Paper Things (13 page)

It’s Ms. Finch, standing by the bench in the front hall. “Ari,” she says. “Everything OK?”

I pause, wondering what she means, and then I realize: she thinks I’ve just come from the principal’s office. Because in her eyes, I am no longer Arianna Hazard, star pupil. Instead, I’m Arianna Hazard, the girl who did Mr. O.’s assignment during computer lab, who is often late and disorganized, and whose hair looks like it hasn’t seen a brush in a month.

I feel pressure behind my eyeballs and blink furiously. I will not cry in front of Ms. Finch. “Everything’s good,” I say as brightly as I can manage. I want to tell her that things will be better from now on — that Gage and I are on our own now and that we’ve been struggling, but Gage has a full-time job and soon we’ll be getting an apartment, which means no more tardies and no more doing my homework during computer lab. But I don’t dare. Not just because Gage told me not to, but because I’m not going to do one more thing to jeopardize my application to Carter. I’m pretty sure they’re not looking for a kid who’s homeless. (Which I’m not, of course. I’m just a temporary . . . What does Briggs call me?
Floor surfer.
)

“I’m on my way to Head Start,” I offer instead. “I volunteer there in the afternoons.”

Ms. Finch raises her eyebrows, like she’s surprised. Another reminder of just how far I’ve fallen in her estimation. Like Daniel said, lots of kids in fifth grade volunteer. It’s so they can say on their middle-school applications that they’ve done service learning. “Maybe one day you can come by my room and tell me more about it,” she says. “I’d like to hear.”

I nod, not sure what to make of that. Is it possible that she doesn’t believe me — that she thinks I’m making up an after-school activity just to look good?

Has it really come to that?

I’m sitting at the cutting table at Head Start. Juju is next to me, cutting a shiny stove from a Home Depot flyer. Omar is tearing paper in his usual way. A couple of other kids have gravitated to us today as well. There’s a page in the catalog I’m flipping through that says, “May Day’s Coming!” and it has people dressed in white, playing games like croquet, ringtoss, and horseshoes. I’ve only played games like that once. Back in third grade, this girl Tori, who Sasha and I were friends with before she moved to Buffalo, invited us to her eighth birthday party, which was at her grandmother’s house in Falmouth. We took turns playing lawn games — though none of us wore white. I remember how Tori’s dad had coached her from the sidelines, telling her how to hold the horseshoe, how to take aim, how to throw it high enough and far enough that it circled and landed around the stake. I wondered at the time if my dad would have taught me how to play horseshoes in our little backyard if he hadn’t died in Afghanistan. I cut out the horseshoes for my paper dad.

After that, I don’t feel like cutting out Paper Things. Instead, I pick up a catalog page that Omar has discarded, fold it, and cut out a snowflake. It’s small but complicated, with a little star in the middle. I picture the halls of our school covered in snowflakes, and that gives me an idea. What if my campaign started invisibly? What if Daniel and I secretly hung snowflakes all around the school like some sort of spring blizzard to bring attention to the lost traditions?

I think about enlisting Sasha, but I know that at this stage, I could never persuade her. First of all, she thinks Daniel is weird. Second of all, she has a leadership role and wouldn’t want to jeopardize it by sneaking around after hours and bending school rules. Third, she still isn’t talking to me. Fourth, she thinks Daniel is weird.

But what if the spring blizzard isn’t enough to get kids — and administrators — excited about bringing back the traditions? Or worse, what if no one gets it? Maybe we need something else, something to make our mission perfectly clear.

The ideas are percolating as I grab another catalog page and start cutting. If the snowflakes got some kids’ attention, we could maybe get them to fight for our cause. They could help us stage an impromptu Crazy Hat Day. We’d have to come up with a way of spreading the word and finding kids who’d be willing to risk getting in a bit of trouble by wearing a hat to school. But once everyone saw the great hats — hats like the upside-down ice-cream cone that Briggs bought me — surely excitement would spread for all the other great Eastland Elementary traditions.

“Ari, what are you
doing
?” asks Juju, pushing a catalog closer to me. She’s clearly disappointed in my choice at the cutting table today.

“I’m making a snowflake, see?” I unfold my triangle to show her the lacy shape I’ve cut.

“Snowflakes?” Carol says as she passes by us. “It’s April, Ari! We don’t want snowflakes now. We want warm spring weather!”

I smile and tell Carol about my campaign to bring back the Eastland Elementary traditions, starting with a surprise spring blizzard.”

“What a great idea!” Carol says. She brings me white paper.

Fran pulls up a chair next to me. “I’ve never made a paper snowflake,” she says. “Have you guys?” she asks the group of Starters at the cutting table. They shake their heads. “Would you show us how?”

She’s surprisingly fast with scissors. In no time at all, she’s cutting really complicated snowflakes. The little kids’ snowflakes are a lot simpler — random shapes cut out of pieces of paper folded just in half — since it’s too hard for them to cut through multiple layers of folded paper. Soon they’re bored by the assignment and start to get restless.

“I know,” says Fran, and she goes and gets glue bottles and glitter. “Let’s make our snowflakes sparkle!”

This the kids know how to do! They squeeze glue onto the snowflakes, shake glitter on top of the glue, and then slide the excess glitter off into a tub. Later, Fran or Carol will ask me to refill the shaker bottles with the glitter from the tub; they both hate that job. “You have glitter in your hair and underneath your fingernails for a week,” says Carol. But I don’t mind. I like the sparkles.

At one point, Fran tears a page from a catalog, but she doesn’t fold it into a snowflake. Instead she sets the page to the side.

I look more closely. It’s a page of bikes.

“I’m hoping to buy a bicycle this spring,” she says when she notices me looking. “To ride to work. But they’re much more expensive than I imagined.”

I nod. The past two months have shown me just how expensive things are. Once again, I am so, so grateful that Gage now has a job. I can still barely believe how lucky —

“Hey!” I say. “I think I might know a way to help you get a bike!” I tell her about Reggie and the wishing plane.

“Did he know that your brother was applying for a job at Jiffy Lube?” Fran asks.

“No!
I
didn’t even know! Reggie just happened to give me a plane that had the ad. I made a wish and flew the plane out a window.”

Fran is quiet as she cuts a six-pointed flake.

“I could take that catalog page to Reggie . . .” I offer.

Fran laughs at my persistence. “Why not?” she says. “Wishing never hurt.” She slides the picture over to me, and I walk into the hall to carefully place it and the snowflakes in my backpack.

“Wait —” Fran joins me in the hall with her purse. She takes three dollar bills from her wallet and hands them to me. “Would you give him this from me, for his time — and his talent?”

“I don’t think you have to pay him,” I say. “He makes free airplanes for kids all the time.”

“I know,” she says. “But it seems like the right thing to do.”

I wonder what Reggie will think of my request. Will he mind that I’m asking him for another plane — this time for someone else? And what will he think when I tell him that his paper airplane made my wish come true?

After the good-bye song, Fran races off to an appointment. Clusters of parents arrive to pick up the Starters, until only Carol and I are left. This is really unusual. Gage typically picks me up in the middle of dismissal, not at the end. “Why don’t you call Gage, see how close he is?” Carol suggests, handing me her phone.

I start to dial Gage’s number but quickly realize that it won’t do any good. “I can’t,” I say. “Gage doesn’t have his phone today.”

“No phone?” I can tell that this frustrates Carol. I can also tell that she is eager to leave. She has to pick her baby girl up at day care.

“It’s OK,” I say. “Gage will be here soon.”

“I can’t leave you —”

“If Gage doesn’t come in fifteen minutes,” I say, “I’ll go to Lighthouse and tell West.” I won’t, though. I know that West has looked the other way before, but that’s because he really believes Gage is doing what’s best for me. If I show up at Lighthouse complaining that Gage never picked me up, I don’t know if West would be able to keep that one to himself.

Instead I’ll go to Chloe’s. Surely Gage would think to look for me there.

Carol is still uncertain.

“The bus stop is only two blocks away,” I say. “And it will be light for another hour or so.”

“All right,” she says. She takes a receipt out of her purse and writes her number on it. “Call me when you’re with Gage.”

Carol keeps looking back as she walks down the street to her car. We both want Gage to show up before she’s gone.

I don’t know whether I’m more mad at Gage or afraid for him. What if something happened during his training at Jiffy Lube? I don’t know a whole lot about mechanic shops, but they seem like the kind of place where accidents could happen. Maybe Gage was distracted because of what I’d told him this morning about Janna no longer buying my school lunch. Maybe he’d been thinking about that instead of focusing on what he was doing and —

I force myself to stop thinking like that. He’s probably fine. Maybe he just lost track of time, or maybe his training went on longer than expected.

I wait around for what feels like about fifteen more minutes, and then I head to the bus stop. I see the bus coming as I approach, and I race the last block and catch it just in time.

The bus going into town isn’t crowded at this hour, since most people are leaving their jobs in the city and heading for their homes in the suburbs, so I have no trouble finding a seat all to myself. But now that I’m actually on the bus, I’m plagued by a new set of worries: What if Gage arrived at Head Start right after I left? Would he be mad at me for leaving? Would he think to look for me at Chloe’s? Should I have left him a note somehow, maybe tucked in the door to the Head Start building, letting him know where to find me?

I try to put myself in Gage’s shoes. If I were Gage and I showed up at Head Start late and saw that my little sister was missing, who’s the first person I would go to for help finding her? It would definitely be Chloe, I assure myself. She’d keep a level head and would know just what to do.

The bus pulls up to the stop by Chloe’s place. I get off and start trudging up the hill. Maybe I’ll even bump into Gage as I’m walking!

Rather than keeping my head down and looking for pennies, I scan the faces that I pass, hoping to spot Gage. There’s a woman covered in blankets, leaning against the wall of a building. A man with dreadlocks who is shouting loudly, though no one appears to be listening. A bearded man who walks toward me with his hands out. I offer a smile — friendly but not
too
friendly — and walk faster.

The door to Chloe’s apartment building feels like home. I push it open and climb the stairs, trying not to notice the smell of pee.

I knock on the door, ready to reassure Chloe when she sees me standing here without Gage. But even after three knocks, no one answers. It hadn’t occurred to me that Chloe or her roommates might not be home. I turn the doorknob to see if the door is unlocked, but no such luck.

Now what? Should I wait here for Chloe or one of her roommates to show up — or for Gage to show up, knowing this is where I’d most likely be? But if Gage knows that Chloe isn’t home right now, would he assume I’d know that, too? In that case, where would he think to look for me?

Briggs’s studio.

I dash down the stairs. What if he’s already there? Will he leave as soon as he sees that I’m not there?
Then
where will he look for me? How the heck are we supposed to find each other when neither of us has a phone?

Holy moly, Gage must be as worried about me right now as I am about him. I fly back down the hill toward the stop for the bus going to the East End.

The bus stop is spilling over with adults waiting to take the bus out of the city, back to their homes with their bright kitchens and their shiny granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances. I picture them eating with their families at long tables, tables filled with platters of food. Afterward, they’ll help their kids with their homework and the kids will grumble, but they’ll also be glad because they won’t be scared or embarrassed when the teacher comes around to collect their work.

Even though lots of people are loaded down with briefcases or shopping bags, no one is sitting down at the bus stop. I peer past the crowd and into the bus shelter; a man is curled up on the bench with his back turned toward the crowd. Every so often someone shoots him a grumpy look, and a woman next to me mutters, “Lousy drunk.”