The World From Up Here

by Cecilia Galante

  “Shhh!” she whispered, not taking her eyes off the wasp. “Be quiet!”

  By now, everyone had stopped staring at the swarm overhead. Silver and the wasp had taken center stage. The tiny insect moved closer to her and veered upward. The students gasped as the wasp hovered near Silver’s eye, inches from her left cheek. Still, she did not move. The wasp hung there for a few seconds, just under Silver’s cheekbone, and then swung lazily around her head.

  “What’re you doing?” Jeremy insisted, taking a step toward her. “Do you want to get stung?”

  A muscle pulsed along Silver’s jawline. Instead of answering Jeremy, she extended her right arm as the wasp flitted back around to the front of her, and opened her palm. Mandy and Rachel made small whimpering sounds in the corner. I held my breath and bit the inside of my cheek. With a honey-like slowness, the wasp made its way over to Silver’s hand. Its slender, reddish body drifted above it for a few seconds, as if deciding whether or not it wanted to land. A pair of long papery wings fluttered back and forth. Silver sat motionless, her eyes still riveted on the insect. Without warning, the wasp descended lightly into the middle of her palm.

  Silver smiled. Cupping her other hand over it carefully, she stood up, walked over to one of the open windows, and shook the wasp free. As if hearing secret directions, the other wasps followed suit, first lingering above the window and then finally disappearing out of it.

  Two janitors rushed in then, followed by Miss Crumb. “Is everybody okay?” Miss Crumb asked. She bolted over to the corner where Mandy and Rachel and the rest of the girls were still cowering, clucking in her high-pitched voice.

  But I didn’t hear her. I was still staring at Silver, who had just walked back from the window. Other than a slightly dreamy expression on her face, she looked normal, as if nothing unusual had just happened.

  And right then and there, I knew what my second wish would be.

  Since it was a nice day, we got to sit outside for lunch. The school’s “patio” was basically just a bunch of picnic tables lined up in a little grassy patch behind the cafeteria. The tables were so close together that all you could hear was everyone talking about Mr. Tunlaw’s freak-out session, from his dimpled knees and ugly black socks, to how his cowboy boot went sailing through the air.

  And of course, the fact that he had pulled off his pants in front of the class and showed everyone his underwear.

  Everyone wanted to know about that.

  Nora and Cassie, who I sat with every day at lunch, were no exception.

  “You mean, he actually took his pants off? Like all the way? As in he was totally just standing there in his underwear?” Cassie was pressed as close to my arm as possible without actually sitting on it. I leaned back a little, and tried not to inhale through my nose. Cassie didn’t have very good dental hygiene. Even at seven o’clock in the morning, there was food stuck all over her braces, which meant that her breath usually smelled like old meat loaf and sour milk.

  “Yup.” I took a bite of my pizza. “But he was getting stung all over his legs. I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

  Nora snorted. “That makes just you and Mr. Tunlaw. No one else would take their pants off in front of a whole class. Like, ever.”

  I looked over toward the chain link fence around the perimeter of the patio, wondering for maybe the hundredth time why I was friends with these girls. Maybe it was because I didn’t have any other ones. Maybe sometimes having people in your life who weren’t really that nice to you was still better than not having anyone at all.

  I stood up and took my lunch tray over to the garbage can. Then I headed over to the little maple tree by the chain link fence and sat down. I took out a pencil from my back pocket, and spun it along my knuckles with one hand. Up, down, over the tops of my knuckles, and back again. Up, down, over the tops of my knuckles, and back again.

  I started the pencil trick by accident, after I saw a guy in the waiting room at the dentist’s office doing it. His fingers moved so fast they were almost a blur, and the pencil itself looked like a spinning propeller. I’d never seen anything so cool. It seemed pretty easy, too—except when I tried it. Then I realized that it was almost impossible. In fact, it took me almost three whole months just to figure out how to get the pencil from my index finger over to my pinky finger without dropping it. Getting it over the tops of my knuckles and then back through my fingers again took me another two weeks. But after I got the hang of it, I started doing it all the time. Now I do it so much that it’s become something of a habit.

  Up, down, over the top, and back again.

  Up, down, over the top, and back again.

  I could feel my breathing start to slow as my fingers raced through their familiar contortions, and my heart settled a little inside my chest. It’s going to be okay, I told myself. Things will be okay.

  Behind me, I could hear Nora and Cassie getting up and following me.

  “Come on, Wren.” Nora glanced around behind her. “We want to know what else happened in Mr. Tunlaw’s class. And would you stop doing that thing with your pencil? It’s so … weird.”

  I didn’t answer. But my fingers slowed. The pencil stopped moving. I stared at it for a minute, still balanced on top of my knuckles like a miniature log, and then slid it back into my pocket. Nora and Cassie had no idea how long it had taken me to get this good at pencil spinning, or what it did for my nerves. They’d never asked.

  “We want to hear the rest of the story about Mr. Tunlaw,” Cassie said. “Like, all of it.”

  “That is all of it,” I said. “Nothing else happened.”

  “He’s probably going to die,” Nora said dramatically. “I heard Mrs. Hoban talking to Mrs. Bertoli. She said something about the hospital not having the right kind of medicine. And if a hospital doesn’t have the right kind of medicine after you’ve been stung by something you’re allergic to, you can totally die.” She made a squirting sound with her mouth. “Done. Just like that.”

  “He’s not going to die.” I paused, watching as Silver stood up across the other side of the lunch tables and navigated her way toward the trash can, tray in hand. Jeremy and Dylan were right behind her.

  “You never know.” Nora fiddled with her earring. “Anything could happen.” That was Nora’s pet phrase—anything could happen. It drove me crazy. Of course anything could happen. After anything, what else was there?

  “Wren?” Nora poked me in the arm. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, without taking my eyes off Silver.

  “What are you staring at?” Cassie raised herself a few inches on her toes so that she could see for herself. “Oh, Silver Jones,” she said, making no effort to hide the disgust in her voice. “Did you hear what she did?”

  “You mean letting that wasp sit on her hand?” Nora nodded, slicking her lips with a strawberry-banana lip-gloss. “I know! What an idiot.”

  I frowned. “Why does that make her an idiot?”

  Cassie and Nora looked at me incredulously. “Seriously, Wren,” Nora said. “If you didn’t get such good grades, I might think you were an idiot.” I turned away from her, not letting her comment settle inside where things were the softest. Nora elbowed me. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything. But, I mean … who goes and lets a wasp sit on their hand? What if she had gotten stung? I don’t know how they teach people to act down in Florida, but up here, Silver Jones is seriously about as dumb as they come.”

  Cassie laughed out loud. “My dad would say that she’s two sandwiches short of a picnic.”

  “Yeah,” Nora snorted. “Definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” The two of them giggled. Nora twisted the end of her empty honey-roasted peanuts bag and then popped it.

  “It didn’t, though,” I said.

  “What?” Nora asked.

  “It didn’t sting her. You said what if the wasp had stung her or something. But it didn’t. Actually, I think Silver might’ve known exactly what she was doing
when she opened her hand and let it sit down on her like that.”

  “Oh, please.” Nora rolled her eyes. “She had no idea what she was doing. She was just showing off in front of Jeremy again—like she’s been doing every single day since she got here.” Her eyes got big, as if she was suddenly remembering something. “Oh, and get this. Mandy told me that Silver said she wanted to go interview Witch Weatherly for the history project.”

  Cassie inhaled audibly. “Witch Weatherly?” Her voice was a squeak. “Didn’t anybody tell her the stories?”

  “Oh yeah.” Nora shook her head disgustedly. “All the boys, of course. But she thinks it’s all a big joke apparently. Whatever. You know she’ll never do it. My dad wouldn’t go up that mountain if you paid him a million bucks, and he’s not afraid of anything. No one would. I’m telling you, that girl is just an attention hog.” She sniffed. “Little Miss High and Mighty from Florida. I mean, please.”

  “Like she needs any more attention,” Cassie said. “Especially from Jeremy.”

  “Exactly,” Nora said. “It’s so annoying.”

  If I’d been braver, I might have turned around right then and told Nora to shut her mouth. Cassie too. They didn’t know Silver Jones was my cousin. And while I didn’t have any particular family loyalty to Silver, the things they were saying were mean. Cassie and Nora were mean.

  But I didn’t say anything.

  Instead, as the bell rang, I put my hand inside my pocket and wrapped my fingers around my pencil. Sometimes, when things got hard, it helped just knowing it was there.

  I kept my eye on Silver after lunch, watching from a distance as she ambled down the hall. Jeremy, whose overly gelled hair looked like a plastic cap on top of his head, was on her left, talking a mile a minute. Dylan and Nathan struggled to stay in step on her right. Silver’s large brown purse, slung across her chest, swung back and forth along her hip. Cascades of hair tumbled down her back, and I could see the outline of her cell phone in the back pocket of her jeans. The soles of her purple flats were bright red. She nodded at something Jeremy said, but as far as I could tell, she was not doing anything out of the ordinary to get his attention. If anything, Jeremy was struggling to get her attention. And I might have been wrong, but from where I stood, it didn’t look like Silver was all that excited about giving it to him.

  Mr. Pringle’s voice came over the loudspeaker, making me jump. “Wren Baker, please report to the office. Wren Baker to the office.”

  “Ooooooooooo!” Everyone in the hallway turned to look at me. The principal had never called me to his office before. I could feel the skin along my neck getting hot, the heat spreading up to my ears. Inside my chest, my heart hammered like a snare drum.

  “What’d you do?” Cassie asked.

  I shrugged and shifted my backpack along my shoulder, trying to appear nonchalant. “Nothing.” But my brain was racing. The last time I got called down to the main office was when I forgot my lunch in fifth grade and Momma brought it over for me. I hadn’t forgotten my lunch today, and I couldn’t think of anything else that would require my presence in the main office. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if I remembered what the main office looked like.

  It came back to me, of course, as I went inside. Mrs. Pool, the head secretary, was still sitting behind her desk, with the same collection of rubber trolls lined up behind her keyboard. Tufts of electric-blue hair stuck up like flames from the tops of their heads, and their naked, miniature bodies were smudged around the edges, as if someone had been squeezing them. There was the same collection of glossy posters on the wall behind her—ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING, THIS IS A NO-BULLY ZONE, and KEEP CALM AND STUDY ON!—as well as the teachers’ mailboxes on the opposite side. In fact, the only thing that seemed out of place was the person sitting in one of the red chairs outside of Mr. Pringle’s door.

  I blinked. “Dad?”

  He turned toward me and got up out of the chair. “Hi, sweetheart.” He smiled—a great big smile that stretched across his face and crinkled the corners of his eyes. I knew right away that something was wrong. Dad never smiles like that unless something bad has happened.

  “Dad? What’s going on? Why’re you here?”

  “I have to talk to you, honey.” He was still smiling, but his green eyes told a different story. I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck start to rise, and something inside my belly flip-flopped.

  Mr. Pringle came out of his office then, and nodded when he saw me. “Hello, Wren. Thank you for coming down so quickly. Why don’t we all go talk in my office?” He stepped back as Dad and I walked into the small, air-conditioned room. I brushed against Mr. Pringle’s large belly as I moved past him through the doorway, and prayed that he didn’t notice. Mr. Pringle adjusted his suit jacket as he sat, and leaned forward slightly. “So I asked you to come down here, Wren, because your father has some news for you!” He was using that brightly cheerful voice, too. It was as fake as Dad’s smile, and totally unnerving.

  “Wren,” Dad said, turning in his chair so that he faced me. “I want you to listen carefully to what I have to say.”

  My heart did a double flip-flop. “Okay.”

  Dad took both of my hands in his. There were deep, dark shadows beneath his eyes. “Momma’s in the hospital.”

  The double flip-flop turned into a squeeze. “Why? What happened?”

  “She went in this morning for a check-up, and they found out that she was sick. She needs special medicine and special doctors. She’s on her way to a hospital where they can give her that. It’s far away, though, in Ohio. I’m going to go stay there for a while until she gets better.”

  My brain was swimming with information. I tried to backtrack to the chain of events that had occurred this morning, but the first thing that came to mind was the family sandwich. Thinking about it now, I started to cry.

  Dad pulled me toward him and hugged me close. “It’s going to be okay, Wren. It really is. I promise.”

  “But wait, what actually happened?” I pulled away. “She was okay this morning, wasn’t she? You said she was just tired. Did she get hurt?”

  Dad shook his head. The expression on his face was grave. “No, she didn’t get hurt. I don’t even know all the details yet, honey, but it has to do with something inside her head.”

  “Her head?” I repeated. “Like a brain tumor?” I’d known a girl named Wendy Titans in the third grade whose mother had gotten a brain tumor. Wendy said they’d done an operation on her that lasted fourteen hours and she still died.

  Dad shook his head. “No, Wren. Nothing like a brain tumor.”

  “Cancer?”

  “No, honey, not cancer, either. Like I said, I’m not sure what it is exactly, but that’s why she’s going to a special hospital. They’re going to find out. And then she’s going to get better.” He ran his arms up and down the length of my arms. “Now, listen to me. Aunt Marianne is going to take care of you and Russell while I’m away.”

  Dad’s words sounded far away, like he was talking to me from another room. Nothing was registering. My brain was still stuck back on Momma. What could possibly be wrong inside her head? What could have happened to her between the time I left this morning and now? Why didn’t Dad know? “Wait,” I said. “What hospital is Momma in?”

  “It’s a hospital in Akron, which is a town in Ohio,” Dad said. “The doctors took her down this morning. I’m going to drive there tonight. It’ll take me most of the night to get there.”

  “Ohio?” I repeated. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Two weeks at the most.” My eyes widened. “Maybe not even that long,” Dad said quickly. “I’ll know more when I get down there.”

  “Why can’t Grandma come up to stay with us?” My breath was starting to come in little spurts. I felt light-headed.

  “Grandma’s on her around-the-world cruise,” Dad said. “Remember?” He fingered a piece of my hair, twirling it between his first two fingers. He seemed lost in thought. “She wo
n’t be back until Thanksgiving.”

  “But … why … I mean, Aunt Marianne …” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  “I know you still don’t know her very well yet, honey,” said Dad quickly, “but she is family, and I really think that—”

  “And Silver …” My eyes filled with tears.

  “What about Silver?” Dad dropped my strand of hair. “Is there a problem with her?”

  “You don’t have any issues with her here, I hope.” Mr. Pringle’s bushy eyebrows arched up along his forehead. “I’ve talked to her a few times since she arrived. She seems to be a very pleasant girl.”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s just that …”

  “Just what, honey?” Dad touched my arm.

  Just what? Just … everything! Sure, she was my cousin, but it was still Silver Jones, for crying out loud! The most beautiful, most popular, most everything girl in the whole school who, as far as I could tell, didn’t even remember my name, much less that I existed in the same hemisphere! I was going to have to live with her? And not just me—but my little brother Russell, too—who was easily one of the most annoying people on the planet?

  “It’s just …” I started again, and then shook my head, thinking of Momma. This was no time to be selfish. “It’s nothing.”

  “You sure?” Dad pulled me in for another hug.

  No, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything. It felt as if the rug I was standing on had just been pulled out from underneath my feet. As if my arms and legs were up in the air, and any moment now I was going to come crashing back down. “Yeah,” I inhaled with a shaky breath. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Dad squeezed me tight. “Mr. Pringle here has been nice enough to make all the arrangements for you while I’m gone. You can call me if there’s an emergency, but he’s here, too, in case anything comes up.” He stood up and rested his hand on top of my head. “I have to go talk to Russell now, honey. And then they’ll bring him over here after school. You’ll both go home with Aunt Marianne this afternoon.”