Copyright © 2005 Carolyn Reeder
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Cover art by Carol Schwartz
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reeder, Carolyn.
The secret project notebook / Carolyn Reeder.-- 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Moving with his parents to a remote New Mexico location in the 1940s, twelve-year-old Fritz becomes suspicious about his father's secret work and begins to keep notes about events unfolding at the end of World War II.
ISBN 978-0-941232-41-8
[1. Atomic bomb--Fiction. 2. World War II, 1939-1945--Fiction. 3. New Mexico--History--20th century--Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.R235237Sec 2005
[Fic]--dc22
2005019166
Printed in Canada
For Liz Reeder
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Historical Note
Instead of today’s Native American and Hispanic, I have used Indian and Spanish-American in this story because those were the words used in the 1940s.
All of my characters are fictitious, and none of them is intended to represent any actual person. Although several well-known people are mentioned by characters in The Secret Project Notebook, they have no role in the story.
I have taken a few minor liberties with school life in the “secret city” during 1944–45, including omitting the late-afternoon PE classes.
Finally, we’re almost there—wherever “there” is. I’ve been marking our route on state road maps for days, all the way from our neighborhood to this mesa we’re driving up now, creeping along a narrow dirt road with a cliff rising on our right and nothing but the view on our left. And I mean nothing. Not even a guardrail.
I stick my head out the open window and crane my neck to look up, hoping for a glimpse of the mesa’s flat top, but all I see is a couple of scrubby evergreens hanging onto the steep, rocky slope. I’ll have to find out what kind of trees those are, ’cause they don’t look like any of the ones we have back home.
“Rule 17,” Dad says. “Keep all body parts inside vehicle.”
“Are you sure that’s not Rule 71?” I ask him.
Mom sighs. “Honestly, you two.” I guess she doesn’t like to be reminded of the way I used to twist numbers and letters around when I was younger. Or else she still hasn’t forgiven Dad for letting Vivian move in with Grandma instead of making her come out here with us.
I think Viv’s crazy, giving up an opportunity like this just so she can keep on taking violin lessons. And so she won’t have to change schools. I wouldn’t miss this for anything. How many twelve-year-old kids get a chance to live in a place that’s so secret your parents won’t even tell you where you’re going till you’re practically there?
And as for changing schools, that’s a real plus. I can make a fresh start. I’ll get to meet some new kids—some kids who don’t know every single embarrassing thing I’ve done since kindergarten, kids who won’t keep reminding me of a lot of dumb stuff I’d rather forget. Stuff from a long time ago, like how I messed up the only line I had in the third grade play.
Boy, this winding road is making me carsick. “Hey, Dad,” I say, leaning forward to tap him on the shoulder. “All of a sudden I don’t feel so good.”
“Rule One: No throwing up in the car. Rule One supersedes all other rules including Rule 17,” Dad says as he pulls over and slows to a stop. “Try to wait till some of this dust settles before you get out.”
I’m standing on the side of the road—the side next to the cliff wall, not the one with the drop-off—breathing deeply—when my eyes light on this really unusual-looking rock. I pick it up and can’t believe how light it is for its size. It’s like pumice, except for being sort of a tan color instead of grayish.
“All right, Franklin,” Mom calls. “If you feel well enough to collect rocks, you feel well enough to ride.”
She’s using that “or else” tone of voice, so I get back in the car, bringing the rock with me. While we’re out here, I’m going to start a collection of New Mexico rocks and minerals. Hope I can find a book to help me identify them.
Pretty soon the car slows to a stop, and I see this high chain-link fence up ahead. It’s got strands of barbed wire strung across the top and a couple of guards at the entrance looking like they mean business. Looking like they think we’re spies sent to infiltrate this place.
One of the guards comes over to check the papers we picked up in Santa Fe, and I see that he’s wearing an arm band with the letters MP. Military police! I’m puzzling over this when he glances into the back seat. He takes a second look and gets this real alert expression on his face—like now he knows we’re spies.
“What’s that you’ve got, kid?” His voice sounds sort of like machine-gun fire.
“You mean this rock?”
He shakes his head. “That map on the seat beside you. Hand it over.” I pass it to him, and he takes one look and beckons to one of the other military policemen, an older guy. When he looks at the map his eyebrows go up so high they disappear under his helmet before they sag back into a frown.
“Park over there,” the MP orders Dad, pointing to the right, and when Dad turns off the ignition, the older MP opens the car door and says, “Follow me.” My mouth goes dry when the first guy falls into step behind the two of them, making kind of a dad sandwich.
When Dad and the MPs disappear into the guardhouse, I turn to Mom. “What the heck’s going on? How come those guys are so upset about my map?”
“I have no idea, but I’m sure your father will straighten everything out,” she says, but her words sound a lot braver than her voice does.
We stare in the direction of the guardhouse for so long I can’t help but ask, “You don’t think they’re going to arrest him, do you?
“I hardly think so, hon. He hasn’t done anything they could arrest him for.” Finally, Dad and the MPs come out of the guardhouse. They stand by the door for a minute while the older guy finishes his lecture. Then they all glance toward the car, and Dad nods his head a couple of times. When he starts toward us, I feel a little better—until I see the grim look on his face.
“What was that all about, Verne?” Mom asks him.
“It was about your son drawing that poor excuse for a road up the mesa onto the map I gave him—and then making a dot which he labeled ‘Site Y.’ ”
Uh-oh. Whenever I’m “your son” instead of “Franklin,” I’m in real trouble.
Dad tilts his rearview mirror so he can see into the back seat, and then he sort of impales me with his gaze. “Look at me, Franklin,” he says as my eyes start to slide away from his. When I manage to meet Dad’s eyes in the mirror, he says, “Apparently I didn’t make clear to you the importance of secrecy—or the extent to which secrecy will be enforced here.”
“But what did I do, Dad?”
“Think a minute. If you’re half as smart as I think you are, you should be able to figure it out.” Dad frowns, and I know he’s trying to look fierce, but he has the wrong kind of face for that.
“Well, it obviously had something to do with the map.”
Dad says, “It has to do with what you marked on the map.”
Now I’m really puzzled. “You mean the route we followed? I don’t see—”
“Not only did you draw in the road we followed up the mesa, you also wrote in ‘Site Y’ beside a dot you placed with surprising accuracy,” Dad says, interrupting. “You pinpointed the location of the laboratory even though I told you that everything about it was top secret.”
“But—”
“There are no ‘buts,’ Franklin. Once we go through that gate you’ll be on a military base, and you’ll have to obey the rules without questioning them, whether you like them or not, and whether you think they’re fair or not. Do you understand?”
His tone of voice tells me I’d better understand. “Yeah, I guess so, but how can I obey the rules if nobody tells me what they are?”
Mom says, “That’s a fair question, Verne.”
“All right, then. For starters, people up here just call this place ‘the Hill,’ and we all use the address Post Office Box 1663, Santa Fe.” I start to say something, but Dad’s not finished. “If we go to Santa Fe, we aren’t to talk to anyone there—other than making a purchase or transacting business, of course—and there will be security personnel checking to make sure we don’t.”
“Boy, this is going to be like living in a spy thriller!”
Instead of answering, Dad readjusts his rearview mirror and starts the car again. As we pull through the gate, I can feel those MPs following us with their eyes, which makes me feel half excited and half scared. Or maybe 90 percent excited and 10 percent scared.
Pretty soon we stop again—to get our passes, Dad tells us, and I don’t think anything about that till they fingerprint us.
Then this WAC says, “Come with me, please,” and the next thing I know she’s handing me a comb and pointing to a mirror. “Make yourself presentable so I can take your picture.”
I don’t have to look in the mirror to know she’s talking about the way my hair sort of stands up instead of lying flat. “Sorry, ma’am, but this is as presentable as I get.” Too bad I didn’t inherit Dad’s naturally wavy hair, or even Mom’s silky-smooth hair that does whatever she wants it to. Mine’s dark brown like theirs, but that’s where the similarity ends.
The WAC shrugs and motions me to a chair. I’m still blinking from the flash bulb when she asks if I’ve got any scars or other identifying marks on my body.
“Only this little scar on my arm.” I show her, and she makes a note of it. “What do you need to know that for?” I ask.
“For identification purposes,” she says. “You may go now.”
We’re back in the car before it sinks in that they’d only need to identify me by scars and other marks on my body if I was dead. What kind of place has Dad brought us to, anyway? I lean forward and tap his shoulder. “What the heck are we doing on a military base? You said we were moving here so you could work in a science lab.”
“It’s a government laboratory, Franklin,” Dad says as he starts the car, “and it’s located on a military base for security reasons. I think I’ve already explained that our work must be done in complete secrecy.” From the way he said that, I can tell Dad’s still mad at me, and I’m kind of surprised, ’cause he’s usually pretty easygoing.
We all crank our windows shut to keep out the dust stirred up by a line of dump trucks coming toward us, and I wonder how Dad can see to drive. I’m thinking this place looks like one huge construction site when we pass rows and rows of trailers, all painted army green. “Hey, are we going to live in one of those?”
“Over my dead body,” Mom says.
Dad says, “The trailers are for the construction and maintenance workers. Scientists’ families are assigned to apartments a little farther on.”
“Away from all this dust, I hope,” Mom says.
“I think you’ll like the apartment, Mona. The living room has a fireplace and a fine view of the mountains. We’ll share a balcony with the other family that lives upstairs.”
I’m wondering if Mom noticed he didn’t say it was away from the dust when I see a bunch of green, two-story buildings with balconies ahead of us. Sure enough, pretty soon Dad pulls up alongside one of them and says, “Well, troops, we’re home.”
Mom’s looking at the packed dirt where a lawn ought to be, so I guess she’s figured out that the apartments aren’t away from all the dust. Dad and I climb out of the car, but Mom doesn’t open her door until a woman and her little kid come out of a downstairs apartment and hurry toward us.
The woman says, “Hi! You must be the Maddens. I’m Sally Edwards, and this is Timmy. I’ve got a pot of coffee and a pitcher of lemonade ready to pour, and Pamela next door baked a batch of cookies this morning. You all come on down as soon as you’ve looked over your new place—upstairs on the left.”
Without waiting to hear anything more, I dash up the outside stairway and along the balcony to our apartment. It’s unlocked, and the first thing I see when I go inside is the vase of wildflowers somebody’s put on the coffee table.
I go into the kitchen, and after I check to make sure the calendar on the wall is turned to September 1944, I notice a loaf of bread, a plate of cookies, and a jar of grape jelly on the counter with a note that says, “Welcome to the Hill!” Out of habit, I open the fridge, and there’s a quart bottle of milk, a platter of fried chicken, and a huge bowl of potato salad in there.
I’m making myself welcome with a couple of cookies when I hear my parents come in. “Guess what?” I say, going to meet them. “Somebody left our supper in the fridge.”
Mom’s got this kind of dazed look on her face as she glances around, taking in the army-issue furniture and then this monstrous black wood stove—or maybe coal stove—in the middle of the kitchen. Dad looks nervous, and I realize he’s waiting for Mom to say something about this place he’s brought us to, the place where we’ll be living until the war’s over.
Actually, we’re both waiting for Mom to say something. I guess she must be practicing what she preaches: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. I’ve heard her tell my sister that about a thousand times.
Dad and I follow Mom down the hall and into each of the two small bedrooms, and then we all look through the door of the tiny bathroom. No tub—only an ugly concrete shower. I wait for Mom to say something about that, but she just frowns. She’s actually kind of pretty, in a comfortable sort of way, but you’d never guess it when she’s frowning.
We follow her back to the living room, and when her eyes come to rest on that bouquet somebody picked, she takes a deep breath and says, “At least we have good neighbors.”
Boy, there’s nothing like getting here one day and starting school the next. It’s a good thing the trip didn’t take us any longer.
This is a great school—brand new last year—and every room has a whole wall of windows with a view of the mountains. The classes are a lot smaller here than back home, so you don’t get that crowded feeling.
So far I like all my teachers, especially this one. Mrs. Jackson, her name is. With that mop of dark curls she looks more like somebody’s big sister than a teacher, but she’s been pretty efficient at getting all the first-day-of-school business taken care of so we can get to work.
Mrs. Jackson flips her map chart to the Southwest. “Okay, class,” she says, “in social studies this year we’re going to start by learning about New Mexico—its history, its geography, and its culture.”
The words pop out before I can stop them. “New Mexico’s got culture?”
The kids laugh, but Mrs. Jackson ignores them. “It certainly does, Franklin,” she says. “This area’s culture predates the settlements at Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay by centuries.” Everybody stops laughing to stare at her, and she explains, “You probably think that ‘culture’ means the fine arts. Things like concerts and plays and art exhibits.”
“Or something biologists grow in a petri dish,” I say, and the kid behind me groans. Uh-oh. I’m supposed to be making a fresh start.
Mrs. Jackson ignores the groaning, too. “That’s one meaning of the word, Franklin,” she says, “but we’re going to be studying the culture of the early people of New Mexico—their arts, their religion, their agricultural practices, and their government.”
“You mean the Indians?” I ask her. I never knew they had government.
Behind me, somebody mutters, “This kid sure does like to hear himself talk,” but Mrs. Jackson doesn’t seem to notice.
“The Indians, and the Spanish-Americans, too,” she says.
I notice that the bored-looking, dark-haired boy slouched in a seat at the end of the front row shows a hint of interest. Apparently Mrs. Jackson notices, too, because she zeroes in on him and says, “Manny, can you tell us when the Spanish first came to this area?”
“Back in the 1500s,” he says. “They set up missions to convert the Indians to Christianity.”
The teacher thanks Manny like he’d done something special and then asks the class, “Who would like to come up to the map and show us where this mesa of ours is located?” I sort of clench my jaw so I don’t holler out that it’s not on the map, and Mrs. Jackson calls on the only person who raised a hand—an energetic-looking girl with bobbed brown hair and bangs. Kathy.
Kathy goes up front, and I see that she’s about my height, which is a little on the short side for a seventh-grade boy but seems just right for her. She says, “Well, we’re northwest of Santa Fe and north of Albuquerque, so we’d be right about—here.”
“Good work, Kathy,” Mrs. Jackson says. “And now can you tell us why a town as large as this one isn’t on the map?”
“Because they want to keep the Lab a secret. Because no one is supposed to know this place even exists.”
Mrs. Jackson nods, but Manny says, “Shoot, when that map was printed, there wasn’t no laboratory up here. No town, neither. This time two years ago, there wasn’t nothin’ here but a boarding school for rich men’s sons.”
“You’ve made a good point, Manny,” Mrs. Jackson says. “But even if the map had been printed yesterday, we wouldn’t be on it.”
I think about telling them what can happen if all you do is pencil this place onto your own personal map, but I manage to keep my mouth shut about that. I actually manage to keep it shut till the end of class, when everybody starts home for lunch.
I’m on my way out the door, thinking about the leftover fried chicken Mom said we’d finish at lunchtime, when somebody punches me on the arm and says, “What’s the matter, Fritz? You deaf or something?” It’s this lanky, tough-looking kid with greasy-looking blond hair.
“How was I supposed to know you meant me? My name’s Franklin.” And then I add, “You can call me Frank, if you want.”
“Nah. I’m gonna call you Fritz,” the boy says, and he turns to the scrawny kid that’s with him and asks, “Hey, Red—don’t you think he looks like Fritz in that comic about them Katzenjammer Kids? You know the one I mean?”
Red squints at me and says, “Yeah, I’ve seen it, and he does look sort of like Fritz. It’s the way that dark hair of his stands up on the top of his head, right, Lonny?”
I turn away without waiting to hear Lonny’s answer, but as I leave the building, he yells, “See you after lunch, Fritz.” I start across the school yard, and when I hear running footsteps behind me, I steel myself for another punch.
Fortunately, it’s Kathy. “Those two stirred up trouble at school all last year,” she says when she catches up. “Just ignore them.”
“You sound like my mom. I’d rather take my dad’s advice—it worked pretty well back at my old school.” Kathy looks interested, so I tell her. “Dad says when somebody teases you, you’ve got to figure out a way to show it doesn’t bother you. If you let them think they can get your goat, they’ll never give you a minute’s peace, so you have to sort of turn things around and take the wind out of their sails.”
Kathy frowns. “I don’t get it.”
“Here’s a for instance. Lonny and his red-haired friend called me ‘Fritz,’ right? Well, if I started telling everybody to call me Fritz instead of Franklin, it wouldn’t be much fun for those two any more, and I wouldn’t feel like I was their victim, either.” Besides, kids might think twice before they tried anything with somebody named Fritz. Who sounds tougher, Fritz or Franklin?
Kathy’s eyes grow wide, and she says, “But you wouldn’t really change your name, would you?”
“Might as well. If those two keep calling me Fritz, the other kids are going to pick it up anyway. That’s the way it always works.” After a few more steps, I add, “I should have kept my big mouth shut in class.”
“You have to participate if you want to get A’s,” Kathy says. “Besides, those guys have a grudge against us anyway.” I’m wondering who she means by us when she adds, “They don’t like it that scientists’ families live in apartments and they’re stuck in trailers or Quonset huts. Places without bathrooms.”
I can feel my eyebrows shoot up. “No bathrooms? You’ve got to be kidding!”
Kathy shakes her head. “Nope. They’ve got bath houses that everybody shares.”
I’m really glad we’re almost to my building, because I’m not used to discussing bathrooms with girls. “Well, this is where I live. See you later.”
I head for the kitchen, where Mom’s spooning potato salad onto our plates next to the fried chicken I’d been thinking about. “Hi, Franklin. How was your morning?”
I pull out a chair and say, “It was fine. From now on, though, I want you to call me Fritz.”
Mom frowns. “If you want a nickname, what’s wrong with ‘Frank’? I think you’ll be letting yourself in for a rough time if you choose something that sounds as German as ‘Fritz.’ I can’t imagine why—”
“Mom. You know how my hair sort of stands up because of that cowlick I’ve got? Sort of like Fritz in that comic strip? The Katzenjammer Kids?”
A look of understanding crosses her face. “So you’re fighting fire with fire, like your dad’s taught you to. I hope—”
“Looks like a good lunch, Mom,” I say as she pours my milk.
Apparently she realizes I don’t want to hear what she hopes, because she drops that subject and says, “After today you might have to fix your own lunch sometimes, Franklin.”
“Fritz,” I remind her. “How come?”
“Because I’ve got a job over at the Tech Area.”
“No kidding! A job doing what, Mom?”
“I’ll be secretary for—well, for one of the scientists.”
I put down my milk glass and ask, “Don’t you know which one yet?”
“I know which one, Franklin.”
“Fritz,” I say automatically. “Are you trying to tell me that you can’t even let your own son know who your boss is?”
Instead of answering, she says, “I’ll probably take a sandwich to eat at my desk most days, at least until I’ve dealt with all the work that’s been piling up.”
I’m beginning to see what Dad meant about secrecy. “Well, I’d better start back so I’m not late for my afternoon classes.” And so I don’t have to walk back with Kathy. The last thing I need is for those guys to start teasing me about my “girlfriend.”
I’m starting home at the end of the school day when Kathy catches up to me and says, “Hey, are you any good at ping-pong?”
I allow as how I’m not too bad at it, and she says, “Want to try a game or two over at the PX?”
“What’s the PX?” I ask. She gives me this shocked look, so I remind her that I only got here yesterday afternoon.
“P for Post, X for Exchange,” Kathy explains. “It’s kind of a combination store, snack bar, and place for off-duty soldiers to relax and have a good time, but anybody can go there. This early, the ping-pong table’s probably free. Come on.”
I don’t remember actually saying I was going to play, but there’s nothing else to do—and nobody else to do it with—so, what the heck.
We go inside the PX, and my mouth falls open when I see all the candy bars and packs of chewing gum lined up along the counter near the cashier. “Hershey bars! I don’t think I’ve seen one of those since the first year of the war.” I fish in my pocket and find a nickel, and as soon as I’ve paid I start tearing off the wrapper. “Want some?” I ask, hoping she’s allergic to chocolate.
“Maybe a couple of squares,” she says, so I break two of them off for her and then fold the next four into a cube and pop it in my mouth. Kathy grins and says, “You look like you just died and went to heaven. They’ve got a lot of stuff here and at the commissary—that’s the grocery store the army runs—that you can’t buy other places ’cause of wartime shortages. My Dad says the army tries to keep the people here satisfied by ‘catering to their creature comforts.’ Come on, before somebody else gets that ping-pong table.”
We hit the ball back and forth for a while, and when that starts to get tiresome, I say, “Want to try a game? You can serve first.”
Kathy catches the ball I toss her. “Ready?” she asks.
I nod, and—Holy cow! That ball whizzed past before I had a chance to raise my paddle! One of the GIs over by the pinball machines tosses the ball back to me, and I toss it to Kathy. Her second serve is exactly like the first, but this time I manage to get a swing at it.
I connect with the third serve, but the ball fwops into the net. This is pitiful—I’m being smeared! I manage to return her next serve, but she’s put so much spin on it that I miss her side of the table completely. Gotta get this last one. I’m sort of crouched down, waiting for it to come zinging at me, and she does this totally different kind of serve that drops the ball up close to the net.
“Zero serving five,” Kathy says. She’s got this deadpan look on her face, but it’s pretty obvious she’s enjoying herself. Well, I’ve got a fierce serve, so now’s my chance to catch up. I give the ball a top spin, but she slams it back, and she’s got this triumphant tone in her voice when she calls the score. “Zero, six.”
I take a deep breath and look at the left side of the table, then serve a fast one to the right side. She hits it, and as the ball arcs over the net, I see my chance for a slam. But instead of a normal bounce, the ball hits the table and makes a bunch of little hops.
“Zero, seven. Game’s over,” Kathy says, setting down her paddle.
“Over! But—”
“It’s a skunk game, Fritz. If the score is 7-0 or 11-1, the losing player’s ‘skunked’ and you don’t bother to play to 21. Come on, let’s go.”
We cut across a nearly empty dance floor and pass a table where older kids are drinking cokes. “I thought you told me you were good at ping-pong,” Kathy says as we go outside.
First she beats me, and then she rubs it in. “I said I was good at ping-pong, not excellent at it. Who taught you to play like that, anyway?”
“My brother. Matthew hasn’t lost a ping-pong game since he was fifteen. Not that he’s had a chance to play lately—he’s overseas.”
“Atlantic theater or Pacific?”
Kathy says shortly, “He’s fighting in Italy.”
“Atlantic theater, then,” I say.
“I hate all this talk about ‘theaters,’ like Matthew’s over there watching a play instead of risking his life.”
Since her voice is kind of shaky, I go back to the subject of ping-pong. “How come you just pitty-patted around when we were volleying, Kathy?”
“Why do you think? ’Cause I didn’t want to give you a chance to figure out how to return my shots.”
Not much chance of that. Oh, well. At least nobody from school saw me being smeared.
When I get home, Mom’s sitting on the balcony with a pad of paper on her lap. Writing to Grandma and Vivian, I’ll bet. “Looks like you’ve found a friend,” she says.
“Not exactly, Mom.”
“At least you have somebody to walk to and from school with. How did your first day go, hon?”
“About like you’d expect.”
Mom frowns, like she’s trying to decide exactly how I meant that, so I figure I’d better distract her. “Remember that rock I picked up when Dad stopped the car yesterday?” I ask. “It’s ‘volcanic tuff.’ I found a book in the school library that’s got a whole section on—get this—The Recent Volcanic History of New Mexico.” I guess their idea of recent is a lot different from mine.
“You like the school, then?”
So much for distracting her. “School’s fine, Mom.” Actually, school is fine. There’s always going to be a couple of kids you wish went to some other school—reform school, maybe. I’m just glad Lonny and Red are only in one of my classes.
It feels sort of strange to start out for school without Mom telling me to have a good day—but no stranger than it felt when she went off to her first day at work this morning looking as excited as I felt on the first day of school. Boy, that seems a lot longer ago than yesterday.
I’m halfway down the steps when I see Kathy coming, and she’s already seen me, so I can’t duck back inside till she’s gone past.
“Hi, Fritz,” Kathy calls, and I decide that since Lonny and his pal are going to tease me anyhow, I might as well walk with her. I’m kind of pleased that she used my new name without being reminded.
“What did you write your homework composition on?” I ask her as we set off. “I did mine on the places I want to go while we’re out here—the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and then down to Mexico. I figure if we save up our gasoline ration stamps, we could manage all that.”
Kathy’s shaking her head, so I argue, “I know we’re not supposed to travel because of the war, but it’s not like we’d be going by bus or train and taking up space a soldier on leave could use to get home.”
“You might as well forget it, Fritz,” Kathy says. “In the first place, scientists at the Lab don’t take vacations—they all work six days a week, including holidays like Labor Day and New Year’s. And in the second place, we aren’t allowed to go any farther than a hundred miles from here. It’s one of the rules.”
I stare at her, wondering if Dad knew about all this when he agreed to come here. I’ll bet Mom didn’t.
“I wrote a fake ‘What I Did on My Vacation’ composition,” Kathy says. “I put in all this stuff about going to the shore and visiting my grandparents, and I ended it with ‘and then I woke up here on the Hill.’ ”
I don’t answer, ’cause we’re almost to the school yard, and Lonny and Red are hanging around, looking this way.
“Hey, Fritz!” Lonny hollers. “Who’s your girlfriend?”
“This is Kathy,” I holler back. “Who’s your girlfriend?”
That stops him for a minute, but then he says, “Red and I don’t have girlfriends.”
“Hey, that’s too bad,” I say as Kathy and I walk up to them. Lonny and Red look at each other and then look back at us. They can’t seem to think of anything to say, which is fine with me.
The bell sounds, and the two of them dash to the building. As Kathy and I walk toward the door, she says, “If they’re going to carry on like that, maybe you’d rather not walk to school with me.”
She should have thought about that sooner. “Don’t worry about it,” I tell her as we go inside. “Those two are going to have it in for me no matter who I walk with.”
My morning classes seem to crawl by, but it’s finally time for social studies—the one class I have with Lonny and Red. Mrs. Jackson starts to call the roll, and each person answers “present” until she calls “Franklin?”
Before I can say what I’d planned to, Red calls out, “You mean ‘Fritz,’ don’t you?”
A couple of people snicker, but they shut up fast when I say, “He’s right, Mrs. Jackson. I’ve decided to go by my nickname this year. I want everybody to call me Fritz.”
Mrs. Jackson looks from me to Red, and then back to me again. She seems sort of uncertain, so I say, “I’d like you to change my name to ‘Fritz’ in your roll book, ma’am. All my other teachers have.” I asked each of them privately, before class started, but I wanted to make things really clear to Lonny and Red—and Red played right into my hands.
There’s complete silence in the room while Mrs. Jackson makes the change in her attendance book, and it takes all my self-control not to turn around to see how Lonny and Red are reacting. I figure Kathy will tell me.
When class is over, Mrs. Jackson asks me to stay behind. “Are you sure you want to be called Fritz?” she asks.
I meet her worried eyes and say, “Yes, ma’am. I’m sure.”
She looks at me for a moment—her eyes are a deep blue color, with long dark lashes—before she says, “All right, then. You may go.”
Kathy’s waiting at the door, and she says, “You should have seen their faces! They couldn’t believe what they were hearing.”
“Now what do you think of my dad’s advice?” I ask her.
“It sure worked today,” Kathy says, and I kind of like the way she’s looking at me now. With respect. Maybe I still have a chance to make a fresh start.
After school, I decide to explore the meadow Mom said she walked to yesterday afternoon—when the walls of the apartment started to close in on her, as she put it. I figure a meadow ought to have some interesting plants for me to identify and add to Notes on Flora and Fauna—the notebook I started when we visited Grandma Madden in Michigan last summer.
I find the notebook and the copies of Guide to Southwestern Plants and Birds of New Mexico that I borrowed from the school library, grab an apple and a couple of fig bars, and I’m on my way.
I’m trying to identify the small yellow blossoms growing along the bridle path that goes through the meadow when I hear hoofbeats. I look up and see Manny, the Spanish-American kid who’s in almost all my classes, coming toward me on this huge black horse.
“Holy cow!” I say when they stop. “How many hands high is he, anyway?” Thanks to my sister’s constant talk about horses, I know enough not to ask how tall he is.
“Almost seventeen hands. Nice, ain’t he? I call him Coal Dust.”
“Is he yours?”
Manny shakes his head. “I don’t own him, but I ride him all the time. Anybody can ride them army horses they’ve got back there in the stable. And now I got a question for you, Fritz. What the heck are you doin’ out here with a book?”
“Trying to identify some of the plants that don’t grow where I’m from.”
“You don’t need no book,” Manny says scornfully. “Just ask me.”
I look up at him, not sure whether he’s serious, and he gestures at the patch of orange flowers a little way off the path and says, “That there’s Indian paintbrush.” And then he tells me the name of the yellow blooms I was trying to identify when he rode up.
I open my Flora and Fauna notebook, and Manny watches me write down what he told me. When I finish, he says, “You’re different from most of them Anglos, you know?”
“Different how?”
Manny shrugs. “You don’t come here acting like anything you don’t already know ain’t worth knowing. And you got respect for living things.” His face clouds over, and he says, “You shoulda seen this mesa before they started ripping it up with machines and putting all them ugly green buildings everywhere.”
“How long have you lived around here, anyhow?”