The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,19
the number eight in the headlights. I’m hungry, and I’m sick of this day. If I were at home, I would be in bed by now, asleep or reading Nancy Drew, my teeth brushed, my hair wet from the shower. They shouldn’t have left me in the truck alone with Mrs. Mitchell. The keys are still in the ignition. She could drive away, take me with her.
“So, Evelyn…It’s Evelyn, isn’t it?” she asks, turning around, smiling with only her mouth. “Why did you-all go to Wichita?”
“To see Eileen.”
“Who’s Eileen?”
“My grandmother.”
My mother and Mr. Mitchell are both peering into the engine of the car, winged insects swirling around their heads. My mother says something, and he laughs.
“So, where’s your daddy?”
“Huh?”
“Your father. Where is he?”
I shrug my shoulders. I don’t want to talk to her anymore.
She clicks her tongue, frowns. “Do you know who your daddy is, honey?”
I stare at her. She stares back, the muscles in her face tight and still. She reaches over the seat and tries to pat me on the hand. She has a diamond ring, a white flicker in the darkness. “You poor thing,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”
Mr. Mitchell and my mother walk slowly back to the truck, Mr. Mitchell with his hands in his pockets, looking down at his feet. When Mrs. Mitchell gets out of the truck to let my mother in, she doesn’t look at my mother, and my mother doesn’t look at her.
“If that car was a horse, I’d have shot it long ago,” Mr. Mitchell says, starting up the truck’s loud engine. “Even if you get the clutch figured out, the transmission’s bound to go next.”
“Well,” my mother says. “At least it got me to work.”
“Yeah. I’ll give you a ride until we can find something else for you.”
My mother says thank you, but it is difficult to hear her because Mrs. Mitchell makes another hissing sound. Mr. Mitchell turns toward her, braking the truck so quickly that we all slide forward and then jerk back. He and Mrs. Mitchell look at each other, unblinking, for maybe three seconds.
But it seems longer, sitting in the backseat.
And now I know my mother shouldn’t have called Mr. Mitchell for a ride, even if it meant we had to hitchhike, or call the police. Now Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell are in a fight, staring at each other right in front of us like they hate each other even though they’re married. I’ve seen my mother and Eileen look at each other like this, eyes flat, mouths unmoving, a long stare that looks like hate but could be something else, and nothing you want to get in between.
four
MR. MITCHELL IS GOING TO pick my mother up for work early, fifteen minutes before my bus comes. She has to give me a key to wear around my neck so I can lock the door behind me, and she tells me not to answer the door, not for anyone. She thinks I will die the moment she leaves, that I’ll let people in from off the highway, turn on the iron to start a fire. I remind her that it will be summer soon, and then I’ll be home by myself all the time.
“Don’t even talk about that,” she says, her hand over her eyes. “I can’t think about that now.”
I’m excited because today is the day of the science fair, and I finally get to bring my lima bean plants to school. I used empty milk cartons for containers, and I made a label for each one with red Magic Marker on masking tape: DARK, IN SUNLIGHT, DARK WITH MIRACLE-GRO, or IN SUNLIGHT WITH MIRACLE-GRO. I planted the seeds less than a month ago, pushing the seeds into the soil with my finger, and already the two that were in sunlight are actual plants, the leaves like small, waving hands. The one with Miracle-Gro in the soil is a darker green, the stem two inches taller than the other ones. Before she leaves, my mother helps me tape them inside a box so they won’t get smashed on the bus.
Ms. Fairchild had been very particular that we should have a poster to go with our project, and it had to be a triptych, she said, a poster folded into thirds so it could stand up on its side. I got a piece of yellow poster board at the Kwikshop the same day I bought the lima bean seeds, and I tried just bending it into