Chapter 5

Sometimes, when Alder was the saddest, he would wait until his mom was distracted, and then he would move a kitchen chair across the room and up against the bookshelf, and he would very carefully lift Mort down. Walking quickly but quietly, Alder would take the stuffed opossum to his room, shut his door for privacy, and hold him.

This was exactly what Alder did when he got home from the first day of sixth grade, following the second bus ride of the day in which he didn’t sit next to Marcus —not because he was sitting next to someone else but because Marcus wasn’t on the bus at all, but rather off on a run with the cross-country club. His mother had left a note saying that she was at an exercise class and would be home soon, so when Alder found himself alone, he went to the kitchen for a chair and climbed up to retrieve the opossum.

Holding Mort, Alder sat on his bed, on the quilt that was still rumpled from last night’s sleep. Out the front window, he could see the sad, nearly flat stump, all that was left of the walnut tree. Alder didn’t like to look at the stump. Gently, he placed one hand on the opossum’s back. The fur felt comfortably soft, softer than it looked.

Mort’s feet were affixed to a smoothly polished, asymmetrical piece of driftwood. He stood as if at alert, his belly raised up from the wood, his four legs spread heroically apart. His mouth tilted upward in a mysterious smile, not unlike the smile of the Mona Lisa, which Alder had seen pictures of in his history textbook at school.

Unlike the Mona Lisa, Mort’s teeth were exposed by his smile—not all of them, but a few sharp top teeth. A tiny tip of his pink tongue stuck out just a bit, but Alder didn’t think the tongue was real. Maybe it was made of plastic, or rubber.

Mort’s coat was mottled brown and black and cream. His front legs were covered in short dark fur, and the back legs were hairier, the same mixture of long, multicolored fur as his body. Mort’s face, around his pink nose and black whiskers, was white, except for a darker patch between his eyes that extended up between his black rounded ears and over the back of his head, joining with the mottled fur of the rest of his coat. His toes were pink and hairless. His tail, curved perpetually in a C shape that veered to the left, was dark at the base and then yellowish-white to the tip, not unlike the tail of a rat, only bigger.

Except for the fact that he was perpetually attached to a piece of wood and the fact that he was perfectly still—not really dead, since he couldn’t rot and didn’t smell, but definitely not alive, either, in spite of the fact that he stood on his feet and his eyes were open—Mort looked exactly as Alder expected any opossum would look.

And Alder knew it was a little weird that he liked to hold the opossum, which was why he did it so infrequently, and why he closed his bedroom door. Still, he did like it. It made him feel . . . a little more solid, somehow, the way Mort was made more solid by his base of driftwood.

He sat in his bedroom with Mort on his lap for a good long while. He waited until he heard Mom get home and run a bath, which she did sometimes after an exercise class. Soon after that he stood up and headed to the living room to return Mort to his rightful place well before he figured Mom would be done washing up.

But maybe he misjudged the time and spent too long in his room, or maybe Mom had just taken an unusually short bath, because when Alder and Mort emerged from his bedroom, it was to find Mom sitting on the pink couch, waiting.

The kitchen chair was right where Alder had left it, up against the bookshelf. Alder climbed atop it, carefully put Mort back where he belonged, and then climbed down again.

“Hey, buddy,” Mom said, and she patted the spot beside her.

It was weird, Alder thought, that he could both want to do something and not want to do something at exactly the same time, the way he both wanted to and didn’t want to sit next to his mom. There must be a word for that, he thought. Maybe he would ask Mr. Rivera.

He did go over to the couch and sit next to his mom, but not quite as close as where she had patted. Even so, she wrapped one arm around him and pulled him toward her, and after a moment’s resistance, Alder rested his cheek on the fabric of his mom’s white T-shirt, on her shoulder. Her hair, still damp, tickled the back of his neck.

They sat there together for a few minutes, not talking. The big front window was orange and bright with the setting sun; without the foliage of the walnut tree to filter the sun’s rays, it looked almost like the whole thing was trying to get inside, to be with Alder and his mom. It was so brightly beautiful that Alder had to close his eyes against it, but even then he could see the brightness through the closed lids of his eyes, he could feel its warmth on his face, magnified through the window glass.

But eventually, the sun slipped away. Alder could tell when the light behind his eyes grew dimmer, when the warmth on his skin faded, and then he opened his eyes.

Mom squeezed him once more and kissed his head. “I love you, kiddo,” she said.

“I love you, too,” Alder mumbled, pulling away.

Mom stood up, ran her hands down the front of her jeans. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.”

Dinner was chili, already simmering in the slow cooker, but Mom said it could wait. She grabbed her purse and her keys from the counter and headed for the car. Alder followed.

“Where are we going?” he asked, slamming into the back seat.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Mom said, “and tonight seems like just the right night to do it.”

“Do what?” Alder felt his heart thumping with excitement. Every now and then, his mom surprised him with some wild thing, like a weekend trip to the San Diego Zoo last spring, or that time a year ago when she’d driven him and Marcus to an orchard for apple picking one day after school, followed by big mugs of steaming cider.

“You’ll see,” Mom said, and she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror and grinned. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s a good surprise.”

Alder wasn’t worried. Mom’s surprises were always good. And thinking about what the good surprise could be filled him with bubbles, bubbles that rose and burst and popped, taking up all the room that had been filled with sadness, before, and embarrassment about being caught with Mort.

It was just dark enough for their headlights to glow in front of them, and their light swept the road in front of the car as Mom drove up Rollingwood Drive to the corner and took a right. Then, at the main intersection, she headed left.

What was in this direction? Alder tried to remember. There was the grocery store; maybe they were going for ice cream. But that didn’t seem to be nearly a big enough surprise for the way his mom was acting.

There was the roller rink. That could be it, Alder supposed. Maybe they were going roller skating. If that was the surprise, Alder would be disappointed, though he promised himself that he wouldn’t let Mom know it was a disappointment, since she was such a fan of roller skating.

But, to his relief, they drove right past the roller rink.

Then Mom put on the left blinker and waited for traffic to clear so that she could pull into a shopping center. Alder craned his neck to see what shops were in the center: there was a coffee shop, and a dry cleaner’s, and a yoga studio . . .

And a pet store.

Mom pulled her car up in front of the store and parked it. She turned around and grinned. “What do you think?” she said. “Want to meet some kittens?”

The big glass door of the pet shop had a sign affixed to it:

CAT ADOPTION FAIR ALL WEEK!

“I saw the sign earlier, when I was picking up the dry cleaning,” Mom said, as the glass doors slid open to reveal a brightly lit store stocked with aisles of pet care products, a section to the left for dog stuff, a section to the right for cat supplies. “And I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but . . .” Mom cleared her throat before continuing, “Well, you’re a sixth grader now. You’re old enough for some responsibility, don’t you think?”

“I almost killed the fern,” Alder admitted, hesitant to remind his mom of that fact in case she changed her mind, but compelled to be truthful anyway.

“Oh, that,” she said. “Plants are hard to keep alive. They don’t meow at you when they’re thirsty.”

That was an excellent point.

“Also,” Alder said, “I’m older now.” And he headed to the kitten adoption area.

“Much older,” Mom agreed, following behind.

The kittens were together in a hexagon-shaped enclosure, an olive-skinned young woman standing nearby. She wore her dark hair in a long braid, and she had two badges affixed to her yellow blouse, one that read “Volunteer” and another that read “Rosa.” When Alder leaned into the enclosure to get a closer look at the kittens, she said in a friendly voice, “Hi! Are you thinking about adopting today?”

“Yes,” Mom said, and that made it seem 100 percent real. Alder grinned up at the young woman, and she grinned back.

“They’re all sweethearts,” she told him. “Would you like to go inside with them?”

“Can I?” Alder asked, and the young woman answered by unlatching the small gate and pulling it open.

He walked through quickly so none of the kittens—there were five of them—could escape, and then he folded his legs and sat down on the ground.

Three of the kittens came over to him right away: a black kitten with a thick black tail held up proudly like a paintbrush and two orange-and-white-striped kittens that looked like they could be twins.

The other two kittens, a gray one and a calico, didn’t look all that interested in meeting Alder; one was asleep on a cushion, and the other was seriously concentrated on a dish of kibble.

The two orange kittens and the black one clambered up on his legs, mewing and purring and butting his hands with their heads. Alder laughed at how cute they were.

“They sure like you,” the young woman said, and Alder looked up to see Mom smiling down at him.

He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could ask, Mom said, “Only one, Alder,” and she sounded like she meant it.

In the end, Alder chose the smaller of the two orange kittens. Of the three that had approached him, this one, he figured, was the one who most needed a home. Maybe she was small because the other kittens pushed her out of the way and took most of the kibble; maybe, back home, she’d get nice and fat if she didn’t have to compete for food.

The young woman put the small orange kitten in a cardboard carrier; it had air holes poked in it, so Alder knew his kitten was fine, but even so, he wished he could just take her out and carry her in his arms.

He held the box while his mom shopped for the essentials—food and a litter box and litter—and he filled out as much information as he could on the adoption paperwork. His name, Alder Madigan, their address, 15 Rollingwood Drive, his mom’s phone number.

There was a line near the top that read “Name of Pet.” Thinking of the plant back home, Alder wrote, in firm, clear letters, “Fern.”

“That’s a great name,” the young woman said. “I’m sure you’ll give Fern a very good home.”

Mom returned from shopping for kitten supplies and signed the adoption paperwork, smiling when she saw what Alder had named the kitten. “And don’t worry,” the lady said. “I’ll bet someone will be in any day now to adopt her brother.”

“Her brother? The other orange one?”

She nodded. “They were found together, in a dumpster. Littermates.”

“Oh,” Alder said, and his joy felt punctured now, at the thought of separating Fern from her brother. He looked up to his mom, wondering if this news—that the two orange kittens were siblings—might sway her decision to take home just a single kitten.

But no. “I’m sure he’ll find a wonderful home,” Mom said. “I’m sure they all will.”

And so Alder had no choice but to pick up the cardboard carrier with Fern inside and follow Mom back toward the car.

Fern’s brother, he told himself, buckling into the back seat and cradling the box on his lap, holding it carefully as his mom turned on the headlights and backed out of the parking space, would be just fine.