IN THE MORNING I asked Harvey how he’d known I’d left.
“We watch out for each other, buddy,” he said, which wasn’t an answer.
Mike said he had heard me leave. “I knew Mr. Meltzer would check on you,” he said while pulling on his earlobe. “So I woke Eli, and he told Harvey to take your place.”
“I’m the right height,” Harvey said.
I thanked them. Harvey could have been dragged to Mr. Doom along with me.
“Any time,” Harvey said.
“Where’d you go?” Mike asked.
“Just to the basement.” I told them about it. When I got to the part about the woman in the lobby, none of them thought she was dumping the kid.
“It could have been for his own good,” Harvey said.
“Yeah,” Eli said. “We don’t know why she brought him.”
“Probably he was bad,” Harvey said.
How bad could he be? He wasn’t more than three.
“Or maybe she was sick,” Alfie said.
She was dumping him. Nothing was wrong with her.
“Or he was sick,” Fred said. “And she knew we had a nurse.”
“This is the last place to go if you’re sick,” Jeff, his twin, said. “You’d freeze to death.”
Nobody said anything for a minute.
“If you go outside again,” Mike said, “could you bring back some food?”
There’d be food at Irma Lee’s party. I told them about it, and said I didn’t know how I could go with the prefects watching me so closely. Harvey said he’d pretend to be me again if I got out.
“I’ll cough till Mr. Meltzer comes and takes me to the nurse,” Alfie said.
“Can you cough whenever you want to?” I asked. Maybe it wasn’t consumption.
“Usually I cough because I have to.” He smiled. “But I guess I could just do it, buddy.”
But Alfie wasn’t able to help me. He had a real coughing fit during supper, and Mr. Meltzer took him to the nurse and didn’t bring him back. Then, while we were getting ready for bed, Mr. Meltzer started packing Alfie’s clothes and schoolbooks into his suitcase.
“Alfie died,” Mike said. He was yanking on his pajama bottoms, which were twisted and backwards.
Mr. Meltzer didn’t say anything. Finally Eli asked, “What happened to Alfie?”
“They’re sending him to another place. Fresh air, wholesome diet. He’ll come back when he’s better.”
“If he’s better,” Harvey said.
“He’ll die,” Mike said, too soft for anybody but me to hear.
“Where is he?” Eli said. “We want to say good-bye.”
“You can’t. He’s outside, in the doctor’s car.”
Eli put his pajama top on quickly. “We’re going to tell him good-bye.”
We all rushed to finish putting on our pajamas. I was ready, so I helped Mike get his pajama legs straightened out.
Forty boys—all of us elevens—marched through the HHB, followed by Mr. Meltzer, who yelled at us to go back to our room. We passed a couple of other prefects, who just stared.
As we walked, Mike kept saying that Alfie might not die if he was somewhere else, somewhere better than the HHB. I didn’t know. My friend Morty had died of consumption, but some people got well.
The doctor’s Model T was parked outside the gate. Alfie was going to get a lot of fresh air on the way to the fresh air place, because the buggy didn’t have a top. He was in the backseat, and the nurse was tucking a blanket around him. When he saw us, he poked an arm out of the blanket to wave. He didn’t look any worse than usual, and he wasn’t even coughing. I wished we could grab him and bring him back upstairs. How did we know they were really taking him to a place that could make him better? Places like that had to be expensive, and I didn’t think anybody would spend much on an orphan.
“The doctor says they have horseback riding upstate, where I’m going. But I may not—” He started coughing.
The nurse closed the door, and the car drove away. Alfie waved and coughed while we yelled good-bye and hollered that he was getting a good deal, that those horses better watch out, and that he should get fat and bring food back for the rest of us.
Later, in bed, I thought about Papa and Alfie mixed up together. I thought about how people seemed to vanish when they died. It felt as though Papa had disappeared, even though I saw him go into the ground. And now Alfie had vanished, even though he hadn’t died. Not yet, anyway. Alfie was a whole, like me, and nobody ever came to see him on Visiting Day either. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters to miss him if he died, not even a deserting rat of a brother. Well, we’d miss him. His buddies would miss him.
Then I got mad at myself for thinking of him as already dead when he’d probably be back in a few weeks with roses in his cheeks.
I rolled over and tried to fall asleep. I felt so tired, like my bones were turning to icy jelly. If Papa’s carving had been sitting on the floor five feet away from my bed I wouldn’t have been able to stand up and get it.
And then I remembered Irma Lee’s party. I had forgotten about it in the commotion over Alfie. Well, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t get out with Mr. Meltzer on duty, and I didn’t feel like trying. I was sorry I couldn’t tell her why I couldn’t come. But I wasn’t sorry I couldn’t go. The last thing I wanted was a party.
The lump in my throat was the size of an orange. I wished I could cry, but I couldn’t. It was too cold to cry anyway. My tears would freeze. I stared down at the tiled floor. I hated everything. Mike was making a racket in the next bed, and I hated him for being so noisy. I hated Danny for snoring. I hated Alfie for leaving. I hated Papa for dying. I hated myself for being an orphan, for being cold, for not being able to fall asleep.
The next thing I knew, somebody was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes. It was Mr. Meltzer.
I was terrified. There’d been a telegram. Gideon was dead. I could tell from the breathing around me that my buddies were awake. Mike was unusually still.
“What?” I whispered.
“Get dressed.”
I was right. It was a telegram.
I had trouble getting my knickers on. Finally I was dressed. I followed Mr. Meltzer out.
Solly and Bandit were in the hall.
“Tell for you your fortune?” the parrot squawked.