Bat Summer (4 page)

“Keep your eye on the horse,” Lucy tells Martin.

“Knight, Lucy. It's a knight,” Russell says.

“I just call 'em like I see 'em,” says Lucy.

“And she does see 'em,” Martin says, shaking his head. “See you later, Luscious. Nice to meet you, Terence.” I give another little wave as we leave the table. Russell doesn't even look up. It's like when that clock is on, there's no world beyond that chess board.

Lucy sits down on one of the benches on the other side of the tree and pats the spot beside her. Guys don't do stuff like pat the seat beside them. It's an unwritten rule. I keep forgetting Lucy's not a guy. Not that she looks like a guy. I just don't feel like I'm hanging around with a girl when I'm with her. I know I felt strange about her this morning, but that had more to do with her being a weirdo than with her being a girl.

“You play chess?” I say. “It looks pretty complicated.”

“No big deal,” she says. “I'll show you sometime. You only have to know two things to play chess: one, you have to know how all the pieces move, and, two, you have to kill the king to win.”

“What's the horse?”

“I told you, I'll show you another time. You can't explain it without the board. Now, did I lug this thing all the way over here for nothing?”

I'm not really all that interested in the bat book. I wonder what Lucy did with the kite. I want to go kite-flying again so we can talk some more while we fly the kite. I want to know what Lucy hears at night, and if it's anything like what I hear. The sound of my mom's key in the lock when she comes home after midnight, the quiet of everything else in the house against the chug of traffic out on Bathurst Street.

Lucy flips the book open. There is a picture of a bat with its wings spread out. Its ears are gigantic and its nose looks like someone hit it in the face with a shovel.

“Our fingers make up the bones in the wing,” says Lucy. “The wing is actually a membrane that covers all the fingers except the thumb. We use the thumb for climbing. The membrane is so thin, it's almost translucent. Like when you hold a sheet up to the light and you can see through it. You can see our bones right through the wings.”

We? I know Lucy thinks she's a bat. But does she really think she's got a bat body? I look her straight in the eye to see if she's on the level. She looks at me, but then turns back to the book.

“Bats have difficulty walking because our legs are
too weak to support the weight of our bodies.”

“What do you mean?” I say.

“You heard me, Terence. We can hardly walk from being too heavy for our little feet.”

“You mean
real
bats can hardly walk,” I say. She slams the book shut.

“I told you. I
am
a bat.” She closes her eyes. “You still don't get it, do you? I thought you got it.” I want to talk about gaps, so I give.

“I get it. I get it. You see the world upside-down. You have trouble walking because you're too heavy for your feet.” And then this flash goes off in my head. I know about being too heavy, the same way I know about hearing gaps.

I start talking quickly. “It's like that for me some mornings. On the weekend, when there's absolutely nothing to do, and I can't sleep in no matter how hard I try. I feel like I'm a million pounds getting out of bed. I can hardly make it to the couch before I have to keel over again. I can hardly carry myself to the fridge.” I can't believe I'm telling her this. The thing is, I know she understands. Tom might understand if you explained it to him for an hour. Rico would never get it.

I look up at Lucy. She's boring a hole right through me with her laser eyes.

“You might be a bat,” she says. “I'm not sure. We'll have to do some more checking.” She looks at me
with those piercing eyes and it's like she's trying to see my bones.

“What kind of checking?” I know it's crazy, but as soon as she says it, I want more than anything to be a bat. I want to belong to batdom. I want my wings, man. I want to fly.

“I don't know,” says Lucy. “I
know
I'm a bat. It's like knowing how to chew. You don't think about it, you just do it. I just am a bat.”

“But you weren't always one, were you? You said it was something that chose you. How did you know?”

I want to be chosen by bats. I want to be a bat like Lucy.

“You know, we didn't always live in an apartment,” she says. “I used to live in a house. I miss it. But anyway…in our old house on the Escarpment we had bats in our attic. My parents didn't know about them for a long time. Not until…” She stops for a moment. “I could hear them through my closet. I could hear them come home in the early morning. I woke up just to hear them come in. The trap door to the attic was in my closet, but the door to it was missing, and I could see straight up through to the rafters. One day, I piled a bunch of old telephone books in my closet and got up there. The bats were roosting in the corner, all huddled up together to keep warm, all hanging upside-down. They were no
bigger than my hand. I went tip to visit them every day. I had to be very quiet so that I wouldn't disturb the other bats. For a long time, my parents and Daphne never knew. For a long time they thought I was normal.”

She looks at me to see if I'm paying attention. She picks at a piece of paint on the bench, which is a challenge when you don't have any fingernails. I start picking at the bench, too.

“I liked it up there. It was dark, and nobody knew where I was. I found some old rope and I used it to make a slip knot. You know, like a noose. I tied it to one of the rafters near the corner where the bats slept. I got a stool from the kitchen and slipped my feet through the knot, then I let myself go. I hung upside-down like that a few times. The rope burned my ankles, and Mom asked about the stains on my socks.”

I get a really good chip of paint off the bench and hold it up for Lucy's approval. She nods. “Anyway, the point is I didn't do it because I enjoyed it. I did it because I had to do it. It felt like I was falling, swinging upside-down like that. I had to know what it was like to feel like I was falling. Like Timber.”

She stops again suddenly. I remember how she got upset when Rico yelled “Timber” the other day.

I don't know what to say. I keep picking at the paint on the bench. I wonder what it would feel like
to hang loose from the ceiling. I never even thought of doing anything like that. All this time I've been watching crappy television shows I could have been hanging upside-down instead.

I want to say how cool it is to think of doing something like that, but the words don't come out of my mouth. I wonder if Tom would think it's cool to hang upside-down.

“What did you do with your hands when you were hanging upside-down?” I ask.

“I tied the cape around my waist and sort of let them hang folded up. Here, I'll show you.” Lucy walks over to the set of monkey bars that looks like a big blue planet. She climbs almost to the top and lets herself hang upside-down. Her spiky hair fans out around her head. She takes the ends of her cape and ties them tightly around her waist. She folds her arms up into the sheet and sort of shimmies the corners of the opening over her elbows, so that she's all tucked in. She closes her eyes and lets herself go limp.

“Cool,” I say. I expect Lucy to jump down, but she doesn't. “All right, I see how it works.” I say. She doesn't respond. It's like she plans to hang there all day. “Lucy?” I begin to walk backwards. Maybe she'll think I've left and give it up.

No such luck. Rico comes blazing into the playground on his bike. He slams his brakes and skids
right up beside me. I try to make like I'm just being casual, but it's too late. He's already seen Lucy.

“Hey, what's with Loser?” Rico asks. I shrug. “Is she doing some escape-artist routine or something?” He yells this right at the monkey bars.

Rico ditches his bike and climbs up the outside of the planet. He perches at the top. He looks at me and waggles his eyebrows.

Oh, no.

He grabs Lucy's ankles and unhooks them so it's only him holding her up. I see her eyelids flutter but she doesn't open them.

“Got you now, Loser,” he calls down to her. “Wakey, wakey. It's time to die.” He doesn't seem to have a really good hold of her legs. Her head is coming close to banging against the bars. Her face is perfectly calm.

I'm mentally begging Lucy to smarten up and quick. But her face is empty. She looks more peaceful than before Rico showed up.

“You're getting heavy, Loser. I can't hold on much longer.” Rico has his teasing voice on but I can tell he really is having trouble holding on to Lucy's feet. Plus, he's grunting. He's not balanced properly on top there.

I feel my heart pounding. I remember what Lucy said about loyalty. Does that mean trusting a friend not to let some goof drop her on her head?

“Come on, Lucy,” I say. “He really is losing it.” Rico loses his grip on her legs for a second and Lucy falls an inch. Her face shows no fear. It is like she is in some kind of trance.

“It's wake-up time, Loser,” Rico grunts again. You can hear the effort in his voice. “Better grab onto something or you're going to smash down on your head.”

I run over and start climbing through the bars. Rico loses it before I can get to Lucy, and the best I can do is stick my feet out under her head before she falls straight down on it. Only she doesn't. She has somehow managed to hook one of her feet around the pole so that her head hangs about four inches off the ground. She opens one eye, grins at me and closes it again.

“The hind feet of a bat are incredibly strong. They've even found dead bats in caves, still hanging upside-down,” she says.

“I thought you were a dead bat,” I say. I look up through the bars at Rico. He's trying to figure out what happened to save him from being a murderer.

“Some Losers just won't die,” he says and jumps off the top of the monkey bars and lands rolling in the dust. “Come on, Terence.”

“Come on where?” I say. Lucy is still hanging from the bars. She's got her eyes shut again. How long will she keep this up?

“Come on, already,” Rico says. “I've got something to show you.” I look at Lucy for some sign of life. “You don't want to hang with that Loser, do you?” Still, Lucy does nothing. “She's not your girlfriend, is she?”

No, no. I guess she's not. And I guess we aren't flying the kite today, either.

Rico takes me out of the park. I feel nervous about leaving Lucy. We wander up to St. Clair. We can't move too fast because Rico is walking his bike. The farther away we get, the less it seems to matter that some kooky girl bat has been left hanging in the park.

“She forgot to lock the garage today,” Rico says as we turn down Vaughan Road.

“What? Who?”

“My neighbor. I can get my stuff. You got a bag or something?”

“No,” I say. “What do we need a bag for?”

“Never mind. I bet she has one in the garage somewhere. In my house there's no such thing as privacy. I have to share a room with my older brother. He's always blabbing on the phone with girls. It's pathetic. If you go in the living room, my sister's there with my mother and my aunt and you can't even watch TV because they tell you to turn it down all the time so you can't even hear what you're trying to watch.

“And Mom goes through my room,” Rico goes on. “Right while I'm standing there, she goes through my room. Can't even take a dump without someone
knocking on the door asking what's taking so long. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I've known Rico for, like, five years. He's a grade ahead of me, so we don't hang out much. Still, I can't believe he doesn't remember anything I tell him.

“I have a cousin, but she doesn't live with us. And I don't have any pets and my mother doesn't go through my room. I can't remember the last time my mother even opened my door. We have two bathrooms and I could take all day to take a dump if I wanted. I could shit my heart out.” Rico looks at me like I exist for a second. I don't think he's ever heard me swear before.

I swear sometimes. A lot of guys swear just to look tough and stuff. I like how Lucy called Rico a Moran. Now that was a good put-down. He didn't even know what hit him. I
will
say shit when I mean shit, though. Especially if what I'm talking about is shit.

We go down the alley behind Rico's house. He locks his bike to the back fence and motions for me to duck down. Nobody is around, but I do it anyway. We get to his neighbor's garage and sure enough it's not fully locked.

Rico lifts the door slowly. It sounds like a screaming kitten as it opens up. It squeaks so loud I can't help laughing at the look on Rico's face. He looks like the cops are going to spring out of the bushes
and shoot him for opening a garage door. He won't lift it any higher. He shoos me in under this half-foot crack under the door.

It smells cold in here. It feels like being in a cave. I think of Lucy again and look up at the ceiling. A canoe is balanced over the rafters.

This would be better if Tom were here. He'd probably smack his hand against the canoe and knock it down.

Rico squirms on his belly like a trapped bug trying to get through the opening. He grunts and gasps. His butt won't fit under the door.

“Help me, dickhead,” he says. So I lean over and open the door more. It makes a huge squeaking sound, like nails on the blackboard. “Not like that, butthole.” He gets in and pushes me into a corner and puts his hand over my mouth. We stand like that for at least a couple of minutes. You'd think it was diamonds he had in here. I want to bite his hand, but I remember: brown bats don't draw blood.

Finally, he takes his hand off. “That was a close call,” he says. He goes to the corner of the garage and puts his hand down a pipe. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, some matches and a couple of magazines. Playboys. Oh, brother.