Chapter Two
The ground is soft beneath my feet, like it’s made from Play-Doh instead of dirt. Rainwater pools beneath the seat of the swing, where years of feet have dug a hollow. Droplets cling to the steel bars, shaking from some unseen force.
Usually I’m on that swing, rain or shine. I kick my legs as hard as I can, until I’m flying. My hair covers my face. Tears sting my eyes. The playground becomes a blur.
When I get to the highest point, I think about letting go. Every time, back and forth. I imagine letting go of the squeaky chains that leave the smell of rust on my hands. In my head I don’t crash to the ground. I keep going up and up, into the clouds.
Not today.
I was almost afraid to look at the money once I made it to my trailer, my heart pounding against my ribs. Like it could bite me if I smoothed it out. And when I did look I gasped. A hundred dollars. Enough money to feed me for a month. Two months. Forever.
What is he doing living on the ground, fishing for food, if he has a hundred dollars? I thought it was a five-dollar bill. Maybe twenty at the most. He could have stayed at a motel in the west side for weeks with that money. Has he been gone from home longer than that?
It didn’t feel right leaving that much money in the trailer, so I kept it in my pocket.
Maybe it weighs a hundred pounds too, because I don’t feel like I can swing today.
Mrs. Keller has been acting strange since this morning. She keeps looking at the door, at the clock. When we go to recess she holds me back. “There’s someone coming to see you.”
All I can think about is the money in my pocket. He must have told someone. I’ll be in trouble. My throat feels so tight I can’t even speak. I stole something. I deserve to be punished.
“Don’t worry,” she says, smiling gently. “It’s not bad. I told the principal how good you are in math. How you really need more than we can offer you. She got in touch with someone who can help.”
So it’s not about the money.
That doesn’t really make me feel better.
I wander away from the swings and the slide. Away from the strange climbing gym that no one ever uses, its metal surfaces too hot or too cold. Patchy grass gives way to uneven dirt near the red brick wall. There’s a place tucked into the corner, hidden from the street and from the basketball court where the teacher stands. A hiding place, but one I mostly stay away from. It’s too easy to get trapped back here. Fifth grade boys are the worst. If they trapped me here, what would I do? Fight? Scream? I’m not even sure anyone would come.
I’m afraid to find out.
I hope the wild boy never trapped any girls here. Never pushed them. I don’t think he would do that. He tried to help me. And you stole his money.
It smells bad in the hiding place, like mold and pee and something kind of sweet.
No one’s in the hiding place today. That shouldn’t make me nervous. Someone doesn’t get beaten bloody every single day. Only most. A knot tightens in my stomach. I can’t stand being out in the playground today, being around running and laughter.
A shadow appears over mine, longer and wider.
I turn around fast, but the sun blinds my eyes. There’s someone standing there, way too close. How did he get here without me hearing him? I know it isn’t Mrs. Keller. He doesn’t have her curly hair or her dress. It’s not Mr. Willis with his tennis shoes and track pants. This man’s wearing dress shoes. An overcoat. And the way he stands, so tall and proud. So still. I know I would remember it if I’d seen him before, even without seeing his face. He looks strangely familiar. Like I know him from a dream.
“Hello, little girl,” he says, his voice smooth like paint, spilling over my hands and turning them every color, mixing together until they’re only black.
Is he here about Daddy?
I know my eyes are wide, hands tucked behind my back. “Hello.”
“What’s your name?”
The way he asks, I can tell he already knows. “Penny.”
“Do you know my name?”
My stomach turns over. I shake my head, lips pressed together.
“I’m Jonathan Scott. Have you heard of me?” He doesn’t wait to hear the answer. He probably knows that everyone’s heard of him, even me. Almost everyone in the city owes him something. “Mrs. Keller says you like numbers.”
I don’t like numbers. Not any more than I like breathing or sleeping. It’s something I can do without thinking. It just happens. “I guess.”
“She said you can do all kinds of tricks. Do you want to show me?”
Tricks. Like I’m a dog. And I never want to show anyone.
I don’t want to show him in particular.
I have the sudden flash of Lisa Blake from two trailers down. Her family had less than us, which was saying something. They got in deep with Jonathan Scott. Then one day her momma got her a bunch of makeup from the drugstore. A new dress. She looked like some kind of beauty queen that afternoon. It was summer. And that was the last day I ever saw her.
The cops came around, asking questions, but everyone knew not to say anything. She just disappeared. No one mentioned the makeup. The dress.
Even the kids understood—we didn’t want to end up like Lisa Blake.
“Okay,” I say, my mind racing. I can’t let him think I’m special. “I’m real smart,” I add, with a touch of boasting, because I’d never really say that. It’s pretend.
I don’t want to be noticed by him, not for my brain and not for my body.
“Are you?” He sounds like I said a joke. “What’s twenty-seven times forty-three?”
I pretend to think about it. “One thousand one hundred and sixty-one.”
“That’s right, Penny. And what about…” Now he’s the one pretending to think. “What’s sixty-nine times four hundred and twenty-eight?” After a moment he adds, “Point two.”
I don’t want to know the answer. I try to forget, but the number 29545.8 hovers in my mind. It’s like he asked me my own name. I can’t forget it if I try. “Can you say it again?”
He repeats himself, slow and patient.
I bite my lip, trying to look worried. “We haven’t done points yet.”
“Without it, then.”
I worry the hem of my dress between my fingers, wondering where Mrs. Keller is. Why doesn’t she come and help me? I know the answer. She sent him here. That’s how he knew I liked numbers. This is who she was waiting for all morning. I was afraid of a group of small boys, when instead I only needed to worry about one big one.
“Twenty-nine thousand,” I say, before taking a breath. “Two hundred and twelve?”
My failure hangs in the air, as thick as the leftover rain. I don’t want to play it dumb completely. He would wonder why Mrs. Keller called him at all. It might get her in trouble. And worse than that, he might know I’m pretending.
“Or maybe twenty-nine hundred, five hundred…and forty-five.”
“Correct,” he says softly, but he isn’t impressed. Not now that I’ve gotten it wrong.
I don’t want to put red lipstick on. I don’t want to wear a new dress. I don’t want to be interesting to a man like this. He might want me for a different purpose than Lisa, but I’m safer if he doesn’t want me at all. “Do you want to try fractions?” I offer him. “We started those.”
“No, little girl. We’re done here.”
He turns and walks away, leaving me leaning against the red brick. Only when he’s gone do I take a breath, that sickly sweet air a familiar relief in my lungs. For the rest of the school day I have to keep reminding myself that I can breathe. I’m not underwater.
Even if it feels like that.
* * *
When the school bus screeches to a stop in the road, a cloud of dust rises into the air, turned golden by the waning sun. The Happy Hills Trailer Park is to the west of the city, nestled between Tanglewood’s slums and a ridge of wilderness on the other side. It gets dark here before anywhere else, in the shadows of either side.
My backpack feels heavy with the book Mrs. Keller gave me. Trigonometry Proofs, it says in large block letters. The cover is wrinkled and torn, the inside pages marked up with pencil. I don’t know where she got it from, but she said it’s mine now.
I want to go home and look inside, but there’s a hurt inside that stops me. I don’t think it’s only hunger. Guilt. That’s what I’ve been feeling all day, the hundred-dollar bill I stole burning hotter in my pocket with every minute of the day.
What I should do is return the whole thing, but it’s already Friday. The school gives me breakfast and lunch with my number, but that leaves me awful hungry on the weekend.
The bus lurches forward, leaving me in the middle of the road. Dust settles back around me, a thin layer sticking to the sweat on my skin.
Instead of taking the path into the park I follow the road to the end.
Thick burglary bars cover the windows of the Tanglewood General Store. Colorful lottery posters and cigarette ads peek through the black iron. A bell rings above me when I open the door.
Mr. Romero stands up and comes around the counter, leaving his baseball game playing on the small TV on the counter.
“Penny,” he says, his voice scratchy. Nothing like the smooth voice of the stranger at school.
“Hello,” I say without meeting his eyes.
If Daddy comes back with money I can get candy sometimes. Kit Kats are my favorite because I can eat one and save the rest for later.
Instead I head down the pantry aisle, where the noodles and peanut butter are.
I don’t know if Mr. Romero thinks I’m going to steal something, but I’ve only done that a few times. He follows me down the row, staying too close for comfort. I pick a few cans of soup—mushroom barley and turkey rice. When I have four cans my arms are full. I walk to the counter and set them down so I can take out the hundred-dollar bill.
The bushy eyebrows on Mr. Romero’s face go up. “Where’d you get that?”
I shrug, because he doesn’t really want to know. He doesn’t really care.
“Your daddy come back?”
“Not yet.”
A grunt. “He’s been gone a long time, this time around. What’s it been? A week now?”
Two weeks. “I don’t know.”
Mr. Romero runs a blackened rag across his forehead. “Runs off and leaves you behind. I know times have changed, but that doesn’t seem right. I don’t say anything to him usually, since he’s one of my best customers.”
Half the trailers in Happy Hills are empty. Some of them have squatters, but they don’t spend much at the store. I’m sure Daddy has bought most of the lottery tickets that get sold here. Every so often he wins a hundred dollars, but it’s never more than he spent.
There’s such a long pause that I think Mr. Romero isn’t going to sell me the soup. Then I would have to walk a long way into town to buy something else. Or most likely go hungry again.
“If your daddy doesn’t come back, you come see me. You know which trailer I’m in.”
There’s a lot I’ll do to survive—lie and steal. But I won’t ever step foot into Mr. Romero’s trailer. He looks at me like he’s calculating. Not numbers, though. Something else.
If I went inside I don’t think I’d ever leave. “Okay.”
He presses a button and the register pops open. Slowly he counts out change.
Ninety-eight fifty-two. That’s what I should get back.
He puts four twenty-dollar bills on the counter. A five. Two ones. Twenty-five cents.
It’s short, so I hold my ground until he adds the rest of the money. Finally I meet his eyes. His flash with dislike. I don’t like letting people see what I know, but it’s not worth losing money over.
Especially when the money isn’t mine.
He gives me a thin plastic bag, the handles stretching under the weight of the cans. I pass my trailer and head into the woods, the same way I went the night before. I have this idea for a deal. Or maybe it’s a plea. Whatever the word, I’m going to offer the cans and the money back to the boy. Then he’ll have what he started with, so maybe he won’t be so mad.
Maybe he’ll let me take one of the cans.
When I get to the lake there’s no one there. Nothing left of his backpack or the Styrofoam or his grown-up magazines. Only a few scuff marks by the water to show that anyone was ever there at all.