Say That Again (20 page)

Right before it was time to leave, Hannah hurried up to her bedroom, saying she’d forgotten Faustine. Just in case Maura walked by, Hannah shut her bedroom door. She put on her purple hoodie and then took Franklin from his cage. He yawned, having been up half the night spinning, munching on seeds, and burrowing through his cedar shavings. She slipped him in her front pocket, then grabbed Faustine off the bed and hurried downstairs.

Every once in a while during the drive to Somerset, Franklin would shift from one side of her pocket to the other. Once, he even poked his head out. Hannah was afraid her mommy would look in the backseat at her just when he was doing this and figure things out, but she didn’t seem to catch on at all.

When they arrived at the pet store, Hannah stuffed both hands inside her front pocket to keep him inside. While Jenn was busy picking out a squeaky toy and a bone for Echo, Hannah snuck away to the small pet section. There were three banks of glass cages and aquariums. The first and biggest of these was full of fish. Hannah tried to listen, but they didn’t have much to say except, ‘
Food, food
’ and ‘
Get out of my way
’. The second held a row of lizards, turtles, and snakes. She could hear nothing at all from them and was glad for it.

The last section was where the mice, rats, hamsters, and gerbils were. Hannah looked in each one, searching for gerbils that looked like Franklin. Finally, she found some. What Hannah couldn’t figure out was how to open the cages.

“Would you like to hold one?” A young woman with blue-streaked hair and a nose piercing stood next to her. She had on a blue polo shirt and a name tag that said ‘Bella’. Hannah could read that much. Last year, she’d taught herself on the computer how to sound out letters. She could read much better than anyone knew, even her parents. She just didn’t see a reason to make a big deal out of it.

Turning away, Hannah shook her head and continued to stare at the cage before her. She hoped that Bella would go away, but for several minutes the woman poked around in the cages, adding cubes of alfalfa and refilling water bottles. Hannah watched her flip a latch and pop the screen top open, then reclose it.

It took forever for Bella to leave. The whole time, Hannah kept checking to make sure Franklin was still in her pocket, then looking down the rows, expecting her mommy to come and tell her it was time to go.

It was now or never. She flipped a latch up. Just as she dug her hand in her front pocket, Jenn came around the corner.

“There you are! You ready to go? I’ll let you pick out your favorite cereals today. I can never remember which ones you —”

“That’s not the right kind,” Hannah said softly, hoping there was no one else nearby who could hear her. She didn’t like people listening to what she said. “Echo likes peanut butter.”

Jenn glanced down at the package of mint-flavored bones in her basket. “Oh, I didn’t think it mattered. Anyway, I thought these would make his breath smell better. Kind of like your toothpaste.”

“Peanut butter,” Hannah repeated.

“Okay, then.” Jenn took the bones from her basket. “Peanut butter it is. Maybe you should show me.”

“I’m busy.”

“Doing what?”

Hannah shrugged. “Just looking.”

“You stay right here. Don’t go anywhere, you understand?”

Wishing she’d hurry up and go, Hannah nodded.

As soon as her mommy was gone, Hannah took Franklin from her pocket, kissed him on the head, and put him in the gerbil cage. She almost pulled him back out when another gerbil started squabbling with him. Soon, however, they were sniffing each other and getting very friendly. Hannah pressed her forehead to the glass, watching. What were they —?

“Hannah?”

Hannah froze at the sound of her mother’s voice. It took her a few moments to realize that the banging in her ears was the sound of her own heart. She took a step back, her breaths coming in shallow pants. Her knees were shaking. She sucked in a lungful of air, held it, then let it out.

“Hey, I saw a squeaky toy on sale and thought Echo might like it.” Jenn tipped the basket to show Hannah the bones and squeaky, then bent down alongside her to peer into the cage. “Oh my. Looks like they’re trying to make babies. I wonder if they know they have a boy in there with all those girls? They usually separate them.” Straightening, she pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You know, he looks
just
like Franklin, don’t you think?”

Did she know? Was she waiting for her to tell the truth? Should she lie? Could she?

Hannah grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled toward the cash register.

They got all the way through the grocery store and back home before Hannah’s elaborate ruse threatened to unfold.

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—o00o—

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“M
om?” Maura held the kitchen door open for them. “Franklin’s gone.”

Jenn set the sack of groceries on the kitchen table. “Are you sure, Maura? He’s not just hiding under his bedding?”

“That’s the first place I looked. I even looked under Hannah’s bed and dressers, in her closet, and all the rooms upstairs.” Maura’s eyes slid to Echo, who was running circles around Hannah, his rear end wiggling like Hannah had been gone for months, not mere hours. He had the new squeaky toy, a pink elephant, in his mouth.
Squeak, squeak, squeak
. She narrowed her eyes at him. “When I was walking by her room, I stopped to check on him, and Echo was lying on the rug next to the cage. The door to the cage was open. The dog is tall enough to reach it, you know.”

Jenn’s mouth slid into a frown. “Ohhh, Echo. You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Hunter entered the kitchen. He searched through the closest sack. “Did you remember to get the turmeric? I was going to make that new recipe tonight. Thought we’d try something new and exotic.”

Echo poked his nose at Hannah’s pocket.

Is he in there? I smell him. Can I see? Where did you go? Can I come next time?

Hannah pushed his nose away. “Stop it, Echo,” she mumbled.

“It appears Echo may have had a snack,” Jenn informed her husband. “As in small, furry-tailed rodent appetizer.”

“No, really? He was with me almost the whole time — except for those few minutes I stepped outside to take out the trash.” Emptying a grocery bag, Hunter placed the vegetables in the refrigerator. “Maura, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just now figured it out. I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Help your mom bring the rest of the groceries in.” He shook his head at Echo. “We’ll form a search party once they’re all put away. Meanwhile, I’ll put Echo in his crate.”

They were all blaming Echo for something Hannah had done. Guilt ate a hole in her stomach. She hung her head. This wasn’t going like she’d planned at all.

An hour later, after they’d scoured the house, Hunter declared Franklin officially lost. No one seemed mad at Echo, though.

“Did you forget to shut your bedroom door when we left, Hannah?” Jenn asked her.

She shrugged. Well, she didn’t actually forget. It was all part of the plan. But she didn’t think they’d suspect Echo of being the cause for Franklin’s disappearance. If they chose to believe that, though ...

As long as they didn’t punish Echo for it, everything would be all right. It was done. Franklin was at the pet store now. Safe from Patrick Mann.

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—o00o—

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M
onday morning, Jenn went in to see Hannah’s teacher. Returning the empty cage, she explained the unfortunate incident.

“It’s all right, Hannah.” Her teacher patted her lightly on top of the head. “These things happen.”

Inwardly, Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t look like she was going to get in trouble. Either Mrs. Ziegler really believed what her mother said, or she was just being nice and underneath she was really mad. Hannah could never tell.

Three days later, a white mouse appeared in Franklin’s cage. Afraid for him, Hannah went home and told her parents what had really happened to Franklin. Echo was forgiven, but her mother scolded her for not telling the truth. Later, when Hannah went down the stairs to get a drink of milk before bedtime, she overheard her parents talking as they sat on the couch in the living room.

“You can’t honestly believe her, Hunter.”

“How do you know she didn’t see that boy do something to the gerbil?”

“Because she told her teacher she didn’t. How do
you
know she didn’t make the whole thing up?”

“Why would she do that, Jenn?”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like this Patrick kid. For all we know, he looked at her wrong, or cut in line in front of her. It could be one of a million things.” There was a long pause, and then her mother spoke again. “You knew I didn’t want her to go to school with other kids. She wasn’t ready for it, Hunter. It hasn’t even been two weeks and already she’s making up stories trying to get some other kid in trouble. We need to nip this in the bud before it gets any worse. I’m going to speak to the school psychologist tomorrow.”

“Jenn, don’t. Not yet.”

“Give me one good reason why.”

Faustine in her arms, Hannah peeked around the doorway. The only light in the room came from the glow of the TV. They had the sound turned off. She was afraid to go up the creaky stairs while they were quiet; they might hear her.

“When I was little, about her age,” her father began, “I ran away.”

“You never mentioned that. How long were you gone?”

“I’m not sure exactly. Most of a day, I think.”

Jenn rested her head on Hunter’s shoulder. “Why did you run away?”

“Mostly because I couldn’t cope with what happened to my dad and grandfather. When I watched the tractor roll, crushing both of them ... it was more than I could deal with. But also because my mom had sort of ‘checked out’. She was pregnant with Cammie then, dealing with my dad’s messed up financial affairs ... She was doing the best she could, but being the kid, I wanted her — the adult — to fix everything, and she couldn’t. It sent me into a spiral of emotional shock. And I felt ... no, I
believed
somehow the accident was my fault. That I should have stopped him before the tractor slid. That Mom was mad at me. Although that was probably just transference. Really, I was mad at myself — and angry at the world in general. So I ran.”

“Are you afraid that’s what Hannah will do?”

“I’m saying kids cope in unpredictable ways. They’re more complicated than we realize. There’s a lot going on under her quiet exterior. And there’s no telling what she may do next.”

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t take much more excitement. Days like this, more than anything, I just want her to be
normal
. Like Maura.”

Hannah stopped listening. She’d heard enough.

Carefully, she tiptoed up the stairs. In her room, she climbed under the covers with Faustine. Sadness filled her, weighing her down. She wanted to draw far into herself, somewhere dark, where she could be alone ...

Sitting up and pulling a throw from the foot of her bed, Hannah dragged it over to the closet and opened the door. She sank to her knees, scooted in, and burrowed in the far corner behind a pile of shoes. The dress with sunflowers on it that Gramma Lise had given her after she got out of the hospital hung down, brushing the top of her head. If she moved it, it would be out of the way, but this way it partially hid her in case anyone looked in there for her. She crouched into a ball and tugged her blanket to her, but it caught on the door.

As she began to unravel it so she could close the door, a black face appeared in the crack of light between the door and jamb. Echo’s orangey-golden eyes gazed at her soulfully, as if asking if he could come in with her. His whiskers twitched as he sniffed her shoes.

Hannah patted the floor next to her and Echo squeezed himself between her and the wall. The blanket was just big enough to cover them both. Except their heads — they had to breathe.

She didn’t remember waking up later, or putting her jammies on, but in the morning she woke up in her bed, Echo asleep on his braided rug beside her.

For a few minutes, she was sure it was a Saturday, but then she heard Maura taking a shower.

No, darn it. It was a school day.

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—o00o—

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H
annah had been calling her Dr. Lemon until she saw her name on the wall outside her office at the school that day — Dr. Cynthia P. Liming. Close, anyway.

For the better part of an hour, Hannah held out, not saying anything as Dr. Liming asked her question after question. Dr. Liming even offered her some paper and crayons and told her to draw pictures of whatever she wanted. So Hannah drew shapes and patterns: squares divided into more squares, and then circles in rows that from farther away took on the appearance of other shapes, like triangles. The whole time, she wondered if not saying anything was as bad as lying.

Eventually, it occurred to her that if she told Dr. Liming everything, they just might let her stay home from school.

It turned out to be a big mistake to tell Dr. Liming that the sparrow outside the window told her about the principal, Mr. Sloan, visiting Mrs. Ziegler’s room every day after school and pulling the blinds.

That afternoon, when her mommy came to pick her up from school, they went straight from her classroom to Dr. Liming’s office. Hannah was told to wait at a low table in the adjacent room while her mommy talked to Dr. Liming. The door between the rooms was made of frosted glass and Jenn hadn’t pulled it shut tight, so it was still open a crack — which meant Hannah could both see and hear them.

Dr. Liming sat behind her desk, two paper notepads and a computer tablet before her. Elbows planted on the armrests of her big chair, the psychologist steepled her fingers together before her. “I’m concerned that Hannah may be having, well,” — her voice lowered in volume — “delusions, Mrs. McHugh.”

Meanwhile, Hannah busied herself drawing circles inside of circles inside of circles.

“Delusions?” Jenn leaned forward in her chair. “Like what?”

“Does she tell you that animals talk to her?”