Weeks went by. A month. Two. School was out.
David had stopped searching the newspaper. He went back to watching only cartoons and comedy shows and such on TV. He cut out his favorite comic strip,
Beetle Bailey,
and saved his favorites for his bedroom wall. He no longer went down the hill and into the trees.
Three days after school ended, he had to go with his grandmother to the Perkiomen Library. She was a volunteer reader for Summer Story Time. They walked. David stayed five paces behind.
Along the way they came upon a kid playing with a yo-yo. To David’s horror, his grandmother stopped and said, “Well, hello there.”
He knew what she was up to, trying to make friends for him. She just would not quit.
The kid stopped and looked up. “Hello.” He couldn’t yo-yo and talk at the same time. It was the ugliest yo-yo David had ever seen. Snot-green. What a geek.
“Do you live here?” his grandmother said, all sugar and smiles.
“Yeah.”
“I see you’re playing with a yo-yo.”
“I just got it yesterday,” said the kid.
David felt her bony fingers on his shoulder. “This is my grandson, David. What’s your name?”
“Tim.”
“Tim. Well, Tim, David moved here not too long ago. He doesn’t know many people yet. But he sure loves to play with his yo-yo.” She aimed her smile at him. “Don’t you, David?”
“No,” said David.
She chuckled. “He’s just being modest. He’s actually very good with a yo-yo. He can do lots of things.”
The kid chirped up at her, “I can walk the dog!”
“Yippee,” said David.
His grandmother ignored him. “Really?” she gushed. “Would you like to give us a demonstration?”
The kid didn’t wait to be asked twice. He backed off a couple steps, took a deep breath and spun the snot-green yo-yo down its string. It walked for about an inch, then lurched like a tire hitting a tree trunk and flopped onto its side.
David laughed.
His grandmother shot him a glare. “That was just for practice, wasn’t it, Tim?”
“Yeah,” said the kid. He tried it again. Same result. Then he did a surprising thing. He pulled the string loop off his finger, held the yo-yo out to David, and said, “Want to try?”
David sneered at the cheap toy and pushed it away. He unsnapped the yo-yo holster on his belt and drew his Spitfire. He knew he was playing into his grandmother’s hands, but he couldn’t help it. He ran a few test drops, then, with a hard snap of his wrist, sent her down for good. The spool of many colors — David had once counted nine — hummed as it spun an inch above the sidewalk, then a half inch, then a quarter. Then, ever so lightly, it kissed the concrete and, like a dog on a leash, walked smartly from one sidewalk crack to the next before scooting back up the string and into its master’s hand.
With a disdainful sniff, David slipped off the finger loop and holstered the yo-yo. The kid went gaga. “Wow!”
His grandmother cooed, “David! I never knew you were
that
good.” Not surprising, since David had been careful not to show her his best stuff. “I’ll bet Tim would love to take lessons from you.”
David walked on, tossing his parting words over his shoulder. “I don’t think so.”
His grandmother stayed behind until they came to the library. At the door she whispered, “I can’t believe you were so rude,” and they went in.
The little kiddies and their mothers were already there, almost filling the Community Room. David took a seat in the back row. He folded his arms, put on a pout, and stared at the wall. He had no intention of listening to stupid stories, especially from his grandmother. He made one silent vow to himself: if she started reading
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,
he would walk up and rip it from her hands. Because that was the story his mother used to read to him at bedtime.
One last person came in, took a seat at the other end of the back row, and then the librarian introduced his grandmother. Lucky for her, she read
Brown Bear, Brown Bear
. Halfway through, the little runts were yipping along with the story. Everybody but David clapped at the end.
Then she read
Green Eggs and Ham.
Then
Make Way for Ducklings.
Finally, the last one:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
About the time Goldilocks was peeping into the bears’ house, David happened to look over at the other person in the last row. It was a girl. Teenager. She wore lime green shorts and a white shirt tied across her stomach and pink earrings down to her shoulders and brown hair unlike any David had ever seen before. It was pulled into a pair of woven ropes that hung halfway down her back. Bare feet. But the main thing was, her head was bowed and her eyes were shut as if she were sleeping.
About the time Goldilocks was sampling the porridge, David looked again. And kept looking.
As Goldilocks headed upstairs, David began moving quietly from seat to seat in the sleeper’s direction.
Goldilocks was settling into Baby Bear’s bed as David stopped two chairs away. The bears were staring at their porridge bowls as David lowered himself carefully to one knee and saw the roller skates on the chair beside her and tilted his head to get a better look at her face and her closed eyes, which he now saw were tinted with purple glitter like a pair of bird-size Easter eggs. And Baby Bear had just exclaimed, “Somebody has been sleeping in
my
bed!” when David let loose the scream of his life.
The shock wave from the scream sent Primrose toppling over backwards in her chair. From the floor she saw a sandy-haired little kid backing away, screeching, “You’re
dead
! . . . You’re
dead
! . . .”
Primrose felt her face, wiggled her fingers. She looked around at the stunned, wide-eyed faces. The kid seemed awful sure of himself. The look on his face. She was beginning to wonder.
“I am?” she said.
“I
saw
you. You
have
to be.” He was no longer screeching, no longer backing up.
Primrose got to her feet, and twenty-five pre-schoolers screamed and clutched their mothers.
“Maybe I’m a ghost,” she said.
More preschooler screams. Two fled the room.
“Ghosts don’t exist,” said the kid, who now seemed more angry than scared.
His voice sounded familiar. “Say that again,” she told him and closed her eyes.
“Ghosts don’t exist.”
“Say ‘My name is David.’ ”
“My name is David.”
“I’m from Minnesota.”
“I’m from Minnesota.”
She smiled. She opened her eyes. He was staring at her, a blue, bold, unblinking stare. She remembered that in the park, even when he had truly believed her dead, he had not sounded afraid.
She pulled a card from her pocket. “Here,” she said. She handed it to him, picked up her skates, and walked out.
The door was closing behind her, but she could not resist. She leaned back into the room and said, “Boo.”
Preschoolers screamed.
The next day David was biking around town, looking at street signs. By noon he had covered Perkiomen, up and down a hundred different streets. He was always careful to obey traffic lights and never go down one-way streets the wrong way. For the tenth time he stopped and pulled out the little white card she had given him. It was done in green ink in fancy handwriting. It said:
Madame Dufee
Reader and Advisor
“Meet Your Tomorrow Today”
Tulip Street
He pocketed the card and kept riding. He was thirsty.
About an hour later he found it. He coasted down the gentle slope of a street called Pratt to its dead end, and there it was, white letters on a black iron sign: Tulip Street. It felt like the corner of Nowhere and Noplace. Not only did Pratt end there, so did Tulip.
David coasted down Tulip. There were no houses, no sidewalks. Loose stones washed like roadside surf into weed fields. Sparrows flirted with the broken windows of an abandoned garage. A rustle in the weeds. Groundhog? Rat?
Ahead, on the left, was another garage. Or was it? A sign was jammed into the bare earth in front of it. Coasting closer, David saw that it was painted in the same fancy lettering as the card in his pocket:
Reader
and
Advisor
He stopped, lowered one foot to the glaring dust. The paint was peeling so bad on the place it looked like a camouflage jacket. A big old shoe-box–shaped junker van without wheels sat alongside. Splatters on the flat back end looked like dried egg.
David was torn. The foot on the pedal wanted to beat it out of there. The foot on the street wanted to stay, check it out. The place had a front door and one front window. Something hung over the window on the inside.
Just as David decided to beat it, the front door opened. A face peeked out — a lady’s face topped by an explosion, a geyser of blonde hair. The lady made a cap bill of her hand to shade her eyes. “You have an appointment?”
What was she talking about? In the heat between them a dragonfly hovered like a miniature helicopter, then darted off. David grunted, “Huh?”
“No need to get mad,” the lady called. “You’re in luck. You don’t need an appointment today.” The door opened wider. “Come on. The flies are getting in.”
David knew there were a million reasons why he should not go in, but none of them had made the turn onto Tulip Street. He parked his bike by the junker. “Does a girl live here?” he said.
The lady’s feet were bare. Every toe had a ring. “Yes, yes. Now hurry. Flies.”
David went in. A smell hit him — flowery, but old and sour. He found himself in the softest room he had ever seen. Floor, walls, ceiling — all were covered with carpets. It reminded him of a tent. There was no furniture. The door closed behind him, shutting out the daylight. He could not see.
“Sit.” Her voice.
“Where?”
“Here.” Hands on his shoulders pushed him gently forward, then down. “Here.”
Nothing but rug beneath him. He sat.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Madame Dufee,” she said. “Who else?”
A drape parted. Light. Her silhouette leaving. The drape closed. Dark again. Night in a box. David alone. Scared.
He held his hand before his eyes. Could not see it. Since April 29 of last year he had never been in total darkness, never allowed himself to be. In his bedroom, low by the baseboard, near the dresser, his Jiminy Cricket night-light glowed and smiled and tipped its top hat every night, all night long, while he slept.
He pulled his knees up. He shuddered.
Is a coffin like this? Are the walls moving in?
He reached out.
Humming. Beyond the dark she was humming. Or someone was. His mother used to hum. Carolyn Sue Limpert. He remembered once. He was on the stairs, playing dinosaurs and soldiers. Tyrannosaurus rex was eating soldiers — privates, sergeants — sometimes two at a time, chewing them up, and below him, in the dining room, his mother was setting the dinner table and humming. Folding napkins and placing plates and spoons and forks and humming while Tyrannosaurus rex ate the whole army, generals and all. Her humming had been the night-light of his life.
Flame flared. Madame Dufee was back with a candle. He could see now that a teddy bear had been sitting across from him the whole time, its button eyes forever astonished. She sat down and placed the candle on the floor between them. Her tornado-whipped hair was the same, but now the rest of her was lost in a robe of flowers, birds, and dragons with flaming tongues. Golden hoops you could pitch a baseball through hung from her earlobes. Before she tucked her feet under, toe rings glowed in the flickering light like ten tiny halos.
“Take off your shoe,” she said.
Was she serious? “Which one?”
She frowned, thinking. “Which foot is your favorite?”
He thought. “Right, I guess.”
“Left,” she said.
He removed his left sneaker.
“Sock too.”
Sock too.
“Okay, lay down and gimme” — she flapped her fingers — “gimme.”
He lay on his back and gave her his bare left foot. She tugged until the foot was close enough to the flame to feel its heat. Cupping his heel in one hand, she brought the foot up to her face. She ran a fingertip across his sole. He shrieked, “Tickles!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, “the worst is over.”
For several minutes then she studied his foot, tilting it this way and that. She pressed the bottoms of his toes as if they were buttons. She poked his foot here, there. She began to nod. She closed her eyes. “Mm-hmm . . . mm-hmm . . .” She frowned with concentration. “I see . . . I see . . .”
“See what?” he said.
“I see . . . bread pudding.”
“Huh?”
“Bread pudding.”
“I don’t like bread pudding.”
“You will. You will sprinkle it with cinnamon and you will love it.”
He doubted it. “Anything else?”
“I see . . . pretty babies . . . children . . .
grand
children . . . a house with a white fence . . . a rocking chair on the porch . . .” Her concentration softened. She opened her eyes. She looked into his face. Firelight danced in her eyes. She smiled. “You,” she said, pointing, “you lucky buck. You are going to have a long and —”
Suddenly all went white — her face, the astonished bear, the room — as the front door flew open. A black silhouette stood in the blinding light, spoke: “He’s not a customer.”