Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) (3 page)

We waited at a red light for two hom
eless people to shuffle past. I locked my door as Grandpa Jack said, “That meat you’ll be eating in college comes from families like theirs, so that’d be something to remember. Little Lotus now, she can tell you every flower and shrub growing from the soil in these parts, how to use them for medicine. Smart as a whip, that girl, absolute spitting image of her sister Sage, just darker and longer hair. Weren’t for the hair, I’d still be calling her Sage. Makes infusions, decoctions, tinctures, I don’t know what all. Barney and I fish while she runs about collecting milk thistle for liver complaints. Those go into a tea they sell at their store down in the Gap.”

“That’s child labor!” I exclaimed.
“She should be in school making friends and giggling about boys.”

As the mail truck rattled up the driveway
to the house, Grandpa Jack yawned. “Seems to me those things aren’t what help you function in society. The Coopers don’t need you fussing over how they choose to live. So you have a nice day, I got some more errands to do and I’ll pick you up at dinner.”

Going up the stairs with my bags, I forgot to duck the sensor and
thus set off the disco music. I was going to rip the batteries out of that toy before I came anywhere near the end of these nine months. The silly tune followed me down the hallway to my room, where I dumped the bags on the bed and decided that I’d had enough. Living without my cell phone was unbearable. I was going to fly home. Since my parents were so worried about me being alone, I’d check in with my friends’ parents daily to say that I was alive and well. Or maybe I could crash in their homes. That would be fun, living with Downy or Taylor and always on the forefront of Bellangame High’s gossip and action.

There was no phone upstairs, so down I went with disco music wafting along in my wake to search.
I found it in the living room on the table by the recliner. And then I stared at this hopelessly old-fashioned thing, a squat black base attached by a cord to a receiver lying horizontally across the top. A numbered wheel was on the front of the base. Around the number wheel was a wider wheel made of clear plastic, and there was a hole punched through it at each number. Tentatively, I put the receiver to my ear and poked my finger through the hole by the one. Then I pressed hard on the metal surface beneath. No tone sounded through the receiver in response.

Of course.
I put down the receiver. I was truly trapped here in Spooner. Sinking into the recliner, I saw that Grandpa Jack hadn’t even bothered to lock the front door when we left for Hubbard’s. Who
did
that? Wasn’t he worried about anyone stealing his televisions and disco fish?

I channel surfed for hours amongst shows I didn’t know and didn’t really want to know.
Lunch came and went without me rising from the chair. I was too depressed to think about food. Everyone had faults, and putting my foot in my mouth combined with a naturally generous spirit equaled a deadly combination. I would give someone the shirt off my back before it occurred to me that now I’d be cold. My parents had better buy me some fantastic souvenirs, or this was going down as the bitterest experience of my life.

When I could
stand no more television, I looked around the cramped living room. The arm of the recliner was brushing up against the arm of the loveseat, and the end of the loveseat touched the side of the entertainment center. DVDs were lined up on the bottom shelf, and the one above it held framed pictures of a younger Grandpa Jack and the grandmother I had never met. She looked like an older version of me, except that she was happy.

Along the other side of the room was a display case of random items: arrowheads and geodes, figurines of fish and shells.
The doors of the three shelves in the case could not be opened without smacking into the bookshelf, upon which dusty volumes were inserted. More framed pictures were there, of my father as a boy and school pictures of myself from years ago. I looked sourly at the smiling girl in the frames and thought that she had no idea what was coming.

The Internet!
I’d been too upset to think about it. But Grandpa Jack was gone so I could hog the line as much as I wanted. I fled upstairs for my laptop, hating every
squeak
-rattle-GROAN and the disco, and returned at top speed to the living room not daring to hope that I could make this work. But in no time at all I had a connection, albeit a slow one, and was squirming around with impatience waiting for my email to load. Even a spam offer about pills to increase the size of my manhood was a welcome sight, and deleting it a pleasure. I clicked over to Frienzies to read everything my friends were posting about their lives. The wait was an agony, and it only brought up five posts. The rest endlessly loaded and never arrived. I placed comments on the scant posts I could see, editing out everything awful about Spooner. That didn’t leave me much of anything to talk about. But I felt
real
again, participating in a long chat with Taylor through the comments about what to wear for school tomorrow. Her younger sister was starting her freshman year at Bellangame High and thought our whole chat was stupid, since she was going in jeans and whatever T-shirt was clean in her closet. She had always been like that, hating clothes and popular music, and Taylor sent me a private message that she was glad they wouldn’t have any classes together.

That cheered me
up tremendously for a while, having a thread back to my former life. Then the Internet quit for no reason I could solve, and I still hadn’t had a chance to check out the menu for Forks and Spooners. I went upstairs to plan my clothes for school. I had some really fashion-plate outfits, but I didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself in the morning when I got to campus. Dressing three cuts above everyone else was going to make me look like a snob. From what I’d seen of teenagers at Hubbard’s and on the streets, they were in jeans or shorts, T-shirts, tennis shoes or sandals. So the miniskirts and fancy blouses were out for now, along with my favorite Ruby heels. No one batted an eye at clothes like that at Bellangame High, but I wasn’t in Bellangame anymore.

Taking out my clothes from the closet, I tried them
all on and eventually settled on my blue Derby shorts and black tank. But the more I looked in the mirror, the less I liked it. My eyes kept getting drawn to the darling summer dress I had discovered at a consignment store down south. Almost ankle-length, deep purple straps came over my shoulders to a lovely abstract striped dress in purple and white, with occasional lines of teal mixed in. The store had also had the same print in white, orange, and black, but it was too reminiscent of Halloween.

No one else would be wearing a dress like this, and I didn’t think it was so over-the-top as to make a poor impression.
It was sweet, not snobbish, especially with a backpack over my shoulder instead of my purse. Now I just had to figure out how to get to school on a scooter while in a dress. Stumbling over this new problem made my eyes roll. I could wear sweatpants underneath for the ride, or pack the dress and change at school, or else take the old mail truck and have everyone ask me the current price of stamps.

Grandpa Jack’s feelings might be hurt if I didn’t take the scooter for the first day of school.
I didn’t know how much he’d paid for that aquamarine monstrosity, yet regardless it was rude to reject the scooter all over the dress I had to wear. So the wisest course of action was to go to school very early in my sweats and change in the restroom before any other students arrived. I’d deal with leaving campus in the afternoon when I got there.

I packed my backpack with notebooks and pens and put the dress in a garment bag.
Then I put that in on top. Shoes! I’d almost forgotten and
that
would have been a disaster, pairing the dress with sneakers. Plucking my wedge sandals from the closet, I slipped them in and zipped up the bag. Almost on cue, Grandpa Jack rumbled up the driveway and honked for dinner.

“Your phone doesn’t work,” I said when I got in.

“Worked fine yesterday,” Grandpa Jack said.

Well, it didn’t today, I thought.
“I pressed in the space by the numbers and it didn’t dial.”

A strained expression came over
his face. Then he chuckled slowly, and for the length of the ride to the restaurant. The only coherent thing he said the whole time was that he’d show me how to use it. Insulted, I didn’t say anything in reply. I knew how to use a phone!

Every
nook, cranny, and shelf of Forks and Spooners was covered in carved bears. We passed a dozen on the walk behind the hostess to the table, along with pictures of bears in heavy wooden frames and stuffed bears piled on the backs of booths. The carpet was printed with bear tracks and the employees’ nametags were bear-shaped. The front of the menu wished us a beary good meal, and I closed my eyes in pain. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

The food on the ensuing pages was standard diner fare, burgers and pasta, salads and sandwiches.
The air smelled heavily of barbecue. After the busboy slopped water into our glasses, the waiter came by for our orders. I selected the salad and a soda while Grandpa Jack dithered between the five kinds of burgers. He chose the one with bacon and ordered a beer to go with it. Without thinking, I said, “You live right by the wine country and just drink beer?”

He
blinked and flipped over to the drink menu, saying to the waiter, “What kind of wine do you got here?”

“We got red and white,” the waiter said.
I looked to the wine list on the back of the menu and saw only two listed there.

“And what goes with a burger?”
Grandpa Jack inquired.

“The red.”

“Then a red, please.”

As the waiter went away, I hissed,
“Grandpa Jack, there’s more to wine than red and white! This restaurant is what, ninety minutes from Napa? The owners should be ashamed of themselves for being so ignorant.”

“It’s a rotary phone,” Grandpa Jack said.

What did that have to do with the current conversation? We looked around at the floods of bears and bear-shaped items until our meals came. It seemed to me that if someone was going to spend that much time canvassing the planet for bear decorations, he or she could spend a little more time on the wine list. Downy’s family had a cellar, and my parents loved to splurge at Hawthorne Market on a bottle now and then. They were nuts for a good pinot noir.

“What’s with the disco fish?” I asked when the
extended silence grew too uncomfortable.

“Your Gramma Sue gave me that on our last Christmas together,” Grandpa Jack said.
Then I was glad that I hadn’t added how aggravating the music was, since it was a memento. We ate our food without speaking much, and I noticed evidence of other animal life in the decorations. Mounted on the wall over another booth was the rump of a deer. Because that was what people wanted to look at while they were eating. Deer butt.

Grandpa Jack
paid the check. The drive back was also quiet, and once in the house, he showed me how to use the phone, spin the wheel and let it roll back. Forget trying to call anyone in haste! What would he do if someone broke in when it took so long to dial the cops?

All of my resolve to call for help evanesced when Grandpa Jack sat in his recliner.
It was definitely going to hurt his feelings, listening to me plead with my parents to send me home. I sat bunched up on the loveseat and watched the news with him as the daylight bled away out the window.

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, I thought once more
. In nine months, I was going to be made of steel.

Chapter Two: The Boy

When I got to the high school the next morning, I parked my scooter in the designated motorcycle area and popped open the seat for my backpack. The student parking lot was almost empty. That suited me fine, since I was dressed in my sweatpants and sweatshirt, and some of the milk from my cereal had dribbled down the front. Leaving early had served me well, since I’d gotten lost trying to find the campus despite my grandfather’s directions.

It was a school only someone from Spooner could love,
with drab, blocky buildings, and lockers painted a dreary dark purple. My scooter was the brightest thing to see. Missing the breezy white and glass airways of Bellangame High, I slung my backpack over my shoulder, slapped a padlock on a locker, and followed signs to the restrooms. It was so early that I’d beaten most of the teachers, as the big windows to the classrooms were dark. Untended wooden planters were all over the campus, with greenery winding down the sides and sprawling over the concrete. Smaller plastic planters hung from the roofs and were going just as wild. This school took no pride in its appearance.

When I pushed on the door to the girls’ restroom, it didn’t budge.
I pushed a second time and got no farther. The door was locked. Cursing under my breath, I looked around and tried the boys’. Locked. I walked quickly to the next building and circled it to the restrooms. They were
also
locked.

What was I going to do?
I couldn’t go to my classes looking like a slob! There had to be some place on this campus to change. I walked along the hall and tried the door of every classroom with dark windows. Locked. Locked. Locked. How stupid of me to assume that even something as easy as this would go well. But I was not going to resign myself to wearing a stained sweatshirt all day. It was drying off-color.

At the third building was a door to some room without windows.
Figuring even a broom closet would do, I tried the knob and was relieved when it didn’t catch. The door opened to an orchestra room. Very dim light was coming down from the ceiling and harp music played. No one was in there, the music coming from everywhere and nowhere. Closing the door behind me, I slunk over to the cabinets along the top row and dropped my backpack in a chair. The teacher was out making copies or getting coffee and had forgotten to turn off the music. I might only have seconds.

Whipping off the sweatshirt, I pulled the dress over my head and then slipped off the sweatpants.
A rustle made me freeze, and I looked over the room more keenly. The seats were empty, and the attached office at the bottom of the pit was dark. I must have made the sound myself, or else it was coming from some other room. Maybe this school had rats.

The
ride on the scooter had jammed my underwear up my butt. I dug it out, adjusted my strapless bra, and smoothed down the dress. It was too dim in here for me to check over my makeup with my compact. There were probably bugs splattered on my cheeks. I pulled out a white scarf and draped it over my shoulders, glad that I’d thought to add that touch since it was chilly. Then I rolled up my first outfit.

As I stuffed
it into my backpack, my heart plummeted to hear a muffled masculine voice call, “Are you decent yet? Or should I still keep my eyes covered?”

I whirled around.
A boy was in the doorway of the office with his hands over his face. Horrified, I gasped, “What are you doing in here?”

“Listening to music.
It’s the room for that. What are you doing? Well, I guess I know, but why?” He was tall and well dressed in chinos and a nice shirt. I couldn’t see his face, but his hair was a light color. So this was going to make a good impression on the student body once it got out, the new girl stripping down in a classroom on the first day of school and retrieving her underwear from where it shouldn’t have gone.

I slung the backpack over my shoulder, thinking there had been no need to use blush since the blood in my face was going to last for the length of the day.
“Because the restrooms are locked at this stupid school, that’s why! What kind of school locks its restrooms?”

He kept his hands over his face.
“One that fears drug deals going on in there. The janitor opens them up about five minutes before the first bell. If it’s a total emergency, you have to go to the office and ask the secretary.” Two fingers parted so he could look at me.

“No, you keep them covered!”
The fingers pressed together. It was dim enough that I could barely see him, which meant he could barely see me either. I hoped. Desperate to be out of this room, out of this school and city and
life
, I said, “You should have told me you were in there!”

“Why?”

“Because I was changing!”

“Why would I
expect someone to come in here and change?”

“Why
would I expect someone to be sitting in the dark in here listening to harp music?” I exploded, and rushed to the door. All I had left to change were my shoes, and I didn’t need privacy to do that.

The cold air and light were welcome, as was the door closing on that boy.
Flustered, I sat on a bench and swapped shoes, thinking as I did that I should have gone around the building first. If he exited the room, I was right here to be noticed. Jamming my sneakers into my bag, I was gone from the bench twenty seconds later.

My breathing didn’t calm until I arrived at the office.
That door was unlocked. A matronly secretary with a tall white bun hung up the phone and said, “Can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m new,” I said.
“I don’t know if the schedules are mailed out or if I pick mine up somewhere on campus?”

“Oh, you must be Jessa Bright!” the woman said, turning in her chair to a stack of computer-printed slips.
“Everyone loves your grandfather, he’s such a hoot.”

Grandpa Jack?
Maybe by Spooner standards, I thought. She rifled through the slips and glanced at the clock. “You’re an early bird! We hand these out in the gymnasium, but the counselors haven’t even come yet. Here, you take this . . .” she handed me a slip, “ . . . and this . . .” a purple folder came next, “ . . . and this.” The last was a handshake. I shook her hand, wondering what in the world was up with this place. Locked restrooms, weird boys lurking in dark offices, crazy secretaries, and then I remembered my makeup.

Smiling sweetly, I said, “Are there any restrooms unlocked on campus?
I really have to go.”

“Just go down the hall there to the staff restroom
s. You can’t miss them.”

“Thank you.
” In seconds, I was locking the door behind me. The trip to school hadn’t wreaked too much havoc on my cosmetics, which I kept light anyway. Downy and Taylor were always envious how the less I wore, the better I looked. I evened the scarf around my shoulders and decided it looked too fashionable. Wrapping it around my neck a little more carelessly, I was satisfied.

It
was hard to force myself out of the restroom. I’d never really gone to a new school before, not in this sense. My friends and I had all met in Bellangame Elementary School and proceeded en masse to Bellangame Junior High, and then we marched on to Bellangame High School. The chairs got taller and the buildings changed, but the faces never did.

God, if Downy and Taylor got wind of some new student at Bellangame caught in her
bra and panties in the orchestra room, they’d have made sure to pass on that story to everyone. Downy would have tracked down the offender and offered her a pair of sexier underwear as a joke.

And I would have laughed
until I cried over it. That filled me with shame now. It wasn’t so funny when the joke was on me, and I wanted to be a better person than that. So I would be, a new school and a fresh start. I wouldn’t say a cross word about anyone, so when everybody was remembering my time in Spooner, they’d only have the nicest things to say. I wouldn’t even think anything cross!

Campus was still pretty quiet by the time I got outside.
Looking around nervously at the boys, I saw only a handful and all were in ragged jeans or shorts. Girls were going into the library, so I followed them in and sat at a carrel to peruse my schedule and the map on the back of the purple folder. The school mascot was Crazy Critter. Seriously? This place was so stupid. I stared at the drawing of a creature so weird that it didn’t even exist in mythology. They’d just stuck a bunch of random animal parts together, creating a winged cow with bird’s feet, a cat’s head, and a raccoon’s tail. The artist must have been high, and so was the school board who voted it in as a great idea.

My first class was trigonometry.
I hated starting with math before my brain juices had even liquefied, let alone were running. From there I had government and Spanish III, followed by science. That was quite a morning. After lunch was an easy afternoon of computers and my creative writing elective. Out the window, I saw a janitor walking to the restrooms in another building.
Why
hadn’t I checked that side office in the orchestra pit before stripping off my clothes? It just didn’t cross my mind that someone might be down there in the dark.

The school slowly began to fill with students calling out to one another and slamming locker doors.
Even now, the story of what I had done was likely being carried around to giggles and mockery. I picked through the folder to distract myself, examining the calendar and reading through the dress code and campus comportment expectations. This was more or less like any school. Three minutes before the bell was set to ring, I left the library for my first class.

I claime
d a seat in the second row of trigonometry. Everyone was chattering about the summer. The dress had been the wrong idea; it
did
make me look snobby. The other students were in jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers that had seen better days. It smelled like patchouli. I was even more nicely dressed than the teacher, whose jeans were thrashed to threads at the knees. There was a big peace sign on his faded T-shirt. His dreadlocks swung over his back as he wrote Mr. Rogers on the board.

Picking up a stack of
syllabi, he started on one side of the room to pass them out. It went slowly, since he was shaking the hand of every student. I watched the plodding progression through the rows and listened in to the conversations between the teacher and various students about sports and movies. When he got to me, he shook my hand and said, “The mailman’s granddaughter! How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” I said.

“Everyone, this is Jessa Bright. Say hello!” Hellos were muttered obediently from the thirty students in the class. “Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?”

My heart slid into my stomach
, since I preferred to watch first and then participate. “Oh, there’s not much to tell. I’m from Los Angeles and here just for the year while my parents travel.”

“And what do you think of Spooner?”

I hate it.
“I like how there’s not so much traffic.”

“Southern Californ
ia is stealing all of our water!” a boy yelled from the back row. I didn’t turn to look at him. Everyone tittered. Mr. Rogers passed me a syllabus and moved on to the next student.

By the time we got through the syllabus, class was ending.
I followed my map to government, where a substitute took attendance and put on a movie since the teacher was out sick. “On the first day of school?” I blurted to the girl next to me.

“Mrs. Philip has
breast cancer,” the girl said, like I should know that. It was better to not say anything, so I didn’t for the rest of the morning. My teachers in third and fourth period stood outside the classroom and shook everyone’s hands upon arrival. With every period, I was nervous that I was going to hear about my changing fiasco, but I never heard a word or received any more than a glance for being the new girl.

At lunch I followed
the flow of students to the cafeteria. A bag of chips soared over my head when I entered the vast room. There was a plethora of round tables, with an unoccupied one far in the back. I moved through the crowds to reach it, smiling and ducking under a game of catch with an apple. Then I sat and took out my lunch. The room was ringing with noise and cheer, trays of hot meals clattering against the tables and squeaks of sneakers on the linoleum. An adult yelled at the boys playing catch and they moved the game outside.

If this were Bellangame, I could take out my phone and play a game on it, pretend I didn’t care to be sitting alone.
Of course, at Bellangame I wouldn’t
be
sitting alone. Downy and Taylor would be at my sides with other friends across from us, everyone checking out the clothes girls were wearing and complaining about our teachers. It seemed hopelessly geeky to take out one of my new textbooks and read to appear like I didn’t need anyone. So I just ate and looked at my hands, casting sly glances around the room to watch the activity.

Tomorrow, I’d wear jea
ns. Or stay home sick and watch television. Oh God, I didn’t want to think of this place as home! No longer hungry for my lunch, I started to put it away. Then I stopped, realizing I couldn’t sit here and not do anything at all but look at the bare table.