Slice Of Cherry (19 page)

Fancy bumped into Madda, who had stopped to admire a pair of black shoes with pink bows on the toes in the window of Ducane’s Department Store. “Those would look cute on you.”

“I don’t like heels.” Kit loved heels. She loved buying useless crap with Madda. Why hadn’t she wanted to come?

“Nobody likes heels, but if you’re a woman, that’s what you wear. It’s high time you started dressing your age.”

Fancy thought of Claudia bursting into flames in her dancing shoes. “No, thanks. If I start wearing heels, boys will whistle at me when I walk by.”

Madda found that hilarious. “Do boys whistle at girls? I’ve only ever seen that happen in the movies.”

“Me too. Still, I’d better not risk it.”

“You wouldn’t like to be whistled at? I would. Just to see what it’s like.”

“Not me.”

“Not even if Ilan whistled at you?”

Fancy saw his reflection in the window, superimposed over the shoes, so faint and ghostly she doubted Madda could see him. He was playing the guitar, and he was alone. Fancy wondered if he missed Gabriel when he wasn’t around, and if he did, how did he cope? Maybe it was the music, she thought, watching his fingers travel over the strings. Maybe if she set fire to Kit’s piano, her sister would stop neglecting her.

“Fancy!”

She turned, stupidly hoping it was Ilan, even though she’d just seen him in the window and knew he was inside some-where.

A boy with a black eye and various lumps and bruises hurried away from his friends and crossed the street to stand before Fancy. She recognized him from the park.

“That’s your name, right? Fancy?”

She leaned into Madda’s side.

“I’m Bill. Do you remember me? You and your sister saved me from those transy assholes. I still don’t know how you did
it, but—” He threw his arms around Fancy, who squeaked. He was hot and sweaty and a horrible hugger. Fancy’s nose was squished against his chest.

Madda pulled Bill away from her daughter by the ear. “Boy, what do you need?”

“Nothing, ma’am.” When Madda let him go and pulled her daughter protectively to her side, he backed away to a more respectful distance, beaming all the while at Fancy. “Just to say thank you. I wish . . .” Suddenly inspired, he dug in his pockets and came out with a few folded bills. “I have money.”

Fancy snatched it from him and then retook her position at Madda’s side.

Bill grinned wider and moved toward her again, but Madda’s quelling look stopped him in his tracks. “Anytime you need a favor. Anything at all, just ask. Cuz that was awesome, what you did.”

Fancy shrugged and watched him go back to his friends. Watched them pointing at her and whispering.

“What did you do to that boy?” Madda dragged her down the street, away from Bill. “And why did he pay you?”

“People are weird. I can’t explain why they do stuff.”

“He said you saved him. From what?”

“Some transy boys were beating on him, so me and Kit ran ’em off. Me and Kit . . .” Fancy sighed.

“You and Kit what?”

Fancy took some of Madda’s bags so she could hold her hand. “Why’re you so upset? I thought you wanted me to get close to people.”

“Not some stranger.” Madda looked over her shoulder and grimaced. “There’s no need to be indiscriminate. And if he’s a stranger, you shouldn’t take money from him, no matter what you did for him.”

“If I didn’t, he’d’ve just followed us up the street, thanking me over and over. And then I would’ve had to push him
into
the street, preferably in front of a truck.”

Madda blinked, startled. But then she laughed. “You don’t talk much, but when you do, heaven help me.”

Fancy couldn’t bring herself to share in Madda’s amusement. Without Kit, laughter was much too depressing.

Monday afternoon, as the class waited for Mr. Hofstram to finally stumble in, Fancy noticed everyone looking at her. Ilan didn’t speak to her like he normally did. So she looked straight
ahead at her empty canvas, feeling exposed, an itching beneath her skin urging her to run. She’d had misgivings about letting Mason go, but like Kit had said, he couldn’t prove anything.

The girl sitting on Fancy’s right, one of those stylish popular girls who never had anything to say to Fancy or Kit, turned to her and smiled.

“Mason said to give you this.” She held out an envelope.

Fancy took it, wondering what Mason had sent her. The envelope was full of cash. She must have looked stunned, because the girl added, “It’s okay. He feels like he needs to say thanks. He said everything happened so fast.”

Someone asked, “What happened?”

“Annie tried to kill Mason over a dance audition; can you believe it?”

“Annie Snoad?” said a different girl. “Yeah, I can believe it. I lived next door to her. She wanted to be in the school play, so to get the lead she told everybody I had gonorrhea in my throat and couldn’t sing.” She smiled expectantly at Fancy. “So what did you do to Annie?”

Everyone had stopped whispering to eavesdrop.

“She opened a door,” said the stylish girl when Fancy didn’t answer. “And sent Annie through it.”

“Well, good riddance.”

As everyone broke into a discussion of whether it was even possible to get gonorrhea in the throat, Fancy felt a slight tug on her ponytail. “Mason, huh?” Ilan whispered. “I didn’t know you had friends.”

Fancy jerked her hair out of his hand, though her roots tingled as though his fingers were pressed against her scalp.

He put his arm across the back of her chair. His arm no longer bothered her; it was actually the least bothersome thing about him.

“I always figured
we’d
be friends.”

Fancy clipped a scrap of newsprint to her canvas and wrote,
I don’t have friends.

Ilan’s hand covered hers briefly as he plucked the charcoal from her hand and wrote beneath her words,
You have me.

Fancy came home from class to find a watermelon the size of a small car on the front porch, with a thank-you note taped to it from Bill, signed
Always your friend.

“I do not have friends!” Fancy screamed, but she wasn’t Kit—the forest paid her no mind, chirruping happily despite her upset.

She stormed into her room and looked at the bit of news-print.
You have me.
The words seemed to mock her. She should have thrown it into the forest and let the birds build their nests with it and lay eggs on it, but she didn’t. She shoved it between the pages of her dream diary and refused to think about it anymore. She made a gallon of lemonade in the milky-white pitcher and waited for Kit to come home.

She didn’t have to wait long. “Did you see that monster watermelon?” Kit asked, bounding into the room. She tossed some sheet music and a pile of letters onto her bed and stripped out of her sweaty clothes. “I guess Bill figures if we eat all that, we’ll be too full to come after him for squealing about us all over town. Smart, huh?” She sat at the tea table in her underwear, some lacy pink stuff that Fancy had never seen before. She turned on the phonograph and played an old Ray Charles record. She poured herself some lemonade and then frowned when Fancy continued to lie motionless on the bed.

“Don’t worry, Fancy. Even if Sheriff Baker came sniffing around here, he wouldn’t find a damn thing.”

“Don’t say ‘damn.’”

Kit breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay. Just making sure you’re still breathing. Why you just laying there?”

“My head hurts.” Fancy had changed into her sleep romper and decided to stay in bed until the day was dead.

“Well, I got just the cure for headaches. Look what I found in the mailbox.” She grabbed a letter from the stack on her bed and crowded into Fancy’s bed with her. She sat against the pillows with Fancy’s head on her stomach as she removed a handwritten note inside an envelope.

Kit read it aloud:

“‘Hi. My name is Selenicera Woodson. You said tell if I have a problem. I do. My sister wants me dead. She is poisoning me. She mixes it into my food. She had to let me go to school once when my brother took her to court, and I remember how real food tastes. Not like the stuff she feeds me. I don’t want to kill her, but if I don’t, she’ll kill me first. I don’t know why she hates me or why she keeps me in this room and won’t let me go outside when I want to. Please help me. I would ask my brother, but when he went to court to get custody of me, he lost. He used to beat people up when he was a kid, and he got in trouble a lot. But that was only because he was sad when our parents died. That was a long time ago, when I was still a baby. He doesn’t get in trouble anymore, and I don’t want him to, but I know that if he goes to jail for
killing my sister, they won’t let me live with him.’

“Man,” Kit said, putting the letter back inside the envelope. “Little kids sure are idiots.
Obviously
they can’t give custody rights to a felon.”

“But it’s a good one,” said Fancy against her stomach. “I knew we’d get a reply.”

Kit stroked Fancy’s hair from her damp face. “You wanna do it right now?”

“Later. It’s too hot.”

“Fancy, what’s wrong with you? And don’t give me any crap about a headache.”

“I do have a headache. People not acting like they’re supposed to always gives me a headache.”

Kit harrumphed, massaging Fancy’s temples. “You don’t always act like you’re supposed to either, you know.”

Fancy pretended not to hear. “Play ‘I Got a Woman.’ That’s the only Ray Charles I like.”

Kit’s hands stilled. “I . . . oh, who knows where that record is.”

“In the crate?”

“I don’t feel like looking through all that.”

“They’re in alphabetical order.”

“Fancy, shh. With your headache you shouldn’t be listening to music anyway. Sleep now. We’ll call on Selenicera tomorrow morning, when it’s nice and cool.”

Fancy knew they’d have to wake up superearly to enjoy truly cool air, but the next day Kit woke Fancy before it was even light out.

Fancy rolled over. “Whuzzit?”

Kit was already dressed in her trademark leggings and T-shirt. “Rise and shine!” she hollered, drill-sergeant-like. “On your feet! We have to go help that girl.”

“It ain’t even six in the morning.” Fancy buried her head under her pillow and almost stabbed her eye out with the pencil she kept under there. It was so early she hadn’t even dreamed anything yet.

“So we know she’s not at work.” Kit knocked Fancy’s pillow to the floor and dragged her out of bed. “Besides, we gotta finish up before Madda gets home. Let’s go!” She pushed Fancy into the inner room.

“Grow one pair of wings . . . ,” Fancy muttered as she wandered into the bathroom. A quick, cold shower woke her up and put Kit’s angelic tendencies into a new light. If the sheriff
did come around, he’d never believe that such a sweet girl could murder anybody.

Fancy came back into the sleeping porch in a sleeveless babydoll dress. The early dawn light glinted off the jars of squirrel organs. Kit was sitting at the tea table with the phone book and the cordless phone.

“Who you calling?”

“Wooding, Woods, Woodson!”

“The girl in the letter?” said Fancy, separating her hair into two low ponytails. “It’s too early. She won’t even be—”

“We have to set up a meeting and talk strategy.” Kit spoke as though she had been doing such things her whole life. After three irate hang-ups, she struck pay dirt on the fourth call. “Hi, is this Selenicera?” Her eyes widened, and she put her hand over the phone. “It’s the sister!”

“Hang up.
Quick
.”

Kit thought about it. Then said into the phone, “Is it true you aim to kill your kid sister?”

“Kit.”

Kit slapped Fancy’s hands from the phone. “This is Kit Cordelle.”

“You told her your name?”

“No, she said you’re trying to kill her,” said Kit into the phone. “Are you? Well, you know me. I can’t hardly point fingers, considering my own situation. Yeah,
that
Cordelle. Well sure, I mean, kill her if you want; she’s your sister. I just figured you’d want some help. We’ve seen our old man in action, after all.” She winked at Fancy after uttering that complete lie. “We could offer any number of tips. We know where you live. Yeah,
we
. Me and my own kid sister, Fancy. We’re a team. No problem.”

“What’d she say?” said Fancy, the minute Kit hung up.

Kit grinned. “She wants us to come over right away.”

K
IT WAS FLYING ABOVE OUR HOUSE, THE WIND FROM HER PINK WINGS BENDING THE TREES.
E
VERY TIME HER SHADOW PASSED OVER ME
I
SHIVERED.

The sisters biked to the address, the kinetoscope propped awkwardly in Fancy’s basket as they twisted down Torcido Road, only a few miles from El Camino Real.

“Think it’s a scam?” Fancy asked, veering behind Kit as a car passed them on the road. Cool, slightly damp air rushed against them. The sun rays slanted intermittently between the thickening clouds. “Or a setup?”

“Probably.”

“She knows we know what she wants to do to her sister, so . . . be on guard.”

A few minutes later the sisters rode onto the Woodsons’ property and walked their bikes up the stony path.

The Woodsons lived in a nice neighborhood in a peach A-frame house. It was an area where the home owners had trained the wisteria to decorate the outer walls of their homes and not eat them alive, very unlike the sisters’ own home.

“Now we know where she’s getting the poison from,” said Kit as the sisters tiptoed their bikes almost respectfully past the fragrantly gorgeous toxins in the front yard.

“Even destroying angels,” said Fancy pointing out the delicate white mushrooms growing around the holly in the yard.

“She can’t be using those, or her sister would be dead already.”

The sisters leaned their bikes against the front porch. Fancy lifted the kinetoscope from the basket of her bike.

Kit ran her hand over it. “It looks weird in broad daylight, doesn’t it?”

It didn’t, but Fancy knew what Kit meant: that the kinetoscope was a cellar dweller like them, and out of its element among the bright beauty of the Woodsons’ flower garden.