The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,93
flower. All my life, I’ve seen bees buzz around, and I never really thought they knew where they were going, but apparently they do.
Deena and I sit at her grandmother’s creaky kitchen table, newspapers spread out beneath our pumpkins and carving knives, careful not to make too much noise. We had to buy our pumpkins at the Kwikshop, and it wasn’t the greatest selection. My pumpkin is bad, but Deena’s is worse. It has a brown scar on one side, the other side is covered with some kind of fungus. She squinted at it for a while in the Kwikshop, tracing the moldy spot with her finger.
“I’ll make it the mouth,” she said.
Deena’s good at things like this. Art is the only class she likes. For the pottery unit, we each had to make a vase in the shape of an animal, and Deena made a baby bird, its beak stretched up and opened wide. She had spent hours texturizing the wings with a No. 2 pencil, and by the time she finished, it looked as if a real baby bird had survived the kiln and was still waiting to be fed, its downy wings small and unfolded.
Mrs. Toss had carried Deena’s bird slowly around the room, cradled in her hands. “Isn’t it lovely?” she asked us. “Isn’t it?”
I had tried to make a swan, with a long, thin neck, but I made the neck too long, and the head fell off in the kiln. Mine was the only animal without a head, and I got a D–. My mother took it out of the garbage and put it on her dresser, and now she keeps safety pins in it.
“I think it’s nice,” my mother told me, not even cracking a smile. “I like it.”
I watch Deena draw on her pumpkin with a ballpoint pen. The swirling lines she’s making don’t look like anything yet, but I know they will. She never messes up.
“You’re so good at things like this,” I tell her.
She looks up quickly, like I have surprised her. “No,” she says. “Not really. Did I miss anything in English?”
“Nope. We all just sat around. It’s just not English without you.”
She squeezes a pumpkin seed between her finger and thumb, hitting me on the cheek. “Very funny. What did I miss?”
I shrug. “You’ve missed a lot. We’re on the third act of Othello. You’re going to have a hard time with it, trying to read it by yourself.”
She squints at her pumpkin. “I know. I know.”
I cut into my pumpkin and tell her that she should come to English, not just because she has to but because sometimes it’s fun. Mr. Adams jumped up on his desk today, holding a yardstick up like a sword, pretending to be Othello. “Put down your swords or the dew will rust them!” he had yelled, jumping off his desk, both of his feet hitting the floor at the same time.
Deena rolls her eyes. “Whoopity-do.”
I say nothing, looking down at the jagged line I am cutting into my pumpkin. She has been doing this lately, talking to me like I am a little kid, instead of the same age that she is, as if everything I think is interesting is actually kind of dumb. I don’t know if she’s doing it on purpose or not. I finish the circle on top of my pumpkin and try to pull it off. The green stub twists off in my hand.
“Well, what’s so great about whatever you and Travis do all day?”
She sets her knife down and looks at me, a slight smile on her glossy lips. She is trying not to laugh. “You really don’t know?”
“No.” I wipe my hands on the knees of my jeans. “I really don’t know.”
She leans in close, her eyes on mine. “We’re having sex, silly goose.” She laughs her goofy laugh, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. “That’s what we do all day. That’s what’s so great.”
I stop cutting, my knife stuck into my pumpkin where the nose should be. I’m not ready for how much this hurts me. I’ve gotten used to seeing them together by now, his arm around her waist when we walk back from the bus stop, their feet wrapped around each other’s under the table in the cafeteria. But now, hearing this, it’s like I just swallowed a needle and can feel it moving down my throat, a long, slow, and sharp descent.