But my mom bought the stuff in bulk anyway. And even though I had at least one little bottle of it in my backpack, I was so sick of the bitter, boozy taste and the whole idea of it that I could only just maybe stand one of the candies. Owen called them his “worry buttons,” and he genuinely believed that they worked. He handed me the tin, and I took one.
Really, I wanted drugs. I wanted one of those little pillboxes that had a section for each day of the week, with little happy pills in each one. Not some herbal hocus-pocus. But my parents actually agreed on a lot of things, and one of them was that they wouldn’t let me take prescription drugs for my anxiety until I was an adult. Your brain is still developing, Maeve. You might grow out of it. It’s too soon, they said. I disagreed. My brain was hardwired differently. What was the point of trying to put out a wildfire by pissing on it? Because that was what it felt like. If they actually realized how bad it was—if they truly understood—they’d let me have pills. If a leg is broken, put a cast on it. If you have cancer, do the chemo. If your head is messed up, take the pills.
“What’s the matter?” Owen said.
“I’m just thinking too hard.”
“I know what that feels like.”
“I wish you didn’t.” I hated that he was a worrier too. It was my fault for always being a mess in front of him. I was a bad person for demonstrating what crazy looks like. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and never on my sweet little brother. Never. “It sucks, right?”
“Yup.”
Corbin was back now, emptying his bag onto the floor.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I think there’s a quarter in here somewhere.” He pawed through the mess. “I went around and got four more, but I need a dollar seventy-five to get the chips.”
“What do you mean, you ‘went around’?” I straightened. “You got money from strangers?”
“Yeah.” Two gnomes, his pocketknife, a rubber alien mask. “I do it all the time.”
“What do you mean, ‘all the time’?”
“He’s good at it,” Owen said. “He usually gets enough for us both to get something.”
“I’m not sure if I’m more surprised that you share it with Owen or that you’re panhandling in the first place.”
“Mom says it’s a job,” Corbin said. “Like any other job.”
“For bums, sure.” I scooped the quarters out of his hand. “You’re going to give these back. Who gave them to you?”
“I’m not telling.”
“Yes you are.”
“No I’m not!”
“Listen, Corbin, I’ll give you money for the damn chips. But you can’t go around begging off people.”
“It’s not begging!” he yelled. “Even Mom and Dad let me.”
“They let you? Or you’ve heard them say that panhandling is an acceptable profession.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do they even know about it?”
“Not really, I guess.”
“Well, you can’t say that they let you if they don’t even know what you’re doing! This is a perfect example of why six-year-olds should not be traveling by themselves.” I grabbed his shoulders and spun him around. “Now, who gave it to you?”
“She did.” Corbin pointed to a girl on the other side of the room.
“Go give it back.”
“No!”
“Fine, then I will.” I closed the quarters into my fist and walked over there with Corbin bouncing beside me, trying to pry my fingers apart. Halfway there I recognized her. The girl from the bus station. The one with the violin. The one who’d smiled at me. I stopped in my tracks.
“Maeve?” Corbin said. “What are we doing?”
She was reading a book and hadn’t looked up yet. My panic attack shifted; it was about her now. About talking to her. Would she recognize me? Was it weird that I remembered her so clearly? Standing at the edge of that park, playing the violin with her eyes closed. Was that weird?
The PA system announced that the ferry would be loading soon, and with that news my resolve came back. Corbin would do the right thing, never mind how nervous I was feeling. “We’re giving them back, and now you’re not getting the chips at all. You’re being a total brat, Corbin.”
“And you’re being a bitch!”
I tightened my grip on his arm. “What did you just say to me?”
“Hey, kid!” The girl stood up, and in two strides she was leaning over Corbin, glaring down at him. She was tall, and cute, and mad. “You do not talk to your mom that way. That is not cool.”
“She’s not my mom,” Corbin sneered. “Just my stupid half sister.”
“Whatever,” the girl said. “You never call a woman a bitch.”
“She’s not a woman.”
“Sure she is.”
“She’s just a girl.”
“Corbin, give the quarters back.” I could not stand them arguing about whether I was a woman or a girl. “Now.”
“No!” Corbin hollered. “She gave them to me fair and square!”
“Begging off people is not ‘fair and square.’?”
“He didn’t beg.”
Up close to her now, I could see that the stamped letters on her belt said SHIFT HAPPENS, and her eyes were apple green. On one hand I wanted to stare at her until I could draw her with my eyes closed, but on the other I would rather have become one with the dirty floor than be having this conversation. Or, no. I would rather be having an entirely different conversation. With the girl.
“Really?”
“He sold me jokes,” the girl said. “A quarter each.”
“Seriously?” I gripped Corbin’s arm even harder. “You neglected to mention that part, Corbin.”
“He did work for it. Fair and square.” She stared at me. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Bus station.”
“Right.” She blushed a little. Did she? Or was I imagining it? I was blushing, definitely. That much was for sure. “The truck on the sidewalk.”
“My dad. Rock-star parking.”
“Did he pay the ticket?”
“You didn’t see him crumple it up and throw it away?”
“What do you call a dinosaur who crashes his car?” Corbin said.
“A Tyrannosaurus wreck,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah, oh.” The girl grinned. “All good?”
“All good.”
She looked at me. I looked at her. Corbin yanked his arm away.
“Meanie,” he said.
“Ferry’s boarding,” the girl said.
“Yeah.” The wonderful thing was that at that precise moment I was not thinking of earthquakes. Not one bit. “We’ve got to go.”
“Bye.”
“Bye,” I said. “Sorry about the misunderstanding.”
—
“It’s already boarding!” Owen said when I got back and began gathering our things. “You took so long, and I was going to come get you, but I couldn’t carry all the backpacks and I thought you weren’t going to be that long.”
“Sorry.” We lined up to board. The girl was ahead of us. She carried a beat-up violin case and had an equally beat-up backpack slung over one shoulder. There was a famous dead composer’s profile silk-screened on a pinned-on patch. I didn’t know which one, but it didn’t matter. Because just below the dead composer was a rainbow patch.
Bingo. She was a friend of Dorothy.