If You Find Me(31)

“Now you know.”

She smiles softly and disappears around the back. I sit up straight and wipe the sleep from my eyes, smooth my hair again, and wait.

“Just a sec, and we’ll be on our way home,” she calls out.

Home.

That word. It creeps across my consciousness like a plump caterpillar measuring my humerus. You don’t want to hurt it, but you don’t know what to do with it, either. To which I tell myself, home is wherever Jenessa is. It’s as simple as that, really. It doesn’t have to mean more than that unless I want it to. One h word can’t wipe out my Obed life. Nor can it wipe out Mama. Even if sometimes a huge part of me wishes it could.

We carry the humongous (I’m a fast study) bags to my room. I carry a heavy one filled with rectangular white boxes. I have no idea what goes into rectangular white boxes. But they look so clean, so fresh and new. For a moment, everything that’s good in the whole wide world must fit into rectangular white boxes.

I vow to keep the boxes, too.

I’m so curious and excited, I don’t even flinch when Melissa leans in toward me and gives me a hug, her eyes dancing.

“Let’s unpack the loot,” she says, and I don’t know what loot means is, but it sounds like it must be at least as good as rectangular white boxes.

The first bag is full of so many colors, I can’t even name them all. I most definitely can’t call the first items “undergarments,” because the plain word dishonors the silky beauty of the pretty colors and patterns. There are matching bras to go along with them, some with small cups and some that remind me of tank tops cut in half. I glide my fingers over the material as Melissa pulls out packs of socks, some colored, some white, some up to the calf, some stopping at the ankle. There are even two pairs of panty hose I could swear are made of flesh-coloreds piderwebs.

Another bag contains a pair of gloves fashioned from the softest material I’ve ever touched—“cashmere,” Melissa says, then explains what cashmere is.

“Isn’t it the most amazing thing you’ve ever felt?”

“Right soft.” Gently, I lay my check on the glove, imagining a whole pillow made of the stuff.

“Do you know what cashmere is?”

I shake my head no.

“It’s the silky, fine wool at the roots of the hair of the Kashmir goat.”

“A goat?”

“I know. Isn’t the world so interesting?”

I smile my yes, my attention turned back to the loot, to another pair of hand coverings with a thumb but no separate fingers, made of thick, scratchier material.

“That’s wool, and it comes from sheep. It’s not as soft, but it’s thick and warm. They’re called ‘mittens.’ It can get pretty cold most winters.”

She says it like I don’t know, like I don’t know cold the way I do. I like when she forgets. I think of early mornings with my clumsy hands purple as I rubbed Nessa’s little fingers, her skin denting yellow, then glazed-over white as we huddled together in the camper, frostbitten if we weren’t careful, our winter coats buttoned up past our throats, and underneath, sweatshirts, the hoods tied snugly under our chins. We wore two pairs ofjeans apiece, and a spare pair of socks on our hands once the feeling returned to our fingers.

It was warmer outside in the snow, where we sat on logs around the fire I coaxed to life from coals each morning, and if we had tea bags, we’d drink cups of orange pekoe. There, I could peel off the covering and warm my hands to the point that I could play for Ness, the ghosts of Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven crouched on the log, the notes sparkling like the icicles hanging from the branches above us.

Sometimes, Nessa skipped and danced to the music to keep warm, her feet scratching white circles around the fire as I heated the leftover squirrel, hiding the bits of meat in thick beans sweetened with brown sugar, lucky with a few squares of bobbing fat.

My new clothes don’t smell like wood smoke, and neither does my hair or Jenessa’s anymore. I never thought I’d miss it, but I do . . . in the same way I miss the crisp ceiling of stars and the wanwood leafmeal that made up our floor.

“Look in the next bag,” Melissa urges, her voice gilded with excitement.

I unpack two pairs ofjeans, fancy as all get out. Jeans just like Delaney’s.

“Bedazzled jeans. They’re bedazzled with gems and rhinestones,” she explains as I run my fingers over the glinting swirls and patterns along the bottom of the legs. “Delaney and her friends brought them back into style.”

Along with a few plain pairs, I count seven pairs ofjeans in all. Seven pairs ofjeans. It’s right unimaginable. My fingers wander over to one pair, washed-out-blue, with a small hole I trace around the knee.

“Can you believe that’s the in thing? Even in the woods, you were sporting the style,” Melissa says, winking.

I laugh, startling myself with the sound. But it is funny. All these girls with hot water and warm houses and store-bought clothes wearing washed-out jeans with holes in them.

The next bag is filled with tops—a few sweater pullovers, a few button-downs made of flannel, also soft in my hands, and some of what Melissa calls “turtlenecks” to wear beneath them. There are more Tshirts, some short-sleeved, some long. My bed is a rainbow for the senses. Melissa leaves and then returns with six packs of hangers in white, pale blue, and pale pink colors.