The Education of Ivy Blake (8 page)

Ivy passed
the pizza place and a park that was only a sliver of land between two houses. Two women pushed toddlers on the bucket-seat swings. After one glance, Ivy looked away. Aunt Connie used to take her to a park and push her on the swings when she was little. She was pretty sure her dad had too, though she only had wisps of memory about it.

She slowed down at the house with the wrought-iron fence. The woman who lived there was on the porch, reading in a wicker chaise, using Dad Evers's chair as an end table. She sipped from a red pottery mug and turned a page. Her face lit at whatever she'd read and it was like watching someone run into an old friend.

Ivy wrapped one hand around a fence spindle—the iron was cold, the grit of rust nibbled her palm—and gripped down until the spindle's edges creased her hand. She wanted—she
needed
—whatever it was that the woman on that porch had.

The woman looked up. She had short reddish hair and freckles and an expression on her face like she might invite Ivy onto the porch—a total stranger!—and offer her a glass of lemonade. A wish slashed through Ivy in that moment. She wanted to be that woman, at peace in her own home—a real home, a home that was inside and outside of herself—and safe. Living instead of just surviving. She pulled her hand off the fence spindle and walked away.

• • •

She passed the hospital and the school and kept going even though the neighborhood was less familiar. She went by a grungy-looking deli and a tattoo parlor and a dry cleaner with a
HELP WANTED
sign in the window. As much as she wanted to walk right out of her own life and into a new one, Ivy's steps began to slow. She heard shouting up ahead and slowed more.

Half a dozen boys were clustered in front of a bodega, jostling each other, talking loud. They called out rude things to two girls walking by and doubled over laughing when the girls grabbed each other's hands and ran.

Ivy gnawed on her thumbnail. Maybe if she waited they'd get bored and leave, or the bodega owner would chase them away. She turned and looked at the store she'd stopped in front of. A neon sign that said
PAWN, BUY, SELL, INSTA
NT CA
$
H
hung in the window.

Three electric guitars were propped on stands behind the glass. There was also an amplifier, a bowling ball, and a kitchen blender. The blender—chunky, with a yellow base—looked like the one Aunt Connie'd had. It had originally belonged to her mother, a grandmother Ivy didn't remember. She'd died when Ivy was tiny. Ivy hadn't seen her other grandma in so long she barely remembered her either. Because of what Ivy's mother had done, she didn't want anything to do with Ivy anymore.

Ivy moved on to the store's other window and saw something that made her heart skip a beat: a video camera with a price tag on it that said $350.

Ivy had wanted a video camera for as long as she could remember. She had a regular camera, one that had been Aunt Connie's, but it could only take about ten seconds of video, and then with only so-so resolution.

She put two fingers against the glass and imagined pushing the Record button. Then she let her hand fall again. She only had seventeen dollars to her name, and even if she had hundreds, what was the point? She was never going to get anywhere really, no matter what Ms. Mackenzie said. Look at how her life always went. The minute any good thing started happening, her mom came along like a storm to wreck it.

Ivy poked her lower lip out and started walking again.

• • •

Her face burned from what the boys in front of the bodega said to her, and her heart started to pound hard when two of them peeled off and followed her. She walked faster and so did they. The soles of her boots slapped the concrete; their feet echoed behind her. A bus shuddered up to the curb at the next corner, and Ivy raced to it.

“You got your pass?” the driver asked. She looked at him blankly.

He made a face and motioned her on with a jerk of his head.

The bus picked up speed after two more stops. Then the driver eased onto an entrance ramp and they were cruising south down Route 209. Ivy stared out the window at the fields and houses flashing by. Were they going to New York City? Someplace even farther away?

In one way, the idea of leaving was thrilling. But she had a spelling test in the morning and had the words down perfectly (
vacuous, vicarious, vindictive, vivacious, vitriol
), which hadn't been easy. Also she was hall monitor this week, a responsibility she didn't want to mess up. Besides all that, her mom was going to be furious. The threat of her mom's fury always hung in the air of their life, and thinking about it now made Ivy nervous.

She fiddled with her phone. Her finger hovered over Speed Dial. But she didn't want to have to explain things to the Everses: the police, her mom's work schedule. She turned the phone off and stuck it back in her pocket.

The bus
turned off the highway and trundled through a village and kept going until they entered a college campus. Ivy gasped and pressed her nose against the glass.

She didn't know another kid her age who was as obsessed with the idea of college as she was. Even Prairie thought she was crazy to spend so much time worrying about getting in and getting scholarships. “Don't go nuts on me,” she'd say if Ivy went on about it too much. “We're not even out of middle school yet.”

That was easy for Prairie to say. It was fine if you wanted to be a goat farmer and knew it already, fine if you came from a family like hers, or just a family, period, one without a crater blasted in the middle of it.

The passengers started moving and Ivy followed. It dawned on her now that they all looked like students: dreadlocks and a tie-dyed shirt on one, backpack with a laptop poking out of it on another, an enormous instrument case that had taken up a whole seat of its own with another. The boy with the instrument case grimaced at her. “Sorry to be so slow. Cello in motion. Hope I don't make you late.”

The driver tapped her arm as she waited for the boy to maneuver the case down the steps. “Don't forget your pass next time. Rules are rules.”

Ivy stared at him. He thought
she
was in college. That must be why he'd asked about her pass. It must be because of how tall she was, and the dress and the eye makeup. The driver began to frown and Ivy quickly smiled. “Okay,” she said. “But the thing is, I have to get back—”

“I'm on another two hours. Just make sure you don't miss the six thirteen.”

“Six thirteen. Got it. Thanks.”

The driver winked. “Just like my granddaughter. She'd forget her own head if it wasn't attached.”

“Right?” Ivy made her voice sound cheerful and—she hoped—carefree, but her legs were wobbly with relief.

• • •

Once she was off the bus, she wasn't sure what to do. She followed a tall, skinny girl up a set of steps and past a fountain and a building full of windows. The girl's steps were sure and quick and Ivy had to hurry to keep up. They jetted past more buildings and past a cart with a green-and-white-striped umbrella where a woman was selling sodas and juices. Ivy was thirsty but she didn't want to lose the girl, so she hurried onward.

She faltered when the girl swung toward a building with a sign that said it was a library. The girl disappeared inside and Ivy gazed after her. She wanted to stride in like the girl had, but she was afraid to. You'd almost certainly need a pass. Alarms might even go off if you didn't have one. Campus Security might come. She couldn't risk it. She turned to gaze over the campus.

There were flowering trees and students sprawled on the grass. A boy in a felt hat played a guitar; a girl in a flowing skirt sat beside him, singing. Her voice was scratchy and bold, and Ivy listened through two whole songs, until they picked up their things and walked off.

“—hope Hinson takes it easy on us, I never finished that section on succulents,” Ivy heard the boy say.

“I know, it was crazy how long that was. Who knew there were so many kinds of cactus—wait, is it cactus or cacti when there's more than one—”

“Cactuses? Cactum?”

They laughed as they walked and then they were too far away to hear anymore.

The leaves of the tree beside Ivy rustled and the sweet smell of its blossoms was shaken out, like crumbs from a tablecloth. Ivy breathed deep. A thought appeared in her head like a message written on a billboard. She could be one of these students. She could stride into the library or sit on the lawn someday, no matter what her mother did. She
could.

Ivy stood up. She had nearly two hours. She was going to investigate. She'd find the campus café and buy herself a cup of tea or maybe even a fancy coffee with the five-dollar bill she'd shoved in her pocket that morning, a habit she'd inherited from Aunt Connie, who never went anywhere, not even out in the yard to play badminton with Ivy, without some folding money in her pocket. She always said you never knew when you might need a little something, and Ivy thought now how right she had been.

Ivy found the student center and used the restroom, then browsed through the bookstore and bought three blue pencils that said
Ulster Senators
on them. Next she got into line at the café. “One ninety-nine,” the girl at the register said when Ivy ordered tea.

Ivy paid and then stuffed her last dollar into a jar labeled
Tips.
The girl, who had shiny black hair and a silver ring in her eyebrow, grinned big.

Ivy pulled the tea toward herself. It was just the way she liked it, so hot that she had to be careful not to burn her lips or slosh it on her hands.

“Have a good day,” the girl said.

Ivy shot a blinding smile at her. “I will,” she said. “I am.”

Ivy wandered
to a kiosk plastered with flyers. A band called the Fiascos was playing on campus Saturday night and a motivational speaker was giving a talk on Wednesday. There were flyers about study groups, used textbooks, dances. Somebody was advertising himself as a handyman and someone else was looking for a housemate.

Ivy read that one again. Maybe the room was on the top floor of a house like the one with the iron fence. Maybe it had tall windows in deep frames, a window seat to read in. Ivy pictured herself unpacking a suitcase in a room with wooden floors, throwing her quilt from Mom Evers across the bed. She set her tea on the ground and ripped the number off and slipped the paper into her phone case where it couldn't get lost. Of course she couldn't call—she was only eleven!—but she liked the feeling taking the number gave her.

She was about to walk on again when she saw a flyer advertising an antique chicken feeder/waterer, complete with a picture. The feeder/waterer consisted of an old blue ball jar turned upside down into a tin tray that must've been made for that purpose. Once upon a time you must've been able to go to the general store and buy not only your flour and sugar and coffee and tea but also these little metal trays that would transform the jar you'd just emptied of spiced pears into a handy livestock feeder. Prairie would love it.

Whoever was selling the feeder was only asking ten dollars. Two of the little tabs were ripped off and Ivy ripped off another one, and then another, and then—this was probably really bad—she took the whole ad down and put it in her pocket. Maybe she could get it for Prairie for Christmas, or maybe just as a surprise, since Christmas was so far away still. Maybe it'd make up, a little, for lying about being sick. Her fingers were still curled around the paper when a voice said, “Hey!”

Ivy jumped and scrambled for an explanation for her theft. The nonscrambling part of her brain realized that the voice belonged to the boy from the theater.

Today he wore a dark blue T-shirt with a picture of the White Rabbit on it. The rabbit wore a checkered jacket and carried an umbrella in the crook of his arm; he held a pocket watch in his paw and studied it anxiously. Ivy could almost hear him saying,
Oh dear, oh dear.

The boy waved. “Hey! I keep seeing you everywhere.”

Ivy's heart banged. She nodded.

He came up beside her. “What brings you way out in the boonies, anyway? Are you taking a class or something?”

Ivy shook her head.

“Just looking around?”

Ivy nodded again.

The boy nodded too, as if Ivy's being here, and her muteness, made perfect sense. “That's cool. Me, I'm here with my mom. She works here.”

“Oh,” Ivy managed to say.

“She's got me helping set up for this class she does every summer. Kind of a drag in one way—I have to cook dinner on her class nights. My dad is one hundred percent hopeless in the kitchen, so there's no counting on him to put food on the table.” The boy smiled easily. “But it's cool. She does this intro to graphic novels every summer semester. I get to read all the books and student projects—” His smile became conspiratorial. “I only read the best ones, right? If I get bored, I just—” He sliced his hand in front of his throat.

Ivy felt a little smile slip out, despite how nervous she was.

“You like graphic novels?” he asked.

“I don't—know,” Ivy croaked. She cleared her throat. “I like movies.”

“Movies,
yeah.
But graphic novels are like movies, don't you think? The way they're written in frames? Or I guess they're more like comic books. Really good comic books.”

Ivy attempted to look smart.

“I was thinking I might try to write one this summer. See how it goes.”

“Uhn,” Ivy said. She'd meant to say
yeah,
or
cool,
or at least
uh-huh,
but it hadn't come out right.

The boy pulled a heavy sheet of paper from his messenger bag, then a roll of packaging tape on a big dispenser. He held the poster up against the kiosk with one hand and applied the tape with four fast swipes. He moved around the kiosk and put up another poster, and then another. “But yeah, movies are cool. Obviously.” He waved the tape dispenser at the flyers he'd hung. “Genetically predisposed to loving 'em, I guess. Family history of it and all that.”

Ivy was about to ask what he meant when his attention shifted to a woman in a green blazer who was walking across the campus.

“There's my mom. I better go. See you.” He waved his tape dispenser at Ivy.

“Bye,” Ivy croaked.

He turned when he was twenty feet away. “I'm Jacob, by the way.” He gave her a two-fingered salute and trotted off.

Ivy nodded at his vanishing back. “I'm Ivy,” she said softly. “Ivy Blake.”

He stopped again a moment later. “Oh, hey!” he called. “Almost forgot. Check out the poster!”