“It’s Friday, little man,” said Ned. “No practice on Friday. Hey, you’d better get home and rest up for however else you plan to sabotage yourself next week.”
The wide receiver gave him another nuggy.
Sully spied the back of Tank getting on the bus. Mustering his limited athletic skills, he jogged, trotted, panted, and gasped his way home, until the park dumped him onto True Street. As he paused to catch his breath, his eyes ping-ponged between the dormer window and the crazy fence. It was only when he stood facing the large picture window that he noticed a shadowed figure behind the sheers. The hunched outline looked vaguely ape-like, if slight, but there was no mistaking that it was staring straight at him. Even through the curtains, its large eyes actually glowed.
Sully dropped his gaze to his feet to avoid any kind of eye contact. He noticed that one of the plastic figurines had been demoted to the bottom rail. Charlie Brown was now lying on its back a few feet from a plastic Madonna—the religious figure, not the singer. Madonna had a tiny hole through her chest where her heart would be, and a black backpack glued to her back.
It crossed Sully’s mind that the wind couldn’t have rearranged the figurines this time. Squirrel iq or not, whoever lived in the purple house was seriously creepy. What was up with this rail-post storytelling, anyway?
Sully wasn’t about to stick around to find out.
As the shadowed figure in the window moved toward the front door, Sully sprinted forward, while keeping an eye on the purple house. He’d run further today than he’d probably run in the entire first thirteen years of his life, but this thought jarred out of his head when he collided with something at the corner of True and Perdu.
Prostrate on the sidewalk, Sully held his head as he propped himself up on one elbow. The woman with the purse looked down at him.
“While you’re down there,” she said, “can you look down the grate for me? My knees aren’t what they used to be.”
“You!” Sully said. “I need to talk to you.”
“The sewer grate. There.” The woman pointed to the road beside Sully’s head. “I have a flashlight.”
She dug inside her purse until she pulled out a flashlight.
“What did you mean by what you said yesterday?” Sully said.
“You look different today.” She tapped her fingers on her forehead and her chin in the exact placement of Sully’s eyes.
“Yah, like that,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
“I’ll tell you what I don’t see.” She held the flashlight out to him again. “I don’t see what I’m looking for because I don’t see as well as I used to. And I don’t see you trying to help me when I asked for your help.”
“You asked me what happened to my face. What did you mean by that?”
“You don’t know what your face looks like?” she said.
“I know what I look like,” Sully said, “but no one else seems to see what I see.”
“Everything’s opposite in a mirror,” she said. “You can’t really see yourself the way others do.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Sully. “What I mean is that others can’t see me the way I see myself.”
“What’s the difference?” she said. “You just said the same thing, except backward.”
“Look, can you see my face . . . really see my face?”
“That depends,” said the lady. “Is that really what you look like or not?”
“Just tell me what you see,” said Sully.
“I see what you see,” she said.
“Which is what, exactly?”
“Your face.”
“But is it normal?”
“Define normal.”
“Look, you’re the one who brought it up. You stalked me to ask what happened to my face.”
“Well, what did happen to your face?”
“I don’t know! That’s what I’m trying to find out!”
“Well, how am I supposed to know what happened to you? I wouldn’t have asked you the question if I knew the answer.”
She lifted the flashlight between them again, using it to point at the sewer grate.
“Never mind.” Sully waved the flashlight away.
“I don’t see why you’re so upset.”
Sully shook his head. He was upset. Upset that he’d thought this crazy old lady might actually be able to help him.
“I’m not crazy,” the woman said. “And I’m not that old.”
“What?” Sully knew he hadn’t said this out loud.
“Do you remember what it looks like?” She rummaged in her purse. “I can show you the picture again.”
Another walnut pod rolled across the street to land between them again. Sully looked toward the purple house, but there was no one in sight.
“No,” said the Purse Lady. She held out the flashlight again and pushed the walnut pod away with her foot. “That’s not it. I thought you realized that yesterday.”
Sully pushed the flashlight away again and frowned.
“An upside-down frown is a smile,” she said.
“Go tell Facebook.”
“What’s face book?” She touched her own face and cocked her head to one side.
“Look,” he said. “I made a mistake. Sorry I can’t help you. I gotta go.”
Reaching the corner of his street, he looked back once to see the woman, bent and focused, beaming her flashlight through the sewer grates.
Much later that evening, Sully woke from a restless sleep.
Wait, he thought. My mouth is upside down. And I was frowning. She really can see me.
CHAPTER 19
Dense clouds darkened Sully’s path to school early Monday morning. Morsixx had called him seven times over the weekend. The guy just didn’t get it.
Stepping carefully in the unnatural dark, Sully held onto the fence as he turned onto True Street. He half-hoped the crazy lady with the Mary Poppins purse might still be casing the sewer, so he could talk to her. She was definitely crazy, but he had a feeling if he could figure out how to ask the questions in the right way, she might have some answers for him.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, threatening rain. Sully let his hand glide along the fence. The figurines were indistinguishable blobs in the low light. He squinted through the muddy dawn at the strange house.
A tiny light pulled his eyes back to the fence. It bounced across the yard as if on a mission and made freaky ghoulish shadows of the man-high weeds.
Glued to the spot, Sully watched what he realized was a lantern float toward him about four feet off the ground. Suddenly it dipped down and stopped, resting between the fence rails, not two feet from where he stood.
Sully took a half-step back and froze again when a small sound reached him.
“Ah.”
Sully made himself as small as possible. Had he been spotted?
“I see.”
The voice was low and raspy. Sully had no intention of sticking around to see who or what had spoken these words.
But as he turned to bolt, something cold and dry like tree bark landed on his wrist. It held him in place with a scaly grip.
“Let me go!” Sully’s plea tripped over three octaves. He yanked himself free, only to fall into the fence, which unbalanced the lantern. In the sweeping brightness, discs of light blinked on and off beside him like Morse code.
Blinded briefly by brightness as the lantern rocked to a stop in front of his face, Sully shrieked as a rod of glinting steel shot out. It hooked him under his right armpit and pinned him to the fence. As he struggled to detach himself, a scabby hand jammed his head against the fence rail, pressing his cheek against one of the figurines.
A crack of lightning ripped the sky. It illuminated the yard only briefly, but long enough for Sully to register a shrunken, hideous face m
ere inches from his own, with bulbous eyes too large to be human.
CHAPTER 20
In the darkness that followed the flash, the metal rod pinioning Sully’s right shoulder released. It hooked the lantern and brought it up to Sully’s face.
“My, my,” the creature wheezed.
“Get away from me!” Sully yelled. “Help!”
“It changes things that you are here.” The creature’s voice, ancient as a mountain, rolled over Sully’s ear like a hand dragged through gravel.
“Help!”
“It will happen as it happens.” It loosened the pressure on Sully’s head. “I see what I see, and that is all . . . but I do what I can.”
Sully’s eyes adjusted somewhat to the dark. The creature raised spindly arms of steel, as if they were wings, and tipped its yellowed skull to the sky.
Sully lurched back. He threw his arms over his face to shield himself from whatever new horror the creature was unleashing.
“Enough,” it croaked, and maybe it was coincidence that, at this exact second, the thunder cut off mid-rumble. In the sudden silence, the dark skies parted, yanked like curtains to reveal a warm pink dawn beneath.
“Now,” said the creature as it lowered its arms. “You’ll be late for school. You’d best be going.”
“Wait . . . what?” Sully uncovered his eyes. He looked at the creature for the first time in full light.
Hunched over, its spine curved like a comma, the creature was not a creature at all, but a very old man. Dressed in beige trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt, his gnarled hands clutched two metal canes. Thick black-rimmed glasses wrapped his bald head aviator-style. Inch-thick lenses magnified each of his eyes to three times its size.
“Ah,” said the man, “that will not do.”
He reached out and plucked the little figurine still clinging to the side of Sully’s face.
“That is ironic, to be sure.” He held the little Charlie Brown figurine between them and surveyed the fence. “This is you. And this,” he said, indicating the other figurines, “is your life. As it might be. As I see it.”
Sully rubbed his cheek. His open mouth gaped in the middle of his face.
“You’re not a monster.” This was the most pressing thing. He had no idea what the man meant by the fence and his life.
“And you’re not a vandal,” said the man. “But you should still be careful about creeping around in the dark.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You’re not as invisible as you think,” the old man said.
“And you’re not as frail as you look.” Sully rubbed the spot on his head that had so recently been pinned to the fence.
“Neither are you,” said the man.
Sully looked over the man’s shoulder at the walnut tree.
“Are you the one who’s been throwing those walnut things?”
“Do I look athletic to you?” The man held up his canes.
“Well, no, not athletic, but—”
“You think I could knock out a thug from a hundred yards?”
“I never said anything about knocking out a thug. But if you didn’t knock out the thug, how do you know about it?”
“I have eyes, don’t I?” said the man.
He definitely had eyes.
“That’s not what I asked,” said Sully.
The old man pursed his lips.
He totally threw those walnut things, thought Sully.
“I see lots of things,” said the man.
“What about me?” said Sully.
It occurred to him that if the strange old lady could see his face, maybe the strange old man could, too.
“What about you?” said the man.
“Do you notice anything different about me?”
“It works best when I don’t know too much about you,” said the man.
“What works best?”
“The universe. Fate. Life. Luck. Will. Destiny. The whole kit and caboodle.”
“Oh-h-h-kay.” Sully darted a look at the fence. Definitely senile. Either that or the old man’s been playing with dolls for too long.
“Don’t judge what you don’t understand.” The man reaffixed Charlie Brown to the fence.
Sully wondered if the old man had just read his mind. “It’s your fence,” he said.
“It is my fence.” The man nodded. “And it’s best that I don’t know your name. But you can call me Mr. C.”
“Mr. C?” said Sully. “Like the letter?”
Mr. C. winked. He inscribed a semi-circle in the air that followed the crooked line of his body. “That’s one way to look at it.” His pupil loomed enormous as his eye re-opened and his lips parted in what might have been a smile.
“Why do you tie all those—?”
“I don’t make the future, if that’s what you think.”
“That definitely wasn’t what I was thinking.”
“I just report what I see and make predictions. But every decision you make bends the story. You’re the one in control, not me.”
“In control? Of the story?” Sully looked at him blankly. “What is it I’m supposed to be in control—”
“So far, you’re not doing so well.” Mr. C. said this last part in a whisper as he cupped his voice with a crooked hand.
“Excuse me?”
“You should pay a little more attention to these two,” Mr. C. whispered these words, too. As if nervous that someone would see him, he brushed his fingers across Sleeping Beauty and the knight with an exaggerated casualness, and then glanced self-consciously up at the rising sun.
“Never mind.” Mr. C. took a step back and straightened his back to the extent he could. “That’s your job to figure out. I don’t want to jinx it.”
“Jinx what?” said Sully.
“It is possible you’re entirely beyond help.” No whispering this time. Mr. C.’s lips were taut as he shook his head. “Now, you’d better be going. You may have to run to make it.”
“How do you even know where I’m going? Is that one of your fencepost predictions?”
“You’re a boy, aren’t you?” said Mr. C. “Boys go to school in the daytime.”
“Oh,” said Sully. “Right. It’s just that—”
“You overthink things,” said Mr. C. “Sometimes the answer’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Right,” said Sully. Which might explain why he was having so much trouble these days.
“So run, already,” said Mr. C. With his back now to Sully, he hobbled toward the house. His canes lent him a ponderous, elephantine gait, like a second set of legs.
CHAPTER 21
Sully arrived at school out of breath and soaked with sweat. Skulking up to the second-floor bathroom, he grabbed a fistful of paper towels and mopped at the random placement of his face.
Focused as he’d been on catching his next breath, he hadn’t had time to give Mr. C. much thought during his sprint to school. But now, strange flashes of their encounter left him with a thousand questions.
Before he could answer any of them, the bathroom door pushed inward. Sully yanked his focus back. His heart hammered as Tank sauntered in and leaned casually against the side wall. He lit up a cigarette and blew smoke in Sully’s face, then cracked just the hint of a smile, as if not at all surprised to find Sully in here. Like a beacon, the now phlegm-green bump on Tank’s forehead alerted Sully to impending disaster.
Sully’s eyes started to water and his mouth went dry. For a panicked second, he grabbed desperately at the possibility that if he pretended not to notice Tank, maybe Tank would stop noticing him. He worked hard at not coughing or making any noticeable movements.
As he plotted the shortest space to the door, it swung inward again and spilled Ox and Dodger into the tiny space.
“Ha, ha,
you were right, Tank,” said Dodger. “Sally seems to have wet himself.”
“It’s just sweat,” Sully said. “I—”
“Lot of paper towels there,” said Dodger. “Have a little accident, did we?”
“I gotta get to class.” Sully eyed the sliver of space between them.
“Well, we don’t want to hang you up, Sally,” said Dodger.
“Actually,” said Ox, who grabbed the back of Sully’s shirt, “yes, we do.”
As Ox pushed Sully’s skull into the back of the handicap bathroom stall, Dodger moved in from the side and yanked Sully’s underwear halfway up his back. Together they looped the painfully stretched leg hole over the clothes hook and stood back to admire their handiwork.
Sully flailed like a marionette. He reached behind and tried to unhitch himself. Dodger convulsed with laughter, and Ox looked at Tank for approval.
“See you in class.” Tank blew a lazy stream of smoke in Sully’s face and led the duo out the door.
Sully arched his back in an effort to swing the door inward. If he could get his feet on top of the toilet seat, he might gain some leverage to loosen himself. The door swung back instead of forward, and the motion caused considerable pain to body parts that were already in distress.
Still, he either had to find a way out of this himself or suffer further embarrassment at the hands of anyone else who happened to walk in.
Which Morsixx did at that very moment.
“Oh, Dude.” Morsixx shook his head. “That’s nasty.”
“Leave me alone,” said Sully. “I can handle this by myself.”
“Yah, looks like you’re doing a great job of that. How long you been hanging out here, Dude? Never mind. You need my help, so just suck it up.”
“Didn’t you read my note?” said Sully.
“Yah, Dude, thanks for the warning. Maybe you should have written one to yourself, too. Here, push yourself up on my hand and use my shoulders to ease yourself off. I’m hurting just looking at you.”
“I don’t want anyone to see us in here together,” said Sully. “If we’re going to do this, make it fast.”
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