Fault Lines (5 page)

For every depressing thought that encouraged me to give up and hide in the dark, a positive counter-point tried to muscle its way to the front of my thinking. I wanted to believe. I wanted to be strong enough to hope, brave enough to make it happen. I wished I could rise up like that boxer in the movies – Rocky Balboa – getting stronger, with the music building up to a crescendo and me dancing around in slow motion, my fists pumping up to the sky.

But then the bus stopped at my stop, and I rushed to get out first. I hopped down the steps and fast walked with my head down to avoid Derek, Todd, and Taylor.

I felt alone, and I missed Justine. All the talk about sickness and death at drama club had me thinking about her, grieving her dad. It wasn’t fair how Taylor Rinehart got to coast through life laughing at the rest of us, who had real problems to worry about.

I slowed as I rounded the corner. I looked over at Justine’s house to see if anyone was home, but the shades were pulled down like they had been all week.

Then I looked down the street to my house – and it knocked my breath out, even though I sucked air like a drowning person.

I saw a “For Sale” sign in my front yard.

I took off running. “No, please, this can’t be true. Please, God, don’t let this be happening.”

I ran so fast with a heavy backpack bouncing on my back that every time my feet slapped the road, my brain banged around in my skull and my eyeballs jiggled.

The sky was cloudless, but it felt like I was in a tunnel with the other end closed behind me, because all I could focus on was my house. Mom’s car sat in the garage when she should have been at work. A stranger’s car stood in the circle drive.

I blasted through the front door so fast I scared Barney, who was probably already nervous about the lady in a business suit and heavy makeup sitting with Mom in the living room. Me and Barney passed each other, with him brushing my leg on his way outside and me slamming the door behind him.

“What’s going on?” I said. “Why is a ‘For Sale’ sign out front?”

Mom stood and reached out to put an arm around me, but I shook it off.

“I’m so sorry, Danielle. I didn’t mean for the sign to be up.” She gave a helpless look to the lady standing there.

“It’s my fault,” the lady said. “I have an overzealous assistant, and I apologize.”

Mom’s eyes looked puffy. “I didn’t expect to be doing this until tomorrow, when I could talk with you kids about it first. Our appointment got changed. I’m sorry.”

“So it’s true?” I said. My voice came out quivery. “We’re moving?”

Mom turned to talk with the sales lady. They both were dressed in work clothes, but Mom’s suit and skirt were wrinkly. She hardly wore any makeup and no nail polish, as if she didn’t care what she looked like anymore, like she was done trying. “Are we finished for now?” Mom asked the lady.

“Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Burkhart.” They shook hands, and she left.

Mom reached for me, but I pulled away. “Why are you doing this?” I said. “I don’t want to move!”

Mom sat on the couch. “Could we sit and talk?”

I stuck my arms across my chest.

“Danielle, I know this is hard, but it has to be done. Your father has been off work so long, we’ve fallen behind on our bills. We can’t afford this house right now. We’ll lose it to the bank if we don’t sell it first.”

I couldn’t look her in the face. I stared out the window and tried to come up with an argument to change her mind, but I couldn’t think of any.

She said, “I’m so sorry. I wish there were another way.”

“Where’s Dad? He won’t sell our house.”

She took a breath and let it out. “I don’t know where he is. He didn’t want to meet with the real estate agent, but I can tell you he knows we have no choice.”

That made no sense. Nothing did. Mostly, it made no sense Dad couldn’t find a job.

“Where are we supposed to live?” I said.

“I haven’t gotten that far yet. We’ve got a little time to sell the house before we have to move, so I’ll figure that out. I’ll do my very best to keep you kids in your same schools. But it’s most likely…”

I looked when she didn’t finish her sentence. She stared out the window, both of us silent, and I memorized the dark patches under her eyes, the two frown wrinkles dug in her forehead, her thin lips pushed down. “What?” I said.

“Things are tight. We’ll have to rent for a while.” She paused again. “We have to find a new home for Barney.”

I barely heard it. I wished I hadn’t. I jumped up and ran to open the front door. “You’re taking everything away from me! I hate you!”

I slammed the door shut as I darted out, so she couldn’t say anything.

I ran again, only this time I was crying, and I called Barney over and over in my crying voice as I staggered down the street, “Barney! Here boy! Come here, Barney!”

I looked for him as I ran, but that wasn’t my main purpose. I headed for the entrance to the neighborhood, to wait for Bobby’s bus. I’d get rid of his best friend Joey and tell my little brother what was happening. I didn’t want him to find out the way I did.

now

I want to wake from this bad dream

“Dani, wake up.”

I’m lying on my stomach. My eyes open. The pillow’s softness puffs around my lips, my nose, my forehead. Then memories rush in, and I tense. An explosion of glass. Creeper. The police. Mom’s locked-down stone face appearing, dissolving, and reappearing in streetlights and darkness all the way home.

I pull the covers over my head.

Bobby shakes my shoulders, and the movement bangs his hips against mine. He’s next to me on the bed. “Mom said for you to get up and start your punishment,” he says. “She’s mad. It’s a long list of chores you got to do.”

“I’ll be up in a minute.” Really I could stay in this dark cave forever.

“She said now. Right now. Don’t make her madder. Please, Dani?”

I roll the covers back with my eyes shut. “There, I’m up. Now you can go.”

“Apparently she has a death wish.”

It’s Mike’s voice. I roll over and sit up. He’s standing in the doorway.

“You know, I heard of some guys who broke windows at Frost School,” he says. “They ended up in Juvie for six months.”

I stand and walk over to my closet. “Great. I’ll get a vacation from you. Now leave so I can get dressed.”

“No problem,” Mike says, “except one more thing.” He pulls a paper from his back pocket. “Justine stopped by this morning, not long after she called and Mom filled her in on your late-night activities. Apparently Mom told her about your no-phone grounding too, because she brought a note. Allow me to read. ‘Dani, I never knew what a talented liar you are.’”

I dash at him and try to grab the note. He does a spin move, holding it above his head, and continues. “‘You certainly had me fooled. For your information, I don’t like liars and don’t care to be friends with one. Signed, Justine.’”

He tosses the paper on the floor.

“Is Danielle out of bed?” Mom calls from the kitchen.

I pick it up and answer. “I’m trying to get dressed, if these two would get out of my room!”

Bobby’s still sitting on my bed. “Why didn’t you run, Dani?” he says. His face is twisted like he’s going to cry. “Why’d you get caught?”

I want to answer him, but I can’t. I don’t know the reason. Maybe in the back of my mind, I’d hoped getting caught would put an end to this unhappy time, but so far it’s only created more misery. Mike speaks up. “Because she’s not the brightest tool in the shed, little man. I tried to warn her about Todd. I said he was a bad one to hang around with, but she wouldn’t listen.”

I laugh. “You’re one to talk. You know all about bad influences.”

We eye each other, but he doesn’t speak – and I know why. I’ve won this particular verbal smackdown with the plain and simple truth. Mike not only gave in to bad influences. He became one, just like me. I got my first glimpse of it a few days after Justine’s dad died.

then

we walked right into a stink bomb

“Let’s go in the woods,” Justine said in this walking-dead tone of voice.

It was the day after her dad’s funeral. We were wandering around the streets of our neighborhood, me babbling about school, the drama club, Mrs. Luna, everything she’d missed in the week she’d been out – everything but what we were both thinking about: the sight of him in that casket, his large belly sticking up, orange skin except where his cheeks had red patches of blush on them, waxy lips like a pink crayon, rubbery hands and fingers like plump sausages folded across his chest.

We stood at the end of our street where a walking path starts into the woods. Justine was wearing her forbidden leggings, not talking, looking like someone sleepwalking despite the brilliant October weather. It was Indian summer – when the trees explode like fireworks in vivid reds and yellows and purples but the breeze still blows warm. My favorite time of year, but I couldn’t shake a feeling of nervousness. I looked at the thin trail leading off the dead-end street and wondered if Justine should follow the dark tunnel into the forest.

Finally, I didn’t have a choice. She went ahead.

We couldn’t walk side by side on the skinny trail. I hiked behind Justine going fast, up hills, down, around curves, past the mucky pond where I used to catch tadpoles in a pail, into clearings with waist-tall weeds, then back into trees.

Within several minutes, we approached the point that my parents didn’t let me go beyond: the railroad tracks.

Justine kept on. I thought she would turn and walk on the train track’s trestles like we sometimes did, but she went over the tracks and down a slope on the other side.

“Wait, Justine, what are you doing?”

Ahead was a large u-shaped open area, surrounded by forest, and right in the middle of this clearing were three giant pine trees, taller than my house, sitting alone in a triangle. The clearing is known as Stink Bomb, don’t ask me why, but all the kids know the hiding space in the middle of the pine trees – The Triangle – is burnout central.

“Justine! You know I can’t go any further!”

I was talking to the back of her head, and it continued moving toward Stink Bomb. I ran into dead weeds and cattails to get next to her on the trail.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “Let’s go back.”

No civilization was around for miles. Who would know if some older kids decided to get their kicks beating us up?

“I’m going,” Justine said. “You go back if you want.”

I heard voices in The Triangle. “Justine, somebody’s there! Let’s get out of here!”

She cut around where the trail curved and led to a slight break between two pine trees. The entrance. I grabbed the back of her t-shirt, but she pulled away and walked in. I stopped for a second, unsure, but figured I had to go. I ran to catch up.

Suddenly, she stopped so quick I bumped into her back.

Then a tingle of fear and amazement spread all over my body when I heard a familiar voice say, “Justine? What are you doing here?”

I stuck my head out from behind her to see Mike.

Never! Never in a million years did I expect this! But there was my big brother, sitting on one of four logs set up in a square around a large circle of rocks, a fire pit, filled with a mound of ashes and pieces of burnt wood. Even more shocking, Todd and Derek sat on the other logs. They had their elbows on their knees and stared at the fire pit.

“Dani?” Mike said. His eyes had the mean look I was getting so tired of.

I couldn’t speak, felt sick. Mike wore his red football practice jersey and held a beer can in his hand. Star athlete, star student. He threw a cigarette into the ashes.

“You two need to go home,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be out here.”

“
We’re
not supposed to be out here?” I said. “And you are?”

Todd blew smoke from his cigarette.

“Just go home,” Mike said.

Amazingly, Justine walked ahead like she owned the place. She stepped up on the circle of fire pit rocks and started tiptoeing around it with her arms stretched out for balance. Nobody said anything, probably because her dad just died.

“What are you guys doing?” she said.

Mike stared me down, his eyes ordering me,
Get out of here or else
.

“Whoa,” Justine said, wobbling on a shaky rock. “I almost fell.”

She was acting like a crazy person. I knew that. But what could I do?

“Justine, let’s go,” I murmured.

She ignored me, just kept playing balance beam, with nobody saying anything. Then she fell in. A huge cloud of thick dust rose up.

I didn’t rush to help her. Everything went slow-motion and I couldn’t move. My dog trainer voice even panicked.
How are you going home now? How will you explain this to Mrs. Hammond? You’re not even allowed back in Stink Bomb!

After a second, as the ashes started falling back down on her, Justine picked herself up to her knees and finally to her feet. Her long-sleeve yellow t-shirt, her leggings, shoes, everything was covered in soot. Even her face and hair.

She was going “Puh-thoo – Puh – Puh – Puhthoo” trying to get the mess away from her mouth and nose, and she held her arms outstretched like she was dripping wet. Finally, she started crying.

I shut up my dog trainer voice. I didn’t look at anyone but Justine. I didn’t care what Mike or Todd or Derek thought. I put my arm around her and led her out.

Walking home, I was scared we’d be in huge trouble, but Justine said it was no big deal. She was back to her sleepwalking.

When we got to her house, she walked right inside through the garage and down the basement stairs. She stripped off her forbidden leggings and shirt and threw them in the washing machine with some soap. She worked the dials to turn it on. Then she opened the dryer and pulled out her special-occasion-only blue jeans and a button-up top to put on.

Watching her zip her pants and button her shirt, my mouth hung open in amazement. For one thing, she didn’t seem worried her mom would hear us and come down to ask questions, and for another thing, she knew how to work the washing machine even though her mom did everything around the house.