Witpunk

by Claude Lalumiere; Marty Halpern

  My brother was waiting for me in the backyard when I got home. He was sitting on one of the patio chairs, not doing anything. I stopped, just inside the gate.

  "I ought to clobber you for throwing rocks at me," he said.

  I stayed by the gate, ready to run. I shrugged nervously. "I got Gus to let you go."

  "Yeah." He kept staring at me. "So how do you know that guy?"

  "He's my friend's dad."

  "Andrew says he's some kind of crazed biker. Says he's dangerous and we should report him to the cops."

  I thought about the tattoo and the motorcycle in the yard. "He writes books," I said. "He's really an okay guy." I started for the back door.

  "Hey, Joan?" he said. He was leaning forward in the chair, and his hands were in fists.

  "Yeah?" I stopped.

  "Thanks for asking him to let me go."

  I stared at him. My brother never thanked me for anything. "Yeah. Okay."

  "You won't tell about any of this, right?"

  "I'm not saying anything."

  "Okay." Looking relieved, he leaned back in his chair. "You know, Andrew says that girl is nuts. Everyone at school makes fun of her."

  I bit my lip. I could imagine Fox at school. She wouldn't fit in at all. She didn't look right, didn't act right. She belonged in the woods.

  "You hang out with her, and everyone will figure you for a dweeb too. 'Course, there's nothing new there." His voice was relaxing as he made fun of me. I turned away and went inside to wash up for dinner.

  The next couple of weeks were great. My mother was busy unpacking, and she seemed just as glad that I spent every afternoon with my friend.

  But on the Saturday just before school started, my mother announced that we were going over to the neighbors for a barbecue at their pool. "Cindy Gordon is just your age," she told me. "And Mrs. Gordon is leader for the local senior Girl Scout troop. I talked with her about being the assistant troop leader."

  I must have frowned, because she asked, "Why are you making such a terrible face?"

  "I . . . uh . . . I don't know if I want to be a senior Girl Scout," I said hesitantly. "I mean, being a Girl Scout was fine when I was a little kid, but I don't think . . ."

  "Don't be silly," my mother interrupted. "You love being a Girl Scout."

  I didn't love being a Girl Scout. My mother liked being a Girl Scout leader.

  "I can't go to a barbecue this afternoon," I said. "I'm going to Sarah's house. She's expecting me."

  "Do you want me to call her mother and tell her that you can't come? I'm sure she'll understand."

  "I don't have her phone number, and she doesn't have a mother. I have to go to her house."

  My mother's frown deepened, and I could see her wondering about Sarah's family. I shouldn't have said anything about Sarah's mother. It had slipped out.

  But my mother was losing interest in my problem. "There's no time for that. You have to help me make some potato salad." She headed for the kitchen.

  "But I have to go to Sarah's house and tell her I can't play this afternoon."

  My father was in the kitchen, getting a beer from the refrigerator. He frowned at me. "Your mother has arranged this barbecue, and it's a command performance," he said. "We all have to be there. Isn't that right?" The last comment was to my mother.

  "It'll be fun," she said brightly. "You'll like the Gordons." It wasn't clear whether she was talking to me or to my father. Neither one of us responded. My father turned away, taking his beer to the living room where he could read the paper.

  There was no escaping it. I went to the barbecue at the Gordons' house. Cindy Gordon was a slender girl with braces and short blonde hair. Her brother Andrew was the blonde boy I had seen in the woods.

  Cindy and I sat together on lawn chairs. Andrew and Mark were swimming; our parents were on the other side of the pool.

  "Do you miss your friends in Connecticut?" she asked me. "I'd hate to move."

  "It's been okay." I didn't tell her that I didn't have any really good friends in Connecticut. I had some kids I hung out with, but no real friends. I liked to read, and I did well in school. Both those things made me suspect.

  "What have you been doing since you moved?"

  "Reading. Hanging out. Not much." I didn't mention Fox. It seemed unlikely that Cindy knew Fox. I studied the ice in my glass of soda.

  "My mom says you're going to be joining the Girl Scout troop."

  I glanced at Cindy. She was working hard to be friendly, and she had the look of a smart kid herself. "Yeah. That's what my mom says too."

  "It's not so bad. We went white-water rafting last year."

  She told me about the raft trip down the Stanislaus River, and it sounded all right. Better than gluing macaroni on cigar boxes, which was mostly what we did in Connecticut.

  We left the Gordons' house at around five. I wanted to go to Fox's then, but my mother said I couldn't. She was in one of her family togetherness moods, and I had to stay home, even though my father was sitting in the living room reading the paper and my brother was watching TV and she was doing a crossword puzzle. "Spending a little time with your own family won't kill you," she said.

  When I went to bed, I couldn't fall asleep. I heard my parents arguing downstairs – my mother was talking about how she wanted to spend more time with the Gordons and my dad was sneering at the idea. That went on for a while, then they went to bed. The house was quiet, but I lay awake, wondering whether Fox had missed me that afternoon.

  I felt itchy and restless, and finally I couldn't stay in bed any longer. I got up quietly, got dressed, and snuck downstairs. I followed the dirt road toward Fox's. Some light spilled over the fences from people's backyards, and it wasn't too dark. Then I turned off the road into the woods, where it was really dark. There was a half moon, but only a little light filtered through the trees.

  The woods were different at night. I kept hearing things rustling in the bushes. Even though I knew the way, I kept thinking I was lost. I kept thinking about zombies and high-school students out looking for trouble. The two seemed equally threatening.

  I went to Fox's clearing. It was strange being there in the middle of the night. I saw something move in the shadows, and I stopped where I was.

  A fox stepped from the shadow of the chair. In the moonlight, her fur was silvery gray and her eyes were golden. She sat down and neatly curled her tail around herself, studying me as if she were coming to some sort of decision. Then she stood up and trotted toward Fox's house.

  I hesitated, then followed. The light in the kitchen window was on, and I could see Gus sitting at the kitchen table. His head was resting on his hand, and he was writing in a notebook. In the light of the bare bulb in the kitchen ceiling, I could see dark shadows under his eyes, lines of unhappiness around his mouth.

  I hesitated, staring in. I thought for a minute about turning around and going home, but I couldn't face going through the dark woods alone. I knocked lightly on the door and watched through the window as Gus got up to let me in.

  I hadn't been in the house before. The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes, but that wasn't what caught my attention. There were bookshelves on every wall – some crammed with books, others with papers. It seemed so weird: bookshelves in the kitchen.

  "Newt," Gus said softly. He didn't ask me why I was out so late, like any other grownup would have. "Good to see you." He really did seem glad to see me.

  "Is Fox asleep?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Oh. I wanted to talk to her. Is she . . . is she mad at me?"

  Gus frowned, sitting down at the kitchen table and gesturing toward a chair where I could sit. "She was upset that you didn't come by."

  "My mother made me go to a barbecue at Cindy Gordon's house. Cindy's mother is the leader of the Girl Scout troop, and my mother wants to be assistant leader, so I'm going to have to be in the troop. But I came out here, even though I was scared." I don't know exactly why, but I was starting to
cry as I talked – because I was thinking about Fox being mad, because I had been really scared in the woods and now I felt safe, because Gus was being nice to me and suddenly I had to cry. Gus held up a hand, stopping me before I really got started.

  "Relax, Newt. Take a deep breath." He watched me for a moment. "You know, you don't really want to tell me all this. You want to tell Sarah – I mean, Fox." Without getting up, he reached over to a bookcase and grabbed a spiral bound notebook and a pencil. "Write it down. Write a note that explains what happened. I'll make sure Fox gets it."

  "Why can't you just tell her?"

  He leaned back in his chair. "If I told her, I'd say it in my words. You should say it in your own words. Tell your own truth. That's important."

  I sat at the kitchen table and wrote a long note to Fox about how I couldn't call because I didn't know the phone number and about how my mother wouldn't let me go and about sneaking out after dark and about seeing the fox in the clearing. I wrote about how sorry I was that I couldn't come. Then I tore out the pages and gave them to Gus.

  "Could you give that to Fox?"

  "I sure will."

  I handed him the notebook too. He opened it to the first page, where he wrote down a phone number. "There's our number," he said, handing me the notebook. "You keep that. Use the notebook to write other stuff down."

  "What kind of stuff?"

  He shrugged. "Stuff that happens. Stuff that you're scared of. Stuff that you make up. Sometimes it helps to write stuff down. Come on – I'll walk you home."

  With Gus there, the woods weren't scary. The shadows were just shadows. The noises were just birds and mice and distant cars on the freeway. He left me at the gate to our backyard.

  The next day, I found Fox in the clearing, sitting in the armchair. "Hey, Fox," I said. "I'm sorry I had to go to that stupid barbecue yesterday."

  "My dad gave me your note."

  "He said you were mad at me."

  She shrugged. "I was. But he said that not all parents are as understanding as he is. Some parents push their kids around."

  "He got that right."

  "So it's okay. Let's go to the tunnel."

  The tunnel was the culvert. Sometimes, we walked deep into the darkness, and Fox made up stories: we were the first explorers in the world's deepest cave; we were rebels, hiding in the sewers of Paris; we were traveling to the center of the Earth, where there were still dinosaurs.

  That day, Fox didn't make up a story. We just walked into the darkness, the cold water squishing in our sneakers. We were deep in the culvert when Fox said, "You saw the fox last night. What did you think of her?"

  "She was beautiful."

  "What did her eyes look like?" I wished I could see Fox's face. She sounded strange – her voice tight and strained.

  I remembered the fox's golden eyes. "Like . . . like she knew what I was thinking," I said.

  For a moment, Fox was silent. Then she said, "My mom was beautiful. I remember she had really small hands. And her hair was the color of fox fur. Kind of rusty red-brown."

  I hesitated. "Do you really think she became a fox?" I asked cautiously.

  Fox stopped walking. In the darkness, I could hear her breathing; I could hear water trickling somewhere. "Sometimes, you gotta believe something crazy," she whispered in the darkness. "Because all the other things you could believe hurt too much. I mean, I could try to believe something else. Like she just ditched my dad and me and went off with some other guy. But I think it would be really cool to turn into a fox. I could see why she'd want to do that. I like thinking of her as a fox, living out in the woods. So that's what I believe."

  "I can see that," I said. It did make a kind of crazy sense. I groped in the darkness and took her hand. "Okay – then I'll believe it too."

  "Hey, let's go and see the newts," Fox said, leading the way out of the darkness.

  * * *

  The next week, school started. The teacher was calling roll in my English class when I saw Fox in the back row. Her face was clean, and she was wearing a clean shirt and corduroy pants that weren't dirty or torn. I kept glancing her way, but she didn't look back.

  The teacher, Ms. Parsons, was a fluttery woman with wispy hair and a high, breathless voice. That first day, she read us a poem about daffodils and asked us what we thought of it. I didn't think much of it, but I didn't say that.

  When class was over, I hurried to catch Fox on her way out. "Hey, Fox. How's it going?"

  She glanced at me, her face carefully expressionless. "Around here, my name's Sarah."

  "Okay. And mine's Joan."

  "Look – I gotta go," she said. She was walking quickly, and I had to hurry to keep up. She seemed smaller than she did in the woods. She hugged her books to her chest as if she were cold. She didn't smile.

  "What's the matter?" I said. "Where are you going?"

  She didn't slow down. "I've got some stuff to do."

  "Hey, Joan!" I turned and saw Cindy Gordon and another girl, standing at a nearby locker.

  I touched Fox's arm. "That's Cindy Gordon," I said. "I know her. Let's go say hi." I walked toward them, but when I got there, Fox wasn't with me. I saw her back as she headed away down the corridor.

  "Hi, Cindy," I said.

  "Hi, Joan." Her friend was staring after Fox. "This is Sue. Sue, this is Joan."

  "Do you know that girl?" Sue asked me.

  "Yeah. Why?"

  She glanced at Cindy but didn't answer my question.

  Cindy closed her locker and said, "Joan just moved here from Connecticut. She lives right near me." She looked at me. "We're going to the cafeteria to get some lunch. Want to come?"

  Fox was no longer in sight. I shrugged uncomfortably. "Sure. I guess so."

  I ate a hamburger from the cafeteria at a table with Cindy and Sue and a couple of their friends. They asked me a few questions about Connecticut, but mostly they talked about the classes they were in and what their teachers were like.

  I walked to science class with Cindy and Sue. The teacher, Mr. McFarland, was a tall, skinny guy wearing plaid pants and a shirt with a pocket protector. He talked for a while then asked us to pair up with lab partners. When everyone was milling around, trying to find a partner, I saw Fox at the back of the class, standing alone. I left Cindy and Sue, who had paired up immediately.

  "Hey," I said to her. "Want to be partners?"

  She looked at me, frowning a little. "Don't do me any favors."

  I frowned back. "What's with you, Fox?" I said, very quietly. "Why are you acting so weird?"

  "Didn't your new friends tell you? I am weird."

  I followed her gaze. Cindy and Sue carefully looked away when I glanced at them. Then I looked back at Fox. "Look – do you want to be lab partners or not?"

  She bit her lip and shrugged. "I guess."

  For the rest of class, Mr. McFarland had us examine flowers and look for all the parts: the sepals, the petals, the stamen, the pistil. Fox worked with me, but she wasn't the same person that she was in the woods. She was quieter, more subdued. In the woods, she was in charge; she knew what she was doing. Here, she was out of place. At the end of class, Fox vanished into the crowd of students before I could catch up with her.

  After school, as I walked home with Cindy and Sue, Sue asked me about Fox. "How do you know Sarah?"

  "I met her when I was walking along the railroad tracks," I said, feeling uncomfortable. I knew that Cindy and Sue would never go wandering in the woods by themselves.

  "I heard that she and her father live in this junked-out house in the woods. Her father's really scary. He rides this big Harley, and he has all these tattoos."

  "I've been to her house," I said slowly. "It wasn't so bad. And I met her dad. He's a nice guy."

  Sue was looking at me like I'd said that I'd been to Mars in a UFO. "You've been to her house?"

  "Yeah, I've been to her house," I said, with a bit of an edge in my voice.

  "Hey," Cindy said, "what did you t
hink of Mr. McFarland's pants. Weren't those wild?"

  So we talked about Mr. McFarland and how weird he was. I was grateful that Cindy had changed the subject. I got the feeling that she didn't like the way that Sue was trashing Fox. She asked if Sue and I wanted to come over for a swim, but I said I couldn't. "Gotta do some stuff at home for my mom."

  I went home, changed into jeans, and headed for the clearing in the woods. Fox wasn't there. I went to her house, and Gus said she hadn't gotten home yet. I checked down by the stream where the newts lived, then I went to the culvert.