“From,” said Ziggy, who had done his report on veins.
I stopped. “What?”
Ziggy waved his hand, wishing he hadn’t interrupted. But Dave was happy to step in. “A vein brings blood from organs to the heart.” Dave was showing off.
“David—” Mr. Stone warned.
I was sure my face was cherry red. I paused, took a breath, and remembered something. “This is the optic nerve,” I said again. “It brings nerve messages”—I hoped nobody asked what they were—“to the brain and back to the eye.”
I stopped. Mr. Stone waited. The class waited. I stood there holding my diagram, unable to remember any more eye parts.
Dave said, “Chérie? What’s the difference between the iris and the”—he pointed at the diagram and pretended to sound out the word—“poo-pil?”
“Shut up, Asconti!” I yelled in his face. I reached for my sketch pad but missed and knocked it to the floor. I left it there and ran out of the room.
In the hallway I fell apart. Mr. Stone found me there, crying with my face against the yellow ocher, glazed brick wall, which felt cool and slightly sticky under my hands and forehead.
“Dave Asconti was bugging me!” I said.
“Is that what’s bugging you? Or is what’s bugging you the fact that you don’t know enough about the human eye?”
I gulped and shrugged my shoulders. “I’m sorry. I—”
“No excuses,” said Mr. Stone. “And no blaming Dave. Did you procrastinate about this report, Chérie?” Now there was another fifty-cent word. I shrugged. “Did you give yourself enough time to prepare?” Mr. Stone asked. His voice was kinder than before. I shook my head. “Procrastination,” he said, “shows fear.”
“Okay,” I said. Procrastination shows fear? But procrastination is doing nothing.
“I’m giving you a D for this report, Chérie. The next oral report is due November fifteenth.”
“Okay,” I said, gulping. I’d never gotten a D in my life.
“Go to lunch,” he said.
In the cafeteria I heard, “Hey, Chérie! That was a great report on eye balls!” Loud snorting came from the lunch line behind Dave.
The baseball field was green and bare, a bald spot in the midst of full-grown blue chicory flowers and goldenrod spikes. The sky was a perfect blue. Aimée was whining about how she just knew she’d fall off and hurt herself and then Mommy would be mad.
“Quit weentzing,” I said brightly. “We’ve only got Pammy’s bike for a limited time, and a limited time only.”
Aimée stood there with her arms crossed. Procrastination is fear.
“Aimée,” I said, “how much do you want to ride a bike?”
“None.” She hid her face in her hands, shook her head.
“No crying, or I’ll let you fall,” I said in an evil voice.
“You’d better not.” She kicked at me, eyes still hidden.
“Save it,” I said. “Get on the bike.”
“Come on, Aimée,” called Joanie from the pitcher’s mound.
Pammy was in a cheerleading mood. She stood at home plate and did a little dance around the bat. “You’ve got to F-I-G-H-T!”
“Save it.” Aimée groaned. I smiled my evil smile.
“Get the bike, Aimée,” I said. She went and held the handlebars and stood next to it.
“Put up the kickstand,” I said. She could do that much. “Now wheel it over to home plate.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. It’s my great idea. Bicycle baseball.”
“You’re going to love it,” said Joanie.
Aimée sniffed enormously. I looked away. Don’t notice, I told myself. Don’t notice the sniffing, the weentzing. And don’t notice how far this field is from the road and how near the tall wildflowers are, how possible it would be for a man to hide among them, jump out, and grab—
“Okay, here’s how it goes,” I announced. “Joanie pitches the ball to Pammy. Pammy swings the bat. When she hits the ball—”
“If she hits the ball,” said Aimée. Pammy’s tongue went out.
“You ride to first base. If you make it, that’s a hit. Now I,” I said, “am going to hold on to you halfway to first base. If you can ride past that, you can try to get to home.”
Aimée bit her cheek. Her face around her mouth was white.
I gave Joanie a glance. It’s worth a try, her face said.
Pammy swung the bat and gave another strange cheer. “A-I-M-E-E! Congratulations, you can read!”
“Stand in, you little weirdo,” Joanie said.
Joanie pitched the ball. Pammy hit it, and it rolled into the space between second and third base. “Go, Aimée!” Pammy yelled. I pushed Aimée toward first base.
“Don’t let go, Chérie,” Aimée said.
“Not till first base,” I said.
“Not there, either,” she said.
Joanie was running in slow motion toward the ball.
“Don’t let go,” Aimée said louder.
“Here it comes,” I said.
“Don’t!” she screamed in my ear. She wasn’t pedaling. She was hardly holding the handlebars. If I’d let go, she’d have crashed.
I stopped running. “All right,” I said, breathing hard. “Let’s try again.”
Joanie picked up the ball, but Aimée was screaming hysterically. “Don’t! Don’t!” It was as if I were still running, pushing her toward a cliff edge.
I stood perfectly still and held the bike firmly. “Aimée!” I shouted at her. “I’m not, you little twerp!”
She wasn’t crying. She was raving, flailing her arms and trying to hit me. And I’d been so creative, planning just how to make learning to ride a bike fun. She was going to stop putting it off, stop being afraid. Fun!
Joanie and Pammy stood stiffly at home plate, shrugging their shoulders at each other, until I looked up and waved to them to go on home without us. Sorry about that.
Aimée sat in a wet frazzled ball, her head buried in her arms. She looked up, saw the others leaving, cried harder, and finally calmed herself. I waited for her to say something, to apologize, to make some excuse. When she didn’t, I said, “Let’s go home.” I picked up the bike and wheeled it away, heard her get up and follow. I said, “You’re going to have to learn sometime.”
Aimée said, “I know.”
“So when’s it going to be?”
“Not now.”
“When?”
“When I tell you.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“Chérie,” she said, running up on the other side of the bike, “this was your idea, not mine.” She put her hand on the bike seat and walked home that way, balancing her hand, letting me push.
I was in my room working on elf furniture, far harder than I’d ever worked on my oral report. Aimée came, knocked, entered, and dumped the papers on my floor. SEARCH ENDS.
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“Don’t like it?” she said. “Too bad. Mom wants your junk off the front porch.” The paper was my job, not my junk.
Aimée hadn’t forgiven me for bicycle baseball. And she was right. Maybe procrastination was fear, but fear was not procrastination. Fear was something else. It was a lot of other things. It was the ground coming up to meet you when you lost your balance. It was people making fun of you when you failed. Fear was helplessness, on a bike or in the dark. It was the feeling that something was going to get you and hurt you and keep you from getting home. I should have understood Aimée’s fear before.
Now the papers were here to give me more fear, here in my room, with a headline that said SEARCH ENDS?
Aimée popped her head back in before I could touch the horrible papers. “Mom says fold up here. A realtor’s coming.”
“Someone to sell the house?”
Aimée banged my door shut.
The police were giving up on Wendy Boland. They had no leads, no clues, nowhere to look but the places they had already looked.
/> SEARCH ENDS! Of all the news I’d read or heard all year, this was the worst. How could a thirteen-year-old girl just disappear—“lost or kidnapped,” the Bell said—and how could they give up looking for her?
I refused, after that day, to look at the paper at all. For the rest of the week I refused. I folded it facedown, banded it without reading a word, and dropped it off without a peek.
When the typewriter sounds at the beginning of the news came on the radio, I went into the bathroom and turned the water on so I wouldn’t hear.
Life magazine was lying on the bathroom floor, but I shoved it under the bath mat without reading it, not even tempted by the story about the Apollo 7 rocket that was going to orbit Earth in October, just a few days away.
I wanted none of it: not the rocket circling the world, not Vietnam or the presidential election or the baseball playoffs or the high school football scores. Not a girl my age in a town near mine with braids like mine who couldn’t or wouldn’t be found.
But the news got in anyway.
PART THREE
Looking Out
October 1968
CHAPTER 13
IT WAS AUNT BONNIE’S IDEA for the grown-ups to go into New York City that lovely October night. Dad laughed when he saw her come striding across the road, Uncle Joe and Faux Pas padding along behind. “What crazy idea is she cooking up now?” he asked Aimée and me.
“If I have to hear one more word about Richard Milhous Nixon,” Aunt Bonnie said before she was even on the steps, “I’m going to split my pants.”
“Who are you voting for, Aunt Bonnie?” I asked.
“Me? I’m no Republican!”
“But—”
“You know, Bon,” said Mom. “Nixon had the cutest dog …”
Aunt Bonnie wanted to go to Broadway to see Man of La Mancha, the new musical that was supposed to be strange, funny, full of adventures, even sexy. “Great music, too,” Uncle Joe added. I hadn’t heard him act jolly in the longest time.
Mom and Dad, the penniless parents, actually said okay. I thought maybe just this once they would leave me in charge of Aimée, but Mom said twelve was still too young to baby-sit.
“I’m in eighth grade now,” I cried. “I’ll be thirteen next month!” But in the back of my mind I knew I didn’t want to be home alone, in charge, not the way I would have a few months before.
“Get Joanie,” said Aimée. “She already is thirteen.”
They got Lucy DeLuna.
Not much made Lucy nervous, but baby-sitting did. I knew she didn’t like being in charge. But I knew how to take care of Aimée and me. Lucy would be there just in case. Well, that was my view of the situation. Lucy’s view, it turned out, was different.
Uncle Joe arrived on Saturday doing some kind of Spanish dance. He rumbled the whole front porch, snapping his fingers like someone on The Andy Williams Show. He wore a wide red tie, black trousers, and—of all things—black cowboy boots. His bristly hair stuck up like always, as if he’d been sleeping on it, except I knew it was just the way it grew.
“Where’s Aunt Bonnie?” Aimée asked calmly, over the dancing.
“Reading the boys”—stomp, stomp—“the riot act!” Clap, clap. Lucy sank into a chair, trying to be invisible.
“Mom!” I yelled insanely up the stairs. “Your date is here!”
Mom was stunning in a light blue dress, her hair up in a bun and wearing my favorite bracelets—big round, shiny plastic hoops in yellow and orange—on her wrists. Her stomach in front of her was like a beach ball under her dress.
“Oho!” hooted Uncle Joe, getting frisky, and did a little dance number in her honor.
“Wow,” I said, rolling my eyes. “He’s in the mood.”
“In the mood for what?” Aimée asked.
“Watch it,” Dad said.
Lucy kept her eyes on her fingernails.
Dad’s idea of dressing up was not so very up: a jacket with elbow patches and church pants he’d been wearing just about forever. But his tie—Mom’s Father’s Day present—was paisley, orange and gold and purple curlicues on a green background. It looked good with his red hair.
“Dad, you look cute,” I said. Aimée made a gagging noise.
Aunt Bonnie came clacking up the steps in an embroidered black peasant skirt with a fringed hem, a sleeveless red blouse, and her favorite orangy red high heels. La-di-da.
Aunt Bonnie talked to Lucy and me together, instead of lumping me with Aimée. “Pete will be right over there, all night long,” she said. I glanced at Lucy in time to catch the blush. “Never the twain shall meet,” Aunt Bonnie went on, shaking her finger. “But it’s good to know he’s there.”
Mom called reminders as the others hauled her out the door. “If you make popcorn, don’t get it on the rug. The vacuum’s got a Lego block stuck in it. Go to bed on time. No phone calls, Lucy”—another blush—“and no company, anyone!”
“Not even Pammy?” Aimée’s voice trailed off.
They were gone with a festive clatter down the porch steps and across the road to Uncle Joe’s Volkswagen. They zoomed away.
The small silence that fell was the last quiet moment of the evening. Aimée sat on the floor playing elves, a good child, but I stood up and went to the door. Lucy said, “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’m just looking—” to see if Dave was looking. If he wasn’t, I’d been thinking of showing Lucy the elf houses. But when she snapped at me that way, Miss Baby-sitter, I didn’t like it.
“I’m only going out on the porch,” I said, but didn’t go yet. I waited to see what she’d say.
“Fine, but don’t go off it,” she said tensely.
I couldn’t stop myself from exchanging a look with Aimée.
“Can’t we go to the circle?” Aimée asked. Lucy shook her head. “Mom always lets us go to the circle by ourselves.”
As if Lucy didn’t know! We were right there in the circle in front of her house, without our mother, every day of her life. But she said, “I can’t baby-sit for you if you’re not here.”
I said, “We don’t need a baby-sitter anyway.”
“That’s not what your parents think,” said Lucy.
From across the road I heard raised voices. Pete and Dave were already fighting. There was a bang, a thump, and Faux Pas burst out the door of the Ascontis’ house and came galumphing across the road. I flung open the door to welcome her in.
“Get that dog out of here!” said Lucy.
I pulled Faux Pas’s collar and took her back out again. Dave was out on his stoop, calling for the dog, while Pete stood behind him, looking guilty, but not remorseful.
Dave came and grabbed his dog’s collar from me, with a grumble to Pete: “This is why Mom doesn’t let her out the front.”
Pete said, “Poor dog never sees anything but the same dog run.” I didn’t think Pete wanted to see Lucy any more than Lucy wanted to see Faux Pas. Ha-ha for them both. I followed the dog across the road to pet her some more.
“Poor Faux Pas,” Aimée said, right at my side.
Lucy stood on our porch, hands on her hips, and called, “Chérie, Aimée, you’re supposed to be over here.”
“We’re coming,” I said, then didn’t. At that moment, a bike came zipping down the road: Sandy coming home. Faux Pas went barking to meet him. Probably Sandy would have stopped, with all of us there like that, but when he saw Faux Pas coming toward him like a hairy cannonball, he sped up to get away. Aimée and Dave and I took off after the dog. Near the entrance to Onion Lane, Faux Pas caught up with Sandy and started nipping at his feet.
Sandy couldn’t keep his feet on the pedals with Faux Pas chomping at them. He careened along, trying to get away.
“Just stop! Get off!” Dave yelled.
Sandy glared at him and kept on weaving.
“Come on, Faux Pas, good girl,” I called. That sent the dumb dog into a frenzy, acting big and trying to jump up on Sandy. Maybe she thought she was defending us girls against th
e bad bike.
“Faux Pas! Sweetness! Come!” yelled Aimée, doing a pretty good imitation of Aunt Bonnie, but Faux Pas didn’t buy it. All this time Pete stood on his stoop laughing. That’s the kind of friend he was to poor, stupid Sandy.
“Just get off!” Lucy tried to help. “Put the bike between you!” Sandy teetered and stopped, then got off the bike on the other side from the dog.
From the stoop Pete called, “Why’d you sic the dog on him, Chérie?”
“She’s your dog,” I said. Faux Pas lunged at Sandy through the bike. Dave and Aimée and I grabbed at the dog, but she tried to nip Dave. It was Aimée and me who hauled Faux Pas away down the road by sheer force of will and shoved her into her run.
The boys disappeared, inside, I guess. Panting and grinning with the drama of it all, Aimée and I crossed the road to our house and were climbing the steps when we saw all three boys riding their bikes up Marvin Road. I kept walking, ignoring them.
They rode onto our front lawn, faces red and set in anger—except Sandy, who looked as if he thought it was all a laugh. Aimée and I ran inside and slammed the door. Outside, the boys thundered up the steps, lugging their bikes with them.
“Go away!” Lucy yelled, sick of us all. She looked out the window next to the door. When she saw her brother, she opened the door and said, “Sandy, you and your jerk friends can just go home right now, or Dad’s going to—”
Pete pushed past her and rode his bike right into the house, with Dave and Sandy behind him. They rode from the living room through the little hall to the kitchen, bumped and banged against the dining room door jamb as they made the turn to go through it, then put on speed as they came through the dining room arch. They left tire tracks on the living room rug, bashed through the metal screen door, and plummeted down the steps—quite a feat. Sandy fell off but jumped back on quickly. Away they rode.
By that time I had run into the backyard for Reshna. I took off after them. Behind me I heard both voices calling after me, Aimée’s bawling plea and Lucy’s furious, deep one: “Chérie, come back!” But I kept going. I stood on the pedals of my bike, pedaling hard, my braids bouncing down my back as I gave chase.
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