When (v5) - Rebecca Stead

I went to the intercom and pushed the Talk button.

“Who is it?”

Her dad’s voice: “It’s Annemarie and her unshaven father!”

I buzzed long and hard in a way that was supposed to say “you are extra welcome to be here.” Also, the lobby door is so heavy I wanted to give them time to get it open.

Mom came and stood next to me by the front door, saying nothing and running her fingers through her hair. She was wearing jeans and had changed her T-shirt for a black turtleneck sweater.

It was at that moment, standing next to her, that I figured out the truth. The truth was that Mom saw it too: the peeling paint, the cigarette butts on the stairs, everything. It soaked into me like water into sand, fast and heavy-making.

But I still couldn’t apologize for what I’d said. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even smile at her.

“Welcome!” Mom sang to Annemarie’s dad. “I’m so glad Annemarie can spend the night with us.”

Annemarie’s dad had a cardboard box full of stuff, little containers and plastic bags, which he offered to Mom. “I’m sure Miranda’s mentioned that Annemarie eats a special diet,” he started.

“Oh!” Mom looked at me. “Actually …”

“Never fear!” He pushed the box at her again. “I’ve brought all sorts of appropriate goodies. Feel free to sample them yourself. They’re not bad, if I do say so myself!”

Mom smiled and took the box. “That’s wonderful. Thanks. Had I known …”

“Never fear!” Annemarie’s dad said again. I saw that the things inside were tied up with purple and green curly ribbon, like Christmas presents.

Annemarie and I played some records in my room, and Mom brought in a special platter with Annemarie’s snacks on it, and a bowl of chips for me, and then we watched TV in the living room for a while before bed. We were watching Love Boat when we heard something hit the kitchen floor, followed by a bunch of cursing from Mom.

A minute later she popped her head in and looked at Annemarie. “Sorry. You didn’t hear that, okay? I dropped some frozen grape juice on my foot.”

Annemarie smiled a wide smile. “No problem.”

“Your mom is so cool,” she said later, when we were in our beds and her face was resting on Moms pillow. “I like her a lot. She’s like a real person, you know? And she treats you like a real person too. My dad still acts like I’m a baby.”

“I guess.”

But who wants to be treated like a real person? I thought. I wanted to be treated like Annemarie and have all my snacks tied up with ribbon.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, Annemarie was still there. I felt this big rush of relief, like I’d been worrying all night that she would disappear. Maybe I had been, without realizing it.

“Thank God you’re awake!” she said, her head propped up on one arm. “I’ve been poking you for twenty minutes. You sleep like the dead.”

“What time is it?” I asked, throwing off my blanket.

“Time to eat,” she said. “I’m starved.”

“Can you eat cereal?” I asked. “All I know how to make is cereal and toast.”

“Nope,” she said. “Can’t eat either one. Got any eggs?”

We went to the kitchen to check.

“Good morning!” Mom was standing in front of the stove, making bacon. “Annemarie, I called your dad last night, and he told me that you have a thing for bacon omelets.”

“Yum!” Annemarie said. “That smells great. No wonder I’m so hungry.”

I was staring. Mom had serious bed head and her eyes were puffy with sleep. But she was up at seven-thirty in the morning, making us bacon omelets. I wanted to hug her. But didn’t.

Things That Turn Pink

It snowed a little on the second-to-last day before Christmas vacation. Snow always puts me in a good mood. Mr. Tompkin let us skip the math workbooks and spend the whole morning on our Main Street projects. Annemarie helped me start my swings. So far, the perfect day.

By the time we walked to Jimmy’s, the snow had stopped and the sidewalk was just slushy enough to make my sneakers uncomfortably wet. Mom had slept through the weather report, so I was the only one without boots.

Colin started to push open Jimmy’s door, but Jimmy jumped out from behind the counter and leaned against the door so it slammed in our faces.

“Hey!” Colin smiled, thinking it was a joke, and shoved back. But I could see Jimmy’s face better than Colin could. It wasn’t a joke.

“Get out!” Jimmy called through the glass. “Don’t come back here anymore! You’re lucky I don’t call the police!”

Annemarie put her hand on Colin’s shoulder. “I think he’s serious.”

“What?” Colin saw our faces and then looked up at Jimmy through the door. “What’s going on?” he yelled.

Jimmy had one foot up against the bottom of the door. He glared at us. Some people on the street looked over, but nobody stopped.

“Somebody stole my bank,” he said finally, his voice sounding far away. “One of you.”

Of course we told him, through the door, that we didn’t, that we wouldn’t. But there was no way he was letting us in.

We went to the pizza place and talked about who could have taken Jimmy’s two-dollar bills. He ran the place alone, aside from the forty minutes a day that we were there. Maybe someone had run in while he was in the bathroom, we thought. He usually put his Back in Five Minutes sign in the window and locked the door, but not every time. Sometimes he just ran into the back for a minute and if someone came in, they waited. Someone could have taken the bank then. But who in the world would have known to take it in the first place? It was a faded plastic bank in the shape of a cartoon character. It didn’t look remotely valuable.

“Let’s write him a letter,” Annemarie said. “Or no—we’ll get him a card!” She used her spoon to scrape up the last of her lunch, which her dad packed for her every day in a cleaned-out yogurt container. “Come on,” she said, standing up. “It’ll be my treat.”

So we went into Gold’s Stationery and bought Jimmy a greeting card. I wanted to get one that said With Sympathy , for Jimmy’s lost bank, but Annemarie said we should pick something that was blank inside. She picked a card with roses on it, which I thought was kind of strange, considering it was for Jimmy and roses are supposed to symbolize love. She said the card looked sincere, but I guessed that she liked it because it reminded her of her mystery rose.

“What do you think?” she asked Colin. She held up the card in front of him.

Colin raised his shoulders and dropped them. “I guess.”

Annemarie said nothing, but she looked like she’d been hoping for a more revealing answer. “Can you put this on my dad’s account?” she asked the cashier.

“Sure thing, Annemarie. Hey, where’s your pal Julia? Home sick today?”

Annemarie turned pink. “No, she’s around.”

The cashier smiled and handed Annemarie a spiral notebook with a beaten-up cover. Annemarie flipped it open and wrote her name and the date.

A charge account at Gold’s. I thought of the fat smelly markers that cost two-fifty each, the leather diaries that locked with little keys, the battery-operated fans that you could wear on a string around your neck on hot days.

“Hey, Annemarie,” Colin said. “Wanna buy me a pack of baseball cards?”

She turned pink again. “I can’t. I mean, I’m not allowed. Sorry.”

He shrugged and smiled. “No big deal.”

Sometimes I wanted to squeeze Colin’s cheeks until his teeth fell out.

After school, Annemarie and I went to her house. Her dad brought us some weird kind of thin ham rolled up so we could eat it with our fingers. We wrote on Jimmy’s card: