Over my head, birds fly back and forth. They swoop into the eaves of the house, working on mud nests as bumpy as warts.
If only I had something new to read! But that reminds me. My Rebecca book is up in my bedroom, not gathering stains in the kitchen as Cassie said. I’m going to wave it at her the next time we’re upstairs, just to show her. And then I’m going to read it over again; I’ll pretend I don’t know what’s going to happen.
I look up and see Cassie at the window. She looks so … woebegone. Strange word, but it fits. Her hair straggles over her collar, her cheeks are red, and she reaches up to wipe her eyes with the back of her sleeve.
I shake my head and go down to the stream. I sit there at the edge, untying my shoes; I pull them off and my socks, too. I leave them near a circle of feathery ferns and walk along the edge, the wet sand gritty against my feet. The stream turns, and there in the shade is a rock. More than a rock. A boulder.
A wonderful place to sit.
I bend over to dip my hands in the water. The blisters from gardening are healing into thick lumps and my palms are getting tough. I cup them, bringing them up to my mouth for a sip. Then I straighten, the hem of my dress soaked, and I see it.
On the rock is a drawing, big and bold. It reminds me of Mrs. Thompson, the art teacher. She came to our classroom once a week and drew all over the blackboard.
I never could tell what she was doing; she drew lines and circles, and she’d tell us to draw like that.
I tilt my head now, looking at these lines. But it’s not the kind of art that Mrs. Thompson did. It’s …
A girl, of course.
I bend for another sip of water, looking up at that girl. I can’t see her face, because she’s wearing a cloche hat with drops of rain cascading from the edges. Her dress is red gingham with a locket caught in the top buttons.
I stand entirely still.
Is she wearing my dress?
There’s something covering her hands.
What is it?
In the warm sun, I wet my hair and soak my face and neck. I put on my hat as the water runs down my shoulders in rivulets, and keep staring at the drawing.
Does she look like me?
It is me! Something tugs in my mind. Something to do with the drawing in the barn.
That’s me, too.
And—
I hear the sound of a motor. It’s not the sound of the mail truck, though.
Amazing. Not once has a car come up the rutted path that leads to our house. I hear it stop.
I shade my eyes. Who could it be? Pop? Home from working on the road? I feel a quick flutter in my chest.
I start toward the house without my shoes and trip over a tree branch. For a moment I can’t catch my breath. I scramble up, but by the time I reach the kitchen steps, there’s the sound of the motor again, as the car drives away.
I burst in the door. Cassie stands in the hall, her back toward me. She’s still, almost like a statue I saw at the museum one time.
“Who was it?” I look toward the living room, toward the window with its chewed curtains. The car has gone.
She doesn’t answer.
“Cassie?”
Something is wrong, really wrong. I go toward her and spin her around. “Who?”
Joey comes down the stairs. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Her voice is strange.
“Did I hear a car?” Joey asks.
She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“But you were the one who was here, right here,” I say.
She waves one hand and walks away from us and out the door.
Joey and I stand there looking after her, then we go into the kitchen.
“There was a car,” he says. “I know it.”
I know it, too. I want to go after Cassie, but from the open kitchen door, I see Xenia in my garden, a strand of green in her mouth.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I scramble around the chicks and out the door; I run across the yard, yelling, waving my arms.
Xenia. Oh, Xenia.
She wiggles her nose at me, a bit of green edging its way into her mouth.
I pull her out of the garden, but it doesn’t make any difference. The pale shoots are gone; the marigolds have disappeared. Nothing is left.
I sink to the bare earth as Xenia wanders off. All my work is ruined.
I begin to cry. I cry for my garden, for Clarence. I cry for Miss Mitzi and Mrs. Lazarus. I cry because there is no school and because I don’t know where I’d get money for more seed. But most of all I cry for Pop. Where is he? Why hasn’t he written?
It seems that every single thing I’m crying about has something to do with the Depression.
When I get up, I’m full of mud. Who knows where Xenia has gotten herself? I look around; she’s back by the fence, her head up, enjoying the warm sun and her nice full stomach.
I walk along the fence and put my hand on her collar. She gives me a soft nudge. “Not your fault.” I stroke her soft ears. “But it’s the barn for you, ready or not.”
I take her up to the barn, find a stall, shovel in some hay so she has a bed. I fill a pail with water from the stream, in case she needs a drink. All the while, I’m wondering about how to get seed. It’s impossible.
Back in the house I sit in the kitchen. I sit there forever, it seems. Then Joey comes in. “Have you seen Cassie?”
It’s past lunchtime, way past lunchtime. I shake my head.
“Listen, Rachel, maybe we’d better look for her. She’s been crying.”
“Missing Pop, missing the city?” I raise my shoulders. “We all feel that. But what about that car? Did that have something to do with it?”
Joey looks in the cabinet for something to eat. “Beans,” he says.
I’m beginning to feel hungry, too. I stand next to him, peering into the cabinet: that row of jars filled with gray string beans, more jars of tomatoes, stale soda crackers. We munch on them. “It’s not like Cassie to miss lunch,” I say.
“She was crying,” Joey says again.
“Maybe she’s upstairs.”
I go up to her room, open the door, and blink.
Gold. How can she live with that color? The paint can is set on an old piece of cloth, the brush washed and laid out neatly. It’s just like Cassie to be so careful.
Downstairs again, I shake my head at Joey.
“She’s still outside, then,” he says.
I shove the cracker box back into the cabinet and see—
My hand goes to my mouth. Cassie’s right. My Rebecca book is there on the counter. And yes, there’s a spot of jelly on it. I turn the book over. It’s not my Rebecca book. It’s Understood Betsy.
But I brought it back to the school.
“I’ll be out in a minute.” I’m hardly able to talk. I run up to my bedroom. I look in the closet, on the windowsill, under the bed. Rebecca is gone.
I go downstairs slowly, trying to understand what happened. I see myself going around the back of the school, passing the flagpole, putting Anne of Green Gables and my Rebecca book on the shelf. I put my own book there!
On the inside cover of Rebecca is written to Rachel, from S. Lazarus.
The principal of the school will see it, too.
Joey stands outside the kitchen door, waiting for me. “I’ve looked down at the stream. She’s not there. I’ve called and called.”
“She went out the front door,” I say, “not the back.”
He nods.
“So she probably went to town.”
He looks doubtful. “I hope she didn’t go the other way.”
“But there’s nothing there. Just a dirt road.”
“There’s a cabin on the path up the mountain to the lake. Way up. I saw it once.”
I shake my head. “She wouldn’t go that way. Why would she?”
“Something’s really wrong,” Joey says.
Joey, who always believes everything is right, everything is fine.
> My stomach lurches. “What are we going to do?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
We call until our voices are hoarse. And then at last we stop.
“Let’s take the path past the cabin,” Joey says.
“Wouldn’t the road to town be easier?” I bend down. My shoelace is untied. The shoes are old; the sole on one foot has come unglued. It flaps a little. It will slow me down, but there’s no help for it.
Joey stands there waiting. “Look at the sky,” he says. “It will be dark soon. If she’s gone to town, we don’t have to worry about her. But the other way—”
I glance up to see a mass of clouds; they’re rimmed with gold as the sun sinks behind the hills. I can feel the chill in the air. I wish I’d worn my coat instead of just this thin sweater. But Joey doesn’t have to say anything else.
We turn off at the dirt road and walk for a long while. Ahead of us then is a small cabin. Off to one side is the beginning of a garden. In front, flowery curtains cover the windows.
We walk past; stones in the packed earth sound loud against my shoes. But inside the cottage, all is quiet, and the road turns before we see anyone.
It’s narrower now and trees on each side cut off the light, almost like a Hansel and Gretel forest. I wonder, too, about animals. Could there really be mountain lions? Could there be a mother bear with cubs? What else? Snakes? Skunks?
Joey begins to whistle a little. I don’t recognize the song; I can hardly hear it. I wonder if he feels the same strangeness that I do.
We keep walking, the road rising gently, but it’s getting dark. I hear clicks and chirps and even a brrrr and move closer to Joey.
“Tree frogs,” he says. “Maybe some insects.”
Cassie is afraid of the dark, so afraid. Together we begin to call her. We cup our hands around our mouths to make our voices loud. The brrrr and the other noises stop; when we stop, they begin again. Every few minutes we call, Joey, then me, Joey, then me.
What made her do this? What happened? For a moment I remember the car that stopped in front of our house. An ordinary car, not the sound of the mail truck—I would have recognized that.
Isn’t it odd that Cassie and I never get along? That we’re so different? But so many times we’ve been friends: walking home from school together, getting caught in a rainstorm, running, laughing. Buying a bag of candy for Joey’s birthday and sneaking two pieces out for ourselves. Hanging stockings. Christmas morning. Dressing as beggars on Thanksgiving morning and knocking on doors for treats. I can hear Cassie’s voice: “Anything for Thanksgiving?”
I wonder if Cassie remembers those things.
At the top of the hill, the road widens. In front of us is a shimmer of water. “North Lake,” I say. “It must be.” We stand at the rim, looking down at it scooped out of the hills. There aren’t as many trees, so we can see for a long distance: a twinkle of lights miles away.
For the first time I begin to be afraid for Cassie. “She went to town,” I say.
He stands looking down at what we can see of the lake, a circle of reeds at the far end, a mess of branches at the other. Could it be a beaver’s den? Insects flit across the top, and something larger—a bat, I’m sure of it.
“Maybe she’s home by now,” Joey says.
“Of course, that’s it.” I feel such a relief, then I’m angry. It’s cold and dark; it will be hard to see the road ahead of us. At least it will be downhill.
“Maybe we could stop at the cabin and ask if anyone’s seen her,” Joey says.
“It’s getting late. Let’s just go home. I’m sure …” The words trail off. I’m not sure, not at all sure, that she’s home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We run up the road to the house, looking for the gas lamp that will surely be lighted if she’s there.
But it’s dark.
We burst in the front door, down the hall, calling her. I run upstairs to her room, just in case. But of course she’s not there.
In the kitchen I don’t bother to fill the feed tray for the chicks. I don’t have time for that. I just raise the heavy bag a couple of inches and dump it in a hill on the floor.
Oh, Cassie, where are you?
“Get your coat,” I tell Joey, “and I’ll get mine. We have to go out again.”
But where?
“I’ll go back to the cabin for help,” Joey says. “Suppose she’s in trouble somewhere?”
“You mean fallen?” I’m glad the stream is so shallow. But I picture her tripping over a rock. Breaking …
Bleeding?
He nods. Then he’s gone and I wait.
I don’t even care anymore that I think it’s the mountain lion boy’s cabin, as long as he’ll help. Was he right that I don’t belong here? That we don’t belong here?
I look around. I didn’t belong here that first day, or even the first month. But I love my garden, bare as it is. And what about the fireplace in the kitchen on cold nights, the drawings on the stairs, the stained-glass window? And there’re Xenia and the chicks, who gather around my feet, pecking at their seed. I’m beginning to belong. I really am.
But suppose something happens to Cassie? That’s worse than almost anything I can think of. Why didn’t I know that?
I go outside and down along the fence to meet Joey and take a breath. The mountain lion boy is with him. I don’t know what to say.
He hardly glances at me. “Hi,” he says.
He looks as uncomfortable as I am. Ha. Serves him right. Then I remember: I’m the one who threw the snowball. I’m the one he saw in the school.
“Maybe the stream,” he says, and Joey nods.
We walk along the edge of the water. A moon is up now; it beams along the water, almost leading us. Hansel and Gretel again!
I’ve lost the sole of my shoe, and mud seeps in, so I take both shoes off and put them under a tree to find later. The stream leads us toward town. I see the back of Mrs. Collins’s house, then, almost a mile after that, the real estate office, the grain store, the train station.
“Maybe she took a train,” the boy says, his first words since we began to walk.
Back to the city? I shake my head. That would take money. She never gave me the change from the paint, though. Could she have used that?
There’s no answer in my mind.
The stream peters out and the three of us walk back toward our house.
That’s what I would have done. If I’d had trouble, I would have gone straight to Miss Mitzi.
But what trouble? What possible trouble?
We reach the back of our house; there are still no lights, no sign of Cassie. It must be almost midnight.
“What can we do?” I hold my hands out in front of me. “Maybe we have to get help.”
“I’m sorry,” the boy says. It looks as if he’s talking to the ground.
“I’m sorry, too.” Are we both talking about Cassie? I don’t think so.
“Come inside.” There’s a little tea in the canister. Maybe …
He follows us and I light the gas lamp. “What’s your name?” I ask at last.
“Anton.”
I nod and then I remember Xenia.
She’s been shut up in the barn for hours. True, she has hay and water, but no food. She must have digested the curtains hours ago.
“Just sit at the table,” I say to them. “I’ll be right back.”
I grab up a scoop of goat food for Xenia and walk around the table. As I do, I glance at Anton. His hair is down over his ears; he’s wearing a thin shirt. He must have been cold outside. His hands are covered with a smear of something blue.
I follow the fence around to the barn and slide open the doors. Xenia is in her stall. In the dim light I see that her eyes are closed; she’s curled up against the wall, looking perfectly comfortable. “I’m sorry, Xenia,” I say anyway. “I know you don’t like to miss a meal.”
Something else is in the stall with her. I see the outline of a figure and step back.
&
nbsp; The dark shape moves and I’m ready to run. Then I see who it is. I sink to my knees. “Cassie.” I’m crying now and I reach out to her and our hands meet over Xenia’s back.
“What are you doing here?” I’ve never felt such relief. “I love you.” I have to say that fast; already I want to yell at her for causing this whole mess. “Didn’t you hear us calling? Didn’t you know we’d be looking for you?”
“I didn’t want to answer,” she says. “I was going to run away, back to Miss Mitzi maybe.”
I shake my head, wondering.
“But I didn’t have any money.”
“You had the change from the paint.”
She’s crying, too, now, a real Cassie crying, loud and grating.
Never mind. She’s here and she’s safe.
I crawl around Xenia. Cassie and I sit together, leaning against the wall of the stall. We hold hands. I can’t believe that. We haven’t been this close since we were little.
“I didn’t have the change,” she says at last. “I lost it somehow on the way home from the paint store. It was raining and I put my hands in my pockets. I don’t know how the money slipped out. I went back and back, but it was gone.”
I shake my head. Careful Cassie.
“The real estate man came this morning,” she says.
“In the car? But he’s early. The rent isn’t due for two days.”
Cassie shrugs. “I didn’t have the money anyway.”
“Of course we do. It’s in the kitchen cabinet.” I lean my head back against the wall. I’m so tired. It’s hard to keep my eyes open. And both boys are waiting for me. I start to get up.
“No, it’s gone. I lost that, too.”
“What do you mean?” I sink back down.
“I took every bit of the money with me to town,” she says, “to buy the paint.”
Xenia makes a little sound of contentment. I shake my head. What is she talking about?
She says it again. “I took the money. I was angry. I was going to bring it back, but I don’t know what happened to it.”
The money’s gone? All of it?