Circle of Secrets

  “Doin’ good, Shelby. He’s real calm with you.”

  I glance up at Gwen. “Or maybe he’s just waitin’ for his chance to escape over the edge and dive back in. Did you ever want a baby gator for a pet?”

  “Yeah, I used to, but my daddy says that it don’t take long before they’re big and start snapping. I could lose a finger before I ever had a chance to get outta the way.”

  “They are pretty cute, though.”

  I hand the baby gator back over to Gwen as a breeze rustles the leaves, soft and gentle-like. Yet it’s so quiet, too. Quieter than I’ve ever heard the world in my whole life. Feels like Bayou Bridge don’t even exist no more. School seems like just a dream.

  “You cutting school, too?” I ask Gwen, realizing that I’ve never skipped school before in my life. Can’t help wondering if Principal Trahan will call Mirage and tell her. She don’t get many phone calls. None really, except for Daddy’s and Grandmother Phoebe’s calls.

  Gwen lies back in the boat, her hair floating like strands of gold ribbon over the bow. “School? Haven’t been in the longest time. S’pose you could say I’m homeschooled now. Need some books, I guess, and I keep meaning to go to the library but never seem to get my legs movin’ that direction.”

  “Where do you think your folks have gone?”

  “Not sure. Can’t even remember how long they’ve been gone. Then I remembered them talkin’ about moving away. To a different city.”

  I’m shocked, pure and simple. “They forgot you!” I bite my lips and hope I haven’t hurt her feelings now.

  She doesn’t look at me, just keeps stroking the baby gator. “Used to cry a lot. I remember that I had a lot of pain. My body hurt, but it finally stopped. Then my heart hurt like it was breaking into a million pieces, but that’s starting to go away, too. I’m not sure what that means. Do you think I’m heartless, Shelby?”

  “’Course not. You can’t spend every moment crying, I guess, but — but — all your stuff is still in the house.”

  “That’s the strangest part, isn’t it? But the house hasn’t been cleaned in forever. It’s dusty and musty-smelling with crud everywhere. The yard’s got piles of moldy leaves and junk the storms bring in and dump all over the place.”

  “That’s so peculiar, Gwen,” I tell her. I’m gonna say more, but I stop myself. Sure seems like something happened to her parents, all right. Like maybe they had an accident or something. But wouldn’t the police come and tell her?

  She sits up. “Guess it’s time to join your brothers and sisters again.” As Gwen sets the gator down on the log, the other babies scatter, startled. Our baby gator opens his mouth big and wide, showing off his little razor teeth.

  “Look, he’s smiling, Shelby.”

  “Smiling real wicked, I’d say.” We paddle out of the cove and I call back, “Good-bye, babies, be good while we’re gone.”

  As we keep going ’round the island, a field of purple water hyacinth spreads out like a meadow. I stop paddling to stare. “It’s like a fairytale woods.”

  “Yeah, it’s the last before autumn sets in. Them yellow swamp flowers are budding now and the purple hyacinth will start dyin’ off soon as it starts coolin’.”

  We finally pull up at the island dock and tie up the boat. As we hike up to the house, darting around patches of water and shrubs, all kinds a birds flit through the trees. Robins and doves and bobwhites talking up a storm, oak leaves chattering back, like I’ve just landed on a whole different world.

  Guess I can see why Mirage likes it out here so much. I never knew the swamp could be beautiful.

  Which makes it even stranger why she’d want to leave. She grew up here. Her animals are here and her traiteur life. Why’d she want to go back to New Iberia and stuff herself into an apartment or some rented room? That don’t make much sense. Why couldn’t Daddy come live with us in the swamp house?

  He could when he gets back from that country by Russia.

  I realize for the first time that he really could. What if all I had to do was just ask him?

  My stomach makes a queer, jumpy feeling — and I know I’m not hungry.

  While Grandmother Phoebe’s having rehabilitation therapy, our house is being taken care of by a once-a-week gardener and housekeeper. It don’t get dirty much when Mirage and Daddy are gone. But I know my grandmother’d be happier if nobody had shoes and homework and books and jackets lying around.

  Grandmother Phoebe’s always kept a tight grip on us, but now I’m wondering if she’d be better off with us in our own house. And only certain visiting hours. Posted on the front door.

  I hold my stomach with one hand and put my other hand on my heart. I’m thinking thoughts I’ve never thought before. Picturing a life I’ve never imagined.

  “Gwen,” I say, hopping over a root in the path, “do you ever get the feeling that you could change your own life if you wanted to?”

  “We’re only eleven. We have to do what grown-ups tell us. But most days, I know I lost the life I used to have. Memories are slippin’ out of my head, disappearin’ into the air, sinkin’ into the bayou. I can’t hardly remember what my mamma looked like, or my baby sister, Maddie. I have to look at the photo albums to bring it all back.”

  I glance over at her, the pale white of her skin, the black and green of her eyes. She’s so different from anybody I’ve ever known. LizAnn and I talk about homework and piano lessons and curfews and shopping. Gwen never talks about any of those things.

  Her words make me sad. I wonder if she’s really a runaway. Or if she broke out of juvenile detention. But she doesn’t seem like either of those kinds a people. Just lost. Lonely. Not a part of Bayou Bridge, not a part of school. Just floating on the edge of life.

  “I’m trying to get my family back together, too,” I suddenly confide to Gwen. “My mamma left a year ago. My daddy’s halfway across the world, and my grandmother’s in the hospital.”

  “We really are almost just alike, ain’t we?” Gwen says, gazing into my face. She reaches out to grasp my hand and hangs on tight, like she’s trying to hold on to a lifeline. Like she might bust into a million pieces if I wasn’t here.

  “I want my daddy to try living here for a while. But I don’t think he’ll come unless my mamma does the asking. I’m finally figuring out that it’s both of their fault, not just my mamma’s.”

  Soon as I say the words, it’s like the whole world shifts, and the telescope I’m looking through grows about ten feet across.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I WANT TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING,” GWEN SAYS A FEW weeks later as she walks over to her bedroom closet. She shoots me a mysterious smile like she’s practicing to be a movie star. “I made a secret chamber, but nobody else knows nothin’ about it. Actually, one other person does, my best friend.”

  “Your best friend?” I say, and my voice goes faint.

  “Yeah, we’ve known each other since we were babies, but she disappeared long time ago. Don’t know where she is, and I can’t help bein’ mad at her. Best friends shouldn’t just move away without telling you.”

  “I agree,” I say, thinking about LizAnn and how hurt I would feel if she stopped being my friend or just up and disappeared.

  I think about Larissa at school and wonder if she’s ever had a best friend. Maybe in her old town. Don’t think she has any friends here in Bayou Bridge, though. Little pings of guilt start up again, stabbing at my conscience. I’m lucky to find Gwen, even if it means cutting school.

  Gwen turns to look at me. “Maybe we can be best friends.”

  A lovely warmth spreads from my toes all the way up to my heart. “Forever,” I tell her. I guess it isn’t a very nice thought, but I can’t help being glad Gwen’s best friend isn’t around no more. If she was, Gwen would never have been hiding behind the angel statue.

  “Now, look at this secret chamber. I made it myself.”

  I peer over her shoulder as she reaches deep into the closet. She makes a fist, pounds o
n the frame, and a little door pops open. It’s even got a cute brass doorknob.

  “I’ve been making a scrapbook. Not a single person of the human race ever laid eyes on it before now.” The scrapbook is also a photo album, the cover a stiff cardboard and covered with blue material. “I made the cover, too, but I’m not a very good artist. It’s kinda sloppy. See the corners where the glue doesn’t hold together right?”

  “I think it’s beautiful,” I tell her, admiring the little cut-out hearts and stars and the purple hyacinth climbing along the edges of each page.

  “Oh! Got an idea!” Gwen cries. “Gonna get my camera. Be right back.”

  She runs downstairs and while she’s gone I sit on the bed and slowly turn the pages of the beautiful little book. My ears start to buzz and my throat goes dry as an empty lake. Gwen’s handwriting is all over the pages. Titles and picture captions and little jokes.

  I run my finger over the caption that says, Me and Daddy and Mamma in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

  I’ve seen those same fat letters before. The circles dotting the i’s on the blue bottle notes. Gwen’s handwriting is the very same handwriting as those messages in the bottles!

  My heart thuds and I keep blinking and staring at those scrapbook pages, wondering if I’m dreaming it all up.

  I study the pictures of Gwen on trips with her parents, a school play, hanging upside down on the jungle gym at school. There’s also a little girl with red curls and a grin with missing front teeth.

  Then I see photos of Gwen with her best friend. The girl with the dark hair from the locket — which is so tiny. Some of the pictures were taken far under the oak trees in the shadows so their faces are hard to make out.

  Suddenly, Gwen is back, out of breath from running up and down the stairs. She’s holding a black old-fashioned-looking camera. “This is my daddy’s. I want to take a picture of this day so we won’t forget it. Let’s go out on the porch. This camera needs lots of light. Here, you take mine first and then I’ll take yours. I’ll frame them in the album after Daddy gets the film developed, okay?”

  “Is this your little sister?” I ask, pointing to the girl with reddish hair and the same pretty smile Gwen has.

  “Yep, that’s Maddie. She’s nine and in fourth grade — I mean, if she was here. She’s pretty cute for a little sister.” Gwen pauses. “I think I miss her the most.”

  We run downstairs to the front porch and I take the camera and aim it at Gwen, who stands on the top step, smiling her sad, faraway smile.

  “Press the button on top when you’ve got it focused,” Gwen calls.

  I wiggle the focus control and the odd buzzing in my ears returns. Through the tiny camera window I can see Gwen, one arm clutching the post of the porch. When I press the button, the camera clicks done.

  Gwen trots over. “Now I’ll take yours. Stand over there where I was.”

  I get into position and Gwen groans. “Oh, no, that was the last picture on this roll!” She glares at the camera as if it has purposely betrayed her.

  “That’s okay,” I tell her. “We can get more film and take my picture another day.”

  “It won’t be the same, because it won’t be today, will it?”

  I nod my head, agreeing with her, but my mind is whirling about so many other things besides taking pictures. I know now for sure the two people who wrote the notes in the blue bottles. Mirage and Gwen.

  Questions burn on my tongue, but I don’t even know where to start. And I’m afraid of the answers. Swallowing hard, I say, “Gwen, you ever go out to the swamp house with that big blue bottle tree?”

  She stops fiddling with the camera and her body stiffens. “Yeah, I know that house. Everybody does. The other traiteur lives there.”

  “Do you ever — did you ever — write notes and put them in the bottles?”

  Gwen frowns at me. “How you know about that? You been spyin’ on me?”

  “No! I just — I mean, I think I’ve seen you out there some nights.”

  Gwen glances away, staring into the dark forest of cypresses surrounding the house. “Supposed to be a secret.”

  So Mirage and Gwen have been writing notes to each other? I’m so shocked I can’t hardly swallow. That means they know each other, because the handwriting matches both of them.

  Maybe Mirage did a healing spell for Gwen. Maybe more than one. And maybe they started becoming friends. What if Gwen has sat in the very same chair where I eat my supper by the stove? What if she’s petted Mister Lenny? I wonder if Mirage ever prayed over her or stroked her hair.

  Now I know what an evil imp is because it’s sittin’ on my shoulder making me jealous like I never felt before.

  Does that mean that all this last year while I was in New Iberia, Mirage made friends with Gwen and they spent time together? Went places together? Talked to each other through secret, fun notes in the blue bottle tree?

  That must be why I’d seen Gwen down by the banks. Times when she’d paddled up the bayou and hidden her notes. Their own secret, private game. Like Gwen was Mirage’s daughter, not me.

  My nauseated stomach comes back with a vengeance and I feel sorta green. My face gets hot. I think I need to sit down. “Why do you write notes to each other in the blue bottles?” I finally choke out.

  She gives me a small smile. “Mostly for some spooky fun. Especially when the power is down in the swamp during a storm and the phones go out. We sneak out and write notes to plan stuff we’re gonna do. Or where we’re gonna meet.”

  I was right then. The messages were like two friends secretly passing notes during class. My mamma — I mean Mirage — and my new best friend, Gwen. I don’t know whether to stomp off and never speak to them again or just cry my eyes out.

  A year ago, there were times I thought I hated Mirage. I wouldn’t a cared a single little bit what she was doing or who she was friends with.

  My legs stumble across the yard to the oak tree, my mind a cyclone of peculiar thoughts. I chew on my cheek and it hurts worse than ever. Mirage was supposed to love me. And she was supposed to love me best. And now I find out she’s secret-note friends with Gwen and treats her like her very own daughter. Maybe that’s why she didn’t come visit more often — because she never missed me all that much.

  Gwen saunters over. “I got this plan to have a note in every single bottle by the time I get to high school.”

  I take a big, hard gulp. “That’s a lotta notes.”

  “Only problem is if my best friend really did move away. Like my family. Like everybody I know just up and disappearing on me. But I still go out there some nights when I’m not too scared of the dark. To look for new notes.”

  She’s not making any sense again. She’s talking like Mirage is the best friend she hasn’t seen for a while, the friend that disappeared. But Mirage still lives at her house. Is Gwen just a little bit crazy in the head?

  Gwen reaches for my hand. “You gonna disappear on me, too?”

  “Where would I go?” I say, but inside I’m thinking that maybe she’s right. I really will leave. Me staying here is supposed to be temporary. And if I had my way, my daddy would come get me tomorrow. In a small voice, I ask, “Do you still find some notes then? How long has it been since the last message in the blue bottles?”

  Her shoulders shake, like she’s holding back tears. “Nothing new for longer than I can remember. She never answered my last note.”

  “And you didn’t ever see her again?”

  “Nope, never again. Sometimes I’m afraid she got sick or died. But I don’t know! I don’t know nothing! She jest disappeared into thin air.”

  Gwen is mixed up, that is for certain. Mirage isn’t sick or dead. And she’s still living at the swamp house, although not for long probably.

  None of it makes a lick of sense.

  Except the fact that Mirage and Gwen have a secret friendship and left me out.

  I’m still puzzling over all of Gwen’s mixed-up stories and the blue bottle notes
when I get back home later that afternoon.

  I also try to figure out the homework I missed, avoiding Mirage’s eyes because I feel guilty about skipping school and lying to her. Used to be I didn’t care much about what she thought, but now I do. And it hurts all over again.

  Mirage is quiet, puttering around the house, cleaning some fresh-picked moss, doing dishes. Mister Lenny gets his bandages off for good, too.

  “Now he can practice his flying again.” Mirage makes those cooing noises, encouraging him to spread his wings and lift off. Finally, he does, in fits and starts across the kitchen.

  After I finish up my homework and rummage in the cupboards for an after-dinner snack, I see her sitting on the front porch in the dusk. The front porch that’s so rickety. “Why you sitting out here and not on the back porch where the tree is?”

  She gives me a wistful smile. “Sometimes I jest don’t want to be reminded of sad and terrible things. I don’t want to think about the bad things I done and that blue bottle tree is the biggest reminder in the world.”

  I blink at her, thinking about her and Gwen writing notes to each other through the bottles and I try to push the envy deep down in my gut. Sometimes she don’t make any sense, either. Just like Gwen. “But it’s so pretty.”

  “Pretty is sometimes ugly dependin’ on your point of view.”

  I stand there, hanging on to the railing, not sure what I want, but not leaving.

  “Sorry I’m bad company, Shelby. This is a bad day for me.”

  I glance over at her, at the way she’s bent over like her stomach hurts, at the sudden lines along her mouth, the puffiness around her eyes. “Why’s it so bad?”

  “Somebody I loved very much died on this day many years ago.”

  I wasn’t expecting her to say that at all. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too, Shelby Jayne, me too, more’n you could know. Because I could have prevented it and I didn’t.”