Torey Hayden - The Sunflower Forest

I stood and held out my hand for the pass. When she laid her pen down, I snatched the form from the pad and left.

Claire, one of my group of friends from school, was having a party the next Friday night. Her mother was helping her clear the furniture from the family room, and there was going to be a live band. It was a local band, made up of three boys from our high school and someone named Frog Newton from Goodland, who played the drums. Frog was a friend of Brianna’s cousin, and Brianna said she thought he was one of the weirder monkeys not in the zoo. She always referred to him as Fig Newton, which in my mind was an improvement on Frog.

Claire’s party was the big social event of the term among my crowd, which by and large didn’t seem to generate many big social events. None of us girls who were friends that year was exactly femme fatale material. Claire still had a generous amount of what her mother affectionately called ‘puppy fat’. Brianna wore glasses and braces and had hair like Little Orphan Annie’s. And of course there was me. Naturally, Claire intended that we all bring dates. But she did tell us that her brother and a bunch of his friends were coming, which was a diplomatic way of saying that there would be at least some boys on the premises.

After lunch on Wednesday I went down to my locker to change books for my next class. I stood alone, sifting through the debris in the bottom of the locker, searching for my German vocabulary notebook.

‘Where were you in history class today?’

I looked up.

His name was Paul Krueger. I didn’t know him well because the only class I had with him was history and he sat across the room. All I knew for sure about him was that he was reckoned to be a whizz kid in physics. Otherwise, he was an ordinary sort of boy with brown, wavy hair and a lumpish build, like a wrestler’s.

‘I was down at the counsellor’s office. Miss Harrich is always hassling me about college applications.’

Shifting his books from one arm to the other, he leaned back against the locker next to mine. ‘Too bad you got her. I got Mr Perryman. He’s not so bad.’

‘Yeah. It’s because my last name begins with O.’

‘Yeah. Mine begins with K.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

Silence. We both looked away.

‘Luckiest kids are those with last names starting with S, because they get Mr Kent. He’s really nice. I know. My friend Bob’s got him.’

‘Yeah, they’re lucky.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed.

‘Yeah.’

Silence.

‘So. Where are you going to college?’ he asked me. ‘Have you been accepted anyplace yet?’

I shrugged.

‘I’m going to Ohio State. They’ve got a good statistics department there. That’s what I’m going to major in. Statistics.’ He shifted his books again. ‘My old man says there’s lots of jobs available in statistics. And you know how it is. You pretty much do what the old man says.’

With a smile, I nodded. I had located my vocabulary notebook, so I shut the locker door. By the hall clock I could see I had only two minutes left to get to German and I didn’t want to be late because Mr Tennant gave us marks when we were tardy.

Paul was studying the fingernails on his left hand. ‘I wanted to ask you something – in history class,’ he said, still regarding his hand. ‘But you weren’t there.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘No.’

Still the intense interest in his fingernails.

‘See, I’m a friend of Kurt’s – you know, Claire’s brother. And about this thing on Friday night.’ He looked over. ‘You going to it?’

‘You mean Claire’s party?’ I asked.

He nodded.

I shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

‘You want to go with me?’

My jaw went slack.

‘I mean, assuming you’re not going with anyone else or anything. Are you?’

‘Yes. I mean, no, I’m not. I mean, yes, I’ll go with you. If you want.’ I grinned. ‘Yeah. OK. I will.’

‘Great, then.’ He hoisted up his books. ‘I gotta go to English. Listen, I’ll talk to you more after school, OK?’

I nodded.

With a smile he turned and took off down the hallway.

I stood next to my locker, a stupid grin plastered all over my face, and watched him disappear. Astonishment had me spellbound.

So this was it.

Still grinning like a Cheshire cat, I tossed my pencil way up into the air and tried to catch it. The teacher monitoring the hall gave me an odd look. I hooted at her, then grabbed my books and ran for German.

When I arrived home from school, I went into the kitchen to fix myself a snack. Megan was sitting at the table and spreading butter on soda crackers. I took down the bread and then went to the cupboard to get the peanut butter.

‘There isn’t any peanut butter,’ Megan said.

‘There was this morning.’

‘Yes, but I ate it already.’

Frowning, I turned. ‘You know I always have a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich when I get home from school. Always. Since before you were born, you little brat. That was my peanut butter.’

‘Not any more!’ She giggled. ‘Here. You want some crackers?’

‘Aren’t there any apples left either? Did you pig them all up too?’

‘No. But all that’s left are the old wormy ones that fell off Mrs Reilly’s tree.’

I sat down at the table and took the crackers away from Megan. Intently, I worked on extracting one from the wrapper without breaking it. ‘Where’s Mama?’

‘In her bedroom.’ Megan was concentrating on spreading butter to the exact edges of her cracker.

‘Is she OK?’

Megan shrugged. ‘I guess so. She’s still got her bathrobe on. And she doesn’t look like she combed her hair yet today. But when she was out a little while ago, she said “hi” to me, so I guess she’s all right.’ Megan paused to look up. ‘But you know what she’s doing?’

‘What?’

Megan wrinkled her nose. ‘She’s got all those photographs out. You know. The ones of Popi and Mutti and Elek.’

I sighed.

‘You know something, Les,’ Megan said, ‘what I really feel like doing someday when she isn’t looking is taking all those old pictures and burning them in the fire.’

‘What an awful thing to say, Megan. All Mama’s family got killed in the war. And she misses them. If something happened to all of us, would you want some kid of yours to burn up our pictures?’

She took out another cracker. ‘Well, I dunno. If it kept me from remembering I had real live kids here in front of me, then I might.’

‘She remembers us, Megs. Don’t be so selfish.’

Megan didn’t reply.

‘Hey, you want to hear some super news,’ I said, hoping to distract her. ‘You know Claire’s party on Friday?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, guess what? I got a date for it.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Really. Who with?’

‘This guy at school. You don’t know him. His name’s Paul Krueger and he’s in my history class.’

‘Can I meet him? When he comes to get you, will you introduce me?’

I rolled up the wrapper on the crackers and rose to put them away. ‘Well, he isn’t exactly coming over.’

Megan’s brow wrinkled.

‘I told him to pick me up at the nursing home.’

‘The nursing home? But you finish there at 5.30. Claire’s party doesn’t start at 5.30, does it?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I thought I could study until it was time. Mrs Morton lets me use the staff room to study when I want to.’

Bafflement still clouded Megan’s features.

‘Besides, it’s a lot closer for him. He lives on Cedar Street. That way he doesn’t have to come all the way over here to pick me up.’

Megan had the knife in one hand, and with a finger she scraped off bits of butter from it and put them into her mouth. ‘Cedar Street isn’t really that far, Les. Why don’t you have him come over here and pick you up? Then we could meet him.’ But before I had to explain, I saw a look of understanding cross her face. She gazed at the knife and finally put it into her mouth to suck the last of the butter off. ‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘I guess it probably is a better idea to meet him somewhere else.’