The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold (23 page)

“Okay,” Rose and Blanche faltered. He stood up to show them to the door.

“Thank you for all your help,” Blanche said timidly.

He nodded and the girls filed past. As they reached the bottom of the stoop, Steven spoke again. “Hey look—it
was
my tuxedo he borrowed. He trashed it, too—the rat— but I know he had a really good time with the girl he was out with.” He flashed a smile at Blanche and raised his eyebrows significantly.

Blanche blushed. “If you hear from him, please tell him to contact us as soon as he can. It’s very important to us.”

Steven and his mother looked at each other again. “I’m making no promises, but we’ll do what we can,” he said at last.

Chapter 16

THE LAST DAY of regular classes they didn’t have to wear uniforms, so Rose was going through her usual ritual of fashion indecision. Blanche noted in surprise that she appeared to have only tried on five outfits. At last, sighing, Rose decided on her royal blue tee shirt.

“Should I wear a skirt or pants with it?” she asked Blanche, who had dressed half an hour ago without ceremony.

“Skirt. That way I won’t feel odd about being the only one in school wearing a long skirt,” Blanche said. She was wearing the rose-colored calico jumper she had made for the white shirt she had bought at the thrift store.

“Do you want to wait for me to get out of detention?” Rose asked, taking out three or four skirts from the closet.

“I’d like to, but the seniors are dismissed at twelve o’clock and I was going to go home to work on my graduation dress,” Blanche confessed. She had been attempting to make a dress of pale pink cotton for that event, which was this Saturday.

“Oh.” Rose gazed sadly down at the paisley skirt she was holding to her waist and Blanche relented.

“I’ll come by at three to walk you home.”

“You don’t have to,” Rose argued unreasonably. “What about this peacock-patterned skirt?”

“Rose! You just asked me to meet you after detention!”

“Well, if you want. But you don’t have to …”

Blanche groaned and walked to the mirror and ran her fingers through her thick hair. She couldn’t decide whether to leave her hair up or down. She enjoyed wearing it down, but in this weather, it was more practical to wear it up.

Rose put on the peacock skirt and rummaged around in her accessories basket for the matching headband. “Blanche, you should try to wear stronger colors. That dark green skirt you had the other day really looked good on you.”

“I don’t want to find another outfit now,” Blanche said. She wasn’t a quick-change artist like Rose.

Rose fluffed up her bangs, checked her face, and moaned. “Oh, I’m glad I let Lisa have it, but boy, I hate detention!” She picked at a pimple with vengeance. “To do nothing but sit for a solid hour! Right now, it’s like spinning wheels. Remind me not to do this again, Blanche.”

Blanche sighed and gave her hair a last brush. “If you think before you act, Rose, it probably won’t happen again.”

As the girls walked into the crowded main hallway at school, which was buzzing with crowds of teenagers on the edge of summer liberation, they caught sight of Mr. Freet, walking swiftly down the hall towards them. He was scribbling something in a small appointment book while holding a brown paper package in one arm and a briefcase in the other. Just then, a shouting group of excited boys barreled down the hallway, jostling him. Mr. Freet started, lost his balance, and fell, dropping the package, which bounced on the floor with a heavy
thud thud.

“Oh! Those boys!” Rose cried in anger and ran to help Mr. Freet up. Blanche bounded after the package and grabbed it. It was far heavier than she had expected.

Mr. Freet was red-faced as Rose helped him to his feet.

“Are you all right?” Rose said anxiously.

Mr. Freet said nothing, being speechless with wrath. “Leave that alone!” he managed to utter at last. He swiped the package from Blanche’s hands and as Rose cried a warning, aimed a blow at her head. Blanche dodged in the nick of time and fell back, astonished.

“You’re always looking for a chance to snatch things from me.  I should report you to the principal for this—or the police! Don’t think I won’t do it!” he ranted.

“We were just helping.” Rose insisted.

“A likely story! I know your kind,” he tucked his package underneath his arm again.  “Loathsome interfering females!”

Blanche and Rose backed away from him, exchanging bewildered glances. Mr. Freet glared at them as if they had been personally responsible for his mishap. Then he turned and hurried down towards the principal’s office.

“What kind of devil has gotten into him today?” Rose remarked, her face alternating between irritation and amusement.

“He had no right to treat us that way,” said Blanche sharply. “By all rights, we should report him.”

“Oh, I’m sure his brother would
really
listen to anything we delinquents said!” Rose tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Mr. Freet is definitely a troubled soul. It must be the unhappy dwarf in him.”

“The what?”

“My new theory. I think Mr. Freet is just a dwarf who’s obsessed with the love of treasure. And of course, anyone who lusts after money is bound to be unhappy.”

“I don’t think he cares about money so much as he cares about art,” Blanche reflected.

“Exactly. Gold and jewels and lovely things. He probably has a secret hoard in his basement.”

Blanche giggled. “Rose, you’re insufferable.”

Detention is horrendous,
Rose thought miserably, watching the hands on the clock inch slowly towards three. The rest of the school had been dismissed at two o’clock, since it was the last day of school. But the kids in detention had to stay until three. Rose was the only girl there.

A few of the guys in the room had been attempting to get her attention. True to form, she had been ignoring them stolidly.

They probably wonder what I’ve done to be stuck in the room with them all week,
she thought grimly.
I certainly don’t look like their type.
She stared at the skull and crossbones on the back of the shirt of the boy in front of her.

At the center of the room, the monitor sat correcting papers and casting occasional glances at her charges.

There was a soft snicker behind her. She couldn’t tell if one of the guys was trying to get her attention or his buddy’s. Either way, Rose was not going to respond. She studied her nails and tried to think about something usual and boring, like nail polish colors.
Fifteen more minutes to go.

Blanche looked up at the grandfather clock from her vantage point on the living room floor, where pieces of her graduation dress were laid out around her. It was a quarter to three. She had better go and meet Rose. She sighed, looking down at her sewing project. A premonition passed over her that she was not going to finish this dress by Saturday.

“But if I work on it from the time I get home until dinner, maybe I’ll get everything done but the hem—” she argued with herself as she went out the door.

Three o’clock!
Rose leapt to her feet, grabbed her near-empty backpack and was the first one out of the room. The guys all swarmed out after her and she decided to make a quick run to the lady’s room to avoid their company.

In the bathroom she pulled a brush through her hair idly. She had been trying unsuccessfully not to think about Bear and his mysterious mission for the last hour or so, because if she did, she would only get more frustrated. There seemed to be nothing left to do but wait. And pray, as everyone kept telling her.

She cocked an ear to make certain that all of her fellow detainees had left. There was no sound of feet in the hallways now. The building was practically empty. But somewhere, two men were talking. She could hear their voices through the heating vent. Unconsciously, she moved a little closer to catch what they were saying.

In the middle of rebuking herself for eavesdropping, she heard something that made her freeze.

“A sixteenth-century ciborium,” one of the men said. All thoughts flew from her mind and she strained her ears to keep listening.

Blanche always disliked walking alone in the City. Even now, in the broad bright light of a spring day, she still felt as though she might meet something sinister around the corner. Rose treated every excursion outdoors as a chance for adventure, the way she was always seeing dwarves or gypsies in ordinary people. Blanche thought there was some truth in Rose’s insight. But the problem was, even dwarves could turn out to be nasty creatures, small but still potentially threatening to unarmed maidens alone in the woods. Or the City …

The problem I have with deeper meanings is that they make things more threatening, not less
, Blanche decided as she kicked a small stone along the granite pavement.
Suppose I were to entertain these deeper warnings, instead of ignoring them the way I try to? Then the shadows of reality might grow bigger and bigger and overwhelm me with their realness. Truth isn’t always safe.

Smiling at her metaphysical reflections, she ran a hand absently through her loose hair as she approached a cross street.