There was nothing worth watching on regular TV (the one downstairs was the only one with the good cable channels), and I had already seen all the movies we owned too many times. So I watched a half hour of nothing and then went to Mom’s laptop to try to see if I could watch End of Daze online, but you couldn’t unless you had a mobile/device login, which I was sure we didn’t. My parents prided themselves on being “late adopters,” which explained why I was the only person my age I knew who still didn’t have a phone. So I snuck back downstairs and tiptoed to the door to the den. A mushroom cloud exploded on the screen. Plumes of dark smoke chased people around corners. The air itself seemed to be shaking.
Back in bed, I couldn’t get the images out of my head and couldn’t get to sleep. So I started playing Russia in my head.
Throw. Catch.
Throw. Bounce. Catch.
Throw. Bounce. Catch.
Throw. Clap. Clap. Clap. Catch.
Throw. Clap. Clap. Clap. Catch.
Throw . . . Clap . . . Catch . . .
It seemed no more or less dumb than counting sheep.
4.
There were still no cicadas in the morning, so I got dressed and told Mom I was going next door to get Taylor. But when I stepped outside, I saw Taylor’s almost white-blonde hair—her parents had thought she was albino for a split-second when she was born—glinting in the morning sun . . . in front of Alyssa’s house. They were playing Russia on the driveway.
“Hey,” I called out as I crossed the street to join them. Then in a near-whisper I said to Taylor, “I thought we were going swimming.”
Taylor looked at me blankly, and I felt my face get hot, like I was getting sunburned.
“Maybe later.” Taylor spoke in an annoyed whisper.
Alyssa asked, “What are we doing later?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Going swimming at Julia’s house,” Taylor said.
How could she be so clueless?
“Oh.” Alyssa bounced her ball. “I have a pool, too.”
“Duh.” I itched a pretend scratch on my neck, just for something to do. “We watched your whole house get built. We saw the pool being dug.”
We all stood there and my mind drew a triangle with the three of us as the three points, and then Alyssa said, “Good for you, Julie.”
“Julie-ah,” I corrected.
Alyssa shrugged. “I like Julie better.”
They went back to their bouncing and throwing.
“This game is dumb,” I said.
Alyssa didn’t even look at me. “Then don’t play.”
But I wasn’t going to fall for that. I picked up a ball that had rolled to the curb and started at threesies, since that was the move they were on.
“You have to start at onesies.” Alyssa pushed some hair out of her face.
“So, anyway, did you end up watching it?” Taylor asked her.
“Oh my god, it was so good!”
“I know!” Taylor nodded a few times, quickly. “Right?”
“Totally.” Alyssa nodded, too, and I watched her move on to foursies, throwing the ball into air and circling her forearms around each other a few times like she was disco dancing, then catching the ball.
I threw the ball against the wall and caught it and struggled to push an ache in my jaw out of my mind. “That mushroom cloud was pretty scary,” I said. “I think I had nightmares.”
Alyssa laughed. “Fraidy cat!”
Taylor giggled, and the spinning motion of her hands on her fourth foursies move made me dizzy. But they were moving forward in the game, and it felt like learning how to play Russia was the only way I was going to be able to stick around. So I ignored the dizzies and paid superclose attention to everything Alyssa was doing. I learned how you had to throw the ball under your leg for fivesies and how you had to throw it under your arm and up in front of you for sixies. The game just seemed to go on and on . . . and I kept having to start it again and again.
Peter and Andrew skated over maybe an hour into it, right when Alyssa had reached thirteen for the first time all morning. I had to admit that the move for thirteen was super hard. You had to throw the ball then turn around then clap once in front, once in back, then again in front before catching it.
“What are you guys doing?” Peter tipped his skateboard up into his hand with his foot.
“It’s called Russia,” Alyssa said.
“Looks dumb,” Peter said, and I wanted to run over and hug him. Peter was in my class at school—the smart kid class, but we weren’t supposed to call it that—and was also in the band with me. When I watched him play trumpet, I sometimes daydreamed about holding hands or having my first kiss with him, but then he’d go and do something like talk about popping the wings off of cicadas—and how their heads would supposedly pop off, too—and the dream would go poof. He was wearing a JOE’S ICES shirt, which wasn’t anything new since his father was Joe. Andrew wasn’t in our class at school, just band (drums).
“Well, it isn’t.” Alyssa held her ball between her knees while she adjusted her ponytail. “It’s really hard.”
“Doesn’t look hard,” Peter said, and he and Andrew laughed.
“Two questions.” Peter scrunched up his face as he watched Alyssa’s ball go high. “Why’s it called Russia? And who the heck are you?”
She didn’t stop playing, didn’t look at him when she said, “Alyssa. I live here now.”
“That’s only one answer,” I said. “Why’s it called Russia?”
“I don’t know.” Alyssa was on her fifth successful thirteensies move. I was pretty much in awe but didn’t want to admit it. “My mom played it when she was a kid, like during the Cold War with Russia or something.”
With Peter right there also thinking the game—and name—seemed dumb, I felt brave. “Cold War would be a better name,” I said. “Russia’s sort of stupid.”
“Maybe it’s you that’s stupid,” Alyssa said.
“Are you joking?” Peter hopped up onto his skateboard, and then spun around and hopped off. “Julia’s like the smartest person in school. And the best clarinet player.”
Alyssa caught the ball after her seventh or eighth thirteensies move she was doing; I was losing track. She said, “Then maybe you should make out with her.”
I dropped my ball. I had nowhere else to look so I watched it roll and land in a small puddle by the curb. Taylor was laughing—Andrew, too. But then Peter said, “Maybe I will,” and jumped onto his skateboard and pushed off down the block.
Andrew followed, shouting, “Later, gators.”
I didn’t care much about anything Alyssa or Taylor said after that—Peter might someday kiss me! He thought I was a good clarinet player!—and then a while later Mom called me home.
The two of us ate leftover pizza for lunch, and went out back and sat in the loungers on the deck. Lying there, the muscles in my arms ached from all that throwing. My neck hurt from looking up. I kept going over the moves in my head when Mom got a phone call and started saying things like, “Holy cow, do you remember?” and “Stop, I’m going to hurt myself from laughing.” I closed my eyes and wondered who she was talking to—probably my aunt Colleen, who wasn’t really my aunt, just an old friend of Mom’s—and wondered when Peter might get around to kissing me.
Would I be ready?
My parents were in front of the TV with wine in their glasses again when I came down after an after-dinner bath. “It’s on again?”
“It’s a two-night premiere,” Dad said. “Before it switches to just Fridays.”
Great. So I’d spend another night being an outcast in my own family. And now Taylor and Alyssa would have more new stuff to talk about that I knew nothing about. “Please, can I watch?” I pressed my hands together as if in prayer.
Dad sounded tired. “Julia, honey. We said no.”
“But Taylor watched it. Alyssa, too.” I could hear the whine in my voice but couldn’t seem to replace it with a tone that was more r
easonable, more mature.
“Oh, great.” Mom reached for her wine. “Well, if Alyssa watches it!”
“Who’s Alyssa?” Dad asked.
“The new girl,” Mom said with some sharpness.
It was clear that that strategy was not going to work, that I’d have to find another way. “Well, can I at least go out in the yard for an hour? Maybe Peter’s out with his telescope or something.”
Maybe Peter could figure out how to get his hands on the show.
“Fine,” Mom said. “But just for an hour. We’re getting up early, and I’m not dragging you around the city all day if you’re exhausted.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Look out for cicadas!” Dad said.
“I don’t think they’re coming at all.” I opened the screen door.
Peter wasn’t out stargazing—we shared a fence at the back of our yards—so I just sat for a while in one of the deck loungers and tried to pick out constellations.
Big Dipper.
Big deal.
I dreamed that I was being followed around the house by a buzzing, long-legged bug. I kept swatting it away but it kept coming back, all dangling and awful-looking, clicking in my face. I grabbed a glass from a kitchen cabinet and trapped the bug under it, on the countertop, where I studied its red eyes, its clear wings, its hard brown shell. I pulled a pen out of a drawer with an index card and labeled it, Exhibit A.
5.
Being a teacher was in my mom’s blood so she couldn’t shut it down on summer vacation. This trip to the city would probably involve a lesson in the history of skyscrapers or maybe the invention of plumbing. But it was a small price to pay for a shopping trip, and I was happy I’d have Taylor to share head-nodding duties.
I rang Taylor’s bell Saturday morning, and she answered in her pajamas. “I can’t go.”
“What? Why not?”
“I don’t feel good.” She coughed, and I was sure it was fake. Something in the sound of it. Too shallow. Too dry.
“Oh.”
I stopped myself from saying, You were fine yesterday.
“Yeah, well.” She coughed again.
Again: fake.
I tried not to notice the way she kept looking over my shoulder, but I couldn’t help it. I looked over toward Alyssa’s house and saw some movement in an upstairs window.
“We’ll go next Saturday instead!” I said. It was genius. “I’ll go tell my mom!”
“No.” Taylor shook her head and looked down. “You should go. You shouldn’t let your mom down. We’ll do something fun when I feel better.”
I tried to think of fun things Taylor and I could do together, but I couldn’t think fast enough.
Total blank.
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.” Then I made my way back to my house, where Mom had just started the car. I went to her window, which she opened when she saw me. “Taylor’s sick.”
“Huh.” Mom cocked her head and slid her black sunglasses onto her face. “Well, that’s too bad.”
“Can we go another day?” I dared.
She looked in the rearview mirror and applied her lip gloss. “No, my dear.” She smacked her lips. “We cannot.”
I groaned and got in the car. Everything was falling apart and now I was stuck with Mom all day.
“Frankly”—she reached over and squeezed my knee—“I’m glad it’s just the two of us.”
I felt a pain in my gut as we pulled off the block, a fear of missing something or everything. I pictured Taylor and Alyssa hanging out together all day, bonding over stuff like End of Daze and Russia.
The drive into the city was about an hour and Mom was quiet the whole time—which was a nice change. Lately it seemed like she was always asking questions about who I was with and what I was reading and what me and my friends were talking about and why wasn’t I eating cookies anymore and on and on. So I just looked out the window, watching houses and warehouses and apartment buildings and Burger Kings and gas stations whir by. We went over a bridge that looked like it could take you straight up to heaven and took another highway to the tunnel.
I thought we’d never get there, with all the traffic, but then we turned into a parking garage and gave away the car keys. Soon we were in an elevator, going up to the way high top of one of the tallest buildings in the city. When Mom went to hold my hand in the elevator—too tight, as usual—I let her. It’s not like anyone I knew was around to see.
We stepped out onto the observation deck and it was so bright that it really felt like we were closer to the sun. We walked around once and found a spot where we could just stand and take it all in. I saw tall apartment buildings with roof decks on them and wondered about the kind of people who lived so high up, who sat in those chairs at night as the city glistened around them. I looked at the cars way down, and pictured tiny people driving them. A sign near where we were standing said that visibility was fifteen miles in current conditions, but as the warm summer wind whipped against me, I caught my own reflection along with the city’s in Mom’s sunglasses and felt like I could see forever. I felt big and small and connected. I wasn’t sure to what, but it was to something important.
After taking some pictures, we went back down, down, down, and walked a few blocks and went to lunch in a restaurant in the belly of a fancy department store. I had the best tuna sandwich of my life (though I had to pick some weird lettuce-type thing that was definitely not lettuce off it). Mom even ordered us fake cocktails. When they came, she raised a toast, “To mother-daughter day!”
I clinked my glass and it made a festive sound. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d seen my mom so happy, so relaxed. And when I said, “Cheers!” I felt cheerful.
We shopped a little bit then. Mom bought some lip gloss, and I picked out a cool purse made of three kinds of neat metallic leather: silver, gold, and peach-tinted. I loved everything about it. The shine. The shape. The clean sound of the snap when it closed.
When we walked past the bedding department, I thought about my own old spread at home. “Can we look around here?”
“Sure.” Mom followed me into the displays of bedrooms, all fluffy and pretty and making me want to climb in.
“I came here when I needed stuff for my first apartment in the city.” She ran a hand along a plaid bedspread that looked like it belonged in a country house. “It was such an exciting time.” Then she sat on a bed with a big red flower at the center of the spread. “You have so many adventures ahead of you, Julia. You have no idea.”
I wasn’t sure how or why we’d gone from bedspreads to adventures, so I pointed at the bedspread. “Can I get it?” That red flower was calling me.
“Not now, honey.” She looked at her watch. “We have to get going. And anyway, we should wait for a sale. But yes, we should get you a new bedspread.”
“For my new room down the hall?” I tried.
She suddenly looked tired, like just being alive was too much work.
“I’ll move the sewing machine myself!” I said. “Please.”
“It’s not that.” She stood up and started to walk toward the elevators. “It’s complicated, Julia.”
“Why is it complicated?” I followed.
“Let me talk to your father.” She hit the Down button.
“For real this time?”
“For real.” She put an arm out against the elevator door as I got in with a skip in my step. She was going to talk to Dad about the room; this was real progress. So as we made our way back to the parking garage, I didn’t even mind talking to her about the book I was reading. It was an old paperback called The Haunted Pond that I’d found at a garage sale a week ago—about a girl and a crippled boy who discover a haunted pond where a mysterious face sometimes appeared.
“Sounds a little creepy,” she said. “And ‘cripple’ isn’t really a word that people use anymore.”
“They use it in the book. And I like creepy things.” It seemed like a good idea to start building a case for why I sh
ould be allowed to watch the rest of End of Daze.
“Why?” Mom asked. “Like what specifically do you like about the story?”
“Mom!” She sure knew how to kill a mood. “I’m not writing a book report. I just like it. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “Sorry. For being interested in my own daughter.” She pinched me softly on the arm and I smiled. She had a point, I guessed.
Alyssa and Taylor were playing Russia in front of Taylor’s house when we turned onto the block. They each had a ball and they were throwing them into the air and clapping under their legs and turning.
Over and over.
My mind was blanking on which number move it was.
As we pulled into our driveway, Taylor dropped her ball and had to run into the street to get it. She waved weakly when we got out of the car, but I focused on Alyssa, who was smiling but also trying not to.
“Can I go over?” I asked Mom. I wanted to show off my new purse.
“No,” she said. “Your father made dinner.”
It was Alyssa who called out to us. “Taylor’s feeling a lot better!”
Mom waved and said, “A miraculous recovery!”
She turned to me, and my reflection was still there in her sunglasses, but no longer sparkling and deep.
“Come on, Julia.” She put an arm around my shoulder, and I had to fight not to squirm free. “Let’s go inside.”
The kitchen was full of heat and strange smells.
“Ladies!” Dad was shaking a frying pan around over the stove. “How was your big day?”
Mom went over and kissed him after he put the pan down. He wiped his hands on a dish towel.
“We had the best time,” she gushed, turning to me. “Didn’t we?”
“It was great.” But already I felt the magic of the day wearing away.
There were mushrooms in the pan.
The Battle of Darcy Lane Page 2
