A soft knock on my door told me Robin was back. She always knocks the beginning of “Wheels on the Bus”: Tap-tap-ta-ta-tap.
“Jackson?”
“Please go to sleep, Robin.”
“I can’t sleep. I miss my trash can.”
“Your trash can?”
“Dad took my trash can to sell at the yard sale.”
“I’m pretty sure that was a mistake, Robin,” I said. “Nobody wants to buy your trash can.”
“It had blue bunnies on it.”
“We’ll get it out of the garage in the morning.”
Aretha made a move to sniff Crenshaw’s tail. He hissed.
I put my finger to my lips to shush him, but Robin didn’t seem to hear anything.
“Night, Robin,” I said. “See you in the morning.”
“Jackson?”
I rubbed my eyes and groaned, the way I’d seen my parents do more than once. “Now what?”
“Do you think I can get another bed someday?”
“Sure. Of course. Maybe even one with blue bunnies.”
“Jackson?”
“Yes?”
“My room is scary without my stuff in it. Could you come read me Lyle?”
I took a long, slow breath. “Sure. I’ll be right there.”
Robin sniffled. “I’ll just wait right here by your door. ’Kay?”
“Okay.” I shot a glance at Crenshaw. “Just give me a second, Robin. There’s something I really need to do.”
16
I went to my window and opened it. Carefully, I pulled out the screen. Our apartment was on the ground floor. A few feet below the window, a cushion of grass waited.
“Good-bye, Crenshaw,” I said.
He opened one eye a bit, like someone peeking from behind a shade. “But we were having such a lovely time.”
“Now,” I said. I put my hands on my hips to show I meant business.
“Jackson, be reasonable. I came all this way.”
“You have to go back to wherever you came from.”
Crenshaw opened his other eye. “But you need me here.”
“I don’t need you. I have enough to deal with already.”
With a great show of effort, Crenshaw sat up. He stretched, easing his back into an upside-down U. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, Jackson,” he said. “Imaginary friends don’t come of their own volition. We are invited. We stay as long as we’re needed. And then, and only then, do we leave.”
“Well, I sure didn’t invite you.”
Crenshaw sent me a doubtful look. His long, whiskery brows moved like strings on a marionette.
I took a step closer. “If you won’t go, I’ll make you go.”
I put my arms around his waist and yanked. It was like hugging a lion. That cat weighed a ton.
Crenshaw dug his claws deep into the quilt my great-aunt Trudy made when I was a baby. I gave up and let go.
“Look,” Crenshaw said as he extracted his claws from my quilt, “I can’t go until I help you. I don’t make the rules.”
“Then who does?”
Crenshaw stared at me with eyes like green marbles. He put his two front paws on my shoulders. He smelled like soapsuds and catnip and the ocean at night.
“You do, Jackson,” he said. “You make the rules.”
A foghorn bleated in the distance. I pointed to the windowsill. “I don’t need anyone’s help. And I sure don’t need an imaginary friend. I’m not a little kid anymore.”
“Balderdash. Is this because I hissed at that odorous dog?”
“No.”
“Could we at least wait till morning? There’s a chill in the air, and I just took a bubble bath.”
“No.”
Tap-tap-ta-ta-tap. “Jacks? It’s lonely in this hallway.”
“Coming, Robin,” I called.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a frog hop onto the windowsill. He gave a tiny, nervous croak.
“We have a visitor,” I said, pointing. Maybe if I distracted Crenshaw he’d move on. “Did you know some frogs can leap so far it’d be like a human jumping the length of a football field? They’re amazing jumpers.”
“Mmm. They’re amazing bedtime snacks, too,” murmured Crenshaw. “Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a little amphibious morsel.”
I could see he was in full predator mode. His eyes turned to dark pools. His rear wiggled. His tail twitched.
“See you, Crenshaw,” I said.
“Fine, Jackson,” he whispered, eyes lasering in on the frog. “You win. I’ll leave, do bit of hunting. I am, after all, a creature of the night. Meantime, you get to work.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “On what, exactly?”
“The facts. You need to tell the truth, my friend.” The frog twitched, and Crenshaw froze, pure muscle and instinct.
“Which facts? Tell the truth to who?”
Crenshaw pulled his gaze off the frog. He looked at me, and to my surprise, I saw tenderness in his eyes. “To the person who matters most of all.”
The frog jumped off the sill, back into the night. In one magnificent leap, Crenshaw followed. When I ran to the window, all I saw was a blur of black and white, streaking through the moon-tipped grass.
I felt like I’d taken off an itchy sweater on a cold day: relieved to be rid of it, but surprised by how chilly the air turned out to be.
17
Robin was waiting for me in the hallway, sitting crisscross-applesauce. Her stuffed armadillo, Spot, was in her lap.
I took her hand and led her back to her bedroom. Her rainbow nightlight painted stripes on the ceiling. I wished I had one in my room, although I’d never admit it.
“I heard you talking,” she said as she crawled under her blanket.
“Sometimes I talk to myself.”
“That’s kind of weird.” Robin yawned.
“Yeah,” I said, tucking her in. “It is.”
“You promised Lyle,” she reminded me.
I’d been hoping she’d forgotten. “Yep.”
“He’s in my keepsakes bag.”
I rummaged around in the brown paper bag. A bald doll poked out of the top, sizing me up with blank and beady eyes.
“Scooch over,” I said. Robin made room for me on her mattress.
I opened the book. Its pages were soft, its cover tattered.
“Robin,” I asked, “have you ever had an imaginary friend?”
“You mean like inbisible?”
“Invisible. Yeah. Like that.”
“Nope.”
“Really? Never?”
“Nope. I have LaSandra and Jimmy and Kylie. And sometimes Josh when he’s not being a boogerhead. They’re real, so I don’t need to pretend.”
I flipped through the pages of the book. “But sometimes, you know, when you’re alone?” I paused. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to ask. “Like say you’re home and you don’t have any friends over and you really need to talk to someone who’ll listen. Not even then?”
“Nope.” She smiled. “’Cause anyways I have you.”