First and always was her hair. Long and untamed and red. And there was the milky skin that was standard issue with the hair, and freckles like red-pepper flakes across her nose. The best of her features—her blue-green eyes—were not enhanced by cinnamon-colored lashes.
Mama came up behind her, placed her hands on Leni’s shoulders. “You are beautiful and you will make friends at this new school.”
Leni wanted to take comfort from the familiar words, but how often had they proven untrue? She’d been the new girl at school a lot of times, and she’d never yet found a place she fit in. Something was always wrong about her on the first day—her hair, her clothes, her shoes. First impressions mattered in junior high. She had learned that lesson the hard way. It was hard to recover from a fashion error with thirteen-year-old girls.
“I’m probably the only girl in the whole school,” she said with a dramatic sigh. She didn’t want to hope for the best; dashed hopes were worse than no hopes at all.
“Certainly you’ll be the prettiest,” Mama said, tucking the hair behind Leni’s ear with a gentleness that reminded Leni that whatever happened, she wasn’t ever really alone. She had her mama.
The cabin door opened, bringing in a whoosh of cold air. Dad came in carrying a pair of dead mallards, their broken necks hanging, beaks banging into his thigh. He set his gun in the rack by the door and laid his kill on the wooden counter by the dry sink.
“Ted took me to his blind before dawn. We have duck for dinner.” He slipped in beside Mama and kissed the side of her neck.
Mama swatted him away, laughing. “You want coffee?”
When Mama went into the kitchen, Dad turned to Leni. “You look glum for a girl going off to school.”
“I’m fine.”
“Maybe I know the problem,” Dad said.
“I doubt it,” she said, sounding as dispirited as she felt.
“Let me see,” Dad said, frowning in an exaggerated way. He left her standing there and went into his bedroom. Moments later, he came out carrying a black trash bag, which he set on the table. “Maybe this will help.”
Yeah. What she needed was garbage.
“Open it,” Dad said.
Leni reluctantly ripped the bag open.
Inside, she found a pair of rust-and-black-striped bell-bottoms and a fuzzy ivory-colored wool fisherman’s sweater that looked like it used to be a man’s size and someone had shrunk it.
Oh, my God.
Leni might not know much about fashion, but these were definitely boy’s pants, and the sweater … she didn’t think it had been in style in any year of her life.
Leni caught Mama’s look. They both knew how hard he had tried. And how profoundly he’d failed. In Seattle, an outfit like this was social suicide.
“Leni?” Dad said, his face falling in disappointment.
She forced a smile. “It’s perfect, Dad. Thanks.”
He sighed and smiled. “Oh. Good. I spent a long time picking through the bins.”
Salvation Army. So he had planned ahead, thought of her the other day when they were in Homer. It made the ugly clothes almost beautiful.
“Put them on,” Dad said.
Leni managed a smile. She went into her parents’ bedroom and changed her clothes.
The Irish sweater was too small, the wool so thick she could hardly bend her arms.
“You look gorgeous,” Mama said.
She tried to smile.
Mama came forward with a metal Winnie the Pooh lunch box. “Thelma thought you’d like this.”
And with that, Leni’s social fate was sealed, but there was nothing she could do about it.
“Well,” she said to her dad, “we better move it. I don’t want to be late.”
Mama hugged her fiercely, whispered, “Good luck.”
Outside, Leni climbed into the passenger seat of the VW bus and they were off, bouncing down the bumpy trail, turning toward town, onto the main road, rumbling past the field that called itself an airstrip. At the bridge, Leni yelled, “Stop!”
Dad hit the brakes and turned to her. “What?”
“Can I walk from here?”
He gave her a disappointed look. “Really?”
She was too nervous to smooth his ruffled feelings. One thing that was true of every school she’d been at was this: once you hit junior high, parents were to be absent. The chances of them embarrassing you were sky-high. “I’m thirteen and this is Alaska, where we’re supposed to be tough,” Leni said. “Come on, Dad. Pleeease.”
“Okay. I’ll do it for you.”
She got out of the bus and walked alone through town, past a man sitting Indian-style on the side of the road, with a goose in his lap. She heard him say, No way, Matilda, to the bird as she hurried past the dirty tent that housed the fishing-charter service.
The one-room schoolhouse sat on a weedy lot behind town. Green and yellow marshes spread out behind it, a river meandering in a sloping S-shape through the tall grass. The school was in an A-frame building made of skinned logs, with a steeply pitched metal roof.
At the open door, Leni paused and peered inside. The room was bigger than it looked from the outside; at least fourteen-by-fourteen. There was a chalkboard on the back wall with the words SEWARD’S FOLLY written in capital letters.
At the front of the room, a Native woman stood behind a big desk, facing the door. She was solid-looking, with broad shoulders and big, capable hands. Long black hair, twined into two sloppy braids, framed a face the color of light coffee. Tattooed black lines ran in vertical stripes from her lower lip to her chin. She wore faded Levi’s tucked into rubber boots, a man’s flannel shirt, and a fringed suede vest.
She saw Leni and yelled, “Hello! Welcome!”
The kids in the classroom turned in a screeching of chairs.
There were six students. Two younger kids sat in the front row. Girls. She recognized them from Mad Earl’s compound: Marthe and Agnes. She also recognized that sour-looking teenage boy, Axle. There were two giggling Native girls who looked to be about eight or nine, sitting at desks pushed together; each was wearing a wilted dandelion crown. On the right side of the room a pair of desks were pushed together, side to side, facing the blackboard. One was empty; at the other sat a scrawny boy about her age with shoulder-length blond hair. He was the only student who seemed interested in her. He had stayed turned around in his seat and was still staring at her.
“I’m Tica Rhodes,” the teacher said. “My husband and I live in Bear Cove, so sometimes I can’t get here in winter, but I do my best. That’s what I expect of my students, too.” She smiled. “And you’re Lenora Allbright. Thelma told me to expect you.”
“Leni.”
“You’re what, eleven?” Ms. Rhodes said, studying Leni.
“Thirteen,” Leni said, feeling her cheeks heat up. If only she would start developing boobs.
Ms. Rhodes nodded. “Perfect. Matthew is thirteen, too. Go take a seat over there.” She pointed to the boy with the blond hair. “Go on.”
Leni’s grip on her stupid Winnie the Pooh lunch box was so tight her fingers hurt. “H-hi,” she said to Axle as she passed his desk. He gave her a who cares? glance and went back to drawing something that looked like an alien with massive boobs on his Pee-Chee folder.
She slid bumpily into the seat beside the thirteen-year-old boy. “Hey,” she mumbled, glancing sideways.
He grinned, showing off a mouth full of crooked teeth. “Thank Christ,” he said, shoving the hair out of his face. “I thought I was going to have to sit with Axle for the rest of the year. I think the kid is going to end up in prison.”
Leni laughed in spite of herself.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
Leni never knew how to answer that question. It implied a permanence, a Before that had never existed for her. She’d never thought of any place as home. “My last school was near Seattle.”
“You must feel like you’ve fallen into Mordor.”
“You read Lord of the Rings?”
“I know. Hopelessly uncool. It’s Alaska, though. The winters are dark as shit and we don’t have TV. Unlike my dad, I can’t spend hours listening to old people yammering on the ham radio.”