But Colton spoke first. “Hey, Annabeth. Mrs. Harp. Ya’ll had the same idea. Which movie are ya’ll going to see?”
“Pippi Longstocking,” Ryan said.
Annabeth thought she’d die right there in the line of the MacArthur Village Cinema.
“Are you going, too?” Ryan asked.
“No, my girlfriend twisted my arm. She’s crazy for Paul Newman.”
Just then a pretty, blond girl about Colton’s age, wearing a halter and tight blue jeans, walked up and stood next to Colton. She was a dead ringer for Marcia Brady.
Annabeth suddenly remembered the peeling state of her face. Her hand flew to her nose. She was the ugly duckling next to the beautiful swan.
“Oh, this is Connie,” Colton said.
“You’re Jeffrey Albert’s oldest girl, aren’t you?” Gamma Rose asked.
Connie nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that’s me.”
She sounded as sweet as Marcia Brady, too, which made Annabeth feel even worse. It was evil to hate a sweet person. Yes, Annabeth thought. I’m an evil girl whose face is peeling like a banana.
They moved toward the front of the ticket booth and Annabeth heard Gamma Rose say, “One adult and three children for Pippi Longstocking.”
Her first impulse was to correct her grandmother. The sign clearly stated thirteen and up were considered adults at the movies. But she knew her grandmother wasn’t dishonest. Gamma Rose had just forgotten Annabeth’s age for the moment. Anyway Annabeth didn’t want to correct her because she realized how young thirteen would still sound to Colton and his Marcia Brady look-alike girlfriend.
They stepped inside the lobby and Gamma Rose made her way over to the concession stand. “Can’t watch a movie without popcorn.”
“Have fun,” Colton called out to them.
Annabeth watched him from the back, his arm cradling Connie’s bare shoulders as they walked toward the usher taking the tickets.
The movie seemed silly and Annabeth couldn’t concentrate on it. Her mind whirled with the vision of a boy and a girl on a horse. And as much as she wanted to she couldn’t squeeze Connie’s face from the vision. She tried, but it wouldn’t work. Connie was the girl on the horse, her long silky hair blowing in the breeze and her tan the perfect golden shade.
Later in bed, she started to read “The Princess and the Pea,” but the story left her empty. She knew what was going to happen anyway. If only it ended differently, with the princess deciding she didn’t want to marry the prince. Maybe then she could read to the end. But that wasn’t the fairy-tale way.
A few days later, they drove over to Hilltop Baptist Church to meet the bookmobile. Ryan and Sammy were thumb wrestling in the backseat.
“Ouch!” Sammy said when Ryan bent his thumb back.
“I win! AGAIN!” shouted Ryan.
Sometimes Annabeth wished she was more like her little brother, seizing anything he wanted without thinking of consequences.
Gamma Rose glanced over at Annabeth. “I’d heard Colton’s girlfriend had broken up with him a few weeks back. Didn’t realize she was Jeffrey’s daughter. Guess they got it all worked out.”
Annabeth stayed quiet, staring through the windshield. She didn’t want to pin any hope on what could have been or what could be.
A few minutes later, they climbed the steps of the bookmobile.
“Here they are again,” Miss Erma said, “the book people.”
Annabeth returned her book.
“Would you like another fairy tale?” Miss Erma asked. “I brought the Brothers Grimm this time.”
“No, thank you.” Annabeth quickly walked to the back of the bookmobile, searching for a book about a real girl without a prince.
Squealers
(1973)
THE DAY AFTER Rick Hanson’s funeral, Annabeth sat in her eighth-grade social studies class, staring at his chair. She didn’t know Rick well enough to call him a friend, but he sat in front of her and once even defended her. When prissy Julie Stork wouldn’t lend Annabeth a pencil for a pop quiz, he’d said, “Jeez, what’s the big deal? It’s just a crummy pencil.” That small remark had made Annabeth like him right then and there.
Rick was friendly to most, but didn’t belong to anyone or any group. Every day at lunch, he leaned against the soft-drink machine on the west wall of the cafeteria, taking in the scenes around him. He looked so cool and steady as he nodded slightly at people walking by him.
The week before, some jocks hung tiny Ory Moser on the flagpole in front of the school. Students in parked buses howled as they got a close-up view of Ory dangling from his belt loop like a marionette. His face turned as flaming red as his hair. It was Rick who grabbed Ory’s legs, releasing him from the flagpole. “You stupid assholes!” he’d yelled. “Don’t you know how to act when you aren’t holding a ball?”
When Annabeth heard Rick had drowned at Lake Pontchartrain on a fishing trip with his grandfather, she’d cried as if she’d lost a best friend, even though they’d hardly talked. There had been smiles between them. She liked the way the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled when he grinned. She’d loved his long, curly brown hair, often resisting the urge to reach out and touch it in class. Annabeth knew deep down her feelings probably had more to do with the fact that she had no friends, unless you counted Cora Johnson, the girl in biology class she ate lunch with who kept asking her to visit the Good News Church.
The day after Rick was buried, she was daydreaming when Melody Armstrong whispered, “Did you finish your Spanish homework?”
At first she wanted to look around to see who Melody was talking to because the head cheerleader had never in her life spoken to her. “Did you?” Melody twirled a lock of her auburn hair around her finger.
“Uh, yes,” Annabeth said. She had stayed up late creating sentences from that week’s Spanish vocabulary. She’d never been to a funeral until that day and all her sentences were dark. Mi hermano se ahogó en el lago. My brother drowned at the lake. Las señoras trajeron ropa negra al entierro. The women wore black to the burial.
“He’s in a better place,” Cora had said as they lowered Rick’s coffin into the ground. Annabeth had hated her for saying something so stupid.
Melody tapped her pen on the desk. She wore a mood ring that at the moment appeared amber. “Can I take a look at it?”
“My homework?”
“Mm-hm.” Her lips formed a tight smile. “You don’t mind, do you? I didn’t have any time to do it.” Then she added in a whisper, “I was at the funeral.”
Obviously, Melody had not seen Annabeth there. Annabeth was tempted to mention the service ended at two o’clock, but part of her was thrilled that Melody chose her to ask of all people.
Annabeth opened her binder, then flipped through the pages, searching for the assignment. When she came to her homework, she unsnapped the rings and handed the sentences to Melody, hoping her classmate wouldn’t think she was a weirdo after she read all her depressing sentences. But Melody didn’t mention any of them. She just hastily copied the words to a fresh sheet of paper.
* * *
The bell rang right as Melody finished. She handed the paper back to Annabeth. “Here you go.” She took off for Spanish class, not bothering to ask Annabeth if she wanted to walk with her.
Annabeth’s face grew hot. Letting Melody copy her homework wasn’t going to win her friendship after all. And Mrs. Trulock would surely recognize the same sentences on both papers.
In class, Mrs. Trulock called roll in Spanish. The first day of school they were given Spanish names to be used in class. Annabeth’s became simply Ana. It had taken her a month to respond to it, but now she didn’t hesitate. In some ways she’d hoped the new name would transform her into someone different. But Ana was only said in Spanish class and Mrs. Trulock was the only one who said it.
With the roll call finished, Mrs. Trulock asked the students to hand in their homework. They passed their papers to the front of the class.
Annabeth
’s armpits felt sweaty. She tore off a corner from a notebook paper and rolled it into a pea-sized ball as she watched Melody pass her assignment forward, showing no guilt. She wondered if Mrs. Trulock would think Annabeth or Melody wrote the original sentences.
At lunch, Melody and her friends gathered at their table near the salad bar while Annabeth settled in her usual spot next to Cora, who was bowing her head, silently saying grace.
“Amen,” Cora said aloud, then took a bite of her peanut butter sandwich. Her frizzy brown hair and big glasses overpowered her thin face. Every day she wore a blue knit cap with a button pinned to it that read “Jesus Saves.” Annabeth spent most of lunch doing a mental makeover on Cora, imagining her without that ridiculous hat and her hair cut in a long shag.
“Have you made up your mind about the Bible study?” Cora asked. “Mrs. Elliot said she’d be our sponsor.” She slurped her carton of milk through a skinny straw, then looked at Annabeth like she was waiting for an answer.
Annabeth couldn’t believe she was asking again. “I don’t want to be in a Bible study.” Why couldn’t she find someone else, besides Cora, to sit with at lunch? Someone who didn’t think playing Twister was sinful. This year wasn’t going at all as she’d planned.
“At first, it might be just the two of us,” Cora said, “but I’m sure once the word gets out, there’ll be more.”
Annabeth stared over at Melody’s table, where she was laughing with her friends. Her carefree manner annoyed Annabeth. She’d made a B+ on the first Spanish test because of late-night study sessions at the kitchen table instead of going to cheerleader practice like Melody. Annabeth was convinced that life at Marrero Junior High would have been better if she’d been a cheerleader. Then she would have had tons of friends, pearly white teeth, and be able to do a perfect split. Annabeth thought of Rick and the spunky way he snapped at Julie about the pencil. After Rick’s remark, Julie had unzipped her floral pencil pouch and loaned her a yellow No. 2.
Before heading to the bus, at the end of the day, Annabeth rushed to see Mrs. Trulock. Inside the classroom, her teacher gathered her papers and slipped them into a briefcase. Annabeth tapped on the door.
“Yes? Oh, Ana, come in. Is something wrong?”
A lump gathered in Annabeth’s throat and she tried to swallow.
“Yes?” Mrs. Trulock was waiting.
After taking a deep breath, Annabeth said, “I need to tell you something about my homework.”
Mrs. Trulock listened patiently and when Annabeth finished, she said, “I know this was hard for you to tell me, but I’ll have to mark off from your grade.”
Annabeth studied the speckled linoleum floor.
“As for Miss Armstrong, I’ll take care of her.”
“She won’t—”
“No, she won’t know you told me. I’d have to be stupid to not notice the same sentences. And as you both should know, our school has a very strict policy concerning plagiarism.”
Rushing to the bus, Annabeth wondered what Melody’s punishment would be.
The next morning, Mrs. Trulock returned the assignments. All but one. Melody looked around as if someone else might have had her paper, then she turned in Annabeth’s direction.
Annabeth’s stomach sank. She glanced away. She could still feel Melody’s glare.
At the end of class, Mrs. Trulock called Melody to her desk. Annabeth left the room, wondering what could happen to someone who squeals on the most popular girl in school.
By lunch, the news spread through the cafeteria like the flu. With fists beneath her chin, Cora gazed in Melody’s direction. “She got a zero on her Spanish homework copying someone’s paper. And—she’s been suspended from performing at this week’s football game.”
Melody and her friends shot glares across the room to Annabeth. She tried to ignore them, concentrating on the soft-drink machine and the space next to it where Rick Hanson had stood every day.
“What’s wrong?” Cora asked.
“I feel sick,” Annabeth said.
When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she escaped to the library. Mrs. Grant, the librarian, didn’t mind if students hung out there. “Anything to get kids to read,” she was famous for saying. Annabeth thought Melody and her friends would never discover her in the library. She doubted they even read.
The musty smell of old books felt comforting. She headed to her favorite corner, the paperback section, and read the titles on the spines. She liked paperbacks best because they were easy to carry and easy to hold. One title caught her eye—The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. The cover revealed a girl looking up at the moon. Haunted by the image, Annabeth opened to the first page.
Just as she started to read, someone bumped her so hard the book fell from her hand. “Excuse me!” Karla, one of Melody’s friends, said, but by the way she said it Annabeth knew she didn’t mean it.
Annabeth bent over to pick up the book. Her fingers barely brushed the cover when another shove knocked her off course.
“Excuse me!” Melody said, squinting at Annabeth, who had grabbed a chair to break her fall. A second friend of Melody’s, who Annabeth didn’t know, joined them, and the three girls stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a fence that blocked Annabeth from moving toward the door.
Annabeth glanced toward the circulation desk.
Mrs. Grant peered over her glasses. “Can I help you girls find a book?”
“No, thanks.” Melody sneered at Annabeth. Then she and her friends left the library, but not before glancing back at Annabeth with their chins held high, warning.
Annabeth’s head pounded as she picked up the book and walked to the circulation desk. As she checked it out, Mrs. Grant asked, “Is everything okay?”
Annabeth nodded and left for fifth period.
* * *
At home, a letter was waiting from Gamma Rose. She dropped her books on a chair and read it in the foyer. She loved her grandmother’s letters and today Rose’s closing words comforted her. I’m so proud of you. She’d try to answer the letter before she went to bed.
Red beans were cooking in the Crock-Pot on the kitchen counter and she could smell the smoked sausage that had been added. It was amazing how food would cook in that pot without burning while they left the house. Her dad gave it to her mom for Christmas last year, but he used it now.
Annabeth grabbed a dill pickle and flopped in front of the television, watching the rest of Another World. She missed John Dean and his wife, Mo, at the Watergate Senate hearings. Next to visiting Gamma Rose, following the hearings had been the best part of the summer. John Dean couldn’t possibly be as guilty as those other men, Annabeth thought. He had such a nice face, not extremely handsome, but he was good-looking enough to get a pretty, blond woman to marry him. Mo wasn’t a ditzy blonde like some Marilyn Monroe–type. She looked sharp with her hair pulled back and dressed in suits. Annabeth would never forget the June day that she first saw them on TV. She watched John testify with Mo sitting behind him, supporting him through a hard time. They seemed so romantic. Most days, Annabeth’s dad sat next to her on the couch, watching the trials.
“He’s a crook, too,” her dad had said about John Dean. “Only the worst kind, a squealer.”
Today Merle wasn’t home. Maybe he was on a job interview. When he had lost his job six months ago, her mother went to work at Sears to help make ends meet. It had been an adjustment seeing her dad instead of her mom when she walked in from school. Once she found Merle sleeping on the couch and when he awoke he’d acted guilty as if he was a little kid who’d been caught doing something wrong. She hadn’t liked how that made her feel.
She missed her mom asking how her day went. Lily was a good listener. If Annabeth had a bad day, her mom knew right off. “How about some hot tea and vanilla wafers?” she’d offer. Ten minutes later she’d told her mom everything. She felt instantly better. Now Lily was always tired. Annabeth didn’t want her to fret over her problems.
The hous
e was dark, so Annabeth drew the drapes covering the sliding glass door. In the backyard, her brother, Ryan, was playing soldiers at war with his friends. For that she was relieved. With the way things had gone today she might kill him if he crossed her.
An hour later Merle walked in, dressed in gray sweats and a light jacket. He held his prized metal detector in his right hand. Gamma Rose often mentioned how as a boy he’d loved to trap wild animals. That thought repulsed Annabeth. Now Merle scouted for metal. Mostly he found dropped coins that he added to a giant pickle jar to be used for a future Disneyland trip. There had been other finds—some Mexican coins, an aluminum salt and pepper shaker set, a child’s wagon handle. Sometimes Ryan went with him. Once they got excited because they thought they’d finally found something big. They were right. After digging for an hour they uncovered a Volkswagen bumper. They’d all had a good laugh at that treasure. The bumper now hung on the garage wall right next to the prized bobcat Merle had shot as a kid.
Annabeth wished he’d hurry and put away the detector before her mother returned from work. Lily expected Merle to be on job interviews all day. Annabeth could tell she hated working at Sears. Lily wanted to be home again, cooking for the family and watching Days of Our Lives. These days Merle watched her soap opera. He claimed to do it to keep Lily caught up. Doug and Julie Reports, he called them. And the first few weeks, her mother clung to every word. Lately, though, he hadn’t brought up the soap opera at all and her mother hadn’t asked.
“Hey, Tinkerbell!” her dad said. “How was your day?”
“Fine,” she lied.
“I noticed that you got a letter from Gamma Rose. What did she have to say?”
“Miss Erma got sick last week, and Gamma Rose got to drive the bookmobile. Do you want to read it?”
“No, it’s your letter. I’ll try and write her soon.”
Annabeth knew he probably wouldn’t. When he had a job they called Gamma Rose once a week. They would all take turns talking two minutes because long distance was so expensive. Annabeth enjoyed the letters best anyway.
Part of Me Page 8
