Summer Sanctuary (2 page)

I hated that question. Everybody thinks that's like the easiest question in the world—only I can explain Pythagoras' theorem in less time than I can answer that question. And Pythagoras is more interesting. I wanted her to think I was cool, so I tried to be mysterious. “I'm not in a grade,” I said, crossing my arms.

“Yeah, right,” she replied. “It's summer vacation. Nobody's in a grade. What grade will you be in when school starts up again?”

“It depends,” I said. I shrugged my shoulders for effect.

“Depends on what?” she asked, draping her arms over the chair across from me. “On whether or not you flunked?”

The word flunked was like a slap in the face. “I've never flunked,” I countered, forgetting to be cool. “My family home schools. I'm at a different grade level for every subject.” I waited for her to laugh or make fun of me, but she didn't.

“Really?” she said with a serious frown. “So what's your highest grade level?”

“I'm at a twelfth grade reading level,” I replied evenly.

“What's your lowest grade level?”

“I don't know. I'm doing sophomore level math and science. Probably social studies is my lowest. I'm just starting high school work in that.”

She seemed genuinely interested all of a sudden. “So do you get a summer vacation when you're home schooled?”

“Not really … well, kind of, I guess. My mom only brings us to the library once a week during the school year. My deal with my parents this summer is I can study independently. I get to choose the project, and I can ride my bike to the library every day if I want.
Once I get my chores and stuff done, I mean. Every day except Sunday on account of church, and the library is closed.” I was talking way too much. I still didn't even know her name or anything about her, except that she wasn't anything like any of the girls from my church.

“So how many brothers and sisters do you have?” She had moved to my table now, dragging her backpack with her.

“I have three younger brothers.” I paused. “And another one on the way.”

“Wow!” she exclaimed, raising both her eyebrows.

I tried to change the subject from me to her. “I've never seen you here before. Are you new in town?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “I just discovered this branch of the library. I think I like it. So maybe I'll see you around. I gotta go now, though.”

I thought I saw her smile as she slung her backpack over her shoulder and disappeared out the door.

A
T DINNER THAT
night I kept thinking about her. What was her name? She didn't look like an Amber or Melissa or Mary or Elizabeth or any other name I could think of. I was so startled when I heard Dad say
my
name that I dropped my fork.

“So, Matthew, what have you decided to study this summer?” Dad asked. I saw him look at my mom and raise his eyebrows. Mom shook her head.

“Earth to Matthew!” Mark shouted.

“Earth to Matthew,” Luke echoed.

“Mattie, Mattie,” Johnny mimicked.

“Boys,” Mom scolded as she cut up Johnny's spaghetti and meatballs. “Let your brother answer.”

“Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the speed of light,” I said. “You know. Math and science stuff.”

“Sounds very interesting. How about you, Mark?” Dad asked.

Mark slurped in the two long strands of spaghetti hanging out of his mouth. “Statistics and averages,” Mark said as he chewed. What Mark really meant was that he was going to play baseball all summer. He was the youngest player in the 10-12 league, but already better than most of the guys my age. Way better than me. When he moved up into my league, I decided to hang up my cleats. Well, actually, I just gave them to Mark, since his feet were as big as mine already. Anyway, I mostly played just because Kyle did.

That night after my brothers were all asleep, I heard my mom and dad talking downstairs. I sneaked down and sat in the dark on the bottom step to hear what they were talking about. I'd been doing it for years. That's how I learned that Mom was the Tooth Fairy, that Dad wanted me to be a preacher just like him, and that Mom was going to have another baby.

That was all old news, except the preacher part. It seems like preachers have to take everything on faith. My dad has mountains of faith. So does my grandpa. Not me. I'm still working my way up to the mustard seed level. I like science with all its experiments and math with all its proofs. I just don't get how people can
be so sure about things they can't prove. But I haven't told Dad that. Yet.

“Just how much money did she offer to donate?” I heard my mother asking.

“She offered as much as we need to complete the new youth center, even if we exceed the projected budget,” my dad replied. “Up to a million dollars.”

Mom whistled softly. “Well, that's certainly a generous offer—especially coming from a woman who never had any children of her own.”

Who has lots of money and no children?
My mind was racing through our congregation.

“It would be generous if there were no strings attached,” Dad said.

“So what does she want?”

“You're not going to believe it.” I peeked around the corner and saw my dad shaking his head as he sat by my mom on the couch. “She wants to be able to bring her dogs to church.”

My mom laughed so loud, I nearly jumped out of my jammies. “All of them?” she howled. I retreated back a few steps, safely out of view.

“Really, Theresa, it's not funny.” When Mom tried to stop laughing, she started hooting like an owl. “And,
no, she doesn't want to bring all of them.” Dad took a deep breath. “She'd like to bring two dogs to each service. She said that if she were blind I'd have to let her bring a seeing-eye dog, and that if she could have one of her dogs on each side of her as she listened to my sermons, she'd be much more capable of seeing and hearing the truth.”

It must be old Mrs. Miller.
Kyle and I once overheard his dad saying that she had more money than God and not a blessed idea what to do with any of it. She's got half a dozen fancy dogs that she paid tons of money for plus more strays than anyone's been able to count.

“So, you get your Promised Land, only it's already going to the dogs!” Mom was still laughing.

Dad sighed. “Right. The Israelites got the Land of Canaan, and I get the Land of Canine.”

They stopped talking. I guessed they were kissing. Time for me to go back to bed.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, I couldn't get to the library soon enough. It opened at 10:00, and I watched Mrs. Cleary unlock the front doors. Mrs. Cleary had worked at the library since before I was born. She still wore her hair in one of those bouffant hairdos. The week before she ordered a bunch of books on relativity for me through interlibrary loan. She stood a little too close beside me and leaned over my shoulder to see my list. She smelled a little too much like the cafeteria at the Senior Center where we went Christmas caroling every year.

I planted myself on the bench outside the library and thought about the girl. I decided that her parents must be dead. Whoever she lived with must be so terrible that she had to run away. As I sat in front of the library that morning, though, our library didn't seem like a place for runaways. So I started thinking maybe she was mental. I read something once about people who are so crazy they eat dirt. They can't help it. They
see dirt in a flowerbed or garden, and they just have to pick up a handful and shove it in their mouths. Maybe there's something like that with garbage. I'd have to research
that
if she didn't show up.

I almost forgot—it was Saturday. What if she couldn't come back until Monday? What if she didn't come back at all? Was she sneaking food out of other trash cans? Did she think I was a total loser—a short, skinny, freckle-faced nobody who liked to quilt? She left awful suddenly. Still—she did smile before she left. Not just a polite smile to dismiss me. It was a real smile that covered her whole face and included her eyes.
She'll be here
.
I just have to wait
.

I reached in my backpack and pulled out
The Last Battle
. Even though
The Chronicles of Narnia
series was my favorite, I couldn't concentrate. I never even turned a page. It was nearly 11:00 when I finally caught a glimpse of her approaching from the side. I didn't look up from the book until she was standing almost directly in front of me. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday—same black t-shirt, same jean shorts, same scuffed-up white jogging shoes. When our eyes met, I said, “Oh, hi.” I hoped she couldn't hear my heart pounding.

“Hi, Matthew,” she replied. She sat down on the bench beside me, but not too close. I waited. Today she was going to have to do more of the talking.

“So,” she said, looking me up and down, “you must have gotten all of your chores done early.”

“Yeah. You were sure in a hurry yesterday. Everything okay?” I asked.

“Sure.” She slipped her backpack off her shoulder and let it drop to the bench. It was every bit as full as it was yesterday, maybe even packed fuller. “I just had someplace else I had to be.” Then she turned toward me, kind of hiding the backpack behind her.

“What about today? Is there someplace else you have to go?”

“Maybe,” she replied. “What about you?”

“I don't have to be home until 3:00.” There was an awkward pause. “Do you want to share my lunch with me?”

“Maybe. What's for lunch?” she asked.

“Let's see what my mom packed today,” I said, rummaging through my backpack and pulling out a brown bag. I peered inside. “How do you feel about half a peanut butter sandwich, half a banana, and some pretzels?”

“I'd like that,” she said. “But let's not eat it here. Let's have a picnic by the trees behind the library.” She was on her feet instantly. “Come on.”

I'd never had lunch with a girl before. I liked the idea of a picnic where no one could see us. I mean, what if Mom or Dad drove by? Or someone from the church? They'd want to know who she was. I wouldn't know what to tell them. Not that I was doing anything wrong. I got the feeling she really didn't want to be seen, either.

“How about right here?” she asked, settling in under the shade of a large maple tree.

“Okay,” I said. There were lots of reddish-brown propellers all over the place—little helicopters to carry the maple seeds away in the wind. I plopped myself down right on top of them, Indian style. I'd never been back there before. I wasn't really sure if we were supposed to be there, but at least there was nobody else around. “So are you ever going to tell me your name?” I ventured.

“That all depends,” she said very matter-of-factly. “Have you told anyone about me or asked anybody else anything about me?”

“No,” I answered. I was relieved that I hadn't. I wanted to solve this mystery on my own.
Would I have told Kyle if he were here
?

“That's good,” she said. “If you tell anyone about me, I'll be gone. You'll never see me again.”

Somehow I could tell she wasn't kidding. “Well, I won't tell anyone then,” I offered.

She stared at me a long time. I felt my palms getting sticky again. I wiped them on my khaki shorts. “Okay,” she said finally. “I think I believe you, Matthew. My name is Dinah.”

“Dinah,” I whispered under my breath. The name danced around and lingered in my mouth like the bubbles from an ice-cold Mountain Dew. “Are you hungry, Dinah?” I asked. I knew she was. I knew that's how I got her back here all to myself. But what did I really know about hunger? I knew if she weren't hungry, she never would have noticed me, let alone told me her name.

“Sure. Let's eat.” She pulled a beat-up water bottle out of her backpack and chugged down half of it while I divided up my lunch.

“It's creamy peanut butter,” I advised her. “Some people only like crunchy.”

“And some people are allergic to peanuts,” she teased. “I like creamy best,” she assured me.

“Me, too,” I nodded, except I didn't. I liked crunchy. But there was never any crunchy peanut butter at our house because Johnny was still too young for crunchy. And by the time he was old enough, the new baby would be too young.

We ate in silence. I looked around, trying not to gawk at her while she ate. The wind gently swayed the tree limbs overhead. Little rays of sunshine slipped through the stirring leaves, sparkling on Dinah's face and hair. A robin hopping around at a safe distance behind us stopped and cocked its head at me. It quickly lost interest and flew away. I didn't care about the robin, but I didn't want Dinah to fly away again like yesterday.

Dinah broke the silence. “Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked. She was combing her fingers through the grass and propellers, watching intently as the blades bounced right back up, twirling the propellers in the air.

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't very well tell her that I watched her dig my sandwich out of the trash yesterday, and I was just dying of curiosity.

“You just seem different—more interesting than most of the people I see around here.” I leaned back on my elbows and stretched my feet out in front of me. “Why did you agree to have lunch with me?”

“I was hungry,” she said simply, rising to her feet and wiping her hands on the back of her jean shorts. She walked around the maple tree, hugging it with one arm as she walked. Then she turned around and walked the other way, hugging the tree with her other arm. She stopped right in front of me. I had to look straight up to see her face. “You seem different, too,” she admitted. “In a good way.” She sat down and relaxed a little, leaning back against the tree.