Absolutely Almost(20)

            I followed her. “I don’t want to bake cookies,” I reminded her.

            “Don’t worry, it’s not cookies. I wouldn’t dream of giving you cookies, Albie.”

            “Good.”

            She was pulling flattened-up cardboard boxes out from behind the door of the pantry, where Mom keeps them until Dad finally bundles them so I can take them for recycling downstairs. “Perfect,” Calista said at last. She pulled out the biggest box, from Mom’s last grocery order, and walked past me down the hall.

            I followed her some more. She turned into my room and started digging through my desk drawers.

            “I said no art projects,” I told her when she yanked out a pair of scissors and a black permanent marker.

            “Good,” she said. “Me neither. I hate art.”

            That time I knew Calista was lying, because she already told me before that she moved to New York to go to graduate school to study art. And that probably meant she liked it.

            But I decided not to tell her I knew she was lying, because by then she was already cutting up the cardboard box, and I sort of wanted to find out why.

            • • •

            “Isn’t this better than regular TV?” Calista asked me. We were lying on our stomachs sideways across my bed, squished up next to each other with our feet hanging off because “No Shoes on the Bedspread, Albie” is one of Mom’s top ten most serious rules. Calista handed me the remote. “Here, you pick the channel.”

            It wasn’t a real remote control. Calista had made it out of cut-up cardboard and markers. But it turned out she was pretty good at art after all, because the way she decorated it, it looked almost real. I aimed it at the cardboard TV frame she’d taped around my window and pretended to push one of the fake remote control buttons.

            “Ooh!” Calista squealed like I’d really done something. “I love this channel!” She pointed out the window.

            Our apartment isn’t super high, only the eighth floor, but from my window, you sure can see a lot. Two high-rises just across the street, with an even taller one behind that. And if you crane your neck to the left, a view of Park Avenue. Straight below, you could see all the people leaving the bodega downstairs, and the Laundromat next door.

            I guess we did get a lot of channels.

            I looked where Calista was pointing. Lots of people had their curtains closed, but not everybody. Right across the street was a blond lady in a blue shirt, standing by the window, stirring something in a bowl in her kitchen. She bounced a little bald baby on her shoulder.

            “What do you think she’s making?” Calista asked.

            I squinted my eyes. “Spaghetti?”

            “Quiche?” Calista guessed.

            “Brownies?”

            “Mmm.” She leaned forward. “Maybe she’ll let us have some.”

            I laughed and changed the channel. This time we found an old couple, sitting on the couch. We could tell they were watching TV by the way the light flickered off their faces. We guessed what show it might be until they turned off their TV two minutes later, and then we changed the channel again.

            We watched a teenager sitting outside on her fire escape, talking on her cell phone, her feet dangling over the edge to the street below.

            We watched a father helping his son brush his teeth at the bathroom sink.

            We watched a man hang a bicycle on hooks high on his living room wall.