One Ripped Square, One True Sorry

"Plink. Plonk. Plonk-a-plink." The rain tapped on Grandpa Bram's big umbrella, and Ivo counted every tap he could hear. Ivo was a small gray rabbit with one ear that flopped over and one ear that stood up straight. He lived at the top of the tallest house on Pudding Lane, where the roof was flat and the little wall around it came up to his chin.

Tonight the rooftops were dark and wet and shiny, like a hundred black umbrellas left open all at once. Grandpa Bram's umbrella was red. It was hooked over a pole, set well back from the wall, and it turned, slow and steady, like a boat with nowhere to be. "Rain drum," said Grandpa Bram from his chair. "Only plays for patient rabbits."

Tova was already on the rug under the umbrella, cross-legged, chewing the flat end of her pencil. Tova was Ivo's friend, and she lived in the flat below with her three little brothers. She could write numbers in neat loops all the way up to a hundred without stopping. Ivo's loops came out wobbly, like spilled spaghetti.

Between them lay the chart. It was a big sheet of paper, soft at the corners from every damp evening it had spent on the roof, and it was covered in little squares. Every square held one number, and every number was one window in the city that had gone dark.

Down at the bottom right waited the very last square, still empty. One hundred. Ivo had been saving it since the first leaf came out in spring. When they reached a hundred, he would get to write it. "Tonight," said Ivo. "Tonight's the night. I can feel it in my ears."

"Your ears felt a tiger in the mailbox last week," said Tova. "That was a very big cat," said Ivo. Grandpa Bram made a soft huffing noise into his coat collar, which was how grandpas laugh.

They started at the top of the hill and worked their way down. A square for the yellow window over the fish shop. Two squares for the tall house with the green curtains. One for the little round window on the houseboat, which Tova said was a porthole and Ivo said was a rabbit hole for a very wet rabbit. One for the window where somebody was watering a plant in the rain, which made Tova laugh so hard she had to put her pencil down.

The rain tapped, and the windows went dark one by one, like coins dropping into a jar. The baker's window stayed lit longer than any of the others, warm and gold, because the baker was always the last one awake. You could smell her bread all the way across the roofs, warm and round and a little bit sweet.

"Ninety-four," said Tova, writing it. "Ninety-five." Ivo counted on his toes. He ran out of toes and started again at the beginning. A window went dark. "Ninety-six." Another went dark, and another. "Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight."

There was one window where a shadow went hop, hop, hop across the curtain. "Rabbit," said Ivo. "Broom," said Tova. They watched until it hopped again, and it was definitely a broom, and they both laughed so quietly it was mostly just breathing.

The street went quiet then, but not all the way quiet. Just the soft quiet of a street where nearly everybody is asleep. Tova whispered, "Ninety-nine," and wrote it slowly, and her last nine came out like a snail looking for somewhere to sit.

"One more," said Ivo. "One more and we're at a hundred." He leaned so far over the page that his whiskers brushed the paper. Down at the corner of the street, one window was still gold. The baker's window. The very last one.

"The hundred's mine," said Ivo. "I saved it since spring." "I know," said Tova. "But wait. My nine isn't round yet." She bent over the page, her nose almost touching it, and drew the tail of the nine in a slow, careful curl. Ivo's foot went thump, thump, thump on the rug without asking him first.

Ivo waited with his whole body, which is the loudest way to wait. "Hurry," he said. "My nine is being careful," said Tova. Ivo reached across and put his paw on the pencil. "Give it here."

Tova pulled it back. Ivo pulled it forward. The pencil went scritch, and the paper went rrrrip, and a whole corner of the chart came away in Ivo's paw.

The corner had one square on it. The last square. The empty hundredth window, torn clean away from the rest of the chart.

Tova didn't say a word. That would have been easier. She looked at the page for a long moment, then turned around and put her chin on her knees. Her ears went flat against her head, both of them, like two little shut doors.

"It was an accident," said Ivo. Tova said nothing. "The paper's old and soft," he said. "It's been out here for ages." Tova said nothing. "The wind did it," said Ivo, and then he felt silly, because the umbrella was perfectly still and only dripping. Plink. Plonk. Nothing at all was blowing.

He found the tape in Grandpa Bram's tin. He stuck a piece across the rip. The tape stuck to his paw. He peeled it off, and it stuck to his other paw. He got it onto the paper at last, and then it folded over itself into a little clear ball, and the rip was still a rip.

Ivo did his best trick, the one where he wiggled one ear in a slow circle. Tova didn't turn around. He did it the other way. Nothing. He rolled the little ball of tape across the rug to her, and it stopped against her foot, and she didn't pick it up.

Grandpa Bram turned a page of his book and said nothing at all. That was his way of handing the whole rooftop over to Ivo.

Ivo sat back on his heels with the torn corner in his paw. His tummy felt like it had a smooth cold stone in it. He tried out a sorry in his head. "I'm sorry, but the paper was old." The but stuck out of it like a splinter.

He tried another. "I'm sorry, but you were slow." That one was worse. He tried one more, and it had no but in it at all, and it made his ears go hot, so he knew it was the right one.

He crawled around until he was in front of her, where she could see him if she wanted to. "Tova," he said. "I grabbed your pencil out of your paw. I pulled it and I tore the page. That was me. Not the paper, and not the wind." He swallowed. "I'm sorry. I'm properly sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

Tova was quiet for a long, rainy moment. Then she lifted her chin off her knees. "You can hold the paper flat," she said. "It keeps sliding." So Ivo held the paper flat with both paws and did not fidget, which for Ivo was an extremely long time.

"I pulled it back too," said Tova. "A little bit." "That bit's all right," said Ivo, and Tova's ears came up off her head, slow, like two little doors opening.

She picked up her pencil and finished her nine, all the way round, round as a plum. Then she looked at the corner in Ivo's paw. "Look," she said. "The last square didn't tear. It came off in one piece."

It had, too. One perfect little square with nothing written in it yet, sitting in the middle of a ragged paper corner. "We could tape it back," said Tova. "Tape is only tape," said Ivo. "Yes," said Tova, "but now it's our tape."

So Ivo held, and Tova pressed, and the tape went across the corner in one shiny stripe, like a little road going somewhere.

Then they counted. "Ninety-nine," said Tova. Down in the corner of the street, the baker's window was still gold, and the smell of her bread came up warm across the roofs. Ivo held his breath. And then the baker's light went out, soft as a blink, and the whole street was dark together.

"One hundred," said Tova. Ivo wrote it in the little mended square. The one came out like a stick, the two naughts like two small stones, and the tape made the ink look like it was floating. "That's the best wobbly hundred I ever saw," said Tova.

"One more window," said Ivo, softly. "One more window dark," said Tova. They said it together, the way they always did, and it sounded different tonight, rounder, like a song that had mended itself.

The rain had gone soft. Now it was just plink. And then just plonk. And then only the hush of water dripping off one roof onto the next, all the way down Pudding Lane, roof after roof after roof.

Grandpa Bram rolled the chart up carefully, tape and all. He hooked the red umbrella over his shoulder and held out one paw, and Ivo held it, and Tova held Ivo's other paw, and they went down the stairs in a line. One, two, three. Past the window with the plant. Past the door that squeaks.

Downstairs the flat smelled of toast and rain and pencil. Tova's little brothers were asleep in a heap, all in a pile like a basket of socks. Tova climbed under her blanket by the window, and Ivo stood in the doorway. "Same time tomorrow?" he said. "Same time tomorrow," said Tova. "And Ivo. Bring your own pencil." "Goodnight, you two," said Grandpa Bram. "Rain drum's finished for tonight."

Ivo laughed all the way up the stairs, quietly, so as not to wake anybody.

Up in his own little room, with both ears soft and still, Ivo heard the rain drum one last time on the red umbrella below. Plink. Plonk. Plonk-a-plink. It was the last sound of the day, and it went round and round, slow as an umbrella turning, until Ivo's ears stopped listening and his eyes went softly shut.