And the next day at school, Willow made that plan with the help of the binder full of bus schedules in the library instead of eating lunch. The plan was to walk to the bus stop from their house and take the bus all the way to Manhattan. She studied the times of the buses and turns in the streets. She calculated the timing of each step and what it would require to execute it. A ticket cost two hundred and nine dollars. A second one for Asher took it to four hundred and eighteen. And they would need some extra money for a taxi. And maybe some candy on the way. Five hundred dollars was the number she scribbled in the back of her word search book and settled on. Five hundred dollars to get back to Mom.
Willow thought about how they would get all that money. She and Asher could pool all the money in their piggy banks. And then there was their weekly allowance to count on.
When Willow got home from school, she decided to count up just how far they had to go to reach five hundred dollars.
She wanted to start with what was in Asher’s piggy bank. So she walked into her brother’s room and watched him as he shook the porcelain pig next to his ear. There was a hollow clank before one dime fell out onto his rug. Asher partly frowned, and then tugged open the drawer next to his bed. He had been spending his allowance every week on action figures from the old toy shop next to the school.
“Sometimes Jack in the candy store even gives me a Blow Pop if I tell him I did all my homewowk,” Asher said with pride. Willow did her best to tell her brother it was okay, that she was happy he had so many action figures and sometimes Blow Pops, but, in reality, her insides were bubbling. Because when she looked into that drawer full of action figures, Willow didn’t see any of Asher’s happiness. She only saw how much longer it would take her to get to Mom. How every plastic Batman meant another ride on Bus #50. Another meal at her long, empty lunch table. How every contorted zombie figurine meant another sleepless night in her cold blue sheets. Another boring plate of string beans and fish for dinner. How every stupid robot, or alien, or superhero meant another stupid, miserable, boring day at Dad’s stupid, miserable, boring house.
Willow stormed across the house to count up the contents of her own piggy bank, desperate to figure out just how much more money she would need. And although there was a knob at the bottom of her piggy bank that would have allowed Willow to shake and wiggle her savings out gently, Willow felt like smashing it. She felt like lifting it above her head and slamming it down onto the driveway. She felt like watching all the pieces scatter across the asphalt. She felt like making a mess that maybe she wouldn’t even clean up. She felt like making noise. Even if no one else could hear it.
So Willow snatched her piggy bank from the top of her wicker dresser, tucked it under her arm and marched out to her driveway with focus in her eyes and her mother on her mind. And when she got outside, she lifted the porcelain pig over her head and she slammed it down onto the ground.
It barely made a thud as it cracked into five and a half pieces to reveal a sizable pile of bills. Nothing shattered into a million tiny parts like Willow imagined. Nothing erupted into a cloud of white dust. Little ceramic pieces didn’t zip in every direction across the blacktop. Out there on Dad’s driveway, it was just the chirp of birds, the smell of new flowers, the calm afternoon sun, five and a half pieces of piggy bank and a pile of crinkled bills.
Willow felt the back of her throat tighten and the familiar pressure of tears forming behind her eyes. Ever since that day at Mom’s house packing up boxes, her tears almost always stayed stuck right there behind her eyes. They would try to force their way out and run down her cheek, but Willow kept them back there. No matter how much they would relentlessly press and press, Willow held them back there.
She held them back there when she tied her shoes in the morning. And when she took off her jacket and hung it in her cubby. She held them back there when she was walking down the hall to gym class. And when she stared at the clock. Willow held them back every afternoon when she pressed the heavy door to Dad’s house open. And when she completed the afternoon checklist. When she retreated to her room with her word search book. And when she set the table for dinner.
She held them back when she swirled her pasta around in its bowl. And when she brushed her teeth and washed her face before bed. She held them back when she slipped under her sheets. But most of the time, when it was late and dark and quiet in her bedroom, Willow couldn’t fight the pressure anymore as the tears came. For a moment, they would stop at the hurdle of her eyelids, but when it was late and dark and quiet in her bedroom, her tears would fall down her face.
But here, on the driveway, looking at that five and a half pieces of ceramic piggy bank and that pile of crinkled bills, Willow couldn’t hold the tears back as she hoped to get to five hundred dollars.
So Willow sat there, deliberately counting each one of her bills, tear after tear streaming down her face. She picked one up, pulled it straight and placed it in a neat pile. She counted her bills, and then counted them again to make sure. She was relieved to be reminded of the hundred-dollar bills she got for her past birthdays from Roy. “Save it for a rainy day,” he told her each time, and then winked. Willow was happy she listened. Four hundred and sixty-four dollars. She didn’t have so far to go. And even though she had barely done anything yet, all this thinking, all this feeling, all this dreaming about ways to put her life back together had already started to exhaust her.
Willow placed her elbows onto her knees as she sat legs crossed on the concrete. And let her palms handle the burden of her heavy head for a moment. She let her hands carry the weight of all that thinking and feeling and dreaming and aching.
It had only been a couple of days, and she was already tired of waiting. Because there was only so much happiness a dream could infuse into the day-to-day happenings of a life. The waking up. The morning checklist. The bus ride to school. The empty lunch table. The lesson in American history. The bus ride home from school. The time at the desk with homework. The nighttime checklist. And although she had her plans, and although Mom was in her future, Willow was living a soul-crushingly lonely present. Because she had nothing in her present world but the little steps leading her toward Mom. Nothing else in her present world was getting her through the day-to-day happenings of her life.
With her head in her hands and her eyes closed, Willow didn’t realize that her father had been watching her through the kitchen window this whole time.
Willow carried her small stack of dollar bills and few pieces of broken piggy bank upstairs. She knew she needed more money and she knew she needed it fast. She fell into her beanbag chair and thought up ways to do it.
The other kids in Willow’s class had always been getting money for things. They sold brownies so that their basketball team could get new team jerseys. They got in shorts and a T-shirt and stood on Main Street offering five-dollar car washes so that their cheerleading team could afford their annual trip to Disney World. When they were in their earlier years of elementary school, these same kids had set up on their front lawn with cups of store-bought lemonade and made enough money to buy new charms for their bracelets or laces for their sneakers.
Willow thought this was something she could do too. Willow, Asher and Mom had baked a billion things together—cakes, and cookies, and pies. And they would always use an ingredient that wasn’t listed in the recipe—sprinkles or Reese’s Pieces or a handful of Cocoa Puffs. Sometimes they would dye the whole batter a different color with one firm squeeze of food coloring. And while these additions never made their cakes or cookies or pies any tastier, they made them way more fun to eat. That surprise burst of peanut butter when you found a Reese’s Pieces in your chocolate cake. Or the unexpected bite of crunchy sugar when you found a sprinkle in your cherry pie. The excitement of eating a bright orange cookie. Yes, her classmates would share in this kind of silly delight. So just like that, Willow’s Bake Sale was born.
She opened her box of crayons for the first time since Mom died, left, and scribbled “Willow’s Bake Sale” in big purple letters on a big piece of cardboard she found in the basement. She drew a red cookie and a blue cake and a green pie. She scribbled and scribbled with her hair bouncing and her tongue out. She scribbled so hard she had to peel the paper back on the Purple Mountains’ Majesty, Razzmatazz, Screamin’ Green and Blizzard Blue Crayola crayons. And when she was done coloring in all of her block letters, and all of the cookies, and cakes, and pies, Willow propped her poster up against her desk using her non-scribble-sore arm and stepped back. It looked perfect.
So Willow went downstairs to bake.
It was already almost 9:00 p.m. and her eyelids were already heavy, but Willow was determined. She pulled her big purple headphones over her hair, placed them on her ears and jammed her pointer finger into the play button. And as “Raspberry Beret” filled her head, Willow bopped her head, tapped her right toe and got to baking. She measured and poured and mixed. She stirred and sprinkled and licked the spoon.
And in no time at all, there was blue chocolate chip cookie batter with crushed up bits of Peppermints in it. And bright green oatmeal cookie batter with Apple Jacks hiding inside. And a flimsy but tasty cherry pie with chocolate chips floating inside. And they were each in the oven coming to life. They were each in the oven bringing her mother back to life. Bringing Willow back to life. They were each in the oven filling the kitchen with the sugary sweetness of Mom’s house. Filling Willow’s bones with the sugary sweetness of Mom’s love.
Willow pressed her nose against the warm glass of the oven and watched her cake and cookies come to life as she daydreamed of her mother twirling around the kitchen holding a whisk at her lips like it was a gold-studded microphone.
* * *
The next day when she got to school, Willow brought her poster and cookies by the principal’s office before lunchtime for approval. Principal Rhoads pursed her red lips together and looked skeptically down at the neon cookies. Willow told her about the food coloring and candy surprises, and then was ushered into the cafeteria to set up for her bake sale.
Willow sat in her plastic chair behind her plastic table and cardboard sign as fifth-grader after fifth-grader walked right by her.
They looked at her cookies through the corner of their eye and kept walking. They turned their necks around and scanned over Willow and her treats while sitting on their cafeteria benches. And then they turned back around to their Oreos and Chips Ahoy! neatly rationed into Ziploc bags. Willow gripped the bottom edge of the table so angrily when Freddie Fisher, and then Kara Avett, and then Erin Simmons, and then Ray Callahan walked by. She gripped the bottom edge of the table so intensely that she got strips of plastic under her fingernails. But still, Willow waited and waited for someone to buy something. Anything. Because even one single purchased cookie meant she was a little bit closer to seeing Mom. She waited and waited as the clock tick, tick, ticked. She waited and waited as the other fifth graders bit, bit, bit into their cookies. She waited and waited as her classmates sipped the last sips of their juice boxes. She waited and waited and nothing happened.
But with two minutes left of lunchtime, Amanda and Patricia walked toward her table with elbows interlocked, and then stopped right in front of it. They had their straight blond hair styled the same way—tucked neatly into a headband with a bow just to the left side of center. They were both wearing pink skirts and white T-shirts and white platform sneakers.
Willow unlatched her fingernails from the bottom of the table. Her first purchase was coming. She could feel it.
Willow looked up at Amanda. And then Patricia. And then back at Amanda, who was holding a dollar bill. Amanda looked back at Willow, scanned over Willow’s treats. And then she laughed one loud laugh and yanked Patricia back into movement.
As Amanda walked away, Willow heard her whisper in her best friend’s ear, “I bet you’ll get those dots on your arms and start tripping in the hallways if you eat her weird outer space cookies.”
And then Amanda and Patricia giggled and giggled as they walked across the cafeteria perfectly in stride.
Willow felt that pressure behind her eyes again. And she clenched her jaw and fists to keep from turning her plastic table upside down and ripping her poster into one hundred teeny, tiny pieces and throwing them all over the cafeteria. After all that planning, all that coloring, all that baking, Willow wasn’t a single step closer to 299 East 82nd Street.
And it hurt all over.
Willow Thorpe’s Bake Sale was never going to work.
She now realized the flaw in her plan. The kids with the perfectly decorated posters with the perfectly crafted bubble letters and the jars full of cash at the end of the day were not Willow Thorpe. They were kids that other kids, and teachers, and parents liked. They were the kids that played together at recess and had playdates after school. They were the kids who were on the same weekend soccer team and who attended each other’s birthday parties. They were not the kid that peed in her pants or had hair that went boing. They were not the kid that tripped in the hallways or wore the same outfit every day or kept a book of word searches in her backpack.
* * *
She threw away her cookies and thought of new ways to make her money. She wondered exactly what she would have to do. How far she would be willing to go.