How to Build a House Read online

  I gesture to the hood.

  “You really should have this thing fixed.”

  “Someday,” he says. He turns on the ignition and pulls away slowly. I stand outside staring up the road until I no longer can see his taillights.

  I stand there for a few more minutes. Finally I go back to my room, and since it’s too late to bother with sleep, I begin to pack.

  Today, our final day, is move-in day. Tonight there will be a party, but first we have some heavy lifting to do.

  Most of the Wrights’ belongings, the things that survived the tornado, have been sitting in a storage unit in Jackson. As we move their furniture, their lamps and their boxes off the truck—careful to lift with our knees, not our backs—I see for the first time all the things that make their home their home.

  There’s a corduroy armchair that reminds me of one we used to have in our house, which Jane took with her when she moved out and had re-covered in brown Ultrasuede. I used to sit in it and read and rest my feet on Pavlov.

  We move new beds into the twins’ room. Grace’s on the left, Alice’s on the right. The walls are a color called Eggshell, but Teddy and I used the leftover bright pink paint from the fort in the woods to paint the inside of their closet. And also, we painted a thick pink line up one wall, across the ceiling and down the other Eggshell wall.

  “Ooohhh! Look at our closet! And I love the stripe!” Grace jumps up and down.

  “What’s it for?” Alice asks.

  I shove her bed into place. It fits just inside the bright pink line.

  “That’s where the invisible wall goes.”

  I help Teddy set up his room. I fold his clothes and arrange his guitars on the built-in stands. I step back as he holds the Miles Davis poster up over his bed, and I try my best to tell him if one side is higher than the other.

  When we’re done I don’t know where to sit. Teddy stretches himself out on his bed. He kicks off his shoes. He motions for me to come over and lie down next to him.

  I shake my head. It doesn’t feel right. This is Teddy’s room and I don’t belong here.

  “Just for a minute,” he says. “Please.”

  I shake my head again. My throat starts to constrict. I open the door to leave and he follows me in his socks.

  The house has cleared out now. It’s lunchtime. Everyone is outside and I’m going out to join them. Outside. Where I belong.

  I head for the front door, but then Teddy grabs me by a belt loop on my shorts and pulls me into the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I don’t want him to see me cry, so I put my hands over my face.

  “In here,” he says. He crouches down, opens the door to the tornado-safe room and climbs in. I look in after him, but all I can see are the whites of his socks. The claustrophobic in me is screaming to run away.

  But I climb in and shut the door and it’s blacker than night in here and Teddy finds me, wraps his arms around me and kisses my eyelids and then my lips.

  “I’m going to miss you,” he says. “You know that, don’t you?”

  I think about the literature that came with this room. Those outlines of people huddled together. The pamphlet didn’t lie. Just being in here makes me feel safer.

  “Thanks for everything,” I say.

  “You’re thanking me?”

  “Yes. If I forget to say that later, if I get moody or sad or I have such a hard time saying goodbye that I don’t say anything at all, I wanted to make sure that I thanked you for everything. Thanks for choosing me, for wanting to be with me, and thanks for making the rest of my life fade away at a time when I needed to stop thinking about the rest of my life, and thanks for reminding me that I couldn’t keep going on like that, not thinking, and thanks for helping me start talking to Tess again. Thanks for loving Jesus radio as much as I do. And thanks for the pie.”

  “Harper, I …”

  “You don’t have to say it.”

  “I don’t?”

  “I know.”

  “You know what?”

  I lean against him, nestling in the crook of his arm. I talk into his neck. I don’t need to be able to see to find the parts of him I know.

  “That morning in the trailer, when we had it to ourselves, and you made me breakfast, I wondered whether you would tell me you loved me, if you’d ever tell me, and I looked at you, and I thought you were going to say it, but instead you went off on a tangent about boysenberry jam.”

  “And?”

  “And it was funny. And it was close enough to the real thing for me. Just sitting there with you like that.”

  “Boysenberry jam?”

  “Boysenberry jam.”

  “Harper,” he whispers into my hair.

  “Yeah?”

  “I boysenberry jam you.”

  The party is on the lawn out behind Teddy’s house. This is the same spot where we had our first lunch with the Wrights, when Diane brought us a picnic and it felt like we were eating in the middle of nowhere. But it’s a backyard now, neatly landscaped with a smattering of pink hibiscus, and small white lights that twinkle at night like distant planets.

  If things were different, this would be a night where we all dressed up. The girls in strapless chiffon gowns, the boys in tuxedos. This is our big night. But we have nothing with us other than our T-shirts and shorts and work boots and jeans, and the best we can do is to wear something clean.

  Teddy’s friend Mikey, his one true friend, returned from his summer away in time for the party. When Teddy introduced us, Mikey smiled and shook my hand and said how nice it was to meet me. But he also looked at me like: Who are you?

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  We write messages in each other’s notebooks. Inside jokes we probably won’t remember by next summer. We make certain we have each other’s e-mails, cell phone numbers.

  Marisol is coming down from San Francisco in October, so we pretend that we don’t even need to say goodbye, and we end up ignoring each other all night, but I watch as she takes Seth aside and says something to him, and he smiles, and she then delivers a quick kiss right to his lips.

  I well up when Captain hugs me. I’ve never been to Florida and I can’t imagine when I’ll ever go. He hugs Tess too, even though they’ve only known each other a few short days, and over her shoulder he shoots me a perverted look as he makes a fake grab for her ass.

  We dance under the stars. I dance with Coach Wes. I hold hands with Alice and Grace as they jump up and down with no relation at all to the song’s tempo. I find Linus by the punch bowl and I ask for his e-mail to add to my book, but he gives me a look to remind me that he is a man of no address.

  “You know,” he tells me, “next summer there’s a project planned in Ecuador. Up in the mountains near Quito. As long as you don’t have trouble with altitude sickness, I’d love to have you in on that. And I was thinking maybe Teddy could do it too. You’ll be college age by then. You could be chaperones. Both of you. Do you think you could handle making sure everyone’s where they’re supposed to be when the lights go out?” He smiles at me. We stand facing each other and then he makes a move as if to hug me, but instead reaches out and musses up my hair.

  Teddy comes over and pulls me onto the dance floor. It’s a slow song. He wraps both his arms around me and we hardly move.

  The only thing around us, above us, is sky. Cathedrals in time have no walls. They have no roof.

  “Guess who called me today?” he asks.

  “The admissions director at UCLA. He called to say they’re holding a spot for you, but the dorms are full, so you’ll have to live at my house.”

  “Nice guess.” He pats my back. “No college this year. Next year for sure. But this year is about the clinic. And …” He pulls back and looks at me with a big expectant smile.

  “And … what?”

  “Phantom called. They have a gig next week at a club in Nashville and he wants me to play. I start rehearsal the day after tomorrow.�
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  The music has changed from slow and quiet to loud and frenetic, but I hardly hear it. Right at this moment there is nothing here, nobody but Teddy.

  “Who’s the man?” he asks.

  “You are.” I tighten my arms around him.

  We’ve already said our goodbyes, even though we still have tonight. We still have the morning. There’s breakfast. There’s the time it’ll take to pack up the car. I’ve said goodbye to Teddy and it feels good to have that out of the way so that now I can just look at his face and take pleasure in how much he’s looking forward to next week. The good things that will still be here after I’m gone.

  We’ve made promises. We’ll talk. We’ll write. He’ll come visit me after the clinic is built. The truck can make the trip, he swears. He likes long drives. He’s always wanted to see the Painted Desert. It’s a bit out of the way, but so what? I can come visit, anytime I want. His family loves me, he says.

  I tell him Cole would like him, and Dad too. There’s a Mexican restaurant that will blow him away. The ocean is warm enough for swimming only in the summer; it’s a common misconception that Californians go to the beach all year round. I’ve heard about this club on Fairfax that has great music, and I’ll be eighteen soon enough, so I’ll be able take him there. Pavlov likes to hike in the mountains and sometimes we see rattlesnakes. Teddy should make sure to bring his boots.

  I’d like to believe all this. That our plans will happen. That we’ll meet again, in the Painted Desert or high in the mountains of Ecuador. I’d like to believe that we’re just beginning to build something, and that we’ll make it happen. I do believe it. At least, I do tonight.

  HOME

  We’re crossing over the Mississippi River.

  We’ve left Tennessee for Arkansas.

  I’m looking at the map, big and unruly across my legs. Tess is driving. Rose is stretched out in the backseat. We have only four more states to travel through before we reach California.

  “What is this crap?” asks Tess.

  She’s referring, of course, to Jesus radio.

  “Trust me,” I say. “Just give it a chance.”

  I think about my trip here, how I looked out the window and watched the earth changing color. I’ll get to see it now in reverse. It’s still summer; the landscape won’t be much different. Those greens and browns and reds are waiting. Even in this era of climatic crisis, change takes place slowly, not over the course of twelve weeks.

  I’m looking forward to the trip. To taking our time. To seeing the things you can’t see from thirty-five thousand feet.

  I turn up the radio.

  It’s still early enough in the day to have our windows down. I try to fold up the map, but the wind keeps whipping it around. You have to be some kind of structural engineer to figure out how to return it to its rectangular shape, so I bunch it up and throw it into the backseat at Rose, who grumbles about trying to sleep.

  We don’t really need the map. Home is pretty much a straight shot from here.

  One way or another, we’ll find the road back.

  About the Author

  Dana Reinhardt lives in San Francisco with her husband and their two daughters. She is the author of two previous novels, A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life and Harmless.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Dana Reinhardt

  All rights reserved. Published by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows: Reinhardt, Dana.

  How to build a house / Dana Reinhardt.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Seventeen-year-old Harper Evans hopes to escape the effects of her father’s

  divorce on her family and friendships by volunteering her summer to build a house in a

  small Tennessee town devastated by a tornado.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89388-9

  [1. Building—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Divorce—Fiction.

  4. Stepfamilies—Fiction. 5. Voluntarism—Fiction. 6. Tennessee—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R2753 How 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007033403

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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