Wreath Page 9

  “Is it my imagination, or is it unusually hot?” As she spoke, Julia paused to water the hanging basket at the top of the stairs, a pot of wilting impatiens in pinks, oranges, and reds. Her landlady kept her back turned, and Julia tried to think of something else to say. She was in no mood for this woman to ignore her.

  “Have a problem with the door?” she asked.

  “The door?” Faye looked startled, all dressed up and standing in the alley, as though she’d been dropped off at the wrong place.

  “The door there. Is it acting up again? Mr. Billy used to have problems with it.” She hadn’t known her landlord very well, but he was easier to deal with than his widow.

  “He did?”

  “All the time,” Julia said. “Sometimes he’d walk around the building to get out back. Said it wasn’t worth his trouble to get the darned thing open.”

  “That’s good to know,” Faye replied. “I thought it was just me.”

  “These old buildings remind me of my students. They’re a challenge, and you never know from day to day what the challenge will be.”

  “You teach school?”

  Julia was surprised her landlady didn’t know that. She had lived in the apartment for the whole two years she’d been in Landry.

  “High school. Civics and American history.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Faye said, although Julia couldn’t tell if she really thought so or not. “Although I confess I never was a fan of those subjects. I liked art and English and gym.” The woman stopped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. That was rude.”

  Maybe Faye was human after all. “Not to worry. I don’t like those subjects either,” Julia said. “I’m waiting for an art class to open up. Are you an artist, too?”

  “An artist? Me? Heavens, no. I prefer sewing. I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in twenty years, other than to paint the trim in the bathroom.” Mrs. Durham was definitely flustered. “Are you going to the gym?”

  Julia was confused. “Does Landry have a gym?”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Faye said. “It’s been longer since I’ve exercised than since I painted. I think there’s a dance aerobics class at my church.” She said the word dance with the slightest hint of a frown.

  By now Julia had walked to the bottom of the steep wooden steps, and she and Faye looked at each other as though they were speaking foreign languages the other didn’t understand.

  “You have on your exercise clothes,” Faye said. “I thought you were going to a gym.”

  “Oh … I’m off for my morning run, but I’m getting a late start. Had to prepare for a computer course I’m required to take. I like to use computers for graphics and art projects, but this is about research and timelines.”

  A completely lost look passed over the other woman’s face. “I thought teachers got summers off.”

  “I need a special certification, so I have to take this course. School starts at the end of the month, so I need to do it now.”

  “I hope you get paid for it.”

  Julia raised a brow. “No pay. Just six hours a day in a classroom. Fun, huh?”

  “Sounds delightful,” Faye said. “I think I’d rather work on the hinges on this back door.”

  The two laughed awkwardly.

  “Nice visiting with you,” Julia said. “Better run.” She waved, and the woman turned without a farewell and headed back into the furniture store.

  While Julia jogged, her feet slapping against the steaming street, she thought about the unusual encounter with her landlady, who rarely stepped foot out of the store. The few times Julia had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Durham, she was alone, lips pursed and mannerisms jerky, as though she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin. Today she had seemed different. She said she liked art.

  Maybe Julia had misjudged her, the way people in Landry misjudged her art.

  Chapter 14

  When Frankie got stressed out, she always said she was about ready to climb the walls. Wreath wished she lived in a house so she could do that right now. The carpeted sides of the stifling Tiger Van closed in on her and increased the anxious feeling she had. She held her watch up to her ear and shook it, wondering if the battery had died.

  She had eaten stale crackers for breakfast and mixed fake citrus flavor into a small amount of water, aware, as always, of how heavy bottled water was to lug back from town and how yucky the pond water was.

  While she ate, she looked over her recent notes.

  Dear Brownie: Mrs. Durham is strange. No, not strange. Frankie would have called her peculiar. And she wants me to call her Faye. That seems plain weird. She’s old. But at least she gave me my job back when I quit. I miss Mama. I wonder if it will always hurt this bad.

  Underneath, she had listed her work duties:

  Sweep.

  Dust.

  Keep showroom clean.

  That list was so paltry that Wreath added a few more duties this morning.

  Other Possibilities:

  Rearrange furniture.

  Clear out back corner.

  Flowers (Fresh flowers always help, according to magazine at the library.)

  WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?!?! She scrawled the letters in huge print across the page, sideways. She was creative, according to her former teachers, and smart. Surely she could do something else for Mrs. Durham.

  She’d have to come up with better ideas if she was going to keep her job and maybe get more hours. Faye wasn’t the type to put up with fit throwing, for sure, and somehow Wreath didn’t think she’d hire her back again if things went badly.

  Worrying about money always made her feel like she needed to throw up, yet counting her money had become a daily ritual. After she counted it, she entered the amount in her journal. Part of the money was now hidden in a small plastic sack near the back of the land, ready to run at a moment’s notice. The rest she carried with her.

  Using a wet towelette to wash off, she pretended she had a luxurious shower. She’d slipped back into the state park a few more times to take a real shower, avoiding that guy named Law. Wreath dressed, put on a red plastic headband she’d found in a travel trailer, and hoped the furniture lady wouldn’t frown at her appearance. The clothes were not only out of style, but worn and faded.

  Looking at her watch again, she tried to figure out what to do for the next couple of hours before she went to work.

  To work.

  Fine furnishings? Not a chance. But the job provided a reason to hang out in town, helped her meet a person or two as “the girl who just moved here,” and paid for food and water.

  She wished she could tell Frankie about the job, get advice about how to deal with a grouchy boss. Frankie had told her about plenty of those kinds of bosses through the years, but she’d always made the stories fun. Wreath couldn’t summon up a fun image of Mrs. Durham, although the woman could be decent when she wanted to. Sometimes she reminded Wreath of herself, as if the death of Mr. Durham had permanently smashed her heart.

  Finding a spot of shade, Wreath sat down in a lawn chair she’d rescued from a rusted-out RV, careful to shift her weight away from the broken webbing. She pulled out her journal and started a fresh page.

  Wreath Wisteria Willis/Williams, employee.

  1. Dress appropriately.

  2. Don’t be late.

  3. Work hard.

  4. Be nice to Mrs. Durham no matter how mean she is.

  5. Earn money!!!!

  6. SAVE money for college.

  She groaned at the last entry.

  Life had seemed hard with her mama sick and Big Fun hanging around, cussing and drinking, but she’d take it back in a minute. Frankie hadn’t believed in feeling sorry for yourself, though, and Wreath could almost hear her mama fussing.

  Something stung her ankle, and she looked down to see that her chair rested next to a fire ant bed, a collection of the insects stinging her ankle. She jumped up, knocked the chair over, dropped her journal in the mud, and hopped around tr
ying to brush them off her legs, yelling all the while.

  Her loud voice surprised her. She so rarely talked anymore that it almost sounded like a stranger’s.

  She grabbed her pack and pulled her bike out of an old van where she had hidden it, feeling as though ants still crawled over her.

  Jumping onto the seat, she rode hard into town, giving the pedals everything she had, tired of wobbling. Her lungs hurt and sweat ran down her body, causing the seat of her shorts to feel damp, but she pedaled harder and harder.

  Hurtling past dense trees, Wreath bumped her way toward town. The route was rough, the pavement full of potholes and rutted-out areas. The shoulders were narrow or nonexistent.

  An occasional house, trailer, or run-down wood building was set back from the road, usually with a junky front yard. A station wagon was pulled near the front door of a weird brick building that looked like an apartment. In the back of the car there was a mattress, and the seats were filled with clothes, dotted with garbage bags.

  All in all, Wreath thought, it didn’t look like those residents lived much better than she did.

  She slowed at the entrance to the state park, considering whether to turn in and look around. She needed a shower but was afraid of seeing the boy again. Wreath hated to admit how much she longed to see Ranger Boy, in his green shirt and khaki shorts. She would have thought he only worked a day or two a week if she hadn’t seen that lousy trailer where he lived. She certainly had misjudged him. With that mink-brown hair and muscular build, he looked rich. But he couldn’t afford a guitar.

  With thoughts of Law in her mind, Wreath glanced at the entrance of the park longingly.

  Instead of the boy, the artist, Julia was her name, jogged slowly out of the park, sweat flying off her body. Hoping the woman didn’t see her, Wreath kept pedaling, but Julia raised her hand in a friendly wave. Wreath took one hand off the handlebars and gave a half wave back, as her pack slipped and the bike headed toward the ditch.

  A car sped by as Wreath swerved onto the shoulder and spun in gravel, straining to maintain her balance. Giving up, she pulled over and planted her feet on the gravel.

  Julia jogged steadily toward her. “You okay?” she huffed, running in place and gasping for breath.

  “I hit a rock.” Wreath shifted, hoping the woman would move on. “I’m fine.”

  “I’ve been thinking about you. Everything all right?” Julia said. “Anything I can do for you?”

  “Everything’s good,” Wreath said, feeling an extra trickle of sweat pour out from under her arms. She tried to make eye contact instead of shifting her eyes away.

  “Your family still camping?”

  “Camping?” Wreath thought for a moment. That’s what happened when you started lying. You couldn’t remember what you’d said, what was real. “We’re staying with relatives. My mama liked it so much she’s moving us here.”

  “I’ll see you at Landry High, then.” She gave a wave and headed off.

  Landry High? What was that all about? Julia didn’t look old enough to have a kid in high school. Wreath rolled the shoulder she had wrenched when she’d nearly wrecked her bike. Could Julia be a teacher? She looked younger and in better shape than any of the teachers Wreath’d had in Lucky or any of the other towns where they had lived.

  Wreath constantly weighed whether something was good or bad when it happened. This encounter could have raised suspicions, one more connection with a Landry resident. What if she had a class under Miss … she didn’t know her last name. She hoped she didn’t get her, because Julia raised too many questions. She might even look at Wreath’s files.

  She had said she had just been thinking about Wreath. That sounded dangerous.

  Maybe it was time to move.

  “No,” Wreath said out loud. She couldn’t. She had to make this work if she was going to finish high school.

  She watched Julia move out of sight, thankful to see distance between them. When the woman was nearly around the corner, Wreath climbed on the bike, her feet on the gravel, feeling as though ants were crawling up her legs, and decided to go to the library to clean up.

  As soon as she entered the cool building, she perched on a small bench in the entryway and pulled her journal out of the pack, sad to see that its cover looked worn. She fished around for her pen and made a small entry.

  Dear Brownie, don’t take this too hard, but I have something to share with you. Life stinks.

  Chapter 15

  In the evenings, Wreath thought nights were the worst. Weird noises surrounded her, and she fretted that a bum would stumble into her corner of the world. But usually sleep overcame her, and although she woke up with a few bug bites, the darkness was gone.

  Mornings hit hard because there was a big hole where Frankie should have been. From the time she was six or seven, her mama had brought her coffee to bed to wake her up. “Rise and shine, baby girl,” her mama would say, giving her the tiny white cup that had more milk and sugar than actual coffee. Every day Frankie sat down on the side of the bed and stroked Wreath’s hair, which stuck out in every direction when she woke up.

  “I’m not a baby,” Wreath had grumbled when she turned nine. “You’ll always be my baby girl,” Frankie said. “Now get up and face the world.”

  At sixteen, Wreath figured she was definitely facing the world. She thought her mama must be watching over her, or she’d never have made it this long. When you were doing fun stuff, time flew. But when you were trying to escape, it seemed to crawl by.

  Wreath developed a routine. Not a normal one, she had to admit, but a routine anyway. Some mornings she pretended she was at extreme summer camp. “Wreath Willis, from Lucky, Louisiana, will be forced to live by her wits for one week. Can she find food and water? Will she be stronger than the other campers, winning the ten-thousand-dollar prize?” She announced the words into an old metal cup she used as a microphone.

  “While other campers are out for activities, Miss Willis diligently takes care of the campsite,” she said into the make-believe microphone. “Chosen as camp leader, she must make sure accommodations are up to standard. Now she must begin her daily inventory of the site, making certain that other campers take care of the property and abide by camp rules.” Rich people paid good money for experiences like this. She had known a rich boy in Lucky who had gotten sent away to a military school for drinking and generally doing dumb things. When he came back, he described it in much the same way as Wreath felt about her life now.

  She went directly to one of her favorite junkmobiles, a travel trailer that looked like one of those cans that ham came in. Maybe she should splurge on a ham at the Dollar Barn. That sounded good. The trailer, even with its share of rust and mildew, had a jaunty air about it, with turquoise trim and bright plastic furniture. She had read about Yellowstone National Park in one of her history books and decided to call it Old Faithful. She could see a family using it to camp in the park, the mom frying bacon while the dad watched for bears.

  This morning, she was on a mission. She gingerly opened the door, never plunging in for fear of who or what might greet her. “Not a creature is stirring,” she said in her announcer voice, trying to shake the nerves she had when she entered any of the vehicles.

  Turning to the kitchen, somewhat of a jumbled mess, she found what she was looking for—a coffeepot, a Dripolator, like Frankie had bought for a dime in a garage sale. She had watched her mama make a hundred pots of coffee and was going to give it a try, once she figured out how to heat the water. She also picked up a cracked flowerpot with a smiley face painted on it.

  The floor creaked, and Wreath jumped, then headed back to the Tiger Van. Cute as Old Faithful was, her van felt safer. It was small and secure, not cozy, but contained. Even though she mostly only slept there, it felt like a home. With the coffeepot in the “kitchen” of her van and the flowerpot by the “porch,” she sat down in a half-broken lawn chair and pulled out the journal. At this rate, she’d need another notebook before
long. She carefully documented her schedule in her journal.

  Schedule:

  Wake up. Eat breakfast. Clean up Tiger Van.

  Write in journal.

  Get dressed. Every three days take shower. Yech.

  Explore Rusted Estates. Work on home.

  Go to work.

  Eat supper. Read.

  Bedtime.

  Writing made her feel in control. She was not a hopeless girl living in a dump. She was Wreath Willis, and if she took life a week at a time, she’d make it, even if she was ignoring the looming weight of school. She hated to admit it, but she looked forward to school starting, even though the idea made her nervous. She missed talking to Frankie and her teachers at school and sitting on the front porch and listening to neighbors argue, TVs turned up loud. She had never watched much television because she didn’t like to be in the same room with Big Fun or Frankie’s other boyfriends, but now she missed the sound.

  Dear Brownie: I wonder if I could get cable out here, she wrote and then got up to explore some more. Sitting still in the van during the day was almost as bad as lying on the floor in the dark, smelly and claustrophobic. Combing the junkyard, she sketched vehicles and listed their contents. It not only gave her something to do, but it made her feel as though she were the landlord, in charge of all these people.

  She shrieked when she looked up and saw a face staring at her through a window and then gave a relieved laugh when she realized it was herself.

  She had finally found a decent mirror.

  Wreath told herself she was making the trip to the state park to shower.

  But she didn’t fool herself.

  She wanted to see Law.

  Desperate for someone to talk to, she was crushed when he was not in the little log cabin, replaced by a man in a tan uniform. The man looked more like a prison guard than a park worker, but he paid her scarcely any attention, watching the Weather Channel on a TV mounted in the corner of the office. She stood at the counter for a full minute before he acknowledged her. She supposed that was a good thing.