Found Things (9 page)

Chapter 14

I lay awake almost the
whole night, first looking at the ceiling, then looking at the wall, then out the window, and then at Meadow Lark, who sighed every so often in her sleep.

Ever since she come to school two weeks ago, strange things started happening. First we met at the river, then we found that pretty white feather, we wished for Daniel Bunch to go away, then Daniel Bunch got sick, we found Mr. Tricks and brought him here, and then he disappeared. I knew there was something different, extraordinary, about Meadow Lark, but no one else noticed that until tonight when she tore that roll. Mama recognized it too. Or maybe Mama only wished she had.

Thoughts like that kept me awake most of that night. In the dark, your mind can talk you into believing lots of things that you would laugh about during the day. I was a breath away from convincing myself that Meadow Lark was more than an ordinary girl, when she turned over and did a little snore and then her stomach gurgled, and I was assured that she was a very ordinary girl, just like me.

I knew Mama was fine, because Daddy was with her. I heard him talking to her after he say good night to me and Meadow Lark. I couldn't hear the words, but his voice stretched like a kitten reaching for a warm patch. Though my ears strained to hear Mama's voice, she never spoke.

This never would have happened if Theron were still here. If he were still here, Daniel wouldn't talk to me the way he did, I probably wouldn't have become friends with Meadow Lark, and then she wouldn't have come to stay with us. That's how time works—one thing happens and leads to another and then another, all in order like pearls on a string. But if the string breaks, the pearls fall off and roll around and what happened next and why get all mixed up. And it's really hard to string them again in the same order, especially if some have rolled away.

There was a string that stretched between the day Theron left and this night when I lay awake, and all the pearls had fallen to the floor. If I were to put them back, what order would I string them?

Theron leaves us. Theron and Daddy argue. Theron say he's going away and never coming back, and don't bother looking for him. Theron leaves us. Theron crashes the car into the river. Theron gets drunk—so they say. Theron gives Daniel a ride home. Theron leaves us. Theron meets up with his friends. I start talking funny. Mama sees something when she looks at Meadow Lark. Theron leaves us.

The pearl I kept picking up was the Theron-leaves-us one, but I never want that pearl. If that one rolled away, time from that night when Theron crashed the car to this night would look very different. How I wished Theron hadn't left.

Sometime that night, Meadow Lark got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She come back after a while. But then I must have fallen asleep, and here's what made that a strange night—the next time I looked over at her bed, it was empty, and I heard a noise.

“Meadow Lark?” I say softly, but she didn't answer.

I heard the noise again—a soft thud, like a drawer closing somewhere outside our bedroom.

I got up and walked out to the hall, and listened. I heard the noise again. It come from Theron's room.

His door was ajar, so I pushed it open. “Meadow Lark?” I say again.

There she was, standing in front of his bureau and staring at herself as if she didn't hear me. The moonlight through the window wove through her nightgown and hair, which was all puffed out from sleeping. The sight of her made me shiver.

Is this what Mama saw?
I wondered.
Some kind of ghost?

“Meadow Lark, are you awake?” I asked, and when she still didn't answer me, I decided she was sleepwalking again. “Let's go back to our room. It's the middle of the night.”

“Mr. Tricks,” she say. “Where is he?” she asked.

She turned to me, and in the moonlight her eye looked wide and confused. Scared, I stepped back.

“Do you know where he is?” she asked.

“No, I don't,” I say, as if she could be awake. “But this is Theron's room, and he's not in here.”

“But I looked everywhere else for him. Someone let him go.”

Oh no—not Mama again,
I thought, my heart thumping.

“Did you let him go?”

“No, I didn't. Did you?” I asked, waving my hand in front of her face. “Are you just pretending?” I asked. “Are you really awake? Because this isn't funny, Meadow Lark.”

“Did you take him down to the river?” she asked me. “Everything ends up in the river.”

“Let's talk about this tomorrow, okay?” I say. Seeing her in the moonlight like that gave me goose bumps. I had to get her back to our room without waking her up, so I circled my arms to herd her toward the door.

To my surprise, Meadow Lark walked out of the room. I looked around once more to make sure everything was the way it was supposed to be. Theron's sweatshirt hung over the doorknob to his closet, and his sneakers lay crossways on his rug, and the picture of Shawna sat on the bureau, right next to his trophy . . . but his trophy was gone!

“Meadow Lark, did you . . . ,” I started to ask, but decided to wait until the morning, when she was awake.

She was in bed when I got back to our room, with her eyes closed, looking fast asleep as if she had never gotten up. I sat on my bed for a few minutes and watched her.

After a few minutes I lay down, shivering over what had happened. She was so attached to Mr. Tricks that she thought about him even while she slept. He followed her around and ate carrots from her finger, and she puckered her lips to him. Of course she missed him.

Meadow Lark's bed creaked. I tensed, ready to peel back my covers and settle her back down. But she just rolled over onto her side. Soon her breathing sounded soft and smooth, and I knew she would stay there for the rest of the night.

I counted to a hundred, until I was sure she wouldn't get out of bed again, and then I got the flashlight from my bureau drawer and tiptoed back to Theron's room to look for his trophy.

I looked on his bureau and on his desk. In his closet, on every shelf and behind the hanging clothes. On the bed, on the bookshelf, behind the door, in every drawer in his room, and under his bed and his night table. I looked until I was sadly assured that his trophy was not in his room.

With his trophy missing, a piece of Theron had gone too. And now, the world felt off, twisted, and spun away from its orbit. I feared that one after another, pieces of him would disappear, taking Theron with them, until one day he would be gone from us completely and forever. And then one morning the sun wouldn't rise.

I went back to bed, and next thing I knew it was morning, and as I woke up, I smelled rain outside. This was going to be a wet summer.

When I opened my eyes, I looked over to Meadow Lark's bed. She was quietly writing on a napkin with a red pen. She made two marks and folded the napkin into quarters, and then she slipped the napkin into her back pocket. That's when I discovered that Meadow Lark drew her own red hearts.

I closed my eyes and heard her get up and leave the room, shutting the door softly. I listened for her footsteps down the stairs, and then got out of bed and slid open her bottom drawer. There I saw a handful of white paper napkins, the kind Mama keeps in the napkin holder on the table, next to a few sheets of thin paper with typewriting on them—the letters from her daddy. Maybe Theron's trophy was in there too, I thought, and rummaged around. But it wasn't there.

As I closed the drawer, I become aware of two things: the smell of maple-cured bacon and a sound I hadn't heard for months—Mama humming in the kitchen.

I raced down to the kitchen to give Mama a big hug, and then stopped—she and Meadow Lark were there together, and Mama was humming as she twisted Meadow Lark's hair into a tight bun at the back of her head.

“There,” she say, smoothing down some loose strands. “That will keep the smell out of your hair.”

“Thanks,” Meadow Lark say. Then she picked up a fork and turned a strip of bacon in the fry pan.

“Use the tongs, or you'll burn yourself,” I say, repeating what Mama had always told me.

“She can use a fork if she wants to,” Mama say, and went back to humming.

“Why are you doing that, Mama?” I asked.

Mama opened a cupboard door. “Doing what?”

“Humming. You haven't done that since—”

“Can't I hum?”

I looked at Mama and then at Meadow Lark, and I didn't like what I saw. “No, it make my bones itch.”

“It
makes
your bones itch, River,” Mama say, with that purple-plum look on her face.

“And Meadow Lark, you have to stop walking in your sleep.
And
—” I was just about to tell her she had to stay out of Theron's room, but I stopped myself because Mama would be upset to hear that.

Meadow Lark turned another piece of bacon in the fry pan. “I was sleepwalking?” she asked. “When?”

“Last night. You don't remember?”

“You have to be careful on the stairs,” Mama say. “We can put up a railing so you don't fall.”

“I don't remember that,” Meadow Lark say to me. “What did I do?”

Just then the bacon spit out of the pan. “Ouch!” she cried, and touched her arm.

“Oh, dear. I'll get you something for that,” Mama say, and left the kitchen.

While Mama was in the bathroom, I whispered to Meadow Lark, “You were in Theron's room last night.”

“I was? I don't remember that at all.” She turned back to the fry pan.

“Theron's trophy isn't in his room. Do you know where it is? Did you take it?”

Mama come back with some cooling ointment and a bandage. “Show me where it hurts,” she say, and fixed up Meadow Lark's arm. I waited the whole time for Meadow Lark to answer my question.

When Mama was done, Meadow Lark say, “Well, I can't be responsible for what I do in my sleep.”

“No one can,” Mama say, and pat the bandage over her arm. “There, you'll feel better in no time.”

“And if I can't be responsible for what I do in my sleep,” Meadow Lark say, hitching a strand of her hair behind her ear and looking me straight in the eye, “then anything is possible.”

Chapter 15

I was in the art
room when my mind went back to that house.

Next time, try to stay longer and see what happens,
Meadow Lark had told me. Well, here I was, at the bottom of the staircase, so I started climbing it. Mint-green wallpaper with dark ferns covered the walls from the first floor to the ceiling of the second floor. Halfway up to the second floor, the staircase took a sharp turn and curled around all the way to the top.

As usual, the house was quiet. All those times I had gone there and sat in that kitchen and smelled that pantry, and walked around the dining room and run my fingers across that carved table, and pushed the keys on the adding machine, I had never seen one person.

There was no sound—no bacon sizzling or mama humming—and I wondered if anyone lived in that big, quiet house.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw a long hallway with a window at the end. A carpet like the one in the dining room, with swirls and flowers and fringe, ran the length of the hallway. In front of me was a bedroom that had a dark wood floor with marks on it, as if people had walked on it wearing sharp heels or had dragged heavy old furniture across it. The room had the same tall windows as downstairs, with long, dark curtains that blocked out the sunlight. A big poster bed, with a carved pineapple on each post, was pushed against the wall. It had a bedspread like Mama's, only pink, and when I ran my hand over it, my fingers buzzed.

The smell of lilacs filled the room, and on the tall, dark bureau was a brush with a nest of brown hairs the color of maple syrup, and a matching comb stuck in its bristles. A bottle of perfume rested on a round mirrored tray with two earrings like gold knots, and beside the tray sat a music box that looked just like mine. When I opened it, the ballerina twirled around and the box played a tune that Mama used to call “Some Enchanted Evening.”

Just like my box, this one was full of jewelry and other things. This box held three tarnished pennies, some colored pebbles, and a plastic barrette with strands of brown hair stuck in it. I also saw a copper-colored chain, a handful of earrings that didn't match, a pin that looked like an artist's easel, and another pin that sparkled.

My fingers smelled like metal, and I kept digging. In the bottom, under all those things, I found an oval locket, as small as my pinkie nail, with a picture of a baby inside. I took the locket out of the box and set it on the bureau. Then I lifted the tray.

“River?” Ms. Zucchero say, back in the art room. In an instant that house, the music, and that tiny picture of the baby vanished. For the first time since I started going to that house, I didn't want to leave it. Everything disappeared but the smell of lilacs, which lingered in the art room and tickled my nose.

“Are you all done?” she asked.

It was lunch period, and because Daniel had ruined my first collage, I had come into the art room to work on a second one.

“Almost,” I say, and noticed a bouquet of lilacs spilling over the lip of a clear vase on her desk. They replaced the pink carnations from her brother, which had wilted. I hoped the lilacs come from Mr. Sievers.

Ms. Zucchero walked over to the art table. “You did a great job of re-creating it. I'm so sorry about what Daniel did to the first one. I should have made quiet time before that happened.”

I knew she felt bad, so I shook my head. “It wasn't your fault,” I say. The only person who should have felt bad didn't.

“I'm really glad to see that you and Meadow Lark are friends. I don't know her well, but I think she needs a friend like you.”

Lately, Meadow Lark hadn't needed me at all. She and Mama seemed fine without me ever since that morning at breakfast. Now, Mama was always asking Meadow Lark if she slept well or had enough to eat or needed any help with her homework, and yesterday Mama bought a family-size bag of Cheetos.

“No one knows her very well,” I say, “her being new.”

“Like me,” Ms. Zucchero say. “So I know what it's like to be the new person.”

“Well, you have a friend who give you flowers, right?” I was afraid that might be too personal, but when she laughed, I knew it wasn't.

“The lilacs are from my landlady's garden. She let me pick as many as I wanted.”

Then Ms. Zucchero leaned closer to my collage, and I knew the personal subject was closed. “You know, this one is even better than the first,” she say.

I stared at the new collage. “Well, it took me less time to make than the first one. Maybe because I didn't have to figure it all out again the second time.”

She smiled. “Sometimes it happens that way.” Then she pointed to one of the pieces of colored glass. “That's so pretty.”

“I liked how the water made it look like a jewel.”

Then she pointed to the bald plastic baby, being careful not to touch it. The black paint that Daniel threw on the collage had soaked into the bottom part of the baby, making it look like it was wearing pants.

“Tell me the story behind this,” she say.

“Well, I don't know what kind of story there is to tell. I found it stuck between some rocks at the river. They wouldn't let it go until I picked it up.”

Ms. Zucchero slid out a stool and sat on it. “And what made you pick it up?”

In my mind I saw the little plastic baby stuck in the rocks, with the water pouring over it.

“Because it was there. Because . . . I don't know why.”

I stopped talking and shook my head, still seeing that baby in the river, and I couldn't tell her why I picked it up.

But Ms. Zucchero wouldn't accept that. “Lots of things must have been there. But why did you choose this?”

“I just liked it.” I knew that was the easy answer, and we had a reason why we put every one of those things on our collages.

But Ms. Zucchero kept asking me about that baby. “There isn't another reason?”

I remembered that baby in the water, with its little plastic arms up. “I picked it up because the water was covering it. That baby looked like it was drowning . . . and I'm afraid of the water. I didn't want to see it drown.”

Ms. Zucchero nodded and say, “I see.”

I wasn't sure Ms. Zucchero did see. She didn't come to the school until after Theron left, and she come from Virginia, where she wouldn't have known anything about him or what happened to our family since then. So I kept talking about the plastic baby. “And I picked it up because someone had lost it.”

“I think you're right, River.”

I touched the plastic baby glued to the collage. “I picked it up because it needed me to find it.”

The stool screeched on the floor as Ms. Zucchero stood up. “That's a great story, River,” she say. “I loved hearing it. One day I want to hear your story.”

“My story? I don't have one.”

“Everyone has a story,” she say, and went back to her desk.

I looked at my collage again.
Maybe when Mama sees it,
I thought,
she will twist my hair into a bun and hum beside me in the kitchen.

“Please put it on the wall with the others, so everyone can see it. Don't worry, it'll be safe.” I knew she meant because Daniel wasn't around.

I started putting away the glue and scissors and pens, thinking about how that baby needed me to find it. It wanted me to find it.

I picked up the scraps of paper and brushed the crumbs of glue and eraser into my hand, and froze, as a thought swooped down on me:

Theron needs me to find him.

“River, are you all right?”

“Yes, I'm fine.”

I thought about that as I carried the scraps to the bin, my mind racing. Even if Theron didn't want me to find him, maybe he needed me to.

Or maybe the truth was that I needed to find him. And, somehow, I would.