If You Find Me(19)

I make sure my words bite back.

“There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s sleeping. She’s tired.”

“No. Why she can’t talk, I mean.” Delaney scrutinizes my face, as if expecting me to lie.

“She can if she wants to. She just doesn’t want to, most of the time.”

“My mom’ll have something to say about that.”

“Don’t you have homework to do, Del?” My father says on his way out, but it’s more a command than a question.

I worry, imagining Nessa being made to talk and the hissy fit she’d throw if she was pushed into it. There’s no making her do something she doesn’t want to do, especially when she’s right. They’re her words. It’s up to her to use them. Or not.

Delaney ignores him.

“Why do you call your own father ‘sir’?”

She’s getting on my nerves, but at least she’s forgotten about the garbage bags.

[page]“Mama says it’s a sign of respect to call grown men ‘sir,’ and women ‘ma’am.’ ”

Delaney scoffs, like I’m the last person who’d know, coming from where I do.

“Well, I call them by their names—Mom and Dad. They’re family, not strangers.”

To her, maybe.

Inside, I hurt in that empty puzzle piece way. It’s obvious she thinks he’s her father, not mine, even though we share the same blood. Maybe she’s right. I wonder if she knows he used to beat Mama and me, and if he’s ever beaten her. Only, it’s not the sort of thing you ask a person, especially a stranger.

“I guess we’re stepsisters. That’s what my mom said. Although I don’t know if I want to be stepsisters with a retarded girl.”

“She’s not retarded.”

My voice betrays nothing, even though the white heat, jagged as lightning, jumps through my veins. I know girls like Delaney from a few of my books. Bullies, who like to tease. Mean-spirited girls who laugh when other girls trip or cry.

“Excuse us, please,” I say.

She plants her feet and her eyes narrow. Hawk eyes, I think. Untrustworthy. Preying on the small and the weak.

“I said, please leave!”

Delaney snaps her beak closed and flounces out the door. I sink onto the bed, sag there on the edge, trying to catch up with my new life. In the woods, a person has all day and night to process things. Out here, it’s different. There’s no time.

“She’s not so bad once you get to know her,” my father offers, sticking his head in as he passes.

I wonder how much he’s heard.

“It’s been hard on her, too, all these years. It’s my fault really, so get mad at me, not her, okay? Door open, or shut?”

“Shut, sir.”

I exhale. Blink back the wetness that threatens to spill. My stomach drops at least as far as we’ve traveled away from our woods. What if I can’t do this? What happens then?

Shorty utters a low whine and slips out from under Nessa’s arm, crawling toward me on his belly until he’s pushed his body all the way up against mine. He rests his graying head on my knee with a sigh and gives my skin a tentative taste. I bend forward and sniff. He smells like soap, like something with jasmine, which reminds me of Mrs. Haskell’s hair.

I let the tears flow, hot as the creek in summertime. I don’t know beans about civilized living. My mind feels crowded, like a room with too much furniture, until chair arms and couch legs poke me, cushions and pillows conspire to smother me. There’s no room to move. To think.

I stare out the window, the glass dark and fogged with our collective breath. In my mind I hear my trees whistling in the wind and my heart melts into a puddle because I’m no longer there to whistle back. One missing Mama and a dwindling supply of canned goods is a molehill compared to this.

I lean over and wrap my arms around Shorty, a kindred spirit if ever there was one. Us, two creatures plucked from the wild. One lost leg. One lost girl. I scrutinize my jeans, zeroing in on the jagged hole below the knee where I’d snagged on barbed wire coming back (empty-handed) from fishing. No wonder Delaney snickered at us. We look exactly like what we are: poor kids. Kids discarded.

“Come in,” I reply to the knock on the door. I sit up and quickly dry my tears.

“Now what?” I groan, seeing Delaney’s face in the doorway.

“Catch,” she says, tossing me a crocheted blanket. “I didn’t think you’d want to wake your sister by pulling down the covers. You can use this one for yourself.”

“Thanks.”

She stares at the garbage bag, her expression different this time.

“What’s this?” Delaney says, toeing the violin case leaning against the bag.

“A violin.”

I almost choke on the v word with the planet-size history curled up inside it, like an embryo bursting its mottled shell. It’s a history that could break me if I let it, spilling out my middle like Gran’s jam cake when you first cut into it.

We exchange glances.

“Can you play it?”

I take her in: her perfect, shiny dirty-blond hair, her embroidered jeans speckled with twinkling jewels, her socks so white, there’s no doubt creek washing wasn’t involved.

“I’ve been playing since I was four. Mama—my mother—taught me. She was a concert violinist.”