Where I'd Like to Be

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  We trudged farther up the hill, past the Older Boys’ Dorm, with its very own driveway and basketball hoop. Then we tramped down the road as it looped around behind the Older Boys’ Dorm and back down the hill, passing the back of our dorm. In the middle of the loop was a playground next to a large garden area and some benches.

  “We grew a lot of stuff there this summer,” I said, pointing toward some drooping sunflowers. “It’s a good place to come if you need to sit and think.”

  “I never think in public,” Murphy said. “It makes people stare.”

  “Just about anything you do around here makes people stare,” I told her. “There’s not much privacy. You’ve got the staff and the house-parents, plus there’s always somebody from the Department of Social Services running around. Don’t expect to get away with too much.”

  “I’ll put on my invisible shield,” Murphy said, putting her hands up in front of her face, palms out. “Then no one will know what I’m doing.”

  “Just don’t forget where you set it down after you take it off,” I warned her.

  Murphy nodded. “That’s how I lost my last one.”

  We looked at each other.

  I smiled.

  Murphy did her best to keep from smiling.

  “So is that it?” she asked, turning toward the Older Girls’ Dorm. “Because there are things I need to take care of if we’re through.”

  “That’s it, I guess,” I said. But neither of us moved. Our attention had been caught by two kids over by the swing set. They were seven-year-olds: a round, redheaded boy named Toby and a scrawny kid with glasses named Kevin. Toby was circling the swings, chanting, “Your mama ain’t no good; she’s got a butt that’s made from wood,” over and over. Kevin’s hands were stuck tight to the chains of his swing, like Toby’s words were holding him prisoner there.

  Toby wasn’t saying something that kids everywhere don’t say, on the bus, on the playground at school, even out behind the Sunday School trailer over at the First Baptist Church. But when you’re a foster-care child, someone saying something about your mama can hurt as bad as stepping on a nail. Mothers are a real sensitive topic. Once you get older, you learn how to hide your hurt better. But a little kid like Kevin didn’t stand a chance.

  Without saying a word to each other, Murphy and I marched in step over to the swing set. Murphy planted herself in front of Toby. “Hey!” she yelled at him. “Leave that kid alone! You’re a bully, and I don’t like bullies. So scram! Get out of here! Run like the wind!”

  You could see Toby take a quick measure of the situation. He looked at Murphy, who was a good foot taller than him, if not but a pound or two heavier, and then he looked at me. I folded my arms across my chest and glared.

  Toby took off like a shot.

  Poor old scrawny Kevin tried to say something, but he only managed to stammer, “I . . . I . . . ”

  Murphy rolled her eyes. “What are you talking to me for? Go eat some graham crackers, why don’t you?”

  Then she turned to me. “Now is that it?”

  “Yep,” I said. I trailed her over to the Older Girls’ Dorm and up the back door stairs. Inside, Murphy turned and looked at me.

  “Are you following me?” she asked.

  “I live here too,” I said, shrugging. “So I guess I am.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  Murphy made a beeline to the bathroom, leaving me standing open-mouthed in the hallway. Back in our room, I stood in front of the mirror, looking at my yellow reflection, my arms folded across my chest. First I glared, just like I did at that kid Toby. Then I grinned. Out on the playground, me and Murphy had been a team. She could deny it all she wanted, I didn’t care.

  I knew what I knew.

  Chapter 3

  After dinner that night, I took my championship rodeo belt buckle off my belt and started polishing it, the way I do every evening. It’s oval-shaped and silver, with a picture of a horse rearing up on its back legs, and I put it on first thing every day, along with jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of Keds tennis shoes. I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a fancy dresser, but I think my rodeo belt buckle shows a little flair. It was a gift to me from Mr. Willis, who found it at a flea market over in Cranberry one afternoon.

  “Where’d you get that?” Murphy asked when she saw me hold the buckle up to the light and inspect it for marks. “Did you ever ride in a rodeo?” She got up from her bed, where she’d been staring up at the ceiling like she was studying it for a test, and walked over to my desk. “Can I see it?”

  I handed her the buckle, suddenly a little scared she was going to steal it from me and claim it as her own. A girl in second grade had taken my favorite drawing pad from me once and went so far as to tell everyone she’d drawn the pictures in it. I’d considered almost everyone I met a little untrustworthy ever since.

  “A friend gave it to me,” I told her. She peered at it closely, as though she were making sure it wasn’t a fake. “I know it’s on the small side, but I’m pretty sure it’s real.”

  “Oh, it’s real all right,” Murphy said, nodding like an expert. “I knew a boy once who was a famous rodeo star, and he had twenty or thirty of these in a trunk in his room. I’d know if this one were fake.”

  She walked back to her bed still carrying the belt buckle, and I had to keep myself from jumping over to snatch it back from her. When she went on talking, it was like she was having a conversation with the buckle, not me, since she never once looked me in the eye.

  “This boy grew up on a ranch in Arizona, so riding horses was like walking to him, and breaking colts was something he’d been doing since he was a little kid. He started riding in rodeos when he was really young, too, and he was pretty good, but he wasn’t the best, and he was the kind of kid who wanted to be the best at whatever he did.”

  “So what did he do?” I asked, inching my chair closer to her bed, in part to let Murphy know I was interested in what she had to say, in part to lunge for her if she tried to make a break for it with my belt buckle.

  Murphy balanced the buckle on the palm of her hand. “He went east to live with his aunt. I don’t know if you ever heard of Ocracoke Island, but that’s where he went because that’s where they have wild ponies. Worse than wild. Those ponies were feral.”

  “Doesn’t feral just mean wild?”

  Murphy shook her head, still not looking at me. “You might think so, but they’re two different words completely. Feral is wild to the furthest degree. No one could ever break those ponies or even get near them. But this boy, he figured out how to talk to the ponies. For hundreds of years, people had been trying to break the feral ponies of Ocracoke Island, and this boy finally learned the secret. After that, he was never bucked from a horse again. If you know anything about rodeo, you’d know his name.”

  I had to admit that I didn’t know a thing in the world about rodeo. “But what was the secret?” I asked, reaching for my buckle and feeling relieved when Murphy handed it back to me.

  “Poetry,” Murphy said. “He told them poems, and after awhile they got so hungry to hear them, they’d do anything he asked.”

  Murphy’s story made me want to draw something, which is usually how a good story affects me. I was about to ask her if she wanted some paper and pencils, thinking she might want to draw too, but before I had a chance, she’d already flipped off her desk light and headed out of the room.

  Later, when I was lying in bed, I tried to figure out whether Murphy liked me or not. Every time I thought she wanted to be friends, she up and walked out the door. Maybe she thought I was too boring to be her friend. After all, she’d traveled all over the world and had artifacts hanging over her bed. What did I have? A belt buckle? No wonder she wasn’t the least bit interested.

  Just when I’d halfway decided to give up on ever being friends with Murphy, her voice reached across the dark alley between our beds.

  “Hey, Maddie,” she whispered. “Look at the clock.”

 
The digital clock on my desk read 11:11.

  “What about it?”

  “Make a wish. Whatever you wish for at 11:11 will come true.”

  I thought about it for two seconds. “Okay, I wish for a million dollars.”

  “Don’t tell your wish! Keep it to yourself. And make it serious.”

  “A million dollars isn’t serious?”

  “Of course not,” Murphy said. “It’s not even important.”

  Now the clock read 11:12.

  “You’ll get another chance in the morning,” Murphy whispered. “So make it something good.”

  I closed my eyes and thought of good things to wish for. I would wish for Murphy to like me, even if she was exotic and interesting and I was just myself. I’d wish for Granny Lane to get her eyesight back and for Mr. Willis to win the Upper Room magazine essay contest, which he tried for every year. And right before I fell asleep, I decided to wish for a million dollars. Maybe it wasn’t important, but it sure would come in handy.

  The next morning Corinne and her husband, Dan, loaded up the dorm van with everyone who went to the middle school and drove us to school. We usually had to ride the bus that pulled up at the end of the drive every morning at 7:30, but Corinne and Dan had to take Murphy to the front office to sign her in, so we all got to ride. I made sure to sit next to Murphy so I could point out the few spots of interest between the East Tennessee Children’s Home and Lawton Crockett Middle School.

  “So do you know whose homeroom you’ll be in?” I asked her as the van neared the school.

  “The paper they gave me says I’m in room one hundred and twenty-four,” Murphy said, leaning her head against the window. She sounded bored with school already. “Mrs. Cattrell. But I switch out for math, to the accelerated class.”

  I was impressed. Not many of the foster-care children I knew were in the accelerated classes. I was in accelerated reading, but that’s just because I’d been reading since I was four. Mr. Virgil Willis taught me. Every morning he’d bring over the Johnson City Press, and we’d read through the sports section. As a result, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball, which hasn’t come in handy so far, but you never know.

  “I’m in Mr. Sanders’ class. We sit next to Mrs. Cattrell’s at lunch,” I told Murphy, “and they don’t care if we mix up tables. So we can eat together.”

  “Girl, you talk too much in the morning,” Donita said, reaching out her foot to kick me lightly on the shin. “Fact is, you talk too much all the time.”

  I knew she was just joking, because if she hadn’t been, she would have kicked me a lot harder. Me and Donita had always gotten along real well, even if we weren’t best friends. She and Kandy had naturally gotten matched up together, on account of them arriving at the Home at the same time and both of them from Knoxville. But I liked how Donita always had some interesting project going on. Last summer she started a green-bean business, growing beans in our garden and selling them to the congregation of the First Baptist Church after Sunday services, and lately she’d been talking about taking a correspondence course in how to speak Japanese so she could be an international businesswoman one day.

  “I’m just trying to give Murphy some important information about her new environment,” I told Donita. “I’m trying to be helpful here.”

  “Miss Murphy Oil Soap can eat lunch without your help,” Donita said, kicking my other shin. “She don’t need you there to hold her hand.”

  “I’ll see you at lunch, don’t forget,” I called to Murphy after we arrived at school, and she was headed toward the main office with Dan and Corinne. She nodded without turning her head, but I was pretty sure she’d heard me.

  When lunchtime came around, I carried my tray, with its taco, salad, beans, and Jell-O square, out into the cafeteria, searching for Murphy. I expected that she’d be sitting all by herself, looking lonely, hoping that I’d be there any minute to save her from the humiliation of eating alone.

  Which was why it was such a surprise to see Murphy with her head thrown back, laughing like she’d heard the funniest thing in the world, and Logan Parrish beside her chewing on a taco, smiling and smiling.

  Chapter 4

  One day last spring, when the beautiful May morning was begging all us kids to come out and play, and our teacher Mrs. Harris kept hinting she was going to turn us loose for recess ten minutes early since most of us had done real well on the math test, Logan Parrish threw a fit because he’d gotten a ninety-eight instead of a one hundred. He stood in front of Mrs. Harris’s desk waving his hands around like a crazy person, while everyone in the classroom moaned and groaned and yelled out, “C’mon, Logan!” and “Save it for after school, Logan!”

  By the time Logan was done, we could look out the window and see all the other fifth grade classes already on the playground. We’d missed seven minutes of a beautiful spring day recess on account of Logan Parrish, but he ignored the boos that came his way as he walked back to his seat, the ninety-eight unchanged on the top of his test paper, still fussing and fuming under his breath.

  That was just the sort of misfit Logan Parrish was. He didn’t even try to get on anyone’s good side, the way poor old pimply Molly Dietz did, handing out Twinkies at lunchtime and writing book reports for people. You couldn’t even feel sorry for him. He couldn’t care less whether you did or not.

  “What are you laughing about?” I asked, setting down my tray, trying to hide my disappointment that Murphy was eating lunch with the most despised person in the sixth grade. “Did I miss a good joke?”

  Murphy tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “Oh, we were just discussing Mrs. Cattrell. She explained how to multiply square roots in class today. It was pretty painful.”

  “She has to use a calculator, if you can believe it,” Logan said, shaking his head, which as usual was covered up by a grungy blue Fraley’s Feeds baseball cap. “It’s so pathetic.”

  I examined my taco. Math was not my strong point. “So how’s your first day going, anyway?” I asked Murphy. “I mean, besides the square roots and all?”

  “Okay,” Murphy said, taking a bite of pinto beans. “I’ve seen worse schools than this one, I guess.”

  “You should join the band,” Logan told her. “There are a few people who aren’t morons in band, unlike the rest of the clubs in this school.”

  He had a stringy little piece of lettuce hanging from his glasses, but before I could think of a polite way to mention it, Murphy reached over and flicked it off. “There seem to be some low-flying vegetables in the air today,” she said, smiling at him, her green eyes shining. Logan went red, and he looked at Murphy all googly-eyed, like she was a present Santa Claus had just dropped on the table in front of him.

  Murphy leaned over and tapped her fork on my tray. “Hey, Maddie, can we have boys over at the dorm? I mean, can Logan come over?”

  “Ricky Ray comes to visit me in the afternoon sometimes,” I said. “So I guess so.”

  Logan wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Is Ricky Ray your boyfriend?”

  “Ricky Ray is six,” I told him. “He’s a little young for romance.”

  Looking at his watch, Logan said, “My mom’s picking me up for a dentist’s appointment in five minutes. Should I tell her to drop me off at the Home this afternoon, around four?”

  “Sure,” Murphy told him. “It’s the first dorm as soon as you come up the driveway. I’ll be waiting out front.”

  “Waiting to do what?” I asked as we watched Logan walk out of the cafeteria, his two-ton backpack hanging off his right shoulder, his trumpet case in his left hand. “What on earth could you think up to do with Logan Parrish?”

  “Well, there’s math homework, for one thing,” Murphy said, popping her Jell-O with a spoon. “And looking for something to do, for another. I’m the sort of person who always needs something interesting to do, wherever I am. I was raised that way.”

  “But why Logan Parrish?” I asked. “What makes you think he’ll be interesting?”<
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  Murphy began packing up her stuff. “What you don’t understand about Logan is that he’s a frog prince.”

  “A what?”

  “A frog prince. A person who once was a frog but who got the right kiss and turned into a prince. Can’t you tell he used to be an amphibian? He’s still not used to being human, that’s perfectly clear to me,” Murphy said, shoving a notebook into her backpack. “It’s like he’s not of this world, not of that world.”

  I’ll tell you, my head was starting to spin. For one thing, who in the world would kiss Logan Parrish?

  I stood and picked up my tray to take it over to the trash. “I think you’re confusing Logan Parrish with some fairy tale,” I told Murphy. “Trust me, they’re two entirely different things.”

  “Don’t you believe that magical things can happen?” Murphy looked at me like she was dead serious and expected a serious answer in return.

  I was stumped. “I guess I never thought about it,” I said. “But I haven’t seen much evidence to prove it.”

  “Oh, there’s more to everything than the eye can see,” Murphy informed me. “I thought everybody knew that.”

  Chapter 5

  I was in a bad mood when Ricky Ray came over that afternoon, which he sensed right away. Little kids are smarter than anyone ever gives them credit for.

  “Let’s look at the books, Maddie,” he said, tugging on my sleeve. “It’ll make you feel happier.”

  We were sitting in the common room, on the brown couch that had coffee stains all over it. It had been donated by someone from the First Baptist Church of Elizabethton, which is the church that sponsors the Children’s Home. Whoever donated this couch needed to cut down on the caffeine; that much was clear.

  “I don’t feel like it, Ricky Ray,” I said. “You have to be in the right mood for the books to work.”