Astronomy, part 1

“Don’t you have a table to set?” Jack asked.

“It is. Dinner is in about five minutes, so Mom says wash up. Both of you.” Charlotte turned and went down the stairs, still smirking.

Worrisome

Jack barely heard the knock at his door over the scratching of his pencil.

“Hey,” Beth said, her backpack clutched in front of her.

Short Fused

“What did you —“

“Sit,” Jack’s mother said, pointing to the stool in the nook by the phone. She slid the door shut.

“Well?” she asked.

Accidental

“What on earth was that I just saw?” Charlotte asked, as Jack followed Beth inside later that afternoon.

“Mr. Grady had to borrow a bus from one of the churches,” Jack said.

Jack’s mother leaned through the kitchen doorway. “Did something happen? Was there an accident?”

Never Better

Jack hissed as Beth’s hand clenched around his, painful even through the gloves.

The light above the bus door flickered, and then gave a sharp “pop,” dark streaks blooming across the plastic cover.

One of Those Mornings

“Hey,” Beth said, scooting over on the ledge beneath the mailboxes.

Jack yawned, kept yawning, so waved.

“You look terrible.”

Jack shrugged, wiping at his eyes.

Sally's Bows

“…And we are pleased to announce that the Spring Fling Dance has been moved up. It’s a Sadie Hawkins dance, so ladies, that leaves you just under three weeks to ask your beau. The main gym opens at six, and the dance begins at six thirty Thursday night, April 4^th. See the fliers up by the main office and gym or just ask one of your student council reps for further information…” 

“Beau? Really? Who even knows what that word means,” Jack muttered.

Herald of Spring

“I didn’t think I would ever see the sun again,” Beth said, watching the yellow-orange glow above the treetops to the east. She turned, and Jack watched her hair carefully, but it was the sun shining through it that was causing it to shimmer.  No sparkling motes of golden light floating about, either. Just her breath, pluming in the cold but clear morning air.

“This means we won’t get any more snow,” Ellie pouted, patting another handful under the shadow of the mailboxes.

“What a shame. I won’t have to shovel the driveway any more,” Jack said, stuffing his hands deeper into the pockets of his parka. “Now if it would just start getting warmer. It’s almost spring.”

“Not for another five days,” Beth said. She cocked her head. “And ninteen hours.”

“Charlotte’s right. It’s creepy when you do that.”

Beth dug her orange-and-green hat from the pocket of her overcoat, and pulled it on, managing to somehow plop gracefully down beside Jack under the mailboxes. She leaned close to him, peering intently into his eyes.

“What?”

“You were doing so well,” she said. “Not so many headaches. No tingling in your fingers.” She took his left hand in both of hers, turning it this way and that.

Jack snatched his hand back. “I’m fine.”

“Agreeing with Charlotte?” Beth arched an eyebrow.

“I’m pretty sure I can scrape together enough snow to make a snowball,” Jack said, turning and reaching towards Ellie’s pile of snow rescued from the morning sunbeams.

“No, you leave it alone!” the girl cried, flopping over the miniature snow drift.

Beth laughed, and Jack joined her.

“I’m glad you’re doing that again,” he said.

“Doing what?” she asked.

“You know. Laughing. Smiling.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, you know… There’s that whole thing with school and Patty. And then… your, uh…”

“My what?” She blinked, batting her lashes. Jack felt his cheeks grow warm.

“You know what.”

“Jack. You have sisters. You probably know more about it than I do.”

He could feel the blushing all the way up to his ears. He was glad it wasn’t snowing, or surely they would be steaming.

Beth giggled. “It wasn’t that bad, last month. And this month will probably be the same. We’ll find out in another four days and —“

“Stop!” Jack said, laughing despite the uneasy feeling lurking in the back of his mind. “‘We’ don’t need to know. You can keep it to yourself.”

“Twenty-one hours and twelve minutes,” Beth finished, sticking her tongue out at him.

Beth pushed herself to her feet, squelching around the mailboxes and pulling Ellie up from where the girl still sprawled over the snow. She brushed the snow from the girl’s pink coat, then carefully dusted the flakes from her gloves over the shadowed mound.

“Wouldn’t want them melting in Mr. Grady’s smelly old bus, would we?” she asked Jack's sister.

“Ew, no!” Ellie agreed, pigtails whipping as she shook her head.

Jack hoped that the clearing of the weather and the coming springtime would bring with it a continued lightening of their winter’s burdens.

Lunch Hour

“You,” Patty said, struggling to perch beside Jack on the wide concrete ledge, “have been avoiding me.”

“And how could I possibly do that, since you’ve been following me around all day?” Jack asked.

Of Angels and Ponies

“Hey,” Beth said, as Jack squelched through the muddy snow. She scooted over, making room for him beneath the mailboxes. “How’s your head?”

Valentine's Day, VI

“Hey!” Jack said, but was too late to reach over and grab Beth. She leapt away, jumping up on his bed, on tiptoes, stretching to reach the dreamcatcher.

Valentine's Day, V

A quiet knock on his bedroom door brought Jack back from the very edge of sleep. It was dark outside — not quite nightfall. Had he been dozing that long? He sat up — slowly — waited for the room and his stomach to settle. The medicine his mom had him take when he got home always did that.

Valentine's Day, IV

“I said I’m fine,” Jack said, pulling his arm from Patty’s grip for the third time. “Look, we’ll just forget it happened, okay?”

“I most certainly will not forget it happened!” Patty said. “You— you saw—“ Her face was nearly as red as her—

Valentine's Day, III

"I thought you might want some company for lunch," Patty said, struggling to hoist herself up on the ledge next to Jack.

Jack didn't move to help her up.

"I can't believe she did that to your locker," the red-head continued. She made a show of fishing through her backpack, pulling out a paper bag labelled with a large  "P." "Well," she said, "actually, I can."

Valentine's Day, II

The murmuring and snickering began as they came through the school’s main wing double-doors, and only got louder the closer they got to Jack’s locker. Beth’s fingers slid through Jack’s, and she squeezed ever so slightly.

“Don’t let it bother you,” she whispered. “I think it looks just fine.”

But Jack wasn’t looking at the fiberglass garland, at the locks of hair that were caught in the gaps between the petals and leaves. There was a knot of students clustered around his locker, just as there had been one around Beth’s earlier in the week.

Valentine's Day I

“Hey,” Jack said, squelching through the night’s accumulation of snow at the end of the driveway. He ducked under the mailbox ledge, squeezing in next to Beth. “I didn’t know if you were going to be here or not.”

Beth glanced at Jack, holding out a gloved finger to catch one of the fat, slowly-falling snowflakes. “This isn’t nearly enough snow for them to call a snow day,” she said.

“No, I mean yesterday.”

The girl frowned. “What about it?”

“You seemed kind of… upset?”

Beth sat up straighter, the top of her orange-and-green knit hat well clear of the shelf that held the mailboxes overhead.

“I was just… surprised, was all,” she said. She turned, smiling, and if Jack hadn’t known her as well as he did, he almost would have fallen for the facade she was putting up. “Nothing to worry about.”

“See, when you say that? That’s when I start to worry.”

“No, really Jack—”

“If it’s bothering you, you can tell me.”

“I just don’t want you to….” Her voice trailed off, and her shoulders slumped, then shook as she chuckled. She looked over at Jack again, as he began unzipping his backpack.

“Here,” he said, handing her a round hoop of wrapping paper.

“What is it?” she asked, turning it over in her hands.

“A change of subject.”

“Are they always this weirdly wrapped?”

“Only the round ones. Now go on and open it.”

Beth picked at a seam, and began to unravel the green and white wrapping paper. Her eyes widened.

“Newspaper! Nobody’s ever given me a loop of newspaper before!”

“Look, if you’re going to be like that about it….” Jack reached over, and Beth snatched her gift away, hugging it close against her coat.

“This is what you’ve been spending all that time working on, isn’t it?”

“Just open it, already,” Jack urged.

She found a corner of the newspaper, and peeled it away, at first slowly, and then more and more quickly as the item beneath was revealed. She drew a deep breath.

“Daisies and sweet-peas,” she breathed, turning the garland around and around. Flowers and leaves, interwoven, passed between her fingers.

“They don’t grow around here, and besides that, it’s the middle of winter, so I just sort of… made them.” Jack shrugged.

“They almost look real,” the girl said.

“I don’t know about that,” Jack said, glancing away. He felt his cheeks warm. He didn’t think he’d done that good a job with the paints.

“Well, they do,” she insisted. Then she leaned over and kissed Jack’s cheek. “Thank you.”

He felt his cheeks heat a bit more. “I know it’s not heart-shaped or chocolate. But since you can’t have chocolate anyway…” He looked over, as the silence between them seemed to strain. She was staring, her eyes wide and green, the little line appearing on her forehead that she got when she concentrated on a difficult math problem.

Jack waved a gloved hand before her eyes, and she blinked, as if coming back from Mars, or Venus, or wherever her mind had wandered off to.

“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” he asked.

“Of course I did! Hearts and chocolate.” The frown crept back.

“Don’t tell me you forgot what day it is today?”

Her frown deepened, but her eyes flashed with annoyance. “Of course I do. It’s Wednesday.”

Jack waited, but Beth simply stared back, matching his expectant posture.

“Wednesday, the..?” he prodded. “Fourteenth,” he finished, when she kept staring.

She nodded, smiling. Then she sat up straighter, staring down at the garland in her hands as if she was seeing it for the first time.

“Oh!” she said. “The three martyrs. Chaucer.” Her cheeks brightened, even as her shoulders sagged. “I didn’t… I’m sorry, Jack. I don’t….” She sighed. “I mean, I’ve never….” She held out the garland to Jack.

He took it, hesitantly. “You don’t have to give it back,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” Beth said, and pulled off her orange-and-green hat, shaking out her hair. “A gift, once accepted, can’t be returned. It’s bad luck. I read that somewhere.” She lowered her head towards Jack.

He placed the circlet of flowers over her hair. It settled perfectly, right where he’d imagined it should fit. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“‘For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate,’” Beth quoted. The gold flecks in her eyes sparkled. Twinkled, even. She beamed a smile at Jack, leaned forward, and gave him another kiss. She ducked away, as quickly as she’d leaned in, and skipped out from under the mailboxes.

They clanged as Jack bumped his head, scrambling to his feet as the bus wheezed and rattled towards them.

Crazy Talk, II

“Jack? Everything all right?”

He looked up at his dad’s voice, blinking. His shoulders ached, but it was from sitting hunched over the workbench. A good sort of ache, one that signified something accomplished.

“I don’t know, Dad,” he said, finishing up the last of the highlights to the interwoven ivy leaves.

“You’re going to ruin your eyes, painting like that.” Jack’s dad flipped the switch, and the overhead fluorescent bulbs flickered to life, the harsh, white light drowning out the fitful orange-yellow of the lantern beside Jack’s project on the workbench.

Jack blinked in the sudden glare.

“It looks good,” Jack’s father said, folding his arms.

“Thanks. Do you think she’ll like it?”

“Jack, you could give that girl a handful of weeds — stickers and all — and she’d probably treat it like the biggest bouquet of roses ever.”

Jack laughed. “Charlotte says she’s crazy.”

“Your sister has been known to come up with a kernel or two of wisdom every now and then.”

“You don’t think she’s crazy, do you?”

“If she is, she gets it from your mother’s side.”

Jack glowered up at his dad. “Not Charlotte! Beth.”

Bill shrugged. “Well, she is female.”

“So… you’re saying that all girls are crazy?”

“If you tell your mother I said that, I’ll deny it.”

Jack sighed. The headache fluttered around behind his eyes.

“Another headache, Champ?”

“A normal one. Just stress. No spots. No ringing. My coordination is just fine.” Jack gestured to the last of his work on the project.

“She’s acting weird again,” he said after a pause.

“I thought that was normal for her?”

“She was normal till Hannah took our picture—”

“Yes, she showed me. Remarkable.”

“— And then Beth got all…. I don’t know. She just got up and left.”

“That’s it?”

Jack shrugged. “It’s just… now I don’t think she’ll even want this.” He waved a hand at the workbench.

“She just left?”

“Well, she thanked Mom for the cookies. Said she’d see me in the morning, and then left.”

“I suppose you’ll have to see what happens in the morning, then. Now come on, dinner’s on the table.”

Jack leaned over and blew out the lantern, closing the door carefully after his dad had turned out the lights.

Expectations

The first picture — he and Beth side by side, holding hands — looked normal. Jack looked up at Beth, but she just kept her lips pressed in a firm line, and gestured for him to turn to the next picture.

The second should have looked the same. It was only taken a second or two after the first.

Jack caught his breath. He and Beth still stood side by side, but behind them, some trick of the sunset painted the Dragon’ Tree’s bark like scales. Jack blinked, but the pattern of shadows and wear did not fade, or shift into another pattern. Some twist of the tree’s main boughs caught the sunset, and it looked as if two blazing eyes stared down at them. A haze of the sun’s flare was even angled in such a way as to appear to be smoke, drifting from knots in the branches, nostrils along the great dragon’s snout.

Jack slid the first picture back over the second, then looked over to Hannah.

She could only shrug. “It didn’t look like that when I took the picture.”

Jack swallowed, his throat gone suddenly dry, as he teased the third picture out from the bottom of the stack.

The Dragon Tree was nearly washed out of the picture, lost behind a brilliant glare radiating not from the sunset, but from Beth.

Jack had seen the glowing motes of light dance from her hair before, months ago, as they struggled along the stream. She’d even shaken out her hair, agitating the phenomenon. He’d seen the picture Hannah had taken later that night, remembered the flurry-like cloud that hung, captured in the split-second after the girl had sneezed.

That was a paltry nimbus, next to the blazing corona that streamed around the girl. Jack found himself squinting, even though he knew the black-and-white photograph couldn’t hurt his eyes. Even through the glare, he could see fine detail — individual strands of hair were still clearly visible. Her eyelashes gleamed, as well, casting sharp light against Jack’s face, reflecting off the surface of his wide-eyed stare.

It looked as though the two of them were surrounded by a whirlwind of light particles, some hanging motionless as points of light, but the vast majority tracing wavering, counter-clockwise trajectories around them.

Beth stood out in stark relief against the mostly-dark forest. But except for his eyes, Jack seemed out of focus. Hazy. Blurred, even though he knew he hadn’t moved all that much in the thirty seconds Hannah had kept the exposure going.

His gaze drifted to his hand, resting along the top of the photograph. It was solid. The table felt solid beneath his hand and arm.

“What—” His voice cracked, and he swallowed again. “What does it mean?” he asked.

Beth reached across the table, her fingertips brushing over the back of Jack’s hand, the one he’d been staring at.

“It’s backwards, Jack,” she said. “It’s all backwards.”

Unexpected

“Try it again,” Beth said, after school the next day.

They were sitting at the dining room table, and Jack had nearly worn the math worksheet through from erasing trial after trial.

“I just don’t get it,” he said, sitting back and running his hands through his hair. The throbbing behind his eyes was growing worse the more he worked at the math problem.

“And don’t you dare compare this torture to art,” he said.

“You keep forgetting the second step,” Beth said, turning her worksheet around so Jack could see her work: neat rows of numbers, straight even though there were no lines on the page, one after another.

“You’re… showing me your work?”

“See? Here, and here.” She pointed with the tip of her pencil, and then turned the worksheet back around, resuming her work halfway down the page.

She looked up. “What?”

“You just… You never let me see your work. You always make me figure it all out myself.”

“You already know it, Jack. You just keep skipping ahead. Now try it again.”

He was three steps into the problem when the sound of boots on the front porch pulled his attention away. He looked over just as Hannah came through the door, thrusting a large manilla envelope ahead of her, just out of reach as Charlotte made a grab over her sister’s shoulder.

“I said ‘no,” Hannah was saying. “You can just wait until I show them.”

The two girls stumbled through the door, and Hannah flicked her wrist, tossing the envelope on the dining room table, where it spun to a stop between Jack and Beth.

Hannah leaned backwards into her sister, leaning left and right as the younger girl tried to ease around to reach the envelope.

“Go on, Beth, open it,” Hannah said.

“Hurry up, I want to see!” Charlotte added, standing on tiptoes, resting her chin on Hannah’s shoulder.

Beth hadn’t looked up from her homework. “Just let me finish this last problem,” she said, still scratching away with her pencil.

“Jack, go on, open it!” Charlotte urged.

Jack hesitated, glancing over at Beth, and then settling his eyes on his own worksheet. “I… better get this problem done,” he muttered.

He kept working after Beth’s pencil had stopped. He frowned, and puzzled through another step as he heard her pick up the envelope, heard her unwind the red string from around the clasps.

He fought the urge to look up when he heard the girl slide the pictures onto the table, concentrating on his own rows of numbers, nowhere near as straight as Beth’s.

Three steps to go, and he heard Charlotte gasp. Beth’s breath caught, and he heard the glossy ‘swish’ as she slid the picture behind the others.

Two more steps.

“What in the world—” Charlotte began, but it was cut off as Hannah elbowed her in the ribs.

Last step, and another soft whisk of picture-behind-picture. Beth’s steady breathing paused. Kept pausing.

Jack looked up, not at the picture, but at Beth. Her eyes glistened, the gold reflecting off a tear that she quickly blinked away. She turned the pictures over, finally drawing a deep, shaking breath.

“Well,” she said, looking over at Hannah. “That was certainly… Unexpected.”

Experiment

Hannah cleared her throat. “Thirty seconds was up thirty seconds ago.”

As suddenly as they were there, Beth’s lips were gone, and Jack was left with the disorienting tingling. He took a step back, because the forest seemed to’ve decided to pitch and roll, like the time he and his dad had gone fishing on the lake. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and that just made things heave and roll faster. He leaned over, hands on his knees, and took several deep breaths.

The small hand was back on his shoulder.

“Jack?”

“I’m okay. Just—” His voice sounded tinny in his ears.

“Sorry,” Beth said. Her voice sounded small, distant.

“Never apologize for a kiss,” Hannah said, looking up from collapsing the tripod. “Unless it’s a bad kiss. And judging from that.…” She pointed to Jack. “I don’t think it was.”

The ringing in his ears had subsided enough that he caught the giggling.

* * * * *

“You could have warned me, at least,” Jack said, as they wound their way along the yarn-marked trail.

“You would have resisted, and that would have ruined the picture.”

“Ruined the—”

“And you never would have done it if I’d asked.”

“How do you know? Did you ask?”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“I didn’t—” Jack’s brain caught up, and he stopped, swallowing. He took a deep breath. “I didn’t… not like it.”

“So…?”

“So what?”

“So why are you mad?”

“I just— you didn’t— and Hannah—” He let out an exasperated sigh. The ringing in his ears had mostly faded, and was leaving a throbbing headache in its wake. “You just… could have asked.” He jammed his hands in his pockets and stalked down the trail.

“So do you?”

Jack turned. “What?”

“Do you want to try again?”

“Try…?”

“The experiment,” Beth said.

Jack leaned against one of the trees. “That was an experiment?”

“Of course it was. What did you think it was?”

Jack rubbed his eyes.

* * * * *

“So? How did it go?” Jack’s mother asked, as they were shrugging out of their coats.

“Piece of cake,” Hannah said. “You’ll have to ask Jack about the details, though.”

“It went fine,” Jack said. His lips had finally stopped tingling.

“Why are you blushing?” Charlotte asked.

“Just wait till you see the pictures,” Hannah said with a grin.

“All right, you two. Now go wash up. Dinner is just about ready.”

Another Picture

“You can’t go running off and abandoning me today,” Beth said, plucking at the sleeve of his coat as they stepped off the bus.

“I’m not ‘abandoning’ you,” Jack said. He glanced up the gravel drive, towards his dad’s workshop and tool shed, where his almost-completed gift for Beth waited on the work bench. “I just… I have… something I have to do.”

“Well, I have something I need to do today. And I need you there.”

“Okay, okay.”

“And I need your sister, too.”

Jack looked towards the house, where Ellie had just slammed the front door.

“Not that one,” Beth said. “Hannah. I need her to take our picture.”

Something shivered down Jack’s spine, and he turned back towards Beth. “Our… picture? She’s got tons of those already.”

“Those won’t do. I finally unpacked my camera, and I want her to use it. Do you think she’ll help?”

“I’ve never known Hannah to turn down a chance to take a picture.”

The clouded uncertainty in her eyes cleared, and she smiled. Her hand went from the sleeve of Jack’s coat up and around, twining her arm with his.

“So,” she said. “What’s the big secret?”

“Look, if you can’t get it out of Ellie, you won’t get it out of me,” Jack said.

Beth hugged Jack’s arm closer.

“Careful, you’ll squish Fuggy,” he said. He hoped that was Fuggy.

Beth leaned slightly away, but kept her grip. “It’s another picture, isn’t it?”

“I’m not answering that,” Jack said, fixing his eyes on the front door. Beth matched his pace as he trudged towards the porch.

“Ah ha. I knew it.”

“You know nothing,” Jack said, climbing the steps. Beth let go of his arm, and stood, staring up at him from in front of the porch.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be over when Hannah gets home. I have some things to do myself.”

“Okay,” Jack said, giving her a wave. “See ya later then!”

He didn’t let out the breath until she’d disappeared through the hedgerow. He told himself that it hurt just a bit because she walked so slow, and not because of the slightly hurt look in her eyes.

* * * * *

“A Kodak 2A Pocket,” Hannah breathed. “Where did you get this?” she asked, looking up from the squeeze-box-looking contraption on the dining room table.

“Dad found it at a garage sale,” Beth said with a shrug. “So, can you use it?”

“Beth’s coat is about the only thing with pockets big enough for that monstrosity,” Charlotte said, turning her head sideways as she looked at the antique camera.

“I’d love to,” Hannah said, a tremor in her voice usually reserved for when she talked about this or that boy at the various parties she’d been to. She pulled her gaze away from the antique camera and looked over at Beth. “So, how do you want to set it up? You two standing there, or maybe sitting on the stairs..?”

Beth glanced along the wall beside the kitchen, where Hannah had taken her picture last November, and then at the stairs, and shook her head. “It sort of has to be done outside,” she said, slowly.

Hannah frowned, looking out the front window. “I don’t know, there won’t be much light for too much longer.”

“If we leave now, we should have just enough to get the picture,” Beth said.

“Leave..?” Hannah asked.

“The Dragon Tree,” Jack said, more certainty than guessing in his tone.

Beth nodded, but kept her eyes on her fingertips, which fidgeted along the tabletop.

“That creepy old tree in the middle of the forest?” Charlotte asked. “Why— No, wait. Let me guess!” She held up a hand as Beth sat up straighter.

“There’s… a fairy ring that grows there on certain nights, and you want to take pictures of the pixies. Oh, I don’t know if I want my big sister dragged into something like that. What if—”

“Charlotte!” Jack snapped, and his sister fell silent, but the smile didn’t go anywhere.

“It’s too short notice,” Beth said, standing up. “I’m sorry. I should give you time to think about it. We can do it again on the new moon, if that’s more—”

“Mom?” Hannah asked.

“Well, if you want to help, you better get moving,” Jack’s mother said. “I’ll hold dinner until seven.”

Beth stared from face to face, the smile growing slowly. “So… you will?”

“There’s no way we’d have you trooping through those woods during a new moon,” Hannah said. She shrugged into her coat. “Let me get my tripod and then we can be on our way.”

* * * * *

Beth had restrung the red yarn marking the path to the Dragon Tree’s clearing, and they made good time, despite the fading light.

Hannah stopped, catching her breath at the edge of the clearing. “Oh, wow, it’s even creepier than the drawings Jack did.”

As if to answer her, the tree gave a rustle and groan. Yet not a leaf stirred, nor did Beth or Hannah’s hair.

“Okay, that’s really creepy,” she said, the tripod slung from her shoulder rattling as she gave a shiver.

Beth took Jack’s hand and led him towards the twisted, blackened tree. “Do you feel it?” she asked him.

He closed his eyes, but all he felt was the slightly squishy leaves underfoot, Beth’s fingers, warm against his hand, and the usual tingle he felt whenever she was near. He shrugged. “Sorry. Nothing,” he said.

“Maybe you should clonk him on the head again,” Hannah said, from where she was adjusting the old camera atop her tripod.

Beth giggled, and the tingle crept along Jack’s scalp and down his back. She stopped, standing just ahead of the hollowed-out split in the tree’s trunk. She looked up, at the sprawling, leafless branches and then over at Jack. She gave his hand a tug, and he hopped a half step closer.

“That should do,” she said. “Two instant ones, please, Hannah, and then flip the lever over to ‘B.’ I’d like a 30-second exposure.”

Hannah fiddled with the shutter control at the front of the antique camera’s lens.

“Say cheese,” she said, and clicked off the first two pictures.

“Wait,” jack said. “I wasn’t even smiling.”

Hannah looked up from the viewfinder. “Your usual goofy grin whenever you’re around Beth will do fine.”

“I do not look—”

“Shh!” Hannah said. “Hold still, I’m going to do the long exposure shot now. In 3….2….”

Beth yanked hard on Jack’s hand, pulling him off balance towards her. He turned, to right himself, and Beth caught his shoulder with her other hand, steadying him. Holding him in place as her lips pressed to his.

The shutter clicked open.

Cows, Socks, and Valentines

“You forgot a step.”

“But I got the right answer,” Jack said.

“Yes…. But part of the grade on the test comes from showing your work. So even if you get the right answer—”

“It’s right!”

“— you won’t get full credit,” Beth explained, her tone similar to the one Jack used when wrangling an idea into Ellie’s head.

“That’s just stupid,” Jack said, sitting back and crossing his arms.

“Do you paint straight from acrylics right onto the canvas, Jack?”

“Of course not. You know that. You have to—” He sighed. “You always do that.”

“What?” she asked, batting her lashes at him.

“Mix up things I like with math.”

“But you understand, now, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” Jack admitted. “But—”

Beth smiled. “Then my work here is done.” She spun Jack’s worksheet around. “Now redo number three.”

He grumbled, but showed every step, and managed to get to the right answer.

Beth looked over the work, and then glanced at the top corner of his worksheet. “What’s that?”

“Just something I was thinking about.”

“You were thinking about cows?”

“It’s not a cow. Look, you know how you keep saying that ‘veil’ thing is broken? Well, what if it’s like this?” He tapped at the doodle in the corner.

Beth frowned. “How is it like a cow?”

“It’s not a cow! It’s a sock.”

Beth tilted the page then tilted her head. “Oh. Yeah. I see now. That’s a patch, not a nose.”

Jack nodded. “What if… it’s not broken, so much as just… not mended right? Like when you have a little hole in your sock. It never stays little for long, does it?”

Beth stared at the doodle, chewing at her bottom lip.

“Forget it,” Jack said. “It was just something random I thought of.”

Beth put her hand on Jack’s when he tried to spin his worksheet back around.

“No, I won’t just forget it, Jack. I’ve been thinking about this for… weeks. And here’s the best explanation I’ve seen, and you came up with it in just a few minutes. Why didn’t I see this sooner?”

“Well, maybe you kept seeing cows when you were looking for socks.”

“Cows and socks,” she said, and giggled.

She kept giggling, off and on, up until she left when Jack’s dad got home.

* * * * *

“So, what are you going to do next week?” Charlotte asked, passing the basket of rolls across the table to Jack.

He blinked. “Next week…? Am I supposed to do something?” He took two rolls, putting one on Ellie’s plate, and then passed the basket to his mother.

She tried not to smile too broadly. “Jack, next Wednesday? The fourteenth?”

“Valley-tines day!” Ellie said. “I like it even more than Christmas, because it has lots and lots of pink!”

“So… am I supposed to be doing something?” Jack asked.

Charlotte drew a sharp breath, but Hannah elbowed her in the ribs. “Valentine’s Day? Who do you know, that’s a girl, that you like, that you might want to do something special for?”

Ellie bounced up and down in her chair. “I know! I know!”

“Even Ellie figured it out, Jack,” Charlotte said.

“Okay, okay, I get it. But… something special? Like what?” He glanced towards the head of the table. “Dad? Little help here?”

“Your mother was always partial to chocolate and flowers,” he said. “A little more for the chocolates.” He leaned out of the way as Margaret took a playful swipe at his arm.

“Beth isn’t allowed to have chocolate after the full moon, though,” Jack said.

“Chocolates are so cliched, anyway,” Charlotte said.

“And there aren’t a whole lot of flowers out and about,” Jack said, thinking of the still-brown grasses in the meadow.

“Write her a poem!” Ellie suggested. “‘Roses are red, violence is blue….” She frowned, tongue poking from the corner of her mouth.

“Violets,” Hannah corrected. “‘Violets are blue.’”

“Violence is black and blue,” Charlotte said with a snicker.

“Beth is the one that’s good with words,” Jack grumbled. “She’d just laugh at anything I came up with.”

“Maybe you could get Charlotte to help you with it,” his mother said.

A grin spread across Charlotte’s face.

”Pass, thanks.”

Charlotte stuck her tongue out. “Fine. I didn’t want to help you, anyway. It’ll be more fun helping Beth.”

* * * * *

Jack rubbed his eyes, then flexed his stiff fingers. He’d been working on a sketch — from memory — of Beth. He’d had some trouble with her nose, but finally managed the slim-but-rounded look it had.

He had warmed up by doodling along the border of the page. All the talk of chocolates and flowers over dinner had him sketching tulips and daisies and roses. He was about to close his sketch book when an idea struck him. He carefully tore along the top border of the page, then laid the strip over the top of sketch-Beth’s head. He shifted the strip of doodled-flowers up and down, back and forth, all the while, measuring and calculating angles in the back of his mind. If he’d saved the scraps, it just might work….

Not Impossible

“Well, I hope you’re happy now.”

Jack looked up from his locker. Patty stared down at him, hands on her hips. Both hands. Herbert was nowhere to be seen.

“He took him,” she said. “He said that pending an investigation, the child is put into temporary custody of the state.” Her eyelashes fluttered behind her glasses, and Jack realized that she was trying to hold back tears. She sniffled. “That was a dirty trick, Jack!”

“If both parents or guardians file claims, that’s what happens.”

“It didn’t work that way with Kyle!”

“Kyle didn’t bother to counter-file,” Jack said. “I helped Beth with that research.”

“She’s not your lab partner. Why were you helping her?”

“She’s my friend, and she asked for help.”

“I’m your friend, too! I’ve known you forever, Jack. I thought we could finally—” The eyelashes were fluttering again. “I’ve known you since kindergarten… and here she is, only here for six months….”

“Patty—”

“Why, Jack?”

Gold-flecked green eyes flashed through his mind; a smile that lit the shadows of the forest, even on a sunny day; laughter, bright and merry as the stream that cut through the edge of the meadow; hot chocolate, steaming in a mug shaped like somebody’s head; the story that ran all afternoon, as they stared up at the clouds in the late summer sky; a hand, small, slender fingers twined through his own; waking to the lightest touch of the smell of strawberries; taking a backpack, overstuffed with books, after a long, hot afternoon hike; hair, shining with its own inner golden light, touched from below by the a single candle’s radiance; the touch of soft lips on his cheek by the windowsill…..

“Jack?”

He blinked. Patty was gone. He looked up. Beth was standing over him, her forehead creased with worry, even though a smile quirked her lips.

“I wish I had your sister’s camera, so I could have taken a picture of that goofy look on your face. Now come on, I thought we were going to finally get to have lunch together.”

* * * * *

“Do you think we’ll flunk this science unit?”

“Well, I know I’m not getting an ‘A’ on it,” Beth said, leaning back along the concrete ledge, kicking her feet.

“I can’t believe she did that,” Jack sighed. “What did you ever do to her?”

“Slap her? Threaten her?”

“She brought that on herself.”

“She doesn’t see it that way, Jack. She just thinks I’m crazy.”

“She’s the crazy one. She thinks just because she’s known me since kindergarten, that…”

“That what?” Beth asked, leaning forward.

“I don’t know… she didn’t say. But… it’s like she thinks we were going to just keep going through high school and… get married or something. That was always how she talked during lunch. ‘We’ll do this’ and ‘we’ll do that.’”

Beth giggled, as Jack pitched his voice towards Patty’s range. “So you don’t think that’s what’s going to happen?” she asked.

“What? Me marry her? That’s—”

“It’s not impossible, Jack.”

“But… I don’t even really know her.”

Beth shrugged. “You’ve still got all of high school.”

“But I thought—”

“What?”

“I mean… you know…” When Beth didn’t say anything, Jack glanced over at her. “You know. Us.”

She’d pulled her feet up, and was resting her cheek on her knees, staring at Jack in such a way as he wondered if she wasn’t looking through him.

“Forget it. Never mind. Forget I even mentioned it,” he said. It was cold, against the shadowed concrete, but Jack felt uncomfortably hot just then. “You’re staring,” he said.

She smiled. “Just thinking.”

“Of…?”

“That there are things I Dream of, and then there are things that I dream of.”

Jack wasn’t at all sure he wanted her to explain that.

Restraint

“Hey,” he said, as they waited by the mailboxes. “Sleep okay?”

Beth shrugged. “Guess so.”

“You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

“So… you didn’t sleep okay, then.”

Beth shrugged again.

Jack tried to follow where Beth was looking down the road, thinking she was waiting for the bus to rumble around the bend further down. Then he saw the moon, peeking up from the distant treetops.

“No more full moon,” he said.

Beth sighed, tried to muster a smile. “It was fun while it lasted.”

“Well, that’s a little bit more like the Beth I know,” Jack said.

She looked over, met his gaze for a moment, then looked down. “Sorry. I just… have a lot to think about right now.”

“What else is new?”

She smiled again, just a little brighter.

“You haven’t asked anything about who that was yesterday.”

It was Jack’s turn to shrug. “Charlotte’s dying to know. But you usually talk about this stuff when you’re ready. So I’ll just do what my mom told me to do.”

She looked down when Jack held out his hand, then looked up into his eyes as she took his hand.

“Your mom told you to hold my hand?”

Jack tightened his grip. The trembling in her hand quieted. “She told me to keep being your friend.”

Beth leaned slightly away. “So you’re only friends with me now because your mom told you to?”

Jack leaned into Beth, and they both took a half step to the side. “She couldn’t stop me if she wanted to.”

He felt Beth shiver against him, and thought he saw a flash of glowing gold ripple through her hair, but the sun peeked over the treetops just then, and the bus rattled and heaved its way around the bend down the road.

She straightened up, shaking her hair from her eyes, squared her shoulders as the bus pulled up. She took a deep breath. “Are you ready, Jack?”

“Ready? For what?”

The bus sputtered and hissed to a stop, the doors rattling open.

Ellie’s charge down the center aisle cut a wake of silence through which Beth followed. Two steps behind, Jack caught the first of the whispers and murmurs as hands went to mouths and heads leaned in close together on either side of the bus.

He looked down, to see that his hand was still joined with Beth’s, and found that he didn’t mind.

* * * * *

The odd silence-followed-by-whispers kept up as Jack led the way to his locker.

“Good thing I don’t keep much in here,” he said. “Your stuff should fit.”

He looked up when Beth didn’t move.

“I shouldn’t, Jack. What if—”

“You, of all people, saying ‘what if’?”

She blushed, then scowled.

“Hurry up, or we’ll be late.”

“Fine.” She dropped her back pack, and stashed the few books she had left above Jack’s.

“You’ll just have to borrow mine,” he said, slipping his Math and English books into his backpack, then slamming the locker door, giving the corner a kick. He fished a pen and scrap of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the—”

“I already know your combination. I’ve known it since that first time you shared your lunch with me.”

He should have known.

* * * * *

“….and due to the clean up, the Valentine’s Dance will be rescheduled for after Spring Break.”

Jack had a hard time hearing the rest of the PA announcements, as the class had burst into an angry buzz. He felt more than a few pairs of eyes turn his way, but he met Beth’s eyes as he turned to glare back, and she just shook her head, ever so slightly.

“Just act like nothing is wrong,” she said, as they filed out of homeroom.

“Didn’t you hear them? It’s like canceling that stupid dance is something you did.”

“Well, they made it pretty clear that it was due to cleaning up the mess that somebody else made of my locker,” Beth said, her voice rising to carry over the dull roar of the hallway.

The tide of mutterings and whispers ebbed as they made their way to Math.

* * * * *

The murmurs and whispers followed them from Math to English, and then to Biology. As Jack moved to his seat, he saw Patty, up at the front of the classroom, head down with Mr. Abrams. He’d just dropped his backpack when the science teacher looked up, and waved Jack up to the lab table at the front of the class.

“Hey, Patty,” he said.

“Good morning, Jack.” She swept Herbert from the table and walked away.

“What’s up, Mr. Abrams?”

“Jack, I’d like to talk to you about this form that Patricia filled out.” He turned it around, so Jack could read it. It looked vaguely legal, but the language had obviously been simplified. He skimmed over it, frowning.

“This… says that I’m not allowed to take Herbert home?” He looked up at the teacher. “Is that how this project is supposed to work?”

Mr. Abrams shook his head. “It’s supposed to be teaching things about responsibility and what it takes to actually raise a child.” He sighed. “This is the strangest semester I have ever taught. It’s more like a course in civil law.”

“Can Patty do that?” Jack pointed to the paper. “I mean, I know she hasn’t even let me take the sack home since this thing started, but...”

The teacher nodded. “I’ve taken that into account, Jack, in reading the daily journal entries. But, technically, yes, she could do something like this. Your child was threatened, she feels Herbert would be in legitimate danger in your care, left unsupervised.”

“Kyle was just—”

Mr. Abrams frowned. “Mr. Thomasson’s case has been resolved.”

Jack looked closer at the paper.

“Beth? No way!”

“Jack, I know she’s your friend, but—”

“But nothing,” Jack said. At the silence that fell over the classroom, he leaned closer to the desk, lowering his voice. “I don’t know what she said, but forget it. Beth would never do anything to hurt anybody’s…science project. Give me one of those forms.”

Mr. Abrams raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to need to make more photocopies, at this rate.”

* * * * *

Jack returned to his lab station, surprised to see Beth sitting in her old seat.

“I thought you were calling me,” she said. “What was that all about?”

“She did what you did. To me.”

Jack put a hand on Beth’s, as hers curled into a fist. “Relax,” he said. “I paid attention when we were researching your thing for Fuggy. I counter-filed.”

“You didn’t!”

Jack shrugged. “She’s my lab partner. We’re in this together.”

Choices, Considered

They finished off the thermos of hot chocolate, and packed up, following the stream, crossing the fallen-log bridge, and making their way through the meadow to the tree line, where Beth stopped short.

“Shoot,” she said.

A dark sedan was parked on the drive behind the professor’s car.

“I have to go,” Beth said, taking the thermos from Jack, walking quickly across the yard before he could even ask about the car.

* * * * *

“Oh,” Jack’s mother said, “I was expecting both of you back.”

Jack hung up his coat. “Looks like they had some company over there.”

“I saw a car pull up. I hope everything is all right.”

Jack just shrugged.

“Hey Mom, did you ever do anything… crazy when you liked a boy?”

“Get married? Have four children?”

“I was sort of thinking more like when you were closer to my age.”

She laughed, marking her place in the book on her lap. “Well… That would be quite a few years back. What sort of craziness did you have in mind?”

“I guess you never trashed someone’s locker at school?”

“No, dear. Do you think someone did that to her locker out of jealousy?”

“Well, Beth has a theory.”

“The administrators didn’t say anything about that to me this morning.”

“I don’t think Beth mentioned it to them.”

“Jack, is she planning any kind of retaliation?”

He sat back, blinking. “What? No. She doesn’t even really care about it all that much.”

“You know you’ll have to say something if she is planning anything.”

“She’s not, Mom.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be. Why? I thought you liked Beth. How could you think she’d—”

“I was her age, too, Jack. Love can make you do crazy things.”

Jack shook his head. “That’s what she said about— the girl she thinks did that to her locker.”

His mother smiled.

“What?” When she just shook her head, Jack threw up his hands. “That’s it. I give up. All girls are crazy.”

“Jack,” his mother said, as he made to go upstairs. He turned. Her smile was gone. “I think you should know there were some other things the administration didn’t say.”

“That they didn’t…?”

“They didn’t mention anything specific, or name names, but they strongly hinted that you reconsider your choice in friends.”

Jack could only stare.

“The other file on Mr. Durand’s desk was quite thick, Jack.”

“That doesn’t mean—” A lump was forming in Jack’s throat.

“It only means that they know things we don’t, Jack. It means I want you to be careful.”

“So… you’re not going to make me stop being friends with her?”

“Stop… goodness no, Jack! Your friendship with her could be the only thing keeping that file of hers from getting any thicker. If she is crazy, she certainly doesn’t show it around you.”

* * * * *

Ellie had been worried that Jack collapsed again, but when she saw he was fine, the other two sisters practically needed dynamite to get her away from cartoons.

Dinner was more bearable than Jack thought it would be. His father asked very few questions, mostly listening and nodding. Charlotte gave up on prying for details after a couple digs in the ribs from Hannah.

After dinner was a rare treat, as well: their parents sequestered themselves in the kitchen, shutting the door behind them.

“Wow,” Charlotte said. “Are you sure you’re not in any trouble over this, Jack?”

“We didn’t do anything,” he insisted.

“Are you sure Beth is okay?” Hannah asked.

“Actually, I think she was more worried about the car that was here this afternoon than anything at all that happened this morning. I guess I’ll have to ask her about it tomorrow at school.”

Jack went to bed early, leaving his sisters to fight over what they wanted to watch on TV. He half expected to have nightmares, given all the excitement and the topsy-turvy jangling of his nerves. What his mom and Beth said about love, how it makes you do crazy things, kept tumbling through his head.

He turned over, pulling the covers up over his head. He hoped this was as crazy as things got.

When he finally did get to sleep, he found himself dreaming of the great, dark, candle-lit vault. It was quiet there, peaceful, in the flickering yellow glow of the countless candles.