“Looks to me like you already found them,” she said, her eyes wrinkled up in smiles. “And what about you, Miss Angel? What do you need today?”
“I was wondering—I know everything’s overdue, but, well, would it be okay if I renew the star book?”
“Keep it as long as you need to,” Miss Liza said. “If someone else comes in wanting to borrow it, I’ll let you know. All right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” They smiled at each other, Angel realizing at once that the likelihood of someone else wanting that particular book was very slim.
“How about the cookbook? Was it any help?”
“Well, it wants you to have stuff we don’t have.”
“So, something simpler that doesn’t call for fancy ingredients?”
Angel nodded.
“Hmm. Let me think.” She didn’t go to the cookbook section but to a part of the children’s section and brought out a paperback book that had a spiral binding. “Here’s one the 4-H Club put out with someone just like you in mind.” She handed the book over to Angel. “I should have thought of it last time.”
“Thanks. And I got another question. It—it looks like we’re going to be at Grandma’s longer than we first thought. Mama thinks we ought to go ahead and start school.” She looked over at Bernie to see if he was going to say anything, but he was happily leafing through a Stupids book. “She wanted me to find out when school starts around here.”
“Well, that’s an easy one. A week from today, the day after Labor Day.”
“I’m sure Mama knows, but Bernie and me was curious as to where the school building is. I mean, do we walk, or take a bus, or what?”
“I’m afraid they closed down the school here in the village a few years ago. Tell your mama”—she looked closely at Angel as she said the word, as though she was suspicious about Mama but too polite to question—“I’m sure your mama remembers that the school’s in Chesterville now.” Miss Liza sidled over to the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a thin yellow phone book. “I’ll write down the number of the school for you. Then they can tell you where to catch the bus, that sort of thing.”
“Thank you. C’mon, Bernie.” Bernie stooped down and began picking up every book he’d yanked from shelves earlier. When he stood up, books were falling out from under both his arms. “You can’t take more than two. We still got to carry the groceries.” He started to argue but sighed instead. After a long time of examining every book, he carefully chose the same two books he’d taken home the time before. She opened her mouth to suggest that he might want a new one, but Miss Liza shot her a warning glance. “I thought you didn’t like books,” Angel said.
“I don’t,” he said. “I only like Stupids.”
Miss Liza stamped the cards and handed them their books. Then she leaned down in her dangerous way that made Angel fear she’d topple over, and pulled something out of the bottom drawer. It was an almost new-looking canvas backpack. “Somebody left this here two or three years ago,” she said, pushing it across the desk toward Angel. “Why don’t you take it? It might come in handy.” A real backpack! She wouldn’t be so weird at school if she had a backpack like everyone else. “Are you sure it’s okay if I take it?”
“Positive,” Miss Liza said. “And if you have any problems, with school or anything else, call me. All right, Angel?”
“Thank you. I’ll, I’ll tell Mama you offered.” Nobody in town, even somebody as nice as Miss Liza, could know that Mama was missing. Sometimes the people with the kindest hearts caused the worst trouble for kids.
Angel planned the next steps carefully. First she cashed Grandma’s check and bought each of them a Popsicle. “We’ll be right back to get groceries,” she explained to the clerk. “We got to eat these first.”
“Suit yourself,” the woman said.
They sat on the steps of the store and ate the Popsicles. “Bernie, you can’t look at your book and eat your Popsicle at the same time. You’ll drip all over it,” Angel said.
“You are so mean.” But she knew he didn’t mean it.
She stretched out her feet in dirty sneakers with no socks. The sun was warm on her bare ankles. A fly buzzing over a drop of melted Popsicle that had dripped on the step was the loudest noise to be heard in the late-summer morning. She licked contentedly. “This is great, isn’t it, Bernie?”
“I wanted grape,” he said.
“Well, you should have said so, Bernie. I asked, and you said ‘orange’ plain as day. I can’t read your blinking mind.”
“I know,” he said happily.
Everything was going to be all right. Oh, they had parents that acted like spoiled babies and a great-grandma who needed a mother as much as they did, and in this immense universe they weren’t even specks of dust, but some
how, somehow, they were going to make it. She knew it, sitting on those steps eating a cherry Popsicle, a real backpack on her back with books inside waiting to be read, and groceries in all five major food groups waiting to be bought. She didn’t have anything to worry about today, and she wasn’t going to get all stressed out about tomorrow. Not while she had the chill syrupy taste of a cherry Popsicle in her mouth.
THIRTEEN
To School We Go