California Diaries # 11: Dawn III: Missing

California Diaries # 11: Dawn III: Missing. Losing. Hurt.

Ann M. Martin

For Betsy Howie

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ISBN 0-590-02389-6

Copyright © 1999 by Ann M. Martin. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.

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Late Friday night 2/5

Ah. The weekend. Here at last. I don’t know why I’m so thrilled. It’s not like

I have plans or anything. It’s just a nice break. This is such a draggy time of year.

Even in California. We don’t get all that snow and ice and slush we used to have

in Connecticut, but we’ve had endless storms and rains and

Oops. Sorry. Gracie was crying. Now I’m back. I’m baby-sitting tonight.

These are my big Friday night plans. Baby-sitting for Gracie and Jeff.

This has been the great excitement of the week: On Tuesday the

groundhog saw his shadow, so we will have six more weeks of winter. Big deal.

I can never understand how that groundhog thing works. Year after year it

mystifies me. What is that groundhog’s name? Punxatonnie Slim? (I think he

resides in Pennsylvania.) And why does seeing his shadow mean a longer

winter? If he sees his shadow, doesn’t that mean it’s a nice sunny day? And

wouldn’t that mean that we’re already enjoying an early spring? Very strange.

Oh, well. I don’t think Punxatonnie Slim’s condition in Pennsylvania has all

that much to do with California weather anyway.

Boy. Gracie is real y fussy tonight. Maybe she’s getting new teeth. I’ve

decided to keep her up with me for awhile. Now she’s on her tummy on my floor,

examining the bunnies on her blanket. She seems a lot happier, but I MUST get

her back in her crib before Dad and Carol come home. They won’t appreciate my

laid-back baby-sitting techniques. They – Yikes there’s the car.

Later Friday night 2/5

Whoa. That was close. I scooped Gracie up and ran her back to her room.

When Dad and Carol came in, they found me standing over Gracie’s crib in the

dark, talking softly to her, like I’d been trying to soothe her for hours. But I just

know that letting her get up is better for her. If I were a baby, that’s what I’d want.

Oh, well.

Dad paid me, and now he and Carol have gone to bed, so I’m the only one

up. I can’t sleep. I’m rolling that groundhog issue around in my head, which is

absolutely insane. Whenever I start mulling over something as idiotic as a

groundhog, I know something else is really bothering me. What is really

bothering me tonight?

Easy.

It’s Sunny.

We’re stil barely speaking to each other.

I AM SO MAD AT HER.

And yet she’s my friend. She’s been one of my best friends for so long. I

miss her. I miss her a lot.

I’m mad at her and I miss her.

Saturday 2/6

I’m sitting in my bedroom, looking out the window and across the yard at

Sunny’s house. It’s bad enough being mad at your best friend, but when she lives

right next door, it’s just so…uncomfortable.

I wonder if Sunny feels the way I do. Possibly, this doesn’t matter to her

just now. After all, her mother is back in the hospital. In, out, in, out, for how long?

The last year or so, at least.

I hope I never get cancer.

Sunny spends most of her time and energy not visiting her mother in the

hospital. She must have to go to great lengths to appear so busy that, day after

day, she can’t get to the hospital.

I think I’ll visit Mrs. Winslow today.

This afternoon.

Later Saturday afternoon 2/6

Oh. My. God.

Mrs. Winslow looks dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. Her hair was just

starting to grow back and then they began chemo on her again, and now it’s

coming out in brushfuls. I brought her a new scarf today so we could experiment

with styling. She tied it on her head so that just a few wispy bangs were showing.

“How should I fix these, Dawn?” she said. She was looking at her bangs in

a hand mirror and holding up a comb.

“Maybe sort of over to the side,” I suggested.

So she ran the comb through the bangs and pul ed them out. I mean, all

the bangs. Clean out of her head.

I nearly cried.

But Mrs. Winslow just held up a big pair of gold hoop earrings and said,

“Well, if I want the pirate look, it’ll work better without the bangs.” And then she

dropped her bangs into the wastebasket (on top of another clump of hair).

I forced a laugh. “The pirate look. Oh, that’s your best look.”

Mrs. Winslow set the comb and mirror aside. She put on the earrings.

“How’s Gracie?” she asked.

“Teething,” I replied.

“Oh, poor you. Poor all of you.”

“Jeff got up in the middle of the night and slept on the kitchen floor.” I told

her. “He tried the bathroom first, but the kitchen was farther away from Gracie’s

room. Anything to escape the screeching. I slept with my headphones on.”

“Smart girl,” said Mrs. Winslow.

I really wanted to ask if Sunny had been by recently, but I didn’t say

anything. I didn’t want to put Mrs. Winslow in the middle. She knows Sunny and I

aren’t speaking (much), and she feels bad about it. She also feels hurt that

Sunny visits her so rarely. But she doesn’t mention it. At least not to me. After al , Sunny is her daughter.

I tried to make myself useful. I watered Mrs. Winslow’s flowers. I tidied a

pile of newspapers and magazines and set them under the visitor’s chair. Mrs.

Winslow is lucky to have a private room, but god it’s tiny. You can barely walk

around her bed. The rest of the furniture consists of a narrow table that slides

across the bed so she can eat (which she hardly ever feels like doing), the

visitor’s chair (just one), a TV, which is bolted high up in the corner of the room

and is really hard to operate, and the wastebasket. That’s it. I tidied up in, like, 45

seconds. After that I filled the water glass and got Mrs. Winslow another blanket.

(She’s cold al the time.) By then I was starting to get nervous that Sunny might

show up after al , and I really didn’t want to run into her.

I put my jacket on. “So how long do you think you’ll be in here this time?” I

asked.

Mrs. Winslow shrugged. “I never know. Awhile, I guess.”

I nodded. Then I kissed her cheek, said good-bye, and left.

You know what? This is completely ridiculous, but every time I kiss Mrs.

Winslow this teeny, tiny part of me wonders if you can catch cancer. I know you

can’t.

And stil I wonder.

Saturday night 2/6

I love Ducky. I really do.

When I came back from the hospital, I walked by the Winslows’ house and

saw him sitting on their front porch.

“Hey, Ducky!” I cal ed.

“Hey,” he replied. He stood up.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I dropped by to see if Sunny was home. I guess she isn’t.”

I love Ducky, and Ducky loves Sunny. Deeply. Like a sister. And I love him

like a brother. Well, that’s not quite true because I do not feel the way about

Ducky that I do about Jeff. (Although maybe that’s because Ducky is sixteen and

Jeff is ten.) What I’m trying to say is that there is no boyfriend/girlfriend thing

going on between me and Ducky, or Ducky and Sunny. Ducky just loved Sunny

and me. Maggie and Amalia too. He likes to take care of his friends. He’s

especial y protective of Sunny right now.

Ducky trotted across the Winslows’ lawn.

“I was just at the hospital,” I told him.

“With Mrs. Winslow?”

“Yeah.”

“Was Sunny there?”

“Ducky.”

Ducky shrugged. “Just asking.”

I said, “A, she hardly ever goes to the hospital. And B, we still aren’t

speaking, so we certainly wouldn’t have gone to the hospital together.” I took off

my baseball cap and put it on Ducky’s head.

“I just thought you might have run into each other there.”

“Nope. Want to come over?”

“Sure.”

Ducky and I sat at our kitchen table and split a bottle of spring water. Carol

joined us for awhile. She sat down on the other side of the table and began to

breast=feed Gracie. Ducky hasn’t been to my house that often, so he doesn’t

know Dad and Carol very well. But this didn’t stop Carol. She didn’t even hesitate

before lifting up her shirt. At least she kind of rearranged herself and Gracie’s

blanket so that not TOO much of her breast showed. And Ducky barely batted an

eye. He didn’t look, and he didn’t make a big deal about not looking. He is

incredible that way.

I kept telling myself that breast-feeding is a natural bodily event.

But really. In front of my friends?

Eventually Carol and Gracie left. Ducky and I paged through The Corner

Bul etin, which is the new community newspaper. (It’s, like, 8 pages long.)

“Hey, look! Vanish is going to be playing next week. At the high school in

Verona.”

“Cool. They’re advertising now,” said Ducky.

And at that very moment, almost as if she\d overheard us, Amalia called. I

picked up the phone, heard her voice, and shrieked. “We just saw the notice

about Vanish in the newspaper!” I cried. “How come you guys are playing in

Verona?”

“Hey, we have a reputation now,” Amalia said. “People know us. The offers

are pouring in.”

We chatted for a few minutes and then hung up.

Ducky left.

I was at loose ends. I called Maggie. Ostensibly I was calling just to say hi,

but I tried to work food into the conversation. I wanted to hear Maggie say she’d

been eating like a normal person lately, or that she had gained five pounds and

needed to buy new clothes. Something. But she didn’t pick up on my cues. I

guess I was too subtle. Anyway, she’s much better these days. Dr. Fuentes is

really helping her work things out.

When I hung up the phone this time, I just sort of sat at the table. I thought

about what a weekend in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, would have been like –

Mary Anne and Claudia and Stacey and everyone in and out of the house, baby-

sitting, so many activities that by the end of the weekend I would need another

weekend just to recover.

So many activities? What I really mean is so many friends. So many close

friends. I don’t seem to have that now. Not with everything changing.

Not without Sunny.

Sunday 2/7

Guess what. I took off on my bike for a ride this afternoon, and when I got

home, Sunny was darting across our backyard in the direction of her house. I

found Carol and Gracie in the kitchen and two bottles of spring water on the

table. Now, Gracie certainly wasn’t drinking that bottled water. So I said, “Carol,

was Sunny just here?”

Carol looked uncomfortable, but she replied, “Yeah. She came over to visit

Gracie.”

“She has awfully good hearing,” I commented.

“Gracie?”

“No, Sunny. She’s fast too.”

“What do you mean?” asked Carol.

“I mean that she must have zipped out the back door the very second she

heard me putting my bike away. She had almost reached her yard by the time I

saw her. Very quick. She must be in good shape from all those trips she’s been

making to the hospital.”

“Dawn.”

“Well, she makes me so mad! She sneaks around, visiting you and Gracie

right under my nose, but she never visits me. And she never visits her mother

either.”

“She’s dealing with things in her own way, Dawn.”

“You mean she’s avoiding things in her own way.”

“Honey, this is an extremely difficult time for her. Her mother is not doing

well. You know that.”

“Yes, because I’m the only one who visits her mother.”

“But she’s Sunny’s mother, not yours, Dawn. We don’t know how we’ll

react when we find ourselves in difficult situations. We always think we know, but

we don’t. Not really.”

“But I’m in the same difficult situation she is.”

“No, you’re not. Because Mrs. Winslow isn’t your mother.”

I stared at Carol. And neither are you, I thought. For just one little teeny

split second I hated Carol. Then the moment passed.

I shrugged and stood up from the table. I used to think of Carol as my

wicked stepmother, but not anymore. She can still drive me crazy, but in a more

normal way.

I changed the subject. “How are Gracie’s teeth|?”

“Coming in just fine.” Carol grinned. “She’ll be well armed when she

reaches the biting stage.” Carol put the empty bottles in the recycling can. Then

she said, “Dawn, I am convinced that you and Sunny will be friends again one

day. Just give her time.”

Sunday night 2/7

I am bored.

What a rich and fulfil ing weekend this has been. Baby-sitting (for three

hours), one hospital visit, one bike ride, a few dull phone cal s, playing Monopoly

with Jeff, watching Gracie’s teeth come in, homework. Yada, yada, yada, I am

exhausted from all the excitement.

Later Sunday night 2/7

I heard somewhere that if you want excitement, you have to create it. Or

maybe I made that up. Anyway, after letting boredom wash over me, I decided to