The Hidden World Page 7

  Jessica cried out, ‘Mom!’ but she knew that her mother couldn’t hear her, and she began to weep with frustration.

  She woke up. Her bedroom was filled with sunshine. She propped herself up on one elbow, and there was a crackling noise. Her bed was covered with coppery, curled-up leaves.

  Slowly, carefully, she climbed out of bed and stood staring at them. You can dream of leaves. You can dream of cats and cakes and bright red bouncy balls. But you don’t expect to wake up in the morning to find a cat sleeping on the pillow next to you, or a cake on your nightstand, or a ball bouncing its way across your bedroom carpet.

  She wondered if she ought to call Grandpa Willy to come and have a look, but in the end she decided not to. After all, he wasn’t very well, what with his angina and his high blood pressure, and she didn’t want to upset him.

  She put all the leaves in her waste-paper basket, then went downstairs for an early breakfast.

  Pretty Face, Ugly Heart

  The schoolyard was crowded with running, shouting children, and snowballs were flying everywhere, even though Principal Tucker had banned them as ‘offensive weapons’. One snowball exploded on Jessica’s shoulder and another smacked her in the back. She stooped down and made one herself, but she was no good at throwing and it only hit the wall.

  ‘Gimpy couldn’t hit a barn door,’ mocked Sue-Anne. She was sitting on her favorite perch, the top of the wooden box that covered the ventilator, from where she could queen it over everybody in the schoolyard. She was wearing a white parka with a real fox-fur hood, and her hair was a cascade of golden curls.

  Her courtiers were standing around her: Charlene, Micky, Fay and Renko, as well as Elica, a pretty, dark-skinned Romanian girl whose parents had come to America seeking political asylum. Elica spoke little English and Mrs Walker had charged Sue-Anne with taking care of her, although Sue-Anne’s idea of ‘taking care’ of anybody was to make them run endless errands for her, and give her money when she was short.

  ‘Back at school, then, Gimpy?’ asked Sue-Anne. ‘Let’s hope you’ve had some sense knocked into you.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’ Jessica challenged her. ‘I’ve never done anything to you.’

  ‘I can’t leave you alone because you’re always there, that’s why. Always limping around, trying to make everybody feel sorry for you.’

  ‘I don’t need anybody to feel sorry for me. I think people ought to feel sorry for you, if you’ve got nothing better to do than make yourself obnoxious.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, Jessica, there is nothing on this planet more obnoxious than looking at you. Now that’s enough to make anybody want to barf.’

  ‘You’re ridiculous,’ Jessica retorted. ‘Look at you, sitting up there with all of your stooges around you. You look like Goldilocks and the Five Bears.’

  ‘You can’t talk to me like that!’ snapped Sue-Anne. ‘At least I don’t limp around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame!’

  The school doors opened and everybody shuffled inside. Mr Kurtzman, the Deputy Principal, was standing on the steps and he smiled at Jessica and said, ‘How are you feeling, Jessica? Good to have you back. I’ve just had details of a statewide art competition … remind me to give them to you. I think one of your fairy pictures could stand a good chance of winning.’

  Jessica went to her locker, took off her coat and collected her books. As she did so, somebody pulled out the neck of her sweater at the back and crammed a handful of snow down it.

  She cried out, ‘Oww!’ and frantically tried to shake the snow out of her clothes. On the other side of the corridor, Sue-Anne was clapping her hands and laughing, while Micky was brushing snow off his sleeves. ‘Snow nice to have you back!’ Charlene taunted.

  Calvin ducked around Jessica and snatched her lunchbox out of her locker. ‘Here!’ he said. ‘Let’s see what gimps put in their sandwiches! Bet they eat limp lettuce leaves! Get it, limp lettuce leaves!’

  ‘Here!’ said Sue-Anne, and Calvin tossed the lunchbox across to her. She opened it up, and Jessica’s orange fell out and rolled across the floor. Micky stamped on it, and said, ‘That’s one thing that gimps have for lunch! Fresh-squeezed orange!’

  Sue-Anne unwrapped the paper napkins around Jessica’s sandwiches. ‘Oh my God, look at this! How disgusting! They look like they’re filled with vomit!’

  Charlene peered into the box. ‘You’re right! It is vomit! The gimp has vomit sandwiches for lunch … saves her the trouble of barfing afterwards!’

  ‘They’re tuna-mayonnaise and give them back,’ said Jessica, pushing Micky to one side. Sue-Anne skipped away, holding the lunchbox high over her head.

  ‘You want them? You want your vomit sandwiches? You’ll have to come get them!’

  Jessica limped after her and snatched hold of her green cashmere sweater. ‘Give them back!’ she insisted. ‘My grandmother made those!’

  ‘Then it looks like your grandmother feels the same way about you that I do! Enough to make you puke!’

  Jessica pulled harder at Sue-Anne’s sweater and the seam under her arm tore apart. Sue-Anne screamed in indignation. ‘Look what you’ve done! You animal! Look what you’ve done to my sweater! That cost nearly three hundred dollars at Saks!’

  In a fury, she threw Jessica’s sandwiches onto the floor, along with a cheese triangle and a Snickers bar. Jessica tried to save them, but Calvin and Micky kicked them around and then trod on them.

  Sue-Anne, meanwhile, went to Jessica’s locker and started to rip the pages out of one of her sketchbooks. ‘You tear my things, I’ve got a right to tear yours!’

  But it was then that Renko grabbed hold of Sue-Anne’s wrist and tugged the sketchbook out of her hand.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Sue-Anne demanded. ‘Get your hands off me!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Renko. ‘Leave her alone.’

  ‘What? Whose side are you on?’

  ‘I’m on nobody’s side. You’ve done enough, that’s all.’

  ‘Listen, you geek, I’ll decide when I’ve done enough. If you think I’m going to put up with sharing the same building with some pathetic gimp who brings vomit sandwiches in for lunch, then you’ve got another think coming!’

  ‘Yeah, what’s the matter with you, Renko?’ said Micky. ‘You gone soft or something?’

  ‘You want to find out how soft I’m not?’ Renko warned him.

  ‘So why are you standing up for the gimp all of a sudden?’

  Renko pointed a finger at him. ‘Her name is Jessica. If you even whisper the word “gimp” again, and I hear you, I’ll punch your teeth right down your throat, braces and all.’

  ‘Hey, man, why the hissy fit?’

  ‘No hissy fit, Micky. All I’m doing is telling you that enough is enough. We almost killed Jessica last week and I’m as much to blame as the rest of you. I’m not going to make the rest of her life miserable just because Princess Sue-Anne is all eaten up with jealousy.’

  ‘Jealousy?’ screamed Sue-Anne. ‘Did you hear that? Jealousy? You seriously think that I’m jealous of some ratty-haired weirdo who can’t even walk straight?’

  Renko went close up to Sue-Anne and stared her straight in the face.

  ‘What?’ she challenged him.

  But without a word he reached into her open locker and picked up one of her brand-new white-and-silver Nike trainers. He held it up in front of her; she pouted at him defiantly. But then he lifted a pineapple-and-mango yogurt out of her lunchbox, pierced the foil top with his thumbnail, and slowly emptied the entire pot into her shoe. Sue-Anne stood with her mouth wide open, totally shocked.

  ‘You just – you just – look what you just did!’

  ‘You are a vain and very stupid person,’ said Renko. ‘Personally I don’t care how vain and stupid you are, but you’re not going to take your personality problems out on Jessica, or anybody else, ever again. You got me?’

  Sue-Anne abruptly burst into tears. Without a word, she turned a
nd flounced off along the corridor, leaving the rest of them standing amidst the squashed remains of Jessica’s lunch.

  Micky went off silently too. Calvin said, ‘Hey, man,’ and hunkered down to pick up the smashed sandwiches. Charlene bit her lip, then held out her hand to Jessica and said, ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. I guess I never thought what I was doing.’

  Elica had kept well away during the bullying, but now she stepped forward and opened her Tupperware lunchbox. ‘Please, is for you share, yes? Is a pitta, with chicken. Also banana.’

  ‘You can have some of mine, too,’ said Renko. ‘That’s if you don’t mind peanut butter and Twinkies.’

  Elica said, ‘I do not go with Sue-Anne more. In Romania we say, “La chip frumos sila inimãgãunos.” This means “a pretty face but an ugly heart”. I am now a friend of you.’

  Jessica still felt shaky, and the back of her sweater was soaked in chilly melted snow. She turned to Renko and took hold of his sleeve. ‘Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘Hey, forget it. Sue-Anne’s been giving me a right royal pain in the butt all semester. I’m only sorry I didn’t stand up to her earlier.’

  ‘Why don’t you come round to my house after school?’ Jessica suggested. ‘You too, Elica. My grandmother’s going to be making chicken pot-pie, and there’s always far too much.’

  ‘I know: you want us to go hunting for those mysterious kids again,’ said Renko.

  ‘I do want to talk to you about that,’ said Jessica. ‘And you won’t believe what I found on my bed when I woke up this morning.’

  Follow the Flowers

  They sat around the kitchen table while Grannie served them heaped-up platefuls of chicken pot-pie and candied sweet potatoes, with two helpings of Rocky Road to follow. Afterward they helped Grannie to dry the dishes while Grandpa Willy told them tall stories about his days in the Marines. ‘I could bite through barbed wire with my teeth!’ Later they went up to Jessica’s bedroom and chilled out.

  Renko sat on the bed and sorted through Jessica’s CD collection while Elica circled the room, smiling in delight at all the drawings of fairies and elves that she had pinned up on the walls.

  ‘This little person, in Romania we call her a zãna. She will steal food, and jewels, also your baby, and give you instead her own baby.’

  ‘Hey, this is cool,’ said Renko, holding up a Limp Bizkit CD. ‘You’ve got some really cool sounds here.’

  ‘Just because I draw fairies and elves doesn’t mean I have to listen to “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” all the time.’

  ‘Anyhow,’ said Renko, sniffing, ‘what about these mystery kids? Don’t tell me you found them?’

  ‘Kind of.’ She told him how she had explored the attic, and how she had found the five death masks.

  ‘That is seriously creepy,’ Renko put in. ‘Mind you – my mom keeps my grandmother’s false teeth in the bathroom, I don’t know why, my grandmother died about three years ago. What does she think her teeth are going to do – start singing lullabies to her?’

  ‘In Romania, when a child is dead, his best toy is keeped by his picture, for remember happy.’

  Jessica told them about Mrs Crawford, too. ‘Ah, she’s nuts, that Mrs Crawford,’ said Renko. ‘My mom says she went batty after her husband died.’

  Jessica picked up her wastebasket and held it right under Renko’s nose. ‘If she’s nuts, what about this? Last night I dreamed that I could see my mom in the kitchen and in my dream some dead leaves blew in through the doorway. When I woke up – look.’

  Renko scooped up a handful and scrunched them. ‘OK, so you’ve got yourself a wastebasket full of leaves. How do I know you didn’t get them out of the garden?’

  ‘Because I didn’t. They were all over my bed, I swear it. So where do you think they came from?’

  ‘You think this leafs come from wall?’ asked Elica. ‘How is this?’

  ‘I don’t really understand it myself. But I keep hearing those voices, and when I was lying in bed I felt sure that I could feel somebody stroking my hair. Mrs Crawford said that there’s another world, and you can step into it.’

  ‘Well, that’s one hell of a fascinating theory,’ said Renko. ‘But how exactly do you get into a solid wall?’

  ‘Mrs Crawford said you only have to believe.’

  ‘Oh, yes, like jumping off the top of the Empire State Building and believing that you can fly. You try walking into that wall and you’re going to end up with nothing but a flat nose.’ He squashed his hand against his face by way of illustration.

  ‘It cannot be true,’ Elica agreed.

  Renko went back to rummaging through her CDs. When he glanced up and saw that she was still looking at him, he said, ‘Go ahead. Be my guest. You want to walk into the wall, fine.’

  ‘Maybe there are times when you can do it and times when you can’t.’

  ‘Oh, sure, and maybe my pet hamsters talk to each other when I’m out of the room.’

  Although Renko was so skeptical about the existence of another world inside Jessica’s wallpaper, they had a cheerful evening, and they were reduced to rib-aching laughter when they tried to teach Elica how to say, ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppercorns.’

  Elica, in turn, taught Jessica and Renko the Romanian tongue-twister ‘douãsprezece cocostîrci pe casa lui Cogãlniceanu’. ‘This is meaning “twelve stork-birds on Mr Cogãlniceanu’s house”.’

  When it was time to leave, Jessica came to the front door to say goodbye. Elica took both of her hands and said, ‘Tonight we are very, very good friends, yes?’

  Jessica nodded. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow in school.’

  Renko had buttoned his windbreaker up all wrong. Jessica unfastened it and put it straight. Renko said, ‘Thanks,’ and then he kissed her on the lips. ‘You know something? I’ve had a really cool time.’

  Jessica blushed; she didn’t know what to say. As Renko followed Elica and Grandpa Willy down the driveway, he turned and gave her a grin. Now she understood why he had decided to stand up for her against Sue-Anne. He liked her. In fact, he really liked her. Maybe that was why he had been so aggressive toward her before. He hadn’t wanted to show anybody that he found her attractive.

  She had never had a boyfriend before. She didn’t exactly have one now, but Renko had kissed her, hadn’t he? – and not just on the cheek. She closed the door and went back toward the stairs, feeling as if she were walking on spongecake. Grannie said, ‘Jessica? Are you OK, sweetie-pie? You look a little hectic.’

  ‘No, no. I feel great. Thanks for having my friends around.’

  ‘I feel so sorry for that little Elica.’

  ‘Why? She’s fine.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s terrible, having her father locked up in an asylum?’

  ‘No, Grannie, he’s not in a mental asylum. He’s trying to get political asylum. Their whole family was persecuted in Romania because they were gipsies.’

  ‘Oh,’ blinked Grannie. ‘She doesn’t look very much like a gipsy.’

  ‘Her family used to live in Transylvania. You know, where Dracula came from.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Grannie, shaking her head. ‘Now we’re having vampires around for supper.’

  When Grandpa Willy had driven Renko and Elica home, he came up to Jessica’s bedroom and said, ‘You’ve made yourself a couple of real good friends there. I’m pleased about that.’

  He sat on the side of her bed and held her hand. The clock in the hallway chimed once, and he checked his wristwatch and said, ‘Ten thirty already. School again tomorrow. How was it, going back today?’

  ‘It was better,’ said Jessica.

  ‘No more of that bullying, then?’

  ‘What bullying?’ she asked, but again she couldn’t stop herself from blushing.

  ‘Come on, Jessica, Renko told me. He said that some of your classmates have been giving you a real difficult time. You should have told me, you know. I could have gone to the school and
knocked some heads together.’

  ‘I didn’t like to. I thought it would only make it worse. Besides, what with your heart and everything, I didn’t want to stress you out.’

  ‘Sweetheart, I’m an old man now, and I’d be lying to you if I said I was in peak condition, but since you lost your mom and dad it’s up to me to take care of you, no matter what the stresses and strains. It’s my job.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Hey, come on, you don’t have to be sorry. Your granny and me, we both love you to pieces. And Renko promised that he’s going to take care of you when you’re at school. He’s a good boy, that one.’

  Grandpa Willy kissed her on the forehead and then he left, but he left the door open a few inches like he always did. She lay back on her pillow and heard him shuffle his way downstairs.

  Then, ‘Your hot chocolate’s cold now, where have you been?’

  ‘Tucking in Jessica.’

  ‘She’s nearly seventeen, she doesn’t need tucking in! Your hot chocolate’s cold!’

  ‘I didn’t even ask you for any hot chocolate.’

  ‘That’s fine! Don’t worry about it! I’ll pour it down the sink!’

  ‘Did you hear me say I wanted hot chocolate?’

  ‘You always have hot chocolate!’

  And so on, and so on. They were still bickering an hour later, when Jessica began to close her eyes.

  A breeze blew across her face, very softly at first, and then more stiffly. At last she sat up in bed, looked around her and realized that the breeze was coming out of the wall. She raised her hand and she could feel it. She could even smell it, too. It smelled of flowers, and grass, and distant rain.

  ‘Please, help us,’ whispered a voice, and she could almost feel the breath against her ear.

  Jessica closed her eyes. She hesitated for a moment and then she spoke quite loudly. ‘I don’t know how to help you. You’ll have to tell me.’