By the time I got around to telling everyone my news about moving, it got lost in the discussion about Oliver, and only Arin pretended to cry a little.
It’s actually a relief that people are distracted, because nobody’s asked why we’re moving, so I don’t have to tell them about Sam . . . and where we’re trying to go.
Anyway, I’ve started to feel guilty about ignoring Oliver so completely. I have to admit that when I think about that strange boy who is so quiet that he might disappear, out in this chilly, wet evening, it makes me feel glad that I have my family and a warm place to call home (at least for now).
I’d like to sit against my church stone in the backyard with binoculars to scan the town for him—a little lonesome speck on one of the streets below—but I don’t want to go back there because of the Cloud. I’m sitting in the front instead. I have a thorn in my toe from walking barefoot around my mom’s rosebushes, pretending to be Saint Francis and trying to talk to the butterflies. I was trying to talk them into saving us somehow, because it seems animals must have special powers we don’t understand. But I guess you can’t just make up a butterfly language and expect it to work.
So here I am, bundled up in my orange rain jacket in the shelter of the stoop, propping my cast against a railing, looking at the Winnebago in the driveway.
We haven’t had a single person interested in the house yet. But Mom and Dad have started packing anyway. They say no matter what, whether we sell or not, we’ll leave on Wednesday.
September 27th
Our life is in boxes. Most of it’s going to Bernard’s Self Storage on Witches’ Pike. The rest will be squeezed into the Winnebago (which Dad has christened the Trinidad after Ferdinand Magellan’s ship—so dorky), though how we’re going to squeeze anything besides ourselves into that old banana on wheels is anyone’s guess. So far Millie and I have refused to set foot inside the awful thing. Mom keeps telling us how nice and homey it is inside, but even we can see she’s stretching the truth by the way her nose wrinkles whenever she looks at it parked out there in all its lumpy, yellowing glory. Only Sam scrambles in and out of it, because he’s the peacemaker and he wants Dad to be happy. He’s been hiding in there for hours at a time. Dad attached a small pod trailer to the back for extra luggage, with a tiny screened window on each of its four sides. Millie asked if that could be her room, because it’s the farthest away from everyone else. Mom laughed, but I don’t think she was joking.
Sam is blissfully ignorant that all of this is for him. He’s convinced we’re going on some kind of adventure, and he seems to be feeling a little better because of it. He even asked me last night why everyone keeps staring at the Cloud out back. I played dumb and said, “Cloud? I didn’t notice.”
His answer chilled me. He said, “You know, the one that looks like a face smiling at me? The smiling man.”
Sam is too innocent to know what he’s supposed to be afraid of.
My cast comes off Wednesday. That’s all.
October 3rd
I found Oliver! It’s a secret I can only write here . . . when I have more time, after dinner.
LATER
Okay. So today I skipped school. I needed some time to walk the streets of Cliffden and say good-bye to some favorite things. I pretended to be on my way to class when I parted with the others, but really I went down past the angel statue and out the underground exit. When I got aboveground again, I wandered in the direction of the zoo.
The Cliffden Zoo is tiny but impressive. I love to watch the monkeys, and when something’s on my mind I can stay all day. You can tell how intelligent monkeys are and that they have senses of humor. It’s nice they don’t hold it against us that we’ve taken them out of the thrilling jungle and stuck them in what is pretty much a big glass box.
Well, to get to the monkeys you have to go past the banshees, who give me the willies, and also the aquarium, which I’m not fond of because of the giant sea snakes and cryptids. (They stare out through the glass like they want to devour you, because they do want to devour you.) As I was rushing along my way, I saw a boy who looked like Oliver on the other side of a big pane of glass, gazing into the beluga whale tank while slipping Skittles into his pocket. I skidded to a halt.
I followed him past the seahorses, which are even weirder looking than the cryptids, moving very stealthily until I was sure it was him. He walked so slowly it was hard to be patient. At the octopus exhibit I finally stepped out of the shadows in front of him triumphantly. Oliver didn’t seem shocked in the least.
“Aren’t you surprised I’m here?” I asked.
“You’re too loud to be a good spy.”
“I didn’t say anything the whole time I was following you.”
“You even look loud,” he replied.
I decided not to dwell on this. Oliver stood with his hair even messier than usual; it tilted to one side so much that it looked like his whole skinny body would tip over. His scar had gotten a little less pink and was less noticeable than it had been the last time I’d seen him. He was looking at me with a mixture of suspicion and concentration, like he was measuring me in his head.
A little crunching sound was issuing from the pocket of his jeans. We both looked down: A pair of big black eyes were peering at me from a tiny crooked face that had just poked out. The creature—about the size of a dragonfly—was bald except for a red patch of hair right above its eyes, and its ears were twice the size of its little head.
“Is that a faerie?” I asked, surprised. It’s illegal to own faeries as pets in the United States unless they go through a very expensive quarantine process. Usually only celebrities and really rich people own them—Meryl Streep has one that she always brings to the Oscars.
“My mom was from Ireland,” Oliver said. “Everyone has faeries over there. So when she immigrated, she had a license for them. She made them little habitats in these big aquariums in our house. This one’s called Tweep. I inherited her when . . .” He trailed off. He rubbed Tweep’s head and the faerie purred and cooed. She was an ugly little thing, and I wondered how Oliver could care for her so tenderly. “None of the pet stores carry faerie food around here, but she eats flies and Skittles.”
“I’m sorry . . . about your family,” I muttered.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I guess you ran away from your foster family.” Oliver frowned, and nodded.
“Everyone’s worried about you.”
He thought on this, seemingly torn. “I don’t want people to worry. But I also don’t want new parents.” There was an edge of anger in his voice, but I suppose if I’d been through what Oliver has been through, I’d be pretty angry too.
“Where are you staying now?” I asked, ignoring Tweep, who’d disappeared into Oliver’s pocket and begun to chirp.
He looked at me forlornly. There were circles under his green eyes. “I’ve been living at the fairgrounds; I sleep in a Ferris wheel car that was taken down. I still have twenty dollars left from my allowance. I’ve been eating McDonald’s.”
I nodded, trying to look knowledgeable about what it’s like to run away. “We’re moving,” I offered, thinking moving to escape a Dark Cloud might be almost as bad as losing your whole family to bloodthirsty monsters. I wanted him to know I was on his level.