Say That Again (22 page)

“You’re in luck — we just finished. And anyway, I need to shut the door and I’m not coming out there.”

Heck blinked several times. Finally, he came inside, but just far enough for Hunter to shut the door.

“Now,” Hunter said, “what can I do for you?”

“Who is it, Hunter?” Jenn came to stand in the open doorway to the kitchen, wiping her hands on her pants legs. “Oh ... hi.” Her voice dipped at the end, as if she’d been expecting someone with a giant Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes check — not the grumpy next-door neighbor.

“Mrs. McHugh.” Heck’s voice was equally lacking in enthusiasm, but it was hard for Hunter to tell if that was because of Jenn’s lukewarm reception or just the way Heck was in general.

“So ...?” Hunter turned to face Heck again. “You needed something? I’d invite you in for dessert, but we don’t have —”

“Dessert, yes. Funny thing. I was gathering the ingredients to make a German chocolate cake from scratch when I discovered I’m fresh out of eggs. I never run out of eggs, but this morning I made myself an omelet and apparently used the last of them. Forgot entirely.” Heck touched a gloved hand to his thick, dark hair, threaded with the barest hint of silver. “Age creeping up on me, I suppose.”

“Do we still have some, Jenn? I haven’t checked in a few days.”

“Sure, plenty.” She tipped her head, one brow raised ever so slightly, as if she sensed Heck was just making an excuse to drop in. “How many do you need, Heck?”

“Four ... if that’s not too much to ask?”

“Not at all,” she replied as she went into the kitchen, her tone noticeably friendlier now. The soft whoosh of the refrigerator door opening sounded, followed by a drawer opening and closing.

Hunter and Heck stood looking at the doorway, waiting for her to reappear. When she didn’t, Hunter broke the silence. “Special occasion?”

“Pardon?”

“Just wondering why you’re making a cake. Our girls would have cake every day if they could, but we try to reserve them for birthdays. Not so much because of the calories, but because if you give Hannah too much sugar you pretty much have to peel her off the ceiling and it’s impossible to get her to go to bed.”

“Ah, yes, a birthday.” Heck glanced at the family photos arranged in a giant grid on the wall above the couch.

“Yours?”

“No.” His words came out so soft Hunter barely heard them. “My wife’s.”

Since Heck lived alone now Hunter assumed he was a widower. It was an awkward subject to broach, but Hunter was curious. “So, your wife, when did she —”

“Here you go!” Jenn strode into the room with a basket handle looped over her wrist. The eggs were tidily cushioned in a tea towel. She handed the basket to Heck. “I put six in there. That way if you need eggs before you get to the store again, you have a couple extra.”

He held the basket at arm’s length for a few moments, as if he were going to thrust it back at her. His lips parted, remaining open while his mind worked at a thought. But all he could manage was a nod and: “Thank you.”

Five seconds later he was out the door. Jenn and Hunter shared a glance.

“Don’t you dare let him pay us back in eggs, Hunter.” She marched back into the kitchen.

Hunter followed her, but before he could tell Jenn about Heck’s wife, Maura blurted out, “You won’t believe what I heard the other day.” Before either of her parents could reply, she got up, plate in hand, and went on. “My friend Linds is friends with Izzy Pinkerton and her aunt’s hairdresser said that she heard Mr. Menendez was a fugitive from Columbia. Something about a drug cartel.”

Crossing her arms, Jenn turned away from the sink. “Oh, really now? Your friend’s friend’s aunt’s hairdresser?”

“Yeah, but that’s not all.” Maura put her plate and silverware on the counter. “She heard he moved here because he was being investigated for transporting Mexican immigrants over the border in a van, mostly girls my age and younger, to be used as child slaves. But they couldn’t prove anything, so he went where the media wouldn’t bug him. Which is here — Nowheresville, Kentucky.”

“Funny how he doesn’t have an accent, since he’s from Columbia,” Hunter said jokingly. “Or is it Mexico?”

“He’s probably been here awhile. I bet he took some lessons to get rid of his accent. Foreign actors do that all the time.”

“Maura Irene McHugh,” — Jenn took her daughter by the shoulders and imparted her sternest look — “you shouldn’t spread wild rumors like that. How would you feel if someone said something about you that wasn’t true and then four more people repeated it? Pretty soon, everyone in Faderville would have their own version of things.”

“But it could —”

“But nothing. I know for a fact that the hairdresser you’re talking about, Brandy Janssen, claimed to be the love-child of Cher and Elvis.”

Maura’s forehead creased. “Who?”

Rolling her eyes, Jenn let go of her daughter. “Never mind. Just don’t let me catch you repeating that, okay?”

“Ooookay, sure.” Maura gathered her backpack from the mudroom to go up to her room. “But why does he live alone out here?”

“Lots of older people live alone, Maura.”

She started for the stairs. “Yeah, but he’s just ...” — she shrugged a shoulder — “kinda weird.”

Hunter tapped her arm as she went past.

Maura spun around. “What?”

“You’re grounded.”

“For calling him weird? Geez, sorry. I take it back.”

“For talking back to your teacher.”

“How long?”

“Until further notice. I’m calling your teacher tomorrow to get her side.”

Deflated, Maura trudged up the stairs and closed her door — firmly, but not quite a slam.

Jenn put a hand on her hip. “For a while, I thought you were going to take her side.”

“Just because I understand why she’s acting out, doesn’t mean I’ll excuse it.”

They spent the rest of the evening in quiet domesticity — Hunter at his makeshift desk at the coffee table, and Jenn toting laundry upstairs in between bouts of prodding Maura to finish her homework. Hannah never did come back downstairs to finish her supper.

The girls had been put to bed and Jenn and Hunter were snuggled up on the couch watching their favorite reality talent show when someone rapped at the front door.

“That
has
to be Heck,” Jenn said lowly.

Hunter went to the door. When he opened it, Heck was already halfway down the driveway, the beam of his flashlight lighting his way back home.

For a few moments, Hunter couldn’t quite figure it out. Then he looked down. There, sitting in front of the door, was a cake — or three-fourths of a German chocolate one, actually — neatly encased in a plastic container. Hunter picked it up. Taped to the top was a note:

‘My wife would have wanted to share this with you.’

“Thanks!” Hunter called, but the wind swallowed his words and Heck kept on walking down the road.

––––––––

E
very day, Hannah thought about ways she could get out of going to school. Mrs. Ziegler was nice enough, but Hannah wasn’t comfortable with the other children. She didn’t understand them, didn’t like all the noise they made, and was never sure if they liked her or not. Every time they whispered to one another, she wondered if it was something about her. She heard things, words, snatches of conversation, like: ‘strange’, ‘weird’, ‘always alone’, ‘why doesn’t she talk?’, and ‘is something
wrong
with her?’

If anything, being at school was worse than she ever imagined it would be before she started going. All the noise and motion and goings-on made her jittery and nervous. It was so hard to concentrate. At home, it was calm and quiet. She could think there.

What if she did something bad? Would they tell her not to come back to school, then? It would have to be really bad. Patrick Mann had tortured Franklin, yet he hadn’t been kicked out of school. True he wasn’t allowed anywhere near the new mouse’s cage and he spent a lot of time at the principal’s office, but it was almost as if he actually liked the extra attention that acting out brought him.

No, Hannah didn’t want people to notice her, for good or bad reasons. She especially didn’t want her parents to be upset with her.

The only way out of having to go to school was to get sick. Hannah avoided washing her hands. She only pretended to take her vitamin in the morning, hiding it in her mouth until her mommy looked away, and then slipping it to Echo. She stopped washing her hands. When it got cold, she didn’t put her coat on until someone made her. But nothing seemed to work. She didn’t get sick. She could’ve faked a tummy ache or sore throat, but that, again, would be lying.

After that first visit with Dr. Liming, Hannah was more confused than ever. Both her parents sat her down that night and told her to keep it to herself if animals spoke to her. Not telling someone, they said, wasn’t the same as lying, in this case. It was
so
confusing.

Things only got worse when, in November, her parents decided it was time for her to ride the bus with Maura. Her mommy was starting back at work part-time, and so the extra time she’d be afforded by not driving Hannah to school made her schedule easier.

Patrick Mann was not on Hannah’s bus, but there were a lot of older kids: fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Not only were they big and loud, but bossy. Hannah sat in the front, right behind the bus driver, Miss Beverly. It was the only safe place she could find. Her sister didn’t want to sit with her and she had no friends. When they got to school in the morning, she always waited until all the other kids got off the bus before going inside. Miss Beverly never said anything more to her than ‘Have a great day’, and that was just fine with Hannah.

During recess, Hannah always stayed inside and drew pictures. Before any of the other kids came back, she hid them, because she didn’t want anyone to see what she was doing. She never felt her pictures were as good as she wanted them to be. Especially not after her mommy and Dr. Liming had mistaken her little blue penguin for a common bird, as if it were a sparrow or crow.

Then one day, they had a substitute, and it was raining and too cold to go outside for recess, so Mr. Panki-Something-or-Other — Hannah wasn’t sure since he’d only mumbled his name once and hadn’t written it on the board — made them all go to the gym. Hannah wanted to let him know she always stayed in the room while Mrs. Ziegler graded papers, but she didn’t know him at all, so she didn’t say anything.

Knots of snakes formed inside her tummy as she entered the gymnasium. When she realized she’d left the room without her backpack — and Faustine — panic filled her chest.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. Twenty-two minutes until they went back to the room. Sound bounced off the concrete block walls and metal rafters, ringing inside her ears. Kids were running back and forth, lobbing basketballs at the hoops, jumping rope off to the side. Others stood in clumps, talking and laughing. Occasionally, one would glance at Hannah, then say something to the person beside them.

A girl, small like Hannah, came up to her. She was black-skinned with the prettiest chocolate brown eyes Hannah had ever seen. “Hi, I’m Lexi.”

Hannah looked down at the ground. The noise in her head rose to a deafening hum.

“Want to play with me and Josie? We’re being Disney princesses.”

What Hannah wanted was to sit down. Everything around her was tilting left and then right, then left again. She shook her head ‘no’.

“Okay. If you decide later you want to, we’re right over there.”

Hannah was vaguely aware of Lexi leaving. Voices filled her head, blending together in a confusing buzz. She turned toward the wall, hands over her ears.

“Hannah, are you okay?” Mr. Panki-Whatever asked.

“Leave her alone,” someone else said. “That’s just the way she is.”

She had to get out of there.
Now
. A quick look around told her all the doors were closed. If she pushed one open and ran out, they’d come after her. Better to just disappear.

It took all her self-control and courage to slowly work her way around the outside of the gym and up onto the stage. Kids were not supposed to be up there, but luckily no one had noticed her so far.

She crawled under the bleachers, where it was dark and dusty. A beetle scampered between the metal bars of the framework, startling her. A few moments passed and she saw no more of the bug. She pushed on, deeper, farther, somewhere safer. She went as far underneath as she could, where she wouldn’t be seen. And there she tucked herself into a ball, with her arms covering her ears and her eyes shut tight.

It was better there. There was room. Less going on. If she imagined being at home, out under the Crooked Tree, with the birds singing and the sheep bleating, the voices faded away.

Even after it got quiet in the gym, she stayed. She was too afraid to come out. When they found her,
if
they found her, she’d get in trouble. And trouble was one thing she did not want to cause.

Yet it was also what just might get her out of there.

––––––––

—o00o—

––––––––

T
he school day was only halfway over when Hannah climbed into the backseat of her father’s truck. Echo was there, his limpid golden-brown eyes overflowing with love and sympathy. She wrapped her arms around him, tears falling softly on his shiny black fur.

Things would have been so much better if Echo could go to school with her. Then she’d never be afraid, because Echo would always protect her and make everything all right. But that wasn’t going to happen. No, they’d make her go back to school alone, where she didn’t fit in, where there was too much noise and too many people.

A ‘panic attack’, Dr. Liming had called it. Whatever that was. Hannah only knew it was a different way of being sick. Like there was something inside your head that was wrong. Which only made her feel even more different than she already did.

Hunter started the truck, but he didn’t drive anywhere yet. He just let Hannah cry and hold tight to Echo. She wished he would just take her home. She didn’t want to talk about today.