Write Before Your Eyes (6 page)

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Dad called that night from Atlanta to tell them that he had an all-day interview the next day. Mom was on the downstairs extension and Gracie on the upstairs one.

“Player Steven Rawley,” Dad said in his gleeful sports announcer’s voice, “after a debilitating string of injuries and a brutal stint on the bench, appears to be mounting a fourth-quarter rally! For the first time in several seasons, Rawley has got game.”

“Steven, have you been drinking?”

“Garrett and I had dinner. He sends fond greetings from Peachtree Street.”

“Steve, is the job in Atlanta? Four hours away?”

And Dad said, in his normal voice, “I don’t know any details yet, Pam. Let’s say it is in Atlanta. In this day and age lots of people commute. This is a great opportunity. Aren’t you going to wish me good luck on the interview?”

“Good luck, Dad!” Gracie said.

“Gracie, why don’t you let Alex and Jen talk to Daddy, and then Daddy and I need to talk by ourselves,” said Mom.

“Dad’s on the phone,” she told Alex, who was on the family-room floor, leaning against the couch with a spiral notebook on his knees, watching baseball.

He grabbed the receiver when Gracie offered it. “Dad!” Then he listened and hung his head. “It won’t happen again, Dad, I swear.” He listened again. “I’m watching the Braves right now. Do you think they’ll make the play-offs?” He listened. “But will you live there?”

Jen came into the room and wrestled the phone from Alex. “Dad, when you get this job, we have to buy back our old house. It’s so humiliating to tell my friends we live in this apartment. I don’t even want to invite anyone over.” Jen left the room, still complaining to Dad, and Gracie didn’t know what else was said.

An ad came on TV with a famous actress asking people to sponsor a third-world child. She said one billion people in the world suffered from hunger. Every three seconds, somewhere in the world, she said, someone dies of hunger. An ad came on telling people to buy stuff from Target. Another commercial came on for beer.

Gracie crawled into bed early and lay there, wide awake, thinking about that strange cat’s slanted yellow-green eyes. The headache over her left eye now seemed to be some sort of heated mass inside her head, growing larger. She wondered if she was slowly going crazy. Surely she’d been imagining that the cat had talked. She took deep breaths and tried to remain calm. Obviously, erasing something you’d written in the journal didn’t cancel it out.

Could she write something in the journal that would save the world’s children? That would solve world hunger? What would it be? Whom could she ask?

The minutes ticked by and she turned over and over, tangling her sheets, trying to nestle the side of her face onto a cool spot on her pillow. Finally she gave up and opened her laptop and checked her e-mail. And saw that Ms. Campanella had answered her e-mail from the night before.

Dear Gracie,

Absolutely do not stop writing! Remember how we talked at the beginning of the year about the nature of fiction? Fiction is made up, but because our stories come from the heart, they are the essence of what’s more true than the real truth. If you are writing things that are coming true, then I believe that you are tapping into the deepest core of truth as you know it, and you are on the right track. Do not censor yourself; keep writing your true feelings, keep tapping into that channel of truth. What is your heart’s desire? I would love to read what you’re writing someday, if you want to share it!

Fondly, Ms. Campanella

Gracie drew in a deep, slow breath. The full moon cast an amazingly bright bluish light on the furnishings of her room. Grace Slick’s rabbit had pale blue fur, not white, and the girl’s pearl earring in the Vermeer acquired a periwinkle cast. Back by the creek, cricket songs pulsed. There was also a deep plucking sound, like a bass note on a banjo string. Some kind of frog call, maybe.

What
was
Gracie’s heart’s desire? Other than fixing her family? She thought back to when she and Dylan had first met, that boring summer after fifth grade, and they’d produced a video sitcom together called
The Thong and the Beltless.
They’d recruited kids from the neighborhood pool for the production. Dylan had done ninety percent of the writing and one hundred percent of the directing. Gracie had typed the script and made copies for the other kids. Her tasks had been lame, but she hadn’t cared, because it had meant that she’d been able to spend gargantuan amounts of time with Dylan, watching the way he waved his arms when he was excited with an idea, listening to the way he toyed with words when he spoke. Now they ate lunch together every day at school and went to movies and plays. Dylan and Gracie had attended every midnight bookstore
Harry Potter
release party and then raced home and stayed up all night to see who could finish the book first. Dylan always won.

Dylan had told Gracie about all the Ms. Vowells (
Ms. Consonants
) and Lindsay Jacobses of his life, and she had told him about all the Brian Greentrees of hers. Not that there was ever that much to tell. The people she and Dylan liked never liked them back. The two of them had once sat under the willow tree and joked that the whole world—or at least their whole school—was like
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
where one person liked another who liked someone else. No one ever liked each other back.

Was there a part of Gracie that never wanted Brian Greentree to like her back? She liked watching him during soccer practice as she ran laps around the school property for cross-country, but the idea of actually having a conversation with him filled her with terror. Plus, she couldn’t imagine herself as one of the soccer girlfriends, sitting on the sidelines watching every game, listening to talk at soccer parties about fouls and headers. She once thought about making out with Brian Greentree on a couch in someone’s basement and got the shivers. Maybe she’d invented her feelings for Brian Greentree just so she’d have someone to talk about when Dylan talked about
his
crushes.

That was what she wanted. She wanted Dylan McWilliams to be crazy about her, Gracie Rawley, and to talk about her in that same wide-eyed, breathless way he talked about Ms. Vowell and Lindsay Jacobs. And she could make that happen. Ms. Campanella had encouraged her to write what was deep in her heart. Ms. Campanella, of the angelic fingers, had assured her there was nothing wrong with it.

Very slowly, as if in a dream, she pulled the journal from under her pillow and turned on her bedside lamp. She started to write:

Dylan and Gracie had been good friends for two years. They told each other everything. Gradually their relationship blossomed into more than a friendship.

Gracie looked at the words, hesitating. This was the first completely selfish thing she’d written in the journal. Yet Ms. Campanella’s e-mail inspired her. She added:

Dylan started liking Gracie and thinking about her all the time. He wanted to make Gracie happy.

Jen was always plotting ways to get Sean and other guys to notice her. Gracie’s theory was that whether guys noticed you had everything to do with what you looked like and nothing to do with what you were
really
like. So why did writing this about herself and Dylan seem like cheating? Dylan already knew exactly what Gracie was like. And he didn’t like her
that
way. Maybe using the journal to affect that wasn’t right.

But it was too late now. She closed the journal.

She straightened her covers and turned over again. She thought she heard Mo, at the foot of her bed, give a warning growl.

Let me in.

What was that? Gracie’s mouth went dry. She dived onto her pillow, yanking the covers over her head.

I beg you. There’s very little that’s truly appetizing to eat out here.

Very slowly, Gracie lowered the covers. Her fingers, as they brushed her cheeks, felt cold as ice. And there, floating in the unfathomable darkness outside her window, were two yellow-green glowing eyes.

Gracie screamed. She didn’t know when or if she stopped to breathe, because in her own brain she just kept screaming. The hall light came on and Mom raced into her room.

“Gracie! Gracie, honey, what is it?”

“Outside my window—two eyes.” Gracie’s breath came in ragged gasps.

Mom rushed to the window. She looked out. Gracie peered at the inky blackness. Nothing. Her heart still pounded.

“I don’t see anything, Gracie. What exactly was it you saw?” Mom wore her faded yellow nightgown, but in the dark it looked white. Her eyes were wide and her hair was sticking up. “Things like this always happen when Dad is gone.”

“Glowing eyes.”

Mom looked out again, then sat on the edge of Gracie’s bed. “The Packards’ cat, maybe? A possum?”

“Maybe.” Gracie felt embarrassed now.

“What’s wrong?” Alex stood in the doorway, straightening a wedgie from his pj’s, squinting at the two of them.

“She just saw something in her window.”

“What?”

“Eyes. Probably someone’s cat, that’s all.”

Jen came to the door. “Jeez, Gracie, you’ll wake up the whole neighborhood screaming like that.”

“Sorry.” Gracie felt like an idiot.

“Well, let’s go back to sleep.” Mom patted Gracie’s leg through the covers. “We’ve all got to get up in the morning.” She stood. “I’ll shut your blinds, how’s that?”

“I can’t believe you woke me up in the middle of the night,” Jen said, heading down the hall to her room.

“If I can’t go back to sleep, it’s your fault, Gracie,” said Alex.

Mom went to the doorway. “Jen, Alex, that’s enough, just go back to bed. Good night, Gracie. You going to be okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Sweet dreams.”

Gracie didn’t answer. She lay stiff as a board watching the window.

He was out there. That weird smiling Cheshire cat. Waiting for her. Trying to get in. And she knew exactly what he wanted. She reached under her pillow and checked for the journal once again.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Gracie hardly slept at all, and the next morning she felt like she had sandpaper under her eyelids. She looked out her window at pale blue sky and yellow leaves gently tapping the glass.

No eyes, no Cheshire cat. How had she gotten so scared? Everything seemed normal. That probably
had
been just the neighbor’s cat or a possum the night before. She reached under her pillow. Still there.

Her headache was only a faint twinge.

Then she remembered. The thing she’d written about Dylan. She hadn’t
really
done that, had she? She pulled out the journal and scanned her own cramped, slightly smeared writing. Indeed she had. Her ears started to burn. Oh, why had she ever, ever done that? She’d had dreams of writing about world peace and ended up writing about Dylan McWilliams liking her! She was such a dork.

But…would it work? A soaring, tickly feeling crept up her neck and behind her ears. And if so, how would she find out, since he was suspended? Would he call her cell or send her text messages? If she heard his voice, would it sound different?

And then she also remembered: No dress code! She could wear whatever she wanted. She sat up, contemplating. Jeans. Her favorite yellow top, the one made of that silky material. Jen had a cool pair of dangly silver earrings with yellow beads that just matched it. Wishing that Dylan could see her in such an outfit, and thinking that somehow he might even if he wasn’t in school, she tiptoed into Jen’s room.

“Get out of my stuff!” This came growling and muffled from under the covers.

“No dress code today, remember.” Gracie gave her voice a teasing lilt as she grabbed the earrings and ran back to her room, shoving them in her jeans pocket. She’d put them on at school. Alex flashed by her doorway dashing for the bathroom. Jen was up, squeezing her thighs into skintight jeans, trying on T-shirts, then peeling them off and throwing them on the floor.

Thirty minutes later they headed down the road in the ancient Mustang, munching on the Pop-Tarts Mom had left them, tailgating the car ahead. When they arrived at Chesterville Elementary, Jen practically had to shove Alex out of the car.

“The detention teacher is mean,” he said. “All she does is yell at people to shut up.”

“Maybe you
should
shut up and she’ll quit yelling,” Gracie suggested.

Alex looked at her as if she were insane.

“C’mon, Alex, get out of the car, we’re going to be late,” Jen said.

Alex slid out and shuffled down the sidewalk like a man going to his execution. His shoelaces were untied and he almost tripped on them.

“Be tough!” Gracie said. “It’s only one day.” She felt so sorry for Alex, and for a long minute as Jen sped toward the middle and high school campus, Gracie fought the impulse to pull out the journal. She wanted to help Alex, but if she wrote something else to try and help him, it could backfire again. Until she could figure out how things worked with the journal, she promised herself she wouldn’t write anything else. Not one single thing.

Jen’s car bounced into the parking lot and zoomed into a space, and she killed the engine. “No more dress code! No more dress code!” she chanted, slamming the car door and doing a little dance beside it. She wore a cropped T-shirt that showed her belly button. It said
LE PETIT GARAGE
,
BODY WORK AND LUBES
.

Gracie smiled. Jen would never suspect that her little sister had done this. They headed across the parking lot together, which was unusual, since Jen normally ditched Gracie for someone older and cooler. Jen called a friend on her cell phone and described to her, in extreme detail, what she planned to wear on her date with Sean that night. Students wearing their uncensored clothing streamed past the Rock into school. Guys wore low-hanging jeans, shorts, and hoodies. Girls wore skintight T-shirts, flaunting suggestive sayings above belly buttons winking with diamonds and pearls. Lime green and zebra-striped flip-flops slapped the marble stairs leading up to the front door of Chesterville Middle. The whole scene seemed tribal and joyous and free.

I did this,
Gracie thought, and held her head a bit higher.

After Jen peeled off and sashayed to the high school wing, twirling her thin spiral notebook, Gracie slid the dangly yellow-beaded earrings into her earlobes and tossed back her hair. She passed Brian Greentree in the hall on the way to homeroom. He smiled and she smiled back. Then someone behind her yelled, “Tree Man!” and he said, “Wazzup?” and she realized he hadn’t been smiling at her at all.

Oh, she was such a dork. She blushed and ducked her head.

She reminded herself it was Dylan she wanted to look at her and smile, and he was suspended today. She remembered what she’d written in the journal the night before and felt herself blushing more deeply. She couldn’t find out anything he might be thinking or feeling until after school, since he was suspended. Who would she eat lunch with? It was four hours away, but already a tendril of anxiety crawled up her scalp.

Then, during homeroom, like the sudden stroke of an ax came the announcement over the PA system.

“Attention, student body,” droned Clueless Chet’s nerdy voice. “Yesterday afternoon we had some serious one-way traffic on what I thought we had agreed were two-way streets, the avenues of Trust and Respect.”

Some kids started laughing.

“Due to the uncontrolled reaction to the announcement about the dress code yesterday, which was witnessed by a number of parents, school policy has been revisited,” Clueless Chet went on. “The dress code will be reinstated on Monday, and beginning the first of October, uniforms will be required. Today’s getups will be reluctantly tolerated, but be forewarned that this school from here on out has a no-tolerance policy for inappropriate garb.”

Gracie felt the blood drain from her face. A buzz of angry voices rose around her. Loud groans of misery were accompanied by shrieks of outrage. That was so unfair! “Shhh!” said Mr. Pemby, her pear-shaped homeroom teacher.

“Uniform catalogs will be sent home with students today,” Clueless Chet continued. “All students must order their uniforms by the end of next week. Anyone who requires financial aid for uniforms, please contact the school office. Thank you.”

Gracie headed down the hall to first period in a daze.
Uniforms!
Uniforms were worse than what they’d had to wear before! Her fingers itched to pull out the journal and write
Clueless Chet turned into a slug on the sidewalk in front of the school and someone shook salt on him.
Just a few minutes ago she’d felt like such a bold, inspired leader, and now she felt like a complete failure.

As she trudged to algebra, the buzz in the hallways was louder than usual, and someone yelled, “Impeach Clueless Chet!”

Suddenly Gracie wondered how her Dad’s interview was going. She pictured Dad pumping the hands of radio personalities wearing headsets, and everyone saying, “Steven Rawley? You’re
the
Steven Rawley? Garrett has been talking about you for
years,
man.” If only Dad’s job ended up among the few things she’d written in the journal that turned out well.

She was briefly shaken from her reverie when her algebra teacher, Mr. Eggles, who everyone thought was a little strange, began the period by turning on a boom box and jumping from behind his desk in a long black leather jacket and sunglasses, doing some lame flying karate kicks like Keanu Reeves in
The Matrix.

“And with that introduction we’ll begin our unit on matrices,” he said. Everyone groaned and rolled their eyes. Gracie thought Mr. Eggles should get an A for effort.

On the way to earth science Gracie passed Constance Gomez in the hall. Gracie looked at her feet, the way she always did when she saw Constance. Everybody knew that Constance’s mom was dying of cancer. Gracie used to talk to Constance sometimes, but now she didn’t know what to say to her. Constance’s dark hair wasn’t clean, and her notebooks had curled, weathered edges. She looked kind of spacey, but otherwise pretty much the same. But how
could
she be the same? It must be awful. It must be like having a pain in your chest and no matter how you tried to move, the pain wouldn’t go away. Gracie stopped and leaned against someone’s locker. Even though she’d told herself she wouldn’t write anything else in the journal, she pulled it out of her pocket and wrote:

Constance Gomez’s mom got well.

She wondered, the minute she shut the journal, if she should have done that. Some people would say that if Constance’s mom died it was God’s will. But doctors tried everything in their power to save people, and sometimes they did. And maybe God would read Gracie’s journal and agree.

In earth science Mr. Diaz discussed the upcoming eighth-grade debate on global warming. Their class had been assigned to argue that global warming was real. The other eighth-grade earth science class had been assigned to argue that it was not.

This was a much more progressive debate than the one that had occurred last year in seventh grade, in which Dylan had been in the group arguing for evolution and Gracie had gotten stuck in the group assigned to argue for creationism.

“Too bad you got assigned to cretinism,” Dylan had taunted.

“Creationism,” Gracie said.

“Riiiiight.”

Now Mr. Diaz handed out sheets describing how to research their position on global warming. “Concerned scientists have estimated a rise in global temperatures of ten degrees by 2100,” he said. “In many places there’ll be no more winter. Scientists have predicted larger, more destructive hurricanes, droughts, and crop failures. Here’s an article about scientists taking core samples from Arctic ice that provide evidence that polar ice caps are melting. Sea level could rise thirty-five inches over the next few decades. Cities like Rotterdam and New Orleans, and even whole countries, such as Bangladesh, could be permanently underwater. So,” Mr. Diaz concluded, “during the debate, we should list actions we can take to forestall this.”

“My mom says it’s too late,” said Laura Tomboro. Her mother taught atmospheric science at the local college. “She says feedback systems have already started that are making everything happen faster.”

“My dad says most of the warming is caused by factories, not by people. So it doesn’t matter whether we do anything,” said Kevin Norris.

“Well,” said Mr. Diaz, “we have to argue our side of the debate. We can’t give up before we’ve even started.” He handed out a sheet listing ten ways students could reduce energy use to slow global warming. The list included hanging laundry out to dry rather than using a clothes dryer. Carpooling. Taking the bus. Recycling. Using energy-efficient lightbulbs. Driving hybrid cars.

Does the journal have the power to fix problems as big as global warming?
If Gracie had the power to fix global warming by writing something in the journal, shouldn’t she?

She began drafting possible entries. Should she say that the sea level stopped rising? That the increase of greenhouse gases halted? Should she write that all people in the United States reduced their energy consumption by half? That humanity discovered a brand-new mysterious form of energy that was clean and renewable and cheap?

She felt overwhelmed with the complexity of it all. There was no way a kid like her could come up with the right thing to write. She would have to ask some brilliant scientist exactly what to write in the journal, word for word.

“Miss Rawley?”

Everyone in the class was staring at her, including Mr. Diaz. He’d called on her. She had no clue what he’d asked.

“Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”

“The future of our planet too boring for you, Miss Rawley?”

“No! Not at all!” Gracie felt her face burn and wished she could disappear. Then it occurred to her: She could write something about disappearing in the journal, right? It was too late now, but maybe, if she ever needed to, she could write that.

“I asked,” Mr. Diaz continued, “which of the ten items listed on the sheet is something your family is doing to conserve energy?” Mr. Diaz always wore stained white shirts and he was standing by her desk with his stomach at her eye level.

“Oh—uh—carpooling. We carpool to school.”

“Pay attention from now on, Miss Rawley.”

Gracie nodded.

After class she hurried up to Mr. Diaz’s desk. “I was just wondering about those concerned scientists. Do you have a list of their names?”

Mr. Diaz had a large head and tiny glasses. He looked at Gracie and blinked. “Yes, you can go to the Web site.” He wrote down the name on a sticky note. “It’s gratifying to see you’ve decided to show some interest in global issues, Miss Rawley.”

Gracie headed for the library at lunchtime. If a billion people worldwide were going hungry, as that actress had said in the ad the night before, Gracie could certainly skip lunch. She could use the computers for research on hunger and global warming, and, almost as important, she could avoid having to eat lunch by herself. She glanced into the cafeteria as she walked by. Jen was approaching one of the juniors’ tables with her tray, getting ready to sit down, when some girl with bleached hair rushed over and shoved Jen’s tray right up into her face.

“What are you
doing
?” Jen yelled. Goopy pink yogurt clung to her
LE PETIT GARAGE
T-shirt, and spilled milk covered the thighs of her jeans. Chicken nuggets and fries slid across the floor.

What was happening? Gracie took two hesitant steps into the cafeteria.

“Stay away from Sean!” Bleached Hair screamed.

“What, are you crazy?” Jen shrank back.

“I’ve been going out with Sean for three weeks.” Bleached Hair stepped closer and shoved Jen. “Me and my friends will make your life a living hell, I promise you.”

Gracie was only halfway across the cafeteria, but she still saw something in Jen snap and an electric fury cross her face. “Hey, it’s a free country, and if you didn’t notice,
he
asked
me
out!”

“If you go out with him tonight, you will pay!”