The Callans a few houses down had their curtains open, and I could see the Christmas tree all lit up by the window. I was sure Mrs. Callan would be in the kitchen cooking, waiting for Mr. Callan to come home. Hanging out in their house had made me realize that not everyone had parents who loved their stuff more than they loved their kids.
The air smelled like a campfire, and I thought about how nice it would be to sit by a warm fire on such a cold night. Maybe we could get the fireplace working again once everything was done. Phil and I would keep a big stack of wood on the porch and feed it to the fire every time it started to die. Maybe we could have regular movie nights in the winter, where we’d invite people over, make popcorn, and sit in front of the fire, watching movies with all the lights off. At this point I should have probably stopped with the “maybes” and “what-ifs,” but whenever the now got bad, thinking about the future always made me feel better.
chapter 11
5:30 p.m.
“Lucy!”
I stopped dragging the green bin across the dining room and listened. It was high and faint, but it was definitely my name. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and my heart beat faster.
I pulled down my face mask. “Mom?” I whispered cautiously, and immediately felt ridiculous. I had to be hearing things. Since I’d only put on lights in the dining room, it was pitch black in the rest of the house now—and starting to get a little creepy, if I let myself think about it. I slowly tiptoed out of the dining room and down the hall, trying to calm myself. Mom was definitely dead the last time I looked. No amount of moving her stuff around and looking in forbidden boxes would turn her into an angry ghost. At least, that’s what I hoped.
I got to the back hallway and flicked on the overhead light. The sheet was still there. I swallowed hard and tried to reason with myself. This was crazy. Whatever I was hearing, it definitely wasn’t Mom calling me. At least not from the hallway.
I walked back to the dining room and started moving boxes again. As I was stuffing some newspapers in a garbage bag, I heard it again. A small voice calling my name.
“Stop it!” I yelled out loud this time. I was starting to panic when movement at the window caught my eye. Before I could react, the curtains parted, and TJ stuck his head through them.
“Hey!” he said. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“Man, TJ,” I said. My knees wobbled with relief, and I felt like I had to sit down. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Did I?” he said, not looking ashamed. “I wasn’t sneaking up on you or anything. I yelled and stuff.” He scrunched up his nose and looked around. “What stinks?”
I ignored that last statement and crossed the room until I was standing above him at the window. “What are you doing out there?” I peeked out the window and saw him standing on the stack of plastic bags. Only TJ wouldn’t think to ask what a giant stack of plastic bags was doing along the side of the house.
He looked around the room. “Are you moving or something? Who’s going to babysit me when Mom goes out?”
“Knock it off,” I said. “We’re not moving. I told you, I’m just cleaning up some stuff.”
“Cool.” TJ looked behind him. “Can I come in?”
“No!” I answered just a little too quickly. “You can’t come in. It’s not a good idea. You said yourself it stinks in here.”
“I didn’t mean it. Come on,” he said. “I can help. Plus, you said you’d see if you could find some of Phil’s stuff for me to go through.”
I hesitated just long enough for him to see the crack in my resolve. TJ was one of those kids that spent his free time wandering the neighborhood waiting for someone to ask him to come over. Whatever the reason, he hated being home—a feeling I understood more than anyone else on the block. Plus, he was a pretty good kid.
“It’s freezing out here,” he said. “Can’t I just come in for a little bit?”
Even though I willed myself not to look back toward the hallway, I could feel my thoughts wandering in that direction. It was dark out now, and even though I could still hear the music from the kitchen, I had to admit it would be nice having another living body in the house. How much could a kid figure out, anyway?
“Shouldn’t you be in bed or something?” I asked.
“It’s not even six o’clock,” he said. “Mom lets me stay up until nine during vacations. She’s having that weird guy from work over for dinner, so I had to get out of there.” TJ’s mom had been divorced for a couple of years and seemed to go out with a new boyfriend every week. TJ didn’t seem to like it, but she kept the babysitting jobs coming, so it wasn’t a problem as far as I was concerned.
I looked around. It was crazy to let TJ in. Nobody had been in here in years, and I was just going to let him climb through the window? I thought about how quiet and a little creepy it was without him here but what a huge risk I’d be taking.
“If I do let you in, you have to promise me that you’ll stay in this room.”
“I promise,” he said, not even asking why. I could hear his feet kicking and scraping at the wood siding on the house. He stopped and looked up at me. “A little help?”
I reached down and grabbed the belt loops on the back of his pants and swung him into the room. He reached over to close the window, but I stopped him. “No, leave it open.”
“It’s freezing out there. Why do you want it open?”
“I, uh…” I tried to think of a good reason why I needed the window open in the middle of winter. “The garbage disposal backed up and I’m trying to get the smell out.”
“My mom just uses air freshener,” he said, taking a good look around the room. “Wow, you guys have a lot of stuff. This is totally cool.”
“Ya think?” I said. “Well, I’m trying to get rid of stuff we don’t need. Which is pretty much all of it.”
“I’ll take it.” TJ started poking his finger in some of the cardboard boxes that were stacked against the wall.
I grabbed his hand and looked him in the eye. “What I want you to do is help me grab all of the green plastic bins in this room and the living room over there and we’re going to stack them up against the wall. Under no circumstances are you to go in any other room. You will be banned forever if you do.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I said so.”
“Okay, but why?”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” I said, knowing it was a lame answer.
TJ shrugged and bundled his jacket tighter. “Can you turn the heat on?” he asked. “It’s just as freezing in here as it is outside.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “we’re trying to save energy, so I can’t do that right now.”
“You’re going to wake up dead then,” he said. “ ’Cause you’re going to freeze to death.”
If he only knew.
He poked at one of the green plastic bins. “So what is all this stuff, anyway?”
“I don’t really know,” I said. “It’s mostly my mom’s.”
He looked at the growing wall of green bins and piles of belongings in both the dining room and living room. “Well, she must be rich, because I’ve never seen anyone with so much stuff before.”
Rich. That was hilarious. “I don’t know about rich,” I said. “She just never gets rid of anything.” I started moving boxes off some bins that were stacked along one window.
“Not anything?”
“Nope. Not anything.” I stacked the boxes on top of some others in the middle of the room and started dragging one of the bins toward our growing stack.
“How about books that you guys have already read?”
I pointed to the overflowing bookcase in the front hallway. If I read one book every day for two years, I’d never get through them all. “Nope.”