Southern Girl

by Lukas,Renee J.

  Jesse took it and saw that it was, in fact, in Nashville. A feeling of intense grief washed over her as she stuffed the paper into her own pocket. She tried to be as cool as Stephanie was, but it was hard to pretend the world wasn’t coming to an end. Nothing would ever be good again. That was certain.

  Jesse wanted to give her something too. She reached inside the other pocket of her jeans and pulled out the clay rock she’d grabbed from the river. She’d been carrying it around for good luck. As Stephanie slowed down her swing almost to a stop, Jesse gave it to her. Stephanie looked at her curiously.

  “You’re givin’ me a rock?” Something about the way she said it, there was that embarrassed feeling Jesse had again. Just like the flowers. She didn’t know why, but she felt stupid.

  “It’s from our river,” Jesse said.

  Stephanie turned it in her hand. She seemed unimpressed. “It’s a rock.”

  “Fine. Don’t take it. I don’t care.” Jesse pulled her swing higher, using all the strength she had. The metal chains made grooves in her hands, but she kept squeezing harder until her feet seemed to be reaching up past the storm clouds, her legs lighter in the wind…“I don’t care!” she repeated.

  “Me neither!”

  “I’m glad you’re movin’. I’m gonna make lots of other friends,” Jesse barked as thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “Me too!”

  Their swings were both going as high as they could.

  “Fine!” Jesse shouted. “I didn’t wanna be your friend anyway.”

  “Me neither!”

  They jumped out of their swings and ran back to the school building right before the storm hit.

  Chapter Seven

  After Stephanie left, Jesse was lost at school. She’d stare at Stephanie’s empty chair while the teacher was talking. At recess, she didn’t want to swing anymore. Other girls now occupied the swings they used to play on. Instead, she’d go over to what was called the “blacktop,” which was basically a slab with goal posts on opposite sides. She’d sit and watch the boys play basketball. It was a silently understood rule that girls didn’t join the boys’ game, not necessarily because girls thought they couldn’t play, though some may have thought that. It was more because the boys were known for spitting and doing gross things that would be considered unseemly for girls to be a part of.

  One day Jesse sat against the wall, watching the activity on the blacktop alongside a girl named Brittany whom she’d never talked to before.

  “Why don’t girls ever play?” Jesse asked.

  “Because it’s a boys’ game.” Brittany fluttered her eyes in perfect snob fashion.

  “No, it’s not.” Jesse buried her head between her pulled-up knees.

  Usually Jesse avoided the girls who always talked about what brand of jeans you wore or how big your house was. Their chins were so high in the air she couldn’t have a conversation with them. She made an exception that day only because Brittany, who had seemed to be one of those girls, happened to be sitting there.

  Over the following months, she and Brittany found other things to do at recess, mostly pretend games like hiding from a killer in the woods behind the swings. Brittany had a giggle that was so much fun to hear, Jesse’s day was made whenever she could make that girl laugh. Every now and then Ms. Wilkins would holler at them for straying too far away from school grounds.

  One day while Jesse was scooting her tray down the lunch line, Christy, a girl behind her, tapped her on the arm. “Why do you hang out with Brittany?”

  Jesse turned around. “She’s fun.”

  “That’s not what she says about you.”

  Jesse got a sick feeling, as though she’d found out the friend she’d been playing with all this time was actually a paper doll. “What does she say?”

  “All kinds of things,” Christy said. “In the library, she was talkin’ ’bout how you were weird, wantin’ to play with the boys.”

  Jesse knew it had to be true. But that was on the day they first met. Maybe her opinion of her had changed since then. “When did she say that?” Jesse asked.

  “It was, like, a couple days ago.” Christy stared blankly. “You’re holdin’ up the line.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Everybody knows how two-faced Brittany is.”

  “I didn’t!” Jesse was defensive. Now she was so stressed, she forgot about her allergy and reached for a milk carton instead of the apple juice.

  “She says you like to play stupid games about murders in the woods and that you may be a psycho.”

  “Shut up!” Jesse tore out of the lunch line. But when she came out into the bustling cafeteria, more stress awaited her: Brittany was saving her the usual seat beside her. Jesse passed her by, gave the girl her most dramatic sneer and kept on walking. She found a spot near a new girl who hopefully hadn’t yet been influenced by Brittany’s characterization of her.

  This was Jesse’s first lesson in duplicity. She learned in time that many of her “friends” talked out of several sides of their faces. She, on the other hand, being cursed with her mother’s bluntness, only knew how to be who she was. She couldn’t imagine lying to different people and trying to remember what she’d said to whom. It seemed like too much work anyway. Because of Brittany, in years to come Jesse would always be extra careful when she was sizing up a potential new friend.

  The summer that followed was painfully long. It was bad enough that she wouldn’t see Stephanie anymore. But Ivy was no longer fun either. Jesse was even willing to play “Fertilizer” again, but apparently Ivy was too old now to trap frogs in jars or host fake gardening shows. Instead, she would invite her own ten-year-old friends over, and they’d sit in her room for hours giggling and playing records. Sometimes Jesse could hear the crackling 45s of the Electric Light Orchestra or Charlie Daniels through the door. If it was a long afternoon, she’d hear the Star Wars soundtrack album playing. Once she overheard somebody talking about shoes. She couldn’t imagine anything so boring. Ivy didn’t think games were fun anymore, but she didn’t mind listening to girls talking about shoes? Shoes were what you put on your feet to keep the mud off. Nothing about Ivy made sense anymore.

  Most days, Jesse moped around her room. Danny called her a loser, and she didn’t argue with him. All of her spirit and fight had vanished. She’d stare out her bedroom window and wonder what it was like in Nashville. Aside from the hospital where she had been tested for her stomach condition, she’d never seen very much of it. Stephanie was probably doing all kinds of big-city things in the big city. To Jesse, it was a metropolis compared to Greens Fork. Stephanie was no doubt going to meet some country singer and play in a band at the Grand Ole Opry and forget she ever existed.

  One day she sat on her bedroom window seat and yanked at the strings of a hole in her jeans at the knee. There was a knock at her door. It was her dad.

  “Why don’t you go out and play?” he asked. “It’s a nice day.”

  She shrugged. “In a little while.”

  “You said that an hour ago.”

  “What if it rains?” she asked.

  He frowned. “It’s not raining.”

  “Yeah, but if it were, nobody would care that I wasn’t outside.”

  “All right,” he said. “Smarty-pants. Put on your sneakers and get some fresh air.” That had been his answer to everything all summer, as if getting fresh air could reset the memory of her best friend and the deep hole of loss that she left.

  The truth was, the outdoors didn’t feel the same. The sun didn’t feel the same. The wind was different too. Jesse couldn’t explain this to anyone, so she didn’t try. She wished she could go to sleep and wake up when she was forty.

  Then something happened that changed things. Toward the end of summer, the Wallaces put a basketball hoop in their driveway. One day they invited the Aimes kids over to shoot hoops—and it didn’t matter if they were two girls and a boy. Everybody was included, not like in school. It wasn’t long b
efore Jesse was hooked. Watching basketball was one thing, but actually hearing the ball slide into the net with that special breezy sound…there was nothing like it. She’d play when the sun was creeping up in the east, then was high overhead in the sky, the shadows changing, all the way until the light turned blue and a sliver of moon was the only thing left illuminating the goal post. It gave her a sense of purpose each morning. She’d fly out of bed, throwing on her clothes so fast, not even checking to see if her socks matched. Her dad couldn’t say she wasn’t getting enough fresh air anymore. And since the Wallaces had what seemed like fourteen kids, Jesse always had someone to play with, especially when their farm chores were done.

  All in all it was shaping up to be a better summer than originally expected. Her mother kept complaining about the cooking club she belonged to and was clearly too distraught about it to pay attention to Jesse’s growing obsession with basketball. About the same time Danny discovered BMX bikes. He and their dad blazed a dirt trail behind their house where he could ride for hours. His absence around the house meant she didn’t have to listen to his “loser” comments anymore. It would be the greatest summer in recent memory.

  One morning, Jesse woke up at six and snuck into Ivy’s room, which had the only good view of the Wallaces’ driveway across the field.

  “What’re you doin’?” Ivy groaned, wiping her tired eyes.

  “Nothin’.” Jesse peeled back the curtain, noting how her sister’s room always smelled sweet, like moisturizing cream.

  “Don’t say ‘nothin’,’” Ivy snapped. “You’re tryin’ to see if they’re up yet so you can go over and play basketball. Again.”

  “What do you care? At least I got better things to do than talk about shoes all day!”

  “You’re crazy!” Ivy shot up from her bed, which was weird because she never rose before eleven in the summer. “You little freak! They could have you arrested, you know.” She threw a pillow at her.

  “I am not a freak,” Jesse protested.

  “You can’t storm over there and wake ’em all up.”

  “They’re farmers,” Jesse argued. “They get up at dawn.”

  Ivy joined her at the window and pulled back the curtain sheer. “Not today,” she said dramatically, revealing the scene of an open field and no activity down by the Wallace farmhouse. She smiled with satisfaction, as though she’d won the argument.

  Jesse stormed out of the room, hating her guts. Ever since she’d gotten so busy with her stupid, shoe-freak friends, Ivy acted like she was too good for everything else.

  “You never do anything fun anymore!” Jesse shouted from the hallway, forgetting it was six in the morning.

  “You’re too young to understand.” Ivy sounded as if she were a much older woman or a secret agent. Then she slammed her door in Jesse’s face.

  It wasn’t long before their father came out in his bathrobe with a few stray oily hairs sticking up on his head.

  “What’s all the ruckus?” He was an early riser anyway, but he didn’t like disorder in the house at any time.

  “Nothin’, sir.” Jesse shuffled back toward her room. Surely one of the Wallace kids would be awake by seven…

  Chapter Eight

  When Jesse’s birthday came a month later, her mother took her to get a cake at Rooster’s Food Emporium. After she’d picked out the chocolate cake with raspberry swirl, Jesse was in a hurry to go home and eat it. But her mother took an unusually long time, wandering the aisles as if she’d never been there before. She even stopped at the spice shelves and took a whiff of nearly each one. She read the labels on every brand of peanut butter. Jesse felt like she was about to burst. “I’m checking for preservatives,” she said.

  After more than two hours, they returned home. Immediately Jesse understood why her mother had taken so long. First she caught a glimpse through the car windows of something strange in the driveway. From behind, it appeared to be a tall post. When they pulled up the drive, she could see that it was a basketball goal with a red bow on top. The thing brought tears to Jesse’s eyes. She couldn’t believe it was for her. Her mouth hung open in awe as she got out of the car and stared at it. Some things are so beautiful all you can do is stare at them.

  The year before, her dad had had their driveway paved, so it had that freshly smooth asphalt feel under her sneakers. She marveled at the goal post a long time, not hearing what anyone was saying. She wondered if she deserved it. She remembered all sorts of “unkind thoughts” she had had that her dad warned against in church. Most of them had been reserved for her brother, but several for Ivy had made their way in too.

  It wasn’t long before her dad and Ivy came out, anxious to see her reaction.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jesse managed.

  Her dad laughed. “It better be. I could hardly get the dang thing up. Your brother had to help. Danny! Get out here!”

  There was a rumble coming from the backyard. When it was clear that Danny was on his bike trail, her dad waved his arm in frustration. “Your brother,” he muttered.

  Jesse looked up again at the goal post. “I don’t have a—”

  “Ball?” Ivy pulled her arms from behind her back and presented her sister with a Wilson basketball still in the box.

  Jesse took it from her with great reverence. She popped the ball out carefully, in slow motion, it seemed. The smell of the new rubber filled her nose as she ran her hand over the little bumps and ridges. It was her Holy Grail.

  “Now maybe you’ll stay out of my room,” Ivy said. She tried to sound nice, but she didn’t seem to be kidding.

  “Uh-huh.” Jesse attempted to spin the ball on the tip of her forefinger but couldn’t do it. She vowed to herself that someday she would be able to spin it better than anyone she’d seen on TV.

  “We’ll leave you be,” her father said. He wasn’t much for sports, except watching his alma mater, the University of Tennessee Vols, play college football occasionally on TV. Any sport besides that, he called “runnin’ around.”

  Jesse spent the rest of the day in the driveway, shooting hoops until she was under the stars. They had a really long driveway, so she could dribble up and down and shoot from many different angles. She wasn’t the greatest student, not like Ivy. The only thing she felt comfortable with was how easily basketball came to her.

  As the days passed, her parents would yell at her to come in for dinner or to come inside and go to bed.

  “Are you sure it was a good idea?” She heard her father say to her mother as she stomped in reluctantly one night.

  Her mother ignored him with an all-knowing smile. “Have something to eat,” she said to Jesse. “You’re growing like a weed.”

  “First I’m not outside enough, then I’m outside too much,” Jesse argued.

  “Now watch that tone, young lady,” her father snapped. “Everything needs balance. When school starts up again, you’ll have to put as much time into your studies as you do that ball.”

  She took her plate from her mother. “Thanks,” she said, her dad’s words settling like a rock in the pit of her stomach. School. Where all dreams go to die.

  Chapter Nine

  Third grade…

  Carolyn took her kids to the school cafeteria. That’s where everyone assembled for the start of a new year. The teachers would line up in front of the students and their parents so everyone could see who was nice and who was scary. Ivy was in fifth grade, and everyone knew those teachers were nice. It was clear she was going to have a good year.

  Here’s how it went: The older teachers were assumed to be cranky, so you didn’t want them. A small few were men, who were thought to be tougher (no one knew why), so you didn’t want them either. Then there were the smiling teachers. Those were the ones you hoped to get, the ones who would give you candy every day and smiley faces on your homework. When each one stepped forward, they’d call the names of that teacher’s class and you’d soon know if you were going to have a good or bad year. It was a life-chan
ging day.

  The reputations of the teachers carried a lot of weight on this day. Those who were said to be tough—stories circled about them and became more exaggerated with each passing year—you definitely didn’t want any of them. The oldest teacher, Ms. Cranston, seemed grumpy, and everyone could hear her shouting at her class—or to other kids—that they “didn’t have any business” doing whatever it was they were doing. According to her, no one had any business. And that was her thing, like a catch phrase. Most teachers had them and didn’t realize it.

  Usually Ivy would warn Jesse and Danny about each teacher. But she couldn’t warn Jesse this year about Ms. Fitzler, a new third grade teacher. She had blond poodle hair and not much of a chin, and most critically, she had no expression when they called her name. For these reasons and even a few she couldn’t put her finger on, Jesse was uneasy about her. Nobody wanted to end up in Ms. Fitzler’s class because she had no reputation. She represented the unknown. And when she didn’t even crack a smile, standing there in the line of teachers, Jesse’s imagination ran wild, attributing all sorts of personality traits to her…sorceress…demon…

  So of course she got Ms. Fitzler, the poodle-headed demon. Soon everyone learned she graduated the year before from college, where she’d learned how to be a teacher. That didn’t sit well with Carolyn, but she didn’t want to make waves, so she signed all the proper permission forms.

  It didn’t take long to learn what Ms. Fitzler’s catch phrase was. When she wanted to warn the class not to make her mad, she’d say, “Class, I don’t want to get ugly.”

  Some kids would laugh and whisper, “Too late for that.”

  Even though it was probably a sin or generally frowned-upon behavior, Jesse would laugh too.

  Still sad about losing her best friend, Jesse did what any other eight-year-old would do: she set out to find a new best friend. This wouldn’t be easy, though, with her general distrust of everyone since the Brittany incident. Luckily, Jesse didn’t end up in the same class with Brittany this year. Instead they had a kind of odd Third Grade Cold War that never thawed. There was never a fight between them, only the realization that one knew something about the other and now disliked her. What she’d been told about Brittany must have been true, too, Jesse thought, because she never asked what was wrong or defended herself.