Eleanor (10 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
n the years between third grade and tenth grade, Eleanor had no friends. She was not invited to parties. She did not throw any of her own. She spent many afternoons in the counselor's office defending her right to be shy. When the school counselor reminded her that she'd had a friend before, that nice bushy-haired boy, David Venn, she'd say only that he was gone.

She'd tried other friends before David and some after, but everyone turned on her eventually. David's constancy was unique. The others were shallow and cruel and didn't love her, so she did not love them. It wasn't some magical unconditional love that she wanted, just a sincerity that Tabitha had once told her was either an innate gift or the product of profound experience. Her mother told her to seek out the good people, but to be careful. She was a special little girl, and she had secrets to keep.

In her years of searching the Jamesford school halls for friends, she'd found no one worthy of her trust besides David. She had shared some of her secrets with him, and he had listened and not judged, even when she would have liked him to. He said he believed her. That was the thing. He said he believed her and she believed him. “Even if they're tall tales, if you believe them, they're real,” he'd said.

“So you think I'm telling tales and not truth?”

“They're true,” he said. “I believe them. I believe them as much as I believe in China—no more than that. I've never met anyone who's been to China but you've been a coyote and I think that's cool.”

Their friendship survived against petty social stresses. David endured the teasing of having a girl best friend until everyone finally just left them alone. David went out for games with other kids, and he was invited to parties Eleanor didn't attend, but always he was there for her. He began calling her his best friend and kept it up until she believed it. He said that made him happy because “it was the best tale he ever told and as true as north and television.”

David once asked Eleanor to show him the coyote.

“I can't,” she said. “I'm not good at it. It hurts and it's ugly, and I don't want you to think of me like that.” Then she started to cry.

“Ah, don't cry,” he'd said. “It's okay. I'll never make you do nuthin' you don't wanna do.” And he never had.

David was kept at the principal's office until lunch. He was sullen and visibly irritated when he sat his lunch tray next to Eleanor's.

“I'm sorry,” Eleanor said immediately. “I didn't mean to get you into trouble.”

“You didn't,” he said. “I did. Or rather, that witch Mrs. Hart did. I thought I liked her. What got into her? Last week I could do no wrong; today she gives me three detentions.”

Eleanor shrugged. “I got detention, too.”

“Why? For your paper? Let me read it; I bet she's up in the night.”

“Maybe. But I asked to take yours instead.”

“You did? Why?”

“So you wouldn't get in trouble.”

“And she gave you one for trying to help me? Typical.” He shook his head and ate some spaghetti.

“Tonight after school. Chemistry homework?” he asked.

“Okay, sure,” she said. They ate in silence for a while. The food improved his mood.

“Ah, wait a minute,” he said. “I've got detention. We can't.”

“I've got it, too,” Eleanor said.

“You think they'll let us work on it together?”

“We'll find out,” she said hopefully. This might not be so bad after all.

“Man, that sucks you have detention. Mrs. Hart made an enemy today,” he said, and Eleanor knew he was right, and not only in the way he meant it.

Eleanor stayed after school for the next three days. Though her detention was only for one, David's was three, and so Eleanor arranged to tutor him in the library. The library staff didn't mind. They'd been surprised to see them but didn't ask questions. They allowed them to sit together and do their homework away from the chronic detention-sitters who spent the hour with their heads down on their desks, asking to use the lavatory every ten minutes

On the following Thursday, Russell and Tanner reappeared in school. Eleanor studied them carefully. They carried themselves arrogantly like they always did, but she sensed their confidence had been shaken, their boisterousness muted ever so much. Besides a patch of rough scabs on Russell's hands, Eleanor saw no other physical change from when she'd seen them last. She carefully listened to them all day, watched them whenever she could, and was caught looking at them several times. They were tight-lipped. When asked where they'd been, they avoided the question, mumbled something about “hanging out at home and stuff,” and then changed the subject. Eleanor waited for David's name to cross their lips, but it didn't. Even when surrounded by the gang in a tightly formed knot at lunch, no one spoke of David or where the boys had been. Neither did they mention Halloween at all. Eleanor wanted to hear their explanations, their interpretations, and their plans for David, but she heard only timid silence. She had to be satisfied with that.

Friday, when Mr. Graham identified David as the student who'd improved the most in science that quarter, and handed out final grade notices, Russell didn't even blink. She'd expected some under-his-breath remark about cheating or sucking up, but none came. David's success didn't merit his attention. Eleanor smiled.

David had caught on and didn't need more tutoring in science, but the two friends continued to study together twice a week after school. If their assignments were done, they'd just talk. David helped Eleanor rewrite her report for Mrs. Hart, adding direct quotes from the teacher's lectures he'd written down and used himself.

“That's what teachers want to hear,” he said. “Their own voices.”

Her paper received a flat C, which incensed David.

“It's better than mine,” he said. “And I got extra points—one hundred and ten percent. She's got it in for you.”

Eleanor hated to think he was right, but as the November shadows stretched across the little Wyoming town, she became more and more convinced that was indeed the case. No more did she leave Eleanor alone in the back to stare out the window and slide by without notice. Daily, or at least so it seemed, she'd flash on some question and put it to her directly, the harder the better. She seemed to relish Eleanor's discomfort and wouldn't let up until she gave an answer she could ridicule in front of the class.

Mrs. Hart was subtle. Not overtly cruel. She did nothing that would show obvious malice, no direct insults or petty teasing, but there was still such a change in her attitude toward Eleanor that the entire class soon realized something was going on. Eleanor, the class wallflower for so many years, was now a target. Most of the kids shook their heads, grateful it wasn't them; others joined in the fun and took the opportunity to build up their own egos at her expense, often reciting her mumbling answers back to her in the hallway.

“Food, huh?” said Alexi one time. “That's the entire motivation of Jack London's character. ‘Food?' Now there's a deep reading.”

Eleanor had said survival, but Mrs. Hart had heard “food” and ran with it as an example of how shallow interpretations hinder deeper understanding of a text. “It's existential,” she'd said.

David, for his part, fumed. He raised his hand to back her up, but Mrs. Hart seldom called on him anymore and hadn't then.

In English and history, Eleanor was a marked woman, but in her other classes, she was left alone as usual.

Late in November, Mr. Blake paused the class to draw special attention to Eleanor's accent and pronunciation of Spanish vocabulary. The next time he called on her, she deliberately failed to trill a double R. It was so obviously an intentional mistake that David asked her about it after school.

“I just forgot,” she said.

“Eleanor, you just lied to me. Friends don't lie to each other.”

“Can we talk about this tomorrow? I gotta get home.”

“You walking again?”

“Yes.”

“I'll come with you.”

She didn't object. They walked easily together along the cold, windblown Jamesford roads to Eleanor's outlying house.

“So why'd you do it?”

“So he'd stop calling on me,” she said.

“Why? You're super good with languages—animal and human. Why hide it?”

“I don't like being noticed.”

David thought about that for a while.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said. “But you gotta take a few chances now and again.”

“I take plenty,” she said.

“You are so different when you're with me than with anyone else, aren't you?”

“My mom,” she said, then added, “No, you're right. I'm different with you.”

“Me too,” he said. “With you, I mean. I really hate this town sometimes. Sometimes I wish we hadn't moved back.”

“Why did you come back?” she asked. She'd waited months for him to tell her, but he had never brought up the subject. He deflected it from everyone, other friends, teachers, even her when she'd made a half-hearted query in October. He hesitated this time, too.

“I told you about Spanish,” she said.

“Yeah, you did,” he said. “We had to leave Georgia. There was a fire right before my father shipped out. It burned up our house and most of two neighbors'. Everyone was pretty sore at us, blamed us for it. With Dad gone, it became too much for Mom. The off-base rent was horribly high and without Dad, there was really no reason to stay. Mom just decided to move us back here.”

“You don't have people here anymore, do you?” she asked. She knew David's mother had grown up around Jamesford and brought his father there after David was born, but she didn't think Karen's family was still around. And Eleanor knew there were no Venns in the county phone book. She knew because she looked every year.

“No, they're all gone. But Mom figures this place will be good for Dad if he comes back.”

“He might not come back?” Eleanor said, then felt stupid and insensitive. “I'm sorry. Is it really dangerous where he is?”

“Maybe. But that's not it. Dad's having some issues,” he said. “He's in a combat zone and all that. It's got to be pretty nerve-wracking.”

“Look there, David,” Eleanor said, pointing under a car.

“What is it?”

“There, that black and white cat. Do you see it?”

David squinted and bent down as Eleanor pointed.

“No. I don't,” he said.

Eleanor knelt down on her haunches and mewed. It was a perfect mimic. David was surprised at the pitch. The cat answered immediately, left the shadow, and trotted across the street to Eleanor's hands.

“How could you see that under the car?”

Eleanor was ready for the question. “I was looking,” she said.

The cat rubbed itself on David's ankle. He bent down and picked it up.

“It's missing an eye,” he said.

“Yes, I think the boy that lives in that house shot him with a BB gun. His mother too. I haven't seen her in a while. She had a litter. I see only this one and one other. The other lives in the neighbor's garage.”

“You think the kid killed the mother cat?”

“Yes, I do. And three kittens. People are mean, David. Most people. The vast majority of them are selfish and cruel. This cat was the best and bravest of them all and what did it get? A BB in the eye.”

“It's still alive,” he said. Eleanor shrugged her shoulders noncommittally.

David petted the cat who purred like it had found paradise.

“I keep thinking of that big trucker who saved Wens and me,” he said. “Not everyone is mean and selfish.”

Eleanor shrugged again.

David put the cat down, and they walked on. The cat followed them for half a block and then ran back under the car.

“You saved my butt in science,” he said after a while. “You're a good person. I want you to know that, Miss Eleanor the invisible.”

“What are friends for,” she said.

“The others have accepted me again, more or less. I could start introducing you around, you know? Meet the others again.”

“You assume I don't know them,” she said.

“Maybe you only think you do. They're not all bad. Well, some are kinda lousy, I'll grant you, but not all. Don't hold grudges, if that's what you're doing. People change. They learn. They improve.”

“Change is usually superficial. People are only nice to get something from you. They don't really want to be nice. They pretend.”

David stopped. He took Eleanor's hands and turned her to see her face.

“Is that what you think I'm doing? Do you think I was nice to you just so you'd help me study?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “You're different. The exception that proves the rule.”

“What rule?”

“The rule that people are mean, base, and cruel.”

“That sounded rehearsed,” he said.

“I've thought it for a long time.”

“But I'm not? What makes me different?”

“I don't know,” she said, turning to continue the walk. David kept one of her mittened hands and walked beside her. “I don't know why you're special. I'd like to know why you and Tabitha are good when all the rest are so bad.”

“Love,” he said. “We love you.”

“That doesn't mean what it used to when we were young,” she said. “Maybe you and my mom have a mutated gland that emits a certain protein which makes you different. I don't know.”

“So it's got to be chemical? Physical? What about spiritual?”

She shook her head. “Don't bring in the supernatural,” she said. “That just plays on fear and ignorance. And those play to violence and murder.”

“Murder? You're getting pretty dramatic,” he said.