October

by J. Grace Pennington

  As Jax drove towards the Rivers’ farm, I wracked my brain for something to talk about with her. We had time. She was right next to me. It was just the opportunity to begin the friendship I was so anxious to have with her. I shouldn’t waste it.

  “So... so you... do you like to read?” I tried.

  She nodded without looking at me. “Yes, I do. I love it.”

  “What are some of your favorite books?”

  I could see her smile in the light that filtered back from the dash of the car. “That would take too long. But I like Dickens... and Louisa May Alcott. And C. S. Lewis.”

  “Have you read Narnia?” I asked.

  “Of course!”

  “I love Narnia. That was the first fantasy I ever read.”

  “I don’t read very much fantasy. I don’t usually like it very much. But I do love Lewis’s works.”

  I smiled, and she smiled back before looking away again. I didn’t know what to ask first—how much she liked Narnia, which book was her favorite, which characters were her favorite, or what other books she liked. Before I could ask any of it, Jax had the audacity to pull up into the Rivers’ driveway.

  By now it was all but pitch black outside, and the small, beige house was entirely dark. Jax didn’t turn off his headlights, and we all sat silently for a few seconds.

  “Are they up?” Jax asked hesitantly.

  “It doesn’t matter. I know where the key is.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and laid a hand on the door handle. “Thank you two very much. You really helped me.”

  “We were glad to,” Jax said.

  She nodded, said “Thanks,” again, and got out of the car and closed the door behind her.

  The lights inside the car turned off as she walked up to the house. Jax kept his headlights on and didn’t move the car.

  I reached up and pulled on his shoulder. “Don’t just stay here.”

  “I want to make sure she gets in safe,” he insisted, pulling away from me.

  “You heard her say she’s going to get a hidden key. It’s rude to stay and see where they hide it.”

  “We can close our eyes when she gets it.”

  “Yeah, but she won’t know we’re closing them!” I pulled on him again. “Please leave, Jax.”

  She walked up to the door.

  “Come on. You’re going to wake up the Rivers with the light.”

  With a big sigh, he backed the car up just as October was reaching down towards the ground beside the door.

  I groaned as we pulled out of the driveway.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I forgot to ask her if she’ll be in school with us.”

  He reached the street and turned onto it. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, huh?”

  Chapter Three

  I looked for October at school all that week to no avail. The first day, when she didn’t appear in any of my classes or in the cafeteria, I held out hope that perhaps she was just waiting to be settled in more before she joined us. The second day I continued hoping. By the third, I had to admit that it was more likely that she was either too old, or wasn’t going to school at all.

  Or both.

  On my way from algebra to English on Friday, I passed Jax in the hall. He stopped to chat with me, his shoulders stooped a little more than they were outside of school.

  “Are you coming over for dinner?” I asked.

  “Probably. Your mom’s cooking kinda beats TV dinners or cheese and stale Saltines.”

  “You forgot microwaved chili.”

  “Oh right. My specialty.”

  I chuckled. “Well, I’m going to the mall with Mel again after school. I assume you would still choose death over joining us.”

  “You assume right.”

  “I’ll see you at dinner then.”

  A lull in the conversation left him the space to say, “You still moping?”

  I jerked my head up. “Moping?”

  “Since you haven’t been able to see that October girl again.”

  I straightened to my full height. “I’m not moping, but thanks, Dr. Phil.”

  “At least you’ll see her on Sunday.”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  The alarm rang then, and I hurried away.

  “Moping” wasn’t exactly the clearest of terms. I pondered it while I was supposed to be listening to Mr. Clancy talk about thesis statements. If by “moping” Jax meant “feeling somewhat disappointed while frequently thinking about the object of that disappointment,” well then yes, perhaps I was moping. Melissa had complained that I was “distracted” that week. By “distracted” she meant that I didn’t talk to her as nonstop as I usually did, thus I offered a second trip to the mall in the space of one week. I didn’t feel like shopping. I felt like reading, or maybe taking a walk, or playing a game with Jax. But Melissa deserved to be pacified.

  When class was over I hopped out to the parking lot to meet her by her car. She was already standing there, curls tossed by the wind, arms crossed over her t-shirt. “You’re late, Drag.”

  “Not my fault, Prin. You know how Clancy is.”

  She giggled. “Fine. I’ll let you off this once. Get in, before I change my mind.”

  The nicknames had started when my obsession with dragons began. Melissa had gotten angry that I always wanted to play “the dragon and the prince,” and even angrier that I would never let the prince (her) win. It had been Jax’s idea to have the dragon and the prince be on the same side instead of fighting each other, thus solving another of our catastrophic fights.

  “Shopping for anything?” she asked as she drove the few miles further into town.

  I shrugged and leaned my elbow on the window. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe clothes.”

  “For anything special?” she teased.

  I rolled my eyes. “I told you, I’m not going to the dance. I don’t care about dancing, and there are no boys I like, except maybe Will Carter, and you know he’s taken.”

  “You could go with Jax.”

  “Ew.”

  “I don’t mean romantically, you nitwit. I just meant to go.”

  “I told you I don’t care.”

  “Fine then. So clothes for what?”

  “Does a girl really need an excuse to buy clothes?” I said it in a teasing voice, but my mind flashed back to October’s long skirts and the ribbons in her hair.

  “Whatever.”

  We didn’t shop for clothes, or really for anything else. We just wandered around making fun of things, trying all the perfume samples until we smelled like a flower garden and an orchard had vomited all over us, eating candy, and judging the fashion sense of everyone who walked by, even though almost all of them looked better than we did.

  “Look, it’s Jane Austen,” Melissa teased, pointing up to the second level. We were in the food court, sipping soda and watching for interesting people to laugh at.

  I did look, and caught sight of a braid of long, red hair before its bearer disappeared into Belk.

  “Wait.” Melissa put her drink down. “It’s that girl who was in church on Sunday, right? April, or something?”

  “October,” I said. “I think that’s her, yeah.”

  “Why is she going in an old lady store? Oh right... because she’s from the eighteen hundreds.”

  Mel had been so amusing just the moment before. “I think she looks nice.”

  “She looks okay I suppose. It’s just kindof weird.” She picked up her soda and slurped it again.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything weird about dressing a little nicer.”

  She looked sideways at me. “Ohhhh I see. This is another one of your little crushes, isn’t it? That’s why you said you wanted to look at clothes.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes you do. You do this sometimes. Remember Jack Malone? Or Tara Knight? Or that one Sunday School teacher... what was her name?”

  “Miss Doy
le,” I said grudgingly.

  “There, see? Nobody else from the church even remembers her anymore. You always like the strange ones.”

  My emotions bristled at this and I turned away and sipped my Sprite, letting the bubbles tickle down my throat. I didn’t like that she called these attachments “crushes” but she wasn’t entirely wrong.

  Jack Malone had been at school for only one year, in eighth grade. He had been thin and pale and he dressed in dark colors and didn’t like to talk to anyone. He had fascinated me, with his silence and the precision he put into his art projects. A week in, I had started dragging Melissa and Jax along to sit with him at lunch until he finally started talking to us. He liked poetry too, though his poetry was darker than mine. Our friendship lasted several months, then his mother moved and took him with her.

  Tara, on the other hand, was a boisterous, short-haired girl I had known for years. I had never liked her—she was loud and always flirting and always causing trouble. For her part, she thought I was snobbish and a boring “good girl.” Then the summer before high school, I caught her crying in the woods behind her house, I sat down beside her, and we were inseparable for three months. She was crying because her dog had died, and we spent the summer in search of the perfect new dog. We never found one that satisfied her, and when school began again we fell into our old patterns and our friendship dwindled.

  Miss Doyle—now that was a different story. She was middle-aged, and had come to town to care for her aging father, who used to farm a few miles behind us. She taught our Sunday School when I was ten, and I had been drawn to her from day one. Stories came alive when she told them, and she had nicknames for everyone in the class. Mine was “wings”—because of my love for all things dragon, of course. I always begged Mom and Daddy to have her over for dinner, and once they did, but she made Mom uncomfortable and after that she told me she didn’t want me to talk to the teacher anymore. I rebelled at this, and used to sneak off after church to sit with Miss Doyle when Mom wasn’t watching.

  Then one morning, after she had been teaching Sunday School two years, I walked in one morning and she wasn’t there.

  “Is Miss Doyle sick?” I asked.

  Ms. Hendrix shook her wrinkled head. “She’s gone, love. Moved away.”

  I supposed that was why Mom was hesitant about October. That’s what they all thought she was—another impulsive attachment that would soon be over. Mom, Jax, Melissa, even Daddy.

  Maybe they were partially right. But it wasn’t just that. There really was something different about her. Something that gave her the look of a good friend, someone who could add something to my life that it had never had before.

  Maybe even I didn’t understand it.

  “Hey, snap out of it.” Melissa snapped her fingers in my face. “Want to do anything else before we get out of here?”

  I looked up towards the store October had gone in, trying to convince myself to go up there and find her and talk to her.

  I failed. “Nah. I’m hungry. Take me home.”

  After all, Jax was right about one thing.

  I’d get to see her on Sunday.

  *****

  When Sunday came, I was ready for church before Patrick Charles was even awake, and Mom and Daddy were still in their pajamas. Daddy looked at me over the newspaper when I came downstairs and he raised his eyebrows. Mom shuffled around the kitchen in her bathrobe and slippers, making pancakes.

  “Hey.” I tried to sound casual.

  Daddy kept looking at me.

  “You sleep okay?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee and self-consciously sliding into a seat across from him.

  “Fine. You?” His look took in my carefully french-braided hair and traveled on down to my blouse and long skirt.

  “Just fine.”

  He nodded, then looked at my hair again.

  “What?” I asked, sipping the coffee to hide my face.

  “Ready for church, are we?” He smiled.

  “Of course! It is Sunday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It is. It’s also before seven in the morning.”

  I shrugged again and downed the coffee in little gulps, focusing on the strong taste in my mouth and the warmth it gave. I ignored his stare until he finally went back to his newspaper.

  I had peace until Mom walked in a moment later. “Bryan sweetie, did you get...” She stopped and looked at me. “You’re ready a bit early, aren’t you, Em?”

  “I guess so.” I sipped the last dregs of the coffee.

  Instead of raising her eyebrows, she lowered them.

  “A girl’s allowed to be eager to go to church, isn’t she?”

  “Em,” she frowned.

  I looked down at the coffee staining the bottom of the cup.

  “Does this have anything to do with that niece of the Rivers?”

  I shrugged.

  Mom shook her head, but turned to Daddy. “Hon, did you pick up that Mrs. Butterworth’s yesterday?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, where is it?”

  “In the refrigerator.” He said this as though it should be painfully obvious.

  Mom sighed. I grinned into my cup.

  “What?” Daddy asked. “I thought it went in the fridge.”

  Mom just shook her head and walked back into the kitchen. “Since you’re so eager to get to church, Em, would you get Patrick Charles up and get him ready to go? Make sure he brushes his teeth.”

  “Sure.” I let go of the cup and trotted upstairs, glad to have gotten off so easily.

  *****

  The church was almost full, and the piano already playing strains of There is Power in the Blood when I saw her walk through the doors. This time her red hair was in long waves down her back, tied back with a white ribbon. She wore a white a-line skirt that ended just below her knees, and a red blouse that left her arms again bare. A silver heart dangled from a chain around her neck.

  How did everything October wore manage to be such a part of her? About half the girls in church came wearing one of the only two dresses they owned or perhaps a skirt with a t-shirt, while the other half dispensed with skirts entirely and went for blue jeans. The same girls might be trendy or colorful or retro at school, but it seemed frivolous to bring style into church. I felt silly enough breaking the code by wearing a blue ruffled blouse that I usually saved for parties.

  Not so October. Her clothes were a piece of who she was, so that the October I’d seen in the woods had been the very same October that I saw in church. Which was—well, as Jax had put it—different.

  She saw me just as she found the Rivers’ pew and she smiled shyly and gave a little wave.

  I waved back. She looked away and sat down.

  We sang, just as always, and then we had a sermon. Again, I tried to pay attention but my mind kept drifting. The harder I tried to focus on the pastor’s words, the more my attention wavered, until finally I was able to hone in on the way his beard moved when he talked, which anchored my shifting mind. It stretched out for an “o” sound, then spread out for an “e,” and bunched up for a “w.” He was talking about Hebrews, about the “hall of faith,” which normally I would have found interesting. Stories in the Bible were my favorite—stories of people who had been tried and tested and had made it through hardship to stand strong on the other side.

  But not today. Today, even with the help of his beard, my thoughts wandered.

  The instant the service was over, I darted out of our pew. I picked October out of the rising crowd and waited for her to stand.

  She first looked to both sides, then picked up her purse and stood gracefully, rising a little at a time in a ladylike manner that I hadn’t seen outside a historical movie. The way she looked slowly around in all directions seemed to indicate an acute consciousness of every motion, seeming to ask for acceptance, and yet naturally and boldly graceful.

  Perhaps that was one of the things that fascinated me. There was an enigma, almost a paradox, in her
simultaneous shyness and confidence. I wanted to understand it.

  For now, I needed to get to know her.

  She slipped out from between the pews into the aisle, and I trailed after her as she walked out the door.

  We came out into the open air, two quiet ones in the midst of a chattering, dispersing crowd. Most of the people headed towards either their cars or the picnic tables on the right side of the church. But not October. She went the opposite way, slipping over the trimmed green turf towards the big oak tree several yards away from the building.

  I followed, far enough behind so that she wouldn’t hear my footsteps on the grass. I’d planned to speed up and draw next to her once things quieted down, but now that the others were far off and it was only me I felt suddenly shy and just trailed behind.

  She was just another girl. Why should I feel nervous? If she wasn’t interested in being my friend, so be it. I had friends already. This shouldn’t matter so much.

  When she reached the oak, she leaned against it and looked towards the river. I watched, feeling like I was admiring a painting. The greening grass, the tree, the distant, flowing river, and October in white and red, leaning, skirt and hair toyed with by the breeze.

  I wasn’t prepared for her to turn and face me, and her startled expression made my last bit of confidence fly away.

  After a moment she blinked, smiled, and walked a couple steps closer. “Hello.”

  “Hi.” I didn’t move.

  “Emily, isn’t it?” She lowered herself to the ground, smoothing her skirt carefully around her.

  “My friends call me Em,” I suggested, stepping forward.

  She smiled a bigger, warmer smile than anything I’d seen from her thus far. “Would you like me to call you that?”

  “Yes.” I smiled back.

  She looked up at me for another moment before dropping her gaze to the grass.

  I settled down a couple feet away from her, careful not to sit on her skirt. Turning to her purse, she reached in and pulled out a little packet.

  “I’m not very hungry,” she explained. “I just brought a snack to hold me over until dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry either,” I hastened to say.

  “Do you... mind if I eat a bit?” she asked.