The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty Page B

soap.
    “You don’t have to do this, Merle,” my mother says. She takes a dishtowel and dabs at the rain on his cheeks. They are standing close to each other, my mother looking up.
    “I want to do this,” he says. He takes the rest of the groceries out of the bag, lifting them out and setting them down carefully, the broccoli, the beans, the soap, the ice cream, the paper towels, and everything else until it is all spread out on the counter before us like a display in a window, so we can see just how much he means this, how much he wants to help.

    With the groceries, it’s better, but I still don’t like missing school. I miss the library, and the large, lit globe in Mr. Pohl’s room. I miss science. Ms. Fairchild showed us a movie the week before about a plant growing, the film sped up so much that you could watch the plant grow from a seed to a tall, leafy plant in less than a minute. It looked like it was exploding. I think about my lima bean plants, dying on the ledge by the window, no one giving them water.
    I’m worried Ms. Fairchild knows about the fight. Traci is probably not missing school, because her mother has a red station wagon with a bumper sticker that says PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT , and I have seen her drop Traci off in front of the school on the mornings when she misses the bus. I tell my mother this, and she frowns and says life isn’t always fair. Or maybe it is, she adds, because I hit Traci first. Just walk away next time, she says. Turn the other cheek.
    Wednesday afternoon the phone rings, and it’s Mrs. Carmichael.
    “Do you want to speak to my mother?” I ask.
    “No, Evelyn,” she says. “I want to speak to you.” She wants to know if I know that Traci had her clothes stolen from her gym locker while she was playing volleyball today, including her heart-shaped gold necklace that her grandmother gave her for Christmas. Someone, Mrs. Carmichael says, someone , walked into the girls’ changing room and broke the lock on Traci’s locker, and walked right out with everything. Did I know that?
    “No,” I say. I am thinking about the smooth blue rock I took from Libby’s rock collection. This is all I have. “I didn’t.”
    “Can I speak with your mother?”
    My mother gets on the phone and listens for a while, frowning, looking at me and then out the window. She tells Mrs. Carmichael that yes, I have been home all week. No, she says, there is no way I could have gotten to school. Yes, she is sure. Absolutely. Yes. Good-bye now. Good-bye. She hangs up while Mrs. Carmichael is still talking.
    “What a bitch,” she says. “What? Does she think I’m lying? Maybe someone else hates her brat.”
    But I know that I am the only one who hates Traci Carmichael. And it’s hard to imagine that anyone would really be able to walk right into the girls’ locker room and break the lock to steal her clothes, that someone could be that fearless. There is a chance she herself hid them, just to get me in trouble.

    The next morning, it’s still raining, a cool breeze lifting the sheets pinned to my window. I stay in bed late because I can, because there’s nothing else to do. I am tired of not being able to go to school, staying home all day and watching game shows.
    There is something red on my floor, some unfamiliar cloth. I sit up in bed, squinting. There’s a palm tree on it.
    In an instant I am awake, kneeling at the foot of my bed. A red OP sweatshirt lies by the foot of my bed, folded neatly on top of a pair of white A. Smile jeans. There is also a pair of red Keds, friendship pins covering the laces.
    I stare down at the shoes, scared to touch them. They shouldn’t be here in the first place, and it seems like they could easily disappear, or maybe explode. There are smiley faces drawn on the white rims of the shoes. I unfold the sweatshirt carefully, tracing the line of the palm tree with my finger. It feels like I did steal the clothes now. My fingers twitch with fear