Pretty Is

Whap whap whap whap. It was the second Sunday after I’d cut off Kayla’s hair. Mama and Daddy were having breakfast and reading the newspaper on the back porch, and I was sitting on the porch steps making about my fiftieth lanyard out of plastic cord.

“Can’t a fellow get a little peace and quiet on a Sunday morning?” Daddy said, putting down the sports section.

“Oh, let her do it,” Mama said. “The Lovingers aren’t home; they went to Gatlinburg.”

Mama turned her coffee cup thoughtfully in her hands. “Maybe we should put up our own basket.”

“She’s sure-enough good at it,” Daddy mused. An hour later I dragged myself into Sunday school. Just like the week before, everybody stared at me, and Kayla and her friends huddled closer together. A smothered burst of giggles escaped them, and I wondered if they were giggling about me. Shakara said hi to me, and I said hi back, but then she kept talking to Samantha.

I went straight into the classroom, even though it wasn’t quite time, and sat down at the table. There was a Bible at each place, and the one in front of me was maroon with gold edges on the pages. I didn’t touch it.

After a minute Ricky Talmadge bounced in, just ahead of the others. “Hi, Scissors,” he grinned, sliding into a chair across from me. There was nothing mean about the way he said it, and I managed a faint little grin in response.

Mrs. Oakes’s lesson was about how Jesus cared for bad people as much as good people, and how He was glad to eat and talk with anyone, even the most notorious sinners.

I didn’t hear Jesus talking to me. But if He’d wanted to, He wouldn’t have had much competition.

After lunch Daddy went to Kmart and came back with a backboard, hoop, net, and a pole in three sections, along with a hollow base and a bag of sand to fill it. Monica helped him take the things out of the station wagon and set them at the end of the driveway. I sat on the front step, between the two white concrete boxes full of geraniums, and watched.

It didn’t take them long to set it up. Monica held the rim straight while Daddy screwed it onto the backboard, which was painted like an American flag, and she put on the red, white, and blue net while Daddy filled the base with sand. She was smiling and bouncing around like a kid on a pogo stick, in the very cool new basketball shoes Mama had bought her, in front of the new basket that Daddy was putting up just for her.

I couldn’t remember ever seeing Daddy put something together. He wasn’t the kind of dad who fixed leaky faucets or built a swing set or helped you with LEGO projects. He was the kind of dad who worked in a store all day and played golf on his days off. One thing for sure, he’d never done anything like this for me.

“You put it up crooked,” I called from my perch on the step as soon as the basket was up.

Daddy folded his arms and narrowed his eyes at the basket. “It’s about half a degree off. Which is pretty durn close to perfectly straight.”

“Yeah, right,” I answered furiously. “And that flag looks so dumb. That’s the dumbest-looking hoop I ever saw,” I threw over my shoulder as I went in the house and banged the screen door behind me.

I was dying of boredom, or something. I was sick of our house but there was nowhere to go. I didn’t make phone calls, and no one called me. I read long books and made long lanyards and strung beads in long, boring necklaces. I sat by a window in the living room and stared out. I sat in the swing on the front porch, barely pushing off with my toes, just enough to move myself slowly back and forth, just enough to make the swing slowly, faintly squeak.

One afternoon, when I was sitting on my bed, staring down at the bag of beads I had just dropped, spilling most of them, the doorbell rang. I leaped up to answer it, hoping for I don’t know what.

Russell Lovinger stood there on the front step. “Hey,” he said. “Your sister home?”

In a minute she was out on the Lovingers’ driveway, teaming up with Russell against two of his high-school friends. With nothing else to do, I dragged myself out to sit under a tree to watch. “Brucie!” I called, and he came trotting up to hang out with me.

“Hey, Russ,” one of the other boys, named Josh something, said. “How ’bout we spot you ten points, since you got a girl on your team? We’ll kick your butt anyway.”

“You can spot us zippo,” Russell answered. “And you ain’t kicking nobody’s butt.”

“Woooo,” grinned Josh’s partner, without looking at anyone. He was trying to spin the basketball on his fingertip. “You better show us, tough guy.”

“Bring it on,” Monica piped up. The boys laughed, and she looked embarrassed. But once the game started, they stopped laughing. Monica’s shooting put her and Russell way ahead in no time.

I watched a little, picked the leaves off clover, rubbed Bruce’s belly, tried to whistle through grass blades. Every time Russell hollered out the score, he and Monica were further ahead.

But the really amazing thing happened after the game. Monica, who didn’t have a friend in the world and never invited anybody over, actually asked the boys to come in for something to drink. And they actually said yes, and the four of them sat around the living room with lemonade and orange juice.

I poked around in the kitchen, listening. Maybe I’d make brownies. I found a mix, a measuring cup, eggs, a bottle of vegetable oil.

“Yeah,” said Russell. “You could probably play first string on the high-school team right now.”

I stretched up to get a pan out of one of the cabinets, then peeked into the living room. Monica’s face was flushed and happy. She was sitting right where she’d sat that Saturday when she opened her big mouth and told Mama I’d gone out in the night.

I cracked the egg too hard against the edge of the bowl and had to pick bits of shell out of the powdery, sweet-smelling mix.

Monica and the boys came in while I was stirring and put their glasses in the sink. Nobody spoke to me except Russell. “Mmmm, save me some brownies when you’re done, okay?” He patted me on the head like I was a tiny little girl, and then they all bounced out of the house.

Once, just once, I got an e-mail from Hannah. She wrote me from San Francisco, using her mom’s laptop. The subject line said for Erin because the address I’d given her was really Mama’s, although Monica and I were allowed to use it now and then. I hardly ever got e-mail messages, so when Mama told me I had one, I knew it had to be from Hannah.

“I don’t read other people’s mail.” She got up so I could sit in front of the computer. “Don’t be on a long time.”

Dear Erin, Hannah had typed, on the other side of the country. We are having a great trip except Jake and Laura are being annoying. You know how they are. I liked Disneyland the best. Yesterday we went to Chinatown and rode on a cable car. Everything is really crowded here. How are you? Are you going swimming a lot? We’ll be home on August 10. Love, Hannah.

August 10. I looked at the calendar that hung on the wall above the computer. I wouldn’t even be here—I was going to church camp for a week on August 8. On the square for August 30 there were big red letters that Mama had printed: SCHOOL STARTS.

I read Hannah’s letter again. She probably didn’t know I’d been caught. She probably didn’t want to even hint at anything about our adventure because she knew Mama or someone else might read her message. We had agreed not to mention anything secret on e-mail. But still, I wished there had been just the tiniest hint. I wished she had sounded like she was thinking about me. Somehow the message made me feel lonelier than ever.

I closed up e-mail and disconnected, then wandered into the kitchen, where Mama was wiping off the counters. “So that was from Hannah?” Mama asked. “Is she having a good trip?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, opening the refrigerator. I didn’t really want anything, and let it close itself. “They went to Disneyland. Now they’re in San Francisco.”

I went to Mama and put my arms around her. I thought I might cry if I tried to say anything, and I didn’t want to cry. She hugged me back. “I know you’re bored,” she said. “But you need some settling-down time, even if it’s boring. And it won’t be long till camp. Just five days.”