Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush?

by Jerry Spinelli

  When I saw Valducci in gym class, he went thumbs up: “Any minute now.”

  At lunchtime: “Any second now.”

  Then, after school, who came straight for us but Zoe, and my first thought was, Either he’s right, or she’s gonna kick him. Neither. She came to me. “Megin sick?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t keep track of her.”

  She gave me a good glare—a California glare, I guess, then she snapped away so fast her dangling earrings went flying out flat after her.

  Two minutes later, Megamouth’s pal Sue Ann came running. “Is Megin sick?” I told her the same thing.

  Valducci and I split, went home, and met at the lake. We were right in the middle of some one-on-one when I heard somebody screeching my name from the sidelines. Sue Ann again. I yelled for her to wait but she kept screaming. I went over. She was gasping, her face was bright red, tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Go home! Fast! Your mom called! Megin! Fast!”

  I was up to the street before I realized I still had my skates on. I turned to go back for my sneakers and bumped into Sue Ann. She was holding them.

  A police car was parked in front of our house. Little kids stood across the street, sled ropes in their hands. Eyes, faces jerked toward me when I opened the door, and for a second it seemed like I had barged in on a picture just ready to be taken: my mother on one end of the sofa; the policeman on the other, note pad, pencil in hand; Toddie clinging to my mother, crying; my mother’s eyes so open, like they get when she’s coming out of her trance, only red now; standing behind the sofa, Zoe, little black streaks creeping down from her eyes; a stack of schoolbooks on the coffee table.

  All eyes came talking through my mother’s voice: “Do you know where Megin is?” My mouth wouldn’t work. I shook my head. “Don’t you know anything? Anything?”

  “What’s there to know?” I said. “She went to school, didn’t she?”

  My mother’s eyes fell to the books on the coffee table. She seemed hypnotized.

  “Her books were found along West Chester Pike,” came the calm, ministerlike voice of the policeman. “You didn’t see her on the way to school?”

  “No. She usually leaves before me.”

  A knock on the door. I opened it. Sue Ann came in, took a look at the books, then at my mother, and burst out bawling. Before I could shut the door, my father was barging in. He stared at the books too, and next thing I knew he was hugging me and practically squeezing my breath out.

  The books were found by a man who runs a rug store on West Chester Pike. There are a lot of businesses along there. It’s a busy highway a couple miles from our house. The policeman kept saying there was probably nothing to worry about, probably nothing bad had happened to her. He said kids do this all the time, play hooky, disappear for a couple hours, worry their parents sick. They always show up by night. That’s why the police don’t list somebody as missing until they’re gone for twenty-four hours.

  Night came, but not Megin.

  Megin

  I WAS halfway to school when it hit me: Emilie was dead, my Wayne Gretzky stick was gone, I was through playing hockey, everybody hated me—so what was I doing going to school? I turned off at the next street.

  I wound up at Dunkin’ Donuts. I never saw it so crowded, every seat at the counter taken. Jackie looked at me, then the clock. “Don’t you have school?” I told her some lie about not having to be there till eleven. She took me into the back and stuffed me with blueberry-filleds. Warm blueberry-filleds. I was sorry I couldn’t act more grateful. I was tired; I hadn’t slept good. In the soft sizzle and squish of the donut-making room, I felt like I was floating in a warm, sweet dream cloud. Then Jackie took out a pan of french crullers. I couldn’t look. I zippered up my jacket, grabbed my books. Jackie called as I was heading out: “Moxie—you forgot.” She was holding out a cruller. I didn’t know how to say no. She wrapped it in a napkin and handed it to me, and for the first time, I thought I felt crying coming on. But it didn’t. I stuffed the donut in my pocket and left.

  I headed for the nearest snow bank and started kicking my way along it. You scum! You rat! You murderer! You killed her! She was on a diet and you kept feeding her french crullers! Smuggling them to her week after week! Till you killed her! I took out the cruller and winged it; it exploded against the side of a car going by. “You stupid, stinking, rotten, scummy murderer kid!”

  I was sorry I’d eaten. Rotten kid, stuffing yourself with warm donuts, your own stinking favorite warm donuts, while your friend—your grandmother!—lies dead in the ground. I punched and punched my books into my stomach until I threw up, blueberry-filled, even warmer now, all over the snow.

  I felt better. I felt worse.

  I walked. I saw a squirrel scamper across a telephone wire. I tried to imagine myself catching a squirrel. Impossible. I never knew anyone who caught one. Or even tried to catch one. Or even thought about trying to catch one. And if anybody ever did, with their bare hands, who would believe them?

  I came to West Chester Pike. I had walked there a couple times with Sue Ann, to look at stores, but never by myself. I looked down the road. Nothing but stores, gas stations, eating places on both sides. I knew that some ways out there they came to an end with a Seafood Shanty. Then there were things like funeral homes and apartment houses and golf courses and farms. And it got hilly out there. I could see the hills from where I stood. That was the West. North Dakota was west, out west somewhere, out beyond those hills. The prairie. And, maybe, a jackrabbit waiting. I put down my books and headed west.

  I always heard that your whole life passes before you if you’re drowning. I think it also happens if you’re walking west. Things came to me that I never knew were still in my head. My father was right; my brother did give me lessons on a little blackboard, and I did cry when he went off to school. But there was also the time I locked him in a closet and tried to suck all the air out with a straw.

  I sort of ran through my life from beginning to end—or present, that is. I zipped through the last week in a couple seconds. Then I went back and did the highlights in slow motion: the time I got my autographed Gretzky stick, the donut fight in the kitchen, the time Toddie barfed in the cider vat, the time I asked Emilie to be my grandmother. Emilie was waiting at the end of each memory, in her room, on Sunday afternoon, alone. Or was she? If she really did make up a brother to give herself company, like the lady said, maybe, in her imagination, he was with her then. I hoped so, for her sake, so she didn’t have to die alone. But I felt bad about that too, because if she had to invent a brother, that meant having me wasn’t enough. And why a brother? I figured if I was an old lady and I was lonely, the last kind of person I’d invent to keep me company would be a brother.

  When I finally took a break from thinking and remembering, I didn’t know where I was. The stores were gone. I looked back. The big boat on the Seafood Shanty sign was barely visible in the distance. I must have walked for miles. I wondered what time it was. Probably around lunch. Sue Ann would be wondering where I was. She wouldn’t have anybody to ask, because she knows that when I’m not going to school, she’s the one I tell. I knew what would happen. As soon as school let out, she would go to my house. I could picture her going to pieces when she found out I wasn’t there either. Good old Sue Ann.

  I turned back.

  Somewhere along the way, I left the pike, and a long time later I came wandering up to a big, long, brownstone building. It was the Homestead House. I wasn’t used to seeing it from this direction. The lake was out in front. Kids were skating. Must be after school, I thought.

  I checked the back door. Locked. Not surprising, since the House is only open on weekends during the winter. Just for the heck of it I tried a window—it came open. I climbed in. I was in the kitchen. Big old wooden table. Fireplace big enough for me to walk into. Big black pots. Bunches of dry plants and weedy-looking stuff hanging from a beam. On the table was a jar of something, big jar. Dried
apples. I ate them all.

  I went upstairs. Steep, narrow, creaky. Maybe scary too, but I was too tired to be scared. Dead tired. I went into a room, a bedroom. Besides the bed, nothing but an old wooden chest, a table with a bowl and pitcher, and a rug that looked like it was braided with string. I looked out the window. I could see my stick jutting out of the ice in the middle of the lake. Somebody was running up the hill. Looked like Grosso. I lay down on the bed. The mattress was lumpy and crinkly, but I didn’t care. I reached out to the floor and dragged up the stringy rug. I folded it in half and curled myself under it and went to sleep.

  Greg

  I DIDN’T NEED my skates. Or my gloves or kneepads or any of the other fancy stuff. Just my stick and puck. And darkness. And the practice board. Last time I was at the lake knocking the puck into the board, I was trying to figure out Jennifer Wade. I’d never in a million years thought my sister would ever be the reason for me being there.

  The cop hadn’t fooled me. I knew what had happened. Oh sure, she probably was just playing hooky at first. So she went out to West Chester Pike, walked along it. Then she decided to thumb a ride, run away, really show everybody she wasn’t kidding. So a car stops, picks her up. She’s already in the car before she realizes he’s a creep, and even she knows what happens to girls that get picked up by creeps. She tells him to stop the car, she wants to get out. He laughs, just laughs, and reaches over and grabs her. She opens the door, tries to get out, he won’t let her, she throws her books out, they land in front of the rug store, the car speeds off up the pike, the door swinging shut… And then, a couple days later, we meet. At the mall, the mall parking lot. He’s got her locked in a van. I see her face at the back window, silently calling, “Greg! Help me!” And there he is, coming out of the mall, with food, two pizzas. I kick the pizza boxes out of his hands (I’m Valducci). Another kick under the chin lifts him three feet off the ground. I snare him on the way down and sling him (I’m Poff) into the side of the van, and then as he crumples I’m pounding and kicking him and I’m all me and I’m kicking and kicking into the face that’s crying and begging for mercy, kicking, kicking… only for real, for cold ice real, it’s not my foot smashing his face to a pulp, but my stick smashing the puck into the board, and it’s not him crying, but me.

  I thought about the donut fight in the kitchen. I thought about the time she locked me in a closet and tried to suck the air out with a straw. I laughed. Then I thought about the schoolbooks on the coffee table. It was my fault, no getting around it. There was nothing in the world she loved more than that hockey stick personally autographed by Wayne Gretzky. Nothing. If she still had her stick, she probably would never have taken off. But she didn’t have it. Because of me. And now I wasn’t even sure why I threw it away. Was it really because she smashed Camille? Or was it because she was the one, not me, who’d had the winning ticket number at the hockey game that night?

  I turned and wound up and sent the puck across the lake. It shot out of sight, into the darkness. I heard it knock against the slatted fence, sending the whole thing into rattles. As it turned out, the darkness wasn’t so bad after all. By the time I got within five feet of the fence, I could see it fine. It was easy enough to climb over; they sure didn’t put it there to block people who really wanted to get to the other side. I stomped a couple times—the ice was firm. I couldn’t see the stick yet, but I knew about where it was. I moved out, slowly, sideways, arms out, ready to jump back at the first crack, the faintest crinkle. But the ice was solid, like a rock. Which figured. The last couple days the temperature never got much above twenty. In fact, looking at the stick that afternoon, I thought I noticed it jutting up a little higher, which would happen, thickening ice pushing it up. I crouched low, trying to place the stick against the distant, dim light of the street. Still couldn’t see it. I moved on. Sideways. Slow. Then—there it was, right in front of me, I had almost gone past it. Slow, slow, a couple steps, little steps—Don’t blow it now—reach—reach—I had it.

  Megin

  AT FIRST when I woke up I thought there was a slow-moving clock somewhere in the house: tock-tock–tock. But no, it was coming from outside. I got up and went to the window. The floodlights were out; must’ve been after nine. From the street a faint light smudged the hockey-playing end of the lake. I could see a dark figure, near the practice board: tock–tock. Then I knew: El Grosso. One of his weird habits. When something is bothering him, he goes to the lake and shoots his puck into the board. Probably still trying to figure out how to get Jennifer Wade.

  Then, suddenly, fear hit me, like a hot puck into my stomach. I was scared of being in this old, dark, cold house by myself, and just as scared of what was going to happen when I got home. I headed for the door, felt my way along the hallway, down the narrow, creaky stairs, pitch-black now, like the House of Horrors at the shore. I expected a green ghoul or headless mummy to come popping out at me any second. I made it to the kitchen. Silence, inside and out: the tock–tock had stopped. I swore I felt ghoul’s breath on the back of my neck. I bumped into the table, found the door, I fumbled around, yanked, pulled, but I couldn’t open it. I went out the way I came in, through the window. I was in such a hurry I snagged my foot and fell to the ground on my head.

  Just as I got up and started to run I heard a voice—from the lake—Grosso—calling for help! In a couple seconds I was on the ice. I stopped, listened: silence. I called his name. “Over here! Over here!” His voice was coming from the middle of the lake, the thin ice!

  I started running, slipped, slid all the way into the fence. I kicked it down, stepped over it, stopped. Now I could hear: splitting ice, splashing…

  “Greg?”

  “Here! Here!”

  I was there. He was a dark thrashing shape that the blacker darkness was trying to swallow. I could hear more than see: gasping, wheezing, like his lungs were rusty springs, grunting, blubbing, smacking water, smacking ice, ice snapping. Your brother is drowning. I reached out. “Stop!” he yelled. “No!” Ice collapsed, he disappeared. He came back up, farther away, glubbing, his breath singing. Your brother is dying. I tore off my coat, got on my knees, held the coat by one cuff, tossed it into the black water. “Here! Grab!”

  He thrashed his way over. “No! Here!” he gasped. For the first time, I noticed he was holding something; it looked like a hockey stick. “Back!” he gasped. “Back! Back!” I crawled back. “Sit!” I sat. “Dig! Heels in!” I dug my heels in as well as I could. He shoved the stick at me. It was a hockey stick, and as soon as I grabbed it I knew exactly which one it was. The stick between us seemed a mile long. At the other end I could barely see his eyes. They were scared. I took a deep breath and pulled.

  Greg

  AT THE OTHER END of the stick, for a split second, I saw her eyes. They were scared. Then she grunted and pulled, I was coming forward, and then the ice in front of her, the ice around her, was cracking, was gashing open with a noise like fresh apples splitting, and she sank, still sitting, still pulling, still scared eyes. We sank together, the stick stiff between us, connecting us. We hit bottom, then, suddenly, the other end of the stick popped up, the weight gone from it. I pushed off the bottom, broke water. “Megin! Megin!” I jerked around—nothing, silence. I gulped air, dove. Underwater, black water, I swept the stick back and forth, back and foth, sweeping, sweeping—Hit somebody! God please hit somebody!—sweeping, sweeping all the black cold waters of the world, please, please, and I saw her face before me, blueberry filling smearing her cheeks and nose, lemon in her hair, laughing laughing, then my breath was gone and I had to find more—fast! I pushed upward, but instead of breaking water I smashed into something—ice. I was under the ice! With the butt-end of the stick I started ramming the ice. My lungs demanded something, if not air, water. You are drowning. You and your sister are drowning together. Ram! Ram! Ram! I broke through, shot up shedding ice and gorged myself on air. “Megin! Megin!” Something thumped me from behind: Megin, grasping, gasping. I lifted th
e stick clear of the water and heaved it as far as I could, back to the days when the sun flashed from our skate blades and we skimmed over ice bright and hard as diamonds. I tried to grab her with my hand, but my frozen fingers wouldn’t close. I clamped my arm around her waist, she did the same to me, and we started paddling with our free arms, kicking, thrashing, straining for the ice. When we reached it and leaned on it, it broke. We started over. I don’t know how many times we did it—paddling, clinging, leaning, sinking—I only know that all of a sudden we weren’t sinking anymore, it was solid beneath us, solid, the ice was holding, we were out!

  That’s when I found out how cold I really was. I wasn’t shivering, I wasn’t trembling—I was slamming, in all directions at once, like some machine loose on its bolts. My body was all on its own, I couldn’t make it do anything for me. But that was okay, because I didn’t really want much now anyhow, just one of two things: either a nice, hot, steamy shower (which was impossible) or to die, that’s all, before another second went by. But somebody was pulling at me, Megin, pulling at me, saying things, and we were moving, up the hill, my body slamming, Megin saying things, cold, slamming, slamming… then steps, lights, voices… “Joan! C’mere! Quick!”… hands, dry, blankets, slamming, cold… “Okay, careful now, easy does it, lift—lift’ car, lights, too bright. Voices, cold, hands, voices, cold, voices voices voices.

  Megin

  THE NURSE was bringing my second cup of hot tea when Toddie and my parents came in. My mother and Toddie had a race to my bed. My mother won. She grabbed me and hugged me and broke out bawling. With my mother smothering my head and Toddie taking over my middle, my father got what was left—my feet. He hugged them and started sniveling away. That got me started. By the time the rest of them were cried out, I was still going full blast. My mother was stroking my hair and begging me to stop. She kept asking me if I had been abducted. When I could finally speak, I said, “What’s abducted?”