Where I'd Like to Be (13 page)

But only for a minute.

“What is this, Murphy?” Katha Coleman exclaimed, squinching up her nose as she looked over Olivia’s shoulder. “It’s really weird.”

“It’s something I’ve been doing with some friends,” Murphy said. “It’s like a story we’ve written, a story made up of a hundred tiny stories.”

“I don’t get it,” Olivia said, her face gone blank, like a switch had been flipped off inside her. “You cut out pictures of houses? I mean, why?”

“They’re houses we might want to live in someday.” Murphy was talking fast, like she was trying to run after the other Olivia, the one who, for a shining moment, had understood exactly what the books were about. “We talk about them and make up stories about them. It’s wonderful.”

“Sure, if you’re, like, eight years old or something.” Olivia looked over at Katha and shook
her head, like she couldn’t believe what a baby Murphy was. “I mean, isn’t this a little . . . immature or something? Cutting pictures out of magazines?”

“I don’t know,” Murphy said, her cheeks reddening. “I don’t really think so. Actually, I thought you might like to do it too, sometime. It’s like making wishes, if you think about it.”

A small ringing sound in my ears was growing louder by the second. I wanted so bad to snatch that book from the table and run as far away as I could, but I stood there, frozen as winter, not able to budge an inch.

“Oh, come on, Murphy! What’s next? You’re going to invite me over to play paper dolls?” Olivia said.

Katha leaned over to pull the book closer so she could find something to make fun of too, and her arm knocked over someone’s Coke. The dark liquid seeped into the pages, turning the edges black.

“Oops!” she said cheerfully. “Sorry about that, Murphy!”

Two seconds later, Brandon Sparks swooped
down on the table and grabbed the book. “I’ll save it!” he cried. “I’ll save Murphy’s book!” Then he tossed it to Jason Breem, yelling, “Speed dry!”

Jason shook the book out over his head so that a few of the pictures came unstuck and rained down on his hair. “What is this thing?” he yelled out so loud everyone in the cafeteria could hear him. “A recycling bin?”

Hands were waving in the air. “Here! Throw it here!” voices called. Olivia and Katha held their stomachs, like it hurt to laugh as hard as they were laughing. I looked around at Logan and Donita. They were both standing, yelling for everyone to put the
Book of Houses
down, to give it back, but one of Brandon’s friends stood in front of them, his arms out like a guard who wouldn’t let them pass.

Murphy sat as still as stone as the book flew from hand to outstretched hand. I couldn’t move for what seemed like years, and then I turned and walked away.

I didn’t ever want to see that book again.

I
couldn’t bring myself to go to JM practice that afternoon. I didn’t want to see Logan or anybody else for that matter. I tucked my head down into my jacket and pushed my way to the bus line. When I felt a hand on my arm, I shrugged it off, ready to shove an elbow hard into a rib cage if I had to.

Murphy dug her fingers into my arm and dragged me over to the end of the bus line, where the bus to Snob Hill stood hissing out gray smoke. “You know, I don’t much care to go anywhere with you right now,” I told her, trying to pry her hand from my arm.

“I know that,” Murphy said, not turning around to look at me. “Don’t you think I know that?”

I rolled my eyes, but I followed her up the steps and to the last row of seats. “Don’t expect me to sit with you,” I said, taking the seat in front of her, “because I sure don’t have anything to say to you.”

After the bus let us off, I trudged behind Murphy through Logan’s backyard to the fort. The air smelled just right that afternoon, just the way the air two days before Halloween was supposed to smell, rich with leaves and dirt and smoke from the leaves people weren’t allowed to burn, but always did.

By the time we reached the fort, the sky was already beginning to dim, and we wouldn’t have long before we needed to turn around to get back to the Home for supper. As soon as we got inside, Murphy flung herself into the armchair and let her arms and legs flop out.

“Home sweet home!” she said, trying to sound cheerful. I gave her a long look and a big mess of silence.

“Maddie, I’m sorry about the book. Things didn’t go the way I’d planned.”

I’d spent the whole afternoon trying to figure out what Murphy had been thinking. Was
her plan to make Olivia fall in love with the
Book of Houses
so she’d keep inviting Murphy over to her wonderful house, now that their math project was done? Or did she think one look at the
Book of Houses
would transform Olivia into a poem of air and light, an old soul, a good queen in a fairy tale?

“I know you’re sorry, but who cares?” I said, idly picking up a pair of scissors and putting them down again. “I know I don’t.”

Murphy unzipped her backpack and pulled out the
Book of Houses
. Even in the late afternoon’s half-light anyone could see it was in tatters. She lay the book in her lap and looked at it a minute without saying anything.

“I’ve thought about it all afternoon. We have to get rid of the books, Maddie.” Murphy leaned forward and looked at me, solemn as Sunday morning. “I’m afraid their magic is gone after everything that happened this afternoon.”

“The books aren’t magic,” I said dully. “They’re just books.”

Murphy stood up, cradling the
Book of
Houses
tightly to her chest. “How can you say there’s no magic in this book? Without it, the fort never would have been built. Without this book, Logan would still be halfway between this world and that one. The books brought him all the way over here to us. He’s not the same person, and that, believe it or not, is magic.”

She began to pace. “You saw Olivia today, when she first looked at the
Book of Houses
. For a minute she was a different person. She was . . . ” Murphy fumbled for the right word.

“Human?”

“She was the real Olivia,” Murphy replied. “The good Olivia, the one who watches stars. That was magic too.”

Then the air seemed to go right out of her. She fell back into the armchair. “My parents researched this group of Tibetan monks once. If one of their sacred objects even touched the ground, they got rid of it. That’s how they honored their special things. They believed it was better to destroy something than to keep it when it was less than perfect.”

I walked over to the box where my curtains lay in a jumble and pulled them out. I was too mad, just flat out too hurt, to think straight. Maybe if my head had been clearer, I would have seen certain things. I would have realized Murphy had lost something too. Her dream of Olivia’s house was gone. There’d be no more visits, no more light and air and poetry, no more stars seen through a glass ceiling.

But then, even if I’d realized it, I would have thought her loss nothing compared to mine. Because in my eyes, even if she never saw that house again, Murphy still had everything. She had the memory of parents who had loved her and taken her with them when they left for someplace new. She had tales of exotic lands and polished, blue stones hanging over her bed. She was special, a shining star for all to see.

Me, all I had were those books, and they were no good to me now. How could I ever pick up one of them again without hearing those voices laughing and yelling across the cafeteria? How could my books ever be special to me again?

“I don’t care what you do with the books,” I told her. “Do whatever you want.”

And then Murphy was opening the box with the
Book of People
and all of our supplies in it, and then she was walking outside. “Come on,” she called, but I just stood there. She came back and grabbed my hand, and I followed her like a girl in a dream.

The fact was, no matter how mad I was at Murphy, I’d go wherever she told me to.

She handed me both of the books, said, “Wait here for two minutes,” and ran in the direction of Logan’s house. I thought maybe she was going to get him and tell him to come take the books and hide them in his house, so that we wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.

But when Murphy returned she was carrying a shovel she must have gotten from the Parrish’s toolshed. She motioned me to follow her, and we tracked through the woods until we reached the fence separating the subdivision from Hampton’s Dairy Farm, right at the edge of the trees. “I used to help my mom garden,” Murphy said, beginning to dig. “Mostly I
weeded, but first thing in the spring I helped her turn over the soil.”

Within no time she dug a good-sized hole. It took me a second to realize that what I was feeling was scared, like we were about to bury a person, someone we’d murdered.

“Put the books in the hole,” Murphy told me, and that’s when I started to cry. I didn’t know why I was crying. The books were no good to me anymore. Why save them? But I couldn’t make myself hand them over to Murphy, even if the books were ruined.

“Come on, Maddie,” she said gently, laying her hand on my shoulder, and I let my fingers loosen a little bit. I was tired and jumbled up with anger and sadness, and suddenly I just wanted to be done with the whole mess, the laughing voices and the torn pages and Olivia Woods’ closed-down face. Sometimes things get too twisted up for you to hold on to them anymore; I guess that’s the reason I handed those books over to Murphy. She took them from me and buried them deep in the hole and shoveled the dirt back over them.

“This is for the best,” she said, and then turned and ran a few feet before throwing the shovel into the woods. “I’ll come back tomorrow and put the shovel in the shed,” she promised. Then she held out her hand, palm up, to the sky.

“It’s starting to rain,” she said. “We’d better run for it.”

T
hat night everyone in the dorm went over to the dining hall to watch a movie they were showing on a big screen, a cartoon about the headless horseman. I didn’t have the heart for it. I had no idea what Murphy and I would tell everyone when they discovered that the books were gone: dead and buried.

I doodled in my notebook, trying to come up with a good lie. What if Murphy and I acted surprised, like we thought the books had been stolen? My heart lifted with this idea, then fell. Why would anyone steal the books? Logan and Donita were too smart to fall for that sort of story.

I couldn’t even bear to think about Ricky Ray.

Murphy stayed in the room too, claiming
that she needed to study for a math test, but she was lying across her bed staring up at that blue stone as if she were hoping to fly away on the next strong wind.

“I think we should go dig up the books,” I told her. I was starting to get a panicky feeling inside of me. I couldn’t think of one good lie to tell Logan, Donita, and Ricky Ray. Besides, even if I didn’t care about the books anymore, they still did. They were going to kill me when they found out what happened.

Murphy didn’t even bother looking at me. “They’re probably already ruined with all of this rain.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe there’s still time to get them.”

Finally Murphy turned to face me. “Let it go, Maddie. The books are gone. It’s for the best.”

Electric tingles ran up my arms and legs, and my face felt hot. I thought back to the first day I’d shown Murphy the books. I should have run the minute she and Logan had walked in the room. I should’ve shoved them under my bed and never let anyone, not even Ricky Ray, look at them.

No one’s stopping me from going back to the fort, I told myself, but I stayed put, feeling frozen again, unable to make anything happen. I picked up my sketchbook and made criss-cross lines over an entire page, humming tunelessly.

I’d been doodling for almost half an hour when a woman tapped on the half-open door to our room. She was pale and thin, dressed in a navy blue skirt and scuffed blue shoes. She’d covered her dark curls with a scarf. You could tell that once upon a time she’d been pretty, but her lipstick and eye shadow couldn’t hide all the tired lines around her eyes and mouth.

“Emily?” the woman said, her voice sounding shy and hopeful.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “There’s no Emily who lives here.”

But she didn’t seem to hear me. “Emily?” she said again, looking straight at Murphy. “Baby? Gosh, I’ve missed you so much.”

And Murphy turned and looked out the window.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

•    •    •

And then it was raining and raining and raining, a cold, end-of-October rain that made the leaves slippery on the path through the woods, and I was wearing tennis shoes so I slipped and slid and fell. I thought I would never get there, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find what I was looking for when I did.

But the turned-over earth was still fresh on top of the hole Murphy dug and even though it was dark, dark, dark, I could see enough to dig through it with my bare hands to get to the books.
Please let them be okay
, I thought,
please let them be okay
.

But they weren’t okay. I couldn’t even turn the pages, they were soaked through with rain and stuck together, and I could have tried forever to dry them out and still they would never be right.

I didn’t know what to do except make my way through the trees to the fort, where there was a flashlight, so I could take a closer look at how bad the damage was.

“She’s not really my mother,” Murphy’d said to me as soon as the woman left. “She just says she is. They made me live with her.”

“Who did?”

“My real parents. At least, I think that’s what must have happened. I think when I was very young, they left me with her, and they meant to come back to get me.”

Murphy looked away. “That’s what I think must have happened.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had the facts right in front of me, but they couldn’t get inside my brain.

That woman was Murphy’s mother.

Murphy’s mother was not dead.

Her parents were not researchers.