The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,27

didn’t look at me as she ran her finger over the fake Indian on her cigar box.

“Her dad and my dad were really good friends,” she said. “They worked together on native rights, trying to protect our land and stuff.”

I stared at the ridiculous headdress and the long black braids of the cigar Indian. I’ve never seen an Indian that looked like that. And I’ve never thought about Lily and Ruth having parents, either; they’ve always just lived with their gran.

“Her dad died in a plane crash,” Dumpling said. “My dad told me to try to understand how that might feel.”

I know what it would feel like if my dad died in a plane crash—great. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything, because Dumpling having anything in common with Ruth had left me totally speechless.

—

Summer kept us out later and later, just spinning on the merry-go-round and talking about the money I won, which still just felt like Monopoly money. We made a game of imagining all the things I could buy with it.

“You could buy some new boots from Sears Roebuck next winter,” Dumpling said.

“And socks that aren’t worn thin on the bottoms from someone else wearing them first,” I added.

“Yeah,” she said wistfully, like she’d never thought of that before.

“What would you buy?” I asked her.

“Maybe a new outboard for my dad? He needs a bigger horsepower engine; the old one kept dying last summer at fish camp,” she said. “Or a new cookstove for my mom.”

But I had too many things on my own list to think about others: boots, socks, big metal locks on all the doors, and if there was a way to buy Dumpling’s family permanently as my own and never have to leave, I’d happily use all the money for that.

—

When the reporter drove up in a brown-paneled station wagon, Dumpling and I weren’t paying that much attention. I certainly wasn’t expecting them to still care about the Ice Classic—we were well into summer now.

I realized right away that it was Selma’s mom, because Selma was sitting in the front seat. Her mom got out and walked over to where we sat spinning around lazily, but Selma stayed put, breathing onto the window and then drawing little doodles on it. It was immediately obvious that Selma really is adopted, just like she’s always bragged.

Selma isn’t fat, but she’s doughy, and she has thick ankles and a round face, while her mother is all pointy and angular, as if she was built by students in a remedial geometry class. She stuck out her hand, which looked like fanned-out twigs on the end of a skinny branch, and said to Dumpling, “Hi, I’m Abigail Flowers. You must be Dora.” Apparently Dumpling looks like someone who would win a big wad of money and I do not.

Dumpling just smiled and tilted her head in my direction.

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. Hi, Dora, Abigail.” I shook the tips of her twiggy fingers.

“So, do you feel like talking about winning the Ice Classic yet? People would still like to hear your version of things. It would be a great ‘feel-good’ story. A nice change from always reading bad news, you know?”

She flipped open her skinny reporter notepad that looked just like her and licked the tip of a pencil.

No, I didn’t know. A change from reading bad news in general, or just bad news about us? I still cringed at the way the paper had called me the first “native” girl to win the jackpot. Why didn’t they just say the youngest and leave it at that? Now she wanted me to be the poster child for a “feel-good” story? I would have laughed if it had been even the tiniest bit funny.

I looked over at Selma sitting in the car and wondered what it’s like to live in a house where people ask what you’re thinking and how you feel. Is that why Selma blabs all the time about her life?

I was glad she stayed in the car, but then I realized the real reason she hadn’t gotten out was because Ruth was the only reason Selma ever came here in the first place. If Dumpling knows where Ruth went, she has never said anything. Lily said Ruth went to visit family in Canada, but that’s a load of crap. Everyone knows what’s going on with Ruth, except maybe her own sister, because if her gran said that Ruth was now living on the moon, Lily