My Life in Dioramas (2 page)

I crossed my fingers as
I dragged the old barn door open and went past my ballet barre into the part of the barn that Dad had started turning into a guesthouse a while back. I heard teeny, tiny mews as I peeked around the corner.

Pants and her one-two-three-four-
five
new kittens had made a little home for themselves in an area that had been framed out to one day be a bathroom. For a bed, they were using a piece of insulation that had fallen out of the unfinished wall.

I squealed and Pants raised her head. Realizing it was only me, she put it back down. I'd named her when I was four—her back legs were white, making it look like she was wearing pants—but she wasn't our pet. Not like Angus. She just lived in our woods and sometimes in the barn. We never fed her or anything but she did okay on her own and her kittens (or at least a few of them) probably would, too.

“Congratulations, Mama Pants,” I said, then went inside to tell my parents the news.

Dad was putting down his phone and was saying to Mom, “Well, it's done. It'll go up tomorrow.”

They both looked miserable when they spotted me.

“What'll go up?” I asked. If I got to work right away I could finish my diorama in time so I could still go out and scooter on the tennis court, which wasn't actually a tennis court—just a big blacktop. My parents thought it was funny to call it a tennis court but I'd never been sure why.

“Honey.” My mom came and took my hand and guided me over to the table.

“Your father and I—” She paused and looked at my dad. He raised his eyebrows and she sighed and took her long
hair and twisted it to fall over one shoulder. “There's no easy way to say this.”

I'd imagined this a bunch of times because of all that fighting.

Drumroll, please . . .

THE DIVORCE.

Just a few nights ago, I'd climbed into bed with my headphones and phone, listened to the song that brought my parents together, and imagined how it all might end. The song's called “Semi” and my dad wrote it when he was in an indie rock back that used to play all over New York City and up and down the East Coast. They were a guitar band, but for “Semi,” Dad heard a part for a violin in his head. So he'd put an ad in an arts paper and my mother, who was trying to make a living as a violinist at the time, answered and helped finish the song. She started coming to gigs to play with the band on “Semi” and pretty soon they were married. Listening to the song made me feel sad that maybe their love story was coming to an end. But that didn't explain the phone call.

“We're selling the house, Kate.” My dad held my gaze.

Everything went very still.

Through the open window I heard the stream surge.

It made no sense.

We
loved
Big Red.

Everybody
loved it.

Me, my parents, Angus, our relatives, my friends, my parents' friends—pretty much anybody who had ever walked through the door. This was where we had big family reunions where people pitched tents in the yard and all the cousins stayed up late watching movies on a sheet hung between two weeping willows. This was where me and Stella and Naveen spent long summer days jumping rope on the tennis court and having picnics on the little island that formed when the stream split in two during the high season.

“But why?” I asked.

“It's too much house for us,” Dad said. “We need to downsize.”

It was true that it was a big house for just the three of us and Angus, but that had never bothered anyone before. One of my mom's favorite jokes was that we had a “napping room,” which was a guest room, of course, but she really did like to nap there.

A lot, lately, come to think of it.

“But where will we live?” I asked.

My parents passed a look back and forth.

“We're not
actually
sure,” Dad said.

“We're probably moving in with your grandma and grandpa for a little while,” my mom said. “I'll take a little break from work or maybe do some stuff remotely, if I can, and your dad can freelance from there. Until we can figure some things out.”

My mom's parents lived about an hour away. We went to their house for dinner maybe once a month and sometimes my aunt Michelle and uncle Keith would be there with my cousins Tom and James, but . . .
living with them
?

None of this
made sense.

“But this is where my friends are,” I said. “Where my school is, and my dance classes and, well, everything.”

If we were living an hour away, how would that even work?

“We're not happy about it either,” my dad said.

“Then why are you doing it?” I asked, my voice loud.

“It's complicated, Kate.” He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes.

“Use small words.” Now louder.

“We know you're upset,” Mom said, “but it's no reason to be fresh.”

Across the street, Troy, who'd gotten his license about a year ago, was pulling out of his family's driveway, car radio blasting.

What else was there to say or do?

Cry, maybe?

Scream?

For a second I wished they
were
getting a divorce. I felt like it would be better than this.

“So! We need to get the house ready to show.” My mom got up and started to straighten the utensils in a jar marked
UTENSILS
on the countertop. “And we'll need to think up some fun stuff to do when the agent is showing the place, okay? There's an open house scheduled for Sunday so we'll need to clear out.”

“This can't be happening.” I stormed out of the room.

“Kate!” my dad called, but I heard my mom say, “Let her go.”

So I went up the new stairs and across the loft and said to them, “Oh, and by the way, Pants had kittens.”

I slammed the door to my room.

Grabbing my phone and falling onto the bed, I texted Stella,
My life is over.

She wrote back,
???

I tapped out,
Selling Big Red
, and the words got blurry because tears were forming in my eyes.
Moving. Don't even know where.

I couldn't even text about it anymore. I couldn't even see. I managed,
Gotta go. Bye.

C U tmorrow
, she said.
Hugs.

A stinkbug slowly crawled out of the shoebox I'd set aside for my diorama.

2.

When Angus woke me up
with a series of cool, sandpapery licks on my right hand, I was still in yesterday's clothes. But my lamp was off, so someone had come up to check on me. I could feel stiff skin and dried tears on my temples and cheeks.

So it wasn't all a bad dream.

I didn't move to get up.

What was the point?

I just lay there and watched a stinkbug inch up a windowpane.

I'd started thinking of them as the zombies of the insect world since they were so vacant seeming. They'd invaded the house through ripped screens and badly sealed doors last fall. Now that it was the last week of March and we'd had a few warm days, they were coming out of hibernation, trying to
get back outside. In spite of my dad's instructions to flush them alive or escort them outside in a gently folded paper towel or tissue, my preferred method of dealing
was
actually smushing, which meant dealing with the foul odor. But it felt too early in the morning for that kind of thing, which probably explained why my parents had stopped sweeping up the dead flies that kept appearing in their room every morning. I didn't even
drink
coffee but it seemed like you should at least be able to have a cup before killing or cleaning up a bug.

Angus passed by with another bunch of licks. “Quit it.”

He whimpered as he walked in a circle and settled on the braided carpet at the foot of my bed. The sloped ceilings above me looked neat but were actually pretty annoying since I couldn't make my bed without hitting my head. The room had two doors and two tiny closets, and the windows were small and opened in, like cabinet doors, which meant you couldn't put any furniture in front of them.

My room was in the old part of the house. Like
really old
. Like 1900 or before. But I loved it anyway. I'd lined the mantel of the closed-up fireplace with my collection of tiny glass-blown animals, and, somehow, the room always felt like a secret.

“Kate!” my mom called out. “The bus is going to be here in ten.”

Maybe I could move some furniture, barricade myself in. My parents would have to update whatever listing they'd
written to say the house came with a number of unique features, including its very own twelve-year-old girl.

I pictured my mom sitting with her coffee in the living room, feet tucked beneath her on the butterfly-patterned chair, looking out all of the massive windows facing the backyard to see if any deer or geese were going to parade through this morning. That part of the house was added on by the people who lived here before us and the vibe they were going for was obviously “ski lodge,” with big knobby wooden beams everywhere you turned. Since my parents loved to ski and rock climb and hike and all that stuff, it made sense they picked this house over the other ones they looked at when I was a baby.

“Kate!” Mom called again.

“I
heard
you!” I shouted, then I got up and changed my clothes. I spotted the shoebox while I quickly, barely brushed my hair, but it was too late for a diorama.

I gave Angus a quick rub behind the ears, then grabbed my backpack and went downstairs. I took a banana from the bowl on the kitchen table and walked to the end of the driveway, aka the bus stop.

My mom appeared with her coffee on the front porch and leaned against a post. Her blue dress, the white porch, the red house, the sun shining on her long, wavy blonde hair, the steam coming off her coffee mug. It was somehow this classic American-looking scene—a photo meant
for a museum, or maybe the diorama I should have made. I couldn't imagine her living anywhere else.

She called out, “We'll talk more later, honey. Okay?” Then she waved weakly.

I didn't wave back. The bus came and I got on and slid into my usual seat next to Stella.

She said, “Tell me everything.”

“They're selling Big Red.” It felt more real now that I was actually looking at Stella and saying those words and watching the house disappear from view. “They don't even know where we're moving to so we might move in with my grandparents for a while. Which basically means I'm going to be homeless.”

“I don't get it.” Stella shook her head. “Why?”

“I have no idea!”

But then I thought of all the talking about money and the envelopes coming to the house with red stamps on them that said
FINAL NOTICE
, and the way the whole place had started to feel more run down lately. Like the front porch paint was peeling, and the washer and dryer were, my mom had been joking, just one step up from a washboard. The dryer knob had broken off so now there was an adjustable wrench in its place and only one setting—high heat—that worked. And why hadn't my father ever finished the guesthouse, anyway?

I pushed down the lump in my throat. “I guess we can't afford it?”

Stella's eyes went wide and she said, “Stiiiinks.”

Which reminded me about the stinkbug I'd forgotten to get rid of.

Great.

We were quiet for a while—both just looking out the windows. Everywhere you looked were apple trees, sometimes with pear trees thrown in just to be crazy.

Neither of my parents had straight-up, nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday jobs and I'd always thought that was cool. My dad was a freelance graphic designer who still occasionally wrote songs. His old college roommate, Shay, was a music manager and had gotten a few of them placed on TV shows I'd never heard of and that mostly weren't on the air anymore, except for one that went into reruns. My dad got checks in the mail sometimes, but not for a ton of money.

My mother worked part-time for a local event planner, mostly organizing small conferences, regional networking dinners, or team-building workshops, so that was pretty low-key, too. It meant we could do fun stuff after school, and when we had snow days or random school holidays and half days, my parents were pretty much giddy and planning some adventure. During the summer, it was almost as if neither of them worked at all. But it had never dawned on me that when they weren't working, they weren't making money. Not like Stella's dad, who drove to Poughkeepsie every morning and got on a train to New York City. Not like
Naveen's dad, who managed a bank, and mom, who was a professor at the state university in town.

I shifted in my seat and Stella said, “Oh, careful,” then moved a bag she was holding by her feet so it was farther away from me. “Hey, where's your diorama?”

“Didn't do it.” The empty box was still on the floor of my room. Was Angus still lying there on the rug, or had he moved to the front porch to get some sun? Had he sniffed the shoebox? Scared the stinkbug away?