I sat in the dirt in front of the playhouse, looking out at the deep blue water of the bay and wishing there was even enough of a breeze to ruffle my hair. I’d gone into the playhouse as soon as I’d gotten here, but the air was so hot and stuffy inside it that I dropped my backpack and came on back out, trying to find a place with enough shade that it didn’t feel like the sun was cooking me alive.
It was funny: when Arden and I had started building the playhouse last summer, balancing plywood scraps together and hammering the nails so hard they went all bent and crooked, I’d been mad, because the only reason we’d decided to build ourselves a playhouse was to make up for the one we’d lost. Maryville was full of old falling-down buildings, along the highways and out in the back of everyone’s fields, most of them left over from when North Carolina was tobacco farms far as the eye could see. They’d been drying sheds, made to hang all those bunches of tobacco leaves from the rafters till they dried out and turned into something you could smoke.
Our farm wasn’t any different. Daddy said the Kellys stopped growing tobacco way longer back than even he could remember, but in the far corner of the peanut field there was one of those old barns, all gray from living who knows how long through the weather—and, as Mama said, always one good gust away from falling down. Daddy had been promising to go knock it down and take the wood to the dump since I was only a little older than Mylie, but it was one of those things he just kept not getting around to.
When Arden and I were ten, we snuck into the tobacco shed without any of our parents knowing and set ourselves up in there, bringing old broken-down folding chairs I grabbed from the trash can and a tablecloth Arden’s mama had thrown out, and calling it our little house. The shed smelled like sweetness and dirt, all the beams stained with tobacco juice, and light and shadow draped over us from the holes in the walls and ceiling.
We played there for a whole year before anyone figured out where we were disappearing to.
When they did, though, there was a reckoning. My mama yelled and yelled, and my daddy went the kind of dead quiet that was almost worse than yelling, and Arden’s parents sat her down in their living room and had a long conversation where they said lots of things like we trust you very much, but and we know you’re very responsible, but and dangerous and condemned and would be heartbroken if anything happened to either of you.
My daddy swore he was going to tear that barn down for real this time, which he didn’t, but Arden and I both got scared enough that we never went in even long enough to get our stuff out. Instead we built the playhouse, which creaked and groaned if the wind blew too hard and which our daddies were pretty sure wasn’t much safer than the tobacco shed—but at least it was smaller, so maybe it wouldn’t kill us quite so quick if it fell on us.
Now I was glad we’d gotten found out. This spot wasn’t all that much farther from my house than our old tobacco shed, but it felt like it was, looking out over the still waters of the bay and hearing the loons that never seemed to make it over to our place. It felt like a different world than the one I’d left behind in my hot, hopeless house this afternoon, and right now, that was what I needed more than just about anything at all.
Arden came late in the afternoon, after I’d already been at the playhouse for a few hours—nearly dinnertime, by the grumbling in my stomach. I’d given in and opened up my bag of sandwiches and was finishing them off, warm peanut butter and sticky honey oozing down my thumbs.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Della Kelly,” said Arden, putting her hand on her hip and raising her eyebrows at me just the way she does when she’s babysitting and Eli gives her sass. I felt my own eyebrows going down, down into deep frowns. Nobody who wasn’t your mama or your own big sister was allowed to give you that kind of a look.
“Shoulda looked here first, then,” I said, licking off the last of the honey-sweet peanut butter and tucking the empty Ziploc back into my backpack. I was feeling cranky, the heat so bad that my hair was nearly soaked with sweat, ponytail and all.
“You should have come to the house first to get me. Why didn’t you?”
I hesitated, the words heavy on my tongue. I rooted around in my backpack and pulled out a bottle of water—warm now, of course—and took a drink so I didn’t have to answer.
Arden waited, not saying a word, until I finally put the bottle back down. You couldn’t play chicken with a girl who had four little siblings. She was still watching me with that expectant eyebrows-up, give-me-your-answer-young-lady sort of face; I wondered if her forehead was hurting yet.
“You said you’d been looking for me everywhere,” I hedged. “You been over to my house?”
Arden nodded. “Your daddy was out in the fields and your mama didn’t know where you’d got to.”
“How were they? What were they doing?”
“Who, your parents?”
“Mama and Mylie.”
Arden gave me a funny look. “Um . . . your mom was at the kitchen table, and Mylie was playing. Why? How long have you been out here?”
“A few hours, I guess.” I bit my lip, looking down at the dirt underneath me. “I ran away.”
“You what?” Arden scooted around so that her face was right next to mine and I couldn’t help but look her in the eye. “Are you serious, Della Kelly? For one thing, that’s a stupid idea. And for another, you don’t think your parents will figure out you’re here as soon as they realize you’re not coming back? And what about your mama? She definitely hadn’t realized it yet. She’d have been in full-on panic mode if she had. Doesn’t that worry you even the tiniest bit?”
I chewed at the inside of my cheek, wishing I felt as confident as I had a few hours ago when I’d packed up my backpack and slipped out the front door of my house.
“I can’t go back yet. A couple days ago I was over with my daddy at Mr. Anton’s house, and Miss Lorena was there. She told me something about how exercising your brain is important when you get older—it stops you forgetting stuff.” I looked past Arden, out the door of the playhouse and to the blue water of the sound, trying to ignore the doubtfulness on her face.
“I don’t know, Della. I’m not sure that’s true for your mom. Isn’t schizophren—”
“It’s true. It’s got to be true. I’ve tried everything else, Arden,” I said, watching a line of geese flying high up over the bay. Everything. Even the Bee Lady and her useless honey. “You gotta believe me about that.”
“I just don’t feel right keeping the secret for you. And how long are you planning to stay here, anyway?”
I hunched my shoulders up, half shrugging, half curling into myself to try to hold off those tears from coming. “Maybe a day or two. But see, it’s already working! You said Mama was out of bed and watching Mylie. She hasn’t done that for two days!”
Arden still looked worried, but at last she sighed and nodded. “I guess so,” she said, picking at her nail polish the way she does when she gets upset. “Though I still don’t really feel right about it.”
“Thanks,” I said, relief running its way through all my skin cells, right down to my fingertips. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. And it won’t be too long. I hope.”