The School of Beauty and Charm by Melanie Sumner

with her hand, but he went on.
    The tornado he’d witnessed on Mount Zion grew bigger with each telling. Twister, he called it.
    â€œWhy, there I was lying in the ditch, when that sucker hit the ground inches from my face. It untied my shoelaces.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t get in a ditch in your good suit to save your life,” corrected Florida, but he continued, his eyes glowing.
    I loved the story about the businessman in Bloomingdale’s who fell down an escalator and was strangled by his tie. “People just don’t think ahead,” Henry would conclude with a frown.
    For a long time, Roderick and I thought every family traveled with funeral clothes—church clothes in dark colors, without undue decoration, just in case.
    â€œIt’s a good practice,” Henry said. “What if you got out there and someone died and the store was closed, or they didn’t have your size? What if all you had to wear were tennis shoes? Then you’d be up the creek.”
    Florida backed him up 100 percent. “We’re going to see old people,” she reminded us of the summer we tried to ditch the funeral clothes for our trip to the Deleuth farm. “You have to be practical. The shops in Red Cavern don’t have anything you’d like.”
    â€œI refuse to participate in this panic mentality,” declared Roderick, removing the clip-on tie that Florida had stuffed in a corner of his suitcase. He was at the rebellious stage: He’d begun to lock his bedroom door, blow-dry his hair, andsnicker on the telephone. On his chin regularly sat a bright red pimple that we were all supposed to ignore. He was thirteen. Because of his asthma, he was smaller than other eighth graders: skinny and bluish-white, with delicate wrists like a girl and a head of those soft, swirling, golden curls. After a few valiant attempts to play football, which failed because he was allergic to grass, he resigned himself to an intellectual life of Dungeons and Dragons, Thoreau, and an occasional joint.
    â€œAm I a bison,” he cried, blushing as his voice cracked, “running off the cliff with the herd, or am I human being, free to think and act as I choose?”
    â€œHe wants a real tie,” said Florida, “like yours, Henry. This one is for little boys.” She glanced at Roderick’s angry face, worrying over his pimple. “Do you need to go to the bathroom before we get in the car?”
    â€œI do not want a tie,” said Roderick, glaring. “I want to live unhampered by the conventionalities of this bourgeois, fear-based society. I want to breathe!”
    Henry told him to get a job. To avoid a fuss, Florida slipped the tie into her dress bag, along with my Mary Janes.
    We spent an hour in the garage, watching Henry pack the car. Roderick had already checked the oil and cleaned the windshield, but Henry had to pack the trunk himself. If anyone put a bag inside the trunk, Henry shook his head, declared “There is a place for everything in this life,” and took it out again.
    â€œSlow poke,” said Florida. “We go through this every time. Did you pack my knitting? Give me that. I need that in the front seat.” She stepped boldly between Henry and the trunkto snatch her knitting bag from the elaborate puzzle he was creating in the trunk.
    Henry mumbled something.
    â€œWhat did you say?”
    â€œI didn’t say anything.”
    â€œYou look like you want to murder me. I’m not going. I’m going to stay here. You all go. Everything is such an ordeal with you!”
    â€œDon’t start a commotion.” Henry turned his back to her and with one last surveillance of his work, closed the lid on the trunk.
    â€œCommotion? Without me to push you, you’d never get out of this house. Dawdle, dawdle, dawdle. I suwaan! You’ve got a problem—an obsession. Sometimes you need to just pick up and go. Move your feet!”
    Henry