My mouth dropped open. What was she doing?
“Yeah, okay … so twice a week? That sounds good for us. Okay, see you then.”
She hung up.
“Mom!”
“What?” she asked innocently.
“You’re asking him to work here?”
“Well, not exactly. I’m asking him to play with your brother.”
“Mom!”
“Chill out. Didn’t you think he played nicely with Lucca?”
“Yes, but—”
“And Lucca liked him. There’s a chance he’ll warm up to him some more.…”
“Yes, but—” She had just been talking about how she was waiting out this thing with Lucca. Yeah, right! She did nothing but try to get him to talk!
“And look at it this way.” Mom gave me a goofy smile. “I’ve just ensured he’ll be coming back here. So he’ll be around to spend more time with you, too.”
“That doesn’t— You hardly— You didn’t even— Agh!” I stormed out of the kitchen.
But …
Infuriating as Mom was, it would be nice to have Sam around.
12
In the morning I was pacing in my room, then I paced up and down the stairs, then I paced around and around the circle made by the connecting hallways of the downstairs rooms. I was thinking, thinking.… If it was true, what Mrs. Lang had said … then it meant … No, it didn’t.… Twice I sat down in the window seat and picked up the pen, but twice the thought of continuing the story, no matter what I could learn, made me put the pen back down and return to pacing.
“You need something to do! Here.” Mom thrust twenty dollars and a shopping list at me. “Go into town. Nielly’s has great produce.”
“I— But—”
“Nope, not listening. Get out of here.”
I couldn’t even explain that that was Sam’s family’s place. I wondered if Mom already knew. That would so be like her, to send me there because she knew.
I found myself pushed onto the front porch, clutching a pair of sneakers I hadn’t picked up, with the door shut behind me.
Well, horribly embarrassing as it was, I would have to see him again soon enough anyway. Might as well get it over with.
I groaned and sat down to put the shoes on.
“You didn’t give me any socks!” I called at the house.
A minute later the door opened, a pair of socks flew through it, and it slammed shut again.
Maybe Sam wasn’t working today.
I trudged into town and up the steps of Nielly’s.
Morgan was at a table reading a magazine (didn’t she have anything else to do?), and Sam was leaning on his elbow at one of the registers.
“Hi,” I said in a dull tone.
“Hi,” he replied in the same tone, imitating me.
Then we both stood there. Morgan’s magazine clunked against the table as she set it down.
Sam smiled slyly and said, “So, I’m coming to your house tomorrow for a playdate.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I couldn’t believe she asked you to do that. So annoying. I’m really sorry.”
“Why? It’s totally cool. Easy job. I’ll get some more money and then we can go to the movies on the weekend or eat junk at the diner. Maybe your mom will invite me to stay to eat again.”
“Again?” Morgan chimed in. “I didn’t know you’d eaten there before.” She came over.
Sam and I both ignored her interruption.
“It’s just a plot, you know,” I said. “She wants you to get my brother to talk. Or at least help him socialize.”
“Who cares why? That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? If he started to talk?”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s the problem?”
I felt my cheeks get hot as I realized the problem: Mom was also trying to help me socialize by having Sam come over on a regular basis.
“What are you guys talking about?” Morgan asked.
“Nothing. Siena’s little brother has no brothers, so I’m going over to play and be like … a brother.”
He didn’t add that Lucca was different.
“You’re really okay with it?” I asked.
“Totally. So super, completely, definitely, A-okay.”
“Then I guess I am, too.”
“Good.”
“Is that why you came by?” Sam asked.
“No. This was also my mom’s idea.” I took the shopping list out of my pocket and unfolded it. “Leafy lettuce. Two beefsteak tomatoes. One white or yellow onion.”
“Allow me to assist you.” Sam bowed and proceeded to the produce section. He paraded about, making a show of selecting vegetables, and then returned to the counter. “Our leafiest lettuce.” He held it up and set it gently into a paper bag. “Our two most beautiful, beefy beefsteak tomatoes.” He nestled them in next to the lettuce. Then he held up two onions and extended them in turn as he announced, “one white or one yellow onion.”
“Uh, yellow, please.”
He rang everything up, gave me change, rolled down the top of the paper bag, handed it to me, and said, “See you tomorrow.”
That night as the sun set, I sat in the window, holding the pen. Still afraid to put it to paper. What would I learn about Sarah? What would I learn about us?
I set the pen back down and went outside. I found Dad on the front porch and sat next to him on the floorboards.
“We’ll have to get some furniture,” he said. “So it’s nicer to sit out here.”
“It’s nice out here now, Dad. ’Cept for the mosquitoes.” I slapped at one on my elbow and left a bloody smear; she’d gotten me.
The arc of the moon appeared over the water, lighting a path. While we sat there, incredibly, the full moon rose so fast you could see it happen.
“Look at that!” Dad said. “Wish Lucca could see. Not that I’d wake him up. Not tonight, anyway.”
I pictured Lucca standing on the porch, saying, “Look at the moon!” I filled in his voice with an imaginary one, one that was a combination of the baby voice we used to hear a long time ago and the toddler voice he uses to yell his happy sounds when he plays.
I took a deep breath. “Dad? Would you do anything for Lucca? Even if it was something hard and maybe scary?”
“What did you have in mind?”
What did I have in mind? I wasn’t even sure. But I’d been afraid to keep going, to find out. What if there were no answers here, but only questions?
It was Mom who met Sam at the door at four-thirty the next day, not me. I waved to him from the stairs. He smiled and waved back, while listening to Mom tell him some of the things that Lucca liked to do.
It was weird: Sam was in the house, but not to see me.
I headed back up to my room, where I stared at Sarah’s pen.
This whole thing was too creepy.
But something must have happened between what I’d seen and the way the family ended up, because Sarah had talked just fine so far. What was it? What had happened?
I picked up the pen. I could do this. I could find out what happened. I got my notebook, too, sat in the window seat, and tried to quiet my own thoughts, to open my mind.
But as I moved the pen across the paper, I got nothing but loopy scribbles.
Sam stayed for dinner.
“You guys have fun?” Mom asked him and Lucca when they came to the table.
Lucca nodded. Mom beamed at both of them. I made a face into my plate but no one noticed.
“Good,” Dad said. “Rice, Sam?”
“Thanks.” Sam took the spoon. The rice fell all over his plate instead of in a neat, round heap like I like to make. I looked back at my own plate when he noticed me looking at his.
“How do you like your school, Sam?” Dad asked.
“Fine. I mean, I’m glad it’s summer, but …”
“No, I get it.” Dad laughed. “I’m a teacher. I like the summer, too. Do you feel like you get a lot of homework?”
/> “Some days are really bad but most days are okay. It depends on your tracking.”
“We don’t have Siena’s tracking yet,” Dad said. “Her transcripts from her old school haven’t come yet.”
Mom made a “tut” of annoyance. Lucca echoed it over and over between eating individual grains of rice with his fingers. There was a general pause at the table while we listened.
“Well, anyway, Siena hasn’t gone to see the place yet,” Dad said.
“I could show you around,” Sam said to me.
“Okay.”
“That would be nice,” Dad said.
“I thought you weren’t interested,” Mom teased me, with raised eyebrows.
“Well, maybe I should go see it.”
Mom caught Dad’s eye. “I guess school’s more appealing with the right company.”
I ignored that. So did Dad.
“I can drop you off there tomorrow on my way to work,” Dad said. He looked at Mom.
“I’ll pick you up,” she said.
I hoped she’d be able to resist going inside herself.
The school was a low, sprawling brick building, only two stories in the tallest sections. Fields and parking lots surrounded it. It was the opposite of any school I’d ever seen in New York, where the closest thing to fields were paved recess yards and several floors were stacked on top of one another.
“Three towns use this middle school,” Sam told me. “About eight hundred kids.”
He led the way through the front door. No security. That was different.
There was a man walking in the hall. He had a little stubble on his face and he looked kind and happy.
“Hi, Mr. Walker,” Sam said. “Siena, this is our principal. This is Siena.”
“Hello, Siena, welcome.” Mr. Walker shook my hand. “Sam, I’d have thought you’d stay miles away from here all summer.”
“I wanted to show Siena around. She’s starting in the fall. She just moved here.”
Mr. Walker turned back to me. “Lovely to meet you. Take a look around. Glad you wanted to come by. I’d show you myself, but I’m late for a meeting. Sam will do a good job.”
We headed on our way. Every few rooms there were teachers having meetings in small groups. When Dad’s soccer camp was over, he’d go to plenty of those meetings at his new high school. One hallway had rooms with a couple of classes in session. “Summer school,” Sam whispered. I tried to get a look at the kids as we passed by.
Two kids never would have been able to show up and walk around my old school because they felt like it. Just that tiny thing made me feel good. It felt like kids were actually welcome at school, invited. The classrooms were bright and airy and some on the ground floor had extra doors leading right outside.
But mostly, I was enjoying the sound of Sam’s voice, and the fact that all his attention was focused on me.
13
Mom refrained from coming inside when she picked us up. She dropped Sam at Nielly’s and I went to the library.
I brought a new book home for Lucca, but at bedtime he handed it to Dad. He didn’t want me to read to him. He was still mad at me.
I went to my room again and sat looking at the pen. What had been going wrong? Was it just me being afraid? Was I not being open enough to see her story?
Don’t be afraid, Siena, I told myself. Knowing can’t hurt you.
I got the pen and notebook and sat in the window seat.
I just had to let go. Of Lucca being mad. Of thoughts of Sam and school. Of everything. To just be open to Sarah.
I put the pen to the page, closed my eyes, and drifted.
I played alone outside, using a stick to draw pictures and patterns in the dirt. The grass had become very dry this fall.
Joshua had just left for his training.
The house was quiet and still. When Frank, our gardener, came by, he seemed to work without making any noise at all. His son, Paul, who usually plays and jokes, was quiet. As they raked the leaves and dry grass, the rakes said, shhhhh shhhhhh shhhh.
Vicky called, “Sarah! Sarah!” but even her call was soft.
I went in to dinner, just Mama, Dad, and me at the dinner table. No one felt like talking. Mama cut her food into many little bites but didn’t eat them. No one had told me to wash up before supper, to tuck my shirt into my dungarees. They usually don’t like it if I’m untidy.
“I built a kite today,” I said. “Will someone take me to the beach to fly it?” Joshua would have done that with me.
Dad said, “Sure, honey. After we’ve eaten.”
After dinner he examined the kite, tugging the string to test the strength of my knots. “It looks like a pretty nice kite.”
“It’s just old newspaper and sticks.” Joshua had taught me how to make kites, but this was the first I’d made on my own.
“Let’s test it out.”
We were the only people on the beach. There was a cold breeze. We sent up the kite; it caught the wind and stayed up. I ran and steered it.
“Look, Dad!” I shouted.
But he seemed to have forgotten all about me. He was staring out at the ocean.
Where Joshua would go. Way out across the ocean, to the war.
I stood still, forgetting the kite. It drifted to the ground.
“Get up.”
The next morning: I stood over Lucca, who was still sleepy in his bed.
I was going to make things up to him. I was.
“Get up, little brother.” I nudged him. He made a show of yawning and stretching. Then he noticed I was in my bathing suit and shorts. He hurried to get out of bed and get ready, too.
“We’re not going to our part of the beach,” I explained. “We’re going to go to the big beach. Where all the other kids are. It’s a day trip!”
Mom had not been especially pleased about my idea of a day trip without her. But I convinced her that it would be even safer for us to play where there were lifeguards and other families. And that compared to a few months ago, when she’d put me in charge of Lucca all the way to Florida, this was no big deal. “Keep your phone on,” she said, finally giving permission.
I packed us a picnic, a beach blanket and towels, and sand toys. I covered us in sunscreen, and then we walked out to the trolley.
It still runs, the summer trolley I saw in Sarah’s memory. The nearest stop was a couple of streets away.
I was a little worried that when I saw the trolley, I wouldn’t be looking at something that was physically in front of me, but would instead be seeing a flicker of the past. What if I had us board a trolley from years ago? What would happen to us then? But Lucca, who, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have my problem, gave a whoop and a holler when it was coming, and I let out my breath with relief to see it full of passengers with beach chairs and flip-flops and plastic beach buckets. Phew.
My fare was a dollar. Little guys like Lucca ride for free. We sat on a wooden seat slatted like a park bench. Lucca hung his hands out the open side when it started up, yelling, “Whooo whooo!” but I grabbed his arms to bring them back inside. The last thing I needed, after I’d convinced Mom this was a good idea, was for Lucca to tumble out. He hardly noticed, though, grinning as he closed his eyes against the warm breeze. I closed my eyes for a minute, too, trying to feel my brother’s happiness. It was better than talking.
There were two boys my age sitting on the bench across from us. One of them smiled at me. I managed to smile back, but then the trolley stopped and I had to pick up our beach bag and help Lucca down from the seat, and by the time we got off the trolley I didn’t see them anymore.
I set up our blanket near families with little kids. Sure enough, after a few minutes Lucca had joined a group splashing around in some shallow, warm pools that had collected when the tide went out. I didn’t let him out of my sight, but I didn’t hover. I just let him play. The other kids didn’t seem to notice or care that he wasn’t talking. He wasn’t actually the only one, because some of the kids were young
er and not really saying much, either. He fit right in. He splashed and got muddy in the smooth, gray sand.
Eventually I got up and paced around, an eye on Lucca, but also looking in the sand for anything left behind. I spotted an old chip bag, a crushed juice box, a plastic fork—but those weren’t treasures. I collected them anyway, to throw out when we left.
I found a little bluish crab in a shallow pool and I called Lucca over to see. He loved the crab and tried to reach out to touch. “No, he pinches,” I said. “See?” The crab pinched at the sand and brought his claw to his mouth, over and over. “He’s having lunch.”
Which reminded Lucca that he wanted lunch. He showed me by running to our blanket and dragging things out of the picnic bag. I had made us peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwiches. Mom always tells me not to give Lucca peanut butter, in case he has an allergic reaction to it, but she fed me peanut butter all the time when I was little. Why all this care with Lucca and not with me?
Mom used to be more fun. We used to do things like take the train out of town to go hiking or explore other parts of the city. She used to take me to museums and let me wander around with a sketch pad while she worked. Now she was all worry-worry-worry and order-order-order.
Lucca seemed to love the peanut butter and didn’t have any kind of allergic reaction. He smeared it all over his face. Luckily, I’d brought baby wipes, and I used a couple to clean him up. Then I rubbed more sunscreen on his face.
He ran off to play while I looked for more treasures. Nothing, though once everyone left for the day, the beach would probably be littered with little things.
But I’d promised Mom we’d be home by dinner. When a couple of families started packing up, I gathered our things and texted Mom to say we were coming back. As we headed up the boardwalk, we ran into an ice cream cart. “Let’s spoil your dinner.” Lucca jumped up and down, then picked a disgusting cartoon-character “ice cream” pop on a stick with bubble gum for eyes. He ended up with the neon food coloring running down his hand and his chin, but that was definitely okay by me. On the trolley home he was totally happy.