Page 12 of Full Circle

I shook my head and stood up a little straighter, hoping she took it as the sign of respect I intended. “No, ma’am. I’m here to work.”

She nodded, still eyeing me with a face full of suspicious dislike. Celeste told me the night before that her nana didn’t think boys and girls could be friends and she didn’t trust anyone who didn’t grow up in River’s Run. I didn’t want to give the old lady any other reasons to hate me.

“Go on and take him up to your tower,” Ms. Suzanne directed Celeste.

Celeste’s eyebrows rose, surprise evident across her face. “You’ll let me take him there?” she asked incredulously.

Ms. Suzanne rolled her eyes as she barked out, “I just said so, didn’t I? There’s a double episode of Fear the Wicked today and I’m not gonna miss it ‘cause of y’all. Git on into work!”

My aunt wished her a good day and thanked her again for her hospitality. “I’ll collect you around 5 o’clock for supper,” Shirley reminded me before hobbling down the stairs to her car.

Celeste grabbed my hand and dragged me around to the right side of the house before her nana could say another word.

“Fear the Wicked?” I repeated in a whisper.

She snickered into her free hand. “It’s a soap opera about witches and vampires that Nana’s obsessed with!” We both shared a quiet chuckle.

“What’s she mean ‘your tower’?” I asked in confusion. Her hand felt warm and soft in mine, and it was oddly soothing. I’d never wanted to hold someone’s hand before, but Celeste’s palm fit in mine as though it belonged there. I quite liked the idea of that.

As we rounded the corner to the back half of the house, I realized there was a second story to the house that wasn’t visible from the front. The branches from the dogwood scraped along the porch roof back here, blending into the side of the house so that it resembled a treehouse. Another screen door faced the tree directly and it was through that door Celeste directed us.

A steep set of wooden stairs led upward. We had to hold the railings on both sides to climb safely. We emerged in a room that reminded me of movies I’d seen where the kids had a club in a treehouse. String lights crisscrossed the ceiling, hanging low enough that I could reach up and touch them. If I grew much taller, they would hit my head. There were several mismatched bookcases with chipped paint along two walls. Some held old books with cracked spines and peeling bargain stickers, others held board game boxes held together with packaging tape. One of the taller bookcases had a bunch of craft supplies like paints, construction paper, and those funny scissors that cut things in different shapes. There was one window each on the walls to my back and right hand side facing out into the flowery branches of the dogwood tree. You could barely see anything through the foliage, although streams of light snuck through.

A weathered wooden table sat closer to the bookshelves with a couple rickety wooden chairs to match. Flecks of paint from old art projects dotted across the surface. Using the stairwell as a divider, the other side of the space, closest to the windows, had a bright area rug. There were beanbag chairs and giant floor cushions all around. A small table sat in the corner with a record player and a crate of old vinyl records leaned against it.

The best part about the space was all of the photographs, though. Unframed photographs lined most of the walls and slanted ceiling. Some even hung from wire down between the string lights. I approached the one hanging closest to me, held up by a paper clip, and observed what looked like a candid shot of a much younger Celeste—maybe four or five—in a ruffly Cinderella two piece bathing suit standing in an inflatable kiddy pool. She was smiling so wide that her eyes were squinted shut, wet hair plastered around her face. A young woman sat on the ground next to the pool. The photo caught her mid-laugh, her dark hair piled high as her head tilted back in the joy of the moment.

It was Celeste’s mom; I could recognize her without hazarding a guess.

I cut my gaze to some of the others and realized many of them were far older. There were several polaroid shots of people wearing clothing from the 70’s or 80’s. A few clearly had Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks when they were first dating judging by the youthful face of Celeste’s dad. Most of the photos were candid shots of people, with the occasional beach view peppered in here or there. I didn’t see any of Celeste with other friends her own age, though. It was mostly just her with her parents.

“So we call this my ‘tower,’” Celeste explained. There was a hitch to her voice that indicated she was nervous about my judgment. “It’s just a place for me to hang out. Daddy and Nana don’t ever come up here.”

“It’s amazing,” I said fervently. This room held more memories than I could recall from my entire life. I turned around again and realized there was only a single stairwell in or out. “Was this meant to be a room? Where are the other doors?”

She giggled and my stomach lurched with how much I enjoyed the sound. What the heck was wrong with me? “It was meant for pantry storage when the house was originally built 150 years ago. This is directly above our kitchen,” Celeste explained. “But as different generations updated the house, it kinda became like an attic space. After Mama and Daddy found out they were expecting, Mama wanted to turn this into a cool place for me.” The words caught in her throat.

I knew Celeste well enough by now to know that she found it difficult to talk about her mother, so I hastily changed the subject.

“What do you wanna start on?”

For the next few hours we pored over worksheets from her school together. She said her father was good friends with the principal at what would be my school here and he was going to talk to him about letting me turn in work just like Celeste’s to help get me caught up. She had used the copy machine at the restaurant to make a second set of the packets Smithson County Schools had allocated for her.

As much as I appreciated Mr. Hendricks and Celeste looking out for me, I was immediately bored out of my mind.

Celeste’s patience eventually ran out as she looked over a sheet of pre-algebra equations I filled out. “Wesley, you’re giving me the wrong answers on purpose.”

I was currently leaning back in my chair, trying to balance the pencil on the tip of my nose. Her accusation brought me up short, and I slammed the front two table legs back down.

“No, I’m not!”

She shoved the paper across the table at me, pointing at the problem on top. “Then why is all of your work right, but the answer is wrong?” Her Southern drawl was a lot heavier when she was mad. Her green eyes drilled into me, daring me to contradict her again.

I rolled my eyes and shot out of the chair. Ten paces away, in the middle of the area rug, I whipped my hands around and faced her. “It’s just school! Nobody cares!”

She was immediately crossing over to me, stopping just as her sneakers hit the toes of mine. I expected her to yell at me, to make me feel like an idiot the way all the other tutors my dad hired always had. Everyone always acted like grades were some sort of definitive proof of the future, and my future was chosen for me, so what did it really matter? Whether I was a total idiot or a prodigal genius, I was going to take over Madden Enterprises. I had no say in the matter.

Instead, her face was utterly sincere as she whispered up to me, “I care, Wes.”

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