The Education of Ivy Blake (7 page)

Ivy scuffed
toward home along the cracked sidewalks. It was weird to think that noticing was a talent. It just seemed natural, like breathing. How could you not notice the way the gold of the afternoon sun made the old houses along the street look stately and dignified instead of old and shabby the way they did on cloudy days? How could you not notice the smell of oil on pavement, or the way the damaged letters in the coffee shop's sign made it seem to say
FAKED GOODS
instead of
BAKED GOODS
?

An elderly couple came out of the coffee shop together. The woman wore pink pedal pushers and the man had on a blue plaid shirt and brown leather shoes. His hands shook as he took his wife's arm; she wrapped a hand over his and they moved slowly down the sidewalk together, their bodies turned slightly toward each other. If Ivy was making a movie to define one word, she'd film them and call it
Love.

She shoved her hands into her dress pockets and smiled to herself. Her boots made a
click-scrff
sound as they hit the pavement.

• • •

A few blocks from home, she stopped to admire a house she liked. It was old, two stories, painted white, with a long glassed-in porch and a turret going up on one corner. Every time she stopped she imagined how it would be to live there. It seemed like it would be wonderful. Romantic, somehow. And peaceful. The yard had a wrought-iron fence around it and tulips and daffodils blooming everywhere. Wind chimes tinkled, a gazing ball gleamed on an iron stand, a bird flittered at the edge of a birdbath. Some days she'd see a lady in the garden, or on the porch. Today the porch door was ajar—it often was—and Ivy saw a swing, some wicker furniture, a huge blue-and-white vase full of flowers, and—this was new—one of Dad Evers's chairs.

She yanked her phone out of her pocket and jabbed Speed Dial for the Everses—theirs and Prairie's were the only numbers programmed in—and waited for someone to pick up. No one did, but that wasn't surprising. Prairie would be on her way home from school, Mom and Dad Evers were probably busy outside, and Grammy could be anywhere—helping them, or volunteering at the library in town, or playing her banjo so loud she didn't hear the phone ring.

Ivy left a message: “Hey, it's me! I'm walking home from school, and I see one of Dad's chairs on someone's porch. It looks great there! Really great. Also, I wanted to tell you I'm feeling better. I can't wait to see you all on Saturday!”

She clicked the phone off, grinning. Here was a case of noticing and doing something about it:
lights, camera, action,
like Ms. Mackenzie said.

Two police cars
were parked in the driveway behind her mother's Mustang when Ivy rounded the corner of O'Reilly Street a few minutes later. She stopped short. She wanted to go straight back to Quail Middle School. She even turned halfway around to do it. Maybe Ms. Mackenzie would still be there, and Ivy could—

Ivy could what? Go home with her and pretend her real life wasn't happening? That wouldn't do any good.

She took a deep breath and began walking forward. One thing she'd decided a while ago—well, when Aunt Connie got sick and died so fast, before they had time to believe it was really going to happen—was that, no matter what, she would be brave and face things. It was going to be her claim to fame, even if no one but her ever knew about it. It was a private promise she'd made to herself and to Aunt Connie.

She walked past the blue house with white trim. Past the brick duplex. Past old Mrs. Phillips from next door, who knelt on a folded-up sweater pulling weeds from her flower beds. The beds were so close to the sidewalk that Ivy could've reached out and touched Mrs. Phillips's shoulder. Mrs. Phillips gave her a sympathetic look. Ivy met her gaze and pulled her mouth into a worried smile, then lifted her chin and kept going.

Two policemen stood in front of the front door with Ivy's mother, and two sat in the second car. The two in the car turned their heads toward Ivy when she walked up. The window rolled down. “Where are you going, young lady?” the man in the driver's seat asked. His face was chiseled and square; his hair was buzzed short. If you grabbed a stock policeman out of a lineup at a movie audition, he'd be it.

Ivy nodded at the house. “I live here.” She took a step forward.

“We'll go with you.” The window rolled up again.

Ivy stood with her shoulders slumped. This was her own house. A rental, maybe, and nothing special, but her own. The place she came back to with her pencils and sketchbook, the place she slept and dressed and ate in, the place where she kept the stones she picked up on Skytop, the overlook on the mountain near the Everses' farmhouse, whenever she and Prairie hiked there. She didn't want to wait for someone else to tell her she could walk up to it. She did wait, however. It seemed like she had to.

Both men climbed out of the car and shifted their feet to straighten the creases of their pants legs. The three of them walked toward the door and Ivy's mom's eyes locked onto Ivy.

“My daughter's home, you have to go,” she told the officers. “I don't want her getting upset.” She reached an arm out.

Ivy went to her and her mom pulled her close. Ivy let herself sink back and remembered being curled into her mother's chest when she was small. Her mom's chest was bony now; it was like leaning onto rocky ground. Familiar ground, though.

“This is just a matter of following up on a complaint,” the nearest man said. “Mr. Gillman says that last week his garbage cans were spread all over the street. Then somebody ran his mailbox over. And now his car's got a brand-new dent in the fender. He's thinking it's you. And he says you've been calling late at night and hanging up when he answers.”

Her mom's grip tightened. “Well, boo hoo for him, and tell him to prove it. There's a lot of people got a lot worse problems than a broken mailbox and a ringing telephone.”

“So you did run his mailbox down, is that what you're saying? You have been calling?”

“I'm not saying anything. I had my fill of George Gillman a while ago. I left in April and I haven't seen him since.”

“But you have seen his mailbox? And his car?”

Her mom's arms went tighter around Ivy than ever. Her breath was a desert wind in Ivy's ear.

The nearest policeman smiled sympathetically, though maybe that was an act. “Listen, I know how it is. A relationship goes south, things are said, your feelings get worked up, maybe you want to leave him a message, something to remember you by. But it's not worth it. Especially not to a woman like you. You've got a history—”

“Hey, that was ruled justifiable, you can't go bringing it up. I'll get a lawyer and sue for harassment if you—”

“You need to leave your ex alone,” the man broke in. “Don't make us come out here again. Like you said, you have your daughter to think of.”

All the officers' gazes shifted to Ivy. Their eyes were all different: brown, blue, wide-set, narrow, but Ivy saw that to each of them, she was a zero. At worst, she was just like her mom. At best, she was innocent but doomed.

“I didn't make you come out here. George Gillman did that, and he better knock it off. I'm living in a whole different town, minding my own business, and he sets the cops on me. I won't stand for it—”

Her mom said more, but Ivy tuned it out. She turned herself into a block of wood that hadn't been carved yet. She hadn't been carved, there was still time, she could become something beautiful and good.

Ivy hauled
four outfits out of her closet in the morning and spread them across her bed. She considered each in turn: a denim jumper, a plaid skirt with pleats, a polka-dotted dirndl, and the elegant dress of fluttery dark blue material that she'd fallen in love with at the thrift shop last fall.

Finally she pulled that one over her head. She was going to follow Ms. Mackenzie's advice. She was going to amaze herself. She was not going to be beaten and she was not going to
look
beaten. She was going to look as good as possible. And as old as possible. She'd be
in character
—in the character of an eighteen-year-old, say, who was in charge of her own life.

When the dress's last glittery rhinestone button was done up, Ivy pulled on a pair of black tights and laced up her granny boots and clumped down the hall.

She studied herself in the bathroom mirror. She thought she looked older than usual, but if she used her mom's eye makeup, she would look older yet.

She did this, then added a swipe of lipstick and made kissy lips at herself. Next she put on a hat she'd found abandoned at a farmers' market. It was made of navy-blue straw with a narrow brim and had a white satin ribbon around the band. She adjusted it, then nodded at herself and ran to the living room for her book bag.

• • •

Ms. Mackenzie stared when Ivy came through the door. “Wow,” she said. Ivy's heart fell. Then she said, “You look lovely, Ivy, but you do have to take your hat off in class,” so Ivy did.

Tate came in and thunked
Go Math!
on her desk. She looked Ivy up and down and whistled. “Holy cats. You look like a million bucks.”

Ivy's face flushed; she tugged on her braid. Then she remembered what she'd decided in her room. She lifted her nose and pooched her lips at Tate. She fluttered her eyelashes too, but they got stuck in the mascara, which maybe she'd put on too thick.

Tate laughed. “So what's the outfit for, anyway?”

“Nothing, really. Just to do it. Just to be—different.”

“Different.” Tate tapped her bottom teeth with her thumbnail. “I like it.”

Ivy felt a rush of affection for her. “Also, I thought, maybe—it'd be like making a character. Did you ever think about that? How you don't always have to just be you? You can, sort of, make somebody up and be them.”

Tate squinted at her worriedly.

“Like in a movie, I mean,” Ivy clarified, and Tate's eyes brightened.

“I love movies,” Ivy confessed. She pulled some books out of her bag to hide how shy she felt. “I want to be a director someday.” She glanced back up at Tate and saw that her eyes had widened.

“That. Is. So. Cool.”

Ivy blushed. “Thanks.”

“If you ever really do it, call me, okay? I would love to help make a movie.”

Ivy couldn't suppress the grin that took over her face.

• • •

That afternoon, when Ivy rounded the corner on her way home from school, the police cars were parked in the driveway again. Her steps slowed but she didn't stop moving forward.

The doors of the second police car opened as she approached, and Ivy made a face. They seemed to already have a routine, the three of them. Her mom had a routine too. She stood on the steps with her feet planted and her arms crossed, scowling.

“What's going on now?” Ivy asked the policeman in the driver's seat.

“There's been an allegation that your mom may have been involved in removing merchandise from the QuickMarket.”

“But she works at the QuickMarket.”

The officer sighed, so softly Ivy almost couldn't hear him.

“What merchandise?” Ivy thought of the sack of flashlight batteries her mom had given her last week, and the popcorn. Also the half case of jam and the little pudding packets that had shown up in the kitchen one day.

The officer eased a blank expression over his face. “I'm afraid I can't say.”

Really, Ivy didn't need him to say. If it was proof they were looking for, they'd find some right by her bed. She hadn't used any of the batteries at first when her mom handed them to her, she was still too angry about her notebook. But then, when her flashlight batteries died, she'd gone ahead and opened the packages. Despite everything, it had made her feel good that her mom remembered her like this, that she knew about her flashlight and had brought home something Ivy wanted and needed, and so much of it. She'd actually taken it as a sign that maybe life with her mom
could
get better. It never occurred to her the batteries might be stolen.

Her mom saw her and stretched her arm out. It was an order:
You come here.

Ivy met her mother's gaze and asked with her eyes,
Did you do this?

Her mother beckoned again. After half a second, Ivy turned and headed back down the walk.

“Hey, hold on—” the policeman called.

Ivy didn't.

“Ivy! Get back here.
Now,
” her mom yelled.

Ivy walked steadily onward.

She felt like one of Mom Evers's sewing pins trying to peel itself away from a big powerful magnet. (Ms. Mackenzie had brought magnets and pins in for their science section last week.) Her legs were as heavy as bags of cement. She'd helped Dad Evers with the addition's foundation before she moved, so she knew exactly how heavy that was: crazy heavy, much heavier than it seemed like one not-very-large sack of mortar could possibly be. Her feet were almost impossible to lift.

She did it, though. She put one foot in front of the other until she was halfway down the block. She risked a look over her shoulder then, but none of the policemen had followed her. Probably they had bigger fish to fry than one doomed girl. She turned the corner and kept walking.