I knew who he was right away. Like I said, our town is pretty small, and up until a few weeks ago, there hadn't been a single African American living in it. That had changed when the old Hoadley place across the street from our house was finally bought by Dr. Thompkins, a physician who'd taken a job as chief surgeon at our county hospital, relocating his family, which included a wife, son, and daughter, from Chicago.
I opened the door and said, "Hey, Dr. Thompkins."
He turned around and smiled, "Hello, Jessica. Er, I mean, hey." In Indiana, hey is what you say instead of hello. Dr. Thompkins, you could tell, was still trying to adjust to the lingo.
"Come on in," I said, moving out of the way so he could get out of the cold. It hadn't started to snow yet, but on the Weather Channel they'd said it was going to. Not enough snow was expected, however, for them to cancel school on Monday, much to my chagrin.
"Thanks, Jessica," Dr. Thompkins said, looking past me through the foyer, to where he could see everybody gathered in the dining room. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your meal."
"No biggie," I said. "Want some turkey? We have plenty."
"Oh, no. No, thank you," Dr. Thompkins said. "I just stopped by because I was hoping … well, it's sort of embarrassing, but I wanted to see if …"
Dr. Thompkins seemed pretty nervous. I assumed he needed to borrow something. Whenever anybody in the neighborhood needs to borrow something, particularly something cooking related, we are almost always their first stop. Because my parents are in the restaurant business, we pretty much have anything you could possibly need to cook with, and generally in giant bulk containers.
Since he was from a big city, and all, I guessed Dr. Thompkins wasn't aware that in a small town, it's perfectly acceptable to ask your neighbors if you can borrow something. There was actually a lot I suspected Dr. Thompkins didn't know about our town. For instance, I suspected that Dr. Thompkins wasn't aware that even though Indiana officially sided with the North during the Civil War, there were still some people—especially in the southern half of the state, where we live—who didn't think the Confederates were so bad.
That's why the day the Thompkinses' moving truck pulled up, my mom was over there with a big dish of manicotti, welcoming them to the neighborhood, before they'd even gotten out of the car, practically. Mrs. Abramowitz, who can't cook to save her life, brought over store-bought pastries in a big white box. And the Lippmans came over with a plate of Claire's famous chocolate-chip cookies. (Her secret? They're Tollhouse Break and Bake. All Claire does is grease the cookie pan. Seriously. I am privy to secrets like this, and many other much more interesting ones, now that Claire is my brother's girlfriend.)
Just about everybody in the neighborhood, and a lot of neighborhoods farther away, showed up to welcome the Thompkinses to our town the day they moved in. I bet, coming from Chicago and all, the Thompkinses must have thought we were a true bunch of freaks, knocking on their door all day long, and even several days after they'd gotten moved in, with brownies and eggplant parmigiana and Snickerdoodles and macaroni and cheese and Jell-O salad and homemade coffee cake.
But what the Thompkins didn't know—and what we were all too aware of—was that our town, like the United States a hundred and fifty years ago, had a line running through the middle of it, dividing it into two distinct parts. There was the part Lumbley Lane was on, which also held the courthouse square and most of the businesses, including the hospital and the mall and the high school and stuff. This part of the city housed what people in my school call the "Townies."
And then there was the rest of the county, outside the city limits, which consisted mostly of woods and cornfields, with the occasional trailer park and abandoned plastics factory thrown in for picturesque effect. Outside town, there were still patches of illiteracy, prejudice, and even, in the deepest backwoods, where my dad used to take us camping when we were little, moonshining. Kids at school called people who lived this far outside of town, and who had to be bused in for school, "Grits," as that is what many of them purportedly have for breakfast every morning. Grits are like oatmeal, only not as socially acceptable, and without raisins.
In my town, Grits are the ones who still sometimes drive around with Confederate flags hanging off their pickups and stuff. Grits are the ones who still say the N word sometimes, and not because they are quoting Chris Rock or Jennifer Lopez or whoever. Although I happen to know quite a few so-called Grits who would never call someone the N word, just like I happen to know, from personal experience, a few Townies who wouldn't hesitate to call a female like myself with very short hair and a tendency to be a little quick with my fists the D word, or my friend Ruth, who happens to be Jewish, the K word that rhymes with it.
So you can see why when we saw the Thompkinses moving in, some of us thought there might be trouble from other people.
But it had been almost a month, and so far, no incidents. So maybe everything was going to be all right.
That's what I thought then. Everything's different now, of course. Still, at the time, all I did was try to put Dr. Thompkins at ease as he stood there in our foyer. Hey, I didn't know. How could I possibly have known? I may be psychic, but I'm not that psychic.
"Hey, mi casa es su casa, Dr. Thompkins," I told him, which is probably about the lamest thing on earth there is to say, but whatever. I wasn't feeling real creative, thanks to Great-aunt Rose, who is a major brain drain. Also, I am taking French, not Spanish.
Dr. Thompkins smiled, but only just. Then he uttered the words that made it feel like it had started to snow after all. Only all the snow was pouring down the back of my sweater.
"It's just that I was wondering," he said, "if you'd seen my son."
C H A P T E R
2
I backed up until my calves hit the stairs to the second floor. When they did, I had to sit down on the first landing, which was only about four steps up, because my knees didn't feel like they would hold me up anymore.
"I don't—" I said, through lips that seemed to have gone as cold as ice. "I don't do that anymore. Maybe nobody told you. But I don't do that anymore."
Dr. Thompkins looked down at me like I had said a dingo ate my baby, or something. He went, his face all perplexed, "I beg your pardon?"
Fortunately at that moment my dad came out of the dining room, his napkin still tucked into the waistband of his pants. My mom followed him, with Mike—Claire, as usual, attached to his hip—trailing behind her.
"Hey, Jerry," my dad said, to Dr. Thompkins, holding out his right hand. "How's it going?"
"Hello, Joe," Dr. Thompkins said. Then he corrected himself. "I mean, hey." He took my dad's hand and shook it. To my mom, he said, "How are you, Toni?"
"Fine, Jerry," my mom said. "And you?"
"Could be better," Dr. Thompkins said. "I'm really sorry to interrupt your meal. I was just wondering if any of you had seen my son, Nate. He went out a couple hours ago, saying he was just going to run to the store—Rowena ran out of whipped cream—but we haven't seen him since. I thought maybe he'd have stopped over here to visit with your boys, or maybe Jessica. . . ."
Over on the steps where I'd sank, I felt color start to return to my face. Sure, I was relieved—relieved that Dr. Thompkins hadn't been asking me to find his son. . . . He'd merely been asking if I'd seen him.
And I was also a little embarrassed. Because I could tell from the glances Dr. Thompkins kept throwing me that he thought I was a freak of the first order for my weird reaction to his simple question about his son. Well, and why not? He hadn't been around last summer, or even this fall. He didn't know I was the one the press had dubbed "Lightning Girl." He didn't know about my "special" gift.