She rushed out. I felt swept along in a wind swirling about the room. My first thought was. Where do I hide Ian's letters? I didn't trust that she wouldn't sneak into the bag to read them. and I still had many more to read myself. I decided the best place to hide anything was in the untouched room, the room reserved for Grandmother Emma. I hurried down to it and put the bag of Ian's letters in the closet. Then I returned to my room, piled up the clothing Alanis had tossed around, and went downstairs to ask Great-aunt Frances if Alanis could move in. A part of me was hoping she would say no. I couldn't help being afraid of having Alanis actually live with me.
"She wants to move in?" Great-aunt Frances said, sitting up on her sofa. Her show had just ended. "What a wonderful idea. She'll really be like your sister then, won't she? And you say she'll help us with the cooking and cleaning?"
I nodded. "She already took all your old things out of the closet and drawers to make room for hers."
"That's okay. That's fine. Remember I told you to put whatever you don't want in bags and we'll give it away?"
"Yes."
She clapped her hands together. "Oh, this will be fun. The three of us will dress for dinner tonight. We're going to have steaks and potatoes and peas. We'll make the steaks on the grill in the back. It's going to be a Western dinner. so I'll go look for the cowboy hats I have and some great skirts and blouses. We used to wear them to a barbeque."
"Alanis might not want to," I said.
"Of course she'll want to. You tell her. Oh. I don't remember if I defrosted the steaks."
She rose and went to the kitchen. I followed her.
"Oh, dear," she said.. "I did forget. Well, it will just take a little longer to cook them, that's all."
She took the packages of meat out of the freezer and put them on the counter. They were like rocks.
"I'd better go look for the clothing," she said. "This will be great fun."
I decided to wait for Alanis upstairs. I wished I could be as excited about it all as Great-aunt Frances seemed to be, but it still made me nervous to think of someone sleeping in my bed and sharing my room. I didn't want to say anything that would make Alanis angry, though. What if she could help me find out where Ian was and we did visit him? Maybe she could help me get to visit my mother.
I went into the bathroom to see how I could rearrange some things to make room for hers. Once she discovered the untouched room reserved only for Grandmother Emma and she saw that bathroom, she would want us to use it for sure. I knew that would upset Great-aunt Frances. I wondered what
Grandmother Emma would say when she found out Alanis had moved into my room. Felix would surely tell her. Maybe her granddad won't let her do it; I thought.
I heard the front door open and close. Alanis, carrying full garbage bags, started to charge up the stairs, then stopped when she saw me in the hallway at the top of the stairway.
"Well? What did she say?"
I told her everything, adding, "She went into the basement to look for things for us to wear to a barbeque."
"That's great, I'll put on the costumes, wigs, masks, anything to move in," she said and continued up.
"But you laughed at us when we did it before," I reminded her.
"We have to make your great-aunt happy. My mother couldn't care any less about my moving in, especially when I said I'd do all the work. Granddad wasn't there so he doesn't know yet, but he'll have to accept it because I'm doing it," she said with determination. "These bags are full of my things. We'll empty them, put my things in the closet and dresser and fill the bags up with those old clothes. C'mon, let's finish setting up our room."
Our room?
I followed her into the bedroom. Sometimes. I thought, everything just happens so quickly that you hardly have a chance to think. That seemed to be the rule for my life. I felt like someone caught in an ocean current and carried along. I remembered when that had once happened to me and my mother had pulled me out of the water. It hadn't mattered one bit if I had been able to swim or not. The ocean had just been too powerful, and so were all the things happening to me now.
Alanis took her things out of the bags as if she thought someone would stop her if she didn't empty them quickly enough. I saw she didn't have all that much more clothing than I had. At the bottom of one bag was all her makeup, hair sprays and brushes. She showed me the CD player and discs. too.
"I still have Chad's CD player. We'll listen to music every night while we do homework, whenever I do it, that is." She looked around as if my room had been a palace. "This is going to be so great. Even when my father was with us. I didn't have a room this big. Cram, let's get rid of her things and make more room for ourselves."
She began to fill up the emptied bags. and I started to do the same. When we had stuffed most of Great-aunt F
rances's clothes into the bags. Alanis hung up her things and put other things in the drawers she had emptied.
"I have to tell you something," I said as I watched her organizing her things so happily.
"What?"
"There might be a ghost in this house." She stopped and looked at me.