The Perfect Place

by Teresa E. Harris

  “Oh, my God, she’s going to smack her up,” I say.

  Tiffany and I watch, rapt, waiting for Great-Aunt Grace to lay hands on loudmouth, clipboard-brandishing Eunetta Baxter. The moment never comes. Great-Aunt Grace’s hands stay in her pockets as she leans in real close to Eunetta and says something I can’t hear. Eunetta throws up her hands and says, “All right! I’ll make room for them, but they better not step a toe out of line.”

  The two of them come over to Tiffany and me. Eunetta stops to write something down on her clipboard.

  “You hear that, girls?” she says. “Not. A. Toe. Out. Of. Line.”

  “You got kids here right now worse than these two, trust me,” Great-Aunt Grace says. It’s probably the nicest thing she’ll ever say about us.

  Eunetta purses her lips and flips to a page in her clipboard. Just then, Terrance comes flying out of the building, holding on to his sketchpad. “Ms. Eunetta, we’re out of—” He stops dead in his tracks when he sees me. “Oh. Hi.”

  I give him a halfhearted wave.

  “What is it that you need, Terrance?” Eunetta asks impatiently.

  “They’re out of drawing paper.” Terrance is talking to Eunetta, but his eyes are on me. I look off into the distance at a bunch of little kids running around a tree.

  “Check with Miss Donna. She said she was going to pick some more up yesterday.”

  “Okay,” Terrance says, and turns to leave.

  “Wait,” Eunetta says, holding out her free hand. She looks from him to me, remembering. “You two are friends, right?”

  I shake my head. Eunetta rolls her eyes.

  “Be that as it may, you already know each other and you’re in the same group. Terrance, show Treasure to Group Twelve.”

  “Jeanie,” I tell her. “I go by my middle name.”

  Eunetta crosses something off on her clipboard and frowns. “Tiffany will be in Group Seven. Your name is Tiffany, right? They’re down there doing arts and crafts. Terrance can walk you—”

  There’s no need. Tiffany takes off running. I watch as she goes right up to the counselor and introduces herself. She’s sitting down at the table in no time, reaching for a paintbrush. That sure enough won’t be my MO. After what happened with Jaguar and Pamela, I have to draw as little attention to myself as possible, which means strict adherence to Moving Rules One and Two: Don’t make friends and Be invisible.

  “So they’re all settled, then?” Great-Aunt Grace says, checking her watch. “I need to get to the store.”

  “They’re as settled as they’re gonna be,” Eunetta says through clenched teeth.

  “Good. Y’all behave yourselves. Some folks are just waitin’ for the two of you to slip up.” She gives Eunetta a hard look, then shifts her eyes to me. “Come over to Goodies when you’re done. Terrance can show you the way.” Great-Aunt Grace exits stage left, leaving me with Terrance, Eunetta, and Eunetta’s stank attitude.

  “Our group is finishing up in arts and crafts,” Terrance says. “We do drawings and murals, not baby stuff.” He holds up his sketchpad with a drawing of a very complicated machine with a seat and lots of buttons. “Then we’re going to the lake.”

  He indicates that I should follow him inside, and I do. So does Eunetta. I keep my distance from both of them, but especially Terrance. He stops in front of room 107 and holds the door open for me.

  “You go on inside, Terrance. I want to have a word with Jeanie,” Eunetta says, smiling.

  The door closes behind Terrance, and Eunetta’s smile melts right off of her face. “Look, your great-aunt is trouble, and from what I know, trouble tends to run in the blood, so listen to me and listen good: I’ve got my eyes on you.”

  Eunetta’s eyes are too close to a nose shaped like a greater-than symbol. “Okay,” I tell her. “That’s cool.”

  She glares at me. The door swings open and Group Twelve files out, first the counselor—brown-skinned with box braids, probably in high school and definitely too perky—followed by the campers.

  “We’re off to the lake, Ms. Eunetta, to see one of God’s many miraculous works.”

  Terrance, still holding on to his sketchpad, is in the front of the line. Jaguar and Pamela are last. I fall into step after them because I have to, lagging as much as I can without getting left behind, but that doesn’t stop them from whispering and turning around to stare at me the whole way to the lake. Eunetta is not the only one with her eyes on me. May as well change this place’s name to Camp Kill Me Now.

  Nineteen

  IT never occurred to me that Black Lake got its name from an actual lake, but our counselor—whose name happens to be Sunny—leads us through a small park five minutes from Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School, across a stretch of grass, and toward a mass of tall trees. There’s a narrow dirt trail between them. Their big, barrel-shaped trunks make them look like they’re standing guard, protecting something sacred. Or forbidden.

  Is it safe in there? I wonder, but I don’t ask.

  I hang back, maintaining a safe distance from Jaguar and Pamela, thinking about bears and cougars with claws and teeth like steak knives. But everyone else is walking along, seemingly not in fear of being snatched and mangled. I stumble over a tree root and almost fall.

  “Walk much?” Jaguar asks, and laughs herself stupid.

  Now I’m really hoping for a cougar or a bear or, at the very least, a psychotic chipmunk to nip at her ankles. With this comforting image nestled in my mind, I look around. It is beautiful in here. The way the sunlight trickles down between the branches and sits in golden puddles on the ground, the smell of pine. Not sharp and stinging like the cleaner I have to use at Grace’s Goodies, but soft and cool like baby powder.

  When we come to an opening between the trees, I’m kind of disappointed to leave the woods behind. “Kind of” turns into full-on disappointment when I get my first glimpse of the lake. The water is surrounded by dingy sand and closed in by trees on all sides. It might qualify as a river. No, too small. More like a pond. The dark water is coated with green scum and writhes like something alive.

  “Welcome to Black Lake,” Sunny declares, our official tour guide. She gestures to us to move in closer. The line dissolves as we cluster around her. I make sure to stand as far away from Jaguar and Pamela as possible.

  “What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you look at it?” Sunny scans the faces of Group Twelve, and her eyes stop on me. Of course. She beams. “This is your first time seeing Black Lake, isn’t it?”

  A dozen heads swivel around to look at me. Some kids lean in at first and then rock back on their heels.

  “That’s that girl from the paper, the one who was all up in Ms. Washington’s window when she disrespected the sheriff?” someone says.

  “Yeah, that’s her. They’re related or something. You saw them leaving church yesterday, right, Pam?” Jaguar again.

  I swallow hard. I open my mouth, then close it, like a dying fish. In the end, it is Sunny who yanks me off the hook.

  “Think about it and you can share later if you want to.” She turns her attention to the entire group again. “What we want to focus on today is the beauty of the natural world, bestowed upon us by our Almighty Father.”

  “It’s man-made,” someone whispers behind me. It’s Terrance, and for the next few minutes as Sunny waxes on about Black Lake being an example of the beauty of God’s natural world, Terrance tells me in a low voice that it was hardly a miracle, but a result of Black Lake being landlocked. “They wanted a body of water,” he says, “so they made one. Plain and simple.”

  Sunny is still rhapsodizing poetic on Black Lake, but fewer than half the kids are listening. “Let’s use the next fifteen minutes to walk around and take it all in,” she says.

  “It’s gross,” one kid says, pointing at the green scum on the lake’s surface.

  “What is that gunk floating right there?” another asks.

  “It’s algae.” Terrance. Everyone except Sunny a
nd me looks at him like he has two heads. “You asked, John,” he says. “I answered.”

  “Fuh-reak,” Jaguar says. Laughter rings out all around. Terrance just shakes his head.

  The Twelves split up to explore, most of them going right. I go left, walking the length of the shore until I find a big, bumpy rock. I toss it from hand to hand, cock back, and throw it with all my might into the lake. It makes a small splash.

  “That’s not how you skip rocks,” says Terrance, coming up behind me. “Find a flat one, and flick your wrist.” Terrance sets his sketchpad down gingerly on a dry spot in the sand and goes in search of a stone. He’s back moments later. “This one’ll do. Flat ones are the best for skipping. Okay. Ready?” I don’t nod or say yes, but Terrance walks me through his rock-skipping lesson anyway. He takes it all quite seriously, and since I don’t have anything else better to do, I scan the ground for flat stones. When I find a few, I slip all but one into my pocket. Then I do exactly what Terrance told me to. I flick my wrist and send the first stone soaring, like I’m trying out for the stone-skipping Olympics. It skips three times.

  Terrance pumps his fist in the air. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about! If you believe what my cousin says, two skips means two wishes.”

  “What?”

  “It’s this game she used to play with her friends called skipping wishes. For every skip you get a wish.” Terrance pauses. “So you gonna wish or what?”

  “Wishes don’t come true if you say them aloud. Everybody knows that.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Terrance says.

  I close my eyes and wish for Mom to find Dad and for the next place we live to be our last place. The perfect place. I skip a bunch more rocks. By the time I notice Pamela standing a few feet away, staring, I’ve wished for a trip to Disney World for Tiffany, a pair of sky-blue Converse for me, and at least one decent meal while we’re at Great-Aunt Grace’s house, because there are some things you can’t wish for enough.

  “What are you doing?” Pamela asks. Instinctively I look around for Jaguar. She’s farther down the shore, talking to John and another boy.

  “Are you just, like, throwing rocks?” Pamela says. Her tone tells me that no matter what I say I’m doing—skipping stones or walking on water—she’s going to say it’s stupid. But she asked, so I answer in as few words as possible.

  “Skipping wishes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Skip a stone. Number of times it skips is how many wishes you get.”

  “Wishes, huh?” Pamela picks up the stone nearest her foot. She attempts to do something with it that in no way resembles skipping.

  “Terrance could show you how to do it,” I say.

  I catch Terrance’s eye. He mouths, “No way.”

  “I can do it on my own,” Pamela says.

  I shrug and turn my back to her. I hear one stone after another belly-flop into the water until Pamela hurls her last one in with so much force, it arcs high in the air like a comet before plummeting back down. “This is stupid,” she says, and storms off to join Jaguar.

  “What’s her problem?” Terrance says, joining me at the water’s edge.

  “What isn’t?”

  “I found some more good rocks to skip. Here, you can have some.”

  I hold out my cupped hands, and that’s when Jaguar and Pamela start blowing loud, sloppy kissy noises at Terrance and me. I jerk my hands back so fast the rocks fall to the ground. Most of them land on Terrance’s feet.

  “Ow! What’s your problem?”

  “You attract too much negative attention, and I don’t need any more of that.”

  I move farther along until I come to a curve in the shore. I can’t see Terrance’s face from here, but I can still hear Jaguar and Pamela and their stupid kissy noises.

  Twenty

  WHEN we get back to Camp Jesus Saves, it is time for lunch. I take my turkey and cheese sandwich and juice box and find just the right table to guarantee I’ll be left alone: the one mostly in the sun and right next to a row of garbage cans. But of course, just as I’m removing my crusts, Terrance walks over with his backpack and his tray and sits down across from me and two seats away.

  “I don’t know where you’re from, but where I’m from they consider this stalking.”

  He holds up his hand, palm out. “I’m in your orbit, but not in your space.”

  What? The word almost escapes, but I hold it prisoner. I’ve talked to Terrance too much today. It’s time for me be stricter about Moving Rule Number Two and get serious about being invisible. Maybe then he’ll get the point.

  He reaches into his pockets and pulls out a wrinkled piece of drawing paper and a nubby pencil. Everything about him seems wrinkled, as if he had been crumpled up in someone’s fist. He tries unsuccessfully to smooth the paper out with both hands.

  “I used to have a folder for my collection of sketches, but I lost it and all the work inside it,” he says, as if I care. “I don’t want to start over, though, because it’s never the same when you do. You know what I mean?”

  I’ve been moving for as long as I can remember, and each time, Dad said we were starting over. I look down at my tray, willing myself not to answer.

  “So we’re doing the silent thing again? That’s cool.”

  Terrance turns his attention to his paper and his sandwich, so engrossed in the two of them he seems to forget about me. I chance a peek, and he looks up and catches me. Of course.

  “It’s a homemade lightning rod,” he explains. “Trying to detect thunderstorms before they start. It’s not a complicated design—it’s more . . .” Terrance gropes around for a word.

  “Rudimentary?” The word escapes before I can stop it.

  If Terrance is surprised that I spoke, he doesn’t show it. “What does that mean?”

  “Limited to the basics. Simple.”

  “Like Jaguar’s brain?”

  “Exactly.”

  Terrance reaches into his backpack and pulls out another piece of paper, this one more wrinkled than the first. He rips it in half. “Will you write it down for me? That word and what it means?” He places his pencil on the paper and slides it over to me.

  I write down rudimentary and its definition, along with the words Hint: Jaguar’s brain. And then, as if she knows we are talking mess about her, Jaguar is there, standing behind Terrance’s chair, along with her faithful sidekick, Pamela.

  “Are y’all exchanging phone numbers, Yuck Mouth?” Jaguar asks, slapping Terrance on the back.

  “No,” he says.

  “Then what’s on the paper?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jaguar comes around the table to get a better look. I try to snatch the paper, but she is as quick as her namesake. She reads it aloud, stumbling on rudimentary. Maybe she won’t get it.

  “Who wrote this?” she demands in a voice like battery acid.

  She gets it.

  Before I can own up to it, Terrance says, “I did.”

  Jaguar balls up the paper and throws it at him. It bounces off his forehead and lands in his lunch. And, for good measure, she picks up the untouched half of his sandwich and finishes it off in four greedy bites.

  “You keep it up, Yuck Mouth, and you and your girlfriend are gonna be sorry,” Pamela says without much conviction. They saunter off, but not before Jaguar helps herself to Terrance’s juice box.

  “Okay, I see what you mean about attracting negative attention,” he says when Jaguar and Pamela are out of earshot.

  “Why do you let those girls pick on you like that?”

  “They pick on everybody. Besides, where I’m from, men don’t get loud with women.” Terrance sits up a little straighter and puffs out his chest. I try not to laugh.

  “And where’s that again?”

  “Mississippi. What about you?”

  “Recently? New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York State.”

  “Huh? Your father in the military or something?”


  “Here, take half of my sandwich.” It’s the least I can do, considering he lost his lunch lying for me.

  “Thanks.”

  We eat in silence for a few moments before Terrance licks mayonnaise from the corners of his mouth and tries again. “So, where are your parents?”

  “Where’re your friends?”

  Terrance reels back, as if I’ve hit him. I look away and come up with Moving Rule Number Three: Don’t feel.

  “Look,” I say. “I’m sorry. But it’s not like I haven’t been sending out signals since I got here. I’m not looking for friendship.”

  Terrance looks down at the picnic table. It’s not much to look at, and yet he seems to be studying it, his nose barely an inch from the surface. He points. “Carpenter bees.”

  “What?”

  “Look around at all the holes in this table.”

  “It’s an old table.” Everything in Black Lake is old, and bees have nothing to do with it.

  “Those kind of holes aren’t from age. Carpenter bees made them. They carve out nests in wood. If you’re not careful and you stick your finger in one of these holes, the female bee is likely to sting you good.” Terrance closes one eye and peers into the hole nearest him with the other. “Kids around here don’t get me,” he says.

  “And you think I will?”

  “I guess. I mean, you have that shirt, the one that says KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, and you weren’t even wearing it like, I don’t know—”

  “Ironically?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t wear that T-shirt to make fun of people who believe knowledge is power. I really do think it is.”

  “I agree.” Terrance looks up at me. “See? Maybe I kind of get you, too.” He studies my face like he studied the holes in our picnic table. Then he takes out yet another wrinkled sheet of paper from his backpack, rips a tiny piece from it, and hands it to me. “Can you write down what ironically means for me too? Or maybe you can do it tomorrow. At lunch?”

  He’s asking to sit with me again. He isn’t so bad, so long as he doesn’t talk about his tarantula or ask questions about Mom and Dad or—