The Tiny Mansion Read online

  I really loved it. Even though the whole thing was smaller than our living room, it was totally adorable, with red-shingled sides, a sloped roof, and even little window boxes for flowers. It was so small inside that it was hard to turn around without bumping into yourself, but everything was perfectly designed, and let’s face it: it was much better quality than anyplace I’d ever lived.

  A lot of times I wished Trent and I had a place just like that for ourselves, where we could go and hang out without Leya and the gnome. Don’t get me wrong, Leya is mostly nice to me, and Santi isn’t any dumber than your average five-year-old, but I never asked for a second mom and a new brother after Trent and Kristen (that’s my real mom) decided to “consciously uncouple.” That’s what they called it instead of divorce. I think they hoped that, if they didn’t use the d-word, I wouldn’t feel so bad about it.

  They were nice to each other while they uncoupled, and nicer than usual to me. But words for things aren’t as important as what actually happens, and the end result was that Trent married Leya, they had Santi, and we lived in crummy apartments while Kristen traveled the world wearing suits and using three different cell phones for some reason. She sent us money, but Trent has never been good with money. I’m guessing that’s part of the reason they uncoupled.

  When I was a little kid, Trent and Kristen told me to call them by their first names because they said Dad and Mom were “loaded with gender expectations.” And I suppose Trent is in some ways a little more like a mom and Kristen is more like a dad, even though none of them—Leya included—act like any of the other parents I know. The good part about living with Trent is that he lets me wear anything I want and eat as much as I like. The bad part is that sometimes it’s just plain embarrassing to be so poor and have such weird parents. At Kristen’s condo in San Francisco, everything is new, everything works, and we never have to add up how much the meal costs before we order takeout.

  Then again, Kristen’s condo is empty most of the time. She swears she’ll be back from Dubai before Christmas, but until then, all we can do is text and talk on the phone.

  The front door of the tiny red house opened, and Trent’s head poked out, beard first, curly hair last.

  “Hey, Dagmar,” he said. “How was school?”

  As a rule, I refuse to answer general questions, so I didn’t. Instead, I asked him a very specific one: “What’s this doing here?”

  He didn’t answer right away, which wasn’t a good sign.

  “Is it done?” I asked.

  “It’s done all right,” he said. “Come in and take a look!”

  I hopped up to the tiny porch and went in the narrow door, careful not to bump into him. Trent had to move out of the way so I could squeeze into the living room, which was really about the size of a big closet, and even though he flattened himself against the wall, I still tripped over his feet.

  It wasn’t his feet’s fault—it was mine. I’m not too bad outside, where I have room to move, but inside, I feel like a giraffe in a shop that sells teacups and tripping hazards.

  “You okay, Dag?” asked Trent, rubbing my shoulders after he caught me.

  I nodded and started looking around. It really was finally done, and it looked great. After the living room came a short hall, off of which were a bathroom, a storage closet, and a ladder leading up to the sleeping loft. Then you came to the kitchen, and that was the end of the house.

  If you’ve never been in a tiny house, all I can say is that they’re like 3-D puzzles where everything fits neatly together. And that’s great if you’re a puzzle kind of person. If you’re not a puzzle kind of person, all you can think about is the fact that, once you take it all apart, there’s only one way to put it back together and you won’t be able to remember how to do it.

  Suddenly, instead of admiring the way the spice rack folded up under the kitchen cabinet (notice I didn’t say cabinets) or the way the breakfast bar doubled as an ironing board and a workbench, I felt claustrophobic (suffering from an extreme or irrational fear of confined places).

  “So, why is this here?” I asked. “Are you delivering it to the clients?”

  He rubbed his thumb against the windowsill, and I could picture him working on it, sanding the wood until it was as smooth as a kitten’s paw, even if nobody would ever notice how much effort he put into it.

  “This house belongs to us now,” he said finally.

  “That’s . . . good?” I asked while I tried to figure out if it actually was.

  “I think so,” he said, even though he still wasn’t looking at me. “I built it using money your mom sent, and the customers were supposed to pay me the full price last month so we’d get all the money back and more. But something happened, and now they say they can’t pay.”

  “Can you sell it to someone else?” I asked.

  “I could, but we’re a little behind on rent and we need to leave our apartment. So, we’re going to live in this for a while.”

  “All of us?”

  Trent laughed. “Of course, all of us. Did you think we’d leave Leya and Santi behind?”

  Even though that was a specific question, I decided it was probably better if I didn’t answer it.

  “It’s so . . . small,” I said instead.

  “Bigger isn’t necessarily better,” he said. “Think of it as your tiny mansion.”

  OXYMORON: a figure of speech containing apparently contradictory terms.

  “Where will we put it? We can’t leave it here in the street.”

  “No, we can’t. We’ll probably head up north. It’ll be like camping—a summer adventure. You and Santi can help decide where.”

  Now I was starting to panic. Living in a tiny house—excuse me, mansion—was one thing. I’ve lived in some lousy places, and I’m tough enough that I don’t complain about square footage. But leaving Oakland and my friends? Imani’s birthday party was in seventeen days, and she had asked Olivia and me to help plan it. Never mind all the stuff we were going to do for fun now that we were done with seventh grade.

  “You said we would live in this for ‘a while,’” I told him. “How long is that?”

  Trent shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, Dagmar. Maybe a few months . . . or maybe forever if we like it. But probably just until we get back on our feet.”

  All I meant to do was leave the kitchen so I could go out to the sidewalk and catch my breath before I screamed. But when I turned to go, I crashed into a wall of hanging pans, knocking a bunch of them down, which sounded like gangs of garbagemen having a trash-can fight.

  Trent frowned at the hooks I had broken off, then took the multi-tool off his belt and got to work.

  “Don’t worry, we can fix this,” he said.

  Unfortunately, some things can’t be put back together with a screwdriver.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Million Miles from Oakland

  Santi, of course, told Trent and Leya about the deadly traps and barking dogs.

  Even though I’d told him not to, I’d forgotten to make him promise, and even if he had promised, that’s just the way he is: words leave his mouth the moment thoughts are formed in his brain. I think he’s afraid that if he keeps the thoughts in, they’ll die of loneliness.

  “Where did this happen?” demanded Leya. Dropping her gardening tools, she had rushed over to Santi and examined him like she expected to find broken bones or a tree branch sticking out of his head.

  Trent put down the rock he was fitting into a wall, wiped his hands on his shorts, and walked toward us.

  “On the other side of the fence,” said Santi. “The one with the big sign on it.”

  “We were hunting unobtanium,” I said, defending myself.

  “You should have asked me to come along,” said Trent.

  “And you shouldn’t have taken Santi with you,” said Leya, giving me an accusi
ng look.

  “I didn’t take him,” I told her. “He followed me. If you don’t want him following me, you should put him on a leash!”

  “Dagmar, that’s no way to talk about your brother,” Trent scolded me.

  “Half brother,” I corrected him. “Anyway, the point is that there’s a primeval forest and a house inside it that looks like a spaceship. You should come check it out!”

  Trent loves trespassing to find cool stuff, and he’s not particularly worried about danger, so I knew he would be interested. But instead of saying, Let’s go! he looked at Leya.

  She shook her head. “And what if someone discovers us here?”

  “What does she mean by that?” I demanded.

  “Nothing, Dag,” said Trent with a sigh. “But if they’re booby-trapping their yard—”

  Santi laughed when Trent said booby, but we all ignored him.

  “—it sounds like they really want their privacy. Besides, if it’s an occupied home, we can’t look for unobtanium.”

  “We don’t know for sure it’s occupied,” I said, even though the boy with the dogs probably lived there.

  “We’re enjoying our privacy, too,” he said, “so let’s all keep to our own side of the fence for now.”

  Santi nodded like he was relieved he wouldn’t have to go into the woods again, even though nobody made him do it the first time.

  “That’s for the bestest,” he said as Leya led him up to the tiny house for a carrot-carob bar or some other allegedly delicious snack. She seemed to think every problem could be solved by eating healthy food.

  ALLEGED: questionably true.

  I looked at Trent, the guy who had never seen a fence he didn’t want to climb, cut, or crawl under, and wondered what exactly was going on.

  “Since you’re back, you may as well take care of your chores,” he said, smoothing his beard, his eyes revealing nothing about what he was thinking.

  “Fine,” I said, without giving him any idea what I was thinking, either.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I DIDN’T DO my chores right away. I wanted to avoid Leya and Santi, so I found some shade and waited while she took him inside.

  Leya had named the house Helen Wheels. Before we left Oakland, she’d painted the name on a small wooden sign and nailed it next to the front door. But as soon as we arrived here, Trent had jammed rocks on either side of the tires and propped the trailer up on jacks and cinder blocks. Helen wasn’t going anywhere on those wheels.

  Just below the road and hidden from passing cars, she was slightly uphill from what Trent called our “compound” even though it didn’t exactly meet the definition of a fenced or walled-in area containing a group of buildings. In front of the house was a dining area shaded by an old tarp, and in front of that, four vintage aluminum-tube-and-nylon-webbing lawn chairs circled a stone fire ring. We’d been there ten days and hadn’t had a single marshmallow roast because everything was so hot and dry that Trent and Leya said we might start a forest fire—and anyway, Leya refused to buy marshmallows. I made sure we had plenty of firewood just in case, but it didn’t look like it was going to rain anytime soon.

  A little way off was Leya’s garden, and scattered around were various other projects she had started, like an art installation made of fabric that was torn and twisted and knotted into a small grove of trees. Sometimes Leya’s art was cool, like when she used old record players to make this weird thing that looked like a break-dancing robot, and sometimes I couldn’t really understand it, like when she balled up a thousand plastic shopping bags and piled them in the corner of a warehouse. But she was always making stuff and said art belonged in the real world, not museums.

  Trent was always making stuff, too, but his stuff was more practical, like bookshelves, cabinets, and tiny houses. He may not have been a good businessman, but he was a hard worker and liked to keep busy, which was probably why he started making a wall out of rocks shortly after we arrived, even if the wall didn’t do anything besides look nice.

  Finally, Santi came outside with carob smeared all over his eating hole, and when Leya followed, I went inside to start my chores. First, I crawled up the ladder to the sleeping loft, took the sheets off their beds, and threw them downstairs before carrying them outside to the clothesline strung between two trees. Since we didn’t have a washing machine, I was supposed to hang the sheets outside every day to keep them fresh.

  Then I grabbed the big plastic bucket and the large watering can and carried them to the pump. The creek down by the pasture barely had enough water in it to make mud, but Trent had discovered an old pump next to a caved-in pioneer house, and the pump, if you worked it hard enough, brought up some water that wasn’t half bad.

  Even though we’d only been gone a week and a half and were just a few hours away from Oakland, it felt more like a year and a million miles. Trent and Leya had asked Santi and me to help pick our destination, but that didn’t work at all. None of Santi’s suggestions—Disneyland, Yosemite, Hawaii—were even remotely realistic, and I couldn’t help out because I was too busy sending SOS messages.

  Run away! texted Imani. You can live in my closet!

  Which would have been great except for the fact that her closet was about two feet deep and I would have had to sleep standing up.

  Make the best of it, texted Kristen. Don’t you want to try camping?

  Apparently, Trent had told her we were going on a long camping trip. Without bothering to add any of the other embarrassing details.

  In the end, we just headed north to the redwoods, with me riding shotgun in Trent’s old pickup truck while Leya and Santi rode behind in the house, taking one winding road after another until we found a place that Trent said was perfect, even though it obviously wasn’t an actual campground.

  Maybe it was perfect for them, but I was mad about leaving my friends, mad about having to spend all my time with the gnome, and mad that every time I turned around inside, I knocked something over. On the second day, while I watched Leya hoe the dirt and plant seedlings for a vegetable garden, I realized how to get home. She obviously planned to stay awhile, so I had to make everyone want to go home as much as I did. I had to make everyone as miserable as I was.

  I had to sabotage summer.

  SABOTAGE: 1) Destruction of an employer’s property or disruption of production by discontented workers. 2) Destructive or obstructive action carried out by non-soldiers to hinder a nation’s war effort. 3) (a) An action intended to impair or damage. (b) Intentional subversion.

  This was definitely a case of 3(b) sabotage, although I guessed there would be a little 3(a) along the way.

  I had to look up subversion in Leya’s paperback dictionary: an organized effort to overthrow or undermine a government by persons working secretly from within.

  A family was a form of government, right? And when the leaders, Trent and Leya, lacked the consent of the governed, namely me, it was time to change the course of history.

  After waving away a couple of wasps that were hanging around the abandoned house, I worked the pump until the water started flowing. Then I put a few inches of water in the bucket and the watering can—much less than I really needed—and carried them back to Leya’s garden.

  Working my way down the furrowed rows of tomatoes, peas, carrots, and other vegetables she’d planted, I sprinkled just enough water on the leaves to make it look like I had done my chore while the dry gray dirt greedily sucked down any stray drops. The garden wasn’t growing well at all. Leya and Trent blamed the wilted, withered plants on the never-ending heat, but I knew the real reason.

  She had planted seedlings, but I was growing unhappiness. It was only a matter of time before the two of them decided to give up and go home.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Blake Berthold

  All day, the compound felt hot as a fryi
ng pan and as boring as a black-and-white movie. But finally the sun started to go down, and when it did, the shadows of the trees felt like cool water. I was outside, trying to read a book and wishing my phone got reception, when I heard a snuffling sound.

  “Wipe your nose, Santi,” I said, without taking my eyes off the page.

  But he didn’t answer. Then I realized there were two noses making the same sound—snuffling in stereo—and looked up.

  The dogs from the forest were padding into our compound with their heads alert and their noses working furiously. They were camel-colored, with black faces and lolling pink tongues. And they were huge. Maybe not camel-sized, but close.

  Behind them strolled their owner, his hair a black slash across his forehead and his eyes and eyebrows making dark lines of their own.

  I hated him on sight.

  First of all, he walked in like he owned the place, looking everything over like he had all the time in the world. And when Leya poked her head out of her art installation—the thicket where she was tying more fabric to branches—he didn’t even answer her friendly hello.

  Trent was in the bed of the truck, checking the big plastic tubs that held our dry food supply. He’s run into so many guard dogs that it’s made him extra careful around canines, which is probably why he hopped down right away and went over to the boy: to make sure we were all safe.

  “Nice dogs,” he said. “Are those mastiffs?”

  The boy nodded and kept moving toward me—then past me—straight to Helen Wheels. He stared at it like an archaeologist discovering a mud hut made by intelligent apes.

  ARCHAEOLOGIST: scientist who studies the material remains of past human life and antiquities.

  ANTIQUITIES: relics or monuments of ancient times.