Witpunk

by Claude Lalumiere; Marty Halpern

  I listened at the opening. "Fox?" I called. No answer. The water was low now, just a trickle running down the center. I saw a couple of muddy footprints on the dry cement beside the water; they looked about the right size for Fox's feet. "Fox?" I called again.

  I headed into the darkness, walking on the curving cement side of the culvert, staying out of the trickle of water. My footsteps echoed the length of the tunnel.

  Every other time I'd been there, Fox had been leading the way. It seemed darker than it had ever been before. "Fox?"

  "Yeah?" Her voice was soft. She was just a little bit farther in.

  "I was looking for you."

  "Well, you found me."

  I bumped into her. She was sitting on the side of the culvert with her feet in the water. I sat down beside her.

  "You didn't wait for me after class."

  "I figured you wanted to hang out with those other girls."

  "You could have walked home with us," I said.

  "No, I couldn't. They don't like me."

  "They just don't know you," I said, knowing even as I said it that she was right. Cindy might accept her, but Sue wouldn't.

  She didn't say anything.

  "My mom's going to make me join that Girl Scout troop. If you joined the Girl Scouts, then . . ."

  "No thanks," she said. "Not interested. That wouldn't change a thing."

  I sat with her in the darkness, knowing she was right

  "Forget school," she said suddenly. "Let's see how far we can go in the tunnel."

  "Right now? We don't have flashlights or anything." The light of the entrance was very far away.

  "Come on," she said. "I think I know where it comes out."

  I followed her into the darkness, splashing through the water. She kept hurrying on ahead, in charge again. "Wouldn't this be a great place to hide a treasure if you had one," she was saying. "No one would ever find it in here."

  The light of the entrance disappeared behind us. The air smelled stale and muddy. We couldn't get lost – there was only one tunnel, and to get out all we had to do was turn back – but my heart beat faster and it was hard to breathe. At last, after what seemed like hours, I saw a pinprick of light ahead of us, getting bigger as we approached.

  When we emerged into the sunlight, Fox was grinning. We were on the far side of the orchard; we had walked almost a mile underground. "Wasn't that cool?" she said.

  I lay on the ground in a patch of sunshine, so glad to be back in the light of day. She sat beside me, hugging her knees.

  "Yeah," I admitted. "That was kind of cool. I couldn't have done it without you."

  She nodded, acknowledging her position and authority. She was, once again, the queen of the foxes.

  That fall, my life was divided into two worlds.

  After school and on weekends, I spent as much time as I could with Fox in the woods. At school, I walked a narrow line. Sometimes I hung out with Cindy and her friends, and sometimes I hung out with Fox.

  One day, I walked into science class and found a glass aquarium tank filled with big green frogs. Mr. McFarland held a squirming frog and demonstrated how to stick the needle in the back of the frog's neck and sever the spine. "Now you'll all do the same," he said. "Each pair of lab partners will dissect a frog."

  When he asked if there were any questions, Fox raised her hand and said she wouldn't do it

  He nodded, and said that he would kill the frog for any teams that couldn't do it themselves.

  "No," Fox said. "I won't cut up a frog if you kill it. I won't have anything to do with this." She was almost shouting at him.

  Mr. McFarland got a little red in the face. "I guess you'll have to talk about that with the dean of girls," he said stiffly. "Joan, why don't you join one of the other groups?"

  "I won't do it either," I said quietly. "I guess I'd better go see the dean of girls too."

  Mr. McFarland looked surprised. I was, after all, a good student. But I couldn't abandon Fox, so we both went off to see the dean of girls. She looked at Fox sadly and at me with surprise. "Sarah, I'm sorry to see you here again – and Joan, I'm surprised to see you here at all."

  While Fox sat with her arms folded, looking miserable and stubborn, I did a lot of talking about cruelty to animals and respect for life. In the end, the dean of girls was sympathetic about what she called our "squeamishness." I suggested that Fox and I go to the library, do research on this type of frog, and write up a paper. The dean of girls and Mr. McFarland agreed on that.

  In English class, I wrote poetry that I knew Ms. Parsons would like. Stuff about clouds and rain and sad feelings. I'd always been good at figuring out what teachers liked and giving it to them.

  Fox just couldn't get the knack of that, although I explained it to her. "It's not honest, Newt," she told me once, when we were sitting out in the clearing. "You're writing stuff that will make her happy rather than writing stuff that you like. Why waste your time?"

  I shrugged. "I get good grades. It keeps my parents off my back."

  I thought Fox's poems were more interesting than mine, but they weren't about the sort of things that Ms. Parsons liked. Fox wrote about the peeling paint on her house, about the stink of the mud in the culvert, about the graffiti on the wall by the schoolyard. Fox wouldn't take the time to make sure that everything was spelled right, and she wouldn't bother to copy a poem over so that there weren't any cross-outs. Her handwriting was awful. Ms. Parsons took points off for spelling and neatness, but I think the real reason that Fox got Cs was because her poems made Ms. Parsons nervous.

  When Ms. Parsons got entry forms for a short-story contest sponsored by an organization of women writers, she gave me one. "They want imaginative stories from girls like you," she told me. "Why don't you write a story and show it to me. Then I'll send it in."

  At lunch that day, Cindy told me that Ms. Parsons had given her an entry form too. "I'm going to write about going rafting," she told me earnestly. "We found litter in the river and that made me think about nature." I nodded politely, though I couldn't imagine anything duller.

  After school, I told Fox about the contest. "Are you going to write a story about puppies and kittens for Ms. Parsons?" she asked me.

  I shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. Ever since Gus had given me the notebook, I'd been writing down stuff that I wouldn't show to Ms. Parsons, stuff I wouldn't show anyone.

  "You ought to write about something you really care about," Fox said. "My dad says that's where the best writing comes from."

  I shrugged again. "If I did that, I wouldn't want to show it to Ms. Parsons."

  "You don't have to show it to her. You've got the entry form. You can just send it in yourself."

  "Maybe you should write something," I suggested.

  Fox shook her head. "Yeah, right. Like those people would want to read anything I wrote."

  "Maybe we should write something together," I said. "What could we write about?"

  "Wild girls," Fox said, without hesitation. "The wild girls who live in the woods."

  "How did they get there?"

  She was sitting in the big chair, looking up at the leaves of the tree and squinting a little against the sun. "One of them grew up there."

  "Her mother was a fox," I said, "and her father was a wizard. The wizard loved the fox and turned her into a woman, but she was never happy so she went back to being a fox."

  "I guess the other one came along later," Fox said slowly. "She's a princess, the daughter of an evil king and a beautiful but stupid queen. She's traveling through the forest on her way to get married to a wicked duke. But she runs away and finds the wild girl in the forest."

  "Then they team up, and it's like Robin Hood," I said. "They steal from the rich and give to the poor."

  "And all the animals in the forest are their friends."

  We decided to write a story. I didn't tell Ms. Parsons; I didn't tell my mother. We told Gus, but he was the only one. He showed us where he kept his dictiona
ry so that we could look up words. Otherwise he left us alone.

  A few weeks after we'd started working on the story my mother asked me about the contest. "Cindy's mother tells me she's writing a story for a teen writers contest. You do very well in English. Don't you want to write a story?"

  "I don't think so," I mumbled. "I'm really busy with school."

  "It seems like you have plenty of time to play in the woods every day," she said.

  "Sarah and I are working on a project for biology class. We're studying newts. Maybe we'll enter it in the science fair." The phone rang then, and I got away.

  After Fox and I had been working on the story for a month, Gus let us use his typewriter to type it up. He gave us stamps and a big envelope so we could mail the story in.

  For a couple of days after we sent it in, we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We knew that the story couldn't even have reached the contest judges yet, but we kept checking the mail anyway.

  In the clearing, we sometimes practiced reading the story aloud – because the contest winners would get to read their stories aloud. We figured out who would read which parts, how we would alternate lines of dialog.

  A couple of months later, Ms. Parsons asked Fox and me to stay after class. She had the strangest expression on her face – her eyes were angry, but her mouth was smiling a tight little smile. "You girls didn't tell me you were entering the teen writers contest," she said.

  I glanced at Fox and then back at Ms. Parsons. "Oh. Well, we did."

  "Your mother didn't even know you had entered, Joan. I called to tell her the news."

  I nodded, trying to smile. "I thought it would be a surprise."

  "Oh, she was very surprised. And happy, of course. Your story won first prize in your age group. That's quite an honor. The contest organizers want you to come to San Francisco to read the story aloud at a ceremony; they'll be printing it in an anthology of stories for girls."

  I looked at Fox, and she was grinning. "We won," she said. I wanted to jump up and down and hug her, but Ms. Parsons was still talking.

  "I'm looking forward to reading the story," she said. "The judges thought it was extremely imaginative and well-crafted."

  Ms. Parsons got the contest organizers to send her a copy of the story, after I lied and said we didn't have a copy. She gave a copy to my mother, and they both read it.

  They had to like it, since it had won the contest, but I don't think they understood it at all. "It's very imaginative," my mother said. "How ever did you and your friend think of all those clever names?"

  "Your metaphors are very nice," said Ms. Parsons. She was always talking about metaphors in class. "But I do wish you had shown it to me before you sent it in. I think I could have helped you tone it down just a little."

  We gave a copy to Gus. "It's got the raw power of adolescence," he said. "Great stuff." When I was heading home that afternoon, he said, "Give my regards to the evil king."

  Of course my mother started making plans. She insisted I give her Fox's phone number, and she talked to Gus on the phone. "I thought I'd take the girls shopping for some clothes to wear to the ceremony," she told him brightly. "It's such a special occasion, and I know they'll want to look nice."

  Fox didn't want to go, and Gus wouldn't make her. After talking to Gus and Fox on the phone, my mother said that she was very proud that I had had the patience to work with that girl and that maybe I should write my next story without her.

  She took me shopping and made me try on dozens of dresses that she thought would be appropriate. I hated them all, but she finally settled on a plain red jumper with a black turtleneck underneath. "Not too dressy," she said. "But very cute."

  On the evening of the ceremony, we drove to San Francisco, which was only about an hour from where we lived. My father was away on a business trip, so he couldn't be there. My mother had arranged for Gus and Fox to come with us.

  Fox was wearing a dark blue dress. Gus was wearing a gray suit, but his belt had a big Harley Davidson buckle and that helped a little.

  Gus kept talking to Fox and me about how we'd be great, but I felt a little sick. The story had been ours, ours alone. Now my mother thought it was hers and Ms. Parsons thought it was hers, and for all I knew the contest people thought it was theirs. Everyone thought they owned a piece of us. We were whittled away to nothing.

  Fox and I waited backstage at a big theater with all the other kids who were reading their stories. Four high-school students were in one corner of the room, pretending to talk about what books they had read but actually proving to each other how cool they were. The elementary school kids were in another corner – they were reading first. A young woman sat by the door – a college student, I'd guess. As I watched, she pulled a makeup case from the pocket of her coat and put on lipstick. She looked, I thought, so cool and perfect. My mother wanted me to look like that.

  We waited with the others for a minute, feeling uncomfortable and stupid. "Let's just leave," Fox said softly.

  "What?"

  "Let's sneak out of here. This is no good. It isn't our story anymore."

  I glanced at the door. "We can't do that."

  "Sure we can." There was a note of pleading in her voice. "Who's going to stop us? We're the wild girls." She looked down at her hands. She wasn't Fox anymore. She was Sarah, and she was unhappy. "It's all gone wrong."

  "It's the clothes," I said. "How can we be wild girls, dressed like this? It just doesn't work."

  "They don't want us to be wild," she said sadly. "Wild girls have dirt on their faces."

  "Or war paint," I said.

  As I watched, the college student stood up and walked down the hall to the ladies room, leaving her coat draped over the arm of the chair. I hesitated for a moment, then stood up. "Come on," I said to Fox. She followed me to the coat. I quickly dipped my hand into the pocket, grabbed the makeup case, and kept walking until I found a spot backstage where no one would bother us.

  The lipstick was a lovely shade of red. Fox closed her eyes while I painted her forehead with wavy lines and spots, drew jagged lightning bolts on her cheeks and streaks on her chin. The lipstick felt cool and smooth on my face as she drew circles on my cheeks, lines on my forehead, a streak down my nose. I unbraided my hair—my mother had braided it tightly and neatly. It frizzed around my face like a cloud.

  "We're ready now," Fox said. She was grinning.

  As the elementary school students were walking off, a woman announced our names. At that moment, I grabbed Fox's hand and we walked to the microphone together. The woman at the podium stared at us, but I did not hesitate. I took the microphone from the woman's hand and stood still for a moment, staring out at the audience. Then I said the first line of the story, which I'd memorized months ago.

  "We are the wild girls who live in the woods. You are afraid of us. You are afraid because you don't know what we might do."

  "We didn't always live in the woods," Fox said, picking up the next line. "Once we lived in the village, like all of you. But we gave that up and left it all behind."

  That is the moment I remember. The hot lights on my face; the sweet greasy scent of lipstick; the startled faces in the audience. The feeling of power and freedom as my voice rolled from the microphone, booming over the hall.

  I looked out at the sea of faces – so many people, all watching us. I could see Gus – he was grinning. Beside him, Ms. Parsons sat with her mouth open; my mother was scowling. They were shocked. They were angry. They were afraid.

  We were the wild girls who lived in the woods. We had won a contest, we had put on our war paint, and nothing would ever be the same again. We were the wild girls, and they did not know what we might do.

  Jumping

  Ray Vukcevich

  We stood waist-deep in the muddy green cattle pond. Seven of us. Boys, girls. None of us more than eleven. All of us standing perfectly still.

  "Leeches," Carly had said at breakfast. "Leeches are the way out."

&
nbsp; "Who wants out?" I'd wanted to know, because I always felt fine in the morning when the sun had not yet cooked the juices from the day, and my belly was full of pancakes and new milk, and the long night was a fading memory. Not so bad, not so bad. Ask me how it's going. Okay, so how's it going? Not so bad.

  Carly had given me her china blue okay for you, buster brown bozo look. In fact, she'd swept the mess hall with the look. She could say a lot with a look like that, like sure you've got your pancakes and you've got your milk but how long do you think it really is until dark? Not to mention the cows. Oh, forget it. Just forget it. I don't care what you do.