Shades of Truth (2 page)

A
fter the scene at Moose Tracks yesterday, I realized maybe the Pumas were over the top. I tried on white running shoes, but they made my size seven and a half feet look like ocean liners, and last year’s shoes were too small. I might as well wear the Pumas.

“Sadie,” Dad called. “Jeep’s heading out!”

I changed shoes and grabbed my backpack. Dad revved the engine when I slid into my seat.

“Hang on!” He dropped the emergency break.

The tires kicked up gravel as we spun out of the driveway, and Dad made squealing sound-effects as we sped around corners. Wind whipped my hair into my eyes. I knew he wanted to give me back yesterday’s excitement. Last night, he noticed something was wrong, but thankfully, because he was Dad, he hadn’t forced it out of me. Dad never talked
things to death. Instead he’d do something wild like this until I laughed so hard I forgot why I was upset.

When we pulled up to White Pine Academy, Frankie leaned up against the bike rack. She rolled her eyes as Dad squealed one last time. I didn’t care. So what if one girl in my new school didn’t like me? To be honest, I didn’t like her much either.

Moss and vines crept over the school’s weatherworn roof and down the gray walls. Odd-shaped windows looked out of three floors of classrooms, with a few tiny, round windows at the tip-top. Maybe a fourth floor attic? A new wing had been built onto the left side of the building, but still it didn’t look like enough room for kindergarten through eighth grade. I followed the signs to the main office to get my schedule. The seventh grade classroom was on the third floor, and apparently we stayed in that one room all day, other than for music and gym. Our science teacher, math teacher, and Spanish teacher visited our room — to teach all twenty-four of us.

As I walked to my classroom, I prayed Frankie wasn’t one of those twenty-four. Of course, when I walked into my classroom, there she sat, on Ty’s desk in the back row, repainting her fingernails. A group of girls crowded around her.

“Frankie, open a window,” Ty said. “That stuff stinks.”

“I’ll do it.” A girl with shoulder-length blonde hair and tons of freckles rushed to the window.

Three boys sauntered past me into the classroom, fortunately not giving me a second look. Ty stood to high-five them. “Nick,” slap. “Mario,” slap. “Demitri,” slap.

Ty’s friends claimed the other three desks in the back row and wadded up paper, using the girls for target practice, while the girls ducked and hurried for desks of their own.

A woman breezed through the door, glasses askew, carrying a stack of papers and books. As she passed me, the top book clattered to the floor. Another few fell as she reached for the first.

“Can you get those?” She stood and rebalanced her pile. “Oh. You must be Sadie. I’m Ms. Barton.”

The room went silent and eyes burned into my back. Perfect. Another awkward introduction. After I handed over the books, I turned, hoping some brilliant greeting would spring to mind. No such luck.

“Sadie’s the one I was telling you about,” Frankie said. “Her dad is Matthew Douglas, so be careful what you say to her. She might report you to the DNR.”

Immediately, the classroom exploded into angry conversation about Dad and Helen and the DNR and next week’s community meeting. From what I could hear, most of the seventh grade agreed with Frankie that bears were like rats.

I’d looked forward to my wilderness adventure all summer, and now here I stood, tongue-tied, staring at everyone.

Frankie grinned. “Nice shoes, Sparkie.”

“Sadie,” Ms. Barton interrupted. “Welcome. Sit anywhere you like. We don’t have assigned seats.”

I chose a desk, pretending not to hear one of the girls say, “Sparkie’s my dog’s name.”

Everyone burst into laughter.

Okay. No big deal. The best thing was to laugh too. Once they saw I could take a joke, the Sparkie thing would go away.

Another woman walked in. If people were colors and Ms. Barton was electric orange, this woman would be silky indigo. Her jet-black hair hung halfway down her back, and she wore a bell-sleeved, gauzy white shirt, embroidered with bright yellow and purple flowers.

“To your seats,” Ms. Barton announced, straightening her glasses.

Desks scraped and bags thudded as everyone settled in. I glanced around the room, hoping to spot at least one girl who hadn’t been in Frankie’s pack. There was one, an elfishly small girl with black hair that curled under at her chin. Two others had pulled their desks together, sharing headphones and a single iPod.

“Turn it off,” Ms. Barton said. “No iPods during school hours.”

“But Ms. B,” Frankie said, “Abby and Erin can’t breathe without their boy-band tunes.”

I smiled at the two girls as they unraveled themselves from the iPod, but they both raised their eyebrows blankly at me, as though to say:
What? Don’t think we’re on your side
,
just because Frankie picks on us too.

“Frankie.” Ms. Barton tapped a pen against her fingertips. “I’m sure we don’t need to start our school year with another conversation about respect. We’ll go over class rules later, but now we have a special guest.”

The indigo woman stepped away from the whiteboard, where she had drawn a moon, a circle, a triangle, three wavy lines, a spiral, and a butterfly.

“Vivian Harris, meet our seventh graders. Most of you have probably seen Vivian’s art at Black Bear Java. Some of you may have attended her art show at the library last June.”

“Oh goody.” Sadie heard Frankie whisper. “An art project, just like kindergarten.”

What was wrong with her
, Sadie wondered.
Why was Frankie so mean?

After explaining how artists use universal symbols with specific meanings, Vivian pointed to her drawings on the whiteboard. “A circle means unity or wholeness. Three squiggly lines together symbolize water and vitality. Butterflies can symbolize rebirth or new life.”

Vivian asked us to choose three symbols and create a pattern that represented our personality and goals for the year.

“Do we have to choose one of those symbols?” the freckled girl asked. “Because none of those represent me. Like, what am I supposed to say … I resemble water? That makes no sense.”

“You could be like water, Nicole,” said the elfish girl. “You know, the way a brook is bubbly and —”

“Ms. Barton!” said Nicole. “Did you hear what Ruth said?”

“I didn’t mean …” began Ruth.

Nicole slid down in her chair. “Whatever. I’m not doing this stupid project.”

Ms. Barton’s eyes filled with panic.

Vivian walked over to Nicole’s desk. “Create any symbol you like. I’ll help you brainstorm.”

Ms. Barton passed out white paper and I started to think. Three symbols. Here was my second chance to introduce myself to the class. I’d start with shoes, to show the girls I could laugh at myself. The colors were perfect: purple was dramatic and playful and silver added the extra splash of shimmer. I couldn’t say that, though, so maybe I’d say the shoes were for energy. Everyone liked energetic people.

The shoes were a complicated symbol, so the next should be simple. I drew a circle around them, but it didn’t look right. Plus, circles were for unity. Absolutely no way could I say that was my goal.

What
was
my goal?

I wanted an adventure. Mountains symbolized adventure, right? The shoes could be climbing up.

On the side of the mountain, the shoes needed something like … sunglasses. Throw in a little California. If I were back home, I might talk about glasses as a symbol for seeing, how I wanted to see people clearly. But here, I’d avoid all that. I sketched sunglasses half an inch above my shoes. Together, they looked like a funny, squat person. Good. A little humor never hurt.

“Are we almost finished?” Ms. Barton asked as she walked around the room. She stopped by my desk. “Sadie, this is excellent. Let’s start with you.”

I
closed my laptop. We’d been so busy unpacking I’d hardly explored the house. I was dying to climb the spiral staircase that led to a trap door in the ceiling. It could be an attic or — I hoped — it could lead to the round porch I’d seen from outside. I grabbed my scrapbook. That porch was the perfect place for Pippa’s reason nine. I climbed up and pushed open the door. Yes! Three more stairs led to the fenced-in deck. I hugged the scrapbook tight and leaned over the rail. Deep-green treetops stretched far into the distance. An alcove, cut into the wall, sheltered a cushioned seat from the wind. Whoever had lived here before us had clearly loved this porch. I climbed onto the seat.

We’d made our first dandelion wish when we were five. My Aunt Molly told us if we blew off all the dandelion seeds and really believed, our wish would come true. Pippa’s big sister, Andrea, said magic wasn’t real, so we decided to prove her wrong. It was hard-to-breathe-hot that day, and we tried to think of the most magical thing possible. We closed our eyes, wished we’d be ice-freezing cold, and blew off every single seed. Minutes later, Mom came outside with swimsuits and towels and swept us away to the unheated community swimming pool. In the picture Pippa had carefully glued in the scrapbook, we huddled in towels, blue-lipped.

Not every single dandelion wish came true, but other pictures in the scrapbook reminded me that important ones had. Pippa and I posed on brand new bikes without training wheels. The two of us holding the soccer trophy — we’d won the division title. Both of us hugging Cocoa, Pippa’s chocolate lab. Cocoa took a whole summer of dandelion wishes last year. I’d wanted my own dog, but we’d settled on sharing Cocoa. A dog was probably too much for Mom.

A sticky note in the bottom corner read:
Go find a dandelion
,
Sades. Make a wish. You know it will come true.

But what to wish for? I pulled Vivian’s card out of my pocket and turned it over and over in my hands. Art lessons? If I could, I’d paint the ocean on a stormy California day. Or Cocoa, stealing pizza off the counter. Or Mom laughing.

What if there weren’t dandelions in Michigan?

After dropping off the scrapbook in my bedroom, I headed outside to find out. Sure enough, along the edge of
the cabin, grass and weeds grew in a ragged border. I found a perfect white dandelion, picked it, closed my eyes, and blew.

Dad pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. “Sades! Patch is just down the street with her cubs. Want to see them?”

With school and Vivian Harris and the round porch and the possibility of art lessons, I had almost completely forgotten Dad’s offer to show me the bears today. I still hadn’t answered my own question. Did I want to see a bear?

“Might as well get it over with. You’ll see one soon out and about, I’m sure. Over at Helen’s today, I saw at least twelve. My favorite is Big Murphy — he’s the biggest, and he’s constantly eating. He follows Andrew around with sad-puppy eyes while Andrew fills the feeders.”

“Andrew?”

“Helen’s son. He helps her at the research station.” Dad climbed out of the Jeep with bug spray. “Industrial strength, issued by Meredith with a warning never to go into the forest without a full body spray-down.”

He sprayed me head-to-toe. “Now listen, Sadie. First of all, you’re never to approach a bear on your own. They’re wild animals, never forget that. They follow their instincts, which you can’t entirely predict. Helen said black bears need two things, safety and food.”

Dad put away the bug spray and hiked into the underbrush. I was torn. If I stayed right on his heels, I was less likely to be pounced on by bears sneaking up behind us. But if I stayed further back, I might have time to run if Dad stumbled across a bear ahead.

Dad pushed aside a branch so it wouldn’t hit me in the face. “If you don’t frighten the bears, and you don’t get between them and their berry bushes, you’ll be okay.”

“Berry bushes? Don’t bears eat meat?”

“Helen says black bears are pretty lazy. They’ll eat a deer if it is already dead. But they only hunt live animals when they’re desperate.”

I grabbed hold of Dad’s jacket and tripped along right behind him.
Don’t think about bears eating you
,
Sadie. Think about anything else
. Just before Dad had pulled up, I made my dandelion wish. “Dad, can I take art lessons?”

“Since when have you wanted art lessons?” Dad held up a thorny blackberry vine and ducked under.

“This artist, Vivian Harris, came to our class today. She liked my drawing and invited me to take lessons with her. I think I want to.”

“Sounds like you had a nice day.”

“Well, that was a good part.”

“I’ll think about the art lessons.” Dad clambered over a fallen log and launched into one of his favorite hiking songs. “The other day …”

“If we sing, the bears will know exactly where we are.” Not to mention how embarrassed I would be if anyone from school heard me.

“Exactly. You want the bears to know where you are, so you don’t startle them. I already startled Patch with the Jeep, which is why she sent her cubs up a tree. I think she’ll stick around until she’s sure it’s safe to move on.”

I sang along with Dad for a few lines until we stepped onto the gravel road. We slowed, and Dad pointed at a bear fifty feet away with a white patch of fur just below her chin — which had to be Patch. My stomach filled with butterflies, and I had to convince my feet to keep moving forward, step after step. Patch stood guard in front of a tree almost directly across from our closest neighbor’s house. Her velvet black fur and her strong beauty took my breath away. If only I could touch her, get closer, look into her eyes. She had to be the biggest, most gorgeous animal I had ever seen outside the zoo. Above, one adorable cub dangled a paw from his perch on a thick branch. Tiny, sharp claws stuck out just beyond his paw pads. A snout poked around the trunk a little further up, quickly followed by the rest of the second cub. The third cub tight-roped on a thick branch, swinging back and forth.

“Hey, bear.” Dad stopped twenty feet from Patch. “It’s good to give them plenty of room.”

“Aren’t mother bears supposed to be fierce?”

“Protective, yes,” Dad said. “But Helen assures me that black bears won’t attack unless they are seriously provoked.”

Across the street, a man came out of the house. I was about to wave hi when a gunshot rang out. Dad pulled me close. Patch scrabbled up the tree.

The man muttered under his breath then ratcheted his shotgun, readying to fire again.

“What are you doing?” Dad demanded.

The man took aim. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to shoot you.”

“Beside the fact you could have hit me or my daughter, it’s not hunting season yet.” Dad crossed to the middle of the street. “You can’t shoot any bears until September tenth. And if you look, it’s obvious the bear you’re aiming at has a research collar, so out of conscience you shouldn’t shoot her even during hunting season. Also, the bear is with cubs. It’s illegal to shoot mother bears with cubs. You should know all this.”

The man lowered his shotgun. “I’m shooting to scare her, Mr. Matthew Douglas.”

“How do you know my name?” Dad asked.

“Everybody knows your meddling name. I’m Jim Paulson, and it’s my misfortune to be your neighbor.” He smirked at my shoes. “And here’s the famous Sadie. My daughter, Frankie, has told me all about you.”

I sent desperate signals to Dad.
Come on
,
Dad
,
time to go home.

Frankie’s dad leaned over the fence and scowled. “Around here, everyone minds their own business. You have no right to be snooping around my property. Understand?”

Dad put his arm around my shoulders. “We didn’t mean to offend. Just watching the bears.”

“Watch the bears on your own property.” Frankie’s dad spat on the ground and stalked away.

Dad and I stood speechless for a full two minutes before we started home. Patch and her cubs had long since run down the tree and into the forest.

“So,” Dad said. “I’m the meddling Matthew Douglas.
Doesn’t look like I’ll be invited on his next hunting trip, huh?”

I stared at Dad in horror. “You couldn’t shoot …”

“Well, not Patch, or any of the research bears, that’s for sure. And probably not any bear, to tell you the truth. But hunting is important to the ecosystem, Sadie. Meredith tells me when too many bears, deer, and other animals live in the same community, some starve to death in the winter. Besides, I’m not here to stop hunting. You know that.”

On the drive to Michigan, we had talked about mediating, about staying neutral, about Dad’s job in this community. But Dad wasn’t anything like shotgun wielding Jim Paulson. I couldn’t picture Dad stalking through the forest, shooting an animal, a beautiful, living animal. The thought made me nauseous. I dodged vines and followed the path Dad picked through the underbrush, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Dad seemed caught up in his own thoughts too.

Finally, when we reached our front steps, he smiled sadly at me. “Sorry that wasn’t what I expected for your first glimpse of the bears, but I’m glad you saw them anyway.” He opened the door, but stopped before going inside. “And I’ve made up my mind. Sign up for those art lessons.”