“ Gonna pass?” Arty said, coming up behind her.
She stopped, just as the water crossed the sidewalk. It looked to Arty like she’d been daydreaming.
“ You almost got blasted,” he said, as she jumped over the spray shooting out from the sprinklers on the old lady’s front lawn.
“ I’m not just going to pass, I’m going to get them all right, Arty Smarty Pants.” She turned around as soon as she was clear of the spray. She was fingering a locket with her left hand and was holding her books in her right.
Arty hated it when the other kids called him that. He didn’t even like it much when they called him Arty, but Arty was better than fatso or fat boy and lots better than what his own mother called him-her little butterball. He’d take Arty Smarty Pants any day. Even from a girl.
“ No way,” he said. She watched as he came closer and giggled when he tried to jump the spray. His coordination was off and he landed in the middle of the blast, getting his corduroy pants wet. He jumped out of the spray and slipped, windmilling as he struggled to catch his balance and keep from going down. She held her breath and didn’t laugh.
“ My mom says that if I get them all right she’s going to take me to Disneyland.” She punctuated the statement by sticking out her lower lip and blowing the hair out of her eyes.
“ No way.” Arty stopped and bent over, trying to brush some of the water away from below his knees.
“ She said so, and she wouldn’t lie, and zip up your fly.”
Arty zipped up. His fly came down too often for him to be embarrassed about it. “Disneyland’s thousands of miles away,” he said.
“ Is not, only five hundred.”
“ Five hundred, that’s still a lot. You really going?”
“ If I don’t blow it.” She bit her lower lip and crossed her fingers for luck. “We’re going to fly to San Francisco on the little plane and take a jet to John Wayne Airport on Sunday after church, if I get them all.” She squeezed her eyes against the sun shining over his shoulders.
“ How you gonna do that?” All the kids in school knew about Carolina’s memory. She was smart and she could figure things out, but she had trouble telling the answers. She had even more trouble writing them down. She might know all the states and their capitals, but there was no way she was going to be able to put them all on paper at test time.
“ I studied hard, and I wrote each state and each capital over a hundred times. Try me.” She sucked in her breath and raised her shoulders, making herself as tall as possible.
“ Nevada?”
“ That’s easy, Carson City.” She closed her eyes and Arty thought she was imagining the map and the words in her mind.
“ Hawaii?”
“ Easier, Honolulu.”
“ New York?”
“ Easier still, Albany?” She opened her eyes and smiled.
“ Albany, yeah, that’s it.” Arty rolled his round head. “I can never remember that one.”
“ Ask me another.” She moved to his right side to get the sun out of her eyes.
“ I’ll give you an easy one. California?”
“ It’s,” then she stopped and started to stutter. “Eh, eh, it’s a, it’s a-”
“ I knew it. You’ll never get ’em all right. You won’t get past two or three and then you’ll freeze.” He regretted saying it as soon as the words left his lips, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself, words just flowed out before he got a chance to stop them. He wanted to say something clever, to make her like him. He didn’t want her to think he was a snot or a snob.
“ Will not.”
“ Will too. You’ll freeze like a dead man.” He started to say more, but he bit his bottom lip to keep himself quiet. He’d already done enough damage, by now she had to think he was a real jerk.
She put her right hand to her locket, fingering it tightly with her thumb and forefinger. “I’m going get them all right, even if it kills me.”
“ I bet you don’t.” His teeth let go and his lips just started flapping. He felt like he was shooting himself in the foot.
“ I bet I do.”
“ Tell you what, if you get ’em all, I’ll carry your books for a year.”
“ And if I don’t?”
“ If you don’t, you can’t call me Arty Smarty Pants anymore.”
“ What can I call you?”
“ Art, or Arty, but you can’t call me anything else.”
“ It’s a deal, and even if I win I won’t call you that.”
“ Really?” Now he really felt stupid about his big mouth.
“ Really, but if I get them all you still have to carry my books.”
“ Okay.” He wanted to say he’d carry her books right now, but he couldn’t, he just puffed up and smiled. He hoped she would miss one or two, because more than anything he wanted to carry her books. He was hopelessly in love with her, he had been for the whole three months that she’d been in Palma. The very thought of her kept him awake nights. He was eleven and she was his first love.
As if reading his mind she held her books out to him and dumped them into his arms. “Might as well start carrying them now, because it’s in the bag.”
He felt the sweat trickle under his arms as he grasped the books. This couldn’t be happening. He didn’t have many friends, and here was the girl of his dreams, handing him her books to carry. Wait till the guys see him with her. They wouldn’t be making fun of him anymore.
“ Hey Arty,” she said, biting the right side of her lip, “you ever get the feeling that something is in your room with you? Something scary?”
“ You mean at night?”
“ Yeah, at night. When you’re alone. And it’s dark.” A curtain moved and she turned toward it. The curtain closed, fast. “Someone’s watching us.”
“ That’s just an old woman. She never comes out past the front porch. You should see her skin, black as black. And hair, whiter than the brightest white, she’s-”
“ Arty, I was talking.”
“ Oh, yeah.”
“ Last night, just before I went to bed, I got this feeling that someone was watching me. You know, like when you’re riding in a car, you can sometimes tell if someone is looking at you from the car alongside, and if you turn quick, you can catch them before they turn away.”
“ Yeah,” he said.
“ Only last night there wasn’t anyplace I could turn and look, except my window. I tried looking away and spinning around real fast, but there wasn’t anyone there. I even tried looking in the mirror to catch whoever it was, but I didn’t see anybody. But I knew there had to be someone. I could just tell. I was scared.”
“ You sure it wasn’t just a tree brushing against the house or the sound of the wind outside?” Arty asked, thinking how wonderful it was that she was talking to him. She was treating him like she would treat anyone else. Like he was her friend, and she didn’t seem to care that he was fat.
“ I don’t know. It felt like someone was watching me through the window, but every time I looked there wasn’t anyone there.”
“ Probably just a bad dream. I get them sometimes.”
“ I wasn’t asleep. It was creepy.”
“ Yeah, but sometimes, when you’re almost asleep, creepy thoughts can sneak into your brain. You think something is real, but it’s only the start of a dream.”
“ No, it wasn’t like that at all. I was wide awake.”
“ Did you tell your dad?”
“ He doesn’t live with us. My parents are divorced.” She said it with a sadness in her voice that Arty couldn’t miss.
“ Bummer.”
“ Yeah, it’s pretty shitty. I really needed to call someone.”
“ What about your mom?” He wondered how she could swear like that. If his father ever heard him talk like that, he’d be grounded till he turned twenty-one and spanked till there was no skin left on his butt. Thinking about his father brought the start of a frown, but he fought it away.
“ She was out on a date.”
“ Wow! So you were home alone? There is no way, just no way, no matter who got born or who died, that my folks would ever leave me home alone for even a minute.”
“ Well my mom leaves me alone lots. She has a bunch of friends, so she goes out a lot. I wish she’d stay home more. I hate it when I’m alone, especially at night.”
Arty thought about what she’d said for a second. He hated the magnifying glass he was always under at home and she hated being alone. “I’m never alone at home, unless I’m in bed, and I don’t like it. My dad is always after me to do something for him, usually I can’t wait to go to sleep.”
They walked in silence for a few seconds, then he added, “I wonder if I’d be scared without my folks there. I wouldn’t miss my dad, but if my mom wasn’t even there, if I was all alone, I bet I’d be scared. It’s only natural.”
“ Yeah, it was pretty scary.”
“ Most likely that’s what it was, you were just scared ’cuz you were alone.”
“ Probably.”
“ You can call me.”
“ What?”
“ If it ever happens again, you can call me and I’ll come over, even if I have to sneak out.” He couldn’t believe he’d said that. His lips were flapping again. If he got caught sneaking out his dad would break his legs.
“ Really?”
“ Yeah, really.” There he went again. What if she called him tonight? What could he do? Ah, but she couldn’t call. She didn’t know his number.
“ What’s your number?”
“ Eight-six-seven, seven-eight-eight-four.” He couldn’t believe how quickly he’d blurted out the number. “Any time you need me, call and I’ll come running.” Darn and double darn, he kept getting in deeper.
“ Thanks,” she said. “Can you write it down for me when we get to school? I don’t want to forget it.”
“ Sure.” He shifted the weight of her books from his right to his left hand. She had the big three with her, English, math and social studies. Their combined weight took a toll on his arm. “Hey, how come you don’t carry your books in your backpack like everyone else?”
“ Because I don’t want to.”
“ What’s in your pack?” he asked, studying it. She was wearing it snug against her back and there was definitely something in it.
“ It’s a secret.”
“ You can tell me.”
“ Maybe, when I get to know you better.” Wow and double wow! She wanted to get to know him better! In all his life he had never, ever felt this good.
She skipped a couple of steps ahead and he happily followed, watching her from behind. She was a little small for her age and she had a cute wiggle when she walked. For a second he thought he saw something in her backpack move, but felt he was mistaken. It must have been that little wiggle that caused the movement. He smiled and picked up the his pace so that he was walking next to her.
The old woman peering out from behind the curtains also saw something in the backpack move, but it was the sparkle the sun made shining off the locket that she was interested in. A shiver ran through her bony frame, and she muttered the words, “At last,” in a voice made harsh by too many years and too many cigarettes. Then she closed the curtains and slumped down on a worn sofa in a dark room.
“ Do you like RFK?” Arty asked, trying to keep up the conversation.
“ It’s okay, a school’s a school. But I like that it’s named after Robert Kennedy. My dad said that he was one of the best men that ever ran for president. That’s why they killed him. He was too good for the job. That’s what my dad said.”
“ My dad hates the Kennedys,” Arty said. Then he changed the subject, asking, “How about Palma, do you like it here?”
“ Yeah, I like that it rains a lot. I like the rain and the woods. And I like most of the people. It’s not like a big city.”
“ I can hardly wait to grow up and get away.”
“ Why?”
“’ Cuz I can’t stand my dad. He’s always after me. As soon as I get old enough, I’m out of here.” Arty surprised himself, he’d never talked this way to anyone before. Somehow it seemed natural talking to her.
“ Where did you live before you came here?” he asked, breaking a few seconds of silence.
“ Atlanta.”
“ So that’s how come you have that accent.”
“ I don’t have an accent.” She stuck her lip out and blew the hair out of her eyes again, then laughed. “Well maybe a little one, but I’m trying to get rid of it.”
“ I like it,” he said.
“ We’re here,” she said. Arty was kind of sad when he looked up and saw the school. He felt like he could have gone on talking to her for hours. He had so much he wanted to say, and not just lip flapping, he really wanted to tell her stuff.
“ Race you up the steps,” she said, and she took off, taking the six steps two at a time. She was at the top before he hit the second step.
“ No fair.”
“ Life isn’t fair, Bubba.”
“ Bubba?”
“ My dad used to say that to me all the time.” Then she said, “Come on, we have to get to class.”
“ Good morning class. I trust everybody had a wonderful weekend. I know I did.” Miss Sadler had a grin on her face two blocks wide. “I want you all to know that this is my last year teaching. You’re my last and my best class. Does anyone want to guess why?” She was wearing her hair on her shoulders, instead of the usual ponytail, and she was wearing contacts, instead of her glasses.
Brad Peters raised his hand.
“ Yes, Brad.” Carolina heard the sparkle in Miss Sadler’s voice and saw the joy rumble from her eyes and knew the answer. She also knew there was no way Brad Peters could ever figure it out. He wasn’t only a bully, he was dumber than dumb.
“ Your rich uncle died and left you a million dollars,” Brad said in a deep voice with a touch of mean. He couldn’t be funny if he tried, Carolina thought. He was ornery and ordinary and she hated the fact that he sat in front of her.
“ You couldn’t be more wrong, Brad,” Miss Sadler said. “Anybody else?”
Carolina giggled and she saw Brad’s ears turn red. He was angry, but she didn’t care. He wouldn’t dare pick on a girl.
Miss Sadler walked across the room, looking at the students in that special way she had that made each kid think she was looking at him or her and no one else. Carolina raised her hand.
“ Carolina.” Miss Sadler’s smile should have told the whole class, even that idiot, Brad Peters, the answer.
“ You got married.”
“ That’s right. My name isn’t Miss Sadler anymore, it’s Mrs. Chase. But you can keep calling me Miss Sadler.”
“ From the bank?” Brad shot out, speaking out of turn and trying to make a joke. He was always doing that. He thought he was funny, but no one ever laughed.
“ What are you talking about, Brad?” Miss Sadler said, losing part of her smile.
“ You know, from the Chase Manhattan Bank. Is he a rich guy?” What a stupid thing to say. Carolina felt like smacking him in the back of his big fat head.
“ No, Brad, Mr. Chase lives in Tampico. He owns Miles of Books, the big used book store. That’s how we met. I was looking for some French language books, because I was going to spend the summer in Paris, but I met Miles Chase and now I’ll be spending my summer, and probably the rest of my life, across the way in Tampico.” Most of the folks in Palma referred to Tampico as just across the way.
Carolina watched the glow sparkle from Miss Sadler as she handed out the papers for the test. She was so obviously happy. Carolina wondered if her mom and dad were happy like that once, but she didn’t think so. They never seemed happy together when they were married and it was worse now that they were divorced. They were full of so much hate for each other that it seemed to kill off the love they once had for her.
She fingered her locket and smiled. It proved her father still loved her, and now her mom’s offer to take her to Disneyland, if she got all the state capitals right, proved she loved her too.
It would be just the two of them on the trip. Just them and not any of mom’s new boyfriends. They would have time to talk and get to know each other. Maybe they could start doing things together again, like they used to. She just had to get them all right. It meant so much.
Some of the kids had already started answering the test questions and she hadn’t even gotten her copy yet. She sat in the second seat in the last row, by the door, and Miss Sadler’s desk was on the other side of the room, in front of the first row, by the windows. She always handed out the tests starting from the first row.
When Brad, who sat in the seat closest to the door, turned and handed her a stack of tests, she kept one and handed the others back.
“ Let me copy off you,” Brad whispered.
“ No,” she whispered back into his squinty eyes.
“ You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
“ I don’t care.” She knew there was no way Brad would mess with her. He might be a bully and enjoy picking on younger and smaller kids, but if he picked on a girl, even his bully friends would have nothing to do with him. She was safe from any of his threats. She knew it and he knew it.
“ You’ll care if I kick shit out of your boyfriend.”
“ I don’t have a boyfriend.” She wished Miss Sadler would look over and see them talking. She usually never missed anything. But she was sitting at her desk, staring off into space.
“ Farty Arty,” Brad said with a snicker barely above a whisper.
“ He’s not my boyfriend.”
“ I’ll kick shit out of him anyway.”
“ Okay.”
“ What?”
“ Okay, you can copy.” She felt defeated. There was no way she was going to Disneyland now, not a chance. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t do it in front of Brad. He’d laugh at her.
She looked down at the test sheet and read the first question. Damn, she thought, and it’s so easy.
The capital of New York is.
She hesitated before writing down, New York City, the wrong answer. She looked over at Miss Sadler, who was still lost in her own little world, probably dreaming about Mr. Chase and his bookstore. Then with a guilty quiver, she turned her paper around. There were only twenty questions on the test. She wrote the wrong answer for every one of them and Brad copied them all.
“ Time’s up,” Miss Sadler said, “trade them across.”
Everybody traded papers with the person across from them.
“ Now hand them back.”
Everybody handed their new test paper to the kid behind them and the kid in the last seat took his to the one in the front of the row. Miss Sadler liked passing the papers around that way, so you could never tell who would be grading your paper.
“ Anyone know the answer to the first question?” Miss Sadler asked. A bevy of hands shot up, but Miss Sadler looked over at Carolina and there was no mistaking the look. She was looking right at her, not any of the other kids, just her. Almost like she expected Carolina’s hands to be folded in her lap. She half smiled, then she turned away.
“ Can you tell me the answer, Art?” His hand wasn’t up either. It never was, but that didn’t seem to matter to Miss Sadler.
He answered the question, “Albany.”
“ Correct.”
Brad Peters turned around, eyes blazing. “You gave me the wrong answer.” He sounded like a snake when he whispered, and she pictured him like that, big and thick, hanging from a giant tree, mean and waiting, with black snake eyes that you could see right through.
“ I didn’t know,” she said. “I missed it too.”
“ Yeah.” He turned away from her.
His head started shaking five minutes later, when the tests were handed back, and he saw that he’d missed all twenty. He turned around and pasted her with his beady, dark snake eyes.
“ Let me see your paper.” His face was so red she thought he was going to hit her then and there. She knew for sure she’d done a stupid thing, giving him all the wrong answers, but there was no way she was going to let him bully her, even if it meant failing the test and not going to Disneyland with her mother. Because she knew if she let him get away with it once, it would never end.
“ I didn’t do so good.” She showed him her paper with the red check mark next to every answer. She bit her lower lip, feeling bad about failing the test, but secretly satisfied that Brad had.
“ You are one stupid girl. I should have known better than to copy from you. Shit.” He turned away as the class was passing the papers forward to be collected by Miss Sadler. She watched the back of his head till the shade of his ears turned from red back to pale white. He was used to failing tests, but still he had been one mad, mad bully.
For the next half hour Miss Sadler talked about the animals that lived on the African plain. She had been raised in Kenya and she loved talking about it, but Carolina was only half listening. She bit her lip more and fought back tears. She wasn’t going to Disneyland with her mother. Now they would never get to talk things out. They would never be like they were. They would grow farther apart, instead of closer. And it was all Brad Peters’ fault. She hated him as much as she hated her mother’s boyfriends.
The bell sounded and the first recess came and it went. Then more talk of elephants and zebras. The lunch bell. She ate by herself in the cafeteria. Then more of Miss Sadler, this time math. The bell again and second recess came and was gone. Only an hour to go and Miss Sadler was droning on about family values. Carolina listened, with only half attention, until the final bell.
She opened her desk, dropped her book, pencil and papers into to it, closed it, sighed, stuck her lower lip out, blew the hair out of her eyes and looked at the clock. Three-ten, she stood up, stretched, and with a delicate move, reached out for the backpack she had so carefully draped over the back of her chair. Then she started for the door.
“ Carolina,” Miss Sadler called.
“ Yes, ma’am.”
“ I want you to stay after for a few minutes.”
Oh no, she thought. She’d looked at the tests. I’m in trouble now. But when she looked in the teacher’s eyes she didn’t see the fire she knew Miss Sadler was capable of. “I didn’t so well, did I?” she said.
“ Are you asking me or telling me?” Was she hearing right. Were those lips curving up into a smile.
“ Ta, telling I guess,” Carolina stammered.
“ I saw you showing the answers to Mr. Peters.” She always called you by your last name when she caught you doing something wrong, like passing notes, or talking when her back was turned, or not doing your homework. The fact that she called Brad by his last name and herself by her first, gave Carolina hope.
“ I, I-” she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to lie and she didn’t want to tell. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“ What’s the capital of Nevada?” Miss Sadler shot out.
“ Carson City,” Carolina answered without thinking.
“ Florida?”
“ Tallahassee.”
“ New York?”
“ Albany.”
“ Just as I thought. You wrote the wrong answers on purpose. Don’t answer, I won’t make you tell.” As a teacher, she was the best Carolina had ever had. She had always been fair. She never made anyone stay after unless they really deserved it, never gave too much homework and never, ever raised her voice, even when she was mad, but it didn’t make any difference now. She’d failed the test. She wasn’t going to Disneyland. Her mother was going to be so disappointed.
“ I’m sorry,” Carolina said. “I don’t have any excuse for what I did.”
“ Oh, yes you do. I’m guessing that Brad made you show him the answers. I don’t know how he did it. You had to show him the answers, but you didn’t have to show him the right ones, did you?”
“ No.” Miss Sadler was so smart.
“ I’m also guessing he won’t ever ask to copy off of you again. That was your plan, wasn’t it?”
“ Yes,” Carolina whispered.
“ You get an A. Brad gets an F.”
“ What?” Carolina said, eyes wide and heart pounding.
“ You heard me. I’m giving you a hundred percent.”
“ But?” She couldn’t believe it. There were such things as miracles after all.
“ Case closed, go home.”
Carolina turned and walked quickly to the door, fighting back tears and a smile.
“ Carolina,” Miss Sadler called.
She turned.
“ Enjoy yourself at Disneyland.”
Carolina smiled, turned and ran down the hall and out the front door of the school, where she crashed into Arty.
“ I’ve been waiting to carry your books,” he said, grinning wide.