Keeping the Moon(37)
Author: Sarah Dessen

Chapter twelve

The annual Baptist Church Bazaar was crowded, even at eight A.M. I went with Mira. She pushed her bike over to the church steps, carefully chaining it to the rail while I took a look around.

Most of Colby was there. The church itself was small and white, like something from a picture postcard, and people were milling across its neat green lawn, picking over the displays and tables of junk: mismatched plates, old cash registers, vintage clothing. In the parking lot were the bigger items, like a pop-up camper, an old rowboat with chipped red paint, and the biggest wrought-iron mirror I had ever seen—its glass broken, naturally—which instantly caught Mira’s eye. As soon as the bike was secure she headed right for it, leaving me standing in front of a table stacked with old hamster and bird cages.

For the next hour, as I browsed, I was increasingly aware, again, of how everyone reacted to Mira. I watched as they eyed her, or smirked once she had passed. A few people—Ron from the Quik Stop, the pastor of the church—waved and greeted her. But most of the town seemed to view her as some kind of alien.

“Oh, goodness, look at that,” I heard a voice I recognized. “Mira Sparks is already doing her shopping.”

I turned around slowly to see Bea Williamson standing there, the Big-Headed Baby on her hip, shaking her head at Mira, who was crouched down, examining a pair of old roller skates.

Maybe it came from facing down Caroline Dawes. Or it could have been building all summer. But suddenly, I felt a fury rise in me toward Bea Williamson and every nasty thing she’d said about Mira in my earshot. It built like a flush, crawling up my neck to make my scalp tingle, so different from my own shame yet feeling the same. I narrowed my eyes at her; she was wearing a gingham sundress and white sandals, her blond hair bouncing as she bent down to deposit the Big-Headed Baby on the grass. When she looked up, her gaze shifted past. She didn’t recognize me.

She’s got some kind of issue with Mira, Morgan had told me all those weeks ago. I don’t know what it is.

But there didn’t have to be a reason.

I moved to the other side of the table, watching her, and pretended to check the price on a bent hamster wheel.

“I’m surprised she wasn’t the first one here,” Bea was saying, as the baby toddled past her legs and started around a table covered with plastic placemats. “I half expected her to camp out last night to get the best bargains.”

“Oh, Bea,” said one of the other women—a clone, in blue and white, same hairstyle. “You’re terrible.”

“It’s just awful,” Bea said, fluffing her hair. “Whenever I see her, it practically turns my stomach.”

I thought of Caroline again, the way her nose wrinkled when she’d seen me at the Last Chance. And I glanced back at Mira, knowing this wasn’t my fight, that if she acted like she didn’t care, I should too.

But enough was enough.

I found myself walking around that table, right up to Bea Williamson. I stepped between her and the blue clone, and she stepped back, surprised, then remembered who I was: her eyes went right to my lip ring. The flush was still burning my skin, as I stood there ready to do for Mira what she’d never done for herself.

I took a deep breath, not even sure what words I would say, how I would begin. But I didn’t even get a chance.

“Colie?”

It was Mira. She was standing right beside me, with her bike; there was a shiny chrome toaster—priced to sell at four dollars—wedged in the basket. She didn’t even seem to notice Bea Williamson and her friend.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked, putting a hand on my arm.

I looked at Bea Williamson, all the words I wanted to say about to spill out. But Mira had already started to push her bike, oblivious, the toaster rattling, and I had to let her lead me away.

We walked together along the road toward the Last Chance, her bike between us. The toaster clanged each time we hit a bump. The rest of her purchases—two old hatboxes, a leaking beanbag chair, and a set of socket wrenches—had been left for Norman to pick up later.

The further we walked, the more what had just happened bothered me, until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Mira,” I asked her suddenly, as a car blew past, “how do you stand it?”

She looked up at me, dodging a pothole. The toaster clanked. “Stand what?”

“Being here,” I said, waving a hand at the Last Chance, the Quik Stop, everything. “How can you stand the way they treat you?”

She turned her head. “How do they treat me?” she asked. I wondered if she was joking.

“You know what I mean, Mira.” It wasn’t like I wanted to start listing things, adding insult to injury. Still, I had to make my point. “The things they say, about your bike, or your clothes. The way they look at you and laugh. I just—I just don’t see how you can take it, day after day. It’s got to hurt so much.”

She stopped walking and leaned against the bike, looking at me with those wide, blue eyes, so much like my mother’s. “They don’t hurt me, Colie,” she said. “They never have.”

“Mira, come on,” I said. “I’ve spent this whole summer seeing it. I mean, what about Bea Williamson? You can’t tell me—”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head, “It’s not about Bea Williamson. It’s not about anyone. I’m a lucky person, Colie. I’m an artist, I have my health, and I have friends who fill my life and make me happy. I have no complaints.”

“But it has to hurt you,” I said. “You just hide it so well.”

“No.” And then she smiled at me, as if this wasn’t as complicated as I was making it. “Look at me, Colie,” she said, gesturing down at her big yellow shirt and leggings, her little purple high-tops. “I’ve always known who I am. I might not work perfectly, or be like them, but that’s okay. I know I work in my own way.”

All this time I’d thought we had everything in common, but I’d been wrong.

I stood there, at the side of the road, and watched as she got on her bike, beginning to pedal slowly downhill toward home. She turned back to wave at me, and then started to coast, the wind picking up behind her. Her hair streamed out and her yellow shirt began to flap wildly, billowing out like crazy wings as, before my eyes, she began to fly.

Around the end of the rush that day, the phone rang and I reached for it, drawing a ticket out of my pocket and my pen from my hair.