The Fog (11 page)

Not the same poster. How could that be? What could be happening? What power of the sea had made Anya sleepwalk, singing to the tide in the tide’s words?

Anya looked down at her plate fairly often, but seemed not to recognize anything on it. She held her fork but did not use it. Mrs. Shevvington said nothing about the rules of sound eating. Christina ate her own breakfast without talking. She stripped the fat off her bacon, which left her with a tiny strip of lean hardly big enough to chew. She ate the toast dry. Perhaps with her allowance she would buy her own jam. Strawberry, the only kind Christina liked. She would hide it between her knees and spread it on her toast while Mrs. Shevvington was pouring herself a second cup of coffee.

I do not believe in fingers of the sea, Christina decided. Anya and I both had nightmares, probably about school. I’m afraid of the seventh grade, and she’s afraid of public speaking. It has to be the same poster, I just didn’t focus. Today I will be granite again.

Mrs. Shevvington was wearing a cranberry red suit this morning. It was the exact same cut and material as yesterday’s royal blue suit. Christina wondered if the woman had a whole rainbow of them — gold and purple and black suits, which would follow one after another, all with the same white blouse. “How are you feeling this morning?” said Mrs. Shevvington to Christina. She bared her corncob teeth.

“I’m very well, thank you,” said Christina, peppering her egg.

“And you, Anya?” said Mrs. Shevvington. “How are you?”

Anya was clearly unwell. But Michael and Benj were already filling one of the two sinks with hot water and squirting dishwashing liquid under the flow of the tap. They did not notice that Anya neither heard nor answered the question.

“Any more trouble with the windows?” said Mrs. Shevvington, still smiling.

Trouble with the windows.
Anya trying to step through them had been the trouble. Christina had forgotten all about that. Now she remembered Mr. Shevvington implying that she had pushed Anya. It’s been one nightmare after another, Christina thought. Pretty soon I won’t be able to keep track of them all.

Christina cleared the breakfast table, handing Michael the plates and glasses.

Anya simply stood there, looking disconnected from her own body. Her clothing did not match. She had on an ugly print blouse in faded grey and brown, with a yellow skirt and red shoes. “Did you look in the mirror?” said Christina.

“No,” said Anya. “But I looked in the poster.”

The fingers in the poster. Were they Anya’s fingers of the sea? Had they come to collect?

Had they already collected Anya?

English class was very quiet.

Christina sat behind Vicki and Gretch, and Jonah sat behind her.

One by one, they were forced to walk to the front of the class and read aloud their poems.

Two of the boys could hardly get up there, they were so nervous. The first boy plowed into two student desks and the wastebasket on his way to the front, and whacked his elbow on the blackboard. There is no pain quite so awful as elbow pain; he moaned before starting his poem. “No sound effects, Robbie,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “Merely the poem.”

The boy had written about the beauty of his mother’s smile when he got home every afternoon.

Christina was touched.

Her mother, too, had a welcome-home smile.

Mrs. Shevvington said, “How sweet, Robbie. Immature, however. I am afraid immaturity runs in the family.”

Robbie flushed scarlet and tripped going back to his seat.

His mother’s smile is ruined for him, thought Christina. Every day this year when he gets home from school and she flings open the door and smiles at him, he’ll blush and get mad and avoid her.

She wondered what Mrs. Shevvington had meant about immaturity running in the family, and why she had said such a rude thing.

The second boy rhymed very carefully. To make sure the class followed the meter, he spoke in a singsong. His poem was about summer traffic.

Summer traffic,
he recited.

Is very graphic.

Too many cars

Really jars.

He had eight verses like this. Christina loved it. She could see the poem illustrated with fat tourist automobiles and bumper-sticker size lettering.

“Welllll,” said Mrs. Shevvington, adding extra lllll’s. She lifted her eyebrows, sharing a joke with the rest of the class. “You tried, Colin.”

Christina’s smile of enjoyment faded. Colin’s head sank between his shoulders like a turtle’s. He shuffled to his desk, trying to avoid everybody’s eyes.

Vicki was next. Vicki’s poem was stupid. It was about the meaning of death as seen in storm clouds. Mrs. Shevvington beamed at Vicki and gave her an A. “Now that,” said Mrs. Shevvington, “is a meaty topic. A topic worthy of a poem.”

Christina said clearly, “I think a mother’s smile is a topic worthy of a hundred poems.”

Mrs. Shevvington turned slowly and stared at her. Eyes of mud, skin of jellyfish.

Christina thought, I am granite. I do not flinch.

“Notice how the girl who did not do her homework feels free to make comments,” said Mrs. Shevvington.

Christina’s heart was hot with pleasure. “I did my homework,” she said evenly. “Would you like me to read my poem now?”

The other children were staring at her, in awe, confusion, or amusement.

I have become different, thought Christina.

She had always been different. The one who was painted, the one photographed. But she had not wanted to be different in seventh grade. It was to be the year of being the same! The mainland year, the year of fitting in.

“Do read your masterpiece for us,” said Mrs. Shevvington in silken tones.

Christina got up from her desk. Her feet seemed to have gotten heavier; she clumped to the front of the room; when she turned to face the class she saw a haze of unknown mouths and noses, queer staring eyes — strangers, strangers, strangers.

She swallowed.

She unfolded her wrinkled poem.

if I were a sea gull

I wouldn’t have to stick around.

if people argued
—
I would fly off, swerve, wheel, dip, scream.

a thousand wings of company if I have friends

two strong wings of my own

if I don’t.

Jonah Bergeron clapped.

Robbie clapped with him.

The rest waited to see how Mrs. Shevvington reacted. The teacher said nothing about the poem. Instead she walked up to Christina, pushing against her, the cranberry red of her suit shouting as loud as a mouth.

“Why, Christina, you didn’t do any homework last night. I myself forbade it. You wrote this poem last year, for some island school assignment. You’re handing it in now, pretending you wrote it last night.”

“I wrote it under the covers,” said Christina, burning. “With my flashlight.”

Mrs. Shevvington snorted. “I will give you a zero, Christina Romney. Cheating and lying may be acceptable on your island but they will not do here.”

I could push her down Breakneck Hill, thought Christina, and applaud when she got killed.

Gretch and Vicki giggled. She knew they were giggling at her. At her poem. At her zero. At her shame.

After class three things happened.

Mrs. Shevvington said, “You will give me your flashlight at dinner, Christina.”

“If you believe I have a flashlight,” said Christina, “you believe I wrote that poem using it last night.”

Mrs. Shevvington smiled. This time her teeth did not show. It was more a thinning-out of her lips: a challenge. “The flashlight,” she said, “is to be given to me.”

Why? thought Christina. To cripple me in the dark?

Who is this woman, that she wants to get me? Who am I to her?

“Christina?” said a soft voice.

Christina jumped as if ghost fingers were touching her spine. Then she flushed scarlet. “Hullo, Miss Schuyler,” she mumbled.

“Are you all right, Christina?” said Miss Schuyler. Her fat braids lay like a thick honey pillow on the back of her neck. How cozy it must be, to live beneath that hair, thought Christina.

She thought of telling Miss Schuyler about what it was like to live with the Shevvingtons. But she could not do that. Teachers stuck together. Teachers had coffee together and meetings together, and if she told Miss Schuyler, Miss Schuyler would tell Mrs. Shevvington, and somehow Mrs. Shevvington would have more power. “I’m fine, thank you,” said Christina, and she skirted around her math teacher and plowed on down the hall, alone.

Power, thought Christina dimly. What is power?

She thought of power plants, and electricity. She thought of nations and wars. Mrs. Shevvington has more power than I do, thought Christina. But what is the power for? Where are we going with it?

Robbie caught up to her, drawing her out of the hall traffic. “Christina? Is that your name?”

She was uncertain of them all now. “Uh-huh,” she said cautiously.

How thin Robbie was. How powerless. “I don’t want you to get in trouble with Mrs. Shevvington,” said Robbie quickly, looking around to be sure nobody heard. “You’re new here, Christina. You don’t know.
Don’t speak up again like that.
”

“But you’re new, too,” protested Christina. “We’re all new. We just started junior high. How can you know Mrs. Shevvington any better than I do?”

Robbie’s eyes were old and dark. He said, “I have an older sister.” He said no more, giving the sister no name, no description; as if his older sister truly were nothing more than that — not a person, not a soul — just a thing. Christina shivered. Robbie swallowed. Whispering, he added, “She — she had Mrs. Shevvington last year for senior English.”

“And?” said Christina.

Robbie shrugged. He walked away. “Just don’t talk back,” he said over his shoulder.

His sister, then — had she talked back?

But what had happened to his sister? Why did Christina feel that she had just received a gift from Robbie, a present he had been afraid to give her — news about the sister who had no name?

Next it was Blake who stopped Christina in the halls. Blake looked so handsome! Christina wondered if the painters and photographers who came to Burning Fog would want Blake to pose. He did not have an island look, though; she had never seen anybody so thoroughly mainland. “Christina, what happened to Anya?” said Blake. He ran his hands through his thick dark hair and it flopped across his part.

The fingers of the sea, thought Christina. They followed Anya all the way into the school. “I don’t know, Blake. What’s the matter?”

“She’s being weird. She looks funny.”

“She’s worried about going out with you, and both of you getting into trouble.”

“Yeah, I’m worried about that, too. But she was saying — ” Blake broke off, embarrassed, because several lowly seventh-graders were listening. “She was saying the sea was gone,” he said in a low voice. “She made it sound like the Atlantic Ocean had moved away.”

The poster had changed. Could the ocean itself change? If the ocean could change, anything could; none of the laws of earth and life would be safe. If the world were about to collapse, Christina wanted to be on the island with her family, where she knew the rocks and the roses. “I’d better go see,” she said. She pushed through the seventh-graders, running out of the building, down the wide steps, between the brick gates, heading for the Singing Bridge.

But it was not Blake running along with her — it was Jonah. Where had he come from? “Christina, you’re crazy,” he shouted, matching her steps perfectly, so their ankles locked like kids in a three-legged race. “Course the ocean’s still there,” he said. “If it had disappeared it would have been on the evening news.”

“I can’t rest easy till I taste it,” she shouted to Jonah. “Run faster. We have to get back to class on time.”

“Taste?” said Jonah.

“When you take a deep breath of low tide air,” said Christina, “you taste it, too.”

They reached the Singing Bridge. Cars hummed over it. The tide was high but the Cove was relatively quiet. Waves slapped in a friendly fashion against docked boats.

They stopped, panting.

Jonah said, “Um, Christina?”

The waves flecked a faint mist onto her face. “It’s still here,” said Christina. She sucked in lungs full of air, salting her mouth and throat.

“There’s this dance,” said Jonah.

Christina focused on him. She was granite and would not give in to yarns and fancies. A dance. “Oh, we’re awful for dances on the island,” she said.

Jonah looked relieved. “You’re a terrible dancer, you mean? Good, because I’ve never danced at all. I’ve hardly even seen dancing except on videos, but I feel as if I should know how. And this — ”

“No, no,” said Christina irritably. She grabbed his arm, turning him around, and they began jogging back to school. “
Awful for dances
means we love dances. We have lots of them on the island.”

“Oh.” Jonah considered this phrase. “Well, will you come with me?”

“Come with you where?”

“The dance.”

“What dance?”

“Christina!” he yelled. “The seventh-grade dance! The Getting To Know You Dance! In two weeks.”

There had been that form entitled Getting to Know You. There had been that order from Mr. Shevvington that Jonah was to be her friend. She said, “It’s bad enough I have to get soup and sandwiches on a blue ticket, Jonah Bergeron. I’m not going to a dance on a blue ticket. Get lost.”

Christina walked home with Anya and Blake.

The Jaye boys were not with them. Michael had started soccer practice, and Benj was looking for a job; he said life was too boring with nothing to do but school. He was hoping for a gas station. He liked engines.

Blake said, “Anya, please tell me what’s wrong.”

She still had her bruised look. Even though Blake clung to her hand, Anya seemed to be alone, lost inside her own body.

Blake pleaded with Anya. He said he loved her. He said he wasn’t going to obey his parents; what did they know anyway? He said okay, if Anya wouldn’t ride in his car, then he wouldn’t either. He would abandon it in the parking lot and walk every step she walked. He just wanted to be with her. Something was wrong, please let him help.