We were all completely silent. Finally, Millie stood from her chair, whispered, “How can you do this to me?” and then, chin held high, walked out of the room. That made Sam crawl back under the table. I just stared at my plate with an enormous lump of unswallowed peas in my mouth.
Mom went on to tell me and Sam how we’ll start packing up, when our last day of school will be, and so on. Toward the end, Dad—who still hadn’t said a word—limped off upstairs, tapping his head as if he had a headache.
I stayed in my seat, festering. “I think it’s coming for Dinky Lipton,” I said, and Mom’s eyes shot to Sam, then back to me.
“What’s coming for Dinky?” Sam asked.
“The groomer,” I lied ingeniously. “Haven’t you noticed he’s getting shaggy?”
* * *
My anger kept building until finally, as soon as we were excused, I followed Dad upstairs. He was up in the cupola, where he loves to hide from us, looking out the window with his telescope.
I was trying to think of what horrible things I wanted to say, when he turned and saw me, reached a hand toward me—careful not to bump my cast—and pulled me onto his lap, which he probably hasn’t done since I was ten. He hugged me tight, which took me by surprise, and then pointed out the window.
A shudder ran through me once I saw what he wanted me to see.
There above the middle of our lawn, still about twenty feet off the ground, but waiting as if to be let in through the backdoor, was the Cloud. It seemed to be a deeper gray than it had been yesterday, a thick mist I couldn’t see through, about three feet across.
A strange whimper came from somewhere, and then I realized it had come from me. All I could think was Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam.
“You have to make it go away,” I said to Dad. “Please, just figure out how to make it go away. I know you can do it.”
“I can’t, Gracie.”
Dad didn’t say anything else for a while. Finally he held the telescope eye toward me.
Reluctantly, I leaned forward. Dad wasn’t pointing the telescope into the Cloud, though, but upward, toward the dusk-darkening sky. A tiny wavering white light glowed in the middle of my vision, much brighter than the tiny bright lights around it.
“It’s a new star, just born” Dad said.
I squinted. It looked like a dot to me, nothing special. I tried to imagine what it must actually look like if you got close—a giant burning ball in all that darkness—but I couldn’t. I tried to imagine I was one of the neighboring stars who’d watched it get born, but I couldn’t picture that, either. Like I said, my imagination is not as good as it used to be.
“Do you know the universe is getting bigger all the time?” Dad asked.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, annoyed, wondering why he was talking about this now.
“It’s blowing up like a balloon,” he went on, “but really slowly.”
I pulled away from the telescope and looked at him. His glasses had slipped down his nose a little, and I noticed for the first time his hair was graying at the temples. He looked tired.
He pushed at his glasses and rubbed at his stubble. “You and Millie and Sam are my baby stars,” he said. “You are my magnificent works. I can’t make the Cloud go away, but I’ll do what I need to do to protect you.”
I felt the angry words I wanted to say dribbling away. “Where will we go?” I finally asked.
“First, we’ll go to your grandmother’s. To the Crow’s Nest. We don’t have much choice. Your grandma knows things. She’ll help us figure out how to get there.”
“How to get where?” I asked, getting chills at the thought of meeting Grandma, and something more.
Dad didn’t answer. But I know where the where is that he means.
And I know that it doesn’t exist.
* * *
It’s almost midnight and I still can’t sleep. My glow clock casts a light across my room, and the shadows make the old rocking chair against the wall look three times bigger than it actually is.
It feels like I’m coming down with strep throat, but my mom said it’s “psychosomatic,” which she explained means that I want to cry but I don’t know it. She said hurting in weird places is my body’s way of crying for me. She made me a bowl of chocolate pudding after dinner, but I couldn’t eat it.
“Mom,” I asked, glancing around to make sure Sam wasn’t nearby, “what does the Cloud look like to you?”
Mom gazed at me for a moment as if she wasn’t going to answer, then she went and stood at the window. “It looks like a snake . . . ,” she said, “. . . trying to steal a robin’s egg.” She turned away from the window and picked up my bowl of pudding. “It looks like something I hate.”
I’ve just tried looking, now that she’s gone. But as hard as I stare at the Cloud, I can’t make out a robin’s egg at all.
* * *
I keep thinking of the Dairy Queen and the papery smell inside our post office, the bike store that smells like rubber and oil where I got my first bike, the cracked linoleum in Mr. Morrigan’s classroom and the place on my flowery wallpaper that looks like a mother rose rocking her baby to sleep, our yard and the view from the church stone. I just can’t believe that we’re going to leave it all behind. It gives me the feeling of falling into a big empty hole.
I keep getting up and getting back in bed. When I press my face against the window, I can just see it. The Cloud is out there in the yard, lit slightly by the moon. I guess it’s one of the ones that waits patiently for you to be ready to go. I guess we are lucky.
Still, no Cloud waits forever.
September 21st
Sitting on the front stoop, under shelter. It’s a drizzly, gray afternoon.
This morning when I got up, my face was even crookeder than usual. I guess it’s because I cried a little before falling asleep. My features always take a few minutes to settle into themselves in the morning anyway—at first my face looks pretty much uglyish, but then it smoothes itself out into being halfway presentable by the time I leave for school.
Mom kept Sam home today. I brushed my teeth and prepared myself to tell everyone in my class the news about moving, knowing there’d be crying and some squealing over me and generally everyone would be thinking about me the whole day, leading up to several presents this week, and of course going-away-party planning. Millie says I’m a “sociopath” for even caring about that stuff right now, but I can’t help it.
I sat through history and Monsters of the Sea trying to think of the most dramatic moment to share the news. I was still working up to it when there was an announcement over the loudspeaker about Oliver.
“Attention please, students. As you may know, Oliver Wigley went missing from his home several days ago.” Everyone murmured nervously. “We are confident Oliver will be found safe, but we ask that anyone who spoke with him before his disappearance or who might have any information leading to his whereabouts contact the school office immediately. Thank you.”
So Oliver really is missing. We all whispered about it after class and basically the class broke down into two camps: the doom-and-gloomers who think he’s definitely been eaten by the same sasquatches who killed his parents (that’s the Arin Roland camp), and the more hopeful ones who think that he might have run away.