Don’t Let Me Go(91)

“OK,” Grace said.

That meant she was talking too much, and Grace knew it, but she decided not to waste time feeling hurt about it. It felt like too much trouble.

After a while she decided she probably was a little more settled inside, but maybe only because she thought she was supposed to be. But then she decided if it felt better it didn’t matter why.

“But that’s just my upset stomach,” she said. “Maybe you should be doing what’s really the trouble. Maybe you should do my brain or something, because my stomach is only upset because I’m nervous.”

“Your brain has nothing to do with it,” he said.

His voice was very calming. Grace liked his voice a lot.

“It doesn’t?”

“Very little. The emotions that are making you sick live in your gut.”

“They do?”

“That’s why you feel them there. Just close your eyes and don’t think for a minute.”

So Grace tried to do that.

“Was that a minute?” she asked, about a minute later.

“That was seven,” Jesse said in that calm voice she liked so much. “Let me show you how to do this on your own at school tomorrow.”

And he did.

And then Grace agreed that it was probably best to go to school in the morning, and not just stay home all day, throwing up and worrying. After all, at the end of a whole day doing that, where would she be? Just facing a few more days that looked and felt exactly the same.

It must have been a good thing to decide, because Jesse and Rayleen both liked it a lot.

? ? ?

On the way home from school the following day, walking side by side with Felipe and learning the Spanish words for “luck” and “happiness,” Grace saw her. Ms. Katz. Which was neither suerte nor felicidad in Grace’s opinion.

It was just one block down from their apartment house. Ms. Katz drove by in a silver car. A little silver Honda or something. Not the kind of car you’d really notice or anything, and Grace had no idea why she’d even looked inside. But she had. And it was Ms. Katz. There was no mistaking her. Grace’s stomach knew her when it saw her.

“She came early,” Grace said to Felipe, rubbing her hands together to heal her poor tummy if she could. “That county lady. She came early.”

“Oh. Why are you holding your stomach like that? Are you sick?”

“I’m trying not to be.”

“Maybe it’s good she came early. Your mom was clean yesterday. So maybe it’s good.”

“How do I find out, though, Felipe? I have to know how it went! I can’t wait for Yolanda to come, that’s in hours! I’ll die!”

“I guess you could go ask her.”

“No, I can’t. She can’t see me until she gets thirty days. You go ask her, OK, Felipe? Please?”

“I don’t know, mi amiga. She hates me so much.”

“Oh, my God, I have to know. Please, Felipe?”

“OK, mi amiga. OK. No guarantees, cause I don’t even know if she’ll talk to me. But I’ll try.”

? ? ?

“Why are you holding your stomach like that?” Billy asked. “Are you about to be sick?”

“No, I’m trying not to be,” Grace said, impatiently. “It’s reiki. Jesse taught it to me. Otherwise I’m just going to explode because Felipe is taking too long.”

“I think that’s good, though. Maybe it means she’s talking to him.” Then his voice changed. “Grace Eileen Ferguson! Are you biting your nails?”

Grace woke up as if from a dream, and looked down to see that she had torn into her right thumbnail.

“Geez, Billy. I’m getting more like you every day. I think you’re rubbing off on me, and not so much in a good way. Oh, my God, here he comes! I hear him walking!”

She ran to the door and threw it open wide, and Felipe came in.

“She wouldn’t talk to me,” he said.

Grace’s hands automatically found their reiki position again.

“Not at all?”

“Not really. But I told her it was for you, not for me. I told her you were really scared about how it went with the county lady, so she said if I waited she would write you a note. So here’s the note.”

Felipe held a folded scrap of bright yellow paper in Grace’s direction. She recognized it as torn off the message pad her mom kept by the phone. Grace had thought for more than a year now that it was silly to keep a message pad by the phone, since nobody ever called them any more. Not even Yolanda. Yolanda always said it wasn’t a sponsor’s job to go chasing after her mom, that her mom had Yolanda’s number, and if she didn’t use it that must mean she didn’t want help.

“What does it say?” Grace asked, afraid to touch it.

“I dunno. I figured it was private.”

“Oh,” Grace said. “Right.”

She took the note from him. It didn’t burn her. It didn’t bite.

“Here, I’ll read it out loud,” she said. Because Billy looked like his tummy could use some reiki, too. “‘Dear Grace, I was clean when the lady came from the county today. I’ve been clean for two days. I did it for you, baby. Twenty-eight more days and then I get you back. Love, Mom.’”