The Youngest One by Nancy Springer

The Youngest One
    Nancy Springer
    “Good morning, Jessica,” called the squatty old woman who always sat on the porch of number 321.
    What’s so good about it? Jessie wanted to scream, her mood as heavy as the backpack hanging from her arm as she trudged toward school. There’s nothing to eat, not even a slice of bread, and Mom’s passed out on the sofa again. But she forced a small smile and replied, “Morning.”
    “Jessica.” Leaning toward her, Warty beckoned her closer. “Warty” was what the kids in the nabe called the old woman because there were bumps on her face, each with a single thick white hair sticking out like a cat’s whisker. Warty’s hunched body looked kind of lumpy too, under her polyester dress, and it bulged like a bean bag over the edges of her chair. Most of the kids called her names, laughing at her to her face. But Jessie never wanted to hurt anyone, especially not a bent-over old woman who could barely walk. Her mood was so bad she wished she could ignore old Warty, but that would be mean. So, stepping off the sidewalk, she stood at Warty’s gray, unpainted porch railing.
    The old woman’s knobby hand hovered in the air as she fixed Jessie with a stare. “Are you studying Shakespeare in school right now, Jessica?” Those old eyes, faded blue, almost white, seemed suddenly so bright that facing Warty was like being caught in front of a pair of halogen headlights on high beam.
    “Um, yeah,” Jessie stammered. “Yes.” Eighth graders had to read Shakespeare, written in the sixteenth century and having sooo much to do with Jessie’s life in a low-rent row house on Railroad Street.
    “Which play?”
    “Um…” Jessie had to think. “ As You Like It. ”
    The old woman nodded once, decisively, and her crooked hand settled in her lap. “Read it closely and pay attention,” she ordered.
    “Um, sure. All right.” Sensing herself dismissed, Jessie stepped back and kept walking toward school, though she didn’t feel like going. What was the use? With Dad run off no clue where, and Mom drunk or maybe stoned too, and Jarod and Jason staying out all night instead of helping the way older brothers ought to, what was the use of anything?
    Jessie went to school only because she was hungry. She didn’t have lunch money, but one of her friends would loan her a dollar, or share with her, or something.
    As You Like It? Whatever. Jessica didn’t like it, especially not taking up the whole English period. She did not pay attention.
    Lunch was fish sticks and cornbread. Lots of kids didn’t like it, so Jessica ate what they didn’t want. After lunch she hooked out.
    She did not want to go home—what for? But she couldn’t think of anywhere else she wanted to go, either. So she wandered the streets. Slow, random, eyes on the gray pavement—
    Something the color of a UPS truck squatted right in the middle of the sidewalk in front of her. Lumpy. At first Jessie thought it was a pile left by a very large dog.
    But before she could say, “Ew!” she saw that it was alive and looking at her. Motionless, but watching her.
    She exclaimed, “A toad ?”
    What would a toad be doing in the city? Jessie had never seen one before. But there sat one about the size and shape of a road-killed softball. A toad. Not a frog. Even a city girl ought to know the difference, Jessie considered; a frog would have been all sleek like a biker in leathers, not sloppy and bumpy like it was made of warts.
    “What are you doing here, toad?” Jessie hunkered down to face it as if she were talking with a child.
    The toad just stared at her.
    Weird. Its eyes were blue. A way, way pale blue.
    “Are your eyes supposed to be that color?” Jessie asked. “I mean, what do I know? I never met a toad before. Aren’t you kind of big for a toad?” It also seemed weird that the toad was not afraid of her. Not hopping away. Its front feet turned inward, half hidden under its belly, like crooked little hands. Its hind feet