Waiting for Christopher by Louise Hawes Page B

two of them across from her. “Your mom sick?” Raylene asked, depositing Christopher, then walking to the old oven and opening its lopsided door. As if she owned the place, she reached in and took out a can of orange soda, the same brand Feena had seen on the table. “She can’t take care of Toffee herself?”
    Feena nodded, grabbing the lie Raylene offered. “Just a cold,” she said. “But she doesn’t want the baby to get it.”
    “Uh-huh.” Raylene took a long sip, lowering the can when Christy begged for some, too. “You plan on spending the night here, or what?”
    Raylene listened, with only a hint of a smile, while Feena concocted a story about her mother being too sick to watch the baby but not too sick to be left alone. About how she was sure things would be better by tonight and so they’d go home any minute. It didn’t make much sense, but it didn’t need to, because why should Raylene care, anyway? Why should she be hanging around them the way she was?
    Why, Feena wondered as the sun’s buttery haze turned pink and long fingers of shadow spread across the grass, didn’t Miss High and Mighty just go away and leave them alone?
    But she didn’t. She chattered and fussed and played with Christy. She told him about the people who worked at CVS. About the crazy customers, like the woman who came in every day to buy a small jar of baby food for her toothless tabby. When Raylene had asked her why she didn’t get seven or eight jars at once, the woman told her she couldn’t be sure what kind of food her cat would feel like the next day.
    “Would you believe it, Toffee?” Raylene tickled Christopher, rolling him over on the booth. “If I had myself a talking cat like that, it better make up its fuzzy mind, and fast. Not be giving me orders up and down, right?” Then she tickled some more, until the baby giggled, helpless and thrilled, pedaling the air like a racer.
    Feena was, she had to acknowledge it, more than a little jealous. Of how Raylene and Christy played, as if they’d known each other forever. Of how the baby followed Raylene’s every move, seemed to watch her with the same intensity, the same awe Feena had thought he reserved just for her.
    As the minutes passed, she was not only jealous, she was worried. The sun had sunk behind the woods, and her mother, long home, would be wondering about the second note, about her daughter’s sudden spurt of popularity.
    Part of Feena—the part that read romantic novels and loved adventure—watched her dilemma from above, saw herself as a tragic heroine with a secret no one could share. But another part—the part of her that remembered Lenore’s face, the sudden brightness when she’d offered Feena the Chinese food last night—wished she could just go home and go to bed.
    “Raylene?” She turned to the other girl now, using the same words, the same voice she had yesterday—had it only been one day?—on the playground with Dale. “Do you think you could do me a favor?”
    Raylene looked at her, expressionless again. She seemed to save that vacant stare just for Feena. But Feena was too tired to care. “Do you think you could watch my sister while I run home and check on my mom?”
    “You live close?”
    Careful
. “Close enough.”
    “Okay, I guess so.” Raylene appeared to have a moment’s doubt. She checked Christy, who, unfazed by Feena’s standing and gathering up her backpack, remained bent over his new books, piling and un-piling them according to some secret baby formula. “But I got a life, you know. Make it quick.”
    “Sure.” Feena shrugged into her backpack, dashed toward the highway. She’d stepped over Raylene’s abandoned book and the pieces of broken sign before she turned and went back. She stroked Christy’s hair, kissed his forehead. “I’ll see you in a little while,” she promised. “Thanks, Raylene.”
    “Yeah. No problem.” Feena had cleared the sign again before Raylene yelled after her, “Just