Going Underground (8 page)

“She needs to quit bugging you at the graveyard,” Marvin says.

My teeth clamp together as I go to war with my own anxiety, and I know the rising heat I'm feeling's got nothing to do with Marvin, or the worried-friend thing he's trying to do. No way am I taking any of this out on him, even though he's the one currently setting off the naggity-nag worrying I can get into when I let down my guard. “No argument. I truly do not want Cherie around.”

“Seriously, man. I've got a bad feeling about her—well, her anywhere near you.” Marvin leans toward me like I'm not hearing him, or not listening to how much he means it. “You and Harper need to put a stop to that shit.”

The hot-hot-hot wave rolling through me, it's trying to explode out of my face now, and worse, it wants out of my mouth at Marvin.

Leave me the hell alone.

Don't you think I know everything's a risk for me?

What if I just don't give a shit anymore?

“Let's talk about something else,” I say, really careful not to let even an ounce of my inside-crazy touch my voice. “Like, maybe, Lee Ann with the red hair?”

The bell rings, but Ms. Anderson isn't in the room yet, so nobody gets quiet except Marvin, who just keeps staring at me, waiting for some sign that I know how important he thinks this is.

I blow out some air to reduce the boiling in my skull. “Look, I've told her to stay away, I've had Harper run her off, I've lied to her—what else do you want me to do?”

Marvin's face sags. “I don't know. Just—try harder. It's important.”

Big deal, big deal, Marvin thinks it's a big deal …

What do you say to the only guy on earth who has your back even when he's driving you up a tree?

Screw off?

Quit playing grandma?

Thanks?

I opt for, “You sound like Branson.”

Something in my tone gets through to Marvin, and he seems to take in the fact that I get it, that I really, really do get it.

He leans back, and his frown lifts back to a normal Marvin smile. “Branson's okay,” he says, then lowers his voice so Ms. Anderson doesn't hear as she passes by. “For a guy who lugs cups of convict piss all over town.”

The anxiety leaves me just like that as I cough out a laugh against my will, and turn toward Ms. Anderson.

Marvin's still easy, after all. Thank God. I'm not sure what I'd do without Marvin and Fred, but what's left of my life would really suck if they weren't in it.

As for Cherie, yeah. Marvin's right. Maybe it's time to try harder.

For some reason, my distracted psychobrain offers me an image of Fairy Girl, like she's becoming a piece of this puzzle, even if I'm still too chickenshit to ask her name.

Is there some relationship between getting Cherie to back off and talking to Fairy Girl more up close and personal? Like one has to move out of the picture to make room for the other? That doesn't exactly make sense, but then again, I'm not the best person to judge what makes sense and what doesn't.

The paper under my right wrist moves as I shift in my chair, making a squeaky noise against the desk and bringing me back to right here, right now.

Damn, I'm doing it again. Not paying attention. I pinch one of the Fred bites on my ear, using the quick flash of pain to keep me in the real world, except there's distant music in my mind, whispering,

The baffled king composing hallelujah …

When I glance over at Marvin, I see he's starting a new rendition of
Lee Ann
, this time in fat '70s-groovy letters, complete with little sketched beads hanging off the
L
.

You know, if I'm made of paper, then Marvin's got to be built out of whatever's opposite of paper. If I asked him, he'd probably say cookies. Or maybe burritos and farts. Right now, it kind of feels like nice sturdy wood to me, or maybe rock. As for what Lee Ann is made of, or Fairy Girl, well. Those are mysteries for later, if I want to keep my grade in Advanced Math.

Three Years Ago: Freaky Creep Show

White light. Blazing. I'm blind. Somebody has hold of my shoulder, and the grip hurts like hell.

Flashlight?

“Wake up, son.”

I don't know the voice, but it's deep and older and it bangs into my sleepy brain like a fist. The man holding on to me's wearing a uniform, and he's shining a white sun in my face, and I'm in a sleeping bag—

I'm still at Good-bye Night.

My heart's beating and it's hard to breathe and harder to talk. “Who's—what's—”

The police officer pulls on my arm, not hard, but hard enough to make me wince and scramble to push up on my knees, then get my feet under me. “Get up and come with me, quiet like.”

Everybody else in my tent is getting rousted, too. Marvin's already outside with Jason and Randall and Tom when the policemen pull me and Raulston out the door.

Raulston's still only half-conscious. He stares at Marvin and blathers, “Dude, did you spike those cookies with something? What the hell?”

“Do you have any drugs or weapons on your person?” the policeman who has hold of me is asking.

“What?” I can't quite understand what he means, or why he's fastening cuffs around my wrists, or why all of us are wearing handcuffs, and a bunch of coaches and Coach are just standing there staring, and I see people staring at us out of their tents, and I hear girls crying and older female voices asking that same question,
drugs or weapons
,
drugs or weapons
—

“Anything that might surprise me or upset me when I search you?” the policeman who cuffed me explains as Raulston stammers out a denial to the officer patting him down.

“Marvin urped up some Oreos,” I say as my officer pats my legs, then my hips and midsection, and my arms. “I got some on my sleeve and it kind of stinks. Sorry.”

The officer narrows his eyes at me, and I see a kind of angry hatred I don't expect or understand.

My skin goes cold as he asks, “Are you trying to be funny?”

“N-no, sir.”

He turns me toward the front of the gym. The doors are standing open, and the girls are moving toward them with female officers—Cory, Jenna, Lisa, and Dutch. They're all cuffed.

“Why are you taking them?” I ask, wanting to run forward and knock Cory out of that procession so we both can make a break for it. “What did they do? What did we do?”

“You don't want to talk about this here,” says the officer with Marvin. We're all walking now, the five of us, and five officers, toward the doors the girls are walking through with their officers.

“I want to call my mom,” Marvin says, and he sounds as sick as I feel.

“I want to call my parents, too,” I say, trying not to stumble as I move—and am moved—forward.

“Yeah—” Raulston starts, but my officer cuts him off.

“We've already called them. All of your parents are meeting us at the station.”

“At the station?” Tom sounds half-crazy. “This isn't a stupid TV show! What are you talking about?”

“I didn't put anything in the cookies,” Marvin says. “They were just cookies. I swear.”

He starts to cry, and I want to, and I'm not sure why I don't, except I'm afraid Cory will see me and she might need me not to be crying.

“It's okay,” I tell Marvin, but I don't know why I'm saying that, and I don't think I believe it. I'm dizzy and I'm scared I'm going to faint.

What did I do?

How did I do anything while I was asleep?

I've never been in this kind of trouble ever. Never planned on being in this kind of trouble.

“It's okay, Marvin,” I say again, like an idiot. “Don't cry. We're going to be okay.”

My Life, the “Supermassive Black Hole”

(That song is by Muse. They
have
to be talking about my life. And there is no life outside the earbuds, Marvin.)

A lot of parrot experts advise clipping wings regularly for the safety of the parrot. This involves stretching out the bird's wings and snipping off the ends of some of their flight feathers. Fred, being an African Grey, hates being handled by anyone other than her preferred person, who is me. But, most avian vets—when you can find one—don't recommend that the preferred person hang around when beaks are ground, toenails are trimmed, or wings are clipped. Parrots, especially Fred's kind of parrot, can get ticked and hold grudges for a long time, sometimes forever.

All of this is to say, when I took Fred in to the vet clinic at the local PetSuperhaven on avian day to have her wings clipped a few weeks after I finally surrendered and she officially claimed me as her own (that's how it works with parrots, just so you know—never the other way around), things did not go well. From the waiting area, I heard lots of smoke-alarm noises, the vet swearing several times, and some terrifying phrases, like these:

“Towel over her head now!”

And …

“Catch her! Catch her!”

And …

“Did that go to the bone?”

By the time Fred came back out, I was freaking. Fred was freaking. The avian vet with the bloody fingers, bitten ears, and scratched face, he was freaking, too, but he tried to pretend he wasn't. He had me hold Fred and comfort her until her heart rate came back to normal and her body temperature lowered out of volcano-drop-dead range. Then he explained to me that when parrots or any bird gets way upset, they really can drop dead.

This did not make me happy.

The fact that Fred's wing feathers looked like somebody had chopped them with a meat cleaver didn't make me happy, either.

The worst part was, when I got her home, she tried to zip from my shoulder to her cage, flapped her clipped wings, and splatted on the floor like a fat, squirming little gray bug with red tail feathers. The way she looked at me, all full of pain and confusion because she couldn't do something so natural to her—it was awful. I got down on my hands and knees and looked her in her bird face and told her how sorry I was, that it might be right for most parrots but I understood it wasn't right for her after all she'd been through, and that I'd never ever do that to her again. I knew what it felt like to be surprised in a nasty way, snatched up and pinioned and restrained, then trapped even though you should be able to fly.

I couldn't believe I'd made such a stupid, stupid decision. I couldn't believe I let somebody hurt her like that.

She pulled out some of the mutilated feathers, but I got her to quit that by soothing her and distracting her, then giving her lots of birdie baths to keep her skin and feathers conditioned. Because Fred had a tough life before she came to me, her belly's bald from feather picking, and those feathers won't grow back. I've always figured if no other part of her ends up naked, I'm making progress.

After the wing-clipping disaster, I read lots of books on parrots.
My Parrot, My Friend: An Owner's Guide to Parrot Behavior
by Bonnie Munro Doane and Thomas Qualkinbush and
African Grey Parrots: Everything about History, Care, Nutrition, Handling, and Behavior (Complete Pet Owner's Manual)
by Maggie Wright were two of the best ones. I've also read
First Aid for Birds: An Owner's Guide to a Happy Healthy Pet
by Julie Rach Mancini and Gary A. Gallerstein. I do Fred's beak and nails myself now, and I've never gotten her wings butchered a second time. She can fly all around the house, but I never let her do it unsupervised, and I'm way neurotic about making sure she's in her travel cage before I take her outside.

Harper doesn't mind when she flies around his little house, so she's out with me right now while we eat peanut butter sandwiches. I've brought him a stack of books I checked out from the library, and I hold up
Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love
by Lisa Carlson. “I always thought you had to take dead people to a funeral home, but this one talks about all the laws about bodies and burials. Marvin's right. Funeral homes aren't necessary, and you could go way greener and less expensive if you do it yourself.”

Harper glances at the book I'm holding up, then at the top book on the pile in front of me, which was something about how to “prepare” loved ones for private funerals—meaning, cleaning the deceased and getting them ready for whatever ceremony you're holding. “Families handling their own dead is a lost tradition,” he says. “I took care of my father, and he took care of his. It wasn't so bad.”

“Most people would vomit or run away screaming,” I tell him as Fred flaps past my head and lands on the counter, close to what's left of Harper's sandwich. She won't usually eat after anybody but me, but she has a thing about grape jelly, and so does Harper.

“Taking care of Pop got me past the loss.” Harper gives his plate a nudge so the bread crust and blob of grape jelly moves closer to Fred. “But people are a lot lazier now. Everybody wants stuff neat and clean. Can I keep these books a few days?”

Fred digs into his jelly, getting purple smears all over her black beak. Later, she'll climb up on me and wipe her beak all over my shirt, but that's okay. By the time I go home, the purple will get lost in all the grave dirt.

“Sure.” I push the pile of books to Harper. I remember being surprised when I realized how many books Harper reads. His whole bedroom is nothing but bookshelves full of classics and crime novels and Louis L'Amour westerns. He's got old comics mixed in that mess, and a bunch of old
Life
magazines he told me he keeps for their pictures. When I asked him about why he read so much, his answer was simple enough.

Graveyards get boring.

Yeah.

Which is why I spend more and more time obsessing about Fairy Girl and hoping she'll pass by so I can catch a glimpse.

Harper lets Fred finish her tiny bird-sized jelly sandwich, then picks up our plates. I watch him, how matter-of-fact and simple he does stuff, and I think about the day last year when I walked down the road and asked him for a job.

He was digging a grave in the Oak Section when I found him, and he pulled himself up to stare at me, holding on to his badly lettered H
ELP
W
ANTED
sign—just an old board covered with spray paint.

“You live a mile or so west,” he'd said, and I'd nodded.

He took the sign away from me and asked, “You one of those kids who got in trouble a few years back? One of the Duke's Ridge Eight?”

Didn't seem to be any point in telling less than the truth, so I'd answered, “Yes.”

“Thought so. Worst of the bunch, right? I figured you'd be in jail.”

“I was. I'm on probation now.” I remember wishing I could hold the sign again, just to have something to do with my hands, but the rest went fast enough.

“Going to school?” he had asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Drink or drug?”

“No, sir.”

“Bother you if I like beer?”

“No, sir.”

“You're hired. But if you call me
sir
again, you're fired. Go to the shed by my house and get a shovel.”

And that was it.

Harper never asked me for the story, or any of the details, which is kind of strange, because of all the people in the world, I don't think it would be hard to tell him. He'd hear me out even through the not-so-good parts, but he's never seemed that interested. All he cares about is how fast I dig, how straight I mow, and whether or not I make the flowers look good when I arrange them on the graves after filling in the dirt from a burial.

“Daylight's wasting,” he says, plopping Fred's travel cage onto the counter.

Time to go to work.

I collect my parrot and put her safely in her cage, and the two of us head out to the spot beside Oak Section, just inside Cedar Section, where we need to start digging. We both glance at the front gate, then glance away fast, because we see my parents where they've decided to position themselves to guard me tonight.

They have their cars pulled at angles across the entrance, and they're waiting.

“Fred,” Fred says, as if acknowledging I've called out the big guns.

Well?

I couldn't think of anything else to do. Marvin and Branson wouldn't have near the same effect as Mom and Dad and their best grim expressions.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” Harper mutters, picking up his pace. “This is gonna be ugly and I don't want to listen.”

I don't really want to, either, but graveyards are quiet, even with shovels and parrots around. I brought my oldest iPod, the one Marvin gave me when I was allowed private belongings in Juvenile, so after I get Fred settled on the ground beside the grave-to-be, I pull out the machine, stick it in my pocket, and fit the buds in my ears. Then I crank the playlist I've picked, which is marked “Dig.”

Songs to dig graves by.

Thank the universe iTunes isn't something Branson's filters block from our computer—and I bet you don't have a playlist for digging graves, do you? “The Boogie Monster” (Gnarls Barkley), “Hey Mama” (Black Eyed Peas), “Cabaret” (Me First and the Gimme Gimmes' version—nothing better than headbanging showtunes to wake me up), “She Hates Me” (Puddle of Mudd)—it's hours long, but that gives you a taste of mine.

I listen to music and dig, and Harper drinks and digs. Either way, we barely bother the silence of the dead, which seems like the way it should be. When I glance up to Fred's cage to check on her, she's plowing through her parrot pellets and the sprinkling of Cheerios (her favorite treat) I added, stopping only to flutter around in her water dish and sprinkle us with droplets from her wings.

We're about three feet down and “Supermassive Black Hole” (Muse) is what's playing when Harper touches my elbow, gestures toward the front gates, then sits down and lowers his head so he's concealed from easy view behind the dirt we've piled on the grave lip.

Sweat drips down my face, plopping onto my dirty shirt, and for a few moments, I just stand still, listening to the hard spank of the song, not sure I want to pull out my earbuds and hear what's going down outside the grave.

In the end, I sort of have to, even if I'm not sure why.

Fred sees me pop out the buds, silencing Muse's first long “Oooh,” and she whistles.

I hold my finger to my lips as I sit beside Harper, and for some reason, Fred turns toward the gates. Her feathers poof out, and she shrills a smoke-alarm sound, then goes ruffledy quiet, glaring into the afternoon sunlight as the voices of Cherie and my parents drift across the silent mounds and headstones.

“I understand you want to see him, but it's just not a good idea.” That's Mom, in her kindest, most earnest surrender-the-animal-so-it-can-get-the-care-it-needs voice. People rarely fail to give my mother what she wants when she uses that tone.

“We're—we're just friends,” Cherie says with a lot less attitude than I expected. “Doesn't Del need as many friends as he can get?”

“You seem like a wonderful girl, Cherie, but you're younger than he is,” Dad says. “You can understand why that makes Del nervous, and us.”

Dad's not nearly as convincing as Mom, rooster-whispering skills aside.

“Your parents and brother absolutely do not approve of you coming here to see Del like this,” Mom adds. “It could cause a lot of trouble for him. Is that what you want?”

“How do you—did you
call
my parents?” Cherie's tone gets a lot sharper and less respectful. “Did you talk to my
brother
?”

I can imagine her black-lined eyes getting wide and furious. If she's wearing fake fangs tonight, they're probably showing.

My parents don't answer her question, which of course answers her question, and I hear Cherie do some major starts, stops, and muttering it's probably better nobody can understand.

“We're asking you to leave our son alone, and to leave,” Dad says, flat and certain. “It's better for everybody if you don't come back here looking for him.”

The sound of a car's engine grinds up the main road, distant at first, but coming on fast.

“I can't believe you did this,” Cherie calls out, too loud to be talking to my parents.

I keep my head down inside the grave and feel guilty, even though I can't quite figure out why. I can't be friends with Cherie because she wants more. I've told her that.

Guilt.

But, why?

It shouldn't be this hard. Why is it this hard?

“Harper doesn't want to call the authorities, but if you keep trespassing, he won't have any choice,” Mom says, though it's getting harder to hear her over the car's engine. “This is a private cemetery, not public land, so he can do that. Take it from us, you don't want to get mixed up in the legal system.”

I'm breathing hard and feeling awful, but then I think about Marvin at his cookie stand, probably eating a cookie, maybe talking to fiery-lettered Lee Ann. He'll be glad I did this. He'll feel better.

Will I?

I rub my fingers across my eyes, getting dirt in the corners. I have to blink hard to clear them out.

Shit. Am I actually going to miss Cherie?

“Glaciers melting in the dead of night
,
”
my brain says,
“and the superstars sucked into the supermassive … supermassive black hole …”

God, my life is pathetic.

I bang my head on the dirt wall behind me. The sound startles Fred, and she flutters as the approaching car stops outside the cemetery.