The Secret Hum of a Daisy by Tracy Holczer Page A

you is on the page too. Chiaroscuro! The transition between light and dark. Show me what you’ve learned about contour.”
    When she was done handing out the mirrors, she went back to her desk and banged a gong.
    â€œIt’s a meditation thing,” Jo whispered.
    I shrugged. I’d seen weirder things from teachers. Like Mr. Langston, who had to touch his nose, his pencil holder, and the top of his head before he could get up from his chair.
    Mrs. Snickels brought me a book on portraiture. “We’ve already done some work with faces this year. Take your time looking through the exercises in the book and if you have any questions, let me know.”
    I flipped through a few pages and studied some of the techniques. Then I looked at myself in the silver-backed mirror, deciding to start with my hair and the shape of my face. But as I touched the pencil to paper, all I wanted was to write down words in my notebook. I took a deep breath and thought them instead.
    If only my words
    could build a path
    to where you are.
    I felt a little better after that, and so the sketching came easier. I went through the motions, letting my hand and arm do the work and leaving my brain out of it, and eventually the bell rang.
    As we rolled our portraits into tubes, Jo snuck a look. “You’re good at faces,” she said.
    I shrugged. My hand knew where to put the shading of a cheekbone, the curve of a brow. I could be one of those people who drew portraits in carnivals, maybe. It wasn’t art like Mama’s.
    But I had to admit there was a certain satisfaction in drawing something true, even if it was the sad eye of a girl I didn’t recognize.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Everyone was eating inside the cafetorium—half cafeteria, half auditorium—with its giant banner proclaiming TRAVEL THE WORLD, ONE BOOK AT A TIME! It had sprinkled earlier, so I took a wad of paper towels from the girls’ room and wiped down a place to sit outside under the awning. I dumped out the lunch I’d packed, which consisted of a peanut butter sandwich with the crusts cut off and a Ding Dong, not that I was hungry.
    Making sure no one was watching, I pulled my backpack onto the bench beside me and unzipped it. I set the T-shirt on my lap and unwrapped the bird I’d found in the toolbox, looking again into the sliver of an opening, reassured by that little edge of paper inside.
    Part of me wished Mama could just leave me an honest-to-goodness sign, like a poster in front of the school that said
Let this sign hereby notify the powers that be that Gracie May Jessup should be living with Mrs. Greene in Hood, California, not her grandmother.
    Jo walked toward me from the cafetorium, her short hair blowing in the wind, and I quickly wrapped the bird in the T-shirt. “Come and sit with us. It’s cold out here.”
    I looked past her to the table inside filled with girls all babbling at one another. Ginger was laughing and flapping her arms like a chicken. Archer and Stubbie sat at the other end of the same table, where apparently Stubbie wasn’t done with his spit-wad tricks. A sour-looking woman in a hairnet and a frilly white apron walked up and took the straw right out of his mouth. Archer laugh-snorted his milk all over the table and immediately began mopping it up with whatever napkins were handy.
    â€œThanks, but I kind of wanted the fresh air. It smells like melted plastic in there,” I said.
    Jo wiped a space across from me with the arm of her jacket and sat down. She swung the end of her long, pink scarf over one shoulder. There was a spit wad in her hair. “We’ve all tried guessing at that smell. Beth thinks Mr. Joe is boiling his mops before school every day to sanitize them. He’s a germaphobe. And if anyone understands germaphobes, it’s Beth.”
    â€œYou have a spit wad in your hair,” I said.
    She shook her head and it went flying off. “Thanks.”
    I