Where the Stars Still Shine(2)

We’re leaving.

Again.

I lean against the door frame, watching as she dumps an armload of toiletries into her plain blue suitcase. We bought our bags at the Salvation Army the day we left Florida. My memories of that time are elusive like smoke, but one that’s always vivid is how desperately I wanted the pink Hello Kitty suitcase with a little handle and rolling wheels. She said it was too easily identified. Memorable, she said. I didn’t understand what she meant, only that there was a finality to her tone that meant I wasn’t getting that suitcase. She tried to make up for it by calling the brown case “vintage,” but sometimes that’s nothing more than a fancy word for “old and ugly.”

Beside her bag is a wad of cash in a money clip she didn’t have yesterday. My guess is she stole it from the man with the leather jacket.

“So Anthony found you, I see.” Mom’s eye makeup is smudged and she’s got a wild look I’ve seen before. “Where you been?”

“Nowhere.”

“I wish you wouldn’t run off to that Laundromat in the middle of the night, Callie.” Her tone is soft, but I can hear the anger simmering below the surface, so I avoid mentioning that she already knew where I was. “I worry something bad could happen to you.”

Bad things can happen anywhere, even when your mother is asleep in the next room. They already have. But I keep that to myself as well.

“Sorry.” And I am. If it wasn’t for me, my mom would probably have a different kind of life. A better kind.

“What are you just standing there for?” She gives me the uncertain smile she uses when … well, I don’t know exactly what she’s thinking, but I suspect she wonders what’s going on in my head. She flings a wrinkled T-shirt at me. “Go pack.”

“Now? Mom, it’s the middle of the night.”

The cracked-face thrift-store mantel clock in the living room—the one that wakes me up on the half hour all night long—chimes three times, defending my point.

“Don’t start.” Her smiles fades. “We’re leaving in three minutes.”

I wonder what set her off this time. It could have been something the man in the leather jacket said. It’s as if she hears things at a different frequency, the way a dog picks up sounds the rest of us miss. Or maybe she hears something that isn’t really there at all. Either way, when she’s ready to go, there is no arguing. There is only leaving.

I don’t have many clothes; the ones I’m wearing and a couple of T-shirts, including the one I’m holding. The one that declares me a member of the Waynesville High School track team. I’ve never been to Waynesville. I’ve never been to high school. The only thing this T-shirt and I have in common is the running. I throw it in the trash. The next place always has a thrift store filled with T-shirts that will transform me into a soccer player or a Cowboys fan or someone who’s attended the Jenkins-Carter family reunion.

My books take up the most space in my suitcase. The binding is starting to come apart on the math textbook I bought for a quarter at a Friends of the Library sale. It was printed in 1959, but I love that it’s still relevant, that math is a constant in a world that is not. It worries me that the book might not make it through another move. I pack the dog-eared copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the atlas of world history I stole from a bookstore’s sidewalk sale, my garage-sale copy of Walden, and my favorite novel in the world—a kids’ book called Mandy, about a little orphan girl who wants more than anything to have a home and a family. I’ve read it so many times the pages are falling out, but I can’t leave it behind. I can’t leave any of my books behind. They’re the only friends I’ve ever really had.

“Two minutes,” Mom calls from the bedroom.

We’re leaving: a sink full of dirty dishes, the old television we found on the curb in front of someone’s house, a vinyl couch that stuck to my face when my head slipped off my pillow, and that stupid noisy clock she bought because it reminded her of the one in her grandparents’ house when she was a little girl. We’re even skipping out a month behind on our month-to-month rent.

We usually live in buildings like this one. Our side of town is usually the rough side, where they don’t ask for references or deposits. Where, when you move away in the middle of the night, they shake their heads and cut their losses. Once we squatted in the model home of a development that was never completed. We’ve lived in a couple of long-term efficiency motels. And another time we “borrowed” a house that belonged to Leo and Dotty Ruskin, an elderly couple who spent their winters in the dry heat of Arizona. I’ve always wondered if they felt like the Three Bears when they returned. Did they feel violated for a while, locking doors they don’t normally lock until they felt safe again? Sometimes I still feel a little guilty about that, but it was nice to sleep in a real guest room. I made the beds and washed all our dishes before we left. I hope that makes up for Mom cleaning out the tin of spare change they kept in their closet.

My curls are tangled and oily as I scrape them into a ponytail. I wish I had time to take a shower. Wish we didn’t have to leave. I have no sentimental attachment to this town. No job. No school spirit. No boyfriend unless you count Danny, which I don’t because he already has a girlfriend. But I still wish we could stay here—or anywhere. Put down roots. Live. “I don’t want to do this.”