The First Day of Spring

by Nancy Tucker

I felt like a ghost or an angel, standing on the wall in my white nightie, eating sugar from a paper bag. No one saw me but I was still there. I was basically God.

“So that was all it took,” I thought. “That was all it took for me to feel like I had all the power in the world. One morning, one moment, one yellow-haired boy. It wasn’t so much after all.”

I was brilliant at wall walking. William timed me once, before his wristwatch got stolen: all the way from Mr. Jenks’s to the haunted house in four minutes and thirty-three seconds. I wanted him to time me again so I could get faster and faster, and he said he would if I helped him find out who had stolen his wristwatch. Unfortunately it was me who had stolen his wristwatch, so I had to say I actually didn’t want to be timed again, but four minutes and thirty-three seconds was still faster than any other kid in the whole of the streets.

After a long time Da wobbled away from his friends, past the tables, and out of the door, and I jumped down to follow him. It was almost like he had forgotten I was there, except obviously he hadn’t. I was the whole point of him coming back alive again. When I caught up with him he held on to my arm, and as we walked he kept stumbling and yanking it so hard I thought it was going to come out of its socket. I didn’t care. If he had torn my arm away from my body and kept it for himself, I wouldn’t have minded. I would have said, “You can have the rest of me too. The other arm, and both my legs, and my belly and face and heart. It’s all there for you, if you want it.”

I wanted to ask the beautiful woman whether she had chosen Ruthie and not me because Ruthie was pretty and I was ugly, or whether it was because she was three and I was eight, and at what point between three and eight a kid got too old to love.