Free Skylark by Sara Cassidy Page A

school and felt like I was marked. Like everyone knew that it wasn’t mine, not really.
    There was a guy in our old neighborhood who walked with his shoulders heavy, head down, dragging his feet. His old coat was too big, and his dark pants were oil-stained. The shoelaces in his cracked shoes were nothing but brown parcel string. Mom said he slept in the woods of the ravine. One day the guy shuffled past our car wearing a hospital bracelet and holding a plastic bag with big letters announcing Patient Garment Bag . He’d been in the hospital, Mom explained, likely for mental health reasons, and when he’d checked out, they had given him his belongings in the big bag. It looked like he was being made a fool of, with that bag. Everyone being told about him. That’s how I felt with the binder. As though it glowed and exposed me. PITY BINDER , it might say.
    At the end of biology class, I asked the teacher if I could use some duct tape—she had rolls of the stuff on top of her filing cabinet. “Sure,” she said, hurrying off for lunch, “just close the door behind you when you’re done.” I covered my binder with that silver-gray tape, then marked it up with a pen— Angie’s Binder , I wrote, between a thousand Sharpie hearts and stars and even a couple of Saturns with radiating rings. I drew a bird zooming through the cosmos, too, a sweet little bird with a small poof of a crest on its head. I don’t know where she came from, that bird. But finally the binder felt like mine. In it, 250 pages of blank loose-leaf paper. Clem got the other 250, and you can imagine that we counted every sheet. It’s the perfect thing to do when you’re squashed up in the back of a car. That, or play cribbage again.
    When things got rough after Dad left, Mom took us to the Single Parent Resource Center. It’s an old brick house on a busy street, with nothing around it but gas stations and cheap motels. It’s got a bread cupboard—Clem and I nabbed a cheese loaf—a clothing exchange, rooms where you can meet with counselors, and a play area for kids. Clem and I are way too old for the play area—I mean, he’s sixteen and I’m fourteen—so we just sat in the waiting area, leafing through Archie comics while Mom talked to the woman at reception. Mom was trying not to cry. She said something like, “How do we stay a family now, without a home and no father? How do we not go flying apart?” The woman answered, “Just keep doing some of the things you always have done. That’ll make a through-line. The through-line will carry you.”
    That evening, we were squished in the car, doing homework by the light of our fancy solar-powered led lanterns, when Mom said, “Let’s head to the Spiral.”
    When we lived in the apartment with Dad, we’d hit the Spiral Café once a week for hot chocolate. We’d just bundle up after supper, leave the dishes unwashed and walk together, the four of us, down the gray sidewalks, talking and teasing, stealing each other’s hats and running, reading lost-cat posters, sizing up new houses. Just being free with each other.
    These days, I get anxious whenever Mom suggests spending money. My heart digs in and I say no. But that night, she didn’t even give Clem and me time to pretend we didn’t want to go. She put the key in the ignition and shifted the gearstick to Drive.

Electrified
    I’d never seen the café so busy. A poster on the door announced that it was Slam Night. The chairs were turned toward the front. There was a microphone under a spotlight, and a young guy was giving some kind of speech. He wore pink skinny jeans and a ragged brown sweater. He was talking about people acting cool. He used repetition and rhymes, and he would slow down and speed up his talking depending on what he was saying. He’d draw everyone in with a whisper, then pop them back to reality with a