Criss Cross (12 page)

She was going to have to take her chances on actual people in trains with actual trees going by because the other stuff, the guy who gets younger because time is moving sideways next to his train, which science teachers seemed to feel was so exciting, made her feel like there was no ground beneath her feet. It gave her the creeps.

Patty wondered if her aversion to these ideas would relegate her to a job pouring coffee at a diner in The Future. She hoped the diner would be on earth. She hoped the coffee would be real. And the cups. And how soon was all of this going to really kick in? She glanced over her shoulder at her room to make sure that it hadn’t reconfigured itself while her back was turned. She went downstairs and called Debbie on the phone, letting their conversation block out any thoughts about the expanding and compacting molecules that were simulating Debbie’s voice in her ear.

The grass was still wet from the rain that had fallen earlier in the day, but the twilight sky was clearing and, in the west, an evening star hung a few inches above a deep pink and orange fringe, tail end of the sunset. Russell’s sneakers were getting soaked. He lifted the lid, dropped the garbage in, and pressed the lid back on firmly to keep the raccoons from getting into it. He saw that a Styrofoam cup had fallen outside the can and, when he bent to pick it up, something else caught his eye.

It was some sort of a necklace, a slender chain with flat gold letters linked together in the middle of it. He thought it was probably something belonging to his little sister, Annette, but when he held it up in the fading light, the letters seemed to spell
Debbie.
He took it into the house, into the bright light of the kitchen. It still spelled
Debbie.
There was a tiny red gemstone dotting the I.

Russell wondered what the necklace was doing in his backyard, how it had gotten there, and which Debbie it belonged to. There were a lot of Debbies. Three that he knew of; probably there were even more. He pictured himself going around to all the Debbies, asking them if this was their necklace. “I found this in my backyard, is it yours?” He didn’t want to do it. He decided he would turn it in to Lost and Found at school, and he put it in the pocket of his jacket, hanging in the hall closet. Where it stayed for a while, because the next day was sunny and warm.

But back in the evening before the sunny day, Phil was shooting baskets. He had finished his homework at school. Lenny heard the ball bouncing on cement and boinging on the backboard, and went over. He sat on the low wall in Phil’s backyard while Phil kept shooting. Sometimes one or the other of them would say something, not saying much, but with the feeling of talking that is a good prelude for going home and going to bed.

A while later, when he finally did slip into his bed, Lenny felt a weight on his feet. Oops, he thought. He reached down and dropped his unopened school books onto the floor. As he fell asleep, he heard the muffled thunk of heavy objects settling into new positions down in the basement.

T
hree or four stars were visible in the opalescent dome of the sky, which was light and diaphanous to the west, a deepening delphinium blue to the east. The air was as warm as bathwater. Across the street, strings of lightbulbs illuminated rows of shiny used cars and a yellow sign with red letters that read

Debbie couldn’t look at the sign without saying it aloud in her head and trying to make it come out right. She and Patty were eating hot fudge sundaes from plastic boats with plastic spoons. They sat balanced on the back of a bench with their feet on the seat, watching people come and go at the Tastee-Freez. Light, spotty currents of east and westbound traffic shoop-shooped past, one way and the other.

Frank’s Featured Cream Puff of the Week was a light blue Mustang convertible, a coupe. It reminded Patty of Nancy Drew, who she hadn’t thought about for years.

“Did you ever notice,” she said, “that everything good or interesting happens to Nancy Drew, and her friends just get the leftovers? If there’s a statue or a painting or a lookalike person, it always looks like Nancy. It never looks like Bess or George.”

“And they never mention Bess without saying that she’s ‘pleasingly plump,’ or George without saying that she’s boyish and athletic and has short hair,” said Debbie. “Just so you don’t forget that

Nancy is the beautiful one with the perfect figure and the ‘titian’ hair.”

“What I want to know is, where does she find time to learn how to do so many things? You never see her practicing. If there’s something she doesn’t already know how to do, she’s good at it right away. It’s always harder for Bess and George.”

“I’d like to read a book about Bess and George solving a crime while Nancy is in the hospital with a broken leg.”

“Or off on a ski weekend with Ned.”

“She’s good at skiing.”

“She’s really, really good. She could probably be in the Olympics. Maybe she breaks her leg, though. An evil criminal rams her into a tree on the ski slope. And Bess and George solve the mystery without her.”

“Ned could help.”

“Maybe Hannah Gruen could still be in the story. She makes really good food.”

“She could help, too. They could all help. And they would find out that Nancy isn’t the only one who can do things.”

“Meanwhile, in her hospital bed, in traction, Nancy is studying marine biology. And Norwegian.”

“And brain surgery.”

“Have you ever noticed how many evil criminals use River Heights for their headquarters?”

“I know. It sounds like a scary place. I would be afraid to leave the house.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t be afraid if you had a light blue coupe.”

A bobbing group of people rose into view. Their heads appeared first as they came up over the rise, then their shoulders and torsos, followed by their guitar cases, legs, and feet. There were eight or nine of them, traveling on foot, as a group. Debbie and Patty held their empty plastic boats and watched as the strolling guitarists set their cases down around a picnic table, then lined up at the two windows to order.

Hector was there. They were both about to call out to him and wave, but something stopped them. Their half-parted lips opened no farther, and their half-raised hands fell back to their laps.

He was talking to a girl, a girl neither of them had seen before. Talking to her from her other side was Dan Persik. Dan, the handsome. The girl was pretty in a way that made Debbie feel the hopelessness of both Hector’s cause—because it was clear he was interested in her—and her own. Because it was clear that Dan was interested in her, too. She was petite and rounded and tan. She had an unruly mass of chestnut hair, pulled back in a loose bundle. She had large, dark eyes rimmed with long lashes. And dimples. She even had dimples.

She wore, along with cutoffs and a T-shirt, red platform sandals and an ankle bracelet. Debbie looked down at her own footwear: a pair of beat-up sneakers.

Also in Hector’s subgroup was a second girl, who was a little older. Sixteen or seventeen. She accompanied them with the friendly, disinterested air of a baby-sitter.

Presently there came the sounds of guitar cases unsnapping and the bonking of guitars being removed, random bumpings of strings blooming from the acoustic wooden shells, followed by a brief jangly tuning, and Debbie’s and Patty’s attention was drawn to the other subgroup. Russell Kebbesward was in this group, sitting on a picnic table bench with two older people. Mr. Schimpf and a lady with white hair and half-moon glasses. Their leader was a young, frizzy-haired minister. You could tell he was a minister because he wore a short-sleeved black shirt with one of those collars. He stood with one foot up on a bench, his guitar hanging from his shoulder by means of a colorful embroidered strap.

The four of them began singing “Edelweiss,” from the movie
The Sound of Music.
The minister sang the chord changes in between the words. His voice was froglike, yet sonorous.

“Have you ever noticed how much Seldem is like Austria?” murmured Patty.

A car rolled by on the street, the subwoofers of its sound system thumping like a giant heart.

“I think the guys in that car were Austrian,” said Debbie.

“No, really,” said Patty. “With the mountains and everything.”

Hector’s subgroup had been delayed in getting their cones by some other customers who wandered in front of them, but now three of his group sat at a picnic table near the singers, licking their cones. Hector alone remained at the window, pinning his wallet to the counter with the elbow of his cone-holding hand while with his other hand he tried to work the change back inside.

He had wanted to treat Meadow, but he hadn’t been able to figure out how to do it without also treating Dan Persik and Meadow’s cousin Robin. He didn’t mind paying for Robin’s cone, but he couldn’t quite believe he had funded Dan Persik, who was now seated in a favorable position next to Meadow.

The whole thing was going wrong. Starting with when he invited Meadow to go for ice cream and Pastor Don overheard him. Pastor Don took it for a general invitation and broadcast it to the whole class. Everyone thought it was a great idea. Walking over, Dan Persik had proved himself expert at sidewalk maneuvering, and Hector conceded to himself that maybe football training might have practical applications after all. Now this. He wished Rowanne were here to tell him what to do.

Debbie and Patty sat for a few minutes more, each with a wadded-up paper napkin held loosely in her hand. Then they stood, tossing the crumpled napkins, the plastic boats, and spoons lightly into the trash basket as they passed. They caught Hector’s eye and gave a little wave, and they heard the frizzy minister say they ought to do this every week.

Russell K. saw them toss their napkins, so lightly and easily, into the basket. They didn’t even stop walking to do it. He thought that looked so graceful. He admired it the way you admire a waterfall or a sunset, or how someone plays a piece of music.

He closed his guitar case and reached for the jacket his mother had insisted he bring along, even though it was practically summer (“It’s going to be chilly later.”). He picked it up at the collar by two fingers and twirled it around, over one shoulder, in what he thought might be a similarly graceful move. But he hadn’t properly gauged his distance from his classmates and the twirling jacket knocked Mary’s glasses right off her face. She wasn’t angry, or hurt, but she did cry out in surprise, and then there was the searching for one of the lenses, which had popped out, and no one, or almost no one, noticed the contents of the jacket pockets sailing through the air.

A wrapped stick of gum flew straight up and fell uneventfully down.

Some loose change arrived at a variety of locations, with a variety of semi-musical pings.

A cigarette lighter Russell had found somersaulted to the edge of the pavement, where it fell in with a crowd of other lost cigarette lighters and some black plastic combs.

And a necklace hurled itself toward the picnic bench where Hector was talking to Meadow, trying to make up for lost time. But it was Dan Persik who saw it land. He reached down and picked it up. He wondered why Russell was carrying around a necklace that said
Debbie.
Maybe that was his little sister’s name. There were a lot of Debbies. There was, for instance, Debbie Pelbry, who had been at the Tastee-Freez a few minutes ago, whose locker was next to his. Who had, he was pretty sure, a crush on him. He could make her blush just by looking at her. It was kind of fun. Thinking maybe he could have some fun with this necklace, he put it in his pocket.

W
hen the idea came to Debbie that she needed a room of her own, and she was talking her parents into letting her have “the spare room,” an alcove off the living room that barely qualified as its own room, because it was the only other room there was, they pointed out how small it was. They pointed out that there was no door between the little room and the living room, just an arched opening in the wall. And they pointed out that the piano had to stay in there, because there was nowhere else for it to go.

Debbie, focused on her vision, said that was all okay; she didn’t mind. So her mother made a drape and hung it from a rod inside the room, and they moved Debbie’s bed and desk downstairs from the room she had always shared with Chrisanne.

She didn’t admit to anyone that once all the furniture was in there, the room felt smaller than she had thought it would. It was only slightly more spacious than a storage locker, which it resembled, furniture arrangement-wise. Everything was right up against everything else. There was a small empty space in the center of the room where Debbie could stand up or sit down. Sitting down had to be done with crossed legs, or at least with bent knees.

Still, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, or on her bed, she felt she had found something. A sanctuary, though she didn’t know from what. A secret entryway. To go where? She didn’t know that, either.