had been so far. We turned off the main road into what looked like the suburbs. I knew this because the sidewalks suddenly filled with grass and hedges and trees. Gone was the concrete coldness of before. This place seemed to be filled with a different feeling now, and this was confirmed when we drove past a small park with a red-and-blue merry-go-round in the middle of it. I stared at the merry-go-round and, like with the black-and-white panda, something lit up inside me.
Not so much a memory, but a feeling, in the pit of my stomach as I went around and around and around.
Did you know merry-go-rounds in America tend to turn counterclockwise?
We drove a little more until we finally came to a halt. I was so grateful when the car stopped, I’d been on the edge of my seat since it had started moving. The driver pointed at a house and I looked. It was small, and cute. Tucked behind a pale yellow wall covered in ivy. Big trees rose up from inside the property, and a red tin roof peered at me.
“Here we are,” the taxi driver said, turning the engine off. I gazed at the house . . . now what?
“That will be one hundred and fifty Rand,” the driver said loudly.
“One hundred and fifty what?” His statement hadn’t quite landed with me yet. I was finding this with a lot of things. Someone would say something to me and, on some level, I think I understood what they were saying, but it took me a while to register. As if my brain was making sense of the world much more slowly than it should.
At last I clicked. “Oh! Yes. Money!” I looked down at my hand and it was empty. No bag. No money. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I would need to pay this man.
“You do have money, don’t you?” he asked, although I got the impression he already knew the answer to this question. I pursed my lips together tightly and shook my head. My head gave a thump, and I winced, reached up and touched the bandage on my forehead. The man’s face seemed to soften slightly.
“I’m going home this way anyway, so it’s fine.”
“It is?” I was overjoyed. “Thank you. Thank you!” I gushed over my shoulder as I raced towards Noah’s door.
CHAPTER 9
I hesitated for a second while I tried to gather my thoughts and plan exactly what I was going to say. But I had no idea, and I didn’t think standing here any longer would ever furnish me with the answer. So, I just tapped on the door, too softly at first. I knocked again, a little harder this time. But no one in the house stirred. I knocked a little more frantically. The grazes on my fingers hurt and when I looked down at my hand, I had obviously ripped a scab off, because there was blood. But I didn’t care. I knocked even harder and even louder. It was dark, except for the low porch light illuminating the space around the outside of the front door. The house seemed completely dead, as if there was no one home, as if it were asleep. Was no one home? It hadn’t occurred to me that Noah might not be here. And if he wasn’t, then what the hell was I meant to do and where was I meant to go? I threw my fists against the door one last time, putting all the effort I had into it, and that’s when I saw it. A bell!
A bloody bell! What a brilliant idea to put a bell by a door! Whoever thought of this was really smart, it actually made so much sense to have this here. I wondered if all doors had bells. I rang it. Once, twice and then, on the third time, like dominoes, one light turned on, and then another one, and another one. The lights moved towards the front door like a train until the room behind the front door was illuminated and I was able to make out the shadowy silhouette of a person. I hoped it was Noah. It suddenly occurred to me that he might not live alone. A roommate? A wife and kids? It hadn’t crossed my mind, until now, that I might be barging in on more than just Noah.
I heard a chain move and fall, dinging against the wooden frame of the door. I heard a