She leaned back into her seat, humming along with the tune that Cassie was singing in the backseat.
Then Radcliffe said what he said. “You remember Gemma in the pay office?” he said, changing lanes.
“No,” said Fancy.
“Come on! You must remember Gemma. She’s the one who spilled her drink everywhere at the office Christmas party? Remember?”
“No,” repeated Fancy.
“Well.” He shrugged. “Well, trust me, there’s a Gemma who works in my pay office. She works afternoons only, lucky duck. Anyhow, turns out she had some kind of laser treatment done on her moles. You know, you’d call them freckles, but they’re really moles. Anyhow. Extraordinary. She got about ten of them zapped.”
Fancy could not believe it. She lowered her chin to check the freckles on her bare shoulders: nicely spaced, attractive freckles. Beauty spots, really.
“What exactly do you mean by that?” she said coldly.
Radcliffe turned swiftly toward her, a hurt, confused expression on his face. Then he looked back to the road.
Tomorrow, it would be Cassie’s birthday. It was a secret, almost scary, wonderful fact which she’d been carrying around the last few weeks, like a smile about to happen on her face.
But what Cassie was actually realizing today was that it used to be better than this, back when she was little. Maybe when she turned five or six, it was more than just a smile: It was like everything was whispering and just about to skip. Now, turning seven, her excitement felt a bit wrong.
It’s because I know you can get disappointed, she realized. One time, she got too excited on her birthday and jumped on the table where the grown-ups were sitting, and at first they laughed, but then she knocked over their champagne and champagne spilled onto her dad’s lap and she got in trouble.
She cried, and you should never cry on your birthday.
Three
In the hot noon light of a summer day once, Marbie, nine years old, was almost killed by an umbrella.
She was distracted at the time.
The day before, her sister Fancy had walked into the beach house at sunset and announced that she had done something incredible.
Marbie was supposed to be washing the sand off her feet, but hearing this, she ran inside. She made herself invisible by placing herself in the shadows just beyond the open sliding doors.
Fancy was standing in the center of the main room, her hands on her hips, waiting for her parents. Mummy leaned in from the kitchen, where she was making a beetroot salad. Daddy leaned in from the bathroom, where he had just had a shower.
“What incredible thing did you do, sweetheart?” called Mummy.
“What’s up, Fance?” said Daddy.
“I told Radcliffe the Secret.”
Now there was a stampede of parents—Mummy’s purple hands flying, Daddy’s bath towel flapping—and they gathered around Fancy. Daddy straightened the towel around his waist.
“You did not!” cried Mummy.
“I did,” said Fancy defiantly. “I told you it was incredible.” She looked up at her parents and folded her arms, but her mouth trembled. Marbie, in her door space, thought of the episode of Charles in Charge, when the good sister tries to be bad, but she can’t pull it off because of her nature.
“When?” cried Daddy.
“Oh, darling,” said Mummy gently. Fancy’s hands fell to her side, and she sat down at the table.
It turned out she had told her boyfriend everything. She did not know why.
“Tell us again what you told him,” ordered Daddy, over and over. “Why did you tell him?” murmured Mummy, also over and over, until Marbie grew bored and climbed onto the side of one of the doors so she could slide with it, very quietly.
“Marbie!” snapped Daddy. “Go and get changed out of your bathing suit!”
“Okay,” agreed Marbie, looking down to the floor where there were little splatters of seawater from her bathing suit. Quietly, she walked into the room and sat down on the couch.
“Oh, Fancy,” said Mummy, in a low, shivery voice.
“Tell us what you told him,” Daddy commanded. “Tell us exactly.”
“Well, I told him about Ireland and about the cherry pies—”
“Oh, never mind,” grumbled Daddy.
He looked at Mummy, and she looked back. It was quiet.
From the couch, Marbie murmured to herself, “Should I tell them that I never told anyone the Secret? Should I say that out loud?”
The others turned to her. “GET OFF THAT COUCH!” Daddy shouted.
“Radcliffe’s not going to tell anybody.” Fancy’s voice collapsed into her arms, and her next words were tangled in a sob: “He promerr ewerd terl any obee.”
Mummy and Daddy were quiet, figuring out what she had just said. After a moment they both breathed in an “ah” of comprehension.
“Well,” said Daddy, “if he promised he wouldn’t tell anybody, I suppose we have to trust him.”
“But heaven help us when the two of you break up!” fretted Mummy.
“We’re not going to break up,” Fancy wept. “He loves me! He said that he loves me forever!”
“There now,” said Mummy apologetically. “Of course he does.” She put her arms around Fancy and said, “Of course he does, hush now, of course he does, sweetheart.”
So the next day, in the high noon sun, Marbie was distracted.
Fancy was sitting on her beach towel under the umbrella, one arm curled around her knees, gazing moodily down at the sand. Daddy was trying to tune his transistor radio to hear the cricket game. Mummy was on her folding chair, reading New Idea. The seaside noises and the radio fuzz and the magazine pages turning were only there to heighten the quiet of the family.
From her towel in the sun a few meters away, Marbie was able to observe her family and, in particular, Fancy. It seemed to Marbie that Fancy, who was usually smart, had now been stupid in two ways. First of all, it was stupid to tell her boyfriend the Secret. Second of all, it was stupid to tell her parents that she had told her boyfriend the Secret. In fact, and this was what interested Marbie, the second stupid thing was a whole new level of stupidity.
She stared out to sea, thinking hard about the two different levels of stupidity. Soon the levels began to shimmer in the air. Just above the horizon was the first level; somewhere a little higher, striking through clouds, was the second. Marbie stared at the first level, then looked up at the second, down at the first, up at the second, down and up, down and up, until an umbrella hit her smack in the forehead.
It was a beach umbrella, snatched out of the sand by a random gust of wind. It had streaked through the air like a javelin while men shouted “HO!” and leapt after it. The sharp end hit Marbie in the forehead and knocked her out cold.
While she was in the hospital, there was a lot of talk about how lucky it was that it hadn’t hit her just over to the right. Or just up a bit. Or a tad lower. Or a smidgeon to the left. And imagine if it had hit her in the eye! She was that close to death, but all she got was ten stitches, two black eyes, and one night under observation.
Fancy was very emotional, so Radcliffe held her hand and nuzzled his nose into her shoulder for support.
That Friday, Radcliffe came along to his first Zing Family Secret Meeting, and was quiet and polite, but couldn’t stop looking at Marbie, who was on a couch surrounded by pillows, and whose forehead was a thunderstorm of purple. The following week he had relaxed enough to point out that the circles of black around her eyes made her look like a raccoon. “See you later, raccoon girl,” he called as he left the garden shed that night. Everybody laughed.
Afterward, Marbie took over responsibility for putting up the family beach umbrella. She alone knew the full extent of the risk. She had a strict routine: first, dig a hole as deep as your arm; deeper; dig until you have to lie down on your side to reach the bottom of the hole and scrape the damp sand with your fingertips; next, take the bottom half of the umbrella and plun
ge it into the hole, then twist to the right leaning with all your weight; next! pack the hole with firm sand; finally, pile sand thick and high around the base of the umbrella, twist on the top half, and bury three sea grapes at random spots for good luck.
She was left with a crocus-shaped scar on her forehead, and a lifelong fear that long sharp items (such as umbrellas or fence posts) would somehow end up in her eye.
Friday morning, the second week of the school term, Marbie stood on the porch of their new apartment, drinking a berry-and-banana shake and saying good-bye to Listen.
“Don’t walk too fast,” she suggested. “You’ll need your energy for the Walkathon. Why don’t you skate to school today? Or I could give you a lift.”
Listen laughed, and strode off at her regular high speed.
“You look good,” called Marbie. “You look great. Like a really hip walker is how you look.”
Listen laughed again, and changed her walk to something hip and groovy for a few steps, then continued in her normal way. Because of the charity Walkathon that day, she was not wearing her school uniform, but hipster jeans and a tank top that showed off her stomach.
Marbie herself locked up and set off to her car, which was parked down the street. Halfway to the car, the neighbor’s black cat crossed her path.
Every day since the day they had moved in, the neighbor’s black cat had crossed her path. Sometimes it made an elaborate effort to do so: a triple back flip from a tree followed by a high jump over Marbie’s head, for example. But that Friday morning, it didn’t even try, it just walked on across her path.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Marbie said aloud. “You don’t scare me, you know that, Gary?”
Gary was the name of the cat, and in fact, his name alone scared her.
But it was a perfectly pleasant day at work: a lot of chatting; stamping documents; a plate of leftover sushi from a conference on another floor. Toni went to the stationery department and came back loaded with gifts, so, also, a lot of time setting up her new magnetic paper clip holder.
She spilled some of the paper clips onto the carpet, and picked up a handful, deciding to leave the rest on the carpet there. It was a decision she would regret for the rest of her life. (Let’s say, one day, Marbie knocks over a vase of flowers. The water seeps into the carpet, while flowers roll under the desk. She gets down on her hands and knees and crawls under the desk to retrieve a flower or two, and without her noticing, a paper clip sticks to her knee. Unaware, she leaves work, travels home, meets Nathaniel, playfully knees him in the thigh, and the paper clip somehow sticks into his skin, and he gets lead poisoning, and dies!) (Her eyes filled with tears at the thought.)
So she crawled under the desk and picked up every single paper clip, afterward brushing her knees carefully for remnants. Then she wrote replies to all the e-mail in her FRIENDS—MUST REPLY folder.
That evening, at the Night Owl Pub, the others had just left and Marbie was finishing her drink when the aeronautical engineer appeared.
“I have just enough time for one beer,” he informed her, sitting down opposite.
“What makes you think that I have time for one beer?”
“Sure you do! What’s the rush?”
The Zing Family Secret Meeting was the rush.
“Okay. Just one.”
“Where is everyone?” said the aeronautical engineer, frowning around at the empty seats.
“I wish you’d stop doing that,” said Marbie.
The aeronautical engineer went to the bar and returned with a pitcher of beer, which they shared.
“Airplane wings are supposed to shake,” said the aeronautical engineer after a pause in conversation.
“Okay,” agreed Marbie. He would know.
The aeronautical engineer said: “Play a spot of tennis?”
On the train home, Marbie wondered why she had agreed to play tennis with a stranger. They had arranged to meet at courts close to her place the next day.
She drove from the station to her parents’ place, imagining her arrival in time for dessert, hopefully some kind of cherry pie tonight, and also imagining excuses: Tabitha told this really long story about her pregnant sister, who has started having fits. It’s awful; she was really upset. The train was one of those slow, all-stops ones. My car was in a different part of the parking lot from where I parked it this morning! I’m sure it was. I’m sure somebody moved it. All of these things were true, even though they were not the reason for her lateness.
By the time she got there, dinner was already over, and the Meeting had begun. Listen and Cassie were watching a movie, as usual, in the living room. “Hello!” she called, running through on her way out to the garden shed. “How was the Walkathon, Listen?”
“Fine,” said Listen, her eyes on the TV.
In the garden shed, Marbie sat next to Nathaniel, and leaned over to whisper in his ear that she had just agreed to tennis with a stranger. Before she had a chance to whisper, Nathaniel kissed her. He quietly passed her an extra copy of her mother’s handout, which she immediately made into a paper airplane. Nathaniel took the airplane from her hand, held it up, and said a dismissive “tch!”, at which Marbie giggled, and her mother, at the front, said, “SHH.”
She and Nathaniel were always getting into trouble at Meetings.
Then Nathaniel reached under his chair, and he had a plate of cherry pie hidden there for her, with a spoon.
After the Meeting, they drove home in Nathaniel’s car. Marbie, feeling sleepy in the passenger seat, took her paper airplane out of her pocket, straightened out the crumples, and said, “What do you mean, ‘tch’?”
“It’ll never fly,” he declared, glancing over at her plane. “Crash and burn.”
“It’ll fly.”
“Show me,” said Listen, leaning forward. Then, sitting back again: “Dad’s right, Marbie. That won’t fly.”
“An aeronautical engineer showed me how. It will fly.”
“Crash and burn,” repeated Nathaniel. “Which aeronautical engineer showed you how?”
“I don’t know. Just this guy.”
The paper airplane had a sharp point, which hit Nathaniel smack in the cheek.
“It flew,” proclaimed Marbie.
“It never.”
“It hit you in the cheek!”
“It never flew.”
“Well then how did it get to your cheek?”
“You threw it at me. Throwing isn’t flying.”
Marbie sat back and pulled on her seat belt. “Hmm,” she said.
“Hey, Listen,” said Nathaniel, checking in the rearview mirror. “How was the Walkathon today? We forgot to collect your sponsorship money from the Zings.”
“Fine,” said Listen. “It was fine.” She didn’t say any more than that.
The Walkathon was fifty-five times round the oval to raise money for an international mine-clearance charity. They got their purple sponsorship cards ticked each time around. Every five times, they got a cup of orange juice, and every ten times they got to stop and have a Vita-Wheat, and the teachers laughed and said things like, “Come on! Pick up the pace! Hup-two!”
They walked in groups with their friends, and Listen walked with Donna and the others.
After eight laps, Donna said, “Raising money for mines, eh? What do you reckon we should do with the mines when we get them?”
“Depends on what kind of mines,” said Sia. “If they’re diamond mines, we should get out the diamonds. If they’re gold mines, we should get out the gold. If they’re silver mines…”
The others were laughing, so she stopped.
“We should plant them in the Science labs,” suggested Caro. “So we wouldn’t have to go to Science anymore.”
“Yeah, you would,” said Gabrielle. “It’d be cool, because Science’d be like a minefield. So you’d have to get someone to go into the lab first and, like, test out the path to your bench.”
“You’d get Caro to do it,” said Donna.
“Let’s run now,” Donna said, when they’d stopped laughing. “You wanna run for a while?”
Then she counted. “One, two, three, and four,” she pointed as she counted, Joanne, Caro, Gabrielle, and Sia, and pointed at herself, “and five.”
She didn’t point at Listen.
“Just us five,” she said, without looking at Listen: “Let’s run.”
They had funny sparks in their eyes, and smirks, and they all began to run.
Listen was confused for a moment. She thought that Donna had just forgotten to point to her, and she started to run too, but they were running faster, and looking at each other as they ran, like “She’s coming with us! What will we do?!”
She slowed down for a moment, to see if they would stop.
They didn’t stop. They kept on running into the distance, and around the corner of the oval. They slowed to a jog, without looking back. Then they kept walking, fast.
Okay, thought Listen, the idea is to catch up with me on the next round?
Listen walked alone then, forty-seven times around the oval, slowly, to give them a chance, but they never caught up with her once.
On Saturday morning, Marbie explained to Nathaniel, through the bathroom door, that she was going to her parents’ place to look through decorating magazines and collect her car.
“Hey, Sporty Spice!” said Nathaniel, coming out of the shower and seeing Marbie dressed up in her sports gear. He pretended to box with her, but Marbie did not have the time.
On the way to her parents’ place, she stopped and bought a can of tennis balls. She stayed at her parents’ place for ten minutes, and then she drove to the tennis courts. Her old racquet was hidden in the trunk.
The air was still, under a low, hazy sky, with vague swarmings of pollen and specks of black bugs. Crossing to the courts, Marbie felt the dry grass crunch beneath her sneakers, and then, in the distance, she saw the aeronautical engineer. He was already at the court, unzipping his tennis racquet and staring at her. He was dressed all in white, including white ankle socks and bright white tennis shoes. The only other color on him was the black of the hair on his legs and arms.
The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor Page 7