The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,63
of her, fingertips touching. She looks like a wax statue on display. It’s stifling hot. I imagine her melting drip by drip onto the stage. But then I remember I’m still wearing two jackets, so maybe it’s only sweltering for me.
I wonder if Jack is sweating, too. He’s slipped off to the side and into one of the aisle seats next to the girl Abigail had called “honey.” The music starts and the ballerina onstage moves as if pulled by an invisible string. She’s mesmerizing, sliding across the stage like butter, leaping and landing very lightly on the tip of one toe, determination written all over her face. She is not just dancing, she is telling the judges a story, and it feels urgent. I lean forward, afraid of missing a single word.
When the music stops I barely notice. Abigail’s niece is bowing in front of the judges and I am twisting the red ribbon around and around on my wrist, thinking of a pregnant girl I’d sat next to on a riverbank.
I push past Isabelle and Abigail, who are still clapping, and slam my way through the double stage doors, not caring that I knock a couple of bun heads out of the way. I rip off one of my jackets and storm toward the exits. I just need air.
“Hank,” Jack calls through the crowd, “Hank, guess who this is?” He is pointing at the brown-eyed girl, but then a sea of people push past and Jack is swallowed up by more bun heads and tutus.
The room grows blurry. Jack keeps calling my name, but I need to find an exit.
I’ve turned the wrong way again, back toward the hallway that led backstage. I’m like a rat in a maze. Another exit sign appears up ahead, but just before I reach it, a hand grabs the bottom of my jacket from behind. “Hank,” says Jack. “Stop.”
The girl beside him is holding the paper towel with the name “Selma” on it in Phil’s thick, black handwriting. I stare at the letters, remembering how Jack traced them all the way across the Yukon. Of course they would lead straight to a real live girl, if for no other reason than Jack believed they would. She is looking at him with brown mud-puddle eyes, and they are shimmering, as if he holds all the answers to the universe.
“This is Selma,” Jack whispers.
We all just stand there staring at each other.
Until the backstage doors fly open and four people walk out. Isabelle, Abigail, the ballerina, and…
“I KNEW IT,” Jack cries. “SAM, I KNEW YOU WERE ALIVE!”
I didn’t even have time to catch my breath. One minute Sam was there, handing me a bouquet of roses as we exited through the side stage doors, and the next minute he was on the ground with another boy on top of him.
Aunt Abigail and a woman I’d never seen before were blowing their noses into hankies, and Selma was standing there looking like she’d just stepped off a fast-moving train. Then Mom came running out from stage left, skipping toward me with more flowers and saying, “You were wonderful.” But then she stopped, taking in the commotion all around us.
Off to the side, another boy was slumped down against the wall with his head in his hands. Everyone seemed to notice him at the same moment. Sam disentangled himself from the first and went over to the other one, who was older, sadder, and more disheveled. Sam kneeled, burying his head in the boy’s shoulder. The words he’d been mumbling grew louder and louder as Sam hugged him: “I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead.”
Jack. Hank. It was like walking from a dark room into bright sunlight. My eyes kept trying to adjust, unable to focus on seeing these three brothers, all finally together.
And just when Sam had started to lose faith that he would actually find them.
“It’s beginning to feel like a needle in a haystack,” he’d said, as soon as we were back in Fairbanks. Mom was overly excited to have us and had made her famous lasagna for a “welcome home” meal. Afterward as we cleaned up in the kitchen, she stressed that Sam could stay as long as he needed to.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” she told him.
“You have?” I asked.
“Oh Alyce, it’s not as if your father and I never talk.”
“You do?”
But she just swatted me playfully like I was kidding around.