Part of Me (10 page)

Her heart pounded so loud, Annabeth feared Colton might be able to hear it. “No, thanks,” she said, immediately wondering who on earth answered for her. She was always doing that, saying no to things when she meant yes. Or agreeing to things when she meant to say no.

Colton tipped his hat. “See you around.” Then he called out to her brother, “'Bye, Cowboy.”

Annabeth watched Colton ride away, her heart sinking.

“That was dumb,” Ryan told her.

Annabeth agreed. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

“I would have gone again,” Ryan said.

“Annabeth,” Gamma Rose said, “come help set the table.”

During dinner, Annabeth could think of nothing else but her stupid answer. After the meal, not even her grandmother's lemon icebox cake could make her forget the ride she'd almost had. Her face and chest felt hot.

Gamma Rose noticed, too. “You look like a crawfish. No more sun for you.”

Ryan didn't help matters. All he talked about was the horse ride, spitting his words between bites of cake. He acted like they'd gone on a cattle drive to Texas instead of down the road to Butter's Cemetery and back.

He swallowed a quick gulp of milk. “And Colton made Lady Luck walk backwards. And he showed me how.”

“Shut up and eat,” Annabeth said.

Gamma Rose shot her a stern look. “He's just excited. Surely you can understand that?”

Annabeth wished she could understand. After dinner, she helped her grandmother do the dishes in the small kitchen. She hoped her dad would get a job soon so they could finally afford to buy a dishwasher. Her hands were starting to look chapped like those people on the television commercials before they started using Palmolive.

With the last plate put away, Annabeth filled the bathtub and poured in some bubble bath. But after testing the water with her foot, she drained some and added cold until the water became lukewarm.

She read another fairy tale while she soaked, something she knew she shouldn't do. What if she dropped the library book in the water? Tonight she didn't care. She wanted to get her mind off the afternoon, but the words on the page wouldn't sink into her head. Normally after the water cooled, she turned the left knob with her big toe, adding more hot, but tonight her skin felt sensitive and her shoulders throbbed from the sunburn.

A few minutes passed when she heard a knock at the bathroom door.

“There's a bottle of aloe vera gel in the cabinet under the sink,” Gamma Rose said. “You might want to put some on before you dress.”

Finally she dried off, slathered the aloe vera gel over her skin, then changed into her nightgown, and made plans for the next day. She decided she'd meet Colton at the mailbox the first time he passed by, not wait for his return trip. She didn't care if she looked obvious. And when he stopped, she'd say, “I'll take that ride now.” Nothing could give her a fresh perspective like a fairy tale and a bubble bath.

The next day Annabeth watched the time and when four o'clock came around she headed outside toward the mailbox. She'd worried that Ryan would be there, too, but her grandmother's neighbor Faith Winslow had dropped off her grandson, Sammy. He and Ryan were sprawled out on the living room floor playing Battleship.

Afraid that she'd miss Colton, Annabeth rushed to the mailbox. But when she looked down the road, no one was there. She started back toward the house, taking the tiniest steps, until she reached the halfway point. She heard a car and turned in time to see blue-haired Mrs. Lucy Cartwright drive by in her little pickup truck. She waved to Annabeth and Annabeth waved back. Finally, she went to the mailbox, opened it, and took out the mail. She walked slowly back to the house, resisting the urge to glance over her shoulder.

The next morning, she awoke to a pitter-patter sound hitting the tin roof. She looked out the window. Sheets of rain fell from the sky, but by noon it stopped and the clouds parted, making way for the sun. Hope filled up in Annabeth until four o'clock came and went with no sign of Colton.

Later, when Gamma Rose asked “How about a movie in Alex?” Annabeth agreed without hesitation. She needed the distraction.

*   *   *

They decided to go to the early evening movie at the MacArthur Village Cinema.
Pippi Longstocking
was playing.
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean,
starring Paul Newman, was playing on the other side.

“We'll have to see pretty blue eyes when it's just us girls,” Gamma Rose said with a wink.

Annabeth didn't tell her that she was glad they were going to see
Pippi Longstocking.
She'd read the book when she was younger.

Ryan rode in the back with Sammy while Annabeth sat in the front seat, examining her face in the visor mirror. The sunburn had faded to dark pink, but her nose and chin had started to peel. She was thankful movie theaters were dark.

While they stood in line for the tickets, Annabeth heard a familiar voice. “Hey, Cowboy.”

At the back of the line stood Colton. Annabeth took a deep breath when his eyes met hers. Now was the time to say it, she thought. Say the words she'd practiced in her head as she walked to the mailbox.
I'll take that ride now.

But Colton spoke first. “Hey, Annabeth. Mrs. Harp. Ya'll had the same idea. Which movie are ya'll going to see?”

“Pippi Longstocking,”
Ryan said.

Annabeth thought she'd die right there in the line of the MacArthur Village Cinema.

“Are you going, too?” Ryan asked.

“No, my girlfriend twisted my arm. She's crazy for Paul Newman.”

Just then a pretty, blond girl about Colton's age, wearing a halter and tight blue jeans, walked up and stood next to Colton. She was a dead ringer for Marcia Brady.

Annabeth suddenly remembered the peeling state of her face. Her hand flew to her nose. She was the ugly duckling next to the beautiful swan.

“Oh, this is Connie,” Colton said.

“You're Jeffrey Albert's oldest girl, aren't you?” Gamma Rose asked.

Connie nodded. “Yes, ma'am, that's me.”

She sounded as sweet as Marcia Brady, too, which made Annabeth feel even worse. It was evil to hate a sweet person. Yes, Annabeth thought. I'm an evil girl whose face is peeling like a banana.

They moved toward the front of the ticket booth and Annabeth heard Gamma Rose say, “One adult and three children for
Pippi Longstocking.
”

Her first impulse was to correct her grandmother. The sign clearly stated thirteen and up were considered adults at the movies. But she knew her grandmother wasn't dishonest. Gamma Rose had just forgotten Annabeth's age for the moment. Anyway Annabeth didn't want to correct her because she realized how young thirteen would still sound to Colton and his Marcia Brady look-alike girlfriend.

They stepped inside the lobby and Gamma Rose made her way over to the concession stand. “Can't watch a movie without popcorn.”

“Have fun,” Colton called out to them.

Annabeth watched him from the back, his arm cradling Connie's bare shoulders as they walked toward the usher taking the tickets.

The movie seemed silly and Annabeth couldn't concentrate on it. Her mind whirled with the vision of a boy and a girl on a horse. And as much as she wanted to she couldn't squeeze Connie's face from the vision. She tried, but it wouldn't work. Connie was the girl on the horse, her long silky hair blowing in the breeze and her tan the perfect golden shade.

Later in bed, she started to read “The Princess and the Pea,” but the story left her empty. She knew what was going to happen anyway. If only it ended differently, with the princess deciding she didn't want to marry the prince. Maybe then she could read to the end. But that wasn't the fairy-tale way.

A few days later, they drove over to Hilltop Baptist Church to meet the bookmobile. Ryan and Sammy were thumb wrestling in the backseat.

“Ouch!” Sammy said when Ryan bent his thumb back.

“I win! AGAIN!” shouted Ryan.

Sometimes Annabeth wished she was more like her little brother, seizing anything he wanted without thinking of consequences.

Gamma Rose glanced over at Annabeth. “I'd heard Colton's girlfriend had broken up with him a few weeks back. Didn't realize she was Jeffrey's daughter. Guess they got it all worked out.”

Annabeth stayed quiet, staring through the windshield. She didn't want to pin any hope on what could have been or what could be.

A few minutes later, they climbed the steps of the bookmobile.

“Here they are again,” Miss Erma said, “the book people.”

Annabeth returned her book.

“Would you like another fairy tale?” Miss Erma asked. “I brought the Brothers Grimm this time.”

“No, thank you.” Annabeth quickly walked to the back of the bookmobile, searching for a book about a real girl without a prince.

Squealers

(1973)

T
HE DAY AFTER
Rick Hanson's funeral, Annabeth sat in her eighth-grade social studies class, staring at his chair. She didn't know Rick well enough to call him a friend, but he sat in front of her and once even defended her. When prissy Julie Stork wouldn't lend Annabeth a pencil for a pop quiz, he'd said, “Jeez, what's the big deal? It's just a crummy pencil.” That small remark had made Annabeth like him right then and there.

Rick was friendly to most, but didn't belong to anyone or any group. Every day at lunch, he leaned against the soft-drink machine on the west wall of the cafeteria, taking in the scenes around him. He looked so cool and steady as he nodded slightly at people walking by him.

The week before, some jocks hung tiny Ory Moser on the flagpole in front of the school. Students in parked buses howled as they got a close-up view of Ory dangling from his belt loop like a marionette. His face turned as flaming red as his hair. It was Rick who grabbed Ory's legs, releasing him from the flagpole. “You stupid assholes!” he'd yelled. “Don't you know how to act when you aren't holding a ball?”

When Annabeth heard Rick had drowned at Lake Pontchartrain on a fishing trip with his grandfather, she'd cried as if she'd lost a best friend, even though they'd hardly talked. There had been smiles between them. She liked the way the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled when he grinned. She'd loved his long, curly brown hair, often resisting the urge to reach out and touch it in class. Annabeth knew deep down her feelings probably had more to do with the fact that she had no friends, unless you counted Cora Johnson, the girl in biology class she ate lunch with who kept asking her to visit the Good News Church.

The day after Rick was buried, she was daydreaming when Melody Armstrong whispered, “Did you finish your Spanish homework?”

At first she wanted to look around to see who Melody was talking to because the head cheerleader had never in her life spoken to her. “Did you?” Melody twirled a lock of her auburn hair around her finger.

“Uh, yes,” Annabeth said. She had stayed up late creating sentences from that week's Spanish vocabulary. She'd never been to a funeral until that day and all her sentences were dark.
Mi hermano se ahogó en el lago.
My brother drowned at the lake.
Las señoras trajeron ropa negra al entierro.
The women wore black to the burial.

“He's in a better place,” Cora had said as they lowered Rick's coffin into the ground. Annabeth had hated her for saying something so stupid.

Melody tapped her pen on the desk. She wore a mood ring that at the moment appeared amber. “Can I take a look at it?”

“My homework?”

“Mm-hm.” Her lips formed a tight smile. “You don't mind, do you? I didn't have any time to do it.” Then she added in a whisper, “I was at the funeral.”

Obviously, Melody had not seen Annabeth there. Annabeth was tempted to mention the service ended at two o'clock, but part of her was thrilled that Melody chose her to ask of all people.

Annabeth opened her binder, then flipped through the pages, searching for the assignment. When she came to her homework, she unsnapped the rings and handed the sentences to Melody, hoping her classmate wouldn't think she was a weirdo after she read all her depressing sentences. But Melody didn't mention any of them. She just hastily copied the words to a fresh sheet of paper.

*   *   *

The bell rang right as Melody finished. She handed the paper back to Annabeth. “Here you go.” She took off for Spanish class, not bothering to ask Annabeth if she wanted to walk with her.

Annabeth's face grew hot. Letting Melody copy her homework wasn't going to win her friendship after all. And Mrs. Trulock would surely recognize the same sentences on both papers.

In class, Mrs. Trulock called roll in Spanish. The first day of school they were given Spanish names to be used in class. Annabeth's became simply Ana. It had taken her a month to respond to it, but now she didn't hesitate. In some ways she'd hoped the new name would transform her into someone different. But Ana was only said in Spanish class and Mrs. Trulock was the only one who said it.

With the roll call finished, Mrs. Trulock asked the students to hand in their homework. They passed their papers to the front of the class.

Annabeth's armpits felt sweaty. She tore off a corner from a notebook paper and rolled it into a pea-sized ball as she watched Melody pass her assignment forward, showing no guilt. She wondered if Mrs. Trulock would think Annabeth or Melody wrote the original sentences.

At lunch, Melody and her friends gathered at their table near the salad bar while Annabeth settled in her usual spot next to Cora, who was bowing her head, silently saying grace.

“Amen,” Cora said aloud, then took a bite of her peanut butter sandwich. Her frizzy brown hair and big glasses overpowered her thin face. Every day she wore a blue knit cap with a button pinned to it that read “Jesus Saves.” Annabeth spent most of lunch doing a mental makeover on Cora, imagining her without that ridiculous hat and her hair cut in a long shag.