I sprayed and brushed my hair until it lay flat and stiff, then pulled back the sides and reached for Nonnie’s barrette. Her brother, my great uncle, gave it to her, and she used to put her long, silver hair up with it every day, before it all fell out. She gave it to me the Christmas before she died.
“Don’t ever lose this,” she whispered when I opened the box. She smiled, her face a beautiful, wrinkled landscape of life and pain. “When it pleases, love will awaken it, and you’ll see.”
She said a lot of nutty things during those last months, while the cancer and the chemo fought inside her.
I snapped the barrette’s catch open and something dropped, rolled to the edge of the vanity table and fell to the floor.
Crud. Did I break it?
It landed next to my foot, and I kicked it out from under the table.
Long and thin, gold like the barrette, it looked like a tiny cylinder in two sections. The hinge?
I turned the barrette over in my hand and found the hinge still intact, but on the adjacent side of the clip lay a narrow channel, as though a second, longer hinge resided there. I picked up the fallen piece and laid it against the hollow. It snapped in.
Perfect fit.
With my longest fingernail I pried the cylinder out again and it fell onto the table. I swept my hair back and clipped it with the barrette, then examined the broken piece.
“Juliet!” Mom called up the stairs. “You’re going to be late!”
I dropped the gold bar into the front of my vanity drawer, then dug further back to find my tube of Strawberry Shortcake sparkle lip-gloss. I glazed my mouth with it and kissed at the mirror.
My skirt swished back and forth as I rushed down the stairs and slid into my chair at the table.
“Don’t you look nice?” Mom said. “What’s the occasion?”
“Nothing.” I reached for the cereal.
“Maybe a boy?” Dad said.
Mark pushed my shoulder. “About time.”
“Knock it off,” I said.
Dad put the newspaper down. “What’s his name?”
“There’s no boy.”
Mark sniffed me and poked my hair. “Three pounds of Aqua Rock. This is serious.”
I kicked him hard under the table and my big toe cracked. “Shut up!”
Mom waved her hand at Mark. “Leave her alone,” she said, then smiled at me with this strange look in her eyes. “Juliet’s growing up. First a bra, now a beau.”
“Geez, Mom!” I stood up too fast and knocked my cereal all over the place.
“A bra?” Dad choked. He turned to Mark. “Is she wearing bras now?”
We hadn’t talked so much at a meal since ever, but I’d have traded all the happy-family time on earth to be able to send the three of them straight to Siberia. Or Pluto.
I swiped the Cheerios off the table and back into my bowl. More cereal crunched under my bare feet.
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Juliet,” Mom said.
“Maybe a boy will finally get her nose out of those sketchbooks,” Dad muttered.
“Howard!”
I dumped my cereal in the garbage.
“Why don’t you let Mark drive you to school, so you’ll have air conditioning?” Mom suggested.
“Yeah, I’ll take you. I’d like to get a look at the guy.”
“There’s no guy!”
I fled from the kitchen to the entryway, and then realized I had no shoes. None I wanted to wear, anyway.
I owned three sensible pairs of footwear: everyday sneakers, white flip-flops, and black patent-leather Mary Janes. We weren’t allowed to wear sandals to school, so that left the sneakers or the Mary Janes.
The Mary Janes were my church shoes, and Mom forbade me to wear them anywhere else. I didn’t like them much anyway. But Keds? With a skirt?
Then I saw them. Mom left her shoes by the door after her client interview yesterday.
“Here comes the bus!” Mom yelled.
I slipped them on, grabbed my bag, and stumbled out the door.
I’d deal with Mom later.
* * * * *
I turned my ankle getting down the driveway. On the bus three people commented on my shoes before I got to a seat. Then the spiked heel jammed between the floor vents and I had to scrunch down to work it free.
And the drawing did not come true. Though not surprised to find Parnell open, I was surprisingly disappointed.
My fingers clenched the railing as I picked my way down the school bus steps. The big toe I stubbed on Mark’s shin throbbed.
“Careful there, Juliet,” the bus driver cautioned. “Those are some clodhoppers.”
“Holy High Heels, Batman.” Pam whistled as she followed me off the bus.
“They’re my mom’s.”
“Does she know you have them?”
“Not yet.”
Pam’s eyes bugged out like Wile E. Coyote’s. “Your mom loves her shoes.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s gonna kill you.”
By the time I made it to the top of the school’s front steps my calves felt like someone shredded them with a fork. In the halls my clack-clacking turned heads.
Hirsch closed the homeroom door behind us. “Good morning, Miss Martz. Miss Brynn, I see you’ve attained new heights.”
I passed between Tori and Bethany to get to my seat.
“Tori,” Bethany said, “I had no idea it was school uniform day.”
Tori giggled.
“And where did she get those shoes?” she added as I slipped into my seat. “Sleazebags R Us?”
I tucked Mom’s navy and rhinestone pumps under my chair.
Hirsch propped his feet on his desk and leaned back. “As we have no announcements today, let’s get started on the homework.”
Not me. Please, not me.
“Mr. Sheppard. To the board, please.”
Somewhere close behind me a chair scraped across the floor. Two steps put him beside my desk, and he dropped a folded piece of paper on my lap as he passed by.
How had I not seen him? I looked over my shoulder. Erik waved two fingers.
Of course. You couldn’t see André the Giant if he sat behind Erik.
Both of my hands clutched the paper he dropped.
A note. A very cute boy passed me a note!
Hirsch read aloud anything he seized during class, so I didn’t dare open it. I folded it in half again and stuck it in the zippered pocket of my bag.
Damon picked up a piece of chalk, wrote the problem on the board, and described the solution as he went along. Totally at ease in front of the class, he explained two-variable linear equations better than Hirsch ever did.
“He has the best voice,” Pam whispered to me. “Very deep and masculine.”
Shut up, Pam.
“I am absolutely inviting him to my party.”
Damon really got algebra. I flipped open my notebook and followed along.
“So after I solved for b, meaning I ended up with a ‘b =’ equation…”
That’s what it means to solve for b?
When Damon finished the first problem, Hirsch had him do the second one as well. I watched carefully and fixed my mistakes as he went along.
That makes total sense! Why couldn’t anyone else explain it like that? Duh!
I finally got it. I could’ve hugged Damon Sheppard, and not just because I’d like it.
After class I stopped at Hirsch’s desk. “Mr. Hirschman, I did all the problems in my homework wrong.”
“Yes, you seem to be having a fair bit of trouble.”
“But I get it now. Can I fix these and give you my homework after study hall?”
“We can’t keep doing this, Miss Brynn.”
“This is the last time. I promise.”
His mole wiggled as he scratched his stubble. “I want it before the third hour bell.”
* * * * *
My pencil never stopped during study hall.
Eri
k looked across the table. “Good on ya, Juliet! Did you take my advice and get a tutor?”
“The way Damon explained it made complete sense,” I said, and hoped I didn’t whimper his name like Pam did Mark’s.
“Yeah, he’s a math whiz.”
“How do you know?”
Erik went back to charting animal species. “He nailed the math material at Academic Olympics practice last night. You should’ve come.”
“He’s doing the Olympics?”
“If he’s as good in other stuff as he is in math, he could just about be the whole team by himself.”
“I heard something about him having been in juvie,” I whispered.
Erik nodded. “Yeah, I heard that, too.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
He shrugged.
Drew Barony raised his head off the desk a few inches. “Can you guys keep it down?”
Erik pointed at him. “It lives!”
“Take a flying leap, Athaca.”
* * * * *
I dropped my work off at homeroom before English, and barely made it into my seat before the bell. Mr. Tollin read Anna Karenina at his desk. I unzipped the outside pocket of my bag and pulled out The Little Prince. Damon’s note dropped to the floor.
How could I have forgotten about it?
I put my bag on top of my desk and hid behind it. My palms started to sweat.
Calm down, Juliet. It’s a piece of paper.
It’s a piece of paper Damon Sheppard gave me. I closed my eyes, unfolded it, took a deep breath, then opened my eyes again.
My sketch of Hirsch.
But Damon wrote something at the bottom. I held it up and squinted to read the very small print.
“You nailed him. D.K.S.”
D.K.S. Damon K. Sheppard.
“Whatcha readin’?” Amica’s face peered over my bag.
I folded the note and stuffed it back in my bag. “Nothing.”
When she smiled, her pink lips curled up on both ends but her eyes never moved. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“Why do you care?” I opened The Little Prince and took out my bookmark.
“Didn’t you get your homework done?” She turned back to the front of the room. “Mr. Tollin! Mr. Tollin! It’s time to start class.”
If I ever got my sketches to prophesy again, I’d do one of Amica Aldridge with scabies and the creeping crud.
* * * * *
“Two steps up and two steps back, then lead your gal around the track!”
Why square dancing is part of the physical education program I will never understand.
I only saw Drew Barony awake and vertical during basketball games and gym class—the one course in which he exceled—and today he and the other guys competed to see who could throw his partner highest and/or farthest. Drew is not small and I am not large and I hated Miss Sweeney for partnering us alphabetically.
“Allemande right around the town, then spin your partner up and down!”
“Hang on, J.B.!” Drew yelled, then picked me up by the waist and heaved me over his head.
“Drew!” I clutched his denim-blue gym shirt in both fists as he spun me in a circle. “Not funny!”
“Mr. Barony! Mr. Peterson!” Miss Sweeney barked over the chipper twang of the caller on the square dancing record. “Mr. Athaca! Stop swinging the girls around!”
The loudspeaker crackled to life and the front office secretary’s bored voice echoed through the gym. “Coach Sweeney? Please send Juliet Brynn to the office. Her mother is here.”
Everyone in the gym hooted and whistled, as if a summons to the office meant execution.
Today, it probably did.
My gym uniform shoes squeaked against the speckled blue tiles as I hurried down the empty hallway toward the office. The round white clock with the needle-shaped hands tick-tocked as I passed under it.
JU-li-ET’S-a-BOUT-to-DIE.
A leather shoestring hung from one end of the wooden hall pass and I twisted it around my index finger till the blood pooled up in my knuckle.
Mom stood outside the office at the desk, drumming her acrylic nails on the counter. She spun toward me and pointed.
“Juliet Alexis Brynn, where are my shoes?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to be sorry. Those are brand new and cost a mint. If there is one scratch on them.”
I appealed to her sense of style, to the sisterhood of fashion anxiety. “I just didn’t have anything that looked right.”
She took two steps toward me. “You have all the shoes a thirteen-year-old girl needs.”
“Mom, I—”
“Go get them.”
I turned around and marched back toward the gym. My heart pounded in my chest and my temples, and I mashed the side of my T-shirt in my fist.
The girls’ locker room looked like the Gap stockroom exploded. I stepped over hot pink tennies and red Converse, piles of jean skirts and stirrup pants, pastel Henleys and tank tops. I picked my way to the bench where my skirt and blouse lay folded and my mother’s spikey, expensive heels waited under the seat.
I sat down and reached into the toe of the left shoe to get Nonnie’s barrette out. Wrong shoe. I picked up the other one and turned it upside down.
Where is it?
Every sweat gland in my body pulsed hot and cold as I searched for the barrette.
“I know I put it in here.” I tipped both shoes and looked inside. Nothing. I grabbed my blouse in one hand and the skirt in the other and shook them open. “Where is it?”
Miss Sweeney pushed the locker room door open with a loud thud. “What’s going on, Miss Brynn?”
“I can’t find my barrette.”
“Worry about your hair later. Get back in the gym.”
“I have to take these shoes to my mom. She’s waiting at the office.”
“You have two minutes.”
“Miss Sweeney, my barrette’s gone. It was my grandmother’s.” I searched through the scattered clothing near my spot.
“You shouldn’t have brought it to school if it was that precious. One minute, fifty-five seconds.” The door swung back and forth on its hinges then clicked to a stop.
I grabbed the shoes and hurried back to the office as fast as I could without running, a cardinal sin at Parnell Junior High.
Mom took the shoes and examined them. I prayed that the vent grate on the school bus hadn’t scratched them.
“If you ever again take something of mine without asking—”
“What am I going to wear the rest of the day? I can’t take these outside the gym.” I pointed at my soft-soled P.E. shoes.
“Be glad that I’m more thoughtful of you than you are of me.” Mom pulled my Keds out of her messenger bag. “You and I will have a long talk about this tonight.”
“I have to get back to gym.” I turned and walked away.
“You think about what your punishment is going to be.”
I bit the inside of my lip. “Why don’t you think about it?” I whispered.
* * * * *
When gym class ended I rushed back into the locker room to shower first and fastest. I kept an eye out as I buttoned my blouse and zipped my skirt, but the barrette never appeared. “Please, God,” I begged silently. “Let me find it.”
I slid my feet into the Keds. The threadbare padding under the heels and toes clung to my skin and stuck, then peeled off, then stuck again as I walked over to drop my towel in the basket. The knobby bones on both sides of my ankles jutted out like Dumbo ears.
The bell rang and girls raced out of the locker room. In one last desperate search, I checked under all the benches and inside every locker.
Mia Teele stood by the door with her lower lip between her teeth. Then Miss Sweeney pushed the door open and knocked Mia aside. “Get to your next class, girls.”
I bit my lip. “I can’t find my barrette.”
“I could help her look for it,” Mia squeaked.
&
nbsp; “Your hair’s fine.”
It had to be here. If I left, I might never see it again.
“Are you having trouble understanding English, Miss Brynn?”
“If you find it, please let me know.”
“If someone took it, it’s gone.”
CHAPTER 5
I slanted my easel toward the window to get the best natural light. But the morning’s cotton-ball clouds rolled toward the horizon, and a thick mattress of iron gray came in from every other direction.
Miss Downey looked out the window from her desk against the adjacent wall. “A perfect day for charcoal.” She leaned back in her seat, sketchpad on her lap, and propped her bare feet up on the register.
“Who do you think took it?” Jimmy sketched an outline of his latest superhero.
“Amica? I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t seem like her style. And she’s not even in your gym glass, right?”
“I feel sick.” I stared at the half-finished flower and steps on the canvas in front of me.
The moss.
That made three drawings I’d done that came true.
“Jimmy,” I whispered. How do I even ask something like this?
“Yeah?”
Deep breath. “Do you believe in ESP?”
He looked up. “You mean like mind-reading?”
I shrugged and dipped my brush in cornflower blue. “More like seeing the future.”
“Psychic powers?”
“Maybe.” I shaded the edges of a couple of moonflowers, then penciled in two more on a vine that stretched up from the ground.
“I guess not. I never really thought about it. Why?”
I made the highest moonflower arch up toward the tiger lily. “Sometimes things happen. Like I knew something was going to happen, then it did.”
“Like déjà vu?”
“Not exactly.”
Jimmy put his pencil down and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms. “Do you know why I can’t go to the Sci-Fi Festival?”
“Your parents want you to wait till you’re older.”
“Nah. I said that, but that’s not it.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“It’s because they think it’s unbiblical. Occult.”
“Occult?”
“Like, witches and demons and stuff.”
“But Sci-Fi is all superheroes and aliens, right? That stuff isn’t even in the Bible.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Which they say proves their argument against it. I’m not saying I agree with them. They don’t really like that I’m into comic books at all, but as long as I don’t put in magic and stuff, they let it go.”