Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle Page A

fear was that my name would be the next to appear under his on some graffiti board. All over the school Merle wrote his name great big, Merle Hucks, and no one, not the teachersor principals could figure out when he did it. Then, within a day where Merle wrote his name, someone with a different-color ink, would change the
h
to an
f
and then write a girl’s name below. Misty’s name had appeared once but mine never had. Merle himself had marked through her name, but she didn’t see it as an insult at all; she said he was calling more attention to her name than all the others that had appeared. Though no one would ever admit it, it was kind of a status symbol to have your name appear there; it was a status symbol in the same way as making out was. At that time I had neither experience.
Lord Forgive Me When I Whine.
    That last night we had to list our sins and it seemed Misty and I could have filled a book. We lay in a narrow bottom bunk and whispered back and forth long after lights were out and the Woman at the Well had asked us numerous times to shut up. “Bathsheba? Agape? Can you hear me?” she called from the other side of our cabin, but we ignored her, our bodies quivering with laughter, the November chill, the excitement of breaking the rules. “I’ve got to tell you who all I like,” Misty whispered, her breath like Teaberry gum. “I like Dean’s friend, Ronald, you know the tall one?” She squeezed my arm and I nodded. “I still kind of like Todd Bridger, but who doesn’t.” I nodded again. “And”—she twisted my arm, which was our abbreviated way of saying
don’t you ever as long as you live repeat a word of this it is graveyard talk
—“R.W. Quincy.” She started laughing and I did, too, though I knew that a part of her was
serious.
“And I like Merle,” I said sarcastically, and laughed in the same way. We lay there shaking, our noses cold as we huddled under our sleeping bags.
    “Agape? Bathsheba? I mean it now!”
    Oh Lord, forgive me when I whine;
it was so easy to sin.
    “It’s a birthmark,” Mama said again, all the while rearranging her cornucopia so that it looked like a
natural
tumbling-forth. “And I don’t think that makeup Mo Rhodes gave her does one bitof good other than to get on her clothes.” Mama looked at Daddy as if they were the only two people in the room. “I just want her to see that she can’t let this ruin her life; there are things we just have to
accept.”
She said the word as if it carried some special message to him. Accept. I wanted him to ask her why she did not
accept
Angela. “Why, poor Misty’s weight problem and that orange hair is ten times worse.”
    “Think of it as a beauty mark,” my father said, and turned towards me, his warm type-stained hand cupping my cheek, thumb rubbing firmly as if he could erase the mark. “You see, I recently read how there are people these days who have no wisdom teeth at all, none under the gums even when they x-ray.”
    “And how much is tea in China?” Mama asked, and broke the spaghetti strands not once, but two, three, four times before dropping them into the boiling water.
    “You could’a just fixed rice, Cleva,” he said, and grinned. Then he pulled out a kitchen chair and motioned for me to sit. “Anyway, these folks without their wisdom teeth, well, it’s evolution in action. What happens when people do cut their wisdom teeth?”
    “They get wiser.” Mama started chopping the salad lettuce as if she were making slaw.
    “They get them pulled,” I said.
    “Damn right. Evolution.” My father raised his glass, toasted it softly against my cheek. “One day, wisdom teeth will be extinct and one day everybody will have a beauty mark. You’re just ahead of things.”
    “Fred.” Mama stopped her chopping and turned to stare at him, the long kitchen knife held firmly, her knuckles white with the grip. I knew what she wanted to say, things about false hope and false pride, truth, reality and