The Distance between Me and the Cherry Tree by Paola Peretti & Denise Muir

Author:Paola Peretti & Denise Muir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

15

Loving Someone

I’m going to have a baby.

I’m almost certain now.

Since we got back from the ski trip, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what Emilia said about how having a baby means you get a sore tummy and then you’re sick. I think about it all the time—while I’m rubbing Ottimo Turcaret behind the ears, before and after my homework, even now as I walk to school.

You get a sore tummy then you’re sick. That’s what happened to me when we were sledding. I don’t know if you need a boy as well, but I did hug Filippo really tight when we were in the race. That must be it. What will I say to Mom? Will Ottimo Turcaret still love me? I’ll have to leave school, and how will I look after a baby in the darkness?

I imagined having six children when I was little—five girls and a boy—then I got the mist in my eyes and I stopped thinking about it. I’d lose them in the mist, or I’d comb their hair silly, or they’d starve because I can’t drive to the supermarket to do the shopping. Maybe I could order pizza for dinner, but that’s not healthy. No, I can’t have children. Just Ottimo Turcaret. He sorts his food out himself, and he cleans his coat and keeps it tidy.

I have to tell someone. Estella. She’s the only one who can help me. I’ll go to her room when the bell rings for break. To stop thinking about it, I count how many steps it takes me to get to the cherry tree, all brown and skinny, from when I can see it. One, two, three . . .

Eighty steps, maybe seventy-eight.

Forty meters, maybe thirty-nine.

Another ten steps and I hear it—Estella’s whistle. If I lose my hearing as well, I really will be in trouble.

I knock two or three times on the door of the janitors’ room. It’s lunch, and everyone is running up and down the corridors, clutching half-open snack bars in their hands. Three boys from Filippo’s class are playing basketball with the wastepaper basket, using scrunched-up tinfoil as a ball. I’d like to play too, but I’ve got more important things on my mind. Estella opens the door and I go inside, leaving some of the chaos, not all of it, behind me.

Estella throws me a bag of chips.

“Are you not having any?” I say.

She flops, or kind of collapses, onto the swivel chair. She props her head up on her hand, elbow on the table. She looks tired. Her face is the color of lemons when they go moldy, which is actually a beautiful color, only it doesn’t seem nice to tell someone that.

Estella gestures that she doesn’t want any chips and pulls a stool closer to her chair. I like being here because everything is nearby and I can see things. I sit on the stool. It’s time to tell her I’m going to be a mom.

I make a little

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