Tall, dark fir trees surround the house. I’ve never seen it so dark at night. The trees are so close to the house that some of the branches touch the roof, making it look like a bridge for squirrels—or worse, tree rats—to scamper across. I shudder at the thought of rats running over the roof at night when I am sleeping.
I hope that taking small steps will keep the gravel out of my toes, and that my sandals won’t slip off. The last thing I want is a sprained ankle. I once tried to walk with crutches. My science lab partner, Scott, broke his ankle playing baseball, and the crutches seemed to call to me as they lay on the floor. I picked them up and practiced hobbling around the classroom. Disaster struck when Jesse, Scott’s best friend, stuck out his foot. The crutches flew out from me, and I landed on my backside. Jesse laughed, and Mr. Marks gave me a two-hour detention for not being on task.
“Your mom called.” Jasper holds open the front door. “I told her that you’d call as soon as you arrived.”
“Okay.” I can’t wait to tell Mom about the ferry. But I think I’ll skip the part about the fast ride on the Island. I don’t want her to worry.
“Do you want some tea?” Uncle Jasper gazes past me.
I’m not sure if he’s talking to Opal or me. When I hear Opal’s voice respond from somewhere in the dark behind me, I turn around. The wooden front door has a stained glass cranberry grape and vine panel. I run my hands over the smooth glass. I know this is one of Opal’s stained glass windows.
As if he can read my mind, Jasper nods. “Opal’s.”
“Ours,” Opal says and steps onto the porch. She clutches a small handful of wildflowers and lavender that she drops into a bucket. She runs her hand over the panel of glass and pauses at a small indentation. I know what she’s thinking. It’s what I think. It’s what Dad thinks. It’s what all artists think about a finished piece. We always find the one place that isn’t quite right. It’s the one place where a small mistake has been left uncorrected.
While she studies her glass, I study her. She doesn’t have the usual wrinkles around her eyes or mouth. Mom would say Opal must have had a very good moisturizer routine that keeps her face so clear and shiny. I call her ageless. I know I’ve been staring too long when Opal turns and catches my eyes. Blushing, I yank my suitcase onto the porch. It bumps against a bicycle with chipped blue paint and flat tires.
“The bike is for you,” Uncle Jasper says. I can’t help but think of Dad’s fabulous art gifts as I stare at the bike. Mom has an exercise bike that she rides with six other women in the basement of the building. She always threatens me that if I’m not careful, I’ll gain weight on my small frame, and it’s good to start exercising while I’m younger. But I’ve never enjoyed bike riding and have escaped the two-wheeled machine—until now.
Uncle Jasper points at the blue bike. “Most people here ride bikes instead of taking cars. We like to save the environment.”
I try to smile. “Sure,” I say. I can conquer a little thing like a bike. If everyone on the Island rides bikes, I can too. “I can’t wait to ride.” I wonder if everything is going to be new and different on the Island. I hope that some things might be like Chicago, but so far it all seems like one of Dad’s foreign lands, and I don’t really feel as adventurous as Dad.
Uncle Jasper holds open the front door, and I step inside. I take a look around the small living room. White cat hairs cover the faded blue denim couch, and stale air lingers in every corner, like air in a closet that no one bothered to open for spring cleaning. At home, both Mom and Dad love open windows and doors. They say it helps the energy in the house. It doesn’t matter what season—spring, summer, winter, or fall—Mom and Dad always have some window raised a crack to let the air flow.
Uncle Jasper turns on a small living room table lamp that looks like something found in a garage sale. The orange lampshade doesn’t match the green lamp. He steps over my suitcase and stares at me with an intensity that makes me want to crawl into the floor. It’s as if he can see right through me. It’s as if he can see to the places I am trying to hide.
“Do you have a computer I could use?” It’s not like I have a best friend that I have to get in touch with immediately, but I want to know that the big world is still out there. I’m beginning to think that life on the Island might get a little isolated.
“There are computers at the library.” Uncle Jasper turns his palms upward as he runs his fingers along his face’s oval edges. His dark stained fingers remind me of Dad’s stained hands from his photography dark room that he uses when he wants to remember the old days before digital.
“It’s too hard to get internet service out here,” Opal says. She settles onto the couch, and a yellow and white cat shoots out from underneath.
“I guess there’s no cell service either,” I say as I pull out my cell phone and fiddle with the buttons
“There is service in town,” Uncle Jasper says. “Sorry.”
I throw my phone onto the couch like a child having a temper-tantrum. I can’t help it. My cell phone has no service. Uncle Jasper doesn’t have a computer, and—I look over at the phone on the hallway table—even his home phone still has a cord! A cord! Whose phone still has a cord?
Uncle Jasper sees my disgust as I stare at the phone. “We like to keep things in use until they break,” he explains.
I suddenly feel claustrophobic. It’s all so strange and different.
“Do you mind if I open a window?” Suddenly, the room doesn’t feel like it has enough air. And I suspect even with a window open, the room will still feel like the walls are pressing in on me. I’ve never been to summer camp, but I imagine that if I had, this aching feeling for something familiar is homesickness. The only problem is that, right now, I’m not sure I can find my way home—anywhere.
“No problem.” Jasper heads toward the kitchen, which I can see from the living room is no more than a small space with a refrigerator, stove, and a few brown cabinets that look like something left over from decades ago.
“It’s different here,” Opal says softly from the couch. “But you’ll fit in.”
For a minute I wonder if Opal is also telling me that I am different? Is the Island only for people who don’t fit in anywhere else?
Uncle Jasper returns from the kitchen. He balances a tray with three cups, tea bags, and crackers with cheese. He places the tray on the coffee table and sits down next to Opal.
“Something to eat?”
Opal smiles at him before picking up a small round cracker. I am very much the odd one out in this trio. I fake a yawn.
“I think I’ll go call Mom,” I say, and grab my suitcase’s handle. “Then go to bed.” I look at Uncle Jasper as I wait for him to tell me where I’m staying. I hope that he won’t suggest the couch, or even the porch.
Uncle Jasper nods toward the hallway. “You’re in the first room on the left. I put clean sheets on the bed, and there is a dresser for you to use. I hope you’ll like it.”
“Thank you,” I say. Uncle Jasper isn’t used to having a twelve-year-old around, and I’m touched that he tried to freshen up the room for me. I slip out of my sandals and scoop them into my hands. Sometimes I play a game of seeing how light my touch can be before the sandals drop to the floor. I like how the sandals feel dangling from my fingers, just seconds away from tumbling out of control and falling to the ground. I got the idea when I sipped an iced orange Italian soda at an outdoor café and watched a girl with her date. The girl picked up her sandals. She scooped them into her hands and held them, dangling from her fingertips, as she and her date walked to the park across the street. I marveled at the girl’s bare feet on the cement of the sidewalk, but what I marveled at the most was the look on the boy’s face—his eyes staring down at the girl by his side, his arm held out around her, as she danced and scurried across the concrete. Someday, I wanted a boy to look at me like that as I dangled my sandals.
I try to balance my sandals in one hand and pull my suitcase with my other. I�
�m doing fine until I step into the hallway, where I try dangling my sandal from my fingertips and it crashes to the floor. I sigh and pick up my sandal. I still need more practice before I’ll be the girl with her date.
Chapter Six
When I open my eyes the next morning, rays of morning sunlight shift across my soft green blanket. If I can catch the right moment, I like to hover in between waking and dreaming. Dad calls it “artist time,” when the pink and golden morning light pushes away the night’s blackness. On Sunday mornings Dad sometimes tiptoed into my room and opened the blinds. “Want to go on an adventure, Jas?”
I’d pull on cornflower blue sweats and a sweatshirt with white lettering, “Art Institute,” and creep into the hall with my sketchbook clutched against my chest. Dad placed his hands to his lips. “Shh, don’t wake Mom,” he’d say, and shift his black photography bag onto his shoulder.
On the adventure Sundays, I sat on park benches and sketched while Dad set up his tri-pod and searched for the right angle. After we finished, we’d go to a pub where Dad’s students liked to hang out. I always ordered a soda and Dad always ordered a beer. The frost from Dad’s glass dripped onto the wooden table as he pulled up chairs for his photography students. I listened to the chatter about shots, angles, and lenses, until my head drooped. After all the students left, Dad whisked me back to the loft studio, where I curled onto a brown leather couch with a soft pink blanket.
In the Island bedroom, I push away the pain that threatens to suck the breath out of me, and vow that artist time doesn’t belong only to Dad. It’s something we shared in Chicago, but here on the Island, artist time belongs to me. I kick the covers off and get out of bed. Pulling on black sweat pants, a black t-shirt, and clipping my hair into a brown plastic clip, I grab my sketchbook and colored pencils and head toward the porch.
When I reach the porch and push open the door, I discover that I’m not the only one who knows about artist time. Uncle Jasper rocks in a wood rocking chair and makes low clicking and clucking sounds.
“What are you doing?” I ask as Uncle Jasper holds his hands over his mouth in a small megaphone shape.
“Calling for the eagles,” he says through clicks and clacks.
“Do they respond?” I search the sky for swooping eagles. I’ve never seen eagles in the sky, just on the back of my fourth grade United States history textbook.
Uncle Jasper shows me a large nest perched on a tree that towers over the house. “Up there.”
“Why don’t they come like this?” I place my hands over my mouth in a cup like a megaphone and bellow. “Here eagle, eagle, eagle.”
Jasper laughs and clicks. “Try it like this.”
I move my tongue against the roof of my mouth. There is no click. Just a lot of saliva and a taste that reminds me I didn’t brush my teeth.
“Practice,” Jasper says. “You’ll get it.”
Artist time never involved clicking for eagles, but I want to belong on the Island. I correct myself—I have to belong on the Island. So I pretend that clucking for eagles is all part of a normal morning.
A bird with outstretched gray wings swoops past and lands in the branches of the tall evergreens surrounding the brown, grassy rolling fields. “Osprey,” Uncle Jasper says. “They like this time of morning.”
I lean against the porch railing. I wish I were more like the osprey, which soar into high places. Instead, high places scare me. I rub my hand over the bump on my nose. I remember the time I went with Dad on a photography shoot in a small park. Bored with waiting and waiting for Dad, I slipped off to the silver swinging bars in the park. Hanging by my knees, I swung upside down. But the silver metal was hot and my knees slipped. I couldn’t pull myself up to the bar fast enough and hit the ground. My nose pushed to a strange angle.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “It’ll give your face character as you grow older. Everyone breaks their nose at some point.”
For years, I searched the faces of my friends for bumps. I never found anyone with a bump like mine.
I slide down the porch railing and crumple against the cold, wooden porch boards. Looking over at Uncle Jasper, I see he has closed his eyes and is taking deep breaths that make his chest rise and fall. I’m not sure if I should get up and go inside, leaving him to the morning, or just stay where I am and not say anything. A sailboat’s mast bell chimes in the distance and across the brown fields as a ferry crosses the Sound. Sunlight sparkles off the tops of the cars traveling to the mainland. I wonder what it would be like to travel every day on a ferry. Would it become just like a daily bus ride? What happened if the waves were choppy? Do people get seasick? Hang onto the sides? Throw up?
I close my eyes and try not to think about choppy waves and people hanging onto the sides of a ferry while hurling throw-up into the waters below. Instead I float into Lucianna. It is artist time, and I am looking for inspiration.
Drifting into a space that’s not quite night and not quite day, I swirl my hands through a misty, damp air. As the mist clears, the vision appears. I glide alongside the ferry. My body is on the porch with Uncle Jasper, but I float outside the ferry as it steers toward the mainland. There is no worry about choppy waves and throw-up; everything is smooth. I peer inside the square windows and make faces at the people sitting on the green plastic benches. I know they won’t see me. It’s just like in the art studio, when I float into the green trees in Lucianna. The ferry leaves a white wake behind it, and I dance alongside the trailing waves until the chilly morning air pulls me back into my body and I open my eyes. I have found inspiration for the morning.
I pick up my colored pencils and sketch a few small boxes of the blue from my vision.
“I’ll be back,” Uncle Jasper says quietly as he opens the screen door and shuts it behind him. I had forgotten Uncle Jasper was sitting on the porch, and thank him for not disturbing me. Sketching lines across my page, I try to recapture the blue in my vision.
The sound of crunching gravel from the driveway startles me. Who is visiting Uncle Jasper this early in the morning? I glance up, expecting to see Opal again, but suck in my breath as long blue-jeaned legs and a well-toned body wearing a green shirt rides up on a bike with a large wood board attached to the back. He rides slowly, and I think that the board must be heavy on the bike.
I run my hand through my hair and sniff. Is my conditioner still working from my quick shower last night? I can’t smell anything, which might be a good thing; if the conditioner isn’t working, at least I don’t smell like the musty house.
“Is Jasper here?” the boy asks. He leans his bike against the porch railing and sticks his hands in his pockets. The board looks like it’s going to knock the bike over at any minute.
I stare into intense, bright blue eyes with a clear sparkle of light in the center. “In there.” I point toward the house. As he looks inside the screen door, I lick my lips. Why didn’t I think to wear some make-up, like my frosted lipstick? My bare lips taste sour under my tongue, and my early morning breath isn’t much better. I wish I had a mint to shove in my mouth like Mom does every time we go anywhere.
The boy turns around. Before he stares too long at me or notices my smelly breath, I stick out my hand. “I’m Jasmine.”
“I know.” The boy moves back and forth on both feet, and the tips of his ears turn red. “I’m Cole.”
Cole is Opal’s son.
Opal’s thirteen-year-old son.
Opal’s cute thirteen-year-old son.
I search for resemblances to Opal. There are none as far as I can see. Cole’s face is smooth and round, and there are no signs of blemishes. Instead, there is just a stream of freckles across his nose and cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” Cole stops fidgeting and studies me.
“Nothing.” My face feels warm, and I know I’ve been caught staring at him. “What’s that?” I try to change the subject and point toward the large wood board that, now I see, is attached to the back of his bike with a yellow bungee co
rd. I toss my head and let my hair swirl around my shoulders. Some of it doesn’t swirl and lands on my cheeks. I toss my head again and pretend like I don’t notice the greasy strands that stuck to my face.
“A project that I’m working on with Jasper,” Cole says. “I have to take it to his wood shed in the back.”
I hold onto the porch railing and slowly move my back against it until I’m standing. “I’m very good at lifting things,” I say as a piece of the wood railing slices into my hands. “Ouch!” I jerk my hand away from the railing
“Splinter?” Cole steps forward onto the porch. He stands next to me, and I smell his spice soap. I lean toward him and hold out my hand, but I keep my mouth firmly shut so he can’t smell my breath. I bet he has a girlfriend. Boys who look and smell like this usually have at least one girl clinging to them.
As if he knows what I’m thinking, Cole leans away and leaves me with my hand outstretched.
Pretending that I don’t feel like I’ve just been slapped in the face, I shove my hand into my pocket and take a step off the porch. My foot stumbles against the last step, but I try to act like losing my balance happens all the time. When my feet hit the cold, dewy grass, it takes a lot of work not to hop right back onto the porch.
Cole turns around and nods toward my bare feet. “Do you want shoes?”
“No,” I say as I remember the girl from the coffee shop. The look in the boy’s eyes as he gazed at the girl—I hope that if I leave my shoes off, I might get that same look from Cole.
Cole walks to his bike and unsnaps the bungee cord. I can’t help but admire him as his shoulders move under his t-shirt shirt and his hips mold to his faded blue jeans.
“How heavy is that?” I ask as I see Cole struggle to balance both the bike and the long wood board.
“It’s not bad.” Cole’s face turns red. “Usually Jasper helps me. But maybe you could…”
Stained Glass Summer Page 5