He bent down. There was a blue metallic wrapper along the path. He turned it over, tossed it aside. And then he was on his hands and knees, peering through the opening.
“What are you waiting for?” Clementine said.
He poked his head through the hole. He pushed at the upper arch, trying to make more space. A few twigs snapped, but the hole barely moved. Dobbs took a deep breath, sliding forward on his belly.
They sat across from each other in that tight, domed space. This was where she kept her most favorite things, even better than the magazines. There was a coffee can of her favorite rocks. And there was a tree stump table spread with acorns and thorns and sharpened sticks. Around it sat her lieutenants, a blue rubber bear, an armless Spiderman, a fat little robot with dingy lights, a pink-skinned princess wearing a dress of mud.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Dobbs said.
For once, she didn’t know what to say. No one knew about her igloo — not Car, not her mother, not May-May, definitely not May and Pay.
“I know your hiding spot,” Clementine said. “Now you know mine.”
His eyes were still adjusting to the dark. She saw him focusing in on the far corner. There was a nasty old sleeping bag and a blanket she usually kept wrapped up in a garbage bag, but it hadn’t rained in more than a week. At the sight of them, Dobbs’s smile began to fade.
“Is this where you live?”
She rolled her eyes and pushed him aside, and then she crawled past him through the opening. She waited until he backed out, and then she took off again. He was walking strangely, his legs stiff from the squatting. In no time, she’d put another lot between them.
When she looked again, he was still standing beside the thicket. He was turning around and around, but she could tell it wasn’t her he was looking for. He was trying to find his house. He had no idea how close it was, tucked away behind a phone pole and a couple of trees. He’d never seen the city from the inside before.
From somewhere up the block, she heard the thump of a stereo. It took another moment for the car to appear, a big black SUV with tinted windows.
Glancing back to where she’d left him, she saw Dobbs ducking down, hidden in the weeds.
Was it someone he knew? she wondered. Or was he afraid how it would look to strangers, chasing a little black girl through an abandoned field?
Once the truck was gone, Dobbs was back on his feet again. Now he picked up his pace. Clementine flew around the beds of May-May’s garden in crazy batlike swerves and loops. Dobbs stopped to watch, as if unsure whether he was supposed to follow. In one great swoop, she ran to the edge of the lot and leaped over the weeds, and then she sprinted down the block and into her own backyard. Without stopping, she bounded up the steps and through the clattering screen door.
Her mother, in the kitchen, looked over her shoulder and let out a sigh as Clementine ran past. Clementine glided into the living room, weaving around Pay’s brown recliner and past the lamp, then hopped onto the couch, where Car was watching TV and thumbing texts to her imaginary friends. Clementine bounced onto the cushions, and Car started to scream. The phone dropped down into the springs, and Car flopped after it like she was drowning. Clementine went climbing onto the arm of the couch and hovered there, midair, before crashing down to the floor.
On her way back to the screen door, Clementine passed the kitchen again. Her mother was standing in the doorway looking cross, about to open her mouth to yell, when Clementine pressed her lips against the metal mesh and shouted, “Are you coming?”
Dobbs had made it only as far as the edge of the neighboring lot, up to his knees in grass. He seemed afraid to come any closer than the swing set.
“Who are you talking to?” her mother said.
Clementine could tell from the tone of her voice that her mother didn’t really want to know.
“A friend!” she yelled, loud enough for Car to hear.
Dobbs must have seen her mother appear at Clementine’s side, because after inching forward another step, he suddenly stopped, dead in his tracks.
Her mother took Clementine by the shoulder and pushed her aside.
“Who are you?” she yelled through the screen.
Dobbs looked up at her. Her mother might have been taller than him even if she hadn’t been inside the house.
He took a step back. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Clementine.” Her mother’s voice dipped to that low place she went when she wanted to show her disappointment.
Clementine started to push open the screen door. “I invited him over for dinner.”
Her mother reached out for the handle. There was cheesy laughter from Car’s stupid show. But when Clementine turned around, her sister was standing at the opposite end of the hallway, watching and listening.
“He’s my friend,” Clementine said again, even louder this time.
But now Dobbs was backing away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m leaving.”
Clementine wedged herself past her mother. “Don’t go.” She got as far as the top stair before her mother grabbed her shoulders.
Her mother’s voice was rising now, as it did when her disappointment turned to anger. “How exactly are you and my daughter friends?”
“We’re not,” Dobbs said. He took another step back. “Not really. We’re neighbors.”
Her mother came down and joined Clementine on the top step, still not letting go. “Where do you live?”
Dobbs started to gesture over his shoulder, but then he must have remembered he was lost.
“Over there,” Clementine said.
Dobbs squinted at where she was pointing. From there, even he could see the crazy tower rising above the trees. She could tell he was surprised that Bernadine Street was so close.
The news didn’t change her mother’s expression.
“We’ve run into each other a couple of times,” Dobbs said.
Clementine felt her mother shift her weight from one foot to the other.
“Do you normally hang out with ten-year-old girls?” she said.
Dobbs lowered his head. “Not usually.”
Her mother responded with that slow, heavy shuttering of her eyelashes. Clementine rarely got to see it directed at someone else. “What’s your name?”
“Dobbs,” Clementine answered for him.
“What kind of name is that?”
“I should be going,” Dobbs said.
He took another step back toward the weeds.
Clementine’s mother did too, descending to the next step. “How long have you lived here?”
Dobbs’s fingers were scratching at his chin. “A couple of weeks?”
“Strange place to move to,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Clementine told me to come with her, so I kind of just came. I don’t know why.”
Her mother palmed Clementine’s head, letting her nails dig in. “She can be hard to say no to.”
“I don’t think I even tried.” Dobbs turned around to face the empty lots. “She was showing me some of her favorite places.”
Her mother sighed. “She thinks the whole neighborhood is hers.”
“Can he stay for dinner?” Clementine asked.
The laugh track rose up again.
“I have to go,” Dobbs said.
Clementine’s mother climbed back up a step. “He has to go.”
“It was nice meeting you,” Dobbs said over his shoulder as he waded back into the weeds.
Her mother’s hand scratched down Clementine’s head to the base of her neck. “Pay will be home soon,” she said. “You can tell him about your new friend.”