All the Colors of Time (19 page)

Anastasia smiled. Now that was interesting. She scanned the
buildings along the cobbled main street. Ah, yes, there it was—a theater. She
could see the ornate marquee peeking up at her between elm sentinels.

“Looks like they’ve picked another homespun backwater,” said
a voice over her shoulder.

She turned, noting that her brother Tamujin’s face looked
just as dour as it had the last time she’d seen it. “What’d you expect?” she
asked. “They do this every time we start whining.”

“I don’t whine, Stasi.”

“No, you pout. The twins whine. I sulk.”

She swept moist strands of deep burgundy hair from her
forehead with one hand and brushed her wind-climbing skirts down with the
other. Her eyes searched the trees.

“There’s the school,” she said finally and pointed.

“Oh, royal. Another one-roomer?”

“No . . . It looks kind of nice. All brick
and white-washed and a green roof.”

“Don’t get too attached to that green roof, sis. We won’t be
here that long.”

“I wish—”

“If wishes were wheels, gramma would’ve been a trolley car,”
Tamujin muttered.

Stasi giggled. “Where’d you dig that up?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Somewhere about three stops ago.”

“What does it mean?”

“Who knows. Does it matter?”

“Anastasia! Tamujin! Dinner!”

Tamujin Jones made a goofy face. “Sounds real down home, don’t
she?”

Stasi giggled again. “Well, at least she didn’t ring that
stupid triangle she got in Armadillo or wherever that was.”

“Amarillo.” Tamujin snorted. “Armadillo! Geezumminy, Stasi,
no wonder you’re having so much trouble with geography. You’ve gotten it mixed
up with zoology!”

oOo

The new school was okay, Anastasia decided. It was old and
neat and smelled of ancient wood varnish, fresh wood oil and cedar. Their parents
had done the obligatory first-day-in-a-new school thing and delivered them to
the Admin office all smiles and pride. They’d filled out the paperwork, kissed
their children and gone off for a day of getting-to-know-Papillion.

“Have fun,” they’d said, but their parting message, as ever
was, “Do try to fit in.” So much for fun.

Now they sat in a neat row on a wooden bench in the Admin
office waiting for the vice-principal, Mrs. Thorpe, to escort them to their
classes. She arrived in due course, wreathed in smiles, flourishing four fresh,
new, file folders. A pair of spectacles dangled from a cord around her neck.

The twins stared at her, making Anastasia wish she could
reach across Tam’s lap and pinch them.

“Well!” The apple-cheeked face beamed its freshness at them.
She even smelled like apples. “What a lovely family! Your parents are such
lucky people. So . . .” She set the spectacles on her nose and
flipped open the top file folder. “Your names are . . . very
unusual. Anastasia?” Her eyes bounced kinetically back and forth between Stasi
and her little sister.

“That’s me,” said Stasi. “Please, call me Stasi.”

“Oh.” She pulled a pencil from behind one ear (the twins
fairly ogled) and made a note, then went on to the next folder. “Tamu—?”

“Tamujin,” he said. “I go by Tam.”

“That is unusual. What nationality is that?”

“Mongolian.”

“It’s Genghis Kahn’s first name,” offered the staring,
blonde gamine next to him.

“Oh, my! How did they ever settle on that?”

Tam turned beet red and threw his little sister a get-even
glance. “Dad’s a . . . a historian. He’s fascinated with that
period.”

“I see . . . well . . .” She
made a note, then glanced at the twins. “Now, you’d be Constantine, I’ll bet.”

“Connie,” said Tam.

“Con,” said Constantine. “Connie is a girl’s name, here.”

“And Tahireh . . . my, that’s pretty.”

“It’s Persian,” explained Tahireh proudly, then announced, “Tahireh
was a martyr in the cause of women’s suffrage.”

Mrs. Thorpe’s face froze, whether because the vocabulary was
bit precocious for an eight year old, or because either martyrdom or suffrage
was an unusual topic of conversation for a child that age, Stasi couldn’t
guess. Mrs. Thorpe wriggled her lips back into a smile.

“Really? How interesting.”

“They strangled her with her own scarf and threw her body
down a well. Just before she died she said, ‘You
can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.’”

Mrs. Thorpe let out a nervous giggle. “How precocious!” she
burbled, then whisked them away to their classes.

Stasi thought she’d like her teacher. Her name was Mildred
Tindall and she was young, pretty, and quick to praise. She exclaimed over what
a pretty name Anastasia was and said she thought Stasi’s dress was strikingly
beautiful and that she liked the unusual color of her hair.

Stasi was not so sure she was going to like her classmates.
She overheard one of them say her dress was “antique” and her hair was “weird”
and her name was “foreign.”

This is a learning experience, she told herself and ignored
the whispers and the fact that she really did look dreadfully out of place
among these wearers of plaid and poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and
natural-colored pony tails.

By lunch time she had acquired a reputation as a Brain and
heard the words “teacher’s pet” whiffle softly through the air over her head.
She thought briefly about playing dumb, but Dad said never to stifle your
natural abilities to suit anyone else’s expectations and besides, it rubbed her
the wrong way.

She was on her way to the cafeteria when she felt someone
lift her ankle-length skirt from behind. She skittered sideways, nearly
colliding with a group of loitering boys and turned to find herself confronting
three of her female classmates. They peered at her archly, their notebooks
clasped to their chests like battle shields.

“Why do you wear such weird clothes?” asked one of them. “Beth
says it’s because you’re a Quaker or something. Are you a Qu-a-a-a-ker?”

Her voice wavered and cracked on the last word and the two
girls flanking her giggled.

“No. I’m a Bahá’í,” Stasi told them.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a religion. Excuse me. I’m going to be late for lunch.”

She started to turn away, but the tallest of the three moved
to cut off her path of retreat.

“So why do you wear such weird clothes?”

Stasi muzzled her considerable temper and said, “I just
haven’t had a chance to get any new clothes since we got here. This was the
height of fashion the last place we lived.”

“Oh, yeah? And where was that, Mars?”

Stasi drew herself to her full height. “Paris, actually.
France.”

The girls exchanged glances. “Prove it,” said the first one,
truculently. “Speak some French, if you can.”

“Mais, bien sur. Ce
que vous dites est folle. Maintenant, excusez-moi. J’ai faim.”
And she
slipped quickly away.

“What’d she say? What did you say?” They were on her heels.

“I said, ‘I’m hungry.’”

“All that, just to say you’re hungry?”

She kept moving.

“You didn’t really speak French! You just made that up!” “I’ll
bet you got in trouble for doing that to your hair!”

She escaped into the cafeteria.

She was standing in the chow line craning her neck to see
where Tam and the twins might be when she felt someone jiggle her elbow. Oh,
God, please! she thought. Not again. She turned to find a pair of pale,
spectacled eyes peering owlishly at her from beneath a fringe of overly curly
dishwater blonde hair.

“Hi, I’m Elaine. I sat behind you in class today.”

“Oh, yeah. Hi.”

“You just have to ignore them, you know.” She tilted her
head toward where Stasi’s tormenters flirted with some male students. “They
really do say the silliest things. I like your hair,” she added, eyeing the
deep red bob. “It’s different.”

“Thanks.” Anastasia managed to turn her ogle into a shy smile.
“Would you like to eat lunch with us? My brothers and little sister should be
around somewhere.”

The smile bounced back from Elaine’s silver-clad teeth with
increased amplitude and Stasi felt a sharp twinge of precognitive agony. For
any member of the Jones family, a friend gained was a friend lost.

oOo

After suffering Tam’s disapproving glances, Constantine’s
moping and Tahireh’s constant chatter on the walk home, Anastasia was ready to
explode. Her mother’s half-cheery, half-anxious, “Well, how was the first day?”
was like a match to a short fuse.

“Oh, Mom, it was awful! They teased me about my name, my
clothes, my hair . . . everything! Mom, when can I get some new
clothes?”

Helen Jones went for the obvious out like a hunted vixen
through a privet hedge. “Why, sweetie, all you had to do was ask. How’s
tomorrow after school?”

Stasi rolled her eyes. “I may swoon!”

“It’s a date. Maybe you should wear something a little less . . .
conspicuous tomorrow. okay?”

“No problem. I’ll go see what I can dig out.” Stasi
disappeared up the stairs.

Helen Jones scanned her remaining children’s faces warily. “So,
how about the rest of you?”

“It was terrible,” grumbled Constantine. “Everybody called
me ‘Smarty-pants.’ Nobody would play with me at recess because they thought I
was showing off for the teacher.”

“Were you showing off for the teacher?”

“Mo-om! All I did was add a column of figures.”

“Six digit figures,” inserted Tahireh. “In his head.”

“Well, what’m I s’posed to do—play dumb?”

Helen grimaced slightly. “Of course, you shouldn’t play
dumb, but you could pretend to be working it out on the black board.”

Con glowered and stuffed small fists into his pockets.

“I s’pose.”

Unprompted, Tahireh announced, “I had fun. I told the whole
class about my namesake. They thought it was so dramatic. I’m going to like it
here.” And she took herself off to the backyard. Con followed like a glowering
shadow.

“Well?” Helen swung away from her roll-top desk and regarded
her remaining child with some trepidation. He still hung back in the archway
between the entry hall and the parlor, looking sullen and rebellious.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing,” he said dully, and turned to head for the stairs.
He paused in mid-turn and looked back over his shoulder. “Stasi made a friend
today.” His eyes accused her.

She smiled weakly. “That’s nice.”

“No, Mom, it’s not nice. She does this every time. I’ve
learned not to, but she just keeps doing it.”

“Then, she obviously needs to do it. She’s fifteen. That’s a
critical time for friends.”

“Oh? Well, how long are we going to be here then, Mom? Is
Stasi going to graduate from this school with her friends? Am I?”

His mother’s smile strained at the eyes and slipped at the
corners of her mouth. “I don’t know, dear. It depends.”

“On what, Mom? On what, this time?”

“The book your father is researching—”

“The Book. The Project. The Grand Theory. The Curiosity.
Jesus, Mom, are we ever going to have a real home with real friends that we can
invite into the house?”

Helen’s expression changed radically from Mom-on-the-run to
Mom reproachful. “We do not use that name as an expletive, Tamujin Jones. And
this is a real home. Home isn’t a place, you know. It’s people. Family.”

“Yeah, I know. But sometimes family’s not enough. Sometimes
we need friends, too. You and Dad get so caught up in your work sometimes.”

“I know. I know. But why can’t you make real friends here?”

“C’mon, Mom. You know why.”

“Lots of people move around—military personnel, field
scientists like your father and I—”

“But they can at least write to the friends they leave
behind. Call them. Visit them. We can’t do any of those things, Mom. We just
keep leaving little bits of ourselves all over the place while we get smaller
and smaller.”

He turned away from her then, and bounded up the stairs. She
sat for a moment, thinking, then dropped her notes into the drawer of her desk,
shutting and locking it. Then she went to call her husband.

oOo

They were halfway through a semi-glum dinner, when the
elder Joneses started glancing at each other the way parents do when they’ve
been plotting behind their children’s backs. After several minutes of this,
Troy Jones made an announcement.

“Mom and I have been talking,” he said, and Anastasia tried
not to recall the last announcement that had been so prefaced. “Congratulations,”
returned Tam, and asked for the mashed potatoes.

His father ignored him. “We realize our existence is rather . . .
Bohemian.”

“Is that what it is?” mumbled Tam.

“We know you get a little lonely and sometimes feel a bit
out of place.”

“Try all the time,” said Tam.

His mother interceded. “Tamujin, quit behaving like a verbal
sniper and let your father finish what he’s trying to say.”

“Yeah,” agreed Tahireh. “This could be good.”

Troy Jones bowed his head to his youngest daughter. “Thank
you, Tar. Now. what I’m trying to get to is this: We know how hard it is on you
to have to keep your friends at arm’s length, so we’ve decided you don’t have
to do that anymore.”

“Excuse me?” said Stasi, not sure she’d heard him right.

Helen smiled at her children brightly. “We’ve decided you
can bring your friends over. Isn’t that great?”

Four pairs of young eyes stared at her.

“Seriously, Mom?” asked Stasi.

“Seriously.”

“
Magnifique!
”
exclaimed Tahireh.

“Of course,” her father cautioned, “there will have to be
some new house rules to accommodate this. We can’t have people wandering into
restricted areas, and we can’t mark them as restricted areas without arousing
too much curiosity. So, we’ll have to disguise those areas. You’ll also have to
be careful with your personal belongings. Okay? You won’t be able to leave
stuff out where your friends can stumble over it.”