Girl Wonder

by Alexa Martin

  “That place—” He shook his head.

  I stiffened. “We can’t all go to the Barclay School.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” he said, studying me with eyes as clear and gray as water.

  Though my face was flushed with embarrassment, I held his gaze. “Explain yourself.”

  “Are those mushrooms in your basket?” James Henry asked abruptly.

  “They are indeed,” Milton said. “Chanterelles, if you must know. As the guidebooks like to say, they are ‘edible and choice’!” He kissed his fingers the ways chefs do. “Mushroom hunting is a personal passion of mine.”

  Passion? Mushrooms? Yet he thought gnomes were embarrassing?

  “Check it out,” he said, waving a mushroom under my nose. “It smells—”

  I took a step back. “No, thanks.”

  He cupped the mushroom in his hand, his expression indignant. “Do you have any idea how much we owe to mushrooms? Like modern medicine, for example?”

  I glared at him. “Remember? I’m just a simple girl from Shady Grove.”

  “I never said—!”

  “I figured it out!” James Henry interrupted. “Chanterelles smell like apricots!”

  Milton snapped his fingers. “That’s exactly right! Thank you!”

  Shaking my head, I started climbing back up the bank.

  “What’s your hurry?” Milton asked.

  “God forbid that I should miss a precious second of my third-rate education!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I heard James Henry say. “My sister’s on crack.”

  On account of James Henry having an orthodontist appointment, my mom drove me to school early. She gave me a choice: I could either practice driving or I could ride in the backseat and James Henry could have the front. I chose the backseat. “You’d make my life a whole lot easier if you’d get an automatic,” I said, fiddling with my new choker.

  “I drive a manual on principle,” she said, reversing the car down the driveway. “One day you’ll understand.”

  “What—I’ll understand why you’re torturing me?”

  She shook her head. “You’re being melodramatic.” Once we were down the driveway, she said, “The hard part’s over. You sure you don’t want to drive?”

  “I need to finish my reading for Political Science,” I muttered.

  We were starting a unit on the executive branch of government. At the beginning of the chapter, there was a racy picture of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK.

  Read this book, kids, and you too can have your own personal blonde bombshell!

  While I read in the backseat, James Henry kept going on and on about Milton and his mushrooms and the fact that Milton was really into skateboarding and that he played the guitar and they might get together sometime and jam, and that Milton was on the snowboarding team and had won all these awards and…

  I snapped my book shut. “You really think that guy wants to hang out with you? He’s like my age, right?”

  “For your information,” James Henry began, overly enunciating each word as if I were a kindergartner, “the Barclay School has a mentoring program that pairs middle-school kids with upper-school kids. Normally you don’t get to choose who you’re paired with, but because we have similar interests, and because we’re neighbors, and because his mom is a teacher there, Milton said he could pull some strings. ”

  “His mother teaches at Barclay?” Mom asked. “We’ll have to invite them out sometime soon.”

  “Maybe they could come to my birthday,” James Henry suggested. “It’s Friday, remember?”

  “Like you’d let us forget,” I said.

  “Have you decided what kind of food you want?” Mom asked. “Italian? Thai? Maybe Ethiopian?”

  “Mexican. Duh.” James Henry swiveled around to look at me. “And since I know you’re dying to know—Milton is a junior. So if you go out with him you’ll be a cougar.”

  I snorted. “There’s no danger of that. You can have Milton all to yourself.”

  “He sounds nice,” Mom said. “Maybe you should give him a chance.”

  “Nice?” I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. He’s a snob. And—he’s weird.”

  “That’s crazy,” James Henry protested. “Milton is cool to everybody. You’re the snob. And you totally misunderstood what he was saying to you this morning. He was just trying—”

  “I understood perfectly,” I said coldly. “He thinks I’m a loser.”

  My mom cut in. “Where in the world would you get an idea like that, Charlotte?”

  “Never mind,” I said sullenly.

  A moment later we pulled up to Shady Grove.

  “Be careful,” my brother said as I climbed out of the car.

  I found my locker in the labyrinth, grabbed what I needed for the morning, and headed to the library—the one place other than the gifted and talented wing where I might be able to relax. A group of students were sitting in a circle on the floor, surrounded by newspapers and magazines. They were clipping articles and sorting them into files.

  Though I pretended to be absorbed in my political science reading, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. These kids were definitely not run-of-the-mill. They were talking about alternative energy, and they seemed to be experts on the subject. They sounded smart and sophisticated. They had huge vocabularies.

  One guy in particular caught my eye. The other kids deferred to him a lot. He had piercing blue eyes, a movie-star jaw, and auburn hair that flopped down adorably over his brow. Even through his long-sleeved jersey you could tell he was muscular. He wasn’t bulky, but strong and wiry like a soccer player. Whether he was talking or listening, he kept flipping his pen around his index finger.

  I tried to concentrate on my political science chapter, but the words on the page—something about the Electoral College—began to congeal into one giant blob. Speaking of college…what was I going to do? I needed some kind of game plan. I knew my parents hoped I’d win a scholarship; though, as my dad was fond of pointing out, I was not Ivy League material. No sir. James Henry, on the other hand…My parents were the only members of their own families who’d gotten degrees, and they valued education over even health. Last year for Christmas, Dad had given me a copy of Barron’s Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges. What I’d learned from reading it cover to cover was that I was screwed.

  I wasn’t a concert-level musician who’d composed her first symphony at the age of two. I didn’t swallow fire or juggle knives. I’d never spent a summer vacation delivering medical supplies to Darfur. I’d never met the Dalai Lama or meditated in silence for a month. I’d never been arrested in a protest for the rights of hamsters. I certainly wasn’t on the math bowl or the chess team. The most athletic thing I did each day was to make it to bed without injuring myself. There was nothing about me that would set me apart from the masses of the other applicants.

  My parents insisted that an impassioned, well-written, and tightly focused personal statement could overcome a lot—even a learning disability. But how impassioned could you sound if you didn’t know what you were passionate about? I didn’t even know if I was good at anything, and because I was so afraid of looking stupid, it was hard for me to want to try new things.

  This was not something the college books addressed.

  Something landed on my foot.

  A pen. A silver pen.

  I bent down to pick it up. It was warm and heavy and felt good in my hand. Glancing up, I found myself looking directly at the face of Adorable Boy.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  I wanted to say something funny and intelligent, something that would keep his hypnotic eyes focused on my face forever. Unfortunately, I had forgotten how to think or speak.

  So I simply held out his pen.

  His fingers grazed mine gently as he reached for it. An electric shiver ran up my spine. He smiled. Had he felt it too?

  “Thanks,” he said.

  A moment later he w
ent back to being engrossed in alternative energy, and I went back to covertly staring at him. He was gorgeous.

  But it wasn’t just his looks that struck me. Something about him reminded me of the movie Dead Poets Society—a flick about some guys at a New England boarding school. The boys in that movie were clean-cut without being dorky. They were eager to learn and eager to break the rules. You could tell my new crush had confidence in spades, not the arrogant kind, but a belief in his intelligence that he had never once doubted.

  Who was he?

  After that, the best I could say about my second morning at Shady Grove was that no one tried to kill me.

  In Chemistry we colored in pictures of atoms. In Spanish, the substitute—our real teacher had yet to show—had us practice rolling our R’s. In Language Arts, Miss Mason gave us a homework assignment: we were to write a five-paragraph essay about the scariest thing that had ever happened to us (I refrained from asking if entering Shady Grove could count).

  Due to a student ambassador meeting, Mimi had missed Chemistry. We met up at lunch—the special was reconstituted mashed potatoes with meat loaf gravy—and after assuring her she hadn’t missed anything important, I told her all about the chemistry I’d felt with Adorable Boy.

  “But I’ll probably never see him again,” I sighed.

  “I’ve got just the thing.” Mimi reached into her overly large orange backpack. “Voilà!” she said, holding up a yearbook.

  Flipping through the glossy pages, I noticed that even the cool kids looked stupid in the pictures. You could tell the photographers were trying to impose meaning onto moments that had only ever been trivial at best.

  Amanda’s picture was everywhere. Last year she’d won the Best Dressed Rebel Without a Cause award. She’d made herself up to look like a drunk Lindsay Lohan.

  I found Adorable Boy on page ninety-three. He was a GATE, of course.

  Mimi studied his picture. “I’ve seen him around.”

  “Neal Fitzpatrick. What a great name.”

  “Not to be a downer,” Mimi said, “but I think he might be out of our league.”

  I stiffened at this. Mimi didn’t know me. Who was she to assume that I was a misfit like her?

  “Mind if I borrow this for the afternoon?” I asked, trying not to show my anger. When she said okay, I excused myself and headed upstairs to the restroom in the GATE wing. Hiding in a corner stall, I spent the rest of lunch hunting down every picture of Neal in the yearbook.

  Here’s what I learned:

  Neal Fitzpatrick was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine.

  Neal Fitzpatrick was a National Merit finalist.

  Neal Fitzpatrick played lacrosse.

  Neal Fitzpatrick was captain of the debate team.

  Debate. This must have been what he was doing in the library.

  I tried to guess what colleges he was going to apply to. Stanford? Yale? Columbia? He was classy. I could imagine him living in a place like New York City or Boston. I traced my fingers along the contours of his face, dreaming that I was touching his features for real. No one would ever mistake him for a misfit.

  In Math, Mr. Johnson gave us a pop quiz on graphing parabolas. Luckily the quiz was easy (“This is a very basic curriculum”). I wasn’t the last to finish either. Afterward, Mr. Johnson gave us some problems to work on so he could grade our quizzes in class.

  At the end of the period he handed them back to us. So much for easy. I got a C. Well, this sucked.

  On the way out of class, I stopped by Mr. Johnson’s desk. “Is there anything I can do to get extra points?”

  He looked confused. “But you passed.”

  “How was it today?” my mom asked when she picked me up from school.

  “I don’t know—maybe a little better?” Because of Neal I was loath to tell her how much the day had sucked. “We could give it another week before we make any rash decisions about me transferring. At least in the regular classes I can push myself extra hard. Maybe I’ll get straight A’s for once.”

  My brother was absorbed in doing homework—otherwise, I’m sure he would have scoffed at this.

  Mom’s cell phone beeped. It was Dad. He was at Smith College, where he’d just finished a reading of Lily at Dusk. Mom handed me the phone.

  “How’s it going?” he asked. “How do you like Shady Grove?”

  “Okay.” To change the subject from my education, I said, “It’s really pretty out here. The air feels extra fresh.”

  He was not to be sidetracked. “You might want to consider adding an all-women’s school to your list of prospective colleges. These girls are very articulate. Smith might be out of your league, but there are some less competitive women’s colleges with similar prestige.”

  “I’m sure there are,” I said. “But where are the boys?”

  He laughed like he thought I was intentionally being hilarious. “You’re not going to have time for boys next year.”

  I gave the phone back to Mom.

  “Where are you staying tonight?” she asked Dad. There was a pause. Her mouth got tight. Then, “You’re going to New York?” More pause. She was gripping the steering wheel like she wanted to break it. “I see,” she finally said. “Well. We’ll talk about this when you get home.” She snapped the phone shut.

  “Everything okay?” I asked. We were at a stop sign now.

  “It’s just that—” She studied me for a moment. I had this sense that she was seeing me in a new light, as someone more adult, someone she could maybe trust. Then, with a weak smile, she said, “It’s just that your father’s writing career is proving to be a big adjustment.”

  As I stayed up late working on my Language Arts essay—the one we were supposed to be writing about the scariest thing that had ever happened to us—my mind kept drifting off to what Mom had said about Dad. There was no denying the fact that success was changing him and also changing the dynamics of their relationship. I wondered if Mom was jealous of how well he was doing.

  I also thought about my dad because the scariest thing that had ever happened to me had happened when I was with him. Back when we lived in Florida, back when Dad was simply a would-be author and had more time for us, he would occasionally take James Henry and me on these Sunday outings to give Mom a break. Though he wasn’t a natural at it, he liked the idea of being an outdoorsman.

  This one time he decided he wanted us to try crabbing.

  I got carsick on the drive out to the Apalachicola Reserve, and when we finally got there I was too queasy to help set up the nets. “Why don’t you go for a swim?” my dad suggested. “It might help.”

  The water, coffee brown and gathering dust, was not exactly inviting. The air was hot, though, at least ninety degrees, and it wasn’t even noon. The sky was a glaring shade of white.

  I dipped a toe in dubiously. “Is it safe?”

  “Charlotte! You can’t be so afraid of everything.”

  Just to prove that I wasn’t a wimp, I jackknifed into the bay, making a huge splash—a fearless splash. The water was bathtub tepid and failed to cool me, but still it was wonderful to be buoyant. I kicked out a good ways, feeling more secure the deeper I went. It was the bottom I feared most—who knew what lurked in the mud?

  Treading water, I watched my dad and brother set up the nets. Then, they too stripped down to their bathing suits and dove into the bay. Over and over, my father tossed James Henry backward off his shoulders. My brother shrieked with delight and flew through the air like a beach ball.

  I remembered when Dad had done that kid stuff with me. I was pretty young—maybe five—when he’d shown me how to duck dive into the waves off Cape Cod. We used to camp there sometimes. Together we would swim out past the breakers, where my feet couldn’t touch the bottom. Dad had said I must be part fish. No matter how cold it was, I would stay in the water for hours. Dad’s admiration was worth a little hypothermia.

  Now, after about an hour of swimming in the brackish water, we swam back in to check
the crab nets. They came up empty, but the weird thing was that even the bait was gone. The last net, the one farthest out and closest to where I’d been swimming, was snagged. I yanked and yanked, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Leave it,” Dad said, gathering up the buckets. “It’s fine if we lose one.”

  Whatever. We’d been studying pollution at school, and I was not going to be responsible for the death of the environment. Besides. I wanted to impress my father. I wanted to show him that I was strong.

  The net finally gave. It was heavy, but rising.

  And then—

  Two beady eyes attached to a brown snout peered at me from the end of my tether. My net was ensnared in the jaws of an alligator. Its jaws weren’t but two feet from my hands.

  “Dad—”

  My voice was just a squeak. I couldn’t shout. I couldn’t move. I was frozen. Paralyzed.

  “I told you, Charlotte—”

  Then he saw.

  He was there in a flash, slicing the tether in two with the bait knife. The twine crackled when it broke. Bubbles arose from the gator’s snout as it sank back into the murky depths. My knees buckled. Fear washed over me in waves.

  This was by far and away the most afraid I’d ever been. It was the moment I realized my dad’s judgment wasn’t always sound.

  My dad’s judgment could hurt me.

  This was what I wrote about late into the night.

  On Friday, Miss Mason called us one by one up to her desk to discuss our essays. I wasn’t worried. The one thing I knew I was decent at was writing. The teachers at my school in Florida were always saying things to me like, “You are your father’s daughter, Charlotte. Talent runs in families.”

  The guy behind me glanced over my shoulder on his way back to his seat. “What did you write about?” he asked.

  I told him my alligator story. “How about you?”

  “I wrote about this time in juvie when this guy held a knife to my throat.”

  “You’ve been to juvie?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “No. But it makes a good story.”