Every morning Leah rushed her to eat breakfast, finish dinner, or brush her teeth. At school, her teachers said, “Turn in your paper. Open your book, line up for lunch,” and at the end of the day, everyone scattered from the school steps to duck inside cars where they were whisked away by their parents for tutoring, piano, math, or martial arts lessons.
Leah’s mother worked in an office not too far from the mall at a bookkeeping job and got home around dinner, when she always changed into a pair of worn jeans and a plaid shirt that was missing two buttons. She wanted to know if she’d like to join the Garden Club or the Spanish Club or even the Conflict Managers Club.
“Not really,” said Leah.
“You sure?”
“Too much homework,” she said, which was that kind of reason her mother might believe even though it was not completely true.
“I could pick you up at school after work.”
She didn’t want to join a club. “I like taking the bus,” she said, which was true because she enjoyed looking out the window past the movie theater to a store that sold rocks and crystals. Sometimes she got of the bus and went inside. There were chimes that hung from the ceiling, and a collection of geodes along the counter that sparkled a deep purple blue.
“But I don’t like your being alone so much.”
Well, it wasn’t her fault that her parents decided to have only one kid. She could count on that not ever changing since she was ten years old and in fourth grade, and her parents’ family both lived in the mid-west where they met, not California, not Grenville where they’d moved six months ago because “the schools were good.” Her father was an EMT technician, which meant that he rescued people who were sick and having heart attacks. At night he drove a special van and slept during the day.
“Think about it,” said her mother, who removed clothes from the dryer and handed Leah a stack of her underwear and T-shirts to fold before she moved back to the kitchen. “Wish you’d change your mind.” Her mother opened the refrigerator, a tall woman who licked her lips in between her sentences, which is why her dad called her his “little lizard.”
“Maybe next year,” said Leah, who had started school in the middle of the year when most kids were already in groups, which didn’t make things any easier for her, a chubby girl with braces who had moved from another state. Why wasn’t it enough for her to stay with her stuffed animal, Miss Meow, and draw in her room or play in the pine grove behind her house?
At last it was Saturday and she didn’t have to rush. Her parents were busy doing chores. Leah was outside playing in the grove behind her house. She’d discovered a pathway behind her unit that had been blocked off by yellow tape that was stretched between sawhorses. Pine needles littered the ground air. She left the leaf-blowers and cars behind her. The grove was quiet. Leah loved to watch the sun spangle on the edges of the leaves. She practiced catching light in her fingers, and collected moss to make a rug for Miss Meow, but decided tree bark would be a better idea, gluing bits and pieces to a sheet of paper. She bent down and listened to a Mourning Dove. Her father had taught her the names of birds. He used to work for the Parks District before he took the EMT job. The bird flew from one tree to the next. “Come back,” Leah called. She voice echoed through the trees. Crickets chirped. It was getting darker now and the branches were beginning to cast irregular shadows.
“Don’t be scared,” she heard a small voice say. Leah saw something glimmer on a eucalyptus branch where the dove had been sitting. “I’ll show you how to get home.” The glimmer settled upon another branch.
Leah could see it better now. It looked like a person except for its size and wings. Each time it took a breath, an orange glimmer fell from the corner of its eyes and sparkled as it spiraled to the ground. Leah looked up at a moss-covered branch. “My name is Ethel,” said the sprite in a voice that was half words and half humming. I’m the leader of the Glimmerine.” Ethel sailed to the ground and stood as tall as Leah’s knee. Her wings gleamed. Each time she moved them, they changed colors. “And you?”
“My name is Leah.”
“I know. The dove told me.” Ethel hummed a few bars of conversation causing a new patch of glimmer to fall to the ground. “Sometimes the dove sings to me. He has such a pretty voice! Then we sit on a tree and eat calendulas. Do you like them?”
“I’m not sure what they are.”
“Silly, calendulas are flowers,” said Ethel. “They warm my insides with the color of the sun, especially tasty on a cold day.”
Leah was getting cold, and at the mention of food, Leah remembered the smell of her mother’s cooking. She reached into the pockets of her corduroy overalls to make sure she still had the key to her house. She’d never met anyone like Ethel who glimmered whenever she talked. Leah hated to leave, but she didn’t want her mother to worry. “Will you still be here when I come back?”
Ethel stomped her foot and the branch shook with a glimmer. “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t” she said, “and maybe calendulas times two is 64.” Ethel disappeared and left a patch of glimmer on the ground.
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