Number 8 (9 page)

“Hmm,” I murmur, like a doctor making a diagnosis. I look around for Asim, but he's trickled back to the living room. He's got himself a chair to sit on, and has wrapped his legs around the big drum. He's tapping away, his eyes closed, so I leave him to it.

“Well, let's make a fresh start,” I say, as if I know what I'm doing. I close the book.

“Hey, hold on, what are you doing?”

I get a new sheet of paper and some apples from the fruit bowl. I write out a problem involving just the first mathematical step and a group of granny smiths at ten cents each.

Ez stares at the fruit for a while. Then she picks up the pencil. After a minute she says, “This is too easy, Jackson! What do you think I am, a first grader?” Her voice is full of scorn, but a smile is tugging at the corner of her mouth.

I look at her answer and smile back. “That's great. If you can do that, you can do any of Norton's homework. That's the basis of it.”

“So give me another one, smarty pants.”

I make up two more, just like the first, with different fruit. She does them in sixty seconds flat.

“Excellent! Now try this one.” I tell her to do that first step, then show her, taking my time and cracking a joke, how to do the next one that builds on it. I act really casual, as if we're discussing the weather. We do some more like that together, and then others which include further steps. We do them slowly, going through each step one at a time. The stereo volume has crept up again, and Ez is tapping the paper with her pencil. But the music doesn't seem to distract her. She's filling the page, concentrating. I tell her that soon she'll be able to do those first steps mentally, and she won't even notice. For the first time, she looks as if she believes it.

I'm really reluctant to start Norton's homework now. She's feeling confident and relaxed, and that load of two pages might be overwhelming.

“I guess I should start the real homework now, huh?” says Esmerelda.

We open the book and look at it. Her shoulders droop.

“What about this: we just do two problems together now, and then if you like I'll finish the rest but we can do them again, slowly, tomorrow afternoon, or on the weekend.”

“Oh, you're an angel!” sings Esmerelda, springing up. She pretends to hold a mike, and sings some line about a bird that is really an angel sitting on her shoulder.

“Hey, that's gospel singing,” says Mom coming into the kitchen. “Gospel was the root of soul—you know, that inspired kind of singing the African Americans did in church. Where they shake and holler.”

“Really?” says Esmerelda. “Even Aretha?”

“Yeah, her father was a reverend. Those singers from Motown, they all learned how to sing in church. How to whip up feeling. Soul is all about feeling—putting your
soul
into the music. And you've got that, girl.”

Esmerelda smiles like the sun has just come out.

“Thanks, Mom, can we get back to this homework now?” I say. I stab the paper so hard with the pencil that the lead breaks. Why does she
always
have to butt in?

“Sure, sure, don't mind me.”

We finish the first two problems and Ez wants to do another. She's excited, I can tell by the way she's breathing. I know she's flying now and suddenly the mom-blues vanish and a tide of happiness rushes over me. Ez just needed someone to sit with her and help her not be afraid. I'm so glad it was me!

Mom's playing CDs in the living room. Tina Turner, Patti Smith. Esmerelda finishes the third, and we check it together. Then I take over. I can hear Asim pattering away on the congas. Esmerelda drifts toward the music.

I've nearly finished when Wilson Pickett comes on with “Mustang Sally.” You might not know it—it's a track from
the sixties that Mom plays at least once a day. It's a real funky rhythm and blues, with a bite to it. I grin to myself—Esmerelda will probably like it.

I'm humming along to this guy singing about his girlfriend and the Mustang he gave her, when I remember the blue Mustang we saw this afternoon.

If only I hadn't said the next thing, this whole night would have been the best of my life. Everyone was happy—me because Ez said I was an angel, Asim because he was playing his heart out on the congas, Mom because she'd shared Aretha with someone, and then, well, all of us were happy, I think, just because we were here together making noise against the dark. But then I have to go and say this dumb thing.

“Hey, Mom,” I call, “we
saw
a Mustang today, and it had such a creepy license plate. Can you guess what it was?”

Mom appears in the kitchen. She isn't smiling. Her face is pale. “Where? Where did you see it?”

“On this street, it was just cruising along.”

“What was the license plate?” She snaps out the question like a police interrogator.

“777,” I say, trying to laugh. “Like a horror movie!”

I wanted her to laugh, too, and say “how very odd,” or make one of her dumb jokes about my obsession.

But she just gets paler. She's standing under the kitchen light bulb and I can see the purplish shadows above her cheek bones.

“What were the letters?”

“I don't know, I got all caught up with the numbers, you know how it is.”

Asim is staring at Mom. “What?” he says quietly. “What is it?”

Asim is wired like me. He knows at a glance when a mood changes.

Mom laughs. She ruffles his hair. “Oh, nothing, I'm getting as bad as Jackson here. The evil seven!” and she does a fake shiver that's supposed to be funny. No one laughs.

Esmerelda bursts into the kitchen humming “Mustang Sally.”

“Oh, no!” she cries, looking at the oven clock. “It's 9:17. Mom'll kill me!”

I gather up her books. “Not if she sees you've done all your homework.”

Esmerelda grins. And then, simple as anything, she takes my hand and squeezes it. She rubs her thumb across my palm.

“Thanks for everything,” she says, but she's looking at Mom.

“I'd better be going, too,” says Asim.

“All right, well, I'll walk you,” says Mom.

We all stare at her. “But it's only across the road,” I say.

She laughs her new, strange laugh. “You can never be too sure what's lurking around the corner!”

The phone rings, crashing through the quiet. Mom doesn't reach for it even though she's right there.

“Should I get it?” I say.

“No, no!” Mom says quickly.

She picks up the receiver. I see her draw in her breath. But she says nothing. Slowly she puts it down.

“No one there,” she says. “Must have been a wrong number.”

As we all walk out the door I see Asim studying her, frowning. It's he who gently takes her arm, crossing the road.

I guess when you've experienced so much danger, as he has, you see it everywhere, even where it doesn't exist—in the suburbs.

It's Saturday morning. Sunlight seeps through the curtains like lemon tea.

My heart sinks. Even as I blink awake, lemon deepens into gold and little stars sail across the room to make a constellation on my comforter.

The weather is never on my side.

I know the whole world, or at least my part of the world, must be waking up, going, “Oh, great, it's going to be sunny for the weekend, what luck!” Sunlight is supposed to make you cheerful. Personally, if I could order the weather, I'd choose cloudy, thank you, or even better, stormy, with gale warnings. Today, at least. Then I could say to Lilly and Mitch and Jackson, “Isn't it a bummer how it always rains on weekends? Pity, the beach is out of the question now. Why don't we go to the movies?”

Don't get me wrong, I love the beach and big buffeting waves and body surfing. I always have. I just hate wearing practically nothing in front of other people, especially when one of those people is Lilly.

The bus to Pelican Beach is on time, too, and doesn't break down or smash into any random runaway four-wheel drives.

I arrive safely at the north end, on time, to meet my doom. As I stroll up to the surf club in my careful, carefree manner, I see Lilly and Mitch holding hands.

No sign of Jackson.

Lilly beams at me with her thousand-watt smile. She's still wearing it from a moment ago when she was gazing at Mitch. She's not wearing much else, either, just her gold suede bikini that matches her hair. I bet she takes boys' breath away. She's certainly stolen mine. I look down at the jeans and T-shirt that cover my bathing suit. How did she have the guts to leave her house that way?

“Hi, Ez, isn't Jackson with you?” She's looking past me, the smile dropping like a brick from a skyscraper.

“Hi, Lills, hi, Mitch.” I shove my beach bag onto the other shoulder. “No. I thought he would be on the bus, actually. Must be running late. Slept in maybe.”

We stand around in Lilly's shadow, watching the seagulls. A really bold one dives for a sandwich crust right near Mitch's foot. He lunges out, pretending to kick it. We laugh as the seagull yells at him, outraged. The sun is killing. I can feel sweat sliming down my legs, gluing the jeans to my skin. I wish Jackson would come.

I spot him first, coming from the north end. He must have missed the early bus. He's wearing faded orange board shorts and a black T-shirt. He's taking his time walking toward us, looking over his shoulder at the beach. Even from here I can see him frowning. His walk has that distracted feel, as if he's not in his body but far away, lost to the scene he's watching. I've never seen him out of school uniform, out in the world. He makes me feel shy all over again. Practically paralyzed.

As he turns and waves, he looks straight at me. In the dazzle of sunlight his eyes are electric blue. He's like a sudden
lick of guitar, shocking. There's a smear of vegemite at the corner of his mouth. He smiles at me, and my heart flips.

“Hey, Jackson, glad you could make it,” says Lilly before I can say a word.

I'm having trouble swallowing, what with my heart in my throat.

“Yeah, well, sorry I'm late,” mutters Jackson, looking hard at the seagulls. “Asim dropped over earlier and it was sort of hard to leave, you know.”

There's a fidgety silence. I let my bag slip onto the ground between my feet.

Last Tuesday, when we arranged all this date-at-the-beach business, Jackson asked me if Asim could come. So I asked Lilly, whose idea this was in the first place, but she said no, definitely not. I told her that Asim happens to be Jackson's best friend (you have to point these things out to Lilly because unless she's directly involved she doesn't notice other people) but she just said, “What has that got to do with me?”

I explained that Jackson would probably enjoy the day more if his friend Asim was there.

“But you'll be there, Ez, isn't that the whole point? It's supposed to be a foursome, a real date. That's what I planned—a romantic
date.
”

“Don't worry, Jackson,” says Lilly now. Her smile is back on, the pink gloss on her lips catching the sunlight. “We've only been standing in the boiling sun for half an hour waiting for you.”

Jackson starts to smile but his mouth wanders off like a dead-end street. He looks down at his feet.

Lilly gives a little laugh and suddenly reaches out to grab his hands. She holds them both in hers and gazes into his
eyes. She's giving him that special Lilly look, the kind that burns.

I glance at Mitch. His face is heating up, his lips thin.

“It's okay, Jackson,” Lilly purrs. She wipes the vegemite tenderly from the corner of his mouth with her finger. His head jerks back as if struck.

“Did you bring any CDs?” she goes on in a low voice. “I brought my stereo.”

“
I
brought CDs,” says Mitch quickly, glaring at Jackson. He steps forward, standing in the space between Lilly and Jackson. He looks like one of those Bible-thumping guys trying to get his foot in the door.

Lilly turns to smile at Mitch, but her hand lingers on Jackson's arm.

Jackson is staring at Lilly. He can't take his eyes off her. The arm she touched is still floating in midair the way she left it. He doesn't even look at me. Maybe it's just as well. If he doesn't look at me all day he won't see the way my stomach rolls over my bikini bottom when I sit down.

We find a space on the sand and spread out our towels. The beach is so crowded it looks like vanilla ice cream. Or maybe M&M's. Oh, why am I so hungry already? I try to hold in my tummy. You can't breathe properly if you do this. Soon I see stars behind my eyes. I think I'll faint.

I look at Lilly. She's lying back, leaning on one elbow. She's a honey brown all over. Her stomach dips into a flat warm pancake between the rise of her hips. There is a hardly there gold chain glittering around her waist.

She lies on the sand looking like a present at a birthday party.

“Nice tan,” breathes Mitch. I bet he wants to unwrap her.

I peer at her stomach from under my hair. It's real. The tan. She must have been working on it out in the backyard. Last year we both experimented with the fake tan in the bottle business and our legs went this outrageous shade of orange. Plus I found out Lilly was on some kind of diet, only eating carrots, which can turn you very orange and dangerously ill, too, if you persist. (I hid her carrots at lunch time and made her eat my Nutella sandwich.) What I want to know is, if the experts are so on about the sun being bad for you, why don't they come up with a real-looking fake tan? Maybe I'll work on that when I grow up, as well as my singing.

It's so hot, we're cooking here in the sun. I'm sweating like crazy. The waves are booming out there, bursting and washing onto the shore. I can't imagine why the boys don't just say
let's go, last one in is a festering dog dropping
or something. But Lilly is raving on—about some new dress her mother bought her this morning and the kids she saw at the mall.