The Decoding of Lana Morris (27 page)

Miss Hekkity’s eyes are bright. “I didn’t mean just you by yourself. That’s why I mentioned the seven rooms.”

Lana stares at her. “This wouldn’t be a good thing to joke about.”

Miss Hekkity lets out a laugh, the same young-sounding laugh Lana remembers from her first visit. “No,” she says. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”

Then Miss Hekkity pushes up the sleeve of her sweater and checks her watch. “Well, let me make some calls and we’ll see where we stand,” she says. She glances down at the street, where the older deputy stands talking to one of the plump gardening women, still wearing her knee pads. “Why don’t you see if Carl will come up here,” Miss Hekkity says, “then you can join your friends at the park and help keep them out of trouble till we know something. How would that be?”

Lana says that would be fine, and she means it because then she can get right down to the car and see what’s on the last sheet of sketch paper. Because what Tilly has drawn will tell her something about what happens next.

T
he note under the windshield wiper of the Monte Carlo says,

Lana pulls open the back door to the car. The leather box sits on the backseat, and the flap is open, but the last sheet of paper isn’t there. Lana gets in and looks everywhere, frantically, but it’s not there.

The park.

Maybe Tilly took it with her to the park.

Almost before she’s completed the thought, Lana’s jogging in that direction, but as she nears the park, she slows to a walk. Chet has borrowed what looks like a kick-ball and in a wide section of shady grass he’s set up two trash cans as goalposts—the spread is wide—and the
Snicks are trying to kick the ball past him and between the trash cans. Again and again he dives at the ball and misses, and each time it draws gleeful shouts and laughs from the Snicks. It reminds Lana of something Whit might’ve done, the good Inside Whit, the Whit who wasn’t.

A ball rolls Lana’s way and she kicks it neatly back. “Glad to see you’re letting them score,” she says to Chet, and Chet, sprawled on the ground, says, “Who says I’m letting them?”

He calls a time-out and walks over to Lana, with the Snicks not far behind. Lana gives Tilly a close once-over: she isn’t holding the sketch paper, but she has pockets. Tilly always has pockets.

“Did someone draw on my sketch paper?” Lana says once they’re collected, and all the Snicks go quiet and turn as one to Tilly.

“Me,” she says without a trace of remorse. In fact, her face brims with pleasure. “You bet I did!”

The Snicks look from Tilly to Lana, waiting to see what happens next. Hoping for some real fireworks.

But Lana just nods. “Can I see it?”

Tilly works it out of one of her front-leg pockets and hands it folded to Lana.

Lana holds it for a second, feeling its scant weight in her hand, wondering how something so slight can mean so much, and then she unfolds it.

Spreads it open before her.

On the page Tilly has drawn a large circle, with a cluster of small circles drawn inside the larger one. The lines are loose and fluid. What they’re meant to suggest is hard to say.

Lana stares at it and keeps staring.

The smaller circles, she notices, are slightly elongated, almost oblong.

Finally Chet speaks. “Tilly says it’s a drawing of something in particular, but she won’t say what.”

Suddenly Lana is through looking at the drawing. She raises her eyes from it and turns to Tilly, who is smiling and staring right back at her. “Guess!” Tilly says.

But Lana doesn’t have to guess.

She knows, and with this knowledge a kind of liquid warmth spreads through her. “It’s a nest,” she says. “A nest with eggs in it.”

Tilly’s smile cracks wider and her head begins to bob up and down. She seems about to explode with sheer pleasure. “Yes!” she says. “Yes yes yes.”

Lana looks again at the drawing. She won’t put it in a pocket or store it in a box. She’ll smooth it and frame it and hang it wherever she lives so she can always remember the day that divided her life from grim to good. “It’s perfect,” Lana says, because it is, and then she’s grinning at Tilly. “You’re perfect.”

Tilly falls into her arms. The others pull close, too, even Garth, though he keeps his inches. Only Chet stands clearly to the side.

And then Lana notices something in the drawing.

“There are five eggs,” she says. “How come five?”

Tilly is beaming again. “It’s me, ’Lito, Garth, Alfred, and you!”

Chet gives Lana a droll look. “You’re an honorary Snick,” he says.

And Lana, looking at Chet, already feeling the first hint of missing him, thinks that the nest is one egg short.

T
here is just one more thing.

After the Snicks walk off single file, Tilly in the lead, to investigate the bandstand and gazebo at the center of the park, Lana tells Chet about Miss Hekkity’s idea.

Quietly Chet says, “Is there any chance of this actually happening?”

Lana thinks of Tilly’s drawing. One nest, five eggs. “Maybe,” she says.

Chet is silent for a second or two, then he makes a smile and says, “Well, this is good. This is very good.” He says it like he wants to mean it, but Lana can see that just below his wanting to be happy for her is a low-grade sadness of his own.

“You’ll get a new and improved Snick House,” he says. “One with no Veronica in it.”

Lana nods. “That would be good.”

“And no Whit,” Chet says, letting his eyes settle on hers.

“That would also be good,” Lana says. This feels true to her, down-to-the-bones true. She looks off toward Miss Hekkity’s house, then back at Chet.

“You know the part I don’t like, though?”

He shakes his head, and she says, “The part about your
not being next door.” She smiles at him. “I liked being part of Conversations with the Long-leggedy Neighbor Girl.”

She wants him to say he could do Conversations with the Long-leggedy Girl in the Next County Over or something like that, but that’s not what he says. He just says, “That’s all right.”

They’re quiet for a few seconds, then a small smile appears on Chet’s face, and Lana follows his eyes to the gazebo in the center of the park, where Carlito, Alfred, and Garth are pretending to play band instruments while Tilly performs some kind of cheer.

“What’s Alfred supposed to be playing?” Chet asks.

Lana gives it her best guess. “Trombone, I think.”

A second or two go by, then Chet says, “They’re really something.”

“Yeah, they are.” She turns back to Chet. “We should make them honorary Chetteroids and Chetteristas.”

“Why honorary?” He grins. “I say, give them full privileges.”

Behind Chet, a black-and-white police cruiser wheels onto the street and heads their way. When it pulls up to the curb, the older deputy gets out, and so does Miss Hekkity. They stand by the car and wait.

Lana looks at the boy in front of her.

He is sad, he is semi-handsome, and he is Chet.

“Quick,” Lana says, “do you have a pencil?”

He does. She turns away from him and pulls from her back pocket the piece of paper containing his wish. Next to
Lana
, she adds
& Chet
and draws a quick fluid circle around both names. Then she folds the paper back up and turns around.

She hooks a finger through his belt loop, tugs him
forward, and slides the folded paper into his front pocket. “You’ve got to promise you won’t read that till you get home.”

He stares wonderingly at her. Behind him, the older deputy has begun walking their way. Miss Hekkity waits still by the police car. Even from this distance, what you might notice first are the red shoes. She looks small, but she stands at ease with herself, relaxed. The news she bears cannot be all bad.

Lana looks again at Chet. “Promise?”

“Promise,” he says, but he still looks confused, so she kisses him on the mouth, once, like she means it, like she has never kissed anyone, because she wants Chet to feel just a fraction of what Tilly felt when she drew her nest and what Lana is feeling right now, which is the pleasure, the pure and gratifying pleasure, of a wish well made.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance and inspiration of Laura Orcutt, Lilly Sabel, and the consumers of The Arc of San Diego, who know how to make a good pure wish. Thanks also to Joan Slattery, Allison Wortche, and George Nicholson: first and keenest readers, always.