Any Which Wall

by Laurel Snyder

  “We don’t really know,” said Susan, in reply to the last question, “because she came that way.”

  Lily took all this information in and then looked at Henry. “Outside?” she asked. “Outside is a pretty big place. Where outside?”

  Henry stared back mutely. “Um, hang on,” he said, “I dropped my fork. Be right back!” Then he dropped his fork with a clatter and disappeared under the table to think.

  While he was there, Susan swallowed the bite in her mouth, made up her mind, and decided to level with the librarian. Lily was unlike anyone Susan had ever met, but she seemed trustworthy, maybe even more trustworthy for that very reason. Lily seemed like someone who could understand the need for a secret. She seemed like a grown-up who could understand that even kids needed privacy sometimes.

  “We can’t tell you that,” Susan said, sitting up as tall as she could, looking Lily directly in the eyes. “And we can’t tell you why we can’t tell you.”

  “Is that so?” said Lily, tapping a fudgy fork against her plate. Coming from any other grown-up, the same sentence would have sounded condescending: Is that so? But Lily appeared to mean just what she said. She sounded curious: Is that so?

  This prompted Susan to offer further explanation. Her words tumbled out. “It’s nothing bad,” she said. “We promise. We aren’t doing anything stupid or mean. We aren’t going to get in trouble. It’s just that we have a … secret.”

  “A secret?”

  “A secret!” Susan nodded sharply.

  “Well, okay,” said Lily. “If it’s a real secret. Though that just makes me curiouser.”

  “It is a real secret,” said Susan, “but even if it weren’t, Bernice needs our help, no matter where we found her. If we wanted to, we could just show you a field and pretend we’d found her there. You’d never know the difference. We could lie.”

  “Hmmm. You make a good point,” said Lily.

  Susan sat back, surprised but pleased.

  “Look,” Henry said, “we really just need a place for Bernice to stay until we can figure out what to do with her.”

  Emma got up and went over to where Lily was sitting. She patted the librarian’s shoulder. “Please?” she asked. “I’m going to keep her, only my mom doesn’t know it yet. I need to talk her into it.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Lily, tousling Emma’s wispy hair. “I’ll help you. But I’m also curious about why you came to me.”

  “It was kind of an accident,” said Henry. “Honestly, we just couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

  “Also, I knew you liked dogs,” added Emma.

  “Hmph,” said Lily. “I don’t much believe in accidents. But that’s fine. And I do like dogs. What kind of person doesn’t?” She rumpled the fur on Bernice’s head. “Now, who wants seconds?”

  Everyone did.

  THAT NIGHT, Susan couldn’t go to sleep. She faced the wall, put her pillow over her head, and counted backward from 100 four times. When that didn’t work, she got out of bed, sat down at her desk, and took out a piece of stationery.

  The room was very quiet. No help at all. She sat back in her chair and stared at the empty piece of paper in front of her. In her best handwriting, she wrote, “Dear.” But the thing about letters is that once you’ve got the “Dear” part out of the way, and after you’ve scribbled something obvious like “How are you doing?” you have to decide what to actually say. Susan tried to start her letter several times, but each time, she erased it so that the paper turned soft and pulpy under her pencil tip.

  She took out another piece of paper and chewed her pencil. “I don’t have to send it if I don’t want to,” she reminded herself, before she hunched over and proceeded to scribble furiously for several pages. When she was finished, she folded the pages, slid them into an envelope, licked the envelope, and looked at it. It felt good, just the right thickness. You could tell, looking at it, that it was a real letter.

  Then Susan got a box out from under her bed, put the letter inside for safekeeping, pulled out a scraggly, well-loved, once-white-but-now-gone-a-bit-gray stuffed bunny, closed the box, and slid it back under her bed. After that, she curled up with the bunny, shut her eyes, and went straight to sleep.

  In the morning, all four kids ate breakfast together on the O’Dells’ front porch and watched the neighbors leave for work. They shared bananas and bagels, the best kind of porch-swing breakfast.

  “I think,” said Henry with a full mouth and a smear of cream cheese on the very tip of his nose, “that all meals should be hand-holdable. I think forks and spoons should be against the law.” Nobody paid any attention to this comment, as it was clearly ridiculous. How could you ever eat spaghetti without a fork? And how could you live without spaghetti?

  “So,” said Roy, folding his banana peel in half before laying it carefully on the table. “Where are we going today?” He looked to Susan for an answer, since it was her turn.

  “Angels?” asked Emma hopefully, though she wasn’t exactly sure whether they were real, and if they were, she wasn’t sure they lived anywhere with walls.

  “No,” Henry said. “I bet we’re going to Hollywood to meet a teen heartthrob!” He batted his eyelashes and pretended to faint.

  “Susan wouldn’t do that to us,” said Roy. “Would you, Susan?”

  Susan, who had been quiet all through breakfast, shook her head slowly back and forth as though she was thinking something through. She finished chewing her last bite of bagel, swallowed, and said, “No, no—of course not, but—”

  “But what?” asked Emma eagerly.

  “It’s just, I think I want to go to …” Susan paused and chewed her cuticles for a minute, a sure sign she was thinking extra hard.

  “Where?” chorused the others impatiently.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll tell you when we get to the wall. Speaking of which, do you think it would work to do our wishing from Emma’s room? I mean, since we left it there yesterday and didn’t lock the wall when we were done. Do you think we can just wish ourselves back out to the field from here? I’m kind of in a hurry.”

  “No dice,” said Henry, shaking his head. “I already tried it.”

  “You what?” Roy, Susan, and Emma were shocked to hear he’d thought of leaving them out of an adventure.

  “Don’t all freak out. It’s no big deal. I just wanted to see if it would work, so I made a wish while Emma was brushing her teeth this morning. I tried to go back to the wall. But it didn’t work.”

  “Why not?” asked Emma.

  “How should I know?” said Henry. “Maybe the wall was in a bad mood.”

  “Huh!” said Roy. “That’s interesting. I bet the wall is time sensitive and that it only works for a certain number of hours or until sundown or sunrise or something before the magic reverts back to the field.”

  “Who knows,” said Susan. “I don’t have time to worry about it today.” She hopped up from the porch swing and made for the steps.

  “Why are you in such a rush? Where are we going?” asked Henry.

  Susan looked back over her shoulder apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to say. Let’s just head out to the wall. I don’t mean to be mysterious or anything. I’m just not ready to talk about it.”

  Before the others could say another word, Susan jumped the last two steps. Her old sandals (they were all sorry they’d left their sneakers in the past because each of them now wore flip-flops or sandals, which are far less useful for adventuring) made a big flap sound when they hit the concrete.

  Everyone else followed, jumping the last two steps right behind her—even Emma, though when she landed, she landed hard, which made the flip-flopped bottoms of her feet prickle.

  They all rode fast. Susan sped along because she was in a hurry to get there, and the others pedaled hard, trying to keep up. Fortunately, Emma had gotten steadier over the last few weeks, so she didn’t get left behind altogether.

  Still, by the time Emma got off
her bike, Susan had been standing in the shade for several minutes, her hand planted flat against the stone, which was still cool from the night. She was smiling, as though whatever she’d been doubtful about was no longer an issue. Riding a bike can sometimes do just that—settle your worries.

  “Come on,” Susan called out happily. “If we do finish this fast, maybe we can go somewhere else afterward. I just have to give someone a letter, really.”

  “You know,” Henry said with a heavy dose of sarcasm, “there’s this thing called the mail. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

  Susan rolled her eyes and matched his tone. “There’s this thing,” she said, “called being nice. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

  “Sorry,” said Henry sheepishly.

  “Besides,” said Susan, “this letter is going to one of the most famous cities on earth, and it might be fun! There’s supposed to be really good pizza.”

  “Pizza?” asked Henry.

  “What famous city?” asked Roy. “Do you know someone in Rome?”

  “New York City!” Susan sang out in a theatrical voice. “The Big Apple!”

  “Oooh!” said Emma, who had once gotten a postcard from her grandma, of Times Square at night, and felt like she knew something about it.

  “Gangsters, at least?” Henry looked at Susan hopefully. “Old timey New York?”

  “Nope, just regular old everyday today New York. Now hand over that key, Henry. Let’s go.”

  Somewhat grudgingly, Henry forked over the key and watched as Susan fit it into the wall. “All right,” he said. “But why New York?”

  Everyone held out a hand to touch the wall as Susan turned the key.

  Susan said decidedly, “Because that’s where Tish is.”

  “Tish?” asked Emma.

  “Yes,” said Susan, “because I realized that even more than Africa or Hollywood or anything else, I just want to see my best friend. I just want to be wherever Tish is.”

  So … she was. They all were!

  Nobody, including Susan herself, had realized she was wishing, so they all blinked in surprise at the unexpected change of scenery. Or lack of scenery. There wasn’t much to see.

  “New York is kind of dark,” said Emma with a nervous edge to her voice. She looked around her at the dark walls and floor of a funny kind of basement room. There was a hum and rumbling all around them.

  And it was dark. Or at least, this part of New York was: the underground part. There were no windows, just overhead lights that cast a strange yellow glow on everything. It was hot and muggy, and the walls were tiled like a bathroom. There were dark round spots on the ground where people had once dropped pieces of gum. Rats danced in the deep, dark ravine that ran beside them, nosing at black soot and stray soda cans.

  A few people stood with them in the muggy underground place. Most of the people looked like they were in a gigantic hurry, tapping their feet and checking their watches constantly, although nothing much appeared to be happening at this late-morning hour. Other people looked as though they had no place to go at all. A man in a suit and a backpack was asleep against the wall. An old lady rode a unicycle in a lazy circle. Far off in the distance, someone played an instrument none of them had ever heard before. It sounded like a cross between a guitar and a very loud mosquito.

  “This must be the subway,” said Henry. “I’ve seen it in movies, but it’s never looked so dark.”

  From down the ravine, which was actually a tunnel, came the sound of something—something between a chug and a clang and a swish. The sound grew louder with each passing second.

  “Definitely a subway,” said Henry, listening. “Definitely. I think.”

  The subway platform was actually very interesting, since none of them had ever been anywhere like it before. They could probably have spent a while longer examining their new surroundings, but at that moment, Susan suddenly yelled out, “TISH! HEY, TISH!” and ran to the other end of the platform where Tish was indeed standing.

  Susan made such an excited dash to see her old friend that she neglected to take note of the fact that Tish was standing with two other people. She ran on over, yelling her head off, but when she got there, she found herself facing not only her oldest, “bestest” friend in the world, who she had not spoken to in over a year, but also two strangers. Two very cool, very New York–looking strangers.

  Both of the strangers had impossibly long hair, impossibly dark glasses, and impossibly pouty lips. They looked bored and beautiful in thin tank tops and chic narrow skirts that skimmed low over their hip bones—effortless. One of them had a ring in her belly button.

  Tish stared at Susan with a look of sheer confusion. “Susan?” she asked in disbelief.

  Susan hadn’t thought about how odd her sudden arrival would seem. She had counted on Tish being alone, had imagined she’d arrive in Tish’s bedroom, where she’d probably find her friend reading a book. Now she gulped and looked down, and when she did, she noticed that her own grubby shorts had a cream cheese smear on them. She felt herself blush and wondered if the wall could maybe undo all of this, take her home or maybe back in time. This was a mistake.

  She looked back up and found Tish staring at her with her mouth hanging open.

  “Susan? You cut your hair,” Tish said, leaning forward to stare closer. “You grew! What—what are you doing here?”

  And while Susan should have been thinking of a fast answer to that reasonable question, she wasn’t. Because as she stared back at Tish, she realized something. Something good! Something that trumped the belly button ring. She saw that Tish didn’t look like the stylish New York teenagers. She realized that Tish still looked like Tish, with the same frizzy hair escaping a ponytail, the same dirty sneakers and freckles.

  “It’s a long story,” Susan said, glancing nervously at the two beautiful strangers standing behind Tish. “I—umm—I’m here on a special trip. I’m here with them—” She motioned back to where the others stood, watching from a distance.

  Emma waved eagerly, and Tish waved back.

  “Cool!” said Tish. “But where are your folks?” She looked around the subway platform.

  Susan coughed a fake cough and made a bug-eyed kind of face. A face intended to say “Can we please talk in private?” A year ago, Tish would have known right away what the face meant, but now it took her a few seconds. Then she got it and grinned.

  “Oh! Oh—yeah!” She tapped the belly button–ring girl on the shoulder. “Rebecca, can I go over here with my friend for a minute?”

  “Affirmative,” said Rebecca. Even her voice sounded cool. “Yeah. Whatever.”

  As they walked a few yards away from Rebecca, Tish whispered, “Sorry about her. She’s kind of my babysitter. My mom knows her mom.”

  “Is she a model?” asked Susan, interested in spite of herself.

  “Ha!” said Tish. “She wishes. No, she’s just a dumb teenager, not nearly as cool as she looks. Her mom calls her Becky-boo.” Tish rolled her eyes. “The sad thing is that I help her with her homework.”

  “That’s no fair,” said Susan. “You have to have a babysitter and do extra homework?”

  “I know,” said Tish. “I’m sooo embarrassed. I mean, I’m twelve, but my folks say the city isn’t safe for me to be alone in.” Tish sighed. “She’s totally bleckish.”

  Susan laughed. “Bleckish” was a secret word that Tish and she had invented in the fourth grade as part of their secret language. Susan felt a warm rush of memory and knew everything would be okay—everything! She stopped walking and turned to her friend. “I missed you,” she said. “I missed you a lot!”

  “I missed you too!” said Tish excitedly. Then her face fell and she looked hurt and angry. “But—if you missed me, why didn’t you ever write me back? I e-mailed you three times before I gave up. I even sent you a postcard, just in case I had your e-mail address wrong.”

  “I know,” said Susan, looking down to avoid Tish’s gaze. “It was terrible of me. I wish I could
say that I didn’t get the e-mails or the postcard or that I forgot or something. But I have to tell you the truth—and the real reason is even worse, if you can believe that.” She made an effort to make eye contact, but it was hard.

  “What is it?” asked Tish.

  Susan planted her feet on the subway platform and gritted her teeth. She closed her eyes and said, “It’s awful, and if you’re mad, I understand, but see—at first I was mad at you—”

  “You were mad at me?” Tish clearly found this idea preposterous.

  Susan opened her eyes. “I guess so, yeah, for leaving me. I was so lonely—”

  “You were lonely!” said Tish. “You think you were lonely? You have no idea. At least you were still at home with your brother and the O’Dells. I was here … with people like that.” She motioned to Rebecca. “All by myself!”

  “I didn’t think about it like that. I thought that you were having an adventure. I felt … left behind.”

  “Oh,” said Tish morosely. “I guess that makes sense, kinda, but you were wrong. I mean, New York is cool, but my parents don’t let me go anywhere, and school didn’t start for a long time, so I didn’t meet anyone for months. I was all alone. It was like being grounded. I didn’t tell you that, so I guess you didn’t know, but still, you should have written back.”

  “I know,” said Susan. “I was awful, but that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that after that, I made new friends. And I was sort of … distracted. I just kind of forgot about you. About me too, I guess.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Tish. “How could you forget yourself?”

  Susan gulped. “The new friends, they’re different, and I started to feel different too.” She scuffed her grubby sandals against the filthy floor and made a big, new dirty spot on her big toe. “I started to feel older and cooler. And the things we used to do together seemed … young and babyish. I felt like I’d outgrown them—and you—and maybe even me.”

  Tish looked sad.

  “It’s so dumb!” said Susan. “I can’t believe I was so dumb. I don’t even like my new friends very much. They’re mean. Do you think—do you think you can ever forgive me?”