Chapter 12 - The Other Side of the Rent Notice
I read Cleo's note three times before calling Mom. No answer. I called Simone instead, though she was downstairs cutting fabric at the kitchen table.
"I need to know if we're actually losing the apartment," I said when she came up.
"You don't have the lease, honey. The answer has to come from Dana or the management office. You can't solve it by guessing."
I texted Mom a single question: Have you asked for a payment plan or rental assistance? She replied with a photograph of the rent statement. Nothing else.
Simone knew a community center that helped families apply for emergency assistance. She gave me its phone number to pass along, not an assignment to complete the application myself. "You can make a door visible," she said. "You can't walk another adult through it against her will."
At work I found a five-dollar bill in the tip jar with a note from Ruby: Eat lunch. It made me laugh and almost cry. I'd been telling everyone I wasn't hungry because a sandwich felt like money that should go somewhere else.
After my shift I met Cleo and Maisie at the public library. Mom had agreed to a supervised hour because Simone would bring them home. Maisie sat against my shoulder, coloring a yellow planet with rings.
"Is school a place where you live all the time?" she asked.
"For most of the year. I'd come back for breaks."
"Would you forget what my voice sounds like?"
"Never."
Cleo studied us from behind a stack of picture books. "You don't have to say everything will be fine," she said. "I'm not a baby."
"You're right. I don't know if everything will be fine. But I won't stop being your sister."
May you like
She nodded. Then she slid her notebook across the table. Inside she'd drawn three houses connected by a road. One was ours, one was Simone's, and one was labeled ZEE'S SCHOOL.
Under the picture she'd written, We can be a family without being in the same building.
