"What's that supposed to be?" Alex wondered, gazing over Neal's shoulder at his drawing.
"I'm trying to draw the white thing, but it's not easy if you aren't certain whether it's a bird or a bug." He held his picture up, tilting his head from side to side. "Maybe it's not either one."
"What else could it be?" Alex wondered. "An albino bat? I know! It's a tiny space ship from another galaxy and they designed it to look like a bird so earthlings wouldn't get suspicious!" She giggled. She looked at Neal's expression, then she turned and looked at Rose. Neither one was smiling. "I don't know why you're both being so serious," she said. She had crumpled five of her own attempts to draw the small white creature.
"Are you going to let us see your painting?" Neal asked Rose. "If you'd rather not, that's okay, but I didn't want you to have your feelings hurt because we didn't ask."
"You can see it," Rose said. "It's not quite done though." She unclipped the large white paper from the easel and carefully turned it around, holding it at the edges because the paint went to the very edge. "I thought it would be so simple to paint flowers. Just sort of dab the brush in the paint, then dab it on the paper." She sighed.
Neal and Alex stared at it for a long while, then they both seemed to realize they should make some sort of comment.
"You sure captured the colors," Neal said. "They may not look like flowers but ..." He leaned close to the paper and sniffed. "Are you using scented water colors or something?"
Alex came up beside him and bent down to eye Rose's work up close. "You did a good job getting the bird's dimensions right. It even seems like he's flapping his little wings."
"Ha, ha," Rose said without humor. "You're both so funny."
"No, really," Neal insisted, leaning over with his hands on his knees. "It appears to be hovering over the flowers, like it's trying to decide which one will taste the best."
Rose grated her teeth as she returned the paper to the easel. Then she gasped, and placed her hands firmly over her heart. "I didn't paint that!" she nearly shouted. "I did not even try to paint the hummingbird!"
"Oh, sure," Alex said, smiling at Neal. "I guess it painted itself."
Rose's face turned red as she stared at the picture. "Believe me or not," she said, slowly and sternly. "I did not paint the ... whatever it is. I didn't even try."
"Why can't you just say 'thank you' for the compliment and be glad if you found your gift?" Alex demanded.
"The thing is," Neal said, and he sounded angry too. "Even seeing it up close in the picture, I still can't figure out what it is. I don't think it's a bird or an insect. Or an alien," he added, glowering at Alex.
"Oh, really?" she snapped. "Then what is it?"
Rose leaned closer to her picture, then stepped back and smiled. "I think maybe there were two albino hummingbirds and they had albino hummingbird babies. Now there's a whole new species and we're the ones who discovered it. They'll probably name it after us."
"We discovered it?" Neal challenged her. "You two never would've noticed it if I hadn't pointed it out."
"You didn't point it out," Alex disagreed hotly. "It flew right in our faces."
"Because you were bothering me!" Neal reminded her.
"Bothering you?" Alex said incredulously. "You were looking into our private garden without permission!"
Rose carefully unclipped the paper again, and holding it away from her body, started towards the house. "I'm gonna show it to Meemaw," she said, more to herself than to her companions. "So she'll know it's not a firefly."
"Maybe it is a firefly," Neal said with depression. "Maybe some fireflies grow really huge in this area and your grandmother has seen them before, when she was a kid."
Alex raised her hands in the air and let them drop against her thighs. "I thought you said it looked like a lunar moth," she reminded him.
Neal lifted his shoulders, ready to admit he didn't know what it was. "Was she always like this?" he wondered, referring to Rose. He thought his own drawing looked too scientific, like an airplane, rather than something alive.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Different, I guess."
Alex remained quiet for a moment, as if she was thinking about how to answer. "Yes," she said finally, "but since her mother got sick, she's worse."
"What's the matter with her mother?"
"We don't know exactly. She got upset one night and couldn't stop crying. And then she wouldn't talk to anyone, not even Rose. The only thing she said was that she wanted to go to the hospital so they could give her a shot that would make her go to sleep. Then once she got there, she said she'd like to stay and she hasn't ever come back."
"That's awful," Neal said, worried that it could happen to his mother too.
"Were you popular at your school?" Alex blurted out suddenly.
"Not at all," Neal said with a sad smile. "My father was too strict. He wouldn't let me go anywhere unless there were going to be a lot of adults and some of them had to be people he knew. I think being a policeman made him that way. He said he saw a lot of kids breaking the law - kids my age. He was always worried something would happen to me. He wanted to move someplace like here, where he grew up, but my mom's always been in love with New York City."
"I'm sorry your dad died," Alex said softly.
"Thanks," Neal said. "Are you popular?"
Alex made a sour face. "I wish I could say 'no,' for some reason, but really, I kind of am. I'm just glad Rose and I don't go to the same school, or she'd probably hate me. I keep trying to give her pointers on how to get people to like her, but she won't take my advice."
Neal folded his drawing in half, then in half again. He stuck it in the back of the sketch book and dropped it on the grass. "I wish I'd see it again," he said wistfully. "I wish it would hold still long enough so I could get a really good look at it."
"Me too," Alex said, though she was actually somewhat bored with the bird/bug. "It's not a bad thing to be popular, is it?" she asked him.
Neal looked into her eyes, blinked rapidly, and removed his glasses. "It depends on how you act about it," he said, aware that he sounded like an adult who didn't really want to answer the question they'd been asked. "I think it's okay if you're not mean to the kids who aren't popular. At my school, the popular kids make fun of the kids who aren't popular."
"I never make fun of anybody," Alex said defensively. She kicked a clod of dirt. "But sometimes I laugh when my friends do it."
"I guess it's kind of like your gift," Neal said, in a more scientific voice. "You should try to use it for good."
"How?" Alex asked. She sounded frantic. "How?" she asked again, managing to sound bored.
"I wouldn't know, since I've never been popular," Neal dodged the question. "I'm starving, aren't you? I guess I ought to go home and eat lunch."
"Meemaw promised to make more cookies. We could fix a sandwich first, if you want."
Neal thought he shouldn't keep eating the Camerons' food, since it was obvious that they were poor. But he didn't want to sit at the table with his silent grandparents either. "Should we carry Rose's stuff inside? In case it starts raining?"
Alex looked up. The sky was blue and cloudless. "I'll get the paints and stuff if you'll carry the easel," she suggested. "Did you really think Rose's painting was good?"
"The moth was terrific." He decided to call it a moth, until they collected enough evidence to prove it was something else. "Maybe she's gonna be better at doing live figures than scenery."
"She'll probably put it all away and never get it out again," Alex said. "That's the way she is. Pops says she can go from gung-ho to ho-hum in less than ten seconds."
"How come she lives with your grandparents?" Neal wondered. "Wouldn't it be better for her to stay with somebody who's more normal? How come she can't go stay with her dad?"
Alex leaned the easel against her shoulder, long enough to scratch her elbow. "She hasn't ever met her dad. He took off before she was born and asked for a divorce through the mail.
Then her mom started dating this guy Steven, and he said he was going to adopt Rose, but they broke up a couple weeks before the wedding was supposed to happen."
"How come ..." Neal gave Alex a sheepish smile. He was embarrassed about asking so many questions.
"How come what?" she said. "Rose would probably get mad at me for telling you all this private stuff about her, but it's not like you're going to go to school and gossip. Are you?"
"No," Neal promised. "How come she doesn't live with your family? Wouldn't it be better for her to be around other kids and parents the right age?"
Alex tried to imagine living with Rose. "No way," she said, shaking her head hard enough to slap herself in the face with her hair. "That would not work."
"I feel sorry for her," Neal said. "I know how awful it is to lose your parents."
"You didn't lose your mother," Alex pointed out sternly. "She's just on a trip."
"She's staying indefinitely," Neal said quietly. "I kept asking her how long she was going to stay and she'd just say 'indefinitely'. It's the worst word in the English language. It doesn't mean anything. It could mean forever."
"It's better than if she said she was gonna stay for a year. This way, you can always think she might come back tomorrow."
"Don't move!" Neal said, in a hushed voice. "Don't even breathe!"
"Why?" Alex asked nervously.
"The moth. There's five of them. On the fence. Just sitting there watching us. Anyway, it seems like they're watching us."
"I gotta look!" Alex pleaded, turning her head so slowly, she wasn't sure she was turning it at all. "They're not moths," she decided, as soon as they were within her line of vision.
"Then what are they?" Neal demanded with frustration. "They're not birds either."
"They must be ... I don't know. Some kind of ... flying squirrel?"
"I'm going to try to get a closer look," Neal whispered out of the side of his mouth. He moved his foot so carefully, the grass wasn't even disturbed. But before he had advanced even an inch, the first of the tiny white creatures lifted off the fence and ascended upwards, drifting like a dandelion seed. The second followed, and then each of the others. As they rose, they seemed to enter a cloud of white and disappear.
"I'm getting my camera," Neal said, with a determination that almost sounded like anger. "I'm going to sit right here and wait until I get a picture so I can enlarge it and figure out what they are."
"Well, they're not birds," Alex said slowly. "I've never seen a bird do that - just rise in the sky. They weren't even flapping their wings, were they?"
"I'm thinking they might be some kind of insect that everyone thinks is extinct," Neal confided. "If I had a picture ..."
"I'll go and ask if I can borrow Pops' camera too," Alex decided.
"Does he have more than one? In case Rose wants to help?"
Alex sighed. "I think he has a couple of them."
"Meet you back here in five minutes then," Neal said, setting off at a run.
(( 11 ))