Paper Things (19 page)

Reluctantly, I go back inside, where I lean against Briggs’s door. And wait.

I’m folded up, my head on my knees. It seems like hours have passed, though I’m not sure how many, when suddenly I hear Gage’s voice.

“What are you doing out here, Ari?” He is as angry as I feared.

That’s when I start to cry. Up until this moment, I was just worried, worried and cold. But now I am sobbing. “I saw Fran and ran out to give her the airplane.”

“Why didn’t you take a key?”

“I didn’t think of it. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t think at all, Ari!” he shouts. He looks around quickly, and I can tell he’s remembering the warning about the landlord. He lowers his voice, but it still hits me like fists. “I kept calling and you didn’t answer. I had to leave work early. It’s only my second week, and I had to tell them that I had a family emergency!”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gage this mad, this disappointed in me.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I repeat between sobs. “I thought of asking someone on the street if I could use their phone, but I was afraid you’d come home if you knew that I was locked out. I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you ran out!”

“I know!” I sob. “I know!”

Gage sighs an enormous sigh and then slides down to sit next to me.

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine,” he says, resting his head on the door. And then to my surprise, a tear runs down his cheek, too. “I’m the one who lied to Janna and said we had an apartment. I’m the one who drags you all over the city, carrying all your belongings in your backpack. I’m the one who gets mad at you when you’re sick, who can’t give you more than Cheerios for breakfast and for lunch.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” I say, and I mean it. “You take really good care of me, Gage. You do.”

He gives me a look that tells me he doesn’t believe me, so I tick off the evidence on my fingers: “You won’t let me be around inappropriate behavior; you make me do my homework; you sleep with me in the storage closet of Lighthouse even though you could have a bed on the boys’ floor; you give me fashion tips . . .”

He looks at me when I say this, one eyebrow up. I can see a little smile on his lips.

I move to a new finger. “You came back to make sure I was OK even though you knew you might get fired. You came back.”

“Always, B’Neatie,” he says. “Always.”

I’m alone, sitting at a giant wooden table in the conference room, serving my detention. The room has two doors — one right off the school office and the other off the hall. I keep my head lowered, focused on my report, so I don’t see the kids who pass by the doors on their way home, and so I can pretend they don’t see me.

Yesterday at Briggs’s, I copied down a few of my favorite Louisa May Alcott quotes, which I’m hoping to use in my paper somewhere. There’s one quote in particular that I keep reading over and over again:

What do girls do who haven’t any mothers to help them through their troubles?

And I want to say, yeah, what
do
such girls do? Please tell me! What would my mother say about my slippery slide from being a shiny gifted student to one who has to serve detention? One whose teachers and even her best friend seem to have given up on?

I’m rereading the other quotes to see how I might work them into my paper when Daniel slips in through the hall door.

I glance around, hoping he wasn’t seen. “Haven’t you already done detention?”

He nods as he plunks down into a seat. “You wouldn’t talk to me in class.”

“You kept talking when we weren’t supposed to. And now you’re talking to me here and you’re not supposed to. You’re going to get us both in trouble,” I say.
“Again.”

“Hey.” He taps his fingers lightly on the table. “You’re the one who wanted a secret spring blizzard, remember?”

He has a point. And he’s kind enough not to mention that it was my glitter that caused the most problems.

I give a long sigh. “I guess it doesn’t matter now if I get in trouble again,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “This detention has probably sealed my fate, as Mademoiselle Barbary likes to say. And that fate doesn’t include Carter.”

“Why does Carter matter so much to you anyway? It’s not so much better than Wilson.”

“Lots of reasons,” I say.

“Tell me one.”

“My mother wanted me to go there. It was basically her dying wish.”

Daniel looks at me sympathetically. After a long silence, he says softly, “But why do
you
want to go there?”

I open my mouth, expecting the answer to be right there, on the tip of my tongue. But nothing comes out. I close my mouth and think about it — really think about it.

“I’ve lost a lot of things in my life,” I say slowly. “Right now, I still have Eastland Elementary. I belong here. But after that . . .”

I pause for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts. “To me, Carter feels like a place where I could belong. It’s where everyone in my family went — Mama and Dad, Gage, even Janna. It’s a part of my history, but it’s also my future.” I shrug, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Anyway, that’s why I want to go to Carter.”

Daniel is smiling, and I think he’s going to make fun of me. But instead he says, “And that’s why you care about the Eastland traditions.”

He’s right. I never did work up the courage to say as much to Mr. Chandler, but to me, the Eastland Elementary traditions aren’t just about getting to stop work to cut paper or wearing funny hats. They’re also about feeling like you belong somewhere. That you’re part of a shared history, part of a family.

“So, when do you want to do Crazy Hat Day?” Daniel asks.

I laugh. Somehow I don’t think Mr. Chandler intended for us to hatch our next plot while sitting in detention. But what do I have to lose at this point, really? I’ve already got one detention on my record. And if it’s too late for me to get into Carter, at least it’s not too late for me to revive another of my favorite Eastland traditions.

Together, Daniel and I make a plan for the next step of our campaign. Then, just as we’re leaving, I point to another Louisa May Alcott quote from my notes. “This one makes me think of you,” I tell Daniel shyly.

He reads it silently:

A faithful friend is a strong defense; And he that hath found him hath found a treasure.

And when he smiles, it really is like finding a treasure.

After I’ve served my detention, I take the bus to the Port City library, where Gage is going to pick me up. (I’m not supposed to go back to Head Start until I’ve been free of the flu for two more days.) When I get to the library, I find a carrel and pull out my application to Carter. On our way out of the school, Daniel had persuaded me that I should still at least apply. “It doesn’t cost you anything,” he’d said, and I wondered how much he knew about my situation. “And the worst that could happen is that you don’t get in — which is what will
definitely
happen if you don’t even bother to apply.”

He had some good points.

There they are again — those spaces on the application that demand an address. I suppose I could write in Briggs’s address, but that might get him in trouble. I could put down Chloe’s address, but what if Gage and Chloe break up? I’m worried about that. We haven’t seen much of Chloe lately — not since Gage got his job at Jiffy Lube. I wonder if they had a fight or if Gage is too proud to crash with her now that he should be able to afford a place of his own.

I could write in Janna’s address, but the last thing I want is my acceptance or rejection letter being sent to Janna’s place. She’d want to know why I used her address instead of Briggs’s — which she thinks is our address. And that’s assuming she’d even bother letting me know that a letter came in the first place.

We need an apartment! That’s all there is to it. We need to figure this out!

I look up at the clock on the wall. I still have an hour before Gage gets here. I walk up to Mrs. Getchel at the front desk and ask her for the address of the Housing Authority.

“The Housing Authority, dear?”

I nod. She doesn’t say anything else. That’s the great thing about librarians; they’ll help you find information without being too nosy. She writes the address down on a scrap of paper, and right away I recognize the street. It’s quite far from here, in one of the really pretty neighborhoods, which seems a little inconsiderate. Not only do most of the people who need to fill out forms with the Housing Authority likely need to pay to take the bus there, but then they have to pass by a bunch of beautiful homes that they’ll never be able to afford. Why not place the Housing Authority office closer to the shelters?

“Is there anything else I can help you with, dear?” Mrs. Getchel asks in a very kind voice.

I decide to be brave. “I need some housing forms so my family can get a voucher,” I say. “But I don’t have the time or the money to go all the way to the other side of the city.”

She thinks for a moment. “Perhaps the forms are online.”

Why didn’t I think of that?

“Do you want me to help you look?”

“That’s OK,” I say. “If they’re online, I can find them.”

It costs twenty-five cents per page to use the printer at the library. I hope the forms are short.

There is a lot to read on the Housing Authority site, and it looks like there’s maybe even more than one program that Gage and I qualify for. They all have a waiting period, though, so they recommend applying to more than one at the same time. There’s a faster program that would help us if we were living in the shelter, but unfortunately, living in the shelter isn’t an option for us.

I’ve just finished reading all of the information and have pulled up the voucher application form when Gage walks up behind me.

“What are you doing, B’Neatie?”

“I found the Housing Authority forms!”

Gage looks over my shoulder and frowns. “Didn’t I tell you that I would take care of that?”

“Yeah, but I thought —”

“Come on,” he says. He turns and walks back out through the double doors.

I click out of the page, grab my backpack, and race after him. “Wait up, Gage!” I yell as soon as I’m on the street.

He turns and faces me. “Don’t you think I want an apartment, too? Don’t you think that I am just as tired as you are of never knowing where I’m going to sleep each night? Don’t you think I’m doing everything I possibly can?”

He starts walking — to where, I don’t even know.

“I was just trying to help!” I shout.

No response.

“I was just trying to help, Gage!”

And I realize, as soon as the words are out of my mouth, that those are the same words Janna used all the time. “I’m just trying to help, Gage.”

Gage
hated
Janna’s help and told her he didn’t need it, but she never stopped trying to give it to him. Maybe Gage resented the implication that he couldn’t handle things on his own. Or maybe accepting Janna’s help made Gage feel disloyal to Mama.

I never did understand why Janna and Gage couldn’t seem to get along, why they were like two stubborn elk, butting heads and locking horns over every little thing. But as I walk behind Gage, I think back on the pictures in Janna’s scrapbook. I think of the big secret I uncovered, of our dad dating Janna before he married Mama. I wonder if Gage knew all about that. I wonder what else Gage knows that I don’t.

It turns out that we’re going to Chloe’s, which makes me happy. And once we’re on the bus, Gage has cooled down, which also makes me happy. By the time we reach Chloe’s house, he’s back to being his old self. When we enter the building, he pauses to slip out of his Jiffy Lube jumpsuit and put on some deodorant.

“Can I use some, too?” I ask apprehensively.

He starts to laugh but stops himself. “Sure,” he says, handing it over. “But you’ll smell like me.”

“Then maybe Chloe will fall in love with me, too,” I tease, struggling a little to apply the deodorant with my shirt still on.

Gage shakes his head. “Come on, dork,” he says, climbing the stairs to her apartment. “You don’t need deodorant to get Chloe to love you. She already does. But we’ll see about getting you some of your own.”