Paper Things (9 page)

In the midst of my despair, another depressing thought hits me: April second. That would have made yesterday April Fools’ Day. I feel the long tug of missing. Missing the days when everyone at Eastland Elementary marched through the school hallway wearing crazy hats. (Last year, Janna showed me a picture of my mother in elementary school wearing a handmade hat with wild pipe-cleaner shapes zinging out in all directions, and I made one just like it.) Missing the days when Gage would play April Fools’ jokes on me. (One time he put salt in the sugar bowl and nearly fell over while he watched me take my first bite of oatmeal.) Missing the days when I didn’t have to wonder where my next meal was coming from or where I was going to sleep each night or if Girl Scouts was no longer something I could put on my Carter application.

That’s what I’m pondering when Linnie says, “GT prowl. Watch out!”

I look up and see Mademoiselle Barbary, our Gifted and Talented teacher, in the double doors of the cafeteria.

I lower my head and take a bite of my Tater Tots.

“She’s coming,” says Sasha.

I wish the approaching Mademoiselle were an April Fools’ joke. When you’re in kindergarten through third grade, being a GT kid is solid. You get to go to a special room and participate in projects, like making a time capsule or learning French. But when you’re in fourth and fifth grade, it means getting pulled away from your friends at lunchtime to discuss “the unique problems of the gifted child.” Lately it’s been even worse because I’ve fallen into the category of “underachieving gifted child.” Now I feel like she has her eyes on me all the time.

“What are your aspirations?”
Linnie says, imitating Mademoiselle.

I can’t help myself. I look up. That’s when Mademoiselle gives me a little come-with-me wave.
Aaagh.
I say good-bye to my friends, pick up my tray, and follow her.

Seven of us sit around the big wooden table in Mademoiselle Barbary’s room today: Daniel, Sam, Gracie, and I have been in this group since it started. She asks us if we are being appropriately challenged. “I am,” shoots out Daniel, who is sitting next to me. We all nod,
We are, too!
(We learned last year that if you say that the work is too easy or that you’re bored, you’ll get tons more work to do — on top of the homework that the other kids get.)

I glance at the supplies on the shelves across the table. How I wish we could play with clay for a little while. “Invent something!” Mademoiselle Barbary used to say.

“Are you sure?” she says now. “I just looked over last quarter’s grades, and some of you are not living up to your potential.”

I look around the table, wondering if she’s addressing anyone other than me.

“Often bright kids don’t do as well as they could when the subject matter isn’t interesting,” she adds in her I-know-how-it-is voice.

Still no one speaks up. I start to feel sorry for her.

“Less than one quarter left, and we’ll no longer be students at Eastland,” Gracie offers. It’s hard to say whether she’s suggesting that our gifted problems won’t matter much in a couple of months (after all, “everyone’s
gifted
at Carter,” as Sasha likes to say) or just stating a fact, but Mademoiselle is happy to run with it.

“How do you all
feel
about leaving Eastland?”

“I’ve started a bucket list,” says Daniel.

“A bucket list?” Mason says. “The things you want to do before you
die
?”

“No. Not that. This is a list of things I want to do before I leave Eastland,” says Daniel.

Mademoiselle presses her hands together like she’s saying a prayer. “
Excellente!
Tell us one thing on your list.”

Daniel pulls a small notebook the size of a passport out of his back pocket and thumbs through it. There seem to be lots of lists and some sketches, too. He finds the page he was looking for. “ ‘Talk to one person at Eastland that I’ve never spoken to.’ ”

“Magnifique,”
Mademoiselle says. She reaches for paper and suggests we each make a list and share them the next time we get together. Usually we come up with all sorts of excuses for not doing the extra tasks Mademoiselle assigns us, but for some reason, everyone seems really excited by the list idea — shouting out stuff they’d put on their list.

I lean over and ask Daniel if he’s picked the person he’ll talk to. He shakes his head and pushes his little notebook over so I can read the whole list.

I laugh after reading number 3. Everyone at Eastland knows about Ms. Finch’s turtle, Gerald, even if they don’t have Ms. Finch. She’s had him forever, and he’s grown so much that he almost doesn’t fit in his tank. Everyone’s just a little afraid of Gerald, even though he’s not a snapper. Even Ms. Finch is afraid of him, which is why his tank is dirty all the time.

I realize that I’m not the only one missing the Eastland traditions. I grab Daniel’s pencil and write “while wearing a crazy hat,” after this item. He smiles.

I continue reading:

“How come seven and eight are blank?” I whisper. Mademoiselle glances at us. He points at the paper to keep me reading.

I look up and give him my you’ve-got-to-be kidding look.

He takes back his pencil and writes:
You can fill in seven and eight.

“No way,” I mouth.

Then he writes:

You might only go to four more schools in your whole lifetime. That’s only four last days, ever.

I think about that for a moment. I reach for the pencil and write:

That’s if I go to college.

He writes:
Of course you’ll go to college.

I force a smile, though what I’m thinking is that I might not if I don’t get into Carter.
I’ll think about it,
I write.

Daniel smiles and crosses off numbers 9 and 10.

Gage picks me up from Head Start and calls Briggs.

“Hey, Brigster,” he says. “What’s up?” I know he’s hoping that Briggs will tell us to come by tonight. While he talks, I travel in ever-widening circles on the sidewalk, looking for pennies.

The conversation drags on, but still no invitation. Gage tries harder: “So, do you have plans tonight?”

And then Gage’s voice gets louder. “You’re kidding! He can’t do that, can he? Are you going to listen to him?

“All right,” he says. “Yeah, sure, I understand.”

“No studio tonight?” I say when he gets off the phone.

“Briggs’s landlord says he’s been violating the lease — that three people are living in the apartment instead of just one.”

“But we’re not living there!” Now I’m as mad as Gage.

“You and I know that, but tell it to the landlord.”

“Does that mean we’re never going back?” I want to ask him what we’ll do about the stuff we left there — our clothes and the boxes from Janna — but now doesn’t seem like the time.

“No,” says Gage. He starts walking — to where, I don’t know, but I follow. “It just means that we have to be a lot more scarce.”

“Chloe’s?” I ask hopefully when we get to the bus stop.

Gage shakes his head. “She has a friend from out of town staying with her tonight.”

“Lighthouse?” I say, less hopefully.

“I hope not,” says Gage, and boards the bus.

As it turns out, we’re staying with Perry and Kristen. Gage met Perry down at the docks, and Kristen is his wife, even though they are hardly any older than Gage.

Right now we’re sitting in their living room in South Port, which is not really in Port City. It’s a whole different town, miles and miles from my school.

I try to decide where I should sit. There are two options: a big, nubby couch with an orange-and-green throw on it, and an easy chair. There’s plenty of room on the couch next to Perry, but Kristen (who is in the other room and who probably looks pretty when she’s happier) is none too pleased about having guests. So I’d hate to take any of her comfiness. I try to decide if she’s more of an easy-chair person or a couch person. I can imagine her stretching out on the couch with one of her cats — I’ve counted three so far — the blanket covering her legs. But maybe she’d prefer the solitude of the easy chair, since she doesn’t even seem to want to be near Perry right now.

I wish I could just go into the other room and do my schoolwork, but we’re not the kind of overnight guests where the hosts announce, “Make yourself at home.” We’re practically strangers here. Gage sizes up the situation and grabs a metal chair from the kitchen table. He brings it into the living room and nods for me to sit on the couch next to Perry.

I sit on the far end of the couch, trying to make myself smaller, cuter, catlike.

Kristen comes into the room and takes the easy chair. I can’t tell if she’s mad about that or not.

Perry hands the remote to Gage, but Gage passes it off to Kristen and says, “We’re happy to watch whatever you like.”

Perry snorts. “Don’t do that, man,” he says, which seems to make Kristen even more annoyed. In fact, I kind of wonder if Perry brought us home just to aggravate Kristen.

Kristen tosses the remote back in Perry’s lap.

When we walked in the back door, Kristen had been seated at the kitchen table. She pounced, expecting only Perry, wanting to know why he was late. Her face tightened when he introduced us (a look I recognized from Janna, who tried really hard not to look like an evil stepmother when we broke the forty-eight-hour rule and brought friends home unannounced) and said that we needed a place to crash tonight, that we’d thought we could move into our apartment today but it hadn’t been ready after all. That’s the sort of thing Gage tells people so they don’t think we’re homeless.

Which we’re not, of course. We’re just between homes.

“What about dinner?” Kristen had asked.

Perry had handed her the leftover pizza from Flatbread, where we’d gone after meeting up. Flatbread is a
très
big treat for us, and I thought Kristen might be pleased, but I guess she mostly felt left out. Anyway, it was a bad start to what was turning out to be a bad night.

Perry turns on a basketball game.

I stare at a spot on my blouse where I spilled tomato sauce. Since all of my extra shirts are at Briggs’s, I’ll have to wear this same top tomorrow. I don’t dare ask Kristen and Perry if I can use their washing machine — I don’t even know if they have one — but think maybe the stain will come out in the sink.

“May I use your bathroom?” I ask.

“Use the one upstairs,” says Kristen. “It’s cleaner.”

On the way up the stairs, I grab my backpack. I lock the bathroom door and take my sweater and my blouse off. I turn on the water and wet the stain on my blouse. I look around for soap, but I can’t find any. I look in the shower and see a small bottle of shampoo. It’s green — I wonder if it will turn my white blouse green.

I decide to take the chance. It doesn’t, but it doesn’t exactly take the tomato sauce out either. It just sort of fades it. I put the blouse back on and button my sweater up over the wet spot. Maybe the stain’ll fade even more once it’s dry.

I’m on the landing, about to head back downstairs, when Kristen comes up the stairs.

“Do you want to sleep in the cupola?” she asks.

I look to my left and right. There is one bedroom on each side of the landing. One, with a big bed and men’s clothes hanging over a chair, is clearly theirs. The other one has a twin bed, and I figure that’s the guest room.

I point to the guest room. “Is that the cupola?”

“No, dummy,” she says, but not in a mean way. “Follow me.” Using a metal rod that was resting against the wall, she opens a trapdoor in the ceiling, and a folding ladder comes down. I climb the ladder nervously. I definitely don’t want to sleep in an attic, but I don’t feel comfortable telling Kristen this. But when we get to the top, I see that it’s not an attic at all. It’s a tiny rooftop room with windows on all four sides — like the top of a lighthouse. There’s a padded window seat all around that’s wide enough to sleep on. The sun has set, but I can see streetlights and house lights below me.

“This was my grandmother’s house,” Kristen says. “I used to come and sleep up here all the time.” She sits down on the edge of the seat. “Sometimes I still do.”

“It’s like being on top of the world,” I say, looking over rooftops.

“My grandmother told me that before there were all these streetlights, you could see stars from up here.” Then she looks at me. “It must be hard not having your own bed.”

I shrug. “I’m OK as long as I’m with Gage,” I say, and sit down beside her.

She nods. “He seems nice. Like the kind of guy who’s considerate.”