Chapter 11 Lorna Now
Lorna let herself in through the front door of the house and spotted Bean sitting in the hallway with Agnes.
He was leaning against his door, legs outstretched, flipping through the pages of a book.
Agnes had her head in his lap and was snoozing.
Lorna glanced at her watch; it was ten past four.
He’d forgotten his key again. If he were her kid, she would have fixed this forgotten key problem in a day.
As much as it annoyed her, a part of her was also glad he’d forgotten his key.
Something about the boy and the dog made her feel.
.. something. Nostalgic, maybe? But looking at him was a little like looking at a work of art that spoke to her.
She liked Bean, which, if she thought too long about it, would make her question her mental state, because since when did she have any affinity for eight-year-old boys?
But lately, she’d talked more to Bean than anyone else.
He didn’t make her feel awkward; she was surprisingly free of awkwardness with him.
Free to be herself. He didn’t judge her.
Or at least not that she could tell. It was entirely possible he was going home and telling stories about the weird lady across the hall.
Except she didn’t think so—she had the impression that Bean liked her too.
“Excuse me?” Lorna said. “How did Agnes get in here?”
Bean looked up. “Hi, Lorna! Miss Liz let her in from the backyard.”
That back door from the main hall was supposed to always remain locked. Lorna sighed with exasperation. “Is no one concerned about home security?” she complained as she moved forward.
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t let anyone snatch her,” Bean said, parroting her concern from the first time she’d found him in the hall.
“I know you wouldn’t, but what about the rest of the people in this house?” She slid down the wall and sat beside him on the floor. He eyed her with surprise. “I know,” she said. “I’m not the type to sit on the floor. But honestly? This week I’ve been on the floor a lot.”
“I like the floor,” Bean said.
“I’m starting to hate it less. You forgot your key again, didn’t you?”
“Yep. That means I have to wash dishes after supper because there are conskences. But I don’t mind because I like all the suds. Yesterday I made this huge tower, then— bam —I knocked it down,” he said, demonstrating how he’d swung his fist through weightless bubbles.
She wondered what he’d do with a giant metal yard rooster. “What are you looking at?”
“It’s a book about desserts. I’m going to get my baking badge. But I have to decide what to bake. Do you like cake?”
“Only idiots don’t like cake.”
He grinned. “Is it your favorite?”
“Probably, although I could be persuaded to like pie or ice cream or cookies just as much. What’s your favorite?” she asked as she eyed a key lime pie on the open pages of his book.
“Umm... I don’t know. My dad doesn’t let me have sugar.”
“What? That’s appalling. What is the point of life if you can’t have a sugary dessert occasionally? In fact, it ought to be a law.”
Bean glanced at her sidelong, clearly afraid to agree with such a bold statement.
“Come in, and I’ll see what I’ve got with sugar.”
“Dad said not to bother people,” Bean said.
“You’re not bothering me.”
“Can Aggie come, too, or does she have to go outside?”
“Of course she comes too.”
The two of them leveraged themselves up to standing with about the same amount of grace. “Come on, Aggie,” Bean said, and headed for Lorna’s door.
Once Lorna opened the door, Bean and Aggie rushed toward the kitchen.
She paused to put the codicil on her desk next to the stacks of envelopes.
In doing so, she had to step over a white envelope on the floor that had been pushed under the door, sealed with a red heart sticker.
She picked it up and flipped it over. Liz Foster, 2B. Inside was a handwritten note:
I would love to hear if you made any progress with our landlord. Feel free to knock anytime, 2B.
On the bottom she’d added, Aggie is welcome! Lorna peered at her dog, who had trotted back to see if the envelope might be bearing treats. “I guess your name really is Aggie now,” she said.
Aggie’s butt swished back and forth in her tailless version of a wag. “Hey, Bean... didn’t you say Mrs. Foster had a cat?” Lorna called into the kitchen.
“Yes. His name is Garfield.”
Of course. “Let me guess—he’s fat, orange, and stupid.”
Bean was startled enough to come back into the living area. “Garfield isn’t stupid. He and Aggie are friends.”
“Friends! How do you know that?”
“Because sometimes Miss Liz brings Garfield to the backyard, and they play.”
“No way.” Lorna thought Aggie hated cats. She barked at them on their walks. Then again, she barked at bushes and bicycles lying in yards and kids bouncing basketballs.
Bean nodded. “They’re best friends. Even Miss Liz thinks so. Diego’s my best friend. But he’s moving to California.”
“That sucks.” Lorna opened her pantry door. “When?”
“I don’t know. My dad says he can come for a sleepover before he moves. And that maybe we can go visit him in California.”
“California is not all it’s cracked up to be,” Lorna said. She didn’t have any cookies or cereal bars, but she spotted a box of brownie mix from the time she was going to bring brownies to the office for Deb’s birthday. But then she’d found out the team was treating Deb to lunch. Without her.
“Have you been there?” Bean asked. “Diego said you can see the ocean from California.”
“Yes, I’ve been there, and you can definitely see the ocean from California.” One of the treatment centers Kristen flamed out of was in California, and Lorna and her mom had spent a week searching for her in downtown Los Angeles. “Want to make brownies?”
Bean gasped. “ Can we?”
She slapped the box down on the bar so he could see it.
“We can.” She sent Bean to leave a note on his door so his father would know where he was, and while he was gone, she found one apron for him and one large dish towel.
When he returned, she tied the apron around his chest and then tucked the dish towel in the neck of her blouse and into her pants, effectively covering her front.
She set Bean up with a bowl and had him turn on the oven to preheat, which, he informed her, he did at home all the time.
As she gathered the ingredients, Bean began to talk.
He told her how Diego had an oven just for pizza on his porch and he also had a pool.
He informed her he’d spent the night once at Diego’s birthday party and Trey Wheeler had vomited into the bushes. “It was yellow,” he said.
“Thanks for the details,” Lorna said.
He talked about all the badges he had, which included skating, coin collecting, first aid, camping, astronomy, weather, rocks, art, canoeing, and some others he couldn’t remember and not necessarily in that order.
And then he listed all the badges he was eager to get, including inventing, cooking, baking, fishing, fire starting, helping, and Texas lore.
Diego didn’t have as many badges as he did, but he was working on them, and Bean shared his badges with Diego.
Lorna failed to understand how that could possibly work, but okay.
Bean said he was going to get a blue vest like the other Rangers and put his badges on it.
When they had the ingredients in a bowl, he paused in his running monologue and looked at Lorna as she greased a pan for the brownies. “Do you have a best friend?”
He might as well have shot that question at her from a cannon, because it hit her just as hard. People needed to warn her before they asked personal questions. At least give her time to suit up in her personal armor. “Well... not right now.”
“Why not?” he asked, still stirring.
She put down the pan and studied the kid.
She didn’t know how to describe the agony of having a sister as a best friend, only to have her continually lie and let you down.
Or explain how, when you had the good luck to find a new best friend, you could screw it up royally.
She decided to stick to the basics. “It’s hard for me to make friends. ”
“Why?”
Oh, because she was afraid of trusting people.
And she was afraid of what they might think if they knew about Kristen.
She was afraid of so many things, really.
Being used. Being lied to. Being tricked.
Being generally unlikable. And continuing to grow more awkward the longer she lived. “I’m kind of weird,” Lorna admitted.
“Like when you said Garfield was stupid?” Bean asked helpfully.
“Exactly.” She paused. “Seriously, I thought everyone knew that orange cats are stupid.”
Bean didn’t look convinced. “Dad says you never know how smart or dumb someone is just by looking at them.”
Well, good for Seth and his ability to be nonjudgmental. Except when it came to sugar, obviously. “The bottom line is that I find it really hard to trust people.” She shrugged.
“What does trust mean?”
“It’s like... you know how you can tell your dad anything?”
Bean nodded.
“And you know he won’t tell anyone? He’ll keep any secret you ask him to.”
“He will,” Bean said eagerly. “Like, I told him that Diego likes Molly, and Diego told me not to tell anyone, but I told Dad, and he hasn’t told a single person.
” Bean’s eyes were starry, as though he were completely amazed by his father’s feat of secret-keeping.
Meanwhile, she was apparently now the second person Bean had told Diego’s secret to.
“That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t really have anyone to tell secrets to.”
Bean seemed to take this in, stirring the batter. “You can tell me secrets.”
Given the news on Diego, she didn’t know if that was wise. She smiled. “Thanks, Bean.”
He turned to the task at hand. “And I’ll be your friend if you want.”