“It’s adorable,” Jane said. “We should show the Captain. Do you mind?” Jane asked Girl.
“It’s okay,” she said, shrugging. She was getting off scot-free.
“But—” Brother whined, but was cut off by the flight attendant.
“We’ll be right back with this,” the first stewardess said, walking down the aisle with Pearl.
“You suck,” Brother said. “You always get your way. Everyone always loves you.” Girl ignored him, smiling sweetly at the stewardess when she returned the squirrel. Brother never even got his Band-Aid.
car rider
Girl and Brother lived 1.3 miles from Rogers Middle School—two tenths of a mile short of the busing requirements. Girl was always jealous of the kids who got rides home, but there were plenty of other kids who walked, too. Poor Tim lived three blocks past Girl—he had missed the bus cutoff by half a block.
One day, though, Girl was going to be a car rider. It was her first day back to school following a week of the flu, and Stepmother said she would leave work early so Girl didn’t have to walk in the cold. This was unheard of, and all day long Girl would stop working and remember, “I don’t have to walk today!”
After school, she stood outside in her pink-and-purple-striped ski jacket. The sun was out, and it was so cold that the snow squeaked under her moon boots. She had wanted moon boots more than anything, but they got heavy when she walked, and she wished she had just bought normal ones.
She kicked the snowy sidewalk as she waited, watching the other kids get picked up one by one. She looked at the clouds as the teachers pushed through the school doors a half-hour later, their arms juggling papers and tote bags as they fought to unlock their car doors.
“Hey, are you okay?” one of the teachers asked. All the other kids were gone.
“I’m fine! My stepmother is coming to get me today!” she called back cheerfully. Stepmother was late, but she was always late. Girl coughed into her mitten. When the janitor locked the double doors, she started to worry. After he drove off, Girl only lasted a few more minutes before she gave up and started walking home. When she got halfway she started to cry, snot and tears covering her face in the icy wind.
Girl was halfway down the row of shops at Irondequoit Plaza. The strip mall had a large cement awning, so it was a little warmer. Stepmother pulled up in her bronze Datsun station wagon, but Girl ignored her and just kept walking. Stepmother trailed her for a few shops, then stopped and got out of the car.
“I’m so sorry!” she cried, tears running down her face. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I got carried away at work, I didn’t know what time it was. I am so sorry.” Girl wanted to punish her more, refuse to get in the car, make her suffer, but Stepmother was crying harder than Girl was, so she got into the front seat and they drove home.
the ghost
When Father and #Four divorced, they sold Loon Landing and Father bought a boat. The Ghost had a single wooden mast mounted to the top of the enclosed cabin, a teak deck, and a pale gray, fiberglass hull the color of a seagull’s wing. Navy blue letters spelled out GHOST in fancy script, painted above smaller lettering identifying the previous owner’s home port of Kodiak, Alaska. Father never got around to correcting the letters to read Seward, Alaska, where he docked the boat. There were white plastic-covered wires called stays at various places to mount the smaller sails, and a fence-like wire in the same white plastic-covered metal that ran around the edge to keep the children from falling off. White rubber buoys were used as bumpers off the sides, and the dodger, a canvas windscreen at the back of the boat, was bright blue. They steered the boat by way of a wooden handle called a tiller that attached to the rudder at the very back of the vessel. The steering area was called the cockpit, and it had a recessed deck framed by storage benches made of teak. If Girl stood on the floor in the cockpit, she was too short to see over the dodger, so mostly she stood up on the benches. The cockpit was the only access into the cabin of the boat by way of a three-rung ladder followed by two conventional stairs. The ladder could be flipped up to access the hidden storage compartment inside the wooden steps where her father always kept lemon-flavored hard candies to combat seasickness, among other things. To the left was the tiny two-burner stove they cooked on. Girl liked the way the metal cooktop moved freely with the waves so as not to spill the soup, and the fence around the burners that kept pots and pans from flying about if they hit a swell. Girl loved using the foot pedal at the galley sink that brought up ice-cold Alaskan seawater to wash dishes, saving the fresh water for the final rinse only. To the right of the stairs was the built-in chart desk where Father kept maps and the radio. The children were forbidden to sit at the built-in seat of the chart desk, though, and Girl developed an aversion to it much like a dog with a shock collar. Girl avoided looking at the desk entirely if she could help it, and she had no interest in learning how to work the finicky radio that was always on the fritz.
The main cabin had a foldable table and two benches that converted into sleeping berths when they attached the canvas sides that connected with ropes to hooks in the ceiling. They had a tiny bathroom with a hand-pump toilet and minuscule sink, but Father had chosen the mirror for authenticity, not function.
