5. A School Marm from Hell
WESLEY
Aunt Shirleywhole-heartedly approved of the plan to work on my missing school credits at Celeste’s house under the watchful eye of her grandmother. Ms. Suzanne Moffitt, otherwise known as Celeste’s nana, was not someone to be trifled with, Shirley warned me as she glided her sleek Oldsmobile down the county highway to the Hendricks’ property.
This part of Georgia was unlike anything back home. Trees stretched towards the sun like skyscrapers, competing with one another to spread their thick branches. The earth was red from a clay-like dirt that Aunt Shirley said was great for growing crops. Periodic pools of green, swamp-like water dotted in between the vegetation, and she cautioned me more than once to be wary of the water because we weren’t too far north for gators to build their homes.
Celeste’s house was nestled behind a thick tree line with a dirt driveway. The house was a single story with a giant wrap around porch, perfect for shade in long afternoons spent in rocking chairs, according to Aunt Shirley. Flowers were everywhere around the outside; fat begonia bushes with bright pink blossoms and thick foxgloves towered along the porch railing. A yard was cleared around the house, although an enormous flowering dogwood tree reigned over everything on the righthand side. The lowest branch was wider than a grown man’s torso and sported an old tire swing. The dirt drive swung around the house to the left where other outbuildings were visible.
Aunt Shirley said the property had been in the Hendricks family for generations. I didn’t doubt that because why would anyone want to leave a place like this? It looked like a slice of heaven.
Celeste was waiting for me in a rocking chair by the front door. She gave her usual shy smile as Aunt Shirley and I climbed the porch steps. It was then that I noticed a figure behind the screen door. The door popped open with a snap and it had to be Celeste’s nana who stepped out.
Her nana wasn’t much bigger than poor Aunt Shirley, but her features were far more severe. She glared down her nose at me, although I was just a fraction of an inch taller than her. Her petite frame was swallowed up in an oversized t-shirt bearing The Comfy Cushion logo and sweatpants that must have been blistering once the heat set in for the day. She eyed me up and down like I was the devil incarnate, and for once I wondered if maybe in fact I was.
“You’ll call me ‘Ms. Suzanne’ or ‘ma’am,’ you got that?” she snapped at me. The burn from her gaze made me leery.
Aunt Shirley gave me a gentle push to acknowledge what was said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ll stay outta the living room,” Ms. Suzanne continued. “I like my shows and there’s no need for you to be interrupting me.”
I shook my head and stood up a little straighter, hoping she took it as the sign of respect I intended. “No, ma’am. I’m here to work.”
She nodded, still eyeing me with a face full of suspicious dislike. Celeste told me the night before that her nana didn’t think boys and girls could be friends and she didn’t trust anyone who didn’t grow up in River’s Run. I didn’t want to give the old lady any other reasons to hate me.
“Go on and take him up to your tower,” Ms. Suzanne directed Celeste.
Celeste’s eyebrows rose, surprise evident across her face. “You’ll let me take him there?” she asked incredulously.
Ms. Suzanne rolled her eyes as she barked out, “I just said so, didn’t I? There’s a double episode of Fear the Wicked today and I’m not gonna miss it ‘cause of y’all. Git on into work!”
My aunt wished her a good day and thanked her again for her hospitality. “I’ll collect you around 5 o’clock for supper,” Shirley reminded me before hobbling down the stairs to her car.
Celeste grabbed my hand and dragged me around to the right side of the house before her nana could say another word.
“Fear the Wicked?” I repeated in a whisper.
She snickered into her free hand. “It’s a soap opera about witches and vampires that Nana’s obsessed with!” We both shared a quiet chuckle.
“What’s she mean ‘your tower’?” I asked in confusion. Her hand felt warm and soft in mine, and it was oddly soothing. I’d never wanted to hold someone’s hand before, but Celeste’s palm fit in mine as though it belonged there. I quite liked the idea of that.
As we rounded the corner to the back half of the house, I realized there was a second story to the house that wasn’t visible from the front. The branches from the dogwood scraped along the porch roof back here, blending into the side of the house so that it resembled a treehouse. Another screen door faced the tree directly and it was through that door Celeste directed us.
A steep set of wooden stairs led upward. We had to hold the railings on both sides to climb safely. We emerged in a room that reminded me of movies I’d seen where the kids had a club in a treehouse. String lights crisscrossed the ceiling, hanging low enough that I could reach up and touch them. If I grew much taller, they would hit my head. There were several mismatched bookcases with chipped paint along two walls. Some held old books with cracked spines and peeling bargain stickers, others held board game boxes held together with packaging tape. One of the taller bookcases had a bunch of craft supplies like paints, construction paper, and those funny scissors that cut things in different shapes. There was one window each on the walls to my back and right hand side facing out into the flowery branches of the dogwood tree. You could barely see anything through the foliage, although streams of light snuck through.
A weathered wooden table sat closer to the bookshelves with a couple rickety wooden chairs to match. Flecks of paint from old art projects dotted across the surface. Using the stairwell as a divider, the other side of the space, closest to the windows, had a bright area rug. There were beanbag chairs and giant floor cushions all around. A small table sat in the corner with a record player and a crate of old vinyl records leaned against it.
The best part about the space was all of the photographs, though. Unframed photographs lined most of the walls and slanted ceiling. Some even hung from wire down between the string lights. I approached the one hanging closest to me, held up by a paper clip, and observed what looked like a candid shot of a much younger Celeste—maybe four or five—in a ruffly Cinderella two piece bathing suit standing in an inflatable kiddy pool. She was smiling so wide that her eyes were squinted shut, wet hair plastered around her face. A young woman sat on the ground next to the pool. The photo caught her mid-laugh, her dark hair piled high as her head tilted back in the joy of the moment.
It was Celeste’s mom; I could recognize her without hazarding a guess.
I cut my gaze to some of the others and realized many of them were far older. There were several polaroid shots of people wearing clothing from the 70’s or 80’s. A few clearly had Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks when they were first dating judging by the youthful face of Celeste’s dad. Most of the photos were candid shots of people, with the occasional beach view peppered in here or there. I didn’t see any of Celeste with other friends her own age, though. It was mostly just her with her parents.
“So we call this my ‘tower,’” Celeste explained. There was a hitch to her voice that indicated she was nervous about my judgment. “It’s just a place for me to hang out. Daddy and Nana don’t ever come up here.”
“It’s amazing,” I said fervently. This room held more memories than I could recall from my entire life. I turned around again and realized there was only a single stairwell in or out. “Was this meant to be a room? Where are the other doors?”
She giggled and my stomach lurched with how much I enjoyed the sound. What the heck was wrong with me? “It was meant for pantry storage when the house was originally built 150 years ago. This is directly above our kitchen,” Celeste explained. “But as different generations updated the house, it kinda became like an attic space. After Mama and Daddy found out they were expecting, Mama wanted to turn this into a cool place for me.” The words caught in her throat.
I knew Celeste well enough by now to know that she found it difficult to talk about her mother, so I hastily changed the subject.
“What do you wanna start on?”
For the next few hours we pored over worksheets from her school together. She said her father was good friends with the principal at what would be my school here and he was going to talk to him about letting me turn in work just like Celeste’s to help get me caught up. She had used the copy machine at the restaurant to make a second set of the packets Smithson County Schools had allocated for her.
As much as I appreciated Mr. Hendricks and Celeste looking out for me, I was immediately bored out of my mind.
Celeste’s patience eventually ran out as she looked over a sheet of pre-algebra equations I filled out. “Wesley, you’re giving me the wrong answers on purpose.”
I was currently leaning back in my chair, trying to balance the pencil on the tip of my nose. Her accusation brought me up short, and I slammed the front two table legs back down.
“No, I’m not!”
She shoved the paper across the table at me, pointing at the problem on top. “Then why is all of your work right, but the answer is wrong?” Her Southern drawl was a lot heavier when she was mad. Her green eyes drilled into me, daring me to contradict her again.
I rolled my eyes and shot out of the chair. Ten paces away, in the middle of the area rug, I whipped my hands around and faced her. “It’s just school! Nobody cares!”
She was immediately crossing over to me, stopping just as her sneakers hit the toes of mine. I expected her to yell at me, to make me feel like an idiot the way all the other tutors my dad hired always had. Everyone always acted like grades were some sort of definitive proof of the future, and my future was chosen for me, so what did it really matter? Whether I was a total idiot or a prodigal genius, I was going to take over Madden Enterprises. I had no say in the matter.
Instead, her face was utterly sincere as she whispered up to me, “I care, Wes.”
Her faith in me was heavy, a burden I needed to take seriously. Life had already given her far too much disappointment for me to add to it. If she needed me to do better, then I would. That’s what best friends did for one another, right?
Except I was reminded again how much she didn’t feel like a best friend. Celeste felt like a soul mirrored to my own. Letting her down was therefore like letting myself down, and my dad already did enough of that. I wouldn’t do that to either of us.
“Fine, I’ll redo it.” Shrugging in defeat, I crossed over and sank down into my seat.
Celeste struggled to keep the smug look off her face. She resumed her seat across from me and pushed the worksheet towards me. “Why do you downplay how smart you are?”
I snorted. “I’m not smart.”
“Um…yeah, you are.”
I refused to answer her, keeping my eyes trained on the paper in front of me.
“Seriously, Wesley,” Celeste continued. “All of these problems were meant to be a placement sheet for math class next year. Some of them are pretty advanced, and you solved them perfectly. Why would you change the answer?”
As good as I’m sure her intentions were, I hated being called out. It felt like an attack, despite her having never made it one. “I just don’t care about any of this! I don’t want to be some nerd who gets perfect grades. It never makes any difference to my dad anyway.” Unwittingly, I flexed my hands into fists on top of the table as I tried to get a grip on my rising temper.
She shrugged. “I guess that’s one way to look at it,” Celeste said thoughtfully. “I just always wanted to know that no matter what I decide to do as an adult, I have plenty of options to get there.”
Her words confused me. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, think about it. If we get good grades in high school, we can probably get into any college we want. That means we could study pretty much anything we want, which leads to whatever job we want. Seems like an awful lot of freedom just for answering some questions on a worksheet.” Celeste flipped her long, bushy hair over one shoulder and began scribbling answers down on the assignment in front of her.
“I guess I never really thought of it like that,” I admitted. But dang, who would?
Celeste, that’s who. Why wouldn’t a girl who could make up a recipe from thin air also plan her future ten steps ahead?
“You can do what you want,” Celeste added. “I’m never gonna tell you what to do.”
Her idea of freedom as an adult was awfully attractive, though. What I wouldn’t give to someday tell my dad he could piss off, that I had a scholarship to a college I chose, not one he donated a million dollars to in order to get me in. Picturing his angry sputter of disbelief made me smile.
Correcting the answers gave me a lot more confidence than I thought it would.