Bat Summer (3 page)

Lucy figures out a way to get it to do tricks by tugging on the line. When it swoops, Lucy swoops with it. The kite zigs and she zags. It's like Lucy and the kite are dancing. She teases it so it looks like it's about to nose-dive straight onto the bridge over the ravine and die under the wheels of some car.

Rico jumps to his feet and yells, “Timber! She's coming down.”

“Don't say that!” screams Lucy. She seems really angry all of a sudden. I swear I see tears in her eyes. She tugs at the line furiously with this scrunched, mad look on her face.

At the last possible second, the kite sweeps up into the air and makes me gasp with how much it wants to go up and away. Lucy looks relieved. I watch a smile crawl back to her face. She looks so different when she smiles. Most of the time she looks kind of cross.

I wonder if Lucy's bat nature means she knows about flying. I wonder if her soul leaves her body at night and flies around as a bat like she said. Could be true. You never know.

“What's it like to be a bat?” I ask her.

I can feel my heart knocking against the back of my throat. I didn't mean to ask her straight out like that. I've been thinking more about what it would be like to be something else instead of me. Like Lucy is a bat. She said it was something that chose her. I
want to know if it was in a dream or what. I have twice flown in dreams, but I have never been anyone else but me in one.

Just once, I'd like to be someone or something else. Just for a day, or an hour, or a minute.

I used to think I wanted to be Tom, but now I think — and I know it's crazy — I'd rather be a bat. Something that escapes into the night sky like a kite that snaps off its line as the sun's going down. Something that flies, almost invisibly, through dark and quiet air.

She looks at me and then up at the kite. Maybe she didn't hear me. It's a private thing, wanting to be something else. I don't have any business asking about Lucy's batdom. I'm almost relieved she didn't hear me.

“I see things upside-down,” she says. I barely hear her say it. It's like she's telling it to the kite spool. She's usually loud, louder than Tom even. Not now.

I take a step closer. She's still got her bat cape around the kite line.

“Upside-down? How do you mean?” I want to know now.

“It's like I know things are supposed to look one way, but I keep seeing them the exact opposite. Bats sleep upside-down all day long. Me, too. And when I close my eyes at night and just listen… that's when
I'm most awake. That's when I know exactly what's what.”

“When you're dreaming?”

“No. Before sleep. Like when my mom gets home and before my dad goes to work — he works the night shift at the bakery. They don't talk, but you can tell what's going on. You can listen to the spaces.”

“I don't get it.” That's what I say, but the second after I say it I
do
get it. It's like those gaps I keep noticing.

“Never mind,” she says. “Forget it.” She shoots a look at Rico to make sure he's not listening. The guy's busy rolling up the sleeves of his T-shirt.

“I think I know what you mean,” I say. I want to get it in before Rico gets tired of checking out his tan. “It's like when people say they're fine, but you can tell they aren't. It's like the way people smile at you when they want you to get out of their way. Right? Like when you feel like something is supposed to be happening, but something else happens instead.”

Like when your mom says she'll take you to a movie on Tuesday night but your cousin comes to pick you up instead, and you aren't supposed to say anything about it because you're getting to see the movie, aren't you? Like when you make a point of asking about summer camp and then school's out and you find yourself not at camp but flying handmade
Santa Claus kites with Rico the spit-boy and a bat in a ravine,

“Yeah. Almost,” she says. “You know anything about bats?”

“A little.”

“I have a book. I'll bring it tomorrow.” She hands me the spool. “Here. My hands hurt. Bats use their wings to hold things and scoop things. But we have to be careful not to get holes in our wings.”

We work it so that her bat cape is tied to the line to protect my hands. I am very careful with the cape. I don't know what Lucy would do if it got a hole in it.

She has to have her back to the kite to make it work. The cape pulls straight up the line as the kite flies even higher.

“Wheeeee,” Lucy sings. “I'm flying now. I knew this cape was good for something.” Which is funny, because I was just thinking that.

“That is the dorkiest thing I've ever seen. You are one twisted loser,” Rico says. He stares at us, shakes his head and throws up his arms, but I can tell he wishes he were on the end of the line watching Lucy's cape bubble in the breeze.

Like I said, these weirdos sure come up with some good stuff sometimes.

No way would Tom get this in a million years.

I'm late going to the park the next day because of Elys. Turns out my mom was having a sleepover date with Farley, so Elys stayed to take care of me, only she didn't do so good a job because she slept in.

She should get up on time at least.

“It's not like you have anything better to do,” I tell her.

“Thanks for reminding me, kid.”

“You have one thing to do all day and you can't even do that.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who cares? I don't remember signing on as your alarm clock, Terence. I'm doing your mom a favor, okay? Don't give me any grief.”

“You're not even dressed yet.”

“That's
my
business.” She takes a sip of coffee and looks at me. Her eyes look like little black marbles when she doesn't have her glasses on. “Didn't you say you had somewhere to be?”

“If I miss kite-flying today, I'm sticking cheese slices in your slippers tomorrow,” I yell and slam the door behind me.

When I finally get to Wells Hill Park, Lucy is swinging on one of the baby swings, sitting on top of the cross
bar. She's way up there where the chains start to go slack. Her bat cape billows out behind her. You can't go much higher than Lucy is right now.

Now that I'm here, I feel strange about yesterday. I don't see the kite anywhere and, for some reason, I can't quite look at Lucy straight. It makes my heart go all funny.

I see Rico hanging out with Boobacious by the wading pool. I think I'll go join them.

I'm careful not to look at Lucy. It's like, if I don't see her, she won't see me. I map out a route through the playground that takes me past the swings, but not right toward them.

I can't really be friends with a weirdo like Lucy anyway. Yesterday was just a freak thing. If Tom ever found out, man, I'd never hear the end of it. Tom's my real friend. If he were here, we'd be playing frisbee with Steel. Tom always knows what to do, and I just do what he does. Tom says that's because I'm easy-going. I think it's because I'm clueless.

I'm halfway across the playground when I see Lucy heave herself off the moving swing. She lands right smack beside me.

“Holy,” I say. I still can't look at her.

“Bats are the only mammals that fly,” she says. She looks me straight in the eye and I want to look away but I can't. I remember seeing in this vampire movie how the vampire mesmerized his victims
with his eyes before sucking their blood.

“Are you a vampire?” I ask.

“Are you whacked in the head?” she says. “There's no such thing as vampires. Don't talk crazy talk.”

What do you do when a human girl bat tells you not to talk crazy talk?

“I guess that means the chess guy isn't a vampire pervert then.” She hauls back and socks me in the arm. It hurts something fierce, and I feel my eyes tearing up. I have to tilt my head back a little to keep them from falling out.

“Ow.” I say it sarcastically, though I'm blinking back tears. I rub my arm. She left a mark.

“You can't talk that way about my friend. You don't even know him. Friends stick up for friends, but I guess you don't care about loyalty. You walked right past me like I wasn't even here. You should treat your friends with respect, Terence. You're supposed to be smart.”

How would she know that? She was in a class way at the other end of the school last year. She was in the cootie class with the dumbheads and the problem kids.

“I don't respect violence,” I tell Lucy. I wonder why she was in the cootie class, because she isn't a dumbhead. Must be the outfit.

“No? What do you respect?” She's turning on me again. “Huh? Lifeguards with big boobs?”

I can feel my face flush, I'm dying, I don't, even know what to say, I'm so dead. I decide to keep to the original plan of heading for the wading pool. There's a water fountain there. I am suddenly so thirsty.

I get to the water fountain and gulp down a river. The water is so cold I can feel it going all the way down into my stomach and freezing up my insides.

Lucy's eyes slowly come into view on the other side of the drinking fountain. She has multi-colored magic marker squiggles fanning out from the corners of her eyes, like a cat.

“Sorry,” she says. She looks over at Rico and Boobacious. Rico's resting back on his hands, trying to look casual. “I know what you guys call her. But it's really none of my business if you want to act like jerks.” She stands up to full red-asparagus height and sticks out her hand. She wants me to shake it.

“I shouldn't have hit you,” Lucy says. “Bats don't hit.” Her hand is still out there waiting for me to do something with it.

“Or draw blood?” I say.

“Or draw blood…at least the kind of bat I am doesn't. I'm a brown bat. A microbat. We echolate. We eat mosquitos. I guess some mosquitos have blood in them, but it's not the blood we're after.”

I wonder if Lucy has ever really eaten a mosquito.

I take Lucy's hand and shake it. She's got a handshake that means business. I can't help noticing she bites her nails. Me, too. It's hard to explain the satisfaction of nail-biting to anyone who doesn't indulge. It's like a secret club that lots of people belong to, adults included, but nobody ever says anything about it. Nail-biters notice other nail-biters. We know about each other's secret life of click-click chew. It's not a proud thing, but it is a bonding thing.

Tom doesn't bite his nails. I don't hold it against him. In fact, Lucy is the only friend I have who bites his nails. I mean, her nails.

“I brought that book,” she says and starts walking toward the picnic table under the big tree by the sandbox where the chess-playing pervert sits. He's in the middle of a game with a black man who is wearing a blue suit blazer even though his shirt is undone underneath. I'm afraid to follow Lucy because it means hanging with these guys.

“Wait,” I say. Lucy doesn't hear me. She turns around and waves for me to come. I look over at Rico, but he's busy telling some story to Boobacious, who looks totally bored. I have no choice but to follow Lucy.

As we get close to the table, the black guy holds one hand up and another to his lips. The guy with the white hair nods at Lucy but doesn't smile. I hear
something ticking. They're playing with a clock.

Lucy squats down and puts her elbows on the table. I can see her eyes bobbing over the chess pieces.

All I know about chess is that the bigger the piece is, the more powerful it seems to be.

The black guy shifts a pointy-headed piece diagonally across the board, picks off a pawn (I know a pawn when I see one), and slams his hand down on the clock.

“Exposed horse,” Lucy says. The white-haired guy nods.

“I didn't see that,” the black man says. “I should have seen that. Luscious, you have got to stay here and help me out.”

“Can't stay, gotta go,” says Lucy.

“People to see, things to do?” the white-haired man says. He doesn't even look up from the board.

“Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend, Luscious?” the black guy says. The white-haired man looks at me for the first time. He does something to the clock so that it doesn't tick anymore.

“This is Terence.” Lucy flicks her thumb at me. I don't know if I should try to shake their hands, or what. I half lift my hand to see if that's what is supposed to happen. When they don't do anything, I just sort of wave it across my chest.

“Hi,” I say. Lucy is digging for something in her knapsack under the picnic table. The men are checking me out.

“Is he a bat, too?” the white-haired man asks. He's looking out over these huge glasses of his. If it weren't daytime, I would think he was a vampire for sure.

“Yeah, you check him out? What does his father do?” says the black guy.

“Does he have a cool car?” says the white-haired man.

“Does he treat you good?” says the black guy.

“Is he worthy?” says the white-haired chessman.

“I don't know. Yes. I don't know. No. Yes. I don't know.” Lucy counts off her answers on her fingers. I lose track. “Terence, this is Russell,” she says, pointing to the white-haired man. “And this is Martin. Martin plays chess at lunch on Fridays because no one buys insurance on Fridays because Fridays make people feel invincible. And Russell has nothing better to do.” Just like Elys, I think.

“I resent that,” says Russell. “There is nothing better to do than play chess. Martin, can you think of anything better than playing chess?”

“Only one thing I can think of,” says Martin. He winks at Russell, then turns to Lucy “And that's being a bat.” He starts making this beeping sound
and waving his arms around. Lucy pushes on his arm, but ends up going up and down with it as Martin keeps waving. We all start laughing. Then Lucy leans over the table and bangs the clock. It starts ticking again.