Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy (10 page)

I waited another minute, and when she didn’t come out, I decided it was time for me to go in. I scrambled down the bank and when I got to the box, I stood to one side and pulled open the flap. Now, I’m half expecting to see the Girl sitting there, ready to blow my brains out, but what I see instead is an old down sleeping bag, a pile of clothes, and a paper sack.

The paper sack is full, but I can’t tell of what. And I’m thinking that maybe the goblets and cross are stashed inside it, so I take a quick look over both shoulders and dive inside.

When the flap comes down, it’s suddenly
dark
inside. And it smells wet. Wet and musty—like old magazines in a basement. And I don’t know if it was the Hefty bag on the roof keeping all the moisture in or if all refrigerator boxes smell that bad after a while, but the place was in serious need of some ventilation.

After a minute my eyes got used to the darkness, so I crawled over to the grocery sack and opened it up. And what’s inside? Cans. No cross, no goblets, just cans of food. Pineapple, macaroni and cheese, beans, stew, and spaghetti. Lots of spaghetti. And next to the cans is an old can opener and a spoon.

I give up on the bag and try the pile of clothes, but there’s nothing in that, either. Just an old pair of jeans, a couple of shirts and a jacket. And I’m just about to put the clothes back the way I’d found them when I notice
writing on the inside of the jacket. I flip it back open and there on the label is
HOLLY JANQUELL
.

So. Her name was Holly. I flipped the jacket over and realized that maybe I was jumping to conclusions. Maybe this was just a jacket she’d gotten from the Salvation Army.

I probably should’ve just backed right out of there—I mean, I didn’t see the cross or the goblets, and that
was
why I was there. But I couldn’t quit wondering whether Holly Janquell was a girl who owned nothing but one jacket, one sleeping bag, and a sack of canned spaghetti, or if she was a girl with so many jackets that she could give one away to the Salvation Army and never miss it. So I started looking for something else with a name on it.

And there I am, pawing through the clothes, when light comes flooding into the box. I turn around and find myself looking straight up the blade of a knife.

I’m not talking pocketknife. I’m talking you could gut a grizzly with this thing. It’s grafted with duct tape to one end of a broomstick, and practically grafted to the other end is the Girl.

She doesn’t say a word. She just looks at me like I’m a big ugly roach in her house, and she’s Raid. I yank the sleeping bag in front of me for some kind of feeble protection, and yell, “Wait! Wait, you don’t understand!” And as I’m looking for that spear to come gashing through feathers, I take a gamble and say, “Holly! Holly, put it down. I’m sorry! I’m
sorry.”

Nothing happens, so I sneak a peek around the side of the bag. She’s glaring at me and that skewer of hers isn’t
even quivering. It just keeps pointing right at my chest while she shuffles into a better position.

Before she can shish-kebab me, I blurt out, “Holly, please. Just put it down. I’m not here to hurt you or steal anything, I …”

She jabs her spear forward a few inches. “Who sent you here?”

I shrink back a little. “Nobody. Honest!”

She comes in another couple of inches. “Those nosy nuns sent you, didn’t they?”

I’m trying to figure out the best way to bust a back door in this box when she says, “How’d they find out my name?”

I drop the sleeping bag and pick up her jacket. “It’s written right here! Nobody sent me, I’m just here ’cause I thought you might have Father Mayhew’s goblets and cross. He thought
I
took his cross and it’s real important to him that he gets it back. I’m sorry, okay? I was wrong.”

She keeps right on crouching in front of me, but I can see a little doubt tiptoeing around her eyes.

I whisper, “I’m sorry, okay?” I put the jacket down and put my hands up. “I didn’t mean any harm. Really.”

She studies me some more and then says, “This … is … my
home
.”

I look down. “I know. I just thought …”

She moves the knife a little closer to me. “You thought breaking into a box wouldn’t be the same thing as breaking into somebody’s house, didn’t you? You thought tearing through my stuff wouldn’t be like going through someone’s dresser, didn’t you? You probably live in some
cushy little house and sleep on a cushy little bed and have dinner put in front of your face every night—”

“No! I don’t! I live with my grandmother in an apartment where kids aren’t even allowed! I’ve got to sneak up and down the fire escape stairs so no one will know I’m there. I sleep on the couch and all the stuff I own fits in one tiny drawer in my grandmother’s dresser.” I look around and say real quietly, “Maybe I don’t live in a box, and maybe I don’t eat cold spaghetti for dinner, but there’s no way I have it
cushy
.” I give her half a smile. “I wouldn’t switch with you, but I’d trade your cold spaghetti for Grams’ lima bean casserole any day!”

She glares at me, kind of biting the side of her cheek. Then she asks, “So why you living there?”

“My mom decided she had better things to do than take care of me.” The knife’s starting to come down a little, so I take a deep breath and say, “How’d you wind up here?”

Her spear pops right back up. “It’s none of your business! And you may think you’re like me, but you’re not. You’re just like the rest of them: Something’s missing? I saw that homeless girl hangin’ around. Must be her.”

“No … I …”

She jabs the knife forward. “Shut up!”

While she’s busy thinking of what she’s going to do with me, I try to scramble up a reason for her not to kill me. “We followed you out here yesterday.”

She squints at me.
“We?”

“Yeah. Me and my friends, Marissa and Dot.”

She blinks at me a few times and then she and her spear back out of the box.

I can hear something out there, but I can’t quite place the sound, and when I scoot my bottom out of the box, she’s sitting on the riverbank with her face buried in her sleeve, crying.

I kind of bob around in front of her, trying to figure out what to do. She looks up and spits out, “Now I’m gonna have to move!”

I sit next to her and say, “No, you’re not! We won’t tell anyone.”

She snickers, “Oh, right. You tracked me all the way out here and you’re not going to tell anyone? Give me a break! I give it two days. Cops’ll be swarming this place and next thing you know I’ll be back in a foster home wishing I was dead.”

“I swear I won’t tell anyone! I don’t think you should have to live out here, but …”

She jumps up. “See? This always happens! Someone comes along and tries to
help
me. Why can’t people just leave me alone?” She kicks the dirt and says, “Living out here’s a whole lot better than living in some foster home or under the bridge with those derelicts.”

“Derelicts?”

“Yeah. Those bums don’t have anything better to do than swipe your stuff or hit on you.” She flashes a look at me and says, “This place was perfect. Why couldn’t you just have left me alone?”

I push sand around with the toe of my high-top a minute. “You don’t have to move. Really. I’ll swear Marissa and Dot to secrecy and …”

She just rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right. We’ll see how long
that
lasts.” She looks at the box and says, “It was a lot of work. It’s the best one I’ve had.”

I try to sound real casual when I ask, “How many have you had?”

She scowls at me. “You’re awfully nosy, you know that?” Then she looks off over the riverbed and says, “About four.”

I’m staring at her, thinking about everything she’s said, when she turns to me and sighs. “I ran away in June.” And suddenly she’s not looking like the Riverbed Savage anymore. She’s looking scared and lonely and tired.

“Why?”

She hurls a rock into the sand. “I’d rather live like this than be locked in a closet or made to eat
dog
food.” She throws another rock and says, “I’m also not into having my head dunked in the toilet.”

My eyes must’ve been bugged way out because she laughs and says, “I guess you’ve never been Sani-flushed, huh?”

I just shake my head.

“Why you working at the soup kitchen anyway? You some kind of nun-in-training or something?”

Well, that’s a laugh. “No! I’m working off a detention for school. I’ve got twenty hours to do and my Grams arranged for me to work it off at St. Mary’s.”

“Twenty hours? Wow. The most I ever got was two.”

“So where’d you go to school?”

She scowls at me. “There you go again. It’s none of your business and I’m not gonna tell you. Next thing you know you’ll be calling up my old school and getting me
thrown in another stupid foster home. Just back off, okay? I’m doing fine. In another few years I’ll be able to get a job and get on with life. Right now I just want to be left alone.”

I take a deep breath. “What are you going to do when it rains?”

“Get wet—what do you think?” She stands up and says, “I’ll survive, okay? And now if you don’t mind, teatime’s over.”

I start up the bank and then I remember her backpack. I turn around and say, “Look, Holly, if you did take the goblets and cross, at least give back the cross. It’s Father Mayhew’s and it means a lot to him.”

“Like I said, you’re no different than the rest of them.”

I take a deep breath and say, “Well, you haven’t actually said you
didn’t
take them. And I’m not asking because you’re homeless. I’m asking because the day Father Mayhew’s cross got stolen I saw you leaving the church, and yesterday I heard something clinking around in your backpack. Sounded like goblets to me.”

“So I’m a suspect, just for going to church, huh?” She whips her backpack from behind a bush and pulls out two old horseshoes. She clinks them together and says, “And you think
these
sound like gold? Don’t I wish! I took them to the Thrift Store, but CeCe wouldn’t give me a nickel for them.” She hurls them out to the riverbed. “Fat lot of luck they’ve brought me!”

Now watching those rusty horseshoes skid into the sand, I feel bad. Really bad. For the way she lives, for what she’s been through. For ever having suspected her. But all I can seem to say is, “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her spear at me and says, “Talk to your friends. I don’t feel like moving, and if one of you rats on me …”

I say, “Trust me, no one’s going to rat on you.”

“
Trust
you? What a laugh.” She shakes her head and snickers. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You can’t trust anyone.”

“But I trusted
you
. I told you all kinds of top-secret stuff!”

“Well, I guess you’re not too bright, then, are you?”

I walk up the bank, but as I turn to look back at her, I don’t see the Riverbed Savage that she wants me to see. I see a skinny girl in jeans and a sweatshirt, trying to act tough while she’s shaking in her high-tops.

I duck back through the bushes, and as I’m stomping across the field, I think about rain and wind and winter. And when I get to the sidewalk, I look back at the path cutting through the weeds. And I want to run back and drag her out of the riverbed and into a house, because there’s no way she’s going to make it through the winter in that refrigerator box.

No way.

Every time I tried to think about something else, my brain would find a way back to Holly. I thought about her sleeping with her spear at night and about her eating cold spaghetti for breakfast. I thought about her having to wait for the sun to come up to go pee in the bushes and how long it must take to warm up in the morning. Mostly, though, I thought about all the people who must have betrayed her and how the last thing I wanted was to become one of them.

I couldn’t exactly call Marissa and Dot on the telephone and make them swear not to tell anyone about Holly—not with Grams right there in the apartment. So when school rolled around on Monday, I’d practically forgotten about the softball tournament; all I could think about was getting Marissa and Dot to swear to secrecy.

I didn’t have a chance to get them alone until lunch, and by then Marissa was so wrapped up in preparing for the game that when I asked her to swear, all she said was, “Right, right, sure,” and went back to talking about softball.

Dot, though, interrupts her and says, “I thought we’d already decided not to tell anyone. Why are you so worried about it?”

“I’m not worried. Holly is.”

They both look at me and say,
“Holly?”

So I tell them about my trip out to the riverbed. And I’m just getting to the part where Holly practically runs me through with a whaling knife when I notice Monet Jarlsberg coming our way.

Now, I don’t let Monet know I’ve spotted her. I just unwrap my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and whisper, “Whatever you do, don’t turn around. Heather’s little scout is coming this way and I have a feeling it’s not to buy us sodas.”

Marissa and Dot do a lot of twitching in their seats, but they make themselves not turn around. And when Monet slides onto the bench right behind them, we all get real busy eating our lunches and saying stuff like, “I can’t believe Mr. Tiller gave us forty-five problems for homework tonight,” and “What are you going to do for Thanksgiving?”