From Ant to Eagle(5)

I recognized the book immediately. I couldn’t believe it! It was the latest R.L. Stine—The Barking Ghost. She carefully manoeuvered the book into the crease of her open hymnbook and held them both together in such a way that the smaller Goosebumps book disappeared inside.

I guess I was pretty caught up staring because I nearly jumped from my seat when I felt Sammy’s elbow jab me in the side.

“Ouccchhh,” I hissed, careful to keep my voice quiet.

“Sorry,” Sammy replied. I looked down at him and for a second he looked ready to get up and run, but when he saw I wasn’t ready to wallop him, he turned his attention elsewhere. He glanced to where the newcomers were sitting then back to me again.

“Who is she?” he asked.

“I dunno,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and pretending not to care.

“Does she go to our school?”

“No. Now shush up or you’ll get us in trouble again,” I said.

But it was too late. Mom was already leaning forward glaring down the pew at us. Her finger was up to her mouth and her eyes looked like a bull’s, ready to charge.

I glared angrily at Sammy and he shrank back into the pew and stopped talking.

Throughout the sermon, I took every chance I had to look back. Each time we were called to sit or stand, I turned around and pretended to be looking around the church, then quickly stole a glance at the newcomer.

She was never looking my way. Her eyes remained trained on the hymnbook in her hands.

Sammy kept nudging me to say something but I pretended not to notice.

Who was she? Where was she from? I had to think of a way to talk to her.

As the sermon came to an end, I rushed to put on my jacket and appeared impatient to get going.

“What’s the big hurry, honey?” Mom asked, staring inquisitively at me. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I really have to go to the washroom. Do you think we can hurry and not talk to Reverend Ramos today?”

I knew it was a long shot. Mom and Dad always stayed behind to chat with the reverend. I needed to get out before the girl left so I could think of a way to talk to her.

Mom looked at Dad and he gave a nod.

“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” he said.

We started toward the back of the church and I realized my mistake immediately. She was walking toward the front. The aisle was packed with people going this way and that—some to the front, most to the back—and we were caught in the stream like salmon. At the back of the church, I turned for one last glance and as I looked, I saw her head swivel around. Her movement was deliberate. She had just been looking my way.

But had she been looking at me? I wasn’t sure.

The only sure thing was it wouldn’t take any persuasion to get me to church the next week.





CHAPTER 4

I SAT AT HOME WATCHING THE CLOCK AS THE SECONDS TURNED TO minutes, the minutes to hours, the hours to days—or so it felt. It was only one o’clock. I had been home from church a mere three hours.

“Wanna play Crazy Eights?” Sammy asked, standing in the doorway of the living room, a deck of cards in his hand.

I had been sitting on our old, brown sofa with a Goosebumps book closed in my lap staring absently across the backyard to the knee-high corn stalks standing like rows of soldiers beyond. It was still raining and the lawn looked like a giant puddle with hair.

I always thought it was weird: we lived in the country but didn’t have a barn, or animals, and the fields all belonged to someone else. We were a small weed among endless stretches of actual farmland—it just didn’t make sense.

Still, my parents worked hard to keep our weed as sightly as possible. I think it was a big part of why we moved to the country in the first place—more room to garden. Our whole house was lined with inconveniently placed rosebushes, hard-not-to-step-on daffodils and many more flowers I actively chose not to learn the names of. My parents called themselves hobby gardeners and said it was relaxing. Sammy could sometimes be lured into helping but I had a very different definition of relaxing and pulling weeds wasn’t a part of it.

Outside our bedroom window, there were two Japanese cherry trees that in my eyes were the only good part of the garden. When we’d first moved to Huxbury, Dad had joked that there was one for each of Sammy and me—a big one and a small one—and he’d told us to name them. I’d decided on Big Tree, which you can imagine took me all of five seconds to come up with. Sammy had spent days thinking of a name for his tree. In the end, he’d gone with Sakura after Dad told him it was the Japanese word for cherry tree. He was excited to have his own tree and utterly disappointed when we learned the following spring that Sakura was a dud. At the end of April, Big Tree transformed into a radiant ball of white flowers that filled the whole house with a delicious smell while Sakura remained bald and ugly. I suggested to Sammy that maybe it was because he didn’t love his tree enough or look after it. Really, it was because Sammy was never lucky with anything.

“Cal? You want to play Crazy Eights?” Sammy repeated.

I’d forgotten that he was still standing in the doorway.

“No. Leave me alone,” I said. “I’m reading.”

I picked up my book to look occupied.

“Can you read out loud?” he asked, starting to move into the room.

“Not right now. Just go away.”