“Not stuff, ” Huck said. “Wolfsbane is a plant.”
Raven didn’t understand any of what they were saying. She felt small in the presence of the stack that stood taller than Huck. The stone lady’s green face was the part Raven couldn’t stop looking at.
“The dog was chasing us down the stream,” Jackie said. “We ran over there,” he said, pointing into the woods, “and found a big pile of junk. There’s an old car and we hid inside it. But the dog was gone by then.”
Raven couldn’t see the car or junk he was talking about.
“This is where Hooper’s land ends and yours begins,” he said. “We built this to be like a jinx to keep the dog away from where we like to swim.”
“Reece and I built it,” Huck corrected. “Because you were so scared and wanted to go home. We had to do something to keep you with us.”
“I was not so scared,” Jackie said.
“You were,” Huck said, laughing. “You nearly peed your pants.”
“Shut up!” Jackie said.
“It’s okay,” Huck said. “That dog would scare the pee out of anyone.”
Raven looked more closely at the stone lady. Her eyes were looking downward, almost closed.
“Reece found the broken Madonna in the garbage,” Jackie said. “That was how he got the idea to make the Wolfsbane. Because she would scare away evil spirits.”
Raven pointed to the green woman. “This is called Madonna?”
Huck grinned. “You don’t know who Madonna is?”
“No.”
“She’s the mother of Jesus. Don’t tell me you don’t know who Jesus is.”
She shook her head.
“Oh my god!” he said.
“Ignore him,” Jackie told Raven.
It was impossible to ignore. There were so many things she didn’t understand. And she couldn’t ask Mama because she dared not tell her about the boys.
“Do you like it?” Jackie asked.
She sized up the stack of objects, from crates to deer skull to the Madonna. She didn’t like it and she didn’t not like it. It was strange, maybe a little bit frightening.
“I think it’s good to scare away something,” she said.
“I know, right?” Jackie said. “We never saw the werewolf again since we built it. It totally worked!”
“I think the werewolf died,” Huck said. “It’s chased Reece and me for two years, and it suddenly disappeared.”
“Because of the Wolfsbane,” Jackie said.
It was a kind of Asking, Raven realized. She liked it more now that she knew what it was.
“I’m going home,” Huck said.
Baby’s soft begging sounds grew louder.
“You coming?” Huck asked.
“I’m gonna help her find bugs for the bird first,” Jackie said.
“Don’t stay too long,” Huck said. “If Mom asks where you are, I’ll say you’re outside. But if she notices you’re gone, it’s your problem.”
Jackie and Raven found insects and fed them to Baby. At first, they talked only a little. But she was afraid he would go away if she didn’t say things. She asked him why he wasn’t at school, and he said he was on summer vacation. He seemed surprised she didn’t know about that.
“Your mom doesn’t tell you much, does she?”
Mama told her about much more than he knew. A world he could not see. But Raven was beginning to realize she didn’t know much of anything about Jackie’s world.
They walked to the trash pile and looked at everything there. They found an old rocking horse and a bicycle with one wheel and two broken computers. There were many cans and bottles and some car tires. Jackie said the trash was on Mama’s property but had probably been thrown there by Hooper or someone who lived on one of the two properties before. He said some things in the trash were old. Reece had said the TV they used for the Wolfsbane was ancient. The rusted car was from the 1950s, an Invicta, he called it. Jackie took her inside the car and showed her the dashboard. He kept saying everything about the car was cool.
After exploring the trash, they fed Baby more insects. They saw a kingfisher and tried to find its nest in the stream banks. That had been Raven’s idea, and Jackie liked it.
They both knew he’d been at the stream for too long when the light turned a golden color.
“I’d better go,” he said. “Huck is covering for me, but my mom might have noticed I’m gone.”
“Will she be angry?” she asked.
“Worried,” he said. “Doesn’t your mom worry when you’re gone for so long?”
“She likes me to be outside.” She couldn’t mention that Mama wanted her to feel close to her kin by learning how to feed a baby bird. Mama wouldn’t expect her home until early evening when birds went to roost.
“My mom likes Huck and me to go outside, too,” he said. “We aren’t allowed to have phones or video games. Or watch a lot of TV. Are you?”
“No,” she said. She didn’t know what a video game was. There was no TV in her house, but Mama had a phone and computer she used to order things they needed. Raven wasn’t allowed to even touch them.
“Do you want to meet again?” Jackie asked.
She got a bursting feeling in her chest and belly. Like sun shining inside her.
“Yes,” she said.
“You can’t wait for me every day,” he said, smiling. “What if we meet at the Wolfsbane on Sunday around lunchtime?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Don’t forget,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Watching him disappear around the bend of the stream hurt even more than the first time. She felt an aching kind of alone she’d never known before. When the sky turned gray, when it was time for mama birds to go to roost, she returned home. Mama was in a good mood again. She had been for many days in a row.
They ate dinner, and Mama asked the usual questions about what she’d seen and learned. After she told her, leaving out Jackie and Huck, she got brave enough to ask a question.
“Did you ever see a dog by the stream?” she asked.
The surprise she saw in Mama’s eyes said she had. “Did you see a dog?”
“I did.”
“Last summer?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize you were going that far last year.”
Raven wasn’t, but she didn’t say so.
Mama clasped Raven’s hand on the table. “Have no worries,” she said. “That dog won’t frighten you again.”
“Why not?” In her mind, Raven saw the TV deer spirit, microwave, and green Madonna scaring away the werewolf.
“It attacked me twice,” Mama said. “I was afraid for my daughter. To keep her safe, I had to return the dog’s spirit to the earth.”
“How?” Raven asked.
“With a gun.”
“When?”
“Late last summer.”
Raven worked to hide her reaction. Except she wasn’t sure how she felt about Mama killing the werewolf. If she hadn’t, maybe the boys wouldn’t have come to the swimming hole.
But Jackie believed his Wolfsbane Asking had made the werewolf go away. And that had made him happy. Raven decided she must never tell him what Mama had done. Because she wanted Jackie to always be happy.
5
Baby called to Raven and Jackie from up in a maple tree. Another Steller’s jay heard and attacked her. Baby escaped, flying out of sight.
“Will she be okay?” Jackie asked. He was as worried about her as Raven was. Raven sometimes called him Baby’s father, and that always made him smile.
“I hope she will be.”
“Will the other birds ever get used to her?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Mama said normally a bird would have the protection of its parents’ territory. But when Baby followed Raven around the land, she went through many birds’ territories, and sometimes they attacked he
r. Seeing her chased and never accepted was sad. Even worse, she’d been attacked by a hawk once. Raven never stopped worrying about her. But Mama said that was part of being a mother.
Raven didn’t have her raincoat, and the drizzle had soaked her clothes to the skin.
“Do you want to go to my house?” Jackie asked.
They had been meeting at the Wolfsbane for three weeks, but he’d never asked that before.
He looked up at the low gray clouds. “It’s not going to stop.”
“What about your mom?”
She had learned to use the word mom around him. She called Mama that when she was with him, too.
“My mom is really nice. She won’t mind,” he said.
“You said she would be mad about you coming here.”
“We’ll say we met closer to my house.”
Raven didn’t know what to say. She had never left her land when she wasn’t with Mama. Would she be safe if she did? And what if Mama found out?
“Come on,” he said. “We have a lot of games. Mouse Trap, Chutes and Ladders, Guess Who? Do you like any of those?”
As always, she didn’t understand.
He had learned what her silences meant. “You never played those games?”
“No.”
“I’ll show you.”
The rain came down harder. They were getting cold. She either went to his house with him or they each would go home alone.
She didn’t want to leave him. “Okay,” she said.
Jackie’s smile was big. She followed him into the stream. Walking past the Wolfsbane, crossing onto Hooper’s land, felt strange. She’d never done that before. She turned around and looked at Madonna. Her outstretched arms seemed to say, Yes, go that way. Go. Go.
“Will Baby follow us?” Jackie asked.
“I don’t know.”
They stayed in the rocky streambed through Hooper’s land. The shores were still thick and brambly there. When the creek bent left, Jackie got onshore. They walked through a thicket of white-barked alder trees and followed a footpath into a field.
“That’s my house over there,” he said.
He pointed at a house on the other side of a wooden fence. It had a metal roof like Mama’s, but it was smaller. Mama’s house had natural logs on the outside; Jackie’s looked like pale yellow planks of wood.
They climbed through the slats of the fence. Raven’s stomach was a little bit sick. She hoped Jackie’s mother wouldn’t be angry. Raven would never bring someone home. There was no way to guess how Mama would react.
They crossed a field of short grass and entered the back door of the house as Raven did at hers. The door opened into a laundry room next to a kitchen. They took off their wet shoes and left them on a rug.
She heard boys laughing in the next room.
“Huck has friends over,” Jackie said.
She thought he looked nervous and wondered why.
“Let’s go in my room,” he said.
He led her to a stairway, hurrying past Huck, Reece, and another boy watching TV in the living room, but the boys saw them.
“It’s the bird girl!” Reece said.
“Where’re you going so fast?” Huck asked.
Jackie stopped walking. “My room.”
Reece and Huck grinned. The boy with dark, tight curls and brown skin was looking at Raven curiously.
“This is Raven,” Huck told him. “This is Chris,” he said to Raven.
She remembered the boys talking about someone called Chris the first day they’d met. “Nice to meet you, Chris,” she said.
Chris only nodded a little. Raven wondered why his mother hadn’t taught him what to say when he met a new person.
“Where’s your bird?” Reece asked.
“Outside,” she said.
“Really? It flies now?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still feed it bugs?”
“Sometimes. Mostly I give her peanuts while she learns to find her own food.” That was Mama’s idea. She’d had unsalted peanuts in the shell delivered to the house.
“Come on,” Jackie said to Raven, gesturing up the stairs.
“Jackie . . . ,” a woman said. She had come into the living room with a laundry basket in her hands. She stared at Raven.
Raven felt like wings were fluttering inside her chest. She knew the woman was Jackie’s mother. He looked like her.
“I didn’t know you had a friend over,” she said. She put the basket on a chair and walked over. Her face was nice to look at, like Jackie’s. She had the same light-tan skin and dark-brown hair. She wore her hair in a ponytail and had on jeans and a blue buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Her eyes were green-brown when she came close.
“This is Raven,” Jackie said.
“Welcome, Raven. I’m Jackie’s mother, Ms. Taft.”
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Taft,” Raven said.
“And how did you get here?” she asked, smiling.
“She was walking in the woods,” Jackie said. “We met out back.”
Huck and Reece were grinning again. They knew Jackie was lying to his mother. Raven wondered why it was funny.
“So you live near here?” Jackie’s mother asked.
“Yes,” Raven said.
“She lives on the other side of Mr. Hooper,” Jackie said.
“Does your mother know you’re here?” she asked.
“She doesn’t need to know,” Raven said. “She likes me to go out and do new things.”
“But maybe you should call and tell her where you are,” Ms. Taft said.
“I can’t,” Raven said.
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t use the phone except to order things.”
“Do you know her number?”
Raven shook her head.
Ms. Taft looked at Jackie and raised her eyebrows a little.
“It’s okay,” Jackie said. “We just came in to get out of the rain for a minute.”
“I see that,” she said, looking at their clothes dripping puddles onto the floor.
Mama wouldn’t like that on her wood floors. “I’ll clean it up,” Raven said. “Is there a towel in the kitchen?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Ms. Taft said. “I’ll get you some dry clothes. Do you mind wearing something of Jackie’s while I put yours in the dryer?”
Raven didn’t want to take off her clothes in a strange house. But she was soaked, and anywhere she sat would get wet.
“I’ll show you the bathroom,” Ms. Taft said. “You can change there.”
Raven dressed in gray sweatpants and a dark-blue T-shirt. The T-shirt was one she’d seen Jackie wear. It said MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK with a drawing of the mountain on it. She took out her braids and spread her hair into waves to help it dry. Jackie said he liked her hair like that.
Ms. Taft gave them hummus, avocado, and vegetable sandwiches. She told Raven they ate vegan, food with no animals in it. The hummus tasted strange, but Raven ate it so Ms. Taft would like her.
They went to Jackie’s room upstairs after they ate. His room was smaller than hers but nice with its blue walls, ceiling stars, and pictures of things Jackie liked. There were dinosaurs, planets, and Star Wars movie characters. There were a few posters that said Seattle Seahawks, Jackie’s favorite football team. Jackie closed the window blinds and turned off the lights to show her how the stars on the ceiling glowed like real stars at night.
Then he showed her how to play Chutes and Ladders. She liked it so much they played twice. They played Candy Land next. Then Mouse Trap, her favorite. Huck came in and asked if they wanted to play soccer. The rain had stopped, and the sun was coming out.
After she changed back into her clothes, she and Jackie went out to the mowed grass behind the house, and the boys explained soccer. They put Jackie and Raven on a team with Huck against Reece and Chris. It didn’t work so well because there were supposed to be more people on each team and they had no goalies. Rav
en liked it, but she couldn’t get the ball away from the boys. Jackie also rarely got it, but when he did, he’d pass the ball to her.
After soccer, the boys taught Raven how to play softball. In the second inning, when Raven was in the outfield, Baby flew down to her shoulder and begged for food. The boys gathered round and took turns feeding her peanuts. They said Baby was “cool” and “awesome.” Huck and Chris started calling Raven “Bird Girl,” same as Reece. Raven liked the attention, even if it made Baby nervous.
Ms. Taft had everyone come inside for dinner. Raven was having so much fun listening to the boys joke and tease she didn’t notice the day—the best of her whole life—was ending.
After dessert, Jackie took Raven into the living room. He said, “Reece and Chris are sleeping over, and my mom says you can, too.”
“Sleeping over?” Raven said.
Jackie was used to her not knowing things. He never looked surprised now.
“It just means you stay overnight. Like a long playdate.”
Playdate. Raven remembered Aunt Sondra had said Raven should have playdates.
“It’s really fun,” he said. “We play games and watch a movie and stay up late.”
Ms. Taft approached. “Would you like to sleep over?” she asked.
“I want to . . . ,” Raven said. She couldn’t remember ever wanting anything so much. But Mama would be upset if she didn’t come home.
“Let’s go ask your mother,” Ms. Taft said. “I’ll drive you over.” She had car keys in her hand.
Raven couldn’t let her talk to her mother. The alarms would go off, and Mama would get upset and probably mad when she found out Raven had gone to Jackie’s house.
Ms. Taft saw Raven’s worry. “I can’t let you stay unless I ask your mother,” she said. “I think I should meet her. She should know where you’ve been all day.”
“I have to go home,” Raven said.
“Okay. I’ll drive you,” she said.
“I’ll walk,” Raven said.
Jackie, Huck, Reece, and Chris stared at her.
“It’s getting dark out,” Ms. Taft said. “There’s no way I can let you walk that far alone.”
There’s no way I can let you. That scared Raven. She looked at Jackie. She was afraid she would never see him again if she did what she had to.
The Light Through the Leaves Page 11