Pretty Is

Sunday morning, the last day of camp. At least it was the last for Monica and me, though some of the other kids would be staying another week. My clothes were packed, my sleeping bag rolled up. Parents were coming between ten and twelve to pick everyone up. But first, after breakfast, there was a church service at the Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary was a clearing in the woods near the top of a hill, with rows of rough benches made of logs split in half. Mr. Haywood stood in front with his hands folded across his belly as we settled ourselves on the benches. He had keen blue eyes, and sometimes he seemed like a big jolly Santa Claus, but not now. “Quietly, please,” he said sternly to some kids who were chattering as they entered the clearing. “This is the house of the Lord.”

There wasn’t enough room for all of us on the benches, so we had to squeeze together, and even then, some people had to stand in the back, among the trees. I was crammed between Isabel and Zoe. Squirming around to watch, I saw that Monica’s group was the last to arrive. They spread out in the back, leaning against trees.

Then it really did seem like the house of the Lord, more than any church building I’d ever set foot in. Behind Mr. Haywood, at the top of the hill, there was a rough cross made out of two slender logs lashed together, and it made a dark silhouette against the eastern sky. The sun was streaming in through a screen of leaves, and a little breeze was blowing, and bright bits of sky jostled with the glowing green of leaves filtering the sun. Birds called in the trees all around us, blue jays and robins and mockingbirds.

We sang, “Morning has broken, like the first morning; blackbird has spoken, like the first bird,” and the song seemed written for this place, and the day seemed new.

I didn’t really listen to the Bible readings or the sermon. I watched the birds and the leaves, and brushed a daddy longlegs off the back of a kid in front of me. I was glad to be going home, glad that Mama and Daddy would soon be here.

I thought I was glad that Hannah would be back in Shipley, too. I could hang out with her, since Mama had said I wouldn’t be grounded after camp. Hannah was probably the only kid in my class who didn’t think I was crazy, after what I’d done to Kayla.

And yet, other thoughts kept creeping in, making me uncertain of how I’d feel, seeing Hannah again. Cutting Kayla’s hair had been Hannah’s idea. She’d come up with the plan, scouted out the tents, put the scissors in my hands, urged me to do it. She’d done almost as much as I had—but she hadn’t gotten caught. She’d been riding roller coasters at Disneyland and eating at fancy restaurants in San Francisco while I’d been grounded and disgraced.

But Hannah was my best friend. She’d stuck with me when Kayla and her pals had treated me like I was nothing. She’d wanted to hurt Kayla for my sake.

I shook my head as if that would somehow clear the muddle inside. All around me heads were bowed, and I quickly bent my head too, until Mr. Haywood said, “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.” Then, after a moment of silence, he smiled broadly, stretched out his arms toward us, and said, “Go in peace.”

The service was over. People were standing up and stretching, starting to leave. Then Mr. Haywood’s voice boomed out again. “Before you go, I’d like to have a word with Monica Chaney and Erin Chaney. Where are you, girls?”

I stiffened, wondering for a moment if I’d done something bad, but I knew I hadn’t. What did he want with us?

But I pretended not to hear, and squeezed past her to the aisle, moving against the flow of everyone else, toward the pastor standing in front of the cross.

Monica and I sat in the dining hall, each on the end of a bench, at diagonally opposite corners of the same table. We were the only people in the room.

From outside, through the screen doors, we could hear a lot of people talking, a few good-bye shouts, repeated crunching of tires on gravel. Inside, there wasn’t a sound except the buzzing of a few big flies.

I put my elbows on the table and stared down at it, twirling hair around my index finger. In third grade I was always doing that, and Mama was always after me to stop it. I finally did, but now, after all that time, it felt good. It felt like I needed some old bad habit to resurrect.

Monica was picking at a hangnail, then tracing a finger along the initials and hearts carved into the rough wood of the table.

One of the screen doors banged open. I looked around and saw Tina heading toward me. “There you are! Why aren’t you out front with everybody else?”

“Oh—just—” As I stumbled over words I saw her glance curiously at Monica, then back at me, as if wondering how we were connected.

“Just—my parents are going to be late, that’s all. I didn’t want to hang around out there and watch everybody else leave.”

“Oh,” Tina said. “Well, listen, my folks are waiting for me—I have to go. But I just wanted to say bye. Maybe I’ll see you next year, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “I come every summer.” But even as I said it, I felt my certainty slipping away, and heard my voice getting smaller.

“Okay. Bye!” She dashed out, banging the door again. Someone was tapping a car horn over and over, whether out of impatience or as a good-bye, I couldn’t tell.

What Mr. Haywood had told us, as we sat on one of the front benches in the Sanctuary, with him sitting on the end of the bench across the aisle, was that Daddy had called and asked if we could stay another week. Mama was going to have an operation, and he needed to be with her or at his job as much as possible. He didn’t have time to look after us.

Neither of us said anything for a bit as we took this in. I felt as though a big space had opened up somewhere inside the top of my head and was pressing against my skull.

Mr. Haywood sat leaning toward us, arms resting on his thighs, hands clasped in front of his knees. I watched his big puffy fingers flexing slightly. He shifted his grasp, running a finger over his wedding ring again and again. For some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off those fingers, as though they were not just parts of him but independent creatures, and I was some kind of naturalist intent on observing them.

Monica found her voice first. “What kind of operation?” “Well,” Mr. Haywood said, “it’s an operation concerning the female organs. It’s—well—” Now the hands unclasped, and my eyes followed one of them up to his chin, which he scratched for a moment. He sat up straighter now, and his broad face was calm, the sharp blue eyes moving from one to the other of us. I had a feeling he was used to giving people bad news.

“Your daddy will explain it all to you,” he said finally. “He wants you to call him collect this afternoon, or this evening. He wasn’t too sure when he’d be home.”

I nodded. This was the kind of question that grown-ups often wouldn’t answer straight out—they’d give you part of the answer, or they’d say something soothing that didn’t soothe you at all because you knew you weren’t getting the whole story. So I watched Mr. Haywood closely as he answered.

“I don’t know. Your daddy didn’t tell me. But I know he’s taking care of her, and some good doctors are too, so I reckon things will be all right.” I looked hard, but his face didn’t tell me any more than his words.

We sat in the dining hall a long time, listening to other kids leaving. I knew we weren’t the only ones staying on for another week—Isabel was staying, and I was glad of that—but those kids had known all along. They were out running around, saying good-bye to other campers. Monica and I were too stunned for that.

Monica wandered over to the game table in the corner and came back with a deck of cards. I thought she was going to suggest a game of War or Go Fish, and I was going to say no. But instead she began laying out solitaire.

I watched the cards going smack smack against the table as she counted them out into neat piles. Nothing else moved in the whole huge room, except an occasional fly zooming past or landing briefly on the table. The noise from the parking lot was lessening, and I could hear clattering in the kitchen, where someone was making lunch.

A screen door creaked open and both of us looked up. It was a counselor I didn’t know except by sight, and he gave us a curious glance but went straight to the kitchen.

Now it was my turn to wander to the game table. It was covered with battered old board games in boxes held together with masking tape: Monopoly, Clue, Life, Chinese checkers. There were more decks of cards, jigsaw puzzles, a wooden maze that you tilted to roll a metal ball to the finish. I shuffled halfheartedly through the games, finally settling on a puzzle with interlocking metal shapes.

I took the puzzle back to my seat, diagonally across the table from Monica and her solitaire. Though last year, after many tries, I’d finally solved this puzzle, now I couldn’t remember how. The pieces jingled as I twisted and turned them every way I could think of, but the star refused to be untangled.

The screen door creaked again, and again Monica and I both looked up. This time it was Amy, and she came over and sat down next to me.

“So you’re going to stick around, Erin!” she said cheerfully. She turned to Monica. “Hi. I’m Amy. It’ll be nice to have you too, Monica.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrugged. I didn’t feel like making any jokes about boys, and Amy’s eternal cheeriness was irritating me.

“I just talked to Mr. Haywood about it. The group for your age is totally full next week, Monica—no beds left in the cabin. And Erin’s group was already small, and yesterday one of the girls called and canceled. So he decided you could join our group and be with your sister.”

I felt panic rising in my throat. This was too much. Mama was having an operation, and I couldn’t see her or Daddy for another week, or Hannah either. And now I was going to be stuck with Monica for the whole week. Now everybody would know this dork was my sister.

I stared at her—at her too-big glasses, her baggy shirt—and thought of how she’d blurted out the words that got me caught and grounded, the words that made Mama drag me to Kayla’s door, to apologize and be humiliated. I wanted to have a screaming tantrum.

Then Monica met my eyes and flinched. She knew I didn’t want her around, and realizing that made me feel so guilty, I wanted to kick her. My right leg twitched.

“I’m going outside,” I said breathlessly, and ran. But as soon as the screen door banged behind me, out on the wide concrete porch, I stopped. Beyond the porch the midday sun made a wall of heat and glare. Harsh light ricocheted off the few remaining cars, a couple of signs, a million gravel stones flecked with mica.

Somehow that wall of glare told me there was nowhere to go. Slowly I walked to one end of the porch and sat on the edge of a rocking chair, where I kept very still and studied the floor. Gray concrete dusted over with gray dust. A dead june bug on its back, legs folded. I wished I was that june bug.