Through Her Eyes

by Jennifer Archer

  “Gotcha!” Stinky calls from the stall. She crawls out, sits back on her heels, and lifts the tube up in front of her for me to see. Her grin spreads wide, exposing a mouth full of red, white, and blue braces. I take the tube from her and, holding it with the tips of two fingers, give it a quick rinse in the sink before returning it to my backpack.

  The girl stands, swiping at the knees of her baggy pants. “Sorry for the run-in,” she says. “I was in a hurry. Don’t want to be late to classes on the very first day.” When the bell rings, she makes a face, then grabs a huge pink book bag from beneath one of the sinks. “Well…I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Tansy Piper, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”

  I’m not about to encourage more conversation by asking how she knows my name. Managing a quick look into the mirror, I start for the door. My hair is even worse than I thought—smashed so flat it looks like a dark, frayed cap—but there’s no time for repairs. I run my fingers through the short locks quickly and leave it at that.

  The girl follows me out, her short legs hurrying to match my long strides. “That’s Shakespeare, in case you didn’t know. William. From Macbeth.” When I don’t respond, she adds, “I’m Bethyl Ann Pugh. Better known as Stinky Pugh to the natives.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you? Being made fun of by a bunch of jerks?”

  “I hold the world but as the world, Tansy Piper, a stage where every man must play a part. And mine a sad one.” She sighs dramatically and shrugs. “Shakespeare again. The Merchant of Venice.”

  “Which means?”

  “It means Stinky Pugh is my part right now. But one day the roles will change.” She grins. “Not to boast, but I have a genius IQ.”

  “That’s random,” I say, glancing at her.

  “Well, I said it to point out that there’ll probably come a time when some of those jerks will call me Miss Stinky Pugh as I’m signing their paychecks.”

  Not slowing down, I say, “No wonder you have such a great attitude. Miss Stinky Pugh is a huge improvement.”

  Bethyl Ann drags her book bag behind her on the floor as she hurries along. “I’m a sophomore this year.” She holds up one hand, as if to stop me from interrupting. “I know what you’re thinking. I don’t look old enough. I bypassed second grade, then sixth.”

  “Which makes you what? Fourteen?”

  “Thirteen, actually. Until my birthday next month.” She falls behind me, skips once, twice, then she’s at my side again. “Enough about me. You are—”

  “Tansy.” I scan the numbers over each door along the hallway.

  “Piper, I know. Daughter of author Millicent Moon. Tears of Blood deserved a Bram Stoker Award, in my opinion. To this day, the scent of roses makes me shudder.”

  I speed up, afraid she’s going to start quoting Edgar Allan Poe.

  Bethyl Ann jogs to catch me. “My mom is the local librarian, and I archive the town newspaper for her every summer. Sometimes I read back issues. The really old ones can be quite informative, if you dig through all the garbage about potluck suppers and who came to visit the natives on the Fourth of July. I know a lot of things no one else does.” She stumbles on the hem of her pants, then rights herself. “You’d be surprised.”

  I’m relieved to see 121 above the next door. Finally I can be free of Bethyl Ann and her random information. She’s the friendliest person I’ve met but annoying, too. If there’s anything I don’t need, it’s the eccentric thirteen-year-old brain everyone calls “Stinky” trying to be my best friend.

  At the door, I manage a small smile for Bethyl Ann. Yeah, I wish she would go back to middle school, but I sort of feel sorry for her, too. “Here’s my English class,” I say.

  Bethyl Ann pulls her schedule out of the pink book bag and looks at it. “Oh, super! Mine, too.” She flashes her red, white, and blues. “Lucky us. Want to sit together?”

  “I thought you were a sophomore? What are you doing in a junior English class?”

  “Blowing the curve,” Bethyl Ann says with a sniff.

  I enter the classroom to find the teacher hugging Alison and gushing, “I was just so proud of you when I heard you spent the summer volunteering at the hospital in Amarillo.”

  Beside me, Stinky coughs and the teacher glances up. Silence falls over the room, like someone unplugged a blaring television. At least twenty pairs of eyes aim our way.

  Bethyl Ann leans close to me and whispers, “Asses are made to bear, Tansy Piper. Shakespeare again. The Taming of the Shrew.”

  I stifle a laugh. Bethyl Ann is weirdly funny. But then I see Tate Hudson sitting at a desk by the window, and my sense of humor evaporates. His eyes pierce me, and not in a good way. I flash back to his frozen twin in the mulberry tree and shudder.

  Two empty desks sit side by side in the front row. The teacher nods us toward them. I draw a deep breath. Yeah, Bethyl Ann. You and me? We’re the luckiest girls alive.

  Clock is ticking…ticking…tricking…

  I was too jittery to eat breakfast before school, and by lunchtime my stomach is so empty that it hurts. Most of the kids my age are heading out the front doors, but I don’t have anywhere to go and wouldn’t eat alone in a restaurant, anyway. So I dump my backpack at my locker and follow the stay-behinds out a side exit and across the street to the cafeteria, wishing I could forget Henry’s words for a while. It’s eerie hearing a dead guy in your mind and freaky how his poem from last night seems to be talking about my morning today.

  I enter the foyer and walk toward the open double doors leading into the lunchroom. Voices and laughter pour out of those doors, making me freeze beneath the entrance. My mind spins back to other cafeterias on other first days at new schools. I’m not ready to do this. Nothing’s more totally embarrassing than eating alone.

  A tray hits the floor. Startled, I back out into the hallway. Forget this. I’ll spend the lunch hour in the library. It’s not like I’m all that hungry, anyway. Not anymore.

  When I smell the yeasty aroma of warm bread, my growling stomach forces me to admit that I’m lying to myself. Not hungry? Yeah, right; I’m starved. I’ve got to face everyone sometime. It’s not like I haven’t survived this sort of scene before. I return to the open doorway, ready to walk inside and fill my tray. But then my gaze settles on Bethyl Ann. She’s sitting alone at the end of a table, reading a book and nibbling on a sandwich, a paper sack folded in front of her. I turn around fast and walk out. She’s an odd girl, but she was nice to me, too. I should sit with her. I know I should, but I can’t do it.

  As I walk out of the building and across the street, I try to look as if I’m in a rush, as if I have somewhere important to be. I enter the high school and hurry down the hall to my locker to get my backpack. Seconds later, I glance over my shoulder before ducking inside the library, then cut across to the farthest cubicle from the door, the one in the very back corner. I shouldn’t miss Hailey after what she did, but I do. Or maybe it’s just having a friend that I miss. I almost wish I had taken her phone call last night. I ache to tell someone about Henry and all the strange things that have happened since we moved here, about my suspicions that he’s reaching out to me through his poems. Someone other than Mom who won’t worry themselves sick about me. But there isn’t anyone. My days of talking to Hailey are over, and Papa Dan is lost to me now.

  I take my spiral notebook from my backpack and stare down at the instructions for the assignment that my English teacher, Miss Petra, already dumped on us. Write a story from the viewpoint of one character. Three pages double spaced. The words swim through a blur of tears. Did Henry eat alone in the cafeteria? Or did he sneak away at lunch to hide? Did his classmates humiliate him? Ignore him when they passed him in the hallway?

  Terrified I’ll start sobbing if I sit here a minute longer, I gather my things and leave the library as quickly as I entered it. I hurry down the deserted hall to my locker again, use the combination to open the lock, then trade my backpack fo
r my camera. I brought it today to take photos after school, since Mom isn’t picking me up until four. Exiting the building, I walk toward the corner.

  The elementary school sits up ahead across the street. Children stroll in a line down the sidewalk, making their way toward the playground. One little girl calls out to another, making me think of Hailey again. The girls’ laughter floats to me on a breeze that rustles the tree branches overhead.

  Leaves are falling, someone’s calling someone’s name: could it be mine?

  Snoopy, pregnant Mary Jane from City Drug waddles at the head of the line of children; she must volunteer in one of her kids’ classrooms. Today she wears a red-and-yellow-striped smock that makes her look like a hot-air balloon. She tilts her head back, wiggles her hips, and, waving her hands out in front of her, starts to sing….

  Peanut, peanut butter

  And Jelly

  Peanut, peanut butter

  And Jelly

  Pausing, I lift my camera and focus on Mary Jane and the children. After snapping several pictures, I continue to the corner, turn, and circle around to the back of the school to the tennis courts, surprised when I spot Bethyl Ann sitting at the bottom of the metal bleachers. She must’ve left the cafeteria while I was in the library. She feeds a skinny cocker spaniel from a sack in her lap. The dog’s tail sweeps the ground like a broom.

  A fist clenches inside my chest. How can she look so happy? Bethyl Ann Pugh has a horrible name, bad clothes, and even worse hair. She’s a lot younger than everyone else in her class but twice as smart. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t have a single friend.

  I aim the camera to take her photograph, and through the viewfinder, I watch her stroke the spaniel’s head and offer it another bite of food. The dog licks her fingers then barks. Bethyl Ann giggles.

  At once, I realize I’m wrong about this girl. Bethyl Ann isn’t only book smart, she’s wise in other ways, too. A lot wiser than me, that’s for sure.

  She chose a friend who will never hurt her.

  9

  I leave campus at noon the next day with my camera. Cedar Canyon is so small that the walk to Main Street and back only takes twenty minutes, and that’s walking against the wind and sticking to side streets to avoid mixing with other kids headed for the handful of restaurants in town. Along the way, I snap photos of buildings. Houses. A plant nursery with dead flowers and bushes out front. An out-of-business gas station with boarded-up windows and gone fishing permanently scrawled in red paint across the planks.

  On Wednesday during lunch break, I take pictures of people. A painter on a ladder in front of a worn-out house, trying to convince a skeptical woman that chartreuse would be a good color. Sheriff Ray Don leading an escaped cow down a residential street. A young mother and her giggling toddler shampooing a dog in a plastic swimming pool.

  I arrive home after school each day to the smell of fresh paint. The handyman, whose name is Bill, replaced the warped boards on the porch first thing, then moved inside. While Mom works on her book, rearranges the furniture for the millionth time, unpacks another box, or drives Bill crazy with instructions, I organize my bedroom and continue setting up a darkroom in the turret, working only while daylight streams in through the windows. After the freaky incident with the crystal, I’m afraid to be alone up there when it’s dark. I guess I could have Papa Dan sit with me while I work, but who knows what might happen? I don’t want to take the chance of something upsetting him.

  When Mom and I were putting together Papa Dan’s shop, we found a purple velvet chair and a round claw-footed side table in the barn. I move them into the turret and place them next to one window. Henry’s treasures fit nicely inside the table’s curved center drawer. Mom might find Henry’s things if I leave them in my bedroom, but I doubt she’ll come into my darkroom often, if at all. I still don’t want her to know about the artifacts. More than ever before, they’ve become a secret Henry and I share.

  By dinnertime on Wednesday night, the interior of the house looks fresh and bright, thanks to Bill’s hard work, and my darkroom is almost ready, thanks to my hard work. I need to cover the windows with black plastic trash bags to block out any light, and then I’ll be set. I make a mental note to buy some when I’m in town. Then all I need to do is get up my nerve to be alone in the turret in the dark.

  The next day, I walk to City Drug during my lunch break to buy the trash bags and some school supplies. Turning onto Main, I hesitate. People cluster on the sidewalks, and cars fill every parking place. Taking a deep breath, I jaywalk across the street, headed for the pharmacy, garnering a few glances, a few hellos, and more waves than I can count.

  A huge pot of dark orange mums sits at one side of the entrance. I push through the door. Inside, every stool and booth in the soda-fountain section on the left of the store is full. The place pulsates with conversation. A woman about Mom’s age waits tables, scurrying back and forth across the black-and-white checkerboard floor. A young guy fills orders behind the bar. It looks like a fun place lifted straight out of a decade when girls wore bobby socks and guys raced hot rods. And it only makes me feel more out of place.

  On the other side of the store, separated from the soda fountain by aisles of merchandise, J. B. stands behind a tall counter filling prescriptions for an elderly couple.

  “Hi, Tansy,” Mary Jane calls out from behind the front register. “You here to eat?”

  “No, I need to pick up some trash bags and permanent markers.”

  “School supplies are on aisle two,” she says. “The bags are at the end of aisle three, directly across from the pharmacy.”

  It doesn’t take long to find the markers. Grabbing a box, I make my way to the back of the store. When I reach the end of aisle three, J. B. calls out a greeting. The old couple he’s waiting on turn around, and I realize they’re my neighbors, the Quattlebaums.

  “Howdy-do, young lady,” the old man says, and his wife nods, her face as grim as ever.

  “Hi, Mr. Quattlebaum…Mrs. Quattlebaum.”

  I turn and search the aisle endcap for the plastic bags as J. B. comes around the prescription counter and hands Mr. Quattlebaum a sack. “So what did you think of the Watermelon Run?” he asks me, putting an arm around Mr. Quattlebaum’s shoulder.

  “It was different,” I say. Locating the bags, I grab a box. J. B. laughs as we all start up front together. “Not something you see in San Francisco, I bet. Your mom was quite the celebrity.”

  We pause at the register, and Mr. Quattlebaum hands some money to Mary Jane. Shifting his attention to me, he says, “Myra bought a copy of that zombie book. I finished reading the thing last night.” He shakes his head. “Good lord, where does your mama come up with that stuff?”

  Mary Jane gives him his change, then rings up my purchases while they discuss the strange workings of my mother’s mind.

  “Now, here comes someone who would probably love to meet your mom, Tansy,” J. B. says. He nods toward the soda fountain and smiles.

  I turn, and my heart does a swan dive when I see Tate Hudson approaching. I’ve been completely ignoring him at school. I have enough to worry about, without obsessing over what I might’ve done to make him so angry.

  But I can’t disregard him now. Not with J. B. standing next to me and calling him over to join us. Besides, Tate looks too good in well-worn jeans and a white button-down shirt with tiny blue stripes. His stride is long and unhurried, and he seems so sure of himself. I wish I didn’t love the way his hair falls over his forehead so much. Or the way he jams his hands into his pockets as he pauses beside the pharmacist. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, exposing tan forearms sprinkled with tiny gold hairs. And I’m pathetic to notice such things. I should only pay attention to the complete disinterest in his eyes when he looks at me. Because of that, none of the rest of it matters.

  “Have you two met?” J. B. asks, glancing between us.

  “Sort of,” Tate murmurs, capturing my gaze, and for once not looking away.
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  Quietly, I add, “We have a couple of classes together.” J. B. gives Tate a friendly slap on the back. “Did he happen to mention he’s one heck of a writer?” Tate cringes and looks down at the floor. “Well, you are,” J. B. says, chuckling. “Tate was chosen to go with a group from the Panhandle to a national poetry event last year in Washington, DC. What was that called?”

  “Brave New Voices,” Tate mutters.

  “The International Youth Poetry Slam Festival?” I ask.

  Tate’s surprised eyes flick to mine again. “Yeah.”

  I’m impressed. Being chosen to participate in the festival is a very big deal. “A few kids from my old school went,” I say.

  “Tate made it to the finals,” Mary Jane chimes in from behind the register.

  “That’s really great,” I say, but Tate only shrugs.

  “Tansy’s mother is a published writer,” Mary Jane says to him.

  He nods. “I heard.”

  “Maybe she could give you a few pointers,” she adds.

  “She’ll have you writin’ killer poetry in no time flat,” Mr. Quattlebaum interjects, chuckling at his joke. Beside him, Mrs. Quattlebaum surprises me by snickering.

  When Tate doesn’t comment, J. B. says, “Tansy has a creative streak, too. She’s a photographer. Pretty accomplished, too, according to her mom. Cedar Canyon is becoming quite the artistic community all of a sudden.”

  I see a change in Tate’s expression, a faint glimmer of interest. “I just play around with it,” I say. “I haven’t won an award or anything like that.”

  “I’ve seen you around town taking pictures.” He stares at me a moment longer, then looks down to the camera hanging at my side.

  Encouraged that he’s finally speaking to me, I continue, “I want to take some shots of the canyon and that bridge I keep hearing about, but I haven’t had time to go out there yet.” Hoping he might offer to take me, I add, “I’m not sure where the bridge is, anyway.”