Courage for Beginners

by Karen Harrington

  “Surprise!”

  They spin around. Mama jumps and hollers and grabs the countertop. “Oh my gosh, Mysti!” She puts her hand to her heart.

  “Gotcha!” I say, and then I fall over laughing.

  But now they are all smiling and happy as the paint color Lemon Yellow. I have to take a moment to really see what my eyes see.

  Wrapped presents. A tall chocolate cake with twelve candles. One for each year I haven’t been anywhere else but here.

  “Happy birthday, Mysti!” Dad says. “Twelve, huh? Make a wish!” Twelve years from now, I will be in France. That is my wish. Poof, the candles are out and my wish is a smoke signal to the universe.

  Mama hugs me. Then she pulls out something from behind the bread box.

  “Now, it’s not completely dry yet.” It’s an oil painting. A really beautiful painting. Red poppies in a sea of yellow-green grass. A pale blue sky. A red-haired girl in white shorts with her hair trailing behind her. Carefree me in an unknown place. Maybe France. Definitely France.

  “Thanks, Mama.” The painted me has never looked so good. In real life, I wish I looked as good as this painting. The long red hair matches mine. The light blue eyes. The tiny freckles across my cheeks. All that is fine. What doesn’t match is that the painted girl has a nice smile. The real me does not. The real me has a mile-wide gap between my two front teeth. The real me does not smile like this. Why would she?

  Dad presents me with a red kite, a book of jokes, and an IOU to fix the zigzag crack in my ceiling.

  “Why didn’t you just give me a roll of duct tape so I can fix it myself?” I tease.

  “Hardy-har, Mysti! Hey, why don’t cats play poker in the jungle?”

  “Why?”

  “Too many cheetahs.”

  Like me, my dad has thick red hair and blue eyes and the love of a good joke.

  “Open mine next,” Laura says, and I do. A book of stories I’d begged for. There are lots of blanks and you get to fill in some of the story ideas and change the direction of the plot. According to the back cover, within the pages there are 267 story possibilities.

  I’ve tried to get the little brown-haired brat to pretend she’s in a story, too. We could each write chapters, I said. We could invent magical lands or trips to the moon or being rock stars who sell Girl Scout cookies, I said.

  Here is a girl giving wonderful lyrics and a box of Thin Mints to the president.

  And Laura always says, No, tell me your stories, Mysti.

  Laura. She’s less of a do-it-yourself girl and more of a do-it-for-me kind of person. (I don’t think she was born with a highly developed imagination.)

  So I tell her my stories. Her favorite is about an eavesdropping owl.

  The owl leans in near the bedroom windows of little girls. He listens. He gathers bits of talk about Barbies who lost their heads. And when he tells his friends what he heard, they just say, Who? Who?

  And he has to gossip again.

  Laura applauds. Laughs. And then kicks me out of her bed.

  “I’m tired now. Go back to your own room,” Laura says.

  Well. Some listeners are ungrateful. Ungrateful listeners get marbles under their sheets.

  “Eggy doodles for breakfast!” Mama announces. She spreads out a nice ironed tablecloth and sets up the kitchen table like we are in a fancy restaurant. Then she makes the most fabulous ham-and-cheesy eggy doodle in the history of eggy doodles.

  “Eggy doodle for the birthday girl!” Mama says as she places a plate in front of me.

  “And what about braces? This is the year for braces, right?”

  There it is. The sharp glance between Mama and Dad. I know what I am doing, playing this trick. Even my dog, Larry, knows I will not be getting braces this year. Because even Larry knows there is only one adult here who drives.

  “We will discuss it,” Dad says finally. “How about you tell us a joke from your book?”

  “We will discuss it” means that it will probably not be discussed anytime soon. I pick up the joke book.

  “Why won’t aliens eat clowns?” I ask.

  “Why?” says Dad.

  “Because they taste funny.” That’s not a bad joke. After breakfast I will text that joke to Anibal Gomez. Anibal Gomez is my one friend. I’m not still and quiet in front of him. I am myself.

  chapter 4

  Here is a girl winning the Nobel Prize for inventing a mobile orthodontist business that drives down neighborhood streets, and all the kids with crooked teeth chase after it and receive straight smiles.

  Anibal Gomez isn’t bothered by girls with bad teeth and transportation issues. And I’m not bothered by shy boys who are size extra, extra large, which is what he is. Anibal has someone to sit with him on the bus, and I have someone who won’t invite me to parties I will just have to say no to. (As they would say in France, this friendship is parfait, which is French for “perfect.”)

  I shared with Anibal this last story excerpt about winning the Nobel Prize for mobile orthodontia.

  “You have crazy ideas,” Anibal said. “Of all the mothers in the world, your mother is the least likely one to let you go chasing after a random orthodontist.”

  “It’s a story!”

  “I guess that could be a good idea for you,” he said. “Especially since your mama—”

  “Shut up!” I interrupted. “Don’t say it.”

  “I was just going to say since your mama won’t have to keep looking at your teeth. Geesh. You’re so sensitive.”

  If you know Anibal like I do, you would know that is a compliment. Sort of. He didn’t say the secret thing about Mama.

  One day during fifth-grade recess, we traded family secrets.

  “Since I was eight, I’ve had to sleep on a broken water bed filled with stuffed animals,” he said. Of course, I loved that his family also fixed things in unusual ways.

  “Since I was five, my mother has never left our house,” I said. I waited. Nothing. Not even a blink. It sealed Anibal Gomez as my best friend.

  “My mother works at the dollar store,” he said. “I can get you a Justin Bieber poster.”

  “My mother grows cantaloupes in the backyard,” I said. “And my dad eats them all, and I don’t care for Justin Bieber.”

  Anibal is still the most trustworthy person I know. There’s no trying to discover his hidden meanings, which I have to say is a problem I have with girls. They are all “Guess what I’m thinking,” and Anibal is all “Here’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  Which is why I took Anibal at his straightforward word when he called to wish me a happy birthday and to present a new idea. A theory, really.

  As long as Anibal is in the world, there will never be a shortage of theories.

  “I’m conducting a social experiment. You will be part of the experiment.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Pretend you don’t know me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve decided to be a hipster this year.”

  “You can’t just decide that. You have to be called that by someone first. Develop a reputation.”

  “I bought a hat,” Anibal said. “And I think Sandy Showalter likes the hipsters. This is the year of Anibal and Sandy. Sandy will notice me and go with me to the fall social. She probably won’t notice me if, you know, another girl is in the way. So, there you go. That’s how you are part of the experiment.”

  “But why not just introduce yourself to Sandy? Even I could do that.”

  “It’s the theory of the world, Mysti. Girls like Sandy are only nice to people who fit in. The world is cruel that way, but what are you gonna do?”

  “Are you saying I am a person who does not fit in?”

  There is silence on the other end of the phone. Loud silence.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said. “Why should I do this for you?”

  “Two words. Talent. Show.”

  “What? Wait a minute. I have to think about this,” I told Anibal.


  “Talent. Show!”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  Lightning and thunder. I knew those two words would come back to haunt me one day.

  chapter 5

  Here is a talentless girl who had the impossible dream of winning the Beatty Middle School talent contest.

  Last year’s talent show was not one of my better ideas, I admit. Maybe it was a story idea that should’ve stayed in my head. I’m usually more cautious about putting myself in the white-hot spotlight of embarrassment. But when I picture myself with Anibal, well, everything else—the kids’ comments, gum stuck on my shoe, a bad hair day—all those things fall away like dry leaves.

  So I’d written my name down with Anibal, and he said he’d do it if I came up with the talent. We didn’t know if we had any talent beyond surviving the bus ride home and making fun of our lunches.

  You call that a tuna sandwich?

  No, I call it Fred.

  Who eats a hot dog without a bun?

  Someone whose mother forgot to buy buns.

  So I asked Mama what I should do for a talent.

  “Oh, won’t you be scared up on that stage? Is it high off the floor? Do you think you’ll fall?”

  I asked my dad.

  “What? I don’t know. Tell some jokes. I love that one about the cow.”

  I asked my sister, Laura.

  “Too bad you can’t sing like me. Taylor Swift better watch out!”

  I went to get the mail and asked our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Jennings.

  “Can you sew? I won a contest in high school by sewing my own pants. They were red!”

  I carried the mail toward our brown front door and spotted the mysterious Woman Who Goes Somewhere across the street. Hey, what kind of talent would you like to see performed by two eleven-year-olds?

  I chickened out and didn’t talk to her because I suspect Woman Who Goes Somewhere is full-moon crazy.

  I tallied up all the results of my survey on a piece of paper.

  Tell a joke.

  Sing.

  Sew red pants.

  Walk on by.

  Just don’t do it because it’s scary.

  I favored the last idea, which was Mama’s.

  But I did it anyway. It’s true that Mama is pretty much afraid of everything. She has a belief that nefariousness is everywhere. And sometimes, I try to do the opposite to test out my own hypothesis of fear. (Because the main thing I’m afraid of is not getting to Paris.)

  So your garden-variety talent show. What’s to fear?

  As it turns out, a talent show includes what we might call “unknown fears.”

  It was two days before the talent show and no talent was showing up. So I wrote a poem, which in my opinion had a lot of depth and angst for a person of my young years. It included the words vast and formidable. Its theme called up a person who rarely left the house.

  She was a person who rarely left the house.

  During the day, she was quiet as a mouse.

  “We’re going to embarrass ourselves,” Anibal said.

  “I know. It was a stupid idea.”

  “No, it was brave,” he said, handing me a Mentos mint. Anibal Gomez is never without a mint and a word of encouragement. Fresh breath and support are good qualities in a friend.

  We followed through. We were brave. Our names were called right after Kelly Springfield finished performing a baton-twirling routine that seemed to defy the rules of spine structure.

  Principal Blakely announced, “And now, a performance by, um, Anibal Gomez and My-sty Murphy. Oh, sorry, that’s Mist-ee Murphy.”

  This was no time to consider how I hated my name with a red-hot passion. We walked onto the stage and collected the last scraps of Kelly’s applause, which was a good thing because that was the only real clapping we’d earn. Four hundred pairs of eyes watched us perform across the cafeteria. I was nervous. Someone—I think it was my mother—said you should picture the audience naked so that you don’t get nervous while speaking in public. My advice? Don’t do this. It will make you turn red and forget what you came to do.

  Anibal rapped a beat while I read my poem.

  Vast. Formidable. Mouse.

  Boom dig a boom boom!

  Anibal did a great job. He’s got skills.

  We soon learned what the sound of a slow, sarcastic clap sounded like.

  Vast.

  And then the shouts. Hey, AniBALL! That performance was just like you. LARGE!

  No matter. We brushed it off like crumbs off a table. Gone. We came to do what we signed up for and had a great laugh on the bus. Other people had a great laugh on the bus, too, if you know what I mean.

  For two days I thought about Anibal’s request to be in a social experiment. This is a big change. A colossal change. And we know I’m not the president of the fan club for change.

  Finally, I called him. “Okay, I’ll go along with your I-wanna-be-a-hipster experiment. Not all your ideas have been this lame.”

  “We won a science fair ribbon, didn’t we?” Anibal asked.

  “Yes.” We won last year for our lame deodorant-comparison experiment.

  “And it’s only during school hours, you know?” Anibal offered. “Besides, you’ll enjoy the show. You will see me in the hallways and be in awe of my skills.”

  “I’ll try to contain my amazement.”

  “Feel free to take pictures of my new and improved seventh-grade awesomeness and send them to my phone.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I have to go play Little House on the Prairie now.”

  “More cantaloupe?”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  I hung up the phone and took stock of my situation. I’d be a seventh grader in a week and would have to temporarily pretend I didn’t know Anibal Gomez during school hours so that he could prove his theory of social coolness. These are the kinds of things you only do in the name of friendship.

  There are harder challenges in the big blue world anyway.

  chapter 6

  Here is a girl washing green beans, extracting melons, and contemplating the true meaning of friendship.

  Blue-sky Saturday afternoon. The air is so still and hot and the sun is so blinding that a person could melt if she’s not careful. I don’t know how those vegetables stand it, especially the ones along the fence line that burn under the sun all day long. They must feel like they are on the death row of gardens. Of course, I know vegetables don’t have feelings, but still. We make them bake all day and then we murder them for dinner.

  I’ve finished giving the green beans a good soak and pull up about three ripe melons from the farm known as our yard and still can’t shake off this empty feeling. Normally, I can make it vanish by doing all my chores, but not today. It’s as if I’ve been let down gently. A cloud in the sky that God’s hand just set down on earth and said, Oh, please stand over here by yourself while I admire all the other clouds.

  The funny thing is, we haven’t even started the stupid social experiment and I’m already missing Anibal Gomez. Because somehow the idea that I, Mysti Murphy, would get in the way of Sandy Showalter doesn’t fit. Anyone with eyes knows I’m no competition, romantically speaking. And then there’s just the idea of Sandy and Anibal together. Getting Sandy Showalter to notice him is not exactly an impossible dream. I mean, I could dye my hair purple and get someone to notice me. No, the real challenge to Anibal’s experiment is that he thinks Sandy would consider going to the fall social with him. That is the part that makes me laugh every time I think about it. There are some girls who don’t mix with guys like Anibal. Sandy is one of them. But maybe that was a sixth-grade rule. It’s not as if I’m the author of the Middle School Handbook on Social Skills. Maybe in seventh grade, things change.

  I get out my new English Red kite and lie down in Mama’s garden next to the tomatoes. My free thinking time is over before it starts because Dad sprays me with the water hose.

  “Gotcha!”

  “Dad!”


  “You’re cooled off, aren’t you?”

  My dad. He’s in the driveway washing the car, and lifted that green hose right over the fence just to soak me good. There is a piece of duct tape around the end of the hose that covers a leak.

  “Going to the store with me later?” Dad shouts.

  “Yeah.”

  “And maybe ice cream?”

  “Definitely ice cream.”

  Here is a girl enjoying the bright sunlit rays of her parental unit’s love.

  “Now that you’re twelve, you can drive, right?”

  “Dad!”

  Now, he lets fly one of his car-washing towels. It soars in the air until it gets plumb stuck in a high branch of the giant tree.

  “Oh, will you look at that?” he says to the tree. “Be right back.”

  The giant tree.

  It’s ancient and big and Deep Ochre. Would it be fun to climb? Well, yes, depending on which parent is in our backyard.

  If Dad wrote a book, it would be titled Go Climb a Tree and See the View!

  If Mama wrote a book, it would be titled Get Down from There Before You Hurt Yourself!

  The giant tree sits squarely between our house and the Jenningses’, right in that raft of grass that separates our two driveways. It was probably planted by the first settlers to Texas.

  While I wait for Dad to climb the tree, I climb the part of our backyard fence that faces the street, hoping to spot Woman Who Goes Somewhere and get another clue about her travels. Laura bounces outside and sidles up to me.

  We peer through a cookie-sized hole in the wood fence. Sure enough, the mysterious Woman Who Goes Somewhere flip-flops past our house in sweatpants, a baggy emerald-green sweatshirt, and a yellow flower in her hair.

  “I’d love to follow that woman to see where she goes,” I say.

  “What if she is nefarious? What if she snatches people and Mama has to make HAVE YOU SEEN ME? T-shirts?”

  “Oh my gosh, Laura, don’t get all worked up. The woman doesn’t even have a car, so how could she do any real snatching? Geesh.” The topic we don’t speak of is not producing a highly developed imagination in Laura. It’s producing a little seven-year-old Mama.