Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (2 page)

Mimi knew exactly where she was going. She'd been planning her trip to Holy Footsteps Academy for weeks. Her mission was to sneak in and steal a blank sheet of school stationery from the office. She planned to take it home to type an official letter to her parents informing them that her earlier acceptance to Holy Footsteps was a mistake—and that Mimi should attend Webster High instead.

Mimi was sure her plan would work. It had to work. She was in love. She was in love with a public school boy from Webster High and was determined to pedal her bike forward toward a future of her own choosing.

By the pond at the edge of Holy Footsteps Academy, the boys stopped to watch Mimi lean her bike against a tree and run in the front door. “What's she up to?” Patrick said.

“I don't know, but whatever it is, I think I'm in love,” Tony said. “Let's follow her in.”

“No, wait. What about our plan? We have to decide.”

Their plan, which was really only Patrick's plan, was to hop a freight train and run away. He'd been dreaming about it for years. Living near the Missouri Pacific train tracks and seeing hobos all the time, he too, wanted a future of his own choosing. He wanted to ride the rails away from the future others had planned for him—high school, college, marriage, working downtown—and let his legs dangle out of a slow boxcar as he passed through other towns, other states, and wide open farm country with no nuns.

In fifth grade he'd been home sick with the croup the day five friends got caught smoking on the kindergarten roof. They ran away from the principal's office, busting out the door to spend hours on the loose. The Gang of Five had lived off the land, swiping candy bars from the Tom Boy in Glendale, hiding out on the Interstate 44 construction zone, and evading an hours-long search by concerned parents and police. Their freedom, though it only
lasted for six hours, gave them the honor, respect, and self-confidence no school desk ever could. Having missed that day sick at home coughing was a failure that still stung. And now the snow globe crisis had given him his last best chance to have a good reason to run away, but only if Tony could see the good in it and join him. Freedom was fine, but only if you had a friend to share it with.

“Maybe we could run away,” Tony said, his voice full of hesitation “But let's see what Mimi's up to first.”

Mimi's footsteps lighted catlike across the front hallway, over polished floors, past dark woodwork, and through dust particles dancing in the afternoon sun. Her head was down so no nun would notice she was a stranger. She could hear the muffled notes of nuns lecturing and smell the old books with doodles in the margins from girls long graduated whose daughters were now doodling. Up ahead was the office with its milk glass door showing the dark shape of nuns moving about to process tuition invoices. Mimi stopped.

A nun burst from a storage closet across the hall carrying a fresh spool of calculator paper to tabulate the incoming checks.

“You there! What are you doing out of class?” the nun said, “Come here.”

Mimi flinched, but kept her head down and itched her forehead to hide her eyes. “Sorry, Sister, it's my period. Gotta go.” She ran around a corner and up a flight of steps, leaping three steps at a time, hoping to reach the landing and get around the corner before the nun would reach the bottom of the stairs and see her. Heart pounding, she stopped on the next floor to listen. Nothing. The nun had walked on to the office.

Meanwhile, out by the pond, where the lazy tips of a weeping willow teased the top of the water, Patrick and Tony talked about the church investigation.

“We can either run away before they find out or after,” Patrick said, “Maybe I should just turn myself in and tell the truth.”

“Never tell the truth when God wants you to lie,” Tony said watching the school for some sign of Mimi. “It's in the Bible.”

“Really? Where?”

“Lots of places.”

“Like where?”

Tony picked up a big rock to stall for time and threw it in the water with a splash. “I got it. Samson.”

“Who?”

“You know, the muscle guy. When he lied about his hair, he was fine. But as soon as he told the truth, they had him.”

Mimi pulled her hair back into a ponytail as she tiptoed past a drinking fountain and along a hallway lined with lockers. She spied her destination in the distance: the fire alarm with its bright red paint and big white letters screaming at her to “PULL.” That was her goal—to pull the fire alarm and dart into a nearby restroom while the rest of the school emptied out. She stopped short of a classroom full of senior girls listening to a nun read romance literature. Mimi's cold fingers reached toward the fire alarm while the nun paced back and forth and the girls' crossed legs bobbed beneath their desks.

“Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth,” read the nun with no makeup, “for thy breasts are better than wine, smelling sweet of the best ointments. Thy name is as oil poured out; therefore young maidens have loved thee…”

The alarm clanged. The nun's head whipped up from her book. Mimi ran.

Out by the pond, Patrick and Tony were skipping rocks to see who could get one to the island first when they heard it. They watched as lines of girls in red plaid uniforms skirts led by nuns in black habits filed out of the doors onto the lawn.

“Must be a drill,” Tony said. Then his eyes widened and he turned toward Patrick.

“No way! Did she do it?” Patrick said. “But why?”

Tony blew an Italian kiss toward the school, hoping it wound find her. “I don't know, but if she did, God, I love her even more.”

Mimi peeked out into the hallway. The last girls were going down the stairs. She stole out into the open, dashed for the staircase, and bounded down toward the first floor.

She skidded to a halt next to a white statute of Pope Pious XII and spied around the corner as the last nuns left the office, scurrying out the front door. Mimi was alone. She owned the school. Running into the principal's office, she opened desk drawers looking for the letterhead. Pens, caramels, and broken rosary beads cluttered the main drawer. She tried another one, rooting around beneath a browning banana. Slamming that drawer, she opened another and there it was—a stack of virgin white official Holy Footsteps Academy letterhead with matching envelopes. She grabbed two of each, folding the paper to fit in the envelopes, stuffed them in her blouse and ran out a side door into some bushes just as the fire truck arrived, siren wailing. Waiting for the next part of her plan to fall into place, she watched as the firemen in their yellow hats ran into the school.

Then it happened.

Though Mimi could barely hear it over the fire alarm still blaring inside, the class bell rang, signaling the end of the school day, and the girls of Holy Footsteps Academy broke formation as if on command. Laughing, chatting, and ignoring the nuns hollering at them, they headed toward carpool moms waiting in station wagons lined up down the street. For all they knew, their school would be burned to the ground by tomorrow, but the girls didn't care. It was time to go home for Ding Dongs and Twinkies. Mimi blended into the crowd, got on her bike, and rode away with a determined look on her face. She rode right past the pond where Patrick and Tony studied her from behind a tree.

“What do you think it's all about?” Patrick said.

“I don't know, but I'm definitely in love.”

MISS KLEINSCHMIDT bought her first and only bottle of hair color the night before she went to Colorado, the trip where she met a man on the slopes. She had seen the brochures of young couples smiling and hugging in wool sweaters, huddled around crackling hearth fires, and imagined herself in one of the pictures. The man she met was handsome, with thick black hair, a good build, and a winning smile. He knew how to poke the fire and keep the conversation going. The snow swirled outside the lodge window while Miss Kleinschmidt and her man were inside. She had just brushed her teeth. He held her in his arms and kissed her. They made love. She felt young and alive and forgot her schoolroom of eighth graders. But the trip came to an end, and the man bought her the snow globe at the lodge gift shop and hugged her goodbye.