I can hear you speaking just that way. Well, the you in the movie version of your book. I almost forgot to tell you that I watched you on TV again last night after my dad fell asleep. The picture of you I had in my mind and the one on TV are blurred together. I hope that’s all right with you. By the way, you would like my new friend, Finn. He is not insensitive like some people, but is all about knowing the exact word for everything. He said that studying a word is like unpacking an old suitcase. If you want to, you can keep taking things out of the suitcase and look at them like they are brand-new. Because he knows I like fashion, he explained to me that you can match words together like an outfit of clothes and accessories. Now, I think that most people use too many accessories when they talk. You do not. You have the right amount of plainclothes words.
I especially liked the courtroom scene of the movie. Again, my smart friend Finn told me this was everybody’s favorite scene, too. I like that I am ordinary that way. I wish I could have been up on that balcony with Jem and Scout to watch you work. It makes me feel like I was there. Because of the way you talk, I had to make a list of words I didn’t know. Well, maybe they’re not all your words. I have to remember that Harper Lee wrote you into being, but you still feel like a real, flesh-and-blood person to me. Chifforobe was the first one. I’d been marking up my copy of the book for a while, circling all the words I needed to look up in the dictionary. There are so many that my copy of the book will be worthless to the next person who might want to read it, so it is mine forever.
These are some words I looked up:
Umbrage
Palliation
Scuppernong
I will have to see if we have any scuppernongs around Garland. It would be nice for me to at least know I’ve eaten one thing you ate, too. That is weird, I know. (I hope you don’t take umbrage with that. Ha-ha.)
Well, thanks for always listening to me. I already feel the tiniest bit better. (But I am still mad at my dad.)
Sincerely,
Sarah Nelson
Chapter 22
When I am complaining or just saying my opinion out loud, Dad always says, “Oh, stop being so dramatic,” but what does he know? From what I can see, life is super-dramatic all on its own. I’m just playing my part.
For example, this is the day the news will report another mother going to court for killing her child. It is strange to think how much can happen on a hot day in Texas, but you know, it does. Someone should investigate if the heat has anything to do with people killing each other.
I didn’t know about that other mother until later, which is a good thing. I just ran out our front door and looked over at the Duprees’ house. Still no movement of the long green car. I am a half hour late to Charlotte’s house today. I just wanted the extra time to myself. That quiet gap between my dad leaving and me being in someone else’s company. It’s a luxury. I needed it for my mood, which is annoyed.
After my dad asked Finn about a thousand questions until it was clear he wasn’t a serial killer or an undercover reporter, they had a friendly chat. Dad told me it mostly centered on words and how many books they’ve both read and probably how erudite they are. I can hear them saying, Oh, look, we are so special and erudite! Blah. Blah. Blah.
Erudite means “extensive knowledge from books,” which of course I know all about because Mr. Wistler once said he wanted to make us “erudite citizens of the world.” The trick, he said, is that you should never let someone else hear you call yourself by that name or they will think you are the opposite, which is ignorant. So erudite is a trouble word in its own way.
Charlotte’s house is supercool inside and smells like cookies. I could just take a nap.
“Try this for an hour before you succumb to TV land,” Charlotte says, handing me a copy of The Red Badge of Courage. She says I will impress people if I read this now. But I wonder if she chose this for the words red badge, which if she did, it is not a funny joke.
This is a conspiracy among Dad, Charlotte, and Finn. All three of them, with their fancy book choices. What they would think about The Valiant Rake, I have no idea.
I take the book from her and plop down on her sofa. I open it to the first page and already I’m bored. I could just sit here and drink Cokes and eat chips all day. Stretch out half asleep the way a dog might. Send Lisa another text message to see if she’s any closer to getting a guy at camp to kiss her. Wait until I hear someone’s sprinkler come on and go run through it until I am soaked. It would be a waste of time, I know. Still, it feels like a day to do something childish, something from my old self.
I hear a car door slam and run to the window. No, it is not Mr. Dupree as I’d hoped. It’s Finn, walking up the sidewalk. He has on a nice plaid button-down shirt and his worn jeans that are the same blue as his eyes. I sit back down and try to arrange myself nicely, not look so lazy. My brain says to me, So, you couldn’t remember to put a little lip gloss on? What’s wrong with you?
I open the book again so Finn will be impressed.
Then, I time it just right to make my voice sound supercasual as he enters the house. “Hey.”
“How’s it going?”
“I was just reading.” Now I know I sound real.
“I thought you only read magazines.”
“Well, I don’t.” A whole smile takes over his face. Finn has the kind of face you want to make smile. “So, do you have a girlfriend?”
“You get to the point, don’t you?” He says this with enormous irritation. “Runs in the family.”
If he only knew what else runs in the family, he would back out of the room outlaw-style, slowly and with his hands up.
“You were interrogated and found worthy,” I say.
“Well, that’s something, I suppose,” he says. “I guess it’s better to be direct.”
“There’s a lot of room for people to misinterpret things if you don’t.”
I want to tell him I come by this philosophy from moving so much. You have a short time with people, so you’d better get busy knowing them if you want a friend. Being the girl with no friends never did me any good. Plus, girls with no friends get picked on by Darts.
“So? A girlfriend?”
“Not at the moment,” he says, which makes my heart smile. “What are you reading?” He lifts the cover of the book. “Good one.”
“I should be more into it, but it’s so hot,” I tell him. “Why does the heat make you want to do nothing?”
“Summer should be lazy,” he says. I wonder if he can read my mind because that was my exact thought.
He pulls a book from his backpack. I can’t tell what it is, but it’s superthick and green, so it must be a textbook. Those kinds of books aren’t just good for reading. They can also prop up the jack under your car when you need to change your tire, which is what my dad did once when we had a flat.
“I have another question,” I say.
“Shocking,” he says, all dramatic.
“When did you take my iPod to put those two songs on it?”
“When you and Charlotte were doing some top secret girl stuff.” Then he says, “And by the way, you’re welcome.”
“What’s up with that?”
“I found your song list deficient,” he says.
“It’s what I like.”
“You don’t have to listen to what people think a twelve-year-old should like, you know,” he says. I can’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I liked his song choices a little. I only listened to them five times.
I read for what feels like a million and a half years, but is really just thirty minutes. The sprinklers at Mr. Gustafson’s go on and off. The dog that lives inside the chain-link fence of Mr. Stanley’s yard barks and barks and barks at nothing. Someone outside the cul-de-sac bounces a basketball. I can’t concentrate on the page with all the unstoppable life going on outside. I wish I were standing on the tree stump. But then I wouldn’t want to waste time I have with Finn. If I end up having to lie about my firs
t kiss, I’ve decided Finn is in the top two for my selection.
“Want to watch TV?” I ask. “We’ll keep it low so it won’t bother Charlotte. And I promise I’ll read more later.”
“Fine by me.”
I flip on the TV, but it takes minutes to warm up. You’ve never seen such an ancient contraption as this. It’s a giant wooden box holding a TV hostage inside it.
“Suggestions,” I ask, afraid I’ll select a show that screams I am a twelve-year-old. What I’d like to watch is The Price Is Right, although I am better at Jeopardy!
“How about The Price Is Right?” and there it is. We have another thing in common.
Drew Carey bounces across the stage clapping and greeting the lucky contestants who want more than anything to win matching washer-dryer sets, a trampoline, or a chandelier. These are the easy items to guess at, but wait until they start bringing in huge cars or vacation trips. Those can be tricky. My dad is the all-time winner of those guesses at our house—how does he know, if he never goes anywhere?
A woman leaps up and down after correctly guessing the price of a laptop computer. Big deal. Everyone knows that. The show pauses for a commercial. A short newsbreak comes into the programming, letting you know the top headlines. They always do this in the mornings so lazybones people watching game shows can have at least some idea of what’s going on in the world.
I move to get off the sofa and go to the bathroom when the announcer, a pretty woman in a red suit, stops me flat.
“This is only the second time in Texas’s history the charge has been brought forth, the first time being the case of Thomas Nelson following the trial of his wife, Jane Nelson.” And there she is, entering my life unannounced and unwanted. A picture of my mother in a white shirt, a pale blue wall in the background, the kind they use to take school pictures of first graders. I’ve never seen this photo before.
“I have to go now.”
Finn might have said something to me, but all my senses are turned off. I think this is what they call numb.
I picture my too-pink room, see myself putting my things in moving boxes, hear the squeaky stretch of packing tape as it unrolls and hugs the sides of a box that will move to our fifth different address. Picking up Plant and telling her she’ll have a new window. We will have to patch the holes in my dad’s closet, make sure the kitchen cabinets are empty.
There are so many things to think about. I will become that girl. Again.
Finn clicks the TV off. I see my reflection in the screen. I look much farther away than I really am.
I close my eyes so I won’t have to look at myself, and I hear the voice of that mean girl saying, “Oh, are you that girl?” Something about the way she leaned into the word that pulled me to a dead stop in the hallway. There’s something about age nine that perks up a person’s nosiness. Nosy girls came into my world, and they were named Gina Graham.
Gina Graham had a locker right next to mine. Hers was decorated so much with G-I-N-A, you would think she had a hard time remembering her name. I had already had an idea about girls like Gina. They are the ones with naturally loooooong blond hair. They dominate the playground. They announce to the world they have a boyfriend, even if you couldn’t care less. They are only children. They don’t smile. They intimidate you. They are Darts.
“My mother told me you are the girl whose mother went crazy,” Gina said. I just slammed my locker shut and let my feet do the talking. But she wouldn’t quit the idea. She raced to stand right in front of me, put her superblond head right in my path, and said, “Are you crazy, too?”
I said the most intelligent thing I could think of. “Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I continued, feeling a rise of tears in the back of my eyes. Somehow my body knew I wasn’t going to win.
“Yes, I do. You’re that girl,” she barked.
I took myself to the bathroom to hide. I had a long private cry and tried to think of ways I could disappear, dissolve into the cracks in the tile floor. Then I thought that Gina would be walking on me, so that was no good.
I sat there through the next class, replaying Gina’s cold words.
Sarah has a crazy mother.
Before the principal came to find me, I’d written lies about Gina on the bathroom wall. I did it with my left hand so it would look like a maniac’s writing.
How I came to be standing in the middle of our cul-de-sac, I have no idea. I would love to see the instant replay. Did I walk or run? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve all of a sudden figured out my dream about Simon. He was trying to warn me by putting that note in my backpack. It’s a sure sign of crazy that I believe in dreams about my brother, but I do. Somebody call the hospital and let them take me now, but I know Simon is still connected to me in a way I cannot describe. There’s no word in the dictionary for it but twin.
Finn followed me out here, too, and we are just standing in the heat, saying nothing. It is so hot. The smell of the wastewater-treatment plant is already sharp. I hold my breath, and the cramps in my stomach come in waves. I have to keep moving or my brain will create a horror movie called Everyone Knows My Business.
“There will be a U-Haul in front of our house,” I tell Finn. There is Dad carrying a box with the word fragile written in black marker. There is the new place, a pile of crumpled newspaper at my feet in the kitchen as I decide if the glasses should be near the sink or the dishwasher. There is our mail, each piece covered with a yellow forwarding-address label on it.
“Why do you think you’ll move?”
“We always do.”
There’s a stone inside my flip-flop so I kick my shoe off and feel the heat from the pavement come up through my foot. I regard the house I live in now, try to see it as it was when we got here on the first day.
“Did you know who lived here before us?”
“No.”
“You can always pick them out, you know. Rent-houses.”
“How?”
“It’s like seeing someone wearing fashion from ten years ago. You know. And there’s always the bad grass.”
“I guess a tree stump is a giveaway, too.”
“Yeah, no one would have a stump on purpose, would they?”
I climb up on the stump and feel the tiniest breeze on my face.
“My mother isn’t dead,” I tell him, tears coming now. He walks around and faces me. “She’s just crazy, or if you don’t care for that word, terminally unreachable.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My family is strange,” I say.
“Strange. Unusual. Peculiar. Odd,” he says. “Sorry, can’t help it. Hey, I’ll delete those songs if you want.”
“No, they can stay,” I say, and then, “Please don’t tell anyone.” But I realize how stupid my request is. The world knows. Aliens from other planets know.
“Tell anyone what?” he says, and I look at his face just as he is winking at me. I catch it in my heart, know I’ll take it out later to look at.
“I don’t want to go back inside,” I tell him. “It’s like the TV knows.”
“That TV is so old, it has a bad memory. It will forget by the time Jeopardy! comes on.”
Don’t ask me how I know this, but I think he could be the security guard outside the vault of secrets. Sorry, Jimmy. Finn is now number one on my list of potential boyfriends. He would never tell.
Chapter 23
If I am forced to do the seventh-grade Family Tree Project, the world will know what I already know to be true. The crazy gene is taking root, setting up a town inside me. Streets near my lungs. A park near my heart. Roller coasters around my skull. But since we will probably move, I guess Problem 2 of my summer is now solved. That’s the thing about problems. One gets solved, and there is a new one ready to take its place.
Now, the only thing to keep from thinking about it is to keep moving. I leap from the stump.
“Where are you going?” Finn asks.
“To get an answer,” I say.
The Duprees’ front door is a nice shade of cocoa brown. My fist pounds on the front door. Then I realize I should be softer. Tap. Tap. Tap. I ring the doorbell and hear its chiming sound within. Still no answer. None. It is silent and it makes me angry. Why isn’t anyone answering?
Then, a shift in the curtains at the window followed by the click of the door unlocking.
“Yes,” Mrs. Dupree says, opening the door, her eyes squinting. “Can I help you?”
“Hello,” I say, unsure and shaky. “Your car hasn’t moved. I was worried.”
Her face folds in on itself, and she grabs the fabric of her housedress. It is then I notice she is not put together in any way. She is completely undone. Hair, face, and dress are all of someone who has been sleeping for a long time.
“Sarah,” she manages. “Oh, my dear, sorry to have worried you, but…” Her voice trails off, and her eyes land on the ground. If she could finish the sentence, you just know that the last word would be heartache or one of its synonyms.
“Can we help you?” I ask. She looks up, and I can tell this is the first time she has noticed Finn. “This is my friend Finn. He’s a linguistics student and not in any way dangerous.” I say this like I’m the lead investigator and that is Finn’s credential.
“Mr. Dupree,” she says. Then her body shivers and says what her mouth can’t speak. Something bad has happened. I knew it.
She motions for us to come inside. The three of us stand in her entryway. Finn and I wait for her to keep moving, but she doesn’t. Against one wall are a giant mirror and an empty coatrack. I watch Mrs. Dupree’s reflection, waiting for what to do next. Right now this small space is the loneliest place on earth.
Sure Signs of Crazy Page 10