“So you think psychic powers are evil?”
“I don’t know. I guess, just be careful. Don’t mess around with something you can’t handle.”
I twirled the paintbrush between my finger and thumb. “I’m not really messing around with anything. It just happens.”
“So you’re not trying to make stuff happen?”
“I did try. But it didn’t work.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Might be a good thing.”
The storm clouds parted just then and for a moment a shaft of sunlight splashed across my face.
“You know what Peter Parker says,” Jimmy said. “‘With great power comes great responsibility’.”
I drew in another moonflower, higher than the last, then rubbed it out. “Be honest. Wouldn’t you like to be able to predict the future? Especially if you could create it the way you wanted it?”
He shook his head. “That’s a lot of control for one person to have. Think of the damage you could do.”
“Think of the good you could do.” I wet a corner of a small sponge and smeared the blue until it faded.
Jimmy went back to sketching in his boxes. “But who knows what’s really good? Think about it. Is there anyone besides yourself you’d trust with that power?”
“I’d trust you.”
“Really.” He snorted.
“Really!”
He turned his pencil over and erased everything from one frame. “You don’t even trust me enough to admit when you’re into somebody.” He looked up, then looked past me and smiled in the weirdest way. “Hey, look. It’s Damon.”
I lobbed my wet sponge at his face and got him in the forehead. “Shut up, Jimmy.”
Then Damon’s voice pierced straight through me. “Excuse me, Miss Downey?”
Miss Downey turned toward the door. “Can I help you?”
“Mr. Holden sent me to pick up some tissue paper for science. He said you’d know about it.”
My skin prickled with this sweeping sort of shock, like electricity, searing me all over. Breath wouldn’t come, and my heart thudded like I just rode the biggest, scariest roller coaster in the world.
“Hey, Jimmy. Hi, Julie.”
He said my name.
He knew my name.
Sort of.
I have to turn around. I have to look at him, and I have to say something.
“Say, ‘Hi’, Juliet.” Jimmy smirked while he wiped off his forehead.
“There’s a stack of tissue paper there on the corner table. You can take all of it,” Miss Downey told Damon.
“Thanks. See you.”
I stood frozen till the sound of his footsteps faded down the hall.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jimmy asked.
Tammy and Lula came over from their desks. “He knows you?” Tammy accused.
I inhaled and the electricity rushed out of my pores. My legs threatened to buckle.
“Look how red her face is,” Lula said.
“Shut up.” I closed my eyes.
“It can speak,” Jimmy said.
“I am so stupid.”
I am so very stupid.
* * * * *
He sat at our table during lunch.
I tucked my ratty Keds as far under the seat as my knees would bend, and I tried again to smooth my hair down where the barrette and hairspray left a crispy crease that made the sides of my hair look like a matched set of broken sparrow feathers.
He got right to the point. “Erik said he asked you to do the Academic Olympics. How come you didn’t show up yesterday?”
Everyone stared at me and I couldn’t answer because of the huge chunk of hamburger in my mouth. I couldn’t swallow, either. I held up one finger and chewed.
Pam intervened. “Juliet’s not exactly Academic Olympics material.”
I frowned at her.
“Erik said she’s amazing in art and stuff.” He looked right at me and smiled.
There’s a dimple in his left cheek, just a smidge outside the corner of his mouth.
“I’ve seen her work.”
The burger inched down my throat like a hard, dry lump of clay. I grabbed my drink and sucked on the tiny straw, but the milk just pooled up behind the burger.
“You’ve got Kim for the English questions,” Jimmy said. “Why do you want Juliet?”
I tried to speak, then realized food hadn’t gotten far enough down, and some milk slid into the wrong pipe. I hacked milk across the entire table.
Pam jumped up. “Give her the Heimlich!”
I waved her off and motioned for her to sit down.
“Juliet, are you okay?” Lula reached over and slapped my back. Hard.
My esophagus tightened and the burger crept in the wrong direction. Please don’t let me throw up. Please, God, don’t let me puke in front of Damon Sheppard.
“Don’t pound on her. She’s breathing.” Damon put his hand on my shoulder. “Try putting your arms up.”
He’s touching me.
I lifted my arms into the air and the front edge of my chair tipped down, dumping my ribcage against the side of the table. I’d hidden my ugly feet too far under me and when my elbows came off the table I lost my balance. The pain in my big toe made me jerk it away from the floor and my chair skidded backwards as I flailed to catch myself.
Damon grabbed my arm and thrust his foot behind the chair’s front leg.
He stopped my fall, but my feet still rested on the tops of my shoes and my ribs supported most of my weight against the sharp edge of the metal table. I jerked down the arm Damon held and meant to grab the table. I missed and landed on his leg.
“Miss Brynn!” Miss Sweeney screeched from across the cafeteria. “Take your hands off that boy.”
Everyone in the room turned to look at me.
Silence.
Then Drew Barony wolf-whistled, and the room erupted in laughter.
I pushed myself up from the table as the burger finally slid down my throat.
Damon stood, too.
“No!” I hissed and held up my palm.
My legs wobbled as I navigated the room through a watery haze. Someone touched my arm as I passed.
“Sweeney’s a jerk.”
Lucas. Always on my side. I tried to force my mouth into a smile for him, but my lips quivered as badly as my limbs, and a tear slid down between them.
I didn’t care about the rules. I ran.
Inside the girls’ bathroom I locked myself in the handicapped stall, sat down, hunched over my knees and sobbed.
* * * * *
Kitty’s letter waited on my bed. I picked it up and checked the postmark. Yesterday. How did a letter make it so far overnight?
I rubbed it between my fingers. Several long, flat lumps slid around inside.
My bag slid off my shoulder to the floor and I tore open the envelope. A sweet smell, like ginger ale and mint-chocolate cookies poured out. I dumped out the contents of the envelope and five silver-wrapped sticks of gum slipped from the folded pink paper.
This was the cool gift? Gum?
Dear Juliet,
Yesterday we went to an art thing at the fairgrounds, and I saw the coolest painting. I wondered if you could do it on an envelope for me?
In the painting there was a hawk, sitting in a tree under the moon. It was winter, and a tiny chipmunk ran around the shadows on the ground. The hawk stared right at the poor little thing, and you knew he was about to dive on it. I wanted to scream for the chipmunk to hide, quick, before the hawk attacked. I knew it would attack, because that’s what hawks do.
Do you know what today is? It’s the fourth anniversary of us becoming pen pals! I saw your great aunt in her yard yesterday, when I was waiting on the school bus, and I told them we’re still writing. They said to tell you hello, and that they miss your grandma.
We’re going up to the lake next week. I’m so glad our schools don’t start as early as yours. Of course, you’ll get summer earlier than I will next year. George tol
d me he’ll take me canoeing for a whole afternoon, and he’ll show me where he found a huge patch of blueberries up the river last year. We’ll have to paddle hard to get there, but coming back will be a breeze. I hope Mom and Dad let me go with him. Why are parents so much less worried about boys than girls? Is it that way with you and Mark, too?
I’m sending some of my favorite kind of gum. It’s special, and I know you’re going to like it, too.
Have a great week, and don’t let things get you down. I like you, and so do a lot of other people.
Love, Kitty
I lined up the five sticks of gum in a row on my pillow. A little longer and wider than any other kind I’d seen, they almost looked like microscope slides. Their wrappers shimmered in the afternoon sun, kind of whitish, but also silvery, sort of metallic like foil, but sort of not, too. I slid my fingernail along the side until it found the edge of the paper, then peeled one partway open. The paper felt crackly, like onion skin. I folded it back up and the seam disappeared again.
Sugar to Mark was like blood to a shark, so I restacked the sticks of gum and looked for a place to hide them. I unzipped the inner pocket of my canvas school bag and stuffed them between two maxi pads. Mark would never dare to look there.
I like you, and so do a lot of other people.
The humiliations of the day swirled around me.
I covered my eyes with my hands, then raked them through my hair. It felt like a mass of thready, crispy French fries.
I went down the hall to the bathroom I shared with Mark and locked the door. The showerhead pointed almost directly at the opposite wall, so I tipped it down before I turned on the water. I took off my stupid clothes and stuffed them into the hamper.
“What is wrong with me?” I stood in front of the mirror and tried to figure it out.
Nothing looked wrong, really. My nose wasn’t too big or too small. My hair was a little fine and sometimes frizzy, but could be a lot worse. I didn’t have cropped, kinky fuzz like Martha Harner, or Mia Teele’s stringy, shaggy mane of split ends that fell down to her behind and always looked like an enormous bird’s nest.
I didn’t hate my eyes. Slate gray with dark blue rims.
My lips looked all right.
My body? Skinny and almost stick-straight. But I had a good neck. My collarbones and the hollow between them drew a horizontal line across my shoulders. I looked like a woman there. I turned my head from one side to the other and watched the tendons in my neck stretch up to my ears.
I sighed and got into the shower.
The steaming water drenched my hair and rinsed the day off of me and down the drain. A handful of coconut-scented shampoo dissolved the crust of hair spray, and I massaged the foam into my scalp to obliterate every last flake of it.
The little silky hairs under my arms had gotten darker and thicker.
Ick.
And the once pale fuzz over my shins and thighs matted like wet feathers of seaweed on top of a lake.
I stepped out of the shower, left the water running so it didn’t get cold again, and turbaned a towel around my head. I wrapped my pink terrycloth bathrobe around me and peeked out the door. No one home yet. I wiped my feet on the mat, so I wouldn’t leave drips of water on the hall carpet, and snuck into Mom and Dad’s room.
Their bathroom door hung open, but I had to close it part way to get into the cabinet behind it. Inside, on the bottom shelf, a package of disposable razors leaned against a red, white and blue candle someone gave Mom for Memorial Day, still in its box.
She’ll never notice one.
I pulled a purple-handled razor out of the bag and stuck it in my pocket.
Then the front door slammed and they came straight up to their room.
“I’ll get it. Just wait downstairs,” my Dad hissed.
“I need another pair of shoes anyway.”
I pushed the bathroom door against the jamb.
They came into the bedroom.
“What’s wrong with those?”
“If the elevator’s still out, we’ll have to walk up.”
Pressed flat against the cabinet, I prayed. Please don’t let them come in here.
“Who’s in the shower?” Dad stood right on the other side of the bathroom door.
“You have to ask?”
“When’s Mark ever home this early?”
“Let’s just get it and go, before he gets out.”
A drawer slammed shut. “Where did you put it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it in years.” She opened the closet door.
“There’s nothing in here but Juliet’s drawings.” Papers crumpled and my dad growled. “Come on.”
“Yes, I save them.”
“Do you have to save all of them?”
“You may wish you had a few when she’s famous someday.”
Famous?
“Wake up, Sheri. Artists are a dime a dozen. What’s she going to do, be an art teacher?”
Mom dropped something on the floor. “Can you not be so miserable once in a while? And what’s wrong with being a teacher? You’re a teacher.”
The papers stopped rustling. “I’m a professor.”
Silence.
My hairy legs should have stayed in the shower.
“Juliet is very talented,” my mother whispered.
“That and fifty cents’ll get you a cup of coffee.”
My stupid eyes went hot again.
Dad rummaged around some more. “Here it is. Let’s go.”
A tear spilled out of one eye, then the other.
He left and Mom lingered. She sniffled once, then called him a nasty name and followed him down the stairs.
The lock turned in the front door, but I waited till I heard the cars crunch down the driveway before I came out.
Next to the bed the rhinestone shoes lay on their sides. Clothes draped on the chair, headboard and footboard, and random stuff scattered over every horizontal surface. Mom had no right to complain about my room.
Papers hung out of the open bureau drawer and littered the floor. A couple I recognized, but most just looked like scribbles. I turned one over. “Juliet, March 9, 1974”.
I crumpled it up, twisted it into a tight spiral and tore it in half, then shredded the halves into confetti. I grabbed another one and did the same, then threw it on the floor and stomped on it. I screamed and kicked their bed.
What’s she going to do, be an art teacher?
My heart pounded in my ears, and fire snapped out of my pores. My chest heaved in ragged gasps. I picked up another paper.
The cover from Lula’s Young Author’s Contest book entry in fifth grade. After the contest Lula’s dad took the book and my illustration to his company and had them copied and bound, so I got the original back.
A jewel-toned dragon covered Lula’s story about a princess who fought her captor, instead of waiting for a prince to show up. The dragon’s scales gleamed in shimmery reds, golds, blues and greens. It rose up on reptilian legs and arched its veined, papery wings across the sky. Teeth gnashed in the sunlight, and two plumes of blue-hot fire spewed from its flared nostrils.
I started calling Amica, Bethany and Tori “the dragons” after this picture. The beautiful beast had a heart of stone and everything out of its mouth devoured everything in its path.
The princess rode the dragon, between its wings, her scepter pointed at its head. In the end of the story, it carried her out of the boring kingdom and off to magical adventures in other lands.
A judge scotch-taped a note to the back. Remarkable illustration. One of the best I’ve seen, in this grade or any other. I expect great things from this artist.
I flicked the dragon with my middle finger and called it the same name my mom called my dad, then took the picture to my room and locked it in my desk.
When I got back to the shower the water ran cold.
CHAPTER 6
I stayed in my room after I dried my hair, after I finished my homework, after
Mom came back, and after Mark brought Ginger home. Mom called me as soon as Dad walked in the door.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Mom sang as I came down the stairs.
Dad ruffled my hair. “Hey, sweet pea.”
“How was your day?” Mom wore a gingham apron and stirred a pot of spaghetti sauce.
We’re the Cleavers now? “Lousy, actually.”
“Mm-hmm.” She beamed at Ginger, who was setting the table.
I went to the fridge for a glass of milk. “You’re making the guest work?”
Mom warbled out this fake, high-pitched laugh. “Oh, Ginger’s family.”
Geez. Does she want Mark to go to college or not?
“I’m happy to help.” Ginger carried the silverware from the sideboard to the table. “You said you had a bad day?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Mark tipped his chair back on two legs. “Trouble with the boyfriend?”
“Shut up.”
Mom gushed over Ginger all through dinner. She liked each of Mark’s girlfriends better than the last. Even Dad winked and nodded at Mark.
Vomit.
After dessert Mark and Ginger went into the living room. Dad went down to his study. Mom and I cleared the dishes.
“How was your day?” Mom rinsed plates and lined them up in the dishwasher.
I shook my head and got the serving bowls off the table. “Fine.”
“I had a really good interview this morning. I have my first client!”
“That’s great, Mom. Congratulations.” I almost asked if the shoes sealed the deal.
We scraped and rinsed and put leftovers away. I just wanted to get back up to my room alone.
The phone rang, and I grabbed it. Maybe Kitty hadn’t left for the lake yet. But it was one of Mark’s friends, so I handed him the receiver and then picked up a towel and started drying dishes.
“Joe’s car died at the mall. I’m going to go give him a jump start.” He looked around the corner into the living room. “Gin, you want to come?”
Ginger bit her lip and looked down at the stack of books she’d brought over. “I’ve got to get this done before tomorrow. Do you mind if I wait here?”
Mom untied her apron and hung it on its hook. “Of course not. Juliet will keep you company.”
“Mom!” I shrieked. “Ginger’s working on homework. She doesn’t need company.”
She pulled me back into the kitchen. “You be nice. It’s only thirty or forty minutes. You can do your homework with her.”