As soon as they carried Delia’s recliner inside, the General deserted his wheelchair, scuffed over to it, and took possession.
Socko thought he looked like a scrawny king seated in the overstuffed chair—and he acted like one too. “It’s hot as blazes in here,” he proclaimed. “Crank up the AC.”
“I’m the one paying the electric bill!” said Delia. Shaking her head, she turned on the air-conditioner as commanded.
Socko didn’t like his mother doing heavy lifting, but it took both of them to get everything inside.
“Table over there,” the General ordered. “Chair over here. And while you’re up and around, lower the thermostat.”
Although the house was turning into a walk-in freezer, the sweat stains under Delia’s arms were as big as dinner plates by the time they brought in the couch.
“Over there.” The General waved toward a distant wall.
Delia dropped her end of the couch with a groan and fell onto it.
“You okay?” Socko asked.
“None of this broke-down junk is worth dying over,” observed the General. “Fini-kaput, every last bit of it.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s still gotta get moved,” Delia puffed.
Socko put a hand on the shoulder of her damp T-shirt. “I’ll get the rest.”
“I’ll be,” the General remarked, watching Socko carry his folded metal and canvas bed into the house. “It’s a goll-durn army cot.”
“Your room’s the first one on the left,” Delia called as Socko carried his bed up the stairs.
He reached into his new room, felt for the switch, and flipped it. Light flooded the huge white cavern. “Whoa!” he whispered. He crossed the floor, his footsteps muffled by the oatmeal colored carpet, and set the cot down in the middle of the room. It seemed to float in a sea of nothing.
After he’d carried the rest of his stuff up the stairs, Socko took a look at everything he owned. It had seemed like a lot when it was crowded into his skinny corner of the living room, but in a room this big, three milk crates of clothes, a backpack, a stop sign with a bullet hole through the O, and a skateboard didn’t add up to much.
He wondered what the kids who lived in the houses around here had in their rooms.
He flipped the switch in each of the other three bedrooms and tried to decide which one would be Damien’s.
Not the one with its own bathroom. That one would probably be the General’s. He knew from the way old guys at the Kludge sometimes used the stairwell like it was a bathroom that people the General’s age needed easy access to a toilet.
The second-biggest room would be Delia’s. That left the third empty bedroom, which was smaller than his—but Damien was smaller too, so it would work fine. Plus, the room was right next to his. They could signal through the wall, no problem.
In a place this big, the General wouldn’t even notice Damien.
“He smells,” Socko whispered, putting plates and dented pots in the kitchen cupboard.
“Of course he smells. He’s past his pull date.” Delia slid a stack of plates to the back of a shelf.
“And what about the names he calls us? Sacko and Delia Marie?” His mother’s middle name was Ann.
“Still, he’s family. He’ll grow on us.”
“Like mold,” Socko whispered back.
“He’s family,” she repeated. “And just look at what we have because of him!” She pointed out the side-by-side washer and dryer in the laundry room off the kitchen. “No more going down to the basement.”
Socko had to admit the washer and dryer were pretty sweet. He was the one who had always done the laundry in the basement. He wouldn’t miss the musty damp that made his chest tight or the stress of listening for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, wondering who was about to catch him alone in a soundproof room.
“And how about this?” Delia slapped the humongous refrigerator, an extra she had bargained hard for. It was so big that, with the shelves out, Socko could have climbed inside.
He was emptying the zip-up cooler that contained the contents of their old refrigerator into the new one when he noticed something.
Or the absence of something.
Unlike the fridge at the Kludge, which panted like an old dog, this one was absolutely silent.
He listened harder, straining to hear something, but the silence didn’t stop at the refrigerator. There was no beep beep of trucks backing up in the street, no one yelling in the apartment below, no gut-thud bass from a car stereo, no wheeze when the temporarily working elevator door opened.
Trying to bring the old place back in his mind, he closed his eyes, but the silence of the new house wrapped around him like cotton. When he opened his eyes again it got worse. What he could see was a kind of silence too: the white interior of the refrigerator, the white kitchen walls and ceiling, and the inky square of sky in the window.
Missing the neon flicker of Donatelli’s sign, he walked to the window. Up close, the simple black square was flecked with dots of light. His forehead pressed the glass. He had always wanted to see a starry sky someplace other than TV. But now, gazing into a sea of stars, he felt like he was falling up. Suddenly he didn’t know where he was. Or who he was. Or what he was.
His heart was racing in a panic of not-knowing when a voice he barely recognized broke the silence. “Sacko? Sacko! Hustle me up some grub. My belly button is shaking hands with my backbone.”