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  No parent saw it. No matter what Christina explained to Michael and Benj — who were right there, who should have seen! — they just got irritated. “Stop telling yarns, Chrissie,” they would say. And sometimes they even complained to the Shevvingtons, “Christina’s yarning again.” The Shevvingtons convinced Michael and Benj that Christina made up these things in order to attract attention.

  The only teacher who realized what was happening, Christina’s math teacher, was fired.

  So Christina turned to Blake, Anya’s boyfriend. Handsome, preppy Blake, who dressed in catalog Maine clothing, and whose watches cost more than a lobster boat. Anya and Blake had walked and danced and kissed, looking like a photograph in a slick magazine. They could have been modeling jeans or perfume or fast cars.

  But even with Blake there, Anya collapsed. Her honor grades vanished like snow in the sun; her mind faltered; she quit high school. Blake struggled on; Blake never gave up.

  But there was nothing the Shevvingtons did not plan for.

  Somehow they arranged for the creature in the wet suit to entice Blake into chasing him. Their timing was perfect. As the twenty-foot tide rolled in like a living army, cannonading off the cruel cliffs, Blake was to be dashed to pieces. But even the Shevvingtons could not plan for the lucky chance of a tourist strolling by. Blake was saved, though he was in the hospital for weeks. But he went straight from the hospital to the boarding school, and for Anya it was the final blow. She never saw Blake again; Mr. and Mrs. Lathem, his parents, refused even to give Anya Blake’s address and phone number, because they held Anya responsible for everything that happened to Blake.

  Oh, Blake had phoned once or twice. But he was swept up in another world now, and who knew what he believed about what the Shevvingtons and his parents had told him? And so they had lost Blake, their only ally.

  But Christina, golden hair bright as summer apples, silver hair bright as stars, fought back. She was of the island: she was granite, like the rock she was born on, and nothing would stop Christina.

  She had shown the Shevvingtons a thing or two! They finally saw she could keep Anya from falling off both the real cliff of the sea and the mental cliff of her mind.

  There had been a week — a wonderful moon-bright week — in which Christina knew herself, age thirteen, to be stronger than the principal. The Shevvingtons had bowed down to Christina.

  And then, laughing in the way of adults, who are always more powerful in the end, the Shevvingtons had brought forth Dolly, Michael and Benjamin Jaye’s little sister. Christina’s best friend on the island. Dolly was supposed to be in sixth grade, safe on the island for another whole year. But Mr. Shevvington used his power as principal, announcing that Dolly was “far too bright to be isolated on that remote little island with its pitiful excuse for a school.” And Dolly’s parents had agreed to let her go to the mainland early.

  Had Michael and Benj protested? Had they said “No, no, the Shevvingtons are evil”?

  Of course not.

  Michael and Benjamin Jaye were oblivious to any of it.

  Christmas vacation arrived. The five children went back to the island for two glorious weeks. And on those beautiful December days, filled with sweet song and crispy cookies, never had Burning Fog Isle seemed so remote from the mainland. It was a world of mothers and fathers, of being tucked in at night. It was a world of peace and laughter and people you had known all your life.

  Her parents had said gently, “Chrissie, honey, you’re exaggerating. You’re getting such wonderful grades in school. Writing such fine papers. You seem to have so many friends to write us about, so many interesting activities. It is a terrible shame about Anya, but she’s always been fragile, you know.”

  “The Shevvingtons,” Christina said, in her last attempt to convince her parents, “took Anya’s fragility and snapped her like little bones.”

  But they all sighed and said Chrissie was yarning. It was comforting to believe that Michael and Benj saw nothing because there was nothing to see. Christina even made a New Year’s resolution to stop yarning about the Shevvingtons.

  They had gone back to Schooner Inne: Michael to basketball, Benj to slog on in school until he turned sixteen and could quit and be a lobsterman; Dolly to sixth grade; Anya to her laundromat; and Christina to her new resolution.

  January classes began.

  It seemed to Christina in those first days of January that the Shevvingtons hovered over Dolly like birds of prey, circling in the invisible air currents of the threatening sky, waiting for the time to strike. The Shevvingtons were drilling into Dolly’s soul with diamond-tipped bits. Christina had no evidence. She hadn’t even figured out yet how they were doing it.

  She did not know that she had fallen asleep against the cellar door.

  The door opened.

  Christina fell backward into the kitchen.

  The cold, harsh ceiling light blinded her. Blinking, she stared up to see Michael, Benjamin, Dolly, and Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington staring down at her. The Jayes wore jeans. The boys’ huge feet were encased in huge, dirty high-top sneakers. Dolly wore tiny, brand-new white sneakers. Mrs. Shevvington’s nylons gleamed like water. Mr. Shevvington’s creased pant leg rested on his polished leather shoe.

  “May I ask, Christina,” Mrs. Shevvington said, “why you have chosen to spend your morning in the basement?”

  “I was trapped down there,” Christina said. She sat up. Now she was staring into their kneecaps. Awkwardly she turned herself over and struggled to her feet. Dolly was giggling. Michael and Benj were shaking their heads in tolerant amusement. “There was somebody down there!” she said. “Somebody — he kept giggling at me.”

  The boys rolled their eyes. “Chrissie,” said Benj, “stop yarning. We’ve told you and told you. You’ll never make friends when you spend all your time yarning.”

  “It’s true,” she said. She sounded like a bleating sheep. “Somebody lives in that basement! He’s huge and rubbery, and he — “

  “What have you been reading!” exclaimed Dolly, giving Christina a little punch in the side. “Chrissie, get a grip on yourself. You’re falling apart like Anya.”

  Anya appeared. She had a tray in her hands. A teacup and a small plate with toast crusts lay on the tray.

  “Anya, where were you?” Christina sobbed. “I called and called! You didn’t rescue me.”

  The rest burst into laughter at the idea that Anya could rescue anybody. Anya, frightened by the guffaws, flushed and nearly dropped her tray. Benj rescued the teacup and set the tray down for her. “I was so cold down here,” Anya whispered. “And you went away, Chrissie. I went up to my room. It’s safer up there, so high. Away from the waves. Things don’t reach me there.”

  Mr. Shevvington lost his temper. “Christina, look what you’ve done. Anya was improving. Now you’ve terrified her again. She’s lost all the ground she gained. Why do you do these rotten things, Christina? I think you purposely plan to destroy poor Anya’s self-esteem.” He turned to Anya. “Christina loves to exaggerate, Anya, dear. You must learn to ignore everything she says.”

  Dolly giggled softly.

  Christina hardened her jaw to keep from showing hurt.

  Mrs. Shevvington said, “Wipe that expression off your face, young lady. March back into that cellar.”

  Christina backed up against Michael and Benj. Save me! she thought. Don’t make me go back down there ever again!

  The boys pushed her to Mrs. Shevvington, who said, “I will escort you, Christina. We will examine every room. We will look in the dust beneath the furnace, and we will measure the spaces behind the unused sawhorses. Then you will march back up here and admit to everybody that this is yet another of your attempts to get attention.”

  Chapter 3

  “AW, CHRISTINA,” SAID JONAH. He was laughing at her! Christina grew hot with hurt and anger. How could her best friend — a boy who was always saying he wanted to be better friends, be a real boyfriend — not believe her story? �
�You have the most active imagination in the state of Maine,” he teased. “You see a fishing boat out at sea and you think it’s an invading navy. One seal pops its head up in the harbor and you’re sure that little brown thing means the harbor is mined with bombs.”

  Christina stalked away. How could she ever have found Jonah pleasant company? How could she ever have thought he would understand anything?

  Jonah ran to catch up. “It was probably just Anya up in the kitchen, being crazy,” Jonah offered. “Giggling to herself.” Jonah was growing at such a great rate that his blue jeans, new in November, were too short for him in January. Even his hair grew more quickly, and it was bunched up in his collar. His huge feet thumped in the school hallway. He didn’t have much control over them. He was always running into something. Beside Jonah Christina always felt graceful. It was a nice feeling, and sometimes she was quite grateful to Jonah for being clunky.

  But not today.

  “Don’t be mad, Chrissie,” Jonah said.

  She wanted to sock him.

  “It was dark down there, and you were scared. You’re just being silly, is all.”

  Christina socked him.

  Jonah knew her pretty well. He stepped out of range. Holding up his palms like a warrior’s shields, he said, “The Shevvingtons are rotten, I agree with that much. But nobody is living in the cellar, Christina.”

  She stared at those hands. A man’s hands on a boy. The feet and the hands were finished growing; the legs and arms were rushing to catch up.

  Slowly, as if unsure that his arm would obey his brain’s order, Jonah extended his arm and put it around her shoulder.

  What comfort! The weight and the warmth were like a signed contract: I’m your friend.

  On the island there had been few boys: Dolly’s brothers, a couple of little kids in first and second grade, one or two older boys already lobstering for a living. Here in school there were hundreds.

  Christina’s mind filled and swirled with boys, like a plastic paperweight you shook in your hand to make it snow. In her paperweight were all the seventh-grade boys and of course Blake … but in her heart they vanished, as if covered by snow. There was only Jonah. Her eyes and ears filled up with him. She forgot school, its hum of talk, the beginning of classes.

  “We’ll be late for English,” Jonah whispered, as if it were a secret. They took each other’s hands, and his hand was very hot in hers. It was like holding a fever.

  Mrs. Shevvington stood in front of the blackboard. She held a sheaf of corrected papers in her hand. In her class the seventh-graders, even the boys, were subdued. Nobody had a set of dueling pistols that shot heavy-duty rubber bands into the girls’ rear ends. Nobody had forged love letters to pass around the room.

  Yet again Mrs. Shevvington made them write an essay in class. Her voice cut like the wind at ten below zero. “A brief essay,” she said to her silent thirteen-year-olds, “on January daydreams. One or two paragraphs. Good adjectives. Nothing dull. What you daydream about on the longest, darkest days of winter.”

  They wrote. The usual kids tried to get sent to the nurse, and Mrs. Shevvington as usual replied that they were welcome to throw up in the wastebasket if necessary, but she expected a finished essay first. The timer on her deck ticked mercilessly. Christina scribbled. She broke her pencil point, and Jonah silently handed her a new pencil. I love you, she thought, but he had looked back at his own paper before their eyes met.

  “Time,” said Mrs. Shevvington triumphantly. As always, Gretchen and Vicki collected the essays, their mean little faces smirking down on the pages, knowing trouble was out there for somebody — but not them. Never them. Mrs. Shevvington leafed slowly through the sheaf of essays. Nobody breathed. They were all praying not to be ordered to read theirs aloud. Mrs. Shevvington tapped the papers rhythmically against her palm, as if spanking herself.

  “Christina?” said Mrs. Shevvington. “Read, please. We will all be so interested in what you have to say.”

  The class sagged in relief. Christina could handle anything. It was better for her to be Mrs. Shevvington’s victim than any of them.

  Gretch and Vicki stroked their silken hair in identical motions and leaned back in their chairs, the better to laugh at Christina.

  Christina walked to the front of the class. She knew her essay was good, even funny. So why was she picked? What torment awaited her? Mrs. Shevvington handed her the paper. For once there was an expression on the teacher’s flat face, but Christina could not fathom it. It was power, that much she knew. Whatever was going to happen, Mrs. Shevvington had planned it.

  The panic from the cellar rose up in Christina. All things dark and slimy trembled in her brain. She tried to control her voice, but couldn’t. It quivered. Even her chin shook. In her hand the essay trembled.

  Gretch exploded in a silvery giggle.

  Christina looked at Jonah for support. His smile gave her courage. She began reading out loud. “ ‘My January Dream. By Christina Romney. I have cabin fever. The snow, the cold, the ice, and the early dark are like demons. I am going winter mad. The sweater I put on so eagerly when the first cold wind came up in September had the prettiest pattern. It was cozy on my shoulders. Now the same sweater is an instrument of torture. My January dream is of burning all my winter clothes. I have worn the same heavy sweaters and the same thick flannel shirts week after week after week. In my January dream I light a huge bonfire in the middle of a field of snow. We all throw our old boring winter clothes into the fire. Then we feel a thousand times better, and we can laugh all the way through February.’ ”

  Christina finished. How clever the essay sounded. Surely the others felt the same way about their winter wardrobes. She half thought her classmates would applaud, and she got ready to smile back.

  But instead, Vicki screamed with laughter. “Then you’d be naked all through February, Christina.”

  Gretchen said pityingly, “The rest of us have tons of clothes. Why, I’ve hardly even started to show off my sweater collection. I have thirty-four sweaters. How many do you have, Christina?”

  Vicki said to Mrs. Shevvington, “Maybe we could get up a collection for Christina. So she’d have something decent to wear.”

  Mrs. Shevvington said that island girls had too much pride to accept charity, but it was very, very thoughtful of Vicki to think of such a thing. Fine people like Vicki, she told the class, were always putting others first.

  Christina found her way to her seat. She could feel Jonah’s pity. She hated pity. She didn’t love him anymore, if that’s what that minute of heat and touch had been.

  Vicki touched Christina’s sweater sleeve and said, “It really is ratty, Chrissie. Maybe you should just wash your wardrobe once this winter and that would make you feel better.” Vicki and Gretch laughed together, like music boxes, all tinkly. Christina yearned to throw the silver laughter against the wall and smash it.

  Mrs. Shevvington delivered a strange little lecture as she walked up and down the rows of desks. “January daydreams,” she repeated. “Daydreams are dangerous things, children. You must be very sure you want what you daydream of.” She was right in front of Christina’s desk, and her heavy-lidded eyes in the oatmeal of her face stared at Christina. “Sometimes when things come true,” said Mrs. Shevvington softly, her voice crawling into Christina’s ears like mice in the night, “you are sorry.”

  Class, like all tortures, ended eventually.

  The rest of school was a summer breeze compared to English. At lunch Christina looked for Jonah. Ahead of her in the hall she saw Mr. Shevvington. In his hand he held a large, swollen briefcase. Christina had never seen it before. It was old but cherished. The leather was supple, kept soft and shiny with polish.

  He loves that briefcase, Christina thought.

  She stood quietly among the teenagers going to and from the most important thirty minutes of the day — lunch. Mr. Shevvington entered his office. A few minutes later he came out again — without the briefcase.
r />   Christina slipped into the girls’ bathroom to avoid notice.

  While she was there a thought crossed her mind.

  She took a paper towel from the shiny box on the wall. She folded it several times. She waited while girls entered and left the stalls, brushed their hair, played with lip gloss. When she was alone Christina unlocked a window, opened it a quarter inch, and wedged the paper in the crack so that the window would not lock.

  Chapter 4

  AFTER SCHOOL CHRISTINA STOOD near the playing fields waiting for Dolly.

  The wintry days were so short! Class was hardly over when the sky began getting dark. January closed in like a fat dictionary on a pressed flower. Christina felt squashed between the pages of January days.

  She swung her ice skates in a circle.

  The village fire department had ruled that nobody could skate on the pond this year. It never froze hard enough because of the brook flowing beneath it. Instead, the parking lot behind the old hardware store was flooded. The curbs held a few inches of water, which froze smooth and black, and there the children skated safely.

  Christina was just an ordinary skater, but when she laced up her skates, she felt like an Olympic star, and in her head she heard nations applauding.

  Dolly came running down the street from elementary school, her book bag, skates, and scarf flying behind her like separate people.

  You could never mistake Dolly for anyone else. Her thick red hair was still in two braids, because she was only in sixth grade and had not started to care yet about hair. Her skinny little legs and long thin arms flung about her as if they were barely stapled to her body and might come off if you jerked too hard. Dolly never cared if any of her clothing matched. Today she wore a neon-pink ski jacket and killer-whale-blue pants with a screaming yellow scarf.