The World From Up Here

by Cecilia Galante

  Two months ago, Grandpa William died. And although none of us saw him more than once a year, because he lived so far away, Momma hadn’t been the same since taking the train out to Arizona for his funeral. I could see the difference after we picked her up at the train station a week later. Usually, it was hard to get Momma to stop talking. If she’d been gone for a few days, her stories could go on for weeks. But that day, after she hugged and kissed everyone hello, she hardly said a word. She looked tired, too; the circles under her eyes were almost violet. She was noticeably thinner and she walked slowly, as if something inside her stomach hurt. She commented on the weather once or twice on the way home, her fingers fiddling with the little necklace around her throat. After a while, she laid her head back on the seat rest and closed her eyes.

  Dad said to give her time; that she was hurting because Grandpa William was gone, and that she would snap out of it. But two months passed, and she didn’t snap out of it. Instead, she started to do things more slowly. Folding a basket of laundry would take her an hour. Making dinner became impossible. And then, two weeks ago, she stopped doing much of anything at all. Since then, I’ve come downstairs every morning, hoping I wouldn’t see her in her usual place at the kitchen table, staring out the window in silence, but so far, it hadn’t changed.

  Until today.

  Momma gestured again with her arms. “Come on, guys, family sandwich.”

  I’ve always thought Momma was beautiful, but now even her prettiness seemed to be worn out. Her hands were still covered with the red blotches that came and went with her spring allergies, and her long hair, which had started turning gray in high school, hung messy and loose around her shoulders.

  Russell dropped his spoon. “Family sandwich!” he screamed, barreling so hard into Momma that she almost fell over.

  But I rolled my eyes and hitched my backpack up my shoulder. I may have been taken aback by Momma’s request, but twelve was still way too old for this silly game. Family sandwiches were definitely not my thing anymore.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Dad said, as I headed for the door. “Where are you going, Wrennie? You heard your mother. Family sandwich!”

  “Come on, Wren!” Momma called, her voice still shaky.

  “Yeah, don’t be a poop-head, you dumb old poop-head!” Russell buried his face in the front of Momma’s bathrobe.

  I rolled my eyes again, then suddenly Dad was pulling me over to join the family huddle.

  “Let go!” I yelled, but my giggles began as he pushed me in flat against Russell’s back and then squeezed the stack of Momma, my little brother, and me with his long arms. It always amazed me that he could still get his arms around all of us, especially as Russell and I kept getting bigger. And that he could still hold us all so tightly.

  “Fam-ly sand-wich!” The four of us jumped up and down, chanting loudly as Dad squeezed tighter and tighter. I could smell toast cooking behind us. Jackson, our golden retriever, barked happily from the other side of the kitchen. The sun peeked out behind the yellow gingham curtain over the kitchen sink, and Dad’s aftershave, which smelled something like gingerbread and dry leaves, drifted over the top of us.

  And then the bus honked outside.

  “Okay,” Dad said, dropping his arms. “Come on, you two. I don’t need any of Mrs. Watkins’s cross looks this morning.” Mrs. Watkins was our bus driver. Dad liked to say that she should have been driving a big rig instead of a school bus, since she was crabby and impatient, the opposite of a morning person.

  Russell’s eyes grew wide. “Bye, Momma!” he screamed. “I have to go or Mrs. Watkins will be evil to me!”

  “She’s not evil, Russell,” Dad said. “She’s just a little rough around the edges. And please, buddy, don’t say anything to her today about the hair on her chin.”

  “It’s long, though.” Russell paused for a moment, considering this. “It’s real long. She should cut it off before it gets stuck inside something.”

  “Russell!” Momma’s voice broke as she said his name. “How about a kiss, sweetheart?”

  Russell rolled his eyes and then ran to her, turning his head dutifully to one side so that Momma could kiss his cheek. She ran a hand lightly along the back of his neck, and then, as he tore away from her, let her arm drop.

  “See you later, Russellator!” Dad said, holding open the front door. “Come on, Wren, let’s go! Mrs. Watkins is starting to look at me sideways!”

  But I couldn’t stop staring at Momma. She was staring at the door where Russell had disappeared, as if she might never see him again. The gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach began to grow. “Momma?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  She blinked at the sound of my voice and then nodded. “Yes, sweetie.” Her voice drifted over the top of my head, soft as cotton candy, as she drew me in for a hug. “You know I love you, Wren, don’t you?”

  “Momma.” I took another step away from her. “You’re acting weird. What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head and dropped her eyes, tracing one of the red splotches on the top of her hand. “Nothing’s wrong, Wren.”

  “She’s okay, honey,” Dad said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “She just didn’t sleep well. I’m going to make sure she gets back into bed before I leave so she can rest up, okay?”

  I listened to Dad’s words, but I watched Momma’s eyes. They had a hollow quality to them, as if the very middle of her, the part I knew and loved best, was missing somehow. Momma is a worrier like me. She frets about things that have already happened—like the scar Russell got under his chin when he fell out of our tree in the front yard; things that are happening right now—like the cavities growing in Russell’s and my teeth; and things that haven’t even happened yet—like Iceland disappearing from the planet because of global warming. But at that moment, I couldn’t even see the worrying part of her. I couldn’t see anything at all. It was like something inside of her, the part that made her Momma, had vanished.

  The bus honked again, slightly longer this time.

  “I have to go,” I said, still watching Momma’s eyes.

  “Yes,” Momma said. “Okay. I love you, Wren.”

  “Bye, Momma.” I blew her a kiss from the doorway. “Get some rest, okay? I’ll see you later.”

  Afterward, I replayed that conversation a million times over in my head, trying to think of all the things I could have said or done differently. Why did I have to say that she was acting weird? Why couldn’t I have just not said anything, the way I usually did? What was I thinking?

  Maybe if I had waited that morning, she would have tried to work up the nerve to tell me what was really bothering her. Maybe she would have told me the truth about what she was thinking about as she stared out the kitchen window for fourteen straight days, or why she’d asked for a family sandwich after so long.

  Or maybe, at the very least, she would have told me good-bye.

  My third-period class is history, which is in Mr. Tunlaw’s room on the second floor. I watched the small commotion as Silver came into the room. I always took a peek at Silver when she arrived, not just because history was the only class we had together, but because I still thought it was so weird that we were related. I think it was in July when Dad told me Aunt Marianne (who’s Momma’s older sister) and Silver were moving back to Sudbury after Aunt Marianne got divorced. They came over to our house twice for dinner, which was a nightmare, since Momma and Aunt Marianne disappeared so they could talk privately, and Silver spent the whole time sitting in the living room, texting her old friends from Florida. It might not have been so bad if I’d had my own cell phone to text with, but thanks to Dad, who thinks that kids today have way too much electronic stimulation as it is, I won’t be getting a cell phone until eighth grade. So I sat there like a dork and pretended to read a book. It’s not that Silver’s ever been outright rude to me; we just don’t have anything in common. And we might have been related at home, but we were already in completely different leagues at school. And
you know how things like that go.

  Now, her usual gaggle of male admirers, including Jeremy, Dylan, and Nathan, followed behind, practically tripping over each other to sit next to her. I couldn’t blame them, really. Her heart-shaped face, wide hazel eyes, and long neck looked like something out of a magazine. Even her outfit—white V-neck T-shirt, black jeans rolled up at the ankle, and purple, patent leather flats—was perfect. Personally, I thought Silver should have been named Sparkle. Or Shimmer. She was all light and air, almost as if she had swallowed a piece of the sun. There was nothing silvery about Silver Jones. She was one hundred percent golden.

  “All right, class!” Mr. Tunlaw, who had been standing just outside the door, moved across the room to his desk. “That’s enough talking for now! Let’s get started!”

  He clapped twice to get our attention, and then smoothed a hand over the front of his brown-and-pink polka-dotted tie. “It’s time to talk about our final semester project. As we discussed before, it must include a two-page paper. But instead of assigning you a general topic, I’ve decided to narrow things down. This year, I want you to pick any historical topic regarding our state to write about.”

  “You mean about Pennsylvania?” Dylan asked.

  I rolled my eyes. Dylan was cute, but boy, was he dense.

  “Yes, Dylan, that is where we live.” Mr. Tunlaw, who had settled himself in his chair, leaned back against the blackboard, propped his blue cowboy boots up on his desk, and began to unwrap a Twinkie. “I’m sure you all know that Pennsylvania is rich with history, from William Penn’s founding of it, to Philadelphia, which is where its founding fathers met to sign the Declaration of Independence. Let’s start with a little brainstorming to come up with some topics of your own. Just throw out ideas. Anyone.”

  “The Liberty Bell?” asked Mandy Dunkin.

  Mr. Tunlaw nodded, taking a bite of his Twinkie. “Good, good. What else?”

  “How about coal mining?” Randy asked.

  “Definitely,” said Mr. Tunlaw. “Keep going.”

  “William Penn!”

  “The Amish people!”

  I looked out the window and thought about the daily writing assignment I still hadn’t finished for English class yesterday. Miss Crumb had asked us to write a few lines about two wishes we’d most like to have granted. My first one was easy. I wished that I were braver. Aside from worrying a lot, I am also the biggest scaredy-cat you will ever meet. Honestly, sometimes even I get annoyed by how much of a chicken I am. Aside from squirrels, I’m also scared of spiders, planes, horses, mean old ladies, and thunderstorms. Sometimes I wonder if I was just born scared, if the little brave gene inside everyone else just didn’t make it inside me. Whatever it is, I wish I didn’t have it. It’s exhausting, worrying so much and being afraid all the time. It takes the fun out of almost everything.

  Anyway, that was my first wish. Miss Crumb, however, had asked us to name two wishes. I thought and thought, but I could not come up with a second wish. If I stopped being such a chicken all the time and could become brave and confident, I could do just about anything. And if I could do anything, what else was there to wish for?

  “The Pittsburgh Steelers!”

  I drifted back to the class, which was still yelling out topics.

  “The Gettysburg Address!”

  “Harrisburg!”

  “Witch Weatherly!”

  The class turned, gasping collectively, to see who had uttered such an insane suggestion. Even I sat up a little straighter.

  It was Silver, who was perched on the edge of her chair, her pretty face cocked a little to one side as she looked eagerly at Mr. Tunlaw and the rest of the class.

  “Witch Weatherly?” Mr. Tunlaw repeated.

  “Yeah!” Silver nodded.

  Dylan drew back in his chair, his lips curled in disgust. “Did you even hear what we told you yesterday during the fire drill?”

  “Well, yeah.” Silver shot a sidelong glance in my direction. “But my mom told me that no one really knows if any of that stuff is even true. It might just be made up.”

  “How does your mom know?” asked Mandy boldly. “She’s not even from here.”

  “She was born here,” Silver contradicted. “And she might not have spent a lot of time in Sudbury, but she heard all the stories growing up.”

  “So why would she say it’s made up?” For the first time since she’d arrived, Jeremy looked annoyed with Silver. “Has she ever been on the mountain?”

  “No.” Silver bit her lower lip.

  “Has she ever talked to Ray Bradstreet about his legs?” Jeremy scooted forward in his chair, eager to defend his position.

  “Well, no,” Silver said. “But …”

  “Yeah.” Jeremy waved Silver off with a flick of his hand. “I didn’t think so.”

  Mandy decided to try a different approach. “There’s no way you could do a report on Witch Weatherly, Silver. You couldn’t get anywhere near her without getting killed first.”

  “I don’t want to do a report on her,” Silver said.

  “Oh?” Mr. Tunlaw uncrossed his cowboy boots and sat up straight. “What did you have in mind then?”

  “I want to interview her,” Silver said. “Ask her what it’s been like, living in Sudbury for over one hundred years.”

  For a moment, the room was silent, except for a faint buzzing sound somewhere. Mouths dropped open, and eyeballs skittered from side to side. “Are you out of your mind?” Dylan said finally.

  Silver didn’t seem to hear the question. “Think about it, Mr. Tunlaw. Sudbury is a part of Pennsylvania. And Witch Weatherly is probably its oldest living citizen. Which makes her a perfect person to interview about the history of the town. It would make a great paper, don’t you think?”

  Mr. Tunlaw seemed to be at a loss for words. A few nervous laughs erupted around Silver. Jeremy and Dylan exchanged a bewildered look.

  “You’re new.” Jeremy sounded almost angry. “You don’t get it, Silver.”

  Silver’s eyebrows narrowed. “What don’t I get?”

  All three boys were turned around in their seats, talking to Silver now as if they were the only four in the room. “Witch Weatherly doesn’t just live on Creeper Mountain,” Jeremy said. “She haunts it. She’s totally evil. No one’s been up there for the past twenty years because of the pits and the snakes and—”

  “All right,” Mr. Tunlaw protested. “I don’t know about …” He paused, flicking his hand at something in the air. “What I mean is, I just don’t know how accurate …”

  He broke off all at once, leaping out of his chair like a startled cat. His cowboy boots made a loud thud as they landed on the linoleum floor. With a hoarse shout, he grabbed at the front of his shirt. “It’s a bee!” he gasped, whipping his hand back and forth in front of him. “Go away, now. Shoo!”

  Witch Weatherly was forgotten as Mr. Tunlaw continued to yell. I giggled nervously along with the rest of the class. It was hard not to. Mr. Tunlaw did look a little funny, hopping and squirming and slapping and grunting, his brown-and-pink tie flopping in front of him like a little flag, the hems of his pants hitched up along his boots. The giggles in the room turned to shrieks as he kicked his legs out wildly, and one of his boots flew off his foot and sailed across the room. Mr. Tunlaw’s face got more and more red as he began to slap at his legs. “There’s two!” he yelped, twisting violently in an attempt to slap his back. “No, three!”

  And then, before any of us could register what he was doing, Mr. Tunlaw wiggled out of his pants and kicked them across the floor. A Twinkie wrapper flew out of one of the pockets, hovering in the air for a brief second before landing again. Mr. Tunlaw hopped up and down in front of us wearing only a pair of blue-and-white-striped boxers, black knee-high socks, and one cowboy boot. “Oh!” he screamed. “Oh, no! No, no, no!”

  And then he ran out of the room.

  Except for a few horrified gasps, the class fell silent, too stunned to move. Mandy sat with her ha
nds cupped over her mouth. Above them, her eyes were wide as quarters. I had scooched as far back into my corner of the room as possible, still looking around fearfully. Were there any more bees? Would they sting me? I’d been stung only once before by a bee, but it hurt. Bad. Dad had to put a poultice on it made of baking soda and spit until the sting went away.

  Suddenly, Jeremy stood up and pointed to the wall behind the blackboard. “Look! There must be a nest!”

  I peeked over, rising a little bit out of my seat. Sure enough, a thin stream of wasps was floating up from behind the blackboard. Wasps were way worse than bees. One by one, they rose in single file, as if following orders from an unseen captain.

  Pandemonium erupted.

  Girls stood up, knocking over their chairs as they headed for the far corner. Mandy Dunkin, Rachel Gerrity, and Nicole Randolph began to scream, swatting the air around them. The boys ducked down as the wasps swooped overhead, and began rolling up their notebooks, ready to smack them flat. Justin Sanders ran over and opened a window. Dylan joined him until all the windows in the room were open.

  But the wasps did not seem to notice their portals of freedom. They rose higher and higher, toward the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, until at least twelve of them clustered in a loose group just beneath the bulbs. Everyone stood there, heads thrown back, watching and waiting to see what they would do next.

  Except for Silver Jones.

  Silver had not moved from her seat in the back one iota during the entire incident. I watched, dumbstruck, as a lone wasp made its way over to her. She kept her eyes on it, not wavering once as the insect flew just inches from the front of her shirt. It made a faint droning sound, like a tiny machine far in the distance.

  “Silver!” Jeremy yelled. “There’s one right—”