I skulk around the library for a while, hoping to run into Jake, trying not to look too obvious. Both computers are busy. So I settle down with the Architectural Digest.
I’m wondering who looks after the fancy fountain in front of Rod Stewart’s mansion when someone nudges my foot. I try to quash the jolt of pleasure when I see Jake. “We meet again,” he says.
“Hi.”
“How’s things?”
“Good.” Now that he’s here, I can’t think of a single thing to say.
“I thought you might show up,” Jake says.
“You did?” To distract myself from the heat rising in my face, I check the front of his jacket. “No ferret?”
“Bandit’s at home with a cold.”
“You kidding me?”
He grins. “You could say.” He holds out a plastic bag. “Libraries are one thing. But I can’t take him into the grocery store. Anyway. He needs his sleep. Ferrets are supposed to be nocturnal, though he can’t tell time. But I’m headed home now. You could come and visit. I know he misses you.”
“Right.”
“Actually, he hardly knows you. So why not come and get better acquainted?” He’s the one blushing now. I like how it brightens his pale face. He looks toward the computers. “Or maybe you’re waiting your turn.”
“I’m good.”
He leans forward. “My mom’s home. You’ll be quite safe.”
“Oh. I know. I mean…”
“I have kettle corn.” He shakes the bag.
“Well…can we stop somewhere on the way?”
“Sure. What do you need to do?”
I show him the ticket. “My mom says it’s a winner. Thought I could check this out.” I shrug, as if it’s a totally normal thing to do. As if it really doesn’t matter to me.
Before he can answer, my phone rings. “Hello.”
“Good morning, pet. How are you? Your mom there?”
“She’s at home. In our room. I’m at the library.”
“Ah, yes.”
Jake pokes me in the back. “You can’t use that in here.” He points at the librarian watching us.
Outside, I lean against a huge cement planter that has been used as an ashtray.
“Everything okay there?” asks Grand.
I watch Jake through the window. “It’s good.”
“And your mom?”
“She’s okay. What are you up to today?”
“Tidying up. Got Scrabble club here tonight.”
He and I play sometimes. Mom too. But she makes up her own rules. And is a sore loser—no surprise there. “We haven’t played for ages,” I tell him.
He must hear the longing in my voice. “I miss you too, pet. But I’m glad things are okay. I worry. You know I do. You haven’t even told me where you are.” I hear him scrabbling for paper and pen.
“The Lion Motel. Richmond. I don’t know the street.”
“Richmond?” There’s a pause. “She didn’t go far this time.”
Close enough for you to come and pick us up, I want to say. To take us home. “I’ll get her to call you later.” I swallow hard. “I miss you, Grand.”
“Me too, pet. Me too.”
He worries. I know he does. But not enough to take us in.
I’m shaking my head at the phone when Jake joins me outside. “You all right?”
“Fine.” I’m not about to explain that I’m almost homeless with a crazy mother while my grandfather is worrying but not doing anything about it only a few miles away. I avoid looking at him and scan the area instead. “So. Which way to your house?”
“I thought you wanted to check that ticket.”
“It can wait. Probably not worth the bother.” All I want right now is to feel Bandit curled around my neck, sliding down my chest, warming my heart.
We go for a few blocks without talking before Jake breaks the awkward silence. “So tell me one good thing. From when you were a kid.” He swings the bag at his side.
“Why?”
“Think of it as an icebreaker. It’s something Dad asks when he gets home from a buying trip. To tell him three good things. Start with one.”
One good thing? I watch a garbage truck thunder past, scraps of paper fluttering in the air in its wake. “Okay.” I take a deep breath. “I’m left-handed, right? I had so much trouble cutting, Mom got me a special pair of scissors.” Heavens knows where, or how she even noticed. “And some newspaper.” The memory is pulling me along. “First I cut big pieces. Then smaller and smaller ones. We were outside on the balcony.” In the middle of the night? I remember this detail, but I don’t mention it to Jake.
“I cut and cut. And soon there were flakes of paper everywhere. Like snow. It must have been windy out there. Mom grabbed some scissors and paper too. And we went crazy. Cutting. Laughing. Waving our arms around to make the paper snow fly.”
Jake starts telling me how his dad once woke him in the middle of a snowy night to go tobogganing. But I’m hardly listening. Cutting paper is normal. But in the middle of night? On an apartment balcony? Laughing and littering.
That’s something only crazy people would do.
Then another memory sneaks up on me, one I’m not about to share with anyone. When I was little, Mom would slip notes or pictures under my pillow. There’s a lovely dream waiting for you, she would say. Go to sleep, and it will find its way into your head.
What kid wouldn’t stay awake worrying about little figures worming their way into her skull? But what also kept me from falling asleep was knowing that as soon as I opened my eyes, Mom would demand to know what I had dreamed. If I couldn’t remember, she would get mad. And if I made something up, she would tell me I was lying. Either way, she would reach under my pillow, grab the paper and tear it into little pieces.
I had no business stealing her dreams, she said. They were too good for me.
Tucking a dream under a kid’s pillow is a nice thing to do. But getting mad when she doesn’t dream what you want her to?
One good thing does not always lead to another, I want to tell Jake. But then I would have to explain what I mean. And I hardly know myself.