Nothing but Trouble

by Jacqueline Davies

There was nothing to do but walk to the gym. Mrs. Dornbusch made herself comfortable on a folding metal chair that was set up in the corner, and directed the children to jog around the edge. Riley was allowed to sit on a pile of wrestling mats due to his highly reactive airways.

  Each time Maggie and Lena ran by, Mrs. Dornbusch would yell out a puzzle clue, such as, “What’s an eight-letter word for ‘Typewriters, for example’?” and by the time they had lapped the gym again, they would have the answer: “Obsolete!” Or “What’s a nine-letter word for ‘Not proven by fact’ that ends in e?” That had taken two laps: “Debatable!”

  “She’s completely cheating,” complained Maggie, who hated running laps more than any other activity on earth. It was so boring. “You’re not allowed to get help in a puzzle-off.”

  Lena was practically walking, her long strides able to keep pace alongside Maggie with no trouble. “I’ll bet you a bag of jelly beans I know what her answer would be if you told her that.”

  Without even a moment’s pause, both girls answered, “I. Don’t. Care!”

  As they continued to run, Maggie and Lena were careful to keep well outside the lines of the basketball court. At one point, Max shoved Tyler so that Tyler took one step inside the lines, and Maggie would have gasped if she hadn’t been so out of breath. But nothing happened. It really is a dud, she thought dispiritedly. But Lena nudged her and said, “Boy, is he lucky.”

  Lyle was the first to figure out that Mrs. Dornbusch didn’t care whether they ran or not. He dropped out of the loop and settled on the ground with his back against the wall, content to spend the rest of gym taking a nap. In short order, the rest of the sixth graders stopped running as well. But Kayla felt that someone should take charge, and if it wasn’t going to be Mrs. Dornbusch, it might as well be her.

  “Let’s do some stretching!” said Kayla enthusiastically. “It will be a good cooldown. I’ll lead!”

  Kayla walked—with that supreme confidence she always had—straight for the middle of the gym floor. Lena grabbed hold of Maggie’s arm, and neither of them breathed as Kayla walked eight steps directly to the center of the gym.

  “How did she do that?” whispered Lena ferociously. “Is she charmed or something?”

  She’s Kayla, Maggie thought, as if that explained everything. This was immediately followed by the thought, I must have messed up.

  “What’s that?” asked Colt, pointing to the daisy on the floor at the far end of the basketball court. Max, Tyler, Chris, and Stevie all advanced to investigate, just as Becky, Grace, Shana, Brianna, and Jenna approached Kayla to follow her lead in stretching.

  Snap! There was a sound like a drum banging, and then a puff of gorgeous purple smoke rose up from Max’s feet.

  Crack! Another explosion of purple smoke ignited at Becky’s feet, causing her to stumble backward, knocking over Brianna and Grace, who were close on her heels. The smoke looked like something from fairyland. A deep plum color and wispy, it dissipated within seconds, leaving nothing behind.

  Pop! Pop! Chris jumped back, setting off two more little explosions, as three clouds of iris-violet smoke puffed into the air and then drifted away.

  All the sixth graders immediately retreated to the edge of the gym.

  “Cool!” shouted Max, pushing a foot forward to see if he could make another explosion go off.

  “That scared me half to death!” said Becky, but she was laughing, now that the fright was over and she was safely on the sidelines.

  “Somebody throw a shoe or something,” said Max.

  “Stop!” shouted Mrs. Dornbusch, who was on her feet, her crossword puzzle abandoned on the floor beside her.

  Only Kayla was left stranded in the middle of the floor. She stared at her classmates, separated by the unstable ocean of the basketball court. Everyone else was safely ashore. She looked so . . . isolated. It was the first time Maggie could remember seeing a look of hesitation on Kayla’s face. She was always so sure, so confident, but at this moment, she looked frightened.

  Slowly, she backed up, away from the place where the other explosions had gone off.

  Snap! Crack! Pop! Three puffs of purple smoke exploded, causing Kayla to hop from foot to foot. She turned wildly one way, then the other, desperately searching the floor for what was causing the blasts. But the floor was spotless, swept clean as it was every day by Mr. Fetterholf, who took such pride in his school, where he had been custodian for so many years.

  Maggie watched. This was not how the hack was supposed to unfold. There was supposed to be joyful chaos, the whole class running rampant over the gym, the air filled with the snap, crackle, and pop of the harmless explosions and the beautiful, lilac-colored smoke. For Maggie, the hack would have been a triumph of science: the miraculous reaction of a compound and a cation. For Lena, it would have been an act of rebellion: an antidote to the iron fist of Principal Shute. Either way, it was meant to be fun.

  But it was clear that Kayla wasn’t having fun. And Maggie was glad. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be. She knew that it was a terrible thing to take pleasure in someone else’s pain, but deep inside of her, there was a part of Maggie that was happy that Kayla was miserable.

  Serves her right, said her father. Telling that story about you on the first day of school . . .

  Maggie agreed with her father. Kayla looked so scared, it occurred to her that maybe Kayla would wet her pants. Ha! There’s a story that no one would forget, she thought. She imagined telling it at the lunch table. After all, turnabout was fair play. Right?

  “Kayla!” said Mrs. Dornbusch sternly. “Listen to me! These explosions are harmless. They’re nothing more than nitrogen triiodide. A party trick. Just run straight to me. Don’t stop for anything. Just run.” She held out her long, bony arms, as if she could shorten the distance between the two of them.

  But Kayla was frozen. And who could blame her? Running toward the Gray Gargoyle? Most students in Odawahaka spent their years running away from the woman. Kayla couldn’t move an inch from the spot where she stood. It was like she’d been turned to stone, except for a few solitary tears that leaked from her eyes. There was nothing anyone could do to help her.

  And then the mouse parachuted from above. Lena had set it up when she had climbed to the rafters. A single rubber mouse, perched close enough to the edge so that the explosions would nudge it . . . just over.

  It tumbled, falling head over heels, until its parachute opened, and it began to sail straight for Kayla’s head, like a World War II paratrooper ’chuting into Normandy.

  Kayla screamed, “A mouse!” and ran faster than Maggie could ever remember seeing a bipedal creature move. It was like Kayla had rocket boosters on her sneakers. Several explosions went off as she ran from the center of the basketball court to the edge, but she didn’t stop.

  As soon as the mouse landed, it set off the big show. Puffs of smoke erupted from the floor, and the air was filled with the percussive sounds of anarchy: explosions, cheers, whoops, and laughter.

  When all was quiet again, Lyle turned to Mrs. Dornbusch and asked, “Can we run all over the court?”

  Mrs. Dornbusch shrugged. “I don’t care.” She picked up her crossword puzzle and started to gnaw on her pencil.

  All the boys raced for the mouse, but Max was the first to scoop it up. He held it aloft, showing the tiny sign the mouse carried in its paws: ROAR! As the students ran all over the court, searching for the last few remaining explosions, they tossed the mouse back and forth, shouting, “ROAR!” at the top of their lungs. Even Riley joined in the mayhem, wheezing slightly but not wanting to miss out on the fun. Only Kayla asked to be excused so that she could sit in the empty nurse’s office and collect herself.

  When the bell rang and the students finally filed out of the gymnasium—hot, sweaty, and bonded for life—Chris turned to Colt and said, “Best gym class ever.” It was the first time he’d spoken directly to Colt since elementary school.

  Colt nodded. “Like something in
a book.”

  Lena nudged Maggie, a big smile on her face. But Maggie knew that Lena couldn’t really understand the importance of these words. You had to have grown up in Odawahaka to see how things were changing.

  TWELVE

  “WELL, I THINK WE CAN BOTH agree that purple is not Kayla’s color,” said Lena as they walked to Lena’s house.

  “Not after today,” agreed Maggie, laughing. “She’ll never eat another plum again.”

  “Or an eggplant!”

  “Yeah, but who would?” asked Maggie. “Eggplant is the grossest food known to humankind.”

  “I love eggplant!” argued Lena.

  As they walked down 2½ Street, Maggie couldn’t help thinking that Lena must feel a little embarrassed by the shabbiness, the complete and utter ruin of the houses in this particular part of town. Many of them were no more than rusted-out trailers set up on cinder blocks, with no electricity or even water hookups. Not that any section of Odawahaka was “fancy,” but none was as depressing as this forgotten curl of a road that spiraled off from the right-angle streets like a pea shoot gone awry.

  But Lena didn’t seem embarrassed at all. “Ta-da! This is it!” she said, pointing to a house that sat at the top of a hill, almost entirely hidden by overgrown bushes. Yep. It was the house that everyone avoided on Halloween, abandoned for as long as Maggie could remember. A steep set of stairs made of cracked and crumbling concrete paraded in front of the girls. “Thirty-two steps,” Lena said enthusiastically. “I like to take them two at a time.” And she was off.

  When they reached the rotting front porch, Maggie could see that the house was twice as large as hers, but half as solid. The porch banister had fallen off, the front windows were cracked, and the few remaining shutters were gap-toothed and hung crookedly.

  “Watch it,” said Lena, pointing to a hole in the floorboards near the threshold. Then she twisted the doorknob, jiggling it furiously, and kicked the door open. They both stepped inside.

  The living room was empty except for a beautiful Oriental rug in the middle of the room, a single wooden chair, and a spindly antique table just large enough to hold a small vase of wildflowers. The floors were swept clean, and the window glass was spotless. Light flooded the room, pouring in through the tall, curtainless windows. There was a fresh coat of white paint on all the walls, as if they were expecting something worth displaying. Maggie had the feeling that she had stepped inside a bleached and abandoned seashell.

  Lena led Maggie into the large kitchen, which was also drenched in sunlight. The stove looked like it might still run on coal and the refrigerator had rust spots. The green limestone sink had a divider down the middle: one half held glass jars filled with dirty paintbrushes and the other contained a pile of dishes left to soak. Lena opened the refrigerator and started to take inventory.

  “What’s this room?” Maggie looked around the corner from the kitchen into the largest room of all. In it, there was a tall easel and rows of canvases. There was one long table covered in painting supplies and another with all kinds of strange equipment: blocks of wood and long metal pipes and wooden paddles. Maggie’s eyes locked on the table: she spotted five different kinds of acetylene blowtorches, along with safety gloves and goggles. Industrial grade! She worried she might begin to drool—specialized tools always made her heart beat fast. “What do your parents do?”

  “Dad’s a poet. Mom’s an artist. She’s in Paris right now, helping set up a show for this really famous glass artist.” Maggie picked up one of the torches. “He got Mom into it. That’s what all that stuff is. He’s got a one-man show at the Louvre. It’s a big deal.” Maggie wondered, Did she hear something that sounded like sadness in Lena’s voice?

  “Do you want ice cream or leftover lasagna?” asked Lena, her head buried in the refrigerator.

  Maggie paused. “Both,” she said.

  “Well chosen, sensei,” said Lena. She cut cubes of the cold lasagna and dished out bowls of blackberry ice cream. Maggie took a bite of the lasagna and was surprised by how good it tasted. It was obviously homemade, not something defrosted at the last minute.

  After finishing her lasagna, Maggie carried her bowl of perfectly softened ice cream into the room with the glass-blowing equipment. Some of the tools looked positively medieval, but others were clearly high-tech. Maggie picked up a pair of spring-loaded calipers and pinched them on her nose so that they hung from her face. It looked like a strange nose-piercing that extended past her chin. She turned to Lena and said, “What do you think? My new look?” But her voice was so nasal it was hard to understand her words.

  Lena laughed explosively, ice cream shooting out of her mouth. “Very glam!” Then she picked up two pairs of heavy metal tongs and placed them on top of her head. “Mutant bunny ears!”

  The two girls continued to move down the row of tools, repurposing them in bizarre and hilarious ways. When they reached the end of the row, Maggie scooped up the last puddle of her soupy ice cream and asked, “Where’s your dad?”

  “Out,” said Lena. She moved back into the kitchen, where she put her empty bowl in the sink. “Wandering the countryside. Dad says poets who stay shut up in their own houses never have anything worth saying.”

  “Your parents are really different,” said Maggie. “It would never occur to my mother to wander the countryside.” Or go to Paris. Or anywhere, for that matter. “Your parents are daring.”

  “I suppose . . . ,” said Lena slowly. “They’re artists. And artists are creative and nonconformists, but they’re also sort of”—she wrinkled her nose, thinking of the right word—“self-absorbed. I mean, I don’t blame them. You have to really love . . . your art.” Lena’s voice trailed off, and again there was the sound of sadness.

  “I think all parents are kind of self-absorbed,” said Maggie. “My mother spends half her time in her room when she’s home.” Maggie didn’t mention the constant, low hum of the TV at night or the sound of ice clinking inside a refilled glass.

  “Oh! I have something to show you!” Lena shouted, reaching out for Maggie’s empty bowl and putting it in the sink alongside her own. “Something to give you. Two somethings, in fact. Come on!” Lena grabbed her camera, then hurried for the stairs. Maggie followed.

  Lena’s room, the last one at the end of the hall, was enormous. There were six floor-to-ceiling windows, all of them open, and a freestanding clothes rack that seemed to hold Lena’s entire wardrobe, out for all to see. Right in the middle of the room, floating like an island, was a queen-sized bed with four posts made out of what looked like the trunks of white birch trees. Lashed to the posts were two old wooden ladders that formed a trellis across the top. Lena had woven long strips of silk cloth in every color over and through the ladders. The filmy ends hung down, forming a curtain on all four sides that fluttered and shifted with the faint breeze that came in through the open windows.

  Maggie turned three hundred and sixty degrees around the room and stared at the walls. They were covered with enormous black-and-white photos of faces—or at least parts of faces. Two eyes, each six feet wide, looked down on the windows. A cheek. A nose. A perfect set of lips that seemed to be kissing the closet door. And on one wall there was an extreme close-up of a woman’s smiling face.

  “That’s my mom,” said Lena. “The day before she left.”

  “You put these up?” asked Maggie. “These are your photographs?” She continued to wander around the room as if it were an art museum, looking at images that were bizarre, frightening, beautiful, surprising. An eyelash as thick as her finger. A mole the size of her fist. Freckles that seemed to be a road map. An elbow that looked prehistoric. “How do you do this?” Maggie went up to the wall and ran her hands over the surface. The photos were pasted on, as perfectly as if the job had been done by a professional wallpaper hanger.

  “In pieces,” said Lena. “You can feel the places where they join. See. There. And there. So then I just piece them together to make the whole face. Or whate
ver part I want to focus on.”

  “Your parents let you do this?” Maggie thought about the time she’d asked to paint her room black so that she could conduct some light experiments. Grandpop’s answer had been, “Over your dead body.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Lena seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

  Maggie had no response. Why wouldn’t parents let kids be kids? She couldn’t take her eyes off the images. They were mesmerizing.

  “Come on,” said Lena.

  Maggie had to literally hoist herself onto the bed, it was so high off the ground. “It’s like being under a waterfall,” she said, reaching out and running her fingers through the strands of colorful silk.

  “I know,” said Lena, rummaging through the books and papers, the laptop and discarded clothes that covered half the bed. “It’s my favorite place in the whole house.” Her hand dove under the rumpled covers and came up with a rolled-up poster tied with a frayed strip of orange silk fabric. “Here it is! For you!” She presented it like a scroll.

  When Maggie unrolled the poster, it was a black-and-white photo from the 1930s of a woman holding a large box camera, perched on top of a skyscraper high above New York City.

  “Margaret Bourke-White!” said Lena triumphantly. “One of the greatest American photographers who ever lived. And a woman. And a Margaret!”

  “Wow,” said Maggie. “How did you make this?”

  “I have a large-format printer. For my work. I make posters all the time.” Lena waved her hand at the walls of her room.

  “What an epic place for a hack,” said Maggie, staring at the image of the woman at the top of the building. “Imagine getting a police car up there. Thanks!” She trailed her fingertips along the surface of the poster, as if she could feel the building and the old box camera. “It’s going straight up on my wall when I get home. It’s the best Margaret of all.”

  “And now, present deux!” shouted Lena. She jumped off the bed and ran into a different room, then returned carrying a small color photograph. Her voice suddenly became serious. “For you.”