Stealing Our Way Home Page 17

  Ben’s mom puts a hand on his arm. I wonder if Ben’s told her anything about us. If she wonders why I haven’t been over in so long.

  “I appreciate what you’re saying,” Principal Moseley says. “But acting in an antagonistic manner is one thing. Striking someone is another thing entirely. That kind of behavior will not be tolerated.”

  “I know,” Ben says. “But I’m just saying. I got it in the nose; he got it in the eye. And you know, what’s fair is fair.”

  “Mr. Michaels?” Principal Moseley looks over at our gym teacher. “What do you think?”

  “I think a one-day suspension is enough,” Mr. Michaels says. “Like Ben said. They both got into it.”

  “All right.” Principal Moseley unfolds her hands and runs them lightly over the surface of the table. “I’m fine with that, then. One day in-school suspension for fighting, Mr. Kendall. But if there’s another incident, it will mean serious trouble.”

  After we all get up, Mrs. Crenshaw shakes Dad’s hand and smiles sadly at him. The look on her face says everything she’s not saying out loud: You’re a mess without your wife. Your family is going down the tubes. It’s such a shame. I’m so sorry. Everything is such a shame. I glance over at Ben as she drapes his coat over his shoulders, hoping he’ll look my way just for a second. Thanks, I’d say with my eyes if he did. I owe you one.

  But he turns around, and with his eyes glued to the floor, walks out of the room.

  Later, much later, after Dad and Pippa and I have eaten dinner and the dishes have been done and we’re all sitting in the living room watching TV, there is a knock on the door. Pippa goes to answer it. A few seconds later, she reappears and points at me.

  “Who is it?” I ask, although I think I already know.

  Pippa puts a hand on her hip and cocks her head. She knows I know.

  “Ooooh,” Shelby says a few minutes later, looking at my eye. “I didn’t know you got hit that hard. Does it hurt?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve had ice on it since I got home. It looks worse than it is.”

  “All boys say that.” She smiles.

  I shrug, look down at my feet.

  “How ’bout your chin?”

  I lift my head a little, touch the congealed bump along the bottom of it. “It’s all right. Might leave a scar, but that’s okay.”

  “Could be a story scar,” she says. “The best kind.”

  “A what?”

  “A story scar,” she says. “Come on out to Finster’s Rock with me and I’ll tell you about them. Can you?”

  I shake my head no, which isn’t true. Dad hasn’t said anything about me not going anywhere tonight. But I don’t feel like riding to Finster’s Rock and rehashing everything that just happened. This was between Ben and me. And I sort of want to keep it that way.

  “We don’t have to talk about the fight,” Shelby says. “We don’t have to talk at all, if you don’t want.”

  Actually, that sounds perfect. Except that I can’t take perfect right now, either. Everything else is so crazy that it would probably mess up perfect, too. “I’m good. I’m just going to chill here tonight, okay?”

  Her face falls.

  I pretend not to notice.

  “All right, then,” she says, giving me a little wave. “I guess I’ll see you.”

  I start to close the door. “Wait.”

  She turns, eyes wide.

  “You didn’t tell me what a story scar was.”

  She smiles. “Ask Pippa. She’ll tell you. ’Night, Jack.”

  I watch her go, pink cowboy boots crunching the gravel along the driveway, the back of her white shirt whipping in the wind. She pulls her coat tighter as she disappears behind Nibs’ house and tucks her scarf around one ear.

  “’Night, Shelby,” I whisper, shutting the door.

  Dad comes into my room and shakes me awake. “Hi, sweetheart.” His breath smells like toothpaste and he’s clean-shaven. As I reach up to touch his soft skin with my fingers, he sits down and takes my hand in his. “Jack and I have to head out for the day. We’re going up to Sandridge. I’ve already talked to Nibs, and since you don’t have school, she … ”

  But I’m not listening. The alarm is going off in my head. And this time it’s loud. Really loud. I sit up. Pull my hand out of his. Shake my head no, over and over again.

  “Pip.” Dad holds me by the shoulders. “Honey. Listen to me. Jack told me you know what happened in Middlebury. That you found the masks.” I raise my eyes, look into his, and try not to cry. He pulls me in for a hug. “It’s okay.” His voice is muffled because my ear is pressed against his shirt, but I can hear him talking about things like losing Mom’s house and the family and how we don’t have to worry because …

  I pull out of his hug and reach for my notebook and pink glitter pen. I write very, very fast inside and then show it to Dad. He shakes his head. “You can’t go with us, Pip. You just can’t.”

  I lower my head, write again. My hand is shaking when I turn it out to show him.

  “Then I’ll tell.”

  A muscle jumps in his cheek. He stares at me with a bewildered expression on his face and in that moment, my heart breaks into a million tiny pieces.

  “Okay,” he says finally. “But you can’t come into the bank. You have to stay in the car. The whole time. No matter what.”

  I nod.

  “We’re leaving in one hour,” Dad says. “Get dressed and brush your teeth.”

  I nod again and close the book.

  Then I wrap my arms around his big shoulders and hold on tight.

  Jack turns when he hears me on the dock behind him. The black-and-blue streak under his right eye is even bigger than it was last night, and his face looks so sad that when I sit down next to him, I slip my fingers around one of his belt loops and lean in.

  “Hey there,” he says softly. “What’re you dressed for already? You’re just hanging with Nibs today.”

  I look up at him. Shake my head.

  His eyebrows narrow. “Yeah. Didn’t Dad tell you?”

  I take my notebook out. Jack looks over my shoulder, reading the words silently as I write them. “You can’t come with us!” He rears back a little, shaking his head. “No, Pippa, you can’t.”

  I bend my head again and write. “I’ll stay in the car.”

  “No. No way. I don’t care if you’re … ” His voice drifts off as I start writing again.

  Jack reads, his eyes getting big. “You told him you’d tell?” The edges of his nostrils are white. He looks as angry as I’ve ever seen him. “You’d do that?”

  I stare back down at my words. They look terrible, suddenly. Wrong. A betrayal of the worst kind. The complete opposite of anything a Spartan soldier would do. I shake my head as the words blur beneath me. A tear falls on the page and then another. I’m scared. I’m so confused.

  “Pippa,” Jack starts, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Listen to me … ”

  But I shrug him off and turn to a clean page to write something else. Then I turn the book around for Jack to see.

  He reads what I’ve written. Lifts his eyes. For a moment, we just look at one another, as if we’re seeing each other for the very first time. As if we might not ever see each other again.

  A strange noise sounds behind us. I blink as it comes again, louder this time. It sounds like a frog snoring or the faint pitter-patter of stones thrown against the water.

  “Pippa.” Jack says my name in a whisper. “Look.”

  I already know it’s Mr. Thurber. But seeing him again, standing there in the middle of the dock with his long, yellow beak and silky feathers feels magical. Almost like seeing Mom again. I feel dizzy, as if someone has blown helium into my head, and I reach out with three fingers to steady myself.

  Mr. Thurber is getting ready to say good-bye. He does his usual preening, examining the snow-white feathers along his belly with his beak the way he always does, in preparation for the long flight ahead. His wings open wide,
the tipped feathers fluttering along the edges, and he flaps once, twice, a third time. As he tips his long neck back, another burble comes out of his throat, followed by two shorter ones, and then he straightens his head. For a long moment, he just gazes at us with his liquid black eyes, taking us in, putting us somewhere where he won’t forget us in the long months ahead. And then, after another moment, he lifts himself into the air. Jack and I sit there for what feels like forever, watching as he rises higher and higher into the sky. Jack takes my hand as the heron moves toward a cloud on the other side of the lake and squeezes as he disappears behind it.

  It will be a long time before we see him again. Months and months of cold and ice and snow and sleet. But then it will get warm. The lake will start to thaw and the snow will melt and the day will come when we catch sight of him cresting around the bend, this time to say hello there, and I’ve missed you, and how have you been?

  “That eye looks terrible.” Dad reaches out across the front seat with his free hand, but I duck my head. He drops it again, watching me. “It’s still pretty swollen, Jack. Does it hurt?”

  “Could you just watch the road?” I don’t mean for it to come out as rudely as it does. Or maybe I do. Pippa jumps a little in the backseat, and Dad grimaces as he turns his head, settling his gaze on the car in front of us. “My eye is fine.” I lower my voice. “I had ice on it all night. It looks a lot worse than it feels.”

  You’d think he’d gotten his fill of talking about it yesterday on the ride back from school, when he went on and on about how fighting wasn’t the answer. “I know what it’s like to have things build and build like that,” he’d said, tapping his chest with two fingers. “In here. Inside. Until you feel like something’s going to blow. The trick is not to let it get that big, Jack. You’ll be a lot better off if you can tell someone what’s bothering you instead of letting is grow into something unmanageable like that. Trust me. Fighting is never the answer. Never.”

  “Oh, but robbing banks is?” I shot back.

  Dad gritted his teeth, turned his head.

  “And who am I supposed to tell, Dad, huh? Who am I supposed to go and confide in that my dad has turned into a bank robber?” I kicked the underside of the car. “How am I supposed to manage that?”

  “All right,” Dad said sharply. “That’s enough.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Fine, I guess that’s fair. You want to take your anger out on me, go ahead. I deserve it. But don’t take it out on your friends. You’re going to need your friends, Jack. And they’ll need you. Don’t ruin that.”

  Now, I close both of my eyes and lean back against the seat. I didn’t sleep well, and I’m exhausted. The swelling around my eye has gone down a lot, but it still hurts, and a bunch of other parts on my body ache just enough for me to notice. Including my chin.

  “Hey, Pip.” I turn around, remembering something. “What’s a story scar?”

  I wait as she writes in her notebook and then hands it over the seat.

  “It’s a scar that has a great story about how you got it. Like my knee.”

  I read her explanation aloud and then give her a look. “Like your knee? What great story is behind the cut on your knee?” I wait as she writes, imagining all the awful scenarios she’s creating about me abandoning her that day, or finding out about Dad’s empty car lot.

  “Meeting Shelby,” she writes. “Getting to be her friend.”

  I give the book back to her slowly. It’s not often that Pippa surprises me. But it always feels good when she does.

  “I have a story scar,” Dad says suddenly. “You want to hear about it?”

  Pippa nods her head in the backseat while I rearrange myself again in the front and stare out the window.

  Dad’s feeling around on the back of his head, fingering pieces of his hair until he stops suddenly and says, “There. Can you see it? Right where my fingers are.”

  Pippa leans forward, examining his scalp up close, but I don’t move. She touches the spot with her finger and then nods, sitting back down.

  “I got that scar the very first time I kissed your mother.”

  I turn my head a quarter of an inch.

  “We’d all just graduated from high school, and Grandma and Grandpa Hession threw her a party at the house,” Dad continues. “I showed up, totally out of the blue. No invitation, no phone call. No nothing. I wasn’t even sure if your mother knew my name. But I’d been so crazy about her for so long by then that I knew if I didn’t say something to her that night, the last night we were all going to have an excuse to be together, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.”

  I don’t have to turn around to know that Pippa is watching Dad with her big eyes and drinking in every word. Neither of us have heard this story before.

  “I went in and said hello,” Dad goes on. “She seemed surprised to see me, but she was perfectly polite. She even went and got me an orange soda from the kitchen when I asked her for a drink. But you know, it was her party. Her night. So I just sort of stood in the corner for a while, watching as she moved around the room and talked with everyone. She was shy, so it was hard for her to do, but she did it. She talked to every single person in the room. Except me. And eventually, I realized that I’d acted like a big idiot, just showing up to this party without an invitation and then just standing there, staring at this beautiful girl who didn’t even know my name, and so I got up to go. I was halfway out the door when I heard her voice. ‘Sam!’ she said. ‘Sam Kendall! Where are you going?’ I turned around so fast that I cracked my head on the side of the door. Just split it right open. There was blood running down the back of my neck, ruining the good white shirt I’d put on to try to look nice and smearing the floor in big drops. Everyone started rushing around for ice and towels and yelling about the blood, but I didn’t notice a thing. Because the only thing I could see was your mother. And the only thing I could hear was her voice, saying my name. Sam Kendall. It was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard in my life.”

  Dad nods, staring straight ahead. He’s a million miles away. So am I.

  No one says anything for a moment. Then I hear the sound of scribbling in the backseat. Pippa shoves her book forward. “When did you kiss her?” I read aloud before rolling my eyes. But the truth is that I want to know, too.

  “Later that night,” Dad says. “After I got all cleaned up, we started talking. And after we started, it was like we couldn’t stop, as if all the things we’d wanted to say to each other over the last year or so just came pouring out. Turns out she’d wanted to get to know me, too, but she didn’t know how. We were still talking by the time everyone left, and Grandma and Grandpa went upstairs to bed, so we went and sat on the dock and talked some more. We talked the whole night. The whole entire night. It was like a blink of an eye, it went so fast. And then, just as the sun was coming up, I leaned over and kissed her. It was our first kiss. And it all came about because I whacked my head on the side of her door when she said my name.” He glances at Pippa in the rearview mirror and then over at me. “So what do you think? Is that a story scar, or what?”

  Pippa nods her head vigorously.

  But I turn and look out the window again.

  He doesn’t need to know that I think it’s probably the best story scar I’ll ever hear. That it’s not just his story anymore. It’s our family’s story. One that I wish could make me proud to be a part of.

  But we’re on our way to rob a bank.

  Which, story scar or not, makes us a family of criminals.

  Sandridge is ugly. Everything is the same boring tan color, even the sidewalks. There are no flowers. No trees. All the buildings are the same size and shape, and they’re all brown. So I don’t even realize it when Dad pulls the car into the bank parking lot and turns off the engine. But then my heart starts to pound. We’re here? Already? I look out the window at the building behind us again. There, in big black letters, are the words SANDRIDGE COMMUNITY BANK.

  I turn back around, stare at the back
of Jack’s head. What is he thinking? Is it about what I wrote in my notebook? And why won’t he look at me? Why won’t he talk?

  Dad gets out of the car and slams the door. He opens the trunk and starts fiddling around. I can hear the sound of things being tossed aside—thunk, plop—and I know he’s almost done. I jab Jack hard in the shoulder.

  “Don’t.” He doesn’t turn around. His voice is hard and clipped, like ice. Despite myself, I do it again, not for him, but for me. I just want to know. I just want to hear.

  He whirls around on the second jab and grabs my finger. “I said knock it off.” His eyes are steely blue, almost gray. I hardly recognize them. I feel scared, like I might cry.

  Dad opens the door and tosses in the pillowcase. Jack glances at it and releases my finger. Dad slides inside the car. “All right, buddy,” he says. “Let’s talk about this.”

  I sit back against my seat and stare at the side of Jack’s face. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  “We don’t need to talk about it,” Jack says. “I’m not going in. I’m not helping you.”

  Dad stares at Jack for a minute. He rolls his lower lip over his teeth and then runs a hand through his hair. “This is it,” he says. “I promise. After this one, it’ll never happen again.” He raises a hand. “I swear on your mother.”

  Jack looks at him. Even from where I’m sitting, I can see something soften in his face. Is it because it will be the last time? Or because Dad just made a promise that he can never, ever take back? Please Jack, don’t. Please. Remember what I wrote. I’m gripping the edge of the seat so hard I can hardly feel my fingers. Look at me, Jack. We can be a phalanx, you and I. We’ll link arms, move in tight together so that nothing can get through.

  For some reason, he turns. I give him the tiniest shake of my head, hope that he can read the words behind my eyes: Remember what I wrote. Remember what I said.

  “No,” he says, turning his head again. “Middlebury was the last one, Dad. This one isn’t going to happen. I’m not going in.”