Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy (12 page)

Did I?

“Do you like being blond?” I mumbled, thinking more about the food that had gone into hiding than what I was saying.

“Blond isn't bad. I may try redhead next. You and your mom have beautiful hair.”

I stopped pawing and turned around to face her. “You talked to Mom?”

“I tried.” She gave me a rueful smile. “She kept grabbing my hands and telling me she had a piano.”

“The one in her wrist.” My stomach felt funny. “Yeah. I got to hear about that too.”

“She asked me to feed the mice in the basement.”

“Me too.”

Stephanie Bridges didn't seem to know what to say to any of that, and I didn't either. When Mom got sick, she talked out of her head, but sometimes she tried to tell me stuff that was important to her. The words couldn't swim through her brain fog, and I wasn't always smart enough to put the meaning together. I wished that I could. Maybe if I could understand what her crazy talk meant to her, I could help her get better faster. Mice and pianos—I just had no idea.

Stephanie Bridges came toward me, close enough to make me back up into the pantry. “Did I upset you just now, talking about your mom?”

Yes. I hate talking about Mom being sick, especially to people I don't know.

But I didn't know her well enough, so out loud I said, “No. I was just trying to figure out the mice and the piano thing. Usually Mom's obsessed with snakes. It might all mean something, or it might not.”

“Like you and your serial killers?”

I rolled my eyes better than Peavine ever thought about doing. “Ms. Perry hates me. I wrote about serial killers just to freak her out because she makes me mad, and you can't tell teachers off any other way.”

This made Stephanie Bridges go quiet for a minute. Finally, she came out with “Fair enough.”

“And don't go investigating Ms. Perry or anything,” I
said as I edged out of the pantry. “She's not abusive. She's just a—well, a not-nice person most of the time.”

“Do you ever think about hurting yourself or other people?”

“No.” I slammed the pantry door behind me. “You creep me out when you ask stuff like that.”

“Stuff about how you feel?”

“No, stuff like the doctors ask my mother. I'm not mentally ill, even if Ms. Perry would get a kick out of me going nuts.”

“I can see why those questions would make you angry, then,” Steph said. “Thanks for telling me.”

Steph.
Yeah, I was giving up.

“I'm sorry,” Steph said. “I won't ask that kind of stuff anymore, if you'll promise to tell me if you ever do start having thoughts like that.”

“Fine. I promise. And for the record, I don't lie very much.”

“Y'all don't have much food, do you?”

No, because we have dinosaur mice in the basement. That, or I've been hallucinating, sleepwalking, and sleep-eating. Yay?
“We're going to the store soon.” That wasn't a lie, because we'd have to make a run to restock. Dad was going to kill me—unless he was sleep-eating too.

“Want to see the rest of the house?” I walked out of the kitchen, into the living room. My eyes darted all around, making sure I didn't see any bullets or knives or
food wrappers or dangerous stuff a DCFS worker might write down in her notebook.

Steph followed me into the living room, glanced around, then waited, like I was supposed to take her somewhere else. I walked out of the living room, back through the kitchen, and into the main hallway. First stop was my room. I had never been so glad that I'd stuffed my dirty clothes in the closet.

The pillow and blanket under the bed, though . . .

I bit my nails as Steph asked, “Why are your blinds taped to the windowsill?”

My face flushed. “Um . . . to keep them from blowing when I turn on the fan.”

A little-bitty lie. Not enough to send me to hell or foster care. At least, I didn't think so. I might be calling her Steph, but admitting I was a baby and scared of the dark—no.

The house phone rang. I almost ran to my bedside table and snatched it from the cradle. “Hello?”

Nobody answered.

“Hello?”

I heard breathing but no answer. For some stupid reason, I imagined the creep from the store wearing his plaid shirt and munching a hot dog and smiling, holding the phone to his ear and listening to me. It freaked me out. I looked at the caller ID.
OUT OF AREA
.

Steph took the phone from me and listened. She said,
“Hello?” then checked the caller ID herself and hung up. “Just somebody breathing. Does that happen a lot?”

“No. First time.”

A car pulled into the drive, a red Toyota. It was Peavine, Angel, and Ms. Jones. They got out, and Ms. Jones opened the trunk and started handing out cloth grocery bags. She had been to the store. Bless her. And blessing somebody is different from blessing their heart. I would never bless Ms. Jones's heart, because she never did anything dumb except when she rooted for Ole Miss to win college football games against my team, Tennessee, where Dad and Mom went to school.

“Food,” I said as brightly as I could, given that I was pretty sure a serial killer had just called my house and breathed through my phone.

Steph smiled when she saw Ms. Jones lugging the groceries toward the door, with Angel just as loaded down and Peavine swinging one bag against each crutch. “Come on,” she told me. “Let me see the rest of the place so I can get out of the way and let y'all cook dinner.”

Steph and I rushed through Dad and Mom's room and the guest room and my bathroom and theirs, and the guest bathroom. Dad and I kept house pretty well, so stuff seemed clean to me, and nothing looked hazardous, in my opinion. Steph said she liked Mom's taste in decorating and the way Mom used light greens and golds and mirrors to brighten even the dark corners.

I hadn't ever thought about that. Who knew my mom was a good decorator? All I knew was, there was stuff I could touch and stuff I was supposed to leave alone. For the most part, I kept to my bedroom and my parents' room, my bathroom, and the kitchen. Other than that, I went outside, but I didn't say that to Steph. What if she thought
outside
without grown-ups was too dangerous?

When I took her to the basement, she poked her
head in the little bedroom with no windows but didn't turn on the light. After that, she looked at Dad's weights and then the pool table. I winced when I saw brownie wrappers poking out of one of the pool table pockets. A half-eaten peanut-butter sandwich rested on a napkin on the table under the wall rack, and the trash can beside the table was stuffed with juice cartons.

My face went from flush to burn as Steph hunted around the basement, revealing two more of our little trash cans crammed with food wrappers, like Dad and I never took out the garbage. Why had I brought the food down here to eat it in my sleep? My hands went to my stomach. I expected it to be double-size, but it wasn't.

My fingers twitched because I wanted to start cleaning up, but then I might have had to explain why the mess was there, and I couldn't, and I didn't want to say anything about sleepwalking and sleep-eating, because then I might say something about brain tumors and hallucinating and going crazy. I felt dizzy and realized I was breathing shallow and fast, way high in my throat. I relaxed, like the YouTube video had taught me.

Steph didn't mention the mess. She went to the back door instead, unlocked it, opened it, and looked out through the glass storm door. “There's a snake on the pond. Yuck.”

“The muddy water draws them,” I said, a little squeaky, like an overstuffed mouse. “Snakes love it when you can't
see them coming.” I walked over and stood beside her long enough to be sure I wasn't lying when I said, “Yep, it's a copperhead. Sorry you took the guns yet?”

“No.” She stepped back from the storm door and pushed the main door closed, so we couldn't see the snake. “Do you still have my card?”

“Yes.” Whoops. I just added a lie to my list.

“Let me see your phone.”

Guilty, I took my phone out of my pocket and handed it to her.

She punched buttons, then handed it back. “There. Now I'm on your contact list. You can call me if you need me, just like Captain Armstrong.”

“Thank you,” I said, and felt surprised, because I actually meant that.

Upstairs, Peavine and Angel and Ms. Jones started clattering around in the kitchen. I wanted to go upstairs with them, but Steph stopped me by holding up one finger.

“Just a sec. I have one more question, Footer. Please try to be honest, and please try not to get mad, okay?”

I didn't say anything, because every time in my life that a grown-up had told me not to get mad, I hadn't gotten mad. I'd gotten furious. All my muscles tensed before she said a word, and I couldn't stop myself from already feeling a little ticked off.

Steph's expression stayed neutral, and she kept her
voice low as she asked, “Do you think your mother had anything to do with the fire at the Abrams farm?”

Panic flooded me so fast, I almost whimpered. I don't know how I managed to stand still with my heart thundering and my guts twitching, but I did. I even kept looking Steph in the eyes without blinking. I focused on her fake hair and worked hard to remember how much I hadn't liked her when I met her at school. I definitely didn't hate her now, not as much, so that made lying to her more of a problem. But she didn't know anything. She couldn't know anything about the barrette or my hallucinations, because I hadn't told her, and Peavine wouldn't tell my secrets, and nobody else knew, except maybe Angel, and Angel didn't speak to strangers at all, except to quote the Constitution and books about alien mutant rock eaters.

Stay steady. Sound calm.
“No. I don't think my mom had anything to do with that fire.”

I thought about throwing a fit about how people always assumed Mom did bad stuff because she was mentally ill, but that would have been pushing it.

Because she might have done something.

No.

But . . .

Stop.

I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn't start talking to myself out loud in front of Steph, even though I really wanted to.

She studied me without moving while I counted.
One, two, three, four.

Her brown eyes narrowed.

Five, six, seven, eight, nine.

“Footer, would you tell me if you thought your mother did have something to do with the fire?”

No.
“Sure.” I didn't even breathe after I told that whopper, and I absolutely wouldn't let myself think about how much bad luck I had piled on my head since Steph walked through the front door today.

“Okay,” she said at last, but her sad expression said something completely different.

Bless your heart, Footer Davis. I don't believe you for a minute.

My definition of “best friend”: The person who understands that some things just have to be done and does them with you, without arguing, even if you're scared of the dark and might be going crazy, and even if he doesn't know if you're a flower or a rock.