Ignoring her, David said, “You got egged.” He was looking at three egg splatters on what used to be the back window, now painted white.
Primrose ditched her swoon, led him to the window, and placed his hand on one of the splatters, then the other two. David’s eyes bulged. “They’re fake!”
“Somebody was selling them at the flea market, along with fake dog poop and vomit. I glued them on.”
“Why?”
“I figured, maybe if they see them there, they’ll say, Hey, look, she’s already egged, let’s hit somebody else.”
“Did it work?”
“Nope.” She snickered. “Sometimes they even come in the daytime now.” David could only stare. She shrugged. “I don’t care. I got what I want. They’re just jealous because of my new place. They wish they could have a place of their own too.”
She pulled him around to the door, pushed his head in. “What do you think? Just okay?”
David was amazed. Instead of the bright green paint that he himself had helped to lay on, the interior was covered with wallpaper. There were birthday cakes and kettle drums and prancing horses in feathered bonnets.
“Did I hear you say wow?”
“Wow,” said David, meaning it.
“I got sick of that green after two days. It was like, eech! Fridge took me to the wallpaper place. I picked it out myself.” She ducked in for a peek. “Bee-yoo-tiful.”
David said, “Is that why you told me to come over?”
Primrose came out with her socks and sneakers. She sat on the lawn chair. “Nope.”
David stood over her. “So why?”
Primrose brushed dust from the bottom of her foot and pulled on a sock. “We’re going somewhere.”
33
Telling him, not even asking.
And what does he do? He follows her like some dumb little puppy dog, till here they are walking along some dumb railroad track, probably get themselves killed, and he still doesn’t know where they’re going.
So for the tenth time he asked her where they were going. This time she answered: “To the city.”
“The big city? Philadelphia?”
“Yerp.”
David was excited. He had never been to Philadelphia. The only big city he had ever been to was St. Paul, Minnesota. Once. And he heard Philadelphia was bigger than St. Paul.
He was also a little scared. He had never heard of two kids going to a big city by themselves. She was wearing a backpack. He wondered how long they would be gone. He looked back. There was no sign of Perkiomen, only two steel rails going around a bend.
“Why are we going this way?” he said.
“ ’Cause I’m not old enough to drive.”
“You know what I mean. The tracks.”
“It’s the only way I know.” They were walking on the railroad ties, Primrose stepping on every other one. David had tried it, but the steps were too long for his legs. “I did this before,” she said.
“You did?”
“Yeah. Well, not all the way to the city.” She stepped up on the rail, her arms out like a tightrope walker. “There’s a place up ahead where you can see the skyscrapers.”
Skyscrapers. He remembered them from St. Paul.
“Is that why we’re going? To see the skyscrapers?”
She teetered off the rail. “Nopey dopey.”
“So why then?”
She climbed back on. “Tell ya later, gator.”
David was getting mad. He hated when she acted goofy like this. “I want to know now.”
“Guess you’ll just have to trust me,” she breezed.
“I don’t trust you,” he growled. “I don’t even like you.” To show her, he pushed her from the rail.
She stumbled along the ties, laughing her laugh. When she turned back to him she seemed about to say something, when suddenly her eyes shifted. She was looking past his shoulder. Her eyes were bulging, her mouth a silent scream, and that was all David needed to know to figure out what was coming behind him. And when she cried, “Jump!” and leaped from the tracks, that’s what he did too — he jumped.
He landed on his side, he kept rolling, getting as far away as possible, stones digging into his skin. When he came to a stop and dared to look, what he saw was not a thousand-ton train roaring by, but a ropey-haired girl on her hands and knees, heaving so violently that he would have thought she was throwing up if he didn’t know she was laughing.
After a while she tried getting upright, staggered tear-blind into the tracks, and fell back to her hands and knees. In time she tested her feet again and found that she could stand. She wiped bucketfuls of tears from her eyes.
“You shoulda seen —,” she started to say to David, but he wasn’t there. Or there. Or there. Not down the tracks. She turned and looked back the way they came, and there he was, in the distance (How long had she been laughing?), walking the ties between the rails, walking slump-shouldered down the middle of the tracks around the bend. . . .
Around the bend . . .
“David!” she screamed. She shucked her backpack and took off. In her mind’s eye she could see a huge diesel lumbering around the bend, and something told her the dumb clunk had no intention of jumping this time. “Daviiiid!”
It took forever to catch up. When she did, she yanked him from the tracks and shook him like a rag doll. “You stupid jerk! What do you think you’re doing?”
He screamed back in her face, jaw jutting, hateful: “What do you care?”
They glared at each other. She thought he might cry. She thought she might cry. And then she heard the rumble. Felt it first, actually, in the soles of her feet, on her shoulders, then heard it, low and faint as her own heartbeat; then louder, sooner than she would have guessed.
She grabbed him and pulled him farther away, up against a wall of gray rock, David trying to wrench free. She held on tight as the blue face of the engine poked around the trees and the ground trembled and thunder drowned out everything but fear. Ten steps away the train went by, blotting out the world, fanning her face. The first brown leaves of August leaped from the cinder bed and settled at their feet.
The engine grumbled on toward Philadelphia, and soon the only sound was that of boxcars and coal hoppers: the k-chk k-chk of their barbelled, pennymashing wheels. When the last car went by, she spat after it in disgust. “Look at that. Not even a caboose.”
David squirmed free. They resumed walking, but he kept way ahead of her. She didn’t mind, so long as he stayed off the tracks. When he came to her backpack, he gave it a kick.
“You’re kicking your own food,” she called.
They walked like that for a while, the separation a full block if they had been on a street. They came to another bend in the tracks, a sharp one this time, sharp enough so that suddenly David was out of sight. Primrose clutched her backpack straps and ran — and practically plowed into him. He was standing stone still, staring ahead.
34
At first he thought it was some kind of mountain range, hazy blue with distance. Or giant churches, with their pointy tops.
“There ya go,” came Primrose’s voice behind him. “The big city. Skyscrapers.”
Two of them were way taller than everything else. They speared skyward so high it seemed they would snag the passing clouds.
“We’re almost there.” She tugged at him. “Come on.” He went with her.
She handed him a hoagie, unwrapped one for herself. “Got them at 7-Eleven.”
David hadn’t realized how hungry he was till he smelled the hoagie. “Aren’t we going to stop?”
Primrose bit into hers. “Gotta keep moving. Let me know when you’re thirsty. Look.” She held up a bottle of Mango Madness. “One for each of us. A cupcake too.”
David had walked while eating before — an ice-cream cone, a candy bar — but never a meal. “Is this lunch?” he said.
“Did you have lunch?”
“No.”
“Then it’s lunch.”
She grinned. “At least there’s no carrot.”
They walked on, eating, staying off the tracks, listening. When Primrose finished her hoagie, she tossed the wrapper. David retrieved it, growled “litterbug,” and stuffed it into the backpack. “I don’t see the skyscrapers anymore,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” said Primrose, “they’re there.”
The river, in the distance before, was nearby now, separated from the tracks by only a thin row of trees and viny tangle. They threw stones into it for a while, then they went down to it. Rocks and tree limbs jutted from the water.
“How much farther?” said David.
“Not far,” said Primrose.
“You said we were almost there.”
“I lied.”
“How far do we have to go?”
“I don’t know. Miles.”
“How many?”
“How do I know?”
“Guess.”
“Fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-two.”
They walked on.
“Primrose?”
“What?”
“What would you rather get hit with, an egg or a stone?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t know, just a question.”
“It’s stupid.”
“I’d rather get hit with an egg. It splats all over you and makes an icky mess, but it doesn’t hurt like a stone.”
“That’s what you think.”
Farther on, David looked at the shrubs lining both sides of the tracks.
“Primrose?”
“Now what?”
“What if we get jumped?”
“Attack ’em with your yo-yo.”
The day had been such an adventure, David had not until now thought of his yo-yo. He drew Spitfire from its holster.
“Want me to teach you stuff?”
“Not really.”
David worked on his stunts, made even harder because he was walking at the same time. Then he had a great idea: walk the dog on the track! He stepped on the ties, snapped Spitfire down to the end of the line and laid it gently on the smooth steel rail, itself barely wider than the many-colored spool. Spitfire jumped off. It jumped a second time. He kept trying until finally he had it going, a spinning blur, runaway wheel of a rainbow train riding the silver rail. “Primrose, look!”
Primrose looked. He half-expected her to make fun of him or say he was being stupid, but she didn’t. She just looked and nodded and said, “Cool.” Then she said, “Can I try?”
David wound up the yo-yo and slipped it onto her finger. He laughed at her fumbling efforts. She couldn’t even make Spitfire sit down, much less walk.
He took Spitfire back and showed her how a real pro did it. Then he spotted a weed with a fuzzy white top. “Watch this.”
He returned Spitfire to its holster. He stood gunfighter style, facing the weed, scowling, feet apart, knees slightly bent, hands at his sides holster-high, fingers spread, fingertips tingling. “Say when.”
“When.”
In less than three seconds, maybe two —“Bam!” — Spitfire was zinging on a laser line. The fuzzy weed top exploded.
“Not bad,” said Primrose, “for an infant.”
She picked out a fuzz-topped weed for herself. She stood before it gunfighter style, scowling, fingertips twitching. “Say when.”
“When.”
She reared back and spit — “Ptoo!” Fuzz flew.
David clapped. “Good shot! Let’s mow ’em all down!”
They went from weed to weed: “Bam!” — “Ptoo!” — “Bam!” — “Ptoo!” — laughing, obliterating cotton tops till Primrose ran out of juice. It took a minute for her mouth to relube so she could talk right. “I coulda gone longer if I had a jawbreaker.”
“Why?” said David.
“They make good spit.”
They walked on.
Primrose said, “Did you miss me the last couple weeks?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
Later she said, “What did you do?”
David shrugged. “Stuff.”
Primrose chuckled. “I had fun.”
David chuckled. “Me too.”
Primrose wagged her head. “I had so much fun — whew! — I could hardly stand it.”
“Me too,” said David. “I had so much fun I almost got sick.”
“Yeah?” said Primrose. “Well I really did get sick one day. I went to the doctor, and he examined me and said” — she made her voice low — “ ‘You are all worn out, young lady. Looks to me like you OD’d on fun.’ He said I had to slow down or I’d give myself a heart attack.”
“Me too,” said David.
They rounded a curve, and again the two skyscrapers appeared before them, only this time they were different. The entire right sides, all the way up to the arrow-tip tops, were aglow. It was one of the most beautiful things David had ever seen. “Look,” he said, pointing, “they’re golden.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And bad news too.”
“Huh?”
“That’s not gold. It’s the sun shining off the windows.”
David looked at her. “So?”
“So the sun’s going down. So it’s getting late.”
Suddenly David felt cool. “You mean, like, dark?”
She snickered. “Yeah. Like dark.”
He stared at her. “Can’t we make it before dark?”
She didn’t answer.
35
“I want to go home.”
“That’s the hundredth time. Don’t say it again.”
“I want to go home.”
Primrose stopped. She grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. “You want to go home? Fine. Go.” She pushed him.
David stumbled forward a few steps and stopped. He balled his fists and wailed down the empty tracks, which were totally in shadow now: “I hate you!” He picked up a stone. He turned.
She picked up a stone. Hers was bigger.
“You wouldn’t throw that at me,” he said.
She grinned. “No?”
“I’m just a little kid. You said.”
“A little kid with a stone in his hand.”
“Who said I was gonna throw it?”
“Good,” she said. “So drop it.”
He had gone too far to drop it.
He swung his arm back. “I’m just gonna lob it, that’s all.”
She swung her arm back, she grinned. “Lob away.”
“Listen, wait —,” he said. He was boxed in. He knew it. And he could think of only one way out. “I know something about you, and it’s something you don’t want to know, and if you throw that at me I’m gonna tell you anyway and you’re gonna feel really bad.” He studied her. Did she believe him? Did he believe himself? “Okay?” She said nothing. “Look — I’m just gonna lob it. Here goes —” He lobbed the stone softly in a high arc; it fell harmlessly in front of her.
She reared back and fired her stone. It bit the ground at his feet and sent a spray of gravel against his ankle.
“You asked for it!” he yelled. But he never found out if he really would have told her, because she said, grinning smugly, “The guy in the picture isn’t my father.”
David stood dumbstruck. “How did you know?”
“Found out a couple years ago. I guess my mother made up all that stuff about my father. Anyway, I figured, who cares? Whoever he was, he’s sure as heck not here. Is he?” She made a mock show of looking around. “So ever since then I’ve just been” — she waved blithely and walked off — “pretending.”
David ran to catch up. “But don’t you feel bad?”
“Not really,” she said. “Pretending works.”
They walked on.
The golden skyscrapers were out of sight again. David kept looking at the sky, which was still a friendly blue. With trees on one side and high gray stone bluffs on the other, it seemed he was walking in a box with the lid off.
>
“I’m hungry,” he said.
Primrose checked the backpack. She pulled out the remaining items. “One chocolate cupcake. One inch of Madness, left in my bottle. But because I am such a fantastically nice person, I’m willing to share. One opened pack of chocolate malt balls, with” — she counted — “nine left.”
“I didn’t know you had malt balls.”
“I didn’t either. I think they’ve been in here since last Christmas.” She held one out to him. “Want?”
David stared at it, took it, smelled it, stared again, opened his mouth. Primrose barked: “Wait!” She snatched the malt ball from him.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” she said. “I just remembered. This stuff will make you thirsty. We each have a half inch of Madness left. We can’t be getting thirsty.”
Streams of saliva flooded David’s mouth. He had never craved anything in his life as much as he craved that malt ball. He reached for it. She pulled it away. She stuffed the malt balls and everything else in the backpack and zipped it shut.
“I’m hungry,” he whined. He reached for the pack.
She smacked his hand. “We’ll eat later. We have to save it.”
“I’m hungry now.”
“You won’t be if you stop saying it. Think about something else.”
David tried, but now that his stomach had gotten his attention, it wouldn’t let go. Suddenly he had an idea. “Buy some food!”
She pulled her pockets inside out. “Broke.”
“Broke? How can you be broke? You always have money. You’re rich.”
“I spent the last dollar on wallpaper and food for today. And anyway, you see a 7-Eleven around here?”
David let out a yawp of frustration. He kicked stones. “I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. I want to go home.” He scowled at her. “It’s all your fault.” He kept scowling.
She smiled.
“How far do we have to go yet?”
“Don’t know.”
“How are we getting back home?”
“Beats me.”
“Are we gonna be out all night?”
“Yerp.”
He jumped in front of her, planted his feet, screeched up at her: “You don’t even care. Do you?”
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