— by Sally Nemeth
PROLOGUE
When we were little, my best friend Jake and I saw eye-to-eye. Then I grew, and he didn’t. I grew a lot. He didn’t grow at all. He never really will. He’s a dwarf, and I’m a freak of nature. I swear, you should see us. He looks like everyone else except he’s got these short arms and legs and stands about four feet tall. I’m thirteen years old and five-foot-ten. Since fourth grade, I’ve been the tallest girl in my class, but at five-foot-ten I’m taller than all the boys too. It’s ridiculous. And Jake and me together? It’s no wonder that we turn heads. Heck, I’d look too. I don’t think I’d yell, ‘Hey, look everybody, the circus is in town!’ but that’s just me. Unlike some people, I was taught some manners.
We live in a subdivision in Delaware called The Heights. If you ask me, this is someone’s idea of a joke. Not Delaware. Well, okay, yes, Del-a-where? For your information, Delaware is one of the thirteen original American colonies. It’s smack up against the east coast, between Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, and is about the size of your living room. The joke is this: the highest height in Delaware is just four hundred and forty two feet above sea level. No one’s getting woozy from the altitude here, that’s for sure.
But this is where we live in a house that looks like the house three doors down from ours and so on and so on. The developer who built this place had a limited imagination, so on every street, the Cape Cod is followed by the Tudor which is followed by the Western Ranch house. Cape Cod, Tudor, Western Ranch, Cape Cod, Tudor, Western Ranch, over and over. It’s like some kind of awful housing theme park. But it’s home.
Jake and I both live in Western Ranches, three doors down from each other. Our folks bought the houses in 1970, the year they were built. Back then, each dirt yard had a single stupid sapling stuck right out in front, and nothing else. Since then everyone’s planted grass, hedges, flower beds, climbing roses. It’s the only thing that makes each house different.
Jake’s mother has a gardening obsession. Every bit of possible space is planted, pruned and weeded within an inch of its life. She’s even got one of those corny pom-pom bushes called a “topiary” that looks like a cross between a shrub and a French poodle. In general, she’s into perfection, which has always been kind of hard on Jake.
Our yard....okay, I’ll be kind. It was my dad’s dream to live in a brand new house that no one had ever lived in before and to make it his own. Well, for a while it was his dream. He took off a year and a half ago in January. He’s sent letters and postcards every week, and calls when he can, but it’s not the same as having him here. Mom tries to garden. She really does. But since Dad left the yard has suffered. Last spring she planted plants the nursery labeled “hardy,” and in the fall, we pulled their shriveled stumps from the ground. Neither of us has anything approaching a green thumb. We do, at least, have grass.
The “dad thing” is something Jake and I have in common. His dad is gone too, but for different reasons than mine. My dad has been off finding himself - or at least that’s what my mother tells me. They got married young, and she says he always felt like he never got a chance to find out who he really was, so he had to go off and do that without us. I always knew who he was: my Dad. But I guess he’s a lot of other things too, and he’s got to figure that all out. And then he’ll be back. I’ve had bad days when I’m not so certain, but sooner or later, we’ll all live under the same roof again.
Jake’s not quite so lucky. His dad married someone else; someone with kids of her own. They live in North Carolina, which isn’t so awfully far, but it’s not so close either. Jake goes to stay with them for two weeks each summer. When he leaves, he’s always happy to go like it’s going to be some kind of great adventure, but when the two weeks are up, he’s always glad to come home.
Here are the two best things about The Heights: Thing 1.) It used to be a farm, and Mr. Lukens, the old farmer who sold off his land to the developer, kept a few acres for himself. He’s got a couple of Shetland ponies, some milk cows and loads of barn cats, and he doesn’t mind kids hanging around so long as we don’t try to ride the ponies or tip the cows. Thing 2.) Our street, Cliff View Drive - no cliff, no view - backs up on a graveyard. No lie. We walk through our backyards and there we are, in a graveyard. Most people think this is creepy. We don’t. Hands down, the graveyard’s got the best roller-skating roads in the neighborhood, the only trees big enough to climb, and Otis, a genuine crabby old gravedigger, who chews tobacco and spits a lot. Some of the graves date all the way back to the Revolutionary War, but you can hardly read the stones, they’re so worn down. There are a bunch of Civil War graves though, that you can still read. Back then, they wrote a lot of stuff about the person who died. One stone even has the name of every battle the guy fought in – Gettysburg, Manassas, Antietam – before he was wounded at the battle of Spottsylvania Court House and died. It’s pretty darn cool, if you ask me.
The other really cool thing is that once you walk through the graveyard and past the old Methodist church, you’re in Pennsylvania. Sometimes I like to just stand there, straddling the line, one foot in each state, like some kind of colossus. At five-foot-ten, feeling like a colossus isn’t much of a stretch, but you know what I mean. It makes me imagine I could walk across the country, giant step by giant step, striding over state lines, great plains and mountain ranges until I stand on the California coast and dip my big big toe in the Pacific Ocean. It’s stupid, I know, but the thought of it amuses me.
It’s summer now, Jake is gone, so I’ve got a lot of time to think about stupid things, and to think about things that are not so stupid. Like last year. Last year was no joke. Last year Jake and I started Junior High, and since then, everything’s changed. Everything. This summer, I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
Oh, yeah - my name. Lucy. Lucy Small. Yep - I’m five-foot-ten, and my last name is Small. Jake’s last name is Little. Lucy Small and Jake Little. Other people think it’s kind of tragic. I think it’s hilarious. What choice do I have? In grade school, on the playground, the girls would jump rope, singing, “Lucy Small, Lucy Small, Lucy Small is ten feet tall.” Jake had a worse time of it, but even he saw the humor. It’s true what they say: you gotta laugh, or all you do is cry.