CHAPTER ONE

Let’s get something straight. I’m not one of those girlie girls. I don’t ooh and ahh. I don’t giggle and blush. Dresses cramp my style. Petticoats make me itch.

Mama and Daddy wanted a boy named Billy. When I popped out, they shrugged and changed the y to ie. So I’m Billie—Billie Sims. I ride bikes and climb trees. I shoot off firecrackers. On Saturdays in the fall, Daddy and I throw the football and listen on the radio to John Forney, play-by-play announcer for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

One afternoon in May 1961, I sat cross-legged on my bed and gazed out the window. I checked my bus schedule, which was smudged and wrinkled from use. When I looked up, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass. I’m thirteen, but I look older. Maybe it’s because I’m tall. It could be my eyes, which according to my friend Grant say, Don’t mess with me. My hair is what they call strawberry blond. I tie it back to keep it out of my face, but it always seems to come loose.

I glanced at the bus schedule and then at my watch. Folding up the schedule, I put it away, hopped off the bed, and went outside. Our house was at the top of a hill on the Birmingham Highway, about five miles west of town. It was a white bungalow with a wide porch and a hedge along the front. Next door was a home built with river stones, and its tan, lumpy walls reminded me of a gingerbread house.

In front, crouching by the steps, was my best friend, Grant McCall. Grant was a month older than I was and thought it gave him the right to boss me around. You’d think he would know better by now. Grant was a little taller than me, with black hair that stuck up in back. He had a long, friendly face, when you could see it. Most of the time it was covered up by his camera, which was as much a part of his body as his nose or eyes.

Grant had moved next door with his mom and dad a few years back, when Mr. McCall had been hired as the lead reporter at the Anniston Star, our local newspaper. They had come from Cincinnati, where Mr. McCall had worked on a big paper with lots of reporters. Grant said his father had been looking for a small town with a good paper, a place where he could make a difference, and had found it in Anniston. Sometimes Mr. McCall’s reporting made people mad, but they read it anyway, because even when they disagreed, they knew he would tell the truth. Once I asked him what he liked about Anniston.

“Important things are happening here,” he’d said.

“Here?” I asked. “In Anniston?”

He smiled. “Open your eyes, Billie. Look around.”

I headed across the yard toward Grant. I hadn’t bothered to put on shoes, so the grass felt warm and dry beneath my feet. It was a sunny spring, and I’d been wearing shorts and a T-shirt for weeks.

“Hey!” I yelled.

Grant ignored me. He does that a lot. It’s not that he’s mean or anything. It’s just that when he shoots photos, he’s in his own little world, with a white border and glossy finish.

I tapped his shoulder. He juggled his camera, then stood up and wheeled around.

“Billie, how many times do I have to tell you—”

“I know, I know. ‘Don’t bother me when I’m taking pictures.’ Well, you’re always taking pictures. You might as well attach that camera to your head. Just graft it right on like a pear branch.”

“Huh?”

I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “Hello! Can you hear me? There’s a world out here.”

“Look, I’m busy. What do you want?”

“It’s Friday,” I said.

“Just give me a minute, okay?”

“What are you taking pictures of?” I asked.

“Flowers. I’m trying out a new close-up lens.”

“There’s a special lens for close-ups?”

“There’s a lens for everything,” he said.

Grant snapped a few more pictures, then took the camera strap from around his neck, showed me the camera, and was off to the races, talking about his favorite topic. Blah blah blah Minolta. Blah blah blah aperture. Blah blah blah telephoto.

I noticed that he had a couple of freckles on his nose and a mole on one cheek. Do you call it a beauty mark if it’s on a guy? A few beads of perspiration dotted his upper lip, and one of them dropped off as he spoke. His teeth were shiny and straight. His lips were soft. Okay, I didn’t know that for sure.

“Well?” he said.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“My new wide-angle lens. Do you want to see it?”

I said, “Of course.”

He took off the close-up lens, then reached into his camera bag, pulled out a shorter lens, and clicked it into place.

“This one takes a wider picture,” he said. “You know, for landscapes, things like that.”

“Could I see?” I asked.

He handed me the camera. “Be careful. It’s expensive.”

I was surprised at how heavy it was. I thought of it almost as a toy, Grant’s fancy toy. But it had weight and heft. Bringing it up to my eye, I looked through the lens and swiveled slowly around. Everything seemed far away, framed like a picture.

“Try looking over there,” said Grant.

He touched my shoulders and turned me gently to the north, until I was gazing out over hills and trees. It looked like ordinary countryside, but I knew better.

“The army depot,” I said.

The official name was the Anniston Ordnance Depot. It covered fifteen thousand acres, just down the hill from us. The people there serviced tanks and antiaircraft guns. At least one of them shuffled papers. I knew, because she was my mother.

I told Grant, “I want to take a picture. Could you show me how?”

“Just push the button,” he said.

“Which one? How do I hold it?”

Grant rolled his eyes, then stepped behind me and guided my hands on the camera, my left hand supporting it and my right hand poised above the shutter button. I felt his breath on my cheek. It smelled like lemonade.

“Okay, push,” he said.

There was a click, and the image blinked.

“Nothing to it,” I said.

“That’s the easy part. Now you have to develop the picture.”

“Could you show me how?” I asked, leaning against him.

Grant stepped away, and I stumbled backward.

“Hey, watch it!” he said. “I told you, that’s expensive.”

He grabbed the camera and cradled it in his arms the way you might hold a puppy, or a girl if you had a clue.

I looked at my watch. “Come on, it’s almost time. Let’s go.”

“Okay,” he said, “but I’m bringing my camera.”

“Here it comes!”

Grant pointed. I grinned and tied my hair back. On the horizon, beyond the trees and houses in my neighborhood, a speck appeared. It got bigger as we watched, moving along the road and up the hill. It formed a shape, fuzzy at first, then long and rounded, like one of the medicine capsules Mama took for her headaches. It disappeared behind some pine trees, then rounded a turn, and there it was.

It was a bus—not one of those beat-up city buses, but a gleaming Greyhound, with silver sides, a long blue stripe, windows that leaned forward, and five license plates, one for each state it went through.

“Now!” I yelled.

We pushed off from the hilltop and down the other side, pedaling like nobody’s business. I owned a Schwinn, and Grant had a ten-speed racing bike, but to do this right, what we needed was gravity.

It was like a magic trick. I’d noticed it one day coming back from church with Mama and Daddy. Church wasn’t Daddy’s favorite place, so he tended to return home at high speed. He had pulled around to pass a car on the highway, and as we came up even with it, there was a moment when our speeds matched and our worlds clicked into place. In that instant, I could see their family as clearly as mine. The father frowned as he drove. The mother looked away and out the window. A little boy sat in back. He glanced at me and smiled. I was in another car, another world, but just for a second I was right there with him.

Grant and I had decided to try it with the bus. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. We had to time it perfectly. If we left too soon, we would beat the bus to the bottom of the hill. If we started too late, the bus would drive by before we got going. But if we timed it just right, we got a ride to remember.

Picking up speed, Grant and I raced side by side down the two-lane highway, like the chariot drivers in Ben-Hur, a movie we’d watched at the Ritz Theater. Looking over our shoulders, we saw the bus reach the top of the hill and start down. It came up behind us and, little by little, pulled even. It was right next to us, huge, throwing off heat, tires whirring on the asphalt.

The wind whipped my hair. I gripped the handlebars, hard. Then suddenly, everything changed.

We were the ones standing still, and the highway sped by. Trees, houses, mailboxes flew past, racing up the hill. Meanwhile we were motionless, suspended in space, the bus floating alongside like a silver bubble. Bus passengers watched us through the windows. A little girl tugged her mother’s sleeve. A man in a brown hat walked along the aisle, bracing himself on the seat backs.

I wondered where the passengers were going—Montgomery, Monroeville, Mobile. Miss Harper Lee lived in Monroeville. That very morning her picture had been in the paper, with an article saying she had won something called the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird, a book she wrote. They said she had an apartment in New York City and lived in both places. I wished I could live in two places. I would live another life, an important life, doing things that mattered. I loved my family, but I wanted more. I didn’t know what, but I needed it desperately, sometimes so much that it ached.

For a moment, I imagined what it would be like not just to chase the bus, but to get on it and leave. I’d travel to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, or to Monroeville to visit Miss Harper Lee. Maybe she would take me to see her apartment in New York City. I could go anywhere and do whatever I wanted. I would be free.

Free. Mama said the word sometimes. Her eyes would light up and she’d gaze off into the distance. I wondered what she saw. Did it just mean getting away, like taking a trip? Maybe it was like summer vacation. During school, the summer shimmered in the distance. Then it arrived with a rush, and classes were over. We could sleep late and roam the hills. We could do whatever we wanted, even if it just meant lying in the grass and watching the clouds. Is that what freedom was?

The bus edged forward, and the bubble burst. I was back on my bike, and the bus rumbled on. Grant and I skidded to a stop at the bottom of the hill, in front of Forsyth’s Grocery. Grant lifted his camera and snapped some pictures of the bus as it disappeared down the highway.

Isn’t it strange how things work? Soon Grant would take pictures again, but the bus wasn’t driving along the highway. It was broken down by the road, sides battered, tires slashed. Glass shattered. People screamed. My rosy dreams gave way to a nightmare of blood and flames.

And it all happened on Mother’s Day.