Outside In (19 page)

“I don’t care what you think you’re doing,” she said angrily. “You’re It, Chérie, and don’t try to get out of it.”

Nobody else knew what had happened in Elfland. I was shaking and silent, the way I’d been when I’d dumped the newspapers, when I’d heard the news about Wendy Boland. I was hidden, colorless, my house uprooted, in the dark. I could have just gone home, ended the game, taken Joanie and Aimée with me. But then Dave would have won. So I climbed the deck steps to his back porch and leaned my wet face on my arms. “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three …”

Aimée’s hand slipped into mine. She hadn’t run. She hadn’t cried or screamed or carried on. “Gosh, Aimée,” I said when I could speak, “you’ve outdone yourself.”

“I saw what he did,” she said.

“Em, he pulled up my whole elf house,” I sobbed.

“Are you all right, Cher?” she asked. “If Dave hurt you, I was going to run for Aunt Bonnie.”

I became aware of my body suddenly, and realized that I was more mad than hurt. The elf house branches had scratched my arms in a few places, that was all. I could still see the forsythia bush flying toward me, thudding into my stomach.

•  •  •

I drifted in and out of nightmares of Dave ahead of me on his bike, faltering, wobbling, plunging off the bridge into the empty blue air below, of myself floundering, wavering, plummeting down and down, arms and legs and pedals and handlebars falling.

I woke at last with a thud into a gray Sunday morning, feeling as if I’d ridden my bike a million miles across gray stones, a narrow wall that kept repeating beneath my tires.

The sky was gray and cloudy. The day after my birthday, with nothing to look forward to. The wind was whipping up the pine trees outside my window. I could see them bouncing from where I lay. My trees, I thought. Suddenly I remembered what Dave had said the night before about his house.

I sat up in bed and looked at it. Lemon yellow. I didn’t want to move there any more than I wanted to move into any other house. Then Uncle Joe came out of the house and got into the black Volkswagen, as casually as if he were going out for cigarettes, and drove away. Someone was at the door, not waving: Aunt Bonnie and Pete and Dave. Uncle Joe didn’t toot the horn as usual. He didn’t wave, either.

I flopped down again on my back. God forbid that any of the Ascontis had seen me. But they hadn’t. They’d all been watching Uncle Joe. I wanted to go back to sleep, to hide my head all day. But there were newspapers, always newspapers. Sunday morning. And I didn’t want Dave coming over to do them for me, not today.

Faux Pas met me at the bottom of the stairs. I staggered past her into the kitchen. It was early, earlier than I needed to get up even for newspapers. Freddy was still asleep, that was how early. Aunt Bonnie was there in her red bathrobe, telling Mom and Dad that Uncle Joe was gone and wasn’t coming back.

“Alone?” I asked.

Aunt Bonnie nodded, gulping. “The boys are here, and I am here.
He
has gone his merry way.” She didn’t seem surprised. I guess no one was but me.

“Gone where?”

“Just gone.” I saw again Uncle Joe’s Volkswagen going down Marvin Road not half an hour ago. Had he been going then? How did Aunt Bonnie know he was gone for good?

What could have led Uncle Joe to disappear into thin air, along with his old black Volkswagen, a satchel of clothes, and, Aunt Bonnie reported, a big box of papers he called his novel? “Too bad he didn’t leave it,” Aunt Bonnie said. “It would have made a nice bonfire.”

“What about Faux Pas?” I asked.

What a stupid question. I wished I hadn’t said it as soon as I said it. It was this question that made Aunt Bonnie, dry-eyed and calm up to this point, slip into tears at last. “He could have taken the damned dog at least!” Not only was she swearing, but she was laughing and crying at the same time.

There was so much that I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know why Uncle Joe left, just when he was coming back.

“He wants to write a novel,” said Dad.

“He doesn’t want to teach anymore,” said Mom.

He wanted to go off on his own someplace where he wouldn’t have to hear Pete talk about going to war. It had been a long time since he and Aunt Bonnie had been really happy anyway. It wasn’t his kind of town, and it had been a terrible year, and it wasn’t his kind of world. That was what Mom and Dad said. It wasn’t news to them.

I turned away and went upstairs and wouldn’t come down when they called me back. I shut my door and didn’t open it again, and nobody came and made me.

After a few hours Dad knocked on the door. “Chérie? Get those newspapers where they belong. We’ve got to get moving. We’re all going out to Chubby Lanes for lunch.”

“What for?”

“Cher, some people are coming to look at the house.”

“So?”

“They’ve already seen it once and might be ready to make an offer.” This was Dad talking, not Mom, talking as though he
wanted
to sell our house.

I didn’t. I didn’t want people to make an offer. I didn’t want them to take a second look. I didn’t want to move out of my room, out of our house. “Forget it!” I yelled.

“I don’t have time for dramatics, Chérie,” Dad said. “Get a move on.”

I got a move on. There wasn’t anything else to do. Nobody cared what I wanted or didn’t want.

In the evening, when I was setting the table, the realtor called and said the people had made an offer. Mom and Dad accepted. Mom was on the kitchen phone, and Dad was on the bedroom phone. But they came together into the dining room to tell Aimée and me.

“Well, they offered, and we accepted,” said Mom.

Aimée turned and looked at me.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means,” said Dad, “that we’ll be moving into the Ascontis’ house just before Christmas.”

“Where are
they
going?” Aimée asked.

I sat down at the table and stared at the little stack of four paper napkins that were in my hands.

“Massachusetts,” I whispered to Aimée.

“That’s right,” Mom said, sounding surprised that I knew. I looked up long enough to glare at her. “Aunt Bonnie’s going to move back to her hometown with the boys.”

“And we get their house?” asked Aimée. She made it sound like a hand-me-down, which I guess it was, except that they hadn’t exactly outgrown it. They had gotten too small for it instead.

Mom plopped cross-legged on the floor beside me. She pulled my hands, and the napkins, out of my lap into her hands. “Chérie,” she said, “they’ll come back—a lot.” I looked into her face and saw tears coming down.

Dad sat heavily in a chair on the other side of the table. “We’re all trying to make the best of a bad situation, girls,” he said.

“None of us wants the Ascontis to leave,” Mom wailed. “But we thought you girls would like bigger rooms—and a family room, and a deck.” Home base.

“We’ll be in the circle.” Aimée was having a revelation. “And we’ll be back doors with Pammy!”

And Dave would be leaving. Mom saw that thought cross my face, I think. She gripped my hands harder. “They’ll always be our friends, Cher,” she said.

Aunt Bonnie would be leaving. “Oh, Ma,” I said.

Aimée asked, “Which room is going to be mine?”

I ran for my room, my nest of a room for a builder bird, even though all my building stuff was hidden away from the realtor. I didn’t come out.

O
N
M
ONDAY
I
WENT TO SCHOOL.
I just went. To hell with it. I didn’t care enough not to, not anymore. My head hurt, and my stomach hurt. I didn’t wait for Dave and Pete. I didn’t ride Reshna. I just walked to school without looking left or right or in front of me—least of all, behind me. I went to homeroom, and then I went to Spanish, and then I went to science. I sat up in the front of science class on Mr. Stone’s stool by the lab table, and stared out at the class and waited for them to stop talking so I could begin.

I was prepared this time. I had the whole thing on note cards, and I read it right out of my lap. Mr. Stone made Dave hold my diagram of the moon. I think that was so Dave would have to face the class and couldn’t mess with me. But I didn’t imagine Dave would be in the mood to mess with me.

For a moment I was surprised that Dave was even there, but what was he supposed to do, stay home and cry? He wasn’t acting the way I would have about it, the way I’d been acting all last week.

It didn’t stop Dave from making significant faces at
Nathan and Ziggy. It didn’t stop him from asking them over to his house after school. And it didn’t stop them from coming out on Dave’s stoop after school to tease me about what I’d said.

Ziggy yelled, “Hey, Chérie, show me your heavenly body.”

I didn’t, as Aunt Bonnie would say, dignify his comment with a response. But Nathan yelled, “Come on, Asconti, show her yours!” Dave put his hand to the top of his pants and called, “Chérie, want to see my moon?” Anything to stay in with the boys.

“Sure, yours and your brother’s,” I said.

“Hey, Joanie Buczko wants to see his brother’s!” Nathan’s voice followed me up the steps.

“No, she wants to see yours!” Ziggy howled.

Why would Aunt Bonnie want all of them there today? Her car wasn’t even there, just a note on the door that Dave hadn’t bothered taking down. He probably hadn’t even read it. At least he would know she wasn’t gone for good, too. Or was she? I wouldn’t blame her, leaving the two of them behind. As soon as I thought that, I was sorry. She
never
would leave them behind. For Dave’s sake. Pete was old enough to take care of himself, and he was horrible anyway. But Dave? My friend Dave? My enemy Dave?

I grabbed the stack of papers off the porch and slammed them on the kitchen counter, began folding and banging them facedown.

“Quiet, Chérie!” came Mom’s voice from the dining room.

Aimée came into the kitchen and watched me. “What are you so mad about?”

“Nothing!” I picked up the stack of papers and carried
them to my bike baskets, parceled them out so there were equal amounts on each side. Aimée came out to the driveway. She stood over her bike and kicked at the training wheels.

“You’re mad,” she said. “I can tell.” She said it in the same tone that she’d say, “I’m going to tell,” as if she knew a bad secret about me.

“Em?” I said, suddenly understanding her. “Want to come with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Mom!” I yelled. “I’m taking Aimée.” I took off before she had time to stop me or tell me to quit yelling.

Aimée squeezed her feet into the baskets next to the papers, and her hands gripped my shirt just above my behind.

“Aimée?” I said over my shoulder. “I want you to watch me ride this bike. And I want you to listen.”

I told her about holding the handlebars steady, about keeping your head up, about pointing your toes frontward. I told her you didn’t have to worry about balancing or what the wheels were doing as long as you kept on pedaling and kept the handlebars straight. I showed her how to lean over on a curve. I made her watch me put my foot down when I stopped.

“When you think you’re prepared, Em, we’ll take off your training wheels.”

Behind me, she started to sniffle.

I stopped the bike. “When you feel
ready,
Em. It’s your call. Okay? Up to you.” I helped her blow her nose. We went home.

On Tuesday after school I didn’t go home on time, and I didn’t call to say I’d be late. I walked from school to Lou
the barber and got my braids cut off. I figured Mom would have a coronary if I brought them home in a box like in the movies, so I left them on the barbershop floor and pretended it didn’t matter, tossing my incredibly light head.

I walked along looking at my reflection in the windows of the stores. I wasn’t sure it was me. But after a few windows I realized that I liked my new replacement head. My hair curled around my ears and felt feathery on my forehead. Cherry Square had the last windows downtown, and I took an extra-long look. I smiled at myself.

Mom cried, so then Aimée had to cry, too. But later, when I was going to bed, I opened the door to her room and went in to look in her big mirror. Aimée was in her bed reading
Harriet the Spy.
It was a pretty hard book for an eight-year-old, but Dave had given it to her, and she’d read anything if he said to. I stood and looked at my hair.

“Don’t you like the way the light shines on the blondest parts?” I asked my sister.

“You’re crazy,” Aimée said.

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you think my hair would look good with earrings?”

“What
earrings?”

“Pierced earrings. Orange ones.”

Aimée snorted, sounding like Aunt Bonnie. “You’ve already got a hole in your head,” she said. “Now get
out
of my room.”

“It won’t be your room for long,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. It was as if I were throwing my whole self away. “Some other kid will be sleeping here soon.” That would do it. She’d burst into hysterical crying, and Mom would get
really
mad. She’d come running up here, and Freddy would start crying, too, and Dad would yell, and nothing would be calm until Aimée was comforted.