Deadman's Castle

by Iain Lawrence

  I saw her bent over the book with her shiny hair touching the edge of her desk. I saw Angelo drawing bloodstained wolf teeth, the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips, and Trevis sprawled in his chair doing nothing, and I began to see why our language arts teacher had made us a group. We were the outsiders, belonging together because we didn’t belong with anyone else. In a supermarket, we would have been the dented cans put aside on a separate shelf.

  In a way, that made me a loser. But I didn’t care. For the first time in my life I was part of a group. Bit by bit, without even trying, I was becoming part of the freak show known as middle school.

  Already it had become my whole life. If I wasn’t in school I was thinking about school, remembering things Angelo had said, and Trevis’s stupid jokes, and the way Zoe clomped along in her big boots. I spent ages trying to figure her out. Why did she dress like a corpse in a coffin, with her face painted white and her eyelids black? Why did she love shiny metal jewelry so much? I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by asking her about it, so I just kept staring. Zoe would have called it ogling.

  She didn’t mind. It was like Zoe wanted people to stare at her and wonder what she was all about. They could hate her or like her, and she couldn’t care less. But she sure wanted people to notice her.

  The next Wednesday, at the end of our study group, we started pushing our desks back into their tidy rows. Zoe turned around to push hers with her butt, and I ogled her big clunky army boots, her little black skirt, her stockings that looked like ripped-up fishing nets.

  She stared right back. I saw her eyes traveling up from the floor, noting my shoes, my pants, my shirt. When they reached my face she said, “Why do you dress so weird?”

  Well, she was a fine one to talk. Had she ever heard of a mirror? Maybe she didn’t cast a reflection.

  “It’s like you raid your dad’s closet,” she said. “Do you dress in the dark?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there, kind of shocked.

  “You got any money?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “How much?”

  I didn’t want to tell her.

  “Come on,” she said. “You think I’m going to rob you?”

  “A hundred dollars.”

  She didn’t seem at all surprised. “Well, that might be enough.”

  “For what?”

  Zoe smiled. “Meet me after school.”

  I didn’t know what she had in mind, and I didn’t have a chance to ask until school was over. At the end of free period, I followed her out of room 242.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  “You know, I’m not allowed to spend my money,” I said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Then why do you have it?” she asked.

  What would she say if I told her the truth? I keep it in my sock in case the Lizard Man shows up. My hundred-dollar bill was supposed to pay for a taxi ride or a motel room or anything I needed. Written on one side was a phone number that would bring help right away, and it was not 911.

  Our lockers were close together. Zoe kept talking as she opened hers and put away her books. “Well?” she said. “If you can’t spend it, why do you have it?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You say that all the time. ‘I dunno; I dunno.’” She reached behind her neck and pulled her hair up over the collar of her coat. She let it fall around her shoulders, black and stiff and shiny. Her jewelry glittered. “Igor, you’re weird.”

  We went down the stairs and out the front door.

  I should have told her my mother was waiting. I should have said I wasn’t allowed to go wandering around after school. But I didn’t. I just followed Zoe out through the gate and north toward Jefferson Street.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the green minivan. I thought I saw my mother standing beside it, watching me, but I didn’t look hard enough to be sure. I wondered what I would do if she pulled up beside me and told me, “Get in.” But that didn’t happen. I’d broken one of Dad’s rules, and a little while later I broke another one.

  Zoe crossed Jefferson, and I followed her. It was only to the other side, so I told myself it didn’t really matter. I was not going past Jefferson Street. We walked west toward the river, past stores and coffee shops. I thought everyone was staring at us, until I realized they were seeing only Zoe. I might have been invisible, a silent gray shadow.

  “How did you get the name Igor?” she asked.

  I couldn’t tell her that story either. I mumbled, “I dunno.”

  “You know who Igor is?”

  “Yeah, from Frankenstein.”

  “From Dracula, dummy. Igor’s a servant in Dracula’s castle in Transylvania. He eats bugs.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “He’s a Gypsy.”

  An old lady driving a silver car gaped at us through her windshield. She turned on the wipers, squirting water on the glass.

  “So why did you pick that name?” asked Zoe.

  “Who says I did?”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Nobody names their kid Igor. So you must have picked it yourself.”

  “Did you pick the name Zoe?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, surprising me. “It’s from a game I used to play. Relentless.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Why would you? It’s a stupid game. This girl called Zoe escapes from an asylum.”

  She strode along beside me with her hands in her pockets. I thought of my mother standing beside the minivan.

  “I think people should change names every year,” said Zoe. “Like on January first you pick a new one.” She glanced at me sideways. “How long have you been Igor?”

  “Always,” I said.

  “Oh, come on.”

  She knew I was lying, but I stuck to my story. If I admitted to inventing my name she’d ask what name I’d had before, and we’d go around and around till she knew the truth. I couldn’t let that happen. Like Dad always said, Zoe could know someone who knew someone else who knew the Lizard Man.

  We passed a theater on a corner. A faint crackling from its neon sign made me look up, and I saw the tubes pulsing with a dim red glow, spelling out the name of the theater. The Bijou.

  “Look,” said Zoe. She was pointing at something up ahead. “See that crazy old clown?”

  She meant my dad. He was two or three blocks away, on the other side of the street, pacing the sidewalk in his stupid clown clothes. His baggy pants swung around him as he turned this way and that way, holding out pamphlets that no one even looked at.

  “He’s always there with those dumb brochures,” said Zoe. “I heard he works for Homeland Security or something. He’s on a stakeout.”

  Of course I didn’t let on that the “crazy old clown” was my dad. I stepped up close beside Zoe and made her my bodyguard. Shielded by her black coat, I walked past a store with shiny windows. Our reflections zoomed across the glass, a Goth in startling black and white, a boy in a plain blue coat. My dad didn’t even glance toward me as we reached the corner of Dead End Road and turned to the right.

  A FRIEND OF FANNY’S

  I stopped just around the corner, as soon as we were safely out of sight. Zoe was taking me exactly where Dad had told me not to go, straight up the street I’d been tempted to explore on my very first day. When she realized I wasn’t beside her anymore, she turned and looked back.

  “You coming?” she asked. “It’s just up here.”

  “What?”

  “The army store.”

  That sounded cool. I imagined myself buying camouflage clothes and ammo belts, combat boots like Zoe’s. I had to go to a place like that, so I tagged along, up a block and left again, staying close to the river.

  Zoe took me to a little wooden building that had once been a church. There was still a stained-glass window high on the wall, above a painted sign. Zoe’s “army store” was the Salvation
Army.

  A little bell rang as we went in. Behind the cash register, on a tall stool, a lady sat reading a romance novel.

  “Hi, Mom,” said Zoe.

  The woman was a lot older than my mom and didn’t look at all like Zoe. She had silvery hair, bright lipstick, and reading glasses with a gold chain that looped down her neck. She lifted them from her nose and squinted underneath. “Well, hello,” she said. “This is a nice surprise. And who’s your friend?”

  “There’s no time to talk,” said Zoe. “It’s an emergency.”

  The woman went back to her reading, and Zoe went shopping. For half an hour she kept pulling clothes from racks and holding them against me to see how they looked. She sometimes had two or three in each hand, shoving coat hangers back and forth along the racks. Once in a while she said, “Try this one on,” and I went into a little booth with a curtain for a door. It didn’t go nearly to the floor, and I had to hold it closed with one hand as Zoe hovered outside.

  She picked out five T-shirts, a pair of chinos, and a pair of jeans. When I stood head to foot in new clothes she hauled me over to a full-length mirror. “What do you think?” she asked.

  I saw a stranger staring back at me, the sort of kid I’d always wanted to look like. I turned back and forth to admire myself. “Now you look normal,” said Zoe.

  She grabbed my old clothes from the changing room floor and piled them on the counter. “Can we leave these here?” she asked. “Maybe someone will want them for Halloween.”

  Her mother rang everything up on the register, stuffed the clothes into a bag, and told me, “That’s seventeen dollars.”

  She stared at me, waiting. So did Zoe. There was nothing I could do but bend down and take off my shoe, and then my sock. I shook out the hundred-dollar bill and began to unfold the creases.

  Nobody said that was strange. Nobody asked why a kid would walk around with money in his sock. But as soon as Zoe’s mom saw the picture of Franklin on the bill she freaked out.

  “Who do you think I am? Mrs. Rockefeller?” she asked. “Don’t you have anything smaller?”

  “No,” I told her.

  “Try your other sock,” said Zoe.

  Her mother opened the till and sorted through the money inside. Zoe nudged me. “What’s that phone number?” she asked, pointing at my hundred-dollar bill. I pretended like I had no idea.

  There wasn’t much money in the till. “I’ll tell you what,” said Zoe’s mom. “It’s my treat.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I can’t—”

  “Nonsense.” She pushed my money toward me. “You’re a friend of Fanny’s, and that’s good enough for me.”

  Fanny? I would have laughed out loud, except that I felt a warm glow running through me. A friend of Fanny’s—I loved the sound of that. I had never been a friend of anybody’s.

  I squashed my hundred-dollar bill into my pocket and led Zoe to the door. Outside, on the sidewalk, she put her hands on my arms and held me tightly. “Igor,” she said. “Please don’t ever call me Fanny.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

  “And don’t tell anybody else. Ever.”

  I looked right into her eyes. I had never done that with anyone other than Mom and Dad and Bumble, and it felt strange. I could see Zoe’s pupils twitching back and forth. There were tiny cracks in her black makeup.

  “Promise me, Igor,” she said. “Kids can be mean.”

  Well, I knew all about that. But it surprised me that Zoe would even worry about it. Maybe under those torn clothes, behind the makeup and the silver crosses, there was a girl who actually did care what people thought of her. I said, “I’ll never tell anybody.”

  With a smile she tightened her fingers, squeezing my arms. “Thanks, Igor.”

  Suddenly she was Zoe again, stepping back, turning so fast that her coat billowed around her. She shoved her hands in her pockets and asked, “You want to go to Deadman’s Castle?”

  “There’s a castle?” I said.

  “No, it’s just a place. On the hill across the river.” She motioned with her hand, spreading her coat like bat wings. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  It was very tempting to go with her. But if I crossed the river I’d never get home before dark, and I’d break all Dad’s rules before I got home. I wondered if my mom was still waiting outside the school. “I can’t,” I said. “I have to go home.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I do.”

  With a shrug she turned and walked away. Her combat boots thunked on the sidewalk, her coat swished against her legs. I shouted after her, “See you tomorrow.”

  Zoe didn’t look back.

  MR. MORON’S HAT

  At the yellow house, I walked past the jelly bean car in the driveway. In my mind I was trying to come up with excuses to tell Mom and Dad. I got stuck in school. Sorry. My teacher kept me late. I had to look at Mr. Little’s butterflies. None of them was very good, and I didn’t know how I was going to explain the bag of clothes, or even the ones I was wearing.

  They all met me at the door, Mom and Dad and Bumble too. Like always, Bumble was happy to see me, but Dad sent her into the living room. I could hear her favorite DVD playing in there. She was watching Thomas the Tank Engine, the world’s most obnoxious train.

  Mom crossed her arms. She looked angry, but not nearly as angry as Dad.

  “Where have you been?” he said. Then he suddenly noticed my new clothes, and he practically shouted, “You went shopping.”

  “Dad—”

  “You didn’t spend your lifeline, did you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then where did you get the money?”

  “I didn’t need any,” I told him.

  “Oh, clothes grow on trees now, do they?” He sounded so sarcastic. “What sort of store gives away clothes?”

  “The Salvation Army,” I told him. “See, they’re old.”

  I held up the bag, and Dad peered inside it. He lifted a T-shirt with the very tips of his fingers, like he thought it was covered with lice. “So where’s the Salvation Army?” he asked.

  “Just over—”

  “I know where it is!” he snapped. “It’s on the other side of Jefferson. You broke the rules.”

  “But—”

  “You also left your mother standing outside the school while you went wandering around with a strange girl.”

  Mom butted in. “I saw you walking up the street. Why didn’t you at least come and tell me where you were going?”

  “You wouldn’t have let me go!” I said.

  “What’s that girl’s name?” asked Dad.

  “Zoe,” I said.

  “Zoe what?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her last name.

  “If you can’t go to school without the breaking the rules,” said Dad, “maybe you shouldn’t go at all.”

  I was afraid he was going to tell me next that I couldn’t go back to school. But Mom stepped in again.

  “Did that girl take you shopping?” she asked. “Is that what happened? She helped you pick out those clothes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re cool, see?”

  I tried to move like a model, swinging out my hips as I spread my arms. But Dad wasn’t impressed.

  “Clothes don’t make the man,” he said.

  But this time he was wrong.

  When I went to school the next day I felt like a different kid. Girls who had never said hello told me they liked my clothes. Even Mr. Moran, the gym teacher, noticed. As he passed through the locker room on the way to his office, he held up a thumb and shouted at me in his booming voice. “Lookin’ good, Igor!”

  I always felt sorry for Mr. Moran. The kids called him Mr. Moron and made fun of him because he couldn’t throw a football very far or shoot a three pointer to save his life. But he was nice to me, and I liked him.

  That day, it was cold in the locker room. I saw goose bumps on my legs as
I took off my new clothes and put on my stuff for gym. We all had to wear white socks; that was the rule. The kids thought I was strange because I pulled mine right over the ones I was wearing. But they had gotten tired of joking about it, and no one even mentioned it that afternoon.

  Mr. Moran came out of his office. The sin bin, he called it, because he made kids sit in there when they were bad. He was wearing what he always wore, a gray sweat suit with a whistle hanging around his neck. He used both hands to put on his red baseball cap, one at the back, one tugging down on the brim.

  Trevis asked, “Are we going to the gym or out to the field, Mr. Moran?”

  “Look at the hat, Trevis!” Mr. Moran pointed at himself, jabbing his finger like he was poking his eye. “I wear the hat, we go outside.”

  Some of the kids laughed. It was an old joke to ask him that question, because he always gave the same answer, but poor Mr. Moran never seemed to catch on.

  We went out and played soccer, though the day was pretty cold and the ball felt half frozen. I kept to the edges of the field until Mr. Moran blew his whistle and called me over.

  “You’re hangin’ back, Igor,” he said. “You’re not goin’ after the ball. What’s the matter, afraid of gettin’ hurt?”

  “Yes,” I said. I wasn’t stupid.

  “Look, Igor, it isn’t goin’ to kill you,” said Mr. Moran. “You get hit, so what?”

  “It hurts,” I told him. Half the kids had huge pink circles on their skin. We might have been playing soccer with a bowling ball.

  “Let me tell you somethin’, Igor.” Mr. Moran lifted his red cap and brushed back his hair. “The way a guy plays ball, that’s how he lives his life. Stay out and stay safe, or go in and take your shots.”

  I nodded like I understood.

  “Winners don’t stay safe, Igor. Up to you.”

  He sent me back into the game. I ran right for the ball, into the crowd of kids, and I got smacked in the thigh two minutes later. The ball left a mark like a tomato. But I scored a goal. It was the first goal I’d ever scored and it won the game, and every kid on my team crowded around to clap me on the back. They started chanting their old chant—Ee-gor! Ee-gor!—but now in a friendly way that made me feel like a hero. I held my hands high above my head and jogged slowly across the field.