Mira in the Present Tense (37 page)

Authors: Sita Brahmachari

At first, people's voices are quiet, almost whispers, but then they start to get louder and some people smile and laugh. I go out to the pond to look for frogs. Simon is sitting there like a garden elf with Piper lying quietly by his side. Simon points to a frog's eyes peeping out of the water. We watch it, all three of us, and it watches us. We do not move an inch. Then suddenly it leaps and splashes gloop at us, sending Piper into a frenzy of yapping.

After everybody has gone there is a lot of clearing up to do. I curl up on the garden bench next to the pond, where I used to sit with Nana. Out of the corner of my eye I see the frog make a dash back into the water. I get the feeling that it's been watching us all this time. I think of all the fairy stories Nana loved to tell me, about frogs turning into princes, about princesses sleeping the sleep of the dead but, right at the last moment, being magically woken by a prince's kissâ¦all those happy endings.

I watch Dad's sad shoulders as he locks the wooden gate onto our secret gardenâ¦and a time when I still believed in fairy stories.

Sunday, 5 June

Today, I don't feel like me anymore. It's like my whole life, up to now, I was someone else. I look at this me in the mirror, trying to see who she is. I brush her hair and wash her face where a rash of spots coats her once-smooth forehead. I choose some clothes for her to wear. Everyone will just have to get used to the ideaâ¦this girl in the mirror is me.

Mum comes in and puts her arm around me and we sit together looking at our reflections. I try to fix this in my mind, the way my mum's head leans in close to mine, the place where her hand rests on my arm, the slight curl up to nearly a smile on the corner of her lips. The way that she is like me, skin color, same hair, same little nose, same round face, same look in her eyesâ¦and the ways that she is not.

She walks over to the easel and picks up my painting and studies it for a long time.

“That one's for you, Mum,” I tell her.

“You've had your ears pierced already,” smiles Mum, looking back at me.

“Can I?” I ask, getting ready to explain the whole period thing to her.

“Yes, I promised, didn't I?”

No questions, nothing.

“What a mess!”

Mum scurries around my bedroom, tidying, folding, and picking up the clothes I have scattered all over the floor. Usually she'd tut and tell me off, but today she just starts sorting through, occasionally asking me if I've worn this or that.

She opens my wardrobe and sighs as the pile of clothes I have flung in there in one of my tidying-up sessions avalanches toward her. I pass her the clothes and she places them on hangers in my wardrobe. I wonder how it is that Mum doing something so normal, like picking up clothes and folding them and just not saying anything at all about my periods starting or JidÃ© Jackson, can make me love her so much.

I thread a piece of navy blue ribbon through the holey stone, measuring its length against mine, threading it through, looping it around and pulling it tight. Then I start to wrap layer upon layer of tissue, just enough so that she won't make out the shape. I choose silvery gray paperâ¦the color of the sky on the day I found this holey stone.

Now I am twelveâ¦

I glue a love-heart shape onto the top layer of tissue and sprinkle it with the leftover glitter from Nana's funeral. Now I get it, why Nana spent so much time and care and love wrappingâ¦presents are the giver's secret, just for a moment, until they pass from one hand to another.

The letterbox clanks. I take the stairs in threes, hurling myself down, flinging open the front door. Standing there, with a worried look on her face, is Millie, but before she can say anything I order her to close her eyes and hold out her hand, pressing my secret parcel into her palm. She opens her wise owl eyes and giggles as she slowly unwraps my presentâ¦it's the moment before you actually know what's inside that's the most exciting. Millie traces the stone with her fingers through the thin layers of tissue paper.

“A holey stone! You found me one!” Millie throws her arms round me and clamps me in the tightest hug, as if I've given her the most precious jewel in the whole world. When we unclasp each other, she tips her head forward, letting her hair ripple toward the ground in a golden wave so that I can tie the leather lace in a tiny knot at the nape of her neck.

“I'm sorry I wasn't here for the funeral,” she says.

“It's OK!”

I check my watch. It's still so early, not even eight o'clock, but we walk into school anyway. The first person we see is Orla, waiting on a bench outside the school gates. When we're halfway down the path, she turns, and for a minute I think she looks pleased to see us.

“Sorry about your nana, Mira.”

“Thank you.”

“I heard her on the radio. My mum and meâ¦on the program about the pope. Why didn't you tell us she was famous?”

“She wasn't really,” I shrug. I don't know what to say. Orla has never ever been this nice to me.

“What's
that
?” she asks, pointing at Millie's holey stone necklace.

Here goes, I think. Now she'll go in for the kill.

“It's a present from Mira.”

Then Orla notices my holey stone, which I've forgotten to tuck inside my blouse.

“My nana and me, we used to collect them on the beach.”

Orla nods.

“Could you get me one?” she asks, smiling shyly at me.

I can't believe that Orla Banks wants
me
, Mira Levenson, to find her a holey stone!

“Looks like your nana's started a new craze,” laughs Millie.

At break we sit on our wall, Millie and me, as if nothing's changedâ¦

“You found your charm then?” Millie points to my wrist to get a closer look.

“Turns out I never lost it,” I say.

She tells me about her holiday and I tell her about Nana Josie's funeral. I want to tell her about pretending to go to hers for tea but going to JidÃ©'s instead and about JidÃ© and his sister and Pat Print turning up at Nana's funeralâ¦and about my dreamsâ¦but somehow I can't think of a way to tell her any of these things. Suddenly I remember my deal with Notsurewho Notsurewhat the day I saw Pat Print on the beach; the day I found Millie's holey stone.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I ask Millie.

She shoots me one of her “Do you have to be so random?” looks.

“No, Mira, definitely not.”

That's what I love about Millie. She's always so sure about everything.

“How about spirits or angels then?”

“I spy with my little eyeâ¦” Millie stares through her new holey stone, scanning the sky for signs of spirits or angels.

“None that I can see,” she laughs, focusing her gaze closer to home until it comes to rest on Ben Gbemi.

And through the eye of
my
holey stone I spy JidÃ© Jackson striding toward me, closer and closerâ¦Nana Josie's voice fills my headâ¦

“People who need charms, you'll know them when you meet them.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Jenna Stempel
Cover image by John Lund/Sam Diephuis/Blend Images/Getty Images

Published in 2012 by Albert Whitman & Company

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Park Ridge, Illinois 60068

www.albertwhitman.com