A Week in the Woods (3 page)

After supper Leon smiled at Mark and said,
“Come. I'll show you our new apartment.”

Through a door at the rear of the kitchen, a short stairway went down to a small living room with two easy chairs, a couch, and a pair of end tables. Nothing fancy, but comfortable and homey. Leon pointed to his pride and joy, his big-screen TV. “See? One hundred and twelve channels now. Satellite. Very clear.”

Mark nodded. “Great.”

There was a small kitchen off the living room with a simple wooden table and two chairs. There was a bathroom, a roomy bedroom, and like the rest of the addition, everything was fresh and new. The views from these windows were not as broad as the ones from the upper levels, but the scenery was just as dramatic. The sunset was past now, and it was dark enough to see a few faint stars above the snowy hilltops to the east.

Anya came down the stairs and Leon went to meet her, putting out his hand and bowing like a fancy gentleman. “Welcome to your castle, my lady.”

Anya smiled shyly and said, “Don't be foolish, Leon.”

Mark felt awkward, like a stranger in their home. He said, “I'm pretty tired.”

He turned and trotted up the stairs, and he didn't answer when they both called good night after him.

Mark found his room. They had done what he'd told them to. Same bed, same bedspread and drapes.
Same carpets and bookcases, same desk and dresser. And he could tell Anya had tried to arrange his stuff just like it had been last week.

But it wasn't the same. Nothing was the same.

Mark lay down on his bed. He didn't even take off his shoes. He pulled his old down comforter up around his chin and lay still, staring at the perfectly smooth ceiling in his new room.

An hour or so later his eyes closed and he fell asleep with the lights on.

For the first two days Mr. Maxwell had given the new boy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the kid just felt shy, or homesick. Or maybe he was trying to prove himself, be sort of tough. He was a good-looking kid, maybe a soccer player, or at least that kind of build. Sharp brown eyes, seemed plenty bright. And he certainly dressed nicely, and wore his hair neat and not too long.

But after twenty-two years in the classroom, Mr. Maxwell could spot a slacker a mile away. And by Wednesday afternoon at the end of his third class with Mark, he'd reached his decision: This new boy was a slacker.

It was written all over him. Like the way he chose to sit at the rear of the room. Or the way he leaned back with his chin up, his head tilted a little to one
side, his eyes half closed. The boy didn't pay attention, didn't even pretend to. This one had a bad attitude. Everything about this kid said, “I don't care, and I don't care if you know I don't care.”

Then on Thursday morning Mr. Maxwell learned who the new kid was.

He was talking to Mrs. Stearns, the reading teacher. “That new boy named Mark?” he asked. “What's he like in your class? He's not doing a thing for me.”

Mrs. Stearns opened her eyes wide. “You mean you haven't heard who he
is
?”

Mr. Maxwell shook his head. He didn't spend much time in the teacher's room, so he was always behind on school gossip.

Mrs. Stearns leaned forward and lowered her voice. “He's the boy from the family who fixed up the Fawcett farm. And he's an only child, too.”

Like everyone else who had heard this news, Mr. Maxwell's eyebrows went up. He said, “Oh, really? The Fawcett place, eh?”

Everyone in Whitson knew about the Fawcett place. For months they had been talking about it, waiting to see what kind of people had bought the old farm property—plus another four hundred acres surrounding it on the crest of Reed's Hill. The buyers had closed the deal in late September, and according to Beth Keene at Mountain Real Estate, the total sale
price for the old farm and the surrounding parcels of land had been two and a half million dollars. That was big news in Whitson.

But the news didn't stop there. Three days after the deal was settled, a building contractor and an architect from New York had come to town and set up an office in a little storefront on Main Street. The contractor put out the word that he was looking for first-rate tradespeople, as many as he could find.

High-paying construction work was always scarce during the fall and winter months, so plenty of people came looking—carpenters, brick layers, stonemasons, plumbers, heating and air-conditioning engineers, cabinetmakers, electricians, painters, wallpaper hangers, and a host of others. And everyone who was hired had to agree to one condition: All the work had to be finished by February first. The contractor was offering top wages and plenty of overtime, so people signed on and went right to work.

One team began restoring and remodeling the original farmhouse. An even larger group began building a new addition that was almost triple the size of the original house.

At one point more than sixty men and women were hard at work out at the Fawcett place. The tight deadlines meant that crews were working day and night. Near the end, some of the workers from distant towns even parked their RVs in the pasture in front of
the house and lived on the site until the job was finished.

And the job did get finished. By comparing notes, the local people figured out that the materials and labor for the work must have cost the owners at least another million dollars—not to mention the new furnishings.

There's nothing that attracts quite as much attention as large amounts of money. So it would be fair to say that in the modest little town of Whitson, almost everyone was curious about these new neighbors. After all, any people who had a few million bucks to throw around were bound to be interesting. Might be a movie star! Or even
two
movie stars!

When Mrs. Stearns told Mr. Maxwell the news, his attitude toward this new boy changed instantly. But it didn't change for the better.

Because the only kind of people Mr. Maxwell disliked more than slackers were environmentally insensitive, buy-the-whole-world rich folks.

And the only people he disliked more than rich folks were their lazy, spoiled kids.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stared at Mark from the calendar that was thumbtacked next to the chalkboard. Mark stared back and forced his mind to work.
Friday, February 27th
, he thought.
It's Friday, February 27th. So that means I've been at this school . . . exactly ten days. Feels like ten years.

Mark was having trouble staying awake. He propped up his head and chewed on the end of his pencil. Anything to keep his eyes open. The teacher—was it Miss Longhorn? or maybe Mrs. Lego?—whatever her name was, Mark thought she was a lousy math teacher.

In fact, the moment Mark had walked in the front door of Hardy Elementary School, he'd decided that the whole place was lousy.

Before Monday, February sixteenth, Mark had
never set foot inside a public school. He'd had third grade, fourth grade, and half of fifth at Lawton Country Day School in Scarsdale. The two years before that he'd been at the American School in Paris. Before Paris it was kindergarten at the Hames School in New York City, and before that he'd gone to a Montessori school in Santa Fe.

He glanced at the fraction problems on the chalkboard, and fought back a yawn. He thought,
I learned all that stuff ages ago.

Mark shifted in his chair and looked out the window. More snow. For the past week, at least two inches of snow had fallen every day. And Mark was glad. The snow was like a layer of soundproofing. It made everything quiet, and quiet was something Mark had begun to appreciate.

A stretch and a yawn earned Mark a disapproving scowl from the teacher. He straightened up in his chair, but slumped down again as soon as she looked back at the chalkboard. He thought,
At least I get to sit in the back of the room at this school. So I guess that's one good thing about the place.

Mark also liked that there were so many kids in every class. At Lawton Country Day School Mark's classes had been small, no more than twelve students, sometimes as few as five. In classes like that there was no escape, no chance to slack off. Never. But here, there were twenty-four other kids. Zero pressure.

Scanning the room, Mark looked over his classmates. He stared at the backs of their heads and tried to remember some names. But even a clear look at their faces wouldn't have helped him much. Mark could only recall the names of two kids.
Two names in ten days—that's pathetic!
Mark gave a mental shrug.
But so what? It's not like it matters.

* * *

When Mark had arrived for his first day in the middle of February in the middle of fifth grade, he decided the place didn't need him any more than he needed it. In four months fifth grade would be over, and he'd be gone for good. And these kids? Were any of them looking for a new friend? Why would they be?

The way it looked to Mark, most of the kids at his new school had been together since kindergarten. Hardy Elementary School was an old school to them, and they were the old kids. And by the middle of February in the middle of fifth grade, they had themselves pretty well sorted out into pairs and sets and groups of friends. Mark had no place in their universe, so he kept to his own little orbit.

By the middle of February in the middle of fifth grade, the old kids at the old school had also gotten themselves sorted out academically—and in just about every other way possible. They knew who the best students were and which of their friends were going to be in the accelerated math group or the low
English group at the middle school. And they also knew which girls and boys would probably make the basketball teams and the soccer teams, and who was the best artist in the fifth grade.

They knew these things because most of the old kids had been looking at each other and listening to each other for years. And they had been watching as the teachers looked and listened too. Suddenly all that information felt like it was important, so the old kids were getting things figured out.

By the middle of February in the middle of fifth grade, it was starting to feel like elementary school was ending. The old kids were looking ahead to sixth grade at the middle school. Big brothers and sisters had told them who the nice teachers were, and also which ones to watch out for. So the old kids had begun to talk about stuff like that at lunch and recess, and when they walked home after school with their friends.

But Mark? That kid who moved into that huge house out west of town in the middle of February? Mark didn't know a thing about this school or the kids in it. He didn't even know the name of the middle school.

After a week or two most new kids would have found someone who was halfway friendly, an old kid who didn't mind answering a lot of questions. Because most kids would have wanted to figure out what was going on.

But Mark Robert Chelmsley hadn't done that. He wasn't like most kids, and especially not like most kids in Whitson, New Hampshire. That's why the other fifth-graders left him pretty much to himself, which seemed to suit Mark just fine.

Even Jason Frazier left him alone, and Jason rarely missed a chance to bully someone. In this case Jason had made a good decision. Mark had taken private karate lessons three afternoons a week since he was six. He knew self-defense. Jason would have learned quickly that Mark Robert Chelmsley was not a boy to be bullied.

During fourth and fifth grades in Scarsdale, Mark had also had math and English tutors come to his home two afternoons a week, and a month before moving to Whitson, he had taken his private-school entrance exams. He'd done well, and that's why he was already accepted into Runyon Academy. Next year he'd be going to one of the most exclusive prep schools in America, the kind of school attended by presidents and senators and their children and grandchildren.

“Nothing but the best for you, Mark. Nothing but the best.” That's what his dad had said.

A week before the move his mom had said, “Now, Mark, I want you to make the most of these few months up in Whitson. This school will be a nice little break before you get down to some serious work next year at Runyon.”

That's what she'd said. What Mark had
heard
was this: “Mark, all you have to do is have a little fun and try to stay out of trouble until you leave for summer camp. Because what happens at Hardy Elementary School doesn't really count.”

So Mark didn't care which teachers at the middle school were nice. He didn't care which kids were the smartest or the best soccer players. And if he found himself starting to care, or even starting to wonder about things like that, he told himself,
It's got nothing to do with me.

Mark knew that his parents were some of the richest people in this part of New Hampshire, maybe some of the richest people in the whole country. It was something he tried not to think about, but he couldn't really forget it, not in Whitson.

Being rich at Lawton Country Day School hadn't mattered. Mark had fit in perfectly. The other kids there had worn blazers and shirts and ties and shoes just as nice as his. Kids at his old school didn't wear clothes from Wal-Mart. In fact, there wasn't a Wal-Mart within twenty miles of Scarsdale.

At Lawton Country Day the other kids had had plenty of spending money, just like he did. And after school the cars that came to collect the other children were just as expensive and new and fancy as the ones that came for him.

Here in Whitson all the other kids rode home on
the bus or drove home with their moms or dads in minivans or pickups, or cars like Jeeps and Toyotas. Mark was the only kid in town who got picked up by a driver in a big Mercedes. And after the way the kids had stared at him on his first afternoon, Mark had told Leon not to get out and hold the door open for him anymore.