Where I'd Like to Be (4 page)

But Ricky Ray was too busy looking for his other favorite cut-out people to pay attention to my attractive bungalow in the “Great, Great Location!” “Here’s the first one you ever cut
out, back at Mrs. Estep’s house,” he said, pointing to a picture of a teenage girl in platform shoes that was on page one of the
Book of People
. “That was after Randy Nidiffer taught you how to do your own books.”

Ricky Ray had memorized practically every story about my life that I’d ever told him. I figured that was Ricky Ray’s way to make it sound like we’d always known each other and that all of my stories were his stories too.

“Randy Nidiffer was like a brother to you,” Ricky Ray continued as he leafed through the pages. “You sure wish he would write you a letter.”

“I decided I don’t care anymore about that,” I lied, rubbing my finger across a ranch-style house to make it stick better to the paper. “It doesn’t matter so much anymore.”

“Oh, well, that’s good,” Ricky Ray said. “I sure miss him, though.”

“You never even knew Randy Nidiffer, you silly thing,” I said, leaning over and poking him in the belly.

“I know. But I miss him anyway.”

I chewed on a cuticle, a habit Corinne was trying to break me of. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me that Randy Nidiffer had stopped writing. Maybe you shouldn’t expect boys to write you letters, even though it sure would have surprised me if Mr. Willis had quit clipping out the baseball statistics from Sunday’s paper to send me April through October. But I had to admit when Randy’s letters stopped after only two, it felt like a piece of me had withered and died on the vine. Randy Nidiffer had always felt like home to me.

Randy Nidiffer had been the only other foster child at Mrs. Theresa Estep’s house when I lived there, right before I came to the Home. He had wavy, golden-brown hair that spilled over his forehead and freckles everywhere you could see. He made terrible grades and talked back to adults whenever he got the chance. He refused to dress for gym, he stole ice-cream sandwiches from the case when the cafeteria ladies had their backs turned, and he smoked cigarettes.

The secret of Randy Nidiffer was that he
was a great artist. To the best of my knowledge, no grown-up had ever discovered this about him. After I’d lived at Mrs. Estep’s house for a few weeks, Randy started showing me his sketchbooks. I remember being startled by his pictures of hands, which looked so real I once had a dream they came alive and started brushing my hair with a silver-plated hairbrush.

He also made notebooks using cut-out pictures from magazines and newspapers, and he had stories for every picture he’d ever cut out. “Now this boy here,” he’d say, pointing to a picture of a boy clipped from a cereal ad, “his name’s Thomas Lee Oakwood, and he’s no good. He used to be good, but no matter how good he was, his brother was always better, at least on the surface of things.” And then he’d point to a picture of a boy who looked like he was dressed for Sunday school. “His brother’s name is Cameron Lee Oakwood. Everybody loved Cameron so much, but they had no idea that sometimes he stole money off his daddy’s dresser and that he’d pawned some of his
mama’s silver at the Bull’s-Eye Pawn Shop down on Bristol Road.”

When I first knew Randy, all his notebooks were of people. I was the one who gave him the idea for a book of houses. Mrs. Estep had dragged us to the Food Lion along with her two scrawny boys, but Randy and I chose to sit on a bench beside the gum ball machines instead of trailing her past the produce and the Deli Fresh Meat Counter. A rack of glossy real estate magazines stood next to our bench, and I picked one up to look at the pictures of the pretty houses. I’d always lived in houses that were run-down and crooked and wore an unhappy look about them. The houses in the real estate magazines were cheerful and new, and the scent of fresh lumber seemed to come right off the pages.

“These would be real pretty in a notebook,” I told Randy. “These could be where the people in your other notebooks lived.”

After that, Randy and I collected real estate magazines whenever we could, and we spent almost every afternoon cutting out pictures.
We made the first
Book of Houses
, and I started on my own
Book of People
and several other books as well. Mrs. Estep thought we were crazy. “Don’t leave your magazines near them kids,” she’d tell anyone who would listen. “They’ll cut ’em all to pieces.”

•    •    •

Now Ricky Ray flipped through my latest
Book of People
, pointing out all the different Crystals that he found there. “This Crystal has blonde hair and this Crystal has black hair . . . ,” he went on in his little-boy drone. I pulled him over onto my lap and rested my chin on the top of his head. All the time I wished I was twenty-one so I could adopt Ricky Ray for real and live in a friendly, white house with green trim and a big backyard for playing ball in. That was the right sort of place for a little boy like Ricky Ray.

“I don’t know why you won’t believe me!” Logan Parrish’s voice came crashing into the hallway. “There’s nothing to do in this town or this county, and the people here are morons. You’re going to have to run away to Johnson
City if you’re looking for something to do!”

“Well, let’s go then,” Murphy said, walking into the common room. When she spotted us on the couch, she said, “Don’t tell me it’s the famous Ricky Ray right here in my very own dorm!”

Ricky Ray looked confused. He was just a little boy and didn’t understand people joking around, even when they were doing it in a nice way.

“I bet he’s helping Maddie with her homework,” Logan put in. He grabbed the
Book of People
out of Ricky Ray’s hands. “What
is
this? Paper dolls?”

I held out my hand and gestured for Logan to give me the notebook, barely containing the urge to pull out every last piece of his hair. He must have sensed I was reaching my limit, because he handed it right over.

“But really,” he said, sounding serious. “What is that, Maddie? An art project?”

I shrugged. “It’s hard to explain.”

Murphy sat down next to me and tapped a finger on the
Book of Houses
. “May I look?” she said in the politest tone I’d yet heard her use. I
shrugged again, and Murphy took the book from me.

She turned the pages slowly, which made me nervous. I was afraid she’d say something that would ruin the
Book of Houses
forever. People can do that, you know. They can take the things you love and twist them around with a few words so you can’t bear to ever look at them again. That’s why I hardly showed the books to anyone if I could help it. I had to protect the things that meant something to me. I put my arm around Ricky Ray and pulled him closer.

I was afraid for the both of us.

Murphy started shaking her head, still looking at the book. “This is so great,” she said. “This is really, really neat.”

She looked up at me. “Where did you get the idea for this? I love these houses! I can’t wait until I live in a real house again.”

I nodded. I understood what she meant. I couldn’t wait to live in a real house either. And one way or another, some day not too far away I hoped, I would.

A
beam of light played against my eyelids, sending red streaks through a dream I was having about an old brown dog of Mr. Willis’s named Gus. When I opened my eyes, I saw Murphy sitting up in her bed, grinning a big grin, a flashlight in her hand.

“Let’s build a house,” she said, aiming the light in my face again.

“Cut it out with the flashlight,” I hissed. “I’m halfway blind from it already.”

Murphy put the flashlight directly under her chin, turning her face into a ghoulish, glowing mask. “Don’t you think building a house is a great idea? It may be the best idea anyone has ever come up with in this room,
although that’s probably not saying much.”

“I don’t know the first thing about building a house,” I said, sitting up and pulling my knees to my chest. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Murphy pointed the light at a pile of books next to my bed and ran it up and down the spines. “Let’s see, I count nine, no, ten library books there, which means you know how to use a library card. We’ll go to the library, check out some how-to books, and we’ll have a house built in no time. A small house. I helped my parents build an adobe hut once in New Mexico, when they were studying the Hopi Indians, so I already know a lot about it. Believe me, Maddie, human beings have been building houses for thousands of years. Anyone can do it.”

“I don’t know, Murphy.”

“Okay, maybe not everyone can do it,” Murphy said, training her light on Brittany and then Kandy. “I’m not saying they could do it. But we could, you and me.”

She turned the flashlight on me again. “Say you’ll do it, Maddie.”

There was something in her voice, almost like she was pleading.

How in the world could I say no?

The next morning we were on our way to the Elizabethton Public Library, with Ricky Ray, Logan Parrish, and Donita right alongside us. It was a beautiful late September Saturday, the sky high and blue, the trees beginning to show their colors.

It would have been a perfect day, if not for the fact of Logan Parrish. Asking Logan along wasn’t my idea, you can be sure about that.

“Hey, Logan, have you ever heard Maddie’s ghost story?” Murphy asked a few blocks away from the library. Donita, who’d heard the story on several occasions, groaned, but Ricky Ray grabbed my hand and said, “Tell it again, Maddie!”

So I did. I was happy Murphy wanted to hear it, especially since I wasn’t sure she’d been as impressed as she should have been the first time I’d told it to her.

The minute I finished, Logan asked, “So why
don’t you still live with your grandmother? How come you’re at the Home?”

“Granny Lane got the diabetes and her eyes started going bad,” I said, sounding like I was reciting from a script. “Everyone thought it best that I stay with people more able to meet my developmental needs.”

Murphy put her hand on my shoulder. “Why are you even bothering to answer that question?” she asked. Then she turned to Logan. “It’s absolutely none of your business why Maddie is here, or why any of us are. That’s personal information.”

Logan Parrish turned red as a sunset, which I found very satisfying. You could tell he didn’t want to do anything to get on Murphy’s bad side. He kept looking at her with a dopey grin every five seconds it seemed like, and it was starting to get on my nerves. I wished he’d go fall in love with somebody else.

“What did the ghost look like, Maddie?” Ricky Ray asked, same as he always did, tugging at my shirt. “Weren’t you scared?”

“I was just a baby, so even if I had seen him, I
wouldn’t have remembered,” I explained. “But I didn’t see him.”

“I’d be afraid that ghost was going to track me down,” Donita said. “We ain’t that far from Roan Mountain. He could find you, check to see how you were doing.”

“He wouldn’t hurt her, though,” Murphy said, turning to face Donita. “Why would he hurt somebody whose life he saved?”

“A ghost is a ghost, friendly or not,” Donita said. “Whichever way, I bet Maddie don’t want to shake hands with one in the middle of the night.”

Donita was going to the library to check out a book on dolphins for a science report. When Corinne heard that Murphy and I were going to the library, she told Donita to scoot along with us. It was fine with me, but Donita didn’t look any too happy about it. From what I could tell, Donita hadn’t warmed up to Murphy one bit over the past few days.

The Elizabethton Public Library used to be the Elizabethton Post Office, back in the old days when they made post offices in the beautiful style
of high ceilings and gleaming floors. Once everything turned modern, though, they built a new post office over by the Wal-Mart. The new post office had gray linoleum and ceilings of regular height, and it was hard to get too excited about going over there to buy stamps if you should need some, which I rarely did.

On the other hand, I was always in need of books to read since I read through a stack or two of them a week, so I was happy that they turned the beautiful, old post office into a library.

The minute we walked in, I went to straight to Mrs. Dugger, the head librarian, and asked her where the house-building books were. Mrs. Dugger didn’t blink an eye, but marched us right over to the shelves featuring books on home repair and the like. I like a librarian who doesn’t ask too many questions and respects your privacy.

Everyone but Donita, who’d gone to find dolphin books, grabbed handfuls of books with titles such as
Designing Your Own Home
and
Contemporary Home Plans
and lugged them over to one of the long, oak tables by the reference section.

“This one’s got a lot of house plans in it,” Logan said, flipping through the pages of one of his books, “but I don’t see any directions for how to build the house itself.”

“That’s easy,” Ricky Ray said. “You just get hammers and nails and wood. Everybody knows that.”

“I think it’s a little more complicated than that,” Logan told him in a superior tone of voice. “Although you have the basic idea, I guess.”

Murphy stood up. “I’ll go see if they have any books with instructions. We’ll probably need several different books if we’re going to figure out how to build a house.”

The books in my pile mostly showed plans for the sort of houses you saw out by the new mall in Johnson City. They were subdivision houses with big garages and windows that lay flat against the outside walls. Over the years I
myself had developed a liking for houses with more character, although I understood why people might want to buy a house that was fresh and new and completely their own. I spent a lot of time wondering about the girls who lived in the dorm before me. It seemed strange to think how their stuff once cluttered up my desk and their clothes filled the closet I now shared with Murphy, Donita, Brittany, and Kandy. Sometimes I worried about those girls, what might have happened to them.

“My books give a lot of measurements,” I told Logan and Ricky Ray after I’d gone through the whole stack. “But that’s it.”