Hope Is a Ferris Wheel (14 page)

“Well,” he said, “not everyone likes Emily Dickinson, I guess. Don't worry about it, because you don't want them in your club anyway. They'd just bring the whole thing down, don't you think?”

It wasn't quite the answer I was hoping for. I still wanted more people to join, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings. And it was probably very good advice for a fifth-grader who actually had friends.

He smiled at me, and I was glad I hadn't said anything, because when he smiled, that whole Ferris wheel came to a screeching halt. Both my feet were on the ground, and I realized that this whole time I'd been a little scared—scared that he would be exactly how Mom said he was. Deadbeat, uncaring, not even able to remember our names or birthdays, busy with more important things like his new wife.

Then Winter said, “I'm pregnant.”

And his smile evaporated. “Pregnant?” he half whispered. “How?”

“You're pregnant?” I said. Her stomach didn't look any bigger than usual. She looked tiny in the glow of the fire, smaller than Mom after she'd talked to the landlord.

Then he asked her, “What are you going to do?”

It was not at all the reaction Mom would have had. Mom would've screamed, then shrunk down to half her size. “How could you be so stupid?” she'd say. No, not that, because that's what she'd said after Winter's principal called her, and this was an even bigger deal.

I didn't know what Mom would do if she found out.

Winter was still looking at the fire, but her eyes were flat. The fire reflected in them, but she wasn't seeing anything. “I dunno,” she said, in answer to Robert's question.

“Have you told anybody?”

“Yeah. You.”

He stood up, his hand around Winter's arm. “Come here. Let's go talk about this … somewhere else.” He said the last two words with his head turned my way. Maybe he thought I was too young to understand, but my fourth-grade teacher had told us about how girls get pregnant. And even if she hadn't, Gloria had given me a rundown the year before at a Heavenly Donuts while Mom took Winter out to buy maxi pads and new underwear.

I stayed on the couch until they left the room, closing the door behind them, and then I followed. Whatever they were saying, I needed to hear it so I could push away the worry forming between my ribs. Would Winter ever be
able to leave Sarah Borne if she was pregnant? What if she had to drop out of school completely, like Mom?

Mom said she had lost everyone when she was pregnant. Her parents, who kicked her out of their trailer, and her college friends, who stopped talking to her once she left school, and even the other people in her old trailer park, who called her horrible names and told her she had ruined her life.

All Mom had left was Gloria. But Winter didn't have anyone like Gloria.

She just had me. And what could I do?

Winter and Robert talked in low, low voices out in the hallway. Even with my ear pressed against the door, I couldn't make out what they were saying. After a minute their footsteps began thudding back toward the living room, so I raced back to my spot on the couch and straightened my skirt out.

The door opened. “Ready to go?” Winter asked.

I wasn't ready, but Winter's eyes told me that it wasn't a question. Robert, with his hand on Winter's shoulder, wasn't saying anything.

I got up and followed Winter to the door, digging my toes into the carpet so I could feel its softness one last time and remember it forever. Robert walked us to the front
door, staying in his nice, warm house while we stepped out onto the cold, wet porch.

There was still so much I wanted to say to him, about the club and about the Ferris wheel. Had he even known I was up there when he saw Winter all those years ago? But instead, I said, “Will you send me a card for my birthday?” He peered at me, so I added, in case he had forgotten, “It's in July. July ninth.”

“You want me to send you a birthday card?” He said it like the idea made no sense. Like he didn't even know what birthdays were.

“You sent Winter one,” I told him. “I can wait until I'm thirteen, if you want.”

Not one bit of confusion left his face. “Well, sure, Star. I guess I could do that. But Winter's my daughter,” he said. “That's why I sent her a birthday card.”

“But I am, too,” I said. How could he have forgotten
that
? I thought maybe Winter had scrambled up his brain when she told him she was pregnant.

“Oh, no,” he said. His eyebrows sagged. “Is that what your mother told you?”

The wind cut into my skin, sapping away all the warmth from the fire. I knew what he was saying before he said it, but I couldn't make myself speak or move. I could only
stare up at him and hope that he wouldn't say what he was about to.

“Star,” he said. “I'm not your father.”

And, piece by aching piece, the Ferris wheel fell completely apart.

I
t was a long drive back to California.

Rain cascaded down the windshield as the sky grew darker and darker, and with every bump in the road, my bag thudded against my legs. Winter kept rubbing at her eyes, but I didn't bother, because it wasn't like I was going to just stop crying.

After a while, though, my tears slowed, and I was able to choke out the words going around and around in my head. “Who do you think my dad is?”

“I don't know, Star,” Winter said.

“I bet Gloria knows,” I told her. “Best friends tell each other everything. I bet Mom told her.”

Winter stared silently at the road. Her hands gripped
the steering wheel tightly, like if she didn't hold on, she'd fall right out of the pickup.

I watched the droplets on the windshield, grouped together like little puddles. They'd found one another, while I had just splattered on the cement. A cold feeling of loneliness was spreading out from my chest. I wondered if Winter felt the same way.

“What are you going to do?” I asked her, because I certainly didn't know what I was going to do.

“Dad gave me—” She paused, then started again. “
Robert
gave me some money.”

“For what?”

“I don't know yet,” Winter answered, and her grip on the wheel slackened. “Anything could happen …”

But I did not think anything could happen. Hope is not a Ferris wheel, I decided at that moment, because instead of getting closer to Dad, I'd gotten farther and farther away. And unlike a Ferris wheel, which would bring me back around again, this time I was stalled at the top.

Maybe hope is a Gravitron. It looks fun at first—until you're inside, and it's spinning so fast, your head pounds. Then the ride ends, and you vomit. And when you get off the ride, you can't even walk because you're so dizzy, and nothing looks right anymore.

“Star,” Winter said after a while. “You have to stop crying.”
I sniffed, waiting for Winter to put her arm around my shoulders or tell me that things would get better. “Mom will know something's wrong if you go into the trailer crying. We saw the redwoods today, remember?” She tightened her fingers around the steering wheel, her knuckles turning white. “That's all we did.”

I checked my bag to see if I'd packed any tissues, but there were none. Just Eddie's big red book and all my starred school papers. For a few miles I thought about saving them. Maybe someday I would meet my real dad, and I could show them to him.

But I pushed that thought away, out of my head. It was all built on a bunch of hope, and I didn't have any of that left.

So after I dried my face with those papers, I ripped them into confetti.

T
he trailer was heavy with the smell of hamburger. It hit me all at once when we walked in, and I wanted to gag. No wonder Winter was a vegetarian.

“Hi, girls,” Mom said. She stood by the stove, stirring a pot, her apron strings dangling at her sides. “I'm making spaghetti sauce. But, Winter, there's a couple cans of tomato soup in the cupboard if you want that instead.”

“I'm going to take a nap,” Winter said, to me, or Mom. Or the trailer. The mattress creaked as she climbed onto her bed, and I didn't know where to go. I was lost inside the trailer. I almost took a step toward Mom, almost went over and tied her apron for her.

But I didn't.

Because what I'd realized between Oregon and California was that Mom had lied to me. She had been lying to me my whole life. She had convinced me that I wanted to be on that Ferris wheel so that I would never, ever find out that she'd lied.

“Mom,” I said.

“What, Star?” she said without turning around.

But I couldn't say anything. I wanted to pull the truth right out of her, say something mean and horrible, something that would hurt her. But I couldn't, because then Mom would know that we hadn't gone to see the redwoods. My throat burned, having to swallow those words.

“What, Star?” Mom said again.

“Nothing,” I said. That word came so quickly and easily, but it left a bitter, battery-like taste in my mouth. “I'm … not hungry.” These words came easily, too, and I knew Mom would be a little hurt that she'd spent so much time making a delicious spaghetti sauce that her daughter did not want to eat.

But it was a very little hurt compared to what I felt.

I
spent all Sunday with a headache, a headache that didn't actually hurt. My head just throbbed with the memory of Robert's house and how close I'd been to having a dad before it all fell away. Now I was back to having nothing—not even a PS at the end of a birthday card.

And Winter was back to not talking to anyone, and now that included me, too. Not that I could have talked to her about anything I needed to, since Mom was always in the trailer. Still, I wasn't sure if Winter had stopped talking to me because she was sad about being pregnant or because now she knew I was only her
half
sister. Which doesn't make sense, because I didn't feel any different about Winter, except maybe sadder because I'm
not fully related to my favorite person in the world.

But thinking about how much Denny hates his half brother, I wondered if maybe Winter felt differently now, too.

It seemed that way when she breezed out of the trailer Monday morning without a word or even a look.

While I shoveled soggy cereal into my mouth, and Mom and Gloria talked over donuts, I decided that I did not want to go to school. I did not want to sit at my desk or talk to anyone or watch Mr. Savage scratch his beard. I didn't want to pretend that I still cared about the Emily Dickinson Club.

So I told Mom I didn't feel well.

“Do you have a fever?”

“No.”

“Does your stomach hurt?”

“No.”

“Then go get dressed.”

I stuffed my high-tops into my backpack along with all the papers and binders and books that I wasn't even sure why I had anymore, and I left. I took a very small detour on the way to school, to a dead-end street with only two houses on it, one of which was for sale. It took me about ten tries, but I finally managed to throw the high-tops so that they wrapped around a telephone wire.