Livvie Owen Lived Here (19 page)

“You made a friend, Livvie,” she said happily. “I'll have to give her mother a call.”

The bus chugged us through six more stoplights and swung left onto Crab Orchard Drive, the back way in to the old Walmart, the one that wasn't as big. Though my friend was gone, I still stayed stuck to the window, unable to turn away. Houses slipped past by the creek and I liked to watch them with their friendly faces. One had pink-and-yellow curtains in checkers. Another had moons cut into the shutters. That one waved at me like the trailer park had done, and I waved back shyly.

“Who you waving at, bug?” Tash asked. When I didn't know how to answer, she lifted her hand and waved, too. “Hi, house!”

“Hi, house!” I echoed. “Hi, house, hi!”

“Hi, house!” Tash began to giggle and we waved together at the house as it slipped out of sight.

We had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch at the diner, and drank milk out of mugs that felt like they
were made out of mud. My parents laughed back and forth over our heads and Tash taught me a finger play about a church and a steeple and all the people inside.

The day was long, much longer than a tired four-year-old could manage, and I fell asleep on the bus heading home. I woke as the bus chugged onto Pendleton Street. It must have been six, because the mill whistle blew, attaching itself to the memory of the perfect day I'd had. Forever, the whistle would conjure up bus rides and grilled cheese sandwiches, mugs as smooth as mud and the house with the moons in the shutters.

Simon carried me off the bus and put me on my feet and I tensed, still sleepy and not sure where we were.

“It's okay, Livvie,” Simon told me, and he showed me on the mailbox, where curly letters danced among pastel flowers. “We're back home, see? Simon, Karen, Tash, and Livvie Owen live here.” I traced the letters with my fingers for a moment.

Then Simon steered me inside and sat me at the table while Karen lit the fire in the firebox. I heard the soft clicking and smelled the gas. It was the first cold night in Nabor that year and Karen hadn't lied. We were all right.

Even though none of my classmates liked hugging, I felt the need to hug them when they offered to help me throw a party for Tash on Monday.

I attacked Michael first. Hugging Michael was like hugging Lanie's book bag with all the pens and pencils. He was all sharp points. He squirmed free and straightened the collar of his polo. He was less concerned with hugging than with the idea that there might still be snakes in the science lab at Tash's new school, and if there were, could she send him a picture.

Bristol came next. Even though she didn't like me, she liked Tash so much that, when I told her Tash was switching to the high school in Neighbor-with-an-E, she put her blue sweater on over all her warm colors. I hugged Bristol more for Bristol
than for me, because that's what you're supposed to do when someone's sad. But Bristol was only sad for a minute before she started hollering orders to Robert, who was pulling chairs into the kitchen so there would be enough for the party. Hollering orders always made Bristol wear warm colors again, and off came the sweater after a moment.

G hugged me six or seven times, till I thought my ribs would crack. I kept telling her it wasn't me who was leaving, it was Tash, but she kept on hugging me, anyway. When I asked her why, she slapped a picture onto her Velcro of a beaming cartoon face with its stick hands clasped over its heart. Relief.

“Me, too,” I admitted. “Livvie's re—I'm relieved, too.”

When I first told G about moving to Neighbor-with-an-E, at the end of last week, she got this look on her face like maybe she wanted to dig out her picture of a cartoon frownie face. But I was beaming so big, I couldn't figure out why. She looked at me without saying anything for so long that I backed up a step and started rocking on my heels. My beam got less bright.

When she finally put the frownie face on the Velcro, it had a picture of me in front of it and I knew it was a question:
Won't you be sad?

That got me started wondering if I
would
be sad
to leave Nabor High School, and once I started thinking about that, I couldn't think about anything else. I asked Simon when I got home that day whether G could come with me to Neighbor-with-an-E, and whether I was really going to have to leave Mrs. Rhodes right when I finally found Mrs. Rhodes.

Simon put the half-empty saltshaker he was about to pack down on the table and let the old newspaper he was wrapping it in drift back down into the box. He looked me square in the eyes, and even though that usually made me squirm, this time I met his gaze steady and waited.

“Absolutely not,” he said without hesitation. “You're not switching schools, Liv, unless you want to. We'll get your principal to agree to it at your next meeting, and I'll drive you to Nabor High just like I used to drive Lanie to Neighbor-with-an-E. Problem solved.” He dusted his hands as if there was an imaginary problem he was dusting away, though all there actually was was salt.

That was when relief happened. It was only later I realized that he just said me. Not Tash.

I spent most of the week refusing to think about it, because I wasn't sure what to think. But on our last morning living in Nabor-with-an-A, I blurted out the whole story to Mrs. Rhodes. And Mrs. Rhodes, of course, helped me find a way to manage things.

“Cream cheese makes a good chip dip for a party,” she announced, banging things out of the cabinet. “That sister of yours, we'd better tell her good-bye before she rushes off to greener pastures.”

“There's no pastures at Tash's new school, there's just a parking lot and it has eighty-eight parking spaces,” Michael informed her. “I went there for summer school and they had snakes in the science lab. Do you think they still have snakes in the science lab? The black snake ate a
Mus musculus.
That's the proper name for a mouse.”

“Well, Tash is leaving us for greener parking lots, then,” Mrs. Rhodes allowed. Then, “Michael, sometimes it's best not to tell a girl if her new school has too many snakes.”

We tricked Tash into coming to her surprise going-away party by sending her a note from Mrs. Rhodes that was written in Official Teacher Language. Bristol read it aloud to us before she and Mr. Raldy went to deliver it.

“Please send Natasha Owen to Mrs. Rhodes's classroom at your con—at—”

“—At your convenience,” Mr. Raldy said, with what I was pretty sure was a hint of a smile, and the two of them went off together. Mr. Raldy was more interested in doing things around the classroom now that Otis Andrews seemed to be threatening to
take his job. Otis had arrived as a volunteer at the end of last week and did not appear interested in leaving any time soon.

While the note was being delivered, the rest of us scrambled to make the classroom right. Michael busied himself hanging pictures of snakes, since he couldn't think of anything prettier to look at. G helped Mrs. Otis get the chips and the cups out on the table. Even Robert helped, thrilled by the privilege of standing on a chair long enough to hang the banner he and Bristol had written in marker on giant paper:

WE
'
LL MISS YOU, TASH
!

Otis Andrews had read it out loud to me while he and Peyton drew swirls and sparkles around the letters, Otis sliding the paper under Peyton's marker while Peyton squealed with delight at the colors. Peyton hadn't stopped gazing at our new volunteer since his arrival. She got so excited making the banner that she moved her chin and her chair followed Robert all the way to the wall to hang her artwork. Now that the banner was hanging, she was watching Otis Andrews spin his Frisbee on his finger. She kept looking at me and back at the Frisbee, like,
Are you seeing this?

I ventured closer and touched just the very end of her soft hair. “I see it, Peyton. It's very cool.”

The door banged open and I spun from Peyton to find Tash, sandwiched between Bristol and Mr. Raldy, with her eyes going from the banner to me and back to the banner again.

“What did you do?” she asked with sparkly eyes like she wanted to cry, but maybe not in a bad way. Used to be, when Tash came to my classroom, she said, “What did you do?” and it meant
What trouble are you in?

I looked around at my classmates, the ones I didn't used to feel at home with. Michael had never stopped darting around the classroom, pressing pictures of snakes onto the wall with Scotch tape. It was beginning to look like we were living in a jungle or the snake room at the zoo. Bristol and Robert and Peyton were all beaming at their banner, while G laid out napkins at the place settings in the kitchen.

“I didn't do anything,” I admitted. This time it was true. “I only told them you were leaving and the rest is their fault.”

Tash laughed and hugged me. Then hugged each of my classmates in thanks, just as I had done.

Funny thing, though. They
let
her hug them. It made me want to hug them all again, but I figured they'd had enough hugs forced out of them for one day.

We settled at the table with Tash right at the corner by the sink, the corner that was usually mine. I scooted my chair down carefully to make room for my sister, and she let me heap her plate with chips and a giant spoonful of cream cheese. Tash ate more chips than anybody, which made me think maybe she felt happy, like when I ate too much popcorn because movies were fun.

“Are you happy you're leaving?” I asked her while she helped Mrs. Rhodes clean the plates off the table. It struck me as wrong that she should help clean up the plates when the party was for her in the first place, so I took them from her and finished. I noticed the look she and Mrs. Rhodes exchanged.

“Liv, I really am,” Tash said in answer to my question. Then she added quickly, before my feelings could get hurt, “I'll miss seeing you at school, though. It'll be different only seeing you at home.”

I thought of the looks she'd had on her face the few times she did see me at school. Embarrassed. Uncertain. Sad.

“I think I'm happy, too,” I told her. “I like how happy looks on you best.”

She hugged me closer than all the others, and whispered something in my hair. I stepped back so
I could hear it and she met my gaze with a wide smile.

“Thanks. You're a good sister, Livvie.”

Bright orange streaks worked their way up from the sunset by the time we reached the trailer to finish packing. Gray Cat firmly protested the idea of being packed, but I tricked her into her carrier with catnip and latched the door securely behind her.

“I'll take her,” Natasha said, urging Lanie out the door in front of her. They had been in the middle of a heated argument that had a lot of smiles in it, for an argument. Natasha shouldered the strap of Gray Cat's duffel carrier and edged her out the door. “I know you have stuff to do!” she added over her shoulder.

But Lanie looped around, shouting, “Wait!” She began banging about the kitchen, checking cupboards to see that they were empty, so I figured I had a few moments before I had to finish up. Galloping out the door behind Natasha, I cut through the side yard and plunked myself on the ground next to Orange Cat's grave.

“I made you a memorial,” I said. “It's on Pendleton Street, where we lived way back when. I'll come visit you there, okay?”

No one answered and the air stayed still, but I think maybe the sunset got oranger for a moment.

“I love you, too,” I promised.

Lanie came banging out of the house, startling me into action. With a last kiss blown toward Orange Cat's grave, I galloped back into the house. I heard car doors slamming outside. Karen and Simon were trying to convince one last pillow to fit in the trunk, as Lanie and Natasha slid into the backseat, elbowing each other for a spot, but leaving space enough for me.

I closed all the doors in the house and locked all the windows, then ran each faucet one last time as if I could wash away the last of us. In this manner, I paced around the house, completing each of my leaving rituals with reverence. There were things that had to be done to make a house not ours anymore. It seemed so foreign, each time we moved, that this was the last time my hand would turn this hot water faucet with the missing H, that I would never again peer through the gathered dust of this particular window. It made sense to spend just a minute with each of these house parts I would never see again.

At last, all my rituals were completed except one, and I was ready. I even had the pen. It felt heavy with importance in my hand.

But I stood a moment, waiting. I wasn't sure for what until it happened. The whistle blew at exactly six o'clock, so quiet I knew I was the only one who could hear it. Just as it did, my eyes caught something purple on the kitchen counter, rolled halfway up under the microwave.

Stepping closer, I picked up my sister's purple pen. Then let my eyes wander to the white wall behind it. Something was written there in purple, and I knew all the words, but my brain took a moment before it pieced them all together.

Lanie Owen Lived Here,
the wall said.

I smiled at my little sister's message for a moment while my throat closed up with an emotion I knew I wouldn't find on a flash card. At last, without writing anything, I dropped the pens on the counter for the next kid. As the whistle faded, I ran for the door, picking up speed as I hit the top step. In the car, my family waited. It was just after six and past time to head home.