Being Neighborly, Part 6

The moving men came on the 19^th of June, the morning after my last day at Orton. They spent two days creating a growing and then gradually shrinking whirlwind of chaos as they hauled boxes that Mom had barely finished packing, disassembled beds and chests of drawers, and packed the interior of our home like a Jenga tower in the back of their van. Mom strode through the midst of it all, labeling boxes and reminding the movers that things were marked fragile for a reason, while Elle scampered behind her asking questions. Dad was already out in Chautauqua opening up the new place. I knew he was excited about it. Mom had been the one to convince when I started my campaign to move us out of the city. She had laughed it off when I first suggested it, but I knew that all the reasons I could marshal — how much she hated her job, the cost of living in the city, the way we never got to see family anymore — were arguments she could have made herself. In fact, I heard her make them to Dad, after she began to entertain the idea of relocating the family. I knew she would never admit that I originated the plan, but I also knew that it wouldn’t ever have gotten very far with our parents if they hadn’t been ready to hear my points.

There was one point I couldn’t tell them, the reason that I wouldn’t — couldn’t — give up, through months of arguing. I had wracked my brains for weeks after I stumbled out of Cassandra’s apartment that last time, searching through my fear for some solution, some way of averting the shadow that hung over my little sister. Despite all logic, I never doubted what she told me. Maybe I was just too afraid to dismiss the possibility. Maybe it’s because she was so beautiful, even in her bitter pain. Maybe it’s because I trusted in an act of neighborly confidence worthy of Harper Lee. Whatever it was, I believed. I looked continuously, searching the Internet until all hours of the night, for any suggested causes of cancer, contagions in Elle’s life that could be obliterated or avoided. Mostly, I just became inundated with information. Everything seemed to be carcinogenic. The only conclusion I could come to was that the risks — from car exhaust, pollution, synthetic foods, what-have-you — were at much higher incidence in this city of billions than they would be in the rural area where my parents met and grew up.

I didn’t know if convincing my parents and sister to change our entire life together and reform it in a new place was the change Elle needed, the vital factor that would shift her future from one fate to another, but it was my best hope, and so the only thing I could do. There was one way to find out for sure if I was right, but I was afraid of the answer.

I waffled over the decision all through our last afternoon, as Mom forced us to make a final sweep of the apartment. I hadn’t tried to contact Cassandra Jones since she told me her secret, and Elle, who had shyly suggested we knock on her door a few weeks into the New Year, had been quelled by my adamant opposition and had not mentioned her name in months. She went on to other books, and other nicknames and I wasn’t sure if she even thought much about our enigmatic neighbor and the evening chocolate sessions of the fall.

After Mom had locked our place for the last time, though, pushing the key under the door for the super, Elle looked over at the anonymous door next to ours and then turned to me, frowning. “Do you think we should say ‘Good-bye’?” she asked.

I looked at the door a long time, feeling secrets pressing against the back of my teeth, until Mom began to move down the hall, saying over her shoulder, “I know it’s hard, kids, but it’s time to go….” Elle took a few steps after her, looking questioningly at me.

            “I’m not sure if she’s still there, Elle.” My voice, which had finally started to adjust to its lower register, squeaked at the end the way it hadn’t in ages. Elle giggled at me, and, as if her voice was a spring-release, I stepped over to Cassandra’s door, and banged on it, hard.

            There was no response. I knocked again, and waited, listening for any movement within, with my ear almost pressed against the door, until Elle tugged on my arm and Mom yelled — she was at the elevator by now — asking what was going on, and why weren’t we coming? Finally, I gave up, and let Elle pull me away, as she called out a garbled and inquiry-provoking explanation to Mom.

            I don’t know if Cassandra had really gone, or if she just let me knock in vain so that I would think I had succeeded. If so, it was kind of her — but I prefer to believe that it was the other possibility, and that the room behind the locked door was as empty as if she had never existed.

Being Neighborly, Part 5

Elle was subdued for the next few days, despite the holiday excitement, although she refused to tell Mom or Dad what was bothering her. They thought she was getting sick, and she provided some support for that theory by developing sniffles and a sore throat on Christmas morning, and spent the next few days enjoying her Christmas presents while lying in bed.

December 30^th (New Year’s Eve Eve, as Mom liked to call it) fell on a Friday this year. Elle was still in bed, and neither of us had mentioned knocking on Cassandra’s door again since she had shooed us out of it a week before. It was warmish, and I tried to take advantage of it (and get out of a house made small by too much family time) by taking my bike around Central Park.

The cold felt like a sheath around my legs and arms as I pedaled home and the dusk made the city around me blur. Mom hated the idea of my riding on the streets but there was no way I was going to wheel it all the way from the Park in this weather. Besides, I liked the idea of slipping between taxis as recklessly as a bicycle courier downtown.

Sadly, my vision of myself was a little more agile and self-aware than my reality. My heart was pounding from volleys of honking and the sounds of brake screeching too many times when I reached my building. “Wotcherself, kid!” one last and particularly irate taxi driver called after me. “You think you know when your number’s up?”

As I wheeled my bike down the hall, I felt tugged by another set of worries altogether. I couldn’t help thinking about Cass, and the tension in her form visible even when she stood at the sink with her back towards me. Mother would worry if I didn’t appear very soon after dark — but I leaned my bike against the wall by our door anyway, and went past it.

I stood in front of the next door for a few, shaky breaths, before raising my fist to knock. I waited, wondering how long I could bear it, and finally reached forward to knock again.

As I did, the latch clicked, and Cassandra looked out, to find me awkwardly pulling my arm back and clasping both hands in front of me. I suddenly realized what a terrible idea this was. What could I say? — Hi Cass, I know you basically kicked me and my sister out of your place last time, but here I am again, in my grody exercise sweats, and I really want to know what’s up with you? — I could feel myself blushing. I wanted to say something apologetic about bothering her again, to look down and away, but, as usually, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She was as beautiful as ever, although her eyes looked tired.

After a while she said, “Hello, Noe.” Then, after another pause, “Where’s Scout?”

Relieved to have something to talk about that had nothing to do with me, I blurted out quickly, “Oh, she’s sick—”

Cassandra’s reaction was astonishing. She blanched, pulled away from me into the shadows of her apartment. I broke off in surprise, and interrupted myself: “God, Cass, don’t freak out! She just has a cold; she usually gets them over the holidays. Mom says that germs are Elle’s way of spreading holiday cheer…. Honestly,” I continued as Cass kept her face averted, “she’s really fine! She’s still asking me for new things to read.”

“I’m sorry, Noe.” Cass’s voice sounded thick. “I must seem unhinged to you.” She reached up and scrubbed her face, a gesture that reminded me of Elle, and looked back at me.

I tried to laugh it off. “Don’t worry Cass; everybody gets stressed out at this time of year — and actually, I really knocked because I wanted to apologize for anything Elle or I might have said last time to upset you.” I gulped, thinking about what I had just said, and hurried on, “Elle, she’s just so young…”

“Please, don’t worry about it. I was out of line.” She shook her head, trying to recover her composure. “Would you like to come in for chocolate? It’s Friday, after all.”

I nodded. Part of me felt as if I was betraying Elle, by enjoying what had become our shared secret without her, but another part of me was agog at the idea of having time with Cassandra all to myself — even if I knew I was just a kid to her. I followed her inside.

At the table, there were a few minutes of quiet while Cassandra made the cocoa, and brought it over. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any cookies this week,” she said, surprisingly sheepish.

“Oh, it’s alright.” I took a breath, and girded up my courage. “Cass — Cassandra; I have to ask you — is everything alright? I mean, it sounded as if you were actually pretty upset about something last time, and — I don’t know — I’ve had the sense that you had something bothering you before. I don’t want to pry into your privacy, but I just needed to let you know that if you want anyone to talk to, or if there’s anything I can do to help — well, I just thought you should know that you have friends.” I tried not to wince, listening to myself. If I’d been older, if I’d been a man, I would have put my hand out to cover hers, but instead I just sat there, knowing that I was blushing up to my hair again and looking at her out of the corner of my eye.

Cass was silent some more. Silence was something she was good at. I wondered anxiously if she was going to blow up again. Instead, after a long while, she smiled a watery smile, and reached up to wipe her eyes. “Oh Noe, you are so sweet.” I experienced an internal squirm that was a mix of embarrassment and elation. “I wish you were right, but I can’t really have friends. I see too much of them.” I looked at her full on, puzzled out of my self-consciousness.

“Let me try to explain. Then you can try to believe me.

“I wasn’t born Cassandra Jones; it’s an epithet I gave myself after I realized I couldn’t live with people, especially not any I cared about, and came here to this city of anonymous crowds.

“I chose my name in a fit of black humor, or possibly hubris — but it felt right, to take the name of a woman whose visions were to no one’s advantage, least of all her own.”

My confusion must have been written on my face, because she caught herself with an almost-laugh. “I’m sorry; I’m not making any sense, am I?” She took a deep breath, and began to speak quickly. “When I was a little younger than you are now, just at the age when things seem to get really complicated and emotional for everybody, life threw a true complication in my direction. I started seeing things — things that other people said weren’t there. Everyone I saw seemed to be followed by a dark silhouette, a shadow that tailed them whether they were standing in sunlight at noon, or sitting in a darkened room. I felt as if I was living in a world of chiaroscuro, where normal shapes and patterns were obscured by clouds — but the worst was when I looked into the shadows that trailed behind people. I saw — I see — violence, illness, ill-chance, the failure of the body and the triumph of age. I thought I was going mad, and that I needed treatment, anti-hallucinogens or tranks, but I was too terrified of the consequences to tell anybody.

“Then, after months of this fear and confusion, I realized the truth — or rather was shown proof of what, I think, I had always been afraid was true. I was walking home from school — I was still in school at that point, although my life was more or less a shambles and everyone thought I was on drugs — when I witnessed a car accident. It was a hit and run, although the victim was probably more to blame than the driver. She was running, with headphones on, not looking where she was going. I know, because she bumped into me a block before she crossed the street. I had shied away from her, from the vision of impact and hemorrhage that I glimpsed in her shadow, but then when I heard the squeal of breaks, the sound of impact and the screams of the bystanders, I turned to look and froze. I was seeing the exact same violence, the same tragedy, again. I stood still while the driver jammed his car into reverse and fled, while people ran forward to see if the victim had a chance (I already knew that she didn’t), but when I heard the sirens approaching, bringing with them the promise of consequences and reactions, I found my legs and ran. It took a long time for me to stop running. I don’t like to think much about that period.” She shivered, and looked up at me.

I felt as if I was gasping like a fish. “B-but, that was just one time, maybe it was a coincidence?”

Cass shook her head. “Of course, that’s what I wanted to believe, too. So I kept testing it — visiting hospitals, or old-folks’ homes. I never saw anything to convince me otherwise, though.”

“But what if you said something?” I asked, “Surely people’s fate isn’t set? If you had stopped the girl, and she hadn’t run out in the street, then she wouldn’t have died just then. Can’t you warn people?”

Her smile was bitter. “You are just like me — although maybe anyone would have this reaction. I haven’t told enough people to know.” I would have marveled, even now, at this sign of my special status, but she was going on. “You would think that this would be a great gift. I could use it to save people, like a super hero — but few of the fates I see are the product of one mistake, or one decision. How can you convince a lifelong junk-food junkie to change his ways, without telling him you can see his massive cardiac arrest in a year? Sometimes you don’t know what the causes are — what would you tell to a woman who will get breast cancer? There are so many possible catalysts.”

“What about the accidents, though?” I persisted.

“Yes,” she agreed, “there are the deaths that I could avert, but that is perhaps the bitterest part of all. If I see a death that is avoidable, and if I take steps to prevent it, warning the person, or changing their life, then they disappear from mine.

“It’s as if I can only exist in the reality of the deaths I see. If the person I warn is able to change their fate, so their future has a different shape, then it’s as if they never existed for me. I remember them, but all evidence of their presence disappears. They live a life with a new future and new choices, but my future is set. I am stuck in this strand of reality whose future I can see.”

I was not sure I understood this. “Hunh?”

“Let me put it this way: if you flip a coin, there is a possibility that it will come down heads or tails. In the moment, both futures exist for you. It comes down tails, and the other possibility collapses; it ceases to exist, outside of the potential of an alternate reality. Suppose I was tied to a world in which the coin could only come down heads. Because it came down tails for you, though, we could no longer inhabit the same reality.”

I looked at her blankly. “How do you know this?”

She shrugged. “It’s my best theory. I tried to help people for a while, to get them to change so that they wouldn’t die in the ways I saw. Either my vision stayed the same, whatever I did, or I never saw them again. It happened over and over. Strangers I met in bars, my friends from home. My mother.”

I stayed silent, digesting this. Cassandra got up and put the cups in the sink. Looking at her back again, I finally said,

“Why are you telling me?”

She turned around, and came back to stand in front of me. “Your sister will get cancer before she is the age you are now.”

Being Neighborly, Part 4

The next week, Elle borrowed the sequel to The Five Children and It, and we drank more hot chocolate and had gooey chocolate chip cookies (Cassandra tore open a new package for us). The week after that Elle demanded something more grown up, and went home with The Three Musketeers. By that time Mother knew that we were spending our early Friday evenings at a neighbor’s house, and although she never met Cassandra — we always got home before Mom — she had made the decision, based on Elle’s voluble and my evasive praises, that a literary acquaintance was to be encouraged.

Actually, Cass was far more Elle’s friend than mine. She was always happy to ask Elle about her school day and her opinion of the books she was reading, just as she was happy to call her “Scout” as long as Elle’s determination to embody the desire for social justice, circa 1963, lasted. She had little to say to me, even after I had overcome my initial paralysis in front of her and began to try to draw her out with questions.

She worked, I discovered, for a high-paying actuarial company downtown and used her free time to mingle with the endless crowds of the city. She loved the fictional worlds of books and plays — her conversations with my sister made that apparent — but her own world seemed strangely devoid of people. She spoke vaguely of family upstate, but when I asked her if she spent many of her nights out with friends (thinking, with a jab of anxiety, about boyfriends), she made a bitter face.

“This city promotes isolation, even in crowds,” she said, and took a swig of her cocoa. “Especially in crowds.”

But why do you isolate yourself? I wanted ask her. I was afraid to push too much, but I was puzzled by it, and not just because the pattern of our Friday afternoons — Elle sprawled in front of the bookcase while Cass and I sat awkwardly on either side of her table — was so counter to the other aspects of Cass’s life, but because I still sometimes saw a hint of that sadness and anger that had transformed her face when she first looked at us. Fall turned into winter, and the sky outside Cass’s window began to be dark when we got there. Cass lit thick white beeswax candles to brighten her table, but her apartment remained barren of holiday decorations. When Elle asked one of her impetuous questions about what and when she celebrated, Cass was more than usually vague, but assured us that she would be here all month.

“You aren’t going up to your family’s place?” I asked, trying to be polite.

“No.” Her voice was cold. “It’s better for me not to.”

“That’s so sad!” Elle chimed in. “Mom always says it’s a terrible time to be alone — you should come celebrate with us!”

Cass stood up and began stacking plates and mugs; clattering them together so that I was afraid she would break something. “Sad is what I live with. What your mother says doesn’t mean anything if being with people is the most terrible time of all.” She turned her back to dump the dishes, while Elle and I stared at her. She turned on the faucet and the sound of running water filled up the silence.

I looked over at Elle. She was staring down at the book in her lap, and the top of her forehead had turned bright pink. I knew I should say something, but I was choked by embarrassment that felt like anger and sympathy that felt like curiosity.

After far too long, Cassandra turned back towards us. Her voice was lower than I’d ever heard it, and sounded almost shaky. “I’m sorry. I misspoke. Sometimes, I let things get the better of me. I didn’t mean to say anything hurtful, but I think it would be best if you went home now.”

Elle and I got up, Elle with a scramble, and me slowly enough that — I hoped — Cass wouldn’t notice how close I was to shaking, too. Cass brushed past us and held the front door open, refusing to look at Elle. I caught her gaze as I followed my sister out. I didn’t want to; but even now I couldn’t stop staring at her.

She closed the door behind us, softly but with as much finality as if she had slammed it. I fumbled for my key with one hand and felt Elle grope for the other, as she hadn’t done for years. I didn’t shake her off as her fingers curled around mine, something I hadn’t allowed for even more years before that. I didn’t have the heart, and there were no witnesses to this crime against my dignity. We were quite alone.

Being Neighborly, Part 3

The next afternoon when I got home, Elle was waiting to make sure that I wouldn’t renege on my promise. I barely had time to thunk my backpack down on the floor before she hurried me back out the door and headed us towards the Park. We didn’t get back to our building until past sunset, and the elevator light was crawling across the panel as people arrived home from work. “Let’s take the stairs!” Elle suggested.

            I looked at her suspiciously. “That’s a high energy proposal for someone who just demanded we take a taxi because she was too tired to walk home.”

            She did her best to look innocent. “Well, we could take a little stop on every floor, that way we wouldn’t get tired.”

            “And knock on people’s doors, I suppose, to ask them if they ever stabbed their father with a pair of scissors? Nice try. I don’t think so.”

            “Aww, come on, Noe. There must be someone in the building who’s hiding.”

            I tried to explain to her that anyone trying to hide themselves away from the world would be unlikely to welcome a visit from a teenage boy and his kid sister (I had to continue over her protests at that point). I was finally forced to compromise, though, and we started upstairs with the agreement that we would try to figure out what we could about people from their front doors, but wouldn’t hammer on any.

            I didn’t have high hopes for Elle’s experiment. New York apartment buildings are anonymous places at the best of times, and most complexes don’t reveal more of their inhabitants than a hall of identical and closed doors on every floor.

By the time we reached our floor, Elle was beginning to lag. Rather than running up to examine the name pasted over each doorbell, she trotted more and more slowly behind me as we went down the hall. I turned back to hurry her along when I reached our front door, which is how I happened to be facing the elevator full on when it opened to let out another passenger.

            I had never seen the woman who appeared from behind the sliding door before, although she stepped out briskly, without any sign that she was unfamiliar with where she was going. Superficially, she also looked very much like most of the other residents we had passed: she was wearing a dark, conservatively-cut pantsuit like any profession. She had a hard, closed expression as she marched towards and past us, stopping at the door just beyond ours. I realized, as she brushed by (and I yanked Elle’s arm to pull her out of the way), that her avoidance of eye contact must be particularly pointed, since I was staring like an automaton.

This was because, taut expression or no, she was stunning. She had long, bronze hair (not the color that comes from inside a salon bottle, but that burnished shade that is somewhere between blonde and red) that fell in silky panels on either side of her finely-boned face. She was tall (taller than me, at any rate), and the demure cut of her suit jacket could not prevent me from noticing, with a kind of internal lurch, that she was well-built in a way that most of my female peers were certainly not yet. I knew that my palms (still curled around the doorknob and Elle’s shoulder) were probably sweaty by now, and I was overcome with simultaneous fears that I would say something mortifying, and that I would never remember to speak. How could I have missed the fact that we live next door to a stone fox?

            Elle saved me from embarrassing myself by taking over the job on her own. She twisted out of my grip and planted herself by the woman’s elbow.

            “Hello, are you a recluse?” she demanded.

            I was distracted from my initial reaction (mentally cursing the day I was ever born into this world of pain) by the look that the woman flashed in Elle’s direction. When she glanced down at my sister, she looked suddenly pained — burdened in the removed, helpless manner of a witness to a car crash or a viewer of a documentary about genocide. That expression vanished so quickly that I was not sure I had seen it, and was followed by a glare at me. I would have cringed, sure that she suspected my heated thoughts, but that look disappeared as well, and she looked back at Elle.

            “A recluse?” she asked. Her voice was soft, and surprisingly deep. “Don’t recluses never leave their houses?”

            Elle squirmed a bit. “Well yes, usually. But I’ve never seen you before, and I live just here. You might not ever have come out ‘til now, since you were in high school. Maybe there was someone you had to save?”

            The woman — girl, maybe; she seemed younger than I had at first thought — closed her eyes briefly at that, as if Elle’s silly question was too much for her. I was about to grab Elle and make a break for it, where I could melt down and commit sororicide in private, when Elle gave one more try.

            “It is funny that we’ve never met, you know. Neighbors are supposed to share things, aren’t they?” She reached up and touched the stranger on the elbow.

            The girl looked directly at Elle’s hand, and the tension seemed to go out of her, almost as if she had to remind herself to breathe. “Yes, usually they are,” she said to Elle, “although I don’t think that happens very much in this city.

            “And if I was like Boo Radley, wouldn’t I be sneaking out, rather than sneaking in?”

            Elle’s face lit up. “How did you know about Boo? Are you reading To Kill a Mockingbird, too?”

            “No, not at the moment, but I’ve read it before. I recognize the symptoms. I guess you like it?”

            “It’s great!” Elle agreed, although she added quickly, “even though it’s really sad, too. Noe says that’s because it’s ‘a picture of an unjust world.’” She jerked her head at me.

            Almond-colored eyes turned in my direction and I swallowed. “Are you Noe?” the girl asked.

            “Ah — yes.” Thank God my voice didn’t squeak. “I’m Noe Rolfe and this is my sister—”

            “Scout!” Elle interjected.

            “—Elle,” I finished lamely.

            The girl smiled and offered her hand to Elle. “Please call me Cass. I chose what I go by, too.”

            Elle, looking charmed that she had been offered a proper grown-up introduction, shook the hand enthusiastically.

            “Have you always lived here?” she asked. “You must not come in and out very often, even if you’re not a recluse, because I usually see our neighbors at least sometimes — even if most of them don’t take much time to talk to me.” She looked momentarily downcast, but then brightened with another comparison to Harper Lee’s world. “At least none of them are scary!”

            “No, I’ve been here only a few months, now, but I’m not surprised that we haven’t met.”

            “Elle! Scout,” I finally made my plunge into the conversation, “don’t ask so many direct questions! It’s not…” I groped for a reproof worthy of Atticus Finch, “civil.”

            Cass laughed a bit, this time. “I don’t mind.” She turned back to Elle. “You can ask all the questions you want.

            “So you keep yourself — and your brother — busy trying to see how much life is like books? I hope you’re not too disappointed. What else have you been reading?”

            “Be careful what you ask,” I had to warn her, “You could be in for a long list.”

            Now it was Elle’s turn to glare at me, but, “Oh, I don’t mind,” Cass assured her. “In fact, why don’t we make this less like New York and more like neighbors would be in Maycomb?” She took a deep breath. “Would you like to come in for some tea?” The question was addressed to Elle but she looked at me as well.

I knew there was a reasonable answer I could give, based on any number of practical maxims, but I looked from Elle’s enthusiastic face, to the mysterious beauty of this new neighbor, and I found myself saying, “Sure. That’s really nice of you to offer.”

Cass pushed open her door the rest of the way and Elle darted through. I hesitated. “I really don’t want her to impose on you. She’s kind of rambunctious…”

Cass’s face closed. “I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t meant it. She’s just a little girl.”

“I — I’m sorry!” I felt as if I had put my foot in it. “I just didn’t want her to be an annoyance is all.”

Cass shook her head, as if catching herself, but her expression remained the same. “No; I didn’t mean to be rude.”

I swallowed again (sure that I had just cemented my image as gormless adolescent in her eyes) and stepped over her threshold.

I found myself in a small living room, clean, but sparsely furnished — proof that had she spent little time making herself at home here. The only distinguishing feature was the far wall, which was covered with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, crammed with volumes. Elle was currently on her knees in front of it, running her hands over the spines and muttering to herself.

I glanced at Cass, who shrugged. “I like the places books can take me. It looks like your sister does, too.” She started towards the kitchenette alcove. “What kind of tea can I offer you? Or would you prefer Swiss Miss?” She made a gesture as if she would like to touch Elle on the head as she went by, but her fingers curled back at the last minute, self-protectively.

“Swiss Miss, please!” Elle had pulled a book out and was cradling it in her lap, but she was not too distracted to ignore the possibility of dinner spoilers.

“You?” Cass looked back at me, the diluted light from the window catching the highlights in her amazing hair.

Mom would no doubt take all this out on me later. “Sure, I’ll have hot chocolate as well, if that’s okay.”

Cass nodded, and started fiddling with her range.

“Cass!” Elle called, looking up wide-eyed from her book. “What’s this story like, The Five Children and It?”

“It’s about things not working out the way you’d expect. It’s for kids.” Elle started to look suspicious — she had gotten to the phase where she only pursued books in the grown-up section of the library — but Cass seemed to anticipate her. “I still enjoy it, though. Would you like to borrow it?”

“Yeah!” Elle grinned up at her.

“Alright, then.” Cass rummaged in a cupboard. “I think I have some marshmallows around here somewhere. Could you help me move these cups to the living room, Scout?”

We ended up staying at Cassandra Jones’s, sitting around her lightweight table until the afterimage of the autumn twilight faded. I put off saying anything about going home. I was happy to nurse my hot chocolate and watch Cassandra quiz Elle, who chattered on about books. Eventually, though, Elle had drained her chocolate to the dregs and was licking the remains off her upper lip like a cat.

The fear that Mom had gotten home began to prey on my mind. “I don’t want Mom to go ballistic thinking we’ve been kidnapped.”

Elle grimaced, but Cassandra came to my rescue. “You’re brother’s right, Scout. You can’t visit me forever.” Another shadow, of the kind that seemed to visit her so frequently, passed over her face as she looked at my sister, but she shook it off. “If you like, though, you can come back next Friday. You can even borrow another book!”