Bridge to Terabithia

If he went home, either his mother was after him to do some chore or May Belle wanted him to play Barbie. Lord, he wished a million times he’d never helped buy that stupid doll. He’d no more than lie down on the floor to paint than May Belle would be after him to put an arm back on or snap up a dress. Joyce Ann was worse. She got a devilish delight out of sitting smack down on his rump when he was stretched out working. If he yelled at her to get the heck off him, she’d stick her index finger in the corner of her mouth and holler. Which would, of course, crank up his mother.

“Jesse Oliver! You leave that baby alone. Whatcha mean lying there in the middle of the floor doing nothing anyway? Didn’t I tell you I couldn’t cook supper before you chopped wood for the stove?”

Sometimes he would sneak down to the old Perkins place and find Prince Terrien crying on the porch, where Mr. Burke had exiled him. You couldn’t blame the man. No one could get anything done with that animal grabbing his hand or jumping up to lick his face. He’d take P.T. for a romp in the Burkes’ upper field. If it was a mild day, Miss Bessie would be mooing nervously from across the fence. She couldn’t seem to get used to the yipping and snapping. Or maybe it was the time of year—the last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything. Nobody, human or animal, seemed happy.

Except Leslie. She was crazy about fixing up that broken-down old wreck of a house. She loved being needed by her father. Half the time they were supposed to be working they were just yakking away. She was learning, she related glowingly at recess, to “understand” her father. It had never occurred to Jess that parents were meant to be understood any more than the safe at the Millsburg First National was sitting around begging him to crack it. Parents were what they were; it wasn’t up to you to try to puzzle them out. There was something weird about a grown man wanting to be friends with his own child. He ought to have friends his own age and let her have hers.

Jess’s feelings about Leslie’s father poked up like a canker sore. You keep biting it, and it gets bigger and worse instead of better. You spend a lot of time trying to keep your teeth away from it. Then sure as Christmas you forget the silly thing and chomp right down on it. Lord, that man got in his way. It even poisoned what time he did have with Leslie. She’d be sitting there bubbling away at recess, and it would be almost like the old times; then without warning, she’d say, “Bill thinks so and so.” Chomp. Right down on the old sore.

Finally, finally she noticed. It took her until February, and for a girl as smart as Leslie that was a long, long time.

“Why don’t you like Bill?”

“Who said I didn’t?”

“Jess Aarons. How stupid do you think I am?”

Pretty stupid—sometimes. But what he actually said was, “What makes you think I don’t like him?”

“Well, you never come to the house any more. At first I thought it was something I’d done. But it’s not that. You still talk to me at school. Lots of times I see you in the field, playing with P.T., but you don’t even come near the door.”

“You’re always busy.” He was uncomfortably aware of how much he sounded like Brenda when he said this.

“Well, for spaghetti sauce! You could offer to help, you know.”

It was like all the lights coming back on after an electrical storm. Lord, who was the stupid one?

Still, it took him a few days to feel comfortable around Leslie’s father. Part of the problem was he didn’t know what to call him. “Hey,” he’d say, and both Leslie and her father would turn around. “Uh, Mr. Burke?”

“I wish you’d call me Bill, Jess.”

“Yeah.” He fumbled around with the name for a couple more days, but it came more easily with practice. It also helped to know some things that Bill for all his brains and books didn’t know. Jess found he was really useful to him, not a nuisance to be tolerated or set out on the porch like P.T.

“You’re amazing,” Bill would say. “Where did you learn that, Jess?” Jess never quite knew how he knew things, so he’d shrug and let Bill and Leslie praise him to each other—though the work itself was praise enough.