by Lewis Harris
"No," I answered, stepping up and taking them from his hands. I looked to the brick house where Lenora Bones had recently taken up residence. Scanning with the binoculars, I finally found my neighbor's face in a second-floor window, staring back through binoculars of her own. She lowered her spyglasses and winked.
What the heck was going on here?
The old woman smiled and waved, then stepped back from the window. Dark curtains dropped, and she was gone.
It seemed I wasn't the only spy in the neighborhood.
Four
Six months ago, when we first moved from Texas to Sunny Hill, California, I couldn't sleep. At first, I thought it was simply the nervousness of starting a new life, the excitement of being in a new place and living in a new house. But weeks passed, and I still couldn't get through the night without tossing and turning. Often I stayed awake all night, watching shadows play across the ceiling. I listened to the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs and the gurgle of water pouring through pipes hidden in the walls and the beating of moth wings against the window. It seemed that I noticed every little sound. I tried wrapping my pillow around my head to block out the noises that were once little but now deafeningly loud, but it didn't help.
My mother was worried because I looked tired all the time. Black circles appeared under my eyes. I lost my appetite. I didn't enjoy eating anymore. My favorite food—bananas—tasted awful. Broccoli had always been bad, but now it was worse. I despised carrot cake. I hated hot chocolate. Orange juice made me irritable. I loathed lemon bars and blueberries and green peas. Even Neapolitan ice cream made me gag—or at least the chocolate part did. I liked the strawberry part. And I didn't mind the vanilla. And I didn't mind spaghetti or lasagna or ravioli—or any kind of pasta, so long as it was buried in tomato sauce. I didn't mind a rare hamburger with loads of ketchup. Or red cabbage stew. Or red beans and rice. Or red snapper with a red pepper sauce and a sprinkling of paprika. Or anything red, really.
So I ate red foods and felt better.
And then I began sleeping under my bed.
You wouldn't think it was comfortable, but I slept like a baby. Each night, after I finished reading, I'd snap off the light and crawl under the bed with my blanket, and sleep the sleep of the dead. Or the undead. It was as if I fell into a deep coma where my newly sensitive senses could find respite.
Until last night.
Now I found myself tossing and turning once more, but this time with the nightmarish red fingernails of Ms. Larch clutching at me in sleep. When the alarm clock buzzed in the morning, I jerked awake from fitful sleep, banging my head on the wooden brace underneath the bed. "Good grief," I grumbled aloud, rubbing the knot already rising on my noggin. It was not a great way to start the day.
"You sure you don't want me to take you to school again this morning?" Dad asked, looking up from the sports scores in the newspaper.
"It's only a ten-minute pedal away," I assured him. I'd decided to ride my bicycle.
Mom had already left to substitute at the high school, and Dad would be leaving soon to do whatever a business systems analyst did. I finished my strawberry yogurt, grabbed my lunch box and school bag, and collected my bike from the garage.
The sun was barely up over the rooftops along Cherry Street. I coasted down the driveway and pedaled slowly past the house next door. Long shadows thrown by twisted trees fell across the yard, climbing up the brick walls of the Bone Lady's house. Black curtains were drawn closed. Did one of the curtains move at the upstairs window in the corner? Silver letters on the black mailbox spelled out the name Lenora Bones.
A sudden squeaking came from behind. I was startled by the shrill ringing of bells and a loud clatter as three bicycles sped past, almost knocking me over. I wobbled on my bike, losing my balance. I had to drop a foot to the street to keep from crashing. Goons!
Sandy Cross and her entourage pedaled past, yipping and squealing. "C'mon, Stephanie!" they cried. "C'mon, slowpoke, you're gonna be late!"
Imbeciles. Excessive trampolining had obviously scrambled their bird-sized brains. I steadied myself and followed slowly after their shrinking shapes. I glanced once more over my shoulder at the Bone Lady's house. At the corner window, an edge of black curtain was pulled aside slightly, as if someone were peeking from the shadows.
I made it to school with time to spare. In Mr. Dumloch's class, sitting at my desk behind Sandy Cross, I fought the urge to reach into her mass of blond hair and thump her on her ear.
The stink of Dumpy Dumloch's cologne did little to improve my mood. He wallowed behind his desk, following his finger down the roll, calling names. "Dwight Foote?"
"Here," Foote answered, stretching his response into a yawn. His mouth opened into a cavern in the middle of his giant face. Would it be too much for him to put a hand over that hole? Were these kids raised in barns?
Fumio Chen tapped the back of my head with a rolled-up paper. "Here's a copy of last month's Sunny Hill Bee," he said, handing it to me. "Larch is on page three."
There were only four pages.
Class began and I put the paper aside for later. Dumloch, impossibly, was even more boring than he'd been yesterday. How could one man make the history of the entire world boring? Math was a little better—and the instructor, Mrs. Fry, definitely had a glass eye. She blinked, but the brown marble never moved. Gym class was—as it forever would be—unbearable. My legs really are too white for public display—gorgeous, but too white. And did I really need to get all hot and sweaty in gym class right before lunch? Also, I'm pretty sure it's universally accepted within the medical community that sit-ups are actually not the best thing for your spine. Unfortunately, Coach Cooper (who smells like cigarettes) wasn't privy to that information. She also seemed entirely disinterested in anything I had to offer on the subject.
Lunch couldn't come fast enough.
Today, I'd packed fruit punch, raspberry jam on white bread, watermelon squares, and two sticks of red licorice. I took a seat at one of the long cafeteria tables and poked my drinking straw into the fruit-punch box. I unrolled the school newspaper Fumio had given me in first period. Beside me, Dwight Foote dropped his tray of food onto the table and clumsily plopped onto the bench. His elbow jostled my hand, and I dribbled fruit punch down my wrist. I bit back a curse, scowling.
"What's up, Svetlana?" He smiled lamely behind his thick eyeglasses. Blink. Blink.
I slid away. "Are you familiar with the concept of personal space, Foote? Are you trying to get on my bad side?"
"You're kidding, right? You don't even have a good side. I think you're antisocial or something."
"You know, your opinion would mean so much more if I didn't have to look at the macaroni in your mouth while you expressed it."
He closed his mouth, chewing with a frown.
"Your potential is appreciated," I informed him.
The cafeteria tables filled up as everyone in first lunch collected their meals and took a seat. Banners on the walls cried victory for the Sunny Hill Spartans. A poster announced the Spring Fling Carnival coming this weekend. Mr. Dumloch waddled through the busy room carrying a sack lunch. He disappeared behind a swinging door marked TEACHER LOUNGE. Three tables over, I spied the back of Sandy Cross's blond head bobbing between her two minions, Marsha and Madison.
I returned my attention to the school newspaper and found the story regarding Ms. Larch. There was a grainy black-and-white photo of her standing next to the flagpole at the front of the school. The headline read "Sunny Hill Welcomes Ms. Larch" and below that was Fumio Chen's name followed by two paragraphs describing how excited Ms. Larch was to be a part of Sunny Hill Middle School and how much she looked forward to working with the faculty and students. Chen's hard-hitting exposé not only revealed her favorite food and the name of her dog, it also uncovered the fact that her astrological sign was Pisces. Great job, Fumio. As I neared the end of the article, an electric tingling tickled down my spine, and my nose filled with the scent of spoi
led food. I looked up.
"That's not a very good picture of me, is it?" Ms. Larch whispered, reaching across my shoulder and tapping a long red fingernail on the page. "Couldn't you have taken a better photograph than that, Dwight?" she asked.
Beside me, Dwight Foote garbled, "It was a good picture; it just didn't print well." His mouth was crammed with fried chicken now.
"Please chew with your mouth closed, Dwight," she suggested.
Ms. Larch leaned down so that her face was only inches from my own. Her cherry-candy-flavored breath blew in my face. "Does the story interest you, Svetlana?" She lifted her hand from the paper and rested it on my shoulder.
I pulled away.
Foote said, "Fumio wanted to do a story on Svetlana, and she nearly threw him out a window." He laughed and nudged at me annoyingly with his elbow.
"You don't want to be in the school paper, Svetlana?" Ms. Larch asked, feigning curiosity. "Don't you want everyone to know who you are?"
Who I am? What did she know about who I was?
Her nails pressed for a moment, menacingly, into my shoulder. She stood straight and patted me gently. "Enjoy your lunch." She reached and plucked a cube of watermelon from my plastic tub. "You don't mind, do you?" She closed her red lips around it. "It's one of my favorites."
She winked and walked away. Something in the way she moved made me think of a cat—and not a tame tabby but a stalking tiger or lioness. She didn't walk so much as glide across the cafeteria floor. Her fire-engine-red dress clung like Christmas wrapping paper, and her hips tick-tocked like the pendulum of a clock. She looked more like a movie star than a sixth-grade science teacher—even if she did smell like garbage.
"Does she always stink like that?" I asked Foote.
"Like what?"
"Are you kidding? Does your nose even work? That woman smells like garbage. Ms. Larch needs to be taken out to the curb." I thought the remark was pretty clever, but Foote looked at me as if he didn't get it. "You don't smell her?"
"What?"
I couldn't believe it. He didn't have a clue. As big as Foote's nose was on that basketball-sized head of his, he obviously didn't suffer the aromatic bite wafting off Sylvia Larch. I watched her disappear through the teacher lounge door.
Did Ms. Larch know I was a vampire? And was she one herself? Did she sleep under her bed and eat only foods that were red? Yesterday, she'd probed my thoughts and laughed over my disdain of chocolate. She'd poured her syrupy voice into my head: Sweet Svetlana, I know who you are. She had antagonized me with the red apple, confronted me by shoving it in my face. What did she know?
Later in the afternoon, in science, Ms. Larch offered no more chocolate treats. She stank to high heaven, riper today than yesterday. The rot smell now was even worse than it had been in the cafeteria. The class lesson was about decomposition, about the breakdown of tissues, which seemed fitting. "Decomposition," she said, "begins at the instant of death."
She sure loved the subject. She said lots of stuff about worms and flies, smiling all the while. When the final bell rang, everyone hastily gathered up their materials and rushed out into the hallway.
I collected my books and approached the teacher's desk just as the last kid banged out the door. Ms. Larch's glinting green eyes followed me with amusement. I wondered if this was what a mouse saw when it came upon a cat.
"Ms. Larch?"
She steepled her slender fingers beneath her chin. "Yes, Svetlana?" Her red mouth curled at the corners.
I concentrated, forming the words in my mind. Can you hear me? I thought, directing my words into her head.
Her eyes went wide in slight amusement. "Of course I can hear you," she replied.
I knew it was real, but there was still a part of me that didn't believe it could be happening. I stood frozen before her desk.
She laughed.
Had I thought that I'd only imagined her words in my mind yesterday? Was this really possible? Are you ... like me? I spilled the question without thinking, and suddenly found myself quivering in anticipation, hanging on the answer.
"Like you?" The expression over her face turned quizzical. She reached and tapped a red fingernail to her lips. Her green eyes sparkled, amused. "And what ... are you like, Svetlana?"
"A ... vampire?" I whispered.
For a moment, her face showed no expression whatsoever, then she dissolved into quiet giggling. I waited for her to stop, but she didn't. She kept laughing, covering her mouth and giggling through her fingers. She began slapping her desk, and soon her giggles grew louder, turning to guffaws. She wrapped her arms about herself and laughed and laughed. Her eyes watered, and tears began streaming down her face. She pounded the desk with her fist and gulped for air and pointed and laughed.
She was still laughing when I left.
I pedaled home with my teeth clenched and my cheeks burning.
Five
The Bone Lady interrupted our dinner with a plateful of cookies.
The knocking came as a sandpapery-soft whisper at the front door. Mom put down her soupspoon and stepped away to investigate. She returned a moment later with our elderly neighbor in tow.
"Oh, please, don't let me disturb your meal!" Lenora Bones exclaimed, shuffling into the dining room, bringing with her a cloud of scrumptious-cookie aroma. She clutched a tinfoil-wrapped plate in her spidery hands. The emaciated old lady couldn't have been more aptly named; she was nothing but thin skin stretched over a tiny skeleton. She stood slightly stooped, barely rising to the height of my mother's shoulder.
Mom introduced Dad and me.
"Oh, yes, I've seen you playing with that energetic dog of yours, young lady," Lenora Bones said brightly. Her eyes, wet and shiny, were as gray as storm clouds.
"Please join us for dinner," Mom invited.
"Oh, no, I couldn't. But thank you. I wanted to stop by sooner and say hello, but with cleaning and unpacking and settling in—so much work—I just haven't found time until now. I finally got around to baking cookies and thought it might provide a good excuse to drop by and introduce myself." She set the covered plate on the table. Her knotted fingers were like thin twigs; the skin on her hands was veined and spotted. "It's only a few sugar cookies."
Mother pulled a chair from the table and insisted Ms. Bones take a seat.
"Well, I feel just awful intruding...." The older woman looked around, embarrassed, but let herself be seated.
"Don't be silly," Mom assured, snapping her fingers and pointing me to the kitchen. "I've been meaning to knock on your door and say hello."
I went into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a bowl of soup.
"Tomato soup! My favorite!" Our wrinkled neighbor clapped her hands with pleasure. "Thank you so much, Svetlana, it's wonderful. And such a beautiful name!" She reached out quickly and grabbed my hand. She squeezed with more strength than I would have thought her capable of.
"Well," Dad began, clearing his throat. "Stephanie has only recently become fixated on the name Svetlana. She's actually named after my mother, who—"
"Oh, Svetlana is an excellent name!" Ms. Bones interrupted, nodding with vigor. "Very exotic—very mysterious ... and strong! I believe that everyone should choose his or her own name. Of course, Bones is the perfect name for me!" The old woman chuckled, unfolding a paper napkin and stuffing a corner of it into the high neck of her black dress. "Would you believe my father actually named me Sheila? Oh, I'm not a Sheila at all!" She winked at me and tapped the brim of her bowl with her silver spoon. She ladled up a spoonful of steaming soup and blew across it. "This looks lovely."
"Where have you recently moved from, Ms. Bones?" Mom asked.
"Anyone who feeds me dinner must call me Lenora, am I right? And London, England, was my previous address." Slurp. Slurp. "Such wonderful soup! But I've been a bit of a tramp since retiring. I've lived here and there and everywhere: Australia and China and the lower parts of Peru—I can no longer take the thin air in the mountains, u
nfortunately. I've lived in almost every corner of Africa—quite a place that is. Nice and hot."
"And you're retired?" Dad wondered.
"From teaching," she answered, blowing and slurping. "Delicious."
"I've just returned to teaching myself," Mom explained. "Substituting—until a permanent position opens."
"That's wonderful," Ms. Bones said. "I never did tire of teaching, you know. Or of the children. Or learning. Which might be something Svetlana could lend me a hand with." The old lady swiveled her thin-skinned skull around, fixing me with shiny eyes. "Do you enjoy reading, Svetlana?"
"She reads more than anyone in this house," Mom announced with pride.
"I do like to read," I boasted.
"Of course you do," Lenora Bones agreed. "What intelligent person doesn't? But these tired eyes of mine can't keep up with my appetite! I simply cannot read like I used to—or wish to still. I've got a proposition for you—if you're interested and if your kind parents will allow it." She wrapped her skeletal fingers around my mother's hand. "I had a lovely neighbor girl in London whom I employed to read to me—only a small wage and a few hours a week. It would be so nice if I could continue to do that here." She threw up her hands. "So now I'm discovered! I thought I'd break in with a plate of cookies and see if I couldn't sway you!" Lenora Bones went wide-eyed at her confession, smiling from face to face around the table.
What was she saying? She wanted to pay me to read to her? That sounded too good to be true. What books would she have me read? Charles Dickens or Emily Bronte, I'd bet.
"Well, that would be fine with me," I said, looking from Mom to Dad, shrugging and grinning. Should I ask how much she wanted to pay me? Would that be rude? What if it was something ridiculous, like fifty cents an hour? She had to be at least seventy years old, maybe even eighty. Old people had funny ideas about money. Like Dad's mom, the grandma I was named after. She was a little daffy, always going on about how much everything costs nowadays. Who knew what this old woman was thinking?
