Chapter 24 2005
The snow had been relentless for three days, and Ms. Bamford had made it clear that none of the students were to leave the school except to walk from the dorms to the main building or the gymnasium.
Which meant I’d have been in big trouble if she’d discovered I’d sneaked out to check on Nick.
But there was simply no choice. Nick had barely survived the previous winter, and the last time I’d seen him, the day before the blizzard blew in, he’d looked frightfully thin.
The snow lightened when I reached the trees, and I quickened my pace.
Nick was an old rabbit, and though wily as they came, he had to compete against much younger rabbits for the meager shoots that sprouted through the snow.
Over the past few months, he’d developed a bit of a limp, and his fur had grown coarse and turned the color of ash instead of the rich mousy gray it had been when I’d met him over a year before.
In my backpack I had three baggies of vegetable trimmings.
Ivy and the cooks knew about Nick and the other rabbits and, for more than a year, had been saving scraps for me to bring to my furry, four-pawed friends.
Bart had no idea of my secret. Since the day he’d nearly managed to pull me into the groundskeeper shed, he’d apparently been under the impression that he’d scared me into being a prisoner within the school’s walls.
Which gave me great satisfaction each time I sneaked out the kitchen door and into the woods, knowing he was the one who’d unwittingly led me to my greatest treasure.
I reached the hole and needed to burrow out the snow before I could crawl through.
By the time I made it to the other side, I was breathing hard, and the knees of my pants were soaked.
Luckily it was a Saturday, so I didn’t need to be back for hours, and Ms. Bamford wasn’t around to see me and get suspicious.
Since my gymnastics dreams had come to an end, five months before, I’d spent all my free time with the rabbits.
Minister Mulvany, who married Mother a few months after she fired Boodo, declared it “unbecoming” for a young lady to tumble around in little more than her underwear.
And Mother, who seemed to have lost all say over things, went along with it.
I railed against them, refusing to eat or talk, but all that managed to do was make me terribly hungry and get me grounded and unable to enjoy the summer with Profe.
Eventually I relented, in part because I knew in my heart, no matter how much I wanted it, I was never going to be a great gymnast. With my weak arms and small hands, I simply wasn’t built for it, which was horribly disappointing.
The minister had also decided that they needed to “fix my face.” It didn’t matter that Mother had already taken me to a dozen plastic surgeons who had all said the same thing, that my nevus went too deep and was too close to the eye to remove.
He was certain money could cure anything and that we just needed to find the right doctor.
He and Mother dragged me all over Minnesota and then Chicago.
We saw seven doctors. Six said the same thing as the previous doctors.
Surgery would leave me disfigured and could impair my eyesight.
The only one who said different was a doctor with a cackle for a laugh and horribly bad breath.
Fortunately, Mother wasn’t a fan of the man’s enthusiasm for “cutting the thing out.”
The good news was that the final doctor, a renowned specialist in Chicago, said quite firmly, “Your daughter is healthy and beautiful. The nevus does not affect her physically, which means removing it is not medically necessary and would only be for vanity.” He emphasized the word and looked directly at the minister who was dressed in his clergy shirt.
“She should be allowed to grow up and decide for herself what she wants to do about it.”
The doctor held up his hand for me to high-five, and I did so with gusto, then hopped off the exam table and marched from the room. After that, the minister lost interest in my nevus, and in me, and Profe and I finished our summer in relative peace without further interference.
Unfortunately the minister’s disinterest did not alter his stance on prohibiting me from doing gymnastics.
I missed it terribly and continued to practice in my room, trying to remember all the things Coach Blood had taught me.
And sometimes, in the clover patch, I did cartwheels and handsprings and pretended I was Carly Patterson performing in the Olympics.
Dylan went with me to the pond sometimes.
I’d learned from Mr. Jeffries it was a pond, not a lake.
It was called Black Hollow Pond and was rumored to be inhabited by a sea serpent that lured people into the water to steal their souls.
Dylan and I had great fun with that, coming up with stories about the serpent, calling out to it, and even singing made-up songs, hoping to serenade her to the surface.
The days he joined me were my favorite. We had all sorts of adventures.
We pretended we were pirates or explorers who had landed on an undiscovered shore.
We hunted for hidden treasure and fought marauders.
We looked for feathers, rocks, and leaves for my collection.
We caught toads and had races. We skipped stones.
Or sometimes, we just sat beside each other on the flat rock and read.
He liked the same books as me, fantasy adventure books like Harry Potter and The Lightning Thief.
During the winter months, I mostly went to the pond alone.
Dylan was on the basketball team, which meant he spent his weekends practicing or at games.
I also never would have asked him to sneak out and defy Ms. Bamford.
Dylan needed to stay out of trouble. He went to Gaines for free because his mother worked there, but that could change if he messed up.
My fingers were frozen by the time I made it through the hole.
I shook out my limbs and stomped my feet, hoping to bring the feeling back.
There was no sign of the rabbits. I whistled and called for them, but other than my breath frosting in the air and the large flakes floating from the sky, the world was still.
My boots had snow in them from crawling through the hole, so I walked onto the ice to dump them out. A gleam of light had broken through the clouds, forming a spotlight, and I shuffled to its center to soak up its warmth, which was when I heard the music.
The pond was crescent shaped, and the music came from the far side of the knoll that concealed the clover patch from the houses on the other side. I recognized the song. Profe had been trying to teach me Beethoven’s Minuet in G on the piano for the better part of a year.
The song stopped, then restarted. Curious, I slid-shuffled toward the knoll, then got down on my hands and knees and crawled forward to peer around the bend.
There, in the middle of the far end of the ice, was a skater. She wore an outfit the same blue as the bits of sky peeking through the clouds, and the cuffs and short skirt were trimmed with white fur. Her skates were white, and her hair was the blondest blond I’d ever seen.
The bright, sharp notes resounded off the ice, and the woman leaped, spun, and glided in harmony. Her performance was so mesmerizing I forgot I was supposed to be hiding and only realized I was in plain view when she skidded to a stop and looked at me, her laser gaze locking on mine across the ice.
Panicked, I backed away, slip-sliding as fast as I could to the beach. When I got there, I wrenched the baggies of scraps from my backpack, dumped them on the snow, and hurried back through the hole.
I ran for the school, praying to God and then to Allah that the woman wouldn’t call Ms. Bamford and report me, knowing if I was found out, I’d never be able to visit Nick or the pond again.