“So?! What’s so big about that?!” Madeleine grips the chains of the swing.
“You di-dn’t get a-any!” Marjorie sticks out her tongue, smeary brown.
Madeleine decides to ignore them and keep swinging.
“Where’s your friend, Madeleine?”
Madeleine pumps and swings higher, the air feels good against her hot legs, her hot face.
“Yeah!” says Grace, which is quite a lot for Grace.
“Who?” demands Madeleine from a furious height.
“You know,” Marjorie replies, then starts batting her hand against her mouth, whooping like an Indian in a cowboy movie. Madeleine lets go of the swing and sails softly through air, lands like a bullet, then pound, pound, pound!
“That’s for you, Marjorie Nolan!”
Marjorie is screaming, blood has poured from her nose to join the chocolate mess around her mouth.
“I’m sorry!” Madeleine hollers into Marjorie’s face, almost in time with the last blow.
And she is sorry. Boys do this all the time. Beat each other up. Madeleine is amazed because when you hurt people they are so pathetic, how could you want to keep on hurting them, or ever do it again to anyone? She pats Marjorie’s head. “Here, Marjorie.” She takes off one of her shoes, peels off her ankle sock and dabs Marjorie’s nose with it — poor Marjorie, who is so revolting and can’t keep anything in, her blood, her snot, tears and tongue. She is still sobbing urgently. Madeleine is suddenly terribly sad.
Marjorie gets up. “I’m telling!” She turns and flails toward home, head thrown back, hands flapping, wailing past the point of really crying, Madeleine can tell, but that’s even sadder, because how horrible to be Marjorie.
Madeleine looks around for Grace Novotny, but Grace has run away. Grace peed her pants in school last year, and that’s all you need to know about Grace.
“I’m sorry,” repeats Madeleine softly to herself.
She still doesn’t feel like going home. She can’t put her ankle sock back on, it has Marjorie gunk on it. She removes her other sock, then puts her shoes back on. She plucks at the dark November grass until she has muddy roots in two fists, and rubs them onto her bare ankles. She rubs the earth in rings around her wrists and stripes her cheeks with it. She sees Claire McCarroll walking slowly from the side door, head down, knees still pink. She is carrying her art.
“Hi Claire.”
Claire stops but doesn’t look up.
“What’s your art?”
“A turkey,” Claire replies.
“Can I see?”
Claire stays looking down but holds the turkey out to Madeleine. It is smiling, wearing a pilgrim’s hat and a white neck ruff.
“That’s really nice.”
“Thank you.”
“How come you made a turkey though?”
“We’re American.”
Madeleine had forgotten. Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in November. Claire’s other hand is clenched in a fist.
“Watcha got?” asks Madeleine.
Claire opens her hand. Her palm is a dark smear, in the centre a melting nub. Madeleine reaches out, dips a finger in Claire’s palm and tastes the chocolate.
Mrs. McCarroll shows the note to Mr. McCarroll. “It was on the porch with the milk.”
“Claire.” Her father beckons gently.
Claire is seated on the McCarrolls’ living-room couch. Her mother stands with her hands folded, her father sits next to her, stroking her head.
“Claire, honey, are you in any trouble at school?”
Claire turns very red.
“It’s all right, lamb, you can tell Daddy and me.”
Claire looks down and adjusts her hairband with one finger. Blair and Sharon look at one another.
“Hey, pet?” asks Blair.
“Is Mr. March not happy with your work, darlin’?” asks Sharon.
But Claire will not look up and she will not say anything. She sits on her hands and big tears fall into her lap.
Madeleine waits for the Children’s Aid to arrive in a kind of ambulance and take her away “for violence,” but nothing happens. Marjorie Nolan has not told on her. And up at the front of the class, on the big felt bulletin board, she sees that she has become a hare in all subjects. She is even a hare in arithmetic. Now I’ve hoid everything, doc.
She helps her father rake the leaves, and confesses to having attacked the tree. He asks if she owned up to it at school and she answers yes. He tells her that she was taking out her anger at her teacher for scaring them with duck and cover, and possibly her anger at the entire grown-up world for having brought us so close to the brink of war: “Sometimes when we’re frightened — when we feel powerless — we do irrational things. Do you know what ‘irrational’ means?” She does not. He tells her.
It was wrong to damage the tree, it was “not constructive” and it was not rational. But it was courageous of her to tell the truth—“You did the right thing, sweetie.” He is proud of her.
She says, “I hurt the tree,” and weeps inconsolably.
She wakes herself up screaming. She was punching the tree and her hand was full of chocolate blood.
She finishes out the night in Mike’s room.
“But what if there isn’t a war on?” she asks him, savouring the canvas smell of the hard camp cot. “How can you fight in one?” They are discussing the future.
“There’s always a bit of war on somewhere,” Mike replies in the dark. “And there’s assassin jobs that are so secret, you never even hear about them.”
“And that’s when you’re a missionary?”
“Mercenary.”
It sounds like someone going around being merciful to people, but it’s just the opposite, thinks Madeleine. How can you go around killing people you’re not even mad at, who aren’t even your enemy?
“It’s nothing personal,” says Mike, “you’re a professional soldier, you work for pay. Anyhow, mercenary’s just my third choice — like if something happens to me, say I lose an eye like Daddy.”
Madeleine can just make out the framed photo of an elegant airborne CF-104 on the wall over Mike’s bed. The pilot is looking at the camera from the window of the cockpit, but his face is not visible because he is wearing an oxygen mask — corrugated snout and goggles.
“What’s your first choice?” Madeleine knows the answer but she doesn’t want him to fall asleep.
“No question about it,” he says. “Fighter pilot. That’s what I’m going to be doing six or seven years from now.”
“What’s your second choice?”
“NHL.”
“What position?”
“Forward.”
“I’m defence.”
“You’re not on the ice, you’re a girl.”
“Let’s say I’m a boy.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t.”
“Yeah, but let’s say.”
“Well….”
“Yeah, and my name is Mike, I mean Mitch, okay? And I’m really a boy.”
“You’re stunned.”
“Pretend I’m really your brother, okay?”
“Mitch?”
“Yes Mike?”
“No, I mean are you sure you want your name to be Mitch?”
“What should it be?”
“… Robert.”
“Okay.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while and Madeleine figures he has fallen asleep. Then he whispers, “Hey Rob?”
“Yeah?” Her voice feels slightly different. Not deeper, really. Lighter. Like a basketball off the driveway. Like red jeans. Madeleine waits for him to continue. After a moment he does. “What do you think of Marsha Woodley?”