Dirty Faces - Book 2

Chapter 15: What's in a Name

Chapter 15: What's in a Name

Tommy hadn't caught a thing all day; it probably didn't help that Rowdy kept chucking little rocks into the water right by his line, but nobody really seemed to mind. The three of them probably shouldn't have been sitting on the edge of that train bridge, but there was nobody around to tell them not to. The summer was winding down and it was almost cutting time. Ginny savored the last days she had to play with her friends before then because when it was over, school would be starting. Granted, her friends these days mostly just meant Tommy and Rowdy.

Nothing in particular had happened between any of them. It just seemed that, as the summer went on, by some natural, albeit unsettling, progression, the others had drifted away somewhat. Becky and J.D. were a pair, though what they did together was anybody's guess. And Danny had managed to become best buddies with, of all people, Sam Green.

"I can't believe him. My own brother, a traitor," Tommy lamented, staring at his line.

"How is he a traitor?" asked Rowdy.

"Sam Green? That's the worst person you could even talk to, let alone be friends with."

"I wasn't aware we had an enemy. What all did I miss last summer?"

"We don't have an enemy," said Ginny. "There's just a lot of reasons to not like Sam, that's all."

"Like what?"

Tommy leaned forward so he could see past Ginny and look Rowdy in the eye. "Like he hit a girl."

Rowdy cocked his head to one side; he looked thoughtful for a moment. "Not really."

"You weren't there!" said Tommy.

"And neither were you," Rowdy reminded him. "But I did hear all about it, and to be fair, it really shouldn't count as hitting a girl."

"How so?"

"Because the girl he hit was...Ginny."

Ginny jerked her head around and gave Rowdy a particularly hateful look. "What's that supposed to mean? Ain't I a girl?"

"Well, yeah. But me and Tommy here know not to hit you."

"Because she's a girl," said Tommy.

"No. Because we don't wanna get the tar beat out of us."

Unable to make any legitimate arguments, Ginny and Tommy glared at him for an uncomfortably long time before turning their attention back to Tommy's fishing line. Ginny wasn't sure how she was supposed to take that last comment. Was it a compliment or a jab? Nobody said anything for a while; they couldn't afford for there to be any tension between the three of them. Finally, unable to take the silence or the uneventful fishing excursion any longer, Rowdy said, "We should swim."

"Yeah," his companions agreed.

"Let me reel in my line and we'll head down to the river bank," said Tommy.

"The river bank?" said Rowdy, appalled. "Why would we go down there when we could just jump?"

The bridge wasn't terribly high, but there was just something about jumping off bridges that seemed unnecessarily reckless. Still, Ginny didn't think it was such a bad idea.

"You don't have to live up to your name, ya know," said Tommy.

"I'd rather have the kind of name you don't wanna live up to than be named after a crazy recluse aunt that lives in a shack out on the mountain," said Ginny, attempting to keep the peace between them.

Recognition flashed in Tommy's eyes. "As in Virginia?"

"Yeah."

"You're kin to Aunt Virgie?"

" 'Fraid so."

Tommy shook his head. "There are worse people to be named after."

Ginny disagreed. It was probably the reason she had those weird dreams - she was marked by the name. As if being a Paserella in the land of MacSomethings and O'Whatevers wasn't bad enough, she had to be named after a loony relative who may well have been a witch; not that she believed in that kind of thing, but still. Besides, she'd never heard anything good about the woman.

"When we used to live out on the mountain, me and my brothers would play in the woods all the time," Tommy explained. "Sometimes, we would wander out to her place and dare each other to go knock on her door and run away. We didn't know her, but we knew who she was." He looked out at the water. Ginny waited for his explanation as to why being her namesake wasn't such a bad thing. Once again the uninformed party, Rowdy sat quietly and waited, too.

"But then me and Danny got the scarlet fever. It was one of those times Pap was gone so long and it was just us boys at the house. Andy took us to see her and she told him what to do to make us better."

"Did it involve burying a stick or turning around three times with your nose pinched?" said Ginny.

"No. I don't know what it was. Some kind of brew. But we got better."

Rowdy leaned forward. "My uncle's talked about her. Calls her a medicine woman. That can't be so bad, Ginny."

Ginny didn't say anything. She was beginning to feel like they were ganging up on her, and she didn't like it one bit.

"How's she doing?" Rowdy asked her.

"Probably dead. I've never met her."

"But ya don't know? Nobody's ever been out to check on her?"

"Not that I know of."

Rowdy shook his head. "That ain't right. She's family."

Ginny had to bite her tongue to continue keeping the peace. It was probably the heat that had them all getting under one another's skin like they were, anyway. They were all quiet a while before Tommy finally reeled in his line and said, "Enough of this. We should be swimming. Let's head down to the bank."

Rowdy stood and puffed out his chest. "If we're gonna swim, we're gonna do it right."

Tommy rolled his eyes. "Come on, Ginny, let's go."

Ginny stood up and looked at Rowdy. "I'll jump if you jump."

"What? No!" Tommy hissed.

"On three?" said Rowdy.

"On three. One!"

"Two!"

"Three!" And with that, Ginny and Rowdy jumped off the bridge into the cool river water below. Tommy waited on the bridge until their heads bobbed back up to the surface.

"You coming, or are ya chicken?" Rowdy called up to him.

Tommy sighed. "What the heck." And then he jumped in, too.