice that he’s looking at Chloe — and he’s got a big, teasing grin on his face.

Chloe’s face turns the color of her red hair. “Not until we make the one-year mark,” she says. But she’s smiling, too, and I can tell she’s glad that he asked, even if it was mostly a joke.

I look down at the iPad, feeling relieved. As much as I love Chloe, lately I’ve been looking forward to me and Gage having a place all our own — at least for a little while. “We can get a one-bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch,” I say, glancing up again. But then it occurs to me that we don’t have a couch. We don’t have any furniture. I wonder if Gage’s job will pay him enough for us to get some.

Chloe takes over the iPad and finds a listing for a one-bedroom in the East End that’s only a little more than we can afford. She reads, “A charming place with a lot of potential!”

“Boy, there are some red flags,” says Nate. “ ‘Charming’ means small. And ‘potential’ means it’s probably gnarly.”

“I don’t mind cleaning!” I say, and lean over to get a better look.

Gage comes over to see, too. “It’s tiny,” he says. “Hardly bigger than Briggs’s studio.”

It
is
a little small-looking. And it could do with a good, hard scrubbing. But, still — our own place in the East End! “We can do tiny.”

Nate scoffs. “You couldn’t even spread out your paper dolls in an apartment that small.”

“We’d have to be the size of Miles,” says Gage, “to fit in that apartment.”

Chloe looks confused, so I tell her that Miles is my oldest cutout, and Gage tells her that Briggs accidentally ripped him and now he has tape across his chest.

Nate finds a listing for an apartment in the West End that has only one bedroom, but it has a little office that could be my bedroom. “Applicants must have two years of good recent landlord references,” he reads.

I frown at the screen. “You mean, you already have to have had an apartment for two years?”

Gage nods. “I would like to rent this apartment,” he says in a fake deep voice.

It’s the game! “Do you have references?” I ask in my fake-lady voice.

“How do you get references?” he says.

“By renting an apartment,” I say.

“I would like to rent
this
apartment.”

“Do you have any references?”

“How do you get references?”

“By renting an —”

“All right, all right,” says Nate. “Anyway, it says here that you can have a cosigner if you don’t have references.”

“What’s that?” I ask, wobbling back onto my stool.

“Someone who has a record of being financially responsible,” Gage says.

“Maybe Janna would cosign for the apartment,” Chloe says before taking another sip of cider.

I raise my eyes at Gage. Would we really visit Janna? Ask her to help us? My heart stumbles, gives an extra beat. I wonder what she’s doing right now. For some reason I picture her slicing onions, chopping them into little tiny chunks.

But Gage is shaking his head. “It’s not an option” is all he says. “Besides, it’s in the West End, and Carter is in the East.” He turns off the fire under the pots and pans. “Someone set the table,” he says, by which he means the bar. Nate turns to grab some plates, while Chloe shrugs and goes back to looking.

“Here’s one in the East End,” Chloe says. “It’s a two-bedroom, and it has laundry in the building.”

“What’s it look like?” Gage asks.

“It looks OK,” Chloe says. “It says ‘prospective tenant must income qualify.’ ”

“What does that mean?” I ask, getting as close to the pictures on the screen as I can. The kitchen has wooden cabinets and an orange countertop. There’s gray carpeting on the floor. The bathroom has a shower stall. It looks a little dated but much cleaner than the other place. And it has two bedrooms! I wonder if I can paint the walls of my bedroom turquoise. In the latest Pottery Barn catalog, a lot of the rooms were turquoise.