“So…,” he says, working on it, trying to put it together, “you weren’t kidding.”
She blinks. “What?”
“The blackboard. ‘DEAD SUCKS.’ ”
“Hah.” She gives a snorty laugh that’s not a laugh. She paces, paces. “Yeah…what’s the date?”
Seven days and a wake-up. “June ninth,” he says.
She’s counting on her fingers. “December twenty-fourth. Almost six months…” More counting. “Was February twenty-eight days this year?”
“Yes.” This was not a leap year.
“How many days in April?”
“Thirty.” He’s liking this. He wishes she would ask him the number of days in every month. He knows them all.
“May?”
“Thirty-one.”
Counting: “…one forty-nine, one fifty…” She looks at him like she’s in water floundering and he’s the only one on deck with a life preserver. “Oh…my…God…,” she says, wondrous, disbelieving. “One hundred and sixty-seven days, Worm. Your days. That’s how long I was in the bottle.”
And suddenly a life preserver is in his hands. He flings it to her. “But you’re out. You’re here now.”
And she’s hugging him again. “Sweet Worm…”
She seems in no hurry to let go. He’s not complaining. He wonders, when you’re alone with them, if all girls are this emotional.
In time, over her shoulder, he sees the door of Dollar General opening….
12:29 p.m.
And out comes the shopping lady with her kid, tote bag bulging.
Right away the kid spots Worm and yaps, “Deader!”
“Stop it,” his mother snaps, and yanks him up the street. The kid is pulling at her hand like a puppy on a leash. What does he think he’s going to do if she lets go? Run over and bite him?
Somehow, the kid manages to break free, but to Worm’s surprise, the kid doesn’t come charging at him. What he does is repeat with a sneer—“Deader!”—and now he’s turning around and bending over and aiming a fart at Worm that’s loud and rumble-deep enough to have come from a sumo wrestler…and Becca has suddenly dropped from his arms and is now on the sidewalk. Her knees are drawn up and her fists are pounding the pavement, and Worm is wondering if it’s dangerous to laugh so hard.
When she’s finally finished, she grabs his black shirt and pulls herself to her feet and wags her head and gasps. “Whew…,” she goes. “I needed that.”
He’s never seen somebody laugh and cry in such a short period of time.
She takes his hand, pulls. “C’mon. I want to walk. I want to walk forever.”
Hand in hand they go down Pocono Street, past Crafts R Us…Jo-Anne Doughnuts…Zummo Hardware….He’s thinking he hasn’t held a girl’s hand since first or second grade, students following teachers like baby ducks. He can’t figure out if she’s being motherly, girlfriendy, or something else. She’s looking this way and that, stops to peek in windows, says a friendly “Hi!” to unresponsive sidewalkers.
At last she gives his hand a quick squeeze: she’s returning her attention to him. “So, yeah, I’m out. I’m here. Question is, for how long? Question is, why?” She looks at him. “We know the who.”
“We do?” he says.
“Oh yeah.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Why me?” he says.
“Bingo,” she says. “That’s the question. It’s kinda fuzzy. Like, I know it’s you. I knew it when I saw you at the water fountain.” She sandwiches his face between her hands. “I’m here for you, Robbie Tarnauer. You need me.”
“I do?” And thinks: I could list forty kids right now who need changing more than me.
She nods firmly. “Yeah. You do.”
They walk a ways in silence. Worm ponders. Pondering is nothing new to Worm. He often tunes in to the birthplace of his own words, sees them percolate up to his mind, into his mouth, where, more often than not, they stay. He seldom lets them out.
They’re passing the First United Methodist church. They’re not holding hands anymore.
“I need to know what makes you tick, Worm.”
He doesn’t like the sound of that, doesn’t want to be investigated.
“It’s not pimples,” she states flatly. “I won’t let it be.”
“What pimples?” he says, and she’s cracking up before the words dry out.
She pokes him in the chest. “There’s more than shy in there, kid. There’s funny.” She studies him. “I bet before you got shy, you were a performer.”
I’m a Little Teapot.
She takes his hand again, swinging it as they stroll along Pocono Street for all the world to see. One minute he feels like her kid, her being taller and older and ordering him around and all. The next minute he feels like they’re boyfriend and girlfriend…hah, yeah, like he would know what having a girlfriend feels like.
They’re passing Mike’s. world’s best hoagies. Closest thing in town to a kids’ hangout. Eddie chills here. So would Worm if he lived in town.
“So, Worm,” she says, shoulder-nudging him as they pass the Apple Walnut Café, “c’mon, spill it, what can I do for you? What do you need?”
Worm’s brain is a blank. He’s got Eddie. He’s got Nuke ’Em ALL Now! Endless, schoolless summer awaits. Seven days and a wake-up. What else is there? Life is good. “I’m OK,” he says.
She’s wagging her head. “Sorry, Worm. You’re not getting off that easy. So let’s see….” She raises his hand over his head and twirls him around like he’s the girl in a dance—it’s embarrassing, but something else too. “Let’s start easy. What’s your favorite color?”
“Red,” he says. It’s not. He just says it to keep her happy. He’s known for years he’s supposed to have a favorite color, but so far he hasn’t been able to decide. Maybe that will come along with maturity too.
“Hmm,” she goes, squinting at him sideways under the slouchy hat brim that halves the distance between them; she knows he’s lying. “How original. OK…best friend?”
“Eddie Fusco.”
“Favorite food?”
“Oyster stew.”
It just came out. That’s how he knows it’s true. Ever since he saw his father eating it at the Gateway Diner. He couldn’t have been more than five or six.
“Ugh,” she goes, making a face. “Kids don’t like oysters. They’re slimy.”
“Sorry,” he says.
“Favorite sport.”
“Ping-Pong.”
Another squint. He knows he’s supposed to say football or whatever, but he saw Ping-Pongers on TV in the Olympics once, and he could not believe how they did it. Because he’s tried at Uncle Bill’s. He’d say football if it was Eddie asking.
“Favorite song.”
He’s stumped. He’s not into music yet like a lot of his classmates. Another race he’s trailing in. He remembers “Onward, Christian Soldiers” from Sunday school, but he’s pretty sure that doesn’t count. Or Christmas carols. At Eddie’s house once he heard a song called “Yellow Submarine.” He still wonders what it means. Well, yellow submarine, of course, but what the hell does that mean? Whatever, he woke up for days with the tune in his head. “ ‘Yellow Submarine,’ ” he says.
She laughs. He doesn’t remember ever making somebody laugh so much. He knows he’s her assignment, but he can’t help feeling there’s something more personal going on here too. He wishes he could compare notes with Eddie….
Eddie!
He looks at his watch….
12:41 p.m.
“It’s over!” Worm wails. He still can’t let it go.
Becca looks at his watch, nods sympathetically. “Ah. Y’think it’s over by now? Eleven minutes? If it started on time?”
“You kidding?” he says (not that he’s a boxing expert or anything). “Eleven minutes? You can’t slug it out for eleven minutes. It was probably over in eleven seconds.” He pictures a roundhouse right—or maybe an uppercut, lifting one or the other clear off his feet…Jeep…Snake…one of them on the ground, flat like a snow angel…glazed eyes staring at nothing…the crowd going wild, the cannon rocking.
She drapes a consoling arm over his shoulders. “Sorry, Worm. I know it meant a lot to you. Hey…” She backs off, chipper, challenging. “C’mon, you wanna duke?” She’s dancing on her toes, like Muhammad Ali in films he’s seen. She’s flicking jabs that land an inch from his nose, quacking at him: “Let’s go, big boy. Put ’em up. Scared of a girl, huh? Scared somebody will see you getting beat up by a girl?” Jab, jab. “Pow! Pow!” One of them actually nips the end of his nose.
Worm, like many boys, grew up believing any boy can beat up any girl. Difference in size means nothing. It’s nature. Boys are stronger and faster and that’s that. Eddie himself has said he could beat up his mother with one hand behind his back if he wanted to, and his mother is five nine.
Now, with this girl, this spectral maiden, sparring in front of him, snarling even…well, he knows she’s just kidding, but he also knows something else: if he seriously tried to hit her, he would find himself seriously decked on the sidewalk.
She’s dropped her gloves now but is still dancing, feinting left and right. And into his head comes the dialogue on the bus tomorrow, maybe the worst thing of all:
Eddie: Hey, man, where were you?
Worm: Oh yeah…right…well, y’know, listen, Ed…I know this sounds, like, goofy [finger-quote “goofy”], but listen, I met this dead chick—y’know, the one on my card?—and so we decided to go strolling up Pocono Street instead. By the way, who won?
If only because it’s the only thing he can think of to do, he looks at his watch.
12:45 p.m.
Worm and a dork named Albert are the only eighth graders who wear a watch to school. He knows he can tell the time on his cell, but he likes the look of the minute and hour hands. For some reason his watch makes him think of his father in the army. But mostly it’s kind of a compass that positions him in time and space. One glance at his wrist and he always knows where he fits. Who he is.
Except this time.
He turns from Becca, from everything, and walks up Pocono…walks up Pocono….
No one is stopping him, no hand yanking him to a halt. He wanted a free day, he got it. The sun’s glare off the shadowless sidewalk is blinding.
Is she behind him? Has she gone off the other way, given up on him? The farther he walks, the more he’s tempted to turn around. He fights it. He’s passing Mean Monica’s bus stop.
He’s passing downtown’s last store, Lamp Repair & More, when she goes prancing past him. And that’s it: prancing. Part run, part dance, all Finch.
Somewhere along the line he expects she will stop, turn, laugh, and wait for him. She doesn’t.
She’s the size of a fingernail now. She’s at the edge of town, nearing Forrest, passing Jimmy’s Auto Repair.
He walks. He refuses to run. He will not run after her. (OK, he walks a little fast.)
As he draws nearer, he is struck by how much she seems to be enjoying herself, lah-dee-dahing along, stopping like a dog to sniff out every little thing, making him stop-start, stop-start. He can’t see her face, but he knows she is smiling big-time. Every so often she pops a Tic Tac into her mouth. He’s only a few steps behind her now—he can hear her humming—but he likes this, discovers maybe he doesn’t want to totally catch up. It bothers him for a moment to think that she’s not missing him, seems perfectly happy without him, maybe doesn’t even know he’s right behind her. She stops. He stops. She picks a black-eyed Susan from a front yard and flips it back over her shoulder. He catches it. She waltzes on. Her fluffy raspberry slippers shsh-shsh on the pavement. He thinks: Dying surprised her. Sadness soaks him.
She speaks: “Are we heading the right way?”
“For what?” he says.
“Your house. I want to see where you live. Meet your parents. Figure this out.”
“I don’t live in a house,” he says.
“Really?” she says. “So…what? A cave? Tepee?”
“Well, yeah, it’s a house house, but it’s a lot more. It’s a retreat kinda place. For writers. They stay in cabins.”
She stops, turns. “Seriously?”
He nods. He can’t believe how good it is to see her face again.
She resumes walking. “So are we going the right way?”
“Yeah,” he says. “But it’s too far to walk.”
“How far?”
“Five, six miles.”
She stops. She takes off her fluffies, walks on, picking up the pace, fluffies in hand. She doesn’t wear nail polish, toes or fingers.
“Why are you wearing slippers?” he says. “And pajamas?”
She stops, so abruptly he almost plows into her. She looks up, gives a deep sigh. She’s breathing hard. “Pooter,” she says, and resumes walking.
He senses it’s time to keep his trap shut. He knows she’s supposed to be interrogating him, not the other way around. He thinks he wants to be alongside her now, but he’s afraid to change anything.
She speaks: “I say that—I tell myself that. But I know better. He didn’t put me in that bottle.”
She sniffs. She stops. This time Worm knows: she’s waiting for him.
He’s alongside her now, arms touching. He has a goofy thought—she seems to trigger goofy thoughts—of putting his arm around her, sticking his hand under that hat and tousling her hair and saying something like, It’s OK, kid. Tell me about it.
But it’s she who makes the move. She leans her head to the side until it’s resting on Worm’s shoulder—tricky because his shoulder is lower than hers and because they’re still walking. Eddie’s words—“I’m making my move”—come back to him, but suddenly they don’t feel so intimidating. He wonders if someday he’ll have a move of his own. He wonders if even now it’s developing somewhere inside him, maturing.
When Becca straightens up, she slides her left arm under his right, like women do with men, and tells him the story.
1:41 p.m.
“It was a little thing,” Becca says. “That’s the most important. Say it, Worm, so I’ll know you know.”
“It was a little thing.”
The sun is high. The shadow line of the hat brim runs under her nose from ear to ear, leaving only her mouth in sunlight, giving the impression that it’s not so much a part of her as representing her, speaking for her.
It was all about Pooter.
Pooter was her boyfriend. His real name was Harmon Dean Baker.
It was December 23, the last day of school before Christmas vacation. But the groundwork was laid long before that.
“He was beautiful,” she says. “Even pretty girls were jealous. He was everything. Class president. Star jock. Sings! Played Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. Smart. And nice! What’s not to like? He was the perfect human being.” She looks at Worm. “Understand?”
He nods. Thinking: Eddie. Thinking: Maybe every school has one.
She stops, steps back, takes off her hat, spreads her arms. “Now look at me. How would you rate me, one to ten?”
Inexperienced as he is, Worm in his role as observer considers himself a competent judge. He takes the question seriously, frankly looks her over. She’s by no means Bijou beautiful. Prom court? No. Cheerleader? Maybe. “Nine,” he lies.
She laughs. She plunks the hat on his head and kisses his nose. “You’re a really bad liar, Worm. But you’re sweet.”
They resume walking. Worm appreciates the shade too much to object to the hat. The sun is super bright
today.
“So…,” she says, “you can see why I was knocked for a loop when one day he’s coming out of Waldo’s—the local pizza hangout—just as I’m going in, and he holds the door for me and sort of bows and says, ‘Milady,’ and I play my part and I curtsy and say, ‘Thank you, good sir,’ and I figure that’s that. Except I take two steps inside and discover that he’s right behind me. Now I’m confused. ‘I thought you were leaving,’ I say. ‘So did I,’ he says.
“Well, I’m so dumb I’m thinking, ‘I guess he forgot something. Whatever.’ But the thing is, I can’t move. He’s got this look on his face I can’t read. It’s not a grin, it’s not a smile. Whatever it is, it’s keeping me stuck there like there’s superglue on my soles. And he’s sure not looking around for something he forgot. He’s looking at me. I mean me. Like I’d never been looked at. And the only thing my brain can come up with is, ‘Uh-oh, girl,’ and I’m praying he says something, because no way can I produce language.
“And then he says, ‘I’m getting tomato pie with anchovies. What about you?’
“Which is totally bogus because he already ate, which I know because he’s still got the napkin tucked into his pants, the klutz—yeah, he’s adorable too. I think I said something brilliant, like, ‘Uh,’ and next thing I know, he’s bowing again and sweeping his arm forward and leading me to a booth.
“It all gets pretty dazy after that. Like, what’s really happening? Is there a girl in another booth that he’s trying to make jealous? I don’t remember what I ordered. I do remember sneaking a look around and finding no girl in another booth. I remember a thought that made no sense and yet kept repeating itself over and over: ‘Harmon Dean Baker is having two lunches because of me.’
“We talked. I don’t remember what about, but I know we talked nonstop. That was the first thing, and it never changed. We were great talkers with each other. We were still talking when we left Waldo’s. He walked me home…talked me home. Then we talked over to his house. Then we talked to the park and around town and went back to Waldo’s and talked through dinner and walked and talked some more until it was dark. We knew we were being ridiculous—we kept saying so—but it was like we were on a train that wouldn’t slow down enough for us to hop off. When he walked me home for the second time, the stars were out, and he said, ‘We gotta stop this,’ and I said, ‘Stop what?’ and he said, ‘Stop talking. We need duct tape. Tape our mouths shut,’ and before I had a chance to laugh, he was kissing me and I was kissing back, and when I came to and opened my eyes, I thought the stars had come down—but it was fireflies, dancing and winking around us. This was a Saturday in August. August fifteenth.”
Dead Wednesday Page 6
