The Second Life of Abigail Walker

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Acknowledgments

  the fox had been stepping into stories since the beginning of time. Important stories, everyday stories, stories that only mattered to one or two people. She sniffed stories out. When she smelled one that interested her, she closed her eyes and leaped into the air, moving through the invisible space between one story and the next. Sometimes she took chances and landed in unfortunate places. Like the story of the soldiers in the middle of desert, the sand seeded with explosives. A fox could get killed in a story like that.

  Not that the fox ever got killed. She hadn’t even managed to die of old age, although how old must she be? Ancient of days, her friend Crow liked to say when you asked him his age. The fox supposed that’s how old she was too.

  Now she stood at the edge of a field, in the invisible space between one story and another, and gazed across the green-goldness of it.

  What had drawn her here?

  This field, like all fields, had come from somewhere else. The birds had flown across its blank slate and dropped seeds into the waiting soil. The raccoons gathered burrs in their fur and deposited them as they tracked through the mud, and in the spring the earth took a deep breath, pulled forth roots, and sent out flowers and grasses.

  There’d been something else here once, not too long ago. The fox could smell it. Something that had gone wrong. Her nose quivered. The scent was mixed: the something-gone-wrong smell, yes, but also mice and rabbits and the small berries that came at the beginning of fall, tiny, sour fruit she might eat just before the first frost. These were smells she remembered from the oldest stories, the laughing stories, stories where her kits gathered around her and chattered and barked.

  Suddenly the heavy, dark smell of exhaust from the road filled the fox’s snout. A bus? A truck? Soldiers back from Al Anbar? Quick, quick, burrow into the center of a clump of weeds. Something was coming. Someone. What would she witness this time?

  Maybe it was someone who could help, she told herself, trying to stay calm. Maybe they’ve sent someone to help.

  The fox trembled, and she waited.

  abby was trying to feel brave, but feeling brave was not something she was good at. In fact, she was chicken. A coward. A natural-born conflict avoider. And she was doomed. Whatever happened next, it would not be good, and her day, which had been completely rotten so far, would only get worse.

  There was no way around it, though. She knew Kristen would hear about what happened in language arts. Myla was in Abby’s class; so was Casey. They were part of Kristen and Georgia’s group, and they’d tell faster than milk spilling from a knocked-over glass.

  She wondered if Kristen would use it against her right away (“Hey, Tubby—oh, I’m just teasing! Take a joke!”) or if she would bring it out later for maximum hurtage. Ever since Claudia had moved and Abby had taken refuge on the fringes of Kristen’s group, she had learned how Kristen worked. Sometimes Abby was in with Kristen, sometimes she was out.

  Mostly Abby was out, although she kept trying to find ways to be in. Sixth grade was no time to go off on your own, pretending like having friends didn’t matter. So she offered Kristen her desserts, and some mornings she did Kristen’s math homework on the bus. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference, though.

  Walking into the cafeteria, Abby wondered how much Myla and Casey would tell. Would they give Kristen the whole story or just the most embarrassing part? Oh, why hadn’t Abby picked another word for her acrostic poem? Why not “rainbow” or “horse” or “volleyball”? Why, oh why, had she chosen “bathtub”?

  “Bathtub? Hmm, sounds interesting,” Mr. Lee had said that morning, and he wrote the word “bathtub” on the board. “I’ve always liked the way the word ‘tub’ sounds, that ‘ub’ sound.”

  Marco Perry had been the one who started the chant. He’d slapped his hands on his desktop and called out, “Tubby! Chubby! Abby! Tubby! Chubby! Abby!”

  Almost all the boys had joined in, except for Weber Logan, genius, who couldn’t be bothered, and Anoop Chatterjee, a very serious and quiet boy who never joined in anything the other boys did.

  “Quiet! Everyone!” Mr. Lee had called out, but it was no good. He was too new and too young. He didn’t have control.

  Abby had tried very hard not to cry. She did all the tricks. She stared straight ahead, breathed in deep through her nose, thought about her starfish collection.

  But she’d made the same mistake she always made: She thought about her mom, and how upset she would be if she knew what was happening. Abby imagined her mom sitting at the kitchen table with her cup of coffee, reading one of the giant history books she loved so much. She was happy because her children were safely at school, and Abby’s dad was in his office over the garage, and she had the house to herself and could read about Abigail Adams or George Washington or Thomas Jefferson and take notes for the class she taught on colonial America at the local college. At least thirty books were stacked around her reading chair in wobbly piles, and Abby’s mom was always yelling, “Watch out for the books!” whenever anyone got too close.

  If she knew boys in Abby’s class were calling her names, her face would crumple up, and she would have to put away her books and her coffee, turn off the radio that played classical music all day in the kitchen.

  Abby’s mom couldn’t stand very much unhappiness.

  When Abby thought of her mother unhappy in her kitchen, the tears started to fall. Which only made things worse. Which only made the chanting boys chant more gleefully.

  Abby resigned herself to crying. That was the only way to make it stop. The only way out is through, her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Reisman, had liked to say. Sometimes you just had to cry until you were done crying. Finally a moment would come when you felt your eyes dry, and then you let out a little sigh. If you were sitting with a friend, you might smile to let her know the worst was over.

  Do not think about Claudia, Abby told herself harshly.

  But then she remembered that when she got home, she could e-mail Claudia or maybe even call her. She might say, I bet you don’t miss the boys in this school. They don’t do anything but tease you and call you names.

  And Claudia would say, Don’t forget, we’ll have our own apartment someday, and we won’t let any mean people come visit us.

  The apartment. That was a good thought, and Abby tried to hang on to it. Once, in fourth grade, she and Claudia had taped together four shoeboxes and pretended they were the rooms of the apartment they planned to share one day. They cut doors in the side of the boxes, so you could get from the kitchen to the living room, the living room to the bedroom. Their real apartment would have hallways, of course, but it was okay that the shoe-box apartment just had doors.

  Mr. Lee asked a tall, gangly boy named Martin to read his acrostic poem, and the boys’ chanting wound down. Abby sniffed quietly and wishe
d she had a tissue. She wished the girl who sat catty-corner from her would turn around and smile. But Abby had stopped crying, and it had only taken her a few minutes. That was good.

  She opened her notebook to a blank page and began drawing the plans for her bedroom in the apartment. She sketched in twin beds and a mini-fridge. She drew a smaller bed for her dog, and then she drew a tiny quilt folded neatly on top of the dog’s bed. She drew floral-patterned wallpaper and a giant flat-screen TV. She drew without stopping.

  When the bell rang, Abby had blinked several times and shaken her head, surprised to find herself in Mr. Lee’s classroom instead of her apartment, which seemed much more real to her, even if it only existed in her imagination. The other kids scurried out of the classroom. Only Anoop Chatterjee took his time, carefully inserting his notebook and pen into his backpack. When he saw Abby watching him, he smiled at her slightly and nodded.

  Abby gave a weak smile back and stood up. She took in a big breath and let it out slowly, preparing herself for what she knew was coming.

  She could have gone to the library instead of the cafeteria. Mrs. Longee, the librarian, liked her. She was recruiting her for Battle of the Books. Abby hadn’t told her yet that she wasn’t going to do it. She loved the idea of being on a team of kids who read for fun, but she was afraid she wouldn’t read the books on the list. She had a bad habit of not reading books she was told to read. She liked to choose her own.

  But she was hungry and she wanted chocolate milk with her sandwich, and she figured she might as well get it over with.

  “I’m thinking about going on a diet,” Kristen announced as soon as Abby sat down at the table. “I’m getting so fat. My jeans are really tight.”

  Everyone rushed to assure Kristen she wasn’t the least bit fat. Abby held back for a moment before joining in. She wanted to seem sincere. “You look great, Kristen. You’re probably too thin, even.”

  Mistake. Kristen was not too thin. She was not too fat. She was just right, and to suggest otherwise—well, you just didn’t do that.

  “So, have your parents ever put you on a diet?” Kristen asked Abby, sounding concerned. “Because I’ve heard that one of the worst things you can do when you have an overweight child is to force her to diet. It’s how girls get bulimic. Although, if you ask me, bulimia sounds like a great diet plan. Eat whatever you want! All you have to do is throw it up later.”

  The other girls giggled. Abby felt her cheeks grow hot. I’m not even that fat! she wanted to yell. And it was true. They’d been weighed two weeks ago in gym. Abby had weighed one hundred and five pounds. Kristen had weighed eighty-eight. So what? Seventeen pounds wasn’t that much more.

  Abby looked around at the six girls at the table. Kristen, Georgia, Rachel, Casey, Myla, and Bess. They all weighed around ninety. They were all medium girls. They were medium smart, medium good at sports, their families had a medium amount of money. Kristen was the most important, and Abby was the least. She knew to stay quiet most of the time. To keep her opinions to herself. She was doing her best to be the most medium of the medium girls so that no one would notice her.

  Abby knew she needed to be careful. If she said the wrong thing now, that would be two strikes. Then she’d probably do something stupid on the bus and Kristen would say, “Strike three!” and give her that dead-fish-eye look that meant Abby was all the way on the outside again. Then she’d have to sit at the very end of the table at lunch while everyone gave her the silent treatment, depending on the occasional sympathetic glance from Bess or Casey to get her through the period.

  Abby looked down at her sandwich. It was tuna on homemade wheat bread. Her mother put two more teaspoons of honey in her dough than the recipe called for, so the bread was a little extra sweet, but not too sweet. Abby’s mother wanted her to be friends with Kristen and Georgia. Abby’s mother wanted her to be happy.

  This bread makes me happy, Abby thought. Being friends with Kristen doesn’t.

  “Well?” Kristen said in a voice that suggested she was ready for Abby to show her the proper respect so they all could get on with eating their lunches. “Don’t you think throwing up is a way you could lose weight?”

  Abby opened her mouth to give the answer that would satisfy Kristen. But different words, unexpected words, came out. “I think it sounds sick. Like something you would have to be mentally ill to do.”

  Everyone at the table grew very, very quiet. Georgia, who had been crumpling a chip bag, stopped mid-crumple.

  Kristen smiled, unconcerned. “Well, I think fat people are mentally ill. In fact, I read an article that said that.”

  “Or, like, emotionally stunted,” Georgia added. “You know, nobody loves them, so they eat all the time.”

  Abby almost said, Maybe. She almost said, I think I read that article too. She almost said the sort of thing she always said, so no one would be mad at her. But she didn’t. Instead she slowly put her sandwich back into her lunch bag. She stood up. Her legs felt shaky. The skin around her eyes and nose was cold, as though she’d just dipped her face in ice.

  “What are you doing?” Kristen asked her. “Sit down.”

  Abby didn’t reply. She thought that if she opened her mouth, she might throw up. What’s gotten into you? she could hear her mom cry out. Abby wanted to cry back, I don’t know!

  She started walking toward the cafeteria exit. Something hit her in the back of the legs. When she looked down, she saw Georgia’s crumpled chip bag.

  Well, she thought, pushing open the door with her shoulder. I guess that’s that.

  And for the rest of the afternoon, until the last bell rang, little sparks of light flashed from her fingers. No one else could see them, but she could.

  riding the bus home that afternoon was an exercise in sitting very still while a swarm of bees hummed behind her ears. Kristen and Georgia were buzzing about Abby’s turncoat behavior, how she was lucky they’d been her friends at all, and now nobody would be her friend, who would want to be friends with a fatty like Abby?

  Abby squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. The girl next to her, a fifth grader named Sonya, scootched closer to the window, and Abby flushed, wishing she didn’t take up so much space. She squeezed her thighs closer together, sat up straighter, sucked in her cheeks.

  “Did you hear her say ‘medium’ when Mrs. Moser asked her what size shirt she needed for the chorus recital?” Kristen asked in a super-loud voice. “Medium! That’s a joke! Extra large would be more like it.”

  Abby stared intently at the head of the boy in front of her. He had three cowlicks that she could see, and one was sticking straight up. Did he care? Did he stand in front of the mirror in the morning and rub hair gel on top of his head to try to make the cowlicks lie down? Did it bug him when someone asked him what size shirt he wore? Did he lie about being a medium, even when he knew he was really a large? Did he dread the day in PE when they got weighed like pumpkins at the state fair and everyone listened as hard as they could when the teacher told her assistant what numbers to write down in the record book?

  Probably not. First of all, he was a boy, and Abby was pretty sure boys didn’t care about stuff like hair and shirt sizes. She had two brothers, so she knew this from firsthand experience. And second, from what Abby could see, he was a regular-size kid. He probably didn’t give it a second thought when they got weighed in PE. What would that be like, Abby wondered, not to care? To walk up to the scale, still joking around with your friends behind you, not noticing as the PE teacher fiddled with the marker, pushing it farther to the right, and then a little farther, the number getting higher and higher. She bet he didn’t stand there with his eyes shut tight, his stomach churning, praying that he’d magically lost ten pounds overnight.

  “I don’t know why we started being friends with her in the first place,” Kristen said from behind her. “What a waste of time.”

  “Are they talking about you?” Sonya whispered out of the side of her mouth, like she was an undercover agent in
a movie.

  Abby shook her head. “No, it’s this girl in their homeroom they don’t like,” she whispered back.

  “Named Abby?”

  Abby nodded, and Sonya turned back to the window with a snort.

  Okay, maybe walking away from Kristen’s table hadn’t been such a great idea. Really, what had Abby been thinking about? She should have just said yes, throwing up was a way a person could lose weight. She should have said she was going on a diet that very afternoon.

  A part of Abby was desperate to turn around and swear she’d only been joking. But she knew it was too late. She was tired of doing things and saying things just to make other people like her. She wanted to do and think what she felt like, even if nobody ever talked to her again. It was terrifying, but that’s what she wanted.

  Finally the bus pulled up to the corner of Ridge Valley Road. Abby scurried down the aisle and practically leaped out the door to the pavement. She needed to make a getaway.

  She ran.

  “Who are you running away from?” Kristen called after her. It sounded like a threat, but what kind of threat could it have been? Did she want to fight? Abby outweighed her by seventeen pounds, as Kristen had pointed out at least ten times on their ride home. If nothing else, Abby could squash her.

  Her feet pounded down the hill toward her house. When she reached her front yard, she stopped. She didn’t want to go inside. Her mother might have just made cookies. She was the kind of mother who did that kind of thing when she was home from work, baked treats thirty minutes before her children got home, so the house would smell warm and inviting when they walked through the front door.

  She couldn’t go into her sweet-smelling house with this pack of jumbled feelings—I’m free! I’m doomed!—on her back. Her mother would sense it. She’d want to smooth things out. But Abby didn’t want smoothness. She wanted rough edges. She wanted to feel whatever it was she was feeling.

  She stood for a moment in the yard across the street from her house. The jungle, her father called it. It was the strangest story. The summer before last, the people who’d lived there had gone to Japan for a year. They paid a man to mow the lawn, but nobody ever went into the house while they were gone to check on things. The roof sprang a leak, probably sometime right after the owners left the country, and when they returned a year later, the house was contaminated with toxic mold.