You Are My Only

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

The Book of Thoughts

Acknowledgments

My house is a storybook house. A huff-and-a-puff-and-they'll-blow-it-down house. The roof is soft; it's tumbled. There are bushes growing tall past the sills. A single sprouted tree leans in from high above the cracked slate path, torpedoing acorns to the ground.

Splat and crack. Another acorn to the ground.

“Sophie?”

“Mother?”

“I'm off.”

“Right.”

“Be good.”

Be good. My mother's instructions. Her rules.

The floor slats are slants, and the furniture slides, clawing away at the varnish. The walls are pink scratch, or yellow. At the kitchen table, my mother has left my day's work behind—the cardboard from the backs of paper pads, the pencil, the string, the ruler, the hole punch, the dulled-down blade of the old X-Acto knife, the stuff, she says, of an icosahedron. The car door slams, and the engine turns over. The Volvo caroms. The day tilts forward.

Another acorn splats the ground. Another. I climb the long stairs to the third floor, then take the skinny, twisted steps toward the attic. Through the window at the far end falls a milky square of sun, and that's where I'm headed, toward the sun—careful on the crossbeams, careful with the splinters, careful not to fall straight through the quilt of insulation, more scratch, more pink. The window is mine, and the world beyond. They belong to me, my secret.

It's a blue-sky sun day, a puff of clouds. In the patch of yard between my house and the next, a dog is chasing a squirrel into a tree. The squirrel leaps, jumps, climbs the branches toward me, and now a white car with a pistol muffler goes roaring past, down the asphalt road. It disappears, is gone.

A blue truck rides the curve, radio on.

A bird with red tips on black wings flies high.

The dog runs a circle around its tail.

There's the crack of the neighbor's screen door, shoes across the porch, a boy hurrying down the porch steps and around the hedge. He jogs past the garden, to the alley. Tall, he wears his baseball cap turned back around on his head and his belt too loose and long. He calls the dog's name—“Harvey”—and Harvey comes, the sash of his gold tail whipping. The boy holds the dog's snout with one hand and fiddles with a neon ball with the other. Harvey tips onto the back of his paws. When the boy sprints to the end of the alley, his loose belt slaps the air.

Downstairs on the table, beside the salt and pepper shakers, beside the empty butter dish, sits the un-made icosahedron. Outside, through my window, are the boy and the dog, and the boy and the ball, and the boy pitching the ball toward the highest limb of the sprouted tree. The ball falls back down. Harvey snatches it clean. The boy pitches it up and it falls and it is caught in the sharp yellow teeth of the dog.

“Atta dog, Harvey!” the boy says. He runs to collect the ball from Harvey's snout, then runs back the other way. “Here, Harvey!”

My mother is gone. She'll be gone through the morning and the stretch of afternoon and come home tired and sad, rubbing her knees, inquiring after the icosahedron, my math work now as important as all the books I've ever read, from all the libraries in every town we've ever lived, ten of them now, if I were counting. I've kept the stories in my head and the words in books, Kipling's words being some of my favorites.
Greeny-crackly. Fever-trees. Scalesome. Flailsome. Tusky.
I was eight reading those words; I remember. My mother was home, watching the window. “Go to your room,” she all of a sudden said, “and shut the door.” Just like that, at the height of the Kolokolo Bird adventures. “Stay there—you hear me? Until I tell you to come out.” I pretended I didn't hear her. I sat there, reading on. But then she pulled my arm and pointed to the window, and I saw what she had seen—a man advancing on the walk, with a felt hat on his head and a jacket slung over one shoulder. He was carrying a briefcase in one hand.

The No Good, I was sure of it.

“Go,” she insisted. And I did.

When the man knocked, she let him in. When he talked, his voice was low and calm. “A child,” he was saying. “A proper education … state mandated.” I got up from the bed, pressed my ear against the door, tried to hear my mother's story, but she was speaking low and waitress calm.

I heard footsteps. I heard back and forth, a rustling of papers, the man's “rules and regulations” and “I'll have someone check the file.” Then I heard the opening and closing of the outside door, a good-bye from the man, a good-bye from my mother. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “Safe travels.”

I pretended to be reading when my mother came to find me. I pretended I'd heard nothing. She didn't say a word. She dragged the closet door across the metal runner until the door snagged in the long hairs of the blue shag carpet and she cursed softly and unsnagged it. She reached to the top shelf that ran along the silver closet bar and pulled the suitcases down, one by one. She undressed the hangers of their blouses and skirts and folded each last thing with air fingers.

“Momma?” I said. “Who was the …?”

“Read your book,” she said. “Read it out loud.” As if I didn't know what was next, as if this was another bit of nothing.

“ ‘And he caught his tall uncle, the Giraffe, by the hind-leg, and dragged him through a thorn-bush,' ” I read, “ ‘and he shouted at his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and blew bubbles into her ear when she was sleeping in the water after meals; but he never let any one touch Kolokolo Bird.' ” I read, and she undressed the hangers. She air-folded the clothes. She layered them, neatly, into suitcases. We were gone from the house by the next afternoon. We were driving, on the hunt for a better rental. A better library, my mother said. A better job.

“Atta dog, Harvey!” the boy calls, and now when the boy throws the ball, it rises high as my attic window. Rises and rises and falls.

The attic is dust. The insulation is pink. The latch on the window is old-time. I fit my hand to the thing and hear the old lock snap, force the window until the sash breaks away from the sill. The sound, I think, is gunfire, the sound of war. “We live in dangerous times,” my mother says. “We must be careful.”

The boy tosses the ball and it flies. He tosses again, a beautiful pitch, and the boy is watching it soar, watching it rise. I lean past the strong arms of the near oak tree, into the day. The ball is falling.

“Hey,” I say, and the boy fits one hand above his eyes to visor off the sun. The ball falls and bounces big. Harvey wags his tail and chases the bounce. I watch the boy watching me.

“Play catch?” the boy asks. Just like that.

It's a blue day, a sun day, and the world is out there waiting—the boy. The world is a danger, my mother says, but I will be careful. Careful not to fall between the crossbeams, careful not to slip on the stairs. I find my shoes, fly through the house, undo the locks. There is breeze on my skin. There is the splat of acorns. I cross the porch and turn the corner and there the boy is, smelling like popcorn and laundry. His hair is crooked beneath his cap. I've watched him through my attic window for two weeks and now, today, he sees me.

“I'm Sophie,” I say.

He smiles polite, pulls at one ear. “My name is Joey.” He steps toward me and I step back, and all of a sudden, Harvey is on me. Harvey—scratch and heat and heavy.

“Down, Harvey,” Joey says, but Harvey isn't listening. Harvey's taller than me; he's fur and teeth, dog breath and bark, nothing I can fight against, though I am trying. I hear myself scream and I hear Joey call and I wait for the pain that doesn't come. All of a sudden, the teeth are gone, the fur and the heat and the dog smell.

“Just his way of saying hi,” Joey says, his hand in Harvey's collar, his body bent in half, as now he tugs the dog down the alley, past the garden, around the corner, and up the steps, to his front door, moaning and groaning. I hear the screen door slam and Harvey's paws against the door. I hear him yelping. Now, returning, Joey straightens up his pants and fixes his cap, and I straighten, too. I put my hand on my heart to stop it from thumping.

“So you play?” he asks again. “You play ball?”

“Not really,” I tell him.

He looks at me hard, and he laughs.

“You live there long?” He thrusts his chin in the direction of my house.

“A couple weeks,” I say, running my sneaker over the rough, high grass. “I guess.”

“You over at the junior high?” he asks.

“Homeschooled.”

“Homeschooled,” Joey repeats.

“My mother's a learning fanatic,” I tell him.

“I seen her lately,” Joey says now. “Down at the diner. Cashier? Black hair? Doesn't talk much? That her? That your mother?”

I nod but don't answer, let Joey look me up and down. “I guess your family isn't big on look-alikes,” he says.

“My dad,” I say. “I look just like him.”

“Where's he at?”

I shrug.

“You don't know where he's at?”

“Never knew him,” I say.

“I got it worse,” Joey says.

“What do you mean?”

“No mom, no dad. Just two old aunts. You mean you ain't seen 'em?”

“The big one and the little one?” I say. “Yeah. I have. I've seen them.” Through my attic window, I've watched his two old aunts come and go—the one built short and round, teacup fashion, pushing the other, skinny as a splinter, in her fancy bamboo wheelchair. “They look too old to be your aunts,” I say.

“Aunt Cloris. Aunt Helen,” Joey says. “Ain't too bad. We get along.”

“That's nice,” I say, wishing I was better practiced at conversation.

“So you want to learn catch?” Joey asks.

I nod.

“Come on,” he says. “I'll teach you.”

“Is it hard?”

“You have two hands?”

I look down at my arms.

“Then hold them out.”

“Okay.”

“Keep your eye on the ball.”

Joey starts jogging backward, toward the street. “All right,” he calls when he's not too far off. “Follow the ball with your eyes.” He makes a pitch, and the neon goes up, but not so high. It comes down, close, close, close, and I reach for it. I feel the hairy sting of the rubber against my hands. I hear it bounce the ground. From inside the house, I hear Harvey going at it, scratching his nails against the window. I turn and see him staring wildly at us.

“You nearly had it,” Joey says.

“Try again?”

“Throw it back.” He shows me how to lift my elbow up and bend my wrist. How to give the thing a thrust. It goes up high, toward the crooked limbs of the tree. It comes down near, going practically no distance.

“You throw like a girl,” Joey says, and laughs.

“Guess I do.”

“You can get better.” He picks up the ball and tosses it my way, underhand. This time I catch it. It stings. I smile.

Joey jogs backward and stops. “Send me a slider,” he says. I throw my hardest. The ball slams down into the ground and takes off in a high bounce. Joey tucks his chin in and pumps his elbows, runs fast. He turns and lobs the ball back to where I'm standing. It bounces. I chase it. I turn and toss. The ball bounces worse than the others.

“What's a slider?” I ask.

“Not
that
.” Joey laughs. “Not even close.” He tosses the ball and I catch it.

From inside the house, I hear Harvey going crazy—scratching his long nails against the windowpane, whining and growling and crying. Joey stops and takes a long look in his direction, tries talking Harvey down, but Harvey won't listen. After a while Joey turns back to me and says that he's sorry. “Aunt Helen,” he says, “has kind of been sick. I gotta go.”

“That's okay.”

“Come back?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“I'll come for you,” he says. “Right?” And I say, “No. I'll come for you.” Fast and urgent I say it, my heart pounding hard. “Please,” I say, and Joey takes a half step back and makes a long, thoughtful tug at a freckle.

“All right,” he says.

“All right?” I say. “You promise?”

“You come for me. That's how you want it.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“For what?”

“For teaching me to play.”

“That's kind of nothing,” he says. “Wait until you learn the slider.”

“You better go,” I say, pointing to the steamed-up, scratched-up window, to the house beyond the garden. I'd like a garden like that. I'd like a house with that rainbow for a porch. I'd like to go inside, where Joey lives, and forget the icosahedron.

“Harvey wouldn't have hurt you,” Joey says, walking backward now, toward his house. “Just so you know, he wouldn't have.”

“How do you know?”

“My friends are his friends. Rules, if you're my dog.”

“Good rules,” I say, and I feel my face go flushed.