If You Find Me(21)

I fumble for my shotgun, but it isn’t there; my heart races as the shadows in the Hundred Acre Wood morph into hulking giants over twenty feet tall. Who, who? echo through the leaves, and an owl blinks down, and I answer, It’s only me. It is only me. Jenessa is gone. Frantic, I search the camper, the campsite, the curving shore of the roiling Obed River.

Who, who?

I don’t know!

I fall out of bed, landing hard on my side.

“Smooth,” says Delaney, smirking from the doorway. “My mom said to wake you for breakfast. Since you slept through dinner and all.”

She wrinkles her nose. “You slept with that fleabag in the bed all night? Gross!”

Technically, I don’t know what gross is, but her facial expression does a more than adequate job of conveying the meaning. She marches into the room and yanks Shorty by the collar. The dog whimpers, pressing hard against Nessa, his body a deadweight.

“Let him be,” I order, my voice still rough with sleep. “We’ll bring him down ourselves.”

“Whatever. You better bounce. If my mom went through the trouble of cooking for you, the least you can do is eat it when it’s hot.”

Bounce?

I push up from the floor, ignoring her, and gently shake Jenessa’s shoulder.

“Rise and shine, baby. It’s a new day.”

Delaney sniggers, an ugly sound I vow never to make. I shuffle Ness into a sitting position, propped against the headboard like she’d started out the night before.

Draped over the rocking chair are yesterday’s jeans. My cheeks burn as Delaney leans in the doorway, watching as I pull them on. I’m not changing my T-shirt in front of her, no matter what she thinks.

“You’re flat as a board. Don’t they have boobs in the woods?”

[page]“People like you, you mean?”

“Touché,” she says with a sharp smile, instead of the anger I’d expected. I wrap myself in the crocheted blanket. Shorty opens one eye, like he knows what comes next.

“Let’s go outside, boy.”

Shorty unfolds himself from my sister and carefully jumps down. We watch him stretch.

“He’s arthritic, the old mutt. I thought you said you never had a dog before?”

“Doesn’t take a genius to know he’d need to go out in the morning.”

“Want me to stay and help Jenessa get dressed?”

I search her eyes, digging deep. I see no trickery, no malice.

“Suit yourself. She’s hard in the morning, though. Make sure she doesn’t go back to sleep. If she does, take the blanket from her. Tell her to put on clean socks, underpants, and an undershirt— they’re in the top drawer of the bureau in her room, and her jeans and shirts are in the closet—and make sure she brushes her teeth. You have to watch her, or she’ll skip it.”

Delaney looks surprised that something like fresh underwear and clean teeth would matter to us. I roll my eyes and follow Shorty down the hallway.

It’s true: We may not have had much. Not a fancy house, expensive clothes, or stuff to show off. But I’ve always made sure we’re clean. Clean is free.

Mama once said teeth were like parents—you only got one set. Being poor was no reason to take them for granted. Me and Ness, we’d bathed in the large metal tub year-round, the sun helping to warm the water in the wintertime, although in the wintertime, we’d been lucky to brave the water once a week. But the rest of the time, we’d bathed twice a week, and that didn’t count all the times we swam in the river. Mama said a person makes do with what they’ve got, and that’s what we’d done.

Shorty waits for me at the bottom of the stairs, eyeing me as I peck my way down, steeling myself to deal with my father and Melissa and all the noise of the civilized world. But my father is nowhere in sight. My stomach rumbles and growls at the scents drifting from the kitchen.

Bacon, again.

A griddle spits. A woman hums to herself. Like a ghost, I tiptoe past, grabbing Shorty by the collar and leading him out the front door. The hound lopes off, scattering a flock of birds into the ether, puffs of dirt kicking out behind his flying paws. I suck in the late-October air, nippy but bearable with the blanket around my shoulders. I wish I had a robe like Delaney’s, though, all thick and warm and shiverproof.

Delaney doesn’t sleep in T-shirts. Last night, she slept in a longsleeved, button-down top with matching pants, the cream-colored material shiny and etched with curled-up cats. Just by looking at her, I know she wears bras, like Mama, not undershirts, like me.

I glance down at my chest. I’m washboard skinny, just like Jenessa, which makes me skinny up there, too.

Shorty returns with a stick in his mouth, panting and smiling, and then trots off with it. When I hear a cow bellowing in the distance, I remember what my father said on the ride yesterday. Cows and goats, an old horse, a mule and donkeys. A farm. Not as a living, but as a place with plenty of room to wander.

I jump when his deep voice sneaks up behind me. “I see you’re up.”

I feel shy as I turn to face him. He holds a mug in his hand, a beat-up pair of work gloves peeking from the pocket of his sheepskin coat.

“Shorty needed out. Jenessa is getting dressed, and then she’ll be down.”

“I take it you girls rested well?”

I’m embarrassed to tell him how well. Two pillows apiece; a real mattress, not two old blankets sewn together and stuffed with yellowed newspaper to cushion a cot too small for two growing girls. Real blankets keeping us warm, no need to sleep in our winter coats . . . I think of Delaney snickering, and nod my head instead.