Orphea Proud (9 page)

“You can’t leave me here,” I said breathlessly. “Leave me somewhere else. Leave me in a city.”

“This is where your mother’s people are. Let them deal with you now.”

“They’re expecting you,” said Ruby. “We didn’t tell them about … you know … Lissa.”

“And you’d better not, either,” warned Rupert.

“What did you tell them?”

“That you had some problems in school and you need a break.”

I smirked. “What kind of problems?”

“Make something up. And watch what you say. And mind your p’s and q’s. People down here are righteous.”

“Righteous?”

“They do the right thing. And if you don’t, they knock some sense in your head.”

He jammed an envelope into my hand. “There’s a check made out to your aunts for your expenses. That way nobody can say that I shirked my duty. The two hundred dollars from your lowlife friends is in there, too.”

My heart hammered against my chest. He tossed my bags out onto the ground.

“Why do you hate me, Rupert?”

“Because you’re ungrateful. You want to throw away what my father worked all his life to build.”

“What are you talking about?”

“His reputation. He’d roll over in his grave if he knew what you’d become.”

Ruby stepped up and gave me my journal. I handed her the scarf.

“Be good, Orphea. Forget those feelings you had about Lissa. You can start over here.… ”

Then they got into the car.

“Where’s the house?”

“Up the road and around the bend,” Rupert called out. “They live in a store.”

He turned the car around and headed back down the hill. Up ahead there was fog. I stood rooted to one spot. Everything was still. I started shaking inside.

I picked up my stuff and trudged up the road. My legs and arms were so tired, walking up the hill was like walking through waves. Then I saw a sign hanging off one of its nails. The chipped paint letters spelled
out
PROUD ROAD
. I walked faster. My feet were suddenly freezing. Around the bend was a crooked house built behind a boulder. Like the sign, the building needed a paint job, but I could tell that it had once been bright pink. A second sign hung above its wraparound porch:
PROUD STORE, MINERVA AND CLEOPATRA PROUD, PROPRIETORS
. I climbed the stairs. Next to the door was a pile of wood and hanging at the windows were white lace curtains. I knocked, but no one answered. I opened the door to the tinkling of a bell. In the middle of the room was a potbellied stove with a fire going. I took a sniff and recognized that fragrance from long ago, woodsmoke mixed with snow clouds. By the stove there was a table with a checked cloth; straight ahead, an old-fashioned soda fountain with red leather stools; beyond that, a wall filled with faded photos and old license plates. And everywhere else there were shelves, mainly empty but here and there with cans or boxes.

A faint snore came from the left of the doorway. An old woman with her hair in gray coils sat slumped behind a low counter, her hands folded in front of the cash register, her shoulders covered with a quilt that looked like a map. I had missed her on my way in. Was she Aunt Minerva or Aunt Cleopatra? I stared, trying to recognize her face. But I couldn’t. I turned and closed the front door quietly.

Suddenly a short, stocky creature in a gingham apron shot out of one of the side rooms.

“Hey there, Orphea, honey child!” she called out.
Her voice was low and gravelly. “Must not have heard the doorbell. We’ve been expecting you.”

“Aunt Minerva?” I guessed.

“That’s me.”

She clomped across the room and gave me a bear hug. Then Aunt Cleo woke up.

“Oh my! Is she here?” Her voice was high and wispy. “Where’s that bad boy, Rupert? Oh, never mind.”

She scooted out from behind the counter still in her chair! A wheelchair—something else I hadn’t remembered. She grabbed my arms and pulled me down to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Welcome home. You must be hungry.”

I sat down at the table in front of the stove. Aunt Minerva brought me hot fritters. My eyes began to close after one bite. Then I felt Aunt Cleo’s hand patting my knee.…

Proud Road is another country. You’d probably think it’s the middle of nowhere or even the end of the world. I think of it as the land of softness in honor of the quilts and pillows my two aunts gave me to take up to a loft, where I slept for a week.

I’m gonna
take five, so I’ll ask Marilyn Chin to come up and play the bass!

Icky Digits will come down and take your orders, soon as he turns the lights up.

If anybody wants to stretch their legs and get a closer look at Ray’s masterpiece—which I’m not supposed to be looking at—be our guest. Right, Ray? How you doin’ back there, anyway? Don’t forget—more than one horse isn’t allowed! Has Raynor Grimes been painting horses all this time? Don’t tell me—he better not be.…

See you guys in a bit.

Do you
have a secret? I won’t ask you to tell, don’t worry. I just want you to think about it for a moment.

There are all kinds of secrets, of course. Little secrets that rest in a corner of your mind, neatly as a thin dime fits in the fold of your pants pocket; then the other kind that hides in your bones waiting to jump out. That’s the big kind of secret, the dangerous kind that requires a lock on your face. That’s my kind.

My secret didn’t start off that way. It started off as a small bubble of surprising joy right in the center of my chest. I first felt it the day I met Lissa flying her kite. I felt it when we were walking home together,
when we sat next to each other on the school bus, or when we were at her house. It got so I couldn’t wait to see her so I could feel that little bubble of joy. Pretty soon just thinking of her made it rise inside me. Was I in love with her even then? If I was, I didn’t know it. And I certainly didn’t think about hiding the fact that I was indescribably happy to have her as a best friend. We gave each other big bear hugs back then.

But in fifth grade, my bubble of joy had turned into a small geyser. Lissa had a habit of grabbing my hand and sticking it into her own coat pocket on the playground. That’s because one of my gloves was always missing; she was trying to help keep my hands warm. When we were ten, that little gesture made me feel cozy; when I was eleven and a half, it made me feel electric. So one freezing day when she grabbed my gloveless hand on the playground and stuck it into one of her own coat pockets, I jerked away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

It felt too good, that’s what was wrong. But I couldn’t say that. Not that I’d ever dream of breaking off our friendship at that point. She was like my other half. But our friendship was definitely changing, at least for me. Along with the pleasure of her company, there was a slight hint of panic. Could it be that I was one of them? One of the people that Rupert called “fairies”?

Pretty insulting term, huh? Sorry. It’s the only one I knew at the time. Rupert said it when we went to the
ice cream parlor. Once not long after Nadine died, he and Ruby and I went to get malteds. Two men came in after we’d ordered. They sat across from each other in a booth on the other side of the room. Our malteds arrived and then their order came, too, one big double sundae with everything on it and two spoons. They began to eat out of the same dish and one of them smiled at me. I’d been staring at their ice cream. But Rupert had been staring at them. Suddenly he pulled me up out of my seat. Ruby jumped up, too.

“Come on, Orphea. We’re going.”

“But I haven’t—”

“We’re going.”

He practically dragged me out of the place with Ruby scurrying behind, leaving three barely touched malteds on our table.

“I haven’t finished!”

“Hush,” said Ruby, “we have ice cream at home.”

By now we were outside. Rupert took a deep breath. “I’m not sitting across from a couple of fairies.”

I turned and looked through the window. All I could see were the two men. Their sundae was almost finished. One of them was saying something and the other was laughing. “What fairies?”

Rupert glared. “Them. Stay away from those kind of people.”

The man who had been laughing noticed us staring and quickly turned away.

I got the message. There was a new kind of fairy—they were bad and also scary. I could feel the fear in
Ruby’s body as she led me to the car. And the disgust on Rupert’s face—as if he’d swallowed a rat. I never forgot it. So, when my hormones began to rage and my best friend became the object, you bet I felt panic.

I’m a fairy, a little voice whispered inside. What am I going to do? Then again, I thought, maybe I’m not a fairy. Maybe this is the way a person is supposed to feel when they’re with their best friend in the world.

By the time we were twelve, things came to a head. Every girl in class liked a guy. Every girl except me. Even Lissa had a crush on our friend Mike. I went along with it, listening to her rave about him as if he were a rock star and she were his groupie. Not that Mike wasn’t a great guy, but I didn’t think he was cute. But Lissa …

“He has such a cute mouth! He has cute muscles! He wears his jeans in such a cute way! Don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

“I think Mike would make a good father. I think we should have three children, named Amy, Keith, and Marvin.”

“Yuck.”

“Don’t you like those names?”

“No.”

“Well, help me think of some others. After all, you’ll be the godmother.”

I snorted. “Thanks a lot.”

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You act as if you’re jealous.”

“Jealous? Me? Of course not.” I couldn’t admit to
that. If I was jealous of Lissa and Mike, it meant I really was a fairy.

“I think it’s great that you like Mike,” I volunteered. “He’s cute.”

Now, you may wonder where Mike came into all of this. That’s the odd part. Mike didn’t like Lissa at all. It turns out that Mike had a crush on me! Lissa was the one to break the news.

“I have something for you.” She handed me a piece of paper folded into a tiny square.

“You wrote me a note?”

“Not me.” She was pouting. Her gray eyes were angry.

“What’s wrong?”

“Mike likes you! That’s what’s wrong. He was supposed to like me. Look at this!” She snatched the note back and read it for me. “Dear Orphea. I want to touch your velvet body!”

I laughed. “That’s so corny.”

“Do you like him? Yes or no?”

I thought for a minute. “Yes.” I didn’t like Mike in that way, of course, but I thought that I might try to. If I could like Mike, I wouldn’t like Lissa, and that would be the end of my problem.

“You like him?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

She grabbed my hand. “That’s okay. If I can’t marry Mike, at least my best friend can.”

“I never said I was going to marry him. And I’m not naming my kid Marvin.”

“Fine,” she said. “But let’s just write him a note.”

So the two of us carried on this love letter thing with Mike for a few weeks. It was fun. Lissa and I would write him letters together and I’d sign my name. Then he’d write letters back to me and Lissa would open them up and read them to me. Things were perfect; I was writing love letters to a boy, proof positive that I wasn’t a fairy. And the best part was that since Lissa and I were writing to Mike together, I was spending even more time with her. Things came to an abrupt end when Mike wanted to go to first base.

Lissa was sick one day. Mike got off at my bus stop. He walked me up onto the porch and wham! Tongue and everything. I did my best. But he tasted like cardboard, and his lips were a little hairy.