Just like Dad said. They are moving. Again. This time to Amsterdam. I don’t know when, but definitely before Nice Avery’s birthday party. Before junior year. Before I have had enough time to either glue my friendship with Jackson back together again and start over or convince myself that I don’t want to.
I fold myself over elf girl and hold tight for both our sakes.
CHAPTER 63
The fugitive sits on her mother’s lap, with my Josefina American Girl doll in her lap and a stack of my books at her feet. Her eyes are still bloodshot, but she’s not crying anymore. I called Melinda from our house, and when Mom came home she drove us here. We’ve already been through the reunion scene, in which Melinda scolds Quinlan for having disappeared like that, and then heaps praise on all the Walshes for keeping her safe.
Ben has been offered the position in Amsterdam, she tells us, but hasn’t decided yet. It’s “a very big opportunity,” which I assume means he will get paid a trillion dollars, and which I assume means he’s going to say yes.
“I don’t think Quinlan wants him to take it,” I say. The girl is focused on braiding Josefina’s hair, but she nods in agreement.
“Oh, Quinny’s just worried about missing a birthday party.” Melinda squeezes Quin’s shoulders. “I told her, though, we’ll actually be able to go to Disney Paris for a weekend if we want.”
“But I can’t bring Avery, and that’s whose birthday it is.”
“I know, sweetie. But maybe you’ll make friends with a Dutch girl!” Quin looks at me and scrunches up her nose. Melinda goes on. “Kids make friends so easily.” She pauses a minute and adds, “Well, Jackson always makes friends easily.”
The cement block in my stomach increases by ten pounds. Jackson makes friends easily; what she doesn’t say is that he leaves friends just as easily. I did not understand these rules before.
I want to ask what Jackson has said about the move—like maybe that he would rather live in the dumpster behind Cupernicus than leave me and Kennedy High School—but Quinlan is in front of me, poking me in the leg with Josefina.
“Greer, will you come see something in my room?”
“Sure,” I say, because I don’t really want to know what Jackson told his mother about the move anyway.
As I follow Quinlan upstairs, I hear Mom say, “I always thought it would be fun to go to high school in Europe!”
Jackson’s door is open, but it’s quiet in there. He’s working out with the baseball team, Melinda said. I wonder if he’s told them he might not make it to the season.
There are two other American Girl dolls in Quin’s room—Kit Kittredge, who is the most famous one, and a new one I don’t recognize, who is wearing doll-sized fencing gear. Quin pulls Kit off an American Girl horse and puts Josefina in her place. Makes sense, I think, since Josefina lives on a ranch. Back at my house she only had a stuffed sea lion. She’ll be happy here.
I wonder what they think of American Girl dolls in Hamster Den?
Whatever Quinlan wanted to show me she has forgotten about, lost in redistributing Kit’s things to Josi. I wander around her room. It’s gotten even crazier since the last time I was here. She could be on an episode of Tween Hoarders.
I notice a bunch of colorful globs on her dresser. They look like Play-Doh, but when I touch one, it’s more like plastic.
I know what this is. It’s polymer clay. You get it at the craft store. It starts out soft, but when you bake it, it hardens. Maggie and I tried making beads one summer, but they didn’t work.
Quin has made all kinds of little things, some recognizable, some not. There’s a pink kitten, and what’s probably a frog. A lot look like chewed gum. I’m ready to dismiss them when I notice one that looks familiar. Not exactly familiar, but recognizable. It’s a little man with a pointy hat and what is probably supposed to be a long white beard. It’s Grumpy Dwarf. She made herself a Grumpy Dwarf.
I pick through the pile and find more dwarfs, and a skinny figure with a blue and red dress, a white head, and black hair. It’s my whole set, remade in Sculpey. What’s remarkable isn’t that they are especially good, it’s that she’s made them at all.
I pick up another blob. Now that I realize what she’s done, I can figure out what it’s supposed to be. This one’s a tennis racket stuck on a block: Jackson’s doubles trophy from his bookshelf. A little iguana. I’d never guess that this speckly melty mess was a Lego boat with a Batman if I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I’m sure of it. It’s Jackson’s stuff, in miniature.
I line them up in even rows. I find the one I’m looking for: A tiny perfect coffee mug. I can imagine those skinny fingers rolling out the minuscule handle. For a second I understand Quin entirely, because I have to work hard not to just slip it in my pocket.
Even the things I don’t recognize must have a real-life counterpart somewhere. So Quinlan’s got a collection, too, only hers is a collection of other people’s collections. She’s made a miniature copy of other people’s lives.
“Did you ever make anything with Sculpey?” she asks. She’s right beside me now, leaning her elf face against my arm.
“I tried. I wasn’t as good as you.” I finish putting all the figures in lines.
“You weren’t?”
“Nope. I only made little balls.”
“For what?”
“They were supposed to be beads, but the holes closed up in the oven.”
Quin reaches out to straighten my rows, evening up the space between the kitten and a volleyball. “What were you going to do with the beads?”
“Maggie and I were going to make bracelets. And then Tyler ate a couple of them.” Quin gasps and giggles. “It wasn’t his fault. He was little and they looked like candy. I mean if you didn’t know better, wouldn’t you try to eat this?” I hold up a plump purple heart, which matches a monster fur pillow on her bed. Quin takes it from me and puts it back in its row. “So my mom threw them away.”
Quin thinks about this for a minute. “I don’t let my mom throw things away.”
I look around the chaos of her room, with its overflowing bins and shelves piled deep, its mountains of clothes and stuffed animals, and stacks and stacks of games no one plays with her. It’s obvious no one has ever thrown any of her things away. This is what she does, I guess. The moving truck must get bigger and bigger. If you keep moving around the world, you try to take the world with you.
Unless you’re Jackson. Then you do the opposite. You leave everything behind.
“You do have a lot of stuff,” I say.