“Right.”
That afternoon, crouched in the stronghold of Terabithia, they held a council of war. How to get Janice Avery without ending up squashed or suspended—that was their problem.
“Maybe we could get her caught doing something.” Leslie was trying out another idea after they had both rejected putting honey on her bus seat and glue in her hand lotion. “You know she smokes in the girls’ room. If we could just get Mr. Turner to walk past while the smoke is pouring out—”
Jess shook his head hopelessly. “It wouldn’t take her five minutes to find out who squawked.” There was a moment of silence while they both considered what Janice Avery might do to anyone who reported her to the principal. “We gotta get her without her knowing who done it.”
“Yeah.” Leslie chewed away at a dried apricot. “You know what girls like Janice hate most?”
“What?”
“Being made a fool of.”
Jess remembered how Janice had looked that day he’d made everyone laugh at her on the bus. Leslie was right. There was a crack in the old hippo hide. “Yeah.” He nodded, beginning to smile. “Yeah. Do we get her about being fat?”
“How about,” Leslie began slowly, “how about boys? Who’s she stuck on?”
“Willard Hughes, I reckon. Every girl in the seventh grade slides to the ground when he walks by.”
“Yeah.” Leslie’s eyes were shining. The plan came all in a rush. “We write her a note, you see, and pretend it’s from Willard.”
Jess was already getting a pencil from the can and yanking a piece of notebook paper out from under a rock. He handed them to Leslie.
“No, you write. My handwriting is too good for Willard Hughes.”
He got set and waited.
“OK,” she said. “Um. ‘Dear Janice.’ No. ‘Dearest Janice.’”
Jess hesitated, doubtful.
“Believe me, Jess. She’ll eat it up. OK. ‘Dearest Janice.’ Don’t worry about punctuation or anything. We have to make it look as if Willard Hughes really wrote it. OK. ‘Dearest Janice, Maybe you won’t believe me, but I love you.’”
“You think she’ll…?” he asked as he wrote it down.
“I told you, she’ll eat it up. Girls like Janice Avery believe just what they want to in this kind of situation. OK, now. ‘If you say you do not love me, it will break my heart. So please don’t. If you love me as much as I love you, my darling—’”
“Hold it. I can’t write that fast.”
Leslie waited, and when he looked up, she continued in a moony voice, “‘Meet me behind the school this afternoon after school. Do not worry about missing your bus. I want to walk home with you and talk about US’—put ‘us’ in capitals—‘my darling. Love and kisses, Willard Hughes.’” “Kisses?”
“Yeah, kisses. Put a little row of x’s in there, too.” She paused, looking over his shoulder while he finished. “Oh, yes. Put ‘P.S.’”
He did.
“Um. ‘Don’t tell any—don’t tell nobody. Let our love be a secret for only us two right now.’”
“Why’cha put that in?”
“So she’ll be sure to tell somebody, stupid.” Leslie reread the note, nodding approval. “Good. You misspelled ‘believe’ and ‘two.’” She studied it a minute longer. “Gee, I’m pretty good at this.”
“Sure. You probably had some big secret love down in Arlington.”
“Jess Aarons, I’m going to kill you.”
“Hey, girl, you kill the king of Terabithia, and you’re in trouble.”
“Regicide,” she said proudly.
“Regi-what?”
“Did I ever tell you the story of Hamlet?”
He rolled over on his back. “Not yet,” he said happily. Lord, he loved Leslie’s stories. Someday, when he was good enough, he would ask her to write them in a book and let him do all the pictures.
“Well,” she began, “there was once a prince of Denmark, named Hamlet….”
In his head he drew the shadowy castle with the tortured prince pacing the parapets. How could you make a ghost come out of the fog? Crayons wouldn’t do, of course, but with paints you could put one thin color on top of another so that you would begin to see a pale figure moving from deep inside the paper. He began to shiver. He knew he could do it if Leslie would let him use her paints.
The hardest part of the plan to get Janice Avery was to plant the note. They sneaked into the building the next morning before the first bell. Leslie went several yards ahead so that if they were caught, no one would think they were together. Mr. Turner was death on boys and girls he caught sneaking around the halls together. She got to the door of the seventh-grade classroom and peeked in. Then she signaled Jess to come ahead. The hairs prickled up his neck. Lord.
“How’ll I find her desk?”
“I thought you knew where she sat.”
He shook his head.
“I guess you’ll have to look in every one until you find it. Hurry. I’ll be lookout for you.” She closed the door quietly and left him shuffling through each desk, trying to be careful not to make a mess, but his stupid hands were shaking so much he could hardly pull anything out to look for names.
Suddenly he heard Leslie’s voice. “Oh, Mrs. Pierce, I’ve just been standing here waiting for you.”
Lord. The seventh-grade teacher was right out there in the hall, heading for this room. He stood frozen. He couldn’t hear what Mrs. Pierce was saying back to Leslie through the closed door.
“Yes, ma’am. There is a very interesting nest on the south end of the building, and since”—Leslie raised her voice even louder—“you know so much about science, I was hoping you could take a minute to look at it with me and tell me what built it.”
There was the mumble of a reply.
“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Pierce”—Leslie was practically screaming—“It won’t take but a minute, and it would mean so much to me!”
As soon as he heard their retreating footsteps, he flew around the remaining desks until, oh, joy, he found one with a composition book that had Janice Avery’s name on it. He stuffed the note on top of everything else inside the desk and raced out of the room to the boys’ room, where he hid in one of the stalls until the bell rang to go to homeroom.
At recess time Janice Avery was in a tight huddle with Wilma and Bobby Sue. Then, instead of teasing the little girls, the three of them wandered off arm in arm to watch the big boys’ football. As the trio passed them, Jess could see Janice’s face all pink and prideful. He rolled his eyes at Leslie, and she rolled hers back at him.
As the bus was about to pull out that afternoon, one of the seventh-grade boys, Billy Morris, yelled up to Mrs. Prentice that Janice Avery wasn’t on the bus yet.
“It’s OK, Miz Prentice,” Wilma Dean called up. “She ain’t riding this evening.” Then in a loud whisper, “Reckon you all know that Janice has a heavy date with you know who.”
“Who?” asked Billy.
“Willard Hughes. He’s so crazy about her he can’t hardly stand it. He’s even walking her all the way home.”
“Yeah? Well the 304 just pulled out with Willard Hughes on the back seat. If he’s got a big date, he don’t seem to know much about it.”
“You lie, Billy Morris!”
Billy yelled a cuss word, and the entire back seat plunged into a heated discussion as to whether Janice Avery and Willard Hughes were or were not in love and were or were not seeing each other secretly.
As Billy got off the bus, he hollered to Wilma, “You just better tell Janice that Willard is gonna be mad when he hears what she’s spreading all over the school!”
Wilma’s face was crimson as she screamed out the window, “OK, you dummy! You talk to Willard. You’ll see. Just ask him about that letter! You’ll see!”
“Poor old Janice Avery,” Jess said as they sat in the castle later.
“Poor old Janice? She deserves everything she gets and then some!”
“I reckon.” He sighed. �
��But, still—”
Leslie looked stricken. “You’re not sorry we did it, are you?”
“No. I reckon we had to do it, but still—”
“Still what?”
He grinned. “Maybe I got this thing for Janice like you got this thing for killer whales.”
She punched him in the shoulder. “Let’s go out and find some giants or walking dead to fight. I’m sick of Janice Avery.”
The next day Janice Avery stomped onto the bus, her eyes daring everyone in sight to say a word. Leslie nudged May Belle.
May Belle’s eyes went wide. “Did ’cha—?”
“Shhh. Yes.”
May Belle turned completely around and stared at the back seat; then she turned back and poked Jess. “You made her that mad?”
Jess nodded, trying to move his head as little as possible as he did so.
“We wrote that letter,” Leslie whispered. “But you mustn’t tell anyone, or she’ll kill us.”
“I know,” said May Belle, her eyes shining. “I know.”
SIX
The Coming of Prince Terrien
Christmas was almost a month away, but at Jess’s house the girls were already obsessed with it. This year Ellie and Brenda both had boyfriends at the consolidated high school and the problem of what to give them and what to expect from them was cause of endless speculation and fights. Fights, because as usual, their mother was complaining that there was hardly enough money to give the little girls something from Santa Claus, let alone a surplus to buy record albums or shirts for a pair of boys she’d never set eyes on.
“What are you giving your girl friend, Jess?” Brenda screwed her face up in that ugly way she had. He tried to ignore her. He was reading one of Leslie’s books, and the adventures of an assistant pig keeper were far more important to him than Brenda’s sauce.
“Don’t you know, Brenda?” Ellie joined in. “Jess ain’t got no girl friend.”
“Well, you’re right for once. Nobody with any sense would call that stick a girl.” Brenda pushed her face right into his and grinned the word “girl” through her big painted lips. Something huge and hot swelled right up inside of him, and if he hadn’t jumped out of the chair and walked away, he would have smacked her.
He tried to figure out later what had made him so angry. Partly, of course, it made him furious that anyone as dumb as Brenda would think she could make fun of Leslie. Lord, it hurt his guts to realize that it was Brenda who was his blood sister, and that really, from anyone else’s point of view, he and Leslie were not related at all. Maybe, he thought, I was a foundling, like in the stories. Way back when the creek had water in it, I came floating down it in a wicker basket waterproofed with pitch. My dad found me and brought me here because he’d always wanted a son and just had stupid daughters. My real parents and brothers and sisters live far away—farther away than West Virginia or even Ohio. Somewhere I have a family who have rooms filled with nothing but books and who still grieve for their baby who was stolen.
He shook himself back to the source of his anger. He was angry, too, because it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give Leslie. It was not that she would expect something expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much as he needed to eat when he was hungry.
He thought about making her a book of his drawings. He even stole paper and crayons from school to do it with. But nothing he drew seemed good enough, and he would end up scrawling across the half-finished page and poking it into the stove to burn up.
By the last week of school before the holiday, he was growing desperate. There was no one he could ask for help or advice. His dad had told him he would give him a dollar for each member of the family, but even if he cheated on the family presents, there was no way he could get from that enough to buy Leslie anything worth giving her. Besides, May Belle had her heart set on a Barbie doll, and he had already promised to pool his money with Ellie and Brenda for that. Then the price had gone up, and he found he would have to go over into every one else’s dollar to make up the full amount for May Belle. Somehow this year May Belle needed something special. She was always moping around. He and Leslie couldn’t include her in their activities, but that was hard to explain to someone like May Belle. Why didn’t she play with Joyce Ann? He couldn’t be expected to entertain her all the time. Still—still, she ought to have the Barbie.
So there was no money, and he seemed paralyzed in his efforts to make anything for Leslie. She wouldn’t be like Brenda or Ellie. She wouldn’t laugh at him no matter what he gave her. But for his own sake he had to give her something that he could be proud of.
If he had the money, he’d buy her a TV. One of those tiny Japanese ones that she could keep in her own room without bothering Judy and Bill. It didn’t seem fair with all their money that they’d gotten rid of the TV. It wasn’t as if Leslie would watch the way Brenda did—with her mouth open and her eyes bulging like a goldfish, hour after hour. But every once in a while, a person liked to watch. At least if she had one, it would be one less thing for the kids at school to sneer about. But, of course, there was no way that he could buy her a TV. It was pretty stupid of him even to think about it.
Lord, he was stupid. He gazed miserably out the window of the school bus. It was a wonder someone like Leslie would even give him the time of day. It was because there was no one else. If she had found anyone else at that dumb school—he was so stupid he had almost gone straight past the sign without catching on. But something in a corner of his head clicked, and he jumped up, pushing past Leslie and May Belle.
“See you later,” he mumbled, and shoved his way up the aisle through pair after pair of sprawling legs.
“Lemme off here, Miz Prentice, will you?”
“This ain’t your stop.”
“Gotta do an errand for my mother,” he lied.
“Long as you don’t get me into trouble.” She eased the brakes.
“No’m. Thanks.”
He swung off the bus before it had really stopped and ran back toward the sign.
“Puppies,” it said. “Free.”
Jess told Leslie to meet him at the castle stronghold on Christmas Eve afternoon. The rest of his family had gone to the Millsburg Plaza for last-minute shopping, but he stayed behind. The dog was a little brown-and-black thing with great brown eyes. Jess stole a ribbon from Brenda’s drawer, and hurried across the field and down the hill with the puppy squirming in his arms. Before he got to the creek bed, it had licked his face raw and sent a stream down his jacket front, but he couldn’t be mad. He tucked it tightly under his arm and swung across the creek as gently as he could. He could have walked through the gully. It would have been easier, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that one must enter Terabithia only by the prescribed entrance. He couldn’t let the puppy break the rules. It might mean bad luck for both of them.
At the stronghold he tied the ribbon around the puppy’s neck, laughing as it backed out of the loop and chewed at the ends of the ribbon. It was a clever, lively little thing—a present Jess could be proud of.
There was no mistaking the delight in Leslie’s eyes. She dropped to her knees on the cold ground, picked the puppy up, and held it close to her face.
“Watch it,” Jess cautioned. “It sprays worse’n a water pistol.”
Leslie moved it out a little way. “Is it male or female?”
Once in a rare while there was something he could teach Leslie. “Boy,” he said happily.
“Then we’ll name him Prince Terrien and make him the guardian of Terabithia.”
She put the puppy down and got to her feet.
“Where you going?”
“To the grove of the pines,” she answered. “This is a time of greatest joy.”
Later that afternoon Leslie gave Jess his present. It was a box of watercolors with twenty-four tubes of color and three brushes and a pad of heavy art paper.
“Lord,” he said. “Thank you.” He tried to think of a better way to sa
y it, but he couldn’t. “Thank you,” he repeated.
“It’s not a great present like yours,” she said humbly, “but I hope you’ll like it.”
He wanted to tell her how proud and good she made him feel, that the rest of Christmas didn’t matter because today had been so good, but the words he needed weren’t there. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said, and then got up on his knees and began to bark at Prince Terrien. The puppy raced around him in circles, yelping with delight.
Leslie began to laugh. It egged Jess on. Everything the dog did, he imitated, flopping down at last with his tongue lolling out. Leslie was laughing so hard she had trouble getting the words out. “You—you’re crazy. How will we teach him to be a noble guardian? You’re turning him into a clown.”
“R-r-r-oof,” wailed Prince Terrien, rolling his eyes skyward. Jess and Leslie both collapsed. They were in pain from the laughter.
“Maybe,” said Leslie at last. “We’d better make him court jester.”
“What about his name?”
“Oh, we’ll let him keep his name. Even a prince”—this in her most Terabithian voice—“even a prince may be a fool.”
That night the glow of the afternoon stayed with him. Even his sisters’ squabbling about when presents were to be opened did not touch him. He helped May Belle wrap her wretched little gifts and even sang “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” with her and Joyce Ann. Then Joyce Ann cried because they had no fireplace and Santa wouldn’t be able to find the way, and suddenly he felt sorry for her going to Millsburg Plaza and seeing all those things and hoping that some guy in a red suit would give her all her dreams. May Belle at six was already too wise. She was just hoping for that stupid Barbie. He was glad he’d splurged on it. Joyce Ann wouldn’t care that he only had a hair clip for her. She would blame Santa, not him, for being cheap.
He put his arm awkwardly around Joyce Ann. “C’mon Joyce Ann. Don’t cry. Old Santa knows the way. He don’t need a chimney, does he, May Belle?” May Belle was watching him with her big, solemn eyes. Jess gave her a knowing wink over Joyce Ann’s head. It melted her.
Bridge to Terabithia Page 5
