Paper Things (3 page)

“What do you need for homework?” Gage asks when he picks me up at Head Start. He’s been working down at the docks today and he smells like fish.

“Library,” I say, zipping up my winter parka. Some days now I walk around with it open, but it’s more winter than spring tonight. “I need to research a famous American.”

Gage sighs, though he tries to hide it. He’s just come from downtown to pick me up. Now, since the library in the East End closed, he’ll have to walk all the way back to the Port City library. “It will be easy to catch the bus to Chloe’s from there,” I remind him.

“Good point,” Gage says, perking up a bit, and slides my backpack onto his shoulder. “Let’s go, B’Neatie.” Mama used to call me her Sweetie B’Neatie, and Gage uses the shortened version when he’s in a good mood.

I hope, hope, hope that Mrs. Getchel is working tonight. She’s the only librarian at the Port City library who’s nice enough to look up your number on the computer if you want to take out books and you don’t have your card. If you lose your card (which I did), you get one free replacement. After that, if you lose your card again (which I did), you have to pay for a replacement. It’s only fifty cents, but I don’t want to ask for it when I know that Gage, who is always worried about money, skips lunch.

Janna would say that I was irresponsible for losing my card (twice), but it’s hard to keep stuff together when you move around the way we do. Besides, I’m pretty sure someone at Lighthouse took my replacement card when they lifted twenty-six cents from my pocket. Twenty-six cents won’t get you much, but a library card will. A library card can let you borrow books, an MP3 player, and movies, or download materials on the computer. But you need to have an address to get a library card, and homeless people don’t have addresses. I just hope whoever took it needed it — or really loves books.

You better hope they don’t love books so much they don’t return them,
I imagine Janna saying to me. She’d be right. Then
I
would owe the library for those books. Even Mrs. Getchel wouldn’t let me take books out if I owed heaps of money.

We stop at an intersection where cars whiz by, nearly splashing cold, salty slush on my legs. The light changes, and Gage strides out into the street. A man with a dog walks toward us. The dog, which I think is a German shepherd, isn’t even on a leash — it just stays right next to the man as he walks. It isn’t until the guy and his dog pass that I realize I know the man: he makes paper airplanes for kids at the soup kitchen. I didn’t know he had a dog.

I watch them till they disappear around a corner and then keep my head down for the rest of the walk, scanning the ground for pennies.

As we climb the ramp that leads into the library, I tell myself that if I find one more penny, Mrs. Getchel will be working.

No penny.

Mr. Crowley and a woman I’ve never seen before are at the circulation desk at the library tonight. No Mrs. Getchel. My chest feels like I swallowed a gum ball whole.

I recognize more adults from the soup kitchen, snoozing in the comfy chairs. They’ve probably been keeping warm here since the shelters closed this morning. Mr. Hale, who says grace sometimes, gives me a little wave.

Gage marches directly to the
Maine Times
to read the want ads, like he does every time we come. He doesn’t have a regular job but goes wherever someone needs him. Lobstermen are always glad to see him on fish market days. Tomorrow he’ll probably be the dishwasher at the nursing home — Friday is the regular dishwasher’s day off. He took me to work with him once when school was closed for the day, and I got to play bingo with the old people. It was fun except that one guy at our table, Mr. Lynnfield, kept cheating, and that made the other players yell at him. I felt sorry for Mr. Lynnfield — all that yelling at an old man whose hand shook every time he placed a chip. But when I tried to show him with my eyes that it was OK, that it was only a game, he winked at me. That’s when I realized he liked the cheating . . .
and
the yelling.

I hope Gage finds a full-time job soon. What he didn’t realize when we left Janna’s is that landlords won’t rent to you if you don’t have a regular paycheck, no matter how much you’ve saved for the first and last month’s rent.

I’ve decided to do my report on Louisa May Alcott, and I stop at a computer to see what the library has for biographies. It looks like there’s at least one biography in the children’s section and a few others in the adult section. I grab my backpack and head downstairs to the children’s room.

Louisa May Alcott wrote a book called
Little Women
about four sisters and their “Marmee,” which was what they called their mother. Janna read it aloud to me whenever Gage was out with his friends, which was a lot. It was funny at times and sad at times, and I kept trying to tell Gage about it, but he’d hold his hand up to stop me . . . suddenly needing to play closer attention to the music playing in his ears.

After I find the book, I grab one of the little pencils the librarians leave near the computer and begin to copy down information. Since I can’t take the book out, I copy everything I can find on the title page and copyright page just to be safe. Next, I skim through the book, writing down the most important facts.

“What’s taking so long?” Gage leans over my shoulder. “Don’t do that here. Do the work at Chloe’s.”

My eyes instantly tear up. I feel like such a baby sometimes. “I can’t take it out,” I whisper. “I lost my library card again.”

“Then, use mine.” He opens his wallet.

I’ve never seen Gage borrow a book before. “You have a card?” I ask.

He looks at me. “Of course I have a card, Arianna. I can read.”

“Well, yeah,” I say, “but —”

Gage isn’t listening to me. He’s got that look on his face, the one he gets when he thinks someone is calling him dumb. Too dumb to get one of the college scholarships for foster kids. Too dumb to get a real job. Too dumb to be a reader. He grabs my book and hightails it up the stairs.

“Wait!” I say, too loudly for being in a library. Gage turns to look at me and I want to apologize, but all that comes out is “Can you take some adult books out for me, too?”

The bus drops us four blocks from Chloe’s apartment, and since it’s getting dark, Gage grabs my arm. He hates this neighborhood. It’s not the drunks he minds, or the bag ladies. It’s the dealers, and they’re not just drug dealers. Chloe has to pay a nine-year-old to protect her car. That is, she pays him so he and his friends won’t slash her tires. I wonder what Gage would say if I told him that the same kid recently blocked me from getting on the number six bus to school. He wanted a dollar to let me pass. I told him that if he paid
me
a dollar, I would tell him how to get free doughnuts.

“Let’s go!” the bus driver had shouted down to me. Everyone else had boarded.

I held out my hand.

The kid pulled a dollar out of his pocket and slapped it in my palm.

“I said, let’s go!” the driver called down.

“Go to Mabel’s,” I said.

“Everyone knows Mabel’s!” he yelled, grabbing my shirt as I started to climb the stairs. “And the doughnuts aren’t free.”

“They are if you tell Mabel that her cinnamon doughnuts are better than Dunkin’s!” I said, and even though I could tell he wasn’t sure if he should believe me, he let go.

I kept my eyes peeled for the kid, wondering what he would do if he saw me now. Probably he wouldn’t do anything, since Gage was with me. But I wondered if my tip with Mabel had worked for him, or if she only gave me free doughnuts because she liked me — or maybe felt sorry for me.

There are always bikes parked in the entryway of Chloe’s house, and a baby carriage. The carriage is probably used for groceries, though, since I don’t think a baby lives in this building. As we climb the grimy stairs, I can smell natural gas from someone’s stove and burnt cheese. I hope Chloe or one of her roommates is cooking tonight. Chloe (with newly dyed Twizzler-red hair!) opens the door before we reach the top of the landing.

“Hey, girlfriend,” she says to me, but she’s looking at Gage. They’re like two supercharged magnets, and I slip past Chloe into the apartment because standing there while they kiss is just way too embarrassing.

Cody is standing in the little kitchen, microwaving Hot Pockets. “Hey, chica,” he says. “Spicy Hawaiian or Four Cheese Garlic?”

“Spicy Hawaiian, please!” I say while dropping my backpack on the floor and sliding up onto a stool. I like coming to this apartment almost as much as Gage does. The kitchen and living room are one room, which if you watch as much HGTV as Janna and I did, you know is called
open concept.
It means that whether you’re sitting at the bar in the kitchen area or on the fake-leather couch in front of the TV, you’re always a part of the group.

Chloe’s other roommate, Nate, is sitting in front of the TV now, playing a video game, but he gives me a nod.

There are two bedrooms — one off the kitchen end of the apartment and one off the living-room end. The one off the kitchen is Cody and Nate’s. They have mattresses on the floor and these low, plastic drawers that, as far as I can tell, are never used; most of their clothes are on the floor.

Chloe’s room has a bed, a black wooden bureau, and a desk. She also has a big closet, which is lucky, because she lets Gage and me keep some clothes and shoes there.

I wish that we could live here, but Gage said that the time isn’t right. He and Chloe have only known each other for a few months, and he likes her too much to have the relationship move too quickly. (Before Chloe, he fell head over heels in love with another girl, Dominica, who turned out to be a big fat liar who broke his heart.)

But I like Chloe’s a lot better than any of the other places we stay, like at Gage’s friend Briggs’s tiny studio apartment on the West Side, or at Lighthouse, which is the only shelter we can stay at, because West doesn’t make us fill out paperwork — technically you’re supposed to be between twelve and eighteen to stay there, so West has to sneak us in. I used to like staying at Sasha’s, but lately I’ve felt weird about asking.

Unlike Chloe or Briggs or any of Gage’s other friends, Sasha doesn’t know that Gage and I left Janna’s. I know it’s wrong, wrong, wrong to keep secrets from my best friend, especially Sasha, who has
always
told me the truth, even when adults wouldn’t or couldn’t. It was Sasha who told me the meaning of words I knew I shouldn’t say, and it was Sasha who, when we were playing Paper Things one day, made her little girl say to my little girl, “Oh, Natalie, your mama’s going to die, you know.” All the grown-ups around me kept sugarcoating Mama’s hospital visits, but Sasha was the one person who told it to me straight — even though it was hard for her to say and even harder for me to hear.

I hadn’t intended to lie to her about Gage and me. The second night after Gage and I left, I called Sasha and asked if I could sleep over. All night I tried on different words to explain what had happened — what was happening — but I couldn’t bring myself to say them. Partly because Gage had asked me not to tell anyone that we’d moved out until we got our own apartment. Partly because Sasha and I were having such a great time — applying oatmeal masks to our faces to give us clear complexions (Sasha had read about it in a magazine), designing what we were going to wear on the first day of school at Carter, and taking quizzes to find out our personalities — and I didn’t want to ruin it. And partly because I was afraid to tell her. I still am.

After I eat my Hot Pocket, I go into Chloe’s room to swap out the dirty clothes from my backpack and put in some clean ones. I’m actually really glad that we have to wear school uniforms at Eastland; no one can tell if I’ve worn the same uniform for three days — not if I’m smart about mixing up the shirts and the socks.

Chloe follows me into her room. “This one’s got your name on it,” she says, handing me a towel. That might sound like she’s telling me, “You stink, go take a bath,” but I know she’s not. The first few times we came here, I had Gage ask her if I could take a shower. I hate having greasy hair, and I don’t usually take showers at Lighthouse because they’re monitored. Now Chloe just offers first thing.

I head into the bathroom, and while the warm water pours over my head, down to my happy toes, I have fun imagining myself as Chloe and Gage’s junior bridesmaid. If the three of us were a family, we could all live here together. Or even better, we could get our own place, just us. I can’t imagine anything more perfect.

After my shower, Gage and Chloe tell me they’re going to the Laundromat and ask if I want to come, which of course they know I don’t. Besides, I have homework to catch up on.

“OK,” Chloe says as I hand Gage my dirty clothes. “Feel free to take over my room.”

I know that I should work on my famous-American outline, but I can’t resist the urge to play Paper Things while I have Chloe’s room all to myself. I reach into my backpack and pull out my folder. First I take out the things I found at Head Start. There’s the dog, Sneeze, a farmer’s table, and a beautiful blue bowl. I place my whole family around the long wooden table. The dad sits at the head of the table. When I was little, we had four chairs at our kitchen table. Gage always called one of the chairs “Dad’s chair,” even though Dad would never use it. I think that’s one of the things he missed when we went to live with Janna. Isabella, the paper girl who is my age, carries in the blue bowl filled with ripe strawberries that she picked with her mother. Her mother who didn’t die.