“But I’m protecting her, too,” I argued one day. “Did you see that TV show last night? The one about child abuse and missing kids? Every day little kids are stolen or molested or—”
“Maggie! Enough!” Leigh had exclaimed. “That kind of thing does not happen around here. Not in little Princeton. All we have to do is keep an eye on Courtenay, not scare her to death with foolish thoughts about strangers or getting lost. Now stop.”
I didn’t stop, though. I just didn’t do it in front of Leigh anymore. But Leigh knew it went on anyway, and it made her pretty angry.
At that moment the phone rang. I answered it and my heart leaped. It was David!
“Listen,” he said, “are you free tomorrow night? You want to go to a movie?”
“I’d love to. Let me see what Mike’s doing.” I covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Mike?” I asked. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Oh, Courtenay and I are going to sit around, play some poker, have a couple of beers, maybe smoke a good cigar—”
I burst out laughing. “No, really.”
“I’m going to the movies.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling disappointed. “David just asked me to go to the movies.”
“Well, why don’t we have everyone over here instead? Courtie told me she’s always wanted to go to a toga party.”
“Mike!” I was laughing again. Then I became serious. “Wait a second. No. If Leigh finds out we had a party while we were supposed to be in charge of Courtenay, she’ll—” I broke off, noticing that Courtenay was listening to our conversation with great interest. “Well, you know.”
“I was kidding,” Mike said. “We’ll just have a few friends over. For pizza or something. Not a big blowout.”
“Well … if we ask Andrew and Jane, do we have to ask Brad?” Brad is Andrew and Jane’s older brother who always wants to hang around with us.
Mike made a face. Nobody likes Brad because he’s always either getting people in trouble by ratting on them or making people shut up by blackmailing them. Personally, I think he’s slime. “Of course not,” said Mike. “No one wants him around.”
I uncovered the mouthpiece. “Mike was going to go out tomorrow night,” I told David, “but then he suggested that we have everyone over here for a party instead. We could get a pizza or something.”
“Oh, okay,” said David. “Sounds great. I’ll tell Martha.”
So the weekend got off to a good start.
I hung up the phone and handed Courtenay her lunch. Then Mike and I stood on the front steps and watched her climb into the little van that she rode to school each day. I shaded my eyes to take a look at the driver, but he wasn’t one I knew. There are about six people, all retired, who volunteer to drive the buses to Courtenay’s school, so I never knew who was going to pick her up and drop her off. Leigh knew all the drivers, though. “You see?” she’d said once. “This is how you keep Courtenay safe. You just have to know things, like who the drivers are.”
But that seemed too simple to me.
Anyway, Mike and I went off to school ourselves, and that afternoon we returned as soon as our last class was over. Then I waited for Courtenay’s bus while Mike drove downtown to the grocery store. We needed milk, cereal, apples, and stuff for the get-together.
While I sat on the front steps watching for Courtenay’s bus, I went through the mail. There were bills for Dad and Leigh, two letters for Leigh from publishing companies she worked for, magazines, ads—and a postcard to me from Mom! I read it quickly. Her postcards never said much. This one said: “Dearest Maggie, How are you? How is Mike? I’m still in California, waitressing. I hope school is going okay. Be a good girl. Love, Mom.”
Beep, beep!
I looked up when I heard the horn and the sound of something pulling into our driveway. It was Courtenay’s bus, and her favorite driver was at the wheel.
I ran to meet them. “Hi, Birdie!” I called to the driver. Birdie is this wonderful skinny old woman with a heap of dyed red hair piled on her head, and false lashes so long they must weigh her eyelids down. She’s seventy-five years old and acts sixteen. She’s never been married, but she loves kids, so driving the bus is fun for her. A lark, as she puts it.
“Hiya, honey!” she called back. “I got your little sister here, safe and sound.”
Courtenay bounded down the steps of the bus, clutching her lunchbox and various art projects.
“’Bye, Birdie!” she cried.
“Goodbye, honey. Have a swell weekend.”
Birdie always says things like “swell” and “lark” and “terrif” and “natch.” “Natch” means “naturally.”
“Okay,” said Courtenay, grinning.
“You have a good one, too,” I told Birdie.
“Thanks, honey.”
And we did have a swell weekend. Well, mostly swell.
3
The Weekend
ON FRIDAY WE HAD a nightmare night like the one we’d had on Wednesday. It started at two o’clock with Courtenay screaming about the red mitten that snores. Then, just like the other night, after she’d been calmed down and was asleep again, I went back to my room. I tried to stay awake but fell right into a hideous dream.
When it was over, I lay shivering and sweating and wanting only for the night to be over so daylight would put an end to the dream demons.
Before I knew it, the night was over. I was curled up in my bed, the sheets and blanket twisted hotly around me. Sun was filtering through the curtains, pushing its way around the shades. And a voice at the foot of my bed said, “I’m hungry.”
I jumped. The dream demons were still with me.
“Is it breakfast yet?” asked the voice.
Only Courtenay.
“Come here, monkey,” I said, and Courtenay, half dressed, hurled herself at me, giggling and wiggling.
“How was your night?” I asked her. “Is the red mitten gone?”
“No, it’s still under my bed. It lives there, you know. I had to jump out of bed this morning like this, so it wouldn’t get my feet.” Courtenay demonstrated by leaping ungracefully off my bed, landing as far out in the room as she could manage.
“Courtie,” I said thoughtfully, “if the red mitten snores all the time, then you know what? That means it’s asleep. And if it’s asleep, it can’t hurt you.”
“Yes, it can. It doesn’t matter if it snores. It snores while it’s awake. It’s a magic mitten. A mean magic mitten.”
“A mighty mean magic mitten,” I added.
Courtenay began to giggle. I noticed that she forgot to stay away from her bed when we went into her room to finish getting her dressed. The red mitten was temporarily gone, banished to join Courtenay’s dream demons in whatever place dream demons disappear to during daylight.
A little while later, Mike, Courtie, and I had just settled down to bowls of Grape Nuts in the kitchen when the phone rang. “I’ll get it! Let me get it!” cried Courtenay urgently.
“You have a boyfriend or something?” asked Mike as the phone rang again.
But Courtenay didn’t hear him. In her mad struggle to stand in her chair, she knocked her entire bowl of cereal to the floor. Milk and Grape Nuts ran into her lap, splattering everywhere, and the bowl broke into six pieces.
R-i-i-ing.
“Courtenay Louise!” I said sharply.
Courtenay burst into tears. The phone rang a fourth time.
I snatched it off the hook. “Hello,” I barked.
I heard a hollow, airy sound and some static.
“Hello?” said a distant voice. “Is that you, Maggie?”
I forced myself to calm down and sound normal. “Leigh! Hi. How are you and Dad? Are you having fun? Is the weather nice?”
“Beautiful, honey. We’re having a great time. We’re both going to be burned to a crisp. How are you guys doing? How’s Courtenay?”
I glanced at Courtie. Mike had actually put her into the kitchen sink and was hosing her down u
sing the spray nozzle. She was wet, messy, and tear-stained.
“Oh, she’s fine,” I said. “We’re just having breakfast.”
“Can I talk to her, please?”
I hesitated. “She’s kind of messy, Leigh.”
“Maggie, just for a moment. We’ve never been separated this long before.”
“All right.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Mike, Leigh wants to talk to Courtenay.”
Mike didn’t know what else to do. He stripped Courtie, tried to dry her off with a dish towel, and set her, naked, in my chair. I handed her the phone. “It’s Mommy,” I told her.
“Hi, Mommy!” cried Courtenay, her tears forgotten.
Leigh must have asked her what she was doing because Courtenay said, “I’m having breakfast. I’m naked.”
My heart sank. There was a pause. Then Courtie said, “Because I spilled my cereal.” Another pause. Then, “Answering the phone.”
If my heart sank any further, it would exit from my body through my toes.
Courtenay handed the phone back to me. “Mommy wants to talk to you again.”
I’d had a feeling she would. “Leigh?”
“Maggie! What on earth is going on? Courtenay is sitting at the table naked? I certainly hope no one comes to the door. And she is not supposed to answer the phone, young lady. You know that. You never know who could be on the other end.”
“Leigh, all she was going to do was find out who the call was for. It’s no big deal.”
“And what if it had been an obscene caller? You want her to listen to dirty talk? She may not answer the phone. Do you understand me?” Leigh’s voice was shaking. “She’s my child, not yours, and I make the rules. Try to show a little responsibility.”
“Okay, okay. Here, Mike wants to say hello.”
He didn’t, but I had to get off the phone. I handed it to him, and he made a face at me. I went to my room. It took me a half an hour to collect myself enough to return to the kitchen. When I did, I found the mess cleaned up, Courtenay dressed, and fresh coffee waiting for me.
“Let’s start the morning over again,” I suggested.
Mike and Courtenay nodded. And as Mike handed me the coffee, he held an imaginary microphone to his mouth. “Jay, what consolation prize do we have for the lady? … That’s right, it’s rich, aromatic, mountain-grown coffee, a year’s supply, valued at one hundred dollars. Better luck next time.”
By seven o’clock that evening, Mike and I were ready for our friends to come over. We’d ordered two large pizzas, one plain, one with everything except anchovies, and we’d promised Courtenay she could have a piece as soon as they arrived. David and Martha were going to pick the pizzas up on their way over to our house.
We’d bought soda and potato chips and M&Ms, and Mike had made a big salad to go with the pizzas. We’d gotten out our Trivial Pursuit game and selected two funny movies to play on the VCR later. For the time being, our television was turned to MTV. We were all set.
The phone rang and I jumped.
“Can you get that?” Mike called from the bathroom. Courtenay was absorbed in a video and hadn’t even heard the phone ring.
“Okay,” I said. I lifted the receiver. “Hello?” Silence.
“Hello?” I said again, just in case it was Dad trying to get through long distance or something.
I heard the sound of breathing. “Are you alone?” the voice asked huskily.
“No! No, I am not alone, okay?” I slammed down the receiver.
“Who was it?” Mike asked.
“Wrong number,” I said shakily. I hadn’t told anyone about the calls. They’d started a couple of weeks earlier, and I’d been afraid that if I’d said something, Dad and Leigh would have found a baby-sitter to stay with us while they were on their trip or worse, that they’d have canceled the honeymoon. The calls were scary, but harmless—though Leigh would never have seen them that way.
“Just a wrong number,” I said again.
A few minutes later, David and Martha arrived with the pizzas. David kissed me quickly, then rushed the pizzas into the kitchen so we could keep them warm in the oven. Courtenay was starving and couldn’t wait to have her piece, so we settled her at the table with a lukewarm slice, a Coke, and a roll of paper towels.
The doorbell rang again and I answered it fast. I was pretty hungry myself. Standing on our doorstep were Jane and Andrew—and Brad. I felt my stomach drop.
Brad was too old to be hanging around with us. He was twenty-one and should have been in college, where twenty-one-year-olds belong. But he dropped out during the second semester of his freshman year and never went back. He became a busboy at P.J.’s Pancake House on Nassau Street. The rest of the time, he hung around his house.
He gave everyone the creeps.
He would ask me weird questions, he’d never smile, he’d sit too close to me, and he’d always have his hand on my arm or leg or someplace when he talked to me. The one thing he’s got going for him is that he’s incredibly handsome. Jane and Andrew have this odd coloring—olive skin with light brown hair, so that, especially during the summer when they’re tan, they look all one color. But Brad has olive skin with jet-black hair, like Raul Julia, the actor. His eyes are piercing and dark and almost (but not quite) too large for his face. And his eyebrows are as expressive as a puppy’s. All he has to do is move them a fraction of an inch and he can go from happy to worried to evil.
Personally, I think it’s a shame to waste such good looks on such a weird person. Andrew and Jane are so nice, but while they’re not bad-looking, they’re just not great-looking.
Jane, Andrew, and Brad came in, and everybody began talking at once.
“I’m starved.”
“The pizzas are here.”
“Where’s Courtenay?”
“Guess what’s on TV tonight?”
“Hi, baby.” (That was Brad, of course.) He came in and slipped his arm around me before I had even closed the door all the way.
I ducked out from under him and made a face at Jane that said, “Why did you bring him along?”
Jane shrugged sheepishly. She knew how I felt about Brad. She didn’t like him much herself. When she was little, he teased her mercilessly, even though he was six years older than she. And some of his teasing wasn’t harmless. He used to blackmail her, just like he blackmailed everyone else, and forced her to lie to their parents. Once, when she was seven, he stole her underwear after a summer swimming class, and Jane had to walk home with nothing on under her sundress. All the kids knew it and the boys kept lifting her dress to see what was (or wasn’t) beneath. I truly believed that Brad was one of the reasons I was not as close to Jane as I was to Martha. I’d do anything not to be near him.
Jane pulled me into the den and shut the door partway. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Andrew and I tried to get out without him, but he knew where we were going. He insisted on coming with us. He said he’d tell Mom and Dad about the F Andrew got on the history test last week if we didn’t let him come. It was bizarre. I mean, it was bizarre that he wanted to come so badly, not that he was tormenting Andrew again.”
I sighed. “Maybe we can get rid of him.”
“If only he were a dog,” said Jane. “We could toss a scrap of meat out the front door, and he’d run after it.”
I giggled.
“Okay. I guess we’ll just have to put up with him.”
But I wasn’t sure how long I could do that, especially when I walked out of the den and into the kitchen to find Brad holding Courtenay on his lap, bouncing her up and down. What I didn’t like was the way he was touching her, but what I said was, “Brad, put her down, okay? She just ate. You’ll upset her stomach if you jiggle her around.”
“Sure, baby.”
I drew in my breath. “My name is Maggie. Feel free to call me that. Everyone else does.”
“Even David?”
I frowned. “Of course David. What did you think?”
Brad grinned. “Cool out, ba—Maggie. We can have a lovely evening together if you just relax.”
I glanced at David, who shrugged.
I told you Brad was slime.
For the next hour, Brad divided his attention between Courtie and me. I could tell that Jane and Martha were both relieved and disgusted. They were relieved that Brad wasn’t bothering them, and they were disgusted because he was bothering us. With Brad, you couldn’t win. I kept throwing pointed looks to David and my brother, and they kept trying to distract Brad, but neither of them actually said much to him. They knew better. If they had done anything, Brad would have gotten back at them somehow. In fact, the things I said about calling me by my name were pretty risky. Brad was probably going to get me for something soon. I shivered at the thought. We’d all tangled with him at one time or another, and believe me, it wasn’t pleasant.
After we had brought the pizzas out and settled down to our feast, David and I grabbed a moment alone together. I made sure that Courtenay was under Mike’s watchful eyes. Then I said, “David, help me in the kitchen for a sec, okay?”
“Sure,” he replied.
We headed for the kitchen.
David is big. That’s about the best way I can describe him. He’s big physically, well over six feet tall (he plays on the varsity football team), and he’s big-hearted. He’ll do just about anything for anyone. But he’s not a pushover. He’s like a huge, kind bear. And while he knows how to have fun (he and Mike are always kidding around), he’s serious about school. He’s preparing very carefully for college, because after that he wants to go to law school.
I can’t think much past tomorrow, let alone past college.
“What’s up?” asked David as the kitchen door swung shut behind us.
“Nothing. I just wanted to see you alone for a few minutes. It’s weird, but I feel funny getting close to you when Brad’s around. I don’t know why.”
“No. It’s all right. I know what you mean. I feel funny, too.”
“Well, let’s forget about him for a while.”
David folded me into his arms and simply held me for a long, long minute.
Then we heard Brad say from the other room, “What could they possibly be doing?”