Chapter 15

Alexi gets to ride to the hospital in the ambulance. The police call Toivo. When they can’t reach him on his phone, they ask if I know where else he might be.

“I’m not sure. Work, maybe?” I say. “Try Kloche’s.”

“Do you have anybody else we can call?” the officer asks. “A mom or an aunt? We’ll put in a call, too, to social services, so there’s someone to be with you until we find your family.”

I pull Mikko close. “Grandpa, I guess.”

Before you know it, what’s an already-crowded country road has Toivo’s white pickup, Gramps’s big diesel, and Miss Tassel’s Caprice parked nose to nose, as if they’re about to race.

All three car doors slam at the same time. All three come running toward Mikko and me.

“Where’s Alexi?” Toivo shouts.

“Is Alexi all right?” Grandpa demands.

“Are you all right?” Miss Tassel wants to know.

Mikko, scared and tired, shrinks into me and sighs. Toivo jogs ahead of Grandpa and Miss Tassel. When he gets to us, Toivo cups each of our faces and looks into our eyes.

“Thank God,” he says.

A police officer lets Toivo and Grandpa and Miss Tassel know that Alexi has been taken to the hospital. Then Grandpa and Toivo get into an argument about whose fault it is. Toivo says a swear word. He says, “If you’d keep those blankety-boom-boom pipe trucks off the road, this wouldn’t have happened!”

Grandpa says a swear word, too. “If you weren’t such a something, something loser, my grandkids would be safe and sound with me!”

This goes on for some time until an officer walks over and stands between them, saying that he’s going to arrest both of them if they don’t knock it off and that there are more important things to worry about right now.

A wooziness comes over me, and I lean into Mikko and close my eyes. Miss Tassel kneels down beside us and tells us everything is going to be fine.

“Yeah, right,” I say.

“Are we going to go to a foster home, too?” Mikko asks. “Like Gary?”

Miss Tassel doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she rubs my back, which feels awkward. When I stiffen, she stops. “Sorry.” She says she’s going to talk to Gramps, Toivo, and the police and get us home for today.

“I want Alexi,” says Mikko.

“Me, too,” I say. Up from my stomach comes a retchy slime of bile. I swallow it down. But up it comes again. This time I turn my head and puke all over the ground. Mikko jumps away.

“Gross!” he shouts. But then he comes over and holds back my hair while I puke some more.

My throat and nose burn. Behind my eyes is a ballooning pressure. I heave again.

Everyone runs over to me. An EMT asks me if I hit my head earlier. I tell her no. Toivo says, “Poor girl.” Grandpa says, “Let’s get her off the road.” Miss Tassel says she’ll take us home while Grandpa and Toivo go to the hospital to be with Alexi.

Toivo and Grandpa can’t find any way to argue with that, so that’s what happens.

Toivo helps me to Miss Tassel’s car. Grandpa carries Mikko over to it and buckles him up.

“I’ll be home soon,” says Toivo.

Beyond exhausted, I say, “I don’t care. I want my brother back with me.”

Toivo looks hurt. He closes the car door gently and speeds off to the hospital.

Late that night, long after Mikko and I are in bed, I hear Toivo return. Watching from my upstairs window, I see him carry Alexi, whose arm is in a sling, into the house. After a muffled conversation with Miss Tassel downstairs, she leaves quietly. I go back to bed.

Aside from giving him the details of what happened on the road, I give Toivo the silent treatment over the next couple of days. On top of all the unpaid bills and threats from creditors and Children’s Protective Services material lie his hiring papers. The top one reads, WELCOME TO KLOCHE INDUSTRIES, THE WORLD LEADER IN NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION!

Toivo thinks I don’t understand the constant itch of being poor, how it’s always a bug biting your back in a place you can’t reach. I do, though. Every morning, I’m the one darting my eyes over the cupboard, refrigerator, or freezer, gnawing my know-how for what to feed all of us. I don’t complain about that. So why does being poor bother him so much? So much that he’d go and work with the polluters?

I sit on the couch, pretend to be watching TV, and brush my hair over and over again.

“Fern,” he says, “I have to talk to you about something.”

I ignore him.

“Did you hear me?” he says.

I grab my hair into a ponytail down my shoulder and furiously brush the ends. “You’re the deaf one,” I mumble.

He blinks and adjusts his hearing aid. “What did you say?”

“I said, you’re the deaf one!”

He cocks his head and puts his hand on his hip. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I throw the brush onto the floor. “I saw you! I saw you at the fracking site!” I pause. And then I decide to let him have it. “At least Grandpa’s honest. You’re not! Maybe we would be better off with him.”

Toivo walks over to the television and punches the Off button. “You’re getting too big for your britches, missy.”

“Whatever,” I say.

His nostrils flare. “Fern.”

I don’t answer. I lie down on the couch and put a pillow over my face. The clean scent of freshly laundered and line-dried goodness fills my nose. Toivo must have done the laundry. So what, I tell myself. I bite the pillow to keep from screaming.

“Fern,” he says again.

“Go away,” I muffle.

Somehow Toivo hears that loud and clear. He leaves the room and goes into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opens and closes, and then a can top cracks open. Then nothing. I turn and peek out from beneath the pillow. He stands there with a beer can in his hand, staring out the window.

Go ahead. Drink it, I think.

He stands there for another minute. “That job pays fifty grand a year.” He throws the full beer can into the sink, where it lands with a tin thunk. Beer and foam spill down the drain. He pulls a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and goes outside, slamming the door behind him.

I sit up and tap my feet on the floor. A faint scent of cigarette smoke wafts from the doors and windows, which all need to be resealed. Or, better yet, replaced. For the first time, I wonder how much that costs.

As I pass the door on my way to my room, I stop and think about going out and talking to Toivo.

But I don’t. I go upstairs, take the hottest shower I can stand, and then go to my room, where I slam my door, too.

I can’t sleep. And it’s not because of the trucks—they’re not running. I lie there and make a list of all the things I have to worry about. From least important to most important. Then I think about them and shuffle them again.

The STEM fair is one thing on my mind. But it’s the least of my worries.

So is Mr. Flores, who is trying to do something about the fracking problem.

And Toivo, who’s making the fracking problem worse.

So is Alkomso, because she’s making me wonder whose side to be on.

Alexi’s wonky arm is on my mind, too, which is all my fault.

So is Mark-Richard, who didn’t do anything wrong at all but was punished.

So is Horace Millner, who I’ve been so unfair to, whose dog might die, which is also all my fault.

So is Ranger. Who I might never see again.

And the woods, which is right in the middle of it all. Which might be cut down.

And Grandpa, who, if he has his way, will make sure I never see Toivo or the woods or Ranger again anyway.

I lie facedown. My pillow is damp from my freshly washed hair. Yuck. I flip it over and put my face back down. But when I close my eyes, there’s Ranger on the road. The pool of crimson. The blood splatter, like a perfectly round rose hip, on Millner’s boot.

I go to the window and lift it open. Cold wind blasts in and whips up my hair. For a while, I stay there with my eyes closed, leaning on the windowsill, as the breeze dries my hair. The stars sparkle above. Long, dark, wispy clouds blow across a half-moon, silver and gray.

Maybe there’s this other place I don’t know about, kind of like a heaven, I guess, or a garden or a forest where all the dead people and animals are having a nice time. Maybe it’s up there in the sky. It’s a pretty simple thought or hope, but on this night that goes by so slowly, the simple thought brings me a little peace.

I run my fingers through my hair, which is dry and cold, like metal. When my eyes finally get heavy, I lie back down in my bed and bury myself deep under the comforter.