Ghost Girl (4 page)

I had never heard such a fool question, but I told them anyway. “Two ham biscuits with apple butter and milk.”

They both looked sort of disappointed, but then Mr. Swanky's eyes landed on my feet and he seemed to spark up again. “So Miss April, why don't you smile real big now and let Hank here take your picture.” Then he poked Hank with his elbow and mumbled something out of the side of his mouth, thinking I couldn't hear. But I did.

“Make sure you get a good shot of those shoes,” he said.

I looked down at my boots, feeling my face turn hot. What was he staring at? They were just an old pair of Mama's. I had never thought much about them before. But now I could see they were just plain ugly, two sizes too big and full of cracks, like dried mud puddles. And my woolens had slipped down on one side, showing my frozen blue leg underneath.

“Look up at me, sweetheart!” Hank was hollering. “Up here at the camera.”

“
Come on, April
,” Mr. Swanky said. “Don't you want your picture in the paper?” His voice was turning mean, but I couldn't seem to lift up my head. I kept my eyes fixed on my boots and the frost on the ground underneath.

Then I heard another voice. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” a woman said. “I'd like to get all the children inside now so that we can begin.”

It was
her
, Miss Christine Vest, delivered to my side like a guardian angel. She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me into her soft gray coat with the fur collar.

The man with the camera stepped forward. “Wait a minute, Miss Vest. We just wanted to get a quick shot of this young lady before she goes inside.”

“Sorry, gentlemen,” Miss Vest called over her shoulder. “Maybe we'll have time for more photographs later.” Then she tightened her grip and started steering me toward the schoolhouse. “Now, don't worry,” she said under her breath. “I'll get you through these reporters. Just keep walking.”

As soon as we got closer, the men—reporters, she called them—began shouting questions. In the crowd, I could see more cameras, and I flinched at the flashes of light and the popping sounds they made as we pushed our way through. A marine hurried over to clear a path for us.

“Excuse us. . . . Pardon me,” Miss Vest said over and over again. She smiled and nodded when the reporters called her name but paid no mind to their questions. Before long, we were through the double doors, standing in a little hallway filled with rows of coat hooks.

Miss Vest yanked the door shut behind us. “
Goodness
,” she said, sighing and pulling off her coat. “Now I know why the Hoovers decided to stay in Washington this week.”

She helped me hang up my sweater, then stopped, giving me a sly look. “I'm just glad I caught up with you before those newspapermen had a chance to run you off down the mountain again.”

I smiled back.

“So you
are
the one I saw hiding behind the lumber pile on my first visit here,” she said. She smoothed her hand along the side of my head. “I thought so. I'd remember that hair anywhere.”

I blushed, suddenly wanting to fade into the row of coats hanging on the wall. She probably thought I was some sort of freakish thing with my hair and eyelashes, so pale and washed-out looking.

“Where are my manners?” Miss Vest said. “I haven't even introduced myself properly. I'll be your new teacher, in case you were wondering. And I'll be living here at the schoolhouse. That door behind you leads right into my apartment.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the door and nodded, pretending I didn't already know her name, that I hadn't been thinking about her moving into the schoolhouse for months.

I was still standing there gazing into her wide brown eyes when another door beside us burst open and I heard Miss Vest let out a little gasp.

“What on earth?” she yelped, and I followed her into what must have been the classroom. It looked like a lightning storm had hit. The electric lights were blinking on and off, and in every corner of the room there was some kind of commotion. Mrs. Woodard's baby was squalling and the Woodard boys were playing chase around the desks and a few other kids were drawing on the chalkboard while their parents gossiped in the corner.

Miss Vest hurried off. I saw her scoot across the room and catch little Alvin Hurt playing with the light switch. Like me, Alvin probably had never seen electric lights before except down at Taggart's. For a minute I stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do. Then I noticed Dewey and his older sister, Ida, standing nearby with three of the newspaper people gathered around them. Dewey was answering questions, beaming like a cat in the sun. You could have heard him all the way outside, bragging about his new shotgun and how he didn't really need to be at school, he had already taught himself to read.

One of the reporters was a lady wearing lipstick red enough to flag a train. I saw her smile and give something to Ida—a black enamel vanity case. Ida squealed when the lady leaned over and showed her how to snap it open. “Oh, thank you, Miss Daniels!” she cried. “Look at that! It's got a little mirror and rouge inside. Can I really keep it?”

“Sure you can, honey,” the lady said. Just then Ida looked up and caught me watching, but she didn't even smile or say hello. She twirled around and ran off to show her compact to Luella Hudgins and some other girls talking in the corner.

“Can I have your attention, please?” Miss Vest called from the front of the room. Through the crowd, I could see her standing by her desk, biting her lip as she waited for everyone to quiet down, but no one was listening. Dewey and the reporters went on grinning and talking. A few more kids and their parents filed in the door, and over by the woodstove Silas Hudgins spit a mouthful of tobacco juice into the coal bucket.

Miss Vest made an impatient face. Then she grabbed a wooden-handled bell on her desk and shook it. At first nobody paid attention to that, either, but then she shook it again—this time hard enough to set everyone's teeth to rattling. I almost laughed, thinking about Aunt Birdy and the bell at Taggart's.

The whole room got quiet as a graveyard. Even the Woodard baby stopped crying.

“Thank you,” Miss Vest said, looking a little embarrassed. She set the bell gently back on her desk. Then she said, “I'd like to welcome you all to the President's Mountain School. We've all been waiting for this day for a very long time. . . .”

Miss Vest spoke with her hands. I'd never seen anyone talk that way before, sweeping their arms back and forth through the air to make a point. But Miss Vest made it look natural, with her sparkly bracelet and her long, graceful fingers. I was watching so close I barely heard what she was saying until she stopped moving long enough to glance at her wristwatch.

“It's after nine o'clock,” she said, finishing her speech. “So I'm afraid we'll need to say goodbye to all our visitors and members of the press for now.”

The Woodard brothers, Dewey and Ida, Luella, Alvin, and all the other kids started scrambling for the finest pick of desks. By the time I found a place, the only one left was over in the corner beside a tall, ornery boy named Poke McClure. I'd seen Poke smile only once in my life, a long time ago when he had caught Riley and me wandering on his property. He had chased us through the woods, chucking crab apples at our backs.

Most of the parents were shuffling toward the door now, but the newspaper people didn't show any signs of leaving. When I turned around in my seat to give them an evil eye, I saw the lady reporter waving her hand back and forth.

“Oh, Miss Vest,” she called out. “Just a few more questions. What about the Hoovers? Didn't the president want to be here for opening day?”

Miss Vest shook her head. “The Hoovers didn't want to add to the confusion by coming up today. They plan on visiting a little later this spring, once the roads are a bit more passable and the children have settled into a good routine.”

A few reporters sighed and huffed and set to complaining in the back of the room. Miss Vest acted like she didn't hear. She pushed a piece of her wavy brown hair behind one ear and straightened a tall jar of dried pussy willows on her desk.

But the lady reporter wasn't done yet. “We hear you'll be living right here at the schoolhouse. What about your living quarters? Are they comfortable?”

“Very,” Miss Vest said, smiling. “The Hoovers have made wonderful arrangements for me. There's a sitting room with a fireplace and a modern kitchen and large bedroom—even a spare bedroom for guests upstairs.”

“Do you think we might have a little tour later?” the lady asked with a flutter of her thick black eyelashes. She sounded almost flirty.

Miss Vest stopped for a second, considering, then said, “I suppose that could be arranged.”

“Miss Vest!” someone else hollered from the doorway. I recognized the voice right off. It was Mr. Swanky again. “Can you tell us where you taught before coming to the Blue Ridge?”

Miss Vest's cheeks turned pink. “Well, this is my first official teaching position, but—”

“Your
first
?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Aren't you concerned, Miss Vest? I mean, this being your very first assignment, and here you are living all alone on top of a mountain in the dead of winter, responsible for teaching twenty-two children who have never stepped foot in a school before. . . . I mean, do you really think you're ready for this?”

“Well . . .” Miss Vest said in her careful voice, “the president and first lady of the United States seem to think so.”

Everybody in the room busted out laughing. I could have cheered at the bushwhacked look on Mr. Swanky's face.

Before he could say anything else, Miss Vest called out, “Sergeant Jordan?” and like magic, a tall marine with a bristle-brush haircut appeared and started herding all the reporters toward the coatroom.

When the room was still again, Miss Vest let out a big breath of air. She looked up and down the rows, taking us all in, and we stared back. At that moment I reckoned everyone was thinking the exact same thing—that Miss Christine Vest was the smartest, bravest, most beautiful woman we had ever laid eyes on.

The reporters kept coming.
Day after day a new round of notebook scribblers tromped through the classroom, pestering Miss Vest with more questions and leaving their muddy tracks on the floor. There were other visitors, too—men in dark suits from the school board, prissy do-gooder ladies from down in the valley, all sorts of nosy people hoping to catch sight of the Hoovers.

Then one morning a group of girls from a school named St. Anne's Academy came to visit. They all wore matching dresses and had ribbons in their hair, and they stared and whispered a lot until a short, chubby woman they called “Headmistress” told them to “please remain silent while observing.”

“We just wanted to see the wonderful things you're accomplishing here,” the woman said to Miss Vest with a smile full of teeth. “And we've brought along some donated school supplies and clothing for the children. Would you like the girls to bring in the donations now?”

“Oh, no,” Miss Vest said quickly. “Of course, we're extremely grateful for your donations, but it might be less disruptive for the class if you left the items on the porch when you go.”

I felt the muscles in my jaw relax a little. Thank goodness Miss Vest had enough sense to know how ashamed we would be if we had to sit there and watch those rich girls pass out their hand-me-downs. Still, I couldn't help wondering what kind of clothes they had brought for us. Maybe there would be starched, white blouses like the ones they were wearing, and enough red satin hair ribbons for every girl in the class.

“How long were you planning on staying?” Miss Vest asked. I could see she was working to stay polite.

“Oh, not more than an hour or two,” the headmistress answered. “We'll just stand back against the wall. Please continue on with your lessons. You just pretend we're not even here.”

Miss Vest pressed her lips together like she was holding back a puff of steam. “All right,” she finally managed to say. “We'll just finish up our phonics exercises and reading lesson, then we'll let you be on your way.” She turned on her heel and walked back to the chalkboard.

“All right, children,” Miss Vest began. “Let's pick up where we left off. Who wants to recite the alphabet today?”

No hands went up.

“No one? Well, then, let's recite together:
A . . . B . . . C . . .
”

With the girls in the back of the room watching, we did a fine job with the alphabet. Usually things were a lot worse. Nobody had learned to sit still yet. With all the wiggling and squirming going on, I sometimes felt as if I was in a room full of puppies. Whenever Miss Vest started to teach her lessons, the Woodard brothers scuffed their boots on the floor and let their eyes wander. Ida checked her face in her new compact five times a minute, and Alvin worked on the hole in his trousers till it was the size of a soup bowl. But the worst was Poke. All day long, he jiggled his long, skinny legs up and down under his desktop, till my own chair was shimmying back and forth across the floor.