The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [16]
“When I have a bad night,” she said, “I look at my dogs.”
She held out a picture of two beautiful dogs—one smallish golden retriever and one very large black Lab. In the picture, Jazza was squeezing the dogs. In the background, there were green rolling hills and some kind of large white farmhouse. It looked too idyllic for anyone to actually live there.
“The golden one is Belle, and the big, soppy one is Wiggy. Wiggy sleeps in my bed at night. And that’s our house in the back.”
“Where do you live?”
“In a village in Cornwall outside of St. Austell. You should come sometime. It’s really beautiful.”
I slowly sipped my tea. It hurt my throat at first, but then the heat felt good. I reached over and got my computer and pulled up some pictures of my own. First, I showed her Cousin Diane, because I had just been talking about the angels. I had a very good picture of her standing in her living room, surrounded by figurines.
“You weren’t lying,” Jazza said, leaning on the bed and looking closely. “There must be hundreds of them!”
“I don’t lie,” I said. I flicked next to a picture of Uncle Bick.
“I can see the resemblance,” Jazza said.
She was right. Of all the members of my family, I looked most like him—dark hair, dark eyes, a very round face. Except I’m a girl, and I have fairly ample boobs and hips, and he’s a man in his thirties with a beard. But if I wore a fake black beard and a baseball cap that said BIRDBRAIN, I think people would immediately know we were related.
“He looks very young.”
“Oh, this is an old picture,” I said. “I think this was taken around the time I was born. It’s his favorite picture, so it’s the one I brought.”
“This is his favorite? It looks like it was taken in a supermarket.”
“See that woman kind of hiding behind the pile of cans of cranberry sauce?” I asked. “That’s Miss Gina. She runs the local Kroger—that’s a grocery store. Uncle Bick’s been courting her for nineteen years. This is the only picture of the two of them, which is why he likes it.”
“What do you mean, ‘courting her for nineteen years’?” Jazza asked.
“See, my uncle Bick—he’s really nice, by the way—he runs an exotic bird store called A Bird in the Hand. His life is pretty much all birds. He’s been in love with Miss Gina since high school, but he doesn’t really know how to talk to girls, so he’s just been . . . staying around her since then. He just tends to go where she goes.”
“Isn’t that stalking?” Jazza said.
“Legally, no,” I replied. “I asked my parents this when I was little. What he does is creepy and socially awkward, but it’s not actually stalking. I think the worst it ever got was the time he left a collage of bird feathers on the windshield of her car . . .”
“But doesn’t he scare her?”
“Miss Gina?” I laughed. “No. She has a whole bunch of guns.”
I made that last part up just to entertain Jazza. I don’t think Miss Gina has any guns. I mean, she might. Lots of people in our town do. But it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t know him that Uncle Bick is actually harmless. You only have to see him with a miniature parrot to know this man couldn’t harm anything or anyone. Also, my mom would have him locked up in a flash if she thought he was actually up to something.
“I feel quite boring next to you,” Jazza said.
“Boring?” I repeated. “You’re English.”
“Yes. That’s not very interesting.”
“You . . . have a cello! And dogs! And you live in a farmhouse . . . kind of thing. In a village.”
“Again, that’s not very exciting. I love our village, but we’re all quite . . . normal.”
“In our town,” I said solemnly, “that would make you a kind of god.”
She laughed a little.
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “My family—I mean, my mom and dad and me—are the normal people in town. For example, there’s my uncle Will. He owns eight freezers.”
“That doesn’t sound so odd.”
“Seven of them are on the second floor, in a spare bedroom. He also doesn’t believe in banks, so he keeps his money in peanut butter jars in the closet. When I was little,