Counting Thyme (7 page)

I was halfway through a stack of copies when I noticed a smudge in the top right corner. It looked almost like a fingerprint. I checked the next page. The mark was there, too.

“Emily, there's something on the flyer.”

She took the paper. Then she pawed through the copies, messing up the stacks. “Oh, no.”

“What's wrong?” Lizzie asked.

“Oh no oh no oh no!” Emily spun around. “They're all messed up!”

Lizzie looked at the sheet. Then she looked at her fingers. “I must have gotten chocolate on my fingers,” she said. “I was just checking the sheet, to make sure it was perfect—”

“Well it's not perfect, is it?” Emily said. “Mr. C's going to kill me! He bought this paper
special
.” Her face was red, like she was about to cry.

“Do you have a potato?” I asked.

“What?” Emily stared at me like I was crazy, but I had an idea.

“My dad made a stamp with a potato once. We could find some paint and stamp over the mark. Mr. Calhoun wouldn't even know.”

Lizzie ran over to the counter next to the fridge. “Will this work?” She held up an apple.

“I think so. Now we just need paint.” Where were we going to find paint?

I looked around the lounge. The teachers were eyeing us with suspicion. Then Emily finally snapped out of it. “I think I have nail polish,” she said with a small, hopeful smile.

We found a plastic knife, and I cut triangles into the apple to make a star shape. Then Emily poured sparkly purple nail polish onto a paper plate. We stamped the paper. The star covered the thumbprint completely. It was going to take us forever to fix all the copies, but at least the sparkles looked pretty.

Emily held up the flyer and squealed so loud the teachers gave us warning looks. “Oh my gosh, it looks great! Thank you so much,” she said, squeezing me with a sudden hug.

“No problem,” I said. “It was fun.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized they were true. I missed Shani, but I also just missed having friends around—even if this friend made me count four hundred flyers for her. Twice.

Lizzie adjusted her glasses. “It must be a pain to move in the middle of the year.”

“It's not easy,” I admitted.

“I've always been here,” Emily said, “but my cousin just moved to Long Island. She says all the girls there make fun of her if she doesn't wear her jeans rolled up at the bottom. How dumb is that?”

“Pretty dumb,” I said, thinking of Darien and what happened in math. Was he going to keep picking on me?

“You know what?” Emily said. “I'll fix it for you, Thyme.”

“How's that?” Lizzie asked.

Emily turned away from me, toward Lizzie. “I can, you know, just . . . help her settle in.”

Lizzie frowned. “People aren't projects.” They were talking about me like I wasn't even there.

“Thyme doesn't mind,” Emily answered. They both turned back to me. “Do you?” Lizzie didn't look happy, but Emily had her big smile on.

Maybe it would be nice to have friends. Just for now.

“No,” I said. “I guess I don't mind.”

SIDE EFFECTS

AFTER SCHOOL, MRS. RAVELLI WAS WAITING FOR ME AT THE
bottom of the steps. We stopped to get groceries on the way home, which required trudging three full blocks away from school, past the subway and the peanut vendor on the corner. I wondered how New Yorkers ever got used to that sweet, burnt smell. It didn't seem like something I would ever like.

Mrs. Ravelli had a little metal cart on wheels, which we filled with the most carefully selected items our refrigerator would ever see. Fresh asparagus and arugula from the grocer on 89th, a pound of sopressata from A & S Market, plus the only brand of crushed tomatoes Mrs. Ravelli found acceptable. She must have caught wind of Mom's super-healthy food plan.

“Now, the anchovy paste,” Mrs. Ravelli said as she pushed the cart along the sidewalk. She kept one hand on the cart at all times, like it might run away from her.

“Can we go to the apartment now?” I didn't see the point of all this shopping when Val was probably feeling awful and miserable after his first day of treatment.

Mrs. Ravelli stopped. Checked her watch. And my stomach knotted up.

“Mom and Dad don't want me there, do they?” I said. They'd done that before. Kept me out of the way while they were busy with Val. Like when I went to a sleepaway camp with Shani over the summer, only to find out that Val had a stem cell harvest while I was gone. If they were keeping me away, that meant things were bad.

Mrs. Ravelli touched my cheek. “Is okay,” she said. “We go back now.”

Back at the apartment, we pulled the cart up the stairs together. I pushed while Mrs. Ravelli pulled. With each
thump
, the knot in my stomach tightened. Even when I knew Val was going to feel terrible, the side effects were hard to take. During chemo, everything had seemed normal until he was suddenly hunched over the toilet, crying and sick. With 3F8, I wasn't even sure what to expect.

On our way past apartment 3B, I spotted Mr. Lipinsky spying on us from his door again.

Mrs. Ravelli must have noticed him, too, because she stopped and waved. His door swung open a little wider, enough to see that he was wearing a tattered purple robe. “Good afternoon,” she called, but Mr. Lipinsky just looked at her. He didn't even blink. His hard gray eyes just stayed open, staring, like one of the creepy metal statues in the park. Then he shut his door without a word.

Right before the door closed, I heard a sound from inside. A whistling, flutelike sound.

“Did you hear that?”

Mrs. Ravelli nodded. “Maybe is a bird, yes?”

I thought about Mr. Lipinsky having a pet. “Not a chance. He's way too mean. He left a note on our door that said we were terrible human beings.”

Mrs. Ravelli chuckled. “Maybe he is like you say. Maybe not. Sometimes, people need time to adjust.” She started up the stairs again. “My papa, he did not like change, either. He always say the city is no place for nice people. When I tell him I go to America, he stop talking to me. Every day before I left, I go to him, and he ask if I change my mind. Every day, I say no, and he tell me to go away.”

She shook her head, huffing as we moved the cart up another step. “For weeks, I try. And for weeks, he refuse to see me.
Ay!
But when I go to the train, there he is. He no want me to leave, but still he kiss me good-bye. That is the way my papa was—
capo tosto!
”

She winked. “Stubborn. Like me. But sometimes, is good to have a hard head, no?”

I wondered whether it was stubborn or just plain insane to drag a grocery cart up four flights of stairs. Then I thought of Dad. He hadn't been able to crack the dog food ad yet, but he kept trying, even though the freelance work was really different from the work he did at home. Apparently, making ads for magazines was much more complicated, but he wasn't giving up. He said it was good to have a little stubborn streak.
But I was pretty sure Mr. Lipinsky was way more stubborn than that.

Inside, Dad was sitting at the dining table, working. “They're in our bedroom,” he said as soon as I walked in.

Mrs. Ravelli pulled the cart from my hand. “I do this,” she said. “You go.”

I swallowed and headed down the hall. There's nothing like walking into a room when you don't know what you're going to find. But I had to know.

Mom and Dad's door was shut. I knocked. “Hello? Can I come in?”

“It's okay,” Mom answered. “Val's awake now.”

I took a deep breath and slipped inside, stepping onto Mom's patchwork rug like it was made of eggshells. Val was nestled deep in the pillows, glued to the iPad while
Transformers
flickered across Mom and Dad's TV screen.

“How was it?”

“It went well,” Mom said, but her cheeks were blotchy. And her eyes were puffy. I could tell Val's first day of treatment hadn't gone as well as she'd hoped.

She got up. “Keep your brother company while I check with Mrs. Ravelli about dinner.”

“I'm not hungry,” Val said.

“I know, honey. That's normal. But it won't hurt to have some bread or a little plain pasta. Dr. Everett said it's important to keep up your energy, even if you do get sick.”

“It's not fair,” Val grumbled. Then he reached for his arm.

“Don't scratch,” Mom warned, and Val stopped, although he looked like he was two seconds from crying. She left, and I climbed onto the bed next to him. That's when I noticed the little red bumps on his skin.

“You got a rash, huh?”

Val nodded miserably, and I patted his fuzzy head as gently as possible. After pain, the most common side effect of the antibody treatment was a rash. Like hives, only the itching was supposed to be much worse. I'd never had hives, but I'd caught poison ivy from the woods at Grandma Kay's house, and the idea of itching like that made me shudder.

“Was it bad today?”

Val shrugged, eyes fixed on the iPad again.

“Like, flu shot bad or when you jumped off the slide and broke your arm? Do you remember that? You were three. Mom totally freaked out.”

“It wasn't that bad,” he mumbled, but he never had much to say about the hospital. It was like he wanted to forget as soon as possible. I didn't blame him.

I reached for the iPad. “How about if I show you the new app I downloaded? It's called Math Mysteries. You get to go treasure hunting.”

He perked up. “Really?”

“Yep. You get a new hunt with every level you finish. The first one's a maze in the jungle.”

He squirmed closer. “Like Indiana Jones?”

“Yeah. Just like Indy.”

I clicked open the game and cranked up the volume so Val
could hear it better. We settled into Mom and Dad's pillows, and before I knew it, we'd worked though eight levels of Math Mysteries and my arm was falling asleep from Val leaning against me. He was nodding off, but if I moved, he would wake up again. So I stayed put until Mom stuck her head in the door.

“Come on,” she said. “You need to get your homework done, plus I owe you an hour for helping Mrs. Ravelli with the groceries.”

I kissed Val on the cheek and crawled off the bed. Mom gave me the time she owed me, and I added it to the Thyme Jar. Then I went into the kitchen, and Mrs. Ravelli showed me how to roll gnocchi. Little dough balls that were actually pasta. Each one had its own funny shape. Not one of them was perfect. What mattered, she said, was that they were just right on the inside. Which made me hope that Val's insides were doing better than his outsides, too.