“This is how you do lunch in the civilized world.”
I stare at the riches. I’ve never even held a twenty-dollar bill, although I touched a five once, rolled into a tube Mama used to snort with. I couldn’t see the pictures too good.
Twenty dollars. Twenty dollars bought a half hour with me, with Mama taking the money first, before shoving the men with the fat fingers into the camper and shutting the door behind us. I hated getting undressed. It was so cold, you could see your breath.
“You’re clueless. Positively clueless, Blackburn. Take your bag lunch. Be a goober on your first day. Just don’t sit anywhere near me. Got it?”
I glower at her. She’s about to say more, and then her eyes train on my feet.
“I know my mom bought you brand-new boots. Why are you wearing those old things?”
“I just am.”
I think of Jenessa and her thumb. Me and the violin. Me and these boots. Even better if they piss off Delaney.
I decide to bypass the cafeteria altogether. My skull throbs with the buildup of noise, people, sights, scents. I discover the door to a barren courtyard hosting a huddle of maple trees, and stone benches, cold but dry. I sit, my violin next to me. I stare at it. It stares back.
Occasionally, a student walks by, eyeing me through a glass hallway that makes up one of the courtyard walls, but, other than that, the space is mine.
I sit on my hat for added warmth and replay the morning. When I hadn’t seen Pixie again, I’d finally broken down and asked a tall, gangly girl if she could lead me to my locker. The lockers are ingenious; so much easier to carry around books for a class or two, instead of the knapsack, which weighs a ton.
Delaney and her friends wouldn’t be caught dead lugging around a knapsack.
Delaney shares two classes with me so far, English lit and American history, and she gives me a wide berth in each, as do her friends.
“Birds of a feather stick together,” Mama said.
It’s even more true here.
I exhale, long and straight, no wiggles for the first time today. The woods were a luxury of sorts, I reckon, cut off from the rest of the world. The peopled world is so fast, so loud and busy. Always things to do, with none seeming all that important. I’ve taken to popping aspirin most afternoons, my head punching back at all the hustle, bustle, and noise.
I watch a phoebe land on the cornice and characteristically pump its tail. Nessa healed a phoebe of a broken wing in the Hundred Acre Wood. The fledgling’s feathers were a silky grayish brown, with its stomach a happy yellow surprise. I pretend the phoebe followed us here, seeing how it’s such a sturdy, resourceful critter.
Fee-bee. Feeeeee-bee.
The bird sounds like it’s calling itself.
I take my violin from its case and, positioning my bow, imitate the sound.
Fee-bee. Feeeeee-bee.
When Ness was younger, she loved to trace the dark, discolored mark under my chin where the violin continually pressed; a mark she called my “purple flower,” blooming from years of playing.
I close my eyes and slide into Vivaldi’s “Spring,” and even the phoebe stills to listen. I ride the notes back to the Hundred Acre Wood, to the sway and dazzle of sun-drizzled branches, the wanwood leafmeal a spicy carpet, the air crisp as a bite from a rare apple as the Obed River rushed off to bigger things.
Some days, the longing for the woods breaks the ache in two until I can’t breathe. I slip into Brahms’ sonata no. 1 in G Major, my lunch completely forgotten, along with the constant motion, the tittering girls, the awkward fit of this outsider’s world. My bow glides across the strings and I play by heart, from the heart, as Mama taught me, my lashes wet and then my cheeks, the strings vibrating the stars behind the daylight, the notes deliberate as switch strokes at times, a caress from Saint Joseph at others.
“Woo hoo! Bravo!”
I hit a clunker, almost dropping my violin. He leans in the doorway, his gloves smacking together, his eyes sparkling like Obed sun off freshly fallen snow.
“Wow. And to think they were calling you ‘Clumsy Carey’ just this morning.”
“Is that what they’re calling me?” I say, drying my face and hoping he doesn’t see. “Could be worse, I reckon.”
I put down my bow, rest the violin on my lap.
“You looked like you were in another world. In orbit.”
I blush, but I don’t look away. Ryan Shipley. My heart leaps, but I don’t understand why.
Say something.
“You look cold,” I say, my own teeth chattering.
“Hold that thought.”
He returns less than a minute later, a thick coat in his arms. I wait for him to pull it on. Instead, he walks over and drapes it across my shoulders.
My heart beats upside down when he plunks down next to me. So close. I think of what Pixie said about him, my cheeks burning. With cold, I tell myself. But even I don’t believe it.
“You can really play. I mean, wow.”
An icicle crashes to the ground behind us.
“What are you doing out here anyway?” he asks, as if he’s been looking for me.
Has he been looking for me?
“Playing the violin,” I say.
Our laughter echoes off the walls.
“Where did you learn to play?”
I feel myself smiling the way Jenessa does when Melissa praises her. I always knew I was good; I’ve practiced enough. But the fuss everyone makes continues to surprise me.
“My mother was a concert violinist. She taught me from the time I was four or so, and I loved it. She said it’s in our blood.”
“It must be, if you can play like that.”
The phoebe pokes its head out over the cornice.
Fee-bee. Feeeee-beeeee.
We look up at the bird, and I answer back with my violin.
Fee-bee. Feeeee-beeeee.
“You must play somewhere, right, where people can listen and there’s heat and stuff?”
We’re both grinning. I can’t stop. I think of what Mrs. Hadley said about Delaney, then push the thought aside.
“I’ve never played for anyone but my mother and my little sister. Not on purpose anyway.”
“You can’t be serious.”
I nod, my chest puffed up like the phoebe itself. And then I think of Mama. Mama, playing her meth’d-up clunkers, or nodding off over the violin, me darting forward to catch it as it fell from her hands. The music couldn’t save her. I think of Delaney’s twenty-dollar bill, and what fifty would get you, and I see Mama’s toothless face, laughing at me when I asked her why I couldn’t play for the men instead.
“That’s not the kind of playing they want,” she’d said, shaking her head at me.
He’d never understand, and I could never explain.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” I say, the words tumbling over each other. I’m shivering, and I can’t stop. “This here is private. Okay?”
His eyes fill with disappointment. “That may be one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re a prodigy. Gifts like that are for sharing. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
I think of a deer I cornered once, terror rising from its coat in steamy puffs. I’d lowered my shotgun, ashamed. Its face had been swallowed up by the same eyes Nessa wore the night she stopped talking.
If I hadn’t been lost in the violin, I might’ve heard sooner. Heard in time.
“Please don’t say anything. Please?” My eyes well. “Please?”
He looks like he’s been struck as the tears slip down my cheeks. Dang tears. I almost never cried in the woods.
“I’m so sorry, Carey. I didn’t mean to push. I was just saying—ah, hell.”
“No worries,” I say quickly, like he’d said to me this morning. I pull myself together, surprised by my reaction. “It’s just that I have so much to juggle right now, and everything’s so different—”
“You don’t have to explain. Your
playing, you’re just so—I got carried away.” He leans in, giving my shoulder a bump. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I just—” I look at him, my cheeks burning. “I reckon for now, I just want to blend in.”
His eyes warm me like our crackliest fires, the ones inside the house.
“You, Carey Blackburn, could never blend in. Believe me,” he says, his words soft as cashmere, “that’s the truth. But, if you want to keep them thinking you’re Clumsy Carey—”
I give a wobbly laugh. “Yeah, I reckon.”
“Then who am I to stand in your way?”
His eyes flicker to the building, where two guys yell his name and press goofy faces against the glass. He tucks his hands into the armpits of his sweater, the way Jenessa and I did in the woods. His eyes hold mine, causing my stomach to flip.
“But we know better,” he adds, winking. “Right?
I hand him back his coat. “We know better.”
I watch his back, his feet crunching through the snow. At the door, he turns, his eyes centered on me, the real me.
Fee bee. Feeeeee bee.
“Catch ya later, then, CC.”
The door clicks shut behind him, and a moment later, the bell rings. I fit the violin and bow back in their bed of crushed velvet, my hands clumsy with cold. I take three big bites of my tuna sandwich and swig the apple juice in the container down to its last drop before dropping the rest of my lunch into the trash can and crunching my way to the door.
I’ve survived my first lunch period as the new girl.
I feel as proud of myself as I did catching my first fish or starting my first fire.
Prod-i-gy: person with extraordinary gifts; extraordinary thing.
I’d looked it up as soon as I got home.
“Could you please pass Jenessa the butter?” I ask politely.
Jenessa wants to melt a pat of butter on top of her peach cobbler.
“Ewwww.” Delaney wrinkles her nose.
Even after weeks of good food, Nessa remains slim like Mama, destined to be long and lithe and beautiful. Everywhere we go, grown-ups and kids alike stop to stare at her. At us. Before Pixie, I would’ve thought it was because we were backwoods losers stickin’ out like sore thumbs.
Good old Pixie.
Delaney ignores my request, although the butter dish sits right in front of her.
“I got it.” Melissa, smiling an apology in my direction, waves me to sit back down. She passes the butter to Nessa as Delaney feigns ignorance, concentrating on her plate, where she pushes around a few stalks of asparagus.
“Not a big pat. A pat-pat,” I tell Jenessa.
When she reaches for another, I shake my head no.
I still can’t get used to the taste of beef. It’s so different from pigeon, quail, squirrel, deer, and rabbit. Going back in my mind, I catch the glint of my hunting knife as I deftly gut a rabbit with a few skillful strokes. We’ve yet to have rabbit at my father’s house.
“How old do we have to be before we’re allowed to have a boyfriend?” Delaney asks with a sidelong glance in my direction.
I cut into my baked potato, fuming.
“Sixteen,” my father booms in his no-nonsense voice.
“How old to wear makeup?”
“Fifteen,” Melissa says. “Tastefully.”
Delaney smiles triumphantly.
“Why?” ask Melissa and my father together.
“Oh, no reason.” Delaney smiles, careful not to look at me. “Just checking.”
They exchange a glance. Melissa shrugs.
“Hey, Mom,” Delaney says, her mouth full of cobbler. “You work too hard. How about Carey and me clearing the table and loading the dishwasher?”
Melissa puts down her spoon, her plate empty except for sugary smears on the glass dessert dish and a few crumbs pressed against the sides.
“That would be lovely, helpful daughter of mine.”
She looks over at me for confirmation. I flash a smile of consent. I might be too shy to show it, but I’d do anything for Melissa. Just for all she’s done for Jenessa, I could never pay her back.
I turn to Ness. “Teeth brushed and homework before TV, okay?”
Ness nods enthusiastically.
It’s obvious from her good mood and voracious appetite that her first day of school went well.
Melissa confirms it.
“I spoke with Jenessa’s teacher today, Mrs. Tompkins. She said the children were very welcoming, especially after she explained your sister’s speech issue. She asked the children, ‘Who wants to be Jenessa’s classroom buddy?’ Every single child raised a hand.”
Ness beams from her chair.
“The class project is sign language, so they can bond with Jenessa, and she with them. Isn’t that so thoughtful of Mrs. Tompkins?”
Melissa pushes back her chair, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin before placing it on the table. She squeezes my shoulder reassuringly as she passes, and I think of here Ryan bumped my shoulder earlier.
Ness copies Melissa, dabbing her mouth with her napkin before pushing back her chair and taking Melissa’s hand. They reunite with a tail-thumping Shorty, who’s anxiously been awaiting Nessa’s arrival before the popping fireplace.
Nessa collapses onto the rug and pulls Shorty onto her lap, practically disappearing beneath the old hound. I think of Mama’s sticker on the bottom of my violin case, a swirl of black and white completing a whole circle, called “yin and yang.” That’s Nessa and Shorty.
Melissa gathers up her crochet bag, choosing colored balls of yarn for the night’s knitting.
“Five minutes with Shorty, okay, then bath, teeth, and homework,” she says.
Jenessa’s giggles are muffled by Shorty’s fur, but her hand waves in the air, giving a thumbs-up.
“Ouch. That’s unnecessary,” I say as Delaney elbows me hard.
“You didn’t think I was going to do this all by myself?”
“It was your idea,” I grumble.
With Melissa and Nessa in the other room and my father out feeding the livestock and chickens, it’s just the two of us in the too-bright kitchen.
“You bring in the dishes,” she orders. “I’ll rinse and stack.”
I glare at her, unmoving.
“Truce, okay? Just get the dishes. Or we’ll be here all night.”
I hand her plate after plate, and she rinses them under the steaming water. I watch, mesmerized, as I’ve been since the first day, by the convenience of inside faucets. She has no idea how good she has it.
“Marie said she saw you in the courtyard with Ryan today.”
I scrutinize her face, but it’s unreadable. I think of how Ryan sat next to me and the way my heart flipped over, and I almost drop a dinner plate.
“Careful with those. That’s part of a set that belonged to my great-grandmother. They’ll be mine, when I marry.”
Delaney grabs the plate from me roughly, almost dropping it herself. As always, I can feel her measuring me. Measuring me against herself.
“If I were you,” she continues, “I’d watch out for Ryan. He’s a player. And a junior. I wonder what your father would say about that.”
I think of the creek in the dead of winter—silent, rock-hard, impenetrable.
Be the creek.
I center on Melissa, who’s speaking to my sister, her words soft as a lullaby.
“We’ll have to ask Santa for crochet needles for you. Would you like to learn?”
Ness nods happily, playing with Shorty’s front toes.
“That’s your defense? You’re going to pull a Jenessa on me?” Delaney demands.
I shrug, hand her another dish. I’m not going to discuss Ryan with her. I can barely discuss him with myself. I peer out the window over the sink, the glass frosted by the cold outside and fogged by the warmth within.
Delaney reaches her finger toward the glass. I watch as she draws a large R, then a circle around it, then a slanted line through the circle.
/> “Just stay away from him, you hear?”
I don’t take well to people telling me what to do.
Never have, never will.
“Or what?” I demand.
What can she really do to me?
Delaney reaches into her pocket and pulls out a sheet of paper folded into squares. The blood drains from my face. I could kill her right there on the spot.
“Or this,” she says, “is going to end up taped to the walls at school.”
“That’s mine.” My voice cracks. “Give it back.”
Her eyes flash, and she begins reading to herself.
“To Whom It May Concern,
I’m writing in regards to my daughters, Carey and Jenessa Blackburn.
I removed Carey from her father’s home without his permission while she was in his legal custody.
His name is Charles Benskin, and you can find him through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
I have issues with methamphetamine and bipolar disorder, and can no longer care for the girls. You can find them at a camper in the woods of the Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park.
If you enter from the first scenic overlook and follow the river, you’ll find the camper in a clearing about seven miles out.
Please know I’m sorry for what I did.
Sincerely,
Joelle Blackburn
“Wow. Your mom is pretty effed up.”
I dart forward and rip the paper from her hands. She grins, the victor either way.
“That’s just a copy. I have more where that came from. You think Ryan Shipley could really like a backwoods freak like you? We only took you in out of pity.”
I stand next to myself—that’s how it feels—and watch helplessly as my arm pulls back and my fist balls, ready to hit her harder than I’ve ever hit anything.
“Go ahead—I dare you, freak,” Delaney hisses, not even trying to defend herself. “Show them who you really are—white- trash garbage whose mother didn’t bring her up right, let alone want her.”
To my horror, a dam breaks.
“You’re pathetic, you know that? I wish they’d never found you. I wish your crack-ass mother had taken you with her—”
“She was smoking meth” I hiss. “And I didn’t ask to come here.”
We’re both breathing heavily.
“What’s your problem with me anyway?” I say, the white heat filling my body. “I reckon you have everything a person could ask for. You even had my father. Why do you hate us so much?”