Courage for Beginners

by Karen Harrington

  Here is a girl who could foresee a future where Wayne Kovok confessed to becoming a criminal because no one would go to the seventh-grade fall social with him.

  Texas History.

  All I do is keep checking the clock.

  Ms. Overstreet passes out a quiz about Texas revolutionary figures. She roams the aisles of the classroom and I can’t help but be distracted by her golden belt buckle. It is, of course, in the shape of Texas and has two sparkly eyeballs embedded in it. Underneath them are the words THE EYES OF TEXAS.

  I probably bomb the quiz completely, my head is so fizzy with worry. My education is crumbling around me like the stones of the Alamo because of illness and bad texts.

  Then I hear the familiar refrain.

  “Mysti, please wait a moment after class.”

  I wait.

  She waits.

  Everyone files out to go on with their Friday-night lives that probably include watching movies, eating popcorn, and not worrying about sick sisters and perfectly good green Toyotas that don’t go anywhere.

  “You don’t seem like yourself,” Ms. Overstreet says. “Is there anything I can help with?”

  “Do you have a car?” I don’t know why I said that because of course she has a car.

  “Well, yes.”

  “You probably aren’t allowed to drive a student to the hospital, though,” I say.

  “Are you sick?”

  That is such a funny question I almost laugh.

  The truth rises up from my feet and spills over my lips.

  I tell her, “Mama never leaves the house.”

  There it is, in the middle of Texas History class. The short, sad biography of Mysti Murphy. All the important things you’d need to know about my life in five words.

  “I mean, it’s nothing,” I say. “My sister’s sick, but she’s probably better now.”

  “Do you want to talk to Ms. Peet?”

  Do I want Ms. Peet to talk at me, you mean? No, I don’t.

  “No, I just have to figure some things out.”

  “Well, I saw the poster today. I was going to mention that. Wish I’d caught the responsible party.”

  I get up from the desk. “It’s okay. It was a little funny anyway.”

  By the time I get to the door, Ms. Overstreet stands abruptly and calls out, “Mysti! Don’t forget what Sam Houston said. ‘Do right and risk the consequences’!”

  “He was scared, right?”

  “Of course! Fear plus courage equals Texas hero!”

  Ms. Overstreet is funny. Despite her attempts to be a guidance counselor to girls who growl in her class, she never for a moment stops believing in Texas heroism.

  I hope it’s contagious.

  chapter 40

  Here is a girl risking the consequences.

  “People will come from all over the world to get an appointment with me so I need to start learning different languages, don’t you think?” Rama asks as we walk home. “It’s the least I can do. Maybe you and I can learn French together! Wouldn’t that be great? And the waiting area will have beautiful carpets and a candy dispenser with Wintergreen gum and copies of The Big Book of Facts by Wayne Kovok. I will still go to lunch with you if you call far enough in advance, because my services will be in high demand, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Rama Khan. She is a dreamer. A dreamer with actual wings disguised as a scarf. Wings in fabric of every color.

  I couldn’t wait to get home and hear Laura’s clear, well voice. I went through the front door of 4520 Fargo Drive and found her asleep on the couch.

  “Is she better?”

  “Much!” Mama says. Her face looks tired and old and smudged with Lemon Yellow oil paint.

  “How was your day?” she asks.

  “Fine.”

  Isn’t that the word that doesn’t really mean fine? Isn’t that the word you use when you don’t really want to talk about your day? When you just want someone to already know you are not fine?

  Mama takes my hand and guides me to the kitchen table. I hope she is about to feed me bread or something. I could eat and go pull up my comforter and let it do what it’s supposed to do. Comfort.

  But there it is.

  “It’s you,” Mama says, pleased as punch. “I worked all day on it.”

  There on the table next to the stupid hugging salt and pepper shakers is a painting of the Eiffel Tower, all done in sharp black paint against a bright white canvas. At the base of the tower is a red-haired girl with a chic haircut and a yellow dress.

  The faux me is smiling.

  The real me is not.

  But Mama seems happy so I don’t want to throw a rock through her fragile imaginary window of being fine.

  But sometimes it’s exhausting trying to keep someone happy, trying to keep worries away from them. You have to shut off your own feelings and concentrate on making them feel better, which haven’t I been doing all this time? Pushing crackers under her door. Walking in the rain. Taking care of Laura. When is it my turn to feel bad out in the open instead of just making it clean-sheet day?

  My mouth stays shut, but I can’t keep that long, warm tear from rolling down my face. And darn it, I’m being a mushy girl, but who is here to see it.

  “What is it?” she wants to know.

  I can feel a big dark thing rising up from the bottom of my feet. A tremor not unlike what animals feel before an earthquake. It tells them to run. Escape. Get away from danger. But since there’s no place to run, no higher ground of safety in 4520 Fargo Drive, all I can do is use my voice.

  It’s a scream.

  My scream.

  A loud and close and from-the-bottom-of-my-feet scream.

  Your voice is your most powerful weapon.

  I scream loud and long and Dad probably hears it at the hospital. It probably makes the crack in my ceiling grow wider. Makes a layer of dust fall off our green Toyota.

  Maybe it was only loud inside my head.

  Now it is a deafening quiet.

  Laura doesn’t even stir.

  So I think I imagined the scream and kept it inside. I feel a headache bloom. And before you know it, I am really and truly leaving the area of danger the way animals do because all I want to do is smash the happy hugging salt and pepper shakers to bits. For their own safety, I must get out of here.

  “Mysti, what’s wrong?” Mama asks as I start toward the front door.

  “That picture! That picture is not me!”

  “What?”

  “It’s not me!”

  “It’s a picture, of course, but—”

  “Never mind.”

  “But Mysti, I thought you loved Paris.”

  “I said never mind. Don’t worry about it. Whatever. I’m going for a walk.”

  “But—”

  “I’m fine.”

  Here is a girl who cannot control photos or paintings, but who might possibly solve a mystery.

  I don’t expect that Woman Who Goes Somewhere is particularly dangerous, but you never know.

  She might be a secret spy, carrying messages to her contact, licensed to kill anyone in her path. She might be training for some kind of reality show where the winner gets a million dollars for doing the same thing the longest and if you get in the way of her and her prize, she will kick you into the next week.

  Or she might just be garden-variety weird.

  Probably.

  The ground is damp and cold, even through the orange coat. Smoke rises up from two chimneys and the neighborhood smells like a fireplace.

  Through the tree branches, I see someone coming down the sidewalk. Then I see the tail of a blue scarf and know it is Rama.

  “Rama! Over here.”

  Rama sits down on the ground with me and I tell her my plan. “Thanks for coming over,” I say.

  “If she is a criminal, you’ll have a witness and a medic,” she says. “Plus, we can always act like we are goofy if she happens to notice us.”

  “We are g
oofy.”

  We wait.

  We chew gum.

  The clouds cover what little sunlight there is and I worry that it will rain and make this walk miserable. More miserable.

  “The social would be a night to remember.”

  “The Titanic sinking was also a night to remember.”

  “Come on, we should try.”

  “You have your optimism intact, Rama, and I like that about you. But if you think I’m going to embarrass myself even more at Beatty Middle School when I’m not required to be there, you are six shades of wrong. I’m just counting days off the calendar until it’s over.”

  “Sad,” Rama says. “Just sad.”

  Before I can protest more, Woman Who Goes Somewhere walks up wearing Cobalt Blue boots and Burnt Sienna pants. She is also wearing a short-sleeved Venetian Red T-shirt. Typical. She is never dressed for the right weather. At least that’s one thing in the world you can count on. One thing.

  I count to thirty and then Rama and I emerge from our hiding spot. We cross the street so that we aren’t walking directly behind the Woman. The Woman’s pace is slow. She walks to the end of Fargo Drive and turns left. Because I always turn right on my way to Tom Thumb, this is going to be new territory.

  My heart beats a little faster when we make the left turn. The Woman stops for a second and adjusts her boot.

  Rama and I pretend we are just out for a walk. Natural. I pause to tie my shoe. Only my shoes have Velcro straps so I have to act the part.

  I check my watch. Eleven minutes have passed since we left 4520 Fargo Drive. Finally, Woman Who Goes Somewhere turns left down Boston Street.

  We trail her to a house on Boston that features bright-blue shutters and an angel statue in the front yard. The Woman bends to pick up a morning paper and continues up the walk.

  “Walk faster,” I tell Rama, and we speed up on the opposite side of the street. As Woman Who Goes Somewhere unlocks the bright-blue front door, a big tabby cat darts out. That’s when we hear her voice for the first time.

  “Hello there, Lucy, let’s go eat,” she says to the cat, and walks inside the blue-door house. Her perky voice doesn’t match her sloppy appearance. It’s high and delicate. If she called you on the phone, you’d think, Oh, this woman is nice and polite and her name is probably Amy.

  “What’s our plan now?” Rama asks.

  I must bring a good story back to Laura.

  “I have to talk to her, ask her a question.”

  “What if she pulls that knife on you?”

  “Nobody pulls a knife on people in broad daylight.”

  “It’s not that bright out. This is the kind of weather most often described in books when something mysterious happens.”

  “This is you being helpful, right?”

  “But as a future doctor of the world, I will know what to do if she uses her knife,” Rama says. “I can make a tourniquet with my scarf.”

  “You would take that off for me?”

  “Only if you were dying.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Just don’t get stabbed. My mother would be upset.”

  I should feel scared about approaching a stranger. A really strange stranger. Oh, Mama would be so upset. Too bad for her. I’m now more immune to suggestions of unusual danger. Perhaps that is not a good outcome of being a walker myself, but it is true. Abductions, feral animals, and strange people all seem to inhabit the television. You get used to being on alert.

  We don’t have to wait very long to make our next move. The wind shifts and you can feel a little rain in it. Rama and I pretend to be really interested in the acorns on the sidewalk. When Woman Who Goes Somewhere comes outside the house, she locks the door and walks farther down Boston.

  We catch up to her.

  “Hey.”

  The Woman turns. I don’t spot a knife.

  “What do you do in that house every day?”

  “I feed the cat,” Woman Who Might Be Called Amy says.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah, the people had to go somewhere in a hurry,” she replies. “Do I know you?”

  “So you just walk around the neighborhood and go feed a stupid cat.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Just walk by in mysterious clothes just for a stupid cat?” My voice cracks and I step closer to the Woman.

  “Mysti, it’s okay,” Rama says.

  “No, it’s not. That’s a stupid, stupid end to the story.”

  Woman Who Goes Somewhere looks confused. Slightly worried.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “This is just ridiculous. Are you even from Texas?”

  “Ohio, actually,” the Woman says. “But I always thought I was meant to be a Texas girl.”

  Rama says, “It’s okay, she was just curious. Have a nice day. Au revoir.”

  This is Rama trying to make things nice. Smooth.

  I pace around and kick the curb. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe she was just feeding a stupid cat!”

  “Calm down, Mysti!”

  “Is there no mystery here? None at all? Nothing is right. Couldn’t I at least get a good story for my sister? I mean, I don’t think I believe that woman. Feeding a cat. Really. She’s dressing full-moon crazy, walking around, getting people’s hopes up that something exciting is happening out in the world and it’s all because of a stupid cat?”

  “Mysti!”

  “A cat!”

  Laura will never believe me. It will make her sad to think that adventure and mystery didn’t really walk past our house each day. That there is not something more exciting beyond our wood fence. Beyond our windows. Our front door. All the exciting things, when you get up close to them, are empty of excitement. Like oil paintings. They are copies, not the real thing. All that art is lying to you because guess what? The person who painted it did not actually see those flowers. Did not see those ships. Did not see a girl in Paris. The kids at school did not see the real me. They saw a cartoon picture that Anibal Gomez could use to get a few jokes.

  It is all fake. Faux.

  No one sees things clearly.

  Everyone is too afraid to see things as they are.

  “That was interesting,” Rama says.

  “Not interesting enough.”

  “I thought you were going to attack that woman. You were acting all…”

  “Nefarious?”

  “Yeah, nefarious. What’s up with that?”

  “I’m tired of being disappointed. Disappointment is exhausting.”

  We’ve reached my house. I don’t want to go inside yet.

  “Let’s keep going,” I say to Rama.

  “You going to be okay?”

  “Sure. Everything always turns out just okay. Maybe that’s the problem. You want something different. Something more than okay. Okay is vanilla.”

  “That is why I like you. You want something more than the common seventh grader. That’s why I sat next to you in the cafeteria.”

  “What? You sat next to me because there wasn’t any place else to sit.”

  “No, I mean the second day.”

  “Oh.”

  “So dream for more. Dreams are free!”

  “Are you getting all psychological on me now, Dr. Khan?”

  “Psychology is my backup, backup plan.”

  “Don’t give up on your plans, Rama. Really. Go and be a doctor who saves the world. If you don’t, I couldn’t take the disappointment. Go and do it. You are the bravest person I’ve ever met. There’s hope for you.”

  We’re in front of the green-shuttered house now. The house where a girl with lots of backup plans lives.

  “You have hope, too. So forget the boy. Forget the cat.”

  “I can’t believe it was just a cat!”

  “Forget it!”

  “I mean, a stupid cat! A cat that didn’t even have an exotic name. Couldn’t I get a Frisky McCracken or Onslow Von Paws or something? Is that too much to ask?”
>
  “Mysti, your own dog is named Larry.”

  “RamaKhan!”

  “RamaKhan!”

  “Thanks, Girl with Scarf.”

  “No problem, Girl with a Great Friend.”

  That Rama. Sometimes she makes my heart dance.

  chapter 41

  Here is a girl helping her mother take secrets out of hearts and nightstand drawers.

  I don’t know how I came to be on the floor of my room, leaning into Larry with one arm, and wanting to sob like a tall two-year-old who didn’t get what she wanted.

  “Larry, isn’t it funny that I’ve seen two pictures of myself today and this is the one that makes me mad? That is the joke of the day, right? I’m going to be known as Girl Who Carries Turkey, but this oil painting ticks me off!”

  I tell Larry that it was just too unbearable to see a one-dimensional me in the place I most want to go in the world. Paris, where there is excitement and no one is ever bored. “Can you imagine, Larry, being bored in Paris? No, I’ll be here on Fargo Drive forever. There are too many people to feed and make happy here anyway.”

  I flop back onto the carpet and stare hard at the widening zigzag crack in my ceiling and wish I could slip through it.

  Here is a girl understanding that the crack is just trying to make room for her escape.

  Then, a knock on the door.

  “Go away,” I shout through the door. “Go far away.”

  “I want to explain some things.”

  “Don’t want to hear it right now, thank you.” This is me trying to be nice and firm and calm. But I don’t think my voice sounds nice and firm and calm.

  “I need to explain that I have something called agoraphobia and—”

  “Read the pamphlets. Already know that.”

  “Oh. You did?”

  “Go away, please.”

  And then Mama makes a joke. Mama.

  “Where would I go?” she asks. “How do you make an agoraphobic go far away?”

  At first, I do not like that Mama makes me laugh through my anger. That emotion makes me uncomfortable. It is like she is burning up my right to be mad.

  But I can’t help but laugh.

  A little.

  Because you can’t really tell an agoraphobic to go far away. That is a funny joke.