Bridge to Terabithia

“Jesse.” Her voice was softer than he had ever heard it, but he didn’t answer. Let her yell. He was used to that.

“Jesse,” she repeated. “I just want to give you my sincere sympathy.” The words were like a Hallmark card, but the tone was new to him.

He looked up into her face, despite himself. Behind her turned-up glasses, Mrs. Myers’ narrow eyes were full of tears. For a minute he thought he might cry himself. He and Mrs. Myers standing in the basement hallway, crying over Leslie Burke. It was so weird he almost laughed instead.

“When my husband died”—Jess could hardly imagine Mrs. Myers ever having had a husband—“people kept telling me not to cry, kept trying to make me forget.” Mrs. Myers loving, mourning. How could you picture it? “But I didn’t want to forget.” She took her handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose. “Excuse me,” she said. “This morning when I came in, someone had already taken out her desk.” She stopped and blew her nose again. “It—it—we—I never had such a student. In all my years of teaching. I shall always be grateful—”

He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to unsay all the things he had said about her—even unsay the things Leslie had said. Lord, don’t let her ever find out.

“So—I realize. If it’s hard for me, how much harder it must be for you. Let’s try to help each other, shall we?”

“Yes’m.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Maybe some day when he was grown, he would write her a letter and tell her that Leslie Burke had thought she was a great teacher or something. Leslie wouldn’t mind. Sometimes like the Barbie doll you need to give people something that’s for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it. Because Mrs. Myers had helped him already by understanding that he would never forget Leslie.

He thought about it all day, how before Leslie came, he had been a nothing—a stupid, weird little kid who drew funny pictures and chased around a cow field trying to act big—trying to hide a whole mob of foolish little fears running riot inside his gut.

It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn’t king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on. For hadn’t Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world—huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile? (Handle with care—everything—even the predators.)

Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn’t there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.

As for the terrors ahead—for he did not fool himself that they were all behind him—well, you just have to stand up to your fear and not let it squeeze you white. Right, Leslie?

Right.

Bill and Judy came back from Pennsylvania on Wednesday with a U-Haul truck. No one ever stayed long in the old Perkins place. “We came to the country for her sake. Now that she’s gone…” They gave Jesse all of Leslie’s books and her paint set with three pads of real watercolor paper. “She would want you to have them,” Bill said.

Jess and his dad helped them load the U-Haul, and noontime his mother brought down ham sandwiches and coffee, a little scared the Burkes wouldn’t want to eat her food, but needing, Jess knew, to do something. At last the truck was filled, and the Aaronses and the Burkes stood around awkwardly, no one knowing how to say good-bye.

“Well,” Bill said. “If there’s anything we’ve left that you want, please help yourself.”

“Could I have some of the lumber on the back porch?” Jess asked.

“Yes, of course. Anything you see.” Bill hesitated, then continued. “I meant to give you P.T.,” he said. “But”—he looked at Jess and his eyes were those of a pleading little boy—“but I can’t seem to give him up.”

“It’s OK. Leslie would want you to keep him.”

The next day after school, Jess went down and got the lumber he needed, carrying it a couple of boards at a time to the creek bank. He put the two longest pieces across at the narrow place upstream from the crab apple tree, and when he was sure they were as firm and even as he could make them, he began to nail on the crosspieces.

“Whatcha doing, Jess?” May Belle had followed him down again as he had guessed she might.

“It’s a secret, May Belle.”

“Tell me.”

“When I finish, OK?”

“I swear on the Bible I won’t tell nobody. Not Billy Jean, not Joyce Ann, not Momma—” She was jerking her head back and forth in solemn emphasis.

“Oh, I don’t know about Joyce Ann. You might want to tell Joyce Ann sometime.”

“Tell Joyce Ann something that’s a secret between you and me?” The idea seemed to horrify her.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about it.”

Her face sagged. “Joyce Ann ain’t nothing but a baby.”

“Well, she wouldn’t likely be a queen first off. You’d have to train her and stuff.”