Take Me There by Susane Colasanti

Author:Susane Colasanti [Colasanti, Susane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-12-23T11:24:09+00:00

I can see Mrs. Schaffer on our stoop from half a block away. She’s just standing there, holding on to the railing. I run up to our building.

“Hey, Mrs. Schaffer!” I climb the stairs up to her.

“Oh good. Would you . . . ?”

“Of course.”

I help Mrs. Schaffer inside and up the rest of the stairs. It’s so weird how a lot of older people live in walk-up buildings without an elevator. How do they get around when they live alone and there’s no one to help them? Living in a third-floor walk-up is nothing for me, but it’s a serious deal for her. It takes her like ten minutes just to get up to her place. And lately it seems like she’s struggling more.

We stop on the second-floor landing for a breather. The hallway smells like mothballs. Mothballs and cabbage. I hate it when people cook stuff that takes over the entire building.

“And so?” Mrs. Schaffer prods. “What’s new with the girl?”

Man. This is the last thing I want to talk about. I just want to go to my room, get my homework done, and work on programming for Danny’s speech. Keep busy until it’s time for 24. Then go to bed. And forget how warped Rhiannon’s being.

“Nothing to report yet.”

“Oh? And why is this?”

What am I supposed to say here? I hate stringing her along like this, but she always gets so excited about the prospect of me having a serious girlfriend. Someone I can take over to her place for visits. And so she can feed us cookies. I just can’t let her down. Especially since she has such high expectations of me.

“I’m waiting for the right opportunity to arise,” I explain.

“In my day, a boy liked a girl, she was the first to know. None of this scheming.”

Mrs. Schaffer is like a grandma to me. My grandparents on Ma’s side live in Germany, where she’s from. But I haven’t seen them since I was small. I hardly remember them. Just fragments. Pieces of another life. And on Dad’s side, my grampa died and my grandma lives in a nursing home.

So I’m really protective of Mrs. Schaffer. Over the years, I’ve felt like it’s my responsibility to take care of her more and more. She’s family now.

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