The man closed his eyes and turned his face toward the front again. “She will call me clumsy and I’ll probably trip and break my neck coming down the porch stairs.”
“There is that danger,” said Ryan. “What if I tell her that you say you only want to talk and you are trying to protect her.”
“Will she believe you?” asked the man, still facing front.
“The only way to find out,” said Ryan, “is to try.”
Somebody in a car in the line waiting for the RAV4 to move honked a long blast.
The RAV4 suddenly patched out, accelerating rapidly away from Ryan.
Ryan stood there on the double yellow line as the other cars roared past. Several drivers flipped him off. Ryan agreed with them and therefore did not flip back.
When traffic coming the other way cleared again, Ryan jogged back to the porch, where Bizzy had not waited. Instead, she had gone inside and watched from a window. Now she came back out.
“Did you tell him to go away?” she asked.
“He says he isn’t trying to kill you or your mother.”
“And killers never lie,” said Bizzy.
“He says he’s driving back and forth to protect you. He says he only wants to talk to your mother. I pointed out that you have a doorbell beside the door, and he suggested that he didn’t want your mother to inform him that he’s clumsy and cause him to break his neck.”
“Not an irrational fear,” said Bizzy.
“I told him that I would tell your mother what he said.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’d find out if she believed me.”
“And how,” said Bizzy, “will we find that out?”
“First,” said Ryan, “I’ll tell her. Then she’ll say whether she believes me.”
“She’ll believe you. But will she believe what he told you?”
“When he asked me the same question—”
“It’s a good question, isn’t it?” said Bizzy.
“I told him, the only way to find out is to try.”
“And so he said he’d come back later and ring the doorbell?”
“Somebody behind him honked and he peeled out like he thought he was driving a Maserati instead of a Toyota.”
“So now let’s walk to school,” said Bizzy.
“It’s still a little early,” said Ryan.
“I want to see if he keeps passing us in order to protect us, or if your little confrontation discouraged him,” said Bizzy.
“We have time for me to tell your mother,” said Ryan.
“We don’t have time for you to spend the next two days hiding out in your house because my mother told you that confronting that man was clumsy of you,” said Bizzy.
“She wouldn’t,” said Ryan.
“I know her better than you do,” said Bizzy.
“If she cursed me, my mother would kill her,” said Ryan.
“She’d curse her too, and then your mother would trip and fall on her own knife,” said Bizzy.
“Then she’d stand up and keep making stabbing motions until one of them killed your mother. Really, you don’t know what my mother is capable of.”
Bizzy stood and looked at him, shaking her head slightly. “You think this is funny?”
“I think I need to tell her. I kind of promised the guy that I’d at least try.”
Bizzy walked to the door and opened it. She stepped inside. Ryan followed her.
Jake was inside, eating what looked like a tortilla with jam on it. “What’s he doing inside here?” asked Jake, with a lot more hostility than Ryan would have expected.
“I invited him,” said Bizzy.
“You know Mother said—”
“Please tell Ryan,” said Bizzy, “whether he can talk to Mother right now.”
Jake’s eyes went wide. “Are you insane?”
“I’m not afraid of her,” said Ryan mildly.
“Because you think she needs you to protect her precioussss?” Jake asked. He elongated the hissing sound so it reminded Ryan of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.
“Yes,” said Ryan. “Or are you ready to step up and do it?”
Jake took a menacing step toward Ryan, but Ryan decided not to back down. He just looked at Jake with mild interest.
Jake stopped. “Mother’s not here. She went to work.”
“Not till nine o’clock,” said Ryan.
“She’s covering somebody else’s shift,” said Jake. “No lie.”
“No lie,” said Bizzy. “I brought you in so you could see that we have nothing to hide, except for Jake’s ridiculously bad manners.”
“Suck rocks,” said Jake to his sister.
“You always offer,” said Bizzy, “but you never provide the rocks.”
“Why couldn’t you just tell me that she wasn’t home?” Ryan asked Bizzy.
“I thought it was better for you to see for yourself.”
“I can’t see that she isn’t home, because, like, I can only see this room,” said Ryan. “And I would have taken your word for it on the porch.”
“I also thought it would be good for you to see how well my strong and beautiful brother watches over me,” said Bizzy.
“Let’s head for school,” said Ryan.
“I’m taking classes in mixed martial arts,” said Jake.
“If you took classes in baking,” said Bizzy, “you’d make some lucky girl a wonderful wife someday.”
Jake grimaced at her and headed back into the new kitchen that used to be Dad’s office.
“Your dad’s gone, too?” asked Ryan.
“He pulled another all-nighter at the library,” said Bizzy.
“Why aren’t you guys worried the loveks will take him hostage.”
“Why do you think we’re not?” asked Bizzy.
“Who watches over him?” asked Ryan.
“My father is a dangerous man,” said Bizzy. “He learned many skills of his own in Slovenia. Now, let’s go.”
Ryan followed her out of the house and pulled the door shut behind him. The RAV4 passed them twice on the way to school.
If it had been doing that before yesterday, Ryan would have noticed, and so would Bizzy. What changed? What made the watchers become so obvious?
What would happen if the guy rang the Horvats’ doorbell before Ryan had a chance to talk to Mrs. Horvat?
Not my worry, thought Ryan. The watchers probably knew already that Mrs. Horvat wasn’t there. For all Ryan knew, they had bugged the house, or had one of those directional microphones pointed at their window so that they could listen in on everything said there. So they should know that Ryan hadn’t told Mrs. Horvat anything about the RAV4 guy.
Or maybe they were really incompetent and the guy would get cursed. So what? Clumsy people survived all the time. It wasn’t always fatal.
15
On the way to school, Bizzy suddenly veered off the sidewalk and headed for the fence. It took a moment for Ryan to realize that it was the exact place where Bizzy had taken off from her mother that time, and so he did the same thing he had done then—he followed her. Only this time he was right behind her, and they ended up going down the hill and getting on the other street together.
“Any particular reason for this detour?” asked Ryan.
“Not a detour,” said Bizzy. “I like this route.”
“Going downhill here means we have to go uphill to get to the school, and it adds about a quarter mile to the trip.”
“We’re early. And isn’t it fun to think of spy cars having to go all the way around?”
Ryan knew that wasn’t really her motive. Bizzy could be playful, but the fact that she didn’t warn him what she was doing meant that this reason wasn’t invented until she had already led him this way.
&n
bsp; “You’re just being romantic,” said Ryan. “This is our detour.”
Bizzy gave one hoot of laughter. “Are you also going to keep the anniversary of our first kiss?”
“Did that count as an actual kiss?” asked Ryan.
“I was really kissing you,” said Bizzy. “And it sure felt like you were really kissing me. Even if there had been a layer of plastic cling wrap between us it would have counted as a real kiss.”
“It’s only a first kiss if there’s also a second,” said Ryan. “Otherwise, it’s just an only kiss.”
She stopped, swiveled to him, grabbed his head, and planted a kiss on him that was so passionate it blew the previous one out of the water. Since it came without warning, he hadn’t taken a breath, and when it ended he had to gasp for air.
“Hello,” said Ryan, when he could breathe again.
“You walked in front of a moving car for me,” said Bizzy.
“He stopped.”
“You didn’t know he would.”
“He had plenty of time to stop, I could see that.”
“You didn’t know that he would stop,” said Bizzy.
“If I’d known it would earn me a kiss like that, from you specifically, I would have been stepping in front of cars for the past three weeks.”
“Not all of them would have stopped,” said Bizzy.
“I bet you’d visit me in the hospital, though,” said Ryan.
“Or in the morgue,” said Bizzy. “Enough with the kissing. I have something to show you.”
They were in a gap between houses on this road, just a sidewalk and woods on both sides of the street. She turned her back on him. “Okay,” she said, “I’ve got it, but you have to walk around me to see.”
Ryan walked around her, looked her up and down.
“My face,” she said. “I didn’t do anything with my knees, you idiot.”
He looked at her face.
It wasn’t Bizzy.
Well, it was, but things had changed. Nothing huge. A little tighter here, a little slacker there. Her eyes were somehow different—bigger? Smaller? More or less slanted or squinty? Ryan couldn’t decide about anything, and yet it was everything, her whole face was changed, and if this were the face on her driver’s license, nobody would believe it was her ID.
“This is what,” Ryan said, “your anti-glamor?”
“Exactly,” said Bizzy.
“Well, it didn’t make you ugly. So if that was the goal, failure.”
“I didn’t know what it would do. But I followed your advice. You know, learning how to wiggle your ear. I looked at my face when I did glamor, and felt how each muscle changed, tightening, loosening, and then I worked on each one of them, doing the opposite.”
“How many separate moves was that?”
“About eleven, on each side of my face. There were some that were too hard to isolate, so the real total, when I do the glamor, is about thirty. But these eleven were enough to make me . . .” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t know what to call this new look.
“A completely different person,” said Ryan.
“Except, you know, hair and clothes. If I really wanted to pass for somebody else, I’d need a different walk, but not anything distinctive. I don’t want a limp like Aaron Withunga’s. Just different from what I usually do.”
“But still a girl walk, not a boy walk.”
“Right,” said Bizzy. “I’ve never really looked at girl walks, except the idiot girls who try to do a sexy walk. They end up looking like beginner prostitutes.”
“You’ve studied the difference between beginner and—”
Bizzy sighed. “I’ve never knowingly seen a prostitute except in movies or on TV. I’m just saying—”
“That’s not a walk you’re going for anyway, that’s what you were saying.”
“This is just the beginning. And it’s beginning to hurt a little.”
“Well, let it go.”
“So get behind me again,” said Bizzy.
“I want to watch the change.”
“It’s going to be weird,” she said.
“I hope so,” said Ryan.
“I don’t want you having nightmares with my face in them,” said Bizzy.
“Your face is in all my other dreams,” he said. “Let’s make it a complete set.”
As he watched her face, it started changing. It happened asymmetrically, a few things on the right side, different things on the left. And when the changes stopped, it still wasn’t right.
“I was afraid of this,” said Bizzy. “I’m afraid the only way I can get out of weird-face is to go to glamor-face.”
“I like glamor-face,” said Ryan. “I don’t mind seeing it again.”
“You do not like glamor-face,” said Bizzy.
“My first kiss was with glamor-face,” said Ryan.
“But the best kiss was with my regular face,” said Bizzy.
“That’s the best? I’ve got nothing more to look forward to?”
“Do I have anything better to look forward to?” asked Bizzy.
“Come on, you’re the first female human I’ve ever kissed who wasn’t a relative, and I didn’t kiss any relatives like that.”
“Such a relief,” said Bizzy.
“I need practice. And who do I have to practice on except you?”
“You have no access to a CPR dummy?”
“They don’t kiss back,” said Ryan.
“The expensive ones do,” said Bizzy.
“We’re at Vasco da Gama High,” said Ryan. “And besides, no they don’t. Why would they ever make a CPR dummy that would—” Her face went to full glamor and he couldn’t talk. And then she relaxed into her regular face. “Bizzy,” he whispered.
“You were saying?” she said.
“That was not the same glamor-face that you did when your mom triggered you.”
“My mom-triggered glamor is one thing. It’s another when I do it. It’s a third thing when I go from weird-face to glamor-face.”
“That’s not it,” said Ryan.
Bizzy put a finger on his lips.
He talked anyway. “That was the glamor-face that appears when you’re talking to the guy that you just kissed like you meant it.”
“You’re saying it’s not my glamor-face, it’s my lovey-face, is that it?” asked Bizzy.
“I’m saying it was different.”
“Better?”
“Every version of your glamor-face is perfect. Beyond perfect. You know that.”
“But this one? That I just showed you?”
“It felt like it was just for me,” said Ryan.
“It was,” said Bizzy. “That’s why I took you on this detour—‘our detour,’ s’il vous plaît.”
“Is that Slovenian?”
“‘Please’ in Slovenian is ‘prosim,’” said Bizzy.
“You took me here to show me my private version of your glamor-face?”
“I took you here to show you that I’m taking GRUT seriously and I’m trying to turn my micropower into something more versatile. You say that when I’m walking along with my regular face, glamor-face keeps blinking on and off, and it makes people notice me. Right?”
“That’s what it looks like to me.”
“But if I walk along with weird-face, maybe only my regular face will blink on and off, and nobody will look. I mean, my weird face isn’t freakish, is it? I don’t look like the Elephant Man?”
“No,” said Ryan. “You look like . . . a regular girl. Kind of pretty. The kind of pretty that could use a little help from makeup. Like most girls.”
“So my weird-face is actually more of a regular face than my regular face.”
“I guess so. Yes. But apparently, you can’t walk or even turn around when doing weird-
face.”
“Not yet. I lose concentration. But the more I practice, the better I’ll be at holding that face while walking.”
“You do fine while talking,” said Ryan.
“Because I’ve had more practice doing that.”
“Has your mother seen that face?” asked Ryan.
“You have seen that face. My mirror has seen that face.”
“We’re going to be so late to school,” said Ryan.
“I’ll just tell the principal I had to stop and kiss you because you’re so damn cute,” said Bizzy.
“I’m sure he’ll believe that,” said Ryan.
“I think you are,” said Bizzy.
“Apparently, I have a face that only looks good to second-generation Slovenian immigrant girls.”
“That’s good enough for me,” said Bizzy. She kissed him again. This time it was a real girlfriend kiss. Not long, not passionate, just quick. A declaration of ownership. A little more lingering than a husband-wife kiss. A little more possessive. But still brief enough not to get teased about it by other people in the halls at school.
“What am I?” asked Ryan.
“Start walking,” she said. They started walking briskly along the sidewalk.
“What am I?” Ryan asked again.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking. You Ryan, me Bizzy?”
“Am I your . . .” He didn’t finish the question.
“You are,” she said.
“Say it,” he said.
“Say what?”
“You have to say it before I’ll believe it.”
“Tell me what to say,” said Bizzy.
“No,” said Ryan. “You say it, if it’s true.”
She put her hand in his and they walked about five steps before she said, “You’re my fant.”
Ryan almost cried. The emotion that swept over him—relief, triumph, joy, love, he couldn’t name all of the feelings—it was nothing he had ever felt before.
“You’re such a sap. Do you watch all the new Hallmark movies every Christmas?” said Bizzy.
Duplex Page 18
