Words That Start With B

by Vikki VanSickle

  Denise is the one who fills me in on all those stories. To hear her tell it, you would think it was Denise who won and not my mother. “Oh, Clarissa, she was a sight for sore eyes. Poor Janice Beal thought she could step dance her way to the podium, but no amount of dance training could get rid of that pug nose. Am I right, Annie?”

  Mom demurs and won’t say anything more about it. If she’s disappointed that her daughter isn’t beauty pageant material, she never mentions it. Just as well. I have no desire to prance around in a bathing suit or spend all that time smiling like an idiot. Still. One dimple might be nice.

  “Do you want me to straighten it? Maybe add a few highlights?”

  I don’t like the way she’s looking at my hair right now, like it’s hopeless. Just because she can do stuff to it doesn’t mean I want her to. It is my hair after all. If I want to shave it off or twist it into dreads it’s none of her business. I brush her hands away from my head.

  “I don’t want to do anything with it,” I say.

  “Fine,” Mom sighs. “A wash and a trim it is. Now close your eyes and I’ll give you your scalp treatment.”

  Before they go to the sink for a shampoo, my mother gives her customers a five-minute head-and-shoulder massage that she calls a scalp treatment. It’s her specialty. Some people swear up and down that mom does the best dye job in town, but really, it’s the massages that keep them coming back. People are always asking her if she took a course in massage therapy, but Mom says, “Nope, I was born with the magic touch.”

  She isn’t kidding. First she starts with your shoulders, kneading them till they go all soft like Silly Putty. Then she works up your neck and her fingers slide behind your ears and into your hair as she massages the troubles right out of your head. When Mom is working her magic, people’s jaws go all slack and hang-dog, and if they’re really enjoying it, they drool a little. When she’s done they open their eyes and blink like they’re just waking up from the best sleep ever. Sometimes they can’t talk until the cool rinse revives them a little. She’s that good.

  When I was younger Mom used to perfect her magic touch on my head. I’d crawl onto her lap, lean back against her and just sit there sucking my thumb, somewhere between asleep and awake, and let her massage away. That was before I was too old for such things. Now if I want a head massage I have to get my hair cut, just like everyone else.

  Birds

  Try as I might, I just can’t seem to fall asleep. I’ve laid out my clothes, packed and repacked my backpack. I even made my lunch. I can’t remember a time I was more excited to go back to school. Then again, the first day of school used to mean the death of summer. This year the first day of school means the first day of the rest of my life. In interviews, famous actors and actresses are always talking about the people who changed their lives. I can’t explain it, but I just know that Miss Ross is that person for me.

  I met Miss Ross in grade three. There was a robin’s nest in one of the trees along the border of the playground, and a group of boys was trying to knock it down by throwing rocks at it.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, back off! Leave them alone!”

  A few of the kids scattered, but the older ones just laughed at me and kept on pitching stones, and anything else they could find, at the nest. You could just barely hear the baby birds, peeping away.

  “How would you like it if I threw rocks at you?”

  When no one answered, I grabbed a handful of gravel and started pitching stones in their direction. I wasn’t aiming at their heads, not on purpose, but I’m not a great shot, so even though I meant to hit their backs, I missed a few times and hit them square in the neck. That didn’t go over very well, but at least it got their attention.

  “Hey! Who do you think you are?”

  Suddenly the nest was forgotten and I was the new target. I held my arm across my face to protect my eyes as stones came whizzing by my head, too close for comfort. They had much better aim than I did. I turned on my heel and ran smack into Miss Ross, Benji hovering beside her.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  “That’s quite enough, gentlemen.”

  The boys skidded to a halt. She wasn’t very tall, but Miss Ross had a way of making herself seem taller. She had what my mother would call a tall personality.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of alerting the principal that you will be waiting for her outside her office.”

  They didn’t look so tough anymore. Getting caught was bad enough, but getting caught by Miss Ross was the ultimate. One of them stuck his lip out and pointed at me.

  “But she started it!” he whined.

  Miss Ross held her hand up for silence.

  “I will deal with Clarissa.”

  I looked up at her, mouth hanging open. She knew my name?

  The boys walked off, grumbling to themselves. One of them shot me a dirty look. I raised my chin in the air and pretended not to see it. What did I have to be sorry for? I wasn’t the baby-bird killer.

  “Come with me, please.”

  But as I followed Miss Ross through the playground and toward her classroom, I got that sick feeling in my stomach. I may not have been aiming at the birds, but I did throw rocks at another person. Some people probably think that’s worse. Maybe Miss Ross was one of those people. I didn’t know much about her then. The older kids didn’t pay a lot of attention to us younger students, so most of what we knew about her came from bits and pieces of conversations we had gathered in the hallways or on the playground. On the first day of school the kids who didn’t get into her class spent lunch hour crying about it. She was like the Wizard of Oz and I was about to enter her Emerald City.

  “Please come in, Clarissa.”

  Walking into Miss Ross’s classroom was like walking into a rainbow. I didn’t know where to look first. One whole side of the classroom was lined with red bookshelves, bursting with books. Easter-egg coloured kites were strung along the ceiling, which was painted light blue with white cloud patterns. Behind her desk Miss Ross had a real painting, the size of a bulletin board, of a tree that had birds in the branches instead of leaves. The birds were all different colours, too many to count.

  Miss Ross smiled at the painting, running her fingers over the canvas. The paint was so thick it stuck out in shiny ridges. I wanted to touch it, too.

  “I have always loved birds,” Miss Ross said. She unwound her scarf from her neck and reached beneath her blouse to pull out a chain. On the end was a silver bird, wings outstretched, mid-flight. It matched a pair of earrings dangling from her ears, delicate silver feathers that glinted in the sunlight and looked almost real. She held out the necklace for me to look at it. I leaned forward but kept my arms at my sides. My hands were still grubby from the gravel; I didn’t want to get dirt all over it.

  “I made this a long time ago, at summer camp.” Miss Ross smiled at the memory. “I hammered it myself,” she explained, running her fingers over the dents.

  “They look like scales,” I said.

  Miss Ross laughed, but in a friendly way. “They do!” she agreed. “People are always giving me things with birds on them, cards, mugs, you name it. I even have a book of bird poems. You know, the Haida people have totems to represent their clans. I’ve adopted the bird as my own personal totem.”

  “What kind of bird?” I asked.

  “It changes,” she said. “But right now, I’m fascinated by magpies. Magpies are collectors. They find bits of wool and thread, sometimes even lost jewellery, to decorate their nests. Each one is truly unique and beautiful.”

  I could see why Miss Ross liked magpies so much. Her classroom was like a magpie nest, full of beautiful things.

  “What kind of bird am I?” I asked.

  “You, Clarissa, have the soul of an eagle. A brave warrior and loyal friend.”

  I liked the sound of that.

  “But even eagles must know when to cross the line,” Miss Ross said gently.

  “Am I in trouble?” I aske
d. Before she could answer, I rushed on, “Because I was just trying to save the birds! There were babies in the nest, and those boys were trying to knock it down. They would have died.”

  “Your friend Benji told me you were trying to protect them. That’s very honourable. But there are other things you can do to stop something like this from happening again. Can you think of something else you could have done?”

  “Told a teacher?” I guessed.

  “Exactly. Let me deal with those boys. Throwing rocks at another person is just as bad as throwing them at birds.”

  “No, it’s not!” I cried. “A bird can’t throw rocks back!”

  “You have a noble spirit, Clarissa. I admire that. But someone could have been seriously hurt. If you throw rocks at another person, you are just as bad as the person who throws rocks at the birds. The intent is still the same; to hurt another living thing. Do you see?”

  When she put it like that it made sense. I felt ashamed.

  “Do I have to go to the principal’s office, too?” I asked.

  Miss Ross smiled. Even her teeth were beautiful.

  “I’m sure Principal Donner has her hands full. I’ll tell you what, just this once I will make an exception. But I want you to promise me you won’t throw rocks at another living thing again. Will you promise?”

  “I promise,” I said solemnly. She offered me her hand and we shook, like adults. The bracelets on her wrist clinked. I would have promised her anything.

  “Well, Clarissa, it was nice to meet you.”

  And then she said the magic words.

  “I look forward to having you in my class.”

  Blank Slate

  It’s the first day of school at last. My eyes snap open and I’m so awake I can barely remember what it feels like to be sleepy. I jump up and go about the business of dressing — looking over last night’s decision and changing my mind. My blue shirt is new, but my old T-shirt with the tree and stitched leaves is cooler, more Miss Ross. She loves nature and the environment and you can’t get more naturey than a tree T-shirt. A tree-shirt. Ha. I’ll have to remember to tell Benji that one.

  I’ve decided to wear my hair curly. It doesn’t curl everywhere, mostly at the back and underneath, but it’s easier to goop it up and scrunch it than it is to straighten it. I swiped a bottle of super-hold gel “specially formulated for curly hair” from the Hair Emporium. It smells like jellybeans. When I pull the sides of my hair back with clips it looks almost pretty and you can’t tell that the front pieces don’t curl as much. I think it makes me look older.

  I don’t have to mention my hair at breakfast. Mom does it for me. “You have your father to thank for those curls,” she says. I chew my cereal and pretend not to be interested. She doesn’t often thank my father for anything. I don’t know much about him, only that his name is Bill and apparently his hair is curly. I’ve never even met him. He and my mom broke up before I was born and he moved out West to sell life insurance. She never even told him she was pregnant, which I used to think was a low down thing to do, but Denise assures me that where my father is concerned, nothing is too low down. Denise calls him Bill the Pill. People used to ask me if I missed him, but how can you miss someone you never knew? Plus, the way my mom and Denise talk about him, he doesn’t sound like the type of father a kid would miss. Mom is careful not to say anything too nasty about him in front of me, but once I overheard her talking with Denise and she called him a piece of human lint. That’s definitely not Dairy Queen talk.

  More than once Denise has said to me, “Trust me honey, your father left the best part of himself behind here with your Mama.” Then she pats my knee and winks at me so I’ll get that she means me.

  Unfortunately, Denise is my mother’s best friend. She is taller than any other woman I know and has red hair that she gets touched up at the salon every four weeks. She has big feet and big hands and a horsey face, and she probably wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but she makes up for it by wearing a lot of makeup and tight clothes. Denise doesn’t have any kids of her own and so she thinks we’re pretty dumb, which is why she goes out of her way to make sure I get her point.

  If you ask me, she spends way too much time at our house. A few weeks ago she started turning up in the mornings before heading off to work. Now I wake up to the sound of her honking at something my mom said over coffee in the kitchen. The first time it happened it woke me up, and for a second I thought maybe a Canada goose had landed in our backyard. She’s that bad. But sometimes she brings those little white powdery doughnuts. Like this morning. I stuff one in my mouth and take two more for lunch. Mom frowns.

  “Isn’t three doughnuts a little much?” she asks.

  “One is for Benji,” I lie.

  “Oh, to be young and have such a metabolism,” Denise sighs.

  I roll my eyes, shout goodbye to anyone who is listening, then run over to pick up Benji. The first day of the rest of my life has begun!

  ***

  “Your hair is different,” Benji says. He’s sitting on his porch picking invisible lint off his jeans. They’re the same jeans he wore all last year, and yet they’re not even a little bit too short. I had to buy all new things because somehow I got too long for everything over the summer. I’ll probably be the second-tallest person in my class now.

  I glare at him. “Good different or bad different?”

  “Good different. You look,” Benji thinks about it for a second, “pretty.”

  “Oh, great. So before I was not pretty.”

  “No, no, before you didn’t care if you looked pretty; now it’s like you care.”

  “Well, I don’t care. I’m just trying something new.”

  Benji changes the subject.

  “I thought you were wearing the blue shirt,” he says.

  “Changed my mind,” I say, shrugging my shoulders like it’s no big deal.

  Benji scrutinizes my tree-shirt. “I get it. Because Miss Ross loves the environment—”

  “Not just because of that,” I protest. “I also think it’s a cool shirt. You said it was a cool shirt, remember?” I feel a little embarrassed. I wonder if Miss Ross will think it’s too obvious. “Besides, it’s my tree-shirt,” I finish lamely.

  Benji breaks out into a smile and laughs. “A tree-shirt! That’s a good one!”

  I feel much better. If something is even a little bit funny, Benji will laugh out loud and he doesn’t care who hears him. It doesn’t matter if he’s in a movie theatre, a classroom or just walking down the street. If it’s funny, he laughs. He should start a business where comedians pay him to come and sit at their shows. He’d make a fortune.

  “Come on, I don’t want to be late!”

  “We’ve got ages,” Benji points out.

  “If we stay any longer Denise will come out and go on and on about her feet.”

  Benji perks up a little. “Denise is over?”

  I forgot that for some reason Benji is not bothered by Denise’s honking laugh or the fact that she can’t open her mouth without telling you too much information. I swing my backpack over my shoulder and start walking. “I’m leaving!” I call.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

  ***

  “Hi, Clarissa! Hi, Benji!”

  Mattie Cohen pulls herself away from a knot of people and runs in our direction. She is the only person I know who still wears a dress on the first day of school. This one is navy-blue and forest-green plaid with buttons all the way down the front. She’s wearing it with a white blouse and knee socks, actual knee socks, even though it’s at least twenty degrees already. She looks like she should be going to Hogwarts.

  “Hi, Mattie.”

  “Your hair looks nice, Clarissa.”

  I wish I could say I liked Mattie’s hair or her dress, but I don’t think I can manage to say the words without smirking, and I am trying to be nicer this year.

  “Thanks.”

  “How was your summer?”

  “Fine.”<
br />
  “Mine was amazing! I went to camp and joined the swim team and I even babysat for my neighbours once. They had a new baby. Can you believe it? I’m not even thirteen yet and they let me babysit their brand-new baby.”

  Ugh. If there is anything I hate more than Mattie Cohen, it’s babies.

  “That’s nice. Come on, Benji.”

  “I really like your dress, Mattie.”

  “I said, come on, Benji.”

  Finally the bell goes and we all shuffle into the classroom. This is it, the moment I have been waiting for since that day in grade three. Maybe even before that. I’m not bad at school, but I’m not the best, either. Despite that, I have a feeling that this is the year I will amaze everyone with my artistic abilities and math skills. I, Clarissa, who have never been able to draw anything but stick people, will suddenly be making masterpieces. Miss Ross will call my mother to discuss the deep and meaningful poems I’ll be writing in language arts. The choir teacher will beg me to sing the solo at the Christmas assembly. Maybe I’ve been a genius all along but none of the other teachers was smart enough to see it. If anyone can, it’s Miss Ross.

  So you can imagine my disappointment when a skinny man with red hair opens the door and says, “Gooooooood morning, ladies and gentle-monkeys. My name is Mr. Campbell and I will be your captain on the 7B ship.”

  Broken-hearted

  Mr. Campbell tells us his first name is Tony, and then he tells us a really boring story about how people used to call him Tony the Tiger because of his name and his red hair. Worst of all, he does an impression of Tony the Tiger and doesn’t even notice that only a few people are laughing at his seriously dumb joke. Benji is one of them, of course. Traitor.

  “Are there any questions before we dive into science?”

  I raise my hand.

  “Yes, Miss—?”

  “Delaney. Clarissa Delaney.”

  “Well, Miss Delaney, what can I do for you?”

  “Where’s Miss Ross?”