Someday Angeline (7 page)

Next to that one was one with an Amazon manatee in it. Back in Columbus’s day, sailors used to think manatees were mermaids. These sailors had gone a long time without seeing women. A manatee looks like a shapely walrus, with hips.

A giant salamander seven feet long, little scissors-tail fish, whose tails open and close like scissors as they swim, and everything was all right at the aquarium. Puff-fish, alligator gars, zebra eels, but soon she would have to leave. Wolf fish, pipefish, a fish called snakehead and one called feather-back, school would be getting out soon. There were crabs, lobsters, anchovies, and sturgeon with their long noses and mustaches.

Sawfish with noses shaped like saws and paddlefish with noses shaped like paddles, she could have stayed there forever. There were brightly colored electric fish, so bright that their tank wasn’t lit like the rest of the tanks, and flashlight fish, who emitted their own light so that they could see where they were going.

She left the aquarium. She felt fine.
Everything was still all right.

The Earth spins around at 1,037 miles per hour, she knew that before she was born, and Angeline spun around too, right along with it.

“Lay down ye weapon, sailor, or off she goes!” The sailor looked at the lovely lady with her hands tied behind her, standing at the edge of the plank. He only had to see her eyes to know that she too was in love with him. He glared defiantly at the one-eyed pirate, then slowly lowered his sword.

Angeline put her thumb in her mouth; then, catching herself, she immediately bit it. “If only I didn’t suck my thumb,” she thought. She examined it for teeth marks. From now on, she decided, anytime she caught herself sucking her thumb, she would bite it hard. The more it hurt, the better. “Then, maybe I’ll learn.”

It had been a week since Mrs. Hardlick had sent her home. She hadn’t been back to school since. Instead, every day she took the number eight to the aquarium, to the bumphead hogfish, the Garden of Eels, and the circular room with all the big frowning fish. She wondered why she liked the frowning fish so much. She thought it must have been kind of like the clowns at the circus. The ones with the frowns were always funnier than those with the big smiles.

“Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” said Abel as he came home.

She wanted to tell him about the aquarium and about what happened in Mrs. Hardlick’s class and why she couldn’t ever go back there. She had been wanting to tell him about it all week, but how could she? He expected so much from her.

“Now you can hug me,” said Abel as he emerged in his pajamas and robe.

Angeline hugged and kissed her father, then sneezed. The odor of his shampoo irritated her nose.

Abel always washed his hair in the shower. He had to wash all the banana peels out of his hair. Every day, all day, he felt like he had banana peels
in his hair. He would look in the rearview mirror to try to assure himself that they weren’t really there but he was never totally satisfied until he took his shower and washed his hair.

Angeline knew she had to tell him about school. She knew he would find out about it, anyway, someday.

“Is something wrong?” he asked her.

She stared at him for a moment, but couldn’t tell him. “Oh, I hurt my thumb,” she said instead.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“I bit it,” she told him.

“I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

“A little,” she replied. “Not enough.”

“Okay, fine,” said Abel. He walked into the kitchen shaking his head. “Do you want salt water with your dinner?” he called.

“Yes, please,” Angeline answered.

The phone rang. “It’s for you,” Abel called.

She ran into the living room and took the phone from her father. “Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” said the voice on the other end, “this is Goon.” Gary laughed awkwardly.

“Hi, Gary.”

“Hi,” Gary said again. He sounded nervous.
“Where have you been the last few days?” he asked. “How come you haven’t been in school?”

Angeline looked at her father cooking dinner. She couldn’t talk with him there. “My socks are green,” she said.

“So?” asked Gary. “You can go to school with green socks.”

Angeline looked at her father again. She wished he’d leave. “My father is right here,” she said. “He’s not wearing any socks. He’s wearing slippers.”

Abel turned and looked peculiarly at Angeline.

“Oh, I get it!” said Gary. “You can’t talk because your father is right there, right?”

“Yes,” said Angeline.

“He doesn’t know you haven’t been in school?” Gary asked.

“No,” said Angeline.

“Wow,” said Gary, “that’s really something. Well, maybe I’ll see you at school tomorrow and then you can tell me.”

“I doubt it,” said Angeline.

“There’ll be Smalayoo,” said Gary.

“What’s Smalayoo?” Angeline asked.

“Nothin’s Smala me,” laughed Gary. “What’s Smala you?”

Angeline laughed. She thought it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard over a phone.

“Well, good-bye, I guess,” said Gary.

“Bye.”

They hung up.

Abel couldn’t stand it any longer. “Why did he want to know what color socks you were wearing?” he asked.

Angeline had to think fast. “Well, see, he lost his socks, except his were blue.” She quickly walked out to the living room and picked up her book.

“Did he think
I
took his socks?” Abel asked out loud, but not loud enough for Angeline to hear him.

The next day Gary walked aimlessly across the school yard, hoping that Angeline would show up. “Will you get outta the way, Goon!” someone said as he walked through their hopscotch game. “Hey! Get off the field, Goon!” as he walked across the baseball diamond. “Come on, Goon, walk around!” He went back to his classroom.

“Hello, Gary,” said Miss Turbone.

“Hi, Mr. Bone,” muttered Gary. “Have you seen Angeline?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

He took off his shoe, then put it back on.

“What did you do that for?” Miss Turbone asked him.

“Do what?”

“Take your shoe off, then put it back on?”

“Did I do that again?” Gary asked.

Miss Turbone smiled and put her arm around Gary. “Angeline will be back,” she assured him.

“You never know,” said Gary. He looked into the saltwater fish tank. He peered into it like he was gazing into a crystal ball, hoping that it would somehow tell him what happened to Angeline. But all he saw was a fish, and he didn’t think that that told him anything.

“Maybe she’s sick,” said Miss Turbone. “Why don’t you go see her after school? I bet she’d like that.”

Gary knew she wasn’t sick. If she was sick she could have told her father. No, she wasn’t sick. It was something bigger. But he could still go over to her house after school, like Mr. Bone said.

He walked up the front stairs of the address he found in the phone book and rang the doorbell to her apartment. Nobody answered. She wasn’t at school and she wasn’t at home. This might be
bigger than he ever even imagined. Maybe she was working for the CIA. She was certainly smart enough. That’s why when he called her on the phone, she couldn’t say anything in front of her father. But then, how did he know for sure that her father was even there? Angeline could have been lying about that too. All he knew for certain was that some man answered the phone—no, some person with a man’s voice. Angeline wasn’t a little girl at all. She was a midget Russian spy! Green socks. Green socks? It was some kind of code. She was trying to tell him something. She wanted to defect. She and agent XZ1000, who was posing as her father, were plotting to overthrow the government and…

“BOO!” said Angeline.

Gary stumbled down the stairs. “Have a nice trip, see you next fall,” he said.

Angeline laughed.

“I never even heard you coming,” said Gary. “You’re as quiet as a cat.”

“As a fish,” said Angeline. “Do you want to come in and see where I live?” She unlocked the front door of the apartment building and they waited by the elevator.

“You have an elevator,” said Gary.

“We have to,” said Angeline. “We live on the fourth floor.”

“We live in a house, so we don’t have an elevator,” said Gary.

“Do you have a backyard?” Angeline asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, you don’t need an elevator if you have a backyard. You can have a dog.”

“We don’t have a dog or an elevator,” said Gary.

They rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. Angeline unlocked the door to her apartment and they walked inside. “Would you like some salt water?” she offered.

Gary looked around the apartment. He was thrilled to be there, just as he was thrilled the time he got to go to Mr. Bone’s car. “Do you have any fresh water?” he asked.

“Yes, we have that too,” said Angeline.

“I’ll have fresh water,” said Gary. “My father said if you drink salt water you’ll go crazy. He said he read a book where a guy on a lifeboat drank salt water, then jumped in the ocean and was eaten by sharks.”

“How could that be?” Angeline asked. “You don’t go crazy from drinking water and you don’t go crazy from eating salt, so why would you go crazy from drinking salt water?”

Gary shrugged.

“Besides,” added Angeline, “fish aren’t crazy and that’s all they ever drink.”

“I didn’t know fish drank,” said Gary.

Angeline went into the kitchen and made them each a glass of water, no salt in Gary’s.

“Where’s your room?” he asked when she returned.

“This is it,” said Angeline proudly. “This is where I sleep.”

“On the couch?”

“It folds out into a bed,” said Angeline. “When I’m asleep it’s my bedroom and when I’m awake it’s the living room.”

“I just have a regular bedroom,” said Gary. “I wonder if my parents would let me sleep on the couch.”

They sat on the floor and drank their water. Gary had a wonderful time seeing Angeline again. He was a little afraid to ask her where she’d been when she hadn’t been in school. He didn’t want to
spoil their good time, but he finally asked her.

She told him about Mrs. Hardlick’s note, and all about the aquarium, the four-eyed butterfly fish and the glass catfish, which you could see right through except for the bones.

“Aren’t you ever coming back to school?” Gary asked.

“I can’t,” said Angeline. “I tore up Mrs. Hardlick’s note and stuffed it under a bus seat. She told me I couldn’t come back to class until I bring the note back, signed by my father. Since I don’t have the note, I can’t ever go back.”

“I wish Mr. Bone would write me a note like that,” said Gary. “Then I could stuff it under a bus seat and I wouldn’t have to go to school.”

“Mr. Bone would never write a note like that,” said Angeline.

“No, I guess not.”

“Besides, if I had Mr. Bone for a teacher, I’d like school.”

“I guess,” said Gary. “But it was a lot better when you were there too.”

“I just don’t fit in at school,” said Angeline, “not like at the aquarium. At school, everyone calls me a freak.”

“They call me a goon,” said Gary.

“You call yourself that,” said Angeline.

“I guess I’ll always be a goon,” said Gary, “but someday everybody will be sorry they ever called you a freak. You’ll be somebody really great.”

“You never know.”

Angeline watched the porpoises and dolphins, sea lions and seals, all playing together. She pressed her face up against the glass, squashing her nose. It would have looked funny to the dolphins, had they noticed, which they didn’t. None of the fish ever noticed her.

The scissors-tail fish cleanly cut their way through the water. The sea horses galloped around the bend. The turkey fish gobbled up their fish food. And beneath the silvery moonfish, the convict fish silently escaped to the other end of the tank.

She was on the outside here too, just like at school. Even in the circular room, with all the fish
swimming around her, she was on the outside. She was in the middle, but on the outside.

At school, Gary stood under a tree, near where he and Angeline first met.

It used to be, before Angeline, Gary didn’t have any friends but he got along fine, telling jokes. Nobody laughed, but so what? The world spun around and he spun around too. But now he missed Angeline. Without her, his jokes, oddly enough, didn’t seem funny anymore.

He kicked the tree. He had told it a joke and it didn’t laugh. “What did the acorn say when it grew up? Geometry. Gee, I’m a tree.” It was even a tree joke.

“It’s not the tree’s fault,” said Miss Turbone.

Gary shrugged.

“I’m sure Angeline will be back soon,” said Miss Turbone. “Did you go see her, like I suggested?”

“She’s never coming back,” said Gary.

“Oh?”

He sighed, then told Mr. Bone all about it. He hoped Angeline wouldn’t be mad at him, but he told her everything, all about the note from Mrs.
Hardlick, and how she’d been going to the aquarium every day. “And since she destroyed the note,” he concluded, “she can’t ever come back.” He looked sadly at Mr. Bone.

Miss Turbone didn’t say a word. She just winked at him.

The garbage truck pulled into the garbage truck garage. Abel brushed the top of his head and checked in the rearview mirror one last time for banana peels. “Mr. Bone, socks, smalayoo—I tell you, Gus, it just keeps getting stranger. I’m almost afraid to go home.”

“What’s smalayoo?” asked Gus.

“I haven’t a clue,” said Abel.

They walked to their cars. “Oh, sorry,” said Gus, as he purposely stepped on Abel’s foot while he secretly placed a banana peel on top of his head.

Angeline made herself a glass of salt water and brought it into the living room. The one-eyed pirate brought his prisoners to a secret cove, where he tried to think of the best way to kill them. He and his crew laughed and sang ribald
songs as they drank rum and brandy. The sailor didn’t let on that he had managed to untie the rope around his hands.

Abel came home. “Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” he said.