I met Aluka at the store. I'd seen her around, but I hadn't spoken to her since that first meeting. She was on her way out, but she waited while I tried to decide between peanut butter cups and an Almond Joy. I got the cups, and Aluka and I walked home together. I asked her how school was going, if she had as much homework as I did.
“I don't go to school,” she said.
“Wow. Lucky you. Homeschooled, eh?”
“Kind of. My mom works at home and she teaches us.”
“My mom works at home too,” I said. “She's an editor. What does your mom do?”
“She's an animator,” she said.
“Cool! Does she work for, like, Walt Disney?”
“Hmm? No. She's private.”
Aluka approved my choice of chocolate bar. She liked peanut butter cups too. I offered her one and she took it.
So much about food, she agreed, depended on context. “For instance,” she said, “we were going to go to the movies tonight, but my little brother is sick. Now I'll be watching tv. And I won't be eating the same kind of snacks that I'd get at the movie theater.”
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You do that too?” I said. “You pick your snacks based on what you're doing?”
“Well, sure. Doesn't everyone?”
It was like meeting my twin, separated since birth.
The wind had picked up a bit, and her hair was blowing all around. She looked like an ad for something. For peanut butter cups, I guess, since that's what she was eating.
“Okay,” I said. “Here's a quiz. What's the best food to eat while you're watching tv?”
She smiled. She knew what I meant right away.
“Drama, or comedy?”
“Comedy.”
She nodded. “That's an easy one. Corn chips. Barbecue corn chips.” She held up her bag of groceries. “Three comedies in a row tonight.”
“Barbecue, eh? Spicy, but easy to handle. Good choice. What about drama?”
“Drama's different. You want something with more depth to it. There's a late movie I might stay up for, so I bought …” She stared over my shoulder and her face fell. “Oh-oh.”
I turned around. A black-and-white tomcat stood there, its back arched and its tail all bushy, spitting and hissing. “Hey, there's Jingles,” I said.
I call him Jingles because he's got a bell. I don't know where he lives. I don't know his real name. But he's a friendly enough cat. I've petted him before.
“Hi, Jingles,” I said, bending down to stroke him. I made that tsk tsk sound with my tongue against the back of my front teeth. “Come here, Jingles.”
But Jingles never took his eyes off Aluka. Weird.
“He must think you're a mouse,” I joked.
Suddenly he flung himself at Aluka. I've never seen a cat do that before. He jumped right off the ground and attached to Aluka's arm.
She never said a word.
“Hey!” I shouted, and lunged for the cat. I got him by the middle and pulled. He hung on with his claws, trying to bite her. As I pried Jingles off Aluka's arm, he lashed out with a back foot. There was a spurt of blood, and I screamed, afraid it was my blood. It was.
I threw the cat away. He landed on his feet and took off. The back of my hand ran with blood. I put it in my mouth.
“How are you?” she asked me.
I lifted my mouth away from my hand. “I'm bleeding,” I said. “What about you?”
She held out her arm. I could see claw marks, but no blood.
“How come you're not bleeding?” I asked.
She shrugged.
Our eyes met, as if for the first time. Boy and girl. I gasped. It was like in the movies. Everything slowed down and intensified. I could hear the whine of the traffic on the main road. I could feel the September sun on my bare head. I could see her throat working as she swallowed.
If this really were a movie, I'd have said something smooth.
“Your eyes are like chocolate-covered almonds,” I'd say.
“Your hair is the color of Doritos,” I'd say.
“When I see you, my heart leaps the way it does when I take the first bite of a fresh warm orange cruller,” I'd say.
Didn't happen. I had to burp, and the moment passed. My hand stopped bleeding and we walked up the street. She was as calm as calm. Never dropped her groceries. The parallel scratches from the cat's claws stood out against her pale skin like a tattoo.
The setting sun was behind us. Our shadows stretched across the pavement ahead. I laughed.
“What?”
“Look at our shadows,” I said. “What do they look like? I just noticed. Side by side like this, we look like the number 10,” I said. “You're long and lean, like a 1, and I'm more rounded.”
She laughed too, and we started talking again.
“You don't have to watch tv tonight,” I said. “You and I could go to the movies.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we could.”
“You'd have to leave your corn chips at home, though. It's a horror movie.”
She didn't say anything right away. I looked over. She was gazing over my head, off into the distance. Thoughtful, contemplative, deep.
“Yes,” she said. “Corn chips would be wrong. But I get really scared by horror films. What snack goes with horror?”
“Let's wait,” I said, “until we get to the snack counter. We'll decide there.”
I called on Aluka after dinner. Her mom came to the door, holding the wriggling baby. “You must be Petey” she said. “Aluka's told me all about you. Come on in.”
The baby growled. “This is Imre,” she said. “He's not feeling very well, poor guy. He's grumpy.” (She pronounced it Im-ray like that. Just so you know.)
“Oh, that's too bad,” I said, stepping away from the baby. “Does he have a temperature?”
“No. His tummy is bothering him.”
Imre lunged towards me. I stepped back hurriedly Aluka's mom chuckled. “Funny little Imre,” she said. “Leave Aluka's friend alone.”
“Eat!” cried the baby, in a strange deep voice. “Eat!”
Aluka's mom laughed again. “It's his new word,” she said.
Aluka came out then, with a piece of steak in her hand. “Imre dropped this on the floor.”
The steak looked raw. Aluka shuddered, but she held the piece of meat up to the baby, who grabbed it in two chubby hands and jammed it into his mouth.
I stared. No wonder the kid had a tummy ache.
“Petey, I want you to look after my little girl,” said Aluka's mom. “I know what happened this afternoon. It has happened before. Aluka's … fragile.”
“Mom, please. You're embarrassing me. Come on, Petey.”
“I'll keep her away from cats,” I said.
The baby grabbed at my shirt with his red-stained hands. “Eat!” he cried. “Eat!” His eyes were empty His mouth opened. He had two baby teeth.
“Time to go,” said Aluka, pulling me out the door.
It was an easy decision at the snack counter. We both reached for the red licorice at the same time. “Popcorn's no good,” said Aluka. “You don't want to keep going back and forth between the bag and your mouth.”
“Right. And most of the movie is going to be whispered, so you don't want to be crunching anything,” I said.
We got seats in the front row. A pair of old ladies was sitting behind us. I could smell their peppermints. Bad choice for a horror movie.
As soon as the film began, Aluka started to tremble. While the two teenage campers took refuge from a coming storm in the deserted cabin under the gnarled pine tree, where the famous painter had hanged himself a hundred years ago, Aluka ate her licorice and shivered.
Night fell on the cabin. The storm drew closer. The teens lit a lamp and went exploring. In a cupboard in the bedroom, they found an unfinished painting of the gnarled pine tree. The famous painter must have been working on this when he died.
Aluka finished her licorice. I offered her one of
mine. She took it and whispered her thanks. Our fingers touched.
A crack of thunder startled the campers. The boy dropped the lamp, and the girl screamed. Lightning flashed. Aluka grabbed my hand.
I'm holding hands with a girl, I thought. First time ever. Good old horror movies. No wonder they're so popular.
The flash of lightning showed that the picture had changed. Before, it had just shown the gnarled tree. Now, there was a figure of a man in a lumber jacket hanging from the lowest branch. The dead painter had materialized inside his own picture.
Gasps from the audience. Aluka squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt.
When the teens saw the picture of the hanged painter, they panicked and wanted to leave the cabin, but the storm was right overhead.
“What'll we do, Jimmy?” whispered the girl.
The wind howled. The lamplight threw flickering shadows on the walls. The front door blew open with a loud crash.
Screams from the audience.
The old lady behind me coughed.
The girl ran to close the door. She struggled against the wind. Finally she got it shut and made sure it was locked.
“Jimmy?” she called.
No answer.
“Jimmy?”
She hurried across the living room, bumping into things. In the bedroom, the lamp was still burning on the floor. Jimmy was gone. Gone! And the picture was different again. Now there were two hanging figures the man in the lumber jacket and a teenage boy in jeans. Jimmy was in the picture!
The girl screamed. Aluka pulled at my hand.
Behind me, a lady was whispering, “Gladys? Gladys, are you all right?”
It wasn't coughing, I realized. Gladys was choking on her candy. I could have told her peppermints were a bad choice.
On-screen, the girl clutched at her throat. The evil spirit that had killed the painter and Jimmy had grabbed her too. Behind me, I heard more choking.
“Gladys!” cried her friend. “Gladys!”
I couldn't sit here and let the old lady choke to death. I stood up.
Now the painting showed a pine tree, and three nooses. One for the painter, one for Jimmy, and one for the girl. She was still struggling, but her movements were getting weaker and weaker.
Aluka clutched my hand in a death grip. I tried to pull away from her.
“I have to save Gladys,” I said.
Gladys's friend had her on her feet. She stood behind Gladys and tried the Heimlich maneuver. Successfully. The mint came flying out of Gladys's mouth like a bullet and hit me right in the face. I jerked away from Aluka, bringing my arms up defensively. Her hand came off in mine.
Absolutely off. I held it up like a trophy. It was cold. Her skin was always cold. And the hand wasn't a fake, not one of those prosthetic limbs. This was real. The lightning flashes on the screen lit up the theater, and I could make out a couple of bumps of white bone and some darker, softer flesh.
I screamed and felt myself falling. Everything went dark.
I woke up with my heart pounding. What a nightmare I'd had!
“Pete,” said a familiar voice, in the quiet darkness by my side.
Aluka's mom turned on the overhead light and smiled. “You're awake! How are you doing, Petey? We were worried about you. Aluka brought you home in a cab.”
I was on a folding bed in a strange room. My hands on the coverlet were empty I stared at them.
“Where am I? Why aren't I home?”
“Your parents had to take your sister Marisa to the hospital. There's no one home. Your mom asked me to look after you, so I put you in Imre's room.”
There was the voice at my ear. But it wasn't saying Pete. It was saying Eat. I turned my head in sick horror. Baby Imre's head was at the level of mine. His mouth was open. “Eat!” he said, in his strange deep voice. “Eat!” He leaned towards me.
I screamed again and again.
I was hoarse by the time I finished reading the story. The class burst out laughing. “But I wasn't trying to be funny” I explained to Mr. Robertson. “I was trying to be scary.”
He wiped tears from his eyes.
“Do you really have a new neighbor?” he asked.
“No,” Nancy-Jane answered for me. “I live down the street from Petey The house next door to him is still for sale. His sister is a big drama queen, though.”
Mr. Robertson nodded. “And do you really try to work out the perfect snack?” he asked me.
“Doesn't everyone?”
The bell rang. I wondered if Mom had had a chance to go shopping. The bakeshop makes these molasses spice cookies that would really hit the spot about now.
Golden Boy
GILLIAN CHAN
I loved it when Darcy came to visit. We never knew he was coming. He'd just show up, full of stories of what he'd been doing and with a bagful of gifts things that were cool, not useful. We'd make the most of his visit because he might stay a couple of weeks, but sometimes it would be just a day or two.
Darcy was the baby of my dad's family, the “afterthought,” according to my dad; “the miracle baby, the golden boy” according to my nana, when she was still alive. He was born when my dad was twelve and his other brothers and sisters were in their late teens. It was just as well that they were older because my granddad was killed the year after Darcy was born and Nana needed all the help she could get. Darcy said he'd had the greatest childhood, with a whole crew of young parents looking out for him.
Darcy was fourteen when I was born, but I didn't meet him until I was five. I can still remember the first time. My mom came to pick me up from kindergarten and there was someone sitting in the car. At first I thought it was Dad, but close up he looked like the movie-star version of my father. Darcy had the same build, but more muscular. They both had brown hair and blue eyes, but in Darcy the colors were more intense. I knew if he and Dad stood side by side, Dad would look washed-out and ordinary.
That visit set the tone for all the ones to come. Darcy spent hours playing with me and my Star Wars action figures, or having light saber duels. My mom positively glowed when he was around. He was full of compliments for her cooking and the way she was raising us. He would do all the little jobs around the house that she had been nagging my dad to do. Dad was the only one who didn't seem too happy. It's not that he was rude, just a little distant, when you'd expect him to be really glad and flattered that his kid brother had hitchhiked halfway across the country to see him. That first visit was one of the short ones. I woke up and Darcy was gone. I think I cried.
As I got older, I liked Darcy even more. Maybe because he was so much younger than my dad, I could talk to him more easily. He was full of advice cool advice, drawn from something that had happened to him. Boy had he done things: traveled the country as roadie for a band, worked at a ski resort where famous people went, hitchhiked all over the world, working only when he ran out of money.
My dad had never done anything just studied, got married, and had kids. He worked a dull job that he hated, and when he finally got home at night after battling the traffic, he was too tired to have much time for us.
If I had to sum it up, Darcy lived life, whereas Dad just existed.
When I turned seventeen, we hadn't seen Darcy for about two years. He always sent Ellie and me birthday cards, postmarked now from California. Occasionally, there was a postcard, too, with a scrawled note about living in Los Angeles.
“Maybe he's finally settling down,” Mom said, turning one of his cards over at the dinner table.
My dad's mouth twitched. “I doubt that, somehow. I'd be willing to bet we'll see him before the summer's out.” He didn't look pleased.
Dad was right.
About a month later, I came back from my summer job as a trainee camp counselor and there was a strange car parked in the driveway a gleaming, white convertible. I ran inside and there he was, Darcy Carroll, holding court on the deck, with a beer in one hand while he told a story to my mom, Ellie, and her friend, Alanna. They were
so entranced, they didn't even see me. Alanna couldn't take her eyes off Darcy.
Darcy spotted me first and broke off midword, leaping from his chair and crushing me in this huge bear hug.
“Josh, my man! Just look at you.” Darcy stepped back and pretended to shade his eyes, as if seeing me was too much for him. I had grown nearly a foot since he last saw me, and the rampant zits had finally been subdued. “Where did this teen god come from and what did he do with my dorky little nephew?” It was corny, and if anyone else had said it, I'd have been embarrassed.
“Hey, Darcy,” I said. “You staying awhile?” I tried to do laid-back and casual.
“We'll see,” he said. “Been working in Hollywood, but I think I'm ready to break out on my own. Toronto's a cheap place to film, so I'm heading up there to get things going. I thought I'd look you guys up on the way.”
Alanna and Ellie just about wet themselves at the mention of Hollywood, and any hope of normal conversation was lost as they rattled off names of their favorite stars, wanting to know if Darcy had met them. I headed off to wash, thinking about how cool it would be to have Darcy hang out with me and my friends, maybe go down to the park and shoot hoops, or grab a pizza and a movie. They'd all heard me talk about him often enough, but no one had met him.
All through dinner, Darcy told stories of his life in California. He never actually said he knew movie stars, but their names kept coming up as having been at events he had attended. Ellie was beside herself and I knew that I would have to work fast to get Darcy alone before she hijacked him and invited over all her girly friends.
Mom was almost as excited as Ellie, but Dad kept asking Darcy exactly what projects he had worked on, what contacts he had up here. Darcy didn't blow him off, but he'd start answering and then mention the name of someone famous; Mom and Ellie would interrupt, wanting to know more, and Darcy would never get back to answering Dad.
After dinner, Darcy looked at me and asked, “Driving yet, Josh?”
I gave Dad the evil eye. “Yeah, but I never get the car.”
“Wanna go for a drive in my new car, show me the hot spots?”
First Times Page 7
