by Alex Flinn
The day before, I’d asked Binky, “Why hang with me? Bet it does nothing for your image.”
She snorted, probably at the idea of her having an image. “Haven’t you figured it out, Richmond? I don’t care what the clones think. I buck the system.”
“So, I’m some project, some statement you’re making?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, you’re just Paul. But they can’t tell me what to do.”
It was a philosophy I hoped to cultivate. I wasn’t having much luck yet.
The clones were out in full force that afternoon. There was a game the next day, and a pep rally. The football team was grunting. Cheerleaders were yelling pointless things, bouncing and flashing their legs in those short, blue-and-white polyester skirts and sleeveless tops where you felt you could see more if you looked hard enough. I tried not to. Why bother? Looking only made you want to touch, and that wasn’t happening. I walked alone, writing a letter in my head to Dad, since he wouldn’t return my calls. I felt stupid, writing him, but I had no choice. I hated Gate, hated living with Mom. Hated my life. I had to leave.
I sat on a high tree stump away from the shadowy area where mosquitoes hid. I wrote in my mind. When I reached down for my notebook and pen, I saw him.
He was about my age. He led a small, white dog on a leash. I recognized him. David Blanco, from the cafeteria and the hallway. It was the first time I’d been near enough to get a good look at him. I’d been curious since Binky had compared us, but really, I saw no similarities. Where I tried to fit in, David clearly wanted to stand out. His dark hair was bleached white, and his face bore the scars of various piercings—not allowed by Gate’s dress code. His pushed-up sleeves revealed a tattoo. I couldn’t make it out. The dog, on the other hand, was white and clean, brushed like he’d just come from the groomer.
What was he doing with the dog, so far away from the cottage at the back of campus where he and his parents lived?
I shook my head, imagining having to live at Gate on top of everything else.
I watched him from a distance. He walked the white fluff ball in gradually tightening circles, near the football practice field. What was he doing? Finally, the dog hunched. David whispered something to it, I couldn’t hear what, then picked it up by its fluffy shoulders and put it down right in the center of the athletic field entrance. I grinned. The guy had balls, not to mention the right idea. He was making his dog crap in the exact spot where the football team would be walking in their cleats.
The dog finished its business and walked on, red ear ribbons flapping side to side. David reached to pat its head. He caught sight of me. I smiled again. David saluted and walked away.
The sermon in chapel that week was “Love Thine Enemies.” I figured it would be a good idea for me to listen to that. But it was hard.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Happy teen years are overrated,” Binky announced.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Show me someone who’s cool in high school, I’ll show you the unemployed guy eating double his share of hors d’oeurves at the ten-year reunion.”
Being Binky’s friend wasn’t doing much for my social life. But then, I didn’t have one anyway. So every Friday, I went over her house after school. I’d never invited her to my place. I hoped I’d never have to. Usually, we watched television. Sometimes I got to hear Binky’s theories about life. She had plenty.
“Hope you’re right,” I said.
“I am.”
We sat a few minutes, watching soaps merge into Maury Povich. Suddenly, Binky stood. “I want to show you something.”
“What is it?” I was bored but too lazy to move.
“Just come on.”
She took off. In a few seconds, I gave up and followed her through the empty house. She was in a hurry, nearly knocking over priceless artwork with her flying arms, me behind her. It was almost dark. Mom was picking me up in an hour. I didn’t know where Binky was taking me, but I followed, across the neighbors’ yards, then over a fence and into an empty, fresh-mowed lot.
“Where are we?” I dropped over the fence after her.
“We’re going next door. To my church.”
“That sounds fun.”
“We’re not going to a service, Squid. We’re going to swing.”
Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, either. But I had no other options, so I followed her, across the lot, over another fence, through a garden where she stopped.
“Look!” Pointing at something, nothing.
“What?”
“Don’t you see?” She pointed someplace different. “There!”
“What am I looking for?”
“Hummingbird.” Pointing back at the first spot.
And then I did see. Or, at least, I saw something bouncing from limb to limb, over the yellow flowers lining the fence. It moved so fast I doubted it knew where it was going. Could have been a moth, in that dim light. Or the wind. “How do you know it’s a hummingbird?”
“Just do. It’s here most nights, this time.”
“You’re here every night?”
“It’s peaceful.”
I’d had enough peace for a lifetime. I really wanted something besides just peace for a change. We stood, watching until the bird or whatever it was disappeared over a red-flowered tree. Binky motioned for me to follow her and, finally, we reached an old swing set crusted with leaves and spiderwebs. She brushed off a swing and sat.
“Oh,” I said. “You meant swing like … swing”.
“Sure, what else? It’s fun, pretending to be a little kid with no deadlines or worries, nothing serious at all. Right?”
I didn’t know. I’d never been a kid like that. I flashed back—Mom pushing me on a swing at some kind of army picnic, Dad saying I wasn’t a baby anymore. He’d been mad I’d placed last in the sack races. We hadn’t gone the following year. But I said, “I guess.”
“So, do it,” she said. “Swing.”
I started to. It came back to me, the pumping motion, pushing my body through the chains, legs flying ahead of me and back. Soon I was watching Binky, trying to outdo her.
But she wasn’t competing. She looked like she was someplace else, someplace really flying. And as she swung, she sang softly, a sort of lilting tune, blending with the rhythm of her swinging legs.
“What are you singing?” I asked finally.
Anyone else would have stopped, caught in something so private, silly. Not Binky. She didn’t care what people thought, lucky her. She kept singing until she finished.
“What is that?” I asked when she did. “Some Cuban folk song?”
She laughed. “It’s a show tune.”
The last thing I’d expected from her. “Where’d you learn a show tune? Thought your family was from Cuba.”
She slowed a little. “My dad’s family is, but they’ve been here a long time. Abuelo and Abuelita—my grandparents—left early. They were lucky. Sometimes, I wonder how our lives would be if they hadn’t.”
She paused a second, thinking about that. We both thought about it.
She said, “But Mom’s family is different. They’re Irish, from El Dorado, Kansas. Mom’s father worked in the oil refinery. But Grandma was a beauty who tried for the Rockettes at Radio City. She’d have made it, too, except she was two inches too tall. She raised Mom on Broadway show tunes, and after Grandpa died from all the asbestos he’d inhaled at work, Grandma lived with us and raised me on them too.” Binky swung higher.
I laughed at her long, stupid explanation. “So, what’s the song?’
“One of Grandma’s favorite swinging songs. She had songs for every occasion.”
I kept looking at her. She began to swing high, singing loudly:
Buy yourself something you really don’t need—
Something sweet like beautiful candy too pretty to eat.
She stopped, self-conscious, suddenly, but swung higher. “That’s all I remember. I’ve looked for sheet music,
or a tape with the rest of it, but there’s nothing. It died with Grandma.”
We swung in silence, me hearing the song in my head still. Finally, she said, “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know. I guess that you should try to get the best stuff, no matter what it costs.” Like Dad, I added silently.
“Even if you don’t need it?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
She stopped pumping, slowing until her feet started hitting ground. Finally, she said, “I think the pretty apples are the poisonous ones. I think I’d rather have a plain, old Hershey bar than the most beautiful candy in the world. That’s what I think.” She jumped from the still-moving swing and ran, hair streaming behind her, to the church. “Come on!”
I jumped off too and followed her, past the stained-glass windows that glowed from within. She was right. About the Hershey bar, I mean. I wished I could feel that way. But I needed something else, something more. I needed some beautiful candy.
Binky led me to a side door. She pulled the handle. It didn’t give.
“Locked,” I said, starting back toward her house.
But she pulled harder, and it opened with a crack of peeling paint. “They leave it unlocked in case someone has spiritual needs outside normal church hours or something.”
“They aren’t scared of vandalism?”
“Guess they trust people.”
I shook my head at this. We stepped into a small alcove that had a Bible, some used-up candles, and, of course, a collection box. Binky pushed through the door on the other side and entered the sanctuary.
I’d never been in a Catholic church. It smelled different from Protestant churches I remembered or the chapel at Gate. It smelled ancient, like candles and dust. The room glowed dull red. Binky led me around to the side, then stopped by a statue in a glass case. I could barely see in the dim light, but the case, at least, was locked. The glass looked thick. Binky crossed herself, and I barely made out that the dull, red-brown object was a wooden statue of a woman.
“What is it?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was stupid. “It’s the Madonna. The Virgin Mary.”
“Oh.”
“It’s been here forever. Someone brought it back from Spain—said the guy who sold it to him told him it was a thousand years old. They found it singing by the road.”
She stopped a second, and we both listened, like it might be true. Nothing.
“He didn’t believe that,” she said. “Still, he bought it and brought it back here, and when it came to our church, it began to weep.”
“Weep?”
“You can still see the marks on it. It wept for six days, real tears.”
That was truly stupid. Probably a roof leak. These people were worshiping a roof leak. Then, I felt bad for thinking that. Gate was a Christian school. Did I believe in anything?
“There are lots of weeping Madonnas,” Binky said. “They weep for the crucifixion of Christ or the sins of mankind. Some cry blood, but this one was just water. Old ladies in our church say she grants wishes, too.”
I looked again. It sure was old. You could barely tell what it was, but sure enough, there were tracks of tears. And for a second, I envied Binky being able to believe in that, in anything. “Do you believe it? The wishes part, I mean?”
“You’re not supposed to. The church believes in miracles, like with God, but not luck or magic or superstitions like knocking on wood. Not officially, anyway. But there are lots of superstitious people.”
Which didn’t answer my question. So I asked, “Have you wished on it?”
“Never had anything to wish for, really.”
I shook my head. Seemed like all I’d ever done was wish, and I didn’t need a statue for it.
Then, suddenly, she spun around like a little girl. She looked up at me. “But I have something now—a wish.” She closed her eyes, and we stood, silent. When she opened them, she looked at me again. She smiled. She turned and planted a soft kiss on the glass cover. “Did it. Now, you.”
“What’d you wish for?”
“Secret.” But she kept looking at me until, finally, I closed my eyes and wished too. I knew I should wish for something important, Mom to stop crying all the time, or money, or for Dad to return my calls. Or even to be happy with who I was, with the one friend I’d ever had besides my mother. Or to believe in—something. But I closed my eyes and wished:
Please, let me make more friends. Please let me be popular.
I was ashamed of the wish. I opened my eyes and saw Binky’s face, so close. I should kiss her. But I didn’t want to. Even though I knew her wish had been about me—maybe especially because of that. Instead, I said, “Do I have to kiss the glass?” When she nodded, I did.
It was only later, sitting in Binky’s family room, waiting for Mom to pick me up, that she looked at me and said, “Of course, Grandma always said, ‘Be careful what you wish for. It might come true.’”
“You spend too much time with that girl,” Mom said on the drive home.
At that point, I was almost ready to agree with her, but I didn’t. “I only see her at school. And Fridays.”
“But she calls you at home, invites you over. It’s not a proper way for a young lady to conduct herself.”
“We’re friends.”
Mom said nothing. We drove in silence, watching the neighborhood turn from … well, turn.... Finally, she said, “I suppose you’re right. It’s just … we have no time together anymore between my job and just scraping to feed ourselves. We were so close before your father did this to us.”
“We’re close,” I said. And part of me was thinking, God. I have one friend, and it’s too much for her. But the other part thought how easy, how easy it would be just to go back to who I’d been. Mommy’s little boy. Do what she wanted and never worry.
She patted my shoulder. “I’m glad you still think so.”
I shrugged her hand away. She looked wounded and yanked about three hairs at once before replacing her hand on the steering wheel.
Sometimes, I realized, I hated her. And, more than that, I hated who I was when she was there.
CHAPTER SIX
I was still calling Dad, daily now, not leaving any messages, just calling. Hoping he’d pick up. It occurred to me that he was sitting there the whole time, looking at caller ID with Stephanie. They were laughing as I called over and over. The bastard. But that would be too callous, even for him. He couldn’t actually refuse to talk to his own son. Could he?
“What are you doing?”
I’d started taking walks, long ones, to fill the time between dinner and bed. The rest of my time at home, I spent on the computer.
But today, when I got home, Mom was in my room. On her knees, my hard drive and monitor on the floor beside her. She tugged on the cables.
“No!”
She looked up.
Stay calm. Don’t panic.
“Don’t pull that,” I said. I rushed to stop her before she yanked the main plug.
She jumped. But she stopped what she was doing and looked up at me.
“It’s not shut down,” I said. “You can’t just pull things without shutting down.” Then, more to the point, “Why are you in here anyway?”
“Oh.” She smiled. Actually, she looked happier than I’d seen her in a while. “I thought if we moved it to the living room, we both could use it.” She found the mouse and shut down the computer. I watched the screen go black.
“Use it for what?”
“Doing my taxes. Work at home.”
“God, Mom, I’ll do the taxes.” Hard to keep the panic from my voice. Even after weeks at Gate, the computer was my only lifeline and, more important, my escape from Mom. How could I spend hours in chat rooms or playing computer games with her standing over me, judging? “I need it for homework.”
“You need it too much.” She snatched up the keyboard and gestured for me to get the hard drive. I thought about disobe
ying, but something stopped me from openly defying her. “You spend too much time on that computer. I read about kids who waste all their time on-line, or playing those horrible, violent games. They lose touch with reality. They have no relationships with real people.”
“I have no relationships anyway.” She was leaving, so, helpless, I followed. “Everyone at this stupid school hates me. I have no friends. I have no—”
“You have me.” She gestured toward a card table beside the TV. “I’m not saying you can’t use the computer, sweetheart. I’m just saying you should at least sit with me instead of being locked in your room.” She put down the keyboard and touched my shoulder.
I pulled away and dumped the hard drive onto the card table, making it sway and her scramble to keep it from toppling. I stormed into my room and picked up the monitor. I fought the urge to throw it against the wall. Amazing how she’d suddenly asserted herself when it came to thinking of ways to screw up my life. I carried the computer to the living room and dumped it on the sofa, leaving her to figure out how to hook everything back up.
“I feel sick. I’m going to bed.” It was seven o’clock.
I walked around campus most days after school. Sometimes, I saw David Blanco, always near the athletic field, always with the dog. We crossed paths once.
“Hey,” I said, like you say Hey to strangers you see walking, not sure they’ll respond. After all, I didn’t know him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
But David said, “Hey” back, not meeting my eyes. The dog tugged its leash.
“What’s his name? The dog, I mean?”
He grinned. “Trouble.” He reached to fondle its ears, and I flashed back to what Binky had said about Charlie Good. That’s trouble.
I started to say something else, but nothing came to mind. When I looked up again, David was far away, leading the dog, Trouble, to the tennis courts this time. Through the green mesh fence covering, I caught a glimpse of Charlie himself, practicing, his blaze of white hair visible through the green. Trouble squatted.