"Because you're making fun of him, and he'll know it. too."
"Big deal," Enid said.
"What are you hoping to become, his squaw?" JoAnn asked. laughing.
"She could be a squaw," Enid followed. "Aren't squaws big and stout?"
My face reddened. The three of them walked faster, passing me by.
My weight will always be a target forvicious people, I thought. Brenda was right all along. I'm going- to lose these pounds or die trying, I vowed to myself. for the rest of the afternoon. I caught their sneers and sly smiles whenever I looked at them or their other friends. My honeymoon period here had ended quickly. I realized. The only one who would feel sorry for me now was myself. Just like in Hickory, everyone was vying for top spots in the popularity contest, and if stepping on me to get a little higher helped, well, so be it.
Of course. I didn't mention anything about the other girls and their snide remarks to Peter when we met after school. I wasn't sure he would care. anyway. He seemed to have little or no interest in making friends here or keeping the ones he had made. We drove away before any of the girls appeared in the parking lot. Despite my claim. I actually had forgotten the way to his house. and he had to correct me an two turns.
"My aunt isn't home." he said when we arrived at her house. "She works for a dentist. She's the one who cleans and polishes people's teeth, a dental hygienist."
"What about her husband?"
"She's divorced. The marriage went sour before they had children, fortunately." he said, leading me to the front door.
His aunt's home was modest in comparison with the home we had in Hickory, but if I compared it with where we lived now, it was a palace. The living room looked cozy. The furniture was arranged with the fireplace as the central focus. It was a pretty fireplace built out of fieldstone with a mantel upon which sat a miniature grandfather clock and two vases with flowers made of colored glass. Above the fireplace was a portrait of an old Indian man wearing a cowboy hat, a blue shirt, and jeans with boots. There was a corral behind him and a pony to the left grazing. In the distance were mountains with a blue tint and a pocket of soft white clouds crowning the peaks.
"That's my great-grandfather," Peter said. "The Smokev Mountains are behind him."
"Who painted it?"
"My great-grandmother," he said. smiling. "C'mon. I have my chess board set up in my room. There's a game in progress."
"Whom do you play against? Your aunt?"
"No, myself." he said. "What you do," he explained as we walked down the short hallway. "is set up famous games and try to meet the challenge. This is a game that won the regional contest five years ago."
His room was very neat and simple. The bed was made like a military bed, the cover sheet tight enough to bounce a coin off it and the pillows were without a crease. Nothing in the room was out of place. The dresser had a picture of a dark-haired woman in a silver frame on top of it. I didn't ask him. but I imagined she was his mother. There was a table to the right with two chairs and the chess board set up on it. He had a desk against the left wall, with his books, notebooks, and pens neatly arranged. The closet door was closed. The hardwood floors were polished and clean, with a light brown oval area rug beside the bed. I immediately thought my pathetic studio was a pigsty compared with this.
The only thing out of the ordinary was a light blue hoop with feathers, beads, and what looked like arrowheads hanging above his bed.
"What is that?" I asked.
"It's a dream catcher."
"Excuse me?"
"A dream catcher. We believe that the night air is filled with dreams both good and bad. The dream catcher hung over or near your bed, swinging freely in the air, catches the dreams as they flow by. The good dreams know how to pass through the dream catcher, slipping through the outer holes and sliding down the soft feathers so gently that many times the sleeper does not know that he or she is dreaming. The bad dreams, not knowing the way, get tangled in the dream catcher and perish with the first light of the new day."
"Boy, could I use one of those," I said.
He smiled, went to the closet, opened it, and took one that looked similar off the inside of the door.
"This will be yours," he said.
"Really? It's beautiful,"
"Really," he said, and handed it to me.
"I have nothing to give you in return," I said.
"You have given your friendship. Go on, take it," he urged, and I did. "Okay, let's go to the board," he said.
He began to rearrange the pieces to set up a new game. "I didn't mean for you to ruin your game."