I screamed Bear’s name over and over again. From the kitchen, Pal scratched at the door and whimpered. There was a ribbon of light at the bottom of the door. I lay down and pressed my face against the floorboards. I could see the legs of the kitchen chair that Bear had wedged under the doorknob. Pal pushed his nose into the crack and sniffed. I could just manage to touch his nose with my finger.
“It’s okay, Pal,” I said. “I’m okay. Don’t worry.” It was as much bravery as I could manage before crying again.
Time passed. I didn’t know how much. My eyes grew dry. My stomach growled. My bladder began to pinch. I hopped from foot to foot and yelled for Bear, but he did not come. When I couldn’t hold my pee any longer, I pulled a towel from the shelf and crouched over it. When I was done, I rolled up the wet towel and shoved it into the corner. I was so hungry that I felt sick to my stomach. I sat on the ground and put my head on my knees. I hated the darkness, the heat of the tight space, the gaping silence beyond the door. I felt myself begin to shake, and the shaking grew until I was stomping my feet against the floor.
I imagined revenge. My father would come home and be horrified to find me in the closet. He would hug me tightly and apologize for leaving me alone. He would cook me an enormous dinner and he wouldn’t give any of it to Bear—in fact, he’d tell Bear he would never eat again unless he started being nice to me. He would make Bear say he was sorry. I would notforgive Bear though. I would make Bear go days without food before I forgave him and allowed him to eat.
When this fantasy faded, I was left alone again in the small closet. I closed my eyes and imagined the expanse of the ocean. I imagined the salt air filling my chest the way my father had told me it had once filled his, healing him if only for a time. I felt my mother watching me from the cliff. I saw her become a red bird that called to me in a clear song from outside the cottage.
My head jerked from my knees at the sound, and I realized I had fallen asleep. The ribbon of light around the edge of the doorframe was gone. The inky darkness of the closet caused a new wave of panic to wash over me. What if my father didn’t return that night? Would Bear leave me to sleep in the closet? I reached to try the doorknob and gasped when the door swung open. Pal trotted over to me, shimmying and nipping nervously at my hands. Bear’s bedroom door was open, and the room was empty.
I hurried across the kitchen and snatched two of the hard-boiled eggs from the bowl my father frequently restocked on the top shelf of the fridge. My hands were shaking. I peeled and ate the eggs so quickly that my teeth crunched against tiny pieces of shell that I couldn’t be bothered to remove. The clock above the sink revealed that it was nearly nine o’clock at night. Except for a single bite of the peanut butter sandwich that Bear had stolen from me, I had not eaten since early that morning. After I finished the eggs, I sat at the table and ate one piece of bread and then another, washing them down witha large glass of water. I wished again that I had hidden the peanut butter.
I was still sitting at the kitchen table in a sort of daze when headlights swung through the kitchen window. I ran out to the front porch with Pal at my heels to see my father stepping out of his truck. I leaped clear over the porch steps and threw my arms around his waist. He lifted me easily off the ground and hugged me. When I opened my eyes, I saw Bear appear around the corner of the house. He glared at me and shook his head. The sight of him made me involuntarily bite down on the inside of my cheek. I whimpered from the pain and burrowed my face against my father’s neck.
“What is it, Merrow?” he asked, running his hand down the length of my hair. “Don’t cry. I’m home now.”
“I bit my cheek,” I said, muffled. I didn’t want to raise my head and see Bear watching me again.
Dad stroked my hair. “Poor Merrow.” He set me down gently, peeling my arms from his neck. “Don’t you want to know why I went to the airport?” He waved his hand in the direction of the open truck door. “Come meet Amir.”
The truck seat was too high to see what was on it, so I climbed into the cab. At first, I saw only a big blue coat, puffy and strangely shaped, and so I thought perhaps the coat was called an Amir. But then the coat moved, and the head of a boy appeared. The boy looked like one of the wood sprites in the book of fairy tales that I had borrowed several times from Little Earth before losing it. His hair was black and silky around his long face and narrow chin; his blocky ears reminded me of myfather’s wood bookends. His eyes were as dark as the smudges made by rubbing burnt kindling on stone. My skin was brown from the sun, but his was browner.
He studied me just as I studied him. His eyes were big and serious and searching. I liked him immediately. This wasn’t something that I decided, just a feeling of happiness that rose within me as I looked at him.
“Hello,” I said.
“Who’s that?” came Bear’s voice, making me start. He stood beside my father with his arms crossed against his chest.
“Bear, say hello to Amir. He’s going to live with us,” said my father.
I stared at my father, surprised and excited. But when I turned back to Amir, his big eyes brimmed with quivering tears.
“Oh no,” I whispered, leaning toward him. I’d never felt a coat like his, as thick as a new pillow below my fingers. “Don’t do that. Don’t cry. Bear won’t like it.” I used a corner of the enormous coat to wipe the boy’s eyes.
“Amir,” my father said, “this is Merrow.”
He stared at me and said something that sounded like“Shookdeeyah.”
I stared right back at him. “Is that a fairy language?” I asked. “Will you teach me?”
“No, that’s Hindi, isn’t it, Amir?” my father asked, sticking his head into the cab. “Merrow, Amir’s mother’s name was Allison. She wasyourmother’s best friend when they were both children in New York. But Amir was born in India. He speaks Hindi, and English, too.”
Amir was still looking at me. “I lived in an orphanage in India,” he said in a quiet but surprisingly clear voice. “When my mother adopted me, she took me to live in New York City. And now my mother has died.”
My mouth fell open. I wondered how his mother had died, and if it had been his fault. I’d never met another child with a dead mother. And he’d been an orphan! And now he was an orphan again, I realized. I’d never met an orphan, either, but Rei had recently given meAnne of Green Gablesand I’d loved it, finishing the entire book in a weekend. I thought that Anne and I would have been best friends if we’d had the chance to meet. It seemed very likely to me that Amir and I would become best friends.
“You’re joking,” I heard Bear say to my father. “We barely have enough to feed ourselves.”
“We have plenty,” answered Dad.
“Plenty! We have plenty of rotten apples and chickenshit. Is that what this kid eats? Because I don’t.”
“Bear.” My father’s voice was low but held a warning.
Bear grabbed my arm and pulled me from the cab of the truck. “It’s my turn to see our new brother.”
His words were so startling that I didn’t yell at the pain of being yanked from the truck. I rubbed my arm and looked up at my father. “Is Amir our newbrother?”
