The Center of Everything (10 page)

And over there, that brown-haired girl of eleven or twelve, clutching a stack of blue cards. She meets his eyes with such hope and admiration. Mr. Gomez gives her a reassuring smile. He feels compelled to nod at her. “Yes,” he says before he turns his eyes elsewhere.
Good common people
, he thinks.
They have erected a statue in my honor.

He raises his arm like the statue, holding aloft a donut that only he can see.

Ruby had not imagined it. She had been standing in the circle in the square, holding her note cards to her chest, wondering if maybe she had gotten things mixed up. If she was seeing signs where there weren't any. What if she had lost her best friend over nothing? What if time didn't stretch? What if there were no spokes? What if? . . .

Her thoughts had been interrupted by Willow's squeals. “It's the fish and chips man! The man on the Salty Sea Dog Fish and Chips box!” She was pointing to a man in a dark wool coat and cap walking stiffly among the other volunteers from the Bunning Historical Society.

“That's not a fish and chips man,” Ruby had said. “That's Captain Bunning. Didn't you go to the museum last year?”

“I missed it. I had the flu.” Willow waved her arm desperately for whatever it was those long-skirted ladies were handing out.

Ruby had kept her eye on Captain Bunning.

And then Captain Bunning seemed to look right at her. He smiled.

Ruby did not wish that he would tell her that she was doing what she was supposed to do, but she asked the question hard in her head.

“Yes,” he said. He said yes.

“Ruby, look!” Willow waved the paper a volunteer had given her. “Look, Ruby! I get a free donut! That says ‘free' right there.”

Ruby read the old-fashioned writing that curled around the circumference of the coupon. “It says you get ‘Free Admission to the Glorious Past.'”

Willow scrunched up her face. “I'd rather have a donut.”

Ruby looked again at Captain Bunning, who was now walking away from her. He had said yes. Her wish was about to come true, wasn't it?

Captain Bunning raised his arm then, just like his statue in Cornelius Circle, and Ruby could come to no other conclusion.

It was.

“There it is! Look, Carter-Ann! There's the school!”

Carter-Ann peers down the road to where her mother is pointing, but she does not see the school. She knows what it looks like, because Willow is in kindergarten there. The school is almost as big as the grocery store, but it doesn't have food, and the floors have squares on them and she can hop from one blue square to another all the way to the drinking fountain, which is too tall up and gets water all over her chin and her shirt, but she can't help it because as soon as she sees it, she gets thirsty.

“I'm thirsty,” she says.

Her mother hands her a water bottle, but it is empty. “I already drunked it. I want juice.”

“It will have to wait,” her mother says. “Ruby is going to do her thing in a minute. As soon as the school gets here.”

Carter-Ann looks again. She still does not see Willow's school. And, anyway, schools don't move. They stay put, like houses and car dealerships and grocery stores. That is why you have to put your seat belt on and drive everyplace.

“I'm thirsty,” she says again.

“Carter-Ann, just—just, you'll have to wait.”

She always has to wait. That's her whole life. People telling her to wait. Or to hurry up. The only time anybody hurries up for her is when she has to go to the bathroom.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she says. And it's true. She didn't have to a second ago, but now that she has said it out loud, she has to. Bad.

“Now? Oh, Carter-Ann, can it wait just one minute?”

Sometimes if Carter-Ann has to pee really bad, she crosses her legs and it is better, so she crosses her legs, but it is not better. “I have to go now,” she says. She makes the word
now
really long, so her mom will understand.
Nooooooooooow.

“Ruby?” her mother says. She has to say it twice, because Cousin Ruby is thinking about something. “Ruby? I'm sorry. Carter-Ann has to go to the bathroom.”

“It's okay,” Cousin Ruby says. Cousin Ruby is always good and never gets in trouble. At restaurants she can go to the bathroom by herself. Nobody has to go with her.

“Willow? Willow, honey, you're going to have to come with me,” Mom says.

Willow looks mad. “I'm going to miss some candy.”

Carter-Ann had not thought about missing some candy. “I don't have to go,” she says, but her legs are almost double-crossed now.

“We're going,” Mom says. “Wish Ruby good luck.”

Ruby doesn't need good luck. She already has good luck. She is big and can stay behind where the candies are. But Willow says good luck and Carter-Ann doesn't want to look like a baby. “Wish,” she says, and then her mom is tugging her away from the parade, telling her, like always, to hurry up.

If you were Bunning Day Essay Girl or Boy, you would likely have rehearsed this moment in your head many times. You would have imagined Bunning Elementary School librarian Ms. Kemp-Davie hopping out of the pickup truck and hurrying to the back of the trailer on which the model schoolhouse was secured. You would have seen her place the step stool next to the trailer, seen her climb up onto it, seen her reach in the schoolhouse window to grab the microphone and flip on the amplification system. And you would have seen yourself there too, stepping one-two-three up the step stool (if you were Effie Stefanopolis, Essay Girl in 2007, you would have even practiced going up and down a ladder at home a few times) and listening as Ms. Kemp-Davie said what she always did. That for her, the highlight of every Bunning Day was this moment, when the winner of the Bunning Day Essay Contest joined her here in front of this symbol of education to which Captain Bunning was so dearly dedicated. Here, to read her winning essay, was—and you would have imagined hearing Ms. Kemp-Davie say your name.

Which is why Ruby is surprised when the pickup truck door opens and it is not Ms. Kemp-Davie who exits but a tall, thin man with wide glasses and a beard.

Suddenly, Patsy Whelk is at Ruby's side. “Okay, kid. Your turn.”

It is her turn.

Up on the trailer, the thin man has switched on the mike.

“Hello,” he says into it.

Most of the kids in the crowd say hello back.

“I'm, um, the new middle school librarian, Paul Yellich, and this is my first Bunning Day, and, um, it's really great.” Paul Yellich squints at a note card in his hand and realizes he is wearing the wrong glasses. He needs his reading glasses. The words on his card are squiggles. “So, you all know what comes next. The essay contest winner . . .” He is supposed to say something else, but he cannot remember it. He does, however, remember the girl's name. “I'm very proud to introduce Ruthie Pepper, who is going to come on up here and do what you've all been waiting for.”

This is not going right
, thinks Mr. Yellich.

Nothing is going right
, thinks Ruby as she steps up onto the trailer.

How can her wish be about to come true when Ms. Kemp-Davie isn't here? When this man can't even get her name right?

“Ruthie Pepper, everybody!” The man holds the microphone out, and Ruby takes it.

“Thank you,” she says, even though she would rather say her name is not Ruthie, it is Ruby. Thank you is what she says. Just like she is supposed to.

Ruby looks down at her note cards. At the chocolate swirl that is Willow's fingerprint.
Some say it was destiny.

That, of course, is what Ms. Kemp-Davie would have expected to hear. But Ms. Kemp-Davie is, at this very moment, in Greece, viewing one of Callimachus's favorite hangouts.

The only other people who have any idea what is written on those cards are not near enough to hear Ruby either. Her mom and dad are just now pulling into the rec center parking lot. Aunt Rachel is holding the door of a porta-potty closed for Carter-Ann.

Nobody knows what Ruby is supposed to say.

And for a moment, Ruby is not sure either.

“Listen,” Gigi had told her.

That's it! That is what she is supposed to do!

“I'm listening,” Ruby says.

Twenty seconds can be quick if you are on the phone with a friend or spinning around on the Christmas Carousel at Santa's Village or holding the hand of someone you love.

But if you are holding your breath, twenty seconds can be a long time.

And if you are standing on the sidewalk of a parade route and the girl on the float in front of you is not doing anything, twenty seconds can be a really, really long time.

And if you are a brand-new librarian and you feel responsible for the fact that this girl on the float—this Ruthie—is holding a microphone and not speaking at all, twenty seconds can feel like your whole entire life.

Which is why, in your kindest voice, you might say her name. “Ruthie?”

And you might even be relieved to hear her speak into the microphone. “I have a minute,” you might hear her say. “I'd like it to be a minute of silence. For my grandmother Genevieve Pepperdine, who loved this parade and this town so much.”

Not Pepper. Pepper
dine
, you might think. In fact, that is all you might think for the next forty seconds. Pepper
dine.
Pepper
dine.
And how you looked like such an idiot and what a brilliant way to start off in a new town, messing up the name of the essay kid, and how you wish you could open up the door to the model schoolhouse and hide inside.

Which is why you would not notice that in front of you, the essay kid is leaning forward, stretching forward, looking like she is straining to hear through the silence.

 

“I'm listening,” Ruby had said out loud. And in her head she says it again.
I'm listening. I'm listening, Gigi. I am sorry, I am so sorry I didn't listen before. I was scared. Maybe. I didn't know.

You weren't supposed to die, Gigi. Everybody said it. You weren't that old. And you had such life. I didn't know what to do. I did what I thought I was supposed to do.

Poke, poke, poke. Ruby feels the poking in her chest.

The pricking in her eyes.

Is it Gigi? Is it Gigi zipping back along whatever radius line she has found, coming to make things okay again?

Silence.

That is what Ruby needs. She has been talking—even if it was only in her head—when all this time she was supposed to be listening! Isn't that what Gigi said? “Listen”?

All around, Ruby hears the sounds of the town. The grownups—at least the ones who had heard and were paying attention—are quiet. A few of the kids are too, and one boy salutes like he did at the funeral of his uncle who died in Afghanistan. But some people are chatting and some are scolding their children. Some are singing along with the banjo band that can still be heard from the far side of Cornelius Circle.

Shut up!
Ruby tells them in her head. She tries to push the banjo sounds away, but they grow louder.
Shut up! I am listening for Gigi. Or time or things getting fixed or whatever it is I'm supposed to hear. Whatever Gigi wanted me to know.

Boom!
A Civil War cannon goes off somewhere down the route and babies bawl. Ruby tries to push those sounds away too, but more noise fills in. The motor of the pickup truck, the horn of a Shriner car, the
ting-ting-ting
of something metal tapping against the bronze shoe of the Bunning statue. A distant
crack—
maybe Lucy splitting boards with Okeda Martial Arts. And—is it possible?—the sizzle of donuts at the Delish tent, where Nero is. Every small impossible sound crowds in the way of what she is supposed to hear.

No!
Ruby thinks.
Be quiet! I'm supposed to be listening. I need to listen. I need—

Ruby feels Mr. Yellich's hand on her shoulder.

“Time's up, Ruthie.”

Aunt Rachel is not near the circle in the square when Ruby returns to it. Neither is Willow or Carter-Ann or Baby Amelia. Ruby has been on the schoolhouse float for only a minute and a half. It takes longer than a minute and a half to find a bathroom on Bunning Day.

The parade continues on its path.

Nothing has changed.

Whatever it was that she was supposed to have done is still undone. Whatever was supposed to have happened to make things okay didn't happen. None of the things that Ruby imagined—seeing Gigi's smiling face or hearing whatever it was that Gigi had wanted to say or traveling back in time (which, okay, she didn't really think would happen, except maybe, but not
really
really)—none of it happened.

What happened was that Ruby had stood on the steps of the schoolhouse float and didn't even read her stupid essay. Which was probably what she was really supposed to have done. And now she couldn't. Not ever. Things were never going to be like they were supposed to.

“Ruby! Ruby!” Carter-Ann has broken away from her mother. She is pulling at Ruby's wrist. “I almost fell in!”

“The porta-potty was an adventure,” Aunt Rachel tells Ruby.

“Did we miss any candy?” asks Willow, pushing her way past Ruby to reclaim her spot at the curb. A clown from the hospital tosses a shower of SweeTarts, which sends Carter-Ann and Willow diving.

“Out of the street! Out of the street!” Aunt Rachel says. “How did it go? Ouch! Amelia, we don't bite!”

HOONK! HOOONNNK!

Red lights flash and Baby Amelia bursts into tears.

“It's the fire trucks!” shouts Carter-Ann.

“That means it's the end,” says Willow. “Isn't it, Ruby?”

Ruby nods. It is the end.