Picturing Alyssa Read online

  Picturing

  Alyssa

  A NOVEL

  Alison Lohans

  This book is dedicated

  with much love to my mother

  Mildred Standing Lohans

  with thanks for sharing your

  stories of your childhood.

  Acknowledgements

  The author would like to express her gratitude to the Saskatchewan Arts Board for the generous funding that assisted with the completion of this book.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “Oh, no!” Alyssa Dixon groaned. The bomb she’d drawn so carefully now had a squiggle on the edge.

  “What’s wrong?” Her friend Rachel bent over the same poster, printing NO MORE BOMBS! across the top. The dining-room table was covered with art supplies and the N volume of the encyclopedia.

  “See?” The mistake was so ugly she felt like giving up. Everything was so hard these days — ever since January when her baby sister Charlotte was born, dead. Just thinking about it, Alyssa felt heavy and tired. Nothing was the same anymore. Especially Mom.

  “Hmm.” Rachel tucked her dark frizzy hair behind her ears. “We’re going to put the X on the bomb.…”

  “Not there.” Alyssa chewed the inside of her lip.

  Rachel went back to printing. Her red letters were straight and even. “It’s not like people will notice,” she said. “I think it’s really good. Nobody would guess that two eleven-year-olds made this.”

  Alyssa looked toward the hallway. The light was on in the baby’s room. That’s exactly what Mom would’ve said before.… She rested her head on the table, watching her friend. Rachel hadn’t been over for a while, and it was so good to have company. Rachel’s marker made little squeaky sounds. The wet ink smell crept into her nose, waking her up a bit. The way Rachel explained it, the squiggle didn’t matter. So how come she’d almost started to cry?

  There was a tromping sound on the basement stairs. Ethan’s dirty jeans walked through the kitchen and stood by the table. “Are you done?” her older brother asked. He was wearing his black shirt with the orange peace symbol — the same one he’d had on all week. Shaggy brown hair covered his ears. Annoyance flared in Ethan’s face. “You’re taking too long. I’m not missing the movie because you’re slow.”

  “We’re not slow,” Alyssa said. She flipped through the pages of the encyclopedia. Finding a map of North America, she quickly sketched the continent on the other piece of cardboard. Ethan had promised to staple their posters to a pole for the peace march tomorrow. Rachel’s mom was coming in less than an hour to pick Rachel up — and the poster-pole too.

  “Help us, okay?” Rachel thrust the red marker into Ethan’s hand. “Make an X over the bomb.”

  Ethan leaned over the poster. His red lines didn’t go anywhere near her mistake, but somehow it didn’t look as bad anymore. Rachel was right. The people at the peace march probably wouldn’t notice.

  A sudden thump on the table made her laugh. Marigold, their cat, had jumped up to see what was happening.

  “Stupid cat!” Ethan said. Now one of his lines skewed sideways.

  Unconcerned, Marigold walked across the poster.

  Alyssa opened her arms. “Here, boy,” she said, lifting him to rest against her shoulder. A rumbling purr vibrated through Marigold’s relaxed, stripey self. Alyssa buried her face in his fur and was rewarded with a cold, wet nose probing her cheek. During the hard times after the baby died, Marigold had been there any time she needed a friend.

  “Stupid cat,” Ethan said again.

  “Use some EZ-White,” Rachel suggested.

  Alyssa got up and rummaged through the drawer of stationery supplies. It used to be easy to find stuff, but now the contents were a jumble. She dug through a heap of sticky pads and paper clips, rubber bands, twist ties, and old shoelaces. Something sharp poked her finger — a thumbtack, it turned out — as she scattered pencils and erasers, and a pair of red-handled scissors.

  “Hurry up!” Ethan said.

  “I’m looking!” Was it in the pile on the counter? She moved advertising flyers, cash register receipts, unopened mail, report cards, and an oven mitt. Yuck — there was a brown shriveled apple core. “I can’t find it,” she said, and sat down.

  “I just remembered,” Ethan said. “It’s in my room.” Soon afterwards he plopped the EZ-White onto the table. Marigold sneezed and jumped off the table when Ethan pulled out the smelly little sponge.

  Alyssa watched her brother fix his mistake. “Thanks,” she mumbled when he handed her the EZ-White. The clocked chimed 7:30 as she painted white over her own squiggle.

  “Help me finish North America,” Rachel said. She had already coloured the eastern coastline, and now was working her way inland.

  Working fast, Alyssa coloured Alaska, then British Columbia and Washington.

  “You’re taking too long,” Ethan complained again.

  Rachel tossed him a blue marker. “So help us. Do the Arctic coast. And Greenland.”

  Ethan’s sigh gusted against Alyssa’s arm as she coloured. Up by the North Pole, a blue shark took shape and began swimming toward the top of Canada. “Ethan!” she yelled.

  Ethan grinned. “Maybe I won’t colour over it.”

  She scowled at him — but it would be silly to waste time arguing. Pressing her lower lip between her teeth, she worked on Baja California, then the rest of Mexico.

  “Alyssa?” Mom’s voice called faintly from the baby’s room. “Will you come here, please?”

  Alyssa sighed. Was Mom going to bug her about doing the dishes? Now that Dad was doing most of the cooking, he didn’t help wash up afterwards. “Why?” she yelled.

  If her mother answered, Alyssa didn’t hear. She didn’t like going in the baby’s room. It used to be Ethan’s bedroom, with posters of humpback whales and hockey players on the grey walls, and the computer on Ethan’s desk. Now the room was pink. A teddy bear mobile dangled from the crib. Cheerful little-kid pictures of animals and clowns were on the walls. Alyssa had helped choose them, and she and Mom laughed a lot while putting them up. Mom’s big stomach had jiggled when she laughed. “Ewwww,” Ethan said when Dad asked him to help assemble the changing table, “now my room’ll stink like baby poop.” But it wasn’t Ethan’s room anymore — or anybody’s room. Mom sat in the new padded rocking chair a lot, doing nothing.

  Alyssa got up. If she didn’t, Rachel might go instead. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Can you help me with something?”

  “Mom…! We have to finish the posters.” Alyssa sighed and went into the dreaded pink room.

  Her mother was kneeling on the floor, dressed in her dirty bathrobe. Her greasy hair dangled in ugly strings, and her face looked like a puffy mask with dark smudges under the eyes. This bedraggled person couldn’t be the same Mom who used to be full of smiles and hugs and interesting ideas. She looked nothing like the seventh grade teacher kids liked so much. Rumpled baby clothes lay in heaps on the carpet. Mom sniffled. “Can you help me? I want to get these put away.”

  Alyssa stared at the bright orange butterflies on the curtains. She couldn’t stand seeing Mom’s
mouth wobbling into strange shapes, or tears streaking down her face. “Just put them in the box,” Alyssa said impatiently. A cardboard box was nearby; she gave it a gentle kick toward her mother.

  “Please, can you help me?”

  Alyssa felt like scooping up the little shirts and sleepers, the booties and bibs and blankets, and just dumping them. Or maybe kicking them all over — except that would be too mean. Why was Mom asking her? Grandma could’ve done it when she came from Ohio to help, during those first awful weeks. Auntie Deb could’ve done it when she came after Grandma went home. What about Mom’s friends, who’d called so many times? At first, anyhow. Or Dad? “I’m not ready,” Mom said whenever somebody offered to help put things away. So what made her finally decide to do it?

  “Okay.” Alyssa sat down and reached for a yellow sleeper with flowers on the front. The tiny sleeves and legs dangled. They should’ve had little wiggling arms and legs inside them. A lump grew in her throat. Then she just felt … empty. Like the sleeper. She dropped it in the cardboard box.

  “Fold it,” Mom said.

  Not “Would you mind folding it?” or “Please fold it, sweetheart.” Just “fold it.”

  “Why?” Alyssa asked. “It’s not like —” Just in time, she stopped herself. It’s not like we need them, she’d almost said.

  Mom didn’t say anything.

  “Alyssa!” Ethan bellowed. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes!” Angrily, she crumpled the sleeper, then lined up the sleeves, the legs, with the zipper lying flat.

  Beside her, Mom was carefully folding, and then re-folding, a tiny blue-checkered dress.

  The phone rang. Ethan’s feet stomped to the kitchen to answer it. “Lyssa!” he yelled. “It’s for you.”

  A phone call? Only Rachel ever called. She put the folded sleeper in the cardboard box and ran to pick up the receiver. “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

  Somebody giggled. There was a loud liquid whoosh followed by a choking, gurgling sound. More giggling. Then the line clicked.

  Alyssa’s face went hot.

  “Who was it?” Rachel asked.

  She sat down at the table. “Somebody’s toilet,” she said.

  “I bet it was Brooklynne,” Rachel said.

  That was something else that was wrong. Brooklynne had been picking on her all year, and it was getting worse.

  Ethan set a wooden pole on the table. “Zach’s probably waiting,” he said. “If you want the posters stapled, I’m doing it now.”

  Rachel quickly coloured more blue at the top of North America. Ethan’s shark almost didn’t show any more.

  Alyssa handed her brother the poster with the bomb. As she watched him use the staple gun, she wished she could go to the movie too. Once Rachel left, she’d be stuck at home. Like always.

  At least tomorrow they’d have the peace march. It was such an important thing to do — and maybe people would notice her. There might be TV cameras — maybe she’d even be on the news!

  ChapterTwo

  It felt weird walking down the middle of Hartford Street — especially going through a red light. Cars honked.

  Rachel carried the sign they’d made. The NO MORE BOMBS! looked just as good as some of the other posters. The squiggles didn’t show at all. Neither did Ethan’s covered-up shark on the other side.

  All around them, peace marchers carried banners and placards. Some walked quietly, but others chanted: “One, two, three, four — we don’t want another war! Five, six, seven, eight — act with love, instead of hate!” Somebody at the front was tapping a cadence on a drum. It echoed off the buildings in little burps of sound.

  Rachel handed her the sign. “Here — my arms are tired.”

  When Alyssa took it, the sign swayed. She steadied it just before it hit Rachel’s mom, Lori, who was talking to a friend.

  Alyssa drew in a deep breath. It felt awesome to be doing something as important as the peace march. On TV, the radio, and in the newspapers, everybody was talking about the war. At home, Dad talked about it a lot. In the past, Mom had gone to peace marches too.

  “Your mother needs time to grieve,” Dad had said one evening when Alyssa was unhappy and Mom didn’t notice. She’d worked hard on a speech about protecting the whales. It was memorized, with expression, and she had four posters to illustrate her points. On the way out to recess afterwards, Brooklynne had said to Mackenzie: “Alyssa thinks she’s so smart. And …” She’d whispered something, and the two girls laughed. Then Brooklynne looked straight at her. As if she’d wanted her to hear. When she told Dad — instead of Mom — he only patted her back and said, “It sounds like that little girl has some growing up to do.” And then he made popcorn.

  “How’s it going?” Rachel’s mom broke into her thoughts.

  “We’re fine,” Rachel said. Then Alyssa stepped on Rachel’s trailing shoelace, and they bumped heads as they looked to see what was wrong. Rachel burst into giggles. Ethan looked embarrassed, walking nearby with his friend Zach.

  “What do we want?” shouted a man with a megaphone.

  “PEACE!” the people yelled.

  “When do we want it?”

  “NOW!”

  The man said it over and over. Alyssa waved the sign and yelled along with Rachel and her mom.

  Mrs. Fraser, their sixth grade teacher, approached on the sidewalk. “Mrs. Fraser!” Alyssa called, and waved. Their teacher always said it was important to be involved with community activities.

  “Hi, Mrs. Fraser!” Rachel’s voice was louder. Mrs. Fraser couldn’t possibly miss it.

  Just for an instant, Mrs. Fraser’s eyes met Alyssa’s. Alyssa smiled, and waved again. Mrs. Fraser’s mouth tightened. She looked at her watch, and walked faster. There was no smile, no sign of recognition.

  A huge, sudden hurt quivered in Alyssa’s middle.

  “I don’t get it,” Rachel said. “She saw us, I know it.”

  “Don’t get what, hon?” asked her mom.

  “Mrs. Fraser. She walked right by and didn’t even smile.” Rachel’s feet stamped harder on the pavement.

  Lori sighed. “Maybe she’s in a hurry. Oh, girls … You know a lot of people don’t agree with what we’re doing. Mrs. Fraser could be one of them.”

  Alyssa stamped. Her tight shoes pinched her toes. In class, Mrs. Fraser was strict about the Pledge of Allegiance. She talked a lot about being patriotic.

  The drumbeats kept bouncing off buildings. All around, there was the sound of shuffling feet, all these people out in the street because they thought war and violence were wrong.

  If Mrs. Fraser didn’t agree with the peace marchers, she wouldn’t think much of Alyssa’s genealogy project. Besides doing a family tree display with photos, everyone was supposed to write a report and give a presentation on things their family had contributed to today’s way of life. The only thing Alyssa could think of to talk about was how almost all of her relatives were Quakers, and worked to make the world a more peaceful place. She glanced at Rachel and her mom; they were members of the same Quaker meeting. The trouble was, Mrs. Fraser said she’d give bonus points to people who could show how their ancestors helped protect America’s freedom.

  Maybe she should change her topic to farming, like Rachel’s. Rachel had photos of people using old-fashioned farming equipment. Her great-grandfather invented a combine part. Compared to that, Alyssa’s pictures were boring — people in long rows.

  The peace marchers turned onto Twelfth Avenue, and walked past City Hall. Another light turned red, and they kept right on walking. Everywhere, cars and pedestrians had to wait.

  Alyssa’s toenails hurt. She tried walking on her heels and grabbed Rachel’s arm when she teetered off balance.

  “What’re you doing that for?” Rachel asked.

  “Feet hurt,” Alyssa muttered.

  Rachel’s mom took the sign from her. “Are you okay, Alyssa?”

  “My shoes are tight.” Embarrassed, she walked normally again and hoped Lori
wouldn’t notice Ethan’s shoes flapping. One day he’d shown her the way the soles had separated. A little rock was stuck in the funny-shaped stuff inside, and he’d used a screwdriver to pry it out. Ethan needed new shoes too.

  They arrived at the park where the march started. As the crowd dispersed, some teenagers went by carrying signs that looked like they’d been done in a hurry. One of the girls had purple hair. She stopped to look at their sign. “Great posters,” she said. “It’s cool that kids care.”

  “Thanks,” Alyssa said shyly.

  “I love your hair!” Rachel yelled as the girl ran to catch up with her friends. She tugged at her frizzy hair. “Mom? Can I dye my hair?”

  “You wish!” Lori laughed and got the car keys out of her fanny pack.

  It was hard, watching the easy way Rachel and her mom acted together. Alyssa banged the end of the sign post on the sidewalk. Why couldn’t she live at Rachel’s house?

  When Alyssa got home, she poured herself a bowl of cereal and turned on the TV.

  Ethan flopped into the reclining chair. “How come you’re watching golf?” he asked. “You always say it’s boring.”

  “It is.” She set her bowl on the couch cushion. “But it’s better than boxing — or car races.”

  Ethan pushed his hair out of his eyes. “How’d you like the march?”

  “Fun.” There hadn’t been any TV cameras, which was too bad. And then she remembered Mrs. Fraser. “I saw Mrs. Fraser. I know she saw us — but she didn’t even smile!”

  “Huh. Maybe she didn’t recognize you?”

  “She did!” Alyssa fidgeted with the remote. The golf tournament flicked into pictures of a desert village. There were tanks and soldiers and wrecked buildings. Frightened people so skinny you could see the bones in their faces.

  “That’s so sick!” Ethan’s grey eyes were hot with anger. “We wouldn’t want anybody doing that to us. Like they even have a chance!” He stomped to the basement, and Alyssa could hear his loose soles flapping.

  On TV, buildings and cars exploded and tanks drove through dusty streets. Scared-looking people hid behind doorways and ledges. Others looked so upset and angry that she almost cried. Did Mrs. Fraser think it was okay to kill civilians? Kids? There were children with bandages. There were also kids with guns who were trying to help protect their families.