The Battle of Darcy Lane

by Tara Altebrando

  My arms were jellyfish, but I only had a day to get ready, so I got right back to work.

  I was about to throw my last thirteen out of thirteen in what would be my first ever successful run through the entire game when Peter said, “Julia?”

  From the way he said it, I thought he was going to say something like, “Don’t move. There’s a massive cicada on your back,” so I froze.

  “Are you wearing a bra?” He was smiling.

  “Oh, jeez,” I moaned and looked away. “Shut up!”

  “Sor-ry,” he said. “You look nice is all.”

  I was no doubt redder than a tomato for real. “I said to shut up!”

  “All right, already. Jeez yourself.” Then after a minute, he said, “Do you hear that?”

  There was a buzzing sound in the air, faint but distinct, like an electric generator whirring.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The cicadas are really hatching.”

  “I’m not impressed.”

  I threw my last thirteen and caught it.

  Peter cheered.

  After I helped Dad cover the pool out back after dinner—I bet him ten dollars we’d be uncovering it in the morning—I went out front and saw Taylor on her lawn with a box of sparklers. I walked over because I wanted her to see that I had a bra now, too.

  “Alyssa told me you went bra shopping.” I could hear in my own voice that I sounded sad, that I hated even saying her name. I wanted to go back to last summer, when Taylor and I wrote our names in the air with sparklers, and tasted honeysuckle on our tongues, and didn’t even know that Alyssa existed.

  “Yeah, so?” I could see the straps of a light pink bra peeking out from under her tank top. I was sure the straps were showing on purpose because I’d done the same thing.

  “So why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I?” She started writing something in the air with her sparkler’s glow.

  “No. You didn’t.”

  She looked at me differently and her gaze fell upon my shoulders.

  I stood up taller.

  “You’re such a copycat.” She wrote something else in the air with her sparkler.

  “Yeah.” I took a sparkler out of the box on the porch. “And you’re so original.”

  Her ghostly letters were barely there when I stepped to her side and lit my sparkler off hers. “What’d you write?”

  “Nothing.”

  I took my own sparkler and wrote the word PETER. Then I wrote over it in midair with another word: PRETTY. I watched the letters disappear into the buzzing night air as little sparks flew off the wand, burning my hand just a touch.

  “So you probably heard about the Russia game tomorrow?” My sparkler went dead. “Between me and Alyssa.”

  “Yeah, she told me.”

  “Are you going to come watch?”

  “I don’t know.” She wasn’t making eye contact.

  “Oh, like you have other plans?”

  “I said I don’t know, Julia.” She did a clicking thing with her mouth. “You’re never going to beat her. So why are you even doing it?”

  I puffed my chest out. “I might beat her!”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I doubt it.”

  “Thanks for the support.” I looked away.

  “It’s almost time for End of Daze.” She picked up the box of sparklers and said, “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  “I’m watching it, too, you know. With Peter.”

  “Good for you, Julia.” She went inside.

  At home, my parents were settling in by the TV, so I said good night and went up to bed. I wouldn’t have wanted to distract myself from tomorrow’s mission with apocalyptic images anyway.

  All I cared about was tomorrow.

  Throwing.

  Catching.

  Clapping.

  Turning.

  Touching.

  Winning.

  14.

  I woke up excited, with a buzzing in my head. I went downstairs to eat a good breakfast for fuel and found my parents watching TV in their robes. On-screen, a local news anchor was being bombarded by big black bugs in front of the courthouse in town.

  The buzzing wasn’t only in my head.

  “You, dear daughter, owe me ten bucks.” Dad opened the blinds on the door to the deck; bug after bug banged into the screen.

  I jumped back for a minute with a shriek, then recovered and moved closer again, to study them. They were huge, bigger than any bug I’d ever seen, and they seemed, well, pathetic. They just kept flying into the screen and falling away and then flying away or banging into it again. I slid the glass door open an inch, knowing the screen would protect us, and the sound was like a UFO hovering overhead.

  So.

  Very.

  Loud.

  It was really happening.

  The pool cover was black with bugs, the air thick with them.

  When I went to the couch, I sat close to Mom, tucking my feet under her thigh.

  We all watched the footage again and listened to the anchorman bring new viewers up to speed, talking about how many millions of bugs had hatched overnight in however many square miles. He looked like he liked bugs about as much as I did.

  “Looks like we’re stuck inside today,” Mom said.

  Dad plopped down on the sofa. “I am so glad I don’t have to attempt to get to work in this.”

  “But—”

  The Russia showdown! I had worked so hard! I was ready!

  But I looked outside again.

  You could not play Russia with the air full of bugs. Was this an act of God? To save me the humiliation of this showdown?

  My parents seemed unable to move from the news, and I decided to stay close. When the phone rang a while later, it was Mom who answered it on her way back from the bathroom.

  I knew it was Alyssa. I knew it was time. But had she seen the news? Had she looked out her window?

  Mom simply said, “That was Alyssa calling to cancel.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  “What are you canceling?” she asked.

  “Oh, just a game of Russia.”

  Canceled.

  I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or not.

  Did that mean it’d never happen or that we’d reschedule?

  Either way it was out of my hands.

  We stayed glued to the TV into the afternoon, watching the reporter ask random people for reactions to the bugs. Their answers were pretty boring after the first few. How many different ways could people be expected to say, “Wow. That’s a lot of bugs”? There was one report of a car accident that the driver blamed on not being able to see because of bugs—“Ha!” Dad said, “Told you!”—but nobody had gotten hurt, and that was about as exciting as it got. So we kept the TV on low and starting playing board games—Life and Monopoly. It felt like a crazy snow day in the middle of summer, and I liked it.

  When dinnertime came around and some of the stations put on their quiz shows and sitcoms, things started to feel normal again. So normal that I was about to ask if I could go over to Taylor’s or something, but then I noticed the buzz again. It had been there all day, but I had gotten good at ignoring it. I looked out the sliding doors at the deck—they were still everywhere.

  There was no way we were going anywhere.

  Today, only the cicadas had won.

  Later that night, too late, the doorbell rang. Mom pulled her robe on—she was already in her PJs—and shuffled to the door in her slippers. I peeked from the kitchen, where we’d been looking at a catalog of fall clothes, and saw Alyssa and her mother standing on the front porch, swatting bugs.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you.” Alyssa’s mother’s words sounded funny, loose.

  “Oh, hi.” Mom turned the porch light on but showed no signs of opening the screen door. “I’ve been meaning to come by to introduce myself and give you a proper welcome, but I’ve had this awful stomach thing.”

  My mo
ther was a pro.

  “Oh,” Alyssa’s mother said. “No worries. But, well, Alyssa’s father’s out of town until tomorrow, and I know the girls are friendly. Could she stay here for, I don’t know”—she looked over her shoulder toward her house—“for an hour or two. I asked over at Taylor’s, but it’s just her and her father home tonight, so, you know. . . .”

  “Oh.” Mom still hadn’t moved to open the door. “Is everything okay?”

  “Sure, sure. It’s just that something came up. So can you take her?” Alyssa and her mom were still swatting. The looks on their faces showed they didn’t think it was as funny as I did.

  “Of course,” Mom said stiffly, and she tapped the screen a few times so that bugs jumped off. She opened the door, and Alyssa slipped in. Alyssa’s mother was already gone, running back across the street with her hoodie pulled up over her head. She didn’t even say good-bye.

  Alyssa came in and sat at the kitchen table. She was wearing her pajamas under a light hoodie, and something about that made me sad for her. When it was clear she wasn’t going to say anything, I finally said, “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” She sighed. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  I sat there, listening to the kitchen wall clock tick, trying to imagine where Alyssa’s mother had to go so urgently. Coming up blank, I said, “You want some ice cream?”

  “Sure.”

  “You want to watch a movie?”

  “Sure.”

  So we fixed some bowls and started a movie. A few minutes later, we were both laughing at the same joke. So maybe a truce was occurring; maybe we were powerless to stop it.

  But then, during a boring part, Alyssa turned to me. “You know how you said you didn’t think they were going to kill Archer?” She spoke louder. “You know, End of Daze?”

  I shushed her; Mom was in the next room.

  “Did you have nightmares like you thought you would?” She faked actual interest. “The mushroom cloud?”

  Mom came in with some water for us, and I held my breath, praying for Alyssa to be quiet. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Richards,” she said, and she seemed to smile at herself when my mom was gone again.

  So she didn’t actually want to rat me out; she just wanted me to know that she could. How could I have been so foolish as to trust her with my secret?

  Luckily, she just watched the movie quietly. All the while my stomach felt like a mushroom cloud, exploding in on itself.

  When the doorbell rang two hours later—we were all so very tired—Alyssa’s last words to me were, “Don’t think you’re off the hook. We’ll reschedule when the bugs are gone. I don’t want to be dealing with all their dead bodies. So gross.”

  She took off like the house was on fire, and Mom turned to Alyssa’s mom and said, “Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Mom stepped out onto the front porch and closed the real door behind her.

  Whatever they were talking about, it couldn’t be good. Because I’d ratted Alyssa out, hadn’t I? About the money and the naked neighbors. And if my mom so much as mentioned any of that, let alone accused Alyssa of making prank calls, I’d be destroyed for sure.

  I couldn’t sleep despite exhaustion—couldn’t block out the buzzing, couldn’t get Russia out of my head.

  I tried counting sheep.

  I tried counting cicadas as they bounced off the window above my bed.

  I tried fantasizing about a postnuclear holocaust romance with Peter.

  I tried reading the book I didn’t want to end.

  But nothing could stop my brain from picturing the ball, flying away and then back to me.

  It felt like some kind of madness, some disease.

  Russia wouldn’t let me go.

  I wasn’t off the hook.

  Not yet.

  15.

  By 11:00 a.m. on Sunday—Mom had refused to attempt to get to church—Dad was officially stir-crazy. He’d spent the morning pacing in front of the doors to the backyard, checking on bug activity, and then finally decided that they seemed to be calming down. So he announced that we were going to the mall for lunch. “It’ll be great,” he said. “I need socks.”

  My dad always seemed to need socks.

  We all got ready and grabbed hoodies, even though it was eighty-five degrees out. We went to the garage through the door off the hall near the kitchen and got into the car, which we hardly ever brought in there, but with the bugs coming, Dad had planned ahead. As the garage door opened, the sun came in and I think some bugs flew in, too. We pulled out and it sounded like a downpour. There were still more bugs out than I’d thought, which meant no Russia would be played today. Alyssa’s driveway was empty anyway.

  Once we were on the road, Dad tried the wipers a few times, but they were useless. When we came to stops at red lights or signs, I swore I heard crunching under the wheels. When we picked up some speed on the highway, there seemed to be less bugs. But there were still a handful of them, dinging off cars and trucks and then spiraling to the ground like tiny doomed fighter pilots. I cracked my window and the noise outside was so very loud, like there was a beehive in my ears.

  Eventually Dad pulled into the mall parking lot up close to the main entrance. “Why don’t you two get out?”

  Mom and I both pulled on our hoodies and ran for the door and had to swat some bugs away—I screamed—and then we made it through the big glass doors into the entryway and started laughing.

  “This is pretty crazy,” I said.

  “See! I told you!” She elbowed me and her look turned all dreamy. “I remember it now, from when I was younger, not like seventeen years ago, but the one before that, when I was like eight. I’d forgotten or maybe blocked it out. I remember being at my grandmother’s house and not going outside for days, but it was almost like she didn’t even let me know why we weren’t going out. I remember the noise, though. We spent days doing this art project, building this whole little fairy village. I should really be more crafty. We should. Together.”

  “Okay, Mom. We’ll be sure to do that.”

  She fixed a piece of my hair, pushing it off my shoulder. “Don’t be like that.”

  I thought about asking her what she had talked to Alyssa’s mom about, but thought I might be better off not knowing.

  Dad ran to us through the parking lot, and then we were all three in the mall, walking along a shiny white floor that reflected overhead fluorescent lights and the colored lights of store signs. Everyone and their uncle was there, and I felt sick thinking it was possible—likely, even—that Alyssa would be here. Her car was gone and her mom loved the mall. But it was a big place. With any luck, we wouldn’t see them.

  So we bought some socks for my dad and we got a few new T-shirts for camp/school, and we bumped into a family we knew from church and a girl I knew from school, then Mom lingered too long at the window display at some baby store. Of course they’d want a baby to be closer to their bedroom. But obviously that wasn’t happening. If it were, there would have been signs. Like Mom would have gained weight or lost weight. She’d have cut out the half a beer with dinner. I didn’t know if or how heartbroken they were or weren’t, though, so I didn’t really know how to feel except that I felt bad for bugging her about moving into the room so much.

  We ended up in one of those annoying restaurants where the waiters all gather around and make a fuss for people’s birthdays, but they can’t sing “Happy Birthday” for some nutty legal reason, and so they clap out this rhythm and shout instead. It happened maybe three times before we’d even gotten our food, and again when we were finishing up. There was a lot of loud whooping this time around, and I craned my neck to see what the fuss was about.

  Almost magically, I made eye contact with Taylor. Who was next to Alyssa. Who was next to her mom, who had an ice cream sundae with a candle stuck into it in front of her. She blew it out and shouted, “It’s great to be thirty,” and some people laughed
. She kissed the man next to her, and I got my first glimpse of Alyssa’s father. His hair was buzz-cut short and his arms were seriously at least twice the size of my dad’s. I had a quick vision of them having a fistfight, and of my dad losing.

  I slid farther into the booth so Alyssa wouldn’t be able to see me. I suddenly very much didn’t want to reschedule our game. I asked the waiter for the check myself.

  “Where’s the fire?” Dad said.

  “No fire,” I said, but I felt like there were flames under my feet.

  We managed to escape without actually bumping into them, and I kept saying in my head, I wouldn’t want to go to Alyssa’s mom’s party anyway. I put it on a loop to the same rhythm of the birthday clapping in the restaurant the whole ride home, even as the bugs hit the windshield, even as I felt like my stomach was a double-knotted shoelace.

  Dad didn’t want to open the garage door and let more bugs in so he said we were just going to make a run for it. He went first, keys in hand, and Mom ran after him. I didn’t feel like running the thirty feet from the car to the door, though. So I put my hoodie on again and put the hood up and just walked at a regular pace—maybe even slower than normal.

  There were bugs on the ground along the path, and I walked on tippy-toes to avoid them—each one easily bigger than my thumb. I felt bad for them, flapping around there, looking for mates without a clue as to what was really going on around them, oblivious to the fact that everybody hated them and that as soon as they mated and laid eggs, they would die.

  I felt one bing me on the head and I wondered if maybe they knew more than I could imagine.

  I stopped and shook myself off on the front porch while Mom said, “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” from behind the screen door.

  I thought about pulling the wings off one of the bugs on the porch, to see what would happen to its head, but then Mom opened the door and the moment passed.

  A while later, I heard noise on the street and went to the window, standing back so no one could see. Alyssa’s car was back, and I watched as Taylor got out and ran down the block toward home, swatting bugs the whole way. I don’t even know why, but I laughed.