Whistle Bright Magic

by Barb Bentler Ullman

  Still immersed in cleaning his shoe, Frederick casually said, “I think I got a picture.”

  “A picture of what?” I asked.

  “The fog in the cemetery,” he said, flicking more cake out of the tread. Then, giving me all his attention, he asked, “Do you think it was a ghost?”

  “A ghost?” I laughed. “It was just a balloon!”

  “It was not a balloon,” he objected. “It was fog, and it glowed when it came out of the shade.”

  “Well, it did seem to glow for a second, but it was just the sun reflecting off that goofy toy.”

  Lupine inched forward, lured by the conflict.

  “Did you see it, Lupine?” Frederick asked, hoping for backup.

  “It wasn’t a ghost,” she said, shaking her head.

  “But it was sort of shimmery—translucent, I guess you could say.”

  “It was not,” I argued. “It was plain as anything until the sun hit it.”

  “Well, I got it on my digital camera,” Frederick claimed, holding it up as if it were Exhibit A.

  Lupine sighed regretfully. “No, you didn’t.”

  “Oh, yes I did!” Frederick countered.

  “You just think you did, Frederick. Have you checked the pictures?” Lupine asked.

  “No, but I snapped a ton of them really fast until my mom told me to knock it off. Look here.” Frederick held out his camera.

  We searched a series of photos that appeared on the screen: a tree branch, a cloud, a flock of crows . . . nothing.

  Bewildered, Frederick snatched the camera back and continued searching the otherwise ordinary images.

  “Lupine,” I asked, “why were you so sure that Frederick didn’t get those pictures?”

  Her blush deepened. “I’ve seen a lot of weird things around here, and I never get the pictures I want, not digitally and not on film.”

  “Then what did we see?” Frederick persisted.

  Lupine’s jaw tightened. She wasn’t talking.

  Turning to Frederick, I tried to keep a straight face. “Fairies,” I answered.

  As I said the word, something moved near the roof, and although the image was gone in an instant, my brain retained a snapshot. A tiny, boyish figure had stood in the gutter, watching us. No more than four or five inches tall, he had seemed to radiate a mustard-colored light, which went bright blue, and then he was gone.

  Feeling unbalanced, I turned back to Frederick and Lupine, who were busy insulting each other.

  “Did you say ‘fairies’?” Frederick cackled.

  “You’re just dense,” Lupine said.

  “Well, you’re delusional,” he spit back.

  As I rechecked the spot where the tiny boy had stood, I thought the word delusional seemed pretty accurate.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Acorns

  “SO, WHAT’S WITH the Acorns?”

  Mom and I settled on opposite ends of the couch in the apartment above Plunkit Books. Exhausted after the funeral and reception, we sat zombielike in the breeze of the fan, picking at leftovers and drinking iced tea. Grammy’s apartment was a quirky, comfortable space with mismatched furniture and a huge, deerhorn chandelier presiding overhead. Except for the fan, the big room was quiet.

  “Didn’t I ever tell you about the Acorns?” Mom asked.

  “No.”

  She sighed. “We were best friends in high school. Different, but compatible. Deb’s maiden name was Fetch, an old valley family who homeschooled their kids until Deb put her foot down. She wanted to go to public school, and she got her way.” Mom smiled at the memory of her friend’s strong will.

  “Deb was a smart girl. She may seem all meek and mild, but she is one of the most stubborn, self-directed people I’ve ever met.”

  “What about Marla?” I asked.

  “In those days, the only other African-Americans in Plunkit were Aunt Viv and a Sudanese kid that the dentist adopted. But what made Marla really different was the money. Her parents got rich during the first computer boom, and back then nobody had that kind of wealth in Plunkit. Plus, Marla sort of flaunted it with all her shopping trips and new clothes. A lot of the kids thought she was a snob, but it was just that Marla knew what she liked and she knew what she didn’t like, and she’d tell you all about it.”

  Mom was grinning again, remembering Marla’s smart mouth.

  “What about you, Mom? What kind of kid were you?”

  “Willa the bookworm, of course. They used to call me Mrs. Science. Pretty corny, huh?”

  I smirked. “It sounds about right.”

  “Yes, your mother was a nerd.”

  “So you three were the Acorns?” I prompted.

  “We started it from that saying ‘Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.’ I guess we figured we’d all grow up to be something great, plus Deb and Marla were obsessed with my freckle of mystery.” Mom held out her elbow so I could see the birthmark shaped like an acorn.

  “Mama and I lived up Wicket’s Road until my junior year,” she continued, her voice softening with the nostalgia. “That’s when she redid this loft.” Her glance encompassed the apartment, dark now since the sun had set.

  “The first two years of high school, the girls and I would meet at the trailer on Wicket’s Road, mostly because Mama was always working, and we’d get the place to ourselves. We made up that dorky handshake, and paid dues, and kept journals . . . all kinds of stuff. It was fun.”

  “Why didn’t we ever visit the Acorns on our vacations?”

  Mom’s mood hit the brakes. “I closed that chapter,” she curtly replied.

  I understood that the closed chapter meant him and apparently everyone else connected with those years.

  “Did the Acorns know my dad?” I asked, trying to sneak in the question before she quit talking.

  “They knew him all right,” she admitted. “In Plunkit everyone knew everyone else.”

  “Did they like him?”

  Mom’s voice went brittle and flat. “Marla used to say he was trouble with a pretty face . . . only I didn’t want to believe her.”

  CHAPTER 7

  We Like This Place

  ALL MY PLUNKIT days ended in Grammy’s office, in the daybed, with the big fan humming a comforting sound and the streetlight keeping me from darkness.

  Photos, mostly of me, crowded the walls: my first swim, feeding ducks, skipping stones, helping Grammy in the store. . . . I was a smiling, happy kid. In contrast, I noticed an old picture of my mom scrunched between her parents, Bertie and Mitch. The adults were smiling, but little Willa was not. She must have been eight or nine, unusually pinched and pale for a young girl, more like a worried old lady. Soon after that picture was taken, her parents split up, and her dad married his “better wife,” as Grammy Bert used to say wryly.

  “Good night, Zel,” Mom said, popping her head in the door. Like her little girl self, she seemed fragile and sad. “Thanks for being so supportive today,” she added.

  “Sure, Mom.” Swallowing a lump of guilt, I remembered being more bratty than supportive.

  “You know,” she said haltingly, “you don’t have to be so brave all the time. It can feel good to have a big cryfest once in a while.”

  “It doesn’t feel good to me,” I mumbled. “It feels like something bad will happen.”

  “The world isn’t going to fall apart because Zelly MacKenzie has a good cry.” She smiled, but it was pasted on top of concern.

  “I’m a thinker, not a crier.” It was my standard reply.

  “Okay, okay.” She sighed, turning to go.

  “Hey, Mom, did you see that blue jay thing floating around the cemetery?”

  “‘A blue jay thing’?” Pursing her lips, she walked back in and put a firm hand to my forehead, checking for fever. At that particular moment, I thought it best not to mention seeing a little man on the deck.

  “This is what comes from eating goodies nonstop,” she chided. “I’m surprised you’re not barking at the moon with
all the junk you ate.”

  “Yeah. Junk food makes you bark at the moon. Some scientist you are, Mom.”

  “One of these days I’ll regret having raised such a sassy child,” she claimed.

  “But not today, right?”

  “No, not today.” Leaning over, she kissed the top of my head.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. “What’s the plan?”

  “I’m on leave through Christmas. Guess you’ll be going to Cedar Road School for a few months, and I’ll be stuck in the store trying to figure out the mess that Mama left. You okay with that?”

  “I’m okay.” I shrugged. Actually I welcomed the change. Back at school all my grades, except for art class, were down the drain. It was getting harder to pay attention to facts and figures with so many other things to ponder: pictures, art stuff, and people especially were puzzles to be figured out and understood.

  Mom heaved a sigh of frustration and then grumbled, “I thought Mama was leaving the store to Aunt Viv, not me. What was she thinking?”

  “That we like this place,” I chimed in.

  “You like this place,” Mom corrected. “I’ve got my job in the city, and I can’t take much of this hick town.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Quirky Art Girl

  CEDAR ROAD K–8 was like a museum with tall windows, noisy radiators, and chalkboards worn to a useless sheen. The wide wooden halls reflected ninety years of wax and wear and smelled of macaroni, summer paint, and mildew creeping up from the basement.

  Even though the school was super old, it was alive with modern artwork. Students’ creations brightened the corridors, giving a free and artsy feel to the school. And my fellow sixth graders seemed really nice, not competitive like the kids back at Smarty Pants. Smarty Pants U was the private name that Mom and I gave to the University International School where my mother was a teacher and where I was a student. It was a brilliant school, everyone said, but for me it was a constant struggle to keep up, except, of course, in art.

  Brushing my hair in the girls’ bathroom, I looked in the mirror, forced a smile, and decided I looked respectably average. With a straight nose softened by freckles, straight hair courtesy of genetics, and normal black lashes shading normal brown eyes, I figured I was plain enough to go unnoticed.

  Still, an inner dread lurked as lunchtime approached. Where was I going to sit? Who would I sit with, and what was the system here?

  As I dawdled at the drinking fountain, I forced my anxiety into a mental drawer. I was slurping cold water from the measly trickle when someone hissed in my ear, “I’ve found something of interest.” Startled, I banged my lip on the nozzle. It was that weird Lupine Henderson. Grr!

  I hated to encourage her, but I was curious. “What’d you find?” I asked, dabbing my lip to see if it was bleeding.

  “I’ll tell you at lunch,” she whispered, and then disappeared.

  In the noise and clatter of the large cafeteria, Lupine called dibbs on a table and announced, “We’ll sit here.” Then she ambushed Frederick Witherspoon and made him sit with us, too.

  “I live at your grandma’s rental on Wicket’s Road,” Lupine declared. “Bet you didn’t know that.” Her little face was smug after surprising me with this information.

  “No, I didn’t,” I admitted, intrigued.

  “You’ll need to bring permission slips tomorrow if you want to take the bus to my house.”

  “And why would we want to do that?” Frederick cut in.

  “Yeah,” I echoed, resenting the domineering Lupine. “What are you, the lunchroom queen?”

  Frederick smirked.

  “It’s about that thing that we saw,” she said, nudging me with her sharp elbow and overacting with shifty eyes.

  “Lupine, your eyeballs are going to roll out of your head,” Frederick warned.

  I couldn’t help but smile, and decided that these kids might be fun to hang out with after all.

  “I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” she maintained.

  Scowling, Frederick took a huge bite of his sandwich, unaware that a blob of mustard was stuck on his cheek, which in no time fell onto his shirt. While Frederick made a big mess with his sandwich, Lupine daintily dissected a tightly rolled tortilla with a fork and a knife and then lined up her grapes on a napkin, eating them at select intervals.

  Studying my tablemates, I realized I was aligning myself with questionable personalities. Cedar Road was a small school where all types were tolerated, but everyone had a place. Frederick was the intelligent slob, and Lupine, the know-it-all fusspot. Both kids were a tad odd.

  Suddenly, I knew why I was at this table—I was one of them!

  “What’s so funny?” Lupine asked.

  “I think I’m the quirky art girl,” I volunteered.

  After a moment of grave assessment, they both nodded, and the fact that they didn’t question my statement was hilarious in itself.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Gypsy Wagon

  “NOT FAR NOW,” Lupine said as the bus turned onto Wicket’s Road. “This used to be a pretty drive,” she added, “until they clear-cut both sides of the road. Now it’s gross.” She shook her head in disgust and stared out the window.

  It had been a long time since I’d been down this road. Mom and Grammy had shown me the old trailer when I was little, but my memory of the place was nothing like this. With no trees and burn piles stacked bigger than barns, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The undergrowth that remained had been baked by the sun, and now it withered in shadeless ruin.

  COMING SOON, a big sign proclaimed, GLEN WOOD NEIGHBORHOOD, A HAVEN OF LUXURY HOMES.

  “Ew! It doesn’t look like a haven to me,” I sneered. “And how can they call it ‘Glen Wood’ if they didn’t leave any trees?”

  Lupine shrugged. “Don’t ask me. All I know is that I have to pass this disaster every day, and it’s depressing.”

  A logging truck rumbled by, hauling the last of the massive trees harvested from Glen Wood.

  “Look at those logs!” Frederick exclaimed, craning his neck to watch them go by. “Bet they’re a hundred years old. They don’t make wood like that anymore.” He sighed.

  We stepped off the bus at the hairpin turn onto Voodoo Creek Road and were promptly blasted with a big belch of diesel smoke. The old Blue Bird lumbered away, and we started walking.

  The weather was clear and crisp, the three-o’clock sun mocking us for having wasted the day indoors. In the chill of the September morning, we’d started for school with sweaters and jackets, but now we were peeled down to our T-shirts.

  “Man, it got hot,” Frederick complained, carelessly dragging his jacket behind him.

  “It’s nice in the shade,” Lupine said sternly. She just had to contradict him.

  Glen Wood Neighborhood spread all the way up to the Hendersons’ rental, where the devastation finally stopped. There, a distinct wall of vegetation marked the property line, and the natural woods resumed. Under an umbrella of tall evergreens, we were mercifully cool, despite the afternoon sun.

  “This is pretty,” I said, focusing on the woods ahead. “I’m glad that awful Glen Wood doesn’t go any farther.”

  “Only because your grandma wouldn’t sell,” Lupine stated. “Ms. Bertie said it was her chance ‘to stick it to the man.’”

  I smiled. That sounded just like Grammy Bert.

  Approaching the little trailer, I was surprised at how cute it looked after all these years. When she was a child, my mom had dubbed her home “the Gypsy Wagon” for its forest green color and bright red shutters. Bragging, Mom once said that she and Grammy had made a castle out of a junk heap. I’d seen the “before” pictures that proved what an absolute horror the property had been.

  Now, the trailer sat like an ornament in a rambling English garden, with rose vines climbing the porch. A carport had been added, supported by stout timbers on rock columns, and the roses climbed there, too.

  Through layers of green branches, the su
n speckled the pretty scene, and the air was filled with something sweet like tree sap or old blackberries, warm and dripping in the brambles. The beauty of this place floated in the atmosphere like humidity. Closing my eyes, I recorded the feeling and wondered how my mother had ever left.

  “My parents are at work right now,” Lupine announced. “They both work at Farm Foods.” Of course, the natural foods co-op, I thought. “But my mom will be home pretty soon,” Lupine said.

  Lupine unlocked the trailer door and ushered us in. From an open fridge, she called, “We’ve got vanilla rice milk and some prune bars that are really good!”

  Frederick and I looked doubtfully at each other, but my stomach rumbled, sweeping away my prejudice.

  “Sounds okay,” I replied.

  “There’s more room in here than I thought,” Frederick said, assessing the space.

  “It’s really cute,” I praised.

  Sparsely furnished, the trailer was clean and tidy, and everything in it was pale. At the little bay window was a painted white dinette set, situated near a white sofa, which faced a cream-colored woodstove. The only additional color in the room was the soft green and white checkerboard floor, spotlessly clean, like everything else.

  “It’s simple but really nice,” I added.

  “It’s my mom,” Lupine confessed. “She likes things plain. But I got to decorate my bedroom the way I wanted. I’ll show you.”

  Munching the prune bar—which tasted better than it had looked—I followed Lupine to the hallway, where she flung open a door.

  The cramped chamber was a shock of orange and violet and yellow, with beaded curtains and sunflower posters.

  “I like it!” I approved.

  “This is cool,” Frederick added, sweeping a hand through the dangling beads at the window.

  Lupine flushed and then said, “Oh, I almost forgot! I wanted to show you something I found when we put the new carpet in. Look.”

  She rummaged through a tiny desk drawer, pulled out a yellowed piece of paper, and handed it to me.