16.
My mom and Peter’s mom had formed a carpool for camp. Every morning of that first week, it was my mom’s job to get us to the school where camp was and then Peter’s mom’s job to get us home. Week two would be the reverse. When Peter crunched his way up to the front porch Monday morning and rang the bell, I was ready.
“Did you do that thing?” I asked. “With the wings.”
“Nah.” He kicked a bug off the porch. “It seemed like a weird thing to do. But it’s definitely true that it works.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The Internet, Julia. Ever hear of it?” He grinned.
I pinched his arm.
He turned and looked at the lawn, still dotted with bugs. “To be honest, the whole thing is a little bit of a letdown.”
“You think?” Poor Peter, I thought. No zombies and now more disappointment. “I actually find it more impressive than I thought I would.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I took a minute to think about it. “I guess I didn’t realize I’d have feelings about them. Like I had dreams about them, and I feel bad for them but also think they’re pathetic. I’ve never really thought so much about bugs before, and what a sad thing it is that they’re just programmed to do what they do.”
“We’re all just programmed.”
“Maybe”—I was pretty good in biology at school and knew about genes and DNA—“but I like to think I can at least shake things up every once in a while, you know. Do something unexpected.”
“Yeah, like what?”
I knew it was wrong, but I smiled anyway. “Like throw a ball at somebody’s face.”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, that was pretty unexpected. I assume it got canceled?”
I nodded. “She wants to reschedule when the bugs and carcasses are all gone.”
“That should give you at least another week to practice.” Peter nodded. “So that’s good, right?”
“I guess.” But I really just wanted it to be over with.
My mom came out and said, “Well, good morning, Peter.”
He said, “Good morning, Mrs. Richards,” and we got into the car. They chitchatted most of the way, and we all talked about the cicadas. For once, now that it was actually happening and would soon be over, I didn’t mind.
Camp was being held at the high school that we would all go to, so I took special note of things, like the colors of the lockers (finger-paint blue) and the smell (Lysol/fresh paint). I tried to imagine myself—older and wiser—walking in there for the first time even though it wouldn’t technically be the first time. I hoped I’d be a totally different person by then and that maybe this place would be the place where I’d feel like I belonged. If there were any clues as to whether that would be the case, I couldn’t see them.
Peter and I signed in and parted ways as we said hi to some people we knew from band at school. I looked around for Wendy before I remembered she wouldn’t be there, and saw mostly unfamiliar faces since the camp drew from schools all around the island. Among those faces, one was smiling and bright. It belonged to a girl that had a short black bob haircut, short-short bangs, and a short denim skirt. She was wearing a cool graphic T-shirt with skyscrapers all over it, and was talking to a few girls who were laughing at whatever she was saying.
When one of the directors told us to break down into instrument groups and gave room assignments, I headed for the clarinet room and took a seat with some others. The overhead lights hummed ever so slightly while we waited quietly for instruction.
So quietly.
Too quietly.
Everybody was first-day awkward.
Then skyscraper girl came in and sat down next to me, and I got crazy nervous.
She got up and smoothed the back of her skirt, and sat again. Then she did the whole thing one more time. Everyone was staring at her, and when she noticed that, she looked at me and said, “It’s a good thing all the flutes are ladies, otherwise some flute boys would be getting quite a show later today.”
I laughed. “Wearing a skirt probably not the smartest move.”
She laughed back and that was that.
Her name was Laney, and we grabbed time to talk between pull-out groups and individual assessments and had lunch together. We made a list of boys that we thought were cute even though we didn’t know most of their names so we had to write things like “Broody Basoonist” and “Little Drummer Boy.” She agreed that Peter was cute, and that I had what she called “crush dibs,” and we confessed that we’d both just gotten our first bras and had never been kissed. We talked about the cicadas and about End of Daze, which she hadn’t been allowed to watch, so I filled her in, and then it turned out she’d read the book about the haunted pond, too. We were like sisters who’d just never met, which, of course, we hadn’t because we lived about as far from each other as you could while still living on the same island.
So unfair! She wasn’t even zoned for this high school!
At the end of the day, while we were waiting for our rides—her older brother was hers and I thought that just made her even cooler—I told her about Alyssa and how her moving to my block had wrecked everything with Taylor and just in general, too. I told her about the stuffed giraffe and the ALYSSA chair, and the hairy guy and the woman who needed the boob job.
Laney’s eyes got huge. “She spies on them?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure whether she was grossed out or impressed.
“Yuck,” she said with a shake of her head.
Lastly, I told her about the Russia showdown. How I’d gotten myself into this totally weird situation where I was supposed to prove my worth by playing a weird ball game against a girl I despised.
“That’s pretty messed up,” Laney said.
“Should I back out?” I did not tell her I’d thrown a ball into Alyssa’s face because I did not want to appear to be the psycho that maybe I was. “Or maybe she’ll just forget about it?”
“Not likely.” She shook her head violently. “And no way. You’ll never live it down if you back out. Have you been practicing?”
I nodded. “A ton. Before the bugs anyway.”
Peter joined us where we were sitting on a curb in the parking lot. “I’ve been coaching her,” he said.
“Is she any good?” Laney asked him.
“She totally is,” Peter said.
Laney nodded. “Well, then, you have to beat her.”
I knew it to be true.
The week took on a steady rhythm, like time was a metronome, and I started to hear songs and notes and drum beats in my head instead of bouncing balls hitting concrete and palm flesh. I’d forgotten that I loved playing with a concert band. I liked the way I knew exactly what to do and started to wish the world were more like an orchestra, everybody knowing their role.
“I wish I could move to your block,” Laney said on the last day of the first week, when we were waiting outside with Peter again. “Wouldn’t that be awesome? Or even your neighborhood, so we’d go to high school together at least.”
She and Peter were making me do the tensies move from Russia like a million times—bouncing and slapping, bouncing and slapping—against a wall near the parking lot. There were bug carcasses on the school grounds, but not a ton.
I said, “That would be amazing.”
But it was a crazy fantasy. In reality, I felt dread of the weekend creeping in. I hadn’t really seen either Taylor or Alyssa all week, and I’d gotten used to it. More than that, I’d liked it.
“You think it’ll happen this weekend?” Laney asked. She and Peter were as eager for news of the rescheduled game as I was.
“It’s possible.”
I dropped my ball and Peter fetched it and bounced it back to me.
Laney said, “Well, just remember that clarinet players totally rule the world.”
“Trumpets are pretty great, too,” Peter said.
“Band geeks for the win!” I said and we all laughed.
/> When our rides came, we said see ya. And the second Peter’s mom pulled out onto the street, I missed Laney so much it hurt.
My mom had a teeth cleaning scheduled that afternoon, so the plan was for me to go to Peter’s until she got home. He had prepared by downloading last Friday’s episode—we were a full week behind—but it started to drizzle on the ride home so the woods were not an option. Instead, we went downstairs, turned on the Wii, and turned the volume up loud. We took turns bowling so that the Wii kept making noises, but our attention was really on End of Daze. Peter’s mom was too busy getting dinner ready upstairs to notice.
In this episode, Mack and Archer and the guys I couldn’t tell apart in the other story line ended up meeting on a deserted highway. And the leader of the other group didn’t seem to like Mack’s attitude much. So there was a lot of tension and a lot of intense stares and glares. As much as I agreed that Mack had a lot of attitude, I figured you needed some of that if you were going to survive a nuclear-chemical apocalypse. In the end, Mack had to play nice with the guys because they had medical supplies and Archer had gotten a pretty big gash while playing on some old, rusty abandoned car. Or at least they thought it was abandoned . . . but then there was some thumping coming from the truck and they all gathered around—some of the guys had guns—to open it.
Roll credits.
“That’s it?” I shouted.
“A cliffhanger!” Peter announced. “Surprise! Surprise!”
I fell back onto the couch cushions. “Ugh! This show drives me crazy.”
“Well, it’s on tonight. So we shouldn’t have to wait long.”
“This weekend?”
“Sure. I’ll be in touch.”
Then we bowled a bit for real.
When I got home, Mom said that Alyssa had called.
I stopped in my tracks. “What did she want?”
“She wanted to play that game with you, I guess, tomorrow.” Mom was setting the table. Every night setting the table. “But we’re having company so I told her no.”
“What company?” My parents never told me anything.
“Aunt Colleen, and Mike and the kids. Melissa and George and the kids.”
“Mom,” I moaned.
“What? It’ll be fun.” She took a plate of pork chops from the fridge. “So anyway, Alyssa suggested Sunday morning, but we have Mass. And then she said she had other plans Sunday, and after that, I guess she and her mother are going along on one of her father’s trips for a few days.”
I sat down on a kitchen chair. “Did she seem mad?”
“No,” Mom said suspiciously. “Why would she be mad?”
“Oh, no reason.”
Mom grabbed a beer from the fridge and opened the door to the deck. “I’m throwing these on the grill. Want to come out and keep me company?”
It was the last thing I wanted to do, really, but I did it anyway.
17.
Dad and I spent the morning getting the yard ready, which meant uncovering the pool and getting rid of bug carcasses. I thought they were crazy not to just reschedule since there was so much clean-up to do and some stray bugs still out there looking for love. But these were friends they only saw a few times a year, and I guess the planets had to be aligned for everybody to get together. None of the kids was even remotely my age.
Mom really went all out with the food, making all sorts of neat combinations of skewers, like beef and mandarin oranges, and chicken and limes. She made fresh lemonade and some other pink drink that was only for grown-ups.
I spent the first hour of the party playing tetherball with some of the boys, who were like eight or nine, then went swimming with five-year-old Isabel, the only girl. After that, she asked to see my room so we dried off and went upstairs.
I got out my carousel and turned on the music and lights for her, and her face lit up when she said, “It’s beautiful.”
After that I showed her my ballerina jewelry box, which I’d forgotten was a music box. We wound it up and listened as we watched the tiny pop-up ballerina inside twirl. The song playing was the same piece from Swan Lake I’d played that one afternoon, before the calls had started.
“I can do ballet.” Isabel stood and put her arms up, fingertips touching to form an arch, and spun for me.
“Good job.” I clapped and she just kept on twirling.
When she stopped, we both tried on some necklaces. Finally, I got out my Snow White and Dwarfs and she asked why there were only six. I went back to the drawer and showed her the many pieces of Dopey, and she looked like she was going to cry.
I said, “Don’t worry. My mom’s gonna help me fix it.”
“I love your room,” she said after a while, and I felt like an ungrateful person.
After playing with old Barbies, we went downstairs and sat next to each other in folding lawn chairs while eating ice cream sandwiches, and I taught Isabel how to play Millionaire. She was too young to be any good at it, but it was fun anyway, like when she said, “I have so much money you wouldn’t even believe it. I have eighty twenty thousand and twenty hundred ten dollars.”
The adults were right behind us, and Aunt Colleen was telling some old story about a birthday party she’d invited my mom to that my mom didn’t go to.
“Not this again!” Mom said.
“You didn’t think I was cool enough.” Aunt Colleen sounded happy. “And you went to Celia McGovern’s party instead.”
“It wasn’t that!” Mom was laughing.
“Oh, just admit it for once, will you?” Aunt Colleen said. “Now that we’re old and gray.”
They all laughed.
After everyone was gone, my parents sat outside for a while, just the two of them, while I went up to bed. I could hear their voices through the open bathroom window while I brushed my teeth. They were laughing a lot, and they sounded like something other than a husband and wife, something other than a mom and dad: they sounded like best friends.
Mom came up to my room a while later and sat on the edge of my bed. “You were really great with Isabel today. Thanks.”
“She’s cute,” I said. I was really tired.
“So.” Mom adjusted my bedspread. “I was thinking we’d spend some time in the office tomorrow, start cleaning it out, so you could move in there.”
I woke right up.
This was big.
Huge!
I could see it all happening because I’d pictured it so many times before.
I knew where everything would go, what it would feel like to sleep in there for the first time. But the whole thing now made me sad. Because of what I knew.
“You’re sure?” I said.
“Your father convinced me,” she said. “And I know you’re having a rough summer. This gives us a project!”
“Thank you thank you thank you,” I said, and I sat up and gave her a huge, tight hug.
I changed into old clothes after Mass, and we spent Sunday morning shredding paper and filling big black bags with junk. If Alyssa and Taylor were playing Russia together, I absolutely did not care.
It was happening!
A new room!
But then I looked out the window of my future bedroom and saw Peter and Andrew giving Alyssa and Taylor skateboarding lessons. I stood there, perfectly still, long enough that Mom came to the window to see what I was looking at. I said, “Why didn’t somebody come get me?”
Somebody like Peter.
Mom said, “Do you want to go over?”
Right then the whole gang went inside Alyssa’s house, and I knew I’d lost my chance to join in. I couldn’t exactly go ring her bell.
“No,” I managed. “I don’t think I do.”
“Good. Because I was thinking we’re just about ready to hit the mall.”
So we went to the mall and mostly I wanted to just crawl into one of the model beds at the store and sleep until it was, I don’t know, time to go away to college? Or at least until the day and hour of the Russia showdown had come and
gone and Alyssa had either died or moved or stopped caring about this bizarre series of Cold Wars we’d been fighting all summer.
Maybe the cicadas knew exactly what they were doing.
How could Peter do that to me? Go hang out at her house when he hadn’t even called me about watching the new End of Daze together or anything?
And the weekend was practically over!
I pushed aside all Darcy Lane drama and threw myself into our mission.
I found a display with a bedspread set I really liked—just colorful circles upon circles—and when Mom liked it, too, I found the right size on the shelves. We got new sheets and curtains, and Mom got in line to pay for it all. Right near the register, by one of the fancy living room setups, I saw a framed poster of a single orange flower that I really liked, maybe because it reminded me of that red flower my mother had sat by when she’d told me my life would be full of adventures. So I pointed it out to Mom and she said okay to that, too.
I went and got one out of a small stack leaning against a wall, and brought it over to the checkout. Since there were still three people ahead of us, I ran through the store and found a jewelry box I adored—a plain white wooden cube with a glass top that let you peek inside to its soft lavender compartments. I thought maybe I’d pass the ballerina one on to Isabel the next time I saw her.
“I want you to do something for me,” Mom said as we left the store with our heavy bags. “It’s an assignment.”
“Mom!”
“Just hear me out.” She started putting stuff into the trunk, and I had a flash of wondering about who or what was going to be in the trunk of that car on End of Daze. It was all I could do not to ask Mom.
She said, “I want you to take a sheet of paper and write down everything you like about Taylor and Alyssa. As friends. One list for each of them.”
I groaned. “I really don’t feel like doing that.”
“Then don’t make a list, but at least think about it. Okay?”
“Fine,” I said, and we got into the car.
The Battle of Darcy Lane Page 8
