Cursed! (2 page)

Later, while Lewis played in the tub, I told him about having to wait so long to get into the bathroom.

“Just tell Grandma about the Spirit Man,” he said, floating a boat past a family of rubber ducks. “She'll move it.”

“I can't,” I said. “It's too, too—just Jane.” I felt my cheeks go hot.

Mom and Dad like to describe our family as
Creative
and
Bold
and a little
Wild
. They smile to show they don't mind the wildness.

Then they continue, “Except for Jane, of course.” They smile again, to show they don't really mean it, but those smiles are always a little tight. So I couldn't tell them I was afraid of a wooden statue. I didn't have to explain to Lewis. He understood. He always understood.

He patted my knee with a wet hand. “You're the best Jane,” he said. “My best Jane.”

CHAPTER 2
Just Jane

Our week at Grandma's was wonderful. We all love Sooke, on the southwest end of Vancouver Island, overlooking the wild Pacific Ocean. The weather was perfect: sunny and clear with just enough wind to keep us from getting too hot. Mom and Dad hadn't brought much work, so they had time to hang out with us, to listen to Lewis's stories, spend time at the beach and drive into Victoria. Even BB was nice. But no matter where we went, the Spirit Man was always waiting when we got back to Grandma's.

I remembered Kara saying, “Jane, you have to face the Spirit Man.”

But I couldn't. I couldn't even walk past his bathroom. I always used the upstairs bathroom. I always took the long way into the kitchen, through the living room. I always waited for Mom in the morning so I could hand her my dirty clothes instead of creeping past the Spirit Man to drop them into the laundry basket. And every day I felt like I'd failed again.

On our one rainy afternoon, Grandma offered to make masks with us. “I have everything we need. We can make papier-mâché masks of our own faces. It feels a bit weird—cold and wet—and we'll need to breathe through straws for the last part, but that just makes it more fun.”

What she described took my breath away. Make a mask of myself? Wet goop layered all over my face? Breathing through a straw without letting anyone see my panic?

Lewis saw the look on my face and said, “I'd like to learn how to draw Egyptian hiro…hiro…Egyptian writing.”

“Hieroglyphics,” I said.

“That's it. I have a book about them,” he told Grandma.

Grandma grinned. “Hieroglyphics it is. You get your book, and I'll look for my calligraphy pens and some good paper.”

“I'll do hieroglyphics too,” I said.

While I arranged stools and Grandma rummaged for supplies, Mom and BB decided to make masks. I sat with my back to them so I didn't have to watch.

By the time we were done, Mom's and BB's masks were drying, and BB was planning how he'd paint his for Halloween, transforming himself into a hideous monster. Lewis and I had written pages of hieroglyphics. Even though he couldn't read English yet, Lewis could read our hieroglyphic messages. His favorite was the Curse of the Mummy.

We spent the hottest day at the beach. The rocks were huge, the water icy and the waves wild. “Just the way we like it,” Dad said, grinning, as we stepped onto the hot sand.

We stripped down to our bathing suits and pulled out the sunscreen. Dad and BB just slapped some on. They have warm brown skin and never worry about burning. I was a little more careful, although I rarely burn.

With auburn hair and pale skin, Mom and Lewis burn really easily. Mom lathered sunscreen all over Lewis, hanging on to him while he wiggled. She did his ears and the back of his neck twice, just to be sure. Then she carefully rubbed sunscreen all over herself. I did her back.

When they were ready, Mom, Dad and BB lined up to race into the waves. They grinned down at Lewis and me, turned and dashed into the ocean. I could tell it was cold from their gasps, but complaining wouldn't have been brave or bold.

Lewis settled onto the sand to build a castle, muttering to himself while he raised the castle walls. I read for a while and then joined him.

When he saw me, he smiled and raised his voice so I could hear his story. “There are sand creatures here. You don't notice them at first, because they push up a couple of fingers, and pull their arms out really, really slowly. Then they slowly roll to lift out their soldiers—their…”

“Shoulders,” I said. “
Sh
—” Mom thought Lewis's mispronunciations were cute, but I worried the other kids would laugh at him.

“Sh-sh-shoulders,” Lewis repeated. “Then they'll lie still on the beach, so unless you look closely, you can't tell anything is going on.” As he spoke, his hands kept working, slowly shaping the walls higher and higher.

I started digging a moat where he directed, piling up sand for him to build with.

“They live in wet sand. If they think I'm busy building, they might move, and I might be able to see one. They're curious—they'll want to know what's happening.”

I tried to watch for them without moving my head.

“Once they pull their entire body out of the sand, they lie like little sand dunes, and move very slowly. When the tide comes in, sometimes it looks like the water is pushing them closer.”

Suddenly Mom and Dad descended and ruined his story. Mom grabbed Lewis and carried him out to sea. Dad lifted me and ran after her. Mom dangled Lewis's toes in the water while Dad dangled me.
All
of me.

The water was freezing. My legs screamed with pain until they grew numb. I struggled, and Dad dropped me just as a wave roared in, folding over my head and rolling me toward the beach.

I staggered to shore, a castaway on a deserted island, shaking with cold, dying from hypothermia. As I crawled up the beach, I was oblivious to the sand creatures lurking nearby. I lay on the shore panting, eyes closed, letting the sun thaw my frozen limbs. The sand creatures crept closer and closer.

Then BB jumped over me, dripping on my newly warmed back.

Hungry, sunburned and sandy, we drove back to Grandma's house. To Grandma and the Spirit Man.

On our last night, Grandma invited some friends over for dinner. They talked about traveling and living in different countries. When they started to compare the colors of sand in different deserts, Lewis and I went upstairs to play. Their voices drifted up the stairs.

“Why do you call Brandon BB?” a friend asked.

“When Lewis was a baby,” Mom said, “he couldn't say Brandon, so he called him BB. That works for Brandon Bartolomé and for Big Brother. Then Lewis Bartolomé became LB, Little Brother.” She paused. “But mostly we call him Lewis.

“Now Jane,” Mom said. “Jane is really Mackenzie Jane Bartolomé. She was named for Mom's grandmother. Why don't you tell them her story, Mom?”

I heard Grandma's voice take over, softer and a little lower. “My grandmother, Jane Mackenzie, was born in Scotland and homesteaded in northern Alberta. She was brave and bold and raised seven children, often alone with them in the wilderness. One day, when she was telling stories about life in the North, I asked, ‘Grandmother, what did you do when the Indians came?'” She paused, and I heard the clink of a glass on the table.

“She looked at me like I was an idiot and said, in her Scottish brogue, ‘What dae you think we did? We put on the kettle.'”

Everyone laughed, and I heard Dad offering more wine.

Then Mom picked up the story. “So we named our daughter Mackenzie Jane Bartolomé, destined to be one of the wild and bold Bartolomés, but…” She stopped for a moment. “Well, she's just quiet. And shy. Timid, I guess. So we call her Jane. Just Jane.”

I sighed. I even looked like a Jane, with round cheeks and straight brown hair and big dark eyes. I was a little too tall to be cute like Lewis, but not tall like BB, who was good at every sport he tried.

I wondered what it would be like to be her, to be Mackenzie Jane, striding down the beach, leaping into the waves, strong and brave, but the more I imagined, the more my stomach twisted.

Lewis got up and shut the door. He handed me Old Moby and said, “Tell me a story, Jane.”

I smiled at him and slipped Old Moby onto my hand. “‘Once upon a time,' Old Moby said, ‘there were two children, Lewis and Jane, and they were the bravest children in all the world. They had to be, because their world was filled with monsters. Late one night, when the wind was howling…'”

That night I dreamed about the Spirit Man. He scowled at me, his face still, his eyes staring into mine, deeper and deeper. I cried out and woke myself. Lewis's hand reached up to take mine. I groped in the bedclothes for Old Moby and lay in the dark clinging to my puppet and my little brother.