The Secret Life of Sam

by Kim Ventrella

  “Don’t worry. We run on the honor system around here, but you can bring your own lock tomorrow if you want.” He placed his old-guy hand on Sam’s shoulder. “How’re you holding up, son? Your auntie told me what happened. Terrible, just terrible, but it must be a comfort now being back with family.”

  It took Sam a while to realize that by family he meant Aunt Jo. He stood there for about a hundred years thinking how he’d like to punch Mr. Redding in the face, and Mr. Redding stood there looking like maybe he was gonna cry, which was pure grape soda, and also a lie, because he didn’t really know Pa and even if he did he should know enough to keep his grape-soda mouth shut.

  Finally the bell rang. Sam shoved his backpack in the locker, not even bothering to take out a pencil since he hadn’t thought to bring one, and headed down the hall. The problem was he didn’t know where he was going, and so Mr. Redding had to run after him, and by the time he caught up he was breathing like the engine on Pa’s ’68 Pontiac Sunbird. The same Sunbird Aunt Jo had let some guy cart off to the junkyard, never mind all the years he and Pa had spent getting her to run again. The same Sunbird that had veered off the road the night Pa . . . the night he . . .

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily, Mr. West. Classroom’s this way.”

  Great.

  The class turned out to be the room right next to the trophy case. The girl with purple hair from the bus was standing in the doorway smirking at him, and he wanted to tell her that it was rude to stare, especially when your head looked like a dried-up eggplant, but instead he kept his words to himself.

  It turned out they did school different in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma, because there was only one teacher for all of seventh grade, and he was the guy with a mustache like a toilet brush. There were maybe twelve kids in the whole class, which meant there were plenty of extra desks, and so Sam took a seat at the very back by the window.

  Everybody else was sitting in the front two rows, but Mr. Redding didn’t ask him to move up, so maybe he wasn’t all bad. During the morning announcements, Sam looked around at everybody else with their textbooks and binders and their little plastic boxes filled with pencils. He tried to remember what he’d done with his binder and the red canvas bag where he kept his pencils, but all that seemed like something from another Sam, one who didn’t exist anymore. Probably all his school stuff was rotting at the bottom of a dumpster with a bunch of dirty tinsel and Pa’s Big Mouth Bass.

  Once the announcements were over, Mr. Redding asked if Sam wanted to introduce himself.

  “No thanks.”

  The girl with purple hair laughed, but Mr. Redding pretended not to notice. “Class, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Mr. Samuel West. He comes to us all the way from Louisiana. Let’s give him a warm Wildcats welcome.”

  His words were followed by this long silence broken by a smattering of applause. Sam kept his eyes pinned to his desk, except he couldn’t help looking up at the purple-haired girl. She was smiling at him the way you’d smile at some loser you felt sorry for, except he could tell she wasn’t really sorry.

  Sam looked out the window for the rest of the day. Usually, he would daydream about flying bombers in World War II or wrestling gators or finally beating Andy Hamlin at the hundred-yard dash, but today his brain was a blob. A big gray blob that clogged up his ears and oozed out the edges of his eyeballs. Except it didn’t really, because if it did he’d probably be dead.

  Nothing interesting happened at all until right after Mr. Redding switched from history to science. Sam was looking out the window, minding his own business, when a long shadow stretched across the grass, coming from behind a row of scraggly bushes. He searched for the source of the shadow, the taffy arms and legs and the rib cage so thin you could pick out each and every bone. Then the shadow wobbled and collapsed, and a twisted gray shape slinked out from behind the nearest bush, blinking at him with a single silver eye.

  Despite all of Pa’s stories about fairy folk and swamp goblins and things that went bump in the night, Sam had always considered himself a realist. Stories were stories, and no matter how good a story was, that didn’t make it a fact. But, realist or not, that cat gave him the creeps. Sure, maybe it wasn’t really a ghost cat, because that was impossible. Totally. Not. Possible. And maybe that shadow was a normal shadow and not some weird shape-shifting shadow that was following him around town like a . . . crap . . . like a ghost. He swallowed, trying to work some moisture back into his mouth.

  “Mr. West, please join the other students at the board.”

  Mr. Redding’s voice drew Sam back to the classroom and he blinked in confusion at the sea of empty desks. It took him a minute to realize that everyone else was standing at the long whiteboard on the front wall, furiously writing words like: cows, cars, and factories.

  Sam got up, only he must have gotten up too fast, because for a second his vision went spotty. He looked back outside near the ring of bushes and the green metal garbage can and the rusty bench, but the cat and his creepy silver eye had gone.

  “We’re listing sources of greenhouse gases,” Mr. Redding was saying, but Sam wasn’t really listening because just then a dragonfly landed on the window, followed by another and another. Each of the dragonflies landed with a dull thud, followed by the twitter of buzzing wings. One by one, the other students turned to watch, staring as the growing mass of dragonflies slowly blocked out the sun.

  “Class, let’s focus on our work,” Mr. Redding said, but even he didn’t seem convinced. The whole time, Sam kept thinking about what Aunt Jo had said. That it was too dry in Holler for dragonflies. Then why were they here? Because one thing was certain: they were a long way from water.

  At lunch Sam lined up like everybody else. He still had twenty dollars in his pocket that Pa had given him for cleaning bird poop off the Sunbird. Too bad the Sunbird was trash now and so all that time he’d spent scraping off poop with a toothbrush had been for nothing. At his old school you got to pick your food, but here a lady with her hair in a shower cap scooped the same chili on top of everybody’s Fritos, and he had to admit, it really did look like barf.

  When he got to the front of the line and it was time for him to hand the twenty to a different lady with hot pink nails and matching lipstick, he just stood there clenching the bill in his fist. He remembered the day Pa had given it to him like it was happening right now. He could smell Pa’s chewing tobacco and oily jeans, and he could see his crooked smile and his missing teeth and the motor grease under his nails, exactly like Pa was standing right there in front of him and not suffocating in some box six feet underground.

  He stuffed the twenty back in his pocket and left the tray with the barfy chili sitting on the counter. Some people called after him, but he didn’t pay attention and instead went through the first door he found. It led into a courtyard. A short stone wall ran along the edges, holding back these huge bushes with white flowers that didn’t look too ugly if you squinted. Sam took a seat on the wall in a shady spot where no one else was sitting.

  Good.

  Great.

  He was alone.

  Except being alone meant that he started to think, and his thoughts were like spiders that hid away in cracks anytime you tried to swat them. But you really did want to swat them, because they were big nasty spiders, but it was even easier to pretend like they didn’t exist. And the thoughts he was scared of thinking had nothing to do with ghost cats or shape-shifting shadows, but they had everything to do with Pa and Holler and how sometimes he wished he were dead too because at least then he wouldn’t be alone.

  To get his mind off things, he watched all the people coming and going, but the problem was that they weren’t really all that interesting. Part of him wished he’d taken the Frito pie, because at least then he’d have a distraction even if it did taste like barf.

  “Hi.”

  He looked up and realized that he’d been so busy trying to distract himself that he hadn’t noticed the purple-haired g
irl standing over him staring with her huge, buggy sunglasses.

  “Hey.”

  She sat down next to him.

  “You’ve got something in your hair,” she said, which he figured was probably some kind of trick. “Seriously, there’s a huge bug on your head. Can’t you feel that?”

  Sam swatted at his hair, and sure enough, his hand touched something solid. The big green thing dropped to the grass, and then its motor started up and it buzzed away.

  “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a dragonfly around here.” She adjusted her giant sunglasses before peering up into the sky, probably searching for the dragonfly’s shimmer.

  “I guess you must not look around very much.”

  “Do you know the last time it rained in Holler?” she said, like maybe she hadn’t heard him.

  “No, do you?”

  “April fifth of last year. I remember because I was outside testing Percy.”

  “Who’s Percy? Your dog?”

  “That’s the name of my first glider. But it’s broken now.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m building a new one.”

  The girl didn’t say anything for a while, but just kept staring at the sky with her ginormous sunglasses that were the same pale purple as her hair. “My dad used to say that dragonflies were bad luck, since they only come around when it rains.”

  Sam looked at the girl a little closer. She hid her hands in the sleeves of her oversize flannel. “I think your dad was right,” Sam said.

  “Not me. Personally, I always liked the rain.”

  “Oh.” Sam considered. “You said ‘used to say.’ Does that mean he’s not around anymore?”

  She shrugged, but turned back to face him. Her glasses were so dark that he couldn’t see anything but his own reflection looking all stretched out and wavy in the curved plastic. “He’s around somewhere, just not in Holler. It’s me and Mom now.”

  “Oh.”

  The girl turned her eyes back to the sky, still searching for dragonflies. He wanted to know what had happened to her dad, but couldn’t figure out how to ask the question.

  “I heard your dad died,” she said, without taking her eyes off the clouds.

  Maybe that was how you asked the question. He wanted to be angry at her for saying it out loud, but he wasn’t. “Yeah, I guess he did.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They didn’t talk anymore after that, but the weird thing was, it felt okay. She sat there, and Sam sat there, and somehow his thoughts weren’t so much like spiders anymore but like normal, everyday thoughts.

  A bell rang.

  The rest of the day wasn’t so bad, and he kept sneaking glances at the girl with purple hair, but not because he liked her or anything. When school was over, he sat down on this brick wall out front to wait for Aunt Jo, and the girl sat down next to him.

  “So, how was your first day?” she said, and she was wearing her giant sunglasses again, and now that he thought about it, they made her look more like a movie star than a bug.

  “Not completely terrible.”

  “I guess that’s okay, then.”

  “Yup.”

  He racked his brain, trying to think of more words, but he couldn’t. And the girl shifted in her seat, and he realized that he didn’t even know her name, and he was going to ask her, but that was when he saw it. Some kid being loud over by the flagpole, getting ready to launch a plane that looked an awful lot like the De Havilland Mosquito bomber. He shot up, and when he got closer he saw his backpack and all of his other stuff spread out on the grass like somebody had dumped it there, including his underwear and his pictures of Pa and the jar full of gator teeth that had hit a rock and shattered. He’d totally forgotten about his backpack sitting in the pointless locker that didn’t even have a lock.

  “Hey!” he shouted, and a bunch of the kids who were picking through his stuff looked up, but he made a beeline for the jerk launching his plane, only he was too late. The kid swung back his arm, really swung it back, and Sam didn’t even see what he looked like, only his ugly red T-shirt, before he slammed him to the ground and started punching.

  He didn’t hear the plane crack into the wall or feel Mr. Redding pull him off, but the next thing he knew, he tasted blood in his mouth and Mr. Redding had him wrapped up in his wrinkly old-guy hands. A bunch of teachers swooped in and shooed everyone away, except for the jerk who was busy spitting out a tooth.

  “You’d better come with me, Mr. West.” Mr. Redding loosened his grip, and that was all the time Sam needed. He bolted.

  “Wait!” someone said, and he actually turned back around, because it was the girl. She was picking up the plane and she started to walk toward him, but he didn’t wait. He snatched it from her hands without so much as a thank you.

  “Mr. West!”

  He ignored Mr. Redding and took off, leaving his underwear and his pictures and everything else he owned behind. The hot wind cut into his skin. He rounded the side of the ugly gray building, bolting up the hill and over the dead grass, the pieces of his plane clutched so tight he couldn’t feel his fingers. He was just running and not caring where he was going, and after a while he stopped and flung the plane as hard as he could. It split into three pieces in the air, and then this gray shadow hurtled out of nowhere and attacked the biggest piece. Both the plane and the shadow hit the dirt and rolled, and when they finally settled down again, there was One-Eye with a propeller blade clutched in his mouth.

  His silver eye flashed, lips curling back in a grin, and then he turned and sprinted away.

  “Get back here!” Sam screamed. He ran, even though the plane was already broken and so who cared, but also he cared, but the cat was running too fast and then he leaped into the air and the next thing Sam knew One-Eye had disappeared inside the hollow of that creepy old tree.

  Gone.

  Just like that.

  Sam froze, his face inches from the hole, and a shiver prickled like needles up his back as he saw that the tree wasn’t covered in bark anymore, but a thick blanket of shimmery blue and green bodies, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all shifting and flashing their veiny, translucent wings.

  He stopped breathing and reached his hand into the hole. His fingers didn’t touch fur or the rough bark at the back of the tree; they kept going. He reached in farther, even though now the dragonfly wings were brushing his cheek, and he touched wet grass and leaves and something long and spidery that felt an awful lot like Spanish moss.

  He pulled his hand back, and moisture glistened on his fingertips. A warm breeze issued from inside the hole, thawing out his icy skin. It smelled like home.

  As if on cue, the dragonflies began to peel away from the bark, pouring like an iridescent blue-green wave back into the hollow. Once the last dragonfly had disappeared, Sam allowed himself one final deep breath before climbing headfirst into the gaping, shadowy mouth.

  6

  IN THE DARKNESS, SAM GOT that feeling again like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff. He drew in a deep breath, leaned forward—and then he was falling. As he plummeted, dragonflies flitted past in the dark passageway, the frantic beat of their wings tickling his face. Salty sweat stung his eyes, bark scraped his cheeks and, before he knew what was happening, he’d dropped face-first onto a bed of thick leaves. He blinked, head still spinning, and noticed that the leaves were the size of hubcaps, all moist with dew. He found the propeller blade from the De Havilland sitting in a patch of grass and slid it in his pocket. A curtain of Spanish moss brushed his cheek as he turned over to stare into the canopy of a dense forest.

  It looked familiar somehow, but everything was larger and brighter and the light streaming through in glittering slants seemed strangely solid, almost like he could reach out and touch it.

  He rolled over and came face-to-face with a bullfrog snoozing in a pool of muddy water, except it wasn’t a normal bullfrog. This one was at least as big as a small dog, and it fixed Sam with an irritated glare before
hopping away and splattering his shirt with water. All around, the trees and grass and reeds grew twice as tall as normal, and everything was dripping sparkling water droplets, as if he’d arrived at the tail end of a rainstorm. The air smelled rainy, too, and it hung heavy against his skin just like the humid air back home.

  Sam sat up and searched the trees for any sign of One-Eye. His whole body tingled head to toe, but whatever questions he had got shut out by the surge of excitement bubbling in his gut. This place didn’t just look familiar. These trees might be huge, but they were tupelo trees, just like in Bayou St. George, and over there through the tall grass, he could see the green, glassy surface of a swamp. His swamp.

  At least, he thought it was. It had to be.

  He ran toward Ol’ Tired Eyes, crashing through the grass that grew up past his shoulders, moving with such speed that he took a few steps in the water before realizing he’d gone too far.

  “Can’t be,” he said out loud, and he didn’t even care that there was nobody around to listen, because here it was. There, on the other side of the swamp, sat a tiny white house on stilts with a wooden dock built out over the water, and that wasn’t huge or strange, but normal size. Just the way he remembered. And, if he squinted, he could see a can of Orange Crush sitting on the edge of that dock, just where he’d left it, and once he’d settled down long enough to listen, he heard Pa’s beer-can wind chimes clinking and clanking on the breeze, and it sounded even more beautiful than ever.

  That tingling coming from deep under his skin grew until his whole body was vibrating, like he had a hundred dragonflies motoring away inside his stomach. He took another step into the water, and another, and he might have swum the whole way, gators or no gators, if he hadn’t noticed Pa’s canoe bobbing in the reeds a few feet to his right. It was tied to a stick buried deep in the mud. Sam was reaching over to untether it when a hand clamped down on his shoulder.