Eight Keys (6 page)

“All right.”

“You can hold her, too, if you like. Let’s get her inside, though, Bess; she’ll need to be fed. She’ll get cranky soon.”

“Of course, of course,” Aunt Bessie said. She started moving toward the porch with Ava. “Are you hungry?” she asked in a high-pitched voice. “Are you hungry? Yes? Yes, you are?” She called back, “Elise, help Annie with her things!”

I guess Aunt Bessie had forgotten about my bum thumb.

Annie’s trunk was packed full. She started pulling luggage out. I grabbed the handle of a duffel bag with my left hand.

“Look at your long hair!” she exclaimed. “How beautiful!”

“I’m thinking of cutting it,” I said. My hair is over three feet long. I know because Franklin measured it for me, with a ruler.

“What are you doing home at this time of day?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Okay. I’m glad you’re home today to greet me, whatever the reason. I’m so excited to be here with you,” Annie said. “You’ll get to be like Ava’s big sister. I know you’ll just love her.”

What’s there to love about a baby? They just cry and make messes.

I hauled Annie’s things into the extra downstairs bedroom while she nursed Ava in the living room. That was something I didn’t want to see. It took about five trips to carry all the bags because I only used my good hand. When that was done, Uncle Hugh showed up with a crib, a changing table, and a special set of plastic drawers. I helped him set up all that stuff as much as I could considering my thumb. It took ages. Uncle Hugh left for a minute, but I was still looking at the new furniture when Annie came into the room, without Ava.

“Where’s the baby?”

“She’s sleeping. Bess is holding her. Thank you for your help in here.” Annie started to move things around the room. “There.” She wiped her forehead when everything was in place. “We’ll get Ava and see how she likes her new bed. Do you want to hold her?”

“No thanks,” I said. “My hands are dirty from putting all that stuff together.”

“Elise, I need you!” Uncle Hugh called.

“Gotta go.”

Phew
.

I found Uncle Hugh on the porch.

“How’s your day going?” he asked.

“Uh, fine, we just set up all that furniture together.”

“I mean your thinking-about-school day.”

“Oh, that.” I sat down on the steps. “I guess that’s fine, too.”

“Did you figure anything out?”

“Not really.”

“So you wasted the day?”

“Don’t worry. I would have wasted it at school anyway.”

Uncle Hugh nearly turned purple. I’d really done it now.

“I’m sorry,” I said right away.

“Go to your room. Now. You will make a list of your responsibilities with regards to school. I will be there in twenty minutes to read it.”

I didn’t need telling twice.

Right on time, Uncle Hugh knocked and opened my door.

“Hello, Cricket.”

“Hello, Uncle,” I replied from my desk, bent over the paper I was writing on.

Uncle Hugh pulled up a chair. He seemed to have calmed down a lot. “So, what have you come up with?”

“Only three things.”

“Good, let’s hear them.”

“One, get to the bus on time. Two, do my homework. Three, bring the homework to school.”

“Two and three are separate things?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Nothing else? Nothing like: remember my gym clothes?”

“I keep them in my locker so I always have them.”

“Okay. If these are your main responsibilities, we will use them to set a couple goals. Can you, for one week, make it to the bus every day? Hand in every assignment?”

“I’ll try.”

“Then we’ll set new ones. Reach for a little at a time.”

He had me write down the goals, put the date at the top, and tape them to my desk.

School must have ended, because Franklin showed up on the porch. He wasn’t being noisy, Franklin never was, but I hurried out and shushed him. “The baby’s sleeping. Be quiet.”

“Annie and Ava are here?”

“Yep. And we have to be very quiet, so you’d better go.”

“I just got here.”

“Okay, fine, you can stay. But don’t make a sound.” I let him in.

“Can I see the baby?” he asked.

“No, she’s sleeping.”

Annie showed up beside us in the living room. “It’s okay, you can peek in.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“I’ve never seen a baby up close,” Franklin protested.

“You’ll see her later. She’ll be here every day.”

“Ignore Elise, Franklin, and come see her if you want to.” Annie led Franklin to her room, and I tromped along, not wanting to be left behind. I stayed in the doorway while Annie and Franklin stood over the crib.

“How old is she?”

“Five months.”

“She looks nice.”

“Yeah, she does.”

We backed up into the hallway and Annie left the door open just a tiny bit. “I want to be able to hear if she wakes up.”

“Come on, Franklin,” I said. I led him into my room and closed the door.

“Why don’t you like the baby?” he asked.

“Who says I don’t?”

“You’re like,
afraid
, of the baby.”

“Babies are boring.”

Babies make me nervous. If they’re screaming because something is wrong, they can’t tell you what to do about it. I’m afraid I’ll break them when I touch them. And they make me think of my mother.

Franklin shrugged and reached into his backpack. “I brought your homework. There’s tons!”

“Great,” I said, taking the stack of books and papers. “How’d you get in my locker?”

“Combination: fifteen-seventeen-seven.”

“How do you know that?”

“I watched you do it once and remembered in case I ever needed to get in there. And look, I did.”

“Doofus. Anything interesting happen at school today?”

“We learned about magnets in science. We got to play with little metal shavings and watch them collect on a horseshoe magnet.”

“No, I mean, with people at school.”

“Not that I know of.”

Who’d he sit with at lunch? Probably Diana from the bus, with her cat sweaters and gymp key chains and plastic thermos of chocolate milk. I hated it when he sat with Diana.

Franklin settled in at my desk without mentioning the new goals taped there, opened his math book, and labeled his paper. “Aren’t you going to start?”

“Yeah, sure.” I got out my science book and the worksheet. “Will you help me with the stuff I missed in class? I don’t really know that much about magnets.”

“Okay,” Franklin said. “I was thinking, since we sometimes do our homework together, maybe we could split the books we bring home, so our bags aren’t that heavy.”

“Good thinking.” I sat down on my bed and opened the science book in my lap. “But I never know where my stuff is. You’d end up not able to do your homework if I forgot something.”

Franklin nodded. “Can I have a snack?”

I shrugged. “Go get something.” I should have gone with him, after he was being nice about the homework stuff, but sometimes it feels like he just comes here to eat.

Franklin headed to the kitchen. I leaned my head back
against the wall. Maybe things would be different when my birthday came. Maybe I’d automatically seem older, cooler, less of a baby. Maybe I’d be smarter and schoolwork would be easier.

Maybe things would be different when I was twelve.

I Make It to School

The next day I made it to the bus on time.

Amanda got to our locker first, like every morning, because she doesn’t take the bus.

“Where’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” I reached up to put my lunch on the top shelf.

Amanda stopped me. “My lunch is up there. Put yours in the main section.” She took my bag and tossed it onto the pile of books below. “Guess I don’t need these.” She dropped the rest of her books into the locker, squishing my lunch.

I was still staring at her when her crew of three girls showed up. I had learned their names were Kate, Lindsay, and Caroline, and all four of them came from the same elementary school. Amanda never let anyone, her friends or Franklin, see the lunch-smashing.

Kate and Lindsay were careful not to make eye contact with me. Caroline glanced at me, but then looked away.

The bell rang.

The four girls started to walk toward class.

From down the hall, Franklin called, “Elise! Come on!”
He was running through kids with his arms full of books. Then he slammed into an eighth grader and toppled over backward.

Amanda, Kate, and Lindsay laughed hysterically. Caroline caught my eye again. Franklin didn’t notice that a whole bunch of people were laughing at him.

I had two choices: I could help Franklin up and get teased and laughed at again, or ignore him.

I left Franklin fumbling for books, trying to keep his balance with his backpack on, and followed Caroline to class.

Franklin showed up late, pink and out of breath, and slipped into the seat next to me. He always comes right back to me. Like a puppy-dog friend.

Mrs. Wakefield had corrected our paragraphs from the day before. “Caroline, will you read yours?”

Caroline walked to the front and read in a clear voice. It was about the ocean. It had full sentences, but it sounded like poetry.

When Caroline sat back down, Mrs. Wakefield commented on how she really liked her descriptions. How you could feel the wet sand under your toes and hear the waves rolling in. Then she returned everyone else’s papers. My paper wasn’t smooth like Caroline’s. It had jaggy edges because I had ripped it out of a notebook, and there was a tear in the paper where I had erased too hard. Mrs. Wakefield had written only a check on it.

Amanda, Kate, and Lindsay didn’t seem to like that Caroline got attention for her essay. They didn’t say good job or anything. I peeked sideways; Caroline was looking
down at her paper. Her ears were pink underneath her shiny, shoulder-length hair, which was pulled back with a headband.

“I liked your paragraph,” I whispered. She produced a tiny smile.

Mrs. Wakefield started talking about nouns and verbs and nothing, and I doodled over the check mark on my paper with a red pen until the check mark was an A. An A+.

After school we went to Leonard’s, and Franklin let me go talk to Leonard by myself for a few minutes, as usual. I breathed in deeply to soak in that great hardware-store smell before I found him shelving stuff.

“Hi, Leonard.”

“Hey, Elise. How’s school? You seem to have barely any time to come by the old shop anymore.”

I shrugged. “It’s busy.”
And awful
, I added in my head.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“The part after busy?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you
thought
something after busy.”

“It’s awful. That’s what I thought. School is still awful.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No, I don’t.” It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to tell Leonard, but I saw no reason to bring Amanda into the store.

“You know what we used to do, your dad and me?”

“What? Go up to the old lake?”

“That’s right. Go up to the old lake.” Leonard was always
talking about how he and Dad did that. “Get away from life for a while, talk about things. Nothing a trip there couldn’t solve. Everything always seemed a bit better when we came back.”

I’d heard about the old lake a million gazillion times. Leonard really seemed to like to talk about it, so I always let him. But this time, him mentioning a place where you took your troubles to talk about them—it seemed like he had been reading my mind again.

“Sounds like a great place.”

“It was, it was.” Then he changed the subject. “Ready to turn a year older?”

“So ready. You’re coming, right? To my birthday?”

“Of course. Would I miss the biggest sloppy-joe fest of the year?”

“Okay, good.”

“And don’t forget,” Leonard said, “just because you’re growing up doesn’t mean you don’t have to come by to visit your old friend.”

“I won’t forget.”

On Saturday afternoon I headed into the kitchen. Aunt Bessie didn’t have a job, so that made this our time.

On the counter were a butternut squash, a banana, an avocado, and a bag of apples. I didn’t think they went together.

“What are we making?”

“Baby food.”

“Like, for Ava?”

“Yes! Isn’t it exciting?”

“I thought she didn’t eat food, just milk.”

“Well, the doctor said she still needs all that milk, but that she can be introduced to certain foods now. We’re making her lots of things because we aren’t sure what she likes best. She’s tried most of them before, but the avocado will be new today.”

“How much can she eat?”

“A spoonful.”

“A spoonful? All this for a spoonful?”

“Well,
she
doesn’t even know what she likes. So we’ll let her taste things.” She was talking about Ava like she was a person with opinions, not a blob. “Here. Why don’t you peel all the apples? We’ll make some into applesauce. I’ll get to work on the squash.”

Cooking time with Aunt Bessie was supposed to be about me and her, not about a baby who happened to live in our house. I didn’t talk as I peeled the apple skins into a big container. The applesauce took a long time to make and a lot of arm strength to turn the crank of the strainer over and over and over with my left hand. The avocado and the banana got mushed up at the last minute, because they didn’t need to be cooked.