The Exact Location of Home (15 page)

“Here.” Gianna hands me the piece she pulled out of the lake and fishes around in her backpack again until she finds a permanent marker. “Sign it, Zig. You can be our spokesman.”

I start to make a Z, but something stops me. Instead, I write “Circuit Boy was here.”

When I tuck the geocache container back into its spot, something else sticking out from the rocks catches my attention.

“Hey!” I pull out a little hardcover book with a plain green cover. The pages are damp, but I flip through them. “This is somebody's journal,” I whisper. Pages and pages of dates and entries, even sketches of plants and trees and stuff.

“Wow,” Gianna says, leaning over so close to look at a sketch that I feel her breath on my neck.

“And look,” Ruby says, reaching out to stop me on a page that has numbers on top. “That's a geocache coordinate, isn't it? I bet this is somebody's geocaching journal.”

“And she just left it here?” Gianna takes the journal from me and flips through again. “No one would do that on purpose. These sketches are gorgeous.” Gianna stops on a page with a sketch of a great blue heron flying between clouds. “I bet whoever left this put it down to put the cache back in the wall and forgot it,” she says.

“Is there a name in it?” Ruby asks. Gianna flips back to the front of the book, to the page right inside the black cover, and stares.

“Well?” Ruby says. But Gianna doesn't hand the journal to Ruby. She hands it to me. Still open to the page inside the cover. And I look down.

Geocaching Journeys:

Senior Searcher

I've only been in bed five minutes when Scoop kicks the bottom of my bunk. “Hey Zig?”

“Yeah?”

“Wanna play Uno?”

“Not now—you're supposed to be asleep.” His mom asked me to keep an eye on him while she's talking with a job counselor in the common area. Our family room light is off, but I have a few Christmas tree bulbs rigged up to a nine-volt battery and clipped to my bed rail so I can read. I lean over the edge of my bunk until I can see Scoop. He has his legs up so his feet are flat on the bottom of the top bunk.

“Will you read to me then?”

“We read
Library Lion
three times, Scoop. Go to sleep.” I flop back in my own bed and open Dad's journal. I've been reading it over and over, all weekend. I keep thinking I must be missing something—the part that says how to find him.

I flip another page, and Scoop starts kicking at the top bunk.
Thump. Thump. Thump
.

“Quit it.” I press the light button on my watch. 9:30. Another half hour until his mom gets back to the room.

“What are you reading up there?” he asks.

“Something my dad wrote a long time ago.”

“Oh.”
Thump. Thump. Thump
. “Know how come I like
Library Lion
?”

I give up. I close the journal and lean down. “How come?”

“Because the lion gets to stay. And because the mean guy turns into a good guy.”

“Yeah, well … don't count on that happening too often in real life.”

He's quiet for a minute before he starts kicking again.
Thump. Thump
.

I go back to Dad's journal. It drives me crazy that there are pages and pages here and almost none of it is personal. It's all about how inspirational the trees and the rocks are. I didn't know Dad was into nature. He was always more interested in his cell phone than the trees when we went camping.

But there's one part I read yesterday that I want to find again. One part that brings him out of the woods and away from the birds and the rocks. Back to Dad voice. Here it is. Dated June 21
^st
of this year. The second from the last entry, almost covered up by a sketch of a huge fern.

I came out for quiet, but the woods scream “New! New! New!” in their noisiest greens this afternoon. Spring comes late to the mountains, but when it comes, it explodes with life and color. Too much for my eyes today. Because it's been a day of good-byes, and good-byes should always be in black and white, like kisses in old movies
.

Tried talking with L one last time before I left today. She wouldn't even look at me. I will always wonder if she understood why I made the choice I did. I so wish I could turn back the calendar to our happy years together
.

The mosquitoes are out. Time to head home
.

“Hey, Zig?” It's Scoop, quieter.

“Yeah?”

“Is that book that your dad wrote a good book?”

I flip through pages and pages of coordinates and notes on the weather and the color of the pitcher plant flowers and salamanders. Almost nothing that means anything to me. “Not really,” I say. “Parts of it are okay, I guess.”

“Is your dad nice?”

I let that one hang between the bunks for a minute before I answer. “He's great when he's around. He's just not around much.”

“Oh.”
Thump. Thump. Thump
. “My dad's nice sometimes, too. But sometimes he yells and stuff and I'm not allowed to see him any more. I wish I could, though. Know what I mean?”

I leave Dad's journal on the bunk and climb down the ladder. “Move over.” Scoop sits up cross-legged and slides over to make room for me. “Sometimes,” I tell him. “you can love somebody and miss them and still have it not be a good idea for you to be with them. At least not right now.”

“But people can get different, can't they? Like Mr. Merriweather in the book? He changes his mind and is a lot nicer to the lion.”

I start to say Mr. Merriweather's not real. But something stops me and I just mess up Scoop's hair instead. “Yeah, sometimes. But not always.”

“Hey Zig? How come your dad isn't here either? Is he mean sometimes, too?”

“No,” I say. “He's never really mean. He's just … really busy, I guess.”

Scoop nods. “Will you read me some of that book he wrote?”

I shake my head. “No, but if you promise to go to sleep right after, I'll read
Library Lion
one more time. I'll go get it in the library.”

I start to get up but he grabs my pajama sleeve and pulls me back. “Here.” He pulls it out from under his pillow. He must have brought it back after dinner.

He hands me the book. “You can start right there.”

It's already open to the page where Mr. Merriweather goes to find the lion in the rain and invites him to come back to the library. Back home.

“Have a good day,” Mom says, as I head out the shelter door to face another one.

Day fifteen.

I wonder if she's counting.

Fifteen days since we walked through that door for the first time.

Fifteen dinners with Brother Vinnie and his imaginary friends.

Fifteen days of being a homeless kid, and here's the weird thing.

I'm getting better at it.

Our first couple days at the shelter felt like they went on forever—the nights especially, with the coughing and arguing from the men's bunk, Scoop talking in his sleep. But you get used to those night noises, like you get used to owls and crickets if you live in the country. Brother Vinnie's just louder and curses sometimes. You don't get that so much with crickets.

But I've mostly fallen into the routine of not having a regular place to live.

Morning shower.

School.

Library.

Diner till Mom's done with work.

Late dinner.

Bed.

Then start over.

Unless it's a weekend. Then I go out geocaching. Sometimes with Gee and Ruby but lately not. It all feels more personal now, with the journal. Like this is something between my dad and me. Something I need to do myself.

In the past two weeks, I've found three more caches that the website says Dad found, too. One was wedged between two foundation rocks at the ice cream place on the water. “Sweet Rewards,” it was called, and there were coupons for ice cream inside. No Dad clues, but I took a coupon and had a chocolate-chip-cookie-dough cone.

There was one hidden in some bushes by the river in the trailer park. The river there floods sometimes, so the people in the trailers have to go to the shelter for a few days almost every April. I think when that happened the cache got all wet because the log book and trinkets were moldy, except for a little green plastic army guy, and he was missing his head. There was nothing from Dad.

Another cache was duct-taped under a board on the footbridge behind school. I had to lean over the railing and balance on one foot to reach it, and I was looking down at the river running all high and fast and got incredibly dizzy. The cache was a film canister with state quarters in it. I took Florida and left a Connecticut I had in my pocket.

Shower. School. Library. Diner. Dinner. Bed. Geocache sometimes.

That's my things-to-do list now. It's short.

My things-to-avoid list is a lot longer.

Mostly, that list is filled with people. Brother Vinnie, because he still freaks me out by shouting at no one all the time. Kevin Richards, even though I haven't had to play him in dodgeball lately. Gianna, because that November dance that she talked about is getting closer. I can't go to a dance wearing one of my two pairs of jeans and one of my
four T-shirts that aren't locked in Aunt Becka's basement. And I can't tell Gianna why, so I don't tell her much of anything any more. Not even hi some days.

Homework's on my list of things-to-avoid because there's no real time to get it done any more. I'm at the library after school, but that's the only chance I have to use the computer and go to the geocaching site. The diner's not quiet enough, plus sometimes I help bus dishes if they're busy. And the shelter's not really a place where you can get homework done. The guys in the men's bunk are always arguing, and Scoop's always asking questions, or somebody's looking over your shoulder at your math problems, and it's just dumb. There's no pencil sharpener either.

I'm also avoiding my last two rabies shots. I didn't even get bit, and it's not like you can get rabies from having bat poop in your hair. Mom reminded me to stop by the doctor's office and have the shot and tell them to bill her.

“Bill you where?” I asked her the first time she said that. “Should they just address it to room five, the lower bunk?”

“I don't really care where the bill goes.”

I nodded, but I didn't say I'd go. And I didn't. I went straight to the library after school instead and then complained later that my arm hurt. She never actually asked about the shot or how it went when they wanted to be paid, so I figure she really didn't feel like talking about it either, and I was doing us both a favor by skipping it.

My new routine—my lists of things to do and things to avoid—works out great until somebody messes with it.

Like today, when I dump my backpack in our room and come out for dinner.

“Hey, Zig! Zig! You know how long the longest fingernails in the whole world are?” Scoop wiggles his hands at me.

“Are they yours?”

“No!” he laughs. “Do these look like they're twenty-four feet long?”

“That can't be right,” I say. “It'd mean your fingernails would stretch from here to the end of the line.”

Scoop looks way down at the end of the table where the church ladies are serving salad and frowns. “I think that must have been total. So you'd have ten fingernails each two or three feet long. But it's still pretty cool, isn't it?”

I nod and steer him toward the goulash. His mom got a job at the diner with Mom, and Rob agreed that Scoop could be at the shelter without her as long as there's somebody to babysit. That's me. So tonight, Heather's working late, and it's another
Library Lion
marathon in the library after we have our green jello for dessert. Finally, Scoop goes to bed and I climb into my bunk.

And I go nuts.

“Were you in my stuff?” I whip around so fast the bunk ladder comes unhooked and falls over onto the other bed, just missing Scoop. “Were you in my stuff?!”

“No! I was with you at dinner and you read to me. I wasn't even in here!” A tiny part of my brain registers how scared he is to see me mad, but the rest of it can't stop to think. I grab the ladder, hook it back onto the bunk, and climb up to where my stuff has been dumped in a big heap.

Math homework. Science book. Science binder with half the pages falling out now. Jeans. Three T-shirts. Underwear. Socks. I throw them into a messy pile looking for Dad's journal until I find it shoved halfway up under my pillow.

But the GPS unit is gone.

“Stay here.” Scoop curls his knees up under his chin and nods the tiniest bit. I fly out of the room and down the hall toward the men's bunk. It's that freak Brother Vinnie. Running around and talking to himself and stealing people's stuff. I'm ready to punch him when I pound on the door. “Open up!”

Vinnie doesn't answer the door, though. It's a new guy—short and muscular and bald, with sores on one side of his face. “New boy for the bunk?” His smile makes me want to punch him, too, but instead I push past him into the center of the room. It's lined with four bunks on each side. “Where's Vinnie?”

“You got a problem?” The bald guy steps up to me and points to a bed piled high with dirty clothes and blankets. “Vinnie ain't here.”

I take long steps across the room to the bed and start ransacking the pile, throwing clothes on the floor. They smell like old urine, and I want to gag, but all I can think about is finding that GPS unit. What kind of a freak goes into a kid's room in a homeless shelter and steals the only thing he has that might help him? I
need
that GPS unit, and I'll search through every pocket of his stinking clothes and bags if I have to.

I'm shaking out the blankets when I hear boots on the wood floor behind me. “You wouldn't be looking for this, would you?”