The Battle of Darcy Lane

by Tara Altebrando

  Someone might cough in the audience, someone might whisper to the person next to them, but the band doesn’t hear any of that, not in any real way. The band is waiting, poised, so that it can take that one last inhale before everything takes off and the rest of the concert is like a runaway train, no brakes.

  I savored that moment, that pause before the inhale, thinking that it was possible it would be the moment before everything really changed, before I changed somehow and for good.

  It was definitely our best performance of The Carnival of the Animals, and when this one part came during the piece called Aquarium, right after a clarinet solo that Laney played brilliantly, and the horns swelled, I seriously thought I was going to cry. Because I’d nailed it and I guess a lot of other people had, too, because it felt like we all had.

  During the applause I looked out at the audience and saw my parents, with that empty seat next to them, and I thought about Wendy and felt bad about making fun of her, even if only in my head, for stickers and wanting to play duets. At least she was passionate about stuff. Like I was, like Laney was. Peter, too.

  Alyssa and Taylor didn’t seem passionate about anything.

  Not even Russia, not really.

  When we all got up to take a bow at the end of the show, I felt like I had on the skyscraper that day—so small that I was large at the same time. I had to work really hard to get control of the muscles in my face, and I didn’t dare look across the way at Peter and his trumpet because I knew that would make me lose it.

  Laney reached over and squeezed my hand, and I squeezed hers back.

  When I saw my parents in the lobby, I ran to Mom and she hugged me. I couldn’t fight tears any longer.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “About Wendy.”

  She hugged me harder and said, “I know you are, Julia. I know you are.”

  “And I’m so glad you signed me up for camp, and I’m sorry I was such a jerk about it.”

  She pulled back and said, “You know your father and I are just doing our best.”

  I nodded, wiping away tears.

  We saw Laney in the parking lot and introduced our parents. Both our dads had taken the afternoon off, and our moms were instantly chatty. Then Laney and I hugged good-bye. “You’ll keep in touch, right?” I asked.

  “Of course, you dope.” She hugged me again. “We can email! Or even send letters! It’ll be hip and old-fashioned. And they have to get us phones eventually. I mean, what is this, the Dark Ages?”

  Pulling out of our hug, she flashed that smile of hers that made you want to be her. “And promise me you’ll remember that when you get to elevens you have to keep your eye on the ball and just trust that you can clap all fancy without actually looking at your hands, right?”

  I laughed. “I’ll remember.”

  We went out to lunch as a celebration, down at a nice restaurant on the bay. Right after we sat down, Peter and his family walked in. He smiled at me, and he looked so cute with his tie still on that I thought maybe things weren’t so bad. Even if it was true about him going to a movie with Alyssa, I felt too bighearted and full to hold it against him right this second. Nobody suggested combining tables, and I was a little bit sad, but it wasn’t up to me.

  When we were done with our entrées, Peter came over, said hello, and slid into the empty seat next to me. “Big day tomorrow, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess Alyssa told you when you were at the movies.”

  “Um.” He tilted his head. “Huh?”

  “Taylor said that you and Alyssa went to a movie last night.”

  Peter made a face. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “She asked me, and I said no.”

  I couldn’t help it; I smiled and let my gaze drift toward my parents. They were talking happily, laughing at the silly names of boats docked just outside the restaurant.

  Leaning in to Peter, I said, “I’m dying to know what’s in that trunk.” I pinched his arm. “You made me wait all weekend.”

  “We’ll watch soon.” His face brightened. “Hey, you want cake?”

  I must have looked confused because he said, “My birthday.”

  “Oh, happy birthday! Sure.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “Mom,” I said. “Do you guys want cake? It’s Peter’s birthday.”

  “No, you go. Happy birthday, Peter!”

  So I went and sat at Peter’s table with his parents. We split a piece, he and I, because we were both too full already. Then it was time for checks to be paid and for us to go to separate cars and houses.

  “You’ll be there tomorrow?” I asked as we walked through the parking lot.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, and he gave me a high five, grabbing my hand as we hit and holding it for a long second.

  Taylor was sitting on her front porch reading when I got home, and I asked Mom if I could go over for a minute.

  “You sure?”

  I nodded and wondered when Taylor’s sister was coming home, whether she’d missed Taylor at all. “She seems lonely.”

  It was the truth and it seemed to hit some soft spot in my mom because she nodded.

  So I went over even though I knew Taylor was probably going to think I looked like a geek in my band clothes.

  “You’re reading?” I took a seat next to her.

  “Yes, Julia. I read.”

  I just nodded.

  “Alyssa was looking for you.” Taylor turned down the corner of a page and put the book down behind her. “She wants to make sure you got her note.”

  “Yeah. I got it.”

  “I’m tired of this whole Russia thing.” Taylor stretched her legs out in front of her. “What is it with you two anyway?”

  I almost laughed but just shook my head. Because, really: What was it? Could I ever explain it? Did I even understand it? The way you just feel in your bones when you and another human being are just never going to be able to connect, no matter how hard you try. It was a mystery I wasn’t sure I’d ever crack.

  “We had a fight,” Taylor said. “Me and Alyssa.”

  “About what?” I tried not to get too excited.

  “She dared me to go skinny-dipping when Peter and Andrew were there, and I said no, and she called me a prude.”

  “Oh,” I got stuck on the idea of Peter skinny-dipping at Alyssa’s house. “Did they all do it?”

  “Andrew got in and took his shorts off but for like two seconds, and you couldn’t see anything, not that I was looking.” Taylor looked at me superseriously, as if to make sure that last bit sunk it. “And Peter just said no way, no how.” She shook her head. “But she didn’t call him a prude.” She sighed. “Anyway, she just wouldn’t stop talking about it, so I told her to shut up, and she told me to eff off, only she didn’t say eff.” She pulled her legs back up close to her body. “That’s it.”

  “Crazy.” I tried not to smile. “But for the record, I wouldn’t have done it either.”

  “Well, I know that, Julia.”

  “She’s been prank calling my house. Just calling and hanging up.”

  Taylor didn’t move an inch, and only said, “I honestly don’t think she cares enough about you to do something like that.”

  “I can’t explain it,” I said.

  Taylor got up to go inside.

  When my parents went into the living room for End of Daze, I said good night. And even though I was happy to be spending the evening settling into my new room, I was pretty grateful that End of Daze was only a miniseries, not an ongoing thing, and that my parents wouldn’t have this secret thing between them once summer was done. If it meant that Peter and I wouldn’t have our secret for long either, that was okay. At the rate we were watching, I wasn’t even sure we’d make it to the end.

  I climbed into bed with my book, and I read and read and reached the scene where the truth about the face in the haunted pond—who it was, why it was there, everything—was about to
be revealed. But the strangest thing happened. Right as I got to the very line where I was sure the old man who lived in the woods was going to blow the whole thing wide open, right as the girl and the cripple were going to have their life together changed forever, I closed the book.

  I got up and put it on my bookshelf.

  I didn’t want to know if the whole thing was somehow a trick of the eye or, worse, a hoax.

  Life was long and there was plenty of time to stop believing stuff later.

  I sort of missed that unicorn poster.

  When I still couldn’t sleep a few hours later, after my parents had come up and gone to bed, I got up and put on a sweatshirt over my pajamas. I went downstairs, turned on one of the lights in the backyard, and went outside to practice Russia. I was up to twelvesies when a light came on in Peter’s room. A minute later, his window opened and his head popped out. “Are you crazy?” he whisper-yelled.

  “I think I am!” I said back, not even trying to whisper.

  “Shhhhh. I’m coming over.”

  A few minutes later, I heard the back door of his house creak open. Soon he was at the fence, climbing and dropping down into my yard. “Julia,” he said. “It’s late. You’re going to wake up the whole neighborhood.”

  “So?” I threw the ball way high and did the over-and-under leg clap and caught it. Only three more times to go before I hit the final move of the game.

  But then noises came from my own house, and Mom appeared on the deck in her bathrobe. “Peter. I don’t want to have to wake your mom.”

  “Sorry.” He climbed back up over the fence and was gone.

  I was about to tell Mom that I needed a few more minutes, and that it wasn’t up to her to tell me to stop, but she stood there and folded her arms. “So, how hard is it?”

  I did another eleven. “Not that hard.”

  “Are you any good at it?”

  “Pretty good.” I bounced the ball and caught it, not as a move, just for something to do.

  “Good enough to win?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She turned a lawn chair to face the patio where I was practicing and turned another of the backyard lights on, “Show me what you’ve got.”

  I started from the beginning again and breezed through the early steps. When they started getting harder, Mom started saying things like, “Try that one again. Another seven times.” And, “That one you’ve got, no problem. Just keep your eye on the ball and not on your hands.”

  “Mom?” I said, smiling and thinking of Laney. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I bounced my ball and caught it. “Why the sudden interest in Russia?”

  “Oh, no reason.”

  Dad came out, too, and pulled up a chair next to Mom but abandoned it in favor of grabbing an extra ball and trying to learn the game alongside me. He dropped it about a gazillion times before Mom said, “You’re hopeless.”

  “Just rusty,” Dad said.

  I was doing tensies so he tried it. “This is harder than it looks.”

  “Julia makes it look easy,” Mom said.

  “You want to try?” He held a ball out to her.

  “No, thanks.” She giggled. “I’m fine here.”

  “But you used to play Leansies Clapsies!” I said.

  “A lifetime ago,” she said.

  They coached me all the way through to the end three times before we called it quits.

  “You can do this, Julia,” Mom said solemnly when we went inside.

  I nodded that I knew, but I also felt a little bit scared. When I was the only one who cared, the Russia showdown was already a big enough deal. If Mom was counting on me—if she thought that now we had something to prove together—I thought maybe I was doomed.

  21.

  It was so hot Saturday, and so humid, that I thought I might just rather die than go through with any of this. The morning crawled toward lunchtime, and I didn’t really feel much like eating, so I faked it for Mom’s sake and did some stretches, which seemed ridiculous even to me since I’d never done them before.

  When it was nearly one, I waited on the front porch until Alyssa came out of her house with a ball in her hand. Before getting up to walk across the street, I took a few deep, calming breaths, and it was like the whole summer flashed before my eyes. The first glimpse of the pink chair. The skyscraper view and skyscraper girl. The Ouija board saying “yes.” Peter. The woods. The cicada infestation. I couldn’t remember what the bugs had sounded like or what it felt like not to wear a bra all day.

  Alyssa was wearing the same outfit she’d had on the first day I met her, and for some reason that felt right.

  “So you showed,” she said when I met her by her garage.

  “Of course I showed.”

  “And here comes our ref.” I turned and saw Andrew walking across the street. Behind him, Peter was on his skateboard. A few of the other neighborhood kids came out of the woodworks, and I wondered if any of them had any idea what was at stake here, whether they’d heard stories about the prank calls, whether Alyssa had been bragging all over town.

  Alyssa’s mother came out and sat on their front porch. Even some of the local dragonflies seemed to want in on the action, flying lazily around in the thick air. I hated dragonflies and their quick darting movements, and I worked to block them out the same way I was trying to block out all the spectators. I’d told my parents that they were only allowed to watch from our porch—out of my line of sight across the street.

  “You ready?” Alyssa asked, just as Taylor wandered over from her house and sat on the curb by Alyssa’s.

  “Ready.” I felt it.

  “All right.” Andrew adjusted his baseball cap. “You both know the rules.”

  “Just make sure she doesn’t cheat,” Alyssa said.

  “Make sure she doesn’t,” I said.

  “I know, I know.” Andrew already seemed bored. “So I guess, on your mark—”

  I rubbed my thumb over the ball in my hand as Alyssa and I both turned to face the garage.

  “Get set.”

  Peter said, “Good luck, Julia,” and I felt like I was the only one who heard it.

  “Go!”

  Alyssa and I both threw against the garage and caught, then did twosies with the bounce inside the line, and caught. After that, we both moved away from the garage and into the street for threesies, and I started to get distracted by things people were saying. Like, “How many moves are there?” and “What’s the prize?” To block them out I started playing Aquarium in my head and went on to foursies.

  The first time I made it through the song, I was finishing up fivesies. Somehow the rhythm of the music in my head and the counting of notes and bars all worked to help the count of Russia. I stopped to see Alyssa already on sixies, and I started the song in my head again and started sixies, too. I’d been thinking that dropping the ball was my worst enemy, but if Alyssa finished faster, I’d still lose, even with a perfect game.

  “Stop humming,” Alyssa said a few seconds later.

  I hadn’t even realized I’d been doing it. I stopped to wipe some sweat off my rib cage under my shirt, and Peter came over and handed me a bottle of water. I took a swig, smiled, and handed it back.

  “You’ve got this,” he said.

  I’ve got this, I repeated in my head and got back into the zone and stayed there—bouncing, clapping, throwing, turning, whacking, catching. Like I’d been born knowing how to do it.

  It seemed like it took no time at all before Alyssa and I were already at twelvesies. That’s when things started to move as if in slow motion. We fell into this rhythm where we were taking turns, and when we were up to nine each, going on ten, Alyssa said, “Taylor slept over last night. That’s like the second time in two weeks.”

  My ball was in the air, and I felt my balance shift but caught it anyway—ten down, two to go.

  She seemed to just be standing there, waiting for me to reply, so I too
k the chance to throw my eleventh out of twelve. And while the ball was in the air, I thought about people like Laney, how probably there were a lot of them out there, people I’d meet in life and like.

  I caught it.

  And with Alyssa still waiting, I thought about saying maybe the nastiest thing that I could think of, even if it was just flat-out calling her the same thing she’d called me in the woods that day. But Peter called out, “You’re doing great, Julia. Stay focused.”

  Right then Alyssa threw her last of twelve—too high. She spun and looked up, squinting into the sun, holding out her hands—too late.

  She missed.

  The ball bounced to the curb.

  Some people moaned. Some people cheered. Taylor turned her head away. But above it all, I heard Alyssa’s mother’s voice, and I could see her face turn sour-looking when she said, “Losing to a loser makes you a loser, Lyss. Come ON!”

  My parents appeared on our porch, and I wanted to wave but didn’t want to confuse my muscles by doing anything out of the ordinary, anything non-Russia. I was so grateful they weren’t the kind of parents who would drop me off at the house of a neighbor they didn’t even know. So grateful that they were the kind of parents who at least told me not to judge people based on their freckles or hair or weight or coolness, even if I was still coming up short.

  “You can do this,” Mom had said, and the words were echoing inside me when I threw the ball high and did the under-the-leg clapping thing for the twelfth time.

  I caught it.

  I took a deep breath as a few people clapped and Peter held out the water again. I went to him and took a long draw off it. I felt like I was maybe dying.

  “You okay?” Peter asked.

  “Yeah. Good.”

  “I know you can do this.” He squeezed my shoulder gently.

  “Me, too.” I nodded.

  “But I’ll still hang out with you if you don’t,” he said.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  My first few spins for thirteen made me a little dizzy, and I had to blink a few times to catch my balance.