They’re just clothes, I told myself and shut the door. When I came downstairs, Violet was sitting at Dad’s side with a bowl of oatmeal in her lap. “Hey, Violet, I…”
When Violet turned back, I saw the feeding tube down Dad’s throat. He lay there, his mouth unnaturally wide, his teeth clamped down on the hard plastic. Something shuddered inside me, seeing him like that. Part of me wanted to run over and tear it out of him, to make her leave him alone, but I marshaled myself and crossed the floor slowly until I was just behind her.
“How’s he doing?”
Violet spooned the last bit of food down the tube.
“About the same,” she said. “I wish I could say more, but without tests…”
“I’ve been talking to him at night.”
“That’s good.” Violet looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “You look really great, Stephen.”
I pulled awkwardly at the new clothes. “Thanks.”
“You ready?”
Jackson had just come down the stairs and was standing behind me.
I moved to the bed and squeezed Dad’s hand tight. “Thanks,” I said again to Violet before leaving with Jackson.
“Mr. Waverly!” Jackson announced cheerily as Martin and an extremely bleary-looking Derrick joined us. Jackson clapped him on the back. “How’s it going, buddy?! Rough night last night?”
“Ugghhhh,” Derrick groaned and halfheartedly pushed Jackson away. He trudged along behind us, grumbling as we made our way to school.
“You playing today?” Martin asked me.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Stunk pretty badly at the end of the game yesterday.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “In fact, I think he was lying when he told me he was descended from a real New York Yankee. Don’t let him play, Martin.”
“We’re not letting you play,” Jackson said.
“Why not?”
“You’re a mess.”
“Quinn, buddy, I was just kidding about how much you suck. Defend me here. Am I a mess?”
I regarded Derrick carefully. His hair was a greasy tumbleweed. All his clothes were rumpled. “Definitely. A total mess.”
“Ha!” Martin laughed and punched me in the arm. “I liked you better when you didn’t talk,” Derrick grumbled.
Carrie and Wendy mixed in with us at the bottom of the hill as we all filed in behind the mass of little ones.
“Lookin’ awful snazzy there, Steve,” Carrie said with a grin.
“Oh,” I said, looking down at my new clothes, strangely embarrassed. “Thanks. Marcus’s old things.”
Wendy reached across and drew her finger across the hair that fell just above my eyebrows. “Your hair’s out of your face too,” she said. “I can see your eyes.”
I didn’t know what to say. She was wearing a pink and white sweater and jeans, her hair loose and flowing coppery over her shoulders. I was surprised to find myself nervous as she fell into place next to me.
Once we got to school we all split up and the rest of that morning was pretty uneventful. Tuttle lectured and while everyone else was struggling to stay awake I leaned over my paper and took careful notes. He talked about math and poetry and the Holy Roman Empire. I had no idea there was so much world out there to learn about. At noon he let us out for lunch.
It had grown colder in the past few hours and some clouds had begun to pile up, signs of fall moving headlong toward winter. All of us spilled out onto the yard, pulling our lunches out of bags and buckets. The little ones immediately swarmed around the slide and swing sets, fighting over who got to do what first.
“Okay!” Martin announced as he pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper out of his back pocket. “Time to make the lineup! Waverly is benched!”
“What? No way!”
“Quinn is taking your place.”
“You know,” Derrick said. “You people don’t appreciate me. I’m gonna start hanging out with Will Henry.”
“Oh go take a bath, Derrick,” Wendy said.
I laughed and the lineup talk went on. They all seemed so comfortable with each other, laughing and joking, trading mock punches. I looked around at everyone else in the school yard as they ate their lunches in their own small groups. The inside jokes and chatter of each one joined with the others into a low roar that somehow didn’t seem as grating as it had just a few days earlier.
I turned back to the negotiations, and when I did, I saw Jenny. She was sitting under the big sycamore, facing away from the school, in her torn-up jeans and Red Army jacket with her knees pulled up in front of her, sketching furiously in her sketch pad.
My body tensed immediately. The note. I had almost forgotten. I tried to stay calm, nibbling at my sandwich and keeping my eye on her, waiting for an opportunity. All the noise and movement below her — the laughing and yelling and flirting, the squeak of the old swing sets — didn’t seem to distract her in the least. She drew with great looping strokes and slashes, leaning down into the pad like she was wrestling with it and just barely winning.
When she was done, Jenny dropped the sketch pad on the grass and stretched out against the tree. She reached up and tucked a length of hair behind her ear, leaving the rest of it to blow over her face like smoke drifting over beach sand.
“I don’t know why she even bothers coming.”
Jackson had moved out of the lineup negotiations and was eyeing Jenny too.
“Does she always just sit up there drawing and stuff?”
“No, that one’s new,” he said. “She just started coming to school again the other day.”
Up the hill Jenny leaned over her sketch pad, erasing, drawing again. I thought of that lone horse, locked in the classroom.
“Sometimes I wish…” Jackson’s forehead wrinkled, his lips hardening into a tense slit as he watched her. Whatever he was going to say, he pulled it back before it could get loose.
“What?”
“Sometimes I wish she would go,” Jackson said, his voice a harsh whisper. “Just leave. Before she does something that gets us all thrown out of here.”
“Would they really do that?”
Jackson eyed me a moment like he was trying to make a decision.
“There was a family,” he said, “a few years back. The Krycheks. Had a little girl, like nine, I think. Mr. Krychek used to be a soldier, but all he did was drink by the time he got here. He hid it pretty well for a while, but it got worse. One night he was drinking out in the woods and tried to build a fire. It went out of control and got within a few feet of spreading to the houses. Caleb called a meeting about it the next day. Mom and Dad tried to speak up for them, but Caleb had more than half the town ready to vote against them and anyone willing to stand up for them. In the end it was pretty much unanimous.”
“Your parents…?”
“Dad voted to send them away. He didn’t want to but… I mean, the guy was dangerous, right? What choice did he have? Let the whole town get destroyed? Get us thrown out too?”
“What about your mom?”
Jackson’s eyes went unfocused as he drew his fingertip aimlessly through the dirt. “She was… sick, I think. Didn’t make the vote that day.”
“What happened to them? The Krycheks?”
Jackson didn’t look up. He shrugged. “Dad and some others insisted they at least give them some supplies but… it was the middle of January.”
He didn’t need to say any more. Middle of the winter and the dad a drunk and dragging along a nine-year-old. Only one thing could have happened. I looked down at the remains of my sandwich but wasn’t hungry anymore. I could see that family clear as anything, huddled together and snow-blind, making their slow way out of town. A sick shudder went right through me.