Water Balloon Page 6

  I will win back the blitzing crown on the Fourth.

  Unless one of them gets me first.

  Slightly Painful Beginnings

  When my dad picks me up from the Krolls' on Wednesday, he has our tennis rackets in the back of the truck.

  "I'm too wiped," I say. "Faith stuck gum in Grace's hair. Twice. They wouldn't eat the lunch I made them, and—"

  "Then just a quick volley," he says.

  He drives to the park by Mom's house, and I feel this wave of longing as we drive by.

  "It's been too long since we played," he says. "Let's have some fun."

  I may have figured something out. It seems very possible that my dad does not know the correct definition of fun.

  I'm not very good at tennis, even though both my parents are. Sometimes, and I never know when it'll be, I play really well. It's so weird, because the next time I'll be whacking the ball over the fence or just barely getting it over the net, but every now and then, it all comes together.

  Dad and I play for almost an hour. There are balls everywhere (this not being one of the days I play well). Even though I didn't want to play, I'm getting some pleasure out of whacking the ball. It's not exactly a five-year-old's head I'm picturing, but it's not that far off, either.

  "Let's gather up the balls and hit one more round," Dad says. He walks around the inside perimeter of the fence, and I step out through the gate to hunt down the balls I hit out.

  It's right there for me to see. Still, it takes a minute to get it. First I see the bizarre pink and yellow of Leah's sister's old hand-me-down bike. I think, Wow, I have to tell Leah there's someone else riding around with that same awful bike. Then I notice another girl walking in a big group of people who looks just like Jane. And there it is. Duh. Leah and Jane, hanging out together. Without me. Who are those other girls? And those guys?

  "Marley? You have those balls?"

  I walk back to the court. "Could we just pack up?" I say. "I'm done." Any spark of energy I may have had has been snuffed.

  In my brain, I know there's nothing wrong with Leah and Jane hanging out with those Curtain Call people. But they made it sound like they had to be together to get all this work done. Really, they're just hanging out, having fun. Without me.

  ***

  Thursday with the twins is another endless one. Grace skins her knee and refuses to go back outside. Faith won't come inside. I have to stand on the porch, with Grace right inside the front door. I must go in and out that door more than three hundred times.

  Grace finally comes running outside, carrying two balloons with ribbons attached. Faith grabs them from her.

  "Get off my balloon!" Grace screams, racing after her.

  "Come and get it," Faith says.

  "It's MINE!" Grace screams. "The pink one's mine! Give it!"

  I can't tell if it's on purpose, but at that moment, Faith trips. Of course only one balloon gets loose. And starts soaring straight up to the sky.

  It's pink.

  "Nooooooooo!" Grace cries. "It was MINE!"

  "Quick!" I say. What, Marley? Quick, what? I have their attention. What? "Make a wish, Grace!"

  "Why?"

  "You never heard of wishing on a balloon in the sky? Quick! It was your balloon, so it's your wish!"

  Grace closes her eyes to think.

  Faith lets go of her balloon too. She closes her eyes.

  I want to go lie down somewhere and take a nap.

  For the rest of the summer.

  ***

  By the time Dad picks me up, I feel like a capital-S Survivor. I have lived through a week of Grace and Faith, albeit a four-day week. The six twenty-dollar bills in my pocket are nice, but I'm pretty sure I'm being paid well below minimum wage, and I'm also sure that few workers on earth are more challenged by their daily job than I am.

  I vow not to look ahead at all the five-day weeks remaining. I will just enjoy this time off, this three-day break. I hum the whole way home.

  When I walk in the door, I grab a Diet Coke and sit on the couch with a book, ready to celebrate my freedom.

  "Marley?" my dad says. "A little help?"

  He so does not get me.

  "Can't I just have a few minutes?" I say, not taking any care to hide my mega-annoyance.

  "Just a little help and then I'll leave you alone."

  "Fine."

  Dad stands in front of some new towers of boxes that he neatly stacked in the corner of the living room. "I haven't figured out the trash collection days here yet, but if I get my garbage out there, sooner or later they'll have to take it."

  Dad has always been the kind of guy who knows the trash collection schedule for the whole town. But of course, this is the new him. I just stare.

  "So are you going to help?"

  It's not bad enough my days are spent with year-old spit-bubble-blowing, balloon-releasing, whining five-year-olds; apparently I need to spend my free time carting cartons with my father.

  "We need to bring out the ones from here to the street, and then we'll get the ones that are already in the garage."

  "Didn't I already bring one of these out?"

  "One? Yes, Marley. You did bring out one. Do you notice how many remain?"

  "Well, Mr. Baird, sir. I'm not so good at math, sir. So, uh, no?"

  He gives me a look. It disguises his love for me quite effectively. "Okay. Why don't you just take the ones from the garage out to the curb, and then you and Rig can go outside for a while. Please. Maybe at a great distance from where I can see you. I'll do the rest."

  I haul eight boxes from the garage to the curb, placing the one with the Monopoly box on top of a big pile, the carton's flaps blowing in the light wind. Then I call for Rig and step out the back door to the yard. Jack is just standing there, staring at our house with a bizarre look on his face: almost cross-eyed, and very serious.

  "I willed you to come out," he says.

  "Whazat?" Oh, great. I'm talking like a twin.

  "I didn't want to bug you. Were you guys doing something?"

  I shake my head no.

  "Do you want to take Rig for a walk or something?"

  "That's exactly what I want to do," I say.

  Jack nods. "Yes. I willed it to be."

  "Is that face you were making a will-it-to-be face?"

  He smiles. I realize then and there that the expression weak in the knees is an actual phenomenon.

  I run back in to tell Dad where I'm going, all the while trying to name the weird feelings floating around my stomach and drifting up to my head. It's not that different from the way I feel at school when I have a crush on someone, always someone who has absolutely no idea, of course. But it is different. There's something that makes this more like its own flip side. Like instead of it being a mostly nervous, anxious feeling, this is closer to a slightly nervous, excited feeling.

  As I step outside, Jack holds something up to show me. An old radio? "So we won't miss the game."

  Game. The Yankees game. "Excellent," I say, feeling like a big liar. I could probably miss a season or two and not feel it too deeply.

  "So," Jack says. "How was yesterday? Any easier? Or did you find out there's a high-maintenance python you need to take care of too?"

  "No, just twins. I don't mean to make it sound like a tough job. I mean, it's not hard like you have to be smart or strong or anything like that." Shut up, Marley.

  A bizarre sound, like a coyote howl, distracts me. Thank you, random coyote, for shutting me up.

  "The Williamsons," Jack says. "They have this chow-shepherd mix. Look upstairs, middle window of the green house."

  I see a dark nose pushed against the screen window. The howling continues, loud.

  It's soon joined by a higher-pitched bark: "Arah-rah! Arah-rah! Arah-arah-rah!" On the front porch of the next house is a poofy gray dog, turning in circles and yipping at Rig. "Arah-rah! Arah-rah!" Turn. "Arah-arah-rah!" Turn the other way.

  "Real dog neighborhood, huh?"

/>   "Yeah."

  "There aren't many dogs where my mom lives. Down the street, there used to be this big white boxer, Beulah. She was Rig's best friend."

  Jack gives me a look.

  "What? Dogs can have best friends. Whenever I walked by their house, Beulah's owner, this old woman, would ask if Rig could play for a while. He'd bound into their yard and Beulah and Rig would both get up on their hind legs to greet each other, and then play like wild things."

  Usually I can't make myself talk to someone new. Today I can't get myself to shut up.

  "Dog best friends," Jack says.

  "Yeah, but it's so sad. Beulah moved. Over a year ago. Every time we pass that house, I mean, like, almost every day, Rig just sits and stares, like he's waiting for an invitation to the backyard. I grab his collar and try to pull him along, but he just looks toward the yard. I'm not making this up. He gets that mournful puppy-dog look. It could break your heart."

  "That's pathetic. Here, come this way." He turns down a street, away from the park I thought we were headed toward. Rig, out ahead of us a little, does an excellent dog double take—looking first where we're headed and then turning to look at me. He trots to catch up. Halfway down the street Jack turns again, this time onto a path. "I take this shortcut to camp."

  It's really lush and beautiful, enchanted-forest-like, with ferns growing everywhere and big trees that meet in gentle arches overhead. We're walking underneath a tunnel of branches with sunshine shafting down in unexpected pools of light, and I think of Hansel and Gretel.

  "Will Rig take off after a rabbit?" Jack asks. "I sometimes see them back here."

  "No, he'll be fine. Unless, of course, the rabbits hang out with flies. Then he'll do his stotal paz fly dance."

  "Stotal paz?"

  "Oh, it's something my friend Jane always says. Sort of the supersize version of a total spaz."

  "Right. Is that who was at your house the other day? Jane?"

  "Yeah, Jane and Leah. They're my best friends. Since, like, forever." My brain keeps going back to the memory of them yesterday with those other kids, drawn to it the way my index finger always seeks the slightly painful beginnings of a hangnail on my thumb.

  "Hey, there's one," Jack says, pointing at a rabbit sitting on top of an old tree stump.

  I watch Rig go through his rabbit-spotting routine. He freezes, like a rabbit himself, and watches. The rabbit seems to sense Rig's presence and also goes completely still. Rig's body is rigid, his ears all perked up, eyes wide open. He's panting, and his tail is pointing straight out behind him, wagging slowly. Then he takes onele ap—just one—toward the rabbit.

  I always think that he's saying, I could! I could chomp you with my big giant dog teeth! I could chase you! I could catch you! I could! Make sure you know that, rabbit! I could! I so could!

  Then he looks at me and his body totally relaxes. The doggy equivalent of Just kidding. He goes back to sniffing along the path. Something stinky must have been along before us, because he is one enthusiastic sniffer today, reaching back into the ferns growing in the deep shade, pushing under tall, thick grasses, then sniffing up, up the trunks of trees.

  "So work's okay?"

  "Well, those two little girls are sort of awful to each other. I always thought there was something special, like almost magical, about a twin. I thought it would be like a real, true best friend."

  "Like you and your friends?"

  "Um, maybe not exactly. Or yeah, maybe. I'm not sure."

  "That's exactly what Will was like," Jack says. "He moved right before school ended. When we were little, his family always used to call us the twins."

  The path ends, and I see that we're near the soccer field at the park, the very one my team used to play on when I was younger. "I never knew there was a path back here."

  "Ah, there is much you have not yet learned, my friend."

  I get a little jolt at that word, friend.

  "You want to sit for a while?" Jack asks.

  "Do you?" There is something so new here. It's like figuring out our own means of communication.

  "We could keep walking."

  "Sure."

  Rig trots a little ahead so that we're following him again. "How long have you had Rig?"

  "Since first grade."

  "He's a great dog."

  I know that this isn't just something he's saying; he gets it. When Leah and Jane come over, Rig runs over to greet them, barks his friendly "Ruh," with his tail wagging, and their hands go up around their faces, as far from him as they can possibly get. They don't hate him or anything. They just couldn't care less.

  "Do you have a dog?" I ask. We're rounding the far side of the field, heading toward the playground and tennis courts that divide the soccer area from the baseball fields.

  "We did for a while, but my brother took her with him when he moved out. She's a golden retriever: Scout. She comes over every once in a while, when my brother comes to visit. I miss her a lot. I really miss having a dog."

  "Why'd she go with your brother? Was she his dog?"

  "Not exactly. She was a great dog. To me. She sometimes bit people."

  "Oh, that sucks. So how old's your brother?"

  "Twenty."

  "Are you close?"

  "I don't know. We used to hang out a lot more, but he's been working really hard. You'd like him. A big fan. All year we save our money so we can buy a bunch of Yankees tickets the day they go on sale."

  "So, Scout," I say. "Is that like a Boy Scout thing?"

  "No, my mom named her for some girl in a movie. To Kill a Mockingbird. I sometimes think she wishes she had a daughter."

  I'm about to tell him about Rig and the son my father never had, and maybe even clear up the big-time Yankee fan confusion. Something else gets my attention.

  I spot Leah's pink and yellow bike. I lean all the way to my right, try to see behind her, to see if Jane's there too, with a posse of new friends. If anyone else is with Leah, they're following at a great distance. She rides down the path and stops right in front of me. "OH! My God! Marley! Fancy meeting you here."

  "Hey, Leah. How's it going?"

  "It's been an amazing week. Amazing!" Her eyes lock on Jack, look up, look down. She shakes out her hair, her gorgeous, wavy honey brown hair.

  "I had no idea CC was going to be so intense. It's, like, so intense! This week? We were working on character study because next week we're going to audition? And so Jane and me were up until, like, midnight and—"

  It will be August before she's done if I don't stop her. I feel Jack next to me. "Do you guys know each other?" There's a sort of grunt of nonresponse from Jack. Then I say, "Leah, this is Jack. Jack, well, duh, this is Leah."

  They smile at each other.

  "So anyway, I'm sorry me and Jane haven't been around. We haven't had a minute when we're not rehearsing or practicing or whatever. We'll see you tomorrow, right? At Jane's." Then, to Jack she says, "It was really nice meeting you, Jack."

  "See ya," Jack says. When Leah rides off, Rig turns his big head to watch, then looks back at us.

  Jack walks over to a bench and sits right in the middle, then scoots over to the end a bit and motions for me to sit, too. Rig settles at our feet.

  "She can be weird sometimes, but she and Jane are my best friends," I tell Jack, even though I've already told him. There's something almost defensive in my voice that doesn't make sense.

  "Yeah, she seems cool," he says. He's quiet, just looking at me, and there are those eyes. His brown hair is a little shaggy, not a look I usually like. There's just something. I start to get all fluttery inside. Unable to talk.

  An ugly tan pigeon lands on the back of the bench, a little too close to me. I think for a second about Elsie Jenkins, the monochromatic no-friends girl in her tan windbreaker. I wonder what people with no friends do all summer.

  We sit there for a while, just looking around. Every time I look at Jack's face, really look at it, my stomach starts flipping. If I st
opped to think about any of this, I doubt I could ever talk to him. I doubt I could walk. Or breathe without panting.

  ***

  Back at our block, Jack says, "Let me know if you want to take a walk sometime."

  "Yeah, I'll will you to come outside, okay?"

  "Might work," he says. "Just don't forget to make the face. The face is key." He shows me the radio. "We forgot to listen to the game!"

  "Man!" I stamp my foot to show my great displeasure. As he walks toward his house I'm pricked by the feeling that I have to come clean about that whole Yankee thing. It reminds me of opening the fridge at home and smelling something sour. My mother will always take out all the bottles and cartons, open each one, and sniff. I'll just shut the door and go into the pantry to find something else, but that sour smell lingers in my brain, worrying me.

  The row of cartons neatly piled in front of Dad's house has doubled since I left. He's heading out with his arms full of more when he sees me. "Leah rode by," he says. "She said you saw her at the park."

  "Yeah, I went with that kid who lives over there." I point toward Jack's house, trying not to let my face show the four hundred and fifty-seven emotions that scramble into play when I even think about him.

  Dad smiles, a kind of surprised smile. "Jack Hadley?"

  Hadley? I nod. "How do you know him?"

  "He wasn't in my class, but I know him as a student at Little Valley. And sometimes I play catch with him." I knew that. I'd seen that. There's just something about hearing him say that. It's just so weird. He puts the pile of boxes down next to him on the lawn.

  "He was in his yard the morning after I moved in, throwing high fly balls to himself," Dad says. "I called over and asked if he wanted to throw the ball around."

  I think again about the son Dad never got to have. I always thought he'd appreciate someone to have catches with, go to games with, maybe wrestle or some other contact boy sport with. I get an image of my dad and Jack wrestling and my body involuntarily wiggles and jerks, trying to shake it away, to go back in time and not have to have that image ever even appear.