“You were stupid.”
“I know…I know….” She’s sobbing into his sore shoulder.
She pops up with an ugly laugh. “And when, Worm? Hah! Don’t tell me I don’t have a great sense of timing. When, Worm? When, of all the nights in the year, did I decide to send the three people on earth who loved me most to the cemetery? When, Worm?”
He barely chokes it out: “Christmas Eve.” And thinks: I’ll never call them Wrappers again.
Something hits him in the side of the face. There’s a cigarette on the ground, still burning. High school kids are curbing them in a rusty convertible.
“Waddaya think this is, Deader? A fashion show?”
“Black shirt not enough for ya? Ya gotta do the loser hat too? Feather? Ya girl!”
Another cigarette comes flying and the car takes off and he starts breathing again. Becca is squatting in the street, giving them a double-finger salute. “Here’s yer loser hat, ya losers!”
Worm thinking: Where’s that side of her been hiding?
She comes to him, smiling. “So…want me to take the hat back?”
Yes! he thinks. “No,” he says. He’s thought about pulling out the yellow feather but can’t even do that.
Suddenly she grabs his wrist, looks at his watch….
2:29 p.m.
Becca smacks her own hand. “Bad Becca.”
“What?” Worm says.
“I’m supposed to be here for you—to fix you—and all I’m doing is talking about my own stupid self.”
“I like to listen,” he tells her, and adds, “I don’t need fixing.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She takes his arm again, perks back to girlfriend mode. “And I bet you’d rather watch than do.”
She’s right. He’s known this about himself for a while, but he didn’t think it showed. He’s felt guilty about it. The world is run by people who do.
“O…K,” she says, looking into him. “Acme—”
“Acne.”
“…is the tragedy of your life.”
He wouldn’t have put it that way.
“Best friend: Eddie…Eddie…”
“Fusco.”
“Fusco. Fave color, red. Food, oyster stew.” She side-eyes him. “Sticking with that?”
He holds up his hand. “Swear.”
She points at him. “Shy. Hates attention.” He waits, senses more coming. She grins, finger-flicks the hat brim. “And yet makes a spectacle of himself on the street, broad daylight.” Turns away while pointing back at him, proclaims: “Ladies and gentlemen! Behold! Worm Tarnauer wears a hat!”
Yeah, he’s mortified. But not as much as he would have been yesterday.
“You’re brave,” she says.
He doesn’t believe it. But he’ll tuck it away, look at it later.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m rushing it, I know. So…girlfriend. Have one?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“No.”
“If I was boss of the world and said you must pick one right now, who would it be? Quick, don’t think.”
“Claire Meeson.”
She nods. “Claire Meeson. You like her.”
He shrugs. “You said pick somebody. Don’t think.”
“She likes you?”
“Prob’ly not,” he says.
She gives a small nod and a grin that says, That tells me all I need to know.
She strikes a thinking pose, finger to chin. “OK. Let’s see what we have here. Pimples…shy…listener…watcher…aspiring kisser…Eddie Fusco…Claire…” She studies him some more, points. “Eddie. He’s not like you, right?”
What’s she getting at? He shrugs.
“He’s…hmm…outgoing, right? Life of the party. Mr. Popular.”
“I guess,” he says, thinking, Like Pooter.
“And you’d like to be like him.”
Absolutely. And remembers this morning’s uncomfortable visit to Eddieworld. “Not sure,” he says.
She studies him, fingertip-tapping her chin, nodding. “We might be onto something here, Wormolator.”
She snatches the hat from his head. And suddenly he knows why he doesn’t want to give it up. It keeps at least part of his face in shadow. He has learned to dread the merciless complexion-revealer of bright light. It’s ninety-three million miles away, but he knows the sun is highlighting every cavernous pore and mountainous bump. Her finger is tapping her chin. He’s never been stared at so intensely, so long.
Finally she speaks. “You know what I’m doing, Worm?”
“Not really.”
“I’m looking at you.” Doesn’t he know it. “Making you uncomfortable, am I?”
He shrugs, concedes. “Kinda.”
She plants the hat over his face. “That better?” she says.
Even Worm has his limits. He slaps the hat away. “What’s your point?”
“The point is, those things don’t stop you from being a good-looking kid.” She runs her finger high on his cheek. “You have good bones.”
Good bones? he thinks. Who needs good bones? You can’t see bones.
She studies him some more. He’s feeling like a—what?—zoo animal.
“You’re into video games, right?”
“I guess.”
“Hmm…” Studying…“And is there one especially that you love, you’re nuts about?”
“Maybe,” he says. And prays she doesn’t ask him the name of it.
She stops to sniff a yellow flower, pulls a blade of grass, chews it, continues walking.
“OK…here’s a question I had to answer once. If you had a choice of being one of three animals, which would it be? A turtle? An eagle? Or a cobra?”
He knows his answer instantly: turtle. But he’s pretty sure it’s wrong. Nobody messes with a cobra. King of snakes. Eagle. King of birds. Eddie would say cobra. “Cobra,” he says.
She just gives a little nod, no sign whether he’s right or wrong.
“Wha’d you say?” he asks her.
“Turtle,” she says.
She stops. She faces him full body, grips both of his shoulders. “Worm…,” she says. “Robbie.” No smile now. Only sadness in her eyes. “This is your life you’re missing.”
She’s right. He knows this, though he never admits it to himself. Cobra. What was he thinking? He loves that she answered turtle.
She knuckle-knocks his head above his ear, like he’s a door. “Knock-knock.” He just stares at her. She megaphones her mouth, like she’s calling from afar. “Come on out and play! You’ve been in there long enough!”
There was a time when he was out. I’m a Little Teapot.
“Worm,” she says. “I want you to do something, OK?”
Yellow alert. “OK.”
The raspberry fluffies she’s been carrying, she drops them at his feet. “Take off your sneaks and put these on,” she says, but sees something in his face. “OK, scratch that,” and slips her own bare feet into them.
She’s thinking…thinking….“OK, little steps. How about this?” She moonwalks up the sidewalk. The goofy slippers make it comical. “Your turn,” she says.
He’s torn. Moonwalk on a public sidewalk? Shy Worm Tarnauer?
He tries. He butchers it, of course. Probably the worst moonwalk of all time. He wants to crawl into the gutter. But even more he wants to please her—and apparently he is. She’s stomping her foot and clapping: “Worm…Worm…Worm…” She applauds when he stops. She throws up her arms and cheers. He’s glad nobody else can hear. They walk away, naturally.
Something on a front lawn gets her attention. “Can it be?”
She crosses the lawn, walks right up to a big gray pot holding a bush. She plucks a white flower from t
he bush, smells it, falls swooning to the ground, gets up, comes back, and sticks it under his nose. “Smell,” she says.
He smells. He’s smelled an occasional rose or Easter lily, but this is something else, like somewhere somebody left a window open and a whiff of paradise drifted in.
“You hardly see them up here,” she says. “My aunt has one in Florida.” She gives him another sniff, takes the flower away, brings it back. “OK? Good?” He nods. She tosses it onto the lawn. “Gardenia,” she says. “Remember that.”
This is your life you’re missing.
They walk. She talks, despite scolding herself for hogging the talk. She can’t help herself, like his father. Which is cool with Worm. The listener.
She stops.
2:41 p.m.
Becca’s looking to the right. At the entrance to the township park a block away.
“Is that what I think it is?” she says.
“It’s a park,” Worm says.
“You played there?”
“When I was little.”
She grabs his hand. They run.
It’s mostly grass. Ball fields. With a band shell and a pavilion and a grove for picnics and a playground of colorful stuff for little kids. His favorite was the sliding board. He’s disappointed it’s not here. The one here now is the same color as before—green—and curved, but it’s much smaller, not the thrilling toboggan ride down the Alps that he recalls.
“Swings!” she chirps, and they do the swings, see who can go higher. The structure shimmies, warning them it’s not for people their size.
Merry-go-round! They jump on. She pushes off with her foot like on an old-school scooter, so for him it’s a free ride. Everything was a free ride when he was little. His father pulled him in a sled down unplowed roads.
They hang upside down by their knees on the monkey bars. He feels blood falling to his head. He never used to notice.
The sliding board. She goes first. It’s so small that, as she sits at the top, her legs come practically down the whole thing. Her slide is over in a moment.
He climbs the green steps. Stands at the top, barely higher than his own height. And it’s coming back to him. The view is the same as before…the merry-go-round straight ahead, pavilion to the right…the plastic green slide curving down and away…and something astonishing occurs to him. It’s not a new sliding board. It’s the same old one. So tame now. So safe. So small. Not the screamingly treacherous plunge of his memory. The slide hasn’t changed. He has.
“Remembering?” she says.
“Sorta,” he says. And kinda wants to tell her but decides to keep it to himself for the time being: standing atop the dizzy-high sliding board one day and surveying everything below and the spinning and swinging kids and feeling…what?…Grand?…Majestic?…And spreading his legs and pounding his tiny fists on his tiny chest and sending out a Tarzan yell that he imagined reached every ear in the jungle.
“Once you were King Worm,” she says, and she bows as if he still is, and down he comes.
3:18 p.m.
Back on the sidewalk.
“That was nice,” Becca says. “But that was yesterday.” She gives a sigh—a real, out-loud sigh, like if you were writing it, you’d spell it out, maybe underline it.
It takes a minute, but Worm gets it. She’s supposed to fix him and she’s not doing it. She’s flunking. And he’s not doing anything to help (unless you count the sick moonwalk). He loves that she’s here but hates that he’s her assignment. He hates himself for letting her down, for making her job impossible by refusing to be anything but the old Worm. He feels rotten.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She gives him a quick look and keeps walking. He hates her silence. She’s been chatty and gushy all day, but she’s no match for the Watching Worm, the Worm Without a Voice, the Worm Who Can’t Speak First.
He blurts: “I see black bears.”
She stops, faces him. She tries a smile but doesn’t get far. Her shoulders dip, just enough to show she knows she’s lost the game but she’s being a good sport. “Nice,” she says. “Good for you.” She resumes walking.
He needs questions to get her back to herself. But what can he ask that doesn’t bring up the life that for her is now over?
Do you think you’ll go back to the bottle?
Could you see God from in there?
What can he do to perk her up?
“I meet writers,” he says. “They stay in our cabins.”
The thin smile is gone. “I know. You told me.”
“That’s where they write.”
Mock surprise: “Really? I thought they came to shoot bears.”
He recalls the text from his mother….“You like to read?”
He can see the answer from her smirk. Good. “Yes, Worm, I like to read.”
What was the name…Daze…?
“Ever hear of Daisy somebody?”
She stops like she’s hit a wall. She’s nothing but eyes. “Daisy Chimes?”
“Yeah, her,” he says.
She grabs him by the shoulders. She’s under his hat brim. “Day…zee…Chimes?”
He prays he’s right. How many Daisy writers can there be? “Yeah. I think.”
She’s shaking him; she’s strong. “Daisy Chimes is staying in one of your cabins?”
“I think so,” he says.
“Right now?”
He looks at his watch. “Yeah, I guess. We usually only see them at meals. Sometimes not even then. Sometimes I have to deliver all three meals to their cabins because they don’t even want to take time out to come over and eat.” Many have come for a week, and he’s seen nothing but the backs of their cars when they leave. Funky bunch, writers.
She backs off, tilts her head, sly-eyes him. “You don’t even know who Daisy Chimes is, do you?”
He never should’ve brought this up. “Sure. She’s a writer.”
“Wha’d she write?” Challenging him.
“I forget,” he says. “I’m not big on titles.”
She grins. “You’re not big on reading either.” She pokes him. “Are you?”
“I go to school, don’t I? Everybody reads.”
She nods. “Yeah. And when you’re home, you’re at that video game you love, right? What’s it called?”
“I didn’t say.”
“So say.”
“Nuke ’Em ALL Now!”
When he says it to her, it sounds different. Not like he feels when he’s playing it.
“Sounds like fun,” she says. She’s not serious.
She grins, drapes an arm around his shoulders. “Daisy Chimes, my dear Wormlet, is only one of the world’s great writers. She’s only my favorite writer of all time.”
Worm’s discomfort vanishes. He’s made her happy. Gardenia petals are falling inside him.
“She just came today,” he tells her. “They usually come on Monday.”
“I want to meet her.” She says it just like that. Like she’s not dead.
“They can’t be disturbed. It’s our biggest rule.”
She stares at him, beams. “Dinner!”
“If she comes,” he says. “She’s prob’ly one of those hermits.” When he delivers their meals, he’s supposed to leave the tray at the door, knock twice, and get outta there.
“But she might come.”
He’s torn between wanting to make her happy and the terror of an impossible dinner scene. Excuse me, folks. I have a ghost here who wants to meet one of you.
Before he can respond, she’s at him again, shaking him. His shoulders are getting sore. “Is there a bookstore around here?”
“Used,” he says. He can’t remember the name. He points behind them, to town.
She starts pulling him
. He digs in his heels. “Wait!” He looks at the nearest street sign. “It’s, like, a mile. More.”
She pulls. “Right. So let’s go.”
He drops to a squat, like a catcher, smacks her hand. “I gotta be home. I was supposed to be home right after school. My dad’s gone today. I’m s’posed to be cleaning eight toilets about now. Changing eight beds. Pretty soon I have to deliver meals. We don’t have time to go back there. I keep telling you, we live in the boondocks.”
She squats beside him. Her voice is calm. “Worm,” she says, “I must—must—get a copy of Wendy Wins. That’s my favorite book by my favorite author. Then I want Daisy Chimes to sign it for me. ‘To Becca.’ Then I can go back to the bottle happy forever. Got it?”
“I’m out of money,” he says.
“No problem,” she says. “I’ll steal it. I’ve done it before.”
“You steal books?” he says.
“Tootsie Rolls,” she says.
She stands. She smiles down at him. She starts walking toward town.
Book…author…sign…
And here it is, right in front of him the whole time, a brilliant play that will be his forever gift to her.
“Wait!” he calls.
3:37 p.m.
Becca stops, waits.
“What if they don’t have it?” Worm says. “What if we do? My parents…when a writer signs up to come…if there’s a book they wrote…my parents try to get the book and have it there when the writer shows up so the writer can sign it. There’s three shelves full of them in the dining room.”
You could swim in her eyes. “You think?”
“What’s it called? Wendy…”
“Wendy Wins.”
“Is it, like, her most famous book? Everybody knows it?”
“Millions.”
“There’s a coffee table for the new ones.” He grins. “I bet it’s sitting there.”
Her grin matches his, but only for a moment. “It changed my life,” she says.
“It’s yours.”
3:38 p.m.
Worm and Becca are walking. She’s talking.
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