Suki laughed. “Yeah, right.”
* * *
■ ■ ■
We threw the paper plates in the trash, and the pizza box, and that was the end of dinner. Francine turned on the TV and slumped in the recliner. Suki and I sat down on the couch.
“You see Teena today?” I asked Suki.
She grunted. “No. Quit asking.”
“You had to,” I said. “Unless she’s sick or something.” Teena was in Suki’s grade.
“Didn’t,” Suki said.
Teena’s mom had called the cops on us, which I didn’t appreciate, but still. “Teena’s our best friend,” I explained to Francine. “She’s, like, my other sister.” I turned to Suki. “It wasn’t her fault.”
Suki jumped to her feet. “Bedtime.”
“Suki,” I said. “It’s only—”
She grabbed my arm. “Bed.”
“There’s an alarm clock in your room,” Francine said. “Get yourselves up however early you need. I’ll drive you to school tomorrow, Della. After that you’ll take a bus.”
I put on my brand-new pajamas. I’d never had new pajamas before. They felt crinkly. “Brush your teeth,” Suki said.
I rolled my eyes at her. I always brushed my teeth.
She said, “And get them tangles out of your hair.”
I said, “You are not the boss of me.” Which was a joke between us, because of course she was the boss of me.
When I came out of the bathroom, teeth brushed and hair as good as it was going to get, Suki was already under the blanket on the top bunk. I climbed up beside her and snuggled close. I said, “It’s way too early for sleeping.”
“Won’t hurt you none,” Suki said. She held her right hand up, fingers splayed. I put my left pinkie against her thumb and my left thumb against her pinkie. We walked our hands into the air, pinkie to thumb, pinkie to thumb, climbing up as high as we could reach. Suki’d taught me to do this and recite “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” but we’d cut the spider song out long ago. When our hands were stretched as high as I could reach, we marched them back down.
“Skinna-ma-rink-y-dink-y-dink, skinna-ma-rink-y-do,” Suki sang. “I love you.”
I joined in.
Skinna-ma-rinky-dinky dink, skinna-ma-rinky do,
I love you.
I love you in the morning, and in the afternoon. I love you in the evening, underneath the moon.
Skinna-ma-rinky-dinky dink, skinna-ma-rinky-do.
I love you.
The car Teena’s mother used to have had this thing called a tape player. It played music when you stuck little plastic cartridges called tapes inside it. Somewhere Teena’s mom had picked up a tape with all these goofy kids’ songs on it, and, since it was the only tape she had, she played it all the time. Teena’s mom didn’t drive us around much, but still, by the time that car quit running we knew every one of the songs, Suki, Teena, and me. Suki’d sung “Skinnamarinky” as my lullaby for almost as long as I could remember.
It wasn’t even dark outside yet, but Suki’d pulled the curtains and the room was full of shadows. I tucked my head against my sister’s shoulder. The bed was unfamiliar and my new pajamas itched, but Suki was the same as always.
That first night at Francine’s, we fell asleep holding hands.
3
Suki didn’t stay asleep. She thrashed around half the night, pounding on her pillow and flopping from front to back to front again. She must have woke me up a dozen times. Finally she settled, and we were both hard asleep when Francine’s alarm clock went off across the room.
I jumped down but didn’t know how to turn off the noise. I smacked some buttons. The numbers on the clock started flashing but the alarm kept going. I smacked some more. Nothing else happened.
Suki reached from behind me. She punched one button and the noise stopped. The clock went back to normal. “Figure it out, Della,” she snapped.
“Good morning to you too.” I loved it when she woke up like this.
In the kitchen Francine poured us bowls of raisin bran. She told us that it was the only kind of cereal she had in the house, and also that after this we’d be eating breakfast at school, because kids in foster care automatically get free school breakfast and lunch.
“You mean, like, hot lunch?” I asked.
We never got free lunch before, but Clifton usually didn’t give us money for school lunch neither—or at least, if he did, Suki wasn’t about to spend it on school lunch. We packed our lunches. Mostly peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes chips.
Suki said, “I don’t want to eat school lunch. Or breakfast.”
“Suki!” I thought it might be interesting, eating at school. The school breakfasts always looked kind of tasty—muffins, juice, stuff like that.
“I always fixed Della lunch and breakfast,” she told Francine. “I fed her. I don’t see why you can’t feed us.”
Francine shrugged. “I’ll feed you plenty. But if the state gives me a benefit, I ain’t turning it down.”
Suki stomped off to school, still muttering. Francine poured herself another cup of coffee. “You sure you don’t need school supplies? We could quick stop at Walmart.”
“Nah.” Teachers always found a way to get me anything I really had to have. Most of the kids in my old school couldn’t afford school supplies. The teachers were used to it.
In the car on the drive to school I asked, “So, foster mother. Does that mean you’re, like, legally my mom?”
We had lawyers now, Suki and me.
Francine glanced at me. “It’s kind of complicated. Clifton wasn’t ever your legal anything—”
“Shoo,” I said, “I knew that.”
“And your mother should have lost her parental rights when she got sentenced to such a long prison term. But that never actually happened. The social workers are getting you and Suki named wards of the state. Until that goes through, I don’t actually have much power.”
She glanced at me again. “It doesn’t matter,” she added. “You’ll be taken care of.”
“I know,” I said. “I have Suki.”
“Suki can’t have legal rights over you, though,” Francine said. “She can’t have legal rights over herself. She’s only sixteen.”
That didn’t mean anything. Suki was still in charge of my world.