The Exact Location of Home (6 page)

I run my finger over some deep scratches on the back of the key chain. I guess there was a lot of time after that trip that wasn't so good. And they've been divorced three years now. Maybe he decided it was time to toss the souvenirs.

I set the key chain next to the computer, click on Dad's name, and wait for the profile to load.

Senior Searcher.

Where Dumbledore's Apprentice had uploaded a photograph of himself, Dad's profile shows a big, stupid looking cartoon bug that says “No Image Selected” underneath. Where Dumbledore's Apprentice had a link to his email address, Dad's contact information is listed as unavailable.

Occupation: Unavailable.

Location: Unavailable.

Dad's an expert at being unavailable.

My hands droop off the keyboard. I sink back in the chair and stare at the screen. There has to be something here.

There has to be.

There's a row of buttons at the top of the profile page that I haven't clicked on yet.
Profile. Geocaches. Trackables. Gallery. Bookmark Lists
.

I click on
Gallery
. An error page says “No Photos Uploaded.”

Trackables
sounds perfect, but when I click there, it's blank, too.

Bookmark Lists
. Another error page.

Geocaches
is the only one left. The only possible place there might be something on where my dad is now. I take a deep breath and hold it. If I count to at least thirty before I click on it, Dad's contact information will be there.

I get to thirty-two, let out my breath in a whoosh, and when I click, the computer makes a beep-beep-beeping noise so loud I jump about a mile.

I reach for the speakers to turn the volume down but realize it's not the computer at all. It's the smoke alarm in the kitchen. Where I left the pizza in the oven for way more than the eight minutes the box said it needed to cook.

The kitchen is hazy with burned pizza smoke. I turn off the oven and open it, which is the dumbest thing ever because thicker blacker smoke pours out at my face. I turn away and cough and pull up a chair to where the smoke alarm is on the ceiling by the hallway. I grab a pile of papers off the table, jump up on the chair, and start fanning the smoke away from the smoke detector.

Finally, it stops.

I climb down, put on an oven mitt, and take the pizza out of the oven. It looks like a melted hockey puck. I open the window and toss it out into the garden because it's still smoking like crazy. I try to fan more smoke out the window.

The one good thing is that Mrs. Delfino isn't upstairs to complain. Well, it's not good that she's dead, but she hated noise. She'd bang on the floor with her cane any time Mom played her music even a little too loud.

The smoke's just starting to clear when there's a knock at the door.

A guy's holding open the screen door so he can knock on the glass. His face is pressed up close like he's looking in. He has gray hair and a mustache, and his cheeks are puffy and red, like he's been in the sun too long. He knocks again.

I unlock the door and open it a little. “Can I help you?”

“I'm Rudolph Delfino,” he says and steps into the house. “I'm Marietta's son, and I'm the executor of her will. I'm handling all her affairs.” He looks around the kitchen and sniffs. “Did you have a fire here? What's going on? Where's your mother? Is she home?”

“Uh, it was just a pizza that got overcooked. And no, she's not. Not now. But she'll be back soon.” I try to fan the smoke a little more with the papers I picked up from the table, but it doesn't help much.

Rudolph Delfino takes the pile of papers from my hand and taps the letter on top. “I see she's received my letter,” he says and hands it back to me. “You tell her that my phone number is on there, and I suggest she call me as soon as she gets home to arrange payment. I am not of the same mind set as my mother when it comes to doing business.”

He looks around the kitchen one more time and turns to go. “Put those papers where she'll see them.” He slams the door so hard the glass rattles.

I stare down at the letter in my hand.

It's not written in Mrs. Delfino's curly old lady writing. It's typed. And it's serious. Mrs. Delfino's son wants August, September, and October rent by October 1
^st
. He doesn't tell Mom to study hard, and he doesn't call her “dear.”

My eyes skim to the last line of the letter.

If rent is not paid in full by October 1, eviction proceedings will begin immediately
.

I scrape some peanut butter from an almost empty jar in the cupboard and spread it thin on a couple pieces of bread. The pizza was probably freezer burned anyway.

I sit down at the kitchen table with my math homework and a sharp pencil. It's easy algebra, but I can't concentrate. The numbers in my brain are different.

Outgoing funds: Rent on the apartment—I think it's $800 a month—that hasn't been paid since August. School supplies. Groceries. Health insurance. Heating bills pretty soon. It's starting to get colder. Nursing school tuition.

Incoming funds: Nine bucks an hour and tips from one crummy waitressing job.

It doesn't matter how many extra shifts Mom gets. Nothing is going to make those numbers add up.

I shake my head and turn back to my homework. Except there has to be something I'm missing here. As far as I know, this is the first time Mom's gotten so far behind on rent. Dad's been gone three years, and she's been doing nursing school and waitressing for two of them. How come there's suddenly not enough money when there was before?

I put my pencil down and check the clock. It should still be half an hour before Mom gets home.

I gather up the papers with Mrs. Delfino's letter, open the door to Mom's room, and add the papers to the stack already on top of her dresser. The pile of bills is there, along with a folder of other papers and the checkbook on top.

We learned how to balance a checkbook in Home and Careers class last year. I turn to the front of it and check the withdrawals and deposits.

Most of it makes sense. Monthly checks to Mrs. Delfino until July. And then I can see why they stopped. There hasn't been $800 in the account since then.

I flip through the pages looking for what changed, and then I see it. A $900 deposit dated June first from Kirby Zigonski, Senior.

Child support. That's the other income that was paying the rent. And it hasn't shown up since the beginning of summer.

 

“Hi there!” When Mom gets home later, her voice has more energy than the rest of her. There's a big splotch of strawberry ice-cream on her sleeve, and her eyes look droopy. She sniffs the air. “Did you burn something?”

I close my binder, finally done with the math that should have taken ten minutes but took an hour. “Yeah, pizza.”

“We have pizza?”

“We did. Till I burned it. I had a peanut butter sandwich instead.”

“Here.” She pulls a plastic to-go box out of her tote bag and hands it to me. I open it and find half a club sandwich, my favorite. “Here's a piece of pie, too.” She hands me a smaller box.

“Awesome. Thanks.” I take a big bite of the sandwich and figure I'll tell her about Rudolph Delfino and his letter tomorrow.

“So what did you do today?” Mom pulls a wad of ones from her pocket—tip money for the night—and heads for the office.

“Went out hiking with Gianna,” I call in to her. “We messed around with the GPS unit. It's pretty cool.”

“Is that what this stuff on the computer is all about?”

I've just taken a huge bite of pie, and all of a sudden, it's all sticky and dry in my mouth. The computer. I left Dad's profile page up on the screen when the smoke alarm went off.

“That's something Gianna was showing me with the geocaching stuff. I didn't pay much attention.”

“Well, finish up here while I get changed. Then I need to use the computer,” Mom says. When I hear her bedroom door close, I race to the computer.

Geocaches. When the burned pizza alarm went off, I had just clicked on geocaches under Dad's profile. It's all loaded now. And it's a list.

I can hear Mom's dresser drawers opening and closing. I scan the page quickly. There are two columns. One is a list of caches that Senior Searcher owns and set up for other people to find. The other is a list of different people's caches that Senior Searcher found and logged.

I check the first list. Sure enough, there's the Nest Egg cache. And there are dates here, too. According to the log, Dad hid that one three years ago. It must have been right after he and Mom split up. No wonder he wanted to ditch the Canada key chain.

There are two more caches on the list, both set up around the same time as the first one. I need to find those. I wish it didn't get dark so fast after school in the fall.

I hear water run in the bathroom. Mom will be out soon. I click the back button and click on the other list—geocaches that Dad has found.

This list is a lot longer. Dad sure must like geocaching. He's found forty-seven caches. I scan the list of dates. They start around the same time as the others—three years ago. But these dates are more spread out. Dad found caches in every season of the year—spring, summer, fall, and winter. I imagine him out in the woods freezing his butt off looking for some plastic container in the middle of February and it makes me laugh. It's just like Dad to do something like that and refuse to give up.

The cache finds are listed in chronological order. I scroll down and get to the last one just as Mom pops back into the room in her pajamas. “All right, off the computer,” she says.

I quit the web browser and stand up. “I'm going to bed to read for a while.”

“Not too late. You need to be up for school.” Mom sinks into the chair and opens the folder of paperwork I saw on her dresser earlier. Rudolph's letter is right on top.

I get in bed with
Popular Mechanics
, but I stare past it at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the snapshots in my brain right now.

Rudolph's letter in Mom's folder.

Mom's checkbook with the dwindling balance.

Dad's last child support payment.

And his last geocache. Both dated June of this year. The same month I was supposed to see Dad for a summer camping trip. And he didn't make it.

What happened in June?

“That must be when he moved in with her.” Gianna brushes her curls out of her face, but the wind keeps blowing them back. Walking to school along the lake is great some mornings, but today it's just cold and bitter and gray.

“With
who
?” I kick some leaves that have blown against the curb.

“Well, obviously I don't know who exactly. But he must have moved in with someone, Zig. It makes sense.”

“I think she's probably right,” Ruby says quietly.

“Why wouldn't he tell me?”

“Well…” Gianna bites her lower lip, thinking. “Maybe she's a lot younger. And maybe he told her that
he's
really twenty-five, so he can't possibly have a twelve-year-old kid, and that's why he has to keep you a secret from her and her a secret from you.”

Ruby picks up a chestnut and throws it at Gianna. “You've been watching too many soap operas with Nonna. Maybe he's nervous about telling you, Zig. Or he might just be busy with work. Maybe he wants to wait until he can tell you in person.”

“That's not good enough. I told you about the geocache log and the child support and stuff. It's been three months. He couldn't have called me or come to see me in three months?” I look at my watch. “Come on. We're going to be late.”

Gianna hands me a horse chestnut as we start up the sidewalk to school. I whip it at the Ethan Allen Middle School sign and it makes a big loud
thwock
sound.

“Mr. Zigonski.” Mr. Frankenbush is standing next to the sign, his arms crossed over his chest, which is the size of a school cafeteria garbage can. “You'll see me in my
office immediately. We do not vandalize school property. And what if that had hit someone in the eye?”

This day just keeps getting better and better.

 

I'm staring at the walls of a study carol on three sides of me, concrete evidence that I'm a delinquent. But it's still hard to believe I've been assigned to in-school suspension room for the crime of pegging one biodegradable horse chestnut at a virtually indestructible wooden sign.

“Take out your homework,” the monitor says.

“I finished it at home over the weekend,” I tell her.

“Yeah, right,” she snorts. “No kid in here has even showed up with his work done. Take it out.”

“Okay.” Instead, I take out the list of GPS coordinates I printed off before school this morning. The list from Dad's profile page.

“What's that?” The monitor frowns, but she doesn't get up from her coffee and
Skinny Gourmet
magazine.

“Science,” I say. I pull the GPS unit from my backpack, too. “We're learning latitude and longitude.”

“Be quiet and get to work.” She takes a loud slurp of coffee and disappears into her magazine. Perfect.

By lunchtime, I've entered coordinates for all the new geocaches. I tuck the list and GPS unit into my backpack and pull out the math I did over the weekend. Might as well check on the exponent problems.

“Back off, will ya? I'll find a seat myself!” Kevin Richards is pulling away from Mr. Teeter, the gym teacher.

“You'll sit where I tell you to sit.” Teeter points to the desk next to mine. “Park it. And get some work out.”

“I finished it all at home over the weekend,” Richards says. I can't help the snort of laughter that comes out.

“What's your problem?” Then he sees it's me and his eyes get wide. “Zigonski? What'd they put you in here for? Did you break into the school computer system or something?”