Paper Things (8 page)

Instead she just sort of stretches, then shakes her head. “God, we were such
dorks,
” she says.

I place my Paper Things back inside the folder, the folder back inside my backpack.

“Yeah,” I say. “Dorks.”

Sasha has church on Sunday morning at ten, so Gage and Chloe come for me right after breakfast. Briggs is away until tomorrow, so they’ve had the studio all to themselves.

I feel a splash of warmth as we burst out the door of Sasha’s apartment building onto the sidewalk. The sun is shining, the snow is melting. It’s one of those end-of-March days in Maine that feel like a present — a little reminder that spring
is
here, even if the warm days won’t really arrive (and stay) for about two more months. My Language Arts teacher would call this day “foreshadowing,” I think — foreshadowing spring. Too bad I don’t get extra credit for knowing that.

I reach down to pick up a penny, determined to make up for the fourteen cents I gave away on Friday.

“What are you going to buy with all that money?” asks Chloe, who knows about my daisy piggy bank at Briggs’s.

“An apartment.”

Chloe laughs.

“She’s not kidding,” says Gage, bending to pick up what we think is a nickel but turns out to be a souvenir coin of some sort. Neat but worthless. He chucks it aside.

“Not the rent,” I clarify. “But once Gage gets a steady job and we find an apartment, I can help out with stuff like shampoo and toilet paper and toothpaste.”

“Yeah, then you can stop using mine,” Chloe says as she bumps shoulders with Gage. We both know she’s kidding, but I still steal a glance at Gage’s face to see if his pride’s hurt. It looks like it would take a lot more than a little teasing today to bring my brother down.

When we get to the playground near Briggs’s, I ask Gage if I can stay awhile. The place can be a treasure trove of dropped coins from adults chasing their kids on the old jungle gym or the rickety teeter-totter.

Gage looks around to see if there’s any cause for concern. “All right,” he tells me, “but be back at Briggs’s in one hour.”

Sasha and Linnie are always complaining about how easily I find money. They don’t get how they miss it and I spot it every time. But it’s not just the looking; it’s
how
you look. When you first look down, you see everything — and nothing. It’s as if your eyes can see only grayness. But if you tell yourself that there’s treasure at your feet, your eyes will begin to see differences in the shades of gray: silvery cracks, charcoal pebbles, ashy litter. Then, when you find your first glimmering coin, your brain will understand exactly what you want, and it will start to find coins everywhere. It just takes patience.

So once I start finding coins under the benches, at the bottom of the slide, and all around the busted water fountain, I don’t want to stop. I look at my watch and see that fifty minutes have gone by, but I tell myself,
Just one more.
Then:
OK, really one more.
And then:
Absolutely, positively just one more. Promise!

I look at my watch again — holy moly, the whole hour has passed! I know I better hightail it back to Briggs’s.

I race down the sidewalk, and I’m about a block away from the apartment building when I see the airplane man and Amelia, heading straight for me.

“Hi!” I say. Amelia wriggles happily as I approach. I reach out my hand and brush it over her from the top of her head, down her tickly back, to the fur right before her tail.

“Arianna, right?” the airplane man asks. I nod. “I have something for you,” he says, and reaches into his coat. He pulls out a paper airplane. It’s long and sleek and much more elaborately folded than I expected. He holds it between his thumb and fingers on one hand so I can get a better look. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a paper airplane that appears so
real.

“Wow, thanks!” I say. Then I realize that I don’t actually know his name.

“Reggie,” he says, seeming to read my mind.

“Thanks, Reggie,” I say. The deep wrinkles around his eyes disappear as he smiles.

Just then something whizzes by us and ricochets off the side of the building, nearly hitting Amelia in the head. It’s a chunk of brick — a big chunk.

“Get a job!” a guy about Gage’s age yells as he walks past.

“Did he . . . did he just throw a
brick
at us?” I ask, shocked.

Reggie shakes his head slowly. “Not at us. At me.” He leans down and holds Amelia’s head in his hands, then looks in her eyes. “Wonder how so much hate grows in a person that young.”

“I’m so sorry, Reggie,” I say, kicking the brick into the gutter.

“No sense worrying yourself about it,” he says, straightening back up. “I’m just glad you and Amelia didn’t get hit.”

I nod and give Amelia one last pat. “I’ve got to get going,” I tell them. “But thanks again for the plane — it’s terrific!”

Reggie gives a little salute, and I race back to the studio. I’m nearly there when I realize that I didn’t even think to offer Reggie any of the change I’d collected today. Sure, I’d been searching extra hard to make up for the money I’d given him earlier this week, but the least I could have done was give him
some
of what I’d found today. After all, nobody was throwing bricks at my head and telling me to get a job.

And maybe it’s because I’m so distracted thinking about the brick and Reggie and Amelia and my plane and the money I’d collected, but when I enter Briggs’s apartment and see Janna standing there, I’m not startled.

“Hi,” I say, my eyes hopping from Janna to Gage and back.

“There you are,” she says, like we had an appointment or something. She has a scarf wrapped around her neck, and she’s leaning against the counter with her arms folded. Gage is standing over some boxes on the floor, boxes she must have brought. Chloe is nowhere in sight.

“So your brother lets you walk around the city on your own, huh?” Janna asks, in her judge-y voice.

I frown. “I was just at the park around the corner. Then I ran into —”

“It’s OK, Ari,” Gage says. “I told Janna where you were and that you wouldn’t be gone long.”

Janna grunts and then looks around. “So, this is cute,” she says, a sweep of her arm indicating the entire studio. “And the decorations are certainly . . . festive. But unless there’s another room, I’m guessing you have to sleep here?” Her judge-y voice is back on, big time. “And where are all your things? Your boots and books and such,” she says, frowning at my wet and ratty shoes.

And that’s when it hits me: Janna thinks this is our place — mine and Gage’s! I try to catch Gage’s eye, to see if I’m supposed to play along, but he won’t look at me.

“This is just temporary,” Gage says. “Until we can find something better.” Well, that’s true, at least.

“Actually,” says Janna, “I’m surprised you were able to afford something in this building . . . in the West End. You must have been squirreling away money your entire senior year.”

“We’re subletting,” says Gage quickly.

I watch Janna closely, wondering if she’s buying this.

Janna nods and walks around slowly, examining the objects in the room. Most of it is Briggs’s crazy party-supply stuff, but I notice that my Louisa May Alcott books are on the table, and my piggy bank has been taken down from on top of the cabinets and placed on the kitchen counter. I also notice that the place looks a lot cleaner than it usually does — no dishes in the sink or piled on the counter, no Cheerios or dust bunnies on the floor. Had Gage known that Janna was coming by?

“The decor is . . . interesting,” Janna mutters, but the judge-y tone is gone. “And where do you hang your uniforms, Ari?”

I hear Gage’s voice in my head:
“Janna rule number one hundred twenty-four: Always hang up your school uniform.”
I start to walk to the drawer under the TV set, where I stuff them (that is, when they’re not stuffed in my backpack or at Chloe’s), but Gage slides over to the closet.

“In here,” he says. He opens the one closet in the studio, the one that holds all of Briggs’s work pants and dress shirts, as well as the worn costumes he brings home from One Stop.

But when Gage opens the closet, only his clothes and my clothes are hanging there, including clean uniforms. When had Gage thought to do that?

“It works,” Janna says, and turns to look at me. She reaches a hand toward my face but stops herself. “Your hair looks very pretty today.”

I’d forgotten that it was in a gazillion French braids.

“You stayed at Sasha’s last night,” she says, her judge-y voice back. Janna used to hate it when Marianna would do up my hair or sew a little flower onto my clothes. She thought it was Marianna’s way of telling Janna that she was a better mother.

“I wanted to give Gage and Chloe a date night,” I say, which is partly true.

“Well,” Janna says, pulling on her coat, “I’m glad you’re doing so well.” But she doesn’t sound especially glad. “This should be everything,” she says, nodding at the boxes on the floor.

“Janna —” I start before she makes it out the door.

She turns.

But I don’t know what to say. “Thanks for bringing my stuff,” I blurt lamely.

She nods and jets away.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had this theory that when each person is born, he or she is given an imaginary sack with the same number of happy moments, same number of horrible-news moments, same number of please-let-me-die-now embarrassments. So, while some people may have a bunch of bad moments all in a row, in the end, we’ll all have experienced the same number of ups and down. We’ll all be even.

Sasha tells me that that’s a ridiculous way of thinking. “Think of people who are starving, or who live in countries where there is war, or whose parents are divorced,” she says. “They suffer more.”

But I like to think that even these people, whose hardships seem to come all at once, might get to experience the same number of joys in their lives as everyone else (and sometimes those feelings of joy pop up smack in the middle of hardship). And on the flip side, people whose lives seem perfect might also be suffering in ways we don’t see, or might face hardships down the road.

But maybe Sasha is right. Maybe that is a ridiculous way of thinking. Yet sometimes, when it feels like all my troubles are piling up — Mama getting sick and dying, Janna and Gage fighting all the time, having to bounce from place to place with Gage and maybe missing out on the chance to go to Carter — it helps to think that there are only so many bad times in my sack. That sooner or later the good things will have to take over.

Anyway, this is what I’m thinking about as Sasha, Linnie, and I are going through the cashier line with our hot-lunch trays — that is, Sasha and I are carrying trays; Linnie brings her lunch to school, but she goes through the line with us ’cause she hates sitting alone — when the cashier stops me and says that I don’t have any money left in my account. “Tell your mom, dear, that she forgot to send in this month’s check.”

Linnie leans over. “She doesn’t have a —”

Sasha pulls Linnie toward our table to shut her up.

“Today I can give you an IOU,” the cashier says, waving me through, “but don’t forget it tomorrow.”

“It’s not like Janna to forget to send the payment,” Sasha says when I join them. She sounds like Marianna.

Normally Sasha’s comment would make me smile, but my head is cloudy. It’s the second day of April.

Holy moly.

I sip slightly warm milk through a straw and wonder about my empty lunch account. Janna never forgets first-of-the-month responsibilities. (Rule number 28: Pay before play.) I always knew when it was a new month, because envelopes were on the counter, ready-to-be-mailed envelopes with checks inside — checks for bills, checks for school lunches and Girl Scout dues
(Am I no longer a Girl Scout?),
checks for the newspaper delivery man and the Fresh Market next door that lets us say, “Charge it, please.” No new balance means that she’s no longer paying for my hot lunches.

Seeing Briggs’s apartment must have convinced Janna that we’re doing all right on our own. But we’re not! Not really. Until Gage finds a real job, he can’t afford to pay for my lunches. What am I supposed to do?