Flowers Page 5

  Ellen tensed, hugging her knees to her chest.

  "She looks really mad," Margaret whispered.

  "No, she's probably just worried."

  A thin rope of smoke drifted from the trailer door. "She burned supper," Margaret said.

  "It's my fault. She's really going to whip me this time."

  Mom called once more, then slammed the door closed. Margaret rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the mobile home. Ellen laughed, though her stomach felt full of bugs.

  "Let's go to my place," Margaret said.

  "What if Mom sees me? She can see me, even if she can't see you."

  Margaret started crawling behind the row of dying shrubbery. "Your mom won't find you there."

  "She always finds me anywhere." Ellen hung her head, near tears.

  Margaret crawled back and poked her in the side. "Don't be a gloomy Gus."

  Ellen slapped Margaret's hand away. "I'm not no gloomy Gus."

  "Why don't you let me get her? I can make her hurt like she makes you hurt."

  Ellen folded her arms and studied Margaret's brown eyes. Margaret would do it. She was a good friend. And in her eyes, behind the sparkle, was a darkness buried deep. Maybe you looked at things that way when you were dead.

  "No. It's better if we keep you secret," Ellen said. "I already got in trouble at school, telling the special teachers about you."

  Margaret poked her in the ribs again. Ellen smiled this time.

  "Follow me. Hurry," Margaret said.

  Margaret scrambled ahead, staying low beneath the hedge. Ellen looked at the trailer door, checked for any sign of movement in the windows. Then she crawled after Margaret, the dead twigs sharp against the skin of her palms and knees.

  From the end of the hedge, they dashed for the concealment of the forest. Ellen half expected to hear Mom's angry shout, telling her to get inside right this minute. But then they were under the trees and lost among the long shadows.

  Margaret laughed with the exhilaration of escape. She ran between the oaks with their orange leaves, the silver birch, the sweet green pine, ignoring the branches and briars that tugged the fabric of her sweater. Ellen followed just as recklessly, her footsteps soft on the rotting loam of the forest floor.

  The girls passed a clearing covered by crisp leaves. Margaret veered away to a path that followed the river. The air smelled of fish and wet stones. Ellen stumbled over a grapevine, and by the time she looked up, Margaret had disappeared.

  Ellen looked around. A bird chittered in a high treetop. The sun had slipped lower in the sky. Purple and pink clouds hung in the west like rags on a clothesline. She was alone.

  Alone.

  The special teachers at school told Ellen it was worse to be alone than have invisible friends. "You can't keep playing all by yourself," they told her. "You have to learn to get along with others. You have to let go of the past."

  When Ellen told the special teachers about what happened at home, the teachers' eyes got wide. They must have talked to Mom, because when Ellen got home that day, she got her hide tanned harder than ever. Someday Mom was going to lose her temper and do something really bad.

  Ellen thought of Mom, with fists clenched and supper burnt, waiting back at the trailer. Ellen shivered. She didn't want to be alone.

  She put her hands to her mouth. "Margaret!"

  She heard a giggle from behind a stand of trees. The red sweater flashed and vanished. Margaret was playing another game, trying to make Ellen get lost by leading her deeper into the woods. Well, Ellen wasn't going to be scared.

  And she wasn't going to cry. Sometimes the girls at school made her cry. They would stand around her in a circle and say she was in love with Joey Hogwood. Well, she hated Joey Hogwood, and she hated the girls. Ellen wished that Margaret still went to school so that she would have a friend to sit beside.

  Margaret wouldn't want her to cry. Margaret would just pretend to be bad for a little while, then pop out from behind a tree and tag her and make her "It."

  Laughter came down from the hill where the pines were thickest. To the left, a sea of kudzu vines choked the trees. A run-down chicken coop had been swallowed by the leaves, with only a few rotten boards showing under the green. That's where Margaret was hiding.

  Ellen ran across the kudzu, the leaves tickling her calves above her socks. She could read Margaret like a book. That was the best thing about invisible playmates: they did what you wanted them to do.

  Right now, Ellen wanted Margaret to go just over the hill, into the new part of the forest. She reached the pines and started down the slope. Half a dozen houses were sprinkled among the folds of the hill. A highway ran through the darkening valley, the few cars making whispers as they rolled back and forth. The headlights were like giant fireflies in the dusk.

  "Margaret," Ellen called.

  A giggle floated up from the highway. Margaret was there by the ditch, waving her arm. Ellen smiled to herself. Margaret wouldn't leave her. Ellen picked her way down the slope, almost slipping on the dewy fallen leaves, until she reached the ditch.

  "Tag, you're 'It,'" Margaret said, touching Ellen's shoulder.

  Margaret's golden-white hair blazed in the lights of an approaching car. She spun and raced across the highway, the roar of the engine drowning out Ellen's scream. The car passed right through Margaret, not slowing at all. The red eyes of the tail lights faded into darkness. Ellen hurried across the road.

  "You're a crazy-brain," Ellen said.

  Margaret shook her head, her hair swaying from side to side. "Am not."

  "Are, too."

  "You're still 'It,'" Margaret said, running away. The darkness was more solid now, the sun fading in slow surrender. Margaret climbed over the low stone wall that bordered the highway.

  "Crazy-brain." Ellen scrambled over the wall after her, into the graveyard. The alabaster angels and crosses and markers were like ghosts in the night. Margaret had vanished.

  "Margaret?"

  Laughter echoed off the granite.

  Invisible friends didn't disappear unless you allowed it. They didn't hurt you or scare you or make you cry, at least not on purpose. They didn’t tease you about Joey Hogwood, or make you sit in a chair and listen to all the reasons why invisible friends couldn’t exist.

  "Come out, come out, wherever you are," Ellen said. She scrambled between the cold gravestones. The grass was damp and full of autumn, and the air smelled of fall flowers. A sharp curve of moon had sliced its way into the black sky.

  Ellen found Margaret beside a church-white marker.

  "Mom's going to be mad," Ellen said.

  "She's just an old meanie."

  "She's really going to kill me." Ellen sat in the grass beside Margaret and the dew soaked her dress.

  "Don't go back," Margaret said.

  "I have to go back."

  Margaret folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her lower lip. "In the summer, we got to play until way late."

  "It's not summer anymore," Ellen said, looking at the sky. Three stars were out.

  "Is that why the fireflies are gone?"

  Ellen laughed. "You're such a dummyhead."

  The moon was higher now, pale on Margaret's face. Her eyes were dark hollows. "I'm not no dummyhead."

  "Yes, you are," Ellen said, her voice sing-songy and shrill. "Margaret is a dummyhead, Margaret is a dummyhead."

  Margaret leaned back against the marker. Her shoulders trembled and thin lines of tears tracked down her cheeks. Ellen stopped teasing. With invisible playmates, you always felt what they felt.

  "I'm sorry," Ellen whispered.

  Margaret was bone silent.

  "Hey," Ellen said. "Now who's the gloomy Gus?"

  She poked Margaret in the side, feeling the hard ridges of her friend's ribs. It was funny how invisible friends could be solid, if you thought of them that way.

  "Sometimes it's hard to remember," Margaret said, sniffing. "You know. What it was like."

&n
bsp; Ellen poked again. "It’s not that great."

  Margaret twitched and tried to hold back her smile. Then the laughter broke and she blinked away the last of her tears. They watched the moon for a while and listened to the rush of the passing cars.

  "I miss summer," Margaret said.

  "Me, too."

  "You don't have to go back."

  They could play hide-and-seek all night and never have to hide in the same place twice. A few gnarled trees clutched at the ground with their roots, perfect for climbing. Honeysuckle vines covered the walls and gates, waiting for summer when they would again sweeten the air. Best of all was the quiet. Here, no one ever yelled in anger.

  But Ellen didn't belong here. Not yet.

  "I'd better get home," Ellen said. "I'm going to get my hide tanned as it is."

  Margaret tried a pouty face, then gave up. All playtimes had to end. Ellen waved good-bye and started back over the stone wall.

  "See you tomorrow?" Margaret called after her.

  Ellen turned and looked back, but her friend had already vanished.

  Margaret's voice came from everywhere, nowhere. "It won't hurt."

  "Promise?"

  "Even if it did, I would tickle you and make you laugh."

  "Good night."

  Ellen paused at the edge of the highway and waited for the next car. She could step out before the driver even saw her. Margaret had promised it wouldn't hurt. But maybe dead people always said that.

  A car came over the hill, its engine roaring like a great beast, the headlights prowling for prey. Ellen ducked into the ditch and waited. Five seconds away, maybe. One jump, a big bump, and then she could be with Margaret.

  Her lungs grew hard and cold, she couldn’t breathe, and the car was maybe three seconds away. She told herself it was only another game, just hopscotch. She tensed. Two seconds.

  Margaret whispered in her ear. "I lied. It really does hurt."

  One second, and the car whizzed past, its exhaust lingering like a sigh.

  "See you tomorrow?" Margaret said, sitting on the stone fence, pale under the scant moon.

  "I guess so."

  "You get this way," Margaret said. "When you’re dead, you want to play games all the time."

  "I guess I’ll find out someday."

  Ellen crossed the highway and tried to drift through the trees the way Margaret could. But it was no use. She was too solid, too real, she belonged too much to the world with its hard wood and hard people and hard rules. If only she were someone's invisible playmate.

  But she wasn't. She forgot games, laughter, the red sweater that Margaret had been buried in. Her thoughts were of nothing but Mom and home.

  Ellen moved onward through the night, only half-dead, not nearly dead enough.

  ###

  THE NIGHT THE WIND DIED

  The wind was heavy.

  Too heavy for Wendy, who was only fourteen and didn’t like dry lips. But Mom said Wendy had to blow, push air out of her lungs and past her throat and over the pink rug of her tongue until the sky gave way.

  Wendy would rather breathe shallowly, taking tiny sips of air as if it were some bubbly soft drink. She wanted to flare her nostrils delicately, like one of those thin glamorous models in the smoking advertisements, though smoking was totally gross. Wendy would deal with a little ickiness in order to be ladylike and dainty for a half a minute or so.

  But, no, she was the wind girl, and there was nothing for it but to purse her lips, gulp and grab the air, suck in like a starving fish, swallow, suck some more, and then hold it, heavy as gold, inside her chest until the moment was just so.

  Sometimes the moment was close, sometimes the moment was days away. Waiting, that was the worst part. If it were up to her, she would draw it in and spit it right back out. But sometimes Mom said she had to suffocate until the rain girl or the cloud man or Mister Thunder was ready.

  Take today, for instance. Here she was, minding her own business, thinking of her two best friends. Beth and Sue Ellen had been teasing each other all day at school about a boy named Randy. They had met him yesterday at the pool, and of course Wendy wasn’t there, Wendy had to come right home after school and sit on the back porch and huff and blow.

  Mom opened the door. "No sign of the rain girl cutting up?"

  "She must be happy today."

  "Not a cloud in the sky. Still, it’s March, and you’re supposed to blow."

  March made Wendy’s mouth tired and her cheeks chapped. March, March, March, which was almost as bad as November, except November was colder, but then you only had to wait for the Snow Boy or his cousin Frost. In March, you had the creek minders and the season people and the rain girl and Mister Thunder and a bunch of ice makers from the Antarctica breathing down your neck, trying to make everything move in its proper patterns.

  If only there were one big weather creature, somebody to run all the elements and make the world spin. Then maybe Wendy and all the other makers could be normal again. Why not even leave it to the humans to worry about? Surely a computer was smart enough to do it, if somebody pressed the right buttons.

  "Mom, I can feel the bones of my ribs," Wendy said. "Can I let go now?"

  Mom cupped her palm over her eyes and studied the horizon. Over the last few days, the edge of the earth had turned from brown to green. "Not a sign of the others."

  "Can’t I just go by myself? I promise to only make it a little wind, so that not too many leaves get on the lawns of the people who are already mowing their grass."

  "This is March. A lot of makers need to join together, at least here in the early days of the month."

  Wendy told herself to just remember the "lamb" part. In like a lion, out like a lamb. Come to think of it, why couldn’t animals run the wind and sun and moon and water? That would work so much better.

  Then November could be in like bird, out like a turkey. December could be in like a dove and out like a polar bear, and so on. Then Wendy wouldn’t have to be the wind girl and could hang out with her friends.

  But right now there was nothing but the stupid waiting.

  While Beth and Sue Ellen were chatting with Randy.

  Oh Randy, who no doubt was gorgeous, most certainly a life guard, with muscles and water-resistant hair and probably his driver’s license already. And here Wendy was, stuck on her back porch, choking herself, her lungs as swollen as balloons, while Beth was probably saying something like, "Randy, do you know how to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?"

  Beth was the flirty one, she would giggle when she said silly things, and Sue Ellen was already doing a decent job of stretching out a bathing suit, so Wendy would have no chance anyway. She never had a chance, because all the other boys wanted "normal" girls.

  Who would ever want to kiss a girl who would probably ram his tongue all the way down her throat until he tasted whatever she’d had for lunch? Who wanted to sit around and hold hands while the girl beside him gasped and wheezed like a sick whale? What guy would put up with Wendy’s Mom standing beside them on the porch, asking if they wanted lemonade and telling the boy he couldn’t stay too much longer because Wendy had chores.

  Oh, how she wished she could just let the wind fall, leak out on the plains and oceans of the world. Let the wind slither down the mountains, let it sink in the valleys and trickle down along the creeks until it disappeared into all the little holes in the ground. Why couldn’t wind just shut up, just lie down and sleep and let the clouds be still and never never never bother Wendy again?

  "My belly feels full," Wendy said to Mom.

  "What did you have for lunch?"

  "A peanut butter sandwich and a bunch of grapes. And air, so much air that it makes me sick."

  "Wendy, don’t talk like that."

  "I want to throw up."

  Mom put a worn hand on Wendy’s shoulder, brushed her hair out of her face. "It’s a hard job, honey, but—"

  "I know, I know. Somebody has to do it. Lucky me."

  "I was
the wind girl, too."

  "A long time ago. At least you’re through. You get to rest now."

  "And you will, too, someday."

  Someday. Didn’t Mom know that someday was a million years away? What did grown-ups know about "someday," anyway? You’d think the longer they lived, the more they should realize that time doesn’t last forever. And meanwhile, Randy was all smiles with Beth and Sue Ellen.

  "There’s a cloud, Mom," Wendy said, trying to stifle the hope in her voice.

  Mom squinted, now that the boy who saw fire was putting the sun to bed and the sky was orange in the west. A lot of the March storms arose as the night came, and that was almost not so bad, because then Wendy could push the air out of her lungs and inhale through her nose and smell the first sprinkles and the thirsty flowers and the freshly-plowed gardens and the silver wetness of clouds.

  And, best of all, when the storms came on fast, Wendy could just throw all her breath at the sky and be done with it.

  "I don’t think that’s a cloud," Mom said.

  "Please let it be a cloud."

  The boards of the porch trembled slightly, or at least Wendy thought so. "Aha. Mister Thunder, coming this way."

  "I believe that was a truck, honey."

  The air grew heavier in Wendy’s lungs. She might be fifteen before the next storm. Why, Beth or Sue Ellen would be practically married to Randy before Wendy even got to meet him.

  Mom had been married once. It was something Mom didn’t like to talk about. But why should Wendy be the only one who was uncomfortable?

  "What happened to Daddy?" Wendy asked, since it looked like they would be in for a long wait and Mom would have to come up with another creative lie.

  Mom sighed and almost stirred a small breeze, but her lungs were too soft, too thin and weak. "Maybe you’re old enough for me to tell you the truth."

  "I’m almost fifteen."

  "Almost fourteen-and-a-half, you mean."

  "Same thing."

  "Don’t be in such a hurry to get old, Wendy. I know all your friends make a big deal—"

  "Friends? I don’t have friends. I have stupid air in my lungs because everybody thinks the world needs wind. Well, whoop-de-doo, let the flags go limp for all I care." "That’s the same thing I said, back before I met your father."