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“Help him,” she asked Paul and herself, her voice a plea, desperate for an answer she could comprehend. Like a shot out of a bayonet, Paul was at her papa’s side shaking his shoulder, slapping at his cheek, and leaning down to listen for a breath. He looked up at her.
“I don’t think he’s breathing. I think he might be having a heart attack. I can’t get a pulse.”
Sally scanned Paul’s face as he glanced over her shoulder, his eyes going hard as he stared at something. Or someone. In the distance, she registered laughter. Words like “Garbage Guy is passed out cold,” and “what a waste of space,” and “stay back or you might catch a disease.” It all came through a hollow chamber like she was hearing voices underwater. The insults didn’t register as much as the fear, and that part was all-consuming. Fear paralyzes you when it’s altering your life forever.
Paul returned his focus to her papa, pumping his chest up and down, rolling him over on his side, hitting his back, and screaming, “Someone call the police! Someone call the police!” while no one did, and she stood back to cry. It’s bittersweet the moment you’re faced with saying goodbye to a life you thought you hated once you realize you never hated it at all. Sally suddenly knew how much she loved her father and their tiny life together, even if everyone else hated them. Her papa was a constant, a touchstone to normalcy. She had a father, after all. Not every child does. He was hers, and she was his, the only father she’d known for fifteen years. The one she wanted for the next fifteen…twenty…fifty years if she had anything to say about it.
But of course, she didn’t.
With the notable absence of a single siren or person coming to rescue them, she felt it the moment her papa passed. Felt her life shift from the daughter of the garbage man to nothing at all, from being part of a team to being the one standing alone that no one ever picked. A slew of kids surrounded them, but not one of them besides Paul moved to help. Most pointed. A few of them laughed. One even tapped her head and called her Dirty Sally right there on the sidewalk in the middle of the worst moment of her life. Kicked her while she was down, while she couldn’t possibly fall further.
It was then that she knew.
She hated everyone in this town.
She would spend the rest of her life making sure they knew it.
Her only friend was Paul,and even then, it was hard to differentiate “friend” from “part-time savior.” Over the last three months, the savior part nearly outshone everything else. He walked her to and from school, carried her books both ways, caught her fish for dinner, and brought her oranges and pomegranates to keep her vitamin intake up. He sneaked an occasional piece of his mother’s pumpkin pie to her for dessert and handed off their remaining slivers of soap without his parents noticing. He even brought her a small bottle of bleach and a tube of toothpaste that he paid for from his after-school job as a bag boy at the local market, one of the few things anyone had ever bought her outside her papa. All in all, her life had gotten better, even as it had gotten worse.
For one thing, she couldn’t sleep all alone in the house. Too many creaks and pops. Too many groans and snaps. Too many cars driving by and the occasional curious person walking up to the house to touch it and run. People were weird but treated her like the odd one. There were too many reasons to lie awake and feel unsettled.
For another, the social worker kept showing up.
She stopped by again late last week, but Sally stayed hidden under her bed until the lady left, just like Paul told her to. Out of sight, out of mind was the hope. So far, the woman showed up every other Friday without fail. How long would her mind stay fixated on Sally, and why couldn’t she forget about her like everyone else? Some people just can’t follow the social norms no matter how much you want them to.
Through it all, she missed papa. Missed his grumpy presence in their home and his slurred words when he talked. Missed doing double the laundry and triple the cooking. Missed chopping wood for the fire she rarely lit now. It was easier to grab a quilt and breathe through the cold than chop firewood for one. But mainly, she missed the companionship that came from not living alone. The tiny house sometimes felt too large when shadows loomed at night.
It was usually when she felt loneliest that Paul showed up.
Tonight, was that night. His soft knock came at midnight, though why he didn’t just come in through the front door as loudly as he pleased was anyone’s guess. It’s not like anyone would hear him. The eleven inches of snow they’d gotten over the last four days and nights cushioned his footfalls, but Sally knew he tiptoed quietly so as not to disturb his own parents. They had made their displeasure with her clear over the years.“Stay away from that girl. She’s a bad influence,”and“Stay away from that girl. Her father is crazy.”Sally had heard the insults. Adults try to say things quietly when they shouldn’t say them at all. One misstep on Paul’s part, and she might never see him again. Never seeing him again meant never seeing anyone but the ones who judged her, and she couldn’t take that risk. So, she kept quiet too, whispering like a church mouse when she opened the door at his first knock.
Only tonight was different.
Tonight, the bitter cold had made her sick.
“What are you doing here?” she asked through burning eyes and a running nose. There was a yellowish film coming out of both orifices. If she had a thermometer, she would likely discover a fever. No matter, she didn’t have the medicine to bring her temperature down anyway. A sharp blast of winter air rushed across her skin, and she pulled the quilt around her to keep from feeling worse. What she wouldn’t give for hot tea or a warm bath, but she resigned herself to holding up a hand to Paul’s chest to keep him from entering. “You better not come in. You might catch something from me.”
“I’m not worried.” Paul pushed her hand away as he came through the front door, its loud squeaky hinges announcing his arrival to anyone who might be awake at this hour. It was the first time he had ever set foot in the tiny house, which was more of a shack in its current state. Can you call a building a home if it doesn’t come with any of the amenities that make it cozy? Heat, food, family, happiness? “Sally, it’s freezing in here. Is your heat not working?”
“N…no. It stopped working last week,” she lied, unable to keep her teeth from chattering. The heat was turned off last spring shortly after the water was shut off and before the window in her father’s old bedroom broke and slipped into the seam. Now outside air blasted in despite the old sheet she’d shoved into the open space, not so bad in the spring and fall but nearly unbearable all summer and winter. The difference was that she could cool off in the pond or under a shade tree in summer. In winter, there was never a way to get warm except at school, where the chill she felt from other students still left her shivering.
Paul looked around the room. “Do you have a fireplace or a stove? You need heat. I could hang meat in here, and it wouldn’t spoil.”
The thought of hanging meat made her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten dinner except for a piece of stale bread with a corner missing due to a spot of mold she’d removed. There was one piece left for tomorrow morning. The weather was too cold for fish to bite, and Paul hadn’t brought her anything from his kitchen. The cold kept most people indoors and eating what was stored in their iceboxes. When you didn’t have anything stored in your useless icebox, you stretched what you did have as long as you could. For Sally, that had been one and a half slices of bread per day for the past three in a row. She melted snow for water by bringing it inside and tucking the bowl under the old radiator, a slightly warmer spot than the rest of the shack. Tomorrow was Thursday, the day the temperature was supposed to get warm enough for the snow to thaw. With any luck, they would be back in school on Friday, where free lunches were doled out to the unfortunate, Sally herself considered the most unfortunate of the lot. She treasured that lunch like most kids treasured movie tickets or a new pair of shoes, not knowing where her next meal would come from or whether it would at all.
“The wood is wet, and it’s too cold to chop more,” she answered, the words sounding weak even to her own ears. Paul frowned at her, his head tilting in curiosity.
“Did the power just go out, or have you been living like this all week?”
She’d been living like this most of the year, but that wasn’t something she was prepared to admit. It was one thing for people to suspect you didn’t have enough food to eat. It’s another for them to know you barely have enough supplies—or will—to survive.
“It’s been out all week,” she said. The truth is the truth, even if you bend it a little.
Paul’s frown grew into full-on concern, and he swallowed. “Pack a bag. You’re sleeping at my house.”
Her head jerked back so hard a passerby might think he’d slapped her. “I can’t come to your house. Your mother wouldn’t like it, and where would I sleep? Your bedroom?”
Even in the candlelight, she saw his neck turn pink as he walked to the middle of the meager living room. He really took it in before turning back to her, disbelief in his eyes. He suddenly looked much older than his seventeen years. “You can’t sleep here, and I don’t care what my mother thinks. Grab your things. Let’s go.”
