I wish you and your family good health and happiness.
Your friend always,
Isabel
I lower the letter to my lap and look into my grandfather’s tired eyes. “She’s right,” I whisper, reaching for his hand. “It wasn’t your fault. Or Isabel’s, either. Henry didn’t blame you two. I know he didn’t.” I open the journal to the last entry. “Henry wrote this poem for you, Papa Dan. Listen, I’ll read it to you.”
If only…
A different time, a brighter moon,
A wiser word,
A longer hesitation,
A calmer voice, a tighter grip,
Another plea,
A quicker realization.
Your regrets
Won’t alter fate, or turn the tide….
If blame’s to cast,
Then blame my dedication
To blind desires, obsessive love,
Lust for control,
Selfish manipulation.
“Henry blamed himself, not you or Bell,” I say. “He couldn’t rest until you knew.” I hug my grandfather, and I feel his thin, worn body relax. “He wanted you to be at peace, too, Papa Dan. You and Isabel. You’ve blamed yourself for too long. What happened wasn’t your fault. You have to move on and forgive yourself.”
Papa Dan sits back and looks at me. In his face I read what he can’t say: I have to move on, too. I smile at my grandfather. A lip-quivering, eye-watering, full-blown crybaby smile.
I’m pretty sure that, somewhere inside his mind, Papa Dan understands that I got his message. Just like he got Henry’s.
The nightingale sings outside my window, but not the mournful tune I’ve come to know. Tonight its song is happy and calm. Peaceful.
I dream of Henry. He sits on the bench rock beneath the willows, playing on his violin the same happy tune that the bird sings while my grandfather and I twirl to the music.
Winter is over. The earth and sky are rich with the colors of spring. Papa Dan is no longer young but an old man whose green eyes twinkle behind his glasses. “Hang on, Tansy!” he shouts. “Don’t be afraid.”
We hold hands and spin, faster…faster…until he becomes a streaking blur of pink and purple, gold, and pearly white light. “Wait!” I cry. “Slow down!”
“Don’t worry, Tansy girl. I won’t let go.”
“I can’t see you!”
“I’m here…all around you. Do you feel me?”
The colors blend; the light brightens. “Yes! I feel you.” He wraps the warm wind around me like a cocoon, and I’m filled with a sense of peaceful security.
“I’ll always be here,” Papa Dan says. “I’ll never let you go.”
Something as soft as a feather brushes my cheek.
“Tansy.” I hear my grandfather’s voice, filled with love and happiness. His husky chuckle drifts on the air.
“Tansy?”
Light floods the room and startles me awake. I squint, blink, and sit up. Mom kneels at my bedside. She pushes hair from my forehead with her fingertips. Her brown eyes are glossy, her face pale and sad. The house is quiet and still. Too still. “Mom?” I whisper.
“Oh, sweetie…” She closes her eyes, as if she can’t bear to see my face when she speaks the words she needs to say.
But she doesn’t have to tell me. Papa Dan. I know.
We wrap our arms around each other, rock back and forth.
Outside my window, the tree sways. The wind rattles the panes against the frame. The nightingale warbles, and for the first time, another bird answers his call. Dawn stains the horizon with streaks of pink and purple, gold, and pearly white light.
I’m here, Tansy girl. All around you.
The colors blend, the light brightens. I see you.
And do you feel me?
A sense of calm surrounds me, just like the crystal’s luminous light once did.
Stroking Mom’s hair, I watch the sun rise over her shoulder, remembering another dawn, one I witnessed with my grandfather on the roof of our house in San Francisco.
“Yes, Papa Dan,” I whisper. “I feel you…I do.”
23
Months Later
Mom takes the last two candy canes from the box, then hands one to me and the other to Bethyl Ann. I hang mine near the top of the Christmas tree, beside a cracked snowman I made in third grade out of Play-Doh. “Why do you keep this?” I ask Mom.
“Because I love it,” Mom answers, placing ornament containers into the clear plastic tub where she stores them.
Bethyl Ann finds a bare spot near the bottom of the tree and hangs her candy cane over the branch. “Oh, that one’s so cute!” she exclaims, pointing to an old ornament—Santa in cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat.
“Papa Dan gave that to me in third grade,” I say. “The Christmas before we moved to Austin.”
“As I recall,” Mom adds, “he said it was to help you get ready to be a bona fide rootin’ tootin’ Texan.”
No matter what new state we moved to, he would always say something like that. Just think, Tansy girl, you’re going to be a bona fide Georgia peach…a bona fide Okie from Muskogee….” But in each place, we only stayed long enough for me to feel like a bona fide outsider. Except here. Thanks to Bethyl Ann, Tate, and Alison.
Bethyl Ann steps back and surveys the tree. “Isn’t it super?” She claps her hands together and begins singing an off-key version of “O Christmas Tree.” I join in, and so does Mom. We don’t make it through the first verse before a car horn honks outside. “Darn and double darn,” Bethyl Ann mutters. “That’s my ride. I’ll see you tomorrow at school.” In the driveway, Mrs. Pugh’s ancient station wagon backfires.
“School,” I groan. “Don’t remind me.”
“Only one more week until winter break,” Mom says in an upbeat voice. “You can hang in there that long.”
“Actually, I’m not looking forward to the break.” Bethyl Ann sticks out her lower lip. “Romy is spending the holidays in Orlando with his grandparents.”
Romy Bernard, a freshman, moved here midsemester from Tulsa. By the end of his first week, he had joined band (he plays the tuba), started a chess club (he, Bethyl Ann, the principal, and the school janitor are the only members), and stole my best friend’s heart. Romy is teaching Bethyl Ann how to play tuba, too, and she plans to join band in the fall, although I can’t imagine that Cedar Canyon High needs more than one tuba on the field during halftime at the football games.
“How will I ever get through two weeks without seeing him?” Bethyl Ann presses a hand over her heart. “O Romy, Romy, wherefore art thou, Romy?”
Mom laughs, and I roll my eyes.
At the door, Bethyl Ann turns to wave. “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow. In case you didn’t know, that’s from—”
“We know, Bethyl Ann.” I raise my brows.
“You’re no fun,” she teases, closing the door. Mom’s phone rings in the kitchen. She goes to answer it while I gather the decoration tubs and haul them to the storage closet. When I’m finished, I join her in the kitchen as she’s hanging up the phone.
“Who was that?”
“Ray Don. He said he read Tate’s article in the newspaper this morning. Apparently, people in town are already buzzing about it. Henry Peterson’s suicide has been a legend around here for a long time.”
I waited until last month before talking to Mom about sharing what Isabel said in her letter to my grandfather. After a lot of thought, I decided Papa Dan would have wanted the truth told. I believe that’s what he intended to do before he got sick. Mom agreed. But first we contacted our landlords—Henry’s descendants—and Isabel’s family. Instead of being upset like I’d predicted, they were all amazed by her letter. Even the Petersons. Everyone agreed that the truth should be told, so Tate wrote the article, and I provided photographs I took of the bridge, our house, and Henry’s treasures.
Tate asked Mom to help him write the article, but once he started, he didn’t need he
r. The words flowed onto the page and, this time, they were definitely his, not Henry’s.
“Is Ray Don coming for dinner?” I ask.
“Not tonight.”
“Why not?” The sheriff has joined us for dinner every Sunday night for the past couple of months. The truth is, I have sort of become used to him hanging around.
“I told him I wanted it to be just us tonight.” Mom cocks her head, her eyes on mine. “I want to talk to you.”
“Ooo-kay.” Anxiety flutters in my chest.
“I finished The Screaming Meemies last night,” she says.
“That was fast.”
“I told you I’d hurry.” She pulls out a chair and sinks into it.
I search her eyes for the signs that are always there when she finishes a book. Restlessness. Sadness. For the first time ever, I don’t see any of that.
“We had a deal,” Mom says. “I plan to keep up my end of it, since you’ve kept up yours. I’ve seen you making a real effort to fit in here since Papa Dan died. If you want to stay, we will; you can graduate here. But if you’re not happy, I’ll move wherever you say.”
“Really?”
She nods, and a sudden rush of happiness almost knocks me over. Before I know it, I’m beside her chair and we’re hugging each other.
I imagine leaving Cedar Canyon, moving to a city again. Restaurants and movie theaters. Museums and rock concerts. I liked Seattle when we lived there. And Nashville. I wouldn’t mind going back to one of those places and starting over again. No more Shanna or Rooster Boy to taunt me. I see the two of them in color now, by the way, as well as the rest of the kids and teachers at school. I hear them clearly. Honestly, sometimes I wish Shanna and Rooster Boy would fade away, though. Poof. No more misery.
I sit in the chair beside Mom, trying to picture going back to San Francisco, but I can’t see myself there anymore. In too many ways to count, I’m not the same person I was when we lived there. Would I have anything in common with Hailey anymore? I’m not mad at her now for stealing Colin. He doesn’t compare to Tate, so I ended up being the winner in the end. I even emailed and told her so. But the truth is, it still bothers me that she was so disloyal, and I don’t see us ever being close friends again. Even so, I finally read all her emails. I had to hear her apology and put what happened behind me.
I think about Tate and Bethyl Ann. Even Alison. In spite of her pom-poms and the totally lame pep rallies she loves so much, we’ve become friends. Saying good-bye to the three of them would be just as hard, if not harder, than leaving San Francisco was for me.
“Well?” Mom says. “Where are we going next? Someplace new, or somewhere we’ve already been?”
“What about your next book? Don’t you need to live where it’s going to be set?”
“A deal is a deal. Besides, I haven’t decided where it’s set. It depends on what you decide.” She leans closer to me. “Wherever it is, it might be nice to plant a few seeds there…see if they take root.” She pats my shoulder. “You don’t have to decide just now.”
I watch her closely. “You and the sheriff—”
“Don’t let our relationship affect your decision one way or the other. We’re not that serious.” My mother actually blushes.
Before I go to bed, I sit in the darkroom on the velvet chair, the rosewood box in my lap. I lift the lid, take out Henry’s pocket watch, and open it. Ten o’clock. It’s kept the correct time since the night I watched Henry fall from the cliff, the same night that Papa Dan died.
I touch the pendant, think of putting it on one last time, then decide against it. In my heart, I know that when Henry was stumbling and he grabbed the necklace from Bell’s neck, the crystal captured their memories and trapped them inside.
Holding my breath, I slant the crystal over a photograph, the one of Papa Dan standing in our yard looking up into the branches of the tree. A part of me wishes the prism of light would shimmer, stretch, and wrap around me so I can step through and talk to my grandfather again. But, though the light catches, it doesn’t spread; I knew it wouldn’t, and I finally accept that’s how it should be.
I’m relieved instead of disappointed. Henry’s spirit holds the memories now. Both he and Papa Dan have finally found peace. And so have I. I wonder if they both know how much they helped me.
I’ve made my decision about where I want to live. I’ll tell Mom in the morning, but right now I have something else I need to do. I turn to the side table and pick up a pen and the pretty blue notebook full of blank pages Mom bought for me at the Food Fair our first night here.
Dear Diary,
I’ve learned what can happen when I keep my thoughts, fears, and hopes bottled up inside, so I’ve decided to take Mom’s advice and start spilling my guts to you. Maybe that’ll keep me from going peanutty and make her stop bugging me.
I’ve been through a lot lately, but I’m starting to feel okay now. Here’s the thing: No matter where I go, sad things will happen to me, hard things. People I love will die, and sometimes I’ll have to tell friends good-bye. I’ll meet people who won’t like me, and I’ll know loneliness. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.
But, unlike Henry, I won’t hide away at this old house or anywhere else, living in a secluded world of my own making, not anymore. I won’t ever lose myself again. If I’ve learned anything from this whole weird experience, it’s that if I take the time to look beneath the surface…of people, of myself, of life…I’ll find wonder. I’ll find strength. And more love and acceptance than I ever imagined.
Which brings me to Tate Hudson. Wow. Sometimes the real world shimmers, even without the crystal.
Sanely yours,
Tansy Piper
Closing the notebook, I set it aside. I start to place the crystal in the rosewood box, then pause, wondering if Henry and Bell would care if I kept it. I touch the silver chain around my neck, the one Tate bought me. It’s beautiful, even without a pendant—though he promised to soon buy me one of my own. I’ll let him pick it out…well, maybe I’ll give him a hint or two about what I’d like.
I put Bell’s crystal next to Henry’s pocket watch and close the lid on the box. Tomorrow morning before school I’ll drop by the library to give Mrs. Pugh the rosewood box so she can display Henry’s treasures in the local history section. Then I’ll go to school and start making my own local history—as a bona fide Cedar Canyon Bobcat.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book evolved over a long period of time, and I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for helping me see it through to the final version. First and foremost I want to thank my sharp, determined, and supportive agent, Jenny Bent, for believing in Tansy’s story from the beginning and for never giving up on it—or me; I am lucky to have such a class act in my corner. I am also fortunate beyond belief that my manuscript landed on the desk of Sarah Sevier at HarperTeen. Her amazingly wise insights into my characters and storyline helped make this book so much richer and even more than I dreamed it could be. Every writer should be blessed with such a smart, talented, and thoughtful editor. My thanks go out, as well, to the other talented members of the Harper team for their careful attention to the many details involved in publishing this book. While researching this novel, I called upon my friend and fellow booklover Renae Haiduk to let me spend a day in her science classroom at Panhandle High School in Panhandle, Texas. Many thanks to Renae and her fun, friendly, and extremely well-behaved students for allowing me a glimpse into their daily lives. And thanks to the entire Panhandle High School staff, as well, for welcoming me into their school and classrooms. My research of life in a small Texas town also took me to the quaint community of Canadian, Texas, where many gracious residents eagerly showed me the ins and outs of the businesses, restaurants, and historical sights around town. Thank you, Canadian! A heaping helping of gratitude to my closest friend from my own teen years, Donna Stamp, for telling me about the Watermelon Run and inspiring the Cedar Canyon version of that small-town tradition. Th
anks also to my teen mentee, Summer Baker, for helping me keep my teenage lingo current and for teaching me the difference between nerds and geeks; Bethyl Ann thanks you, too! I’m not sure I could ever write a book and remain sane without the input and encouragement of my fabulous critique group: Linda Castillo, Anita Howard, Marcy McKay, and April Redmon. Thanks and much love to you, ladies. You rock! I am also fortunate to have a wonderful family that keeps me from spending too much time inside my own head. Gratitude and love to Jeff, Ryan, and Jason for making me laugh and keeping me solidly planted in the real world…most of the time. The best coffee baristas in the Texas Panhandle work at Roasters on Soncy; thanks, guys and gals, for your delicious java, your welcoming smiles, and for often having my “usual” poured and waiting when I walk through the door ready to write. Finally, although chances are good that they will never read this acknowledgment, I’d like to thank Mychael Danna, composer of the Girl Interrupted soundtrack, Alan Silvestri, composer of the Identity soundtrack, and the various composers of The Mothman Prophecies soundtrack for their beautiful, eerie music—it set the mood and immersed me in Tansy’s world!
About the Author
Jennifer Archer moved twenty-three times before her eleventh birthday—and one more time at the age of sixteen. She has lived in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Arizona, California, and Oklahoma. An avid reader no matter where she was, Jennifer has always felt at home in the pages of a good book. Today, Jennifer spends as much time writing books as she does reading them. She has written several novels for adults; THROUGH HER EYES is her first novel for teens. The mother of two grown sons, Jennifer lives in Amarillo, Texas, with her husband and two dogs. You can visit her online at www.jenniferarcher.net.
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