Buddy had changed schools before, a number of times, but never had she dreaded it as much as she did this time.
It had done no good to protest that surely her brother and her father would be coming soon to pick her up, that it was pointless to enroll in a new school for just a few days. It hadn’t helped to remind Cassie that no one had gotten to bed until late last night, and that what sleep they’d had hadn’t been restful.
It didn’t even matter that Grandpa had again been cause for concern at breakfast, when he was despondent and confused and uncooperative. He hadn’t wanted to get out of bed, he wanted to know why he wasn’t in his old room upstairs, and he insisted that he did not like scrambled eggs, even with sausage.
“But they’ve always been your favorite!” Cassie exclaimed, sounding mildly provoked. “I made them special for you today!”
The old man’s mouth took on a mutinous pout. “Don’t you think I know what I like?” Grandpa demanded, making Cassie roll her eyes. “I don’t like scrambled eggs!”
Addie pushed back her own chair. “Well, you two work it out. Let him have cold cereal for once, if that’s what he wants. It won’t hurt him. Max, you and Buddy better get going. See that she gets to the right classroom and finds her way around. I need to get to work upstairs; I have a chapter almost finished.”
Now it was Max’s turn to roll his eyes, and though she was quite apprehensive herself, Buddy took pity on him. “You don’t have to take me around like I’m a baby,” she said. “I know where the office is, and they’ll tell me where to go, won’t they?”
“You’ll get Mrs. Hope.” Max made a derisive snorting noise. “Wrong name. They should call her Mrs. Pity-Party.”
Immediately tense, Buddy asked, “Why? What’s wrong with her?”
“She likes nothing better than to find out what’s wrong with everybody, and then make a big public display of it. If you go in with a cast on your arm, she has to know how you broke it, and all the particulars, then tell all the details to the whole class. When she had her gallbladder out we got to know all about it, including how she threw up from the anesthetic. I was surprised she didn’t show us the scar. So if I were you, I’d keep quiet about how your dad disappeared. She’ll make a federal case of it, for sure. She probably already knows about Pa falling down and getting a concussion. I guess everybody in Hayseed knows.” He sounded glum.
Buddy decided her stomach was too uneasy to finish her breakfast. “Hayseed? Is that what you call Haysville?”
“It’s a hayseed town. Nothing happens here. No movies, no bowling alley, a library that’s only open two days a week. Everybody knows everybody else’s business, and they tell. Don’t be surprised if people ask you about Pa, and Grandpa, and all your own business that’s none of theirs.”
For a few more minutes Buddy lingered, hoping against hope that Bart would call with good news and make going to school today unnecessary.
But the phone was stubbornly silent. Talking clock going off every few minutes, Grandpa retreated to his bedroom, refusing Cassie permission to come and straighten it up. There was nothing to do but leave.
Buddy had expected that Max would not even want to be seen walking to school with her, but he fell into step beside her. Obviously he had decided the smell would be gone from his room, or if it wasn’t, the class would have to use it, anyway.
“I’ve been a Hayseed all my life,” Max said. “My mom liked it here when she first came, she said. She liked a small, friendly town. Until Pa took to drinking too much, and everybody in town knew about it. Nobody actually came out and said anything to her about him, but she said she always knew they were thinking about it. It was humiliating and embarrassing.”
“Where is she now?” Buddy asked, grateful that she wasn’t making this walk alone. She saw other kids heading toward the school, too, and some of them glanced at her curiously, but none of them spoke except a couple of boys who greeted Max.
“Last two letters came from Fort Worth. Texas, you know. She said she had a good job there, and had met an interesting man. They were just friends, but she liked him a lot. She sent me money for some new jeans and a shirt. She said she’d have sent more but she wanted to save enough so maybe by next summer she can get me a bus ticket and I can go see her. I was never in Texas, but I’ve read about it a lot. I hope I get to go.”
“I hope you do, too,” Buddy said sincerely. She wondered where she would be next summer, or even if she might still be stuck here in Hayseed. It seemed a more appropriate name than Haysville.
That morning there were kids in the office at the school, along with Mr. Faulkner and Sylvia. The secretary was speaking sharply to a tall, unkempt-looking girl dragging a battered backpack on the floor.
“I’ve told you before, Myra, you can’t come to school smelling like horse liniment and the barnyard. The other kids refuse to sit next to you.”
“I can’t help it,” Myra whined. “My ma makes me.
“Then tell your mother I want to talk to her. You’ll have to take a bath before you come to school.”
“There’s no hot water. The heater’s broke, and we can’t get a new one until Dad gets paid next week. I’m not taking a bath in cold water, even if I have to stay home from school,” Myra said defiantly.
“You have a kitchen stove, don’t you? Put some water in a pan, heat it on the stove, and take a sponge bath. And use soap, or that smell won’t come off.” Sylvia glanced past the unhappy student and saw Buddy. “Oh, good morning, Amy Kate. I’ll be with you in just a minute. Now, Myra, you can ask Mrs. Murphy if she wants you to stay and sit in the back away from everyone else, or go home and scrub up before you come back. Dust yourself with baby powder afterward; that might help.”
Myra turned sullenly away from the desk, and Buddy felt a moment of compassion for her. The girl might not be homeless, living in a car, but she certainly had problems.
“Now,” Sylvia said, smiling, “let’s see who we can find to take you to your room.” She glanced around the office at the milling kids, most of them looking unhappy. “Sara Jenks, you’re in Mrs. Hope’s homeroom. Will you take Amy Kate back with you, please, and introduce her?”
Sara was a small, thin girl with very thick glasses. “I need a pass to leave school at eleven o’clock,” she said, giving Buddy only a cursory glance. “Mom’s got a doctor’s appointment in Kalispell this afternoon, and I have to go along and baby-sit Junior.”
Sylvia’s smile congealed. “I told your mother she can’t keep taking you out of school to baby-sit, Sara.”
The girl shrugged. “You want me to bring him to school with me? He’s only eight months old, and we can’t leave him home alone. I gotta go unless I can keep him with me here, and Mrs. Hope didn’t like it the last time. Everybody wanted to play with him and didn’t pay any attention to her.”
Sylvia appeared to grind her teeth. “Well, I’ll give you the pass this time, but you tell your mother I need to talk to her about this. She’ll have to make other arrangements for the baby next time.” She scribbled out a pink pass and handed it over. “Now, show Amy Kate where to go, all right?”
The girl said nothing to Buddy, who simply followed her out of the office. The hallway was full of noisy kids, laughing, yelling, and shoving. Sara led the way up the stairs, turning to the right at the top. She didn’t speak until they’d reached the door of a room with a sign on it that said MRS. HOPE.
“You the one who’s been abandoned?” she asked then.
Buddy’s heart was jolted. “No! My dad went away to take a new job, and something happened to him, but my brother’s looking for him. I’m only staying with my aunts until they come get me.”
Sara nodded. “Everybody talks in this town, but they never get anything right. If they tell you my mom’s got cancer, it’s not so. She’s getting treatment for a disease with a big, long name, but it’s not cancer. She’s going to get better.”
“I’m glad,” Buddy said, and she was. “My mom died in a car wreck.”
Sara opened the door to Mrs. Hope’s room and moved toward the teacher’s desk. She laid the pink slip in front of the middle-aged lady and said, “This is Amy Kate, but they call her Buddy.”
Buddy certainly hadn’t told her that. Her ears felt hot, knowing that people were talking about her, and they were saying things that weren’t true. Her dad never would have abandoned her and Bart.
“Hello, Buddy,” Mrs. Hope said.
Several kids snickered, and one boy even asked under his breath, “What kind of name is that for a girl?” Buddy felt the heat creep up her neck, flooding her face.
Mrs. Hope was scowling at the pink slip. “Again? Sara, how do you expect to keep up your grades if you keep missing school?”
Buddy didn’t listen to their conversation. She was acutely aware of the other kids, already in their seats, watching her. Two girls sitting next to each other leaned toward the middle of the aisle, putting their hands over their mouths as they whispered and laughed.
At what, she wondered? Her name? Her red face? Her haircut, or her clothes?
What if Bart and Dad didn’t come for her soon? She’d have to stay here, going to this school, with these kids whose eyes appraised her hair and her clothes and everything about her. They probably all believed that she’d been abandoned. The heat spread from her ears to her cheeks, and she was helpless to control it.
“Class,” Mrs. Hope announced, “this is Amy Kate, but she likes to be called Buddy.”
Buddy wanted to speak out and deny that, to tell them to call her by her real name, but her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t make a sound.
“Maybe she’ll tell us, when we get better acquainted, how she came by that nickname. There’s an empty seat in the second row, there, beside Elinor. Just take that desk.”
Buddy slid into the designated seat, which felt strange, as if it didn’t fit her. She resented having to be here, when she was only going to be in town for a few more days. Surely she’d hear from Bart soon, and she’d have gone through all of this for nothing.
Dad had said that if this job worked out, they might be moving, and then she and Bart would both have to enroll in new schools, but that would be different. They’d be in a town where they were going to stay, where she’d have time to make friends.
None of these kids looked like friends. They were examining her as if she were a new variety of beetle in a glass jar.
The girl across the aisle—Elinor?—asked abruptly, “Who cut your hair?”
Immediately Buddy stiffened defensively. Did that mean the girl thought it was awful, or did she like it? She swallowed. “My aunt,” she admitted.
“Hmm. I thought maybe it was one of those fancy stylists, like the models have. It makes you look kind of . . . exotic.”
Exotic? That was good, wasn’t it? Tentatively, relaxing a little, Buddy smiled, and Elinor smiled back.
That was the only friendly overture, though. The teacher was kindly, but clearly too busy to spend much time on a new student. Not that Buddy wanted her attention. She remembered what Max had said about the way Mrs. Hope knew everything about everybody and didn’t hesitate to talk about it.
It was nearing the noon hour when an older student opened the door to the classroom. She conveyed a note to the front of the room, and Mrs. Hope paused in her explanation of a difficult math problem to read it, then looked directly at Buddy. “Amy Kate,” she said, not using the nickname this time, “you’re to go to the office immediately.”
Of course Buddy hadn’t done anything wrong. She couldn’t have. But her heart raced as if she were guilty of something.
Awkwardly, Buddy stood up and moved toward the door. Once more everyone in the room was staring at her. The student messenger handed her one of the pink slips that gave permission to leave the classroom, and Buddy followed her out into the hallway. “Is something wrong?” she asked the older girl.
“I think your aunt is here to get you. I don’t know why,” the girl said.
Buddy didn’t know whether to be excited or apprehensive. Was it about Dad, and Bart? Or had something happened to Grandpa?
Addie was standing in the lower hallway at the door to the office. She didn’t waste any time. “Your brother’s waiting for you to call him back,” she said. “He’s found Dan.”