The Places We Sleep Read online

  Text copyright © 2020 by Caroline Brooks DuBois

  Epigraph copyright © 2020 by Georgia O’Keefe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: DuBois, Caroline Brooks, author.

  Title: The places we sleep / by Caroline Brooks DuBois.

  Description: First edition. | New York City : Holiday House, [2020] | Audience: Ages 8-12 | Audience: Grades 4-6 | Summary: Twelve-year-old Abbey’s world is turned upside-down by both personal and national events of September 11, 2001, as well as their aftermath, but finds greater strength through art, friendship, and family.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019022768 | ISBN 9780823444212 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001–Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Novels in verse. | September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001–Fiction. | Friendship–Fiction. | Families of military personnel–Fiction. | Middle schools–Fiction. | Schools–Fiction. | Family life–Tennessee–Fiction. | Tennessee–Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.5.D83 Pl 2020 | DDC [Fic]–dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022768

  Ebook ISBN 9780823448203

  a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r1

  For my parents, Jim and Rebecca Brooks,

  and my 3 Rs, Richard, Rosabelle,

  and Rowan, with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  September

  October

  November

  December

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  And the Months Beyond

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small.

  We haven’t time, and to see takes time—like to have a friend takes time.

  ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

  SEPTEMBER

  1.

  It arrives like a punch to the gut

  like a shove in the girls’ room

  like a name I won’t repeat.

  It arrives like nobody’s business, staring and glaring me down,

  singling me out

  in the un-singular mob

  that ebbs and flows and swells and grows

  in the freshly painted, de-roached hallways of Henley Middle.

  It arrives like a spotlight,

  like an intruder in my bedroom,

  like a meteor to my center of gravity.

  It arrives.

  And my body—

  in cahoots—allows it.

  Just.

  Like.

  That.

  It arrives

  and textbooks, full of themselves, weigh me down.

  This backpack holds the tools for my success,

  yet I’m unprepared for IT:

  No change of clothes,

  no “girl supplies,”

  no friend to ask

  because Camille is nowhere nearby,

  no know-how,

  no nothing.

  (Did I mention, it arrives like a double negative?)

  What was Mom thinking

  by not thinking

  to prepare me

  for IT?

  2.

  The bully-of-a-bell taunts me,

  rings its second warning

  to those of us clogging the halls:

  Follow the arrows, Dummy, on the walls!

  Remember your locker’s secret code: 22 06 07

  Right,

  Left,

  and then Right again,

  as if that cold metal box

  holds all I need to survive

  yet another school.

  If I could just locate Camille—

  the only person I can talk to,

  the one friend I’ve made

  since we moved to town in June—

  she might know what to do.

  But no sight of Camille’s flame-red hair,

  and I’m pushed through the rush

  of arms and legs and sideways scowls.

  My insides turning black and blue;

  my sense of direction confused,

  just as the other new student—Jiman—breezes by,

  head up and confident.

  I stop to stare at her

  before stumbling in

  to Ms. Dequire’s room.

  Late again! And her mouth forms its red-stained frown:

  “Tardy, Abbey!”

  I find my seat, resist the urge to draw, instead

  head my paper:

  Abbey Wood

  Math

  September 11, 2001

  3.

  I sit through that morning hour,

  a dull ache in my abdomen

  blossoming like a gigantic thorned flower,

  jotting down mathematical formulas

  I’m told are the key to my future.

  Even with a math teacher for a mother,

  my focus wavers in and out…until

  another teacher bursts in and whispers

  in the ear of our teacher,

  who stops teaching to wring her hands.

  “Something’s happening—in New York and in D.C.,”

  she informs us.

  The tension is tangible.

  “Some planes have crashed!”

  But we don’t know

  the half of it yet.

  And to my shock,

  we are soon released

  from school.

  Whatever’s happening must be terrible.

  But I can’t curb my relief:

  Early dismissal!

  Set free!

  Free to trod off,

  free to go our separate ways

  like it was any

  other

  September day.

  4.

  The buses pull up like salvation on wheels,

  like rays of sunshine to my gloom.

  And Camille, my single friend in Tennessee,

  is AWOL, so I sit up front on the bus and sketch.

  Up front, with the kids from the elementary school next door.

  Up front, with my back to kids my own age,

  who are talking

  and shouting

  and pushing and shoving

  and vibrating with questions about what’s happening.

  Up front,

  where the driver is crying!

  Crying!

  …about what’s happening in New York?

  New York is where Mom’s sister,

  my Aunt Rose lives

  and Uncle Todd,

  and my cousins Jackson and Kate!

  If anyone has cause to cry, it’s me—

  but I’m sure they’re okay. New York is huge.

  It’s not just that—my secret is now announcing itself,

  and I have nothing to tie around my waist

  and I’m wishing I hadn’t worn white.

  Maybe a few others have reasons too,

  like the kid halfway back so short nobody sees
him,

  or the sixth-grader who sits near the football boys

  and tries like mad to make them laugh.

  Or Jiman, new like me,

  who also sits alone

  but doesn’t usually seem to care.

  How will I walk away

  from this bus, my back

  to all these nosy faces,

  eyes staring from windows,

  arms dangling,

  mouths jeering?

  But I do.

  And Mom’s car is in the drive! The high school

  must have been dismissed, too.

  5.

  It’s the way she clutches the phone

  and that unspeakable expression on her face—

  her voice attempting to comfort

  someone who is NOT me.

  She glances, half-smiles out of habit

  as I walk into our latest house.

  But only her mouth smiles. Her eyes

  are hollow wells of worry. Her eyes

  miss the BIG change in me.

  I need her

  to hang up and follow me

  to the bathroom,

  to talk to me

  through the door,

  tell me, “Abbey, I’m here,”

  but she doesn’t.

  I count to ten.

  Breathe deeply.

  Count again.

  Is she talking to Aunt Rose? Uncle Todd?

  Is it about New York?

  Her voice quivers and doesn’t sound like her own.

  What’s going on there?

  6.

  I soak my underclothes in soapy warmth

  and think of the sink in my art teacher’s class,

  with its every-color splatter, and paint brushes

  rinsing free of paint.

  The TV buzzes loud from our den

  with news of a magnitude I can’t comprehend.

  Why can’t Mom hear me

  crying for her, needing her, screaming in my head—

  the kind of screaming

  a mother should hear?

  7.

  She finds me in bed,

  sketchbook propped in my lap.

  “Something’s happened…” she whispers.

  I rise and shadow her

  from room

  to room,

  questions stick in my throat.

  “My sister!” she chokes,

  tossing random shirts

  and pants toward a suitcase

  and swiping at her eyes

  with a pair of socks.

  I pick up clothes where they land,

  fold them neatly,

  place them gently

  into her bag.

  “What’s going on—” I begin,

  but she’s distracted and tells me,

  “I have to request a sub,”

  replacing my words with hers.

  I rearrange the photos of relatives on her dresser

  and stare at a recent one

  of my cousins.

  Mom pauses packing for a few seconds,

  looks directly at me and tries to explain

  with plain language, straightforward,

  seemingly simple:

  Your Aunt Rose is missing.

  Still, I stare,

  my face a fill-in-the-blank,

  my brain shuts down, my words dry up.

  Missing?

  Missing from her desk, her office in New York,

  the towering building in which she worked,

  but the building in which she worked,

  her office, her desk are also missing,

  as in—no longer.

  Missing?

  How can a building just give up,

  be gone? How can people just disappear?

  Mom is preparing

  to drive to New York—

  which is half a map from here—

  to be with my cousins,

  Jackson and Kate,

  who are thirteen and eight,

  and with my Uncle Todd,

  while Dad and I

  will be missing

  her.

  But not the same kind of missing.

  My Aunt Rose is missing from the 86th floor

  of a building that’s smoldering and missing

  most of itself.

  I visited her office once,

  with my cousins and Uncle Todd.

  See, my Aunt Rose and I,

  we see eye to eye. We click.

  She gets me. That day, she let me

  sit in her chair and pretend to be Boss,

  so I bossed everyone: Be nice! Make art!

  Aunt Rose agreed, “Let’s decree

  naps, music, candy—and raises

  for everybody!”

  A framed landscape I’d drawn

  decorated her office’s white wall,

  which I guess

  is not there

  anymore.

  8.

  “All?” I ask.

  “All planes are grounded,” Mom repeats,

  her voice gone monotone.

  “As in, not in the air?” I ask again.

  She nods, looks out our window

  to the empty sky. “Who knows

  what’s coming next!”

  After planning her route, she hesitates—“Your dad

  will be home soon”—and then kisses me,

  grabs her final necessities,

  and loads her car.

  I remind her to wear her seatbelt,

  to call when she gets there,

  then I wave goodbye,

  but she’s already in math-teacher

  problem-solving mode.

  In comparison, my problem shrinks

  to beyond microscopic, so I befriend

  the bathroom.

  Beneath the sink, Mom’s supplies

  loom like a commercial

  for a product I can’t decode.

  The folded, illustrated instructions,

  black-and-white line drawings

  of a woman who smiles with knowledge

  she won’t share

  with a girl like me.

  The woman, all curves and experience,

  could help me if she wanted,

  but she doesn’t. And nothing Mom owns

  works for me.

  These bathroom walls offer no advice,

  the green carpet as useless

  as grass in a house.

  The bulbs around the mirror glare,

  illuminating my ignorance.

  I’m the star of this one-character show,

  but my freckles look like dirt

  and the trash can fills up

  like failure

  —and Mom is driving out of town this very minute.

  She is going,

  going,

  gone.

  9.

  I call Camille,

  visualize her phone

  echoing in her empty home.

  If she’s shooting hoops, she won’t hear.

  If she’s not home, she won’t know

  that I’ve called, since I leave no message.

  I’m just a phone ringing,

  echoing in somebody’s home.

  Unanswered.

  Unheard.

  Alone.

  10.

  Later that evening,

  from my savings

  I pocket seven bucks

  and catch a ride with Dad, who’s camouflaged in fatigues.

  Since Mom’s left town,


  he’s on a mission to buy us food

  so he won’t have to feed me MREs—

  the military’s version

  of instant meals.

  On the drive, he doesn’t speculate

  on what President Bush should do—

  or mention anything about anything really.

  I guess we’re both in shock.

  His silence fills the car. He steers

  us toward the store, as if that’s all

  he remembers how to do.

  The rest plays out like a nightmare,

  a slow-motion blur of shame,

  that begins with me slinking the aisles

  of mysterious hygiene products,

  skipping over a box like Mom’s,

  hoping not to see anyone I recognize,

  looking no one in the eyes,

  and avoiding Dad, who’s lost in his head

  and wandering frozen foods.

  Then I snatch a box of pads from a shelf

  and dump too much money at the first register I find

  and turn and run

  with the guy calling after:

  “Hey there!

  You! GIRL!”

  Dad,

  with his special-op skills

  and his empty hands

  and an unreadable expression on his face,

  regards me with my purchase

  so visible,

  so obvious.

  So!

  And his voice turns to whisper

  as he finds his words

  and shakes his head:

  “Today is like nothing

  I’ve ever seen.”

  I freeze at first,

  but of course I know

  he’s talking about New York,

  Pennsylvania,

  and D.C.

  Not

  me.

  11.

  Our father-daughter time we spend

  glued to the tube, as Dad likes to call

  our TV—

  the FIRST plane

  soaring, angling, drifting

  birdlike

  in the blue-sky, sunny,

  ordinary morning.

  The plane is low, banking,

  turning,

  then plunging

  its knife

  into the north tower.

  Debris and papers

  fluttering free,

  among the shock and disbelief,

  SHOUTS,

  confusion, panic.

  That’s when a SECOND plane

  careens