Number 8 (15 page)

“Good. Listen, don't say anything about today to her, okay? She's cranky, and I don't want to make things worse.
She'd probably go and yell at Badman's mother or the principal or something.”

“All right. We can leave the roof now, and tomorrow we can nail it on. Then we'll be ready to take it to your place and show the possums.”

As we're packing up, I say, “You haven't had any weird calls have you? You know, when you pick it up, no one on the other end, just heavy breathing?”

“No. Do you mean like the other night?”

“Yeah, and there've been more. It's creepy. Do you think it's Badman?”

Asim shakes his head. “I don't know. He is not the type, I think. I don't know if he could keep a secret. He just seems to go off like one of his firecrackers. But then you cannot be sure.”

The sun is setting behind the wires lacing the sky as we cross the road to my place. There are dinner smells in the air, and I wonder if the sausages are ours.

“But I did see something strange last night,” Asim says as we open the gate. “I tried to tell you this morning before math, and then I forgot after the fight. I saw that blue Mustang again.”

“The 777?”

“Yes. But this time it stopped a couple of times going down the street. It stopped at your place.”

I freeze on the path, my hand holding the gate wide open.

“There were two men in the car. The passenger man got out and put something in your mailbox.”

“When was this?”

“Last night, at about nine o'clock. I was coming to put the garbage out.”

“Maybe it's still there!” I let the gate bang shut and lifted up the little door on the mailbox.

“No, I wouldn't think so, your mother went to the mailbox right away. She must have seen the car stopping from the gate. Maybe she was putting out the garbage, like me.”

He's right. I find nothing but a shiny flyer for Dominoes Pizza.

“What did the man look like?”

Asim thought for a moment. “Tall, thin man in a dark suit. I could not see the driver.”

“Strange, she didn't say anything about it to me this morning.”

As we walk in the door and smell the sausages frying from the kitchen, I suddenly remember Mom swearing over her coffee this morning because she'd forgotten to put out the garbage can. “Don't even know what day it is anymore,” she'd said, and her mouth had quivered as we stood looking at the mess of orange skins and milk cartons and cereal boxes still poking out of the plastic bags bulging from the wheelie can.

“And now, give it up for … ES-MER-EL-DA!”

A hand at my back pushes me into the footlights. The shimmer is blinding, a wall of light. I know I'm here to sing, but my throat is blocked by a stone the size of an egg. Below me the audience swims in shadow. The neon sign, Blue Moon, blinks from the blur.

The hand pushes again and I'm falling, holding my head, waiting for the crash to Earth. But the dark just goes on and on. It's not dead space—there are folds and rustles, soft as a car's purr. A riff of guitar steals out, electric. The notes make me ache, rising so high and pure above the dark that they burn like stars and suddenly everything is clear.

The stone flies from my throat and drops like a dead thing. It smashes hard on something a world away. I'm so
GLAD
to hear the smash and my voice rips up through my throat and I'm singing.

Something clutches at my hand. The touch is gentle but in my hand the lightness becomes heavy, dragging me down. I'm not flying anymore—I'm sinking down to the bottom of the sea. I open my eyes and there's Lilly smiling and nodding, her hand clamped on mine like a vice. She's whispering something in my ear.
Oops,
she giggles and I'm wondering why her hair is all dry and golden when we are under the sea.

The weight of the water is crushing. It's pressing on all the bones in my head. I tell her we won't survive unless she lets go when suddenly, she does. She opens her hand and there, deadly as a cannonball, is the stone. She taps it against my head and the sound is like thunder,
boom!

My heart goes wild with another crack of thunder and I'm dripping wet, tossing and turning but now there's something soft wrapped around my legs and I look down to see my own sheets with the little blue boats on them and the curtains blowing out toward me with a gust of wind. I lie still, waiting for my heart to slow, feeling the edge of the dream curl back. I listen for the rain that should go with the thunder. But there's only the low whine of wind and after a while, there's no sound at all.

“Hey, Esmerelda, wait!”

Jackson. Damn. I stop and turn around. “Hi—listen Jackson, sorry, but I'm in a bit of a hurry. I have to talk to Lilly about something before class. There she is over at the lunch tables with Catrina and Mitch. I won't have long.”

“But did you hear about Asim?”

“What? Can't it wait?” I hear the impatience in my voice and bite the inside of my cheek.

“His mailbox was blown up last night.” Jackson's lips go thin and angry.

Oh, not now!

“Can't imagine who would do something like
that,
can you?” he says slowly. Sounds like he's squeezing something nasty out of a tube.

No!
I don't want to think about it. I haven't done my math homework, I don't get this new reciprocal fractions business, and I'm thinking out my speech to Lilly.

“Blown apart,” Jackson goes on. “You know his dad made it himself? Looks like a little log cabin? Well the door was blown off. It's the sort of thing you could do with copper pipe and dynamite. Although maybe if you had a bunch of powerful firecrackers like Thunders or Three-Quarters, you could do that much damage.”

I remember the soundtrack to my dream. “Where's Asim now?”

“He's coming later. Wants to help his dad fix the mailbox. He was too upset about it to come to school. He said he heard something in the night, but was too sleepy to get up and have a look. Did you hear anything?”

“Yes, but I was having this weird dream, and I thought it was thunder. Did it rain last night?”

“Ez, what are we gonna do about this? Badman—”

“Look, Jackson, that fight you had with him was terrible. I thought you were going to kill each other. He just goes crazy sometimes. But we don't know for sure he's responsible for this mailbox thing. It might've been one of those racist gangs that write on the store walls or maybe just … a bunch of idiots. You can't always blame … anyway, he just likes to show off about his fireworks, you know that. I think he's all talk.”

“Oh, come
on.
Everyone knows he did old Mrs. Shore's mailbox down the road. Me and Asim saw him running away, the smoke practically hissing from his feet. You know his dad can get him those fancy fireworks—he buys them on the black market or something. You should see Asim, he's a mess.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Lilly stand and pick up her bag. I jiggle my own with frustration. For sure the bell will go and I'll lose the moment. There won't be another time, because I won't find the courage again. “Look,”
I burst out, “it's only a mailbox for God's sake. No one was hurt, were they?”

Jackson looks at me strangely. “No.” He starts to speak again, very slowly, as if explaining something to a very dim and not very nice kindergartner. “Esmerelda, for you or me, having our mailbox blown up might be just annoying, but for him, well, you know what he's been through. I've told him we're going to get whoever did it, but all he says is forget it, don't make trouble, ‘is nothing compared to what life was like before.' And then he goes on about all the ‘wonderful' things there are in Australia, but he's bawling and his hands are all trembly. That bastard—I'm just not going to let him get away with it!”

A sinking feeling is spreading in my stomach like sour milk. “Yeah well, nothing we can do right now, anyway,” I say briskly, not liking myself or him. “We'll talk about it at recess, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Jackson turns on his heel and stalks off. I look at his hurt back and grind my teeth. Nothing I can do about
him
now, either. I walk quickly toward the lunch tables. As I wave at Lilly, she runs toward me.

“Hey, Ez, guess
what!
Double, triple guess what!”

The tone of her voice reminds me of her knock knock jokes in second grade. I had to say “who's there?” fifty times a day or she'd stop being my friend.

“Guess
what,
I said!”

“What?”

She takes my hands and flaps them up and down with excitement. “We were chosen for the concert!”

Lilly's face is almost fluorescent with triumph. The sour milk feeling clumps in my guts.

“Only three groups got in and we're going to be first. Imagine, I'll be so nervous!”

I look down at my hands in hers and remember the dead weight in my dream.

“Oh, don't be scared, Lilly, you'll be a star,” says Catrina, coming up and patting her shoulder. “You could wear your new halter top.”

“Well, actually my mom—”

“Lilly, could I talk to you a moment?” I try to pull her away.

She looks sideways at Catrina and rolls her eyes.

“It's okay,” says Catrina, grinning. “You stars must have a lot to talk about.”

We walk a little way along the path toward the classroom. I'm trying to begin but I feel like there's something stuck in my throat again.

“Well, what?” says Lilly. “Aren't you glad? You've got a face like Mom's when she's about to ground me. Geez you're weird, Marx. I'll never figure you out, as long as I live.”

This wasn't a promising start. “Well, look,” I began, “I really wanted to talk to you about this.”

“This what?”

“You know, the concert. It's just, well, the thing is I don't think I'll be able to sing ‘Oops! … I Did It Again.'”

“Are you kidding me? You do that song in your sleep. What are you talking about?”

I take a deep breath. Lilly's eyes are wide and innocent, like perfect blue plates before you put anything on them. “No, see, I really do find ‘Oops' hard to sing. It's just that song, Lilly, I think it's kind of creepy—”

“Creepy?”

“Yeah.”

Lilly hasn't taken another breath. She's going red in the face. I wonder if I should remind her to breathe. I start to babble.

“See, I go dead inside when that music starts. I don't know why. I guess I just don't like it—for me it's like eating too many doughnuts with fake cream, sort of makes me sick. It means so much to me to really like the song I'm singing. You know?”

She hasn't breathed yet. Then, with a clutch of horror, I see her eyes filling.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Lilly, look I'll do anything else, even another one of Britney's maybe. Something we both like. It's just, see, the sick business is getting worse. I'm even having nightmares about it. We could try harmonizing, like Valerie says.”

“Oh, Valerie this, Valerie
that.
What's
she
got to do with this? It's her that changed your mind, I bet!”

“No, she's got nothing to do with it. She's just helped me see what I
do
like—”

“Ever since you met Jackson, you've been different. No one sees you anymore.
I
don't see you anymore. Girls should never drop their best friends just because they get a boyfriend. You should read what
YM
says about girls like that. You'll be very lonely one day.”

A mass of protests crowd into my mind—isn't it all the other way around?—but a foggy heat is gathering behind my eyes. I stare, dumb, at my shoes.

“Never mind.” She looks at me kindly now. “Everything will be all right. It's settled. We were chosen,
us,
and everyone thinks we're great!” She throws down her bag and lifts her arms in the air like a singer accepting applause. A shower of
dust flies up into our faces. I rub my eyes and wish I could rub myself away, like the genie in Aladdin's lamp.

I mumble something and start to walk away but suddenly she grabs my arm. Her eyes are hard again. “I mean it, everything is
settled.
Say it is, and I'll forgive you.”

I stare down at my shoes again. The hot, cloudy feeling in my head blurs the ground.

“Oh, Ez, why do you have to be so weird? Why do you always have to change things, upset everyone!” She lets go of my arm as if it burned her. “My mom has even made us costumes—we've got these pink skirts with black sequins and a pink bikini top, oh, you should see them. I was going to bring them to your house as a surprise!” She stamps her foot, kicking her bag so her math book falls out.

Oh no, math is first thing. My stomach drops like an elevator.

“Lilly, please let's forget this now, we better get to class.”

“I'm not moving until you say sorry. Till you say you'll do it, just like we planned and re
hearsed
so many times. And that you'll wear the outfits.”

I look at the set of her jaw, the pout of her lip. I've seen that expression so many times. It means
I won't be your friend if you do that, no one will like you anymore, you're so weird, Marx.
I think of all the things over the years that I've done because of that look.

A spark of pure rage clears my head for a moment, like clouds parting. “God almighty, Lilly, I've obeyed your orders since we were five. Have you ever thought maybe I don't
want
to do everything you do? Maybe I've got my
own
… things, like…”

“Like what?”

“Like … oh, I don't know.” A fog seems to have taken over my brain, drowning my thoughts. I've gone blank, stupid as a stone. All I can think about is this video clip of Little Richard that Valerie showed me—his band was called The Upsetters and their hair was piled high as Marge Simpson's beehive.