The Battle of Darcy Lane

by Tara Altebrando

  I hated mushrooms.

  My parents didn’t care.

  “Wait.” Dad furrowed his brow. “Wasn’t Taylor supposed to go with you? She was out with that new girl all day.”

  More magic going poof.

  So Mom explained about what she called the “sudden onset” of Taylor’s “mysterious illness.” We sat down for dinner, but I just pushed my food around the plate, unable to eat. When I realized that Mom had noticed, I took a few bites, forcing food down with slugs of cold water. I knew I was spoiling our day by letting it be spoiled by Taylor and Alyssa, and I felt bad, but I couldn’t think of anything to do about it.

  After I helped clean up, I went out to the yard with a tennis ball and started to play Russia alone. I was only up to fivesies when Peter called out to me from his yard. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “How are you doing?”

  I could see his red shirt through slits in the fence. “I’m miserable,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay, I guess. Why miserable? I heard you went into the city today, so that sounds pretty nonmiserable.”

  I sighed. “It was fun. But I don’t know.” For a second I was afraid to say it. But this was Peter, so I went for it. “The new girl? Alyssa?”

  He nodded.

  “She’s kind of mean to me. And she’s stealing Taylor away.”

  “What do you care? You have Wendy.” Wendy James was my best friend from school. She was a little bit overweight and sometimes had dandruff and I hadn’t seen or talked to her since school let out. “Isn’t she your best friend?”

  “No, Taylor is,” I said. She was a lot cooler than Wendy. “But now Alyssa is pushing us apart.”

  I could see one of Peter’s eyes now, peeking through the biggest slit, the slit we always talked through. He said, “She’s kind of mean to me, too.”

  “It’s different.” I tried to bounce my ball on the grass, and it landed with a thud in my vegetable garden.

  “If you say so,” he said.

  I bent down and found the ball under a tomato plant; I really needed to weed. But not now. “Hey, are you watching End of Daze?”

  “Nah,” he said through the slit. “Not allowed.”

  “Stiiinks,” I said.

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “Everyone’s watching it but me.”

  “And me!”

  “And you.” It didn’t make me feel any better, though. “My parents aren’t even taping it. If they were DVRing it, I could at least try to sneak it. But they’re watching it when it’s on, like clockwork. So annoying.”

  “Is it online?” he asked.

  “You need some special login for that channel for devices or something.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and my heart filled with hope.

  Inside, my parents were side by side on the couch, talking quietly, and I thought about the stories they used to tell me about myself as a toddler, how I’d see them snuggling on the couch or curled up in bed and I’d push in between them, whining, “I wanna cuddle, too!” I wasn’t sure I’d ever been able to kick the feeling of being lonely in their company, and I sometimes wondered whether everybody felt like that around them, since they were so obviously in love, or if it was just me.

  They looked up at the same time, as if surprised to see me, and Mom adjusted her position, moving closer to Dad, who yawned.

  “You want to play Bananagrams or something?” she asked, but I didn’t have the heart to make them move, not one inch.

  Up in my room, pajamas on, I thought about reading, which usually made me happy, but tonight I didn’t think it would. I pulled the monkey Peter had given me into bed, snuggling close.

  6.

  “It’s too bad about yesterday,” I said when I went over to Taylor’s the next morning. Mom had woken me up early and dragged me to Mass, so I was home and changed into shorts by ten thirty.

  “Yeah, well.” Taylor was sitting on her front stoop, looking over toward Alyssa’s. Not reading a book or anything. Just sitting there.

  “At least you’re feeling better.” I couldn’t look her in the eye so I watched an ant that was marching across one of the bricks of her front steps and wondered whether ants got jealous during the cicada years. It was funny to think about them getting miffed about the cicadas getting all that press when it was true every second of every day of every year that ants could do amazing things like carry something twenty times their own body weight.

  “That was some weird flu or something, right?” I heard my own forced laugh as the ant disappeared into a crack. “Like a two-minute bug or something?”

  “What are you even talking about?” Taylor snapped.

  “I just mean you got better fast is all.” My face heated up again.

  “Yeah, I did.” She huffed. “So why are you making such a big deal out of it?”

  I didn’t know.

  “Look what I got.” I held out my purse, which now held my wallet, some lip balm, and my book. I thought about telling Taylor all about The Haunted Pond, but then I didn’t.

  “It’s nice,” Taylor said, but she sounded sort of sad and I wondered if maybe she was jealous. I hoped so. I hoped she regretted not coming because maybe she could have bought something awesome, too.

  “Why don’t we play Spit or go swimming?” I said. “Just the two of us. My dad’s talking about covering the pool for a few days because of the cicadas, so this might be our last chance all week.”

  “I’m just going to hang out.” Taylor put her elbows on her knees.

  “Okay, then.” I sat down next to her. “I’ll hang out, too.”

  She looked at me funny for a long moment. “You’re suffocating me.”

  “What?” This was weird.

  “I only mean it’s, you know, good to have other friends.” She adjusted her ponytail. “We should both have other friends.”

  “Well, duh. Of course.” I felt instantly like I might be coming down with some weird, sudden bug, too. “But I don’t know. Why do you even like her?”

  “I just do, okay?”

  “She’s mean to me.” I blurted. Maybe telling Peter had given me confidence.

  “She’s not mean.” Taylor sighed. “She’s just, I don’t know . . . she’s funny. And here she is!”

  Alyssa had appeared at the base of the driveway, bouncing her ball. She had gum in her mouth, and it made me think of something my mom said all the time, claiming it was something her mom used to say. What are you, a cow? Chewing cud? I wasn’t even sure what cud was but I was still tempted to say it.

  “My mom’s at the mall for like an hour,” Alyssa said. “Let’s go to my house.”

  Taylor stood up, but I didn’t. “I’m not sure I’m allowed,” I said. My parents only ever left me home alone when they went out to get pizza or making a quick trip to the bank or drugstore.

  “Well, we’re going.” Alyssa shrugged and walked off, and Taylor copied her shrug and followed.

  It was only across the street. My parents wouldn’t even have to know and they were probably too busy cuddling on the couch to care, anyway. Weekends were all about the cuddling for those two.

  There were no cars in Alyssa’s driveway, and the house was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. She led us through the kitchen, up the stairs, and into a room where a bunch of boxes sat untouched. The carpet was beige and really soft, and the walls were all clean and white. It smelled like new house, and there was a Ouija board in the middle of the floor.

  “This is all my grandmother’s stuff.” Alyssa sat down in front of the Ouija board. “We’re going to try to talk to her.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “What, are you afraid of everything?” Alyssa said.

  “No, it’s just. I don’t know.”

  But I did know. “Praying to dead people is one thing, because you’re not expecting them to talk back, but expecting an answer seems wrong.”

&nbs
p; “Oh my god,” Alyssa said. “You pray?”

  It was pretty funny that she’d said Oh my god while asking me that question.

  So what if I did?

  That was one thing. This was another.

  I said, “I seriously doubt that dead people are waiting around for their relatives to pull out a Ouija board so they can talk.”

  Taylor was sitting cross-legged across from Alyssa. She turned and said, “So leave,” with a shrug.

  These two could really shrug.

  I sat down and let my fingers rest lightly on the gliding piece alongside theirs and felt a surge of anger, like I suddenly had too much blood in my body and it was trying to get out any which way, pressing on me from the inside out.

  Alyssa took a deep breath and exhaled. “Okay, everybody close your eyes.”

  She did, and then Taylor did. So I did, too.

  “We are here today,” Alyssa said, all serious, “to try to talk to my grandmother, Camille. Will you let us know if you are in the room with us, Grandma?”

  Beneath my fingers I felt the piece jitter. It slid across the board a bit and then more and then stopped. When I opened my eyes, the window with the needle in it was pointing to the word YES.

  “Holy cow,” Taylor said. “I just got chills.”

  But I wasn’t buying it.

  Alyssa said, “Grandma? I want you to tell me, if you can, where the money is. I know you had cash that you packed. Can you tell me where it is?”

  The piece started to move under my fingers, hitting letters one by one. The answer, when complete, spelled out TOWELS.

  “What does it mean?” Taylor’s eyes got big.

  “There.” Alyssa got up and walked across the room to some boxes. “This one,” she said. Sure enough the box was labeled TOWELS.

  She ripped the top open. Taylor rushed to her side, and I did, too, and then there was Alyssa, holding an envelope full of cash.

  I seriously thought I might faint or something. “Now I just got chills.”

  Because it had actually worked!

  Alyssa and Taylor busted out laughing.

  Alyssa stopped long enough to say, “You are so gullible.”

  “We totally got you!” Taylor squealed.

  “Yeah.” I just waited a second for the inside-out pressure to stop again. “You really got me good.”

  “Come here.” Alyssa got up. “I want to show you something.”

  She went to the window that faced the back of the house—there were no drapes or blinds—and pointed toward the house behind hers. “See that window there with the red curtains?”

  “Yeah?” Taylor said.

  “There’s a couple that lives there, and sometimes they walk around naked.”

  “No way!” Taylor laughed.

  I wanted to head for the stairs and pretend I’d never come here with them.

  “The guy’s pretty hairy and gross,” Alyssa said. “The girl’s all right, but she needs a boob job.”

  Taylor shook her head. “You are too much.”

  I might have imagined it or it might have actually been true, but I heard Mom’s voice calling me home, so I said, “I think my mom’s calling me.”

  “Well, go on home to Mommy then.” Alyssa shooed me with her hand.

  I turned to Taylor. “I left my purse on your porch.”

  “That’s yours?” Alyssa was back at the Ouija board. She said, “Is Julia’s new purse nice?” And she pushed the sliding piece over to the word NO.

  “Just go get it, Julia.” Taylor really seemed to want me gone. “You know where it is.”

  7.

  “Where’s Taylor?” Mom asked. She and Dad were sitting side by side at the kitchen table looking at something on Mom’s laptop. No one had been calling for me at all.

  “Oh,” I said. “She’s busy.”

  I felt awkward in my own body. I had no idea what to do with my arms, and wanted to ask Mom some questions about the birds and the bees and boob jobs. But it felt too weird now that I had the image of a hairy man in my brain. And anyway, Dad was there.

  “Do you have the receipt for my purse?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, why?” Mom was only half paying attention. “Is something wrong with it?”

  I looked at it, thinking I’d try to find something defective about it, but I still liked it. I sure liked it better than Alyssa’s tacky chair and her ridiculous stuffed giraffe. “Never mind. So did you ask him?”

  Now Mom looked up. “Ask who what?”

  “Dad.” I turned to him. “Can I please-please-please move into the office?”

  He was about to say something, but Mom cut him off.

  “Julia. I want to talk to your dad about that privately, okay?”

  He squeezed her shoulder.

  I went upstairs and thought about reading, but instead changed into my swimsuit. I went out to the pool and sat down at the edge, with my feet in, waiting for a face to appear so I wouldn’t be alone. I was also hoping to get hot—hot enough to want to dive right in—but there was too much shade, so I moved to a lounge chair and closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but I wasn’t tired.

  Then Peter called out “Julia,” and I looked up and saw movement—blue shirt today—behind the fence. I walked over, and Peter said, “Meet me in the woods in ten minutes?”

  “Okay!”

  I ran through the house, shouting out that I was going over to Peter’s.

  Since we’d had woods by our old house, I’d been excited when Peter had first shown me the woods across the street from him. Even better, these woods had a pond—not haunted—that we could ice-skate on. This past winter a big branch had fallen and frozen into it in just the right spot for jumps. We sat on that same branch now—the part that was on dry land—with Peter’s dad’s iPad.

  “It took me a while to figure out the password,” Peter said, “but we’re good to go.”

  It felt wrong to be watching a television show in the woods—and also wrong to be watching End of Daze against my parents’ orders—but it was also thrilling in a butterflies-in-stomach way. They weren’t going to be able to keep me from growing up no matter how hard they tried, and this was hardly the worst way for me to start.

  The trees offered just enough shade that we could see the images on the screen without too much glare, and I swear it was like neither of us moved the whole time, not for a whole hour or whatever an hour without commercials was.

  I saw the scenes I’d glimpsed that first night—of the mushroom cloud, of people being chased around corners by smoke. But now I learned the names of the main characters—Mack and Archer—a father and son who survived a chemical bomb attack on New York because they’d retreated to their crazy neighbor Buddy’s underground bunker. They were freaking out because Archer wanted his mom, but she was at work and also probably dead, and Mack and Buddy agreed they couldn’t go out for a few days. Buddy had an old radio but the news was grim—attacks in Europe, China, all across the US. And then the broadcast stopped all together. Eventually, the three of them left the bunker and started roaming the streets of the city, looking for food and water. But there were bodies everywhere, and Buddy started to get crazier, and he threatened Mack and, well, Mack had to take him out. Together, Mack and Archer made their way across town to the office where Helen, the mom, worked, and they found her body among the dead. The hour ended with them both weeping over her body . . . and then her cell phone rang. Mack picked it up and said, “Hello?”

  Roll credits.

  “Oh, come on!” Peter shouted.

  “Wow.” My butt was killing me.

  Peter got up and stretched. “I thought there were going to be zombies.”

  I straightened my legs out in front of me, shifted my bones. “You sound disappointed.”

  He bent and picked up a stick. “Zombies are cool.”

  “Do you think that could really happen?” I asked.

  He poked a lily pad on the pond with his stick. “Doubt it.”

&n
bsp; I watched as a few tiny fish, probably annoyed by that stick, swam away from us. “But the world can’t last forever.”

  “It’s done all right so far,” Peter said. “I mean, if you ignore the whole global warming fiasco that our species has brought about by its self-serving lifestyle.”

  I smiled. I liked the way Peter talked.

  We tried to skip stones for a few minutes, but the pond was too shallow. I looked up at the trees. “Do you really think these cicadas are coming?”

  “Oh, they’re just days away.” Peter tried to land a small stone on a lily pad a few times but failed.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I liked not caring about something that everyone else was so caught up in.

  “Come here.” He picked his stick up again and walked over to a tree a little bit farther into the woods and crouched down.

  I followed.

  “Look.” Peter pointed to all these weird little holes in the ground at the base of the tree. “They’re going to climb out of these.”

  “Gross.”

  “Not gross. Cool. If they’re tunneling up, it means the ground temp has finally hit sixty-two.”

  “You’re such a boy.” I stood up and put some distance between me and those holes.

  “You’re such a girl.” Now it was my sneaker he poked with a stick.

  “I thought I found an old treasure map right here once,” Peter said.

  “Really?” We started to make our way back out of the woods on the path, me first.

  “Yeah, there was this box I dug up that had old Native American coins in it and an old map with a chest of gold marked with an X and some small broken colored glass bottles, like for perfume or something.”

  “Awesome.” I pushed a branch out of my way, and turned to hold it for Peter.

  “Not awesome. It turns out my brother had planted it there.” He slipped past the branch and past me. “It was a joke. I was crushed.”

  I took a minute to think about that, how exciting and awful it would all have been. “I would’ve been, too.”

  Just before we reached the street, a yellow butterfly flew over a small patch of purple wildflowers. I imagined it was one of the butterflies that had been in my stomach while I was going against my parents’ orders, and that it had somehow gotten free—and freed me. And as I watched Peter step out into the grass that separated woods from his street, and I saw the sun light up his hair, I knew I now officially had a crush on him. And in spite of Alyssa and Russia and Mack and Archer, I felt for a moment like everything was pretty great.