Where I Belong (7 page)

“I think you're being a bit harsh, Brendan,” the Green Man says. “Not to mention a tad selfish.”

“I just want to be his friend,” Shea begins.

And I interrupt. “I don't want to be
her
friend.”

“Well, this is a pretty turn of events.” The Green Man laughs. “One wants to be friends, the other doesn't. It puts me in mind of a Shakespearean play. Perhaps I should act the part of Puck and bring peace to the forest.”

“
A Midsummer Night's Dream
,” Shea and I say at exactly the same moment. We look at each other, surprised to discover we both know the play. But that doesn't mean we should be friends. It just means we read a lot.

“Do you know how Brendan gets up there?” Shea asks the Green Man.

“Don't tell her!” I shout.

The Green Man smiles. “I can't tell you unless Brendan gives his permission.”

She frowns at me. “If you tell me, I'll never tell anyone else. Cross my heart and hope to die. And I'll give the unicorn back to you. And never ask for it again.”

“That sounds like a fair offer,” the Green Man says.

“She can't bargain with something that doesn't belong to her.”

“Please, Brendan,” Shea says. “Please let me.”

The Green Man looks from me to Shea and back again. “Let's turn our backs and close our eyes and wait for Brendan to come down in secret. When we're all together on the ground, maybe he'll change his mind.”

He looks up at me. “And maybe he'll bring those sandwiches and apples down with him. I've got an empty belly.”

When I'm sure he won't let Shea cheat, I scoot backwards into the hollow trunk and climb down as quietly as I can. I sit next to the Green Man and Shea sits on his other side. I pass out the sandwiches and apples. To my surprise, Shea hands me the unicorn.

“Maybe by the time you finish him, we'll be such good friends that you'll give him to me.”

Don't count on it
, I think.

After we eat, the Green Man asks Shea questions about herself. Does she like to read? Yes, all the time. Does she love the woods? Yes, especially these woods because they seem so magical. Does she believe in magic? She wants to believe but sometimes it's hard.

The Green Man nods. “It's easier to believe when you're here in the woods.”

“Yes,” Shea says to him. “It's like an enchanted forest in a fairy tale where anything can happen. Even you.”

Something changes in me. Maybe I'll be her friend after all. She looks at me and smiles as if she's guessed what I'm thinking.

By now the shadows are long. The clearing around the tree has grown dark. A thrush calls, and another deep in the woods answers. Fireflies light up in dark places under the trees. They could be elves carrying lanterns to light their way through the forest.

The Green Man gets to his feet. “It's time for you two to go home to supper and for me to resume my rounds.” He kisses Shea's hand and shakes mine. Bowing to us both, he strides away almost soundlessly and is soon out of sight and hearing.

“Is he really the spirit of the forest?” Shea whispers to me.

“What do you think?”

“He must be.” She stares at the place from which the Green Man vanished. “He
must
be.”

Together we follow the path out of the forest. After we cross the train tracks, she says, “Tomorrow will you show me how to climb up to your tree house?”

“Maybe.” I peer into her pale green eyes. Yellow rings around the pupils remind me of a cat's eyes. “But you have to keep it a secret. Not just how to get up there but where it is.”

“Why is it a secret?”

“I have enemies,” I say, almost proudly. “Enemies who'd destroy my tree house if they knew how to find it.”

Shea nods, impressed. “Are they supernatural?” she asks. “Demons or monsters or—?” Her voice falters as if she's not sure what else might roam the forest looking for me and my tree house.

“No.” I picture Sean and Gene and T.J. skulking through the woods, smoking dope and cussing. Looking for me. I see their ugly faces, their mean eyes, their tattoos. “They're just ordinary thugs, outlaws, scum. . . .” My voice is rising, and I stop myself from saying more. I don't want Shea to think I'm afraid of them, that just thinking about them terrifies me.

Shea nods, but she still looks puzzled. “Well,” she says, “thanks for not chasing me away from your tree. You wanted to, don't think I didn't know.”

I kick a beer can and send it flying down the tracks. I watch it bounce three or four times before it rolls to a stop. “I'm not good at making friends.” I don't look at her when I tell her this. She had a bunch of friends in Texas. She can't possibly understand.

“Yeah,” she says. “I noticed.” Then she laughs.

I laugh too.

“When you move as much as I do,” Shea says, “you learn a lot about friends. How to get them. How to keep them until you move again.”

“You'll make tons of friends when real school starts,” I tell her. “The kids in summer school, well, I don't think you're their type.”

“You and me, though, we're right for each other.” She stops in front of me and turns those eyes on me full force. “See, what I know about friends is, you have to pretend to like what they like and hate what they hate. But you, I don't have to pretend to like what you like because I like what you like.” She starts to giggle. “I'm getting all tangled up in words, but you know what I mean. Right?”

“I guess.” I kick another beer can, but it only bounces once.

Suddenly I want to get away from Shea. I need to think about what she said. Could we really be friends? I feel nervous, maybe even scared.

“Can I go to the woods with you after school tomorrow?” she asks.

“I guess so.” I watch her scramble up the embankment and head for wherever she lives. Even if I'd said no, she would follow me.

When Shea's out of sight, I take a deep breath and walk along the railroad track, balancing the way she did.

The moon hangs low in the sky, close to Venus, and the sharp sweet smell of the woods fills my nose.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, I show Shea how to climb to my tree house. Since she's a girl, I hope the spider webs will scare her, but she doesn't even notice them. Once she's on the platform, she looks in all directions, out over the green sea of leaves moving like waves when the wind blows.

“You can see so far.” She points at a church steeple way far away and the Blue Ridge Mountains stacked like clouds along the horizon. “It's splendid!” She hugs herself and smiles so widely her face almost splits in two.

Next she looks at my carvings, and I tell her she can choose one. She picks a unicorn a little smaller than the one I haven't finished. Then she goes through my books and finds
A Wizard of Earthsea
, which she hasn't read. While she reads, I draw. She's very quiet. I can think my own thoughts and concentrate on my picture.

After a while, she says, “Do you think he'll come today?”

I shake my head. “He patrols the whole forest,” I tell her. “He only comes this way from time to time.”

She nods, her face solemn, and returns to her book. A few minutes later, she asks, “Is he a wizard?”

“No. At least, I don't think so. Green Men have a special magic—they understand what animals and trees say. They know their secrets. They protect the forest. Guardians, that's what they are.”

Shea nods. “Protecting things—that's better than casting spells.” She pauses and smiles to herself in that secret way she has. “I talk to my cat all the time, but he never talks to me. At least not in a language I can understand.”

“Do you think your cat understands you?”

“Definitely. He's very intelligent.” She smiles. “He's a purebred Siamese. We show him at cat shows and he always wins. He has more medals and silver cups and ribbons than any cat in the world.”

Shea leans over my shoulder to see what I've drawn. “Hey, that looks like me if I was a fairy princess or something.”

I stare at the picture. She's right. “I didn't mean it to be you,” I say, suddenly embarrassed. “It just came out that way.”

“It's okay.” Shea smiles. “I like it. Nobody ever drew me before.”

She settles down with her book again, and I put some finishing touches on the picture. As an afterthought, I carefully print
Princess Shea of the Enchanted Woodland
.

When it's time to leave, I give it to her.

“Princess Shea”—she touches the lettering—“of the Enchanted Woodland.” She smiles. “I didn't even have to ask for it.”

We walk slowly and silently through the gathering shadows. Hidden in the bushes, things rustle and scurry around us. The evening damp rises from the earth, a good smell. The sunlight casts long beams through the trees. It's the sort of time you expect to see a unicorn peering at you from a tangle of leaves and vines.

We wait for a long freight train to rumble and bounce past, and then we cross the tracks. “Maybe the Green Man will be here tomorrow,” Shea says.

“Maybe.”

We wave goodbye. I go my way. She goes hers.

 

After dinner, I hole up in my room and actually do my math homework. Shea says it isn't fair if she does hers and I don't do mine. Plus she doesn't want to go to middle school without me. Someday I figure I'll have to tell her about Mrs. Clancy and how much Sean and his friends hate me and how weird I am and all that, but not yet. For the first time since I've come to this town, I have a friend. I don't want to lose her.

So that's how it goes for a while with Shea and me. Almost every day after summer school, we go to the tree house. She reads, and I draw. Sometimes I carve things out of wood, faces and figures and swords and staffs. And other times we just sit and talk, dangling our legs over the edge of the platform and gazing out over the forest.

Shea does most of the talking. She tells me about what it was like to live in Guam when her father was stationed there. Big brown snakes all over the place that ate all the birds. Jungles. The ocean as warm as bathwater. And heat you wouldn't believe in the summer, heat so thick with humidity, you were scared you'd drown on dry land. You could go swimming every day all year round. And you could snorkel and see the prettiest fish swimming all around you like clouds of color. Or rainbows. It was the best place she ever lived.

She also tells me her father and mother take her places every weekend. Sometimes they camp overnight in the mountains and roast marshmallows over a fire and sing songs. Or they go to Virginia Beach and stay in big hotels with rocking chairs on the front porch and walk on the boardwalk.

While Shea talks about trips to amusement parks and museums and beaches and mountains, my mind drifts to the stories I've told myself all my life, all versions of the same subject—my mother takes me with her when she leaves the hospital, she stops taking drugs, and she finds a little house for us.

Shea gives me a sharp little nudge in the side. “Here I am blabbing on and on while you just sit there and never say a word. How come you never tell me anything about your life? I don't even know where you live.”

Before I know what I'm doing, I tell Shea my favorite fantasy, only I pretend it's true. I live with my mother, I say—my father died in a car crash before I was born. We don't have much money, so my mother and I can't afford weekend trips. But that's all right. On summer evenings we drive to a snow-cone place out in the country or get ice cream and read together on the couch. Sometimes we go to the movies.

I talk on and on, making up stuff I wish were true, and Shea never questions a thing I say.

“She's an artist,” I add. “That's where I get my talent. To her, art is the most important thing in the world. It doesn't matter if you're poor. Doing what you love best is worth more than money.”

I've told this story to myself so many times that it doesn't seem like lying.

When it's time to go home, we walk through the woods side by side. I feel bad when she says she wishes she could meet my mother. I tell her maybe someday both our families can get together and have a picnic or something.

 

The minute I walk into the house, Mrs. Clancy jumps all over me. It's her night to work at the mall. “You have ten minutes to eat your dinner.”

After I gulp down my vegetables and dispose of my chicken, we drive to the mall and I have to go with her. She says she doesn't like me to be home alone until almost eleven p.m., but the truth is, she doesn't trust me—not since I lied about summer school. While she's practicing her be-nice-to-strangers skills at the card shop, I sit on a bench near the fountain and read
Slaughterhouse-Five
, by Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Hailey mentioned it in class, said it was one of his favorite books, so I checked it out of the library. It's about war, but it's antiwar because of the terrible things that happen to Billy Pilgrim in Dresden. Not to mention the terrible things that happen to Dresden. I hope I never have to go to war.

Suddenly I realize it's late and the mall is getting ready to close. I can see Mrs. Clancy shutting down the cash register. Just a few shoppers linger, strolling along with big plastic bad-for-the-environment bags. Soon it will be time to go home.

I hear someone shouting. Something's going on in the jewelry store. Three guys are running toward me, shoving shoppers out of their way. They knock down an old woman. Their sweatshirt hoods hide their faces, but I recognize Sean, T.J., and Gene. T.J. runs right past me. Our eyes meet. There's no mistake about the look he gives me—death if I say anything to the cops about him. I nod and hunch over my book. I will say nothing to anyone. Even torture would not loosen my tongue.