I have no idea what she is talking about, but I can feel the grin on my face. Krysten has one of those smiles, where it’s hard not to smile back.
“Um, do you think Mr. Belling will let us pick her?” I ask, looking down at a black-and-white photograph on the back of one of the books. “She wasn’t on his list of suggested poets.”
“He already said okay. I asked him yesterday, when you weren’t at school.”
She stops talking then, I guess waiting for me to talk about why I was absent. My brother was suspended is what I want to say. But I can’t.
“Did you already check all these books out?” I ask.
“Yes, but you can borrow any of them.” She continues to look at me with her kind, blue-framed eyes. “Especially if you don’t have anything of your own.”
“I used to have one. Really. But we had to move in with my uncle Carl and there wasn’t space to bring all my books and that was one I left behind. To be honest, I never really read it. I kind of regret that now.”
She nods slowly.
I can’t believe I just said all that.
“That sounds awful,” she says. “I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t keep my books. Even when we moved here from Sacramento, when I was in the second grade, I insisted on bringing all my books with me. I think my mom only let me because she felt bad that she was taking me away from my friends and the city to live in a small town.”
“Yeah, talk about Nowhere, Northern California, right?”
She chuckles and says, “Seriously.”
I don’t even know why I’m trying to joke around. Maybe it’s just Krysten herself, who goes to my same school, who isn’t a tornado, but more like a clear blue sky, the kind of sky that stretches on forever and makes you grin.
“We only moved here because my mom grew up here and got a job at the clinic. She’s a gynecologist. She also serves a couple of the nearby Native American reservations.”
“And you said you still feel like the new girl even after five years?”
“Yeah. But maybe that’s because there’s only one other black family in like a hundred miles. It’s like being a human island.”
I had no idea she felt this way. She always seems so connected at school.
She looks down at an Elizabeth Bishop biography. “I think that’s why my dad stays in Japan.”
“Your dad lives in Japan? Are your parents divorced?”
“No. It’s just a complicated job situation he couldn’t get out of. He’s supposed to move back next year, but I want to visit him first. Maybe this summer.”
“My mom always wanted to go to Japan,” I say.
“How come you don’t live with her anymore?”
“She passed away almost a year ago.”
All of a sudden I have this feeling of being on a roller coaster and I’m coming over the top and gravity is pulling me down down down and I’m going incredibly fast, and there’s absolutely no way to stop it.
“We wanted to scatter her ashes in Japan,” I keep going. “But there was no time or money. So we had to scatter them at a lake near our old house up in Portland. But I kept a tiny bit of her ashes so I can go someday and eat fresh soba noodles by the sea just like she always wanted to and scatter them there. I have them in an old Skittles bag.”
I haven’t thought of this since I stood on the shore of the lake, shoving the last few Skittles in my mouth, and secretly replacing them with a pinch of the ashes. Neither Birdie nor Mrs. Spater saw. I did it without thinking, and I still have the Skittles bag, taped shut, inside a plastic bag, that’s inside another small pouch, which I have hidden in an old pair of socks. I shoved it in there ten and a half months ago and haven’t looked at it since.
“I think that’s a great idea,” says Krysten. “We scattered part of my grandfather’s ashes in San Francisco over the summer and the other part in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where he’s from. I like the idea that he’s in more than one place. It’s almost like he has special powers now.”
Krysten is probably the only person in the world who sees nothing wrong with keeping a bit of your mom’s ashes in a Skittles bag. She spins her pencil along her fingers.
“I’m sorry about your grandpa,” I finally say.
“Oh, thank you. Sorry to hear about your mom.”
I nod at her. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet another island.”
“It is. And hey, we’re an archipelago now,” Krysten says. “A chain of islands.”
• • •
On my way out of the library, I forget to check for Ms. Perkins. She catches me outside, in front of the doors.
“Jack!” she says. “I haven’t seen you in a while.” Her eyes are serious. “We were all very worried for you and Birdie during your bus ride. And I hear he’s been in a bit of trouble at school.”
“He was suspended for fighting,” I say, not wanting to explain everything in such a public place.
“I can’t imagine Birdie fighting.”
In a flash, my eyes start to sting. “I know, neither can I.”
“I saw you working with Krysten. That girl knows her stuff, but let me know if you need anything. All right?”
I nod and she shoos me off in her normal Ms. Perkins fashion, acting like I was the one who interrupted her. But I smile as I watch her march back into the library.
• • •
I run into Uncle Carl coming out of the Stop-and-Go in a hurry, coffee and an unlit cigarette
