She wore ribbons in her hair. Someone had fastened her into a dress with clasps she couldn’t even find. Someone had slipped her feet into patent leather shoes, which seemed to soak in the light of the room. When she came downstairs, someone had spun her around like a ballerina, and the rest of her family had applauded as her dress ballooned out like an umbrella. They had told her she looked adorable.

            
            “Where are your parents?” a woman asked when the little girl came in through her screen door. Startled, the girl looked up at the grown-up with wide brown eyes. Rebecca let the door behind her swing uncertainly with the wind, until the hinge at the top finally reined it in. Rebecca listened as the door snapped back into its frame. She shrugged.

            
            The woman crouched down to Rebecca’s height, a smile sweeping across her face with a dramatic but suspicious flair. “You’re one of the Patterson children, aren’t you?” the woman asked. When Rebecca didn’t respond, the woman seemed to take this as an affirmative. “I thought I recognized you. You’ve grown so tall!” The woman paused, giving Rebecca a chance to look past her and through a narrow hallway, to where the party was waiting. Here by the front door too many grown-ups lingered, their voices too deep and their laughs too fake.

            If her family were here, her dad would have talked to this woman enough for all of them, while she and her siblings would have rushed right to the back where everything was prepared for them, wonderfully child-sized. But because she was alone, she found herself trapped in the sea of heavy, clomping feet and clothes the color of dirt and stones.

            She became focused on one woman in the dining room to the left, who was setting out paper plates and napkins on top of a bright red tablecloth. Rebecca was trying to remember when her dining room at home had looked like that, all clean and pretty. Someone some time ago had set her table with such precision, leaning over the table all the way from the waist, maybe one foot lifting off the floor for balance, to make sure everything was in place.

            The woman was still talking, and Rebecca finally began to listen. The woman’s voice was softer and kinder than before, as if she had just remembered that was how moms were supposed to sound. “I’m so sorry about your mom, honey…just a few weeks ago now….Jesse wasn’t sure your family would make it to his party this year, but I’m so glad you could come.” Jesse’s mom kept peering out the door behind Rebecca, as though waiting for something.

            
            Rebecca remained silent, staring straight into the woman’s eyes with all the intensity her six years afforded her. The woman pressed her hands to her thighs and stood up. “Where’s your brother Cameron?” she asked. “Jesse will be so happy to see him.” Rebecca shrugged again. “You know what,” the woman said as if the most exciting game had just occurred to her. “Why don’t I just give you this party hat and let you join the party, while I ask Jesse’s dad to see if he can’t find the rest of your family?”

            The woman took off one of the conical hats that were looped around her wrist, revealing the red impression of skin that had been hiding beneath the foremost hat. Rebecca accepted the hat with light, hesitant fingers. It was bright blue with white, silver-edged stars, and the ribbons in her hair were red. Her head would look like an American flag in the shape of an ice-cream cone. As if the gift of a hat completed their conversation, the woman smiled brightly and gave the girl a gentle push on the back, directing her to the party. The woman’s touch accidentally tickled Rebecca’s skin, where the topmost clasps of her dress had been left undone. The woman drew her hand back and walked away, her fancy shoes clicking against the hardwood floor, and Rebecca obediently stepped forward.

            The kids at the party had just made clay dinosaurs, and Jesse’s dad was moving their projects into the kitchen and making the dinosaurs parade across a counter, where they would be safe from accidents. Everyone was talking or running or playing with scattered toys in the den. Rebecca looked over at the fancy dinosaurs and then down at her stubby fingers. She was younger than most of the kids by two or three years, and she probably wouldn’t have been able to do the same project as them. Or else her dinosaur would have looked like a chubby dog. It was good her family had planned on arriving an hour late.

            Rebecca spotted a table full of presents wrapped in sparkling papers. She didn’t have anything to put on the table because her dad was supposed to bring Jesse’s present. But the pretty designs of the wrapping papers caught her eye and drew her closer. Rebecca reached out to touch one, maybe to turn it over and see if it had ribbons like she did. Everyone else had brought a present.

            As soon as she felt the surface of the present, so reminiscent of Christmas mornings she couldn’t even fully remember, she knew what she had to do. Rebecca reluctantly unlatched her thin silver charm bracelet from her wrist. She’d worn it ever since she could remember. Someone used to talk all about it, telling her it would bring strength and wisdom and other things she couldn’t yet define. But no one had mentioned it in a long time, no matter how much she toyed with it. Now she caught the bracelet in the sweaty palm of her left hand and dropped it on the table with the rest of the presents.

            Cameron would have played with her if they were here, but she soon realized this was not true for all nine-year-olds. She was quite alone and decided to make her way over to the clay dinosaurs instead of lingering in the den. When Rebecca reached the kitchen counter, she paused without thinking and made as if to grab at one but saw she couldn’t reach. She tried anyway, hoping to touch one. To see if nine-year-olds knew how to make dinosaurs with scales.

            Then she noticed the woman who had met her at the door. She was talking to a man who had to be her husband, Jesse’s dad. “You’ve got to do something. How could a six-year-old girl just show up at a party alone? Don’t we have the Patterson’s number somewhere?” Jesse’s mom was asking. “Shouldn’t Cameron’s phone number be on the class list? Or the soccer roster?” She began flipping over sheets tacked to the refrigerator with magnets.

            “Honey, who knows where that stuff is right now,” Jesse’s dad said, “I’m sure I moved some of those papers out of the way when I was setting things up last night. Why don’t I walk over to the house and see what’s going on? It’s just down the block.”

            Jesse’s parents held hands again. Her father never held anyone’s hand like that, except hers when they were crossing the street. David and Lucy were old enough that they usually didn’t have to hold hands with anyone, unless it was a really busy street. But still, Rebecca and her dad didn’t hold hands like Jesse’s parents did.

            “You can’t go. What about the party? I’m waiting for the magician to get here, and you’ve got to clear some space for him and keep the kids entertained. I can’t do this on my own!” Jesse’s mom was starting to shout, and Rebecca winced and looked away.

            Her eyes caught sight of the party hat in her hand. Rebecca looked down at the hat with surprise, but then acceptance. She placed it on her head with the elastic uncomfortably under her neck. She didn’t seem to have another choice.

            “Well who do you think would have their phone—” she heard Jesse’s dad say, but he stopped when he noticed Rebecca, as if wearing the hat had made her visible all of the sudden. “Well hello,” he said, his face softening as he spoke. “I’m Mr. Taylor, Jesse’s dad, and you must be…well, you look so grown up, you must be Lucy, right? The oldest?” He was teasing, Rebecca could tell. She smiled.

            “No, I’m Rebecca,” she answered, “the youngest. Lucy’s fourteen. I’m only six.” He smiled back. Rebecca decided she liked him. She liked that he called himself Mr. Taylor, like when Rebecca visited her dad’s classroom and everyone called him Mr. Patterson. Besides, his shoes were Nikes, like the ones her brothers wore, especially Cameron, who had a different pair for every sport. She was soothed by the familiar Nike swoosh, even beneath boring trousers like the ones her dad wore to work.

            Jesse’s mom still stood there in an awkward silence. She fingered her watch and at the same time looked at the kitchen clock across from her. Rebecca hadn’t learned to read a clock yet, but it didn’t seem like it should take anyone that long to figure out what time it was. Jesse’s mom kept glancing from side to side as if the magician would appear at any second, in any place. “We’ll take care of it,” Mr. Taylor said. Jesse’s mom nodded curtly and walked through the fancy living room and to the left, toward the dining room.

            Rebecca followed the clicking heels with her eyes. Some of the grown-ups had spilled out from the entryway and dining room into the living room. They were so boring standing there talking, everyone in the same shades of brown and black and white.

            “Rebecca?” Mr. Taylor asked, calling her back from her far-off place. She reluctantly turned her back to him. She had come here for the party, but it didn’t look like she was going to get that. Even if the magician did come, some other grown-up would probably find her and start asking questions. And everyone kept wanting to know about Cameron.

            “Jesse’s mom told me you came here all on your own, is that right?” he asked, his voice gentle but his eyes searching her, silently asking even more questions whose answers she didn’t know. Rebecca nodded, hoping that was all he wanted from her. She wondered what she could do to make him let her stay at the party forever. It was like recess last year in kindergarten, when she got to go outside and pretend that the inside world didn’t even exist.

            “Does your dad know where you are?” he asked. His rough voice was nice to hear, but she didn’t want to listen to what he was saying. She didn’t want to think about where her father and Cameron were. She looked at his sneakers again. The loops of the laces on his left sneaker were lopsided, like he didn’t know how to tie his shoes right. She wanted to warn him about how easy it would be to trip on those laces. She knew because it had happened to her a lot recently. No one was there to remind her about the first twist, so she just went ahead and made the bunny ears, uneven and loose.

             



                                                                                                                                                       Next Page