by Patricia J. Esposito

Caddie didn’t steal; she abandoned. In her right fleece pocket, she had the amethyst from the museum of lapidary art. It wasn’t her favorite, but it cut crystal into a purple galaxy. Imagine, she thought, abandoning a galaxy.

Beneath Scooter-In’s red awning, she fisted the stone in her pocket, while her mother closed the black umbrella. “Hate to bring it in all wet,” Mom said, looking up and down the rainy Main Street as if someone might be there to take it. Caddie didn’t offer.

Maybe she’d leave the stone at the restaurant table leg. Some kid bored with the line of asparagus, the wedge of lemon collapsed on roasted chicken would slouch in her seat, lower, lower, table edge eye level now, then a dark cover as she reached for what shone.

“Caddie? Where are you?” Her mom held the door to the inn’s café. It puffed warm air. Where had the umbrella gone? Caddie hadn’t seen its rescue.

Someday she would leave something of consequence.

For now she sat with polite pleases and thank-yous while her mother spoke to a man in a black shirt and red tie. He matched the awning.

Her mom’s job interview, Caddie had learned, required a sleepless night and morning of burnt toast and lost socks and tight smiles. She didn’t mind. People abandoned more than amethysts at tables.

#

“Will you get the job?” Caddie asked, trailing her mom up the apartment stairs. Her mom wiggled the key in the door lock, and Caddie thought, if it opened on first try, the answer was yes. It was important to look for signs. Guardian angels left signs to help people, guide them, Caddie was sure, but people had to listen and look. Caddie liked helping. She’d placed that amethyst at the table leg, and whoever found it would know it was a sign.

While her mother talked to the sizzle of stir-fried chicken, Caddie scribbled in her school notebook. Her mind though was on what she would abandon tomorrow . . . and on the intrusive thought that nagged now and then: Did she steal something from the person who found the amethyst? What act of giving came without a theft?

Her mom set the plate beside Caddie’s notebook. Was dinner a gift?

“You mind if I watch something?” her mom asked. “My favorite’s on again.” The three empty chairs around Caddie whispered no. She wrote in her notebook, Are gifts ever selfless? What do we gain from them?

“Darling, you twist good to bad,” the TV character said, and Caddie erased her questions.

Homework done, yawns came early, breaking right into their kiss goodnight. Caddie pulled the comforter over and hid under its lumpy tent. She flicked on her flashlight and flicked it off. She would leave the lavender-scented flower soap in her friend Kelly’s desk tomorrow. The smell would fill the classroom every time Kelly opened her desk. Kelly might get mad at that though, embarrassed by the attention. No, not the soap. She would leave the matchbox race car. Her favorite gold metallic sports car. That was a true gift.

She slept well on that thought. Until morning.

The race car was gone. But that was impossible. She’d kept them all safe in her mom’s old taped-up gift box. Still, her favorite was missing. Caddie sat on the bed’s edge, the mattress sinking and ready to toss her off. Slippery this attempt to control. What had she wanted to achieve giving up her prize possession, the slick gold racecar that defined her as someone different, as more than cautious Caddie.

Why had the powers snatched that away? Be careful of pride, her mom would say—enough times that it sounded no different from Don’t forget to brush your teeth. Caddie heard the warning now. What had she meant giving up her most valuable gold car?

She cried on her small twin bed. She slipped to the floor. Tucking up her legs, head in her arms, she cried. Sometimes the sobbing came unexpectedly. She’d feel her body shaking and didn’t know why, and then with sudden clarity, she’d think, because I’m sad. That was enough. People were sometimes sad.

She had nothing to put in Kelly’s desk tomorrow.

#

The wall clock over the classroom door read 2:52. School was nearly out, the sun chattering through trees out the window. Kelly flipped back her dirty-blond waves. She had larger breasts than most of the girls, and they marveled at it. A superpower, some said, because the boys stopped their stupid talk and stared. God, some of them went on, Caddie thought, boast after boast. That didn’t seem generous at all.

She set her elbow on the school fence and watched Mario and Ethan punch each other in the arm in the school bus line. She felt wise, standing there, observing. One learns through observation, her teacher said. Ethan was the type who would steal her gold matchbox, not Mario. She liked cute Mario. She should give a gift to Mario.

Caddie felt around in her pockets—not much of value in there. She reached under her baggy shirt and easily scrunched her arms out of her stretch bra. Sometimes, in the moment, things seemed less shocking, less serious. It would only be a joke, a small thrill the boys could laugh over, wonder about. They’d gossip: Who did it belong to? Why was it left with Mario? Obviously a girl wanted him. But what girl?

The stuff of fantasies. Butting behind Mario in the bus line, she stuffed it in his backpack pocket while he fought with Ethan over who’d scored the last basket at recess. As they pushed and shoved, the clouds overhead shredded to a magnificent fan, geese catching gold as they passed through. Signs.

Once, she’d tried to give a boy something she valued, a real part of herself. That was Robbie. Caddie loved castles, the gray stone walls that exhaled not just minerals, like they read in science, but ghosts. History walked right around those places, she thought. When she’d told Robbie, he’d said, “And waiting at the castle wall is a man, your hero…”

Caddie had thrown her Subway wrapper at him, then quickly caught it as a wind whipped up. She hadn’t meant to litter, but the jerk! He hadn’t heard anything she said. Why’d she want a man at the wall? Sometimes people just heard what they wanted.

Still, should she abandon something to Robbie? In the back of the bus, the boys had gone silent around Mario and his backpack. Caddie held her grin. For this short time, brown-eyed Mario was king.

Did she want Robbie to be king? Not at all. But she was probably just feeling hurt because he didn’t listen. Petty to hold a grudge, her mother would say. Forgiveness was the noblest virtue. And giving.

She could hang around after the bus, wait around the corner of Third, till Robbie walked by. He lived a few doors down from Scooter-In, a place she felt conflicted about at the moment. Had she lost her precious amethyst for nothing? Cold playground stones filled her pocket now. These weren’t small stones. They could pound someone good. She imagined a purple bruise right above the eye on Robbie’s unblemished face.

Slouching in her seat, she tried to ignore the dirty words she heard from the back of the bus. At least Robbie had proposed a hero at the castle wall. The boys in the back proposed things she’d never imagined.

Mistakes. Sometimes abandoning part of oneself was a mistake. She took note of that. She would be more careful.

The bus door hissed then squeaked at each stop. Hers was next.

Her mom waited there. And the relief was elemental.

#

Elemental. That word delivered her an evening of kitchen-table, spiral-notebook thoughts. The slant of the ruled lines, her pencil looping and running and breaking rules—it gave the appearance of doing homework, and for a long while her mom didn’t interrupt.

“What is your essay on?” her mom finally called, curled up on the couch. The TV’s light ricocheted off her, making her look foreign—a white nose, black eyes. When Caddie didn’t answer, her mom pushed up on one elbow. There she was—looking now like peach punch with her floppy collar like bunches of grapes. Mom.

“Caddie?”

The essay. She looked at the whirl of painted words. They could be anything really, gold racecars, amethysts, Kelly’s boobs, or her desktop closing. “What is elemental?” Caddie said.

“My dear Watson?” Mom laughed, and that ended her question. It was too late to decipher the looped and spattered clues. Caddie closed the notebook.

“I think I have a fever,” she announced, and immediately the room jumped with activity. Cabinets opened, faucets ran; her mom’s cracked hands cleared the table for space. To what? Perform surgery? Caddie thought. Yes, take out of her everything she’d stolen.

“I meant to give,” she said, and her mom’s cold hand lay against her forehead. A sweet cooling.

She could give her sweat, the shadow of a mother’s hand, give that to Mrs, Fenier in the lunchroom who looked so sad. “Pack it in my pocket,” she mumbled.

“Caddie, you’re burning. Swallow these. Come on now.”

She must have done what her mom said because the bed hugged her. It sweated and froze her all night long, and the moon flashed photos. Here, Caddie grabbed the nightstand. Here, she flopped side to side. Minutes that were swollen into hours.

She had nothing to give! Everything was a risk. People didn’t hold gently and generously; they tore and ripped and laughed. Somewhere in the night, sleep snatched her body and threw it overboard into dark water.

She woke in a bed not a boat. Morning sun sat plump at her window ledge. God, she thought, feeling her way to the bathroom—that was a trip, an embarrassing display. Had she cried out for her mother? She was pretty sure she had.

“I’m fine!” Caddie packed her book in the backpack and held her hand out for the soft spiral being now in her mother’s hand.

“Caddie, this is good.” The notebook jittered, a nodding head, chattering teeth. “This— what you wrote. Elemental! I would have never thought.”

Her return smile felt like rain. “I left the amethyst under the hotel table,” Caddie blurted. It was all she’d kept of Sylvie’s—her sister, lost somewhere under streetlights or cars or bridges. They didn’t know where she’d gone. She just wasn’t here.

Her mom’s hug felt good but not enough. She had to give something. Something of herself. Something to the world.

Sometimes, she thought she’d give her life just so Sylvie could come home. To the known. Elemental, their family unit. The front door would swing open to sighs of relief. Home. A shivering mug set down on the counter with all fears relieved. Clothing fought with and falling smooth. Mom, a shoulder against the doorframe. The nod of listening. Elemental.

“Did you think Sylvie would find it?” her mom asked.

She hoped. But if not, someone would. Someone who needed a gift.

#

The problem with the boys, she considered, hitching up her backpack as the bus hissed to her stop, is they hadn’t yet felt that elemental need. The magic of gifts. True gifts. Maybe her sister hadn’t either. They still thought all was theirs for the taking.

Caddie barely saw them as she scooted into the bus seat, shoulder against the warming window. Mario gave her a funny look and then fingered his jacket pocket. He glanced at her again, softly, like a rabbit sniffing out of the bushes. He smiled a little.

That look. She understood it. It was his thank-you. Sometimes thank you was the best gift of all.

In her pocket she fingered the rain-stained menu she’d tucked there the day of her mother’s interview, the day of Scooter’s-In and the abandoned amethyst. She’d kept it like a lifeline to the finder of the amethyst. It seemed stupid that the menu felt like Mario in her pocket now, crumpled and soft. She didn’t mean to smile back at him. But she did.

Litro Magazine

coming-of-age consequence guilt kindness mother-daughter objects short fiction small town tension theft