Here in the Real World

by Sara Pennypacker

  And then he told his uncle the worst. “She wishes she had a normal kid.”

  Uncle Cy frowned a tiny frown. “That’s hard to believe. She talks about you all the time.”

  “It’s true. She called me antisocial. Like I have a disease.” He held his breath.

  Uncle Cy steepled his long fingers to his lips. “Well, if that’s a disease, I’ve had it all my life.”

  Ware swelled with so much hope he couldn’t reply.

  “Yeah.” Uncle Cy nodded. “Just then, it sounded like you were describing me. Actually, it sounded like you were describing everyone I work with—the musicians, cinematographers, the writers. The whole tribe. Sounded like you were describing an artist.”

  And just as abruptly, Ware’s hope was dashed. He looked at the floor. “I can’t draw.”

  Uncle Cy shrugged. “Lots of kinds of artists, you know.” He crossed his arms behind his head. “When you were just a rug rat, I came to see Big Deal. Your family was there, too. We were moving her into that Sunset Palms place. I took you out one day, get you out of your parents’ hair, took you to the ocean. First time you’d seen it. You went rigid, as if you’d been electrified. Eyes like this. And you kept reaching for the water, wanting to drink it.”

  Ware felt a shock of recognition at the story, the way he felt whenever he passed a mirror unexpectedly.

  But of course wanting to drink the ocean would sound crazy. Especially to people like Uncle Cy, who went to film festivals with celebrities, who was practically a celebrity himself, and who sent postcards from places like Morocco and Hong Kong and Calcutta, places you had to look up on a map. “I was a weird little kid, huh?”

  “Weird? No. That’s when I thought maybe you’d be an artist.”

  Ware gripped the counter. “What do you mean?”

  “First time I knew it about myself, I was a kid, too. Maybe eight or nine. Friend of mine had a new kitten. Its paw pads were so perfect, like shiny little coffee beans. I had the urge to swallow them. That’s when I knew. Not that I was an artist—I hadn’t figured that out yet. Just that I was different, and this difference would be important my whole life.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s like this: artists see something that moves us, we need to take it in, make it part of ourselves. And then give it back to the world, translated, in a way the world can see it, too. That make sense?”

  You see that? Wow. “Yes.”

  “Artists need solitude to do that. And quiet. By the way, you’ll have to fight for that—the world loves noise.”

  Ware fell back against the cupboard. He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been holding himself since he’d uttered the word “antisocial” out loud. “I get it.”

  “I know you do. You showed me today.”

  “I did?”

  “Your lot. The moat, the sundial, that stained-glass window. You’re transforming it. That’s what artists do.”

  Ware remembered his drawing of the escaping tiger. Not everyone can be an artist. “But that’s not me. I told you—I can’t draw. Or write or make music, or anything.”

  “The lot is your art right now. You’re creating it.” A slow smile spread over his face. “I have a hunch. Tell you what. I’m going to give you a movie camera. Nothing fancy, just the one I travel with. I’ll show you how to use it, teach you how to do some easy editing. You bring that camera with you to the lot and film what you’re doing there. I’ll be back in a month—you show me.”

  “So . . . you won’t tell my parents?”

  “Sorry, little man. I think I have to. Or you do.”

  “No. If they knew, my dad would worry. My job this summer is to not worry them. And besides, Mom would send me back to Rec, and then Jolene would be alone with everything. I’ve made a promise to her. Please.”

  Uncle Cy rubbed his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. Then he slid off the counter. “All right. The community center is next door. Go there if anything happens, or if you even think something’s not right. You stay safe.”

  Just then, the door opened and Ware’s mother walked in. “Evening, you two. Having a nice chat?”

  “Evening, Little Deal.” Uncle Cy hugged his sister. “We are, in fact.”

  Ware’s mom poured some iced tea and sat at the table.

  Uncle Cy raised his beer like a toast. “Got some good news for you tonight, Little Deal.” He winked at Ware.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Turns out you’re raising an artist.”

  She lifted her eyebrows toward Ware. “That so?”

  “That’s so. Know what that makes you?”

  She shook her head, sipped some tea. “What’s that make me, Cyrus?”

  Uncle Cy beamed. “Lucky.”

  That night, Ware cut up the papaya and passed it around for dessert.

  “It’s good, right?” he asked after everyone had had some. “Really sweet.”

  “It is,” his uncle agreed. “Extremely sweet.”

  “Plus smooth. It’s a very smooth fruit, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, Ware. It’s remarkably smooth,” his mother said, giving him a funny look.

  “It tastes kind of like a cantaloupe, but more cantaloupey, right?”

  His father cocked his head. “Did you grow this yourself? Are you a papaya farmer now or something?”

  Ware dipped his face, but he smiled to himself. He was a papaya farmer now. Or something.

  Thirty-Five

  A camera lens reveals how special things are, even things that appear ordinary. The way you could walk all day on a beach full of gray stones, but it’s only when you pick one up and study it on your palm that you notice how there isn’t another one like it.

  Everything begged to be filmed, to get that attention. “Don’t worry, you’ll cut out anything extra once you know your story,” Uncle Cy had advised. “First, film whatever you want.”

  “What are you going to put in your movie?” Jolene asked, the first day.

  Ware stopped to think before he answered. “Whatever moves me.”

  “Moves you?”

  “Whatever makes me feel something. That’s what I’ll film.”

  And that was what he did.

  He filmed Jolene easing a cylinder of soil from a ChipNutz can, so carefully the sprout in the middle never wobbled, and patting it into place in the trench. He filmed her hoisting Mrs. Stavros’s hammer over her head, smashing it down true. He filmed her fist-pumping at the crack, every time.

  He filmed a line of ants carrying tiny bits of watermelon away from the compost pile; a frayed green ribbon fluttering from the flattened slide. He sorted through the boxes of photographs and took out the scenes that castle ladies would have chosen for their tapestries. He lined them up and zoomed in on each. He chose a single papaya and shot a close-up of it every day. “You’re going to be a star,” he’d promised the lucky plant. “Going to grow up right on camera.”

  Before long, the camera felt like part of Ware’s body. Each day, he would have kept on filming right past the bus if his alarm hadn’t gone off. And when he got home, he went straight to the computer to see what he’d caught.

  Lighting was an issue: some things looked washed out under the glaring sun; things in the shade weren’t bright enough. A piece of poster board solved both problems: used to block the sun like a visor, or covered in tinfoil as a reflector. The poster board also made a great backdrop for subjects that had seemed lost. He wrapped his T-shirt over the camera’s microphone when street noise interfered and began to experiment with the buttons—focus, frame rate, white balance.

  By the end of the week, the film was matching what his mind imagined. You see that? Wow, every frame seemed to say.

  Uncle Cy had said the hardest part would be editing. “You have to leave a lot of great stuff on the cutting-room floor.”

  Ware wasn’t ready to edit yet, because he didn’t know his story. But Uncle Cy had talked a lot about dramatic turning points, and he hoped he
was getting some of those.

  “I wish I’d seen the wrecking ball,” he said to Jolene one day.

  “Nuh-uh, you don’t. It was awful.”

  “Okay, maybe I don’t. But I wish I had that film.”

  Jolene shrugged. “It was on the news. You could probably look it up.”

  That afternoon, Ware did. Not only was there news footage, but people in the crowd had posted clips, too.

  Jolene was right. It was awful. Swing, crash, BOOM. A cannon to the heart every time.

  But it moved him.

  He put the camera up to the computer screen, and he filmed.

  Thirty-Six

  Ware sat on a cinder block, chin on his palms. Uncle Cy had said he was transforming the lot, but was he?

  The old playground was a thriving garden now. He’d raked the overgrown grass of the front lawn into medieval designs. He’d finished the stained-glass window and was making a suit of armor out of some beat-up cookware and a roll of tinfoil. The moat wall was rising and would soon be full of water. But right in the middle, the wrecked building was wrong.

  The shape was fine, castle-like already with its tower and chunky walls. It was the color. Pink was all wrong for a castle. Castles rose from the surrounding land, made from its native materials. Clay, stone. Castles were the color of rocks.

  Rocks.

  Ware got up and walked over to Jolene’s garden. He kicked at the mountain of lousy dirt Jolene had dug out of her trenches. “What did you call this stuff?”

  “Rock dust. It’s useless.”

  “Maybe not.”

  He went up into the church and gathered a dented spaghetti pot, a mixing spoon, and a mop. He filled the pot with rock dust, hosed in some water, and stirred.

  He lugged the pot down to the west wall of the church, still in the shade, and began smearing the slurry onto a patch of wall. As soon as it was pasted on, it slid down, leaving a sick pink track.

  If the mud slid off in the dry air, how would it ever hold up through a summer of evening rains?

  Ware remembered a sand sculpture exhibition he’d gone to the year before. “Elmer’s glue,” the winner had whispered behind her hand, when he’d asked how it held together. “Mix it in with the water.”

  He went back up into the church and retrieved a whole case of glue. The labels read Shure-Stuck, not Elmer’s, but glue was glue.

  He mixed it in and started over, painting the sticky mud on with the mop. Every once in a while, he noticed that Jolene got up and made a show of stretching, but he knew she was spying on him.

  It kept him going.

  Two hours later, stopping only to film his progress, he’d covered the entire wall up to where he could reach.

  He solved the problem of the high parts in medieval style. He had just finished setting up the Y-shaped branch, the bungee cords, and the colander when Jolene gave up spying and came over.

  She studied the mudded church wall. “You’re insane,” she said matter-of-factly, as if reporting that the sky was blue.

  Ware stepped back and saw what she saw. “I guess so,” he had to agree.

  “I mean, really. This is exactly what’s wrong with you.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  She pointed at the catapult.

  “Basically, a giant slingshot,” he mumbled, head down.

  “Show me.”

  Ware filled a couple of sandwich bags with the mud, placed them in the colander, pulled back, and let them fly. The baggies burst against the church wall with a satisfying splat.

  “Literally insane.”

  “I know.”

  Jolene shook her head with a tragic eye roll. Then she pushed him aside. “I’d better help.”

  Jolene, it turned out, was a catapult natural. But even with two of them hurling stucco bombs, it took a while. The noon sun was just peeking over the ramparts when the final brown splat covered the final pink spot.

  They walked back to his block and sat on it together.

  Instead of smooth and pink, the west face of the church was rough and stone-colored, convincingly medieval. A few of the baggies had stuck, resulting in random glossy patches that reflected the sunlight in a jaunty way.

  “Wow,” Jolene said.

  “Wow,” Ware agreed.

  “Don’t castles have flags?” Jolene asked after another minute of reverent admiration.

  “They do.” Cut into triangles, run through with sticks, the red-checkered tablecloths would be perfect. As Ware imagined them snapping from the castle parapets, he suddenly saw knights dashing below them on armored steeds, heard the clash of broadswords, and smelled pigs roasting over smoky fires.

  Jolene poked him. “I said, people would see them from the street.”

  “Oh, I was drifting off. Sorry.”

  Ware caught himself. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t sorry. “I was drifting off,” he repeated, “and it was great. But you’re right, no flags.”

  “And you can’t mud up the front of the church.”

  That one was harder. “No,” he promised at last. “Not yet.”

  Thirty-Seven

  The next morning, Ware hung out on the oak branch for an extra moment, admiring the mudded wall. The church now looked strong and defiant, like the best castles, like a fist of rock bursting up through the ground.

  As he was about to drop into the lot, he heard the squeal of car brakes. The squeal sounded urgent. Also familiar.

  He glanced back. He stifled a panicked gasp.

  His mother.

  Ware ducked deeper into the leaves and watched. She shut off the engine, and when she turned to open the car door, he dropped from the branch and darted behind the bus kiosk.

  His mother slung her bag over her shoulder and started up the walkway to the community center door at an extremely purpose-driven pace. It looked like the purpose was to find out if her son was where he was supposed to be.

  “Mom,” he yelled. “Over here!”

  She turned, a hand shielding her eyes. “Ware!”

  Ware hurried to intercept her on the walkway. This would be a lot worse inside with all the Rec kids watching.

  “Ware, I got to the end of the street and I realized—”

  “I know, I know,” he began, hands raised.

  “—that I didn’t give you an August bus pass. I was worried you’d . . .” She pulled a new pass from her bag. “Wait. What do mean, you know?”

  “So . . .” He looked back at the oak. How could he even begin?

  A clanging at the bike rack bought him some time. A girl locked her bike and then skipped up the walk. Ware raised a hand. The girl looked at him strangely, but she waved back and Ware breathed.

  “Oh, my goodness,” his mother said. “You realized it too! You thought, ‘It’s August first, how will I get home today?’ so you went over to the bus stop to figure it out!”

  “Actually . . .” Ware searched his mother’s face. The little lines that had creased her forehead all summer had relaxed. “Right,” he said. “I thought, ‘Hey, maybe there’s a sign in there or something.’”

  She reached out as if to stroke his face, then pulled back as if she remembered how old he was.

  Just then, a car pulled up to the curb. The tall-necked boy, Ben, got out. He leaned down and smiled into the car at the driver.

  And once more, Ware recognized himself in Ben and winced. Because the smile Ben wore was the same one he used to flash every day he’d been dropped off here, at least the days he’d actually gone inside. Don’t worry, I’m fine, the smile said. Super popular, just like all the other kids. Why didn’t anyone else see how fake it was?

  The tall-necked boy’s smile, when he turned and saw Ware, was real.

  “Hey, Ben,” Ware said, smiling back.

  “Hey,” Ben said. “See you inside.”

  Ware turned back to his mother and took the bus pass. “I should go.”

  His mother took a step and then stopped. “You’ve changed so much this summer.
You’re like a new person.”

  Ware was caught off guard. “I’m really trying to do that, Mom. Be a new person. I know you want me to change.”

  “I see that. You’re happy every morning when I drop you off here. You haven’t complained about Rec once. You’re making friends here. And it’s as if you’ve changed inside, too.”

  “You think so?”

  “Well, thinking ahead about the bus pass? It’s as if you’re more here.”

  “What do you mean, here?”

  “You know. You were always . . . kind of off in your own world.”

  Off in your own world. His mother had never said that before, at least not in that blaming way, as if it was something he should be ashamed of. Someone else had said it that way recently—he didn’t remember who, but he hadn’t liked it then, either.

  He had changed this summer. He was spending more time off in his own world. And it turned out, he didn’t feel ashamed about it. Turned out, he really liked it there.

  Thirty-Eight

  Back in the Middle Ages, moats were disgusting, Ware knew. A moat was basically the castle’s sewer. But this was no ordinary moat they were making. This was an enormous, circular get-yourself-reborn tub. And whatever holy water was, the one thing it wasn’t was dirty.

  “It’s almost time to fill the moat,” he broached the subject with Jolene. “We need to put in some filter plants now, to keep it clean.”

  Jolene shrugged. “We promised to cover the pavement with water. Nobody said anything about it being clean.” She drove another nail hole into the ChipNutz can on her lap.

  “But you don’t want dirty water near your papayas, do you? We need those filter plants.”

  “The garden is uphill. Don’t care.”

  “Dirty water might attract rats.”

  Jolene raised her hammer and bared her teeth. She looked like something rats should be afraid of.

  Ware wasn’t giving up, but he was temporarily out of arguments. He picked up a can. Another pile of them had appeared overnight. “Where do you get these?”