“Tell me where she is.” I can feel my face getting red.
“You aren’t going to give me the stuff?”
“No.”
“Fine. I’ll get it from Russell then. Thanks for nothing.”
“Yeah, well, same to you.”
I march out of the flower shop and look at Russell’s building. He’s on the ninth floor, I remember from riding the elevator with him.
There’s only one R listed on the ninth floor. I push the button.
“Yes?” It’s Russell’s voice. Maybe he thinks I’m the police.
“It’s Terence,” I say.
“Who’s that?”
“Lucy’s friend,” I say. He buzzes me in.
When I get off the elevator, I see his head poking into the hall. I wave and he puts his head back in. I get to the door and can see behind him into the living room.
His place is painted all different colors. Like the living room is orange and the kitchen is blue. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this… it’s like something out of a magazine. It’s the opposite of Lucy’s place in how clean it is. There’s music going, too. Old cowboy songs, not country music like the kind Elys hates, but something about sleeping under the stars and a cold wind. And there are bookshelves everywhere. And something else…
“You don’t have a television?”
“What? Oh, no,” he says. Out the window you can see across to the ravine. “Can I help you with something, Terence?”
Now I don’t really know what I’m here for. If I ask for the kite stuff he’ll be on to me in a flash. Anyone who can think three moves ahead is going to be able to figure this thing out…
I sit down and Russell stands up. He looks at me and then out the window. He must be really worried about Lucy.
Look at what Lucy’s made me do now. All these people worried about her and getting in trouble because of her. Why didn’t she ask Russell for help? Why didn’t she come to my house? Why wouldn’t she let Elys buy her some spaghetti?
Russell’s looking out the window and so am I.
“I looked for you in the park the other day but you weren’t there,” I say. He looks out the window and then sits on the couch.
“I haven’t been feeling well. I’ve been busy.” I can see where the police might be suspicious of him. Shy guys always get a bad rap. It’s not that we don’t want to talk to people. It’s just everything that comes out of our mouths sounds stupid. But I know Russell isn’t stupid. He just looks so guilty. I even think he looks guilty and I know he isn’t. How must it feel to have a whole neighborhood thinking you’re a pervert? Russell keeps blinking.
I have to stop this. It is up to me to stop this.
How am I going to get Lucy home? Even if we finish the kite today, it’s no guarantee she’ll come back. I wonder what Tom would do? Nothing. Tom would pretend it wasn’t his problem. Tom would ask me what to do. That’s right. I never thought of that before.
What would I do then? Who would I ask what to do?
“If you had a friend…” I start. Russell looks up at me. I’m tempted to stop, but I’ve started already. “If you had a friend who was in trouble and said she didn’t want help, but you knew she needed it, but she asked you not to tell anybody, what would you do?”
He’s got this huge smile on his face. Its like I just told him about buried treasure.
“You know where Lucy is, don’t you?” he says. He’s looking at me straight over those humongous glasses of his.
I wait a few seconds and then shake my head. I feel suddenly heavier, like someone just loaded ten bowling balls on my shoulders. Russell’s face falls.
I feel the water rising in my eyes. I open my mouth to tell him. I want to say something, but I can’t. It’s like sitting with Mom watching television the other night, only it’s a thousand times worse, like, if I speak, bugs will come out. I sit there trying not to cry and thinking about how I’m all full of bugs, like a bat, only I can’t be a bat. Bats don’t lie.
Finally, Russell stands up. He walks over to the window and looks out.
“Thanks for coming by, Terence.”
I stand up. He wants me to go.
He knows I’m a liar and he’s not going to help me.
My promise to Lucy has made me a liar. The only way to make up for it is to bring her home. She’s coming if I have to drag her by her feet. It’s all up to me now. I want to come clean. I want to be bug free.
I pass through Wells Hill Park. Rico and Daphne are on the bench under the picnic table. I have to try to look fine now. I can’t help thinking how everything gets messed up by people pretending to feel one way when they feel another. That’s how gaps are born. Never mind. I can do it this one last time.
“Hi,” I say. They both barely look up. Rico takes a slug off his Big Gulp and offers it to Daphne. She shakes her head. I wait for him to offer it to me, but I guess I don’t count because I’m a guy. “Any news yet?”
Daphne sighs and shakes her head. She’s got huge circles under her eyes. I should tell her now. I could just say something and it would be all over. I’m dying to say something.
“The news is there is no news,” says Rico, like he’s in charge of the whole investigation. Man, he burns me up.
“Oh, shut up, Rico,” Daphne says. She must be tired of him, too. She smiles. “We’ll let you know if we hear anything, Terence.” I start walking away. Every step I take away from Daphne makes the gap in my stomach grow ten times larger. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this bad. I start running. I feel too heavy for my feet, but they carry me anyway. Away, away, away.
16
“Lucy!” I burst into the cave.
“Careful, careful, careful,” she screams. I back up against the side.
She’s got the kite all laid out. The sticks are all strung together and the plastic’s over top of the whole works. She has the kite book open by her feet. She’s copied the design from a picture. It shows a guy with water skis hanging from a kite, sort of like a hang-glider. Underneath, the words say Alphonso Woodall of Cleveland tried to be flown from a kite in 1959 for the television show “You Asked For It” — only the kite got caught in a cross draft and he plummeted fifty feet. Alphonso ended up with a broken leg and two broken heels.
I’m scared for Lucy.
The wings of the bat kite fill the whole cave. The branches for Lucy to hang from run along the bottom. I’m not sure they will hold her weight. The picture of Alphonso Woodall, kite-rider, shows him wearing a helmet and a special flight suit.
I have to admit that she’s done a really good job, though. The thing looks like it just might work. Wouldn’t it be something to watch her soar onto Russell’s balcony?
Lucy’s smiling and has this glow of pride all over her. I wish I could be happy for her.
One thing’s for sure. The kite’s almost done. There’s no talking her out of it now.
“Click, click, eep, eep. She sure is some beauty,” I say.
“Did you bring the stuff?”
“I…no.”
She looks up at me and shakes her head in disappointment. Then she walks over to her knapsack, picks it up and chucks it at me. Spray paint, tape, glue — all the stuff she asked me for.
“Where’d you get all this?” She doesn’t answer. “You stole it, didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t wait on you all day, Terence. And, as it turns out, it’s a good thing I didn’t. It wasn’t easy, either. I had to get all that stuff in the bag without the hardware guy seeing. I couldn’t get the spray paint until some lady came in to yell at him about her new keys not fitting her lock. But, a bat’s gotta do what a bat’s gotta do. And you don’t always come when you say you’re going to.”
My hands go into fists at my sides. I’m so angry, I can’t even talk. She has no idea what I’ve gone through for her, what everyone is going through for her.
I turn to leave. Let her crash that thing into the side of the hill. At least they’ll find her then.
All busted up…I swallow my pride and pick up the glue.
“So looks like all we have to do is glue the edges over and reinforce the sticks with tape, right?” I clap my hands and get busy.
Lucy grabs the glue bottle from me.
“This is a very delicate operation. You’d better let me handle it.” She’s growling at me. It’s like I’ve done something wrong. Fine, I’m mad at her, too. I watch her put a stick in the glue bottle and smear it along the flap of plastic. She folds it over, presses it down and smooths it out.
“Put some tape here,” she says. I lean down and put the masking tape along the glued fold to make it extra secure. Maybe if I just shut up we’ll be done real fast and out of here.
Lucy puts some glue over the spots where the sticks cross.
“There. Now we just have to wait for it to dry,” she says.
“Then we spray paint it. Then you fly it. Then you go home.” I wait for her to say something, but she’s busy playing with the glue around the sticks. Her head looks like a peach. Half of me wants to kiss it and the other half wants to put it in a headlock and drag it home. I don’t want a girlfriend if she’s going to be as stubborn as this.
“After we fly the kite, we go home. Right, Lucy? Eep, eep?”
“We’ll see.” She doesn’t even look at me when she says it. I can feel her not caring about anything I say. I can feel her not-caring attitude bouncing off her like a high-frequency bat echo.
My palms begin to sweat. What if I can’t get her out of here? I don’t want to tell the police, but I’ll have to. She’s made me lie long enough.
“What do you mean? You said! You said you’d go home once the kite is done. I shouldn’t even let you do it. You don’t have a helmet or anything. What if you crash?”
“You aren’t the boss of me.” Lucy turns on me with that voice and those eyes. She sounds like shoveled gravel. “Why don’t you just leave me alone? Why don’t you go home? It’s none of your business what I do. I don’t need you.” I can see tears coming up in her eyes but they won’t fall. She is so stubborn.
“Why are you so mad at me?” I can hear a crack in my voice. “I thought I was a bat, too. You said —”
“People say things all the time. It doesn’t mean anything. People are liars. They say they’re doing something for you, or they’re your friend, but it’s just to make themselves feel better.” She goes and sits in the corner, in the dark where I can hardly see her.
My whole body feels weak with sadness.
“Everyone lies,” she says. “Only dead people don’t lie.” This must be what it feels like when your heart is breaking. I want to leave the cave and run to Elys. But instead, I find myself crawling to sit beside Lucy.
“Do you mean Timber doesn’t lie?”
At the sound of Timber’s name, Lucy starts wailing. I have never heard such a sound in all my life. I put my arm around her and she cries into my baggy T-shirt. I can feel her getting snot on it, too, but I don’t care. It is like a whole bunch of sadness is flying out of her and out of the cave on the backs of angel bats.
I hold her bald head and feel the bristles of her growing-back hair scratch the palm of my hand. If hair can grow back, maybe hearts can, too.
It’s a good ten minutes before Lucy stops crying enough to catch her breath. I can feel things changing already.
“Timber was a good friend of yours,” I say. “Daphne told me.” Lucy nods but doesn’t open her eyes. She’s still breathing funny.
“She was my best friend. The best ever. So I don’t know why…”
Lucy kicks the kite. The branches crack loudly as she stomps on them. I cover my ears. Now she’ll never finish it! She jumps up and down on it. I want to yell stop but it’s too late. The kite’s already ruined. Lucy’s tearing at the plastic with her hands. I’m scared. I think Lucy’s going crazy. I should go get someone but I can’t leave her alone.
Lucy is stuffing the dead kite into the entrance to the cave. She’s lying on the floor of the cave and pounding it out the opening with her feet. I watch her do it. It sure is a small opening. Even broken, the kite takes a lot of effort to get out.
Something clicks inside my head and I can’t help giggling. Maybe it’s because I’m nervous. Lucy stops stomping and looks at me. I didn’t even think she knew I was still here. I’m terrified of what she’s going to do to me, but I can’t help it anymore. I’m laughing. I’m hysterical.
“What?” she says. Her voice is calmer now. She looks angry at me. “What is it?”
I’m trying not to laugh. I swear. But I look at her being angry at me and I can’t help breaking up. She bangs her hand against the top of the cave and some dust comes down. I fall down on my back laughing.
“Terence! What are you laughing at?” I point at the door.
“I don’t know how we thought we were going to get that kite out the door in one piece.” I manage to get the words out between laughs.
Lucy gives one more stiff kick to the plastic jammed in the mouth of the cave. She pounds it with her feet a few more times.
Then she starts laughing, too. She laughs and kicks at the plastic. I go over and help her. We kick at it and kick at it, like we’re trying to kill it, like you can kill plastic by stomping on its head. Our feet are going so fast, it’s like those cartoon feet on that Tasmanian Devil guy, where you can’t even see his feet, that’s how fast they’re going.
Then the plastic is all the way out the door and we just keep on kicking because it’s fun.
I look over at Lucy and she looks at me and we both stop and just look at each other for a while.
And I get this strange feeling.
It’s like when I used to have these nightmares about a crocodile in my bed, and I’d go to Mom’s room and crawl under the covers and go to sleep feeling safe. It’s just that exact feeling, of knowing that even though there’s a crocodile in your bed, it doesn’t meant there’s crocodiles everywhere you go.
It’s like somehow me and Lucy just closed a big gap full of nightmares.
17
I turn around and look out the cave. It’s a beautiful sunny day. That didn’t matter to me five minutes ago, and now it’s like… it’s like the whole world. Lucy turns around and pokes her head out, too. We both have to squint a bit. I push the plastic out of the way so we can see farther.
“Here!” someone shouts.
I want to hide, but then — it’s over. I know it’s over. Lucy starts to crawl back into the cave but I hold her by the arm.
“Lucy,” I say. “I think the kite’s done now.” She nods, peels my hand off her arm and crawls out of the cave.
“Is that where you’ve been hiding out?”
It’s Russell. I should have known. I crawl out of the cave and brush off my knees. Russell is hugging Lucy.
“Come on, now. It’s time to go home.”
“How did you know where I was?” she asks. I grit my teeth.
“Well, I’m afraid Terence isn’t as good at hiding as you are.”
“Lucy! Hey, she’s over here.” Daphne and Rico appear at the edge of the hill and Daphne starts running down sideways. She can’t go too fast or she’ll fall. That’s one killer hill.
I look down at the broken plastic kite and think how close I came to letting Lucy try to fly.
Russell must have followed me. He must have collected Daphne and Rico on his way through the park. If I hadn’t run all the way from Wells Hill to the ravine, they probably would have found us right away.
Now Lucy is in her sister’s arms.
“Thank God. Thank God,” Daphne keeps saying. “I am so sorry, Lucy.” And then, “Don’t you ever run away again. We thought…”
I go back into the cave because I can’t stand all that corny crud. It’s just like television, only worse, because it’s three-dimensional.
I start gathering up Lucy’s stuff and Elys sticks her head in the cave.
“Gotcha!” she says and pokes me in the arm. “I knew you we
re coming here, and when Russell called… wow. Is this where she was?”
I should have known it was too easy getting out of the florist shop.
“And you knew all this time?” she says. I keep still. “Why didn’t you tell anyone, Terence?”
“I promised Lucy. If she didn’t come with me today, I was going to tell.”
“Do you realize what could have happened? She was out here alone for three nights. You can’t leave a friend in a dangerous position, even if she asks you to. You have to take care of your friends when they’re in trouble like this. You have to say something.”
“How do you know how to help someone?” I spit out. “No one was taking care of Lucy at home. No one cared about her until she ran away. Maybe I was helping her. Seems like everyone cares now.”
Elys grabs my wrist. I try not to look at her. Adults think they know everything. Just because she’s got a job, now she thinks she’s Queen of the World Smartypants.
“You don’t know what it’s like to think that maybe your kid is dead, Ter. She didn’t even tell her parents she had lice. Don’t you think she could have given them the chance to make good?”
“But why should she have to? They should have known. They should have been paying attention.”
Elys looks in my eyes and then folds me into a hug. She softens right up.
“That’s right. They should have been paying attention.”
I don’t know why, but I start crying. Elys hugs me tighter. “Maybe people don’t pay enough attention to the important things. We get preoccupied. It’s bad and wrong — and it happens all the time. It shouldn’t, but it does. That’s why you need to learn how to YELL.”
She actually yells when she says that. It echoes all over the cave.
Elys is cool, like a bat.
Her hollering makes me realize where I am. Even though it’s better that everyone knows where Lucy is, I’m going to miss our secret hideout. I wonder how a bat like Lucy will survive outside her cave.
I wipe my eyes and start packing stuff up in the knapsack. Elys is looking at the kite book.
Bat Summer Page 11