Dead Wednesday Page 12

  “I was up before the sun. No stops to eat.”

  So much…so much Worm wants to tell him, complete the Becca picture for him, but he can’t. He imagines the day after Christmas, the Baker family pulling into the driveway, the snow in the front yard smooth, undisturbed. It’s killing him to not say what her plans were, her mission to delight him with the snow-dug double-heart emoji, the duct tape. But something wiser than himself is telling him to leave it be. It would be wrong to give Pooter a memory he doesn’t already have. He could never own it.

  Worm has already said too much. And Pooter is letting him off the hook. He knows Worm did not bike here from Scranton. He knows Worm had something to do with the broken glass. He knows Worm is not telling him everything.

  And Worm? Worm knows this is their place, Pooter and Becca’s. He does not belong here.

  “Well,” he says, trying to act casual, “better be going. Long ride back.” He holds out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Pooter.”

  At this point they are on opposite sides of the stone, as Worm has been edging toward his parked bike. His outstretched hand hangs in the air over the still-new marble arch.

  By now Pooter has the glass footed into a pile. Where’s a dustpan when you need one? In time Pooter looks up, discovers the hand hanging over the gravestone. He stares at it. He seems to be deciding something. At last he reaches out and shakes Worm’s hand. When Worm pulls away, Pooter’s hand stays behind, resting on the top of the stone.

  Worm has a thought that never would have occurred to him before last Wednesday: if there’s anything left to be said to Pooter, Becca will find a way.

  He pedals off.

  * * *

  —

  It’s all changed. He’s lost his appetite for drama. He will never look for her house. Whatever eternity has in store for her, Worm will play no part.

  And he’s OK with that. Pooter is the rightful custodian of her memory. The relief Worm feels now tells him he got out just in time. He stops at the Mennonite fruit stand, treats himself to a massive chocolate-covered strawberry.

  He smiles as he rides, thinking of them. A sweet feeling is rising in him, and it surprises him to realize what it is: pride. He’s proud of Pooter. He wasn’t exactly chummy with Worm, but Worm could see the quality. Six months later and he still visits the grave every day; Worm is sure of it. And Becca—he couldn’t be prouder if she was his sister. He’s proud to have known them both. What a couple they must have been!

  There’s plenty of daylight left on this Wednesday in June, but there’s plenty of road left too. He picks up the pace, dares to race the sun—for a reason that’s new to him. He wishes he brought his phone. He would like to call his parents, tell them not to worry, he’s OK.

  They walk. Worm. Eddie.

  Usually for a distance like this they would bike. Worm sleeps over so often at Eddie’s that he has a junker backup stashed in his best pal’s toolshed.

  But not today.

  Per tradition, they walk all the way from Eddie’s house to the park. Because on this day, walking the town is part of the deal. It’s the little kids. Usually invisible to teenagers, on this day, suddenly, here they are, taking over the place, going batso wherever you look: running, screaming, waving flags and sparklers, tooting kazoos, croaking noisemakers, banging pans. There’s a manic look in their eyes. Maybe they’re making up for not being allowed to stay up till midnight on New Year’s Eve.

  And yet it’s not just spectator fun for Worm, not like the other years. He finds himself on edge, afraid one of the little kids will dash into a street, into a car. He’s alert, poised to spring if he has to.

  Along the way they collect Otter and two others: posse. Otter, as always on this day, is decked out in a red-white-and-blue stovepipe hat. Hardly a minute goes by that some little kid doesn’t try to knock the hat from his head. They jump, grunting, but they’re too short. It only gets worse at the park, already bustling. Before you can smell the first hot dog, Otter lifts one little kid up so he can knock off the hat. Makes the little kid’s year.

  Fourth of July at the park is a ten-ring circus. By midafternoon the whole town will be here. Sack races. Egg toss. Frisbee Frolic. Magicians. Until the talent show officially begins, the band shell stage and microphone are available to anyone wanting to star in Amber Springs Has Talent. A policeman stands in the wings.

  Somebody is reading a poem. The voice sounds familiar. Worm looks. It’s Claire Meeson. He only catches the second half of it, something about freedom and the price of tomatoes. He’s shocked to see meek Claire Meeson performing onstage. Nobody but Worm is paying attention. Worm’s not big on poetry and he has no idea if her poem is good or not, but at least she’s up there, doing it. You go, girl, he thinks. She’s barely finished the last word when she hustles off the stage. Worm feels rotten. He could have clapped—still could, not too late—but he’d be the only one, and of course he’s too shy (OK, cowardly) for that. A little kid darts past the cop, yells, “Poop!” into the mic, and darts off. The cop laughs. People clap.

  Grilling meat flavors the air. Every picnic table in the grove is taken. Folding tables, portable grills everywhere. Lines at Hickey’s food stand.

  And people. The whole town. Every couple seconds the posse bumps into other ASMS kids. High-fiving. Trash-talking. Mock fights. As always, Eddie leads the way, sets the agenda. “Let’s do this.” “Let’s do that.” Parents have stuffed their pockets with food money.

  Waves of recently minted ninth graders, not to mention all the other grades, surge across ball fields, invade the playground, little kids waiting and scowling because hooting fourteen-year-olds are hogging the swings. The next time this many of them will be in the same place will be the first day of high school.

  This year things are different. Well, not things. Himself. There’s no way to document it, but he knows when it started. The day after The Day. Brushing his teeth. As usual, he did so without looking at himself in the mirror. Then, capping the toothpaste tube, he did—and discovered that the sight of his complexion left him…flat. He reached for the old familiar pain, the disgust, but it wasn’t there. Hasn’t been since.

  You have good bones.

  On the Friday after The Day, he went back into the woods, all the way to the brook. He searched for a daddy longlegs but couldn’t find one. But he did find mitten-shaped sassafras leaves. One of these days he’s going to make root beer. If it’s good enough, maybe serve it to the writers. Since then, toeing over rocks, he’s found half a dozen salamanders. Once, he shouted. No particular words. Just shouted in the woods. Another day, after Elwood, he got out the old hand pump and pumped air into the perfectly fine back tire of his bike. The tire got hard as a rock, but he kept pumping…and pumping. In time a black bubble of inner tube peeked out like a tongue from between tire and rim. The bubble went from black to gray as it got fatter and fatter—and finally popped in a rubbery gust of bad breath. It felt good to do something stupid.

  By now he knows he’ll never dig up the watch.

  * * *

  —

  They’re starting the egg toss in the outfield of the American Legion baseball field. He breaks from the posse and says, “Who’s coming with me?” Eddie looks at him like, Do I know you? But Otter, bless him, rams the second half of a hot dog into his mouth and glubbles, “Yez doot.”

  They’re one of half a hundred teams, three-year-olds to old farts. They’re instructed to face each other nose to nose. Grinning, Otter leans—he’s taking the command literally, too close for Worm’s comfort—but Worm inches up to Otter’s nose and bumps it with his own. Now they’re instructed to each take one step back. Somebody hands Worm an egg, brown. The guy with the megaphone goes, “Toss!” and Worm tosses the egg to Otter. Otter’s hands receive it softly, giving with the incoming arc of the egg. Worm, well known as a klutz, tries to emulate Otter. He doesn’t, bu
t at least the egg doesn’t break. He notices that some people have come prepared: they’re wearing aprons.

  Back a step—toss. Back a step—toss. Splats, shrieks: teams are leaving the field. Worm has had fun before, but never this kind of fun. He’s thinking maybe he’ll try out for JV soccer next year. With each step back Otter whispers, “Easy, Worm…soft hands.” They’re at least ten steps apart (Worm can’t believe he’s this good; maybe they got a hard-boiled egg) when it happens—splat!—yellowy mess on his hands, shirt, yolk and shell shrapnel rolling down the front of his pants. He scoops off what he can, wipes his hands on the grass. Otter is cracking up. As they leave the field, a little kid high-fives them both.

  The next event is always a crowd favorite: the Great Foamalooza. The fire trucks are ready. People in bathing suits are rushing to the soccer field. Most are little kids, of course, but there are more than a couple of teens in there too, girls and boys, and one wrinkly old lady, prompting Eddie to clap his hand over his eyes and go, “I can’t take it!”

  Fire truck bells clang and out comes the foam, and within a minute a hundred deliriously dancing humans are awash in bubbles. “Whoa!” goes Otter, and nobody has to ask who he’s spotted. It’s Beautiful Bijou, in an aqua two-piece. Worm’s not sure if it qualifies as a bikini, but who cares? Worm resists the urge to look at Eddie, see if he’s reacting. Bijou is twirling and slinging foam with other girls, one of whom, Worm notices, seems to be Monica Biddle. But maybe not. Bathing suit (definitely two-piece, off-white), wet hair, so un–Mean Monica–like as she dances and laughs and frolics: hard to believe.

  * * *

  —

  So goes the day. The posse joins a thousand others at the bandstand, enduring the off-key singers, the occasional surprise (“Whoa! Who is that?”) of the annual talent show, no cop needed now. By the show’s halfway mark, the posse has had enough. They take off, except for Worm, who says, “Go ahead. I’m staying. I’ll find yas.” He’s thinking of the remaining contestants, somewhere backstage, maybe peeking around a corner. He doesn’t want them to see him leaving, whoever they are, turning his back on them.

  He understands, at least as the guys see it, he’s veering from the old Worm. But, like the face in the mirror, he doesn’t care. Occasionally he’s caught Eddie looking at him funny, once muttering, “Worm, what?”

  * * *

  —

  Every so often he has allowed himself to feel good about what he hopes he did for her. But these days he’s more occupied with a transition of his own, from her to the gifts she left him with.

  Which doesn’t mean she’s not with him, even on this tumultuous day. It happens both when he’s with the posse and when he’s not. For a flicker of a moment…maybe? A glimpse of blondish hair. A flash of raspberry. A moonwalker in the foam. A shouted name: “Rebecca!” It never turns out to be her, of course, but he can’t help checking.

  * * *

  —

  The crowds, if anything, get even bigger as dusk approaches. The word fireworks is seldom heard, yet from the first kazoo when they stepped out of Eddie’s house, every minute of the day has been draining toward the final glimmer of daylight. Families spread blankets over the vast, grassy banks surrounding the American Legion baseball field. Little kids have made the leap beyond mere excitement. They can barely be spoken to, directed. They are in the land of puppies.

  All day long eyes have drifted toward the infield, scarcely believing that tonight’s magic is, for the moment, packed into the black tubes poking out of the sandy soil. The sight always makes Worm think of whisker stubble on the chin of a giant.

  The trees beyond the dugouts fling their shadows from third base to left field, minute by minute dissolving into the darkening dusk. The posse finds a spot, by instinct roosting among others of their kind, Amber Springs teenagers.

  The murmuring din of thousands becomes louder and louder, more highly charged, as if a great knob somewhere is being turned up, until…

  Whump!

  Sudden silence. The first warning cannon-shot has been fired. Ten thousand upward eyes follow a missile they cannot see, which abruptly crashes upon the sky, spilling a gorgeous downpour of gold and a crinkle of stars over the infield.

  Otter cries out: “It’s on!”

  The night explodes in geysers of color. Worm lounges back on his elbows, wonder-struck at the spectacle like everyone else. He cheers with everyone else when a stray gob of red falls upon a fire truck. When a firefly twinkles past his nose, it takes him a beat to react. He sits up, scans, locates it winking over the people’s heads, right before their eyes, yet no one seems to see it, such are the marvels in the sky.

  Worm does not realize he’s standing until he feels slaps on his shins, tugs on his pants.

  Eddie barks: “Worm!”

  Others chime in:

  “Down in front!”

  “Sit!”

  “I’ll putcha down!”

  He alone is standing among the five thousand. Now he is walking, the front of him lit red beneath a shower of pomegranate pearls. He is moving generally in the direction of the firefly, picking his way among the bodies on the ground. He’s not sure where he is going or why, only that things are coming together on another field and he must leave the sideline. The faces, so many faces, marveling in the splashing lights…her whisper in his ear: Be bold, Worm.

  He finds himself passing a cluster of girls, their faces strobing on and off with the stutter of the skylight. It’s his classmates. He spots Beautiful Bijou—defoamed, dry, and back to normal—and Claire Meeson and Mean Monica, and he sees the heavens celebrate in the reflecting eyes of every girl, and it’s coming together…coming together….

  Be bold, Worm.

  And he feels it…a word…a name…in his mouth…leaning on his lips….

  Get a life, Worm.

  And he does it, he lets the name out: “Monica.”

  In a world visible only to Worm, the rockets halt halfway to the sky, the raining colors freeze as if snapshot. All the girls before him, all five thousand faces, are focused on the halted rockets. All except one. Monica Biddle turns her eyes from the sky to the voice that uttered her name, and when they land on him…well…he knows for sure this time who they’re looking at. Her face is surprise. Her face is question. And now her face is level with his, because she is standing among her sitting girlfriends and the night is exploding again and he and Monica Biddle are the only two standing, looking at each other across a painting of faces that has returned to animated rapture.

  She’s moving, weaving through the bodies until she’s right up to him, close. “What?” she says.

  He has no words prepared, yet here they are: “There’s a better show.”

  She nods. “OK.”

  He knows she must have been cute for the past year, but he’s just seeing it now. He turns and starts walking, feels her following, hears the calls:

  “Monnie! Get back here!”

  “Go, girl!”

  In the strobing light they pick their way through the crowd, up the long slope to the boulevard, walking side by side, saying nothing.

  He knows now where they’re going. Well, not the coordinates maybe, but the kind of place. He’ll know it when he sees it. They walk. Two kids walking down the boulevard at night, behind them the boom and clatter of the fireworks receding. Until the grand finale, thirty seconds of reward for a year of waiting, a volley of cannon-shot and screaming sky that must be visible from Saturn. Neither one turns around to look.

  The town is silent, deserted. But won’t be for long; the crowd will be streaming back home.

  He’s looking…looking…and realizes as they turn from the park boulevard and head into the West End over the stone creek bridge and the tracks of the long-gone freight line that since they started walking, neither of them has said a word. The intensity of their
mingled presences packs the air around them; there’s no room for words.

  One of his first memories comes to him. He’d never had a sister for reference, so one day—he couldn’t have been more than three—he asked his mother what the difference is between boys and girls. He wishes he could go back in time now and see the look on her face as she answered his question. The difference, she said, basically has to do with books and comes into play once you go to school, especially by the time you hit middle school. Boys, she said, carry their books from class to class with one arm. The arm curls around the stack and clamps it to the hip. Girls, on the other hand, carry their books in front of them, cradling them against their bosom. At least that’s how it used to be, she said, before backpacks.

  Worm’s not sure how long he continued to believe that, but he’s pretty sure it was a lot longer than a couple of days.

  And now, as they pass the abandoned asbestos factory, he needs to speak. “I used to call you Mean Monica,” he says.

  She laughs. “I know.”

  He’s surprised. “How?”

  She shoulder-bumps him. “Worm, duh, word gets around.”

  “Well,” he says, “sorry. Like I said, ‘used to.’ ”

  She laughs again, reminds him of someone else who laughs a lot. “Because of that time, right? When I told you to get a life?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “There’s a fantasy. I imagine I’m a worm—”

  She interrupts: “You are a worm.”

  “You gonna let me finish?”

  She mock-bows. “My apologies. By all means, continue.”

  He tells her his Worm-up-her-nose fantasy. “The best part is when it happens at the dinner table. In front of your parents.”

  She’s properly repelled. “Eww!” Then jumps from horror to grammar. “Happens? Present tense? You still do?”