Eternal Spring A Young Adult Short Story Collection (36 page)

Suddenly images flash through her mind. A woman with
sea-green hair. And memories of soaring through a piercing blue sky while
looking down on a city with winding streets and tightly packed, dun colored
buildings.

Did I say memories? No, this is . . .

I sway and grip the glass case.

“Are you all right, Terry?”

“Just dizzy.”

I glance at him and it’s like going from the frying pan into
the fire. But what a fire it is. His eyes lock onto mine and I sense this
megawatt surge of some of, of . . . I’m not sure what. The word power comes to
me. Or euphoria? All I know is I’ve never experienced anything like it in my
life.

And I can swear Jerrod is feeling the same thing.

“Oh, there you are, Jerrod. And Terry.” Ms. Cresley walks
into the room. “How did it go?”

Jerrod falls into such an easy and lucid conversation with
Ms. Cresley that I’m wondering if what just happened between us was wishful
thinking on my part.

Whatever. Mudded and confused, I still know one thing. I’ve
got to get home before my mom does. I mumble my thanks and move toward the
exit.

“See you tomorrow,” Jerrod says as I pass, and he touches my
arm. I’m not sure if the warm and tingly buzz it sends through me is because I
think he’s hot, or because there’s something strange about him.

I stand at the bus stop and can’t help squeeing the tiniest
bit, wishing I had a best friend to tell about my encounter with Jerrod Pierce.
His fingers brushing my arm. The way he held my hand. And his eyes. Could he
actually like me? Or was it just pity for a dorky sixteen-year-old?

I think about those strange images that flashed through my
mind when I looked at the dragon figurine. Was it just my blood sugar?

Which reminded me of a text Mom left me earlier, telling me
to take a pack of chicken out of the freezer as soon as I get home from school
so it’ll be ready to cook by the time she . . . oh no. I give up waiting for
the bus and cross Thirty-fourth Street at a jog.

My mother would have a bird, especially with all the
robbery-turned-murder stories around some of the not-so-great neighborhoods I
have to pass through. Which is why I don’t use my iPod earbuds. But aside from
inhaling auto fumes and garbage smells, it refreshes my head, gets me out of
the muddled state that overwhelmed me at the museum. Running is another love of
mine, a thing I can do all alone, letting my mind go off into the stratosphere.

The trip home is an easy two-mile sprint across the bridge
to Center City and straight down South Street to Eighth and Kater. Aside from
the newer high-rises near city hall, Philadelphia isn’t a tall city. And
certainly not where I live in Bella Vista, an Italian neighborhood that’s more
mixed than it used to be. When I see a white lightbox sign reading: Marini’s
Pizza, I slow to a walk. Home turf.

The scent of melted cheese makes my stomach growl. It also
gives me a solution to the chicken I never took out of the freezer for dinner.

I pull open the glass door. Cheryl Quigley, Central High’s
answer to Rachel McAdams sits at one of the orange plastic tables just inside
the entrance with her two-girl posse. And here I am with my hair a frizzed out
mess and my tee all sweaty from my run.

Can I make it to the counter without being publicly
insulted? Halfway there I get my answer.

“Yo, Terry. Soup kitchen’s at the church up on Seventeenth.
You know, same place you get your clothes.”

Her posse laughs like it’s the funniest thing they’ve heard
all week. Or maybe it is. Maybe I am that big a joke to them.

I look right at Cheryl, determined to surprise her with a
comeback. I think of all the snarky lines I’ve rehearsed over and over in my
bedroom, promising myself I’d someday get one out of my idiot mouth. But as
usual my voice freezes.

Cheryl looks back at me as if she’s a hair from getting out
of her chair should I dare to answer her back. I’m reduced by my fear. I set my
palm on the counter and feel a warm hand pat the top of mine. I meet eyes with
Leon the owner. His salt and pepper colored beard is neatly trimmed. The lines
on his face scrunch together as he smiles. “Don’t pay attention to them,” he
says. “Want the usual?”

“Please.”

“Here or to go?”

“Delivered, please?”

“You got it. Twenty-five minutes.”

I pay him and turn to leave. As I pass by Cheryl’s table
something gets between my feet. Then comes that awful feeling of sailing face
down onto the floor. Hands outstretched, I catch myself an instant before my
nose hits the tile. Next, a cold, wet deluge of soda drenches my head. I can
taste it in my mouth as it runs down my cheeks. Hoots and hollers cheer on the
deed.

Cheryl sneers down at me and walks away.

A pair of hands lifts me up. Leon. “You all right?” he asks.
I nod. He points his finger at Cheryl and her two partners in crime. “Get out.
And don’t you come back.”

The three of them swagger their way to the door. Cheryl
turns and says, “My Dad could buy and sell this dump and not even feel it. And
as for you, Terry, you’re marked, girl. You’re on my list. Got that? Till next
time, loser.”

“Parents today. Raising brats like that,” Leon says.

He walks me to the door, where I wait until the coast is
clear. I thank him and go home to await our pizza, even though I’ve just about
lost my appetite.

I unlock the door of a two-story, brick row house on Kater
Street. Walter, our aging tabby, assaults me with demanding meows, following me
through the dark, cluttered living room to the small kitchen in back.

After feeding Walter and grabbing a swig of milk, I sprint
upstairs, tug off my grubby clothes, and under the pounding spray of the shower
I belt out my cover of “Defying Gravity.” I go into one of my corny Broadway
fantasies, picturing myself onstage in New York, L.A.,
London
— anywhere but here in my loser life.

My voice doesn’t fail me when I sing. I never go mute or
stumble over words or stutter. I fly.

Toweling off, I smirk at my mirror image.
Too skinny. No
boobs. No wonder guys
never
look at me. Unless they’re
staring at the hideous, blue birthmark on my ankle
.

But Jerrod looked at me.

Yeah, and if he mentions my name at school tomorrow to any
of the other sophomores he’ll find out what a freak loner I am, and that’ll be
the end of it.

In my room I march past posters of Dawn Harper, Robert
Pattinson and the Treasures of Ur Exhibit and slip into comfy sweat pants and a
clean tee. With about fifteen minutes until both pizza and Mom arrive, I decide
to make a quick check through Dad’s books for the mushrushu.

I dart into the small room that used to be my father’s
study. My mother keeps business papers there, but seldom uses it. After working
all day as a paralegal, she just likes to veg-out in front of the TV.

The study is a sad, but cozy place with my father’s beaten
up maple desk and his reading recliner with worn upholstery. He died fourteen
years ago, and even though we’ve changed the house around a few times, Mom
would never alter anything here. She gets kind of upset when I delve into in my
dad’s stuff, so I try to do it before she gets home.

In my rush, I climb a stool and reach for the book I want on
a high shelf, creating a tumbling avalanche of books and papers. Even an old
rosewood tea box falls to the floor. I hop down and start gathering things.
That’s when I see the bundle of papers held together with one of those old
skool metal clips.

It’s labeled “Terry.”

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I peruse
photocopies of newspaper articles about “The Cuneiform Baby.” And about Richard
Conn, the University Of Pennsylvania professor who’d found the infant abandoned
in the school’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. How he’d waited weeks
and weeks while the state had searched for any sign of a relative. And when
none came, he and his wife, Maribeth, had adopted the baby girl.

Just then I hear the front doorbell. Fuming, I spring to my
feet and stomp down the stairs. I mean, how much weird crap can a girl take in
one day?

Mom arrives on the tails of the pizza delivery guy. I can
tell she’s tired, but right now I don’t care. As soon as she steps into the
living room, I hand her the stack of papers.

“This is
me
, isn’t it?”

Mom frowns and shakes her head. “I never hid the fact that
you were adopted.”

“No, but you also never told me I was a foundling. A
homeless baby dumped in the museum.”

“I didn’t want you to think of yourself—”

“As the daughter of some drug addict who threw me in the
trash?”

“Terry . . .”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

Mom sighs and drops onto our ugly green-and-gray sofa.

I continue. “This is why you don’t want me working at the
Penn Museum. Because people there know about me.”

“Only some. The older ones who were around when Richard
found you.”

“Well, guess what? I’ve got a job there. In the gift shop.
And I’m not giving it up. I don’t care if it embarrasses you or if—”

“That’s not the reason, Terry. I . . . it’s . . . your
father had some superstitious ideas about this piece of jewelry they found on
you. And, well, it scared me. I didn’t want it in our lives. Especially with
Richard gone.”

I could see she meant it. That something about it troubled
her. She’d told me how devastated she’d been when cancer took my father’s life,
leaving her alone with a toddler to care for. Having been two years old when he
died, I’ve got only one clear memory of him. Of being carried in his arms,
while he smiled at me and pointed up at a star in a beautiful night sky.

I perched on the coffee table facing her. “Forgive me, Mom.
I don’t mean to upset you, but this is stuff I have a right to know.”

She patted my cheek and nodded. “Did you get these papers
out of the rosewood tea box?”

“Yup. It fell when I was reaching for a book.”

“Well, that box is all about you. And the little necklace
you were wearing is in there.”

I bolt for the stairs.

I sit on the floor next to the partially spilled contents of
the tea box. At first I think maybe there will be info about who my real mother
was, but so far it’s just articles about Sumerian and Akkadian words. Big
surprise. Richard Conn researched and taught about ancient languages.

But then, near the bottom of the box I find a sealed manila
envelope with my name scribbled on it in black ink. And it isn’t flat.
Definitely something solid inside.

I tear open the envelope and tip it. I tarnished silver
chain falls out. Along with what looks like a tube bead, which rolls toward me.

“Oooh, neat. Lapis lazuli.” Deep blue with golden sparkles.
About the size of my finger digit. I’ve read about these and seen plenty in
photos and at the museum. I know this carved spool is a cylinder seal. They
signed things with these back in Mesopotamia. Rolled its carved out shapes over
soft clay leaving three-D imprints.

Too bad I don’t have any clay around. No way to tell what
this looks like without an impression of it.

I dig into the box again and find another envelope. This one
has a little hardened rectangle the size of a small candy bar. Yep, this is it.
Mostly cuneiform writing and some crude drawings. And a little four-legged
creature that looks like the mushrushu.

Too weird.

My mother calls up the stairs. “Terry? Aren’t you hungry?
Get down here and eat some pizza.”

“Coming, Mom.” I stuff the impression back into its envelope
and take it to my room, along with my cylinder seal and silver chain. If I
hurry after school I’ll can get to the museum early enough to catch one of the
professors in the tablet room near the library archives. I gotta know what this
thing says.

After not once getting even remotely close to having a
boyfriend, there I am, standing at my locker after last period, when Jerrod
walks up and leans his shoulder against the locker next to mine.

“You ready for your second day among the ancients?”

I can almost see jaws dropping around me. Jerrod has only
been here a week, and already every girl in the school is so obsessed over who
he’ll date you’d think you were at the betting tables in Atlantic City

“Sure am,” I say. I try not to giggle. I’ve heard guys hate
that. But a giddy bubble wells up inside. I purposely wore a jersey dress
today, hoping Jerrod might look at me again. But I never imagined he’d really
pick me of all the girls in the school.

Cool your jets, sweetie. He’s just stopping by to say hello.

“Want a ride to the museum?”

Stunned, I take a steadying breath and manage to say, “Sure.
Thanks.”

He reaches for the books out of my hands and carries them
along with his own.

Whoa. Am I in a teen movie or something? As we walk down the
hall together, I note the envious and baffled looks. Truth is I’m baffled
myself. Why would someone as yummy as Jerrod want to hang with me? I know I’m
not too bad looking, but he could have any of the popular girls. I wonder if
it’s because we had such a good time talking yesterday about the mythical
creatures. Which reminds me . . . “I need to make a stop in the tablet room
before I start today.”

“Why?”

I’m itching to tell him I’ve got a seal impression he will
die for, but I’m not sure if it’s wise to show him, considering I’d have to lie
about where it came from.

Last night I cleaned the silver chain and threaded it through
the hole in the cylinder seal. This morning I tucked it into a compartment in
my shoulder bag along with the terracotta rectangle that has the impression.