The Umbrella Lady Read online

  Mazy didn’t want me simply to read important stories and books. She wanted me to read about them, and I remembered this one very well, because what it taught was something I had keenly felt but didn’t know how to express.

  His eyes brightened. “Well, let’s see how Miss Dazy came to that conclusion, class,” he said. “Welcome to ninth-grade honors English, Miss Dazy. You can drop all the flowers you want.”

  I gazed back at the boy, who was now staring out the window.

  The pretty dark-brown-haired girl on my right was smiling at me. She had a button nose and sweet hazel eyes. Her lips were full and perfect, which made her look older. Of course, everyone was probably older than I was.

  I smiled back at her and opened the text to the short story.

  “Nice,” the girl behind me whispered.

  I glanced at her. She had short light-brown hair and kelly green eyes, but she wasn’t that pretty, I thought, definitely not as pretty as poor Lucy.

  Mr. Madeo began to read a paragraph aloud. I sat up. Mazy was always after me to have good posture. It was silly to think it, but I couldn’t help feeling she was in the room with me, sitting in the rear, smiling proudly.

  Maybe a normal life was beginning for me after all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The pretty girl who had smiled at me and two of her friends surrounded me instantly after the bell rang to end the class. All the other students glanced at me curiously but moved around us, as if they were afraid to make any contact with me, even eye contact.

  “I’m Karla Matthews,” she said. “This is Trudy Samuels and Missy Brooks.”

  “Hi,” I said. We all kept walking, me a little more hesitant and unsure of where I was going.

  The corridor, with coffee-white walls and shiny grayish black floor tiles, was lit by narrow light fixtures and an occasional window. There were posters prohibiting everything from loitering in the bathrooms to acts of vandalism, as well as posters announcing upcoming school events. Although no one ran, everyone was walking fast and talking. Peals of laughter came in waves from every direction. Excitement and, I hoped, well-smothered nervousness swirled up from my stomach. This was school; this was where I had dreamed of being for so long. Was everyone looking at me? Would I make a fool of myself in my next class?

  “Your name really is Saffron?” Karla asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that was something to eat. I think my mother uses it in recipes.”

  “Ingredients are often used as names,” I said. “Ginger, for example.”

  I tried not to look at them, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see they were laughing.

  “You live with your grandmother, Mrs. Dutton, but your last name is Dazy?” Karla asked.

  “That is correct,” I said.

  “That is correct?” Trudy said. I glanced at her and kept walking. “Sounds like you’re taking a test, Karla, and Saffron just gave you a passing grade.”

  “So Mrs. Dutton is your mother’s mother?” Karla pursued, ignoring her.

  I just nodded. To explain that my grandmother took back her maiden name would take too long and only raise dozens of new questions, especially why I had taken on her name, too. Was this normal? Was this how you made friends? By cross-examining them?

  “You have algebra next, correct?” Karla said, imitating my correct.

  “Yes.” I looked at her clever little smirk. She was fishing for a laugh at my expense. “Don’t you like being correct?”

  “What?” Her smile started to fade.

  “Forget that, Karla. I loved how you put down Donald Nickels,” Trudy said, stepping forward to move closer to me. She was the tallest of the three, with straight licorice-black hair sharply cut at the base of her long neck. Her ebony eyes pulsed with glee. “He’s so puffed up with himself that he can’t fit in a selfie.”

  All the girls laughed. The tension I felt among us dwindled, and I smiled.

  “However, we all hafta admit that he is good-looking,” Karla practically sang. She leaned in to me to emphasize. “He’s hands down probably the best-looking boy in our class, maybe the whole school.”

  “Trouble is, he knows it,” Trudy responded, and looked to me for some confirmation. “Wouldn’t you agree, Saffron Dazy?”

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  Trudy stopped walking, making us all pause. “You don’t have to know his biography. You can tell just by looking at him. If his nose got any higher, he’d have to be on oxygen.”

  “I’ll let you know if and when I meet him,” I said.

  Trudy lost her smile. “But you know what he meant with his joke about flowers. You are the Tree Girl, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “No. I just told you, I’m Saffron Dazy,” I said sharply, and kept walking, just a little faster than they were.

  They caught up at the door of math class.

  “How long have you lived here?” Trudy asked. Before I could enter the room, she quickly added, “Where’s the rest of your family?”

  “In the forest. Where else?” I said, and entered the classroom to introduce myself to my teacher, who was already waiting with a textbook in hand.

  Until I smiled at them, the three girls didn’t look happy when they entered and took their seats. Trudy laughed and whispered something to the two others. Then Karla smiled back at me, nodding her head. Missy grinned. From the way they were all grinning at me now, I thought I might have passed some test they had designed for new students.

  Apparently, I had. They never stopped talking to me, walking with me to every class and insisting I sit with them at lunch. Maybe they had briefly discussed it first, but when they sat with me at the table, none of them asked any more particularly personal questions, even though I could see how much they were dying to do so. Instead, they competed to tell me things about the school, the other girls, and the boys, each rushing to get me more interested in what she had to say than what the others had said, sometimes talking over the one speaking.

  Karla, especially, didn’t like the attention I was giving to Trudy, who did speak louder and faster than the other two. Mazy’s warning about coming between best friends echoed in my mind. The temptation to favor one of the three was like bait leading me into an early trap. Other kids from our small classes came around to say hello. Karla took the lead in introducing me, but I caught some of the glances between my three guides and the other students. Their eyes were jammed with the same question: What have you learned about her? I was sure every text among them tonight would have my name. What golden nugget would I provide? Which one of them would claim it first?

  Would it help me or hurt me to continue to be mysterious? I wondered. The danger was that they’d get tired of trying to learn things about me or simply make things up, unattractive things. But despite how much I wanted to confide in someone and share my feelings and especially my history, I kept that urge tightly reined in. My dead silence and expressionless face at times didn’t stop their fishing.

  “I don’t know anyone homeschooled,” Karla said, “but having someone who taught as long as Mrs. Dutton did surely helped.”

  “We saw that already,” Missy reminded her. She turned to me and, almost suggesting I had somehow cheated, said, or more like whined, “You had the algebra problem solved practically before Mr. Wasserman had finished putting it on the blackboard. No one else in class had a chance.”

  “It’s a common equation,” I said.

  “Common?”

  She looked at the other two, who shrugged. She had reddish-brown hair neatly cut. Her face was explosive—her crystal-blue eyes brightening, her nose twitching, and the dimples in her cheeks bubbling when she tugged in the sides of her mouth. Despite the jealous way she described my work in class, I felt she was the least threatening to me. She was small, a good two inches shorter than I was, with doll-like features, and insecure. She wanted so to be liked, I thought, even more than I did. It was too obvious.

  Mazy had warned me
about that: “The more you want someone to like you, the harder she’ll make it for you, dishing out her favor like spoonfuls of gold.”

  I imagined that Missy was one of those who was always close to bursting into tears. Mazy would say she had been babied too long. “She’ll need a caretaker, not a husband.”

  Like my mother, I thought, but never said.

  “Still, even if it was a common equation, Missy’s right. You wouldn’t have become so smart in homeschool if you didn’t have a teacher like Mrs. Dutton,” Tracy said. “How did she teach you so much so quickly?”

  “That’s not a big mystery,” I said.

  They all stared, waiting for more.

  “First, she created a classroom for me in her house.”

  “A real classroom?” Karla asked. “You mean with a blackboard and desks?”

  “Only one desk,” I said. “And don’t forget the chalk.”

  “Did you have to raise your hand to ask her a question?” Trudy asked, smiling. She thought she was so clever.

  I didn’t smile. “Sometimes,” I said, and they all looked quite surprised.

  “You’re kidding,” Karla said.

  “Why would you have to raise your hand if there was no one else there?” Missy asked.

  I decided that teasing them was fun. “Training for coming here,” I said. “It was a simulation.”

  “A what?” Trudy asked.

  “An imitation of something, like when an astronaut goes into a machine that makes it seem like he’s really in outer space so he can practice.”

  I could hear Mazy calling simulation another example of a dying word.

  “So going to school is like outer space for you?” Karla asked, with a smile that was really closer to a smirk.

  “In a way, it is.”

  “Really?” Missy asked. “So you’re telling us you were being trained to go to public school?”

  I nodded. “She had a bell she’d ring between subjects, and there were announcements over a speaker in the house describing rules of the day. I had to walk on the right in the hallway and never run.”

  They all stared at me. I couldn’t help myself. I was having too much fun.

  “There was a bathroom pass and a list of rules and a school uniform. She had a room with the word Principal on the door, and there was a detention room, too, with no furniture and no windows. Is there a detention room here?”

  Their mouths were slightly open now.

  “I had to sit on my hands in the detention room. Anyone ever have to do that for an hour?”

  Missy gasped.

  “You’re making all this up,” Trudy cautiously concluded.

  “Well…” I said, looking around before turning back to them. “Maybe a little.”

  Missy laughed, relieved. “You’re funny,” she said.

  “She’s hysterical,” Trudy said dryly.

  “You deserved it,” Karla told her. “You made her feel odd.”

  “Me? What about you two? ‘Saffron is something you eat?’ ” she mimicked.

  “Well, it is, isn’t it, stupid?” She turned to me. “You weren’t upset, were you?”

  Now they were going to fight over me, I thought. Should I take one’s side over the other’s? Mazy had frightened me enough with the warnings about being too friendly too soon. The night before, she had come to my bedroom after I had gotten into bed and said, “Remember, your friendship is very precious. You don’t give away precious things quickly. Be a good listener and not a good talker. Roll everything around in your mouth first, and then give your tongue permission to perform.”

  When she finally left, I thought that was another one of her wisdom quotes.

  But I wasn’t following her advice. Would that hurt my chances of being just another student here?

  The girls were waiting for my response.

  “Maybe a little,” I said. “Nobody likes to be cross-examined.”

  The three looked equally defensive.

  “We’re just interested,” Trudy said. “It’s not a cross-examination. You should appreciate our attention. Most new students have to scratch and claw to get into the real action around here. And believe me, we’re the real action.”

  “I was just interested. Honest,” Missy said.

  “Okay,” I said. “The real answer about me is simply that education is and always was the most important thing in my grandmother’s life. I guess I’m just lucky she was in charge of it until now.”

  “Why didn’t she put you into school immediately?” Trudy pursued.

  I shrugged. “She thought she would do a better job. From the looks of it, she might have been right.”

  “Meaning?” Karla asked sharply. Did I mean they were all dumber?

  I shrugged again. “I think I’m doing better than most do their first day. What do you think?”

  They were all quiet for a moment, pondering. I kept eating my lunch.

  “So then, why now?” Karla asked. “What took so long?”

  “She thought I was ready, I guess. There was just so much she could do herself. She wanted to… expand my horizons,” I said. “You all know what that means, right?”

  “Of course we do,” Trudy said. “We’re in the honors classes, too, you know, even though we weren’t specially tutored.”

  When she was being sarcastic, she spoke out of the side of her mouth.

  “That’s good,” I said. “I’m happy for you,” I added, tapping my lips gently with my napkin. “The food’s not as good as I hoped it would be, but I guess I’ll get used to it.”

  “It’s a simulation of food,” Karla said. The other two laughed. “Did your grandmother ring a bell for lunch?” she asked. They laughed again.

  “Actually, she did. I’d get too involved in my work.”

  “When I’m hungry, I couldn’t care less about good grades,” Trudy said.

  “You always ate with just your grandmother?” Missy asked.

  “No. There is a cat, too. The third Mr. Pebbles. My grandmother had two identical ones previously. There’s a picture of the first Mr. Pebbles on our kitchen wall. Anyone have a pet?” I asked, tired of talking about myself.

  “We have a German shepherd,” Missy said. “Just two years old.”

  “My grandmother is not crazy about dogs. Cats are independent, but they can be devoted,” I said.

  “Whoopty-do,” Karla said. “Your best friend was a cat.”

  I glared at her. When would they put their knives away?

  “I once saw you walking with your grandmother,” Trudy said, sitting back. “But that was years ago. I never knew you were still here until the boys talked about you. We used to plan sighting expeditions in the woods.”

  “What does that mean? Sighting expeditions?”

  “Thought you were such a good student. Don’t you know that’s what explorers do? We were exploring. We’d venture close to your grandmother’s house to see if we could catch a glimpse of you,” Karla said. “They said you had branches instead of arms and leaves where your hands should be.”

  “So is that what you saw?”

  “Of course not,” Trudy said. “We accused the boys of lying about you, but they claimed you could go back and forth from human to tree. It got to be boring, actually, and we stopped spying on you.”

  “I forgot all about you,” Missy said, smiling. “Until you showed up at school.”

  I nearly laughed, because she sounded like she was bragging about it.

  “Actually, most everyone did. Most of us thought you had left Hurley some time ago,” Karla said. “Until recently. I don’t know how you put up with homeschool so long. It almost sounds like solitary confinement.”

  She leaned toward me, her eyes smaller, more intense.

  “Tell the truth, for once. Weren’t you bored to death living with your grandmother? I’m bored after spending ten minutes with either of mine.”

  “The truth is… she made sure that I very rarely had time to be bored.”

&nbs
p; They all stared at me as if I had said the most fantastic thing they had ever heard. I suspected they were often bored, despite the freedom they had compared to me and all the things they were able to do that I couldn’t.

  “I’d still be bored,” Trudy said. “Suicidal, maybe.”

  “You all make boredom sound like a disease,” I said. “My grandmother would say, ‘If you’re bored, start a new book. Try to write a poem or draw a picture.’ ”

  “I read only what I have to read,” Trudy said. “And that’s too much as it is.”

  “I do sketch things sometimes,” Missy admitted. She looked down quickly.

  “It always looks childish,” Karla told her.

  Missy’s cheeks quickly turned pink.

  “I’d like to see your drawings sometime,” I offered, and she brightened.

  “Show her. Maybe her grandmother taught her how to be an art critic, too,” Karla said.

  I nearly bit down on my lower lip. Taking sides too soon, I told myself. There was too much temptation to do so.

  Karla leaned forward. The other two did as well.

  “We haven’t told you the whole truth,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “Stuart Wiley was the one who brought you back to our attention. He told us how he had to chase you away from Lucy.”

  They were all keenly waiting for my self-defense.

  “That was a mean thing for him to do—mean to his sister, too. I hope he feels sorry. If he tries to make me into some sort of scapegoat, lies about me…”

  “Then what?” Karla asked.

  I glared at them, feeling the anger in me rise like mercury in a thermometer. They all looked a little frightened now, and it suddenly struck me that they thought I might be threatening to do something to Stuart, something I might be able to do to them, too.

  “I didn’t realize how sick she was,” I said in a more apologetic tone. “I was only trying to be friendly. She looked lonely sitting by herself every day on her porch.”

  No one spoke for a moment, but I could clearly see now that there was some other reason for their interest in me besides normal curiosity. Suddenly, none of the three had the courage to speak.

  “What?” I demanded of their silence.