“Think it’s gonna stick?” she said, looking out the window. The snow was falling pretty heavy now.
“Hope so,” I said.
“Why?”
“So we get off.”
“Go sledding?” There was a gleam in her eye. “Go chasing?”
I couldn’t face her. I thought of her running after me up the hill, through the trees, her call getting fainter. “I’m sorry. That was rotten.”
“You were rotten.”
“I was rotten.”
We both watched the falling snow. She sighed, “Well, I was probably a little moldy myself.”
“No, not you.”
“I shouldn’t’ve been chasing you like that. I don’t mean just up the hill either.”
The snowflakes were fat, wet, the sticking kind. “Sara?”
“Mm?”
“What about, uh, Leo?”
“What about Leo?”
“I don’t know. How come you went out with him?”
She ran her finger across the windowpane. “He asked me.” She was grinning. “You think I went to him because of you, don’t you?” I shrugged. “Well, you’re right, I did. I wanted to see if he had any words of wisdom for a poor, innocent girl that some guy used as a stepping-stone to get to another girl.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah. ‘Wanna go to the mall with me?’”
We laughed. “I saw you that day,” I told her.
“You did?”
“Yeah. I was on the upper level. I saw you and him going into the bookstore.”
“Wha’d you think?”
“I wondered where you got that powder blue scarf and hat.”
“What else? What did you feel?”
I didn’t want to answer that. “Honest?”
She looked into my eyes. “Yes. Let’s try honest from now on, okay?”
“Okay. I was relieved, sort of.”
“Now that Leo got me off your back, you were free to go after Jennifer without having to feel guilty about me right?”
I nodded. The fat, wet flakes were melting on the window ledge. “But I didn’t feel relief when I saw you and Leo at the lake that time.”
She laughed. “Saw us? You mean crashed into us. Boy, your little sister sure did a number on you that time.”
“Yeah… well, the play was the worst.”
“The school play? You were there?”
“Watching you every minute.”
“You were?”
“Followed you into the lobby during intermission.”
Her eyes were widening, present-opening eyes. “You did?”
“Went up to Valducci in the light room. Told him I couldn’t stand it.”
“Couldn’t stand what?”
“You sitting there with Leo the Shrink. Were you holding hands?”
“None of your business. What else?”
“I walked the hallways. Heard somebody go into a room. Thought it was you and Leo.”
“Yeah, what else?”
“Remember the end of the play? Lights flashing all around, swirling?”
“Yeah?”
“The spotlight was on you.”
“It was?”
“You and Leo.”
“Why?”
“Valducci was doing it. For me. So I could see you clearly, you and Leo.”
In her eyes I saw that she had opened the present and that it was just what she had been hoping for. “Honest?” she said. I nodded. She looked out the window for a while, then turned to me. She fingered my sleeve “When you ran up to see Valducci, what was it you said to him? Something about not standing it?”
“Yeah, well, that was it.”
“No, you say it.”
“I can’t stand it.”
“Anymore?”
“Yeah, anymore.”
She tugged. “Okay now, say it again. Just like you said it to him. Just like.”
I was starting to feel like an idiot. “Okay, uh—Valducci, I can’t stand it anymore.”
She didn’t say anything more. The wide eyes were gone now. She just smiled, as though she had taken the present out and tried it on and found that it felt really good and fit perfectly. She kept smiling faintly as she turned to the falling snow, as we both turned and looked out at the falling, falling snow.
“It’s sticking,” I said.
“I know.”
The bell rang. Kids were pushing out chairs, leaving. Sara and I looked at each other and broke out laughing: it had never occurred to us to eat.
After school I found a piece of paper in my locker, with writing on it. Looked like a poem, but it didn’t rhyme. It said:
You were an egg.
Or were you?
You came into this world
as an egg
and you went out with a name
and a warm place to lie down
and a mother and father
and love.
They will remember you
as Camille.
You were an egg.
Or were you?
I met Sara out behind the school, by the bushes near the bike racks, as planned. I handed her the poem. “Did you write this?”
She read it, shaking her head. “No, but I think I know who did.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“John Poff.”
“Poff?”
“After sixth period, I thought I saw him slip something into your locker.”
I couldn’t believe it. “The John Poff? Football player? Weight lifter?”
“Him,” she said, handing me the poem. I shook the snow from it, folded it, and put it in my pocket. I gave her the paper bag. “Shoot, I forgot to bring something to dig with.”
“What are you going to use?”
“Hand, I guess.” I looked around, picked a spot. “This okay?” She nodded. She was holding the bag close to her, with both hands. With my foot I cleared away snow; it was about three inches deep by now. I crouched, started digging. The ground was hard and cold. I thought my fingernails were ripping off. I just kept digging, clawing, until the tip of her boot touched my hand. “That’s good enough,” she said. One of my fingers was bleeding.
She crouched beside me. I took the bag from her. “Last look?” I said. She sniffed, nodded. I took out the little pink pj’s, still with shell pieces clinging. A large snowflake landed on the C of Camille. It looked so pretty I didn’t want to brush it away. We watched it melt, soak in. I put the pj’s back in the bag, put Poff’s poem in too, laid the bag in the hole, pushed the dirt back over, smoothed the ground.
We stayed there, watching the snowflakes land on the little plot, some melting, some not. “Well,” I said, “did the experience speak to you?”
“It spoke,” she sniffed, her voice raspy, “and it whispered and it hollered and it sang.” She laid her hand on mine. “Au revoir, Camille.”
Megin
I WAS too upset to eat breakfast. “Mom,” I said, “why does he hate me?”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“Then why is he doing this to me?”
“Because he’s at his wit’s end. He doesn’t know what else to do. Eat your toast.”
“I don’t want any. But why does he have to ground me for a whole week? Right in the best part of hockey season. The ice is like a rock. Why can’t I be grounded for a week in the summer? I’d take two weeks then.”
“Misbehave now, pay the price later, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I don’t think so. I think he needs a little satisfaction right now. Drink your juice.”
“I’m not thirsty. Great. So I gotta suffer so he can get a little satisfaction. Wonderful father I got.”
“You could’ve done worse.”
“And what about my new stick? If I’m only one minute late on one day, I don’t get it till April. That’s cruel. That’s child abuse!” She laughed. “It’s not funny!”
“I know. Sorry. Anyway, you can probably get away with
being one or two minutes late.” She pulled my juice over to her side.
“Are you gonna tell him if I’m late?”
She took a sip. “Won’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said he’s going to call to make sure you’re home.”
I screeched and shuffleboarded my toast across the table. I stood up. “Mom, what about Emilie? How am I supposed to see her?”
“Well,” she said, picking up the toast, “Beechwood Manor’s on your way home from school. You’d have time to pop in and say hello for a second.”
“But I don’t see Emilie for just a second. And besides, I never go there without a french cruller—and by the time I went to Dunkin’ Donuts and then to Emilie’s and then home, I’d be so late I wouldn’t get my new stick till the end of the century.”
She laid the toast down. “It’s just a week. You’ll survive. Emilie will wait. She’ll understand. Let’s just get it over with. Keep the peace.”
I jammed the chair into the table “Peace, bull!” I stormed out of the house. Halfway to school, my stomach was aching from hunger. I was glad.
I got home at 3:30 on the dot, just as my mother was opening her eyes on the sofa. Five minutes later the phone rang. She made me answer it. I picked up the receiver, snapped “The prisoner is present!” and bashed it down.
I got home on time Tuesday too, but it was getting harder. Usually I went to see Emilie early in the week, Monday or Tuesday, and I knew she would start to wonder now. I went home a different way. I was afraid if I took my usual route past Beechwood Manor, Emilie might see me from her window. Or even worse, call to me. What could I say to her? “Sorry, Emilie, I’m not allowed to see you.” “Sorry, Emilie, if I’m late I don’t get my new hockey stick.” “Sorry, Emilie, it’s you or a new stick.”
I felt rottener and rottener. At least she had her brother to come see her, I kept telling myself, even if he did make her stick to her diet. But she kept staring at me from her picture on my dresser. On Wednesday I ran home, blew in the door at 3:20. I couldn’t stand being on the streets, thinking of Emilie, who was probably looking out her window, watching all the kids go by, wondering where I was, waiting, waiting. And probably, by now, figuring I’d never show up again. Typical teenager. Old people just a joke. Trade in an old hag for a new hockey stick any day.
She was probably starting to hate me by now. Well, why not? Join the crowd. My father hated me. Grosso hated me. I hated Grosso. In fact, come to think of it, I wasn’t so crazy about myself. I was in bed, my room was dark, but still I could feel her eyes, her big, proud grin. Would she have traded me in for a new lacrosse stick? I got up and turned the picture toward the wall.
On Thursday after school I went straight to Dunkin’ Donuts, paid for a half dozen french crullers (Jackie wasn’t there), and took them to Beechwood Manor. As I walked through the lobby, the clock on the wall said 3:45. Goodbye, hockey. Emilie wasn’t in her room, but somebody else was, an old hag. She was leaning on a cane and rooting through Emilie’s dresser. I left her there gawking at me with her toothless mouth hanging open. I raced down to the lobby, to the man in the uniform at the desk. He was reading a magazine. “Somebody’s in Emilie’s room,” I told him. “Emilie Bain. Room two-fourteen. She’s robbing Emilie.”
He put the magazine on the desk, but he kept reading it as he got up. “Come on!” I said. He took one last look at the magazine, turned it facedown, and started crawling toward the elevator. I grabbed his arm. “Stairs! Hurry!”
We made it in time. The hag was still there, her hand in a drawer, her toothless mouth gaping. “See?” I said. “See?”
The man asked the hag some questions. I couldn’t understand her answers, with her lips flopping all over the place. When he asked her what her name was, it sounded to me like she said, “Buhbuhblubba Buhbuhblubba.” Then he left.
“Aren’t you gonna kick her out?” I said.
“She says it’s her room.”
“She’s lying! It’s Emilie Bain’s!”
He shrugged. “I’ll check the names.”
“What’s her name?” I asked him.
“Pendleton.”
It started to hit me then that the room didn’t look the same as before. I ran ahead, down to the lobby, into the office marked DIRECTOR—MRS. FLAGSTAFF. I practically crashed into her desk. “Where’s Emilie Bain?”
She looked up. She blinked, smiled. She didn’t seem to have any eyebrow hair, just two thin pencil lines. “Yes, dear?”
“Where’s Emilie Bain?” She didn’t answer. She just kept smiling, blinking, smiling, blinking. There was a green, cube-shaped soap eraser on her desk. I wanted to grab it and erase her stupid eyebrows. “Where is Emilie Bain?”
She jerked back, stopped blinking. The smile was gone. She came around the desk. She looked in pain. She put her hand on my shoulder. I twisted away from it, cringed back. “Where is she?” She was shaking her silly head. “What’s that supposed to mean? Huh? Can’tcha talk?”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “I’m afraid Emilie has passed away.”
“Passed away? Waddaya mean, passed away?”
“She died, dear. Sunday afternoon. In her room.”
I hated this lady. “No she didn’t! There’s nothing wrong with Emilie! We go racing down the hallway! I’m gonna teach her ice hockey!” Stick or no stick, we’ll be out on the ice tomorrow, okay God?
“It happened in her sleep, dear.”
She was heading for me again. I backed off. “Get away from me! Emilie’s fine! She’s here someplace! Did you tell her brother about this? Does he know what’s going on?”
She pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about. “Brother? Miss Bain had no brother. There were no living relatives.”
No? Waddaya call me? “She has a brother!”
“Did you meet him, dear?”
“He comes to see her all the time! She sent him to get me a Gretzky T-shirt!” I ripped open my buttons to prove it. “Look!”
She was moving forward, coming after me, her pencilline eyebrows wiggling like worms. “Sometimes, dear, we are lonely. Sometimes we invent others, even a brother, to keep us company.” Suddenly she stopped, the eyebrows arched, she pointed. “Dear, is your name by any chance Megin?”
I backed into something, the lobby desk. The man in the uniform looked up from his magazine; he was starting to rise. I bolted for the door. “Something’s going on here! Emilie! Emilie! Somebody’s up there ransacking her room, and you’re saying she’s not here, and you’re saying she doesn’t have a brother—Emilie!—and I’m going to the police! Y’hear!”
I burst through the door and I ran. I ran and I ran. I meant to go to the police, but I didn’t. I didn’t go home either. I just ran. And after a while I knew why I was running, exactly why. Jackrabbit chasers don’t die, especially not in old folks’ homes on Sunday afternoons, and jackrabbits—who ever heard of a jackrabbit that stopped running? I could see the critter up ahead of me, darting this way, that way, tail bobbing, flashing across the prairie—hah! look at it go!—but no way was it gonna get away, because I was a chaser now, but I knew that as long as I kept after it, chasing it, everything would be okay, and Emilie would be waiting back in her room, room 214, and boy what a yip and holler she was gonna let out when she saw me stroll in holding that critter by the ears… Then somewhere, somewhere after dark, the jackrabbit got away, and I knew then that everything the lady with the pencil-line eyebrows had said was true.
Greg
I DIDN’T WANT to sound like all of a sudden I was the big expert on how to get a girl, but I had to say something. After all, Valducci had helped me; now it was my turn to help him, even if the girl he wanted was a glittery seventh-grader from California. Anyway, ever since I saw her in a kimono on Megamouth’s birthday, I’ve been thinking Valducci isn’t so crazy after all. But there he was, as usual, chopping and high-kicking everything in sight on the way to school. I told him, “Valducci,
you’re not gonna get her that way.”
“Ya-yagah!” He flicked a foot at Poff, his heel stopping an inch from Poff’s nose. “Wha’d you say?”
“I said, you’re not gonna get her that way.”
“Who? What way?”
“Zoe. That way. Karate. Man of destruction.”
He glowed at the mention of her name. “Zoe? You mean my honey? Fa-fa-choo!”
“I’m saying, Dooch, if you ever want her to be your honey, you better change your style.”
“Oh, the big expert now, huh?”
“Dooch, I’m just trying to help ya.”
“Yu-aaaahh-hie!” He chopped a small tree; all the ice coating its branches came tinkling down like it was suddenly undressed.
I pulled up my sleeve. “Look.” He looked. “Notice anything?”
“You lost your tan.”
“The vein, dumbo, remember my vein? How it humped up?”
“So?”
“So, it’s gone. I haven’t lifted a weight since last year. I stopped trying to be Mr. America, and I still got what I wanted.”
“Who’s trying to be Mr. America? Su-su!”
“I’m saying, you gotta be yourself.”
“I am myself.” He planted himself in front of Poff, contorted his body, and pulled his upper lip practically up to his eyes. “Foff, who av I?”
Poff broke out grinning.
“Dooch,” I said, “you’re not gonna get her that way.”
“Get her? I already got her. Right where I want her. Any day now—” He spotted a dog taking a leak on a telephone pole. In no time at all the poor dog was on its butt, its one remaining hind leg cut out by a Valducci low-kick. The dog tore off.
“Any day now what?” I asked him when I stopped laughing.
“Any day now—pah-pah!—she’s gonna ask me out—yonga!”
We were at school by now, and sure enough, he spotted Zoe. She was with some other girls. They were taking turns putting an apple on their heads and seeing how far they could walk without it falling off. When Zoe got the apple and put it on her head, Valducci moved in. Oh no! I thought. Give Valducci credit—he didn’t do it from behind. He jumped right in front of her, squatting. She stopped, froze; he twirled sideways, up shot his leg—he looked like the dog taking a leak—“Fu-chaya!” Into the air popped the apple; it landed ten feet away in the snow. Valducci bowed, turned, and strutted into school. Some of the girls started howling with laughter, and some of them just looked at Zoe, who was not laughing at all.
Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush? Page 15