A Simple Case of Angels (10 page)

24

—

Later that
night it started snowing. Heavy, feathery clumps. It was still snowing the next morning, Saturday, when Nicola walked June Bug to Feeler's Flowers. Over the old snow, dingy with salt and grit and stained with dog pee, a thick white carpet had settled. In front of Feeler's Flowers, under the shelter of the awning, the fresh petals Irene had scattered looked even prettier against this pure new snow.

“Is this June Bug?” Irene called as they came in. “My first dog customer!”

Whenever June Bug found herself in a new place, she had to race around and explore it, sniffing everything in super-snorkel mode.

In the middle of the shop, a reverse sneeze gripped her.
Ork ork ork
, she wheezed. Irene buckled over laughing.

Finally, Nicola managed to distract June Bug with a treat. She made her Sit and Wave and Roll Over.

“She's the cutest dog I've ever seen!” Irene said.

A man in a striped toque with snow stuck in his beard walked by with a golden Lab. The Lab stopped at the door as though he could read the
DOGS WELCOME
sign. The man came inside and the two dogs sniffed each other's bottoms to say hello.

“My second dog customer!” Irene said.

“What's your dog's name?” Nicola asked the man.

“Buster.”

Irene gave Buster a treat, and June Bug, too. Then the man bought some flowers. “Just because,” he said.

“Come back on Valentine's Day, Buster,” Nicola said.

After Buster and his owner left, Irene asked how Nicola was feeling.

“Sad,” Nicola said. “I was hoping Lindsay would be here.”

“She's at home. She won't come out of her box.”

“I'll go see her,” Nicola said.

“Thank you so much,” Irene told Nicola. Then she told June Bug, “Sorry, June Bug, it's a no-pets building.”

“I'll take her home first.”

“Leave her here,” Irene said, even though the little dog was lapping water from a flower bucket on the floor.

“Are you sure?” Nicola asked.

“She's already bringing in customers!”

* * *

At the Sheldon Arms Apartments, Nicola met Ignacio shoveling the walk in his big earflapped hat.

“Ah, winter,” he told her. “It can put a good janitor to the test. The pipes freezing, the furnace going out. But these little joys, like being the first to walk on freshly fallen snow? They make it all worthwhile. How is June Bug?”

“Good. I left her with Lindsay's mom. She said this was a no-pets building.”

Ignacio nodded. “I wish it wasn't, but the owner makes the rules, not me.”

“The retirement home I've been visiting with Lindsay and June Bug has a lot of rules. I wonder if Mr. Devon made them or if he's just doing what he's supposed to, like you?”

Ignacio shrugged and continued shoveling.

Nicola stamped her boots on the mat in the lobby, then went up the stairs to Lindsay's apartment. The door was locked. Nicola rang and rang and finally Lindsay, in her pajamas, her glasses all smeary, opened up.

“I
slept
in my box again and I still don't feel better!”

Nicola kicked off her boots. “I got a sign last night.”

“What?” Lindsay asked.

“At New Year's we do this special thing in my family.” Nicola pulled off her mitts. When she stuffed them in her coat pockets, she dislodged June Bug's treat container. It landed on the floor and the lid popped off. Little heart-shaped salmon treats scattered across the hall.

“Oh,” Nicola said, blinking down. “I think we just got another sign.”

Lindsay squinted at the treats.

“I thought they glowed to remind us to use our heads,” Nicola said. “But that's completely wrong.”

Lindsay pushed up her glasses. “They want us to eat dog treats?”

“The shape of them.”

Lindsay looked again and broke into a smile. “They want us to use our hearts.”

* * *

Everything made sense then. It was as obvious as the perfect line down the middle of June Bug's half-black, half-white face. June Bug was a good little dog who sometimes did bad things.

They were sitting together on Lindsay's bed.

“Like my dad,” she said. “My mom says he's a good man who did something bad.”

Then Lindsay crawled into her Feel Better Box and started tearing down the pictures. Glossy magazine brides, Lindsay's own bride drawings, the magazine pictures of happy things — they flew out the end of the box.

Lindsay asked Nicola to pass her the 100 gel pens that were on her desk. Nicola crawled inside with them. She didn't feel claustrophobic at all.

Good and bad
, Lindsay wrote on the wall of the box.

“Love and hate,” Nicola said, and Lindsay wrote it down in a different color gel pen. “Life and death.”

Tears welled up in Lindsay's eyes, but she wrote it.

“The world is full of opposites,” she said.

“We don't like the bad side. Or the hate side. Or the dead side,” Nicola said. “But it's there.”

“We can stay on the good side if we want,” Lindsay said. “If we use our hearts.”

* * *

On Monday, the most amazing thing happened. Ms. Phibbs brought in a scale and set it up on her desk. Everyone was supposed to guess what combinations of different-sized weights would make the scale balance.

“Lindsay!” Nicola shrieked across the room, for which she had to stay in at recess.

At lunch, the girls couldn't get a seat together in the crowded lunchroom. It was so noisy they wouldn't have been able to talk anyway. They ate their sandwiches separately. Then, as they were leaving, Margo Tamm leapt up from her seat and shoulder-checked Lindsay.

“Look at me! I'm an angel!” She flapped her hands.

Nicola felt like kicking Margo, but Lindsay looked at her with pity.

“I wish you were happier,” Lindsay said.

Margo turned red and Lindsay and Nicola walked out together.

They paused to put on their coats in the entranceway, under the picture of the queen. The kindergarten leaf frieze drooped above it, still covering the school motto.

Nicola looked at the gray-haired queen hanging crookedly. She remembered the kids falling off the playground equipment last fall.

“The world's out of balance,” she said.

It had tilted.

With the playground cordoned off, there was nothing to do at recess and lunch. Everyone was bored. Bored, they fought more often.

That day, Gavin Heinrichs chased everyone around, trying to make someone lick the spoon from his lunch that he'd chilled to freezing in a snow bank.

Lindsay and Nicola screamed when he came at them. They ran back into the school and hid in an alcove, but they weren't really safe from Gavin. The school wasn't safe anymore. Or fair, or kind. Ever since Mrs. Dicky fell off the chair last fall, everyone had forgotten the motto. The replacement principal didn't seem to know it, or how to run a school. He didn't know to send the kids in shifts to the lunchroom, or to organize lunch-time activities.

“Remember
Paradise Lost
?” Nicola asked Lindsay. “How the fallen angels tried to mess people up to get back at the good angels?”

Lindsay stared at Nicola. “Is Gavin a bad angel?”

“No. We don't need fallen angels. We do the messing all by ourselves.”

25

—

At Nicola's
house everyone had chores. Jackson, being five, had the easiest. He replaced the toilet paper when it ran out. Because of June Bug, he didn't even need to put it on the roll. He just left it on the windowsill. Nicola set and cleared the table. Jared, unless he forgot or managed to con Nicola into doing it for him, took out the garbage and shoveled the walk.

During dinner that night, Jared argued his case for his own computer. All his friends had one.

“I wish he did, too!” Nicola said.

Mina laughed. “That's nice. You don't usually side with your brother.”

“If he had a computer of his own, then I could get on the family computer when I need it.”

“You can get on the family computer any time you want,” Terence said.

“No,” Nicola said. “Last time I had to take out the garbage for him just to check my email.”

Terence frowned, which caused Jared to shoot Nicola an evil look.

Jared's annoying behavior annoyed their father. But Terence getting mad, the way he did now, made Nicola feel sorry for her brother. Because of hormones, Jared probably couldn't help being annoying.

“Let me get this straight,” Terence told Jared. “You made your little sister do your chore just so she could use the computer, which she has the right to use anyway?”

Head down, Jared shoveled in some casserole.

“And now you'd like me to reward you by buying you your own computer?”

Mina put her hand on Terence's. “Let's just drop it.”

“No,” Terence said. “I'd like Jared to explain why he should be rewarded for being lazy and selfish.”

“Why are you always picking on me?” Jared exploded.

“Because I want you to grow up to be a decent person! You have to do your share around here, young man!”

Jared threw down his fork. His chair scraped across the floor.

After he had stormed from the table, Mina turned to Terence. “That was harsh.”

Terence snapped back, “You baby him too much!”

Nicola shrank down. She hated it when her parents argued. Jackson did, too. His bottom lip quivered and he began kicking the leg of the table so that the dishes rattled.

And Nicola blurted, “Everybody around here should just use their hearts a little more!”

In the silence that fell over the table, they could hear Jared smashing something in his room.

“You're right, Nicola,” Terence said. “I'll go apologize.”

Abruptly, dinner was over. Nicola cleared the table, shuttling back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen with the dirty plates, June Bug at her feet. With Mina occupied getting Jackson into the bath, and Terence having a Talk with Jared, the coast was clear.

Nicola lined up the dishes on the floor. June Bug licked each one clean. Nicola sat on the floor beside her, hugging her knees. She picked up a fork June Bug had scoured with her tongue and spent a minute trying to balance it on one finger.

She thought of something then. When the little dog had finished her chore and Nicola had loaded the dishes in the dishwasher, she went to call Lindsay.

“So there was a big fight here at dinner. My dad said Jared's not doing his share. I think that's why they're not helping each other.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Tanaka, Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Michaels
.”

“Huh?”

“It's why they're not just walking out. If angels help each other, nothing's added. They're already one hundred percent pure goodness. But we're not.
We
change the balance, not them. Only the good things we do count.”

“So we have to be the angels?”

“I think so. And we have to do what Mr. Milton asked us,” Nicola said. “
We
have to get them out.”

26

—

Nicola and
Lindsay went back to Shady Oaks after school the next day. They kept their eyes open for signs, even watched the Shopping Channel with Mrs. Cream, but couldn't find any significance in the Lint-o-matic Furniture Brush. They walked up and down the shiny halls, allowing June Bug to scratch under Mr. Fitzpatrick's door and, farther down the hall, Mrs. Michaels' and Mrs. Tanaka's.

They tried opening the doors.

Locked.

Nicola pressed her ear against each one. Each time she felt a light vibration.

Glenda appeared, hands on her hips.

“What are you doing?”

Nicola pulled back with a nervous smile. “Could we say hi? June Bug really wants to. Look.”

June Bug was crouched down with her nose right in the crack under the door, snorkeling.

“I'd lose my job,” Glenda said.

“What if we got in on our own? What if you didn't know about it? It's mean that they never have visitors.”

Glenda waved them out of the hall with broad sweeps of her thin arm. The girls followed her swinging ponytail, disappointed.

When they got to the nursing station, Glenda said goodbye at the same time she pulled a yellow lanyard out of the front pocket of her pajama uniform.

A key hung on the lanyard.

Glenda opened the cupboard where all the medicines were kept. Inside hung two other yellow lanyards with keys. Glenda placed hers on an empty hook.

She turned and said, “Oh,” as though she was surprised to see them still standing there watching her. Then, with the cupboard door open and the keys in full view, she buzzed them out, a little smirk brightening her face.

* * *

The last sign they needed came on the weekend, on Saturday night, while the Breams were playing rummy.

Jackson dealt first. It was his favorite thing, but his clumsy hands and terrible counting slowed the game. June Bug circled the table pushing an old sock against everyone's legs, trying to get someone to pull it. And Jared did that annoying thing he always did, laying his runs and sets face down on the table instead of face up, so no one knew which cards to stop collecting.

Nicola took hold of the sock. June Bug snarled and tugged on her end, almost pulling Nicola right off her chair.

“June Bug,” Mina said. “You're scaring me!”

Triumphantly, Jared laid down another run. He was fiendishly good at cards. Nicola glared at his hoard spreading across the table in front of him. Then she noticed something that made her let go of the sock.

And the funny feeling started up. The fluttery, butterfly feeling she'd been hoping for.

By the time rummy was over, it was too late to call Lindsay.

So it wasn't until Sunday morning that Lindsay got to see the sign. She hurried over to Nicola's house as soon as Nicola called.

Nicola drew the playing card from her back pocket and showed it to Lindsay before she was even out of her coat.

“Three of hearts?” Lindsay said. “Didn't we already get the heart sign?”

Nicola turned over the card and showed Lindsay the pretty curlicued border. Perched in each of the four corners was an angel. But that was not the sign. The sign was in the two circles in the middle of the card, one upside down, one right side up. Two more angels.

Angels on bicycles.