Don’t Let Me Go(30)

“Yeah, it’s me, Mr. Lafferty. I came to ask you a favor.”

“Are you OK? Are you in trouble?”

“No, not really. It’s just that nobody else in the whole building has a car that works—”

“You need a ride someplace? Where do you need to go?”

“Just let me tell you,” she said, trying to hide her frustration.

If it had been Billy, or Rayleen, she wouldn’t have tried to hide it. She would have just said, “Stop it! Stop interrupting!” But this was Mr. Lafferty, and you had to be a little more careful with him.

“Sorry,” he said, which surprised her.

“I need somebody to go to the lumber store and get a big piece of wood.”

“What kind of wood?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How big?”

“Billy said five feet. Or six feet. Either one.”

“That’s not quite all I need to know, though. Five or six feet in which direction?”

“Hmm,” Grace said, probably because it’s what Rayleen always said at times like this.

“I better go ask him.”

“No!” Grace said. Well, she’d meant to say it, but ended up shouting it. “No, please don’t go knock on Billy’s door any more, please. He hates that.”

She watched Mr. Lafferty’s eyes narrow, and she wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it seemed to have something to do with the look she’d seen on his face before he found out it was only somebody short knocking on his door.

Why did everybody hate it when their door got knocked on? Grace thought she would like that. A new person, maybe, or a good surprise. She wondered if she would outgrow that openness when she got older, since it seemed everybody else had.

Then Mr. Lafferty said, “Let’s try this. Why don’t you tell me what it’s going to be used for, and maybe that’ll help.”

“Oh. Sure. It’s for a dance floor. Because I’m learning to tap dance.”

“Ah,” Mr. Lafferty said. As if that explained a lot, as Billy would have put it. “So you need a sheet of wood. Like plywood. Like a big plywood square.”

“Yeah!” Grace shouted, excited now. “That’s what he said! He said plywood, and he said either five feet square or six feet square!”

“Sure,” Mr. Lafferty said. “I could do that.”

“You could?”

“Sure.”

“Wow. I’m surprised.”

“If you didn’t think I’d do it, why even come ask me?”

“Well, it never hurts to ask.”

“Where are your shoes?” he asked, with a little bit of an air of disapproving of things like that.

“I left them down at Billy’s. I was wearing his tap shoes. I need to get my own tap shoes, though, because I can only use Billy’s when I’m at his place. I can’t take them home. And I really need to practice at home, and at Rayleen’s, because I’m not getting enough practice, and besides, they don’t really fit me right at all, but I don’t have the money for tap shoes, and I don’t think Billy or Rayleen do, either. And I know my mom doesn’t, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that, but if I had the wood, at least I could go back to practicing some. You know. Like, at all.”

“Fine,” he said. As if that could be the end of the conversation.

Grace just stood there. She wanted to ask, “When are you going to get the wood?” But it seemed rude. After all, he’d said he would, which was shocking enough, and it didn’t seem right to ask any more questions than that.

“OK, thanks,” she said.

Then she padded along the hall and down the stairs in her sock feet.

She got down to the first floor just as Rayleen was leaving Billy’s. She ran into Rayleen out in the hall.

“He said yes!” she screeched.

“Really?”

“Really! He said yes!”

“Well, I’ll be damned. When is he going?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“Am I supposed to give him some money for it or something?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“What exactly did you ask?”

“If he would do it. And he said yes!”

Rayleen put a hand on Grace’s shoulder. She seemed to be feeling down, Grace noticed. She hadn’t seemed down when she came home, but now she was. Maybe she had caught it from Billy. And Billy had caught it from Grace. So maybe it was all her fault.

“Come on inside,” Rayleen said to her. “I have to think of something to make us for dinner. I had a client cancel on me today, and another was a no-show, so we can’t afford to order out.”

“Oh. That’s OK,” Grace said.

“I’m not sure what we’ve got to eat.”

“What about when Mr. Lafferty comes back with the wood? Do we have enough money for that?”

“I have no idea,” Rayleen said. “I don’t even know what plywood costs.”

But Grace could tell she was getting lower and more depressed.

They went inside her apartment, and Rayleen rummaged around in the cupboard and the fridge.