“Hi, Peter,” I said.
He opened his mouth but nothing came out. Teardrop streaks were on his cheeks.
“You okay?” I said.
He nodded.
We just stood there. Some more people were lining up. “Well… be seein’ ya,” I said.
He nodded. He never took his eyes off the coffin.
When we got to the back again I saw Calvin wasn’t with us. He was just then leaving the coffin. He came at us crying and not even trying to hide it. I guess being hardhearted about worms wasn’t very good practice in getting ready for Kippy Kim. I decided not to ask him how the lightning bug transplant turned out.
We went back out. The man at the door said, “Goodnight, boys.”
It was dark out. The moon looked like a brand-new baseball hanging over the parking lot.
On the way home we didn’t look at each other. Or talk.
We rode with our parents the next day to the church. When we came out to go to the cemetery, there was a sticker on our windshield saying “FUNERAL.” A man poked his head in and said, “Lights.”
We went real slow. We went through red lights, stop signs—nothing could stop us. I looked up ahead and back; I couldn’t believe how long the line of cars was.
At the grave we stuck with our families. They gave us flowers to put on the coffin. The Kims were still there when we walked away.
It was a big cemetery. Rolling hills. On the farthest hill somebody was standing. It was Dugan.
THE DARK
I NEVER THOUGHT THAT MUCH ABOUT THE DARK BEFORE. Now I don’t like it.
At first I left the light on, and when my mother asked why, I told her I fell asleep reading.
Then I rigged up my space station with lights. Little train-type lights. Red. Green. Yellow. Blue. My favorite is a big white one that blinks. I lay there looking at the little dots of light in the dark.
I work on my space station a lot. I keep making improvements. It’s going to have everything. It won’t need Earth at all. The kids will still go to school, but it won’t be like here. There won’t be any tests, and you can take any subject you want. For instance, if you want to take a course in bike riding, or making paper airplanes, you can. The other main difference is, there won’t be any ninth-graders.
I stopped keeping track of my hitting at the park. Sometimes we let a stray kid in. But most of the time it’s only three or four of us. Now that Peter isn’t out in centerfield anymore, we all have to do a lot more running and chasing after balls. For the first time in my life I play other positions than shortstop. I never knew what the world looked like from the outfield.
I don’t like the outfield. You have to run so far after balls. You’re all alone. It’s so quiet out there, just you and the ball. You can hear your feet running. They seem to say, Kippy’s dead. Kippy’s dead. Kippy’s dead.
Every time I go up to bat I look at the drainpipe out in centerfield. I don’t know why, but I get more and more anxious to see that raccoon come out of that hole. I keep looking and it keeps not coming out.
I ride my bike a lot. I don’t ride past the corner kids anymore. I go another way. There’s things I ought to be telling them, and I want to tell them, but I just sort of can’t.
Sometimes, even with the space station lights, I still can’t sleep, so I go downstairs and onto the porch. The first time I did it I couldn’t believe how different things are at three o’clock in the morning. My first thought was: Jeez! They change planets on you at night!
Once, riding my bike, I saw a dead crow in the street. I stopped and looked. Cars were going by. Each time a car tire wnizzed real close, even though most of the crow was masned into the street, the end of one wing would kind of flutter in the air.
It’s been really hot out. Everything is snaily.
I see old ladies grinning. Especially in the supermarkets. And on Sundays. After a while it got to me. I tried scowling at one right in her face, just to see what would happen. She just kept grinning away. Someday I’m going to find out what they’re all grinning about.
One night it rained. Then stopped. I listened at the window. The whole night was crackling and popping, like everything was ready to come to a boil. No wonder. Baseball… Kippy Kim in a coffin… sunshine… dead crows . . Debbie Breen… grinning old hags… bugs… bicycles… bellybutton lint—God! How can such different kind of stuff all fit in the same world? Much less the same thirteen-year-old head?
I dream about Pioneer. Sailing out toward Pluto. The golden man and lady tumbling out of the Solar System. Sometimes I wish it would turn back. Sometimes I dream it does. It’s right outside my window, bobbing like a buoy, waiting for me to add something to it—my little gift to worldkind—to take out to the stars. I squirm and sweat and get panicky, because I don’t know what to contribute, and Pioneer can’t wait any longer.
GIRL
I WAS OUT RIDING MY BIKE. NOTHING ELSE TO DO. HOW LONG can you stand to hang around your house? Even my space station was getting a little boring. Baseball? Forget it. Calvin was away at the beach. Richie away at the mountains. Peter—just—away. And Dugan doesn’t show up unless there’s at least two people.
So I decided to ride—far. I filled my canteen with water and strapped it on my bike and got an advance on my allowance to buy something at a McDonald’s.
First I swung by the park to check out the drainpipe: no raccoon. Then I headed out of town. Past the state hospital. Past the community college. I turned down a road I was never on before, and pretty soon there were no sidewalks or traffic lights. Then the gutters and drainpipes went, and most of the houses. Lots of trees though. The road got crunchier and skinny and curvy. Sometimes when a car came along I got squeezed over and whipped in the legs by stems and thorns hanging out.
Then the farms started. Fields, corn, cows, silos, fences: farm stuff. It wasn’t even noon yet, but already the road ahead was starting to shimmer, that’s how hot it was. Every once in a while I stopped to take a small swig from my canteen. I kept my eye out for a McDonald’s.
Most of the going was up and down hills, but it was on a rare level stretch where I spotted something far ahead, oozing in and out of the heat-shimmer. A bike! It disappeared around a bend. I stepped on it, and when I spotted it again it was clear of the shimmer. Sky blue bike… red butt on black seat… red shorts… floppy red hat… bare feet . . girl.
I slowed down, wasn’t sure I wanted to make contact, thought about turning around, didn’t want to do that either. Then suddenly she stopped. She was reaching into a clump of bushes. She heard me coming, looked up. It was Call-Me-Marceline McAllister.
I don’t know why, I couldn’t explain it in a million years, but I was glad—I think. I pulled up.
“You?” she said. I wasn’t sure if her tone meant disapproval or surprise.
“Who else?” I answered. I was cool.
She went back to reaching in the bush. “I wouldn’t expect to see you out here.”
“Why not?” I said. “I ride my bike all over.” She didn’t answer. “What’re you looking for?” She didn’t seem to hear me.
After a pretty long time she pulled away from the bush. “Farts,” she growled.
Wow, I thought, Marceline McAllister says Farts. “What’s the matter?” I said.
She flicked a pebble with her bare big toe. “They’re gone.”
“What’s gone?”
She didn’t answer. She just took off, pumping up the hill. I didn’t know what to do. I had the weirdest feeling somewhere around my stomach, like there was a ball of string in there and it was tied to her and as she rode away she was unraveling it.
At the top of the hill she stopped and looked back. She called something, but I couldn’t make it out. So I rode all the way up to her. “What?” I said.
“Blackberries,” she said, and went zooming down the hill.
I followed.
Pretty soon we were rolling along together. Not side-by-side though—the road was too skinny for that
. At first I felt a little funny riding behind a girl like some little puppy dog, but I soon got over that.
Interesting thing about McAllister: take the trombone out of her mouth and put her on a bicycle, and she jabbers away like a thousand parrots. Well, to be honest, I wasn’t exactly Silent Sam myself. We pedaled and talked, pedaled and talked. Fences, silos, cows, trees. Mile after mile. When she was doing the talking, I wasn’t always listening too well. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her bike seat and how perfectly those red shorts of hers fit onto it. Looked something like a big red valentine.
We were chugging up a hill when all of a sudden she points and hollers: “Raccoon!”
I looked just in time to see the striped tail disappear into the bushes. “Neat,” I said. “I like raccoons.”
“Really?” she said. She seemed shocked.
“Yeah. I like them a lot, as a matter of fact.”
“You mean you don’t go chasing them and throwing stones at them like all the other idiot boys?”
My brain echoed with the sound of the bottle I threw rattling in the drainpipe, the sound of the soft thud. We were still riding, but her face was turned full around, staring at me, waiting for an answer. I couldn’t speak. All the wetness in my throat went to my eyes.
“Yeah, right,” she finally sneered, and snapped her head around and pulled away.
I went after her. “Marcy. Marceline. What’s the matter? Wha’d I do?”
She glared around again. “You tell me.”
Was I going crazy? There I was, practically trembling in front of this girl, like she was my mother or something, like if I said the wrong thing I’d get spanked. And the craziest thing was, I couldn’t lie to her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. “Okay.” I shrugged. “So I threw a bottle at one once. So? Is that a crime?”
She skidded to a stop, almost making me crash into her. I was getting the same look from her that I had gotten in the vice-principal’s office: burnt toast. “What is it with you boys, anyway? Whenever you see a bird or an animal, anything alive, you have to try to kill it. Does it make you feel like a big man, huh? Is that it? Huh?”
I tried to explain, but before three words were out of my mouth she was off again. “Hell with ya,” I muttered.
I would have turned back right then, but I hadn’t passed any McDonald’s, and I figured there had to be one up ahead. So I pedaled on—slow—to give her plenty of time to get miles away.
That’s why I was surprised only a few minutes later to see her bike parked up against a fence. She was picking something from a tree. I pretended not to notice and cruised on by, but she called, “Peach?”
I U-turned and coasted over. “Nah. I’m waiting for a McDonald’s.” I reached for my canteen. “Water?”
“Okay,” she said. She took about a year wiping the mouth of the canteen with her shirttail—you might have thought I had leprosy—then she took the longest swig I ever saw. In fact, she drank it all. While I gaped in shock, she just grinned and took off, with the canteen. When I finally caught up to her a mile down the road, she was filling the canteen with water running out of a pipe.
“From the water cooler of the earth,” she said.
“It’s not polluted?”
She just laughed and leaned over and drank right from the pipe. I tried it too. It was the best water I ever had.
We saddled up and moved on. I felt more comfortable when we were riding. On a bicycle she wasn’t taller than me.
“I never went past the water pipe before,” she said, “but I think you better get a peach next orchard we come to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think there’s a McDonald’s out here.”
“Sure there is,” I told her. “There’s McDonald’s everywhere. Wait and see.”
“You wait,” she said. “I’d rather have a peach anyway.”
Shock again. “You don’t like McDonald’s?”
She snorted. “I hate McDonald’s.”
I came right out and said it: “Man, you are weird.”
She just chuckled, so I figured I’d get into a couple other areas I had been wondering about for a long time. “Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure.”
“Why do you want to be called Marceline?”
“It’s my name. What do you want me to be called? Oswalda?”
So much for names. “Whatever made you play the trombone, anyway?”
“Nobody made me.”
“I mean… you know…”
“My father plays it.”
I wondered if he was a natural or a step. “Don’t you feel a little funny playing that thing?” She was silent. Better change the subject. “I hate August,” I said.
“I love it,” she said.
“You do? Why?”
“Why do you hate it?”
“There’s never anybody around.”
“So? You afraid to be alone?”
“Course not. Who’s talking about being afraid? Anyway, naturally, there’s a couple people around, but not enough to get a game up. So why are you so crazy about August?”
She stuck out a bare foot and lopped the fuzz off a weed. “Oh, I don’t know.”
But I figured I knew. Marceline McAllister wasn’t popular. Figure it: (1) she insisted on being called Marceline instead of Marcy; (2) she played the trombone; (3) she was tall; (4) she hated McDonald’s. Put it this way: she wasn’t exactly the Debbie Breen type. So how many friends could she have? She liked being by herself. And August is a great month for by-yourselfers.
I asked her, “Ever think of cheerleading?”
She slowed down for me to come alongside. The look I got was part burnt toast, part confusion. “Jason,” (first time she ever said my name) “what is it with you anyway? What did you mean back there about the trombone? Why am I supposed to feel funny playing it?”
“I don’t know,” I fumbled. How do you explain it?
“You think it’s funny to play the trombone, Jason?”
“Nah, it’s great.” Before I could shut my mouth, a little snicker snuck out.
She snickered back. “Well, do you feel funny?”
“Huh? About what?”
“Killing raccoons?”
I glared right at her and yelled. “I don’t kill no raccoons!”
“Being short?”
An icicle stabbed me. I didn’t know it was that obvious. Did she know I didn’t have pubic hair too?
“Being made a fool of?” she sneered.
“Yeah? By who?”
She rolled her eyes up and sighed. “Oh, by a certain Miss Breen.”
“I didn’t see anybody asking you to dance, skinny.”
“Oh, yes, Jason dear, I’d love to see your space station. I’ll come tomorrow. Or maybe the day after tomorrow. If I don’t have a toothache. I get a lot of toothaches, you know.”
“How many boys are after you, Mar-cee?”
“Jason dear, why did you run away on Halloween? That tiny little Luke Skywalker was you, wasn’t it?”
“Ever see the wall in the girls locker room, Mar-cee?”
“So that’s where you hang out.”
“It says Marceline McAllister sucks trombones.”
“Boo-hoo.”
“You think you’re the greatest thing in the world.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, you’re not! You’re an asshole and everybody knows it!”
“That so?”
“Yeah, that’s so! Nobody likes you!”
“My mother does.”
“Up yours, Mar-cee!”
“Twerp.”
“Everybody knows what you do with that trombone every night! Mar-cee!”
“Runt.”
“The fudge I gave you that time had ants in it!”
“I hope they were pissants like you.”
“Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee!”
“Raccoon killer.”
“I don’t kill raccoons!”
r /> “Short immature runt raccoon killer.”
She was laughing.
“Knock it off!” I screamed. “I ain’t no raccoon killer! I love raccoons! I felt rotten ever since I threw the bottle at that one! I gave my Valentine’s candy to Esther Kufel! I teach little kids stuff! I can’t sleep right ever since Peter Kim’s little brother got killed! I’m a good kid! You hear? My stepfather says so! I’M A GOOD KID!!”
She was wheeling away, hunching over and pumping like a demon. I got into my racing form and took off after her, screaming bloody murder all the while She zipped out of sight around a sharp curve and all of a sudden I heard a scream, a crash, and a moo, and I screeched to a halt in front of the craziest scene I ever saw: she had crashed into a cow.
The front of her bike was caved in, Marceline was sprawled and whimpering on the ground, and the cow was just standing there like a dope. There was a tire mark on its side.
Marceline reached for her floppy red hat—red hat!—I grabbed her and dragged her away. “Look out!” I warned. “Maybe it’s a bull!”
She got to her feet, sneering. “That’s no bull, dumbo.” She pointed downward. “Look.”
These pink and white udders were hanging down all over. They were humongous. I felt myself blushing. “So?” I said. “Maybe bulls have them too.”
She sighed at the sky. “Oh God.”
Well, bull or cow, somehow we managed to get the animal back through the break in the fence and into the field. That’s when I noticed her arm: it was bleeding. I froze. Not because it was a bad cut, but because of the fence that cut her—it was barbed wire, and it was rusty. Lockjaw!
I tried to act casual. “Hey, uh, looks like you got a little nick there.”
She looked. By the way she said “Uh-oh” I could tell she knew about lockjaw too. “Got a hankie?” she asked me.
I did, but it was full of boogies. Anyway, that wasn’t the treatment. “You gotta suck it,” I told her.
She made a face. Then she held out her arm, right under my nose. The cut was on the inside of her arm. The skin was real white there. Don’t think, I told myself, just do it. Next thing I know I’m sucking and spitting like crazy. I’m trying to suck as hard as I can, since I figure the poison’s got a head start, but the problem is, the harder I suck the more scared I get that I’m going to suck the poison right down my own throat. So I spitted about twenty times for each suck.