Chapter Six Portland, OR 1999
Chapter Six
Portland, OR
“Grandma, you have to promise not to cry at her.”
Scarlett stood in the big front window of the apartment where she lived with her grandmother, the scent of cinnamon and sugar flooding the air and Chrissie’s gorgeous wig atop her head.
“Well, really, Scarlett. I don’t cry at people.”
Scarlett turned away from her watch of the parking lot to glare at her grandma.
Grandma might have looked like an innocent bystander, with her pink frilled apron and her best lipstick on, but Scarlett knew better than to be fooled.
“Yes, you do. Whenever someone tells you something sad, you fold them up in your arms and squeeze until they turn blue. Then you cry all over them and make them eat cookies. Even the other church ladies talk about it.”
“She won’t want any cookies? Oh dear. Would she rather have apple slices, do you think?”
Scarlett almost stamped her foot in frustration. When snickerdoodles were on the menu, there was only one answer.
“Of course we want the cookies. But no squeezing. And no tears. You have to promise.”
“I promise to try my best,” Grandma lied, her eyes already starting to water behind their thick cat’s-eye frames. “But that poor little thing, losing her brother at such a young age. I can’t imagine what she must be going through. We’ll have to do everything we can to make her visit a nice one.”
That was when Scarlett knew there was no fixing it.
Her grandmother was going to cry all over her new friend—and she was probably going to do it for most of the night.
They’d rented three different Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen movies, set up a fort of pillows and sheets in the living room, and had enough junk food to last them a whole week.
It was just like all the sleepovers she’d seen on television and read about in books.
She and Chrissie wouldn’t be able to gossip about boys because, well, they didn’t know any, and braiding their hair was out of the question because, well, Scarlett’s hadn’t grown back yet, but all the rest was lined up and ready to go.
Grandma had even bought a cucumber to cut into slices and pink nail polish so they could pretend to go to the spa in the bathroom later.
“She’s here!” Scarlett cried as a shiny blue car pulled into the parking lot.
It didn’t look like the other cars down there, which were as rusted and faded as the apartment building itself, but Scarlett didn’t care.
Those dark-tinted windows hid the best friend she’d ever had—or would have, if everything went the way she planned.
“Can I go down and help her with her stuff?”
“We’ll both go,” her grandma promised as she took Scarlett by the hand and unlatched the door. “I’m sure her parents would like a cup of tea before they leave.”
They didn’t.
Scarlett and her grandma had reached the bottom step by the time Chrissie’s parents were out of the car and looking up at the apartment building, their smiles pulled flat.
Chrissie’s mom was an older, more weathered version of her daughter, her neck and arms so long that she looked like a swan about to turn into a princess.
Her dad looked like pretty much all the dads on TV, with a tie tight around his neck and a phone pressed against his ear.
“Yeah, I’m on my way now,” he said into the phone. “There shouldn’t be any more setbacks to the timeline now that… Well, you know my circumstances. I’m more available now. As long as it takes.”
His hand lightly touched Chrissie’s head before he walked a few steps away to finish his call in private.
Chrissie’s mom was a little better. “You’re Ms. Sanderson?” she asked as she took in Grandma’s too-big T-shirt and worn leggings, the weeds sprouting up from all the cracks in the parking lot. Her flat smile turned into a frown.
“Guilty as charged,” Grandma said. “Thank you for sharing your daughter with us for the night. It means a lot, especially since I’m sure it’s hard for you to let her go just now. We’re all so sorry about your loss. Would you like to come in for—”
“We can’t stay,” Chrissie’s mom cut her off.
Grandma looked the way Grandma always looked when someone turned down her tea—like someone had left a pile of garbage on the living room floor.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I have a lovely chamomile that I grow myself on our little terrace.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes in Chrissie’s direction, sure that her friend would share in the mortification of adults who grew things like tea and then sat sipping it for hours and hours, but she only stood there clutching a pillow in one arm and a stuffed rabbit in the other, an enormous overnight backpack sagging halfway down her body.
“I’m sure,” Chrissie’s mom said. Scarlett hoped that would be the end of it, and they could all head back up to the apartment to get this party started, but Grandma wasn’t done yet.
“Then I’ll make a few sachets for you and send them home with Chrissie,” she said. “I always found a good cup of herbal tea soothing on those nights when Scarlett was at the hospital without me. It’s not a cure for a broken heart, but it’s something.”
“Please don’t,” Chrissie’s mom said sharply. As if aware that she’d been rude, she forced herself to add, “You’ve already done enough.”
She looked down at Chrissie then—Chrissie, who hadn’t made a peep except the sound of her breathing; Chrissie, who was staring down at her shoes and looking so miserable that Scarlett wanted to take a cup of hot tea and throw it in her mother’s tightly pinched face.
“Don’t be any trouble,” she said, and then she did the same thing Chrissie’s dad had done—lightly touched the top of her daughter’s head as though testing to make sure she was real.
But they didn’t kiss her. Didn’t hug her. Barely even looked at her, really. Even Scarlett, who couldn’t remember her own mother, knew there was something wrong with that. Especially when they got in the car and peeled away without once looking back.
Scarlett groaned when her grandmother didn’t even wait for the car to be all the way out of the parking lot before darting forward and pulling Chrissie into her arms. Her grandma was a good hugger—no one was denying that—all soft and pillowy with the smell of the baby powder she used to dry her skin, but it took her forever to let go.
She hugged some of the kids at the hospital for so long that they actually fell asleep against her.
“Grandma, the cookies are gonna burn,” Scarlett tried protesting, but her voice was swallowed up by the sound of her grandma murmuring some kind of nonsense in Chrissie’s ear.
Scarlett knew what the nonsense contained.
You’re all right. I’ve got you now. Aren’t you the sweetest thing I ever met?
I could just gobble you up. None of it ever made any sense, and it almost always ended up including the snacking on children’s bones as if Grandma lived in a gingerbread house with an oven built especially for the job, but none of the kids seemed to mind.
This was no different. By the time her grandma let Chrissie go, her new friend’s face was streaked in tears, her whole body heaving as she tried not to sob all over the parking lot.
“It doesn’t matter, love,” her grandma was saying as she hoisted the girl on her hip and started carrying her toward the stairs. “You just come on inside and have a little snack. We’ll take good care of you.”
Scarlett wanted to protest that Chrissie was way too old to be carried like a baby, but one look at the way Chrissie clung to her grandma’s neck had her clamping her mouth shut tight. She also grabbed the backpack and stuffed rabbit, which had fallen to the pavement during the painfully long hug.
The backpack was too heavy for her chemo-wasted muscles, but she didn’t complain as she marched up the steps in her grandmother’s wake. Scarlett wasn’t a very good hugger, and she didn’t want to gobble anyone up, but for once, she and her grandmother were on the same page.
As long as Chrissie was inside her house, with her lopsided hair on a pillow next to hers and that look of sad, miserable heartbreak on her face, Scarlett was going to take good care of her.
That was a promise she planned to keep for the rest of her life.
* * *
“In this one, Mary Kate and Ashley go to the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame and a special French dance.” Scarlett pushed the play button and settled in beside Chrissie to watch the third movie in their marathon.
“Someday, I’m going to Paris, too. And New York, and London, and Hawaii, and maybe even San Francisco. What about you?”
The night was well advanced by this time, the pair of them settled in their blanket fort and the plate of cookies sitting empty on the floor. Even though Scarlett was barely able to keep her eyes open, she was determined to eke out every minute before sleep robbed her of her friend.
She’d always hated that sleep had the power to do that—not just to steal people, but to steal time. When she was grown up, she wasn’t going to sleep any more than she absolutely had to.
“You can come with me to France if you want,” she said when Chrissie didn’t respond except to yawn loudly into her fist. “We can be just like Mary Kate and Ashley. In fact, in a few months, both our hair will be long enough to cut like theirs. We’ll look like sisters.”
Her use of that word—sisters—made Chrissie wince and hug her knees to her chest. Too late, Scarlett realized what she’d said.
So far, both of them had been careful to avoid the subject of Chrissie’s brother. They also hadn’t talked about the hospital, Chrissie’s parents, or the fact that they’d practically pushed a seven-year-old-kid out of the car before driving away.
But Scarlett wanted to know. She needed it.
“I never had a sister,” she said, hoping that would do the trick. “Or a brother. Just my grandma. My mom left me with her the first time I got sick. I was only three years old at the time, but she said the cancer was too much for her to handle on her own.”