Page 3 of Shelter
“Can’t I just go with Ava?” I asked as Mama tied the pink sash around my middle. We sat on the edge Mama’s bed, her foot propped up on a three-legged stool and covered in an ice pack.
“No,” Mama said, her voice gentle. “Cole and Ava are doing you a kindness by inviting you along. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to trick-or-treat at all tonight.”
I pressed my lips together to keep the words I wanted to say in my mouth. Cole Whitehurst wasn’t doing me a kindness. Based on what I knew of him, he wouldn’t do anyone a kindness.
Ava, on the other hand, wasn’t all kindness, but she was all kinds of fun. Unlike her brother, Ava Whitehurst was sparkly, playful, and just one year older than me. She always wore a dreamy smile, even though her eyes could also be wide and watchful, and she’d always seek me out in the kitchen on days I didn’t have school or if Mama needed to work late when the Whitehursts were entertaining. We’d play with her Water Lily Barbies — she had two of them — or her Tomagachi, or we’d take her ribbon dancer set outside and pretend the wands could cast spells and the ribbons were bursts of magic.
I’d flick my wand around, imagining that with every flick, I granted myself a wish.Flick!A new house. One in a nice neighborhood like Myrtle Place. The house didn’t have to be as big as the Whitehursts’, but bigger than our two-bedroom shotgun, and it would be full of nice things, like Ava’s house was. White couches with deep cushions… big screen TVs in every room, even my bedroom…
Flickandpoof!Instead of Mama working as a housekeeper for someone else, we had a housekeeper who worked for us. Mama could wear her Saturday clothes every day and pick me up straight after school instead of working until five o’clock.
And, finally, with one lastflick,my wand would produce a fluffy, brown and white dog to go in our new back yard, but who would also secretly sleep in my bed at night. And Mama would never know because she wouldn’t be the one changing my sheets, so she wouldn’t be able to see any dog hairs on my brand-new Disney princess bedspread.
The things Ava Whitehurst wanted confused me. Once, she wished for a new dressage outfit, whatever that was. Another time, she wanted a Bijon Frise. I didn’t know what that was either. But most of the time, she would flick her wand and cast a spell to make Cole as big as her daddy. Her brother, of course, never played with us, thank goodness. She would cast her spell on a pretend Cole nonetheless. Once, when she started dancing around a pretend, grown up Cole, I asked her where her real brother was.
“Lessons,” she’d answered.
“What kind of lessons?” The only person I knew who took lessons was Anna Grace Hillborn in my first-grade class, and she took ballet. The thought of Cole in a leotard and a tutu made me giggle.
“He takes karate lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays, fencing lessons on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Chinese lessons on Thursdays and Saturdays.”
As far as I was concerned, lessons sounded a lot like school, and I hated school. “He goes toschoolonSaturdays?”I’d asked horrified.
Ava nodded, her sandy-blond ponytail bouncing as she did. “He likes it. Oh, and he has swim practice on Saturdays and Sundays too.”
I’d wrinkled my nose at this news. Who liked going to school on Saturdays and Sundays? Maybe that was what all fourth graders did, but I’d hoped not. Still, it was one more reason for me to stay away from Cole Whitehurst. If he took karate and fencing lessons, then he probably hadn’t been lying about who got beat up worse the first time I’d met him.
I remembered all this as Mama drew makeup on my eyes like Mulan. Cole Whitehurst was going to ruin my Halloween.
“If I had a daddy, he could take me trick-or-treating,” I pouted.
Mama’s mouth got flat the way it always did when I talked about daddies. “Elise Nicole, it’ll do you no good to talk like that,” she said. She wasn’t using her angry voice, but she didn’t sound happy either. “Your daddy isn’t worth knowing.”
She’d always say that when I asked about him.He isn’t worth knowingwas all I knew. But that answer just seemed unfair.
“But you know him, don’t you?” I argued.
Mama eyes didn’t look into mine, but I saw her slim, brown eyebrow make a hill on her forehead. “I knew him once,” she muttered, barely opening her mouth around the words. “But that’s my fault, not yours.”
I frowned and puffed air through my nose. I asked my next question, hoping for more as I always did. “Does he know me?”
Mama sighed, and a felt her breath blow over my face. It smelled like peppermint Life Savers. “I’m afraid he does.”
“Well, then why doesn’t he ever come to see me?”
Mama shook her head. “Like I said, he’s not worth knowing. Now close your eyes and be still so I can put on your eye shadow.”
I knew thatbe stillmeantbe quiet.Mama always wanted me to be quiet when I asked about my daddy. But I couldn’t help but wonder about him. If he knew me, that meant he’d met me. Maybe when I was a baby or too little to remember it. And if he met me and he didn’t come back to see me again, maybe it wasn’t him.
Maybe I wasn’t worth knowing.
As Mama drove me to the Whitehursts’, hissing every time she had to use the clutch, all I could picture was Cole dressed in one of those white fencing outfits. Would he try to poke me with his fencing sword? Or what if he wore his karate costume? The ones I’d seen on TV looked like a bathrobe with pajama pants. I hoped he wouldn’t wear that because then I’d laugh at him, and he’d karate chop me in the stomach.
But when we arrived at the Whitehursts’ house at a quarter to six on Halloween night, Cole wasn’t dressed for fencing or karate. At first, I didn’t see him because as soon as we pulled up, Ava dashed down the steps of the spacious front porch and ran to greet me in her short pink dress, pigtails, and plastic heels, her makeup done to look exactly like Baby Spice from the Spice Girls.
I smiled at her as I got out of the car, and it wasn’t until my feet hit the concrete of their driveway that I saw him. Cole Whitehurst descended the steps of their porch dressed for battle. In camouflage from head to toe, his eyes blackened with greasepaint, Cole carried a toy machine gun and wore two bands of pretend ammo crisscrossed over his chest.
The sight of him wiped the smile right off my face. He was that scary.
