I pulled away and brushed at my tears. "Pa never sees what you do, does he?"
"Why do you let him hurt you so much?"
"Oh, Tom . . . !" I wailed, falling into his arms and really beginning to cry. "How am I ever going to have any confidence in myself when my own father can't stand to look at me? There must be something evil he sees in me that makes him hate me."
He stroked my hair, my back, and there were tears in his eyes when I looked, as if my pain were his. "Someday Pa's gonna find out he don't hate ya, Heavenly. I know that day's comin soon."
I yanked away.
"No, it's not ever coming! You know it as much as I know it. Pa thinks I killed his angel by being born, and in a thousand years he won't forgive me! And if you want to know what I think, I think my mother was damned lucky to escape him! For sooner or later he'd have been as mean to her as he is to Sarah now!"
We were both shaken by this kind of frankness. He pulled me back and tried to smile, but he only looked sad. "Pa doesn't love Ma, Heavenly. He's miserable with Ma. From all I've heard, he did love your mother. He married mine only because she was pregnant with me, and he tried for once to do the right thing."
"Because Granny made him do the right thing!" I flared with hot bitterness.
"Nobody kin make Pa do what he sets his mind against, remember that."
"I'm remembering," I said, with thoughts of how Pa refused to let himself really look at me.
Again it was Monday, and we were all in school. Miss Deale expounded on the joys of reading Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, but I was dying to get on to study hall.
"Heaven," said Miss Deale, her baby-blue eyes fixed on me, "are you listening, or daydreaming?"
"Listening!"
"What was the poem I just discussed?"
For the life of me I couldn't remember one word she'd said in the last half hour, and that was not my way. Oh, I had to stop thinking of that darn Logan. Yet, when I was in the study hall and Logan was seated to my right, I began feeling the strangest kind of sensations whenever our eyes met. His hair wasn't a true brown or black, but a blend with auburn highlights, with a little gold where the summer sun had streaked it. Really, I had to force myself not to glance his way again, since every time I did he was staring at me.
Logan smiled before he whispered: "Who in the world was ingenious enough to give you such a name as Heaven? I've never known of anyone with that name before."
I had to swallow twice so I could say it just right. "My father's first wife named me minutes after I was born, and then Leigh because that was her Christian name. Granny said she wanted to give me something uplifting, and Heaven is about as uplifting as a name can get."
"It's the most beautiful name I have ever heard. Where is your mother now?"
"Dead in a cemetery," I said bluntly, forgetting to be charming and coquettish, something Fanny never forgot. "She died minutes after I was born, and because she did, my father can't forgive me for taking her life."
"Absolutely no talking in this room!" shouted Mr. Prakins. "The next one who speaks will receive fifteen hours' detention after school!"
Logan's eyes softened with compassion and sympathy. And the minute Mr. Prakins left the room, Logan again whispered: "I'm sorry it happened that way, but you said it wrong. Your mother isn't dead in a cemetery--she's passed into the great beyond, into a better place, into heaven."
"If there is a heaven or a hell, I've been thinking it's right here on earth."
"How old are you anyway, one hundred and twenty?"
"You know I'm thirteen!" I flared angrily. "Just feeling two hundred and fifty today."
"Why?"
"Because it's better than feeling thirteen, that's why!"
Logan cleared his throat, glanced at Mr. Prakins, who kept his eyes on us through a glass wall, and risked another whisper, "Would it be all right if I walked you home today? I've never talked to anyone as old as two hundred and fifty, and you've got my curiosity aroused. I'd sure like to hear what you have to say."
I nodded, feeling a bit sick as well as exuberant. Now I'd tricked myself into a situation that might disappoint him with only ordinary answers. What did I know about wisdom, old age, or anything else?
Still, he showed up on the edge of the schoolyard, where all the boys walking home with hill girls waited until their choices showed up. And there stood Fanny.
She spun about, flinging her hair over her face, then tossed it back, whipping around to make it fan out in a circle; grinning broadly when she saw Logan, as if she thought he was coming for her. A short distance from Fanny stood Tom and Keith. Tom seemed surprised to find Logan waiting near our trail. Ours was just a faint path through the underbrush that led to the woods, and eventually to only our cabin nearest the sky. The minute Fanny saw Logan and me heading for our trail she let out a whoop so loud and embarrassing I wanted to drop dead.