The Girl from Felony Bay
Read The Girl from Felony Bay Online
Authors: J. E. Thompson
For Amanda and Liza
M
y name is Abbey Force,
and my story starts about a year ago, on the last day of school when we were getting out for summer break. It was a time when I was feeling meaner than a stepped-on rattlesnake, because in the previous nine months I had lost everything that mattered to me: my pony, my home, and my dad.
But before we get too far into things, here's a bit of backstory for you. I come from a family of what are called French Huguenots. In the early seventeen hundreds, at a time when South Carolina was part of the colony known as the Carolinas, my ancestors fled religious persecution in France and carved a plantation out of the wilderness in a place called Leadenwah Island. Those early people were tough. They were big-time risk takers; they had fast tempers and didn't pull any punches.
Before the accident that put him in a coma, my dad liked to say that acorns don't fall far from the trees that grew them. I think it was his way of telling me that I was headstrong and stubborn as a mule, had a big mouth, and didn't shy away from fights. He also used to joke that I was a Force to be reckoned with. Ha, ha.
It was a Friday afternoon, and I was slouched in the back of a school bus full of lower-school kids as it trundled down the length of Leadenwah Island. It was my very last time on this bus, because next year I was going to be in seventh grade, and I would be riding the middle-school bus. Just like he always did, the driver, Mr. Jancowski, stopped every couple hundred yards and dropped off another group of students.
All around me kids were shouting and giggling, delighted at the prospect of three months without classes, tests, or homework. I was trying to ignore them. I was dreading summer, every bloody day of it, because this summer wasn't going to be like any other summer of my life.
Before this year I had always looked forward to summer vacation, just like any other kid. June, July, and August had seemed like an endless merry-go-round of pony riding, swimming, crabbing, spending time with my friends and my dad, and exploring the nearly one thousand acres of Reward, the plantation that had been in my family for more than three hundred years. Back in those days, I was pretty darn certain I had to be one of the luckiest people on earth.
But there is an old saying that luck is fickle. In the past nine months, I had found out just how true that saying was. Everything in my life had changed, every single part of it, and all for the worse. A year earlier my father had been healthy and happy and highly respected. Now he lay in a hospital in a coma, unable to defend himself against the charge that he had committed a terrible theft. I knew he was innocent in spite of what the facts seemed to say, and while I was determined to prove what I believed, I sure hadn't had much success so far. In the meantime Reward Plantation had been put up for sale to pay Daddy's debts and was now owned by strangers. Even my Welsh pony, Timmy, had been sold to the same people who bought Reward. And to make matters worse, I was stuck living with Uncle Charlie and Ruth. More on them later.
Anyway, I was stewing over all those things on the bus ride, feeling the anger rise up in me the way it seemed to do so often when I thought about how unfair life had been. That was when we came to another stop, and Jimmy Simmons made his move. He used the confusion of other kids standing up to get off the bus to climb out of his own seat, move forward several rows to where the smaller kids sat, and drop down next to little Skoogie Middleton.
I saw trouble coming right away.
Jimmy Simmons was going into seventh grade next year just like me; only he should have been in ninth or tenth grade. I wasn't sure why the school had decided to move him up this particular year. It's not like his grades had improved; he'd gotten Fs on almost every test. Maybe they had a law in South Carolina that a school couldn't hold somebody back more than three times. Or maybe you couldn't be in sixth grade anymore once you started to shave. Maybe Jimmy's teacher felt sorry for him, which was fairly unlikely for a kid who should have had
WARNING: IDIOT BULLY
tattooed on his forehead. Or maybe the principal had needed a few speeding tickets fixed, and Jimmy's father, Deputy Bubba Simmons, had agreed to do it if they moved his kid up.
Either way, all Jimmy ever did was sit in the back of the class and glare at everyone in the room. All of the kids, and I think even some of the teachers, were a little afraid of him. He had big, meaty shoulders, a buzz cut, ugly red zits, and an angry lower lip that he liked to stick out over his top lip. All of us in the sixth grade had our fingers crossed he was going to be held back again and become the next class's problem, but now he was all ours.
Needless to say, Jimmy Simmons wasn't dropping into the seat next to Skoogie Middleton to wish him a happy summer. Skoogie was a small kid, a fifth grader who lived with his dirt-poor and mostly crippled grandmother in a tiny trailer down the road from Reward, and Jimmy had sat beside Skoogie because it was his last chance to pick on someone before school was finally out.
The last of the exiting kids finally stumbled out, and the bus doors closed. I watched Mr. Jancowski, the three-hundred-pound bus driver, look in his rearview mirror, notice where Jimmy was now sitting, then call out, “Back in your seat, Simmons.”
Jimmy totally ignored him.
“Back in your seat, Simmons. Don't make me come back there.”
Jimmy kept ignoring him just like everyone on the bus knew he would. No way Mr. Jancowski was ever going to haul his two-ton lard butt out of the driver's seat and waddle back down the aisle, because he hadn't done it one time that whole year.
As Mr. Jancowski finally sighed and took his foot off the brake, I saw Jimmy put his arm around Skoogie, who had moved over as close to the window as he could. Jimmy said, “Raggedy Andy, Raggedy Andy.” That was his way of making fun of a kid who didn't have any money and wore crummy clothes.
Jimmy dragged Skoogie into a headlock, then started to give him a noogie. Noogies hurt anytime, but when it's a hundred and forty pounds against eighty-five pounds, they really hurt. I could see Skoogie fighting to push Jimmy away but having no success.
Unfortunately for Jimmy Simmons, I'd spent the whole bus ride getting madder and madder, thinking how lousy life had been for me and my dad and how I couldn't seem to do a thing about it. When the bus stopped again and a couple more kids got up and walked toward the front, I got up, too, even though it wasn't my stop. My eyes were fixed on the back of Jimmy Simmons's head.
At that moment, I wasn't thinking about how much bigger Jimmy Simmons was or how much he weighed or how one of his hands could probably wrap around my neck and choke me. I was thinking about “Raggedy Andy, Raggedy Andy,” about some jerk giving noogies to a little kid who didn't deserve them and who couldn't defend himself. I was so angry about how my own life was bullying me and how I couldn't do anything about it, but I thought that I could do something about Jimmy Simmons.
I walked up the aisle to right behind where Skoogie and Jimmy were sitting. Other kids were moving in front of me heading toward the exit, so Mr. Jancowski couldn't see me. “Leave him alone,” I said.
Jimmy swung his head around and smirked. “Go away.”
“I said leave him alone.”
Jimmy craned his head farther, trying to look at me as if he really didn't understand why I would try to stop him. “Why do you care?” He gave Skoogie's head another hard rub. “Raggedy Andy likes it, don't you, Raggedy Andy?”
“Stop saying that.”
Jimmy turned again. “Get off it, Force. He wears rags. He's like a peon.”
“Just because a person doesn't have money is no reason to pick on them,” I said, wondering why I was trying to argue logic with a moron.
Jimmy guffawed. “Sure it is.”
“You know, Jimmy, when Skoogie grows up, he won't be poor anymore. But you'll still be stupid.”
Jimmy swung all the way around. “Sit down, Force, or I'll pound you.”
The only weapon I had was an empty book bag. I had brought it with me and had unzipped it on my way down the aisle. Now I turned it over and pulled the open end down over Jimmy's head. While he was blinded, I whacked him around the ears a couple times.
It took Jimmy all of two seconds to rip the book bag off his head. He hurled it away, stood, and spun around, stepping into the aisle. His ugly face was bloated with anger.
“Force,” he said, shaking his head, “y'all got a death wish.”
“Pick on somebody your own size,” I said. Not the most original thing I'd ever said, but I wasn't going for clever.
He laughed. “Like you?”
“If you want.”
I was five feet tall and weighed ninety-five pounds. Jimmy was six inches taller than me and outweighed me by at least fifty pounds. No wonder he laughed.