by Laura Bickle
“You,” the girl snarls. “You gave me the wrong answers on the math test.”
Renee lifts her chin, and the curtain of hair falls away. The other girl is much taller than Renee is, but Renee looks her in the eye. Renee is brilliant at math and got moved ahead one year to Pre-calculus with some of the sophomores. Her grades were great, but it wasn’t going well socially.
“Get your own answers,” Renee spits.
The girl shoves her again, harder, and Renee’s shoulder bounces against the wall. “You don’t understand how things work. I ask, and you answer. And you answer right.”
Renee looks at me, her eyes pleading for me to intervene. I open my mouth to say something, but no sound comes out.
Renee’s eyes narrow. “Let go of me.” Her voice is low and shaky.
“Nobody’s going to stick up for you, little girl.”
She slams Renee back into the wall, this time hard enough that it knocks the wind out of her. Renee slumps, gasping. A piece of plaster cracks off the wall and slides down to the floor, where it crumbles to dust.
I’m stunned, too stunned to make a sound.
There’s growling at my feet, and all of a sudden, Lothar has wiggled between the two girls. His lips draw back from his teeth, and he’s doing his best impression of a Big Dog.
The older girl kicks at him, and Lothar growls, lunging at her. She swears and backs away. The fur lifts on Lothar’s spine, and he herds her into the knot of other kids.
I kneel beside Renee, my voice stuck in my throat. She’s wheezing and crying. People are snickering at her. I hear them over my shoulder, calling her a child. She climbs to her feet, pushes past me, and rushes out the front door.
“Renee…” I whisper, but it’s too late.
It was too late for her and for me. We never spoke again.
CHAPTER THREE
I DO MY BEST TO be invisible at school the next day, dreading telling everyone that there will be no Halloween bash at Sulliven’s Funeral Home. Mostly, I’m hoping that everyone just forgets. That would be nice.
And I feel like it’s actually a possibility, since my class is going on a field trip today.
I know it’s not cool to be excited about a field trip anymore, but as we pile into the buses, I do like the thrill of getting out of the classroom for the day. It’s restless and contagious. I feel it in the squeaks of the old green bus benches, in the chatter, and in the scrape of the windows being tugged down. I’m lucky to get a window seat, and the air trickles across my face. It smells like fall, like turned earth and leaf-mold.
Our school sits in the middle of a green lawn, all glass and metal, with flagpoles out front that rattle in the breeze. It was very new fifty years ago, single story and lined with some funky turquoise tile that sprawls along the snakelike corridors. Not so new anymore. But it’s as familiar as a broken-in pair of shoes that aren’t so fashionable but are still very comfortable.
One of the girls from my cross-country team slides into the seat beside me. Her dark ponytail bobs. “Hey, Charlie.”
“Hi, Jenn.” I force a smile.
I open my mouth again to make some small talk, but it dies on my tongue.
Jenn’s thumbs are tapping on the keyboard of her smart phone, and she’s laughing at something on the screen. Something that clearly doesn’t concern me. I stare down at my fingers and pick at the remaining flakes of my nail polish.
Our chaperone for the day is Mr. London, our history teacher. He stands at the front of the bus, frowning at his clipboard with a pinched expression on his face. He rubs his bald head and clears his throat.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he calls out.
No one quiets.
“People!” He leans over and pounds on the bus horn.
The chatter dies down to a dull roar.
“Thank you for your rapt attention. As you know, we’ll be visiting the Sumner County Museum and Historical Society today. I expect you all to take copious notes for your term papers.”
There’s some grumbling at the back of the bus, and my fingers tighten around my spiral notebook. I notice that some of my classmates didn’t bring paper to write on. There’s a girl across the aisle from me who did, though. She’s dressed in black and has her knees pressed up against the seat in front of her. Her burgundy-black hair is falling in her face, casting her in shadow. I look over at her paper, and I’m not so sure she’ll be taking notes on the assignment. She’s drawing, what looks like some kind of gothic mermaid. I remember her name from roll call—Amanda. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her speak in class.
If I were sitting next to her, I might ask her about it. But I’m sitting next to Jenn, and Jenn is showing me something on her cell phone.
“Oh my god,” she breathes. “Will you look at that?”
I glance at her phone and immediately recoil. It’s some guy’s junk. “Gah!”
“Right?” She laughs.
“Who sent you that?” I’m horrified. Horrified and intrigued, but even more disgusted.
“Guess!”
“I don’t want to,” I blurt, immediately mentally smacking myself in the forehead for saying the wrong thing.
Jenn collapses in giggles and immediately turns around to show the girls in the seat behind us.
Unsure of what to say, I slouch down and stare out the window as the bus pulls away from the loading zone in a belch of black smoke. The school recedes into the distance as the bus turns down a two-lane road toward town. I failed this social test. I was supposed to be fascinated, not grossed out.
Sumner County seems both big and small to me. It’s big in terms of the sheer space between things. There aren’t a whole lot of places you can get to on foot, and if you don’t have a driver’s license, Saturday nights are pretty darn boring. My house, for instance, is a good ten miles from town. Mostly because my relatives didn’t want to bother people with the unpleasant activities of undertaking. Most other people live far away from one another because they don’t want to be bothered. That, I get. Their reasons are all different, though. Some have little farms and some raise cattle. A few are rumored to be batshit crazy and have little armories in their basements and others grow pot in the woods. And more than one trailer blows up and burns down each year due to mismanaged meth cooking. Rumor is that one blew up and caught a nearby chicken coop on fire, sending flaming chickens into the night. The Fried Chicken Incident, we called it.
The high school is down the road from Mooresville, which is the biggest town in Sumner County. It’s not quite what anyone would call a real city, but it is the county seat. There’s a post office, a jail, and a grocery store. The florist we use has a greenhouse around the corner from a tire shop, the bank, and an ice cream shop that’s already closed down for the season. Mooresville has about eight stop lights, and you can miss them all if you blink. The Milburn River cuts right down the center of Mooresville, a reminder of the time when there used to be honest-to-god canals running through here. Now, the only time we really remember that is when there’s flooding. Most of the Victorian houses crowding the banks have had more than ten feet of water behind their brightly-painted facades at one point or another. For a very short time, Mooresville was considered for state capital, but someone in charge wisely changed their mind after watching debris floating on by from the spring floods of 1841.
The county museum sits across the bridge on the east bank of the river. It’s a two-story brick building that someone long ago gave up trying to paint, but there are still flecks of white embedded in the mortar. Moss has chewed into the shingles, and an elm tree is busily shedding its leaves in a bed of ivy at the front.
My class thunders out of the buses once we’ve parked. I try to slip into the flow of people, but never quite seem to find an opening. I slide into line as the last folks trickle out the back of the bus, behind a couple of boys that I’m pretty sure smell like pot. I sidle past them on the brick sidewalk into the shadow of a group of girls huddled around Jenn’s cell phone.
Mr. London counts heads through narrowed eyes, lips moving. When he seems satisfied, he snaps his fingers. I hate it when he does that. Makes me feel like a dog. But I look obediently up as he climbs the steps of the museum.
“Ladies and gentlemen, keep your voices down and hands to yourself. No leaving the museum, understand?”
Voices mutter their assent. Mr. London sighs and shoves open the thick retrofitted glass doors. Like a gaggle of geese, the class follows, making a racket and nipping at one another.
The inside of the museum is dark and quiet. Thin rays of light filter in through the thick glass windows, illuminating swimming dust motes. It smells like sawdust and mildew. I haven’t been here since I was a little girl, when my grandfather took me. Gramma says he was a big fan of museums.
A man in a dress shirt and khakis stands in the middle of the polished floor. He’s thin and bald, and clasps his hands before him, nervously clutching at a sheaf of brochures.
“Good morning,” he says, clearing his throat. “I’m Mr. Haskins, director of the Sumner County Historical Society. Welcome to the Sumner County Museum grand re-opening. I’ll be giving you a tour of the museum today. If you have any questions, please ask.”
A hand lifts from the back of the group. “Um, the museum was closed?”
“Yes. A spring flood ten years ago destroyed most of the contents of the building. Consistent community fundraising and private donations to the collection have allowed us to re-open this season. Speaking of volunteers, we’re always in need of help. If any of you would like to do an internship, I’m sure we can work something out.”
Now that the doors have closed behind me, the smell of mildew is a bit stronger. One of the girls in the back sneezes. I’m sure that the internship opportunity Mr. Haskins speaks of probably involves moving a lot of boxes and scrubbing baseboards with bleach.
The brochures are passed around. They’re printed on copy paper that’s been folded three times—probably by another intern in the basement—showing the exterior of the building and muddy black-and-white photos of the staff. Most of the staff members are around Gramma’s age, with a couple of younger people who look like they could be the current “interns.” I slip my brochure into my notebook.
Mr. Haskins leads the way across the creaking floors. The planks still feel swollen and uneven from the water’s touch, and I have to watch the seams carefully, or else I’ll trip on my metallic platform sandals. Glass cases holding artifacts line the walls in the first room. More glass covers a diorama table in the center, where Mr. Haskins pauses. I bend to squint at it. It looks like it’s made from papier-mâché—sort of. It’s been meticulously-painted, with tiny trees, sand, and bits of stuff that looks like moss. The river and the streams that feed into it are rendered in blue resin. I’ve never seen water that blue in this county. A brass plate in the corner reads: GIFT OF THE SUMNER COUNTY MODEL TRAIN ENTHUSIASTS’ CLUB.
“This is Sumner County as it appeared in 1840,” Mr. Haskins explains. He points to a little town made of matchbox buildings on the banks of the Milburn River. “This is the first settlement of Mooresville, as it may have existed then.”
I squint to see through the glare on the glass. Small whitewashed buildings perch on the sides of hills, surrounded by fences and boats on the river. But there are no people. Maybe the railroad modelers didn’t do people. After all, they would only be the size of ants—too difficult to recreate on such a small scale.
Mr. Haskins points to a wall. “And this is Mooresville in 1841, from sketches in the diary of fur trappers. They came in spring, and this is what they saw.”
I crane my neck over the shoulder of a shorter girl to look at the series of small framed pictures he’s referring to. I’m relieved to have something other than people to focus on, even though the crude drawings look nothing like the scene created by the railway modelers. There are houses with open doors and broken timbers. The fences are shattered, and I see dark scribbling, like fire or mold. Structures have sunken in on themselves, like rib cages that have released sighs and collapsed. There’s a picture of a man in a heavy fur coat, holding a fish that is larger than his arm. Catfish, I’m guessing. Nothing else in the river gets that big. Another sketch shows a group of buzzards, chewing on something. Amanda reaches out to touch it, but pulls her hand back under Mr. London’s sharp gaze.
“These are reproductions,” Mr. Haskins explains. “The original diary can’t withstand much handling. The diary was found in an estate sale, strangely enough.”
“This is after the flood, right?” Jason, one of boys, asks. He’s already writing in his notebook.
“Actually, no. This is before the flood. The trappers came to Mooresville and found the settlement entirely abandoned. The flood came a month later. The destruction from that event is well-documented.”
Jason looks up from his notes. “Where did everyone go?”
“We don’t know,” answers Mr. Haskins. “The state historical society is keen to study exactly that. There are theories, of course, such as smallpox.”
“What about Indian attacks?” someone else chimes in.
Mr. Haskins shakes his head. “Not likely. The First Nations people here were very peaceful. There’s no recorded conflict at that time.”
“How many people were here?” a girl asks.
“A good number. At the time of the winter encampment, we estimate that there were two hundred people. The river froze in the winter of 1840—that much, we know from records in surrounding counties. Mooresville was pretty much cut off from the rest of trade. Who knows what happened? Could have been starvation. They may have just walked away, for whatever reason. But we’re looking now—for bones or evidence of graves. It’s all very exciting from an anthropological point of view.”
Mr. Haskins moves on, pointing to some framed documents describing the debate around using the land for the state capital. There are a few kids taking notes on what he says now, so I’m sure that won’t be an original topic for my term paper.
I clutch my notebook to my chest and gaze into the cases, determined to try to find an idea before the others do. Most of the artifacts are unremarkable: arrowheads and bits of pottery pre-dating the first or second settlement. Maybe I can find something interesting here, something that I can go on about for ten pages.
I weave around the students who are knotted around the model. Others chatter excitedly about the sketches. A couple of students sneak away to the restroom. I even glimpse a couple of boys outside vaping.
Jason is already talking to Mr. London about his topic. Since he’s is captain of the debate team, I’m pretty sure he’s got the disappearance angle covered.
My fingers pick at my notebook as I walk down the hallway, gazing at mannequins dressed in Victorian clothes. The mannequins are small and homemade, probably because the clothes are so tiny. It’s strange to imagine that people were so little then. The hoop skirts don’t interest me, and I walk deeper into the museum.
I pass by a small library of maps, which is really just two shelves above a scarred table, pinned above a reconstruction of a wigwam. I gnaw on the cap of my pen, circling the wigwam, when my eye catches a bit of yellow caution tape in the corner of the room, cordoning off a doorway. A sign on the placard in front of it says: EXHIBIT UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
Glancing over my shoulder, I duck under the caution tape. The doorway leads down a short flight of stairs into the basement. This area is in disarray. It smells damp, and I see the ghosts of bleached mold along the baseboards. Open boxes sit on tables, and shelves are screwed into the wall.
A few items have been laid out on a table, beside a box labeled CATTELL ESTATE. They are clearly Native American artifacts, surrounded by bits of masking tape for labels. There is a beautiful beaded vest that I can’t resist running my fingers over. The beads are cold, like water. My heart pounds. I know that I shouldn’t touch these things. They are not mine. But I can’t stop myself. I move on to the next artifacts, little b
its of copper and bone worked into the shapes of birds and otters. One coin-sized piece of bone shows a whimsical figure of a catfish, sucking on a bone that it holds between its fins like a pacifier. The bone is cool to the touch and looks like some strange totem. I turn it over.
On the reverse side is a human skeleton, curled in a fetal position, also sucking on a bone.
I cup it in my hand. I don’t know what it is about this thing that is so strangely compelling. My pulse quickens and thuds behind my temples. I hear voices rattling and the floor creaking above me. Dust filters down from the ceiling.
I have the irresistible urge to jam the artifact into my pocket.
I can’t explain it. I’ve never had the urge to steal anything before. Not even so much as an extra newspaper from the newspaper machine. I’m the girl who feels guilty when an extra pop comes out of the soda machine that I didn’t pay for. When one of the girls I went to eighth grade with was busted for shoplifting at the drugstore, I was shocked. Lissa had slipped four bottles of glitter nail polish into her purse. I was so mortified that when the pharmacist came out from behind the counter to yell at her, I just walked away. I walked away and went out to the street to call my mom. That was the end of that potential friendship, one that went south over twenty bucks’ worth of nail polish—something so shiny and insignificant and totally not worth the risk.
But I want this, this small grubby thing. I want it like nothing I’ve ever touched before.
I put it down on the table and stare at it, sweating. I can’t. I tear out a piece of my notebook paper and pull my pencil out of the spine. I take a hurried rubbing with the pencil, trying to capture the detail on my lined notebook paper, just the way we did in elementary school when we visited the graveyard on a field trip. We took rubbings of gravestones that I still have buried in my art notebooks, somewhere. I turn the artifact over and make a rubbing of the reverse side lower on the page.
I hold my rumpled piece of notebook paper up to the light to inspect it. It’s a sad facsimile of the real thing.
