Free The Anybodies by N. E. Bode Page B

sheets on the orange, now less furry, sofa for Fern. They lay down across the room from each other in the dark. Except for the occasional roar of a passing train, the apartment was quiet. There was a little slice of moonlight coming in through a crack in the curtains. Fern was writing in her diary as silently as she could. She had a lot to catch up on. She wrote about Milton Beige, Howard, the Bone, and Mary Curtain—the real Mary Curtain in her kitchen somewhere—and Marty, the fake Mary Curtain. She wrote about the rooster man and the raw onion and the orange and the Miser andher mother, most of all her mother. She pulled the picture out, gazed at it, and then wrote:
    When I look at the picture of her, I mean really look, really stare right into her eyes, I feel like I know her. Sometimes I feel like we are thinking the same thing or feeling the same thing, like our hearts miss each other.
    The Bone started to hum a sad love song, and then he sang a few of the words, “Sweet, sweet, my sweet darling angel, where have you gone, where have you gone?”
    The song made Fern want to cry. She put the picture back into the diary and closed it. She stared up at the ceiling, and a lump rose in her throat. When she coughed, hoping to clear it, the Bone stopped singing. He coughed too, as if embarrassed he’d been caught. Fern thought that maybe he’d thought she was asleep.
    â€œSoon the Bartons will start clog dancing upstairs,” the Bone said.
    â€œAt least the rooster won’t wake us up,” Fern said.
    â€œTrue.”
    The Bone let out an exhausted sigh. He said, “Your mother knew she wasn’t going to make it. She just knew. She told me over the jail phone, looking at me through the Plexiglas. I told her she was silly. She started giving me information about the book, where she’d leave it for me, a special spot, but I hushed her up. I said I didn’t want to hear about it. She gave up talking about it. She gave up pretty easily, in fact. She didn’t want to upsetme. Or, sometimes I think, maybe…”
    â€œWhat?” Fern asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
    â€œMaybe she was hatching a bigger plan. Your mother was tricky. She always had a way of getting what she wanted.”
    â€œWhat did she want when she was alive?” Fern asked, now sitting up and staring at the Bone through the weak light.
    â€œOh, I don’t know.”
    â€œReally,” Fern said, “tell me.”
    The Bone thought out loud, “What did she want? What did she really want? She wanted for me and the Miser to be friends again. And I guess she’d have loved it if I’d gotten along with her mother….”
    Fern hadn’t thought about this before. She had a grandmother. This took her by surprise. She wanted to meet her grandmother now. She had to!
    The Bone went on, “But her mother is a loon, I tell you. C-R-A-Z-Y. She runs a boarding house but truly lives in a world of books. And I mean that very seriously. I never got along with the old woman….”
    Fern stopped listening now. She was starting to understand something—her mother was a plotter. She had a plan. She was smart. She wanted the Bone and the Miser to be friends again. Fern guessed that her mother felt responsible for the two cutting ties, for coming betweenthem, maybe. And she wanted the Bone to become close to her mother. Well, of course, she loved these two people.
    Now that Fern knew what her mother wanted, she had to think of how her mother would use the book to get it. Her mother knew the future—that she was going to die—but how far into the future could she see? Did her mother know that one day Fern would be here trying to piece it all together? Fern was on her feet now, pacing. It helped her think.
    â€œWhat is it?” the Bone asked.
    Fern didn’t answer because she hadn’t really heard him. She was thinking of her mother’s heart and her own,