Tell Us We're Home by Marina Budhos

Author:Marina Budhos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2010-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

chapter 25

Jaya dropped down onto the playground bench and ripped open her package. All day she’d survived her classes, language arts and social studies, and that god-awful chemistry quiz, by reaching beneath her desk, touching the spiral pad tucked into her satchel.

This is how her father used to sketch—thirty-second drawings—before he’d settle into his painting. He’d draw a group of children running past, or a mother and baby wading into the waves. One, two, three, and magically a person danced onto the page. He filled a whole sheet with these spindly little figures, and another, his hand moving in swift, sure strokes. Later he’d redraw some of the images, giving them volume, adding details: the straps of a little girl’s bathing suit, how a mother’s face was shaded by her straw hat.

First get the gist, Jaya, he’d tell her. Then you can fill in the rest.

Her plan was to draw pictures of Meadowbrook and hang them up all over Mrs. Harmon’s walls. That way she could be reminded of her old life, all the places she couldn’t visit anymore. But when Jaya tried to sketch a boy going down a slide, all she managed was just a few squiggly lines. She tried a girl clambering onto a jungle gym, but it came out like a clump of knotted yarn.

A shadow fell across her page. She looked up, to see Maria.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Maria looked different; she smelled different, some kind of shampooey perfume scent radiating off her glossy curls. A tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans, and boots. Jaya felt a pinch of irritation, sure it was the influence of that Frisbee boy, Tash.

“Where were you? It’s Tuesday. I left a message.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

Without saying so the girls had called off their regular meeting. Jaya just couldn’t handle seeing either of them right now, especially Lola. She was less afraid that she’d get mad at Lola and more afraid that she’d find herself swept into Lola’s crazy ideas once more. Lola could do that to her, simply mesmerize her with her bigmouth daring. After, it was like having a sudden ice cream headache, chilly and disorienting.

Besides, the whole business with Rachel Meisner made her nervous. Rachel had these X-ray eyes that flashed right through you, fierce with judgment; she was the talented poetess whose searing haikus adorned the pages of the school magazine. One time Jaya accompanied her mother on the job to help out, and when she opened the door, to her embarrassment, there was Rachel in her messy room, sprawled on her bed, writing in a book with gold-rimmed pages. Rachel shook back her black bangs, looked straight at Jaya, and complained, “Ma, why does the cleaning lady have to come on Saturday?”

Jaya was pretty sure Rachel didn’t ever recognize her in the school halls after that. She found that happened most of the time. The other kids just didn’t put it together. But with Lola picking fights, she was making it worse. As if calling attention to the three of them, taunting the world.

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