Dead Wednesday

by Jerry Spinelli

  And they’re out the door.

  “You forgot to wash your hands!”

  It’s her. Calling after them. She’s behind him, in the mirror.

  They do show in mirrors.

  “Go ahead and pee if you want,” she says. “I won’t look.”

  The bell rings.

  11:43 a.m.

  Worm lurches for the door.

  “Stop!”

  “School’s out! I’m out! I’m a Deader!” Eddie! Fight! Freedom!

  “Worm! Please!”

  He stops. He doesn’t turn. He won’t turn. He won’t look at her. It. He won’t speak to something that doesn’t exist. He hears her approaching footsteps. They stop behind him. Her voice is gentle, kind of motherly in a pleading way. He’s pretty sure she’s going to touch him, but she doesn’t. “Worm, we have to work together on this. I don’t know what’s going on any more than you. Please, Worm.”

  Worm turns. He has to look up to see her eyes. Remembers she’s seventeen. Was. He’s already missed a minute of freedom.

  He wants to run.

  He wants to stay.

  “To tell you the truth,” she says, “I’m amazed that you hung in there this long.” She squeezes his shoulder. “Thanks, Worm. Really.”

  Somewhere inside him a warm wave kisses a shore.

  “OK,” she says with a snap in her voice. “Let’s get this outta the way. Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “No,” he says automatically, and wonders if he’s hurt her feelings. She’s wearing fluffy, shaggy slippers that match her pj’s: raspberry.

  Freedom-bound kids are thundering past the BR door.

  “Neither do I,” she says. “I don’t have a clue any more than you do.”

  “How can you not believe?” he says. “You are one. How can you not believe in yourself?”

  “I believe in me, not in ghosts.”

  “So what are you?”

  Is he really having this conversation?

  She shrugs. “Who knows? Does it matter? All I know is one minute there was the tree, and next thing I know, I’m in a bottle.”

  As if Worm’s not already confused enough. “Bottle?”

  She waves it away. “I’ll tell you later. Hey”—with her finger she traces a circle above her head, flaps her arms like wings—“maybe I’m an angel.”

  “You’re no angel,” he says, which sends her laughing, staggering into a stall door.

  “Touché,” she says.

  “So why are you here? Why me? Why aren’t you in a graveyard somewhere?”

  “Suddenly I was out of the bottle and into your school hallway and there you were, at the water fountain.”

  “But why me? How’d you know my name?”

  “I don’t know. I just knew.” She laughs. “Hah—duh—and one little thing that made it pretty obvious you were the one.”

  “What?”

  “Nobody else could see me.”

  “What bottle?” he says.

  “Hold your horses. We’ll get to that later.”

  “Later? There’s gonna be a later?”

  She laughs more. Something about him seems to tickle her. “ ’Fraid so, dude. Like, it’s…Dead Wednesday?” She air-quotes Dead. “And I want to know why I’m here as much as you do.”

  She snatches her card from his pocket again. She looks at it, wags her head, frowns, suddenly perks up. She holds the card next to her face. “OK, seriously now. Tell me the truth. You won’t hurt my feelings. Am I or am I not better-looking than the warthog in this picture?”

  He studies them both, face and picture. “Drop the fake camera smile,” he says. She drops it. He nods. “You’re better.”

  “In person.”

  He nods. “In person.”

  In person?

  She looks back at the card, snarls. “Oh, for crying out loud. Do you believe this? ‘Bottles lightning bugs.’ ” She throws the card to the floor—“Once!”—stomps on it. “One time I bottled lightning bugs. I was six, for God’s sake. I woke up the next morning and they were all dead. Because I didn’t poke holes in the lid. And this is all they can say about me, like it’s all my life added up to, like, ‘Oh yeah, the Finch girl. The notorious lightning bug bottler. Right up there with Vlad the Impaler.’ ”

  “Who’s that?” he says.

  “And they are not lightning bugs. They are fireflies. Cockroaches are bugs. Thousand-leggers are bugs.” She pokes him in the chest. “The firefly is the official insect of the state of Pennsylvania.” Pokes again. “Didn’t know that, did you, Worminator?”

  Playing games with his name, like his father.

  She picks up the card, hands it to him. “Sorry. Sometimes I’m impulsive.”

  Already the hallway is quiet. The Deaders have broken the world record for vamoosing school.

  She rolls up her raspberry pajama sleeve. She holds out her arm. “Pinch me.”

  “Huh?” he says.

  “Pinch me. So you know I’m real. Pinch me.”

  He stares at the arm. Magicians do this: feel this, feel that. Is that what all this is? He’s inside a magician’s trick?

  “Pinch me!”

  He pinches her.

  She yells: “Owww!” She punches his shoulder. “That hurt.”

  “You said,” he says.

  “I didn’t say mutilate me.” She rubs the spot. It’s red. His thumbnail mark shows. “Satisfied?” she says.

  He can’t speak, can’t think.

  She’s studying his face. “Shy, huh?”

  He says nothing.

  Her eyes are true as a mirror, but better. She smiles, nods. “Pimples.”

  He stiffens. The word sends tremors through him. It’s the word that defines him more than any other, yet he cannot bear to hear it, to read it, to even think it. “I had a pimple once,” she says. Like, I had an itch once. “A monster. Right”—she fingertips a spot on her chin—“here. I know. No comparison.”

  And now—what!—she’s patting his cheek…and now she’s running the tip of her forefinger across the bumps. He jerks back. Even he doesn’t do that. “Stop!” he screams, his voice resounding in the boys’ room.

  She leans in; he feels her lips move against his ear as she whispers: “Worm, it’s OK. It doesn’t matter.”

  Yeah, sure, he thinks, One-Pimple Girl. Tell me it’s OK when you wake up with a face full of them someday. Tell me when they start taking school pictures of knees and elbows instead of faces.

  It happens too fast for him to react: she leans down and kisses him, right on a bump. Somehow her kiss confirms her reality more than his pinch.

  “Where’s the auditorium?” she says abruptly.

  Thrilled to change the subject, he ushers her into the empty hallway. He points. “That way.”

  She grabs his hand, pulls him. “C’mon. I never got to do this.”

  He has to run to keep up.

  11:50 a.m.

  The auditorium is dark and empty. Becca sprints down the aisle, hand-vaults herself onto the stage. Tamps her hands as if asking for wild applause to stop, standing ovationers to be seated. “Thank you…thank you”—facing in turn each quarter of the auditorium—“please…thank you…thank you…you’re too kind….” After at least two minutes of this, she drops her arms, shuts up. Suddenly Worm feels like the place really is full and he’s the only one left standing. He sits, somewhere in the middle.

  “I wrote this,” she says in the darkness, like a shadow speaking, “not very long ago.”

  She begins to sing. She has a good enough voice. OK for a high school choir, he figures. Hits the notes.

  He expected something sassy, like her. Maybe hip-hop, rap. But it’s not. It starts out happy—he knows this even without understandin
g much of it—and ends up somewhere else. From what he can tell, it’s about two streams pouring into a cup—he thinks one of them might be her—but there’s a hole in the bottom of the cup, and when she goes to drink it (can you be the drink and the drinker?), nothing’s there. The cup is empty. Whatever, it’s not the meaning of the words that touches him, but how she sings them, like she’s not taking them from the dictionary, but planting them in a beautiful garden. The musical notes are rain.

  No big fuss, no thank-yous when she finishes. Apparently, the crowd is either unimpressed or stunned into silence. He discovers he’s standing, clapping.

  She calls from the stage: “Thank you for crying.” He didn’t know he was. “I always thought, ‘Man, I wish I could write a song that makes people cry.’ ”

  The shadow hops down from the stage, hurries to him. She hugs him. “You really liked it?” she says. “You’re not just being nice?”

  “I liked it,” he says. He loved it.

  She grabs his hand and hauls him, running, from the auditorium. “Let’s blow this dump!”

  11:58 a.m.

  The school property is empty as a Sunday morning.

  “Which way’s the action?” Becca says.

  Worm’s never heard the word action paired with Amber Springs.

  “Downtown,” she says.

  It’s a half block away. Pocono Street. She marches off, still holding his hand.

  Only now is he getting over the embarrassment of crying at her song. He thought he was past all that.

  She stops at every storefront on Pocono. Baskerville’s Pharmacy…Best Man men’s shop…Jake the barber…She’s all eyes and squealy comments, like Amber Springs is New York or something.

  She hangs so long in front of Fiona’s Fashions that his eyes are driven to his watch.

  12:14 p.m.

  “I gotta go!” Worm wails.

  Becca doesn’t even turn from the store window. “Really? Where?”

  “The fight. Jeep Waterstone and Snake Davis. They’re finally gonna settle it. Everybody’s gonna be there. Already there.” Another glance at his watch. “Fifteen minutes! Even girls. Maybe even teachers! It’s the biggest thing of the whole school year! Maybe ever!”

  Well, at least that got her to turn around and face him. “Wow,” she says, the weakest “wow” he’s ever heard. “And where is this biggest thing ever going to happen?”

  “At the cannon in the park. Over there.” He points. It’s a five-minute walk. He’ll trot. He can feel his muscles getting twitchy, like he’s going to be in the fight. “I gotta get a good spot. The cannon seats are long gone by now.”

  She shakes her head, pretends to be pondering. “Long gone…long gone…”

  She’s mocking him. He’s had enough of this infuriating, clueless outsider. He turns and heads off, breaks into a trot…and is stone-shocked to feel her steely grip on his upper arm, yanking him to a stop. She squares up to him, her face serious now, the mocky twinkle gone from her eyes. “OK, now let me see if I have this straight. If I don’t, you’re free to go. OK? Deal?” She holds out her hand.

  He reluctantly shakes her hand, says nothing. He knows she’s out of his league. Makes no difference that the fight is real and she isn’t. Can’t be.

  “OK…so…,” she begins. “What you’re saying is…you would rather go see a couple of dumbos slap each other around than be with me”—she thumb-points to herself—“me…a…uh…” Her shoulders flump with exasperation. “We gotta find a name for me. ‘Ghost’ was just a default. Something that’s me. Any ideas?”

  Like she doesn’t know his head is empty as a balloon right now. “Well,” she says, “I’ve been giving it some thought. Now tell me how this strikes you…spectral maiden.”

  She’s too pleased with herself to conceal it. Like he’s really got a choice here. “Sounds good,” he manages to say.

  She nods perkily, all happy. “It does, doesn’t it? It’s me.”

  She’s looking at him like a dog at dinner. She wants more. “Yeah,” he says.

  “Yeah,” she repeats, with a fist pump and a satisfied growl. “So…you’d rather go see a fight than spend time with a spectral maiden—in other words, you want to walk away from what is probably the most unique experience in the history of humanity. Did I get any of that wrong?”

  He’s smart enough to know when he’s walked into an answer trap. She’s got his head looped like a funnel cake. His only hope is that she’ll see his problem and take over the driver’s seat…which she does. She grabs his hand and pulls him up Pocono. He can feel his skin scraping as he exits the jaws of his dilemma.

  His exiting dialogue with his brain:

  Dude, the fight’s real. She isn’t.

  Yeah? Tell her that.

  * * *

  —

  They’re standing in front of the Play It Again Sam thrift shop. A lady in shorts and blue socks comes out. Becca Finch sends her a stage whisper: “Boo.” The lady gives Worm a look and heads up the street. “Do they have hats in there?” Becca calls to the lady, who keeps walking.

  Becca walks in. Not through the door. She opens it, closes it. Leaves him like a dummy on the sidewalk.

  A brilliant idea lands on him like a Boeing 747. He can have it both ways! He can run to the fight, watch the fight, and run back to meet her anywhere she wants, store of her choice. She can have him the rest of the day.

  And just as fast, brilliant turns to stupid. He hardly knows her, spectral maiden or whatever, and yet in some sense he can’t put his finger on, he knows her well. And one of the things he knows is that, whether he’s her assignment or not, not in a million years is she going to play that game. With Becca Finch there’s no having it both ways. He enters Play It Again Sam.

  For an instant he thinks it’s his mother, the person in the back, because she’s wearing a floppy gray felt hat, its circular brim wide as a sombrero. His mother wears one like it in the garden. But of course it’s not his mother. His mother wouldn’t be wearing pajamas. And when she turns, her smile is practically as wide as the hat. She poses flirtily. “Like it?”

  “It’s OK,” he says. As if the hat isn’t bad enough, it’s got a yellow feather in the band.

  She goes into fake shock. “Wow—rave review!” She swoons. “Somebody catch me.”

  He laughs.

  “Pay for it,” she says. She hip-checks him and breezes out the door.

  He turns to the counter. The lady at the cash register is so stiff, he thinks at first she’s a secondhand mannequin for sale. Then she blinks. He wonders what she saw. A floppy hat floating out the door? He has no idea what a thrift shop hat costs. He dumps his only money—a five—on the counter and hurries out.

  She’s half a block away, not waiting for him.

  12:22 p.m.

  Worm has heard of riptides. People at the shore standing in the ocean, maybe only up to their knees, and a riptide grabs them and carries them out to sea. Fighting it is useless. They’re never seen again. He catches up to Becca.

  If she wasn’t already, now with the hat she’s the centerpiece of the town. Wide and floppy as it is, it looks like a giant manta ray with a yellow feather. “Oh…,” she goes, looking surprised. “It’s you. I figured you slipped away to the big fight.”

  She moves toward him in a way he’s never seen a girl move before. Walk is not the word. She’s grinning with intentions he can’t read. “So…,” she says, actually more purrs than says. “This must mean you like me. You must”—she hip-checks him—“wanna dance.”

  She hip-checks him again, and this time she says “Boop” when their hips bump. And next time his hip meets hers halfway, and they both go, “Boop,” and laugh.

  And keep doing it: “Boop…boop…boop…” In between “boops” she wiggles her hips, shakes her
shoulders. And—riptide—so does he. Right there in the sun, the mother of all spotlights, on the sidewalk in downtown Amber Springs, PA. Shy Worm Tarnauer. They laugh and continue on up the street, and it occurs to him that he has just danced for the first time in his life—with a girl, no less.

  “Mommy, Mommy, look! A Deader!”

  It’s a little kid with a mother, him in one hand and a canvas tote bag big enough to hold the kid in the other. At first he thinks the kid is referring to Becca, then remembers the black shirt he’s wearing. He should have ditched it.

  “Don’t look,” says the mother. “We don’t see him.” She pulls the kid into creaky-floored Dollar General.

  Him. Not them.

  He wonders if he’s special, can see dead people—dance with them—like the kid in Sixth Sense. Special. Take that, Mean Monica.

  She’s turned away from him, her snappy self gone. He suddenly senses she may not be here all day. Whatever is going on, he hasn’t gotten the hang of it yet.

  “So…how big’s the bottle?” he says, anything to get her back in the game.

  She sniffs. “Big,” she says. She turns. Her eyes are red. She points to the steeple of the Presbyterian church. “Like that high.”

  “Wow,” he says, meaning it. It’s goofy, but he’s feeling fatherly toward this tall, older girl. “That’s a big-ass bottle.”

  She can’t help it—a gaspy laugh comes out, and suddenly she’s smothering him in a hug. She’s a hugger, like his dad.

  “It was only once,” he says, muffled, into her neck, thinking of the fireflies.

  He feels her nodding above him, feels her swell and deflate with a deep breath. “I know…I know….” She lets him go, starts pacing randomly about the sidewalk. “It’s…” She stares at him, still finding nothing in his face. “There’s no time in there, Worm. Y’know?” Worm nods. Like, sure, he knows. “It’s always, like, now, this instant.” She snaps her fingers. “But at the same time it’s a trillion trillion this instants, a now that never ends.”