“Leni! Hang on a minute.”
I break into a trot. But within seconds Jake overtakes me. He runs backward down the driveway, facing me. “Why did you leave like that?”
“Like I said. I’m allergic to chocolate. Just being in the same room with it, I could go into antiseptic shock.” I read about it on Wikipedia a few days ago. “My tongue would swell. I wouldn’t be able to breathe—”
“Garbage!”
“I am allergic. To chocolate and celery and tapioca pudding. And red peppers and pineapple on pizza—”
“It’s anaphylactic shock, by the way,” Jake interrupts. “Not antiseptic.” He turns to walk alongside me. “And I’m allergic to raisins and egg whites and squid and cheese that’s been aged more than ten years and red M&M’s.”
“Now you’re full of it,” I tell him.
“So why did you leave in such a hurry?” He sits down on the bench at a bus stop to tie his runners. It’s a miracle he didn’t trip running backward like he did. “Dinner wasn’t that bad, was it?” Jake asks. “Steph noticed we forgot to put out the cheese. Is that why you left? Because there was no parmesan for your pasta? Or maybe you’re allergic to that too.”
I can’t help but smile.
He grins back. Then he gets serious. “Are you going to tell me?”
I look back toward his house. “You have no idea, do you?”
He frowns. “Idea about what?”
“About my life.”
He shrugs. “What about it?
“Our spaghetti comes out of a tin or in a little frozen package. Right now we’re staying in one room in a motel. Who knows where we’ll be this time next week. I haven’t been to school since…I don’t know. Maybe four years? The last time I sat at a kitchen table to eat was at my grandfather’s. I don’t know how long ago. Mom talked back to the tv news the whole time. Grand ended up taking his dinner into the garage just to get some peace.”
Jake is watching me carefully. “What are you saying?”
“That happy family stuff? Back there?” I nod toward his house. “You take it all for granted. Everyone around the table together. A nice meal. Chatty conversation. Parents who don’t wig out every time someone cuts them off in the car or doesn’t wrap their sub the right way.”
Jake stands up and puts his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—”
“Why should you? It’s not your life. It’s my life. Always on the run. With a crazy mother and no money and no idea when it is all going to change. Or end. Knowing that if it does end, it won’t end well.”
“What about your grandfather? Can’t he help?”
“He worries. He really does.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
Jake doesn’t get it. And, really, why should he?
“If he worries, it means he cares,” Jake says.
“Sure, he cares.” It’s true. I know that. “But he’s not about to do anything about it.” I slump onto the bench.
I haven’t done anything either. I could have begged, pleaded, insisted that he take care of us. What have I been waiting for? For Mom to figure out what a mess she—we—have made of things?
There’s not much chance of that happening.
Jake plucks at my arm. “Come on. The bus is coming.”
“I’m not taking the bus.”
“It’s cold. Come on. Let’s take a ride.”
“Where are we going?”
He pulls his chin back to his chest as if I’ve said the stupidest thing ever. “Is there somewhere else you need to be right now?”
So we ride the bus, and I tell him everything, or as much as I have the stomach to tell. The more I tell him, the quieter he gets. He does not look out of the window once while I tell him about Mom’s pills and her moods and all the things she has been afraid of and all the reasons she gives me for moving from one place to the next and how hard it is to never make a friend.
I don’t know the last time I ever told anyone this. If I ever have.
I tell him about the room we rented with the damp creeping up the wall. And the motel with so much dog hair in the carpet I could weave my fingers in it and pull it away in hanks. And the landlord I punched when he squeezed me against the wall in the hall one day to feel me up.
The more I talk, the more intently he listens.
“Doesn’t sound like any fun.” His voice is quiet.
He could say what a rotten mother Mom is. Then I’d have to defend her.
He could ask what we live on. And I would have to explain that if we didn’t use Grand’s address, we’d not even get welfare.
He could tell me that a diet of subway sandwiches and donuts is not good for a person. And I could ask him how anyone can eat decently with no way to cook real food.
But he only asks, “Do you think this is the way it will always be?”
I swallow hard. Put one hand in my pocket and finger the little piece of paper. “Mom figures that lottery ticket is the answer to everything. As if. It’s just another of her crazy delusions.”
When Jake puts an arm around my shoulders, I let myself lean against him. “It sounds awful,” he says. He smells of straw and wood chippings and ferret. Of all those creatures he takes care of.
I lean against him for as long as I dare. When I pull away, he leaves his arm draped lightly over my shoulder. “Can’t your grandfather help at all?” he asks.
“I told you. He worries. But it’s just words.”
“Someone has to be the grownup. Take care of things,” says Jake. “It shouldn’t have to be you.”
I’ve thought that a hundred times, but it sounds different coming from someone else. “You’re right.” I hear how quiet my voice is. So I say it louder. “I know. You’re right.” I stand, push past Jake and head down the bus aisle.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to call my grandfather.”
Jake holds my hand as we wait for the bus to stop. Then we jump down onto the sidewalk.
I pull my phone out of my pocket, flip it open, then close it again. “I need to call Grand.” I look around. “But not here. I should go back to our room.”
“Where are you staying?” he asks. “You didn’t say.”
“The Lion Motel.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Jeez.”
“What?”
He looks at his feet. “Nothing. It’s just…well, I hear it’s—”
“A dive?”
“Okay. A dive. I’ve heard all kinds of stuff. I’ll walk you.”
“You go home.” I may have told him everything. Or most of it. But that didn’t mean I wanted him to see Mom asleep in our grimy room with the Shopping Channel blaring in the background.
“Will you call me? Let me know what your grandfather says?”
“Sure.”
When I don’t move, he says, “You need my number.”
“Oh. Sure.”
He reels it off, and I punch it into my Contacts. Jake comes between Grand and M Dr. Three numbers are all I have in my phone. That’s one more than I had yesterday.
It’s a small thing. A good thing. “I’ll call you.”
As I head back, I catch myself practicing aloud what I will say to Grand. No one messes with a crazy person talking to themselves in the dark.
But I shut my mouth and keep on walking.