Free Paper Things by Jennifer Richard Jacobson Page B

not living there!” Now I’m as mad as Gage.
    “You and I know that, but tell it to the landlord.”
    “Does that mean we’re never going back?” I want to ask him what we’ll do about the stuff we left there — our clothes and the boxes from Janna — but now doesn’t seem like the time.
    “No,” says Gage. He starts walking — to where, I don’t know, but I follow. “It just means that we have to be a lot more scarce.”
    “Chloe’s?” I ask hopefully when we get to the bus stop.
    Gage shakes his head. “She has a friend from out of town staying with her tonight.”
    “Lighthouse?” I say, less hopefully.
    “I hope not,” says Gage, and boards the bus.
    As it turns out, we’re staying with Perry and Kristen. Gage met Perry down at the docks, and Kristen is his wife, even though they are hardly any older than Gage.
    Right now we’re sitting in their living room in South Port, which is not really in Port City. It’s a whole different town, miles and miles from my school.
    I try to decide where I should sit. There are two options: a big, nubby couch with an orange-and-green throw on it, and an easy chair. There’s plenty of room on the couch next to Perry, but Kristen (who is in the other room and who probably looks pretty when she’s happier) is none too pleased about having guests. So I’d hate to take any of her comfiness. I try to decide if she’s more of an easy-chair person or a couch person. I can imagine her stretching out on the couch with one of her cats — I’ve counted three so far — the blanket covering her legs. But maybe she’d prefer the solitude of the easy chair, since she doesn’t even seem to want to be near Perry right now.
    I wish I could just go into the other room and do my schoolwork, but we’re not the kind of overnight guests where the hosts announce, “Make yourself at home.” We’re practically strangers here. Gage sizes up the situation and grabs a metal chair from the kitchen table. He brings it into the living room and nods for me to sit on the couch next to Perry.
    I sit on the far end of the couch, trying to make myself smaller, cuter, catlike.
    Kristen comes into the room and takes the easy chair. I can’t tell if she’s mad about that or not.
    Perry hands the remote to Gage, but Gage passes it off to Kristen and says, “We’re happy to watch whatever you like.”
    Perry snorts. “Don’t do that, man,” he says, which seems to make Kristen even more annoyed. In fact, I kind of wonder if Perry brought us home just to aggravate Kristen.
    Kristen tosses the remote back in Perry’s lap.
    When we walked in the back door, Kristen had been seated at the kitchen table. She pounced, expecting only Perry, wanting to know why he was late. Her face tightened when he introduced us (a look I recognized from Janna, who tried really hard not to look like an evil stepmother when we broke the forty-eight-hour rule and brought friends home unannounced) and said that we needed a place to crash tonight, that we’d thought we could move into our apartment today but it hadn’t been ready after all. That’s the sort of thing Gage tells people so they don’t think we’re homeless.
    Which we’re not, of course. We’re just between homes.
    “What about dinner?” Kristen had asked.
    Perry had handed her the leftover pizza from Flatbread, where we’d gone after meeting up. Flatbread is a
très
big treat for us, and I thought Kristen might be pleased, but I guess she mostly felt left out. Anyway, it was a bad start to what was turning out to be a bad night.
    Perry turns on a basketball game.
    I stare at a spot on my blouse where I spilled tomato sauce. Since all of my extra shirts are at Briggs’s, I’ll have to wear this same top tomorrow. I don’t dare ask Kristen and Perry if I can use their washing machine — I don’t even know if they have one — but think maybe the stain will come out in the sink.
    “May I use your bathroom?” I ask.
    “Use the one