Out of the Box (5 page)

Jeanette tells me this is the lounge, and the soup kitchen and dining hall are up the flight of stairs in the center of the room. As we make our way there, heads turn and people watch us. I don't know if I should look friendly or tough—
show no fear
, like they say in self-defense class. Jeanette is walking straight and tall like she always does, smiling and saying hello to people. She knows a lot of them by name. Suddenly I imagine her coming here with Alison, the two of them walking in and stopping to chat along the way. I pull myself taller and follow Jeanette up the stairs.

The kitchen gleams—metal appliances and white walls. The other three volunteers are all Jeanette's age or even older. The one woman, Louise, has tanned skin and bright white hair. One guy has an army-style brush cut and is in a wheelchair, and the third volunteer is a man whose wrinkled face reminds me of a turtle. They tell me their names too, but minutes later I've forgotten.

Louise shows me where to wash my hands, and then we start making sandwiches. As I smear margarine on hundreds of slices, I keep sneaking glances at my aunt. She's smiling like nothing happened out there on the church steps. I can't even see anger simmering in her eyes. She's much better at hiding it than my parents, I guess, or maybe I just don't know her as well. I'm not looking forward to our walk home, although maybe she'll wait until we're behind the closed doors of her house to ream me out.

“Ned's looking good these days, eh?” she says to the others, then catches my eye and tells me Ned's the guy with the earring we met as we came in. I nod as if I noticed that kind of detail, and she goes on. “He got out of detox a few months ago and has never looked back.”

Louise smiles. “I hear he's moving in here soon.” She jerks her head toward the far end of the dining hall. Behind those doors, my aunt has told me, homeless people can have a room for up to three months, until they find a more permanent place to live. To be accepted, though, they have to be sober and looking for work.

“Pretty impressive, considering what he's been through,” adds Turtle Guy.

Again, Jeanette fills in the blanks. “Alcoholic parents. On the streets by the time he was fourteen. In and out of shelters for ages. Finally got into a program for drug addiction, but the program's funding got cut, and he wound up on the streets again. Last year, he got hit by a car. It happened right here, in front of the soup kitchen, and a bunch of people saw it. The driver got out, looked at Ned, made some comment about one less drunk and took off. Left him for dead.”

I stare. “God.”

“Yup, and that's just one story,” says Louise. “Everyone here's got stories like that. Amazing they keep going, really. It's humbling to work here, that's for sure.”

I think about that as I keep plopping margarine onto bread. Jeanette goes on smiling and talking, but I tune her out. No wonder Jeanette and Alison wanted to donate money to this place. I've never thought about the stories behind guys like Ned. And when I realize that, I see how dumb I've been. Like anyone would
choose
to live like they do. I shake my head, trying to shake my thoughts into some kind of order.

On our way out, I smile at a few of the people in the courtyard, and they smile back, like normal people.

For the first few blocks of our walk home, Jeanette acts like I haven't done anything wrong. In fact, she even smiles when she says, “I'm glad you shook hands with those fellows on the church steps.”

I breathe a sigh of relief.

“One of the biggest gifts you can give people,” she says, “is to treat them with respect. You did that, and I was proud of you.” It sounds like the kind of Teachable Moment speech most adults would make, but Jeanette doesn't do Teachable Moments. I know she's totally sincere.

I don't do tears, yet suddenly they've sprung to my eyes. I wonder if I'm turning into my mother, getting emotional about absolutely everything. I blink furiously. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“For shaking their hands? Why would I—?”

“For
not
shaking their hands,” I say. “I didn't want to at first.”

“But you did, in the end. That's what counts.” She looks baffled.

Suddenly I am too. When I was just visiting for a week or so, I didn't worry about making Jeanette mad, but now that I'm here for two months, the thought of crossing her makes me jumpy. What's worse is that I don't know the rules. At least at home, I know where the danger zones are. For the first time it occurs to me that maybe there are no danger zones here.

S
EVEN

T
hat evening, Mom misses our nightly phone call. I know I shouldn't worry. She often works late. Then again, maybe she had something scheduled for tonight, and she forgot to mention that she wouldn't be calling. Whatever she's doing, I hope it gets her mind off her troubles. All day, I've been saving up interesting things to tell her, little things that might make her smile— like the fact that Jeanette got me a dentist appointment at the end of this month. After half an hour of hanging around the wall phone, though, I'm pretty sure my very punctual mother won't be calling, and I'm relieved when Sarah comes to the door.

She's wearing yet another of her many awesome outfits, this time a white blouse with tight jeans that show off her butt. Her hair is shiny, and she's applied the faintest hint of lip gloss. I stand there in my basement-cleaning shorts and a ragged T-shirt, still puzzled that she wants to be my friend.

She flops onto the couch and asks what treasures we unearthed today.

“My favorite was
Wardrobe Renovation Made
Simple
—all about how to make dresses out of aprons, scarves out of pant legs, and bowties out of old socks,” I say. “
A Loving Look at Outhouses: A History in
Pictures
was pretty good too.”

She laughs, and I don't tell her that these books were presents from my mom, because I don't want her to think my family's weird. I'm sure they must have seemed like the perfect gifts at the time. Mom tries really hard to give people stuff she thinks they might like. When she gets it right, she's ecstatic.

“So?”

I look up, meeting Sarah's gaze. I realize I haven't heard a word she's said. “Sorry. What was that?”

“I asked if you want to go clothes shopping with me sometime. For school.”

“Oh.” I'm not sure how to answer. I could pretend to be thrilled and go along, or I could invent an excuse. But excuses mean lying, and lying is exhausting. Besides, the truth has to come out sooner or later, even if it means she'll declare me a total disappointment as a friend. “I actually kind of hate clothes shopping,” I admit. “It's genetic. My mom hates it even more than I do.”

“She does?” Sarah asks, clearly unable to imagine anyone like this. “Who do you go with then?”

“My dad,” I say. “We've got a pretty good system. We go through the store and grab a bunch of stuff that might look okay on me. I try it all on and choose a few things, and we head to the cashier. Once a year. Quick and painless.”

Sarah doesn't stop staring. “You let your father help pick your clothes? Tell me you at least go to a decent store.”

“The Gap. Sometimes Old Navy. I only ever get T-shirts and jeans anyway. Shorts in the summer.”

A look of pity flashes across her face, and under any other circumstances, I'd be indignant, but if that pity gets me out of a shopping trip, I'll take it.

“Oh well,” she says at last. “Nobody's perfect.”

Now I stare at her, until she bursts out laughing. “I'm kidding, Ellie. You don't have to come shopping if it's not your thing.”

I smile as if I knew it was a joke all along. I wish I didn't blush so easily though. I ask if she wants some milk and cookies. She agrees, and when I come back with a tray, she's looking down at her nails. “Do you still have that book about making dresses from aprons?”

I scan her face, waiting for the punch line, but I realize she's serious. “You want to make bowties out of old socks?”

She shrugs. “I like sewing. It could be interesting.”

I laugh and tell her I'll go get the book.

Sarah's nothing like the person I first thought she was, and this summer is going better than I ever could have imagined.

Every day since finding the bandoneón, I've been trying to play it. I still sound like poultry with breathing problems, but now and then I get a decent run of notes. Alison would be proud, I think.

And if Mom could stop worrying about teenage rebellion, she might be a little proud too. She always wanted music lessons when she was growing up, which is why she enrolled me in classes almost as soon as I could talk. Today I manage an almost-recognizable rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on the bandoneón. I let out a whoop and drop onto the bed, grinning. The instrument case falls off the bed and lands on the floor. For the first time, I notice something brown peeping out from behind the red inner lining.

It's a blank envelope, slightly bigger than letter size, full of papers: a map of Uruguay; a bit of paper with a Victoria address written on it; two old-fashioned airline tickets; and more money than I've ever seen at one time. It's not Canadian money. Most of the bills are American, but some say
República Argentina
. The American money alone adds up to almost two thousand dollars, and the numbers on the bills from Argentina are all in the thousands.

I sit back on my bed and stare at the envelope. All my life, I've wanted something exciting to happen to me. People in books are always finding secret notes hidden in library books or messages in bottles washed up on the shore, but I only ever find old receipts or bus transfers. The one time I found a bottle at the beach, it turned out to be wine someone was chilling for supper.

Now, at last, I've uncovered a mystery. Why would anyone leave that much money in a bandoneón case?

I race to explore every cranny of the case and even parts of the instrument itself. I don't know what I'm expecting, but I find nothing more. I tuck the bandoneón away in the closet, slip the envelope into the drawer of my night table and wander into the kitchen, trying to look aimless or slightly bored, in case Jeanette shows up out of nowhere. I'll tell her about the envelope eventually, of course, especially if I can't find out who the money belongs to. All that money could buy tons of bread and sandwich meat for the soup kitchen, and maybe then I'd feel better about keeping the bandoneón itself. Before I tell anyone anything, though, I want to know more about what I've found.

Through the kitchen window, I see Jeanette in the garden, chatting over the back fence to Mr. Ignilioni, the most long-winded guy in the neighborhood.

I breathe a sigh of relief and dash into the living room. For the first time ever, I use Jeanette's old encyclopedia instead of just teasing her about it. I look up every place name mentioned, and after about half an hour, I've found out that Uruguay is a country in South America, and Argentina is just west of it. Argentina is where tango music started, so I guess it's not surprising that a tango instrument has some connection to Argentina. The airplane tickets are from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Caracas, Venezuela, and the date on the tickets is 22JUN1976. The names on the tickets are Andrés Moreno and Caterina Rizzi.

A knock on the front door startles me so much that I almost fall off the couch.

“Feel like going on a field trip?” Sarah asks when I open up. “I want to check out Vic Middle, the school I'll be going to in September.”

I laugh. Can I really be so lucky? A bandoneón, a mystery and a friend who likes school enough to check it out in July?

Sarah gives me a sheepish smile. “I know it's weird, but I want to scope the place out.”

“Let me tell Jeanette we're going to school in July,” I say with a grin. “Just a sec.”

Sarah grins back, and a few minutes later we're heading across the park and up the hill to Vic Middle.

“How's the basement-clearing going?” she asks, kicking a pebble along the sidewalk. “Found any more treasures?”

Her words are like ice down my spine, but I know it's only a coincidence that she's asking, so I play it cool. “I'm still figuring out how to play the first treasure I found,” I say. “I'm hoping Jeanette finds plenty of treasure though, preferably expensive stuff that she can sell for the soup kitchen.”