Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

She gave her shrug again. “I’m Queen of the Strays. Even my mom says so. Which reminds me, I’m supposed to be picking up some junk for my mom. See you around.”

She was already pedaling down the street. When she hit puddles, muddy water rooster-tailed up her back, but she didn’t avoid them. Fluorescent cats and a one-boobed Barbie. Genuinely weird, I decided. I liked her. “Yeah, see you,” I called after her.

I got home just as the rain resumed. I called Mom’s office and left a message on her voice mail that I was safely home. I dumped my books in my room and went to the kitchen. Not much in the fridge. There used to be little microwave pizzas or pudding cups when Mom and Dad were together. Not that we’re starving now, just on a budget. I grabbed an apple and some cheese. Then I watched television and did homework until Mom got home. I forgot about Lonnie until late that night. I thought about rain soaking the cat’s body and hoped someone had picked it up. Then I thought about all the live strays, shivering in the rain. Lonnie was Queen of the Strays. I wondered what she had meant and then I fell asleep.

Three weeks passed. I didn’t see Lonnie. I watched for her, in the lunchroom at school or when I saw kids on bikes in the street, but I never saw her. Then one day, walking home from school, I found two outlines of dead cats in the street. The paint was bright and fresh.

I had reached the front of our apartment building and was fishing my key out of my shirt when Lonnie yelled to me from down the block. I waved back and she came in a lopsided run. She favored her right leg. As she came, I realized that her whole body twisted that direction. It hadn’t been so obvious when she was on her bike.

“Hey, Mandy,” she greeted me.

I was surprised at how glad I was to see her. “Hey, Lonnie! Long time, no see. Where’s your bike?”

She shrugged. “Got stole. My mom left it out and someone took it while I was gone. She didn’t even notice until I asked her where it went. So.” She paused, then changed the subject. “Hey. Look what I made.” She pulled a little drawstring bag out of her shirt. It was hanging around her neck on a string. “This is my new, uh, whatacallit, omelette.”

“Amulet,” I said reflexively.

She tugged the bag open. Inside was a little princess doll from a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Like the Barbie, it was missing a boob. As it was dressed in a ball gown, it looked very peculiar. Lonnie shrugged at my frown. “It doesn’t look as good as the other one.”

I changed the subject. “So. Where were you, then?”

She shrugged again as she replaced her amulet. “CPS came and got me, ’cause I missed so much school. They stuck me in a foster home, but they couldn’t make me go to school either. So now I got a deal with my social worker. She lets me live with my mom, I stay out of trouble and go to school.”

“I didn’t see you at school today,” I pointed out. “If you live around here, you should go to Mason.”

“Yeah, I should, ” she conceded sarcastically. “But even when I’m there, you wouldn’t see me. I’m in the special-ed classes at the end of the hall.”

“But you’re not retarded!” I protested.

“Special ed isn’t all retarded. There’s deaf kids. And ADD. Hyperactive. Emotionally disturbed. They got lots of names for us troublemakers. They just shove us together and forget about us.”

“Oh,” I said lamely.

“I don’t care.” She smiled and wagged her head to show how little it bothered her. “Mostly I just read all day. They don’t bother me, I don’t give them any grief.”

“Well.” I glanced up at the sky. “I’ve got to go in. I have to call my mom as soon as I get home from school.”

“Oh, latchkey kid, huh?” She watched me stick my key in the security door. “Well, after that, do you want to hang out?”

I stopped. “I’m not supposed to have friends in when Mom isn’t home,” I said awkwardly. I hated saying it. I was sure she’d take it as an excuse to ditch her.

“So who’s going to tell?” she demanded with a superior look. I quailed before it. Knowing I was going to regret this, knowing I’d have to tell my mom later, I unlocked the door and let her in ahead of me.

Our apartment was on the third floor. I was painfully conscious of Lonnie limping up the stairs. There was an elevator at the other end of the building but I’d never used it. I felt almost ashamed that my body was sound and whole and that the climb didn’t bother me. As I unlocked my door, I automatically said, “Wipe your feet.”

“Du-uh!” Lonnie retorted sarcastically. She walked in just like a stray cat, with that sort of wiggle that says they’re doing you a favor to come in. She stopped in the middle of our living room. For an instant, the envy on her face was so intense it was almost hatred. Then she gave her shrug. “Nice place,” she said neutrally. “Got anything to eat?”

“In the kitchen. I’ve got to phone Mom.”

While I left my message, Lonnie went through the refrigerator. By the time I got off the phone, she had eaten an apple, drunk a big glass of milk and poured herself a second one, and taken out the bread and margarine. “Want a sandwich?” she asked as I turned around.

“I hate peanut butter and that’s all there is,” I said stiffly. I’d never seen anyone go through a refrigerator so fast. Especially someone else’s refrigerator.

“There’s sugar,” she said, spreading margarine thickly on two slices of bread. “Ever had a sugar sandwich? Mom used to give them to me all the time.”

“That’s gross,” I said as she picked up the sugar bowl and dumped sugar on the bread. She pushed it out in a thick layer, capped it with the other piece of buttered bread. When she lifted it, sugar dribbled out around the edges. Her teeth crunched in the thick layer of sugar. I winced. I imagined her teeth melting away inside her mouth.

“You ought to try it,” she told me through a mouthful. She washed it down with half the glass of milk, sighed, and took another sandy bite.

As she drained off the milk, I suddenly knew that Lonnie had been really hungry. Not after-school snack hungry, but really hungry. I had seen the billboards about Americans going to bed hungry, but I never grasped it until I watched Lonnie eat. It scared me. I suddenly wanted her out of our house. It wasn’t all the food she had eaten or the sugar mess on the floor. It suddenly seemed that by living near people like Lonnie and having her inside our house, Mom and I had gotten closer to some invisible edge. First there had been the real family and home, Mom and Dad and I in a house with a yard and Pop-Tarts and potato chips in the kitchen. Then there was Mom and I in an apartment, no yard, toast and jam instead of Pop-Tarts . . . We were safe right now, as long as Dad sent the support money, as long as Mom kept her job, but right down the street there were people who lived in cruddy apartments and their kids were in special ed and were hungry. That was scary. Mom and I weren’t people like that. We’d never be people like that. Unless . . .

“Let’s go hang out,” I said to her. I didn’t even put her glass in the dishwasher or sweep up the sugar. Instead, I took a pack of graham crackers out of the cupboard. I opened it as we walked to the door. She followed me, just like a hungry stray.

I felt safer as soon as I shut the door behind us. But now I was stuck outside with her on a cold and windy day. “Want to go to the library?” I offered. It was one of the few places Mom had approved for me to hang out on my own. Even then, I was supposed to say I was going there and phone again when I got back.

“Naw,” Lonnie said. She took the package of graham crackers, shook out three, and handed the stack back to me. “I have to pick up some junk for my mom. But we can do my route before that. Come on.”