Not Mine
The shelter is huge, like massive. Sam isn't sure what he's expecting when his mom says they're moving to a shelter but the building he's looking at definitely isn't it. It's one of those older buildings downtown, the brick ones, and the lady who comes out and smiles way too much at everyone says it used to be a hotel, back when people still stayed at hotels in downtown Lima Ohio. Now there are just motels going onto the interstate because people don't come to Lima, they go through.
The smiley woman is named Liza and she starts explaining how everything works and shoots him uncertain glances every time she mentions that it's a homeless shelter, but mostly it's a women's shelter. He doesn't look directly at her when she does this because thinking about men who would hit women who love them or their own children makes him really want to throw up and he's not sure how Liza will react to having the remnants of his leftover pizza on her practical black leather shoes. He finally understands why she keeps looking at him when she explains that there are places inside where he won't be allowed to go.
She also tells them that the shelter is for women and their children up to the age of sixteen and she wishes she could do more for them but...and Sam hasn't even considered that they might still be living in a shelter in May when he turns sixteen but from the look on his mother's face she has. He hasn't actually thought much about any of this and he feels a bit guilty when he realizes he's left his mother all alone taking care of three kids when one of them is definitely old enough to help out.
Stacy tries to read the name above the reception desk when while Liza types stuff into the computer and his mother starts filling out forms. He shifts her over to his other hip and wants to help her but the letters are shiny and metallic with backlighting and he struggles with cursive at the best of times but this might as well be just a squiggly line for all he can tell. Stevie rolls his eyes and mutters under his breath about how it's totally a S and Sam has to keep himself from snapping at Stevie for what feels like the millionth time because Stevie just lost his dad and he's allowed to be angry at the world because he's seven and only just old enough to understand that he's gone. Stacy is only five and trying to learn to read and just wants to be super smart like Stevie.
Sam adjusts Stacy again and steps over to the notice board, shooting Stevie a look when he looks like he's about to wander off. The notice board has all kinds of posters for support groups and events and most of them have the logo from the reception at the top, but some of them have it in print at the bottom and Sam helps Stacy sound the words out, ignoring Stevie's eye roll when she stumbles over the unfamiliar name.
Salikon Home for Women
He wonders if Salikon is someone's name or if it means something else but forgets about it when Liza leads them down a corridor and keeps talking to his mother in the same too bright voice she's been using since she introduced herself. Sam volunteers to get the room set up while Liza shows his mother around some more.
They have more stuff still than they can really keep in the small room they're allocated and his mother asks about storage spaces nearby and Liza says she might have a cheaper alternative. The cheaper alternative is a boy named Blaine. He's younger than Sam, but only just, his birthday is in July and Sam's is in May. Blaine goes to Dalton, a fancy all boys boarding school in Westerville, just like the one Sam used to go to, but apparently comes to the shelter every day to help out.
Blaine is polite and helpful and a little too composed for a teenage boy as he helps Sam move things into the room and tells him they can store things in his garage, or if something is terribly sensitive to cold in the guest room just in case, his mother doesn't care and it's a safe neighborhood.
Sam and Blaine pick up the rest of their stuff and pile everything into Blaine's garage at Blaine's house that is huge and empty and there are two cars already in the garage and still space for Blaine's. Blaine is super nice all afternoon in a weird way where all Sam knows about him when he drops him back off at the shelter just in time for Stacy and Stevie to go to bed is that he's super nice. Sam swears he's shared his entire life story, and Blaine talked as much as he listened but Sam can't recall any real details like things Blaine likes or does or wants.
He resolves to make an effort to shift the conversation over to Blaine the next day when they're both helping out in the kitchens. Blaine isn't at all as smooth when he has to talk about himself, Sam discovers quickly, at least not when he's unprepared. He segues seamlessly into asking about Sam but then seems a little confused when Sam turns it back on him again and again.
The conversation is a bit stilted but Sam learns that Blaine likes almost everything, but nothing quite as much as music, he's the lead vocalist for the Warblers, and he's good at fencing and polo. He's taken up boxing as well, but wishes he could play football. He's too small to play, and Dalton doesn't have a team anyway. After dinner he learns that Blaine really likes kids too as he happily folds himself down next to the pink table in the playroom for a tea party with the girls and drops dramatically to the floor (veering mid fall to avoid the jenga tower) when Frankie shoots him with a nerf gun.
Blaine comes by every day after Warblers or polo or fencing and Sam asks him why he's wearing his uniform one day when he's a little late and apologizes, saying that polo ran late, because surely it would have been more comfortable to change into sweats or something when he showered. Blaine says something about being as inoffensive as possible. Sam realizes that the reason Blaine shrinks down and pulls his arms into his body at the shelter isn't that he's nervous or anxious; it's his way of looking non-threatening.
Blaine looks surprised when Stacy, at the start of their third week at the shelter, attaches herself to his leg and demands a story, which Sam can't understand because from what he can tell entertaining the children seems to be a significant part of what Blaine does, but follows her dutifully into the room and sits down on the side of her bed. A few of the other children trail behind them and Sam lets them settle in on his bed while Stevie tucks himself deep under the covers.
I'm going to tell you a secret, one that no one knows but me.
His voice loses the polite lilt it's had all day and Sam feels himself relax as he seats himself on the floor, allowing Klara, one of the younger girls, to settle in his lap.
I have a twin sister. Don't tell anyone!
Sam can tell Stacy is about to ask why and catches her eye, gesturing for her to wait.
Not even mom and dad know, because when we were born, a long time ago, my sister and me, seven years ago, she ran straight out and hid behind the rosebush at the bottom of the garden.
The way Blaine captures everyone's attention so effortlessly is one of Sam's favorite things about him, and it's much clearer when his audience is a group of children listening to him tell them how Ylva-Li, his twin doesn't call him Barbro (his real name), but always calls him Most Beloved Sister. Everyone is facing him, already waiting with bated breath. Somewhere in his mind there is a voice that says the kids would probably pay attention to anyone telling them a story, but he really wants to believe that it's the smile that just looks happy and nostalgic and the voice that sounds like there is nothing he would rather be doing.
Ylva-Li likes me so much. Dad mostly likes mom, and mom mostly likes my little brother who was born last spring, but Ylva-Li just likes me.
Blaine isn't a seven year old girl, nor does he have a secret twin sister hiding in the rose bushes, but he sounds like he wishes he did.
Ylva-Li is the queen in a golden hall, hidden under the rosebush and she and Blaine (or Barbro) share a secret language where the name of the rosebush is Salikon and they go on adventures in the woods on their horses with gold and silver manes and hooves and play with their dogs and visit the most beautiful valley in the world where only they are allowed to be. Sam has let himself be transported into the valley with them when Blaine's voice cuts through.
Ylva-Li grabbed me tightly by the arm and said "Most Beloved Sister, you must know something." And my heart hurt, so badly, just then.
Sam finds himself echoing Barbro silently as she insists she doesn't want to know anything.
"Most Beloved Sister" Ylva-Li said.
Sam stops himself from blocking his ears. It's just a children's story after all, but Blaine sounds a little like the words are causing him pain and Klara is hugging his left arm tightly and he knows he's not going to like what Ylva-Li has to say.
"When Salikon's roses wither, I'll be dead."
Blaine goes on, as though he hasn't just set every heart in the room in a vice, and tells them all how he rode back in tears and returned home to a mother out of her mind with worry.
She took me in her arms and cried and said: "Dear child, where have you been? Where have you been all day?"
"Behind the rosebush." I said.
"Thank God, oh, Thank God you're here."
There is a puppy in Barbro's room that is the most adorable puppy in the world, even more adorable than her dog down in the golden hall and Barbro doesn't sleep all night.
This morning, when I went out into the garden, I saw that all of Salikon's roses had withered, and there was no more hole in the ground.
Sam imagines Blaine snapping a book shut because that is the only way the end could have been any more clear. Blaine's smile is all comforting and polite again and he's not at all Barbro anymore.
"That was a sad story." Stacy says, and she doesn't sound put out or upset, just melancholic in a way Sam didn't know five year olds could.
"No. Barbro didn't need Ylva-Li anymore. Sometimes we need a place to go and someone who cares when no one else does, but then we have to let go of those things after a while. Barbro had her parents and her brother and Ruff, and Ylva-Li had to move on."
The children seem to accept this as gospel and Stacy leans down to him and whispers "I need you forever, ok?"
Sam kisses her on the forehead and reassures her that he'll be there as long as she needs him and then some and stands up, careful not to shift Klara, who has dropped her head onto his shoulder and is making little snuffling noises, and making his way out, following Blaine who has picked up the twins from down the hall. They manage to get everyone situated and Blaine says goodnight to everyone before leaving.
Sam is in bed, listening to his siblings snore quietly, when he realizes what he'd felt like he'd been missing during the story. There was something familiar about the rosebush, Salikon, and he realises he'd been pronouncing it wrong in his own head. No one said the name of the shelter, but he had read it in the lobby the first day. He hadn't noticed it at first, but now that he has he can't stop thinking about it. He mutters it to himself and snickers to himself when Hermione pops into his brain saying "make the AH nice and long". S-ah-lick-on. Salikon.
He thinks back to the things Blaine said after the story, about needing a place to go and someone who cares and it seems obvious that that is where the name comes from. He wonders who told Blaine the story and if he used to live there too. When he drifts off to sleep Blaine isn't Barbro, he's Ylva-Li, not that Sam is planning on telling anyone that he had a dream about his siblings' bedtime story, much less that another boy took the starring role in one of his dreams.