Imaginary Enemy (9 page)

Pins and Needles

L
uke kicked my shin as he walked by, and stalked from the room.

“Hey, that hurt,” I called.

When he didn’t respond, I ran after him and tried to kick him back. Unfortunately, and typically, my toe caught the carpet and I succeeded only in causing myself to stumble. I fell into him to break my fall.

“Back off,” he snarled.

“What’s the matter with you?” I whined.

“Bug off.” He slipped into his bedroom and shut the door in my face.

“You bug off,” I yelled.

Later on there was a knock at my door. “Janie?” Luke called.

“Whaddayou want?”

“Can I come in?” It’s a good thing I wasn’t going to say no, because he was already halfway through the door before he finished his sentence.

I glared at him.

“Sorry about before.” He sat on Carmella’s bed.

“Kicking me was an unprovoked attack,” I said, my voice hard. I wasn’t ready to forgive him just yet. “I didn’t do anything.”

He looked at his hands. “She dumped me,” he murmured.

“Who?” I asked stupidly.

He looked at me like I was clueless. “Cassidy, who do you think?”

“Why?”

“Who knows? She had a bunch of reasons but none of them made any sense. Basically, she met someone else, but she says things weren’t right between us before that. She claims that she tried to tell me but I didn’t listen. Which is bull. I always listened to her.”

“I never did like her,” I said, raging inside at Cassidy’s nerve. How dare she treat my half brother that way! The very idea of it angered me. But the hurtful thing was this: I had grown to like her, had shared my secrets with her, told her my weaknesses, so I felt personally betrayed.

“Well, I liked her,” Luke said. “A lot. I still do. That’s why I’m so pissed. She dumped me for a guy she met at a costume party. How could she dump me for some fool who wore an Oscar the Grouch costume stuffed with real garbage to make it authentic? It’s so degrading. And he’s not even great looking, unless you go for those guys who’re built like freight trains.”

“She’s a loser. Forget about her.”

“It’s not that easy, Jane.”

“Then get back at her. That’s what I’d do. I’ll even help you come up with a plan.”

“You don’t understand at all,” he said, and left the room.

Carmella slammed the door, breathless. “Wait till you hear this.”

I closed my Bubba folder and shoved it beneath my pillow. “What?”

“It’s about Sharp and Chord.”

“Oh brother. What about Sharp and Chord?” In spite of my disdain for Harmony and Carmella’s appetite for ferreting out people’s secrets, I was curious.

“Wait for Harmony. She’s on her way over.”

“You two must be the biggest gossips in the entire fourth grade,” I said.

“Observing is not gossiping,” my sister answered. She picked up her newest Barbie and began grooming her hair.

“Wanna borrow my markers? She could use a tattoo,” I suggested, and received only a glare in response. I paged through a magazine until Harmony came skipping down the hallway.

“In here,” called Carmella.

“My brothers are so stupid.” Harmony said. She sighed, throwing herself on the bed next to Carmella. “You won’t believe what they did this time.”

“You really won’t,” added Carmella.

I waited patiently, aware that they didn’t need any urging.

“They were
gambling
with their friends.” Harmony waited for me to react. I didn’t.

“We saw them.” Carmella raised her eyebrow, coming close to achieving a Mrs. Perkins.

“With money,” added Harmony. I wondered if either of those two girls could tell a story without the other.

“Real money,” Carmella whispered, as if the FBI was monitoring the conversation. “We aren’t going to tell Peggy and Elliot, though.”

“I’m sure Sharp and Chord are relieved to know that,” I drawled sleepily.

“But what should we do? We saw a TV movie where a man gambled away his brother’s fortune and got murdered because of it,” Carmella went on, acting like the future of the galaxy depended upon her and Harmony.

“Watch less TV. A sure remedy for the overactive imagination. Now go away. I seriously doubt Sharp and Chord are headed for disaster over a backyard card game.”

“What do you know?” asked Carmella. “You’re the most unobservant person in the neighborhood. I bet you don’t even know about Tag.”

“Tag?”

“Jason Blackshire’s dog.”

Stupidly, I took the bait. “What about his dog?”

Harmony frowned. “He died. Jason’s really upset…. I think he even cried. His eyes looked red.”

“Mr. Blackshire says it was old age, but we suspect poison.”

“Poison?” I asked.

“Antifreeze,” admitted Carmella. “There was a container of it in Mrs. Thomson’s garage. She never did like that dog.”

“Geez, your snoop-a-meters are working overtime today, aren’t they?” I asked.

“We simply notice things, that’s all,” Harmony said.

“Go away,” I moaned, covering my ears with my hands. I just couldn’t take any more.

I raged at what Cassidy did to Luke. And in some crazy way, I felt responsible. I shouldn’t have let her weasel her neo-hippie self into our lives. Maybe if I’d stuck with my original opinion of her, Luke would’ve seen through her and avoided all that heartbreak.

I decided to take action. I rummaged through my closet and found the cardboard carton of sewing stuff Aunt Jane had given me. I pieced fabric scraps together and embroidered. I sewed on buttons and beads. I cut yarn into strips. Then I used black acrylic paint to add the finishing touch. “Perfect,” I said, admiring my work. “Who knew sewing could be this much fun?”

“Here,” I said, tossing something onto Luke’s bed.

He picked it up and examined it. “What the hell is this?” he asked.

“What does it look like?”

“Um…Barbie’s evil twin?”

“Funny, Luke. It’s a voodoo doll.”

“A what?”

I sighed with exaggerated exasperation. “A voodoo doll. Geez, don’t you know anything?”

“I guess not. What do I need with a voodoo doll?”

“Get back at Cassidy. Ruin her life.”

“Ruin her life?”

“Remember that hairbrush she left in the bathroom? I pulled the loose hairs from it and stuffed them inside the doll. That’s how the magic knows who to curse.” I threw my tomato-shaped pin cushion to him. “Stick it to her.”

He caught it and laughed.

“Do it, Luke. It’s easy. You’ve got the pins.”

Luke looked puzzled. He held the doll before his face. “It does look kind of like her,” he said. It didn’t really. It was shaped like a gingerbread man and, courtesy of Aunt Jane’s embroidery pamphlet, sewn with blanket and feather stitching and embellished with randomly placed beads. Two big red buttons were the eyes. The wild hair was made of strands of colorful frayed yarn. A black heart was painted on the left side of the chest.

“What do I do with it?” he asked cautiously.

“Make her suffer profusely.”

“Why?”

“She’s making you suffer,” I answered pragmatically.

“Yeah. But Jane, I don’t want to hurt her.”

What a sap he was! “Oh, come on, Luke. Make her pay.” I snatched a straight pin and stabbed it into the hole in one of the button eyes. A tremor of satisfaction coursed through me. “Some pain is just what you needed, isn’t it, little lady?” Then I flashed Luke a big smile.

“You’re insane,” he said, laughing. He took a pin a poked it into the other eye.

“Put more feeling into it,” I said, as if I was an acting coach. “And tell her what a loser she is.”

“I’m never going to forgive myself if Cassidy has a seeing-eye dog next time I run into her,” said Luke.

“We should be so lucky…. Just jab her again,” I encouraged.

“Yeah, okay.” He stuck a pin right through her black heart. “Guess you can’t feel pain there, ’cause you’re heartless, aren’t you Cassidy?”

“Ow! That hurts. Stop it. Please stop,” I squeaked, pretending to be Cassidy.

“What? You want more?” Luke asked the doll, and he drove a needle through her neck.

“Oh, the pain! Have mercy! Please,” I cried.

“Beg, harlot, beg,” said Luke, and he poked her again.

By the time Voodoo Cassidy had been appropriately pierced and punctured, Luke was laughing more than he had in days. So I guess my homemade voodoo worked, at least a little.

Self-motivation

“H
ave you heard the news?” Zander stood in front of me, smiling smugly.

“What?”

“I don’t have to go to school next year.”

“Right.”

“It’s true. Ask Mom and Dad.”

“Squab, they aren’t going to let you quit school after fifth grade. No way. They want us to go to college, remember?”

“Go ask. You’ll see.”

So I brought up the subject at the dinner table, intending to burst Zander’s dream bubble in front of everyone. Imagine my outraged shock when Dad said, “That’s true. Zander won’t be attending Kingston next year, so you don’t have to worry about him embarrassing you on the bus.”

“You can’t let him quit school. It’s against the law!” I protested.

“We’re radicals, Jane!” said Dad dryly.

“Then let me quit, too.”

“We’re not
that
radical.”

Mom, ever the voice of reason, spoke. “Zander’ll be homeschooled. Elliot’s going to teach him along with Sharp and Jazz. Chord will be at Jefferson High next year.”

“You’re mean he’s not going to be homeschooled anymore?”

“Not for high school. Elliot says he’s not geared to get the kids through chemistry, physics, and foreign language classes.”

“And Chord wants to meet some new girls,” added Carmella.

We all looked at her.

“That’s what he told Sharp. Harmony and I heard him say it.”

“Eavesdropping again,” groaned Zander. Then he turned to me. “I’ll think about you while I’m living the good life.”

“It’s not fair, Mom,” I protested. “Is Zander going to sit around the deMichaels’ all day watching TV and playing games?”

“There’s more to it than that. Peggy and Elliot say it’s been great for their kids.”

“So Zander will be playing musical chairs in Elliot’s backyard while I’m stuck in English and math class every day? No fair.”

“They do lots of cool stuff,” said Zander. “Like today. They went to the state forest and made plaster casts of animal footprints.”

“Oh brother.” I rolled my eyes.

“Now, Jane, Elliot’s very competent. Zander will flourish in Elliot’s learning environment.”

“Then let me go to Elliot, too.”

“Jane, you hated music lessons, and Elliot centers much of his curriculum on music. Besides, you’re not self-motivated like Zander. We believe you need more structure.”

“Not that again. I’m structured to death.”

Once more, I saw the wisdom of the “life isn’t fair” philosophy Mom had shared with me when I was a mere infant.

“So, Dad,” I ventured. “What made you decide to run the marina and not go to work anymore?” It was early one Saturday and we were walking the piers to check on the boats moored in their slips.

He sat on the edge of the dock and adjusted his ball cap. “Jane, I
do
work. Or play, maybe. But I earn a living. I’m just lucky enough to love what I do. It wasn’t like that at the insurance company.”

“You hated it there?”

He removed his sunglasses. “Took me years to identify it, but yes, I did. I took that job before Luke was born, telling myself it was temporary until I found something else. And there I was, four kids and two wives later, still climbing the ladder, but the view got uglier and uglier. Faxes and conference calls and printouts. Clients and quotas and claims. But absolutely joyless. For me, that is. I’m sure some people there love what they do. But I was drowning without knowing it.”

“So you quit because you wanted to work here?”

“Not really. I quit because I had to. For my survival. And once that was done, this opportunity came up. The timing was right. I’m happy here. Guess it was in my heart all along and I didn’t know it.”

“And now you do?”

“And now I do.” He removed his hat and wiped away the sweat on his brow. “It was like this:…I’d lost my dreams, and by losing my dreams, I’d lost something else, too…some place in my soul. Life got soft and comfortable after my last couple of promotions, and it was easy to grow complacent. And that’s what I did. Then one day I was training a young kid fresh out of college and I suddenly felt sick. Weak and exhausted. So I went looking for my dreams. It wasn’t easy. I had to rummage around a bit. Strip away the outer layers to get to the core. But in the end, I found them. I found my dreams. And I think that makes me the luckiest man alive. Plenty of people never look for their dreams once they’ve lost them. Others never even realize their dreams have gone missing.” He hugged me, kissing my cheek before letting go. “I’m a lucky man, that’s for sure.”

So later, I sat on the bank casting my line into the bayou, thinking about dreams. Where did they come from? Did they float around in the air like sound waves, waiting for someone to reach out and grab them?

Emma really knew her dreams. She talked about getting into a good college and then medical school. Fantasized about her future as a career woman successfully juggling family and work, or curing cancer or AIDS. Even spoke of retiring to one of the islands in the Caribbean.

My dreams were vague and blurry, like reflections on the water’s surface. There were things I wanted to experience—seeing the world, falling in love, enjoying life, maybe finding fame and fortune. But those things were fluid and elusive, and I certainly never charted a plan to make them come true.