At least he had the adventure of taking out the garbage and putting away the clean dishes from the dishwasher.
He knocked on Mr. Lindquist’s door.
“Come in, Ryan,” said Mr. Lindquist.
There was no window in the door. It was not ajar. Had Lindquist attached a tracking device to him?
Ryan opened the door and saw that someone was sitting in a chair across from Lindquist.
“Dad,” said Ryan.
His father turned and looked at him. He was holding a pen, and there was a form on Lindquist’s desk, filled out with Ryan’s name at the top. A permission slip.
“I hoped you’d stop by before you returned to class,” said Lindquist.
“I came to tell you never to do that to me again.”
Father was still holding the pen, hovering over the parent-or-guardian signature line. He was also studying Ryan’s face.
“The group that is soliciting your involvement,” said Lindquist, “is fully sanctioned within the school district and in all the other local school districts. As such, they require all minor participants to have parental permission to take part.”
“And you called my dad?” asked Ryan.
“I called your home,” said Lindquist, “and your mother suggested that I should call your father.”
Ryan looked questioningly at Dad.
“Your mother said, I believe, that it was about time for me to start taking some interest in my own children,” said Dad.
Lindquist rotated his chair to face the narrow vertical window in one wall.
“Come on, Mr. Lindquist,” said Ryan, “we can’t be the first family you’ve dealt with where the parents are behaving like petulant children.”
“Or where the children are also petulant and have no sense of discretion,” said Dad.
“They want to study me,” said Ryan, “because I ate a bee.”
“If that’s true,” said Dad, “I would want someone to study you.”
“It didn’t sting me inside my mouth,” said Ryan. “Or anywhere. I think it kind of felt like it had a Jonah moment. It flew right off to call Nineveh to repentance.”
“You know the Jonah story?” asked Father.
“You and Mom took me to church, remember?” said Ryan.
“About six times,” said Father.
“Two of the times they did Jonah,” said Ryan. “It must be a favorite with children’s Sunday school teachers.”
“Do you intend to go to these meetings?” asked Father.
“Less often than I intend to go to church,” said Ryan.
Father turned to the desk and signed the form. And the one behind it.
“Why did you do that, when I said—”
“If you’re not going to attend, then my permission slip does you no harm,” said Father.
“It does me no good, either,” said Ryan.
“It does me good,” said Father.
Ryan waited.
“When you decide you do want to go after all, and you need a permission slip, your mother won’t have to go into a diatribe about how I couldn’t carry out one simple task for the benefit of my children.”
Father was, of course, right. It would do Ryan no harm, and it would save Father grief. He could picture his mother saying or texting, did you take care of Ryan’s permission? And now Dad could answer yes.
“When do they meet?” asked Father.
“At a time when I’ll be doing something else,” said Ryan.
“They usually meet after school, in a classroom,” said Lindquist.
“If you’re ever kept late because of it, or you need a ride, or whatever, call me, not your mother, and I’ll smooth it over. I’ll take care of it.”
“Very kind of you to take care of anything that might go wrong at home because of a thing I am never going to do,” said Ryan.
“You’ll do it,” said Father.
“Is that an order?” asked Ryan.
“It’s a prediction,” said Father.
“You do know that I now am honor bound to make sure your prediction is wrong,” said Ryan.
“You’re not an idiot,” said Dad. “You’ll do it when you see a good reason for doing it, and you won’t care about some petulant desire to show me.”
Ryan said nothing, just looked at his father, wondering whether he was right, and if he was, whether saying it meant that Dad had respect for Ryan, or none at all.
Dad got out of his chair. “I’ve got to go back and get a bunch of lazy guys to pick up their tools again.”
“I thought you didn’t hire lazy guys,” said Ryan.
“I never said that,” said Dad. “I only said I don’t hire lazy fifteen-year-olds who are close relatives of mine.”
Dad brushed past him and went out the door. Ryan toyed with the idea of tearing the permission form in half.
Lindquist slid the form toward himself. “I’ll tear it up when you ask me to,” he said, “but only after you’ve actually attended once so you know what you’re talking about.”
How did Lindquist know that Ryan was thinking of tearing it up?
He wished his micropower was having an unreadable mind. Or at least an unreadable face.
* * *
“So what were you called out of class for?” asked Bizzy the next morning on the way to school.
“Silly, stupid counselor stuff,” said Ryan.
“If you don’t want to tell me, say so,” said Bizzy. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
He wanted to argue the point, insist that he wasn’t treating her like a child. But he was. Just like his parents treated him and Dianne. This is grownup stuff. You wouldn’t understand. Well, why not give us a try and see if we understand? That was a conversation that would never happen. At least not with Mom.
“There was a guy who saw something I did once, and thought I had a skill that needed training.”
“What skill?”
“Bee catching.”
“Oh, be serious.”
“Specifically, catching a bee in my mouth and then blowing it out again unharmed.”
“Who was unharmed? You or the bee?”
“Both. Neither. No harm.”
“You caught a bee in your mouth?” said Bizzy. “That’s just pointless.”
“It’s a place where you can store a bee to keep it from stinging anybody.”
“Except you,” said Bizzy. “I don’t think there’s anything in the bee rulebook that says they face a ten-yard penalty for stinging somebody inside their mouth.”
“I’d say only five yards,” said Ryan. “Except that stinging somebody, inside or outside the mouth, carries the death penalty for the bee.”
“Good point. You’re talking about the bee that was buzz-bombing me and you tugged on my hair and the bee was gone. You put it in your mouth?”
“It spent a little time there.”
“Did you have any kind of plan when you did that?”
“Yes,” said Ryan. “I figured one chomp would put an end to its career as a sting-carrier.”
“So how do people get anything between their teeth?” said Bizzy. “They move it with their tongue. Their nice, soft, stingable tongue.”
“I didn’t end up chomping it anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Because I would have had to move it with my nice soft stingable tongue.”
“You were saving me from the bee,” she said. “And you didn’t even tell me you had done it.”
“The bee was gone. It just flew away. Didn’t mess with us anymore. Now, chances are that about a week from now, a whole hive of bees is going to track us down and swarm us, and you’ll curse the day you agreed to walk home with a guy who starts feuds with stinging insects.”
“The bee started it.”
“That’s not the way she’s going to tell it to her friends.”
“They’ll just mock her for having human spit all over her,” said Bizzy. “Bees are very sensitive about substances that get carried back into the hive.”
“My spit will only increase their intelligence,” said Ryan. “Or rather, that of the next generation of bees, after my spit gets ingested by the queen.”
“What was this training the guy was offering?”
Trust Bizzy not to stay distracted by the empty chatter, and come back to the real question.
“He thought I dealt with the bee very quickly. Just pulled it out of your hair and it was already in my mouth—some of your hair with it, so if you feel smarter suddenly, that’s because I got a bit of spit onto your tresses.”
“He didn’t come for samples of your spit.”
“He thinks I have a micropower,” said Ryan. “Like a superpower, only kind of trivial. Can’t pick up the Golden Gate Bridge and move it to Alcatraz, but I can grab a bee, terrorize it by putting it into the deep cave of my mouth, and then set it free. He says they can train me to be better at my micropower. Like, two bees at a time, or a dragonfly. Or a rabid dog, if I can fit it into my mouth.”
“Protecting me,” said Bizzy. “He saw you protecting me, and he wanted to train you to be a better protector.”
“Or get me to do something that takes me away from school after hours so I can’t walk you home.”
“Mom can come and get me again. She’s been glad to have a few weeks off, but she’ll also be fine with picking me up.”
“I told him no,” said Ryan.
“Because you don’t want to get better at your micropower.”
“Because I don’t have a micropower. There’s no such thing as a micropower.”
She stopped, which forced him to turn around and face her.
“Do you want to be late to school?” said Ryan.
“I don’t care a rat’s petoot about being on time to first-period European History, especially since we’re going to have to sit through Hardesty’s theories about what really happened to the poor little princes. Personally, I think it was Henry Tudor who had the boys murdered, and not Richard the Third at all. But I’m sure he’s all set to shatter that hypothesis.”
“Nobody knows, so it’s just his opinion against yours and mine and Thomas More’s.”
“I know about these people, Ryan,” said Bizzy. “They approached us years ago. Dr. Withunga came to our house, back where we used to live. Said that my ‘amazing good looks’ were a micropower, and my mother said, drop dead, and that was that.”
“So you knew about them?”
“They seem pretty harmless. They aren’t the ones my mom was worried about. They’re kind of like the people who try to get photographs of Bigfoot, or people who remember being abducted by aliens.”
“Do you think they’re right? That there really are micropowers?”
“Ryan,” she said, “you’ve seen what I can do.” And as she said it, right there beside the road, about a block from the high school, she turned herself so beautiful that it almost stopped Ryan’s heart.
And then she switched it off, and she was just Bizzy again—very pretty and smart and kind, but nothing to make some group of scientists take notice.
“Okay, yeah, only I don’t know if what you do is a micropower.”
“They say it is,” said Bizzy. “And now you seem to have one, too.”
“Nothing like yours.”
“Rapid bee-eating is way more impressive than being able to put on a face without using makeup.”
“Here we are,” said Ryan. “This is the high school where we are required by law to show up every day.”
“Aren’t you even curious about these micropower people?” asked Bizzy.
“I just assumed that they were loons.”
“Me too,” said Bizzy. “Mom thinks they’re sinister somehow. But look, you and I are proof that they aren’t loons.”
“You didn’t even see me take the bee,” said Ryan. “You don’t know if I actually did anything.”
“I didn’t get stung. The bee went away.”
“Look, you’re not getting stung right now, too, so is my micropower really that good? Having saved you from one bee, if I did—does that warn all the other bees to stay away?”
“Why don’t you go and find out what their group is really about?”
“Leaving you to be assaulted on the way home by teams of ruffian bees?”
“I’ll roll up the windows in Mom’s car and I think I’ll be safe enough.”
“I’m walking you home. Every day.”
“Okay, here’s another plan. I drop out of the play and go to this rare-and-useless-talents group with you. Then we still get home before Mom knows we did anything unusual.”
“You can’t drop out of the play,” said Ryan. “They’re counting on you.”
“Every other girl in the cast has been memorizing my part in case I got hospitalized for, you know, anaphylactic shock or something.”
“So the show would go on without you.”
“All the girls would be so glad I was gone. I’m sick of them sniping at me during rehearsals, anyway.”
“What makes you think this group meets in the afternoon?” asked Ryan.
“Because I think they’ll meet whenever I tell them I can come.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because Dr. Withunga said so. She’d assemble a group meeting at whatever time and place I could attend.”
“Wow,” said Ryan. “They must think you’re really hot stuff.”
“You know of any reason why they shouldn’t?”
Ryan thought about his feelings toward Bizzy and answered honestly enough, “Nope. Very rational plan.”
“Wanna do it?” asked Bizzy, with fake eagerness.
“If we could really get back without worrying your mom.”
“Mom always knows everything without anybody telling her. I think she’s got a palantír or a crystal iPad or something.”
“Because she’s a witch,” said Ryan. “Come on, that’s a joke.”
“It’s not a joke,” said Bizzy. “I think if these GRUT people had any actual knowledge, they’d be after her, not me.”
Ryan knew that it was a joke, because that’s the way Bizzy always talked when calling her mother a witch.
“Next time I catch Aaron spying on us,” said Ryan, “should I tell him we’re in?”
“Not the boy,” said Bizzy. “We’re going right to the top.”
“Dr. Withunga?” asked Ryan. “How will we find out—”
“How many Withungas are on the faculty of a university somewhere around here?”
“I don’t want to do detective work,” said Ryan. “Mr. Lindquist has Aaron’s contact information. If it includes a home number, Dr. Withunga probably lives there too.”
“So your micropower is creative laziness?”
“I don’t think I have a micropower. It’s you they want anyway, but if we go together, then either we can be witnesses to make sure nothing bad happens, or it’ll happen to both of us.”
Bizzy rolled her eyes. “Then there’ll be two families causing grief to the police until they find us.”
“Nothing bad will happen,” said Ryan.
“Why not?” asked Bizzy. “You sound so sure.”
“Because Aaron Withunga has one leg shorter than the other. We can probably outrun him.”
“I hope they really know something,” said Bizzy. “I hope they can help me understand this stupid ability I have.”
Ryan wanted to say, It’s not stupid, it’s amazing, it’s wonderful. But then he’d get a lecture about how it’s sickening that her micropower only affects something as stupid and evanescent as personal b
eauty. And she’d be right. He didn’t love her for her beauty, because he had seen it at full blast only a couple of times. He loved her for all the right reasons: her intelligence, her wit, her sass, her lively curiosity, and the fact that she wasn’t repulsed by his attention.
By the end of second period, Ryan had gotten Dr. Withunga on the phone. By the end of school, he was able to tell Bizzy that there would be a group meeting the next day right after school, in the same conference room where he had met with Aaron.
“She can assemble a group here on one day’s notice?” said Bizzy. “Very odd for a bureaucracy. Things are always supposed to take a week.”
“And you’re sure you want to quit the play?” asked Ryan.
“I already told the drama teacher. GRUT or no GRUT, I was done with it. He’s posted the notice for auditions for my former part. Ten signatures on the lines under the notice. Already. They were so ready for me to get lost.”
“But I’m not,” said Ryan. “I don’t want to lose you.”
She laughed. “You don’t have me, Ryan.”
Yes I do, he thought. I have you tightly sequestered where only I can see you. It’s just that the prison of my heart has invisible walls and you don’t know that you’re my captive. Or wait. No, that’s backward. I’m your captive. Bummer.
8
Ryan had expected that the next morning would be the usual: walk out the front door, sidle over to the Horvats’ door, knock, and then he and Bizzy walk to school.
Not quite. The Horvats’ door opened, but it wasn’t Bizzy standing there. It was Jake Horvat, who was not only athletic but was getting almost as tall as Ryan.
Jake didn’t look happy. “Mother wants to talk with you.”
“After school,” said Ryan. “Or we’ll be late.”
“You know that you’re planning to meet with those psycho bastards this afternoon, so you’re going to talk with Mother now. Or Bizzy never walks anywhere with you again.”
Ryan knew inevitability when he saw it. He stepped past Jake into what used to be the living-room side of the house. Where Mom and Dad used to share the master bedroom upstairs. Where Father had his book-lined office, and where they used to gather to watch television, back when entertainment was a family goal.
Duplex Page 8