“Er . . . are you talking to me, Grandma?” I said, sniffling and adjusting my glasses before looking up at her. “What winter formal? I’m homeschooled, remember? I don’t go to dances.”
“Don’t be a goose, Nettie!” Grandma giggled, her eyes lighting with girlish excitement behind her own thick glasses. “The formal is going to be sublime! Especially with Cleavon Dorsey as my dance partner. Daddy doesn’t want me to go—he doesn’t care for Cleavon. But I don’t care what Daddy thinks.”
I found myself wishing I could still see forward or backward in time; it was difficult to imagine Grandma Pat as a teenager with a crush, going to an olden-days dance. I would’ve liked to see it for myself.
By lunchtime, I felt like I was juggling frogs. Grandma had already slipped out of the house and down the road three times, and Tucker had gone to play in the yard twice without asking. To prevent future escapes, I made a makeshift alarm out of some jingle-bells Samson found in a box labeled X-mas. I secured the bells around the doorknob. No one would leave the house without me knowing.
Not long after the bells went up, Grandma fell asleep in her chair and Tucker threw a fit. He got mad when I told him he couldn’t play with the skinny, scraggly cat sunning herself on the front stoop. Tucker stomped around the living room, growing bigger and bigger, until Samson slid down the ladder from the attic and tossed me a bag of candy. Momma didn’t know it, but Samson had secretly stocked up on sweets at every gas station we’d stopped at the day before. He’d hoarded Skittles, gummy worms, and taffy the way Grandma Pat hoarded Cool Whip containers and department store catalogs.
This time, Tucker’s tantrum was brief, and he shrank back down without doing any damage. In an effort to keep him calm—and little—I offered to help him feed the stray cat.
Making sure Grandma was still asleep, we opened the last can of tuna in the cupboard. Momma took a break from packing up the kitchen to pour some water into a bowl.
“Hooray!” she exclaimed with a soft chuckle. “I only spilled half of it. Things are looking up.”
Happy and satisfied, Tucker grinned as we set the water and tuna out on the stoop. Tucker loved cats. I loved them too—I liked the way they purred and pushed against my leg, demanding my attention and affection. But the stray cat didn’t do any of those things. She ran from us and hissed.
“I think kitty needs someone to look after her, the same way Grandma does,” Tucker said as we went back inside. Tuck had become more charitable toward Grandma when she didn’t swat him on sight the way he’d expected her to. He’d warmed to her even more when she let him keep a dusty box of chocolates he found under the sofa. Tucker nearly broke a tooth on a fossilized nut cluster before I convinced him the chocolates were too gross and old to eat.
At lunchtime, I made jelly sandwiches for everyone, after Momma somehow managed to burn soup. When I brought Grandma her sandwich, she waved it away.
“I don’t want that . . . or you. Where is the other girl? The nice girl who brings me sandwiches.”
“This is a sandwich, Grandma,” I said, nodding at the bread I’d sliced into quarters and arranged neatly on a pretty plate. “And I’m nice.”
Grandma picked up a triangle of sandwich and sniffed it. Then she made a face and let it drop. “Well, it’s not tuna. Go get the other girl. The one who knows how to make a tasty, tasty tuna sandwich.”
“What other girl, Grandma?” I asked, wondering if she meant Momma.
“The other girl,” Grandma answered. “The girl with the makeup. The one who lives across the road and doesn’t rifle through my things.”
Grandma Pat wanted the neighbor girl, Nola Kim. I had to work hard to keep my feelings from getting dinged. Was this what every day was going to be like after Grandma moved in?
I tried to be the best granddaughter I could be, even if Grandma Pat couldn’t be the best grandmother. I knelt at her side and took her hand in mine, hoping for . . . something. Anything. A gentle squeeze. A kindness. But Grandma immediately wrenched her fingers free, then slathered her hands with a gob of the hand sanitizer she kept next to her chair.
It’s not always easy to love someone, even if they’re family.
I ate Grandma’s jelly sandwich. I didn’t tell her that tuna sandwiches were my favorite too. We already had the same curly hair and bad eyesight—the same birthday too. I didn’t want to have anything else in common with Grandma Pat.
SHARING A BIRTHDAY WITH someone isn’t too unusual. Samson looked it up for me once when I was younger. He knew how much I worried that our common birthday connected me and Grandma in unpredictable ways.
“Relax, Gypsy,” Samson murmured, typing a search into his computer. “You and Grandma Pat are like sugar and steel. You couldn’t be more different.”
A few clicks of his keyboard, and Samson looked triumphant. “See?” he said. “Nothing to get worked up about.”
I leaned over his shoulder, squinting hard as I read aloud: “Every day, over nineteen million people celebrate their birthday. Three point seven million in China alone. Nine hundred thousand in the United States. Even twenty-seven in Tuvalu.”
I looked at Samson. “Where’s Tuvalu?”
My brother shoved his long hair out of his eyes and did another search. “Tuvalu is a tiny island country in the South Pacific,” he said a second later.
I sighed in relief. If twenty-seven people in a place called Tuvalu were blowing out candles on the same day as me and Grandma Pat, maybe she and I weren’t connected in any unfortunate way after all.
After my episode with Grandma and the jelly sandwich, I wasn’t too excited when Nola Kim knocked on the door a few hours later. At the sound of the knock, Samson poked his head down from the attic scuttle in the hallway. Tucker crawled into the cardboard box he’d turned into a spaceship. Grandma jumped in her chair, startled.
“Go away!” Grandma crowed loudly. “I’m not feeding any trick-or-treating beggars, and I don’t sign petitions!”
When I opened the door, Nola smiled a cheerful, black-plum smile and blinked eyelids so heavy with dark, uneven eye makeup, it looked as if she’d been in a fight. The girl’s short brown hair stuck out in cute wisps and tufts around her face and was highlighted here and there in tints of green and purple. Nola looked like a pugilistic pixie—a colorful punk-rock fairy in orange combat boots. Even with her mess of severe makeup, she was pretty.
Part of me really wanted to like Nola Kim. Another part of me really, really didn’t.
Nola stepped inside carrying a bulging plastic bag. She looked as comfortable inside Grandma’s house as if she’d been there a thousand times.
“Hi,” Nola said, looking at me and then tilting her head sideways to get a better look at Samson. Before Nola could finish saying, I’m Nola Kim—I live across the street, Samson had pulled his head back up into the attic.
“Someone’s not very sociable.” Nola laughed at Samson’s sudden disappearance. Then, stepping right past me, she called out, “Hello, Mrs. B.!”
I cringed, waiting for Grandma to say something rude or do something embarrassing.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. B.” Nola quickly crossed the room. “It’s not Halloween, and you don’t have to sign any petitions. It’s just me. The girl with the sandwiches. Only, I didn’t bring any sandwiches today, just this bag of bae for your family.”
Nola bent and kissed Grandma’s cheek—like she was the granddaughter, and I was the neighbor girl standing awkwardly by the door. Nola didn’t appear one bit bothered by Grandma’s quirks and quibbles.
Grandma patted Nola’s arm and smiled. Smiled! She’d only smiled at me once since we’d arrived, and that was when she thought I was her childhood friend Nettie. Grandma’s fondness for Nola was a fast-moving blizzard slamming through my rib cage; I wasn’t used to feeling so cold-hearted. So jealous. It did not feel good.
“Hello, Nola,” Momma s
aid, trying to wipe her hands clean on a dirty towel as she came into the room. “How nice of you to stop by. I’m Jenny Beaumont, Patrice’s daughter-in-law. This is Gypsy.” Momma nodded toward me and then looked around for my brothers. “My boys Tucker and Samson are around here somewhere . . .”
“My mom wanted me to bring you these, Mrs. Beaumont,” Nola said, holding up her plastic bag. “Mom is at a medical conference in Chicago all week, and Dad is on loan to a hospital down in Pueblo that needed his surgical skills for the next few days. So he’s going to be away too. But if you need anything, you’re supposed to let me know.” She held the bulging bag toward Momma. “I hope you guys like Korean pears. The skins are tough—so you should peel them.”
Momma took the bag of fruit, holding it carefully so it wouldn’t break. “You’re all alone in that big house, Nola? Would you like to stay for dinner?”
Say no, say no, say no, I thought.
To my relief, Nola smiled and shook her head. Just as she said, “I’m okay, thanks,” Tucker jumped out of his cardboard box, and shouted, “BOO!”
“Ah! That boy is loud and sticky,” Grandma said. Taking Nola’s hand, she whispered up at her: “Please take him with you when you go.”
Little Tuck looked wounded.
“That’s Tucker,” I told Nola, giving her an uncertain smile. Nola smiled back, but her eyes darted to my sweatshirt. Maybe she was just noticing that I was wearing it inside out. I sometimes wore my clothes that way on purpose, to stop scritchy seams from making my life extra-scratchy. I felt myself blush. Poppa had told us Nola was fifteen—fifteen and already staying by herself! I didn’t want the neighbor girl to think I was some baby who couldn’t even dress herself properly. Had I brushed my hair that morning?
“Is that your fort, sprout?” Nola turned back to Tucker, saying nothing about my shirt.
Tucker furrowed his brow. “What’s a sprout?”
“It’s a little plant that still has a lot of growing to do.”
“I’m not little,” said Tucker. “I can grow really, really big. Really, really fast. I got my savvy early and now I become a giant whenever I get mad. And this isn’t a fort. It’s a spaceship.”
Momma and I both tensed at the same time. Tucker had been told time and again to keep our family’s secret secret. But Nola didn’t know about savvies. She only knew about the oversized imaginations of little boys.
“Well, I think you may have scraped your really, really big chin on one of your sensor arrays or photon torpedoes,” Nola said. Tuck raised his chin and we all saw a long red scrape.
“Oh, Tuck!” said Momma, stepping toward him with her dirty towel. Nola reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a colorful assortment of Band-Aids.
“I’ve got this, Mrs. Beaumont. Don’t worry.”
Momma laughed. “Do you always carry first aid supplies with you, Nola?”
The girl shrugged. “I guess that’s what happens when both of your parents are doctors.” Nola dressed Tucker’s boo-boo with no fewer than five Band-Aids—one of each color—while Tucker beamed up at her like she was made of gumdrops and rock candy.
Tucker asked, “Are you gonna be a doctor, when you grow up?”
Nola grimaced. “No way. I have much more exciting plans.” After stuffing the empty Band-Aid wrappers back into her pocket, Nola spread her fingers wide and traced an arc above her head. Her eyes reflected imaginary flashbulbs as she said, “Someday I want to see my name in lights and hear crowds of people cheer for me. It’s my dream to stand on a stage and sing for an audience. To get a standing ovation!”
I wished I had half of Nola’s confidence. She obviously knew what she was good at and wasn’t afraid to share her talents with the world.
“Do you sing for other people often, Nola?” Momma asked.
“No.” Nola sighed. “I signed up to sing in the school talent show last fall. It was going to be my big debut. But then Bo Peters tried to play his piccolo blindfolded and riding a unicycle, and he pedaled off the stage. Bo’s accident ended the show. I never got my chance to shine.”
That evening, after dining on delivery pizza and Korean pears, Samson and I hauled bags and boxes of garbage down the driveway. Music thumped loudly from the house across the road. In the darkness of the mountain subdivision, it was easy to see into Nola’s second-story bedroom. Her curtains were drawn back and she was dancing around her room like a pop star, wearing a sparkly tank top and zebra-striped pajama pants. Nola held a hairbrush to her lips, pretending it was a microphone. The only thing missing was the cheering crowd.
And Nola’s name, in lights.
OUR SECOND DAY IN Colorado wasn’t any better than the first. After breakfast, Tucker let the stray cat zip inside. The growly old grimalkin scaled the holes in the scorched drapes, then leaped to the top of a bookcase, where she hissed and clawed at everyone.
After lunch, Samson accidentally set fire to the dead leaves and pine needles in the yard. He quickly soaked the flames using a garden hose, but someone in the neighborhood saw smoke and called 911. Samson endured a long lecture on forest fires and the dangers of cigarettes, lighters, and matches, before the fire trucks drove away.
As soon as Nola got home from school, she knocked on the door again, carrying a plate of sandwiches. “Just habit, I guess,” she said.
Grandma was happy to see her. “You must have known these people are starving me!”
“Grandma—!” I began to object, wanting to assure Nola we were doing no such thing. Nola gave me a sympathetic eye roll. I liked her better for it. I liked her even more when she nudged my arm and said, “Looking after Mrs. B. is hard work, Gypsy. Don’t take anything she says too personally.” After she left, I sampled one of Nola’s tuna sandwiches. Grandma was right. They were tasty.
That evening, Grandma Pat wandered down the hallway wearing swim goggles and a polka-dot bikini. She gripped a stocking filled with loose change. There was a hole in the toe of the stocking and with every step Grandma took, a nickel, a penny, or a dime spilled to the floor. Momma and I led Grandma back to her bedroom. While Momma wrangled Grandma into a nightgown, I took her sock of coins and laid it gently on the dresser.
“I want my son to meet you,” Grandma told Momma as Momma helped her into her slippers. “I like you better than that so-called perfect woman he married.” Momma stiffened. Then she relaxed her shoulders and laughed.
“I’m not sure if that was a compliment or an insult.”
When Grandma was asleep, Momma went for a walk to clear her head. She returned lickety split, reeking head-to-toe of skunk.
At midnight, I got up to get a drink of water and found Momma sitting at the kitchen table in front of an entire store-bought sheet cake. She cradled her head in one hand as she stabbed at frosting flowers with a fork. I slumped into the chair next to her, resisting the urge to hold my nose. Even though she’d washed and scrubbed, Momma still smelled awful.
“Cake?” Momma offered me her fork. I shook my head. Cake was for parties; I couldn’t think of anything to celebrate.
“Things will be all right in the end. Won’t they, Momma?” I tugged on a loose thread that dangled from the cuff of my sweatshirt, watching the stitching unravel. Momma stopped me, weaving her fingers through mine.
“Let not your heart be troubled, Gypsy,” she recited. “Neither let it be afraid.” Momma squeezed my hand, then added: “Of course, sweetheart. I’m sure everything will be A-okay. Eventually.” I tried to take comfort in Momma’s words, but she didn’t know about my vision of Grandma and the clock tower. I was about to tell her everything, when Momma reached up and removed my glasses, wiping the lenses on her shirttail. It was a bad sign. A week ago, Momma never would’ve grabbed my glasses without asking—without giving me time to close my eyes, to avoid seeing any savvy visions.
“Do you think our savvies will ever switch back?” I asked
, taking my glasses from her.
“Honestly, Gypsy?” Momma looked at me with tired eyes. She paused for a long while, sitting so still, I began to wonder if I’d stopped time without knowing it. But eventually she laughed her beautiful laugh and said, “I have no idea what’s going to happen. I kinda wish you did.”
I kinda wished I didn’t.
The sound of the television woke me with a start. It was Friday morning. On Saturday, Poppa would arrive with the moving truck and we would all be together again. At least, that had been the plan.
“Brace yourselves, folks,” the Channel 3 weather lady trilled. “We have a winter storm warning in effect starting at six p.m. Temperatures will drop this afternoon, with snow showers beginning around . . .”
I hunted for my glasses, wishing my eyesight had gotten better with the switch. Samson and Tucker were awake now too. We all listened as the meteorologist continued her crummy forecast with enthusiasm.
“. . . tonight’s fast-moving blizzard is expected to dump up to twenty-six inches of snow on the Denver metro area by midnight. Officials are asking people to stay indoors this evening, and to—”
“Snow?” I cried, thinking, No-no-no-no-no! First there was the tiara. Now there was a blizzard on the way. Drat and drizzle! More and more pieces of my snowy clock tower vision were falling into place. The last two days of sunshine and warm weather had tricked me. I’d thought there was no danger of my vision coming to pass any time soon.
“I hope the weather doesn’t delay your poppa,” Momma said, brushing cake crumbs from her shirt as she joined us in the living room. I wondered if she’d slept.
“Don’t worry, Momma.” Tucker yawned. “Not even a snowstorm could stop Poppa. He never gives up. That’s his ordinary, everyday savvy.”
“That was before the switch.” Samson’s words were soft, but bleak.
“Tucker’s right, kids,” Momma assured us. “Your poppa would never give up on us—switch or no switch. Besides, no one but us has had a problem with things changing.”