Shining On

by Lois Lowry

  I sensed Kyle looking at me then. Really looking—for the first time. I wondered how he saw me now. I smiled at him as he straightened up.

  “I … look, I have something to tell you,” Kyle began uneasily.

  “Forget it.”

  “No, it's important. I …”

  “Dean and Joseph bet you that you couldn't get me to go out for a burger with you. But just so you know, they've each asked me out and I turned them down flat, so they reckoned you had no chance.”

  Silence.

  “Stop it! You're staring!” I laughed.

  “How did you know that?”

  “What? About the bet or that you were staring?”

  “Both.”

  “‘Cause I'm brilliant!” I teased. “And by the way, I wouldn't tell my brother about the bet if I were you. He's a bit overprotective where I'm concerned and he'd probably want to punch your lights out.”

  “I … I suppose you don't want anything more to do with me?”

  “I knew about the bet before you'd even said one word to me—remember?”

  “I still don't understand how.”

  “I heard you.”

  “But we were practically across the field,” Kyle protested.

  “No, you weren't. You were only several meters away and the wind was blowing in my direction.”

  When Kyle didn't answer I said, “Are you OK?”

  “We'd better go back,” he said, his tone strange.

  Now it was my turn to be surprised. “What's the matter?”

  It was a long time before Kyle answered. We started back to the sports field, my arm lightly resting on his. I knew the way back without any problems, but I had wanted to sense what he was feeling. And it didn't take a genius to guess from the way his muscles were stiff and tense what was going on in his head. He wasn't happy.

  “Kyle?”

  “I'm sorry, Amber. I guess you hate me now. And I don't blame you. I behaved like a real jerk.” The words came out in a rush of genuine embarrassment. And there was some-thing else, something more, behind them.

  “Why should I hate you?”

  He looked at me then. And his eyes hadn't changed back—I could tell. He was still looking at me with the eyes of someone who could see me. Not a blind girl. Not someone to be pitied or patronized. Not someone who had less than him. But a girl who could see without using her eyes.

  “So d'you still want to go out for a burger later?” Kyle's voice was barely above a whisper. If it wasn't for my bat ears I doubt if I would've heard him.

  “Course. I'm starving.”

  There was no mistaking the sigh of relief that came from Kyle. It made me giggle.

  “D'you know something?” Kyle stopped walking. He looked all around him, then straight at me. “I hadn't noticed before, but everything around me is …”

  He shut up then. I could feel the selfconscious waves of heat radiating from him. I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing, which made Kyle even more selfconscious.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let's go and watch my brother come last in the four-hundred-meter relay.”

  And we walked over the bridge together to join the others.

  Lois Lowry

  Molly is in the hospital again, and it's my fault.

  Why can't I learn when to keep my mouth shut? I'd already said something I regretted, to Ben, and hadn't had the nerve to go to him and apologize. It was just a week later that I blew it with Molly.

  She was lying on her bed, in her nightgown, even though it was eleven in the morning. She's gotten so darn lazy, and my parents don't even say anything to her about it. That's partly why I was mad at her, to begin with, because she was still in her nightgown at eleven in the morning.

  She was grouchy and mad, too. I'm not sure why. I think mostly it was because school had just ended, before she'd even had a chance to go back. Tierney McGoldrick hardly ever calls her anymore. She doesn't know it, but toward the end of school he started dating a redhaired senior girl. At least I was smart enough not to tell Molly that.

  But there she was, lying on her bed, grumbling about how awful she looks. I am so sick of hearing Molly talk about how she looks. Her face is too fat. Her hair is too thin. To hear her talk, you'd think she was really a mess, when the truth is that she's still a billion times prettier than I am, which is why I'm sick of listening to her.

  I told her to shut up.

  She told me to drop dead, and before I dropped dead, to pick up my sneakers from her side of the room.

  I told her to pick them up herself.

  She started to get up, I think to pick up my sneakers and throw them at me, and when she swung her legs over the side of the bed, I suddenly saw what they looked like.

  “Molly!” I said, forgetting about the sneakers. “What's wrong with your legs?”

  “What do you mean, what's wrong with my legs?” No one had ever criticized Molly's legs before; in fact, even I have to admit that Molly's got nice legs. She held up her nightgown and looked down.

  Both of her legs were covered with dark red spots. It looked like a lot of mosquito bites, except that they weren't swollen.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” she said slowly, looking puzzled. “What could it be? It wasn't there yesterday, I know it wasn't.”

  “Well, it's there now, and it sure looks weird.”

  She pulled her nightgown down to cover her legs. Then she got into bed and pulled the covers up around her. “Don't tell anyone,” she said.

  “I will, too. I'm telling Mom.” I started out of the room.

  “Don't you dare,” Molly ordered.

  I'll be darned if I'll take orders from Molly. Anyway, I really thought my parents ought to know. I went downstairs and told Mom that there was something wrong with Molly's legs; she jumped up with a frightened look and went upstairs. I stayed out of it after that, but I listened.

  I heard Mom and Molly arguing. I heard my mother get my father from the study. Then more arguing with Molly. I heard my mother go to the upstairs phone, make a call, and go back to Molly.

  Then Molly crying. Yelling. I had never in my life heard Molly like that before. She was screaming, “No! I won't! I won't!”

  Things quieted after a few minutes, and then my father came down. His face was very drawn, very tired. “We have to take Molly back to the hospital,” he told me abruptly, and without waiting for me to answer, he went out to start the car.

  Mom came downstairs with Molly. She was in her bathrobe and slippers, and she was sobbing. When they were by the front door, Molly saw me standing all alone in the living room. She turned to me, still crying, and said, “I hate you! I hate you!”

  “Molly,” I whispered, “please don't.”

  They were in the car and ready to leave when I heard my mother call to me. I went outside, letting the screen door bang behind me, and walked over to the car. “Molly wants to tell you something,” Mom said.

  Molly was in the back seat, huddled in the corner, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “Meg,” she said, choking a little because she was trying to stop crying, “tell Ben and Maria not to have the baby until I get home!”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “I'll tell them.” As if they had any control over it! But I would tell them what Molly said, just because Molly asked me to. At that point I would have done anything in the world for Molly.

  I went back upstairs, picked up my sneakers and put them in the closet. I made Molly's bed. The pussy willows were still there, in their little vase. The photographs of Will were back on the wall, and the two of Molly and her flowers were with them now. The chalk mark was still there, faded, but there. It was a nice room, except that an hour before, Molly had been in it, and now she wasn't, and it was my fault.

  I went down to the darkroom, gathered up the photo-graphs of Maria I'd been working on, and walked across the field to their house.

  Will Banks was there, having lunch with Ben and Maria. They were all sitting outside at the picni
c table, eating the entire crop of peas. There was a huge bowl of them in the middle of the table, and they were each eating from it with their own spoons, as if it were the most normal sort of lunch in the world.

  “Hey, Meg!” Ben greeted me. “How's it going? Have a pea. Have two peas!”

  He fed me two peas from his spoon; they were the ten-derest, sweetest peas I've ever eaten. I sat down on the bench beside Will, and said, “Molly's back in the hospital, and she says please don't have the baby until she comes home. I know that's a dumb thing to say,” and then I started to cry.

  Will Banks put his arms around me and rocked me back and forth as if I were a baby. I cried until his shirt collar was wet clear through, saying “It's my fault, it's my fault, it's my fault” over and over again. Will said nothing except “There. There.”

  Finally I stopped crying, sat up straight, blew my nose on the handkerchief Will gave me, and told them what had happened. No one said very much. They told me, of course, that it wasn't my fault. I knew that already. Ben said, “You know, sometimes it's nice just to have someone to blame, even if it has to be yourself, even if it doesn't make sense.”

  We sat there quietly for a minute, and then I asked if I could borrow Maria's spoon. She wiped it on her napkin and gave it to me, and I ate all the peas that were left in the big bowl. There were pounds of peas, and I ate them all. I have never been so hungry in my life.

  The three of them watched in amazement while I ate all those peas. When I was finished, Maria started to giggle. Then we all started to laugh, and laughed until we were ex-hausted.

  It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that some-times the two are very close together.

  I took out the photographs of Maria. Will had seen them, of course, because we'd worked on them together. He is as able in the darkroom now as I am, but our interests are different. He is fascinated by the technical aspects of pho-tography: by the chemicals, and the inner workings of cam-eras. I don't care so much about those things. I care about the expressions on people's faces, the way the light falls onto them, and the way the shadows are in soft patterns and contrast.

  We looked at the pictures together, and talked about them. Ben was much like Will, interested in the problems of exposure and film latitude; Maria was like me: she liked seeing how the shadows curved around the fullness of the baby inside her, how her hands rested on the roundness of her middle, how her eyes were both serene and excited at the same time.

  “Meg,” she said, “Ben and I were talking about some-thing the other night, and we want you to think it over and talk about it with your parents. If you want to, and if they don't mind, we'd like you to photograph the birth of the baby.”

  I was floored. “Golly,” I said slowly, “I don't know. It never occurred to me. I mean, I don't want to intrude.”

  But they were both shaking their heads. “No,” Ben said. “It wouldn't be an intrusion. We wouldn't want just anyone there, and of course you'd have to be careful to stay out of the way and not to touch anything sterile. But you're spe-cial, Meg; you're close to us. Someday Maria and I would like to be able to look back at that moment. We'd like the baby, someday, to be able to see it, too. You're the one who can do it, if you want to.”

  I wanted to, desperately. But I had to be honest with them, also. “I've never seen a baby being born,” I said. “I don't even know much about it.”

  “Neither have we!” Maria laughed. “But we'll pre-pare you for that part. Ben will show you our books, and ex-plain everything in advance so that you'll know exactly what to expect when the time comes. Only, Ben,” she added to him, “I think you'd better do it soon, because I don't know how much longer we have. The calendar says two weeks, but there are times when I wonder if it might be sooner.”

  I promised to talk to my parents, and Ben said he would, too. Suddenly I thought of something. “What if it's born at night?” I asked. “There won't be enough light. I could use a flash, I suppose, but—”

  Ben held up one hand. “Don't worry!” he said. He cupped his hands into a megaphone and held them against Maria's stomach. Then he spoke to the baby through his hands: “Now hear this, kid. You are under instructions to wait until Molly comes home. Then come, but do it in day-light, you hear?

  “That'll do it,” Ben said. “Maria and I are determined to have an obedient child.”

  Before I left, I took Ben aside and spoke to him alone. “I'm sorry, Ben, for what I said that day.”

  He squeezed my shoulders. “That's okay, Meg. We all say things we're sorry for. But do you understand now what I was talking about that day?”

  I shook my head and answered him seriously, honestly. “No. I think you're wrong, to anticipate bad things. And I don't understand why you even want to think about some-thing like that. But I'm still sorry for what I said.”

  “Well,” Ben said, “we're friends, anyway. Hang in there, Meg.” And he shook my hand.

  Will walked me home across the field. He was very quiet. Halfway home, he said, “Meg, you're very young. Do you think it's a good idea, really, being there when that child is born?”

  “Why not?”

  “It might be very frightening. Birth isn't an easy thing, you know.”

  “I know that.” I dislodged a small rock with one toe and kicked it through a clump of tall grass. “For Pete's sake, Will, how can I learn if I don't take risks? You're the one who taught me that!”

  Will stopped short and thought for a minute. “You're absolutely right, Meg. Absolutely right.” He looked a little sheepish.

  I looked around the field. “Will, what happened to all those little yellow flowers that were here last month?”

  “Gone until next June,” he told me. “They've all been replaced by July's flowers. Molly's goldenrod will be in bloom before long.”

  “I liked those little yellow ones,” I said grumpily.

  “‘Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving?’ ” Will asked.

  “What?” I was puzzled. He never called me Margaret; what was he talking about?

  He smiled. “It's a poem by Hopkins. Your father would know it. ‘It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for,’” he went on.

  “Not me,” I told him arrogantly. “I never mourn for myself.”

  “We all do, Meg,” Will said. “We all do.”

  That was three weeks ago. July is almost over. Molly isn't home yet. The baby hasn't been born, so I suppose it's following Ben's instructions and waiting for her. I've studied the books on delivering babies with Maria and Ben, and I'm ready to do the photographs. My parents don't mind. When I asked them, they said “Sure” without even dis-cussing it. They're very preoccupied. I know why, finally.

  It was a few nights ago, after supper. My dad was smoking his pipe at the kitchen table. The dishes were done; Mom was sewing on the quilt, which is almost finished. I was just hanging around, talking too much, trying to make up for the quiet that had been consuming our house. I even turned the radio on; there was some rock music playing.

  “Hey, Dad, dance with me!” I said, pulling at his arm. It was something silly we used to do sometimes, back in town. My dad is a terrible dancer, but sometimes he used to dance with Molly and me in the kitchen; it used to break my mother up.

  He finally put down his pipe and got up and started dancing. Poor Dad; he hadn't gotten any better since the last time we did it, and I think I have, a little. But he's pretty uninhibited, and he tried. It was dark outside; we had eaten late. Mom turned on the light, and I could see on the kitchen walls some of the drawings of wild flowers that Molly had been doing, that she had hung here and there. Dad and I danced and danced until he was sweating and laughing. Mom was laughing, too.

  Then the music changed, to a slow piece. Dad breathed a great sigh of relief and said, “Ah, my tempo. May I have the pleasure, my dear?” He held out his arms to me and I curled up inside them. We waltzed slowly around the
kitchen like people in an old movie until the music ended. We stood facing each other at the end, and I said suddenly, “I wish Molly was here.”

  My mother made a small noise, and when I looked over at her, she was crying. I looked back at Dad in bewilder-ment, and there were tears on his face, too, the first time I had ever seen my father cry.

  I reached out my arms to him, and we both held out our arms to Mom. She moved into them, and as the music started again, another slow, melancholy song from some past summer I couldn't remember, the three of us danced together. The wild flowers on the wall moved in a gradual blur through our circling and through my own tears. I held my arms tight around the two of them as we moved around in a kind of rhythm that kept us close, in an enclosure made of ourselves that kept the rest of the world away, as we danced and wept at the same time. I knew then what they hadn't wanted to tell me, and they knew that I knew, that Molly wouldn't be coming home again, that Molly was going to die.

  Rosie Rushton

  “What do you mean, you aren't coming?” My sister stared at me incredulously. “You can't miss it—everyone goes to the End of Year Ball.”

  “So I'm breaking with tradition,” I retorted. I would have smiled if I could, but I can't, which is half the problem.

  “But Ellie,” she pleaded, “you can't opt out. Like Matt was saying—”

  “I'm not interested in what Matt or anyone else was saying!” I shouted. “Now just leave me alone, OK?”

  After Jess had flounced out of the room, I felt a complete cow. I knew Jess had mentioned Matt because she thought it would make me change my mind, but in fact the opposite was true.

  “Sorry, Ellie.” Jessica poked her head round the door two seconds later. I wasn't surprised—people do a lot of apologizing to me these days. “It's just that—well, every-one's rooting for you and remember what Mum said? You can't hide away forever. And besides, I need you there.”

  “Oh sure,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood. Jess has been really good to me these last eleven months and I hate it when we fall out. “Like you're not going to be fully occu-pied with the Three Musketeers!” Or Four Musketeers, I thought to myself.