“I know.”
“Do you think she’s going to be all right?”
“I think she’s already all right. She just has a bump on her head.”
“More like a dent.”
“Okay, a dent.”
“Do you think it will pop back out?”
“The dent? I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
No. But Breezie’s eyebrows are scared, scrunchy caterpillars, so I say, “Uh-huh. I’m one hundred percent sure, that’s how sure I am.”
The worry leaves her face, and my heart swells, because I did that. I made Breezie feel better.
“Good,” she says. She’s silent for a few seconds. Her hand hovers over the pile of pebbles I made, and I want to say, Go on. You’re allowed.
She pulls back her hand. She says, “Also, Taylor caught a fly.”
I crane forward and peek out from beneath the bouncy bridge. I see Taylor. I see kids gathered around him.
“I think you better go over there,” Breezie says.
“Me? Why?”
“Because he’s Taylor, and you’re . . . not. Please?”
Well. I crawl out from beneath the play structure and brush myself off. Reluctantly, I approach Taylor. Breezie follows, staying about ten feet behind.
“Taylor caught a fly!” Chase exclaims when he sees me. “He caught a fly, and now he’s going to pull its wings off!”
“Maybe,” Taylor says. His hands are cupped around something, and the something is buzzing. “Or maybe I’ll eat it. Or both!”
“Taylor, no,” I say. “If you have a fly in there”—I nod at his hands—“you have to let it go.”
“My cousin says flies taste like carpet,” Taylor says.
“Well, he’s wrong,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“Because I do. Because I asked a fly once, and he said that flies taste like . . . like . . .”
Taylor squints. He’s deciding whether to pop the fly into his mouth, I just know it.
“Like cheese puffs!” I say. “Yucky cheese puffs. And the fly you caught?” I step forward and put my ear next to Taylor’s cupped hands. “Ohhh,” I say. “What? What? Oh. Okay, sure.”
I straighten up. “He says his name is Cheese-head. Cheesehead the Fly. So you can’t eat him, because he has a name.”
Taylor doesn’t know if he should believe me.
“You can’t pull his wings off, either,” I say. “He’s already used his special fly radar to tell all of his fly brothers and sisters that he’s trapped in your hands, and if you hurt him, they’ll come and find you.” I widen my eyes. “It will happen when you’re least expecting it.”
“It’s true,” Breezie says. She’s not ten feet behind me anymore.
“But if you let him go, he’ll be your special fly protector forever,” I say.
“Like a fly bodyguard?” Taylor says.
“Exactly like a fly bodyguard,” I say. “Only so sneaky you’ll hardly even know he’s there.”
Taylor uncups his hands. The fly zips away. Everyone watches, and then Taylor says, “Let’s play soccer. I call goalie!”
He and some other kids run to get a ball. Chase heads for the grassy field, while Hannah and Elizabeth wander toward the swing set.
“Thanks,” Breezie says.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
We look at each other. I’m not sure what to do, so I hold out my hand. She hesitates, then shakes it. Then she spins on her heel and jogs toward Hannah and Elizabeth. “Hey!” she calls. “Wait for me!”
I stand there, my arms dangling by my sides. I think about Lexie. I hope she’s okay. I think about Joseph. Being in the hospital means Joseph’s not all the way okay, but his doctor says he’s doing a great job of getting more okay, which makes a small glow light up inside me. Still, I’m ready for him to hurry up and be every single bit okay, so that he can finally come back to school.
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning, Mom stands at the stove and makes breakfast like a good mommy. Dad has already left for work, and Sandra and Winnie are upstairs doing girl stuff, so for a few minutes it’s just me and Baby Maggie at the table.
Actually, Baby Maggie isn’t at the table. She’s on the table, strapped into her bouncy chair.
“Now listen, I’m working hard on getting you a pet,” I tell her in a low voice. “I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten, because I haven’t. ’Kay?”
I jostle the bouncy seat, and Maggie nods. Her whole body nods—up, down, up, down.
“And we have eggs,” Mom announces in a ta-da sort of way. “Ty-bug, will you call your sisters?”
“SISTERS!” I bellow. “EGGS!”
“COMING!” Winnie bellows back.
“Here’s a thought,” Mom says, coming to the table. “Next time I ask you to call your sisters, I want you to go to them and make sure you can see their eyeballs. Then, very politely, let them know that breakfast is ready. Can you do that?”
“Sure,” I say. “But you asked me to call them, so I did.”
“Next time, eyeballs,” Mom says.
She spoons yummy, fluffy eggs onto my plate. While she’s there, she kisses Maggie’s rosy cheek, which sometimes I want to bite. Not because I want to hurt her! Because her cheeks are round and chubby, that’s all.
But I bit my own arm once—it’s a little round and a little chubby—and it wasn’t the thrill of a lifetime. So whenever I think, Mmm, me bite baby’s cheek!, I right away remind myself to think a second thought: No bite! Yucky! Have cookie instead—or eggs!
“At the end of the day, remind Lexie to go with you to the pickup line,” Mom tells me. “I got a text from Lexie’s mom this morning, and Lexie will be at school. That means your playdate is still on.”
Since I’m chewing, I give her a thumbs-up.
“If she doesn’t go home with you when Sandra and Winnie pick you up, she won’t get to go home at all,” Mom says. “So it’s important she sticks with you.”
I swallow. “Well, someone would pick her up eventually.”
“I mean it, Ty,” Mom insists. “Don’t forget.”
But Lexie doesn’t let me remind her, because she’s too busy being a rock star. All day long she flits from person to person, letting them admire her bruise. It’s the exact shape of the wooden heel of Mrs. Webber’s clog. It’s purple and blue and heel-shaped.
When the final bell rings, however, she magically appears by my side.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say.
She walks with me to the pickup lane outside the school.
“Do you want to touch my bruise?” she offers.
I do. I’ve wanted to all day long. But I say, “No, thanks.”
“You don’t? Why?”
I look her straight in the eyeballs, the way Mom wants me to do with Sandra and Winnie. Since I’m Lexie’s sometimes best friend, I think she should have let me touch her bruise first, or at least in the first round of touching. Maybe she figured that since she was going home with me, I’d get one-on-one time with her bruise then. Maybe she figured I’d get more time with it than the other kids, so I didn’t need time with it while we were at Trinity.
Maybe she’s right, but it still hurts my feelings.
“I’m not allowed to touch other people’s bruises,” I say. I stop looking at her eyeballs. “There’s Sandra. Come on.”
“Hmph,” Lexie says.
On the way home, she chats with my sisters. She glances at me from time to time.
“Do you want to touch it now?” she whispers at a stoplight.
“No, thank you,” I say in my regular voice. “But thanks for the offer.”
“What offer?” Winnie says, craning around from the front passenger seat.
“Nothing!” Lexie says. She turns red and doesn’t ask again.
When we get to my house, Winnie and Sandra go off to their rooms. Mom brings Baby Maggie downstairs and says “hi,” but after putting out milk and cookies, she takes Maggie away again.
“It’s her nap time,” I tell Lexie.
“Your mom still takes naps?” Lexie says.
I start to say, No, silly. Baby Maggie does. Then I realize Lexie wants me to say that. So I nod matter-of-factly and say, “Yep.”
Lexie narrows her eyes.
I take another cookie from the plate on the kitchen table. “What do you want to do?”
“Something not boring,” she replies.
“We could do our non-random acts of kindness. I could do a kindness for you, and you could do a kindness for me.”
“I said not boring,” Lexie says.
“But—” I close my mouth. I am in a mood of not liking her very much. I’m ready for her to go home, only she just got here. I can’t complain to Mom, because all Mom would do is say, “Work it out.”
“You choose something,” I say to Lexie. “Something un-boring.”
She smiles. It’s a smile that makes me think of Mrs. Webber’s egg timer, and like Mrs. Webber’s egg timer, it gives me the shivers.
“The electric chair,” she says smugly.
I put my head in my hands. Of course she picked the electric chair. She thinks it sounds so cool, when really it’s just this stupid chair that goes up and down our back staircase. It’s connected to a metal railing, and there’s a button you press to make it work, and it’s called the electric chair because it runs on electricity.
The lady who lived in this house before us was really old. That’s why she had the electric chair. First she got so old that she couldn’t climb stairs. Then she got so old that she died. She might have died in the electric chair—that’s what my sisters say. They say our back staircase has ghosts.
“Well?” Lexie says.
I lift my head. “We’re not allowed.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s too dangerous.” I try to sound important. “It’s too dangerous, and so Mom made a rule!”
“That’s silly. I’ll go ask your mom myself.”
My hand snakes out, and I grab her forearm. “NO! I mean, no. She’s, um. She’s putting Maggie down for her nap. We aren’t allowed to bother her.”
Lexie looks at my hand on her arm. I let go.
“Hmm,” she says. She sticks her legs out near me and crosses one foot over the other. She’s wearing her cool black high-tops. The sparkly ones. “If the electric chair is so dangerous, why haven’t your parents gotten rid of it?”
“Because . . . well—”
“I don’t think there is a rule. I think you’re just scared.”
“Yeah, right. I’m sooooo scared.” I make spooky hands. “Oh no! It’s a chair! Oh no, it’s coming to get me!”
She hops up from the kitchen table. “Then let’s go, Mr. So Not Scared. Show me.”
So, fine. I guess I have to. I mean, I can’t think of any other plan . . . so I take draggy steps to the back staircase and do a limp flop with my arm.
“There,” I say.
Her eyes get big. The electric chair is right in front of her on its steel railing. The cushion part is yellow-y and scratched, and so is the armrest, and she touches a peeling-off bit of fabric. It’s old, just like Mrs. Robinson before she died.
On the bottom of the armrest is the power button, which you hold down to make the chair move. There’s a power button on the wall, too, beneath the light switch. I don’t know why there are two on/off buttons, unless Mrs. Robinson liked to ride the chair without doing any work at all? Maybe she’d perch on the chair like a queen while her husband or daughter or granddaughter pushed the button on the wall and sent her on her way.
Lexie’s fingers scooch to the bottom of the armrest and hover above the power button. She pushes it, and the empty chair hums and lurches up the railing. Lexie squeals and lets go of the button. The chair stops. She laughs.
“Who’s scared?” I say.
Her eyes are bright and her smile is brighter. “Not me,” she says, going up one stair and climbing into the chair. She holds down the power button and giggles as the chair takes her up up up. “Adios, amigo!”
She looks like she’s having fun, and there don’t seem to be any ghosts. If there are, they’re hiding. I almost decide I’m having fun, too, until I remember that I’m mad at her.
I push the power button on the wall, which maybe she doesn’t even know about.
The chair stops.
She says, “Hey!”
“Ha-ha,” I say.
I let go of the button, and because she’s still pushing the button under the armrest, the chair lurches upward.
“Hey!” she cries.
“You did it, not me,” I say.
She lets go of her button. The chair stops. I push down my button. The chair starts. She scowls and holds down her button, only mine is the boss button, because hers only works when I’m not pushing mine down and mine works no matter what.
So, even though she wants to stop the chair, the chair keeps going because I’m pressing the boss button. Ha-ha-ha.
“Ty, stop!” Lexie says.
“Bossy, bossy, bossy,” I say, because I can.
“Ty! STOP!”
I keep pressing the button. She keeps going up.
I smile.
She doesn’t.
She hop-skaddles out of the chair while it is moving, and I am startled, but not startled enough—or maybe too startled—because I keep pressing the button.
The chair keeps going.
Lexie is in front of it.
Her leg is very very VERY in front of it, between the electric chair and the steel railing. Her foot is on the stair itself, which is BELOW the railing and the chair, and also BETWEEN the railing and the chair, and it is kind of like she—or her foot—is standing smack between two elevator doors that are closing, closing, closing. Only even so, the chair still keeps going.
She screams a scream, and it’s bad. So bad there’s even a word for it, and the word is bloodcurdling. Spiky cold things twist under my skin, and now I know. They are the curdles.
The chair jolts forward and rams Lexie’s shin.
Her scream is the bloodcurdliest scream in the universe.
CHAPTER FOUR
I let go of the button, and the chair stops—finally!
But it’s too late. Lexie’s leg is pinned between the electric chair and the hard wooden stairs. Her foot in its black sparkly high-top is wedged between the edge of the stair and the motor of the chair. It is JAMMED IN. I can see it, and it is squished at the ankle between metal and wood. She tries to pull it out, but she can’t.
“OW!” she bellows. “My leg, my leg, my-leg-my-leg!”
I’ve heard that sometimes time stands still, but I didn’t think it was true. Or, I thought, Okay, but not to me.
Only, yes, it’s true, and yes, to me. Lexie’s leg is stuck, and so am I.
Then—pop! Time bubbles through and unfreezes me, and I sprint up the staircase and tug on Lexie’s leg. No good.
Tears stream down her cheeks, and she is scared, I can tell, because her face is red and blotchy and her eyes are trying to jump out of her eyeball sockets.
“Hold on, it’s okay,” I say. I’m scared, too.
She reaches for her button, the on/off button beneath the arm of the chair, and I say, “No!”
She pushes it, and the chair jumps forward another half an inch ON TOP OF HER POOR SQUISHED LEG.
“Owwwww!” she cries.
“Don’t do that!” I say. “You’re just making it stuck-er!”
“Help!” she wails. “It hurts!”
“I know!”
“It really hurts!”
“I know, but—” I close my mouth. But if you make the chair go forward any more, you’ll break it, I was going to say. Meaning, her leg. Snap. But I keep that thought to myself.
“So,” I say. “Um.” My heart bam-bam-bams. I tug again on her leg.
“OW!” she shrieks.
“Sorry!”
I bite my lip and glance at the top of the staircase, wanting my mom and my sisters to come running, but also not wanting them to come running. I don’t want to get in trouble. I do want Lexie to get unstuck.
No one comes running.
“You’re doing a very good job of holding still,” I tell Lexie, because she is, even with all the crying. “You’re being very very brave.”
“It hurts,” she whimpers.
Then! A storm in my brain! A good one! I squat and flip the “change direction” lever on the motor of the chair. Why why why did I forget about the “change direction” lever? I stand back up and reach for the on/off button.
“No!” Lexie cries.
Too late again. I’ve already pressed it. But this time there’s a happy ending, because with a creak and a groan, the chair goes down the staircase. Down the steel railing. Down away from Lexie’s poor squished leg and poor trapped foot.
She’s free! The disaster is over. PHEW.
• • •
It rains that night, and that’s good. It’s a good night for rain, especially since it’s just rain and not thunder and lightning. It’s a good night for hearing drumming sounds on the roof and for being snug inside with all the lights on and Parmesan chicken for dinner. I eat five pieces of French bread with butter, and Mom tells me I’m going to turn into French bread with butter, and what will she do with me then?
“Eat him up—yum!” Sandra says in a witchy voice, and I laugh with everyone else. The laugh that comes out isn’t quite my laugh, but close enough.
Still.
Witches and trapped legs and a stormy night, even without thunder and lightning, make it hard for me to settle down. Lexie didn’t tell on me when her mom came and picked her up, even though it was her fault for getting hurt since she was the one who wanted to play with the chair, but what if she decides to later? And when will Joseph ever come back? He’s doing well. The doctors are always saying he’s doing well. So why can’t he just be well? Joseph never tells on me. He also never gets stuck in the electric chair.
The Life of Ty Page 2
