The tables were mostly empty, and I chose a seat by one of the windows looking out onto the playground. Maybe I could see Jay from where I was sitting. Warm sunlight streamed in the window, and after a moment I closed my eyes to let it fall on my face.
I got that feeling again. Of someone watching me. Heaviness sat on my shoulders and I opened my eyes.
That girl from the back of the classroom—Susie—stood in front of me holding a tray of cafeteria food. She blinked at me twice, really fast, like something was in her eye. Her night-black hair was twisted back in two braids that she had pinned up around her head to look like a crown. She smiled carefully, like she wasn’t used to it.
“May I sit here?”
I blinked. “Why?”
Susie tilted her head. “Why what?”
“Sorry, I meant, well . . . why do you want to sit here?” I looked around the cafeteria, which was filling up now. Lettie and her group were sitting in the center of the room, and most of the other kids were sitting closer to her. She was practically the most popular person at school and she hadn’t even been here a full day yet.
“I don’t like bunches of people.” Susie shrugged. “And it’s cooler over here by the open window.”
That’s when I realized I was being rude to someone who hadn’t given me a reason to be rude back. “Okay,” I said.
“Thanks.” Susie sat down in front of me and unfolded her napkin. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
“No, um. We can.” I had some of Mama’s Hoppin’ John, a dish of peas and rice cooked together. It was one of my favorite things to eat. We usually only ate it at New Year’s, but Mama had made some special for our first day back at school. “You’re new, right?”
Susie nodded.
“So you just moved here?”
She nodded again.
“Sounds like you’re the one who doesn’t want to talk.”
Susie laughed. “Sorry. I don’t have lots of friends, so I forget how to act around people sometimes.”
This time I nodded. I never knew how to act around people. I took a drink from my thermos of lemonade.
Susie did her strange double blink again. “My family used to live here a long time ago—up by Robinson farm. But we moved away.”
I didn’t know any Robinsons, but then I didn’t know all the people on the island. Some of the farms were really large. “When did you come back?”
“About a week ago.”
Another double blink. She placed her sandwich on her napkin and removed the top slice of bread. With her butter knife, she scraped off some of the peanut butter and licked it.
I giggled and Susie’s eyes went round, like she’d been caught doing something wrong. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I have strange ways of eating things too.”
“You do?”
“I eat all the tiny seeds inside the string beans first.”
“That is weird!” Now she was giggling too. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “You wanna see what I can do?” Before I could answer, Susie ripped her apple in half with her bare hands.
I gasped. “How did you do that?”
She laughed and spread peanut butter on half the apple. “I’ll show you if you show me how to write really pretty like that.” She pointed to my composition book.
“It’s a deal,” I told her.
4
After school, me and Jay raced home, ignoring the wall of breath-stealing heat outside. Usually we would be running along the cooler marsh bank, climbing the branches of the big live oak trees, smelling the scent of pluff mud, and getting in all the fun we could before we had to go in for dinner and do homework. But not today. Today we ran down the dirt road toward home for our first real rootwork lesson.
Doc wasn’t in his room when we got home, so we headed to the cabin. The lock Deputy Collins had broken was fixed, so Doc had to be around somewhere. If he’d left his cabin door open, he couldn’t be far away. We went back in the house to change out of our school clothes. For the first time ever, Gran wasn’t home to greet us when we got home from school. My throat tightened up looking at the empty kitchen. It was so quiet in here. No pots banging around, no visitors chatting away at the table, no cold drinks or treats waiting for us. Next to me, Jay sighed. He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed.
“I miss her too,” he said, reaching up to raise a window.
“That’s why we have to learn. So her memory isn’t gone forever.” I took a deep breath in and held it until my head felt light as a balloon. Then I finally let it out in a big huff. “Even if it means I have to deal with those snotty new girls at school. Lettie’s never going to quit when she finds out I’m learning to work root.”
Jay frowned. “Somebody bothering you, Jez? Need me to—”
“No, it’s okay.” I gave him a squeeze back. “Let’s get changed and find Doc.”
Seconds later, we were sitting in the yard watching the chickens peck for corn and bugs. Doc wasn’t anywhere to be found.
“Do you think he forgot?” I asked my brother.
Before Jay could answer, the door to the cabin swung open and Doc stomped out. He brushed dust off his clothes and placed a huge rock in front of the cabin door to keep it open.
“Where’d he come from? We just looked in there,” Jay said, pointing.
When Doc saw us there in the front yard looking at him, he jumped like he’d seen a ghost from one of Gran’s stories. “What’re y’all doing out here?”
“Waiting on you,” I said.
“Me?”
“Yeah,” Jay piped up. “You know . . . lessons?”
“Oh! I got busy and clean forgot we were going to do that today.”
I was about to be disappointed when I noticed his eyes sparkle. He was teasing us.
“First things first. Y’all two need to look out for each other when you’re working roots. Don’t let Jezebel go off by herself, Jay.” When Jay agreed, Doc pointed a finger at me. “And you know better than to leave your brother anywhere.”
“Yessir,” I said, saluting him.
“Now that’s clear, c’mon in here with me.”
Doc’s cabin was where he stored everything he and Gran used in their potions and powders. While they had sometimes let me and Jay write out labels and such, Doc had never let us spend much time in the cabin. My heart beat faster just thinking about all the secrets and mysteries waiting for us inside.
“Wow,” Jay said.
Doc’s supplies had started running low when Gran got sick, but he must have been busy restocking his products. The pine shelves smelled sweet and clean, like they were fresh cut, and were filled with bottles and jars of roots and dried flowers. A table, covered in carved wooden bowls and handfuls of branches, stood in the middle of the room. Bundles of herbs tied with tan string hung from the ceiling. Mixed up with the scents of Doc’s and Gran’s handmade potions, the whole place smelled like spice-filled woods after a hard rain.
I could see dust-covered jars pushed toward the back of the top shelf. I stood on tiptoe and my fingers were barely able to reach the shelf at all. I jumped and got a quick look at them, but it was difficult to see in the sunlight filtering through the cabin’s windows. Were they hidden back there by accident or on purpose?