When we got home the house smelled funny. Mom said, “I think your dad has a surprise for you.”
I ran upstairs and into my new room, where Dad stood with a paint roller. The walls were the most gorgeous pale lavender I’d ever seen and something about the paint made the carpet—wall-to-wall cream—look even better.
“I love it!” I spun around to take in all four walls.
“Your mom thought you would,” Dad said.
The only bad thing about it was that we had to let the paint dry and air out the room for a few days before I could actually move in. I couldn’t stand the wait.
It was already nearly dark by the time we finished dinner, but I wandered over to Taylor’s house anyway to ask her to come over and see the lavender. But Taylor’s mom answered the door, looking confused.
“She’s at Alyssa’s?” she said. “The sleepover?”
“Of course!” I actually smacked myself on the head to really make a show of it. “I forgot.”
I sat on my front porch for a while taking calming breaths. I watched for shadows at Alyssa’s window and saw nothing—no lights, no shadows—but I was looking at the wrong place. They’d be in the back room, with the Ouija board and peep show. I pictured sleeping bags, flashlights.
I wanted to be there almost as badly as I was glad I wasn’t.
I was going to beat Alyssa at Russia if it killed me.
18.
In the car on the way to camp on Monday, I couldn’t exactly ask Peter about his visit to Alyssa’s with his mom right there, so I waited until we got out, and said, “I saw you teaching Alyssa how to skateboard.”
“What?” Peter scratched his head. “Oh, right. That.” He snorted. “Barely.”
I couldn’t make eye contact and looked at the ground. The bugs were mostly gone from the air, but their deathly remains were still hanging around, gathering in wispy piles along the curb. “So you like her now?”
“Julia,” he said, all serious, and he shook his head.
So I just walked away and looked for Laney and pulled her into the girls’ bathroom and told her about Taylor and Alyssa having a sleepover without me. “And I asked Peter if he would teach me how to skateboard, and then this weekend he was teaching Alyssa instead.”
“But he likes you; I just know it!” Laney rubbed my back. “And anyway, after you beat her at Russia, he’ll never even give her another thought.”
“It’s just a game.” I went into a stall to get some toilet paper so I could blow my nose.
“Everything’s a game,” Laney said. “And you have to play it. So when you ride home with him today, you have to act like you don’t care.”
I knew she had to be right—she sounded so very sure—and still it didn’t feel right to play games with Peter.
We were learning a set of pieces called The Carnival of the Animals for the big concert, and the music was so lovely and so sad that I had a hard time holding it together. I didn’t dare look across the room to where Peter sat with his trumpet. He couldn’t like Alyssa. He wouldn’t. But I felt crazy about it. Because boys like Peter had to like girls like me—and not girls like Alyssa—or there was no hope at all.
When Peter tried to talk to me at lunch, I acted like I was really in a rush and had to practice some hard clarinet parts and we’d just talk later. And when we met at the usual spot in the parking lot at the end of the day to wait for our ride, he said, “About Alyssa . . .”
I said, “Oh that.”
My mom was already pulling up.
“Forget I mentioned it,” I said. “You can hang out with anybody you want to, right?”
“Julia,” he moaned.
“What,” I said. “It’s true.”
“I thought it would be a few more years before this started.”
“Before what started?” I breathed hard.
He adjusted his backpack straps on the shoulders of his purple tee. “Before you started to get weird.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Everyone says girls get nutty.” He made that crazy gesture by the side of his head. “They get boy-crazy and mean and stuff. I didn’t think it would happen to you, but if it did, I thought it would at least be a few years from now.”
None of this was my fault. Didn’t he see?
I said, “Yeah, well, me, too, I guess.”
We didn’t talk the whole way home.
At home, Mom pulled hamburgers and hot dogs out of the fridge. “Taylor’s coming for dinner,” she said. “In case you forgot.”
I absolutely had forgotten. I wasn’t sure I’d even been told. I said, “Does she have to?” and Mom might have smiled.
“Yes, she has to. Her parents have a work party to go to.”
“I’m just really tired.”
“Yeah, well, join the club.”
Then the phone rang and it was Taylor’s mom, and she said she’d made other arrangements and not to worry. And that felt worse.
We had burgers and dogs and macaroni salad out at the table on the deck, then moved some of my furniture into the room so we wouldn’t have to do it all at once. It still reeked of paint, but after my parents went back downstairs, I sat there, barefoot on the floor, breathing it all in.
19.
Before I knew it, it was Thursday—the last full day of camp since Friday was just the concert. And now that camp was over, I wished it had been longer. How would I survive the rest of the summer—the rest of my life—without Laney?
“This really stinks,” I said, when she was watching me practice elevensies by the parking lot.
“We need cell phones,” Laney said. “So we can at least stay in touch, like, constantly.”
“I’ll work on it.” I nodded.
“Me, too,” she said. “And stop looking at your hands. You know how to clap without looking!”
I threw another ball, but I wasn’t trying very hard. Great as Laney was, I missed having Peter as my coach. We weren’t exactly ignoring each other anymore, but he wasn’t going out of his way to be around a nutty girl like me. Right now he was waiting for our ride as far away from me as was possible while still being able to see me.
“Do you think if you win, you’ll win Taylor back?” Laney asked. I’d told her it was all on again, for Saturday.
But it wasn’t even about that anymore.
Was it ever?
“I don’t know.” I thought hard about what I wanted to be different after the showdown. “If I could have anything I wanted, I wish I never had to see either of them ever again. Then I’d like to never meet another girl like Alyssa in my whole life.”
“They’re everywhere.” Laney was bouncing a ball. She had no real interest in Russia beyond helping me get better. “You need to learn to spot them and stay away. And, I mean, you have friends in school, right?”
“Not great ones,” I said. “Taylor actually told me the other day that there was no way I would ever win. Why would she even say that?”
Laney shook her head. “You just have to win and you’ll have that to hold over them forever.”
I loved this girl.
Loved.
And even though we’d still see each other tomorrow we knew it wouldn’t be the same so we hugged hard when my mom pulled into the lot.
In the car, I handed Mom the envelope I’d been given by the camp director after turning in our order form and check that morning: three tickets to the concert.
“You have to call Wendy to remind her,” Mom said as she slipped it into her purse.
I very much didn’t want to.
I looked out the window to where Laney was pretending to walk down an imaginary flight of stairs behind a small car. I laughed and waved.
“Who’s that?” Mom asked, as Peter jogged over and climbed into the backseat.
“That’s Laney,” I said. “Another clarinet.”
“She nice?” Mom asked, after saying hi to Peter.
Now Laney was climbing back up those stairs. “She’s
entirely awesome.”
“Well, that’s exciting!” Mom’s voice was full of hope.
“She lives on the complete opposite side of the island,” I said.
“That’s too bad.”
“But if I had a cell phone, I’d at least be able to text her and stay in touch!”
Mom hit the gas and we were off. “Peter, do you have a cell phone?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and presented it as evidence. “Just got one.”
“See!” I was giddy.
She said, “One battle at a time, Julia,” and we all settled in for a quiet drive.
After saying good-bye to Peter in the driveway, I went up to the porch and saw a note taped to the door. I snatched it, unfolded it, and read it: Saturday. 1:00 p.m. No excuses. Even if it’s Armageddon.
“Pretty big word for a girl like Alyssa.” Mom was reading over my shoulder.
I turned and looked at her, shocked.
“Sorry,” Mom said. “That was mean.”
We started cracking up and couldn’t stop.
The paint smell was officially gone, so we moved the rest of my stuff in and started to wash my new sheets and bedspread. Too excited to do anything else, I sat in front of the washing machine, watching circles and bubbles go round and round, and thought through a whole game of Russia in my head.
When everything was dry, Mom and I put them all in place, and the whole room felt new and amazing. We hung the orange flower over the bed and both took a step back. I said, “I love it. But the dolls . . .” We’d moved them from my old room to a shelf in the new one. “They have to go.”
“But you love those dolls,” Mom said.
“Loved, Mom. When I was like five.”
“We’ll box them up,” she said as she plopped down and had a look around. She seemed sad.
“Mom?” I said.
She looked up.
“Wendy said her mom thought you were going to have another baby, that this was going to be a baby’s room.” We were in it now, no turning back.
“Oh, honey.” She grabbed my hand. “You’ve been wondering all this time? Why didn’t you ask?”
“I’m asking now.”
She took a minute to think. “Your father and I had what people call a . . .” She stopped then started again. “We thought I was pregnant, but it was just for a week, and I actually wasn’t. But when it was happening, I started getting excited about the idea—everything was so much simpler when you were a baby, and I guess I was thinking a lot about that—so we talked about maybe trying, but we’re way too old. And we’re fine about it. We’re good.”
“I think I would have liked a little brother or sister.” I felt so sad, imagining a little baby to hold.
“I know it’s hard sometimes. You feel like you’re on your own. But your father and I, we love things just as they are. And the friend thing. It really does get easier, I swear.”
We joked about the idea of Dad changing diapers again, and then she left me alone on my circle-y bed in my cool new room. I felt like big things could happen here. I tried to think ahead, another seventeen years, to imagine what things would be like when the cicadas came back. I’d be twenty-nine, so I’d probably only ever come back to sleep in this room when I was visiting my parents from wherever I lived.
It seemed crazy that it would ever happen.
The phone rang and I stiffened, and Mom called out that it was Taylor. I didn’t even want to move to go talk to her, but I did anyway.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
“What?”
“Alyssa and Peter are going to the movies together tonight. I thought you should know.”
“Thanks.” My face started to vibrate, like it might jump off my skull.
“That was all. I have to go.” She hung up.
I went to the mirror and looked at myself, but nothing appeared different even though it was.
I hated Alyssa and it felt good.
I hated Peter and it felt awful.
Mom seemed extra happy that night. She smiled wide and more easily, and she talked about all these things we should do come fall and winter, like apple-picking and ice-skating. She was already giddy about Christmas, and it was only August. I sat close to her while she talked about new decorations that we might get—like a new star topper for our tree—hoping some of it would rub off on me like glitter.
Then the phone rang and Mom picked it up and there was no one there. She hung up and said, “Wrong number,” but I could tell in her tone she wasn’t convinced, and neither was I.
It rang and rang again and Mom answered once more, but there was no one there.
“Not this again,” Dad said, coming into the room.
The next time Mom just picked up the phone and hung it right back up without a word. “I’m going over there,” she said.
“Mom! No!” I said.
She looked expectantly at Dad.
“I have to side with Julia on this one.” He rubbed his eyes and sighed like he couldn’t believe his misfortune at being stuck in the middle of all this. “You’ve met the girl’s mother. You really think she’s going to be open to having this conversation after the way she reacted to, well, you know?”
Mom’s frustration at knowing he was right, I guess, came out as a deep, guttural scream. What had they even talked about that night?
The phone rang again. I picked it up and just held it to my ear, picturing Alyssa at the movie theater, maybe calling from the bathroom.
“Hello?” came a confused girl’s voice. A familiar one.
My brain worked hard to figure it out. “Wendy?”
“Julia?” she said. “I called a second ago, but somebody hung up on me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “We’ve been getting some prank calls.”
I went out to the deck for some privacy as my parents started talking in the den. Call waiting signed another call, but I ignored it and asked Wendy about her vacation. She told stories about crab cakes and beaches and a big house on the ocean. “Sounds awesome,” I said.
“How was camp?” she asked.
“It’s been great.” And I froze, thinking about the extra ticket. “I mean, it’s been okay.”
“So what’s the deal with the concert tomorrow?”
“Oh.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Let me ask my mom. I’ll be right back.”
I put the phone down on the table and didn’t move a muscle while I tried to think how to play this. The idea of Wendy coming to the concert and of having to introduce her to Laney made me mad. Why had Mom—who I could hear saying to Dad, “well, somebody has to do something about it”—invited her without even asking me? I pictured Wendy talking to Peter, who’d betrayed me, and thought I’d be sick from jealousy. So I made some footstep sounds with my feet and made some muffling noises into my hand, and picked up the phone again. “You there?”
“Yeah.”
“My mom’s so sorry but she totally forgot to get you a ticket. And they’re not selling them at the door.”
“Oh.”
The silence was so painful that I wished for some cicadas to fill it, but they were officially gone. I heard a lone cricket croak, then said, “I’m really sorry.”
“No big deal,” she said. “We’ll make plans soon, though, right?”
“Yeah, definitely.” I’d gotten away with it. “Okay, I have to go.”
“Okay, bye.”
I hit a button on the phone to end the call, and got up and turned to head inside. Mom was standing at the door. I had no idea for how long until I looked her in the eyes.
“I’m not impressed.” She turned off the outdoor lights.
“You invited her without asking me,” I said, lamely, in the dark.
“Don’t even try to make this about me,” she said wearily and drifted back into the den.
I got an old notebook out before going to bed and turned to a new page. I wrote down the names Alyssa and Taylor. But when I went to write things
under them that I liked, I found myself writing words like mean and disloyal and stuck up instead.
On the next page, I wrote Laney, and wrote under it, Awesome in every way.
I wrote down Peter and had to think hard.
I wrote smart, then funny, cute, understanding.
I crossed those all out and wrote, TRAITOR.
Under Wendy, I wrote smart, talented, happy, confident, nice, nice to me.
Then I wrote Julia and the letters looked funny to me, like that couldn’t possibly be a real word, a real name.
I wondered what words my friends might write under me.
20.
We’d been told to wear white shirts and black pants or skirts for the concert, which seemed silly in summer, but those were the rules. So I pulled out my lightest weight black skirt and a short-sleeved white top and got dressed. I spent some extra time on my hair, drying it with the blower, which I hadn’t really done all summer, and making it curl under just right.
“You look gorgeous!” Laney said when she saw me, but I didn’t feel gorgeous. I felt awful about everything.
Laney was wearing a black skort—!—and a white top with black suspenders. “And you can somehow pull off suspenders!” I said. “How is that even possible?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” She really had no idea how amazing she was. I didn’t dare kill her mood with my drama.
The stage was all set up with the chairs arranged just so, and I stood there in the wings for a minute trying hard not to feel so lousy. I peeked out into the auditorium, which was filling up quickly, and that started to do the trick. Then a few notes played by people tuning their instruments rose up, making me excited and nervous at the same time. Which was silly. There was nothing to be nervous about. Even if I messed up, who’d even know but me? Still, it felt important.
To do a good job.
Since I’d gone and mucked things up good last night.
There is a moment, after the curtain opens, right after the conductor raises his hands or his pick, when the whole band, the whole world, seems to be holding its breath. But it is not holding, it is waiting to inhale.
The Battle of Darcy Lane Page 9
