“Nice to meet you, Matt.” Mom’s voice sounded like syrup over mushy mealy pancakes. “Susie? Isn’t it nice to meet the Riders.”
I turned face-front to her and looked deep into her eyes, squinting, like aliens were lifting her so far out of my sight I could barely make out it was mom anymore. Then, she pressed her eyes back at me and darted them like a spy toward the door where the Riders stood, like I’m supposed to respond or something.
“Nice doesn’t describe it,” was my comeback, which exhibited the least amount of sincerity I could portray.
“Susie!”
“Mom. I have homework.” I did this thing with my body that I do when I m so totally disgusted by a situation. It’s like my whole body goes limp but I’m still standing on my feet, and then I let out a gigant-mo, “Gaahhhh!”
Mom’s discomfort level soared into her rosy cheeks. “Kids.” She looked at me and glared. “Go.” She ticked her head toward home, faced Mr. Rider again and began to apologize for my behavior and I started to leave but. God. It was like my body developed some sort of conscience, or something. Plus. Mom was trying so hard.
I turned around.
That got Mr. Rider’s attention and he looked at me over mom’s shoulder and when he did, mom looked too.
I actually said, “Really great to have you in our neighborhood Mr. Rider.” Then I looked at batboy and said, “Matt.”
He didn’t even speak. Instead, he scratched a blemish that shone like a beacon next to his nose and just retreated from the door then vanished.
Mom was smiling at me so I didn’t care.
“Hold on, Susie.” She turned back to Mr. Rider. “Well, Mr. Rider,”
“Paul.”
“Paul. Hope you and Matt enjoy the pie.”
“It’s very kind of you.”
Mom backed up one step and smiled then wiped at her hair and looked over to me again, then her heel caught at the edge of the crack in the sidewalk and she kind of stumbled, then she giggled, again, “Oh! I’m such a clod!” She actually said clod, she waved and then she walked up next to me. “Come on.” It was like we couldn’t get out of there fast enough, you know.
As we crossed the street, she placed her arm over my shoulder. “You’re a very nice girl.” She pulled me in closer to her as we walked. “I love you.”
“Now, don’t get all overcooked on it, mom.”
She giggled again but this time the way she used to when dad made a joke, slower and deeper, not her voice, I mean with love, deeper. “Oh, Miss Susan,”
“Ms. Mom.”
“Ms.” She corrected herself. “Sometimes you amaze me.”
I almost told her about using am or azin’ right then but decided not to.
She put the flat of her hand onto my back and gave me a slight push toward our house. “Go. Do your homework.”
And, I took off running the rest of the way home, all of about twenty feet. When I reached the door I looked back. Her blonde hair lifted under a late warm autumn wind that floated in and around our neighborhood. It swirled past her then rushed up the porch where I stood. It rustled my hair too and somehow connected us.
My hair looked nothing like mom’s. I’d gotten dad’s genes. NO! Not his Calvin Klein’s! LOL. His dark-haired genes.
I just stood there looking at her. She was beautiful, mom was. “I love you too mom.” I couldn’t help but say it.
FIVE - Weeeeeeeeeee!
You probably want to know how it felt. How the metamorphosis felt, going from a kid one second to becoming a bite-sized-spider the next.
This is the thing, see, becoming a super-human-spider-girl was so drastically different from anything else (as one might imagine). I'd never experienced the feeling and one I can only explain as a catching of breath. You know, like when you enter a dark room and turn on the light and the first thing you see is a spider? It's that Eek! Holy moly! startled feeling. And, that drawing in of your breath that describes the sensation of going from five feet to an inch tall. It's that sudden.
And, no! It doesn't hurt. Crimanittly.
Although, my teeth rattled as if they were dancing the Richter-scale-tango. Even my braces flew out of my mouth!
But, it is like getting pulled through a funnel. Big at the top, small at the bottom. It reminds me of the tune... Susie Where Are You Going?
Oh, yeah. It also felt stretchy, like the first stage is the funnel and the second you become a rubber band. Boing-O!
I mean to tell ya.
What was ultra cool though was Delilah. She saw the whole thing. She didn't try to eat me, which was good or else I wouldn't be able to tell this story. Snicker.
She did, however, nudge me with her nose and then tried to bat me with her paw. But, I screamed as loud as I could which sounded like:
Hey! No. Delilah. No. It's me, Susi. (I felt I had to drop the E at that point.) :)
Cats, as with dogs, have tremendously sensitive hearing so she cocked her head as if I'd asked her for a treat or something and then laid down on her tummy.
When I moved the first time her head popped up but then I just said,
Delilah. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Movement felt artless. [Look it up! Artless also means "simple."] I mean, I would think going from a two-legged gangly humanoid to an eight-legged skitter bug I'd be tripping all over the place.
But, no. Movement was natural and, if you want to know the truth, it felt like this is how all movement should be, for everyone. In fact, going back to life as a kid felt more awkward than becoming a spider. Lucky for me the transitions occurred at night, landing me back in bed, or else I would've most definitely fall flat on my big butt! Snort.
K. So, where was I?
I walked deliberately, carefully, making sure Delilah wouldn't glug me up on her scratchy tongue. When she didn't, I maneuvered my way onto her furry paw. Now, that felt bizarro. Like walking through a field of stiff grass. But, after getting my cat fur legs, I surfed up on top of each hair and sailed across her forearm, up onto her shoulder and to the top of her head.
Delilah smelled like she always did, sweet like Downy softener from lying in the clothes basket but also leathery like the skin of a housecat.
Oh, yes. And, that first night? My very first moment of becoming a spider? Only one word comes to mind--brilliant. Like a ray from a prism straight into your pupils. Zappo dappo. Like the snap and flash of a sparkler. Azin'. Waaaayyyyyyyy.
No sound. Deafness everywhere. It felt as though all the electricity in the house went out all at once and all traffic ceased to exist, no planes, no trains. Nothing. Voidness. For a mere second.
Then?
Everything became one-thousand times louder. Except for my voice to the outside world. I sounded like the fly in The Fly, who yelled... Help me! As he shrunk out of sight.
Every noise I heard sounded as if the world had been put onto an amplifier and the speakers were sending off some freakin' horrid feedback. But, then, everything normalized at a level that didn't send my cochlea bursting into shards of sea shells! Holy.
On top of Delilah's head felt like sitting in the captain's chair of a really furry and sweet natured kitty ship. The Good Ship Kitty Cat!
The barbs of my claws gave me extra holding power. I steered her like an equestrian riding a horse.
It must've sounded like whispering to Delilah as I gave her orders. But, she responded to me as a spider better than she did with me as a human. The snot. :) Not really. She's my puddin' kitten'. I love Delilah. And, she loves me. She proved her love to me at the most important time in my life.
When we passed through her kitty door, I nearly got scraped off and rolled end over end to the tip of her shaggy tail but miraculously, I held tight. I yanked with my left set of claws and she jumped into action--down the street around the block toward Morlson's apartment.
SIX - Music Soothes the Savage Beast
Okay. Remember, now, my grades.
They had been getting much better sin
ce mom got me my stupid glasses, from which I’ll probably suffer irreparable psychological damage.
The subject I showed most improvement in was reading, of course, like, duh, who knew, but I also improved in classes I hadn’t been so savvy in like math and history and civics and science and band (I play the alto saxophone), and, well, all of the classes really.
Here's a side note about the saxophone:
Te he. But, really. I love my sax. Whenever stress levels reach the FREAKIN' ROOF! I pull out my faithful horn and bloooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww! It's, like, the music soothes the savage beast thing.
My grades in the other classes soared from low C’s in most, a D in science which was slipping further into the dregs of “you’ll never amount to anything in life!” To A's in most classes all, except, science--the biggest road block I had for getting a quality education in any post high school studies.
However. After my fall? My grades did not only improve they totally escalated like rocket boosters. Like my brain had gotten strung up to some space shuttle or something and went zipping across the phosphorescent galaxy of my intellect.
And, yet, my science teacher, a one, Ms. Morlson—the gnarliest of gnarly teachers—who needs to be excused to a convalescent center, please, seemed apprehensive about my new found mental abilities but my girlfriends thought the new, improved, smarter me was way cool.
So, Ms. Morlson asked me how I had been studying and, like, I mean, I told her, “The usual.”
She pulled back her chin like she wanted to make her whole head, neck and shoulders go into one weird looking Weeble, ‘cause when she did it her chin got lost in all of that skin she has.
She said. And I quote. “How is that possible?”
“How is what possible, Ms. (I always call women Ms. not Misses or Miss. I’m sort of a feminist that way) Morlson?” Not knowing what she meant and all.
“How is it that your grades should improve this much?”
“I’m, uh, learning?” I flicked my head ever so subtly. Still. I think she caught it. Because with my slight inflection leaning toward, oh, maybe, a bit of sarcasm, it nearly appeared that she growled and squinted all at the same time. Her chin un-sucked and now she was pointing the bottom of it at me with a bunch of what I would define as "enthusiasm." Then her thin graying lips moved in, like, slow-mo and flipped upside-down much like my head onto the floor that night when I got bit, and she snarled out this next statement, again, quoting, “No one, I mean no one, Miss,” (I hate that she referred to me as miss!), “Speider can improve this greatly without some sort of, of, assistance!" The words hissed from her mouth.
Which I took to mean, and she meant for me to take to mean, cheating!
Okay. Here’s the deal. I am many things, as a teenager, one might suspect but I am no way, ever never will ever be or would ever even consider myself to be a cheater. EVER!
You can imagine my insult.
I told Ricki and Jamie and they freaked and called Ms. Morlson a toad and a reject from cool people past. You know, normal kid stuff but then they also told me that the day I missed school, from falling on my noggin, all the kids had been given an assignment, assigned by the toadmeister herself, a one, Morlson, and that we all had to write a 2000 word essay on something scientific and then we each would have to read our essay and develop our idea, for real, as a presentation in front of the class. So, like, if we wanted to write an essay on incubating eggs we would then have to incubate an egg for the class. See?
I had no clue what I might write about. Not until way after Ricki and Jamie left. Way after dinner that night and way after I went to bed. I mean, I have never in my entire existence have ever written a 2000 word essay and it sort of freaked me out but then to have to put my thoughts into action? Scientifically? Well, it scared the bejeezus (another mom word) out of me. Plus, the whole deal with Ms. Morlson, well, my lid popped about her! She really got my fangs throbbing and I just wanted to take action against her, not like going all Columbine on her or anything like that. But, you know, something about her and her comment and then this stupid assignment all swirled into some weird vortex of anger for me and I sort of went off.
But, then, I just fell asleep and forgot all about it.
And, for the next several evenings, after I went to sleep I dealt with the problem. I spun together a very cool scheme of how to make Ms. Morlson pay for her saying, in her oh so not very subtle way, that I was cheating.
I didn’t know how but I was going to make it happen. No matter what.
I told mom about her calling me a liar and mom did this funny little thing with her finger which she always does when she gets mad at me or hears some Republican lying about health care. She always says Republicans are big fat liars but I really don’t see much difference in any politicians. They all seem to be lying, to me.
So, mom does this thing by rubbing her first finger on her right hand underneath her nose, kind of hard like and then she purses her lips together but still tries to talk making her words sound as if they’re being sieved through a potato ricer or something. It’s funny but scary all at the same time.
She says, “Why that...” but then stops before saying what “that” is and looks at me like she can’t say what she wants to in front of me for fear it will set my precious little virgin (yes, I’m all that!) ears ablaze!
Then, she goes on, “Why that... [pause] [pause]... that... woman” (mom says woman like a dirty word), she says, “needs a talking to.”
That’s all!? I almost spit my chocolate milk out through my nose.
“A talking to?” I asked.
“Go get ready for school.” She, like, nearly bit my head off.
I just turned and huffed out a breath of air to make her see how ridiculous I thought she was. Like, oh, a talking to, that’ll really be like the worst possible sentence for a teacher. I mean. God. That’s all they do is talk.
Well, it’s kind of hard for me to get uber-mad at mom because she’s mom but also she smells so good all of the time, like her skin smells sort of like vanilla but also like roses and then to top it off, she wears this pretty cologne called Precious by Estee Lauder. So, I turned and stomped off making a grunt in the process for effect.
K. If you wish to put my reaction to her all together, it went something like this: huff out air, turn grunt and stomp off. Then, of course, I slammed the bathroom door and banged around in there for a while.
SEVEN - Butt String
Delilah waited for me on the fire escape landing. She became my taxi to and from Morlson’s apartment on the quick trek about a block away from our house and closer to the main road. I just grabbed hold of the hair on pussy’s head and whispered where to go in her ultra-sensitive ear. It felt good riding on her like that. I made tiny little spider wee-wee-wees as she ran.
I couldn't help but think, after this whole spider experience ended maybe Delilah would bite me too so I might become a cat at night!
First things first, however.
The brick wall felt rough and easy to climb. With dark falling upon the city, no one could notice me. Well, no one but possibly an insect-eating bird--like a SWALLOW! Gulp! But, none were around, they all seemed to have gone to their nests for the night.
At that point, I hadn’t thought about anything that might harm me--nothing, nada, zilch.
Morlson kept her windows cracked about an inch because she liked to “feel the draft as it wafted through lifting the light curtains and stilling the muggy interior” of her home.
(I know this because she’d written it once as an example for some lame homework assignment. She was subbing for Mr. Rally, our cooler and REAL English teacher. Morlson got all teary when she read it too, like it was some award-winning literary masterpiece and we should all cower at her words. Bleek!)
Anyway, the window, as suspected, was cracked wide enough for a small rat to climb through. I walked in and could’ve been carrying a cane and top hat for as much space as I had. Easy Breezy!
And, there she
was!
Asleep, in bed.
Shhhut-UP!
I leapt from the sill and grabbed hold of the gauzy beige linen curtain. With the breeze swinging me outward toward her bed, I easily jettisoned my silken spool of thread onto her headboard.
And, by the way, the silk does NOT come out of your wrists like Spiderman would have you believe. No. It comes out of your butt. The holes are called spinnerets and you force your back set of legs straight and grunt like a little pig and it goes zinging to wherever you aim your butt.
Azin’. Way way azin’.
After the silk attached, I walked across the line like an eight-legged circus performer on a trapeze. That’s how cool it was.
EIGHT - Icky Gooey (Squared)
When I woke up, my homework papers had been tossed all over the bed and there was this sticky sort of string around my hands and mouth and the papers on the bed were stuck to the sheets. No lie.
I said, “What the?” But remembered the dreams which had become more vivid with every passing day.
And, every morning after getting out of bed, I had to use a loofa just to get all the sticky off my fingertips, out of my hair and scraped off from my lips before mom could see me.
Later, I kept the sponge in bed with me so mom would never, ever see me looking like a cocoon. Especially, when she expected to see her daughter. That might prove disastrous.
My skin began to clear up and my vision was becoming better, even without those socially-crippling glasses. Plus, there were more times than not throughout my classes that reading with them bothered me more than aided me.
Even so, by the end of each day, it was like everything reverted back to my old self and I was just plain old Susie Speider again.
I groaned out my homework at night, pop my meds and then would go to bed so early mom started to think I was sick or something.
“No mom, I just realized that when I get my rest, I feel so much better.” That was not a lie. I did feel better, yes, but mostly while I was sleeping! It was like as the spider, I always felt I could do anything and I never thought about my dad dying. All the bad just melted away as the spider. Sort of.
Spider Brains: A Love Story (Book One) Page 3