The Exact Location of Home (13 page)

Heather nods. “Come on, Scoop.” He jumps up and runs to her, crashing into her legs so hard he almost knocks her over. She's really skinny for a mom. “Let's go to the library and do some puzzles before bed.”

“Will you read me
Library Lion
?” he asks, and I smile. Kids love that book. Gianna's little brother Ian never gets tired of it either. It's about this lion who walks into the library and decides to stay. So he helps out dusting and shelving books and listens to the stories, but he doesn't follow the rules exactly so they throw him out into the rain. But then at the end, they realize what a good guy he was and let him come back and he's all warm and cozy there again. I can see why Scoop would like it.

“I'll read it,” Heather says. “
Once
. Not six times like last night.” She takes his hand, and they head to a side room with beanbag chairs and a little bookshelf while Mom and I catch the end of the food line.

The spaghetti sauce is the best thing that's happened to me all week. You'd think it would be crummy sauce out of a jar, but this tastes like the stuff Gianna's Nonna makes, and she was born in Italy. Mom says it's because church ladies volunteer to make dinner here three nights a week.

By the time we clear our paper plates, use the bathroom, change into sweatpants and T-shirts, and find room five, I'm wiped out. Heather and Scoop are already in one set of bunk beds. Heather's in the top bunk flipping through a
People
magazine. Scoop's in the bottom bunk—not happy about it.

“I want to sleep up there,” he says, kicking the mattress above him.

“Quit it. I said no. It's too high.”

“It's boring down here,” he says. “Hmph.” Then he spots Mom and me. “Oh hi. My name is Scoop, remember? But not really. Really, it's Anthony James, but I like Scoop so call me that, okay?” I nod. “And I know you're Mrs. Zigonski and you're her son Kirby who really wants to be called Zig instead, and I'm supposed to be quiet and not bother you because it's your first night here and you're probably tired. Are you?”

The corners of Mom's mouth turn up. It's the biggest smile I've seen from her all day. “Well, yes, we're pretty tired, Scoop. Not too tired to make a new friend, though.”

That was a big mistake. Not only is Scoop our new friend; he's our new best friend forever.

I toss my backpack into the top bunk and start to climb up after it.

“Hey Mom, see that?” Scoop says. “Zig's sleeping in the top bunk.”

“He's a bit older than you,” my mom says, trying to help out.

“How old is he?”

“Thirteen.”

Scoop looks at me like he's trying to decide if Mom's telling the truth. Finally, he nods. “My cousin is thirteen. She lives in Ohio and has a smart mouth and is boy crazy and is going to be the death of Aunt Molly and Uncle Joe.”

“Anthony James!” Heather sits up and leans down to glare at him.

“That's what Aunt Molly says.” He turns back to me. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” I say. But then Gianna pops into my head. Does that mean maybe I do? There's the whole dance conversation, and we always walk to school together. I knock twice on her door on my way by, and we sit on the porch and wait for Ruby and we always walk together. Always until this week. What am I going to tell her tomorrow when I'm not there again?

“I don't believe you,” Scoop says.

“What?”

“I don't believe you. I think you have a girlfriend. What's her name?”

“Anthony James! Will you leave these people alone?”

“Okay, okay …” He settles back onto his pillow but tilts his head out again and whispers, “But I still don't believe you.”

It takes me a few days, but by the end of the week, I have everything at the shelter figured out and things feel pretty normal. Okay, that's a lie. But they look normal anyway.

If I leave the shelter at 7:30 and walk the long way to Gee's house, I go past our old apartment, so I'm coming from the same direction as always. Plus Gee's always late, so she's never outside when I get there to see where I'm coming from anyway.

I don't have to go to the breakfast program any more because there are showers at the shelter and they have toast and fruit cups in the morning. It's the mushy cut-up pears, but at least I don't have to start any more days on the receiving end of Kevin Richards' dodgeball arm.

Friday morning, Gianna's extra late because she's lost her running shoes. She finally finds them in the laundry room, and it's a good thing because by the time we leave her house, we have to run to make it to school before the homeroom bell. We're so late Ruby didn't even wait, and she always waits unless she's positive we're not coming.

“See you at lunch,” Gianna says and rushes down the hall to her locker.

I spend half the morning trying to figure out how to avoid lunch, but I'm finished with lunch detention, so I can't use that as an excuse not to show up anymore.

It turns out okay, though. I just make sure I get there really late so Gianna's already through the line when the lunch lady punches in my number and the red bar that says “Free Lunch” pops up on her screen. They might as well slap a
POOR KID
sticker on your forehead before you sit down to eat.

I was eligible for free lunch before, but Mom never filled out the paperwork. She always made my lunch at home instead—a turkey and cheese sandwich or leftovers from dinner. It was all better than the leathery, pink hockey puck sitting on my tray now, pretending it's ham. Try making a bag lunch in family room number five, though. Even if we had brought our food with us—which we didn't—so many things just aren't around any more. Stuff I used to take for granted.

Plastic sandwich bags.

A snack when you feel like one.

Aluminum foil. I needed some the other night because Scoop's little battery-operated tow-truck wouldn't tow anything, even with fresh batteries. It's a cheap toy and stuff like that always breaks because the wiring isn't secure enough. I could see the problem but couldn't fix it. I had to wait for dinnertime so I could steal a little corner of the foil covering the rolls.

“Hey!” Gianna smiles a huge smile when I sit down. It makes me feel stupid for hiding out in the library last week. And besides, I really want her help looking for Dad.

“Want to go geocaching tomorrow?” I ask.

She raises her eyebrows and wiggles them at me. “Let me guess…. You decided the bat-infested cave wasn't enough of a challenge, and so now you want to try to find one that's guarded by mutant rogue spiders.”

“Like Aragog in
Harry Potter
?”

She grins and curls her two index fingers into fangs at the corners of her mouth, trying to look like a giant spider. She looks more like an Irish setter with buckteeth.

“Are you trying to look scary?” I say.

“My children need fooooood….” she says in a scratchy voice, wiggling her finger-fangs.

“I'm serious,” I say.

“I know.” She sighs and takes the top piece of whole wheat bread off her tuna sandwich and shakes off the lettuce and alfalfa sprouts her mom puts on there. “You're always serious. That's why Nonna says you're good for me.” She glances up quick but then goes back to shaking sprouts.

“I … uh … yeah,” I say. Her Nonna's always laughed about us getting together, but this is the first time Gianna's ever mentioned it. “So you wanna go geocaching?”

“I need to help Ruby finish some posters, but after that, I'll go.
If
it's just for fun.” A tater tot flies across three cafeteria tables and lands in front of her. She picks it up and studies it. “Don't you think this is kind of shaped like Montana?” I look at it. It sort of is. Over by the window, where the tater tot came from, Kevin Richards is laughing with Ryan Larson as if no one's ever thought to throw a tater tot before.

“Geocaching's always for fun, isn't it? Except for the whole bat thing,” I say.

“Yeah,” Gianna says. “but you were getting kind of scary-intense about it. Like the whole world depends on you finding the geocache.”

“It's not about finding the geocache…. It's about—”

“I know it's about your dad. But, Zig, I still don't get why you think Senior Searcher is him. Even if it is, what makes you think you'll be able to find him? Your mom said he'd talk to you later, when he's ready. It's probably about the new girlfriend or something, but you need to relax. Why can't you just wait and see what happens?”

“You wouldn't understand.” I pick up my tray and sling my backpack over my shoulder.

“You're making such a big a deal of this.”

I stare at her. Such a big deal. That's easy to say when your family's all together and perfect and your father has his own business and pays the bills.

“See ya.” I don't wave. I don't turn around. I go straight to the library, borrow a pencil from Mr. Smythe, and take out tomorrow's math homework.

But I'm so mad the numbers blur. The pencil breaks. And I stare at fuzzy equations until the bell rings for science.

 

After school, I hang around English class, asking questions about what really happens at the end of
The Giver
. Not because I care but because I don't feel like seeing Gianna and Ruby. Every other day this week, I've walked with them after school. We stop at the park so Ruby can skip her rocks and make her stupid wishes and talk about her big plans for the city council meeting every time a heron flies over. We stop at the diner for hot chocolate—somehow there's still money for that, or else Alan just isn't charging Mom for it. At about five, I wave bye to Gianna and Ruby when they go home to have dinner. Then I hang out doing homework at the counter until Mom's diner shift is over.

We get home—shelter-home—at around seven, which is a good time because dinner's always ready, but it's not too early. The shelter has a rule that you have to be gone during the day—in school or out looking for a job or an apartment or doing something to prove to somebody that you don't just plan to stay forever. If you need someplace to go during the daytime, you go to the main offices downtown and you can
use their phones and little kids can play in the toy space. That's where Scoop was today while his mom made calls on part-time jobs.

“Hey, Zig! Zig! Know what I learned today?” He comes running up with orange-yellow sauce around his mouth. Macaroni and cheese night.

“What?”

“A magic trick. You wanna see?”

“Sure.”

“Okay …” He holds out his hand, face up, and puts a quarter in his palm. “I, the great and powerful Scoop, will now make this quarter
disappear
!” He waves a white handkerchief over his hand a few times and then lets it rest there. Then he picks it up again and hands it to me. I can feel a coin inside the cloth. “Okay … now you have the coin, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Now I'll say the magic words.” He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. “Hold on … I forgot them.”

“Usually, any old magic words will work,” I tell him. “As long as the magician is great and powerful.”

“Right,” he says, and starts waving his hand in fast circles around my hand that's holding the handkerchief. “Hickedy-Wickedy-Pickety-Slickety-Boo-Too-POO!” On the “POO” part, he grabs the handkerchief, whips it out of my hand, and shakes it. “See? The coin is gone!”

I nod. “Pretty impressive. Can I see that handkerchief again?”

He stares down at it in his hand. “No.”

I grin. “How come?”

“Because I'm the great and powerful Scoop and I say so.”

“Oh.”

“Also because the coin you had in your hand just now is really a secret coin I had hidden in this cool pocket the whole time.” He pulls back a piece of cloth that's velcroed to the corner of the handkerchief to reveal a quarter. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out another one. “Here's your real quarter.”

“You really had me for a minute there.”

He nods. “I know. When Rob showed me, I thought he could really make coins disappear. And then he said he could make them appear again, too, and I was thinking how cool because then you could just make lots and lots of them appear and you'd have enough money to pay for a house with a tree fort and your mom wouldn't have to find a job. You could just live there and play in your tree fort all day.”

I smile. “That would be pretty cool.”

“But then he showed me the stupid secret pocket and ruined everything.”

“Sometimes it's better not to find things out.”

He nods. “Did you ever find something out and then wish you didn't know?”

“Hardly,” I say, thinking about everything I can't find out. Where Dad is. Why he hasn't called. Why Mom's so mad at him she won't let me see him. Why she's mad enough to have us living here, in a place where little kids can't even believe in magic for more than a few minutes.

“What are you going to do all day?” Mom ties on her apron for a double shift at the diner. “I'm worried about you being out on your own.”

“I'm going to geocache,” I tell her. “So I can get some exercise and fresh air.” Mothers never argue with exercise and fresh air. The only thing better would be if I told her I'd eat broccoli on the way.

“Do you want a ride somewhere?”

I shake my head.

“Okay, but be careful. And be back by seven. I'll be here by then.”

Even though I have a stop to make first, I turn on the GPS as soon as I get outside. I love fiddling with the coordinates. I've entered home—what used to be home, that is, and now the shelter, school, the diner, and most of Dad's geocaches. I want to stop at the library and get on a computer so I can check the coordinates on the last one. I was entering it in a hurry because Mom was hovering around.