His mother smiled and waved back.
That surprised Sam. He had thought that maybe she would start to cry when she saw him, and would rush out and beg him to come home, and maybe she would add more lasagna to the pan so that there would be enough for him at dinner.
But instead she smiled and waved.
Sam trudged on, feeling angry. He tried with his tongue to dislodge a cookie crumb that was stuck under his fangs and was making the top of his mouth hurt.
He decided that he needed a drink of water. The milk at Gertrude Stein's had been good, but now his fangs had a bad taste and he needed water.
He decided to stop for a visit at the Sheehans' house on the other side of his own. There wasn't really any reason to rush to Alaska. He could ask Mrs. Sheehan for a drink of water. He could say good-bye to the Sheehans, who had always been very nice to him, and who had once given him a kitten when they had too many. Also, he could scare Kelly, the Sheehans' baby, with his fangs.
"Come on in, Sam!" Mrs. Sheehan called when he knocked at their back door. It surprised him that she could see through the door and tell who was knocking.
"Nice to see you!" she said cheerfully as he entered, and she folded up her portable telephone and laid it on the counter. "Kelly's daddy's away on a business trip so we're kind of lonely, and it's nice to have company."
She looked more closely at Sam. "Wow, neat fangs!" she said.
The baby was sitting in a playpen in the corner of the Sheehans' big kitchen. Kelly looked up and grinned at Sam.
Sam always wished that the Sheehans' baby had a name like John or Amanda. That way Sam would be able to tell if it was a boy or a girl.
When the baby got a little bigger, maybe it would wear a dress or a necktie, and then Sam would know. Maybe it would grow longer hair and Mrs. Sheehan would give it a hair ribbon and then Sam would know.
But now it wore overalls and had just a little bit of hair and was named Kelly, and Sam didn't ever know what it was.
If he went off to Alaska, Sam thought—Then he corrected himself in his mind: Not if, but when he went off to Alaska, he would never find out if Kelly was a boy or a girl.
"Hi, Kelly," Sam said. He leaned over the playpen, feeling a little sad because of the important information about Kelly that he was never going to learn. He grinned a Dracula-style grin so that Kelly would be scared.
But the baby just giggled and looked at Sam with big eyes. He—or she—pointed with a chubby finger toward Sam's mouth.
"Fangs," Sam explained to Kelly. "Maybe when you get bigger, you can have fangs. Your mom wouldn't mind, I bet." He glanced over at Mrs. Sheehan with a questioning look.
"No," Mrs. Sheehan said. "I don't mind fangs."
"My mom has fangphobia," Sam told her in a sad voice.
"Yes, she told me," Mrs. Sheehan said. "I have wormphobia myself. I remember that your mom didn't mind when you had a pet worm in your room, Sam. But I'm never going to let Kelly have a pet worm." She looked fondly at the baby. "Got that, Kelly-Belly? No worms?"
Kelly grinned and began to chew on a yellow plastic toy.
Sam set his bag on the floor, unzipped it, reached in, and found his bear wedged beside the rolled-up towel. He took the bear out and handed it to Kelly, who dropped the plastic toy, grabbed the bear, and hugged it.
"Kelly can play with my bear while I visit. But I can't stay long. I have to go to Alaska," Sam told Mrs. Sheehan. "Sleetmute," he added.
"Oh, dear," Mrs. Sheehan said sympathetically. "I was hoping you'd be around next month, Sam, because it will be Kelly's first birthday, and I'm going to have a little party."
"With cake?" Sam asked.
"Yes. And ice cream, of course."
"And presents?" Sam asked.
"Oh, yes, certainly. Lots of presents."
Birthday presents would reveal what Kelly was, Sam realized. "Would the presents be dolls?" he asked. "Or would they be trucks?"
Mrs. Sheehan thought about that. "Probably both," she decided. "Kelly likes both dolls and trucks."
Sam sighed. It didn't matter, really, he realized, since he wouldn't be there for the party, or for Kelly's future, male or female. "I suppose there will be lots of ice cream in Sleetmute," he said.
"Yes, I would expect so."
"I guess I'll live in an igloo, probably," Sam said.
"You'll be eating a lot of fish, I imagine," Mrs. Sheehan said cheerfully.
"Fish?" Sam made a face. He didn't like fish at all. Right now, right at this very moment, there was half of a tuna-fish sandwich hidden behind the radiator in his bedroom.
"And blubber," Mrs. Sheehan added.
"What's that?" Sam asked, wrinkling his nose. He didn't like the sound of it. It was a gross-sounding word: blubber.
"Oh, it's a sort of fat," Mrs. Sheehan explained. "From seals, and walruses, I think."
"And you have to eat it?" Sam hoped that Kelly's mom was joking, but it didn't really sound like a joke. Her face looked pretty serious.
"Well, if you live in an igloo, I believe your life tends to center around fish, and blubber," Mrs. Sheehan explained.
Sam stood silently for a moment. In the playpen, Kelly chewed happily on a leg of Sam's bear. Sam envied Kelly. It didn't matter if Kelly was a boy or a girl. Kelly would never have to eat blubber.
Kelly would be eating birthday cake in a month. Probably a sweet, crumbly, delicious cake with lots of sticky frosting, Sam thought sadly. At the same time, far, far away in Sleetmute, Alaska, lying around in a pile, Sam Krupnik would be eating a sandwich filled with gray, gluey blubber. Maybe they would let him put some mustard on it, he thought, but somehow the thought didn't cheer him at all.
It didn't seem fair. For a moment Sam had forgotten why, exactly, he was going to Alaska. Then he remembered.
"It's all because of fangs," he whispered to himself mournfully. The word came out sounding like "fangsh" once again. He couldn't even talk right with his mouth full of fangs. Sam pulled them off his teeth and shoved them back into his pocket.
"What was that, Sam?" Mrs. Sheehan asked. "What did you say?"
"It's because of fangs," Sam repeated.
Kelly giggled again and banged the bear against the padded floor of the playpen.
5
"Look, Sam, there's your sister," Mrs. Sheehan said. She had been standing near the kitchen window while Sam drank his water. "It must be getting close to four o'clock. I almost always see Anastasia coming home a little before four."
Sam, with his fangs stored in his pocket, finished his drink, put the glass on the table, and peered through the window toward his own house. Sure enough, there was his sister, Anastasia, wearing her L. L. Bean backpack and trotting up the steps of their back porch toward the kitchen door.
Usually, when Anastasia got home from school, Sam was in the kitchen. She would come through the door, drop her backpack on the table, and say, "Hey, Sam." It was what she always said. Sam liked the sound of it: "Hey, Sam." It made him feel kind of grown up.
She would go to the refrigerator and find something to eat. Anastasia liked leftover stuff. Thinking about it, Sam remembered that they had had chicken for dinner the night before.
Right now, right at this very moment (because his sister had gone in now through the kitchen door), he imagined Anastasia would be taking leftover chicken from the refrigerator. If Sam were there in the Krupniks' kitchen, instead of running away to Alaska, she would be sharing leftover chicken with him.
On an ordinary day, not a running-away day, Sam would sit there at the kitchen table with Anastasia, sharing their snack. His mom would ask how school was that day, and Anastasia would tell them funny stories, like once she told how a girl named Marlene got the flu and threw up in her locker.
And once Anastasia had told him about a classmate, a seventh-grade boy named Jacob Berman who was a teacher's pet. Sam didn't know what "teacher's pet" meant. At first he thought Anastasia was describing a boy who slept on the floor beside the teacher's bed a
nd maybe went for walks on a leash now and then.
But Anastasia had explained that "teacher's pet" didn't mean the same as family pets, like her goldfish, or Sam's kitten. "Teacher's pet" meant like Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver, that Jacob Berman talked in a fake way to the teacher so the teacher liked him but nobody else did.
Anyway, Anastasia said, Jacob Berman had memorized a long, long poem about a guy named Ancientmariner. Ancientmariner was on a boat, and he hung a dead bird on a string around his neck, and everybody on the boat died. It sounded really interesting to Sam.
But when Jacob Berman stood up in front of Anastasia's English class and recited it for extra credit, it was so long and so boring that half the class—and the teacher, too—all fell asleep.
Anastasia said that there was a part in the poem where Ancientmariner said, "And they all dead did lie; and a thousand thousand slimy things lived on..." When Jacob Berman said that part, Anastasia described, he looked at the class, and half of them had their heads on their desks, and even the teacher's mouth was hanging open and he was snoring.
Sam didn't see how a poem about dead guys and a thousand thousand slimy things and a guy who wore a dead bird could possibly be boring. But Anastasia had said, "Take my word for it, Sam, it was."
Sam stood there looking out of Mrs. Sheehan's kitchen window, toward his own family's kitchen window, and thought about Anastasia inside that kitchen, eating leftover chicken, and telling interesting stories to his mother, and the two of them laughing.
He thought that Anastasia would probably be asking, right about now, "Where's Sam?"
"Here I am!" Sam called softly through the closed window of the Sheehans' kitchen. "I'm over here!" His breath made a steamy little cloud on the cool glass pane and he wiped it with his hand.
For a moment he thought that Anastasia might magically hear him, come to the Krupniks' window, and wave across the yard. But she didn't.
"Can I give you any other supplies for your trip, Sam?" Mrs. Sheehan asked. She had just folded an old pink-and-blue-plaid baby blanket and put it into his bag, so that he would be warm during blizzards in Sleetmute. "Do you have everything you need?"
Sam thought for a moment, remembering what was in his traveling bag. Blanket, mittens, cookies, towel. His bear was still in Kelly's playpen, but he would get it back before he headed out.
"I wish I had a portable phone," he said, looking longingly at the little folded-up phone on Mrs. Sheehan's counter. Back at his own house there were only boring phones attached to the wall.
"Yes," Mrs. Sheehan agreed, "that would be nice. You could call your family often if you had a portable phone in your bag. I'm afraid I don't have an extra one to give you, though."
"Anyway, I wouldn't call my mom because I don't like her anymore," Sam said.
"Yes, that's right. I'd forgotten."
"Because of fangs," Sam said.
"Yes, because of fangs. Of course."
He and Mrs. Sheehan sat silently for a moment. In the playpen, Kelly had set the bear aside and was chewing on a board book about farm animals. There were little teeth marks on the cow and calf page.
"You might want to call your dad and sister, though, if you had a phone," Mrs. Sheehan said.
"Yes. I might."
"In fact," Mrs. Sheehan suggested, "maybe you'd like to call your sister right now, before you head off to Alaska."
"Sleetmute," Sam said.
"Yes, before you go to Sleetmute. You didn't have a chance to say good-bye to Anastasia. Would you like to use our telephone?"
Sam nodded. It seemed like a good idea.
Mrs. Sheehan unfolded the telephone and dialed for him. Sam heard her talk briefly to his mother.
"Katherine," he heard her say, "Sam would like to talk to Anastasia. He wants to say good-bye before he leaves for Alaska."
She waited a moment, then handed the telephone to Sam. "Here's your sister, Sam," she said.
"Hello?" Sam said.
"Hey, Sam!" He heard Anastasia's voice. Always when his sister said "Hey, Sam!" it made him feel grown up and special. But for some reason, this time it made him feel sad. It made him feel like crying.
Anastasia didn't notice. "I wish you were here, Sam," she said. "I had a chicken leg all saved for you, and then Mom told me you weren't even home. She said you had run away."
"Because of fangs," Sam whispered into the telephone.
"Yeah, that's what she said. You know what, Sam? Once, when I was younger, I ran away."
"Because of fangs?"
"Nope. It was because of you."
"Me?"
Anastasia started to laugh. "Wait'll I tell you! But it's too long a story for the phone. How about if I come over to the Sheehans' house? You're not leaving right away, are you? I know you have a long trip and you might want to get started."
Sam sighed. Holding the telephone to his ear, he looked through the Sheehans' window to the street, and to the sidewalk which led to the corner. He didn't even know which direction Alaska was.
He was afraid it would be dinnertime soon, and then dark, and bedtime, and he would be all alone on that sidewalk not knowing the way to Sleetmute.
He didn't like thinking about any of that.
"Could you bring the chicken leg?" he asked his sister. "When I'm not wearing my fangs, I can eat a chicken leg."
"Sure."
"Okay," Sam said. "Come on over."
Mrs. Sheehan took Kelly upstairs for a bath, and left Sam alone with Anastasia in the kitchen. They sat together in the little place called the breakfast nook. Sam liked the breakfast nook. It was a sort of a booth, like at McDonald's, and there were red cushions on the seats. A wooden holder shaped like a rooster held paper napkins. Anastasia gave Sam a napkin along with his chicken leg.
Sam felt better now that he was eating the leftover chicken leg, which tasted just as good as it had last night at dinner. He felt better now that Anastasia was here. He felt stronger. He wondered if maybe she would be willing to go to Alaska with him.
"Tell me about when you ran away because of me," he said to his sister.
"Well," Anastasia said, "I was older than you. I was ten. You weren't even born yet."
"How could you run away because of me then, if I wasn't even born?" Sam asked with interest. He licked his fingers. They were greasy from chicken and tasted good.
"Mom and Dad had just told me that they were expecting a baby."
"Me!" Sam announced happily.
"Yes. Of course they didn't know it was you. It was just a baby. After you were born, you were you, but before you were born, we didn't know you were going to be you."
Sam didn't quite understand all that, but he nodded his head and pretended that he did. He wanted to hear the part about running away.
"Anyway," Anastasia went on, "I was the only child up till then. And I didn't like the idea of sharing Mom and Dad."
"You're good at sharing," Sam pointed out. It was true. Anastasia was much better than he at sharing.
"Now I am. But it took me a while. And when they told me there was going to be a new baby, I got mad. I wanted them all to myself."
Sam nodded. He could understand that feeling.
"So I told them I was running away, and I packed a bag. You know a funny thing, Sam?"
"What?"
Anastasia was looking at the traveling bag on the kitchen floor near the breakfast nook. "Well, I see that you've borrowed Dad's gym bag. The funny thing is that when I ran away, I took a bag of Dad's too. It wasn't the same one, though. I took his old Navy bag. You know the one with his name—KRUPNIK M — stenciled on the side?"
Sam did remember the bag his sister was talking about. It was much bigger than the one he had packed, and it had a drawstring at the top. "I can't take that one," he said, "because I'm KRUPNIK S, not KRUPNIK M."
"Well, that didn't bother me. I took that bag and I put a whole lot of stuff in it. Food, and clean socks, and—let's see—my watercolors, and some souvenirs. I rem
ember that I felt very, very sad that I couldn't pack my goldfish."
"Yeah. I feel very sad about my cat," Sam said gloomily.
"And I told Mom and Dad that if they were serious about having another baby, I would be moving out."
"And did you? Did you move out? How long were you gone? How far did you go? Was it cold where you went?"
Anastasia adjusted her glasses. She scrunched up her face the way she always did when she was thinking. "No, I didn't ever leave. I'm trying to remember why I didn't."
"Probably they locked you in the house," Sam said. "Maybe they tied you up." Actually, he was wondering why his mom hadn't locked him in the house, or tied him up.
"No, they didn't. They stayed very cheerful, I remember. They helped me pack."
Rats, thought Sam. Just like Mom this very afternoon.
Anastasia scrunched her face again. "I wish I could remember why I stayed," she said.
"I know!" Sam announced. "I bet they said okay, they changed their minds, and they wouldn't have another baby after all. Just like Mom will probably change her mind and say, 'Guess what, Sam, I've been doing some thinking about those fangs, and—'" He stopped in the middle of his sentence and looked at his sister.
"No, they didn't change their minds, did they?" he said.
She shook her head, smiling at him. "You were already on your way. Here you are. That's proof."
"You changed your mind, then," Sam said.
Anastasia nodded her head yes. "I remember," she said. "They told me that if I changed my mind, if I decided to stay, if I didn't run away after all, I could name the baby."
"Me," Sam said with satisfaction.
"Yes, you. I stayed, I unpacked my bag, and when you were born, I gave you your name."