Anna Was Here Read online

  Dedication

  For all my Goering relatives

  who share history, family stories,

  and sweet Kansas hospitality

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: The Last Meeting of the Safety Club

  Chapter 2: Good-bye, House, Be Back Soon

  Chapter 3: When Did Dad Turn into Moses?

  Chapter 4: I Refuse to Be Dorothy

  Chapter 5: Tornado Preparation Makes You Brave

  Chapter 6: Grandma Didn’t Stick and I Won’t Either

  Chapter 7: Pink Stinks

  Chapter 8: Even a Small Miracle Is a Good Miracle

  Chapter 9: Totally Unprepared

  Chapter 10: Live by the Sword, Cry by the Sword

  Chapter 11: The Angel

  Chapter 12: Meeting the Great-Aunts

  Chapter 13: TJ, Bob-Silver, Morgan, and the Monkey

  Chapter 14: Angel of Death

  Chapter 15: Save Your Sister, Save the Cat

  Chapter 16: Meeting Morgan

  Chapter 17: The Children’s Graves

  Chapter 18: Preparation Is Better than Hope

  Chapter 19: The Power of Jell-O

  Chapter 20: Forget, Forgive, and Forget

  Chapter 21: Bad Luck at the Potluck

  Chapter 22: Stinky Oakwood

  Chapter 23: Shiverydee

  Chapter 24: Make Haste to Get Us Home

  Chapter 25: Powerful Prayer

  Chapter 26: Farm Food Forever

  Chapter 27: Maybe I Will Miss This Place

  Chapter 28: Searching for Isabella

  Chapter 29: The Biggest Door Slam Ever

  Chapter 30: Gandhi Wouldn’t Make Me Go to School

  Chapter 31: The Running-Away Plan

  Chapter 32: Anna Versus the Preacher

  Chapter 33: Hanging On to the Plan

  Chapter 34: Saving the Farm

  Chapter 35: Mystery and Frustration

  Chapter 36: Let My People Go

  Chapter 37: Watching

  Chapter 38: S Is for Scurvy

  Chapter 39: Tree House Disaster

  Chapter 40: Surprise

  Chapter 41: Tornado!

  Chapter 42: Midnight H. Cat, Where Are You?

  Chapter 43: Luckily, Unluckily

  Chapter 44: My Guardian Angel, Where Are You?

  Chapter 45: Smallpox, Tarantulas, and Quicksand, Oh, My

  Chapter 46: The Power to Smite Simon

  Chapter 47: Psychic Bob-Silver

  Chapter 48: Always Two, Always Together

  Chapter 49: Where Did All the Angels Go?

  About the Author

  Credits

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  The Last Meeting of the Safety Club

  I was attending the weekly meeting of the Safety Club and thinking about my birthday party when the best thing and the worst thing of my entire life filled me up and knocked me flat.

  Squish, squash, smoosh, splat.

  The best thing was the bear.

  It was early April, and Jericho was sitting at my desk in my perfect green bedroom. She was the college student who stayed with me after school. She had a tiny star tattoo on her shoulder and chopsticks that she used to wrap her hair into a beautiful twist. I was pretzel legs on my pillow with Midnight H. Cat purring in my lap.

  My Safety Club Notebook was open to my pyramid page, but I was thinking about my birthday party. Everybody in my class was already ten. My turn didn’t come until May 27, the utter end of fourth grade.

  So even though I had researched pyramid safety, I thought maybe we could plan my birthday party instead.

  Pyramid or birthday?

  Grandpa and Grandma Campbell liked birthday camping. If Jericho had a tent, I could invite her to come, too. That would be enough guests for me.

  “Take it away, Anna.” Jericho tapped her pencil on her Safety Notebook to show she was ready.

  Uh-oh. Jericho was my Sunday School teacher and part of Dad’s college group. She was also the only other member left of the Safety Club—besides my cat—and I didn’t want to do anything that might make Jericho resign.

  So not birthday.

  I held my Safety Notebook open. “What I researched this week is getting sealed inside a pyramid.”

  Jericho gave me a thumbs-up. Midnight H. Cat slid off my lap and trotted over to the window seat. Something had caught her attention. I tried not to be distracted.

  “Find the king’s coffin and stand facing it,” I said. “The exit will be on your right. Unluckily, it will be sealed by an enormous block of granite. Luckily, you can break a stone vase and use it to carve into the limestone around the granite. You’ll be in pure dark, but grope until you find a corridor and crawl along it.”

  Jericho gave me another thumbs-up. She and I had invented the Safety Club when everyone was feeling freaked about the wildfires roaring across Colorado last summer. Jericho said she was always braver when she felt prepared, and I said me, too.

  “Use the stone blocks.” I used my finger to show the route. “You’ll know you’re getting closer to the outside when they start getting warmer to the touch.”

  Jericho gasped.

  Shiverydee. Had I said something wrong?

  She pointed toward my cat. “Is that a bear?”

  We rushed over to the window. The bear in our yard was like a walking rug—big as a car. “Yow,” Jericho whispered. Midnight H. Cat switched her tail.

  Luckily, the Safety Club had studied bear safety.

  1. It wasn’t a grizzly bear because it had no hump.

  2. No one in my family was silly enough to leave food or smelly clothes outside.

  3. Jericho and I were remaining calm, and since the bear was outside and we were inside, we were obviously giving it lots of room.

  The bear rubbed against a tree. “The wildfires pushed animals out of their habitats and into the city,” Jericho whispered. “Deer. Raccoons. Now bears.”

  I squinted at the faraway mountains where the bear probably belonged. The ex-members of the Safety Club would be running and screaming. It was a good thing Jericho and Midnight H. Cat and I were the only ones left.

  “I’m staying calm,” I whispered.

  That was Plan A. It was also good to have a Plan B. If a bear charged, you could throw your camera on the ground and maybe distract it. Never run, though. Bears can run thirty miles per hour, and you can’t.

  The bear started to climb the tree. My face felt shivery with excitement.

  Jericho put her hands on her heart. Staying calm. “The wildlife people say if bears aren’t a nuisance, let them be.”

  Suddenly the bear swung its head around. It looked at me. Could it see through the glass? Midnight H. Cat rumbled low. I put out my fingers to rub her back. It was like I was inflated and floating in the biggest adventure of my life.

  Then the bear shimmied down the trunk and shrugged away toward Foothills Park.

  I let my shaky breath out. Jericho rushed back to the desk. “They’ll be all over the place this summer.” She grabbed her notebook.

  I tucked my cat under my chin, feeling her whiskers poke my neck. Jericho was right. Preparation did make a person brave. “That was amazing!” I said.

  “I’ll bet you won’t see any bears in Kansas,” Jericho said.

  “What?” My hands squeezed, and Midnight H. Cat clawed me. “Ouch!” I dropped her, and she started licking herself indignantly.

  Jericho looked like she had swallowed a raspberry whole. “I thought you knew.” She coughed. “Your dad told us at the college group and said if he ever needed prayers, he needed them now.”

  I’d never seen her look so sorry.
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  I’d never seen my cat look so insulted.

  And me?

  Totally unprepared.

  That’s how I learned that sometimes the best and worst things come together.

  Squish, squash, smoosh, splat.

  CHAPTER 2

  Good-bye, House, Be Back Soon

  I sat in the backseat of the car, feeling as grumpy as a tiger salamander in sand. Dad climbed in singing, “Indoors, outdoors, in the sun.”

  A Beach Boys song. I could predict what rhymed with sun. Something I wasn’t having.

  Fun.

  “Fun is backpacking,” I said. “Fun is zip lines and seeing bears. Not riding in a car to Kansas.”

  Dad laughed.

  I patted Isabella’s car seat. “Back seat belt check.”

  Mom didn’t look up from her book. “Front right check,” she said.

  Good. Distracted safety was better than no safety at all.

  Dad hooked his arm over the drivers’ seat. “Go, go, Anna Nickel, Gold Ribbon Safety Citizen.” He oozed the car backward.

  “Of the whole fourth grade.” I thumped his arm. “And you don’t have your seat belt on.”

  Dad swung the car onto the street and parked. Isabella leaned forward, blinking like a large owl. “Are we there?”

  I groaned. Mom explained the concept—again—that we were going to be stuck in the car all day, all the way to Oakwood, Kansas. Dad got out and ran back to our porch and handed our very own keys to our very own house to Owen’s mom, who was going to live here until we got back.

  Tonight I wouldn’t sleep in my perfect green bedroom. I would sleep in Kansas in a house that belonged to a church.

  What a disaster.

  On our porch, Owen hung his chin over the railing. His mom used to play her guitar with Dad in church and say, “Let us lift our voices in joyful song.” A few months ago she made us sing something achy sad about the rivers of Babylon and I predicted she was getting a divorce, and she was.

  I felt bad for her. I really did! But why did Dad have to get the noble idea to loan her our house and our furniture? My knee skin was still stuck to the porch from the time I tripped over my wheeled shoes and fell flat. I never thought I’d have to say good-bye to my skin. Or to Miranda’s grave.

  Miranda had a lacy dress and gloves that came up to her elbows. She had eyes like blue almonds. When the neighbor’s Great Dane chewed up Miranda, Dad helped me dig a grave under the dogwood where petals fell on it. We sang “Abide with Me,” and I wept.

  I never did forgive that dog, even though Jericho said forgiveness was very important.

  Dad leaned on the porch rail. All sympathetic! He’d better tell Owen’s mom not to get used to our house because we’d be coming back soon.

  Last night in my perfect green room, I got up and turned on the closet light. Then I wrote on my closet wall, “Anna was here.” After a minute, I wrote, “And she’ll be back.”

  But when?

  Now I watched Dad shake hands with Owen. Dad believes in good karma and peacemaking. He says, “Actions speak louder than words” and “Never give up hope.”

  I peered under the seat, trying to see my cat. She had a perfectly good cat carrier—beside me on the seat—but she refused to come out. Dad’s car door opened. “Let’s rock and roll,” he said. “Take one last look around.”

  I considered pointing out that in the Bible when Lot’s wife looked back, she turned into a pillar of salt. A few minutes later the car rumbled forward.

  “Stop,” Isabella said. “We need to twist in the swings in the park.”

  Mom explained the concept of finding twisty swings in Kansas. I hugged my ankles and bumped my head purposely on the seat.

  “Got a plan back there?” Dad asked.

  My plan was to stay folded up. Mom and Dad could see how they liked having a daughter who looked like a lawn chair in a garage.

  The car went faster. Midnight H. Cat squeaked. I stretched my fingers out. Her fur felt soft and scared.

  Turn around, I thought.

  If Dad turned around, we could be in the mountains in an hour. We’d set up tents, and Grandpa Campbell would tell his favorite story about when Mom was a girl and a moose trotted around the campground with her pajamas in its mouth.

  This direction?

  We’d never had any reason to go east.

  Now I knew what a tiger salamander and Midnight H. Cat and Anna Nickel had in common.

  They don’t like to change their habitat.

  CHAPTER 3

  When Did Dad Turn into Moses?

  On the day of the bear, I made Jericho tell me everything she knew. “Not much,” she said. “A church in Oakwood, Kansas, is having problems. Your dad hopes he can get them over the hump.”

  Dad sometimes said, “My roots are in Oakwood, Kansas.” It made me imagine him as a big Colorado tree with roots shooting out sideways into the next state. But he hadn’t been in Oakwood since he was a kid. And I didn’t understand—and no one still had explained to me—how churches got humps or how long it took to get over one or how Dad could help. He wasn’t even a preaching-every-Sunday-in-charge-of-everything kind of minister.

  I felt the car slow down. Stop sign, I predicted. Last summer, when Jericho and I made an evacuation plan, she and Midnight H. Cat and I walked around these blocks and counted the steps in case I had to find my way in the dark.

  The car eased forward again. A garbage truck groaned. With a few turns, we could be at my school. I’d rush down the hall past the fourth-grade safety display with my gold ribbon on my hurricane poster . . . only it was too early. No one would be in my classroom yet except the tiger salamander.

  “Stop,” Isabella said. “We need to pet the cow.”

  We must be passing her preschool with the painted cow in the yard. If we turned right, we’d be at the church. Jericho and I walked to Dad’s church almost every afternoon and read Dad’s name on the sign beside CONTEMPORARY SERVICE IN THE CHAPEL—“START SMALL.”

  On the day of the bear I’d asked, “Why?”

  “Our church has four ministers,” Jericho said. “The Oakwood church has zero. He probably thought it was fair to share. Didn’t his mom grow up in Oakwood?”

  “Right.” But she moved to California. By the time Dad was in college, both his parents had died, and then he’d met Mom, and her family had scooped him in.

  Outside, someone called, “Got time for coffee?” The city was waking up. In a few minutes we’d pass the high school where Mom had taken AP history and decided she’d become a college history professor.

  Beyond that?

  We never went beyond that.

  Turn around, I thought desperately. In the Bible an angel made a donkey speak up and tell Balaam to turn around. I needed an angel and a donkey like that on my team.

  Instead, the car sped up and city sounds melted away.

  Why, why, why? drummed in my head. How long, how long?

  The day of the bear Dad apologized at supper for sharing the news with the college group before telling Isabella and me. Then he said, “When I read the letter from the church, I think I heard a call.”

  “The call of God?” I tried to see if he was starting to sprout a beard like Moses in the picture in my third-grade Bible.

  Mom said, “Wouldn’t it be handy if God sent important messages on a banner behind an airplane, so everyone can read them?”

  Dad said the call didn’t come in a burning bush, like the call of Moses. It wasn’t out loud but more like a still, small voice in the fog. He said, “It’s hard for a church in a small town to find a minister. They’ll have a better shot if they get over the hump.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “Possibly not long at all.” He looked like the picture in my Bible of Daniel walking boldly into the lions’ den.

  “All I ask,” Mom said then, “is three hours a day of writing time for my journal article.”

  All I ask, I thought now, is someone to te
ll me how long it takes to get over a hump.

  I walked my fingers to my backpack and pulled out the water bottle and Isabella’s dollhouse pan. Be prepared. I poured the water and pushed the pan under the seat and listened for lapping sounds.

  What could I do to make Midnight H. Cat less miserable?

  In a sermon about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dad said when we’re feeling mighty and proud, we conveniently forget God’s special heart for the weak and meek. Maybe I could tear a piece of paper out of my Safety Notebook and make a peaceful protest sign—SAVE THE WEAK AND MEEK CAT—and hold it up in the car window.

  Smack. Smack. Uh-oh. Isabella. Sucking her thumb. She was four and never sucked her thumb anymore.

  I popped straight up. “Somebody’s suffering back here!” I hollered.

  Dad used the rearview mirror to lock his eyes with my eyes.

  Uh-oh.

  He cleared his throat. “Anna . . .”

  It’s bad enough when your dad puts on his preacher’s voice in church.

  Distract him. Quick. “Look.” I pointed out the window. “Um . . . grass.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I Refuse to Be Dorothy

  East, I discovered, was Highway 24—with no huge red rocks that looked like a ship’s prow or camels kissing, with no mountains, with zero tourists. East had one thing, I pointed out.

  Grass.

  “It’s not like we’re stuck in a covered wagon,” Mom said. “It’s not like we’re heading off to live in a soddy with cows walking on the roof.”

  “Look, Isabella,” Dad said. “A real cow.” But Isabella had gotten up too early and had thumb-sucked herself to sleep.

  At Limon we got on I-70. For a while Mom entertained me with pioneer stories about buffalo stampedes and hailstones as big as eggs. “Pioneers wrote in their journals about crossing an ocean of grass,” she said. “One used the prairie wind to sail his wagon across the ocean of grass until he smashed.”

  If Mom weren’t a history professor, I’d be sure that was a made-up story.

  “Ah, the ocean!” Dad said. “When I visited Oakwood, Kansas, I taught my cousins Beach Boys songs.” Dad loves singing Beach Boys songs almost as much as he loves preaching about how Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used peaceful protest to challenge the mighty and the proud.