“You didn’t scare me off.” I didn’t want to tell her about the funeral. I didn’t want to think about Mrs. Patel.
“Okay, forget the funeral.” Salix chewed on her straw. “Tell me what three things you’d take with you if your house was burning down, not including people or pets.”
That was her changing the subject? To house fires? Really?
“Did you know that over three thousand people die in house fires every year? That’s just in the States. And that’s not including firefighters.”
“I’d take my violin, and my computer—because it has all the pictures of my family,” Salix said. “And my earphones.”
“That works out to be about one every hundred and seventy minutes.”
“One what?”
“One person, dead.” I knew that I should be saying something else—I should be telling her those three things—but my brain took over and brought up the statistics instead. “Every hundred and seventy minutes. I think it’s actually one hundred sixty-nine minutes.”
“And if you narrowly escaped being one of the dead people, what would you take?”
I pressed my lips tight, biting them shut. A ticker tape of facts ran through my brain: Stay close to the floor. More Americans die in house fires each year than in all natural disasters combined. Change smoke-alarm batteries twice a year. I would not say anything at all until I could be sure that I would not recite even just one more statistic about house fires or charred bodies or arson or smoke inhalation or the best way to survive a house fire. Three things—think about those three things.
When I decided, I said them over and over in my head before I said them out loud. Just so that I wouldn’t end up telling her instead that most house fires start in the kitchen.
“My sketchbook and pencils—that counts as one. My computer—same about the photos—and the painting of me and my dad.”
“Show me.”
“The painting?”
“Your sketchbook.” Salix put a hand out, as if I would just give it to her.
“No,” I said. “I don’t do that. I mean, I don’t show people. I never do.”
“I played my violin for you.”
“You play your violin for a lot of people.”
“Show me.”
I put my pencils into my case and zipped it shut. I placed my sketchbook in my lap, and my hands flat on top of it, pressing it down, as if it might drift over to Salix despite everything.
“Okay,” Salix said. “You’re a tough audience.”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “But not today.”
Salix grinned.
“What?” I said.
“That means I’ll get to see you again.”
I grinned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Salix beamed. “Let’s see. Other introductory stuff. My dad is a bus driver. My mom works at the grocery store. But before that they lived in a bus and sold crappy jewelry at folk festivals, until my sister was born. In the bus. Her name is Linden. After the tree. Salix means ‘willow.’ You get the picture. Linden is two years older than me. She’s at Juilliard now. She plays the cello. We used to busk in this park, actually. Up by the cenotaph. Pretty much right where the dying goose is.”
“Juilliard,” I said. “That’s impressive.”
“I’ll be going too. If I get in, that is.”
“You’ll get in.” I wasn’t thinking about house fires anymore. I was thinking about Salix’s parents, on a bus. Having a baby. Don’t go there, Maeve. Leave the babies alone. Step away from the potentially dead babies.
“It’s almost impossible to get in.”
“Your sister did.”
“So maybe that’s it for family luck.” Salix lifted her necklace, the same one she’d worn each time I’d seen her. Even that first time at the bus station. “Linden gave this to me for good luck. She wore it for her audition.”
“But it’s not luck,” I said. “It’s talent. Which you have lots of.”
“Maybe,” Salix said. “But it’d have to be a full scholarship, like Linden. I have a plan, though, for if I don’t get in.”
“Another school?”
“No. I’d just take off. Europe. Or Australia. Maybe Thailand.”
“Thailand? But what about earthquakes? What about tsunamis?”
“In Thailand?”
“Over two hundred thousand people died in that one in 2004.”
Salix emptied her drink and squinted at me. “You know, we have earthquakes here, too.”
“Or hepatitis,” I blundered on. “You can catch hepatitis from water. Or spa treatments. Tattoo parlors. Tourist sex.” I heard myself say it, even as I wished I would just shut up. Or have a normal conversation. Like a normal person. I took a sip of my drink just to stop my verbal diarrhea.
“I’ll stick to bottled water,” Salix said with a laugh. “And I’ll be sure to avoid spa treatments and dodgy tattoo parlors. And tourist sex.”
“What if you meet some guy on the beach and he plays the guitar and he’s really nice and then he says, ‘Hey, let’s meet up in Bangkok.’?” The words just came spilling out and spilling out and spilling out. “Only he tucks a brick of cocaine in your backpack and you get caught at the airport and then you get thrown into a jail in Thailand. And then what? It happens.”
Salix stared at me, dumbfounded.
“It happens,” I repeated. “It does.”
“It’d be a girl.”
“What?”
“On the beach. It’d be a girl.”
“Oh.”
“Where are you from?” Salix said.
As in what planet? As in who says shit like that? What kind of person goes on and on and on about shit that won’t happen and why it would happen and basically insinuating that Salix would be stupid enough to have whatever the hell “tourist sex” is or carry drugs across an international border, as if she wouldn’t notice a brick of cocaine in her backpack? As if.
“That is such a good question,” I said.
“Seriously,” Salix said. “You said your dad lives here. Where’s your mom again?”
“Haiti.”
“Your mom is in Haiti and you’re worried about me going to Thailand?”
“I worry about her, too,” I said. “Trust me.”
“Why is your mom in Haiti?”
So I told her how it all happened. I managed not to tell her about Raymond’s shriveled-up penis, or Mom and him in a parked car beside the bear-proof garbage cans, or the man who was questioned at the border, or Tim McLean, who’d had his head cut off by a madman on a Greyhound bus.
I told her about Dan instead, and the unicorn pajamas, and the FRIEND OF DOROTHY shirt, and even about Jessica. But I didn’t tell her about Ruthie, or how Dad was ruining everything, or how I was thinking about getting on a bus and going home, even though no one was there. That maybe I wanted to go home while my dad ruined his second marriage. I told her that the baby was kicking. I told her about Mr. Heidelman and the ice cream sandwiches and the moving truck full of instruments.
“I wish I could stay,” she said when I finished. “But I have a student.”
I collected the boys and we walked with her as far as the store. She came in and held the basket for me while the boys ran up and down the aisles. I took a loaf of bread off the shelf, and a carton of milk, and when we were outside again, we stood in the middle of the sidewalk, the boys running circles around us.