Hope and Other Luxuries by Clare B. Dunkle Page A

cool.
    â€œAre you sure you’re not getting sick?” I asked. “Sore throat?”
    â€œNo.”
    I sat down and watched as she prowled the room in the dim light, bending close to read the titles of books.
    â€œSo, what’s wrong?” I asked.
    â€œNothing.”
    Nothing?
Really?
    In the years I had known this child, I had heard many explanations of what was wrong. She had told me once, eyes filling with tears, that she was sad because her father would die one day. She had told me that she was afraid thieves would target her window out of every possible window in the house to jimmy open in the middle of the night. She had told me that crickets have been known to get lodged in people’s ear canals and that we swallow eight spiders per year. Over and over, she had told me she’d had a bad dream. Cross an anxious, excitable temperament with an overactive imagination, and the result is that I had never
once
heard that nothing was wrong—
    Until now.
    â€œSo . . . Really? Nothing’s wrong?” I prodded. “Nothing at all? Everything’s fine?”
    â€œMm-hmm.”
    I watched her continue to prowl.
    â€œHow’s Mona doing this year?” I asked. “Is she managing to keep out of trouble?”
    This was a blatant fishing expedition. Raising the topic of Elena’s roommate was usually enough to start a good half hour of entertaining talk. Like Elena, Mona had a larger-than-life spirit, coupled with a lively distaste for rules and routine. That and her unsettled and somewhat tragic home life made her a great character for Elena’s stories.
    But not this time. This time, Elena just said again, “Mm-hmm.”
    She chose a book and went back to bed.
    For the whole weekend, Elena stayed preoccupied and silent. And for the whole weekend, I worried. Each day, I alternated between giving her alone time to sort out her troubles and giving her opportunities to confide them. Valerie stayed away from her, too. On her own, Valerie was cheerful and relaxed, but she tensed up around her sister.
    I heard no happy voices raised in chatter that weekend.
    Silence was so unlike Elena that I could think of no precedent for it. Even when she had had the flu last year, she hadn’t stayed in bed. She had continually bundled herself up and come to find me to tell me stories. But now she barely spoke, she barely ate, and she barely slept.
    Elena was one raw nerve.
    I’ll wait until the next free weekend
, I thought.
Maybe things will have worked themselves out by then
.
    Three weeks later, my girls came home again. This time, they both seemed subdued and touchy. Elena was thinner. I could tell she wasn’t eating well. Once again, I cooked her favorite foods, and once again, she barely touched them.
    But at least this time, Elena had some stories for me.
    She told me that she and Mona were storing beer on their windowsill. It was the perfect windowsill for it, she boasted, because no other window overlooked it. One of the older girls had brought her stash of beer to Elena and begged her to hide it. The housemothers knew there was beer in the dorm, so they searched high and low. One of them even stood right by the window. All she had to do was push aside the curtain! But she didn’t. They didn’t find the beer. They had no clue.
    Needless to say, this story didn’t thrill me.
    â€œWhy are you doing a thing like that?” I said. “It’s wrong, and it could land you in serious trouble.”
    Elena rolled her eyes. “Oh,
please
!” she said. “Everybody does it.”
    Since when had this creative, confident girl cared about what everybody else might be doing?
    â€œSo there’s this new housemother,” she went on. “She’s really young, and she doesn’t have much of a brain. Maybe she’s even, you know, a little
behindert
.”
    I did know. That was the German word for
disabled
.
    â€œSo anyway,