The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (11 page)

Jungle.

Like the backyard.

Until they reached the other side and she
stopped, gaping.

“Wow,” she said quietly.

A huge expanse of grass right in front of her,
tall evergreens on the far side; to the left a ballfield, and
beyond it a large white bandstand at the foot of a hill that sloped
gently upward to more trees on top. It was like the country in the
middle of a city, she thought; riding past it in the car had given
her no idea that it looked like this.

“Neat, huh?” Kitt said, grinning.

She nodded.

Drake leaned over, bat in both hands, and looked
at Kitt.

“You going to the pond?”

“The moon.”

“Suits me,” he said. “Just don’t leave without
me, okay? You do, I’ll pound you.”

“Oh boy, I’m — so scared.”

He looked at Fran, and suddenly smiled so
broadly she couldn’t help but smile back. “When you’re ready to go
home, lady, I’ll be right here, all right? Don’t let her talk you
into anything stupid.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Sure,” Kitt echoed sarcastically, and bolted
across the grass. “C’mon, Lumbaird, leave the creep to the
creeps!”

Fran ran.

Around people on sheets and blankets sunning
themselves, burning themselves, playing catch and slow tag and just
walking without having any real place to go; looking over once to
see Drake joining his friends, pushing and shoving and threatening
with the bat; looking to the right to the spear-tips of the fence
that rose above the shrubs and between the trees, but not being
able to see the village on the other side; breaking through the
evergreens behind Kitt, And stopping again.

“Damn,” she whispered.

The pond was a bloated L shape, its high banks
covered with pine needles, the water a darker blue than the sky.
Darker, almost black. A small rowboat anchored in the center, two
people in it beneath a large umbrella. Another world again, a world
within a world, and she wondered how many more surprises this place
had.

She followed Kitt along the lip of the bank
until they reached the far end. She knew Chancellor Avenue was out
there, but the greenery cut it off, smothered the traffic’s noise,
and smothered the heat as well, making her shiver as she ducked
under the branch of a multi-trunk elm and found herself in a small
glade whose grass had long since been trained to grow in ragged
patches amid patches of dark earth where violets grew low. High,
crisscrossed branches masked most of the sky, sliced the sun into
fragments that barely lit the ground. Not quite twilight, not quite
an autumn afternoon.

Elly was there, sitting primly on a folded
tartan blanket, and Susan with her dimples, and two others she
didn’t recognize. Kitt introduced them, but Fran couldn’t hold onto
their names right away, and maybe didn’t want to the way they
looked at her. Sideways, not straight on, checking her out,
measuring her. Not really friendly. City kid. She found a place to
sit-behind and to the right of Elly, on a root like the one where
she’d cried on the day she’d arrived.

There were no boys.

Elly crossed her legs, smoothed her skirt with
both hands, brushed her bangs carefully away from her eyes. “All
right,” she said, and the others quickly formed a ragged half
circle in front of her. One of them — Maddy? she couldn’t remember
glared at Fran until she deliberately looked away. She wasn’t about
to play this game until she knew the rules. All of them. And being
like some kind of servant to some kind of queen wasn’t what Daddy
would call her style.

Elly didn’t seem to mind.

The faint
crack
of bat and ball.

A duck calling to another, was answered, and
calling again. A bumblebee checking the flowers, Fran watching it
uneasily, praying it wouldn’t come near though she could hear it
buzzing loud and soft, loud and soft, swaying side to side in the
air and moving on, and buzzing.

Then Kitt said, “Fran hasn’t got a friend.”

Maddy — was it Maddy? Maggie? who cared, she was
fat and had frizzy hair — looked at her sorrowfully, and Fran felt
her temper tug a scowl into place. What was going on here? She had
a friend. Kitt was one. Maybe Elly, maybe Susan. That was three.
She had lots of friends back in Cambridge. Tons of them. What was
going on?

Elly nodded, and brushed at her skirt. “She’s
been here long enough, but does she want one?”

Kitt chewed on the end of a pigtail, lifted one
shoulder.

“Hey,” Fran said.

They all looked at her. Except Elly.

“I’m here, you know,” she said, pointing at her
chest “It’s not like I’m a ghost or anything. Why don’t you just
ask me?”

Elly swiveled around, smoothed her skirt,
brushed at her bangs. Smiled sweetly. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Want a friend.”

“I’ve got them.”

Maddy laughed, and cut herself off.

“What is this, some kind of club?” Fran shook
her head, not liking the way they were so serious. “Yon guys some
kind of club?” She looked at Kitt. “What?”

Kitt pulled the end of her pigtail out of her
mouth and plucked at the grass beside her. It wasn’t a club, she
said, not exactly. It was kind of like some of the kids hung out,
that’s all, and when one of them got in trouble, the others kind of
helped out, stuff like that. Homework, teachers, brothers, stuff
like that. Finding things that got lost, chipping in when you
couldn’t afford a new necklace or headband or wristband, stuff like
that. Sometimes, when you needed a friend, they kind of helped out
there too, checking the guy out, making sure he was all right,
wasn’t a creep, a dork, a scuzzbag, stuff like that. Sometimes you
couldn’t tell. Sometimes they smiled at you, said things to you,
you think maybe he likes you, but he really doesn’t, he just wants
to pretend like he’s something else, not just a kid with zits and
glop.

“A boyfriend?” Fran said, not believing what
she’d heard.

“You,” She laughed, but not aloud.

New kids didn’t know about the kids who already
lived here, Kitt went on. New kids sometimes got hurt when they
didn’t have to be hurt, didn’t have to cry themselves to sleep
every night, didn’t have to make a jackass of herself over some
jerk who couldn’t even remember her stupid telephone number. The
old kids helped the new kids. Stuff like that.

Fran didn’t know whether to laugh, get mad, tell
them they were nuts, tell them without knowing why she wanted to
that her parents had started to fight every night when they thought
she was asleep, could they help her with that with their stupid
little club? But she didn’t say anything. Because the expressions
they had weren’t hostile any longer, or uncaring, or suspicious;
they were patient. As if they had read her thoughts, or had had
them before themselves, and were just waiting for her to make up
her mind that things were really okay, there wasn’t anything she
had to worry about. Not here.

It almost made her cry.

“There’s this kid who came around once,” she
said at last, and shook her head. “Twice. I saw him at the carnival
too.”

They waited.

“Chip. He said his name is Chip.”

“Chip Clelland?” Elly said as if she hadn’t
heard the name correctly.

Fran nodded.

“You want him for a friend?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s nice, I guess.
Not a boyfriend. He doesn’t have to be a boyfriend, does he?”

“Hell, no,” said Maddy as she unwrapped a
chocolate bar, her offer to share untaken, “Besides, boys are dumb
shits anyway.”

Kitt and Susan giggled.

“Language,” Elly said softly.

Maddy stuck out her tongue.

“Mine,” a voice said then. Frail. Quiet; so
quiet it screamed.

Fran looked around, wondering who else had
joined them, and saw the fifth girl staring at her. Pale, scrawny,
her T-shirt baggy though it couldn’t get much smaller; her legs
were crossed, the flesh stretched so tightly across her knees, the
white of the bone showed through. Her elbows were the same.

Fran recognized her then — the girl on the
carousel, the one riding with, talking to, laughing with Chip.

“Mine,” she repeated, from behind limp bangs
that nearly covered her eyes.

Maddy snorted, jabbing an elbow into Susan’s
ribs; Susan slapped the arm away, but Fran saw that she was
grinning.

“We know that, Zera,” Elly snapped. “You don’t
have to keep telling us all the time.” She rolled her eyes, plucked
at her skirt. “The problem is —”

“Tell her,” Zera persisted. She looked at Fran
without expression. “Tell her.”

“Oh for god’s sake,” Maddy said, and squinted up
at the sky. “Look, we gonna be here all day or what? I’m going
shopping with my mom in Harley.”

“So go,” Susan said. Maddy didn’t move.

The bumblebee landed on the root between Fran’s
legs, and she watched it turning in a slow confused circle, almost
didn’t hear Elly tell her that Chip was Zera’s friend, and you
didn’t share friends, that’s not the way it worked, but if Fran
really wanted one they would see what they could do even if she was
new. Susan said it was too hot, that she was going to fry, that she
wanted to wade in the pond, and if all they were going to do was
sit around and bitch, then she was leaving.

“So go,” Maddy said with a smirk.

Susan didn’t move.

Fran looked up; they were watching her. Waiting.
When she glanced back at the root, the bee was gone.

“Well?” Elly asked impatiently.

“Well what?” Fran pushed herself to her feet,
dusted off her backside. This was no fun, no fun at all; if she’d
wanted to listen to people talk like this, she could’ve stayed
home.

“Do you want one or not?”

It was almost a command.

Fran bridled. “If I want a friend, I’ll get my
own, okay?” She shook her head. “You guys are nuts, you know
that?”

A quick disgusted wave to Kitt, and she walked
around the tree, into the bushes. Angry at herself for getting
angry at something so stupid. Angry at them for as much as telling
her she couldn’t see Chip because he was Zera’s friend. What kind
of a friend was that, that you only belonged to one person? And
what kind of a name was Zera anyway?

She slapped a branch aside and came out on the
pond’s east bank. The ducks were still there, the rowboat gone, and
she walked slowly, every few paces picking up a pebble and tossing
it sideways into the water. Watching the splash. Watching the
ripples die before they reached the shore. Sunlight caught and
shattered on the surface.

Beyond the evergreens she paused, indecisive,
then swung to her right and walked along the field’s edge. Kicking
at the grass. Watching the sunbathers. Listening to low music from
radios set on the ground. Watching the ball game and answering a
wave from Drake in the outfield. Passing another open stretch with
the bandstand on the far side.

Climbing the low hill.

Where she sat when she reached the top, and
looked out, looked down.

She hated this place.

Kids that started out okay and ended up as
snotty as the kids she knew back home, the ones who snickered at
her and teased her because she wasn’t quite as fast, quite as
strong, quite as smart, quite as anything as anybody else. She knew
the words and she knew the moves, but somehow they had never quite
all fit together. She wasn’t the only one. She knew that. But it
didn’t make it feel any better. And here, she could tell they
didn’t think she fit either. Maddy, Elly, that weird Zera . . .
they didn’t know it, any of them, but they were a club that had
dumb rules just like all dubs had, and the way they talked to and
about Elly made her the queen of the club.

The Queen of the Club.

What a joke.

Someone sat beside her.

She moved her eyes, not her head, and saw Chip
with his legs crossed, a shirt with the sleeves rolled above the
elbows, jeans with patches and carefully torn holes. His feet were
bare. He smelled, for a moment, like cotton candy.

“Hot,” he said, nodding toward the field.

“Yeah.”

“Hot up here too, but at least there’s a
breeze.”

“Yeah.”

She could feel him looking at her, and it made
her feel funny.

He poked her thigh with a knuckle. “Been with
the jerks, huh?”

“How did you know?” Still not looking.

“You look like you want to kill somebody.”

A hesitation before she nodded.

“Bet Zera told you to keep your hands off me,
I’m hers, private property, keep out, no trespassing, right?”

Fran almost laughed. She nodded instead.

“You gonna let them boss you around?”

She did look this time. He smiled. She smiled
back. “Not me. I told them to go jump.”

“That’s good.” He picked up a pebble, flicked it
away. “You let them boss you around like they were your mother or
something, they’ll do it in school too, they’ll even do it in high
school, you’ll end up so miserable you’ll want to kill yourself.”
He watched the game for a while. “You know Susan? Dumont?”

“Yes. Her sister died or something.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “She was a friend of
mine. For a longtime.”

Fran didn’t know what to say, followed a crow
instead that chased a dozen sparrows away from something in the
grass.

“You know, Fran, there are other kids to hang
out with around here. Not a lot, but others.”

“You gonna be my friend?” she asked before she
could think.

His head swiveled toward her slowly.

Bat and ball; children yelling.

“You mean that?”

A shrug, a nod, a shrug again. “Yeah, I guess
so. Yeah.”

She stared then at his profile, saw skin jump as
muscles twitched, saw what might have been a grin pull back the
corner of his mouth.

“Maybe,” he said at last.

Her scowl didn’t make him turn, and she looked
back at the game, where Drake had just dropped a fly ball. “Maybe?
What do you mean, maybe? I gotta do something first, huh? Some kind
of test?”