I opened my mouth to talk, and I had this long, achy pain all of a sudden, all down through my chest, but it wasn’t really a bad pain. I know that probably sounds weird, but it’s the truth. It was like what was happening, or at least what I thought was happening, was so big it made my heart stretch until it hurt.
“So you’re actually asking me to live here . . . you know . . . like I was . . .” It was a hard thing to say, but I knew I had to spit it out, because if I was wrong about it I needed to know that right away. “Like I was your family,” I said when I could make myself say it.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I’m offering. If you’ll accept it.”
“Starting when?”
“As far as I’m concerned, starting when you walked through the door an hour ago.”
I felt the skin on my forehead wrinkle down. “I have to go back and get my stuff.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t even go back there. Please. I don’t want to risk losing you again. It’s not that much stuff.”
“But it’s the stuff you bought for me,” I said, which was embarrassing, because I was totally letting on that the stuff meant more to me because it was from her. Too late, though. That cat was out of the bag.
“I’ll buy it for you again,” she said.
“But you said you hardly have any money.”
“I don’t have money for childcare,” she said. “I have money for a sweatshirt and a hairbrush. Now, come on. Eat another slice of pizza. Everybody in this house gets enough to eat. Then I’ll show you how this couch folds out.”
I knew it was almost midnight because I could see the clock on the microwave in the kitchen from my bed. It was a good bed. Comfortable and soft, but not soft enough to give a person a backache. Just sort of welcoming soft.
I was lying there on my back, with my hands behind my head, in a huge, long T-shirt that Brooke gave me to sleep in, but I wasn’t sleeping at all. The moon was nearly full, and the light from it was pouring in through the window because I hadn’t pulled the curtains shut. We were on the third floor, and there was nobody to see in, so I hadn’t bothered. I could have gotten up and closed them to make it darker, but I sort of liked the light from the moon. It made shadows of the mountains of boxes in the middle of the room, like real mountains and valleys but with straighter edges.
The door to the bedroom was open, and I thought it was nice that Brooke had left it that way, because it made me feel like she trusted me, or at least like she was willing to try. I’d sort of thought she would lock me out of her room every night or something like that.
So I guess it seemed like we were off to a pretty okay start.
I could hear Etta snoring, which was funny. It always made me laugh, or almost laugh, that a girl so little could have a snore so big. I couldn’t hear Brooke snoring, so I didn’t know if she was asleep or not.
I said her name. “Brooke.” I said it just loud enough, or at least I hoped it was just loud enough—not so loud that it would wake the baby, but I hoped it would be something she could hear if she was awake. “You asleep?”
“No,” she said. And it was just that same right amount of loudness.
“I’m worried about something.”
“Okay,” she said. “Talk to me about it.”
“What if I get on your nerves?”
“So what if you do? I might get on your nerves, too.”
“So . . . wouldn’t that be bad?”
I heard her sigh a big sigh. It must have been big, because I could hear it from the next room.
A minute later she came out and sat on the edge of the couch bed with me. I could hear the springs creak under her when she sat down, and I liked the sound of it, because I think it sounded to me like not being all by myself.
She said, “Remember when I told you about how I wanted two kids and I wanted them in my early twenties?”
I said, “Yeah.”
Because I remembered pretty much everything she’d said to me and everything I’d said to her, ever, probably because it all seemed important.
“So if I’d gotten my wish on that, as you pointed out at the time, I’d have a teenager just about your age right now. And don’t you think she’d get on my nerves? Of course she would. I know lots of people my age with teenagers, and they drive each other crazy. Most of the time. Any time you live with another person there’s always some level of driving each other crazy. I mean, I hear what you’re saying. You’re worried we won’t get along. But when you have a child, there’s no guarantee you’ll get along.”
“But they’re blood family.”
“Not necessarily. One family that I know, the boy is adopted.”
“But I’m not adopted by you,” I said.
I think I was trying to get closer to the thing that was worrying me, even though I didn’t really want to go all the way there.
As it
