Part 2 (2/2)

On summer mornings, when you first wake up, you hear the birds chirping, and a shady green light filters through the leaves, and a coolness in the air means it still feels good to have at least a sheet pulled up over your shoulders. Maybe there is the faint whining and clanking of a garbage truck on a nearby street. For a minute or two you don't even think of any personal facts, like what your name is, or what town you live in, or what kind of life you might be having. Then you hear your mother outside talking to a neighbor or banging around in the kitchen, or you roll over and see your sister, still asleep in the other bed. You know who you are now, and your mind eventually gets around to what you might be doing that day. Which is when your heart feels light or sinks a little bit, depending.

From the backseat of the Flaibers' car, Glenna asked her mother what day they would be leaving for their vacation. My ears p.r.i.c.ked up. An unexpected ray of hope lit up little dioramas in my head: happy pictures of a week (or two?) without Glenna. A sc.r.a.p of song from a pa.s.sing radio furled through the open window.

Finally, I thought. Finally.

Trying to keep my face calm, I waited for Mrs. Flaiber's answer.

”Sat.u.r.day,” she said. ”But early. So probably Maureen should stay over Friday night.”

What for? I thought giddily. So she can wave good-bye?

”That way she'll be sure to get up in time,” Mrs. Flaiber went on. She threw a quick grin over her shoulder at Maureen. Maureen and Glenna grinned at each other. ”We'll just roll you out of bed and into the car, Maureen!” said Mrs. Flaiber in a jolly way.

A tide of comprehension rushed in all around me, separating my little island from the sh.o.r.e where the three of them stood, getting into the car to drive away.

”Where are you going?” I couldn't help asking.

Apparently they could still hear my voice, although it sounded far away, even to me. At least Mrs. Flaiber could.

”Borth Lake!” she answered. ”We have a camp up there! We decided to let Glenna take along a friend this year! We'll be sitting on each other's laps, but we figure, the more the merrier!”

I don't know what else she said, but all the sentences had exclamation points at the end. The water rose over my island and lapped around my ankles. I pressed my fingers into my knees, then lifted them and watched the yellow-white spots disappear. Maureen's knees were right next to mine. There was her hand on the car seat, with the fingernails bitten down below the nubs, as familiar to me as my own. I looked out the window at whatever was pa.s.sing by. I felt mean and small, like something wadded up. Weightless, like something that doesn't even matter.

Mrs. Flaiber's voice chorbled merrily away, cramming the air with colorful pictures of capsizing row-boats and dinners of fish fried with their heads still on and the eyeb.a.l.l.s looking right at you. I could hear Glenna telling Maureen that Borth Lake was the seventh largest man-made lake in the state.

”Really?” I heard myself say. ”That is so interesting.”

Suddenly it seemed to me that if I didn't get out of the car, I might completely disappear, and I said, ”Mrs. Flaiber, can you let me off here?”

All three heads turned my way, and the abrupt quiet told me that I had probably interrupted someone.

”I just remembered,” I said. ”There's something I have to do. For my mom. I have to pick something up for her.”

”Where do you need to go?” she asked. ”We can take you there and wait while you run inside.”

”No, no-that's okay,” I said. ”Actually I feel like walking.”

”Are you sure?” she said, pulling adroitly over to the curb.

”Yep,” I said. ”Thanks. See you guys later. Have fun on your vacation.”

Then, looking right into Maureen's eyes, I said, ”Call me when you get back.”

I tried to keep my voice steady, but my eyes were shooting out messages and questions and SOS's. I saw them reach her eyes and spark there in a flash of surprise. She turned to Mrs. Flaiber and Glenna and said, ”I'm going to get out here, too.”

She was out of the car and closing the door before Glenna could follow. She leaned her head inside to say good-bye. Glenna and her mother wore the startled expression of fish twitching in the bottom of a rowboat or fried on plates. Mrs. Flaiber turned forward, and the car moved slowly back into traffic, crunching pebbles and grit musically beneath its tires.

I was surprised, too. A rush of exhilaration went through me. Maybe Maureen just hadn't seen what was happening, what Glenna was doing. Maybe I just needed to tell her. She dropped her beat-up tennis shoes onto the sidewalk and slid her toes inside.

”Are you mad?” she asked.

I just needed to explain it to her. Make her see. That was all. ”Not mad,” I said. Then I said it, what was in my heart: ”I just miss when we were friends.”

I waited for her to get it.

”We're still friends,” she said, standing on one foot to pull the back of her shoe up over her heel. She looked at me as if I had said something really humorous. ”You goof,” she said. ”Hey, let's go down by the river.”

She started off across the spongy, s.h.i.+mmering parking lot of the Seldem Plaza, leading the way through the canyons of wavy heat made by the parked cars. I followed her, like maybe I had my whole life. But wanting only to keep on doing that.

”You know what I mean,” I said. A few shades less certain, though, that she would. ”I miss the way we used to be friends. Before Glenna.”

It crossed my mind that to anyone who happened to see us there, we would look the same as we always had. Debbie and Maureen. There they are. ”Frick and Frack,” my dad said. We would look the same. Did that mean something?

”You should give Glenna a chance,” said Maureen. ”She tries to be nice to you.”

We moved through a short tent of shade next to the AS-P and then the scrubby weeds that are the native flora of Seldem, the kind that can grow up through concrete as long as it's not the middle part that cars drive over all the time. The kinds of scratchy weeds that grow about ten inches high, then branch out and blossom forth in stiff, itchy exploded seedpods.

”Glenna doesn't want to be my friend,” I said. ”Glenna wants to be your friend. Glenna would be happy if I disappeared from the face of the earth in a puff of smoke.”

We looked at each other. We both knew it was sort of true, and we smiled a little bit the way you can smile at something that is true when it is said out loud for the first time. It was a relief, in a way, to know that Maureen saw that part of it. For the moment that seemed enough. Going further seemed dangerous, like stepping off a cliff. Because I could also tell that Maureen wasn't going to be deciding right then and there to dump Glenna. She didn't see why she should.

I realize now that Maureen saw something in Glenna that I could not see. (I leave it to her biographers, or maybe to microbiologists, to discover what that is.) Not that I was trying too hard.

Anyhow, it felt safer then to leave that topic behind and take this bit of time with Maureen any way I could get it To add it to the little pile of proofs that I hoped would add up to some charm that could eventually ward off Glenna.

So we squeezed between the dusty bushes to get to the riverbank, where we sank our feet into the silty mud, and sat on the low, bouncing branch of a big old tree that leaned out over the water. We crossed our legs like yogis and tried to balance there with our eyes closed. The shallow part of the river flowed along steadily, but in no hurry, about a foot below our branch, greenish brown, the color of a dollar bill. We opened our eyes and dangled our feet, making whirls and eddies form around them, talking about whatever, one thing or another. The sun must have been moving along up above the trees because the patches of sunlight s.h.i.+fted bit by bit over the moving surface of the water, lighting up patches of our shoulders and legs and the tops of our heads. In a way it was the best afternoon of summer. But it was also like a prediction from the oracle at Delphi; it could mean practically anything.

six.

WHILE MAUREEN AND GLENNA WERE AWAY AT BORTH LAKE, I believed in the afternoon at the river. I believed it meant something that Maureen had gotten out of the Flaibers' car. She had promised she would call when she got back. So I knew that she would. Maybe they had stayed a few extra days. Then there would be unpacking. That takes time. And probably the Bercks would be doing some family-type activities. I knew she would call.

Here are some things you can do while you are waiting for a phone call: I. Take a wine bottle that is empty. Mateus has the best shape. Or another kind of bottle, or a jar, if your parents don't ever drink wine. Which mine don't, but Fran gave me some bottles. You rip masking tape into a gezillion tiny pieces with ragged edges and cover the bottle with them. (See diagram.) Then, with a rag, you put brown shoe polish over the whole thing. Wipe most of it off. When it dries, paint varnish on it. It will look old, like an antique. You can use it for flowers or as a candleholder.

Suitable for a gift!

2. Smash a winds.h.i.+eld. No, wait,. I don't mean like a vandal! You will need parental a.s.sistance for this. My aunt Alice told us how. You get thewinds.h.i.+eld from a junkyard, and you paint one side of it with all different colors. Let it dry. Wrap it in a large towel or a blanket, and smash it to smithereens with a sledgehammer. Probably your dad will have to do it The driveway is a good place. Then glue the pieces to the outside of a big goblet from Jim's Bargain Store, with the painted side in. Don't cut yourself! Put grout (like in a bathroom) between the pieces and wipe the surface of the gla.s.s bits clean. When the grout is dry, paint it gold. Presto-another candleholder! When you light the candle, it looks like stained gla.s.s. You will have enough little pieces of colored gla.s.s to make a dozen of these.

3. So, if you think you now have enough candleholders, find an old wooden cigar box Paint it a nice color. On the lid glue a picture from a magazine. Organically Grown clothing (with the beautiful woman and the deer) or Herbal Essence shampoo ads are good. (”Why do you want your hair to smell like gra.s.s?” my dad wants to know.) Varnish over it Inside, on the bottom, glue a piece of felt. Call it a jewelry box.

You have now made fourteen Christmas presents, and it's only August While you're in the Christmas spirit: 4. Blow up a balloon, and knot it Wrap a ton of thread around it and tape the end Dip the whole thing in sugar water with starch in it, and let it dry. Then pop the balloon. The threads stiffen in the round shape, and they make good Christmas ornaments, especially if you hang them near a colored light they have a glittery glow.

If you're lucky, a couple of days have gone by.

If you're not lucky, it's only time to watch Hollywood Squares.

<script>