Jesus Land. Julia Scheeres
car radios as they tear between cornfields, the explosions of their guns as they shoot cans or grackles or squirrels, silencing the world for a long moment afterward.
Jerome, David, and I walk into Harrison on the first day of school sporting matching Afros that envelop our heads like giant black cotton balls. As we stride down the entrance corridor bobbing and grinning like J.J. on Good Times, our classmates recoil in horror.
No.
This will not happen.
This is a nightmare.
I will myself awake and stare at the wind-up alarm clock on the bedside stand. It’s almost six. I stare at it until the black minute hand jerks over the red alarm hand and the clock rattles to life, jittering over the wood surface. I wait until the nightmare dissipates completely, then I slap it quiet.
It’s the Tuesday before classes start and swim team tryouts are in thirty minutes; the coach wants to make sure people can handle the early-morning workouts once school starts. I figure it might be a good way to meet potential friends.
I hear Mother rumbling around in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and cupboards, but by the time I walk into the great room, pulling my hair into a tight pony tail, she’s gone. I stand at the kitchen counter, gulping down coffee and generic granola doused with powdered milk. The sky is pink outside the great room windows, the orchard and garden wrapped in pink mist.
It’s a mile and a half to Harrison, a right on County Road 650 and a left on County Road 50. I had Mother measure it with the van’s odometer last Sunday after church.
After brushing my teeth, I wheel my ten-speed from the garage onto the gravel driveway. Lecka hears me and crawls from her doghouse, yawning and batting her tail in furious circles. She strains against her collar, whining, and I walk my bike over to her.
“Wish me luck, girl,” I say, tugging on her ears.
As I turn to mount my bike, the venetian blinds in the master bedroom window clap shut. Mother?
I shrug and mount the bike, standing on the pedals to force the Schwinn’s tires over the slippery gravel lane until I reach County Road 650. As I cruise by the Browns’ white clapboard house, a dog barks in the dark interior. Opposite the Browns’, a red barn slowly collapses into overgrown weeds. Next to it, a pair of meadowlarks trill in a sugar maple. Then there’s an alfalfa field, bright with yellow blossoms. I inhale the sweet air and am seized by a sudden joy at the beauty around me. It’s still early, and life hasn’t acquired its sharp edges.
The road dips over a small creek before passing a double-wide trailer mounted on railroad ties. Pink gingham curtains hang daintily in the windows, and the muted voice of a news announcer floats through the ripped screen door along with the smell of percolating coffee.
At the intersection of County Road 650 and County Road 50 is a small brick building where farmers met in the days before telephones to discuss business. I turn left onto the ragged asphalt ribbon of County Road 50, which bisects cornfields and dairies until it reaches town, ten miles away. As I pedal up a small rise, the concrete expanse of William Henry Harrison High School swoops into view, sprouting mushroom-like between fields.
My early-morning joy slams into stomach-grinding fear. I glance at my watch—6:25—before shifting my bike into tenth gear and crouching low behind the handlebars, racing toward my new school. Bring it on.
As I ride closer, I notice tire tracks have ripped donuts into the front lawn. Across from the school, a cow barn is covered in graffiti. “HARRISON KICKS ASS!” “RAIDERS ROCK!” “WESTSIDE IS CRUISIN’ FOR A BRUISIN’!” West Side. That’s where our three older siblings went to school; it’s Lafayette’s smart high school, where the Purdue professors send their kids.
I swerve into the driveway and pedal to the back of the building, remembering the location of the gym from our orientation tour. There they are, about twenty girls, clumped around the back door, bags dumped at their feet. A few sit on the curb, smoking. They look up at me with sullen faces when I coast into view. I am relieved that this look is common to all teenage girls and not just me, as Mother believes.
“What’s wrong with you?” she’ll ask, scowling. “Why don’t you smile more?”
She’s one to talk.
The bike racks are located across from the gym entrance, and as I unwind my bike chain from under the seat, I sneak peeks at the girls. A couple of the smokers I’ve seen before, a fat girl with blond pigtails and a girl in a Tab Cola shirt.
The day after we moved in, Jerome, David, and I were so bored that we rode five miles along the shoulder of Highway 65 to a Kwik Mart. A group of girls, stuffed into cut-offs and tube tops, their eyes raccoonish with black eyeliner, were leaning against the shaded wall of the cement shack. They sucked on popsicles and cigarettes and jutted out their hips at the trucks and jacked-up Camaros that pulled in for gas.
They tittered when we glided into the station, panting and sweat-stained. It was a scorcher, one of those days where the heat feels likely to peel your skin right off. Jerome stopped beside the gas pumps and gawked at the girls while David and I propped our bikes against the building.
“Better watch out, Rose Marie,” one of them shouted. “I think he likes you.”
Rose Marie twisted her dirty blond pigtail around a finger, staring at Jerome and sliding her grape popsicle in and out of her mouth real slow. Her friends squawked with laughter, then poked their fingers in their mouths and made gagging noises.
Jerome grinned at Rose Marie and tucked his fists under his biceps to make the muscles pop out, Totally Clueless. Seeing this exchange, I ran into the Kwik Mart and bought an orange push-up before racing away on my bike. I didn’t want to be seen with the boys at that moment.
“What’d you take off for?” David asked when he caught up to me, an ice cream sandwich melting in his hand. Jerome was farther behind him.
“The smell of gasoline makes me sick,” I lied.
After threading the bike chain between the front tire and the rack, I click the combination lock shut and stand to face the crowd.
Dozens of eyes land on my face, then slide away. It’s a small community. They know who I am. I’m the girl from that new family, the one with the blacks. Sure enough, Rose Marie elbows the Tab girl and they both stare at me, smirking. I unzip my backpack and pretend to dig around in it for something important as I cut a wide circle around them.
There’s a girl sitting alone against the wall and I walk in her direction. She’s dark-haired and olive-skinned, blatantly foreign to these parts as well. We belong together, she and I; we’re both outsiders. She watches me approach, but looks away when I stop and lean against the wall a few feet away from her.
I look at my watch. 6:37.
“So the coach is late?” I ask, trying to sound casual as I zip my backpack closed.
“Seems that way,” she says without looking at me. She plucks a dandelion from the ground and flicks its head off between her index finger and thumb. Mary had a baby and its head popped off . . . Her shoulder-length black hair is feathered about her face, Farrah Fawcett–style, just like mine and every other girl’s here.
“You nervous?” I ask, a bit loudly.
She shrugs.
Across the road, a row of cows plods single file toward the graffitied barn. “EAT, SHIT, AND DIE!” someone wrote over the wide entrance.
“So, what’s your name?” I ask her, sitting in the grass. Talk to me, please. Finally she looks at me, her black bangs skimming her dark eyes like a frayed curtain.
She says something in a foreign language.
“What?”
“You can call me Mary.”
“What country are you from?”
“Arcana,” she