Where Do You Stay by Andrea Cheng

hide itself.”
    “Did you find the keys to the back rooms?” I ask.
    “Not yet. But we looked in the windows, and there are just stacks and stacks of boxes.”
    I see Damon coming up the hill toward us. He stops a couple of yards from where we’re standing.
    “Another cousin?” Ginny asks.
    “That’s Damon,” I say. “Monte’s brother.”
    After I’m adopted, he’ll be my brother too. I never thought of that before. I’ll have a brother who talks back to his mother and shoplifts and smokes. But the adoption might not even go through. The lawyer wasn’t sure. It could be that at the last minute my father will decide to claim me. He may decide that he doesn’t want to relinquish his rights. But then what? There’d be plenty of places to hide in that big mansion. Behind all those boxes they’d never find me. Breathe deep and steady, Jerome, count slow like the first movement of the Moonlight, slow and smooth .
    “Pleased to meet you,” Ginny says, holding out her hand.
    Damon hesitates, then comes just close enough to shake it.
    “Looks like we got a whole crew today,” Ginny says. “Anybody here who wants to work?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Damon says.
    Ginny looks him up and down. “How old are you?”
    “Fifteen.”
    “You can help Tom,” she says to him. “There’s some heavy stuff down there to haul up.”
    I want to tell Ginny that you can’t really trust him. He was just caught stealing and soon he has to go to court. But Damon is smiling and talking to Tom, acting all charming the way he does when he wants something. He says he’ll be in tenth grade next year.
    “What’s your favorite subject?” Tom asks.
    “Math,” he says.
    I never even knew Damon had a favorite subject. Tom wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “I’m not too good at math, but Ginny here, she’s good with figures. Isn’t that right, Gin?”
    “I’m not too bad,” she says. She’s squinting in the bright sun. “It’ll be another hot day today,” she says. “We better get started.”
    Tom and Damon go in through the side door. Ginny hands me and Monte sandpaper, sanding blocks, and masks, and we go into the mansion.
    The small pieces of wood fit together just right, dark and light and dark, small flowers all around the whole room. I show Monte how to sand with rough sandpaper first, then medium, then fine to make the wood feel soft as silk. When we are done, Ginny gets some rags and we clean off all the dust.
    “Take a break,” Ginny says, standing back. “Isn’t this gorgeous?” She calls Tom. “Come up here and just look at this floor.”
    Tom whistles. “Magnificent. Better get some serious varnish on it,” he says, “to protect it for the next hundred years.” He puts his arm around Ginny. “This is going to be the most beautiful school you’ve ever seen.”
    It’s not a school , I want to tell her. It’s somebody’s home. Me and Mr. Willie could fix it up and live here just fine.
    “Jerome and his brother did most of the work,” she says.
    I almost say No, he’s my cousin, remember, not my brother , but Monte is smiling from ear to ear.
    Tom takes out his wallet and hands me and Monte each twenty dollars. Monte is so surprised he can hardly talk.

27
    The dumpster is already more than half full. Monte holds on to the edge and jumps so he can look inside. “Hey, there’s a candlestick,” he says. “I’m going to get it for Mom.” He pulls himself up and over the edge. “Hey, Jerome, come on in here. There’s all kinds of stuff.”
    It’s hard for me to get myself over the top. Monte tosses out a crate that I use as a step stool, and finally I am inside.
    Cabinets, blankets, lamps, pipes, screens. Mr. Willie said the house was just a shell, but really it’s full of stuff. I pick up a wooden box that’s small and white with green leaves painted in the corners. Inside are a few plastic beads and one of those diary books. I open the cover, and in curly