The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [16]
“Uh, candy?” I said.
“Would you like some?” Miss Beverly said. “I’m sure I have goodies left from Halloween, and candy canes from Christmas. Come on in and let me find you a treat. But first you must tell me your names.”
“I’m Sebby and she’s the—”
“I’m Barb,” the Shish said quickly, glaring at me out of one side of her face while the other smiled sweetly at Miss Beverly. How did she do that?
“Thank you, Miss Beverly, but we really shouldn’t impose on you,” Barbie said. “We just came over to deliver these eggs to Mr. Odum.” She held the carton out. “And if it’s not too much trouble, my mother would like the carton back next time you want a refill.”
“Eggs? Oh, yes, Stanley had quite the sparkle in his eyes when he told me someone would be dropping by with them. Someone! That trickster! He knew you children were coming to make my day! Well, hurry in so we won’t heat the outdoors. The money’s in the kitchen.” She took the carton and shooed us inside.
The first thing I saw was myself in a hall mirror. Holy oops. I’d taken off without changing my clothes. My old jeans were frayed at the bottom from when they used to drag on the ground, but now my bed-knob ankles stuck out over my mismatched socks. Grass stains floated like green clouds above the knees. I’d always been kind of husky, but now I looked skinny, except across the shoulders. My T-shirt stretched tight on top. And it was on inside out. I didn’t have to sniff to know I was carrying half the chicken coop around on my grubby sneakers. The last time I combed my hair was before church last Sunday. No wonder Barbie was so embarrassed by me.
“You have a beautiful home,” Barbie said, and then I turned to take it all in. The room was all gussied up with antique furniture, paintings, statues, flowers. The floor was the glossiest wood I’d ever seen. Curtains, velvet. They looked like wine.
“It’s nice enough,” said Mrs. Odum, wincing, “but it’s hard to keep clean. Stanley pitches in when he can. He wants to hire a cleaning lady, but I told him I know how to keep house, thank you. People don’t belong anywhere they can’t take care of their own messes, that’s what I say.”
“Cleaning is hard work,” Barbie said sympathetically. “We do a lot of that at our house, too.”
“Miss Beverly, you got any . . . M&M’s?” I said, poking the Shish in the ribs.
“Why, Sebby, I just might!” Miss Beverly said.
“Will you please shut up?” Barbie whispered with an elbow back at me. Wow, she’d definitely gotten shorter. She stuck me in the arm instead of the head.
All the way to the kitchen Miss Beverly described the treats she might have hidden away, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too in awe of the sights on the walls. The artwork was amazing. Paintings of ferns and broccoli and waterfalls, shells and Queen Anne’s lace and trees, all from different angles that showed the little details you usually never notice. Every nook and cranny held a sculpture. Even the antique furniture looked like it ought to be in a museum.
Barbie stepped on the back of my sneaker when I stopped to stare at the humongous painting at the top of the staircase. It showed a planet from outer space. The landforms looked like Earth, but it wasn’t your typical big blue marble. Beautiful patterns of color swirled down from the coastlines, meeting in the middle in whirls of lava. Somehow the artist had made the flat canvas seem like a magical globe, like you could reach inside the painting all the way to China. The water moved with the tides; the lava looked molten.
“You like that painting?” said Miss Beverly proudly. “My son gave it to me for Christmas. He used some newfangled paint he’s working on to make spacecraft stronger. Land of the Adri is the title, whatever that means. He tried to explain, but I didn’t understand. Too many fancy words. That one is called Fractal.” She gestured toward the broccoli we’d just passed.
Or was it broccoli? From this angle it looked like the coast-line on a map. One minute it was a head of broccoli, the next it was the world.
The next