If they thought I was yarning about sea gulls, she thought, they’d never believe me about the Shevvingtons.
She walked down the hall, smelling school: a chalk-sweat-paper-floorwax-mimeograph smell she had never smelled before. As distinctive as low tide; the kind of smell you would never get wrong, you would remember all your life.
“Listen,” said Gretch, smiling. “Don’t be upset about Jonah finding out you’re a welfare cheat, Christina. He’s really into honesty, that’s all.” Vicki and Gretch escorted Christina on down the long hall, telling her that the next class was art. “You’ll hate art,” Vicki said. “Everybody hates art. The art teacher stinks.”
“I am not a welfare cheat,” Christina said. “I’m into honesty, too. We don’t own the cottage, we just — ”
“And don’t call it a cottage, either,” said Jonah, coming up behind them. “Anybody who lives in a thirty-two room house lives in a palace. And then you’re rude to the mainland tourists who end up paying for your free school lunch as well as buying your overpriced soda. It’s disgusting.”
Christina belted him in the mouth. When he staggered back, unprepared, she belted him a second time. This was so satisfying she was ready to do it a third time, when Miss Schuyler responded to the screams of Vicki and Gretch.
“That island girl hit him first!” yelled all the witnesses.
Miss Schuyler grabbed Christina by her sweater sleeve and Jonah by his pink oxford collar. “I cannot believe this,” hissed the math teacher. “The very first day of school, and you are starting fist fights. We do not do this kind of thing here, Christina. Nor, Jonah Bergeron, do we fight little girls who are here for the very first day of their lives.”
Jonah snorted. “Some little girl,” he said.
Miss Schuyler hauled them down to the principal’s office. They went through an outer office full of high counters and secretaries. Miss Schuyler knocked hard on a yellow door blackened around the handle with fingerprints, and pushed into Mr. Shevvington’s office.
When Jonah finished his explanation there was silence in the room. Christina was aware of tall filing cabinets, piles of papers, books tumbling sideways, and an open window through which came the smell of the fish cannery. Mr. Shevvington seemed not to be a part of his office, any more than his wife had been a part of her clothing. He was simply handsome and silvery and sad. He fixed his eyes on Christina, and the eyes never blinked.
He’ll call my parents, she thought. I’ve been away from home a day and a half, and look at me. In trouble with everybody.
Mr. Shevvington’s voice was gentle, and yet rough, like a luxury car driving slowly over pebbles. “Christina,” he said sadly, “I am so disappointed in you.”
Christina’s heart began to pound hideously, as if at thirteen she were going to have a heart attack. “I got mad at Jonah,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She felt as worthless as an empty soda can by the side of the road.
Mr. Shevvington sighed. Then he turned to Jonah. “Christina’s father is caretaker of a millionaire’s mansion. They don’t have access to the house, but live in the servants’ quarters because that’s what they are, Jonah. Servants. Christina needs free lunch more than anybody else. I don’t want you to gossip about her situation, but you might let people know that Christina is the kind of Maine native who knows poverty firsthand. So although yes, she’s on welfare, no, she is not a welfare cheat.”
Christina felt punched. “We have never been on welfare! My mother runs a restaurant.”
“Her mother serves toast and coffee to lobster-men from a little shack near the harbor,” said Mr. Shevvington to Jonah. “Now I want you two to be friends. That is your assignment for the fall, Jonah. You take Christina on as a friend and help her steer a safe passage among the rocks of junior high.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jonah. He was staring down at his shoes. Christina stared there, too. Yet another example of catalog Maine, only this time it was hunting boots, which most certainly had never been taken hunting.
I hate them! thought Christina. I hate them all. “I am not on welfare,” she said.
“What do you think a free lunch is?” said Jonah.
Christina flung back her head to shout, Then I’ll never take free lunch again! when she realized that her parents did not, in fact, have money to send for buying hot lunches, that Mrs. Shevvington was unlikely to buy her boxes of apple juice and Twinkies when the state would supply it free, and that she did not, at thirteen, earn any money herself.
Mr. Shevvington ordered her to apologize to Jonah.
“I’m sorry,” muttered Christina without looking at him.
Jonah was excused to return to class, with a little note from Mr. Shevvington to carry to his teacher. Mr. Shevvington’s handwriting was delicate enough for wedding invitations. His muscular fingers did not look right making such thin, graceful shapes.
The principal dropped back down into his chair and smiled at Christina.
Christina had thought she would never smile again, but Mr. Shevvington’s smile was so kind. Little by little Christina’s face and mouth relaxed, and slowly she managed a smile of her own. The worst was over. Mr. Shevvington said that junior high could be something of a shock. Children age thirteen, he explained, were barbarians. He knew Christina was not, of course, but she was not used to the pressure of a whole grade around her. She would have to be calm, and pliant, and let them all have their way.
Christina did not see why they should always have their way. She didn’t feel like being calm and pliant. She felt like belting Jonah again. But she did not say so. This is good practice, she told herself, and she made herself look pliant, like a flower stem in the wind.
“While you’re here, Christina, why don’t you fill out this form we will need to guide you through your school career.”
Forms! she thought eagerly.
Christina loved to fill in blanks. Mostly she sent away for folders and leaflets about anything at all, just to get mail. This would be a real form.
Christina accepted the clipboard Mr. Shevvington gave her to write on and the pen he passed her to write with. With each item, she felt more like somebody too poor or too stupid to have brought her own. “My things are still on the floor in the hall where Miss Schuyler grabbed me,” she said.
Mr. Shevvington nodded as if he did not believe her, but was willing to accept Christina’s fibs to save her pride.
I won’t cry, she told herself. I never cry. I won’t now.
She took the pen purposefully. She could make her script just as beautiful as his. She’d show him.
The form was entitled Getting to Know You. Computer generated sixteenth notes floated in the margins, like a happy song. Christina filled in name, address, parents’ occupations. Then she looked at the questions. Her brow wrinkled. They were very odd questions.
“How come I didn’t get this in homeroom along with the medical forms?” she asked Mr. Shevvington.
“It’s only for new students.”
“But all the students in my grade are new,” she protested, “starting junior high for the first time.”
Mr. Shevvington wound a pencil around in his fingers like a baton twirler. “Christina, I hope this is not a harbinger of things to come. Do you have difficulty with authority? Are you going to be continually presenting problems and arguing? Mrs. Shevvington and I decided to overlook both last night and this morning, because we know how nervous you must be, an island child away from home for the first time — but I am beginning to have doubts about your ability to handle yourself.”
Her hand grew sweaty around the pen. The metal chair poked her back like Mrs. Shevvington’s fingernail. It’s true, she thought. Nobody else argued. Nobody else got in a fistfight. Michael told me to laugh when they teased. I never even tried to laugh. I just socked Jonah.
Mr. Shevvington said gently, “Christina, I want you to think about counseling. We have a wonderful guidance department here. We have a social worker who understands trouble
d adolescents very well. I want you to consider working with her to sort out your emotional problems. Of course it will be your decision. We won’t force you into anything.”
Emotional problems? Christina thought. Me?
She had always been the granite of her family, the old strong stock of the island. It was Anya who was the endangered species, the fragile one.
Or was it?
“Now fill out the form,” said Mr. Shevvington gently. His eyes were warm, soft: eyes to wrap a child in comfort.
“But these questions — ” began Christina. She wet her lips.
“Will help us understand you,” the principal said.
Christina lowered her eyes to the page. The letters were soothing; the alphabet never changed; the white rectangle of the pages never changed.
She tried to breathe evenly.
What are you afraid of? asked the first question. Circle all that apply.
Rats?
Darkness?
Being laughed at?
Pain?
Acid?
Failure?
Being alone?
Most of the time, Christina Romney thought, I am afraid of nothing.
Some of the time, I am afraid of everything.
But I am not telling anybody which I’m afraid of, or when.
“I won’t fill this out, Mr. Shevvington.”
“You must, Christina, dear.”
“No.”
The word sat alone, like an island in the sea.
There was a long silence. Christina did not look at his eyes. The eyes, like the beckoning hand of the wet suit, might force her into something.
The silence lasted and lasted. What would happen in art without her? Would Jonah be there even now, telling them all how poverty-stricken she was? How her parents were nothing but servants? It wasn’t true. Her father was an excellent tennis player. Her mother was an excellent cook.
“Then you may go,” Mr. Shevvington said. “But I want you to know that I am your friend. All I want is to help you. And Christina — ”
She set the clipboard and pen on his desk and backed out of the office.
“ — you desperately need help.”
Chapter 6
AFTER SCHOOL CHRISTINA WENT to look for Anya, Michael, and Benj, but it was Jonah she found. Or actually, Jonah who found Christina.
“Get lost,” said Christina. “I don’t want any friends by marching orders from the principal.”
Jonah said nervously. “I have to do what he says.”
“Why? I won’t rat on you. If he ever asks, I’ll say you’re very attentive, and helpful in every way. Now get lost.”
Jonah stuck with her. “He’s watching,” whispered Jonah. “Let me walk with you as far as Breakneck Hill.” The heavy hunting boots clumped along with her. Twice Jonah looked over his shoulder.
Twice Christina forced herself to look straight ahead.
Jonah was slightly shorter than Christina, but boys usually were at that age. All of him was thin: even his lips and his eyelids were thin. But it was not as thin as girls can be — anorexic. It was thin for the moment: Tomorrow, or next week, Jonah would grow six inches and gain seventy-five pounds. His hands were much too large for his seventh-grade body; his feet big as a clown’s; his teeth too square. “You have funny hair,” Jonah said. “Is it dyed?”
“No, it isn’t dyed. And what kind of name is Jonah, anyway?” added Christina, getting in a dig of her own. “It sounds like a graveyard name to me.”
Jonah stared at her.
Too late she remembered this was yet another island saying Anya had forbidden her to use.
Names fascinated Christina. So far in seventh grade she had met Kimberly, Jennie, Krystyn, Sable, Brandi, Vicki, and Gretch. But generations back, Christina’s ancestors had names like Florence, Nellie, Phoebe, and HepsiBeth. They were in the graveyard on Burning Fog Isle, where their stones were routinely checked by graveyard buffs who wanted a rubbing of the angel on HepsiBeth’s stone. Christina had always thought HepsiBeth sounded like a soft drink — Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, HepsiBeth.
“We always give our cats graveyard names,” said Christina to Jonah. “Off the old gravestones. One year the litter was Emmaline, Tristram, Jethro, Jemima, Dorcas, and Abiah. Jonah sounds like a good cat’s name.”
Jonah said, “You’re weird, Christina.”
“Good. Then you don’t have to be friends with me. Forget your marching orders.” Christina walked away from Jonah. Then she remembered something and turned around again. “There is one way you can help me. But you can’t tell Mr. Shevvington about it.”
Jonah did not look thrilled about something for which he got no credit.
“I want to see the house where Anya lived last year. It’s in this neighborhood somewhere.” If I get in even more trouble, she thought, the Shevvingtons will send me away. Probably there.
Her head ached with the day’s events. She felt as if it would take all autumn to think through what had happened. And in only a little while she had to face the Shevvingtons again, and Anya and Michael and Benj. They would all know about the fistfight with Jonah.
Jonah took her down a narrow street, away from the cute little tourist-trade, sailor-trade shops. Past car repair places stinking of oil, and old sagging warehouses with weeds growing in the cracks of the buildings.
He pointed to a thick, squat house with seaweed-green asphalt siding. It was a house where poor people lived; where the smell of cabbage clung to the torn wallpaper and the ugly carpet curled up and collected spiders. Where there would be only one bathroom, and its tub would be pockmarked and its shower curtain moldy. There was no yard, no view of the sea, no color, and no wind.
Christina shuddered.
I, from my island of wild grass and roses, of leaping salt spray and seabirds floating in air currents — living there?
“Creepy, huh?” Jonah said. “Aren’t you glad you live in Schooner Inne this year?”
Christina thought, Why did the Shevvingtons decide to take us? They don’t have any other guests. I don’t think they’re going to have other guests. I think we’ll live in the attic and they’ll live on the second floor and nobody else will come. Ever. Anya says we’re living with the Shevvingtons because they’re so kind. Vicki and Gretch adore Mr. Shevvington. I don’t think they’re kind.
She remembered what the tourist on Frankie’s boat had said. Don’t they look like ancient island princesses, marked out for sacrifice? Sent away for the sake of the islanders, to be given to the sea?
“What’s it like in the cupola?” Jonah said.
“I haven’t been up there yet.”
He was amazed. “A girl that slugs boys the first day of school hasn’t explored the best part of the sea captain’s house yet?” he said. “That’s where the sea captain’s wife stood when she dove to her death.”
“Couldn’t have,” said Christina, who wanted never to agree with Jonah about anything. “It’s all glassed in.”
Jonah shrugged. “She didn’t care if she got cut by a little glass, did she? She just jumped through it.”
Christina was horrified. She had never thought of that.
Why had Mr. Shevvington smiled, saying, “I know,” when Anya promised to do anything he asked?
Why had Anya said “The sea keeps count. The sea is a mathematician. The sea wants one of us”?
Jonah and Christina waited for the light to change at the bottom of Breakneck Hill. The waves crashed in Candle Cove. Six cars crossed the Singing Bridge, and the open metal floor of the bridge hummed loudly as the rubber tires spun over it. Christina had always loved the Singing Bridge.
“It sings when somebody drowns, you know,” said Jonah.
“I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never heard that,” Christina said.
“Huh. You’ve lived on Burning Fog Isle all your life, not this town. I suppose town is pretty exciting for you, huh? Must be real quiet on that island once the tourists are gone.”
; “It’s never quiet. The sea crashes, the gulls scream, the motors of the boats roar, chain saws cut wood, anchor chains rattle, shutters bang, the wind whistles — ”
“Okay, okay, it’s noisy on the island. I meant people.”
“I do not,” said Christina sharply, “consider tourists such as yourself to be people, Jonah.”
She stalked up Breakneck Hill, not an easy thing to do. It was too steep for stalking. The glass of the cupola caught the sun and blinded her.
Neither of the Shevvingtons could be home from school yet. Christina would climb the cupola.
This had been the worst day of her entire life.
And she had no mother to greet her with something yummy, hot from the oven; no Dolly to share it with; no VCR to put her favorite movie in; no litter of kittens to play with on the kitchen floor.
Christina had never expected to be homesick, and certainly not the first day. Her sides hurt, as if she had cramps from running.
She unlocked the huge green door, shut it quietly behind her, and went inside.
No guests sat in the formal living room; no guests snacked in the formal dining room. The kitchen was dark and silent. The dingy den was empty.
Christina carried her books up to her room.
She got to the top of the stairs and the bedroom door was closed.
She distinctly remembered leaving it open that morning.
Mrs. Shevvington certainly hadn’t gone in; she had left for school before they had.
Inside the room Christina could hear breathing.
She set down her book bag. Then she picked it up again to use its weight as a weapon.
The breath came in little huffs like a panting animal.
She swallowed. She cracked the door. No black wet nose of a dog or cat came through the crack. The breathing continued. Like somebody blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Like —