The boys split off, like cowboys in a movie, trying to confuse me. Sandy headed left into the circle, making me laugh to myself. Later, when Lucy complained to her mother, he’d deny that he had been there: “I was home then, wasn’t I, Ma? How could I be riding a bike through the Witkowskis’ kitchen, huh?” Sly. Weentzy.
Pete and Dave gave their pedals an extra kick as Marvin Road sloped downhill. I saw myself catching up with Pete, knocking him off his bike, pushing his face into the gooshy mud beside the river, leaving him to rot among the skunk cabbages.
At the corner Pete went right onto Glover Street, while Dave headed for the river. Later I told myself that I just didn’t know what I would do to Pete—or what I could do to Pete—if I caught up with him. I went after Dave. His bike shot down the hill and around the curve, disappearing, and I went like a rocket after him. He didn’t even know I was there, I thought. Wouldn’t he be surprised when he looked up and saw we were neck and neck?
My tire caught the sand at the end of the mill driveway where the Little River Rangers Club was. I got my balance back and kept going. But where was Dave? Marvin Road was empty. In a second I realized that Dave must have gone down the Rangers’ driveway, not past it. I turned and headed back. As I reached the end of the driveway, Dave came flashing out of it past me, banging one of my braids into my face with his swinging arm as he flew by. “Sucker!” he yelled.
I spun my bike in the sand and lit out after him again, sweaty and raging. I’d catch him before the river bridge. I was at least as fast as he was; I was only this far behind because he’d gotten a head start. But Dave had disappeared again.
All of a sudden I wasn’t mad anymore. I still thought Dave had been acting like a jerk at camp and school, and I still thought it was rude to ride a bike through our house, but I wasn’t mad. All of a sudden it was fun, because I’d escaped Lucy and Pete and I was on my bicycle chasing Dave. So where was he?
I caught sight of him in the grass at the river end of Marvin Road, lifting his bicycle onto the stone wall of the bridge that curved across the river to Neil Road on the other side. I slowed. What craziness was this? Was he going to throw his bike into the river? Sure, it was nothing but a piece of junk handed down from Pete, who was hard on things, Aunt Bonnie said, but it was a bike.
Dave was up on the wall now, too. Was he laughing? Then he got on the bike and rode it along the narrow flat top of the wall. The nerve that took! He looked back once at me, his black eyes serious, where the bridge went out over the river.
I caught that look and grabbed my own bike by the middle and hoisted it onto the wall. The stones of the bridge wall went rolling away beneath me. I concentrated, narrowly avoiding the ruts of the mortar that held the stones together, aware of the glittering river far beneath me, beneath my skinny pale legs and the rubber tires and the spinning pedals and the whirling spokes of Reshna’s wheels.
Up ahead where the wall went over land again, I saw Dave taking off on his bike, but looking back over his shoulder at me, smiling again, my friend again. For a moment I thought that if he kept going that slowly, I’d have a chance to catch him when I got off the wall. When I got to the end, I jumped two-footed to the ground and snatched my bike down.
But before I threw a leg over it, a deep voice said right into my face, “Congratulations. You can throw your bike in the back now and get in the car.”
I looked, petrified, into a face I didn’t quite recognize. I let hands lift Reshna into the back of his car, a green car, but not a station wagon, and not a familiar neighborhood car.
“Hop in,” he said. I had a second to be relieved that it was someone I knew: Lucy and Sandy’s father, Mr. Boring DeLuna, in his car I’d hardly ever seen because he was the kind of man who had a clean enough garage that he could put his car in it.
“I really don’t need a ride,” I said, but he was already starting off.
“It’s no trouble,” he said. “I’ll take you home, for your mother’s sake, before you do anything else life-threatening.”
When the car pulled up in front of my house, Dave was sitting on his front steps, chewing on a piece of grass, looking innocent, as if he’d never been anywhere or done anything.
Mr. DeLuna took my bike out of the trunk. “Thanks,” I said, not feeling grateful. I whisked Reshna into the garage.
I barreled past Lucy and ran upstairs, slammed my door, and didn’t come out for the rest of the evening. I sat on my bed for a long time and watched Dave whistling on his stoop. For a long time I shook. What was worst? Remembering riding across the wall? Thinking how easy it would have been for anyone to take me away in a green car the way Wendy had been taken? Or worrying what would happen when Mr. DeLuna told my parents what he’d caught me doing?
It took awhile for me to realize that Dave was sitting out there so long because Pete wouldn’t let him in. He got up and banged on the door a few times before settling down to sit in the gathering darkness.
I got in bed and lay watching the shadows of the pine trees sweeping across the wall as they blew in the breeze. When cars came down the road, I rolled onto my stomach, leaned up on my elbows, and peeked over the windowsill to see if it was the grown-ups. Though I was afraid of what Mom and Dad would say, though I was worried about Dave out there on his stoop alone, though I was afraid that I’d dream of flying off the bridge through the soft air into the unforgiving water, I fell asleep eventually. I didn’t wake up until morning.
In the morning I woke to the sound of Dad singing some dramatic operatic song about an impossible dream. Yes, Dad. He and Mom were downstairs acting noisy, wild and happy and goofy, singing strange songs. Guess they hadn’t yet heard from Mr. DeLuna.
Faux Pas was already outside in her fenced yard. Pete was in the front yard, pushing the little power mower, and was nearly done with the job. Dave was not on the porch or anywhere in sight.
The music wasn’t coming just from downstairs. A hi-fi speaker in the Ascontis’ front window played almost the same notes as ours. There were scratching sounds as someone moved the record needle, and then the song blared into the road from both sides.
Uncle Joe burst onto the little stoop and began singing and dancing, stomping and clapping. Now I heard cheering and stomping from the porch below. I got out of bed and ran down the stairs to see my parents, in their normal Saturday clothes, doing some kind of dance while all four of them—Witkowskis and Ascontis—sang this soaring song. It had to be from that play they saw, Man of La Mancha.
They told us kids the story of the play: A man goes out over the countryside like a Spanish knight of the Round Table to do brave deeds. Really he’s sort of nutty, and he doesn’t see things for what they are—thinks a windmill is a giant he needs to have a joust with—but somehow he makes everyone remember how beautiful life can be, like King Arthur or Martin Luther King, Jr.
Pete stood scowling, waiting to start the lawn mower. Dave made a loco-motion with his hand, one finger circling his ear, but absorbed the story, of course.
“I’m glad you had a nice time,” I said softly to Mom.
She sat on the steps, put her arm around my shoulders, and hugged me. “You should have seen Uncle Joe,” she said. She described him coming out of the theater at the end of the show and walking around Times Square enraptured, with tears on his face, spellbound by the play. “He’s a wild man!” Mom said, shaking her head. “How Aunt Bonnie puts up with him I don’t know.”
I thought of Dave shut out on the stoop last night and wondered how Aunt Bonnie put up with any of them. But it wasn’t my day to go telling tales on Pete, not with my personal record of sins. When Dave sat on our porch beside me, it made me shudder, seeing again the bridge and the wheels. But it wasn’t his fault that Mr. DeLuna had caught me, not him. I was happy because our parents were happy and because nobody had told on me yet. With luck, no one ever would. And I’d been lucky so far.
CHAPTER 14
I WAS DELIVERING THE DELUNAS’ paper when the door opened and there
was Lucy. She was wearing old shorts and one of Sandy’s gym shirts. She had a pair of blue jeans in her hand, with a needle and thread hanging off them. She tucked the Bell under her arm without looking at it.
“What are you doing to your jeans?” I asked. She had red thread on her needle and a square of red velvet that she was sewing onto the seat of her pants.
“Putting on a patch,” she said.
“It doesn’t blend in much,” I said. I turned to go, nervous around her since her baby-sitting night.
“Is something the matter, Chérie?” she asked. She was wearing the little rectangular granny glasses with blue lenses that she’d brought home from vacation in Cape Cod. Her hair was pulled back into a curly clump.
“I just want to get these rotten papers done,” I said. “I’ve got homework.”
“Wait till you get to high school,” she said.
“But you’re not doing homework; you’re sewing.”
She put her hand on the doorknob. “Better be careful on that bike, Chérie. I heard about what happened on the bridge, with you and Dave. Dad said you were brave … and stupid.”
“Why didn’t he tell?” So he had seen Dave.
“Because I told him what Pete and Sandy did. It’s not Dad’s style to tattle.”
“Plus you’d lose a baby-sitting job,” I said.
Lucy lifted her chin. “It’s not like it’s a regular job,” she said. Thank God for that, I thought. When I looked at Lucy, I saw that it was what she was thinking, too. I smiled.
“You could have the route back,” I said.
“Why? You don’t want it anymore?”
“It’s not that. It’s the news.”
“Yeah.” Lucy sighed. We stared off in different directions for a moment. “It’s like what my dad says when he’s on the road and he doesn’t call home and my mom worries. ‘No news is good news.’” She pushed at her eyes as though to push hair out of them, but her hair wasn’t really long enough to be in her eyes anymore.
“Who cut your hair?” I asked.
“Lou the barber,” she said.
Lou’s was just a few blocks from school.
“Your hair’s beautiful, Chérie,” Lucy said.
I shook the compliment off. “So’s yours,” I said, meaning it.
Lucy shook her head, too, and closed her door.
“If you were a kidnapper,” Dave said on the way to school, “what night of the year would you think would be easiest for kidnapping?”
“Shut up!” I said.
“You going to the Rangers’ on Halloween?” he asked.
“Yes. You?” Every year the Little River Rangers had a party on Halloween night, at the millhouse on the curve where Marvin Road dipped down toward the bridge.
“Yes.”
I wanted to ask Dave to trick or treat with me, but Pete was all ears. I waited to see if Dave would ask me, but Pete was leaning close to hear. He stared at the two of us, a little smile on his face. But neither of us said a word.
“Well, isn’t that sweet,” said Pete.
“Shut up,” we both said. Oops.
Mom put the princess crown on Aimée’s head and watched her face as she saw herself in the mirror. “Looks good,” said Mom.
Aimée cocked her head to one side. “I should have been an elf, too.”
“You shouldn’t have insisted on getting a princess getup so soon,” Mom said wearily.
“Well, you said I should decide early, just in case.”
I couldn’t have been more pleased at my reflection in the mirror. Tall felt hat, stiffened by a Styrofoam cone underneath. Red felt skirt to match, over the red-and-white striped socks left over from my old Raggedy Ann costume. And just in case some old lady wasn’t sure what I was, I carried the little elf doll I had copied to make my costume.
I said, “I want a haircut for my birthday. Okay, Mom?”
Mom took a braid in each of her hands and wrapped them around my face. She had to reach quite a way to get past her big stomach. Little Vivienne. Or Guillaume, if it was a boy. “Cut this hair?”
Aimée stared. “Why, Chérie?”
I flipped a braid over my shoulder. “I’m too old for braids,” I said. It was clear Aimée didn’t believe any such thing.
“Wear it loose then,” said Mom. “Lots of girls do now.”
“No,” I said softly. “It’s too frizzy. I hate it.”
“Forget hair!” Aimée said. “Let’s go!”
Mom grinned and showed us the door. “The night awaits,” she said in the same scary voice she used to recite “The Raven.” “Watch for cars now.” Aimée waved goodbye with the flashlight.
I felt adventurous and responsible and old, walking out on Halloween night, a pillowcase for candy in one hand and the other hand for Aimée. But she pulled away, walking ahead.
Along the dark road the lighted doorways stood waiting and welcoming. Leaves covered the sidewalks and the edges of the road. There was no way around them; we had to kick our way through. Leaves fluttered and whooshed and crackled and caught in the hem of Aimée’s ruffled slip and stuck on the felt of my elf skirt.
I could feel the pavement and the pebbles beneath Aunt Bonnie’s black snow boots as surely as if I were barefoot, but my feet were warm and silent as I walked. It was like hide-and-seek, so quiet was the ground under my feet.
The neighbors all asked us in and turned us around and wouldn’t let us tell what our costumes were meant to be, made us wait while they guessed, guessed who we really were inside.
Between the houses Aimée wouldn’t stay close. Now she walked ahead of me again and stood at the end of Onion Lane, tapping her foot. “Aimée,” I said, annoyed, “you’re supposed to wait up.”
“Stop bossing me,” Aimée retorted.
The next stop, around the deep curve in Marvin Road, was the Little River Rangers’ driveway. A jack-o’-lantern glowed from a flat rock beside the driveway, which dipped down a steep bank toward the river and disappeared.
When Aimée saw how pitch-dark things were beyond the jack-o’-lantern, she stopped and came back to me for once. “Is this safe?” Maybe she was just catching my mood. She held my hand and pulled me forward.
“It’s just darkness,” I said. It was the gravelly kind of driveway, and it hurt my feet through the soft snow boots. I felt safer off the road, where no passing car could see us. I thought of hide-and-seek again, the way I could sneak along under the so-called cloak of night. Aimée tripped over her fluffy slip and would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed her by the elbow, smacking her so hard in the head with the pillowcase of treats that she wailed louder than she would have if she’d fallen.
Inside, the millhouse was the same as every year before: deeply dark except for the fireplace, with Rangers big and small looming out of the darkness with candles, waving us in toward the cider and doughnuts. Was Dave here? Joanie Buczko appeared from nowhere, wearing a Minnie Mouse costume. She grabbed my elbow and pulled me forward. Aimée’s hand slipped out of mine. There were doughnuts hanging from strings, and I saw Dave’s friend Nathan trying to catch one in his mouth, his hands behind his back. “I’m doing that,” said Joanie. “Come on!”
“Your mouth’s big enough,” I said, and pushed her toward Nathan. I felt safer inside, safe enough to laugh.
“Meanie!” she said, and looked back at me, giggling.
I might have followed, but from behind me in the dark, hands clutched my shoulders. “I’ve come to suck your blood.”
“Get off me!”
“Come here, will you?” Dave pushed me away from the firelight, making me spill my cider. Why couldn’t he just be nice? I landed on one of the benches with my doughnut in my lap. The fire made Dave in his Dracula cape look very realistic.
“What are you being so weird for?” I asked him.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked.
“Should I be?”
“Shh.” He kept looking over his shoulder. “I don’t know where Pete is.”
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“So? Who wants him?” I asked.
“I don’t want him to see me talking to you.”
“You’re a jerk.” He just wanted to stay in with the boys.
“I didn’t tell on you, Chérie,” he said. “It was Pete.”
“What do you mean, it was Pete?”
“I told Sandy about the bridge, and he told Pete.”
“Of course.”
“Yeah, well, Pete told Dad.”
“Why?” Why should Pete have it in for me?
Dave looked at the fire. “To get me back,” he said.
“For what?”
He didn’t answer. I hadn’t heard about Dave doing anything to Pete. It was about time somebody did.
I chewed on my lip, something I must have picked up from Aimée. At last I said, “Well, nobody told Mom and Dad.”
He sat down on the bench beside me. “Really?”
“Really.” We both thought about it, why nobody would tell my parents anything bad right now, not Pete or Uncle Joe or Aunt Bonnie. Or Mr. DeLuna, but I didn’t tell Dave that part, in case he didn’t know whose car it was that had brought me home.
“Chérie.” Aimée came tattling over to me. “Pammy is hogging doughnuts.”
“So?” Dave answered Aimée. “What’s it to you?”
Aimée peered at him. “You know what Joanie called you? Dave Ass-conti.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Dave.
Joanie rushed over, covered in doughnut crumbs. “Watch out, Nathan’s coming!” she said, giggling. It was obvious that she wanted him to. Nathan, who’d taken his mask off to try to bite doughnuts, put it back on now to chase Joanie.
The mask was blue and grotesque, with protruding red eye sockets and a warty nose. Aimée burst into tears when she saw it.
“You little weirdo,” Joanie told her. She said it nicely, but still.
“Cool it, Em,” I said.
“But—” Aimée sniffed up her sobs.
“He’s just a giant rubber ugly,” I said. “Like the ones you put on your finger. Come on, don’t cry. It’s Halloween.”
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