Between Worlds

by Skip Brittenham

  Any sensible teenager who’d just moved to a new town would have edited her style to match the local dress code, but Mayberry was stubborn and sometimes more impulsive than sensible. She hated the idea that she had to conform in order to make friends, and her mom’s frequent urging to do so didn’t make the idea any more palatable. She rolled her head back and stared dully at the auditorium’s ceiling.

  After Mayberry was born, her mother had taken a hiatus from Columbia University’s doctoral program so she could be a full-time parent. Now that Mayberry was fifteen—too old to want or need full-time supervision—the family had moved from New York City to rural Minnesota so her mom could finally finish her thesis. The subject of her doctorate was the pathology of northern aspens, and the forests she’d chosen to study were all within a day’s drive of Eden Grove. Her dad hadn’t minded the move, since he owned a small software service company and could work from anywhere. Mayberry questioned her mom’s timing—why couldn’t she just wait until Mayberry was out of the house and in college?

  Mayberry might have been . . . quirky . . . but in Manhattan, friends had surrounded her. She’d been going to school with the same group since first grade, and made new friends at local shows and theater performances. There were plenty of like-minded free spirits in Manhattan, and being born there had only helped Mayberry’s prospects. She might not have known much about the natural world or outdoor life, but she was a walking subway map.

  She’d gradually shied away from her usual social scene, though, after her parents told her about the impending move. Leaving the only home she had ever known loomed over her like a guillotine’s blade. Her best friend, Emily, had stuck around, but her sort-of boyfriend, Peter, had gradually distanced himself. Even though she’d known that they’d never manage a long-distance relationship, she’d never been more heartbroken than when she learned that he and Emily had hooked up. There were angry texts and tearful phone calls between the girls, and for now, they weren’t talking. Even more disturbing was the fact that none of her other friends had chosen to jump in and defend her or pop their quills out to skewer Peter and Emily for their betrayal. They had all taken Emily’s side, as if Mayberry didn’t count anymore, and started keeping their distance, too.

  Mayberry’s spirit needed a boost, but if there was a more mind-numbing, backward place to get it than Eden Grove, she couldn’t imagine where. Nevertheless, here she sat, patiently waiting for a chance to carve a fit-in-with-the-locals niche by auditioning for a small part in the school’s upcoming Autumn Chorale production. She was a pretty good singer and had performed in her school’s plays for as long as she could remember. Theater geeks were usually a good starting place when it came to finding friends.

  Except for Kylie Murphy. Mayberry couldn’t categorize her as a theater geek. She was more of an archetypal mean girl. Kylie was currently standing in the middle of the auditorium’s stage, her arms flung up and out, warbling Céline Dion’s “Taking Chances.” She belted it out like a beauty-contest contestant showing off her new “talent,” trying to squeeze an entire song’s worth of emotion into every line.

  Mayberry grimaced at Kylie’s pitch—the girl sounded like a parrot getting crushed in a wood chipper. To keep her mind off the unholy sounds coming from the stage, Mayberry doodled a caricature of Kylie on her sketch pad. She smiled as she drew a giraffe’s neck, chunky hippo body, twisted mouth, and bugged-out saucer eyes. Mayberry had always liked creating fantastical animals, and seeing another side of Kylie on the page was particularly satisfying.

  CHAPTER 2

  MAYBERRY TUGGED her vibrating cell phone from the front pocket of her cargos. Her friend Marshall—

  so far, her only real friend in Minnesota—had texted. He’d been one of the first people to talk to her, and seemed to appreciate all the things about her that made others think she was weird—her geeking out on science, love of punk music, odd choice of clothes, and sometimes snarky attitude.

  She glanced over her shoulder and spotted him in the auditorium’s last row, his worn red Converse propped on the empty seat in front of him. A gray T-shirt and scruffy plaid pullover hung loosely from his six-foot frame, making it look like he’d plucked them at random from a donation box on the curb outside a thrift store. Bad fashion call, she thought. Marshall was almost cute, with brown eyes, a strong jawline, and choppy blond hair, but his cowlicks made him look like he’d just rolled out of a pile of hay. Oversized brown glasses completed the nondescript look, making him the perfect contestant for a makeover show.

  His text was made up of the shorthand they’d developed: SSS. She so sucks.

  UGTR, she texted back. You got that right.

  Kylie finished demolishing the song, then dipped her knees and raised an arm in an awkward curtsy. Her best friend, Penny Singleton, began applauding and hooting loudly, then the rest of their clique joined in, feigning the kind of excitement that would come over a crowd if Beyoncé had just performed an original ballad. Penny finally lowered her hands to smooth her hair, then absentmindedly plucked balls of fluff from her tight pink sweater, which flowed smoothly into a form-fitting gray miniskirt. She wouldn’t need to change even one piece of her outfit if she were called upon to play a Pink Lady in Grease.

  Penny and Mayberry hadn’t started out on the right foot, to say the least. Trouble had the bad habit of plucking Mayberry from a crowd. Although, to be totally fair to Trouble, she sometimes seemed to seek him out. Case in point: When Mayberry passed Penny and her friends in the hallway during her first week of school, Penny sneered at her, then turned away and whispered to her friends, who giggled while staring daggers at the new girl. Mayberry knew Penny’s type. If she didn’t stand up for herself right away, she’d be doing the girl’s homework before the year was out. Without missing a beat, she stepped over and put her face so close to Penny’s that she could see the flakes of mascara on her lashes.

  “Do we have a problem?” Mayberry whispered, as if she were telling her a secret.

  “What?” Penny said, aghast, shuffling back a step. “No . . . I don’t . . . I mean, why would we?”

  “Good. Have a nice day,” Mayberry chirped, narrowing her eyes into threatening slits before spinning around and walking away. From that moment on, the two of them were in a cold war that sometimes seemed on the verge of turning hot. Either way, after the confrontation, Mayberry didn’t talk to Penny or her friends or they to her. Mayberry realized that she might have gone too far, but it was too late to backpedal.

  She’d managed to befriend a few of the girls who weren’t fans of Penny or her minions, but she only really liked hanging out with Marshall. He would have been cuter if he wasn’t such a dork, but either way, he was definitely not her type, mostly because he was so timid. If he was bullied, which he often was, Marshall ignored it instead of standing up for himself.

  “Mayberry Hansen,” screeched the music teacher, Miss Speca. Her voice had a disconcerting edge to it, like the point of a nail being dragged across sheet metal. That unsettling sound was still reverberating in Mayberry’s mind as she rose and forced a smile. She strode up the aisle toward the stage, pointedly ignoring Penny and her friends.

  “What is that freak grinning at?” Penny whispered, just loud enough for Mayberry to hear. “There aren’t any mirrors in the auditorium, so she can’t see how ridiculous her clothes look.”

  Mayberry raised an eyebrow and turned to Penny. “Actually, I’m thinking about how ridiculous you look,” she said, waving an arm at Penny’s tiny miniskirt and platform heels.

  Mayberry skipped up the steps to the stage as Penny’s lips twisted into a sulky frown.

  “Let’s sing, shall we?” Miss Speca said from her seat at the piano bench.

  “I’m ready when you are, Miss Speca,” Mayberry trilled. “You should have the music already.”

  Miss Speca’s bony fingers thumped out the opening chords of the David Gray song “Sail Away” whi
le Mayberry focused on remembering the words. The first notes of the song came out fresh and pure. Although Mayberry could still hear Penny tittering, she tried to stay calm by imagining herself in an old-fashioned nightclub, performing for an audience of red-lipsticked ladies and their dapper escorts.

  Then there was a loud snort and she heard Penny saying, “No one would want to sail away with that weirdo. She’ll be setting sail on her own.”

  Mayberry imagined jumping off the stage and smacking Penny . . . and the distraction made her voice crack. The piano trailed off.

  She turned to Miss Speca, her cheeks growing hot. “Can I start over?”

  “Fine,” Miss Speca said without turning away from her music. She started playing the intro again.

  “Okay . . .” Mayberry listened for her opening and began a second time, but she could see the girls laughing at her. This would never have happened in New York, where people did theater because they loved it, not because it racked up popularity points. Mayberry stumbled over the lyrics and froze in embarrassment. She sighed and dropped her head, trying to take the deep, calming breaths her mom’s yoga teacher had recommended.

  Her mouth was bone-dry, but she wanted to try one more time. “I can do this,” she said to Miss Speca, in a low, quavering voice.

  “Perhaps you can do it someday,” Miss Speca said, her piano bench screeching as she pushed it away from the instrument. “But I’ve heard enough for now.”

  Mayberry scurried off the stage and ran down the aisle. “Loser,” Penny hissed as Mayberry rushed by.

  “Go back to where you came from, you weirdo,” a petite blonde in a blue sweater set called out.

  “Learn to sing,” Kylie said, joining Penny and her pack of clones.

  “Now, ladies, civility please!” Miss Speca said, even as she rolled her eyes at Mayberry’s retreating figure.

  They’re right. I am a loser here. And a weirdo. This is pathetic, Mayberry thought.

  Growing up in Manhattan, Mayberry had been schooled in its unique street ethos, where the ability to fence with words was an important survival skill. But she lacked the drive, much less inspiration, to defend herself here. Firing back clever retorts took wit and a deft touch, but here she felt dull and dispirited. All she wanted now was to go home, bake a batch of cookies, and eat them while watching some reality TV.

  When Mayberry turned thirteen, her mother had told her that her teenage years would be an amazing time: she’d start sorting out who she was and what she wanted to do with her life. But instead of figuring things out, she was adrift in Eden Grove, becoming a portrait of apathy. A week ago she’d seen graffiti scribbled on a brick wall in an alley near Main Street that read YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DREAM BIG and realized that this optimistic aphorism didn’t apply to her anymore. All her dreams stayed stuck to the pillow when she got up in the morning. Mayberry couldn’t be herself in this town or learn the skills she would need later on as an adult. She needed to be somewhere . . . anywhere . . . else.

  CHAPTER 3

  MAYBERRY SPED PAST the row where Marshall was sitting as she scrambled out of the auditorium, angrily slamming her palm into the metal bar to flip open the exit door. Marshall darted out of his seat and followed.

  “Mayberry,” he called at her retreating back. She’d already made it past the classrooms and rows of industrial lockers, and was nearly at the front entrance.

  She glanced over her shoulder and waved briefly. Not quite a greeting, but not a dismissal either.

  “Want to talk about it?” he said as he walked up to her and held out his hands. For a second it seemed like he was going to put them on her shoulders to help calm her, but he stuffed them in his pockets instead.

  She vigorously shook her head while staring into the cracked concrete walkway—as if the secret to a happy life were scribbled on it somewhere in chalk. Then she turned toward home, nimbly dodging through the clumps of students standing by the school’s front gate. They barely registered her presence . . . she could have been a veil of smoke they could see through.

  Marshall paused and idly ran his hands over his hair, making it stick up even more. Then he reached into his pocket and whipped out his phone.

  Those grls r losrs, he texted.

  A few seconds later, her response pinged through. TT, she wrote. True, true.

  He liberally interpreted her vague reply as an invitation to walk her home. With a few quick strides, he caught up. He let her occupy the weed-choked cracked sidewalk while he crunched through the fall leaves strewn in the road’s gutter.

  Her route home took them through the middle of Eden Grove’s primary shopping area. It consisted of a few blocks of inelegant retail buildings bunched next to each other along both sides of their joke of a Main Street. Once considered quaint by visitors, the washed-out buildings had gone from antique to merely dilapidated. Most were faced with chipped, stained brick, some had cracked windows, and a few retained old-fashioned wooden signs that hung over creaky doors.

  A new interstate highway had been built ten years ago, but it skirted the town’s center by nearly fifteen miles. Eden Grove wasn’t a convenient highway stop, and it had never developed a tourist attraction compelling enough to lure people off the road. Compounding the town’s woes, its biggest employer, a Winnebago-type RV manufacturing plant, closed when gas prices rose and the economy tanked. Inexorably, the town’s economy continued to wither and die. Kristi’s Jewelry Store shuttered. H & T Bakery moved. Ace Hardware closed. And so on.

  There wasn’t much for teenagers to do in Eden Grove. A skating rink, a two-screen movie theater, and a rickety bowling alley made up their prime entertainment choices. Most of the young locals planned on leaving someday so they could live more stimulating lives elsewhere. Sadly, lethargy and fear often overcame their ambition, and few managed to escape.

  Mayberry and Marshall watched as Mr. Hamner bounced out of his empty barbershop and idled on the sidewalk, trying to spot a male passerby who needed a haircut or shave but didn’t realize it yet. The neatly trimmed Fu Manchu mustache perched below his bulbous nose showed off his barber skills, and his thick, ungainly body revealed the fact that he wasn’t a man prone to dieting or exercise.

  Looking straight at Mr. Hamner’s jowly face, Marshall texted Walrus to Mayberry without missing a step.

  Mayberry smirked.

  As they approached the next corner, Mrs. Thomas, the bank manager’s prissy wife, passed by. Her oversized oval sunglasses were parked on the bridge of her sharp nose, and her white hair was teased into a perfect bouffant. Neatly pressed khakis and a crisp blue shirt with an embroidered American flag on the front pocket completed her look.

  Mayberry’s fingers flashed back a text: Poodle.

  Marshall laughed as he shuffled through the leaves.

  A few blocks later, they turned off Main Street, and Mayberry stopped in the driveway of a rambling colonial-style home.

  “See ya tomorrow,” Marshall said, peering into Mayberry’s face. “Unless maybe you want to hang out tonight?”

  Mayberry shrugged, walked up the driveway, and passed through the house’s front door without having uttered a single word since abandoning the auditorium stage.

  CHAPTER 4

  EONS BEFORE HE WAS BORN, Marshall’s forebears had been the wealthiest and most prestigious family in the county. The Jackson Mansion was perched on top of Eden Grove’s biggest hill, like a hungry vulture scouting for carrion.

  A professional paintbrush hadn’t touched its red clapboard siding in decades, and its steeply pitched roof was missing shingles, exposing weathered tarpaper underneath. The square tower attached to its roof was the highest point in town, from which an observer could see miles of surrounding countryside in every direction.

  Marshall’s late grandfather, James Jackson, had started the family’s downward slide by investing in a variety of ill-considered ventures: mi
nk farms, uranium mines in the Arctic

  Circle, oil exploration in the Baja desert, and other equally foolish get-rich-quick schemes. Finally, almost broke, he subdivided the virgin land around the mansion and chopped down the graceful old-growth pine trees that had blanketed it. Then he sold the lots to quick-buck developers who played off the proximity to the Jackson Mansion. This resulted in the worst kind of urban blight: a decaying old mansion surrounded by flimsy mini mansions packed together so tightly they nearly rubbed against each other.

  Unfortunately, Marshall’s parents had done nothing to improve the family finances. They continued James Jackson’s downward spiral while living beneath a veneer of inherited dignity and the mantle of being the “Eden Grove Jacksons.” For as long as they could, they’d supported their lavish lifestyle by auctioning off the mansion’s art and antique furnishings, and now the house’s interior looked like a looted museum.

  Marshall walked up the cracked asphalt driveway that led to the mansion. He opened the faded green front door and immediately heard his parents’ sharp-tongued bickering. Nothing new there, he thought.

  “Things would be different,” his mother croaked from the den, “if you would just get busy and—”

  “Me get busy?” his father interrupted. “Me? I’m the one who . . .”

  Marshall crept by the two ratty velveteen armchairs they occupied and slipped upstairs. How he’d managed to stay out of his family’s muck was one of the great mysteries of Darwinian evolution, like the way tiny, blind shrimp prospered miles below the ocean’s surface, living in pitch-black water that circled hot volcanic vents.

  Marshall’s limited expertise with money extended primarily to squeaking by without much. Thankfully, he was a whiz with electronics and was able to pick up enough repair and programming work to keep himself equipped with new technology and a decent pair of sneakers. Still, his hard-earned cash would disappear if he left it anywhere his mother might find it. Neither of them spoke about the game of financial hide-and-seek they played, but he’d finally started winning when he stashed his paltry savings in an empty tuna can hidden in the very back of the pantry. His mother believed that her delicate palate was much too refined for tuna, which worked out well for Marshall.