Part 1 (1/2)

All Alone in the Universe.

Lynne Rae Perkins.

one.

OUR TOWN IS CALLED SELDEM.

My dad likes to add, ”If ever.”

The bronze plaque in Memorial Park says that our town was founded by Lord Henry Seldem, from England, in 1846. No one knows who he was or why he came here. The next town west is Hesmont, also named after a lord. It's hard to imagine any lords living here now, though. The biggest house in town probably has four bedrooms. Maybe Lord Seldem's house was torn down when they put in the Seldem Plaza or the Thorofare. Or maybe he never lived here at all; maybe he just founded the town, and the next day he looked around and decided he'd be better off in Deer Church or River's k.n.o.b.

Memorial Park is a tiny green triangle on Pittsfield Street Besides the bronze plaque, which is bolted onto an oily slab of coal from the Hesmont Mine, it has a flagpole, a war monument, a bench you can sit on to wait for the bus, and enough gra.s.s for one dog to lie down on under the sign that says WELCOME TO SELDEM! A COMMUNITY OF HOMES. When the dog stands up, it might want to trot two blocks south to the river and wash off because the gra.s.s (and everything else here) is coated with a light film of fly ash from the power plant in Birdvale, to the east. The dog would be kidding itself, though, because the river itself is fly ash (and who knows what else) mixed with water.

My dad says that we are descendants of Peter Stuyvesant, who started New York City, and Lord Baltimore, who used to own Maryland. My mother doesn't believe this, but my dad says, ”That and twenty-five cents will get you a cup of coffee.” So we would seem to be up to our armpits in royalty and n.o.ble heritage, not to mention real estate. Nothing has made it all the way to 1969, though, except for some names. And names don't mean that much. If you think about them in a certain way, they can mean anything.

For example, my dad told me the other day that the stuff on the outside of our house is called Insul-Brick. It's supposed to look like bricks, but it's just a brick pattern, printed somehow onto thick sheets of a tar-papery, s.h.i.+ngly-type material. No one would be fooled into thinking it's really bricks, but it looks all right. It keeps the rain out.

Now pretend you don't know that, and listen to the word: Insul-Brick. ”Insulbrick.” It sounds like a royal name, a name for a castle in Scotland or England.

I can picture it in gold, s.h.i.+ning letters on a paperback book, with the gorgeous couple in flowing robes falling in love at sunset on horses in a garden with the castle, Insulbrick, in the background.

Debbie of Insulbrick is not the gorgeous woman, though. Debbie is the girl up in the tower who has to finish ironing all the flowing robes before she can send carrier pigeon messages to her friends. That would be me.

In the first chapter, Debbie of Insulbrick's mother would be saying, ”Why do you always send the first carrier pigeon message? Why doesn't Maureen ever send one to you, first? They have pigeons, too, don't they?”

Debbie would breathe an inward sigh of exasperation with her mother for expecting Maureen always to do the same things that ordinary people might do, like make phone calls. I mean, send carrier pigeon messages. But aloud Debbie would just say, ”She does, sometimes.”

Which I think was true, before last summer. Before last summer Maureen and I were best friends. I know we were in May.

I'm positive we were, in April. At least I think we were. I don't know what happened exactly.

As people who get hit by trucks sometimes say, ”I didn't see anything coming.”

two.

THE YARDS IN DEER CHURCH ARE SO BIG THAT A BETTER WORD for them might be meadows or maybe parks. They are perfect and beautiful and so big that you can have a picnic in one corner of the yard and the people in the house never even know you're there, because the house is so far away, and there are trees that block the view.

The only part of the house we could see from where we were sitting was the roof, with its dozens of peaks and chimneys poking up over the treetops like the skyline of a city. We were sitting on two park benches at the edge of a grove of birch trees, eating lunch out of our bike bags.

”See,” Maureen said, pointing to the benches, ”they expect people to come here.”

”I wish they had put a pool in, though,” I said. ”I'm sweating to death.”

”Cheapskates,” said Maureen.

A few birds and crickets chirped, and some bees buzzed through the warm spring air. A car came and went somewhere, and there was the distant drone of one lawn mower. But there were no voices shouting, no screen doors banging. We could have been a million miles from Seldem. We chewed on our plain cheese sandwiches, made without mayonnaise so we wouldn't get food poisoning, and washed them down with warm, plasticky water from our water bottles.

”Let's ride back through Blentz,” I said, ”then stop at the Tastee-Freez.”

”Okay,” said Maureen, ”but first, let's do our stomachs.”

We plopped down on the silky, never-seen-by-its-owners gra.s.s and pulled up our T-s.h.i.+rts to expose our pale stomachs to the sun. Bathing suit season was right around the corner. We closed our eyes and drifted. The sun was warm. It had been a long ride, with a lot of hills.

”I wish I had a c.o.ke,” I said.

”Me, too,” said Maureen.

”Do you have a suit yet?”

”No, do you?”

”No.”

”No, me either.”

There was a new kind of bathing suit I was thinking about a two-piece. The top had two or three rows of ruffles in the front to ”emphasize the bust.” In my case I was hoping it would make me seem to actually have a bust.

Joke: A flat-chested girl goes into a store to buy a bra. She opens her blouse and says to the clerk, ”Do you have anything for this?” And the clerk says, ”Clearasil.”

Which pretty well describes my figure. And Maureen's.

The sun dazzled our eyes through our eyelids. Gra.s.s tickled the backs of our legs. In my daydream I was going to the pool in a ruffle-topped swimsuit, which was somehow also making my hair thicker and straighter, helping me tan without burning, and bringing me success in romance: there I was, talking and laughing with three of the twenty-seven boys I was currently willing to have a crush on but was unable to speak to. I wondered if I had asked them about their interests and hobbies. I strained to hear what I was saying in case it was something that could actually be said to a real person, but suddenly someone started shouting. My dream self looked around to see what this interruption in my perfect life was all about.

”Hey!”

The shout was coming from the outside, not the inside of my head. I rose, spinning, to the surface, and my dream self dissolved into a million rainbow-colored bits, like oil dissolved by detergent.

”You there!”

I lifted my head and saw a man walking briskly toward us across the unknown wealthy person's emerald lawn. He was carrying something pointy that glinted in the sunlight.

Because I am the type of person who views being shouted at by people holding weapons as something to be avoided, I panicked. I grabbed Maureen's arm.

”Maureen!” I whispered. ”We have to go. Now! Wake up!”

”I'm not asleep,” she said. Rolling her head in my direction and opening one eye, she asked, ”What? What did you say?”

”This is private property!” the man shouted across the fifty feet of lush green carpet that still separated us. The pointy, s.h.i.+ny thing he carried looked like a dagger. Or possibly hedge clippers.

”Oh,” said Maureen. By the time she stood up, I was on my bike, poised to disappear from the neighborhood for several years or even forever.