The Fog (7 page)

The only thing wrong with lunch was that she did not pay for it.

Mrs. Shevvington had handed her a blue ticket to exchange for a hot lunch. Christina noticed that about a quarter of the students had these; the rest brought bag lunches, or paid money to buy a hot lunch.

“How come I have this blue ticket?” Christina asked Gretch.

“Because you’re poor,” Gretch said. “Island kids are always poor. The state is paying for your lunch.”

For the first time Christina saw that Gretch, too, was dressed in catalog Maine. That while Christina’s jeans were from a sale rack in a discount store, bought on a mainland shopping trip in July, Gretch’s jeans had a brand name Christina recognized from full-page ads in
Seventeen
magazine. I might be able to afford the three-ring binder, thought Christina, but not the jeans.

She wanted jeans like Gretch’s.

It was the first time in Christina’s life that she had lusted after a brand name. She hated her own boring, unstylish jeans. They embarrassed her, they hung wrong, and they were too blue. She resented her parents for being poor and living where they didn’t know anything about seventh-grade fashion.

Anya walked over to Christina’s table.

An honor roll, drama club, soprano solo, tennis team, senior girl — pausing at lunch to chat with a seventh-grader? Even Christina, who knew nothing of the social life of schools, knew this was remarkable. Senior high kids ate on one side of the cafeteria and lowly junior high kids on the other. Nobody crossed the invisible lines, not with their feet, their speech, or their eyes.

Gretch and Vicki were awestruck. Their giggles were silenced. Their Jell-O spoons hung motionless. Anya had never looked so beautiful. The eyes of all the seniors and juniors followed her, and so, in person, did Blake. Now the younger girls almost swooned. Blake was perfect. Anya was perfect. Anya and Blake together were twice as perfect.

At first Christina thought. Anya had come over to make Christina look good and stop any teasing that might have begun. But Anya’s eyes caught Christina’s with a strange, dark desperation. Anya was not crossing the cafeteria lines to be sure Christina was surviving her first day, nor to borrow a dime for a phone call, nor to give her a message — but because Anya was not okay.

Christina did not know what to offer. She could not imagine what had gone wrong for Anya.

Anya held her arms out for comfort.

Blake caught up to Anya. Certainly Blake wasn’t upset. Laughing, he took both of Anya’s outstretched hands and twirled her away, like a dance partner. The seventh-grade girls sighed in delicious envy. “Do you see a lot of Blake?” breathed Gretch. “He’s so wonderful! He’s so handsome!”

“What’s it like on that island of yours?” Vicki asked. Vicki was very tan, and wore a white cotton knit sweater, which made her look even tanner. Her light brown hair was absolutely straight, and it swung when she moved. She had a tourist look to her; she was the day tripper they scorned on the island.

“Oh, you know,” Christine said, “just a rock and some sea gulls.”

She flushed with shame. She loved Burning Fog. Why had she made it sound like a garbage dump?

“I
adore
sea gulls,” said Gretch. “They’re so
beautiful
and
pure.
I love how they tilt in the wind.” Gretch had blonde hair, cut exactly like Vicki’s, and they had a habit of tilting themselves toward each other, so their brown and yellow hair swung together and then swung apart.

“I don’t think pure is the word,” said Christina. “You should see them with baby ducks and baby terns. Why, one sea gull could goffle up a whole brood.”

Gretch’s blonde eyebrows lifted like punctuation marks. “
Goffle?
” she said, starting to laugh. She turned to Vicki, who giggled with her. They tilted hair. “Goffle. That’s so cute. What other cute little words do you know, Christina?”

Christina said lamely, “I mean eat. Sea gulls eat anything.” She would not tell them how her mother took the kitchen garbage, eggshells, crusts, and scrapings off plates to the top of the cliff, where sea gulls would swoop down like Roman gladiators.

Once they stood up from the table, junior high etiquette allowed the boys to join them. This turned the girls arch and silly. Christina did not know how to be arch and silly. One boy claimed to be able to spit tobacco farther than anybody, but as the cafeteria proctor was approaching, he could not substantiate this claim. One girl said out on Burning Fog Isle even the girls chewed tobacco. “I bet Christina can spit as far as you can,” she said. “That’s probably what she does when she’s not canning fish.”

Everybody laughed.

Another boy said he had been to Burning Fog Isle himself several times. Each summer his parents liked a day trip and a picnic on Burning Fog. Christina did not tell him what she thought of day trippers, but he was not so polite to her. He said he did not think much of islanders. He said they charged too much for soft drinks and yelled when you touched their silly dock.

It was probably Christina’s mother who had sold him the soft drink. It was probably Frankie’s dock.

Michael had told her to laugh it off. Christina could not find any laughs. But it was the other seventh-graders who laughed, closing in on Christina, talking louder and louder.

She had been afraid of being alone. Now she was afraid of being in the center.

“What’s your house like?” said the boy. He had a funny, knowing smile. She felt wary, the way she would around lobster claws. “Is it one of those little shacks that always needs a coat of paint?” he said.

Vicki and Gretch giggled. “Jonah,” they said, warningly — but coaxingly, so they could get credit for telling him to stop, but yet not stop him.

“It’s a cottage,” Christina said.

Jonah smiled triumphantly. “I know which cottage, too,” he said to the rest of the seventh grade. “Christina’s cottage has thirty-two rooms.”

Gretch and Vicki looked impressed. They blended their hair together like a fence against strangers.

Jonah said, “And notice that, nevertheless, Christina is getting free lunch. Another welfare cheat. Welcome to our midst.”

In English, Christina did indeed have Mrs. Shevvington.

The manners in her room were markedly different. There was no jostling or kidding. Even the boys behaved like human beings, without spitting, tripping their friends, or imitating tomcats in heat.

Mrs. Shevvington stood in front of the class, and the class sat in front of Mrs. Shevvington, and nothing else happened. Mrs. Shevvington gave a lecture while twenty-four children took notes.

When Christina picked up her pencil to take notes, her fingers smudged the page, and she left a sweaty palm print where the pencil couldn’t write. Class seemed to last forever, and yet when the bell rang nobody jumped up. They waited until Mrs. Shevvington excused them. Then they walked quietly out of the classroom, just as Christina had to walk quietly down the stairs at the Schooner Inne.

In the hall Vicki and Gretch walked on either side of Christina as if the cafeteria scenes had never happened—and they were a trio of best girlfriends.

“What’s it like living with the Shevvingtons?” said Vicki. “Mr. Shevvington is so handsome, don’t you adore him? If he weren’t a hundred years old, I would have a crush on him. But Mrs. Shevvington is so dull, isn’t she? It’s like being in first grade every year, absolutely nothing happens. Oh, well, at least she’s sweet. Her first name is Candy. I think it fits perfectly, don’t you?”

If they thought I was yarning about sea gulls, she thought, they’d never believe me about the Shevvingtons.

She walked down the hall, smelling school: a chalk-sweat-paper-floorwax-mimeograph smell she had never smelled before. As distinctive as low tide; the kind of smell you would never get wrong, you would remember all your life.

“Listen,” said Gretch, smiling. “Don’t be upset about Jonah finding out you’re a welfare cheat, Christina. He’s really into honesty, that’s all.” Vicki and Gretch escorted Christina on down the long hall, telling her that the next class was art. “You’ll hate art,” Vicki said. “Everybody hates art. The art teacher stinks.”

“I am not a welfare cheat,” Christina said. “I’m into honesty, too. We don’t own the cottage, we just — ”

“And don’t call it a cottage, either,” said Jonah, coming up behind them. “Anybody who lives in a thirty-two room house lives in a palace. And then you’re rude to the mainland tourists who end up paying for your free school lunch as well as buying your overpriced soda. It’s disgusting.”

Christina belted him in the mouth. When he staggered back, unprepared, she belted him a second time. This was so satisfying she was ready to do it a third time, when Miss Schuyler responded to the screams of Vicki and Gretch.

“That island girl hit him first!” yelled all the witnesses.

Miss Schuyler grabbed Christina by her sweater sleeve and Jonah by his pink oxford collar. “I cannot believe this,” hissed the math teacher. “The very first day of school, and you are starting fist fights. We do not do this kind of thing here, Christina. Nor, Jonah Bergeron, do we fight little girls who are here for the very first day of their lives.”

Jonah snorted. “Some little girl,” he said.

Miss Schuyler hauled them down to the principal’s office. They went through an outer office full of high counters and secretaries. Miss Schuyler knocked hard on a yellow door blackened around the handle with fingerprints, and pushed into Mr. Shevvington’s office.

When Jonah finished his explanation there was silence in the room. Christina was aware of tall filing cabinets, piles of papers, books tumbling sideways, and an open window through which came the smell of the fish cannery. Mr. Shevvington seemed not to be a part of his office, any more than his wife had been a part of her clothing. He was simply handsome and silvery and sad. He fixed his eyes on Christina, and the eyes never blinked.

He’ll call my parents, she thought. I’ve been away from home a day and a half, and look at me. In trouble with everybody.

Mr. Shevvington’s voice was gentle, and yet rough, like a luxury car driving slowly over pebbles. “Christina,” he said sadly, “I am so disappointed in you.”

Christina’s heart began to pound hideously, as if at thirteen she were going to have a heart attack. “I got mad at Jonah,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She felt as worthless as an empty soda can by the side of the road.

Mr. Shevvington sighed. Then he turned to Jonah. “Christina’s father is caretaker of a millionaire’s mansion. They don’t have access to the house, but live in the servants’ quarters because that’s what they are, Jonah. Servants. Christina needs free lunch more than anybody else. I don’t want you to gossip about her situation, but you might let people know that Christina is the kind of Maine native who knows poverty firsthand. So although yes, she’s on welfare, no, she is not a welfare cheat.”

Christina felt punched. “We have never been on welfare! My mother runs a restaurant.”

“Her mother serves toast and coffee to lobster-men from a little shack near the harbor,” said Mr. Shevvington to Jonah. “Now I want you two to be friends. That is your assignment for the fall, Jonah. You take Christina on as a friend and help her steer a safe passage among the rocks of junior high.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jonah. He was staring down at his shoes. Christina stared there, too. Yet another example of catalog Maine, only this time it was hunting boots, which most certainly had never been taken hunting.

I hate them! thought Christina. I hate them all. “I am not on welfare,” she said.

“What do you think a free lunch is?” said Jonah.

Christina flung back her head to shout,
Then I’ll never take free lunch again!
when she realized that her parents did not, in fact, have money to send for buying hot lunches, that Mrs. Shevvington was unlikely to buy her boxes of apple juice and Twinkies when the state would supply it free, and that she did not, at thirteen, earn any money herself.

Mr. Shevvington ordered her to apologize to Jonah.

“I’m sorry,” muttered Christina without looking at him.

Jonah was excused to return to class, with a little note from Mr. Shevvington to carry to his teacher. Mr. Shevvington’s handwriting was delicate enough for wedding invitations. His muscular fingers did not look right making such thin, graceful shapes.

The principal dropped back down into his chair and smiled at Christina.

Christina had thought she would never smile again, but Mr. Shevvington’s smile was so kind. Little by little Christina’s face and mouth relaxed, and slowly she managed a smile of her own. The worst was over. Mr. Shevvington said that junior high could be something of a shock. Children age thirteen, he explained, were barbarians. He knew Christina was not, of course, but she was not used to the pressure of a whole grade around her. She would have to be calm, and pliant, and let them all have their way.

Christina did not see why they should always have their way. She didn’t feel like being calm and pliant. She felt like belting Jonah again. But she did not say so. This is good practice, she told herself, and she made herself look pliant, like a flower stem in the wind.

“While you’re here, Christina, why don’t you fill out this form we will need to guide you through your school career.”

Forms! she thought eagerly.

Christina loved to fill in blanks. Mostly she sent away for folders and leaflets about anything at all, just to get mail. This would be a
real
form.

Christina accepted the clipboard Mr. Shevvington gave her to write on and the pen he passed her to write with. With each item, she felt more like somebody too poor or too stupid to have brought her own. “My things are still on the floor in the hall where Miss Schuyler grabbed me,” she said.

Mr. Shevvington nodded as if he did not believe her, but was willing to accept Christina’s fibs to save her pride.

I won’t cry, she told herself. I never cry. I won’t now.

She took the pen purposefully. She could make her script just as beautiful as his. She’d show him.

The form was entitled
Getting to Know You.
Computer generated sixteenth notes floated in the margins, like a happy song. Christina filled in name, address, parents’ occupations. Then she looked at the questions. Her brow wrinkled. They were very odd questions.