Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace (3 page)

Jennifer stopped her with a raised hand. “Don’t start on me. I’m so
not
in the mood for this.”

“You gotta admit, you’ve never done anything like that before. I mean, you’re the best player on our team and all, but… you should have seen yourself. You looked totally juiced up.”

“So, what? You’re saying I
am
on drugs, and you don’t believe me?” She could feel her own face getting red. Susan was probably right—this is what her parents “were muttering about! They were going to ground her! For
drugs
! This was so unfair!

Her friend shifted uncomfortably on the trellis. “Geez, Jenny, don’t have a heart attack. I’m just saying people aren’t going to know what happened. They’re going to think it’s strange.”

“You mean
I’m
strange. And don’t call me Jenny.”

“I didn’t say
you
were strange. And since when do you care if
I
call you Jenny?”

“I was ‘Jenny’ when I was six years old. I’m in high school now and I like ‘Jennifer’ better. And wouldn’t I
have
to be strange? Isn’t everyone just saying I’m a freak, slipping steroids or whatever?”

Susan looked down at the ground below. “Listen, Jen, I gotta go. Are you coming or not?”

“Yeah, sure, right after I pop my pills and shoot up.”

“Fine. I’m out of here.” Without even looking back up, Susan scrambled swiftly down the trellis and was gone.

Jennifer seethed as she stared out the open window for a moment, then got up and slammed it shut. She crossed her room, whipped open the door, and shouted down the stairs to her whispering parents.

“
I’m not on drugs
!”

It was a wretched few weeks after that. While her parents released her from her room after an hour that day, they didn’t say much more about oranges, or drugs, or what was “coming,” or anything else. Her father seemed on several occasions to want to say something, but at the last moment, he would just sigh and mutter about how he was always available if she needed someone to listen.

Of course, he went off on another trip for five days.

Meanwhile, Jennifer continued to have disturbing dreams. In some, she was a dinosaur attacking her parents. In others, she was an angel drowning in the clouds. In still others, she was a python in the dark, coiled around a tree branch and waiting to drop onto her friends.

All of this was too unsettling to share. So she just lurked around the house, waiting for her parents to say something, and wishing they wouldn’t. And while Susan and the rest of the soccer team weren’t nasty to her, they weren’t exactly friendly either. Fixing relationships there would take time.

About two weeks after the day with the oranges, she barged bravely through the front doors of the still-frightening high school and nearly ran over Edward Blacktooth. And she smiled for the first time in what felt like a year.

Eddie, her next-door neighbor, reminded her of a sparrow. He had pale skin and deep brown accents in his hair and eyes, and his nose arced like a gentle beak. A crooked, mischievous smile graced his face as he and Jennifer recognized each other.

“Eddie!” she cried, delighted. “You’re back!”

“Jenny!” He grinned. He knew she hated that nickname. “The soccer star who rules the school. They haven’t skipped you up to tenth grade yet?”

“Hardly.” She blushed. “How was England?”

Normally Eddie started the school year with everyone else, but this year his family had insisted on taking him on some strange month-long vacation in England. Eddie had told Jennifer before leaving that they would visit ancient churches, museums, fortresses, and other horrifically boring historical points of supposed interest. Apparently, he could trace his ancestry back several centuries to some baron who lived in a castle not far from Wales.

“The castle was pretty interesting. Everything else was tolerable. We had a good time—Mom and Dad even smiled once or twice. How goes the battle?” Eddie was always talking in military metaphors: How goes the battle? Who’s winning the war? What an amazing coup!

“The battle goes badly,” she muttered as he fell into step beside her. “Way badly.”

“Oh, don’t let people like her get you down.” She looked at him. Brown T-shirt and blue jeans. Brown loafers. His mud-colored hair fell into his eyes and he flicked it back with a jerk of his head. And for the first time, Jennifer noticed a faint scent of aftershave. Edward Blacktooth was reliable, there when you needed him, less so when you didn’t. He was—Eddie. “People like who?” she asked.

He breathed in a bit and then spoke quickly. “Nothing against Susan. The three of us have been buds since first grade. But I heard about that kick, and she’s obviously jealous. You two have owned the soccer field together for a long time. Next year, when you both try out for the varsity team, she’ll have to start at the bottom again—but maybe you won’t. She sees that and doesn’t like it.”

Jennifer didn’t answer right away. Eddie pressed.

“It’s her problem, Jen. She’ll deal with it herself.”

She nodded and tried to smile. True, Eddie could be a bit of a snob—he got that from his parents, who disliked everybody—and Susan was deeper than Eddie let on. But right now, Jennifer didn’t care. She knew why he said those things.

“Thanks, Eddie.”

“Welcome. See you in gym.” He casually smacked her shoulder and took a sharp left. She stared after him for a long moment, then started walking to class.

“Everyone, this is Francis—”

“Skip.”

Ms. Graf squinted at the yellow transfer sheet. “Francis Wilson.”

“Please, just Skip,” the new kid sighed. Jennifer fought down a giggle. Skip Wilson’s eyes were green, or maybe blue, set far apart from a narrow nose and under dark chocolate hair. He was taller than Ms. Graf, who many students dubbed “Ms. Giraffe,” and his incredibly long fingers splayed across his schoolbook:
Principles and Applications of Calculus
.

In ninth grade
? She thought to herself. She had felt pretty bright for picking up Advanced Algebra this year.

“Skip’s family just moved here to Winoka from out of state, right, Skip?”

He shrugged.

Ms. Graf was a veteran teacher and knew to give up at that point. “Just have a seat right there,” she said, pointing to the empty desk behind Jennifer.

The silence in the classroom was pronounced. Jennifer felt sorry for this boy. This was, after all, high school. No one was going to say hello, or smile, or even really look at him. No one ever did.

Except for Bob Jarkmand. As Skip walked between him and Jennifer, Bob stuck out his enormous leg.

The heavy and thick limb was squarely in the new kid’s way. Jennifer sighed. This was one of the moments when being a girl was definitely better than the alternative. When Skip tried to step over it, Bob would bring his leg up and kick him in the groin. He would then feign innocence while his victim doubled over in pain. Then Ms. Graf would try to figure out what had happened, and everyone would be too scared of Bob to speak up. Then the bell would ring and they’d all forget about it. Except for the new kid, who would never feel more alone and friendless in his entire life.

Jennifer watched, wondering whether to intervene. Bob reserved his worst bullying for boys, and generally ignored girls unless he felt like making a crude remark about breasts or bodily functions to get his cronies laughing. Another day, she would not have hesitated to speak up—but today, she wasn’t sure she needed the additional aggravation, just to help some new kid who may turn out to be a jerk himself.

She had no time to resolve the issue. Skip raised his leg to step over Bob’s leg, and then—just as the larger boy’s leg kicked—jumped straight up in the air, outperforming Bob’s knee by at least six inches. At the same time, he swung his heavy textbook around, catching Bob in the side of the head so hard, everyone in class looked up at the sound.

But by then, Skip was sliding into the seat behind Jennifer, and Bob was bellowing like a walrus. It had all happened so fast, she was certain no one else saw it. She stared, mouth open in delight.

Bob’s ear was an angry red and was already swelling. He spun his head around and spat at Skip.

“You’re dead,
Francis
!”

Skip turned in his seat—eyes, head, and body in full—to face the other boy. Jen was impressed with how calm the new boy seemed.

“I don’t see that happening,” he replied.

Ms. Graf, of course, had missed the entire thing. She was pulling a stack of large, wooden picture frames off of a low shelf behind her desk.

“Today, class, we will start our unit on insects. We begin with the order
Lepidoptera
… more commonly known as butterflies and moths.
Lepidoptera
means, literally, ‘scaled wings.’ ”

Jennifer perked up a bit at that. Scaled wings—that sounded kind of cool. And she’d always thought insects were fascinating. When she was younger, she’d catch dragonflies and grasshoppers and butterflies with her bare hands and look at their heads through a magnifying glass. They had the sweetest expressions.

Sadly, Ms. Graf could render even the most interesting subject lifeless. Within ten minutes Jennifer had gone from clear-eyed interest to droopy-eyed boredom. Next to her, Bob had tilted his head and begun snoring.

She came all the way awake when Ms. Graf opened the picture frame cases and began taking out specimens.

“Of course,” the teacher said, “there’s nothing like seeing these creatures up close to get a full sense of their beauty, complexity, and elegance.”

Small cards made their way from the front of the class to the back. Touch gently, they were told.

Pinned to the center of the first yellowed three-by-five index card was a gorgeous monarch butterfly. Its orange-black whorls strained against the paper, and its body was half-decomposed.

The metal spikes driven through its soft, scaled wings seemed incredibly cruel to Jennifer. Wincing, she chucked the card behind her.

“Whoa, hey, easy!” the new kid mumbled as he tried to catch the ungainly missile. “Lessee … mmmm… lunch.”

She allowed a giggle at the remark, and at her own squeamish reaction, even while her stomach tightened with nausea. Or was it empathy? Why the heck would she care so much about some dumb bugs on cards?

Another card came back—a rusty red butterfly, with four bright blue spots at the corners of its wings. Black, yellow, and white markings graced the spots.

She flipped the card. On the back, in neat pencil, were the words:
Peacock Butterfly. Inachis io. Ireland
. One of the pins lanced the top loop of the “B.” Jennifer winced again, and turned the card back over to look at the poor thing.

The four bluish markings stared back at her, like lid-less eyes. Jennifer paused. There was something scary about this. She couldn’t place it. It was an instinct, or a warning of danger …

A sharp poke on her right shoulder made her flinch.
Attack
! She whipped her left hand up and grabbed … the new kid’s finger.

“Hey,” Skip muttered with a crooked smile. “Easy, champ. I just wondered if I could look at the next one. And, um, maybe have my finger back?”

Jennifer relaxed, flashed an easy smile, let go of his finger, and handed back the peacock butterfly. “Sorry. Don’t poke me.”

“Sorry. Nice reflexes.”

Jennifer felt red around her ears. “Thanks.”

The penciled script on the back of the next card listed
Five Bar Swordtail. Pathysa antiphates. Singapore
. The Swordtail was an elegant thing, with black and green stripes painting the length of its wings, accented with yellow and white midwing markings.

Suddenly, it screamed.

“
Cripes
!” shrieked Jennifer, dropping the wailing butterfly onto her lap. This made the screeching worse. She darted out of her chair, letting the card flap onto the floor, and backed up several paces.

“Ms. Scales!” Ms. Graf fixed her with astonished eyes. “What is the matter?”

Jennifer looked back down at the butterfly. Its wings were pulling against the pins in vain. It stopped screaming long enough to pant for a piece, but then started right up again.

The stares of her classmates and Ms. Graf gave her more information than she wanted. She pointed down at the screeching Swordtail. “No one else hears that?”

Ms. Graf sighed. “Ninth graders are never as funny as they think. Ms. Scales, please take your seat.”

Bob Jarkmand guffawed. Jennifer wasn’t sure if he was laughing at her, or with her. It did seem from the smirks at other desks as though most of the class felt she was playing a prank. She smiled uneasily, accepting the praise for breaking a school day’s tedium, and sat back down.

Another poke at her right shoulder. “Um, if you’re sure that’s dead, could you pass it on back?”

Jennifer heard herself hiss. This boy Skip was lovably weird, perhaps, but also a bit of a pain. And hadn’t she told him to stop poking her? “Give me a sec.”

She bent over and picked up the card. The butterfly was sobbing now.

It was awful. Jennifer felt like she was a conspirator in the plot to hurt this thing. She turned to the tall classroom windows—shut against the chilly October morning—that provided a view of the nearby farms. She wanted to burst out of her chair, yank one of the windows open, pull the pins out of the card, and set this creature free.

Skip’s voice behind her broke her thought. “Ummm…”

“
In a minute
.” She was certain this boy irritated her now. A pity Bob hadn’t managed to rack the nimble pest!

The butterfly’s peals of pain and sorrow went on. She looked back at the classroom windows. What was she thinking? Everyone would laugh at her. And what was the big deal anyway? Despite what her ears told her, this butterfly was dead. It wasn’t going to come back from the dead and haunt her like a little buggy ghost.

There was no outcry in its murdered sleep, no appeal for revenge, no family to care whether it lived or died …