Every Shiny Thing Read online

  I can’t be “such a helpful sister” anymore, when Ryan’s not even here. But now I can help other people instead.

  I was so busy wondering whether I should tell Jenna to use the money for Hailey with the puffy ponytail or to choose who needed it most that I didn’t notice when a woman in a black dress crossed the store and stepped behind the register.

  She gave me a smile that lasted a millisecond. “How can I help you?”

  “Uh, I want to sell these.” I put the jeans on the counter between us. “Please.”

  She unfolded them and made an “mmm” noise as she examined the front and then the back.

  “They’ve never even been tried on,” I added, in case that was a selling point.

  “Do you have a receipt for these by any chance?” she asked as she put them back down on the counter.

  I didn’t like the way she was looking at me, with her lips squeezed together as if she’d just downed a cup of the fresh-squeezed lemonade Audrey and I tried to sell the summer before third grade, before her mom told us you had to add sugar.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Then she raised her unnaturally skinny eyebrows, and I got it. She thought the jeans were stolen.

  I dug into the bag, and luckily Mom’s receipt was there, clinging to the top layer of tissue paper. I thrust it at the sour-faced lady, but she didn’t tell me sorry for getting the wrong idea.

  “They’re great jeans,” she said, looking me up and down. “And they look like your size. You sure you don’t want them?”

  “Positive.”

  She held up both her hands, as if she’d done everything she could to talk sense into me.

  “All right, then.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here’s a form for you to fill out. You’ll get forty percent of the profit if we’re able to sell them.”

  At first I thought I’d heard her wrong.

  “Forty percent?” I said. “If?”

  “We’re a consignment store,” she said, enunciating every syllable. “That means you only get your commission if your item sells. That’s how we stay in business, and that’s how we’re able to sell such beautiful things.”

  My phone buzzed. Probably Audrey, getting impatient.

  “Well, how long do you think it’ll take to sell the jeans?” I asked. “And how much would you sell them for?”

  She gave me that millisecond-long, fake smile again. “We’d probably price the jeans at eighty dollars, but there’s no way to know for sure whether they’ll sell. You get the item back if it doesn’t sell in sixty days.”

  Another customer wanted to look at a necklace inside a locked case, so she left me there at the front of the store.

  Forty percent of $80 . . . $32 for $139 jeans, if somebody wanted them?

  My phone buzzed again, and another employee, who’d been hanging up clothes, walked over and cleared her throat. At first I thought she was going to get mad at me for having my phone on, like at school.

  “You could try online,” she said quietly. “You can get closer to what those are worth that way, if you need the cash.”

  I started to tell her it wasn’t like that—I didn’t need the cash, exactly. But other people did, so what difference did it make?

  I thanked her and stuffed the jeans back into the bag. And as I crossed the street back to Starbucks, I tried to plan my next steps. If I sold the jeans online, what site would I use? Would I send them in the regular mail? How would someone pay me? And what else did I have that I could sell?

  Inside, Audrey was sitting at one of the front tables with a half-melted Frappuccino for each of us.

  “Finally!” she said as I slid into the chair across from her. “What happened to you? I have a flute lesson this afternoon. I barely have any time to hang out now.”

  “I’m really sorry.” I didn’t want to tell her why I’d made her wait, so I just said, “Family stuff.”

  Her face softened immediately, as if she’d just done the expression-switch we used to do when we were little kids. Hold up a hand in front of our foreheads. Slide it down and frown. Slide back up and smile.

  But she didn’t ask what was going on or if it had to do with Ryan. Why would she, when she just assumes everything is so wonderful at Piedmont? Every once in a while, she says something like, “Aw, this song reminds me of Ry!” or, “Tell Ryan hi for me!” but that’s it. It’s like she thinks, OK, we talked about Ryan leaving for five minutes back at the end of August, so that conversation topic is taken care of, and now we can just move on.

  “Well, you’re here now,” she said. “I have a scheme to discuss!”

  She paused to examine my face, probably making sure I wasn’t too upset about the fake family drama she didn’t really want to talk about. I tried to look normal as I took a long, cold sip of my drink.

  “Three words,” she said once she was satisfied that I was OK. “Field. Hockey. Captains! What do you think?”

  “Um, for next year, you mean?”

  “Yes! We could start practicing together outside of school, like we did in third grade when we wanted to be the best at that Presidential Fitness thing.”

  I didn’t remind her about how our Presidential Fitness Test training plan had turned out: Our stomach muscles were so sore from all our sit-ups practice that we both tanked on the actual test.

  “We could run together to get faster, and we could work on passing and dribbling and stuff. There are even sleepaway field-hockey camps we could go to next summer!”

  “That sounds fun,” I said.

  But it didn’t, really. I like field hockey. I like how my mind goes blank while we run at the beginning of practice, and I like the rush of sprinting up the field and yelling for the ball when I’m near the net. I like the cracking sound it makes when I take a big swing and connect just right, and I like that I’m one of only three seventh graders who start on the A team. But that doesn’t mean I want to spend all my time trying to become a field hockey star. It’s just . . . who cares?

  “I was thinking I could offer to switch to fullback, since Grace got hurt,” Audrey added. “Then I’d probably get more playing time, and I could practice defending you, so we’d both get better.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She took out her phone to type notes for the scheme and yanked off her thick silver cuff bracelet because it kept sliding up and down her arm.

  The bracelet sat there on the table, next to Audrey’s drink, glimmering in the sun that streamed through the window.

  Maybe I could sell jewelry online, too. People might buy bracelets or necklaces or whatever more often than jeans, since you don’t have to try on jewelry.

  “I feel like you’re not adding any ideas. Are you not into this?” Audrey asked.

  “It’s not that. You’ve just thought of so much good stuff!” I said, and she bought it.

  She used to always know when I was faking something. Maybe I’ve had too much practice at it lately and gotten too good. She barely even flinched last weekend when she invited me to go shopping and I told her Mom was making me stay home to clean my room.

  A few minutes later, her dad texted to say he was outside, and she jumped up to meet him. “Do you want a ride?”

  “It’s fine,” I told her. “It’s nice out. I’ll walk.”

  She slurped up the end of her drink and hurried out the door, leaving the silver bracelet there on the table.

  She probably won’t even notice she lost it—that’s how much jewelry Audrey has. I picked it up so I could give it back later, and it was heavier than it looked. Real silver, probably.

  I slid it into my bag, wondering how much somebody might pay for it if I didn’t have to give it back. And how much somebody would give me for the jeans, once I figured out how to sell them online. A lot, probably. Enough to do something way more important than figuring out how to be captain of the field hockey team in eighth grade.

  I started to head back home, and a few blocks in, I saw a flash of
blond hair, bouncing, and then Anne and Carl’s sweet, stringy gray dog, Seeger. The girl from the window.

  “Hey!” I called. “Wait up!”

  SIERRA

  Expressions

  Carl says one of their values as a family

  is to respect and revere nature.

  And that they expect their foster children to follow suit.

  They show me:

  the compost,

  the garden,

  the “rainwater reclamation system.”

  “Working the land is good for the spirit,” Carl tells me.

  Does he have a Chicken Soup for the Soul expression for everything?

  Mom’s favorite

  AA expression is

  Fake it till you make it.

  She used to say it even

  drink in hand.

  Maybe I can fake this

  till Mom can get me back.

  Not make more trouble.

  Carl hands me a rake

  I fake a smile, then start to pile the leaves.

  Red. Green. Brown.

  Carl shows me his system. Raking onto a tarp.

  But Seeger keeps jumping into the piles.

  System broken.

  Carl winces. Anne laughs.

  Another Unfamiliar Corner

  After raking,

  Carl asks me to take Seeger on a walk.

  Anne says when I get back,

  she’ll pour us some sun tea.

  I wonder if that’s like the sweet, powdery kind

  Cassidy and I would eat with our fingers sometimes.

  Each house castlelike, old.

  Seeger doesn’t pull, lets me lead.

  We walk around another unfamiliar corner.

  The girl with the long brown hair from the window

  runs toward me, bag in hand, smiling.

  I want to run the other way

  but remember some of Mom’s advice over the years:

  Don’t let them know you’re hurting, or they’ll try to get you.

  Wear a smile, but protect your heart.

  She says her name’s Lauren, asks if I just moved in.

  I nod. Trying to grin.

  Seeger wags his tail at her, licks her hand.

  Her hair’s in loose, movie-star waves. Pearls in her ears.

  But she wears a sweatshirt, jeans with a hole in the knee.

  Asks if she can walk with me, where I’m going to school,

  how old I am.

  Same school, Northwest Friends School,

  same grade, seventh.

  Same bus stop.

  She almost squeals, says she’ll pick me up Monday morning.

  We can walk

  together.

  I grin, shrug,

  run a hand through my hair,

  as stringy as the dog’s.

  Blue Already

  This new room, blue already,

  reminds me of when Mom

  would stash me at Nan’s so she could party all night.

  Sometimes she would leave me for weeks. A month once.

  Nan’s pull-out in the den, hard like this bed.

  The blanket here isn’t a comforter,

  it’s an old quilt, smells like Nan’s basement.

  Nan with her yellow teeth and Jell-O.

  Nan who died from all that smoking.

  I don’t know what to wear to this new school tomorrow.

  Wish I had asked Lauren.

  I try to sleep

  but, instead,

  pretend I’m back in my first room ever

  back when things were better

  parents still together

  my Rapunzel posters,

  my Target-brand American Girl doll, Cynthia.

  Instead of sleeping, I spin back in time,

  dress Cynthia

  for school.

  The Morning

  I throw on jeans and a sweatshirt.

  Anne’s gotten up with me,

  says Carl’s already at work,

  at the co-op.

  I look at her, confused.

  She explains

  the co-op is a food market,

  Carl works as a manager.

  I want to ask why

  they don’t call it a grocery store, but I don’t.

  Anne’s wearing an oversized, sweater,

  clunky jewelry, and big headband.

  Think of Mom’s Wawa uniform.

  Her tanks and minis,

  her small gold heart necklace.

  Anne’s gotten me cereal,

  some kind of granola.

  Missing my Corn Pops,

  tell her I can do it myself.

  She says, beaming, that she’s happy to,

  she’s got lots of energy, she says,

  she loves the morning.

  I don’t tell her, but I want to say, I do, too.

  The morning is when good things happen.

  Better than anything the night before.

  Curiosity

  On time, as promised,

  Lauren’s here.

  In a puffy red vest and sweater.

  With two chocolate muffins.

  Anne told me this morning

  Lauren has an autistic brother,

  he’s gone away, a special school.

  Lauren takes my arm.

  My old jean jacket links with

  her soft white sweater.

  Like we’re friends already.

  And though I know we aren’t,

  it does make this day

  something less scary.

  At the bus stop,

  Lauren knows everyone.

  But on the bus, she sits with me.

  Wonder whether she used to sit

  with her brother,

  if they even went to the same school.

  Wonder what’s changed

  since he left.

  She asks me so many questions, like Anne,

  but she looks at me

  with real curiosity,

  not like a grown-up trying to be nice.

  Not sure what I can give this girl,

  who, besides this missing brother,

  seems to have everything.

  Why does she need me?

  Shiny necklace on now, beads swinging.

  Shiny bright teeth, like she already had braces.

  But she laughs when I ask—

  the bus wheezing onto the curb—

  whether a Friends school means

  they make you be nice to everybody?

  Chain of Hearts

  This school’s old, too.

  Not like my old junior high,

  it had white walls and red lockers.

  These walls, painted with murals,

  no lockers, you share a “space,”

  which is really a cubby, like in elementary.

  How come a school costs so much money

  when it’s old and you have to share?

  Lauren’s in my advisory.

  She has an Asian friend, Audrey,

  hair black, straight to her shoulders.

  I can tell they’ve been friends a long time,

  their inside jokes light the room.

  I watch the way other people watch them.

  But mid-laugh,

  Lauren seems to remember something.

  She walks away from Audrey,

  to me.

  As she walks, I doodle Mom’s signature doodle:

  a line of hearts chained to other hearts

  one heart up, one down, up, down, never-ending,

  I line the whole page,

  pretending I wasn’t

  one of the others, all of us

  watching.

  Joining

  I tell Lauren she doesn’t have to sit with me,

  but she says she wants to,

  says she just joined a group.

  She looks at Audrey quickly

  Audrey looks at her then away.

  Says it’s called

 
Worship & Ministry

  (sounds like something out of Nan’s church).

  Thinks it might be just what I need.

  Wonder how she thinks she knows so much

  already about me.

  I miss Cassidy, us laughing together

  watching TV or bowling.

  Our moms letting us stay at the arcade

  for hours.

  Finding quarters on the floor.

  Or at school, partners in gym.

  Studying for tests.

  I look at Audrey, what’s there to lose, I agree.

  Tricks or Treats

  Our homeroom (they call it advisory)

  is run by Ms. Meadows.

  She makes an announcement about Halloween,

  says Quakers:

  don’t wear costumes with weapons,

  don’t wear costumes that appropriate other cultures.

  Not sure what she means by this

  maybe, like, when I was seven

  and Mom went as Pocahontas?

  Her long wig covering her hair like mine.

  I hid her wig,

  didn’t want her to cover up our matching hair.

  Wonder if these seventh graders

  even still wear costumes anymore.

  Before they took me from Mom,

  before that terrible last day at the mall,

  before Mom’s lucky streak of green days ran out,

  Cassidy and I had plans to trick-or-treat.

  Mom said we were too old for that crap,

  I told her no one’s too old for chocolate.

  She said, No matter what the day, my Sierra girl,

  green, orange, you always make me laugh.

  The Weight Between Us

  After school,

  Anne’s home,

  says she will be here, every day, for me.

  Is that supposed to be comforting?

  I do one of those fake smiles.

  She asks how school was

  she wants to know everything

  about my day.

  Or anything I’m willing to share.

  She says all this while stringing beads on wire.

  I tell her it was fine, Lauren’s nice.

  Give her a little so she doesn’t ask more.

  I don’t tell her how the worry I feel for Mom

  feels like wearing a life jacket made of lead.