Wally

It was Tuesday, August 15, and in just a couple more weeks I’d be back at school. Eighth grade was pulling me closer with each passing day, promising all new teachers and new classes and the huge safety net of summer separating me from my big mistake at the end of seventh grade. I could start fresh, focus on my classwork, reunite with Vic, even rejoin the Art Club, although I knew it would be different without Trey. He would be joining a new art club, the one at the high school, the one you had to apply and be accepted to, which he had.

I realized right then how much I missed Art Club. I missed sitting still and looking at something so long and hard that it eventually became something else to my eyes. I missed making lines on paper—dark, light, thick, thin—until what pushed out of my pencil matched what I saw in my mind and felt in my chest. Because that’s what drawing was for me—a feeling that came from the inside out. That feeling was either tight and stiff and frustrated when it wasn’t going well, or loose and cool and smooth as icing on cake when it was.

I missed drawing on Fridays.

And then I had an idea.

Maybe once school started again, I could come to the library each week to draw Wally’s flower. I could make it a yearlong study to submit as part of my portfolio for the high school Art Club. I could buy a special journal, and each page would be a flower portrait. It would show my commitment to the work, and my growth in skill, and it would reveal the color pattern, if there was one, of the flowers Wally chose for his special vase each Tues—

Wait.

What was I thinking?

Wally was gone. He couldn’t bring flowers anymore for the jar on the circ desk. In fact, the last one he brought, that bright red carnation, was two weeks old and way overdue to be changed. The only reason it was still in the vase, the petals curled at the edges and shriveled up, was because none of us had the heart to pull it.

I didn’t want to think about that jar being empty.

As I approached the library, I saw Lenny and Black Hat Guy standing by the book drops, talking under a cloudless sky. I couldn’t see if Shady was there in his usual spot, and I didn’t want to interrupt my errand to check. I walked quickly past the building, then up the side street that led to Foxfield’s only grocery store.

A small display of cut flowers greeted me as I stepped through the automatic doors. There weren’t a ton to pick from, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted something cheerful and bright to help fill the void Wally had left.

A clerk from one of the registers eyed me suspiciously. There had been a lot of shoplifting recently at the store, all covered in the Biweekly. She didn’t need to look at me like that, though. After what I had been through, I knew I would never steal anything again for the rest of my life.

The clerk approached me.

“Are you going to buy something?” she asked, not bothering to keep the snark out of her voice.

“I need a flower,” I replied, still scanning my choices. “Just one.”

“One stem?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if it’s just one you want, then you have to go with the roses. Everything else we sell as a bouquet.” Her voice lost some edge as she settled into her regular sales pitch.

“The roses are here.” She pointed to the three pots at the top of the display, each holding a different color. “Today we got yellow, that’s for friendship; red, that’s for love, of course; and orange, which we don’t see here too often.”

“What’s orange stand for?”

“It says on the card orange is for enthusiasm and passion.” She huffed a little then, as if maybe she thought the whole color symbolism thing was nonsense. “So they say.”

Wally had passion for the library. Wally showed enthusiasm every single time he came in, even with his deteriorating health closing in on him from all sides. He had enthusiasm and passion for the movies he checked out every week and always returned on time. Orange was a good match for Wally.

“Okay, I’ll take an orange one, please.”

“One orange it is,” she said, and lifted a stem out of the bucket.

After she rang me up, she handed over the rose and said, “Now, don’t forget this stem’s got thorns on it. You got to watch where you hold it or you’ll prick your skin and bleed like the dickens.”

Another way to use the word dickens. I smiled to myself and decided I would mention it to Beverly later.

“Thanks,” I told the salesclerk. I turned to leave, then stopped and looked back at her. She was standing over the open till, fighting with the wrapper on a roll of pennies she needed to add to the drawer.

I cleared my throat to get her attention. “You always have roses on Tuesdays?”

“Usually, yeah. Unless something’s wonky with delivery,” she answered.

“Okay, thanks.” As long as the flowers were there, and as long as I could get to the store before school on Tuesdays, I would keep it going. I would do my best to keep Wally’s vase full, and I would draw each flower like a weekly diary entry. Flowers for Wally could be the title of my project.

I hurried to the library. Wally’s vase needed to be cleaned. It needed some fresh water and one sunshiny-orange, passionate rose.

It was going to be a beautiful Tuesday.