I Am the Wallpaper

by Mark Peter Hughes

  “Quick!” I whispered. “Flashlights!”

  With our lights out, it was almost completely dark around us. On the other side of the little clearing, another light moved through the reeds, getting closer. Our visitors had their own flashlight. Suddenly, the wall of reeds opened up and somebody stepped into the sandy area.

  “Such a beautiful night,” whispered a man’s voice, a pretty large man, as far as I could tell from the shadow. In fact, he looked as big as a bear.

  “Glorious!” a woman said. She’d stepped out of the reeds a moment after the man did. “Even prettier than last night.”

  We were at the edge of the clearing. If these people had only known where to point their flashlight, they could have easily caught us sitting there, so we stayed absolutely quiet and still.

  The man turned his light back to the reeds and two more people climbed through to our little sandy area. Even though I couldn’t see the man with the flashlight, I got a brief look at the other three. When I saw them, I stopped breathing. I was close enough to Wen to feel him almost jump too.

  These people weren’t wearing any clothes.

  They were completely, absolutely stark naked.

  There was an old bald man, big and powerful-looking, with a huge belly and a blurry tattoo on the back of his arm. He was holding hands with a skinny old woman with long white hair to her waist. As they stepped into the clearing, they were laughing about something. The person standing next to the man with the flashlight was another old woman, this one with short curly hair and big droopy breasts, but I only saw her for a split second. They all looked really old, maybe in their seventies. Whenever the light passed over any of them, Azra, Wen and I could see everything there was to see.

  Everything.

  Without intending to, we suddenly knew an awful lot about these strangers, the most private things.

  I was horrified.

  Under his breath, Wen said, “Holy—!”

  I elbowed him. He’d said that almost loud enough to be heard. Thankfully, the naked people were still laughing and didn’t seem to notice.

  I felt incredibly guilty. These people probably were staying in the old cottage, so they had a right to be here, unlike us. Every now and then the light gave an unpleasantly clear view of something I’d rather not have seen: secret hair, saggy skin—I didn’t want to know about any of it. Even though it wasn’t on purpose, it was terrible that we had invaded their privacy, and in such an awful way. But what could we do?

  I was too scared to move.

  The two old couples, still holding hands and giggling, ran down the beach and into the water. In the moonlight I watched the large man and the woman with the droopy breasts sit down in the shallow water and splash each other. The second couple ran in deeper. I remember looking at the bald guy and thinking that for a man with such a huge stomach, he had a surprisingly dainty butt.

  After that thought, I felt even worse.

  Then it suddenly occurred to me that these old couples were in love. Okay, so they weren’t beautiful or special as far as I knew, but they certainly looked at each other like there was magic going on. Maybe that sounds stupid, but that’s what I saw. They might have been old, but it sure looked like they still had romance in their lives.

  Wen tugged my arm and all three of us dashed into the reeds behind us. I only just managed to keep hold of my penlight. We were quick, but we made a lot of noise.

  They must have heard us because one of the men called out, “Who’s there?” And then, “Did you hear that?”

  We ran away through the reeds as fast as we could. Maybe they would mistake us for a raccoon or something. As I ran, I found myself comparing those old couples to Calvin and me and every other unsuccessful relationship I knew about. Why was it different for these people? What was their secret? How did they find that kind of real and lasting happiness? Later, that question, the Mystery of the Old Naked People, would run through my mind over and over again.

  We hopped on our bikes and pedaled as fast as we could. Only when we reached the cemetery, a safe distance from the cove, did we slow down enough to talk.

  “Did you see that?” whispered Wen. “Can you believe it?”

  Azra looked traumatized. “That was absolutely disgusting. So gross.”

  I didn’t say so, but I couldn’t help thinking she had missed the point.

  “Don’t ever mention this to anybody,” Wen said. “I don’t ever want them to find us out.”

  “Maybe they’re still coming after us,” Azra said.

  “You think?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going home.”

  The streets flew under my wheels and the houses raced by one after another. And my heart kept pounding. I felt a strange excitement because I had finally had an actual adventure of my own. At last, my good karma must have been paying off. I couldn’t wait for Lillian to come back from her honeymoon so I could tell her.

  chaptereight: three guys

  or

  zen and the

  art of flirting

  I climbed back through the open window to my bedroom as carefully as I could so I wouldn’t make any noise. Unfortunately, as I stepped through the window my shoe caught on the trellis, so I lost my balance and fell onto my bed, accidentally squashing Frank Sinatra. His squeal could have woken the dead. It was loud enough, at least, to wake Tish, and that was saying something. The ferret scrambled away as soon as I hopped off him, but by that time it was too late. The shadow in the other bed sat up.

  “What are you doing?” she asked me. “Where did you go?”

  “None of your business.” I scrambled down from the bed and yanked off my hat, scarf, shoes and pants. I was worried that my mom might come to the room to find out what had made such a racket. Oh God! Why did I have such terrible luck?

  Tish adjusted her pillow so she could sit back against the wall. “This is great! Did you know that my mom told Richard and me to watch out for you? She said you might be a bad influence. Did you know that?”

  “She said what?”

  “I was hoping she was right, and now I think she was. I’m so glad! Where did you go? Did you meet a boy somewhere?”

  What nerve!

  “I already told you it’s none of your business.”

  “Then I must be right. Was it Wen?”

  “All I know,” I said, hopping into bed, “is that you better not say anything about this to anybody.” I put my head on my pillow, and for a while neither of us spoke. I could even hear the crickets outside.

  “Here’s the deal,” Tish whispered after a few minutes. “You tell me where you went tonight and who you were with, and I won’t say anything to Aunt Grace.”

  I sat up and stared at the shadow in the opposite bed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Sure I would. Tell me.”

  She waited quietly while I considered the situation. “Okay,” I said eventually. “Suppose I do. How do I know you won’t blab everything anyway?”

  “You can trust me. And while we’re at it, I have lots of other questions too. Personal questions. You’re going to have to tell me what I want to know. Not just tonight, but anytime I want.”

  “Personal questions? What kind of personal questions?”

  “I don’t know, lots of things. I want to know what it’s like to be a teenager. What’s it like to be pretty and popular? I keep asking you about things but you don’t answer me.”

  Pretty and popular? That was a laugh!

  I had to think fast. I was probably off the hook with my mother for the moment, because if she hadn’t come to investigate the noise by then, she probably wasn’t coming at all. But after years of witnessing just how mad she got whenever she caught my sister after one of her adventures, I knew things would get ugly for me if Tish told her about tonight. At the same time, though, I didn’t want to let a ten-year-old walk all over me.

  “All right,” I said. “But not any old time you want, just tonight. And just one question.�
�

  The dark lump shook her head. “No. You have to answer every question I have or I’ll tell.”

  “No deal, Tish,” I said, trying to sound confident. “You get this one question for sure and that’s all I’ll guarantee. If you ask me another, I might answer and I might not. If you don’t like that deal, go tell, but then you definitely won’t get anything out of me. And I mean ever.”

  We both sat quietly for a long time and I wondered if I’d pushed my luck too far.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Two questions tonight and it’s a deal.”

  Relieved, I lifted my head again. “All right. Where was I? On the beach at Otis Cove. That’s one question. Who was I with? I was with Wen, you were right. Whoop-dee-doo. But Azra was there too. That’s two. Now I have a question for you: Does Richard really have the birthday picture?”

  “Birthday picture?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. Does he?”

  There was a long silence before she answered. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I dropped down to the pillow. I didn’t believe her—I figured she must know. But what could I do?

  “So Wen really is your boyfriend, isn’t he?”

  I pulled the covers up to my neck. “That’s your third question. I’m not going to answer any more. Now, while you think about how long you’re going to keep asking me that over and over again even though I won’t answer it, I’m going to sleep.” I closed my eyes. My heart raced. What did I do to deserve twenty nights with this nosy little girl?

  Eventually, Tish slid down into her bed again and put the pillow back under her head.

  “Good night, Floey,” she whispered.

  Just then, another series of explosions went off outside. I imagined big globes of fire and color somewhere overhead.

  Saturday, July 5, noon

  Dear Me,

  Do ferrets ever lose so much hair they go bald? I’ve heard of hairless cats. Ma found a huge hairball under the kitchen table and told me to clean it up, as if it were my fault. She made me redo all the carpets! I got back at her, though, by singing “We Shall Overcome” in a loud voice the whole time. Ma pretended she didn’t hear me, but I know she did. Once again, New Floey does what Old Floey never would have dared! My voice is a little hoarse now, but it was worth it. In fact, it actually sounds sort of sexy. Kind of Demi Moore–esque. Maybe I should call Wen so he can hear me.

  On second thought, I’ll wait. He should call me.

  Yuck! Richard is such a pig! Just now, Ma leaves the house for only a minute, and as soon as the door closes behind her what does he do? He runs into my room, drops his pants and farts right near my face! Gag! Barf! Billy was at the door, laughing. Truly, they are barnyard animals!! Plus, the boy is sickeningly sweet to Ma but she doesn’t seem to have the faintest clue that it’s all an act. I tried to tell her but she just said I have a bad attitude. His room this morning was an absolute pigsty as usual—except he’d made his bed again. I bet he does that to get in good with Ma.

  Fourteen long days to go until my cousins leave and I’m free.

  My good karma must be sky-high by now!

  P.S.

  I need to get myself another hardcover diary soon. Writing in this spiral notebook just isn’t the same. It feels like I’m doing homework.

  That afternoon I ran into Calvin in the bookstore café next to Gary’s studio. By then it was raining, so I was waiting for Ma to pick me up. If I had noticed him sitting engrossed in a book at the next table I wouldn’t have sat down. In fact, if I’d known he was there I would have stayed hidden in the studio with Gary. But I didn’t recognize him until it was too late. He saw me. We were too close to pretend we didn’t know each other.

  “Hello, Floey,” he said, almost knocking over his tea.

  Talk about dukkha. I almost died of embarrassment right there over my decaf caffe latte.

  “Uh, hi, Calvin,” I managed, my face growing hot. “How are you?”

  He fidgeted a little and gripped his cup nervously with both hands. At least he had the courtesy to be uncomfortable. He looked different in a T-shirt than he did in either his suit or his cowboy hat. Skinnier. Plus, I noticed a big pimple at the corner of his mouth.

  After a moment of awkward silence he said in his slow Oklahoma way, “I … I’m sorry I couldn’t stay that night to hear you read your poems.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.” For some reason, I didn’t want to tell him that I hadn’t gone through with it. “They weren’t anything, just some haikus.”

  He stared at me. “You write haikus?”

  “Well, like I said, they weren’t anything. Besides, you had to go.”

  He looked even more uncomfortable, but he nodded. “Yeah, sorry about all that.”

  There was another long silence. And then I don’t know what came over me—I opened my mouth and the words just popped out before I could stop them. “Do you always let that girl push you around?”

  His shoulders rose a little. “Oh, Melanie’s nicer than you probably think,” he said. “She was just having a rough day is all. She’s a little high-strung, but she’s all right. If you knew her, you might even like her.”

  I had a hard time imagining it. All I could think of was how he’d let her bully him out the door.

  small frightened mousie

  whatever happened to my

  zen cowboy poet?

  I checked out the window for Ma’s car but didn’t see it. Today, of all days, I hoped she wouldn’t be late.

  “Are you waiting for somebody?”

  “Yes, my mother. She’s picking me up.” And then I felt like I had to explain further, so I said, “I work part-time at the picture place next door. I’m kind of a photographer.”

  “Really?” He glanced at my fedora, black blouse and black skirt. I’d chosen a goth look today. “In that outfit you certainly look like an artist.”

  I studied his face to see if he was making fun of me, but I decided he wasn’t. “Listen,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you that I really liked your poem.”

  “You did?”

  I nodded. “I don’t think I understood it completely, but I liked it—in a Zen kind of way.”

  He looked surprised. And then, out of the blue, a big, shy grin formed on his face. “Thanks,” he said, suddenly staring down at his cup. For a couple of seconds, he didn’t look at me. I could tell I’d really made him happy. It was actually kind of sweet. “Believe it or not, that’s exactly what I meant it to be—a Zen kind of poem. You’re the only one who noticed.”

  “Well, I did. And I honestly liked it a lot.”

  A moment later, he leaned over to see the cover of my book. “Wow,” he said. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Do you know that that’s one of my favorites?”

  So we talked about it a little, and that led me to ask him about what he was reading. It was a worn copy of The Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot. Calvin said he couldn’t count how many times he’d read it. After that, we both relaxed a little and started talking about books. It turned out that he’s an even more avid reader than I am, and not just of poetry. Pretty soon, we were telling each other all about ourselves. He told me how his family moved up from Oklahoma just before he started eighth grade. It had been hard for him to adjust at first because he didn’t know anybody, so he’d spent a lot of time reading. That’s when he had discovered poetry.

  “Is Melanie a poet, too?”

  “Melanie?” He smiled and shook his head. “She comes to see me at open-mike nights every now and then, but she says she doesn’t really get it. It isn’t her thing.”

  As we spoke, I realized that talking to him had suddenly become comfortable and easy again, like it had been at the wedding. Only this time, I told myself, I wasn’t interested in him as anything other than a friend. And that made it almost nicer.

  That’s when I noticed Ma’s car finally pulling into the parking lot.

  “I have to go,” I
said.

  “Sure,” he said, setting his empty teacup down in its saucer. “I do too, pretty soon.”

  I stood up and grabbed my things. I don’t know why, but before I left I said, “I’m sorry about what happened. At the wedding, I mean. It was really embarrassing.”

  His face went pink. “It’s okay. It wasn’t that big a deal, really. I enjoyed dancing with you. You’re a good dancer.”

  “I know you told Melanie about it, but don’t tell anybody else, okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  I smiled. “Well, bye, then. Nice to see you.”

  “Bye.” But before I got as far as the door he said, “Hey, Floey. I’m really glad we ran into each other again.”

  I waved and left him sitting by the window.

  On the way home, I went over our conversation in my mind. What a shame it was that he liked Miss Halter Top. He seemed like he might be a nice guy. Sweet, even. But then I remembered what he’d all but said at the wedding—that I’m too young for him. He was starting tenth grade in the fall, so even if he didn’t already have a girlfriend, he probably wouldn’t want to be seen with a soon-to-be eighth grader like me.

  But that was okay, I decided as we rode through the rain. I already had Wen. Plus, I didn’t like Calvin in that way anymore. I was over him.

  I was so over him.

  Sunday, July 6, 8:00 p.m.

  After spending the entire day in Mystic with my cousins I had every right to expect a message from a certain trumpet player when we got back—after all, it’s been two days! But what did I find? Nothing! Nada! What is the matter with that boy? I’m getting seriously tired of waiting for him again and again. What kind of pathetic boyfriend does he think he is? This is it! I’m giving Bugle Boy until tomorrow morning. After that, he can go eat another Dump Cake.