Fifteen-year-old artist Georgia Bennett is about to give the small town of Kingsburg a big surprise.
To Georgia, the town looks less like the romantic and unique Main Streets she sees in her art books and more like a military barracks, which is not surprising given the strict leadership of its mayor, a retired Army captain. Georgia’s first attempt at inspiring a bit of art appreciation meets a disastrous end. Not that the people of Kingsburg even notice. They are much more captivated by the controversial photographs taken by the new kid in school, Henry Winters.
Once his photographs spread through town with the destructive power of a tornado, Georgia begins to see how Henry operates. He loves the shock value, the thrill of the chase and the attention.
She decides that for every ugly thing Henry does, she will counteract it with something beautiful, like a magnet, her positive to his negative.
Her efforts, however, are constantly undermined by Henry’s ability to give the town something to really talk about, namely, which person was kissing you-know-who behind the you-know-where. Can art grab people’s attention without airing the town’s dirty laundry on a rope across Main Street? And, if so, could it ever happen in the absolute smallest town in the known universe? Maybe not. Although, with the right plan, she bets she could stir things up a bit.
Her plan certainly grabs attention but for all the wrong reasons, and she discovers that the mayor has a very good and very secret reason why he likes to keep his town ship-shape. And so she puts everything on the line and plans her final masterpiece.
It will be larger than life and impossible to ignore. By doing this, however, she risks more than her reputation: she risks the fury of the mayor, who holds the key to her family’s past—and future.
And she finds that she can ignore the town’s uproar over Henry’s photographs only until his camera captures an image that threatens all that she holds close to her heart.
CHAPTER ONE
Tommy and I were taking the shortcut home through Mr. Bixby’s cornfield after school when the tall stalks behind us twisted and shook like blades of grass under a mower. Tommy screamed and raced ahead. It took me a few seconds to catch up, even though I have longer legs and can usually outrun him, especially in circumstances like this, mainly imminent death and other such annoyances. But since he was only eight and I was fifteen, I knew I had to protect my little brother from the attack of the creature behind us.
“Georgia! Wait up!”
I thudded to a stop. I don’t think Tommy heard the voice and was twenty feet ahead of me before he looked over his shoulder and didn’t see me following him anymore.
“Georgia! Georgia!”
I turned around. Randy Pepperwood charged through a row of cornstalks. His feet were too big for the rest of him, and he galloped toward me as if making a proper clown’s entrance at the circus. The nylon jacket tied around his waist loosened and fell behind him, but he kept running, one arm waving, the other tucked behind his back.
“Georgia! Wait!”
“I’m not moving,” I said, shaking my head. What was it about ten-year-olds? Did the obvious always need to be explained? Telling a non-moving person to wait was about as original as opening a door and then ringing the bell. Ding-dong!
I never realized how perfectly honest a doorbell could be.
Randy stopped in front of me, pulled his arm out from behind his back, and handed me a bunch of wilted, white daisies. He dropped to one knee and said, “Georgia, will you marry me?”
I didn’t laugh. I could’ve, believe me. It would have been easy.
He gazed up, his little chin jutting out like the prow of a ship braving uncharted seas.
Part of the problem, I suppose, was that he was only ten and not too smart yet. The other part may have something to do with the fact that his older brother (a legal eighteen and two days) was married yesterday and left his parents’ house forever to move to a different county with his new wife. Randy probably thought that if we got married, then he could move out, too.
Not that I blamed him. His daddy, who has the same chin with the indent at the end of it, like a healed cut, yells a lot. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him not yell. His tonsils must be cranberry red.
“Randy,” I said, “I can’t marry you.”
“Yes, you can.”
“What’s going on, Weed?” Tommy asked, out of breath, walking up from behind.
“Randy has asked me to marry him.”
Tommy bit at his lower lip. “Can I hold the pillow?”
When he was four, Tommy had been ring bearer at Uncle Sketcher’s wedding.
“We’re not getting married.”
“Oh, okay. Then can we go home?”
“Just a second.”
I grabbed Randy by the arm and pulled him up. “Randy, I’m sorry. You’re very sweet to ask.”
His chin quivered, and he pulled on the end of his T-shirt, twisting his thumb into it. Two tears, one from each eye, raced down his red cheeks, the left one beating the right to the finish line of his jaw.
“Now, run along home,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve got homework.”
He snatched the daisies from my hand, threw them on the ground, and raised his foot.
I looked down at the bundle. To the left was a two-foot tall weed, its green and purple leaves just beginning to push out its puffball flowers.
I screamed, “No!”
With a grunt, he jammed his foot down. He stomped and stomped until the daisies were caked with dirt, their white petals flattened as if they had been pressed for keeping by Uncle Sketcher’s tractor.
Randy vanished into the wall of stalks, but I heard him scream, “Who’d want to marry you anyway?”
I turned to Tommy. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
“See you at home.” He skipped down the row with his arms spread out, hitting the stalks. They moved like a wave behind him as he surfed their green crest.
I looked down at the smashed flowers. Across them lay the long weed that had suffered the same fate under Randy’s tantrum.
There have been times when I’ve felt like that weed, as if someone had come along and pulled me out of the ground, grabbing deeply to make sure there were no roots left over to start a new one to replace it.
Just before I entered kindergarten, I was playing in the garden behind my parents’ house with my little plastic shovel. After my twentieth scoop, I leaned forward, the knees of my overalls already smeared with mud, and plunged my shovel into the ground behind the tomato plant. When I pulled it out, a clump of dirt, like a primitive vase, held a long-stemmed weed. I brought it inside and placed it on the windowsill. It turned crisp and brown the next day. I had killed it. That afternoon I came down with a flu that almost killed me. I was nothing more than a skeleton with pigtails. I had destroyed it and was punished.
When I was twelve, Daddy told me to spray around the back stoop of the house. A jungle of beautiful weeds had grown up on each side of the walkway like a flower path down the aisle at a wedding. He handed me a canister that read, “Weed Block.” I figured sun block protected my skin, so weed block would protect my plants. He hadn’t known that I’d been watering them daily. They shriveled up by the next afternoon.
Standing over them, I squeezed my hands into fists, like an angry prayer, wishing and hoping I wouldn’t get sick again. But it wasn’t me. It was Mom. She died the next week giving birth to Anna Mae, and I sat on that back stoop and cried, watching the dried leaves break off in the wind and tumble away.
From then on I’ve seen the death of a weed as a sign.
I suppose that’s why Tommy started calling me Weed. He said I was the Queen of Weeds and ruled over them. He called them my soil subjects. I think he meant loyal, but with Tommy you never can be sure.
So when Randy stomped that weed into the ground, I knew it was a sign of something awful to come.
Leaving the cornfield, I saw Tommy running for home. I looked beyond Mr. Bixby’s farm and spotted the police car parked in our driveway.
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