Chapter 10

When we get to Alkomso’s apartment, I punch in the security code and climb the stairs. Two of her little sisters swing the door open, grab my arm, and screech, “Come in! Get in here!”

The house smells of roasted goat and almond milk and garlic. Sometimes I think Alkomso’s home smells weird, but she thinks my house smells weird, too. Like feet, she says.

“Hullo,” yells Alkomso’s mother from the kitchen of the small apartment. She says something to the little girls in Somali that makes them back up and pout. Abdisalom pops out from behind a couch, and my little brothers are off like hounds after a rabbit.

“Hi, Hamdi!” I say. That’s Alkomso’s mother’s name.

Alkomso waves a notebook at me. “Did you see Mr. Flores on TV last night? I started a story about a science teacher who hates fracking and a lady lawyer who represents Kloche’s. They fall in love. It’s very tragic and very romantic.”

Hamdi raises the spatula she’s using for cooking. “You stop thinking about boys all the time, and put that story away! Get to work on the STEM project!”

The baby, Kaltumo, wails in a bassinet Hamdi has placed in the kitchen, where she’s cooking. I lean over and grab the baby’s tiny fist. I stroke her hand.

“What’s the matter with her?” I ask Hamdi.

“I don’t know. All she does is cry.” Hamdi doesn’t appear nervous or worried. She simply pats the baby’s belly and coos something else I don’t understand. The baby smiles, but then, as soon as Hamdi returns to her kitchen work, starts crying again.

“I’ll hold her,” I offer.

Hamdi waves her hand. “Sure, sure. You hold her.”

I lift Kaltumo to my chest. She immediately stops crying and reaches for my lips. I put my nose to her hair and sniff. I love the scent of babies: curdled milk and baby powder. Matti smelled just this way. My eyes well up. I give Kaltumo a kiss on the cheek and lay her back in the bassinet and give her the edge of her blanket to hold. She puts it to her mouth and starts sucking.

Alkomso sets up a laptop on a card table.

“Where did you get this computer?” I ask.

“The library!” she says. “You can borrow all kinds of technology from there.” Sometimes I don’t know why I don’t think about things like that. Alkomso’s family doesn’t have much money, either, but they always seem to be able to outsmart being poor.

She clicks around and opens up a document called “What Is Fracking?” She says, “My project is so confusing. Lots of people think fracking is good because it brings jobs, but there are lots and lots of people who say that it poisons the air and water.”

“I wonder why Mr. Flores didn’t tell us what he really thought about fracking,” I say.

“Too political!” Hamdi shouts from the kitchen.

“Quit eavesdropping, Mom!” Alkomso scolds. Then she leans close to me. “Mom said that Mr. Flores is in big trouble with the school board already. She said that Mrs. Peterson is working overtime to get him fired.”

I pull on a strand of my hair. “That would be terrible. He’s the best science teacher ever.”

“I know,” says Alkomso. “What’s your project? Have you decided? If you haven’t, you can be my partner.”

“No,” I snap.

She tilts her head.

“I mean…” I take a breath. “I mean, thanks for offering, but I’ll figure out my own project.”

“Are you still mad at me about what I said in class?”

“No. I’m not mad about that. I just… I just think that if I do my own project and get a good score, maybe Grandpa will leave Toivo and us alone.”

“Your grandpa just needs to give it up. Maybe he should get a girlfriend and think about something else.”

I laugh. And I feel relieved. I don’t want to have a fight with Alkomso. Especially now that Mark-Richard is gone and I’m not sure when he’ll be back. I don’t want to lose another friend.

When Alkomso and her family first came to Colter, I wasn’t her friend. I can still picture her on her first day at our school. I can still see her brown eyes scanning the classroom. She checked each face for a hint of a friend.

When she looked at me, I met her hope with a stony glare. Those were the days when I was trying hard to fit in with Margot and her friends. I was one of the girls who used to snicker about Alkomso’s clothes, especially her scarves. I was one of the girls who used to pretend she had “germs.”

At recess time, I would sit under the big tree with Margot and the rest. We’d scoff at Maura’s socks. We’d laugh about the hair on Bernice’s arms. We’d say Letitia had lice. We made fun of everyone for anything.

I never felt safe around them. Every morning my stomach roiled. My forehead singed. I would lie on my pillow and feel behind my ear, where I knew my hair was changing. The gray hairs grew stiff and wiry. Every morning I wondered if this would be the day Margot would notice.

One day I was surprised to see Mom waiting for me outside my classroom door after school with Hamdi, who was waiting for Alkomso. One of my so-called friends elbowed me and said, “Look at that old lady with a new baby. Gross!” Because after Mom had Matti, her tummy hung over her jeans like a mushroom cap, and she didn’t color her hair, so most of her head was silver.

I walked right past my mom and pretended she wasn’t mine. Mom watched me, understanding exactly what I was doing.

I didn’t really like myself for a long time after that.

I didn’t like saying nasty things about the other girls. I didn’t like talking about cute boys all the time. I didn’t really have the slightest interest in jewelry or nail art. I always knew that if I made one mistake, Margot and her friends would turn on me.

Which they did.

About a month after Mom and Matti died, the girls stopped talking to me. I would try to sit with them beneath the tree, and they would purposefully create a circle with their knees and not let me in it.

They would pretend they couldn’t see or hear me.

They would say things like, “I understand her mom died, but now she’s just trying to get attention.”

And “She must like that her mom died, because now all the teachers give her extra time to get her homework done.”

And “She doesn’t have to pretend to be so sad about her little brother. He was just a baby. She hardly had time to even know him.”

What’s really embarrassing is that I was still frantic to be their friend, and so I kept trying. I think I was scared of any more change.

Then one day, during reading class, Alkomso helped me out. I had lost my reading book. I just sat there when the teacher said to get it out. Alkomso scraped her whole desk and then her chair right next to mine. It was super noisy, but she didn’t care. Then she pulled out her reading book, set it on the crack between our desks, and opened it.

When Mom died, Alkomso became the kind of friend to me that I should have been to her.

I’m embarrassed about all that now. I can’t take it back, but I wish I could.

I flip through a few pages of her book while the little kids throw pillows at one another.

“The drawings in here make fracking look very neat and orderly,” I say.

“I know! Look at all the green grass around the drills. And all the shiny trucks and hard hats.”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Um, do you think it really looks like that?”

She leans over my shoulders and stares down at a drawing with a pond labeled WASTEWATER. It’s shiny and blue. “Yeah,” she says. “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I say. All the kids in the apartment are making a racket.

“Quiet down!” Hamdi says. “Kaltumo needs her nap.”

I slap the book shut. “Let’s take the boys for a walk. Get them out of your mom’s way for a while.”

“Yeah,” Alkomso agrees.

I whisper, “Maybe we can go see where those trucks are going, do some research for your project.”

She nods.

Hamdi would have a heart attack if she knew we were taking the boys out that far, so we just tell her and the boys we’re going sledding.

Once we get outside, Mikko kicks snow on Alexi and Abdisalom. They get mad and yell and carry on like a bunch of hooligans.

As we’re walking past the American Legion bar, I notice an old Dodge truck, two-tone white and blue, with a crooked snowplow attached to the front. On the bumper there’s a sticker that reads NO FRACKING!

That’s definitely Horace Millner’s old truck, the one that drove Mom and Matti upside down into the ditch. But the sticker is brand-new.

It’s confusing, knowing that Millner and I are on the same side.

I slow way down and try to see through the dark windows. At first all I can see are the neon lights of beer signs. But then I fix my gaze on a man hunched over a coffee cup at the end of the bar. He’s all alone.

“What are you looking at?” Alkomso asks.

“Nothing. I’m not looking at anything.”

She steps up to the window and presses her nose against it. “Who is that?”

“No one,” I say.

“Is that him? The one who—”

I tug her arm. “Let’s go.”

She walks along beside me. My head spins with thoughts. Does the sticker mean that Millner isn’t going to sell his land? But even if he doesn’t, Toivo said the county can simply take it if they want to. I’ve never seen Millner’s truck at the bar before. Is he thinking today about what he did to my mom and brother? Is he going to drink his guilt away? But I didn’t see a bottle or glass of beer.

“Looked like he was just drinking coffee, right?” I ask Alkomso.

She nods.

“Sometimes I used to wonder about how he dealt with it,” I say. I kick a stone out ahead of me. “Not that I feel sorry for him or anything. But I wondered if he drank a lot or something.” I almost add like Toivo, but I don’t.

“Adults do all kinds of dumb things to handle problems. But drinking coffee doesn’t seem like a dumb way to do it.” She stuffs her hands in her pockets. “My mom sneaks cigarettes. Don’t tell my dad!”

My mouth forms a big O. “Wow, I had no idea.”

“Adults can be sneaky,” she adds. “Very sneaky.”

The boys push and shove one another out ahead of us.

“Move it, fatty,” Abdisalom says to Alkomso.

She points back at the apartment. “You do that again, and you are going home! Got it?” Abdisalom giggles but nods.

“Move it, fatty,” Alexi says to me.

I glare at him. I feel a little sorry for myself. It’s a tough-enough day the way it is, without my annoying little brothers. I wish Toivo had offered to take them partridge hunting with him. I understand the need to be alone, especially out in the wild, especially on a day like today. But I could use a break, too.