Anybody Shining by Frances O'Roark Dowell Page A

face and also I seen Tom sitting off to the side,wishing like anything he could play too, and it about broke my heart.
    â€œJames!” I cried out. “Put a stop to this right now! This is not the game Miss Pittman is wanting us to play!”
    But James didn’t listen, nor Harlan nor Will Maycomb. Them Baltimore children didn’t listen either. Well, that got me angry as a wasp trapped in a jar. Did they think they didn’t have to listen to me? So I run straight into the middle of the crowd and grabbed James by the arm. “You are a rude, ignorant boy! Quit this game and show some manners!”
    James’s face got still and white, which is how you know he’s angry something fierce. “You let go of me, Arie Mae,” he said in a quiet voice. “Or else I’ll make you wish you had.”
    I dropped his arm, but I stood there glaring at him for a good, long minute. “You show some hospitality to Miss Pittman,” I hissed at him finally. “This is her picnic, not yourn.”
    James shook out his shoulders like he was getting shed of me and walked away. “Game’sover,” he called to the crowd. “Miss Pittman wants us to play her game.”
    The children moaned and groaned, the Baltimore children loudest of all. Miss Pittman clapped her hands and smiled grandly. “Line up in two rows for Mother May I,” she commanded. “And after that, luncheon!”
    I looked over to where the table was loaded down with platters of olive sandwiches and sliced cucumbers. I’d not yet carried the apple stack cake from the kitchen, and now I couldn’t bear the thought of them Baltimore children laughing at it, the way I was sure they would. And so I run back into the kitchen, and I shoved Mama’s cake in the cold stove.
    I hated to do it, but I hated worse the thought of them children turning up their noses at Mama’s cake that she worked so hard to make.

    The worst thing? Later, when James asked me where the cake had got to, I told him I didn’t know, but I bet one of them Baltimore children chucked it out the window! That got himand Harlan riled up, and they left even before the ice cream was served, without saying a word of good-bye or thank you.
    And even worse than the worst thing? James lied to Mama about it when we got home and said her cake had been everybody’s favorite. I knowed he hated to lie, but he would have hated hurting Mama’s feelings even more than lying.
    I write this with such a heavy feeling inside of me. And on top of all the other things plaguing my mind is how I’m going to tell Tom tomorrow morning that we can’t take our trip to Aunt Jennie Odom’s. That’s all he talked about at the picnic, me just a-nodding and a-smiling, even though I knowed we weren’t ever going to go up to Pilgrim’s Gap.
    Oh, James ain’t the only liar living in this house.
    Signed,
    Your Cousin,
    Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,
    By the time Tom got up to the home place this morning, I had worked up a terrible story to tell him. I had thought about saying I didn’t feel well, but then he would have said that we could go tomorrow or the next day, and then I’d just have to act sicker and sicker until I was lying in bed pretending to be half-dead.
    So I decided the only thing to do was tell him I had no interest anymore in Aunt Jennie Odom or ghosts or the stories Tom wrote in his little book the size of a deck of cards. It killed me to even think about saying that, but what else was I supposed to do?
    Oh, it made me so mad that I finally had a true friend and he was living at death’s door!

    When Tom showed up, I was sitting on the front steps shelling crowder peas, the last of my morning chores. “I fear we have to call off our trip,” I said as soon as I seen him, wanting to get it over with. “Mama and I had a long talk last night, and she don’t want me believing in