The Battle of Darcy Lane (4 page)

We stepped out onto the observation deck and it was so bright that it really felt like we were closer to the sun. We walked around once and found a spot where we could just stand and take it all in. I saw tall apartment buildings with roof decks on them and wondered about the kind of people who lived so high up, who
sat in those chairs at night as the city glistened around them. I looked at the cars way down, and pictured tiny people driving them. A sign near where we were standing said that visibility was fifteen miles in current conditions, but as the warm summer wind whipped against me, I caught my own reflection along with the city's in Mom's sunglasses and felt like I could see forever. I felt big and small and connected. I wasn't sure to what, but it was to something important.

After taking some pictures, we went back down, down, down, and walked a few blocks and went to lunch in a restaurant in the belly of a fancy department store. I had the best tuna sandwich of my life (though I had to pick some weird lettuce-type thing that was definitely not lettuce off it). Mom even ordered us fake cocktails. When they came, she raised a toast, “To mother-daughter day!”

I clinked my glass and it made a festive sound. I couldn't think of the last time I'd seen my mom so happy, so relaxed. And when I said, “Cheers!” I felt cheerful.

We shopped a little bit then. Mom bought some lip gloss, and I picked out a cool purse made of three kinds of neat metallic leather: silver, gold, and peach-tinted. I loved everything about it. The shine. The shape. The clean sound of the snap when it closed.

When we walked past the bedding department, I
thought about my own old spread at home. “Can we look around here?”

“Sure.” Mom followed me into the displays of bedrooms, all fluffy and pretty and making me want to climb in.

“I came here when I needed stuff for my first apartment in the city.” She ran a hand along a plaid bedspread that looked like it belonged in a country house. “It was such an exciting time.” Then she sat on a bed with a big red flower at the center of the spread. “You have so many adventures ahead of you, Julia. You have no idea.”

I wasn't sure how or why we'd gone from bedspreads to adventures, so I pointed at the bedspread. “Can I get it?” That red flower was calling me.

“Not now, honey.” She looked at her watch. “We have to get going. And anyway, we should wait for a sale. But yes, we should get you a new bedspread.”

“For my new room down the hall?” I tried.

She suddenly looked tired, like just being alive was too much work.

“I'll move the sewing machine myself!” I said.
“Please.”

“It's not that.” She stood up and started to walk toward the elevators. “It's complicated, Julia.”

“Why is it complicated?” I followed.

“Let me talk to your father.” She hit the Down button.

“For real this time?”

“For real.” She put an arm out against the elevator door
as I got in with a skip in my step. She was going to talk to Dad about the room; this was real progress. So as we made our way back to the parking garage, I didn't even mind talking to her about the book I was reading. It was an old paperback called
The Haunted Pond
that I'd found at a garage sale a week ago—about a girl and a crippled boy who discover a haunted pond where a mysterious face sometimes appeared.

“Sounds a little creepy,” she said. “And ‘cripple' isn't really a word that people use anymore.”

“They use it in the book. And I
like
creepy things.” It seemed like a good idea to start building a case for why I should be allowed to watch the rest of
End of Daze
.

“Why?” Mom asked. “Like what specifically do you like about the story?”

“Mom!” She sure knew how to kill a mood. “I'm not writing a book report. I just like it. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “Sorry. For being
interested in my own daughter
.” She pinched me softly on the arm and I smiled. She had a point, I guessed.

Alyssa and Taylor were playing
Russia in front of Taylor's house when we turned onto the block. They each had a ball and they were throwing them into the
air and clapping under their legs and turning.

Over and over.

My mind was blanking on which number move it was.

As we pulled into our driveway, Taylor dropped her ball and had to run into the street to get it. She waved weakly when we got out of the car, but I focused on Alyssa, who was smiling but also trying not to.

“Can I go over?” I asked Mom. I wanted to show off my new purse.

“No,” she said. “Your father made dinner.”

It was Alyssa who called out to us. “Taylor's feeling a lot better!”

Mom waved and said, “A miraculous recovery!”

She turned to me, and my reflection was still there in her sunglasses, but no longer sparkling and deep.

“Come on, Julia.” She put an arm around my shoulder, and I had to fight not to squirm free. “Let's go inside.”

The kitchen was full of heat and strange smells.

“Ladies!” Dad was shaking a frying pan around over the stove. “How was your big day?”

Mom went over and kissed him after he put the pan down. He wiped his hands on a dish towel.

“We had the best time,” she gushed, turning to me. “Didn't we?”

“It was great.” But already I felt the magic of the day wearing away.

There were mushrooms in the pan.

I hated mushrooms.

My parents didn't care.

“Wait.” Dad furrowed his brow. “Wasn't Taylor supposed to go with you? She was out with that new girl all day.”

More magic going poof.

So Mom explained about what she called the “sudden onset” of Taylor's “mysterious illness.” We sat down for dinner, but I just pushed my food around the plate, unable to eat. When I realized that Mom had noticed, I took a few bites, forcing food down with slugs of cold water. I knew I was spoiling our day by letting it be spoiled by Taylor and Alyssa, and I felt bad, but I couldn't think of anything to do about it.

After I helped clean up, I went out to the yard with a tennis ball and started to play Russia alone. I was only up to fivesies when Peter called out to me from his yard. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself.”

“How are you doing?”

I could see his red shirt through slits in the fence. “I'm miserable,” I said. “How are
you
doing?”

“I'm okay, I guess. Why miserable? I heard you went into the city today, so that sounds pretty nonmiserable.”

I sighed. “It was fun. But I don't know.” For a second I was afraid to say it. But this was Peter, so I went for it. “The new girl? Alyssa?”

He nodded.

“She's kind of mean to me. And she's stealing Taylor away.”

“What do you care? You have Wendy.” Wendy James was my best friend from school. She was a little bit overweight and sometimes had dandruff and I hadn't seen or talked to her since school let out. “Isn't she your best friend?”

“No, Taylor is,” I said. She was a lot cooler than Wendy. “But now Alyssa is pushing us apart.”

I could see one of Peter's eyes now, peeking through the biggest slit, the slit we always talked through. He said, “She's kind of mean to me, too.”

“It's different.” I tried to bounce my ball on the grass, and it landed with a
thud
in my vegetable garden.

“If you say so,” he said.

I bent down and found the ball under a tomato plant; I really needed to weed. But not now. “Hey, are you watching
End of Daze
?”

“Nah,” he said through the slit. “Not allowed.”

“Stiiinks,”
I said.

“What's the big deal?”

“Everyone's watching it but me.”

“And me!”

“And you.” It didn't make me feel any better, though. “My parents aren't even taping it. If they were DVRing it, I could at least try to sneak it. But they're watching it when it's on, like clockwork. So annoying.”

“Is it online?” he asked.

“You need some special login for that channel for devices or something.”

“I'll see what I can do,” he said, and my heart filled with hope.

Inside, my parents were side by side on the couch, talking quietly, and I thought about the stories they used to tell me about myself as a toddler, how I'd see them snuggling on the couch or curled up in bed and I'd push in between them, whining, “I wanna cuddle, too!” I wasn't sure I'd ever been able to kick the feeling of being lonely in their company, and I sometimes wondered whether everybody felt like that around them, since they were so obviously in love, or if it was just me.

They looked up at the same time, as if surprised to see me, and Mom adjusted her position, moving closer to Dad, who yawned.

“You want to play Bananagrams or something?” she asked, but I didn't have the heart to make them move, not one inch.

Up in my room, pajamas on, I thought about reading, which usually made me happy, but tonight I didn't think it would. I pulled the monkey Peter had given me into bed, snuggling close.

6
.

“It's too bad about yesterday,”
I said when I went over to Taylor's the next morning. Mom had woken me up early and dragged me to Mass, so I was home and changed into shorts by ten thirty.

“Yeah, well.” Taylor was sitting on her front stoop, looking over toward Alyssa's. Not reading a book or anything. Just sitting there.

“At least you're feeling better.” I couldn't look her in the eye so I watched an ant that was marching across one of the bricks of her front steps and wondered whether ants got jealous during the cicada years. It was funny to think about them getting miffed about the cicadas getting all that press when it was true every second of every day of
every year
that ants could do amazing things like carry something
twenty times their own body weight.

“That was some weird flu or something, right?” I heard my own forced laugh as the ant disappeared into a crack. “Like a two-minute bug or something?”

“What are you even talking about?” Taylor snapped.

“I just mean you got better fast is all.” My face heated up again.

“Yeah, I did.” She huffed. “So why are you making such a big deal out of it?”

I didn't know.

“Look what I got.” I held out my purse, which now held my wallet, some lip balm, and my book. I thought about telling Taylor all about
The Haunted Pond
, but then I didn't.

“It's nice,” Taylor said, but she sounded sort of sad and I wondered if maybe she was jealous. I hoped so. I hoped she regretted not coming because maybe she could have bought something awesome, too.

“Why don't we play Spit or go swimming?” I said. “Just the two of us. My dad's talking about covering the pool for a few days because of the cicadas, so this might be our last chance all week.”

“I'm just going to hang out.” Taylor put her elbows on her knees.

“Okay, then.” I sat down next to her. “I'll hang out, too.”

She looked at me funny for a long moment. “You're suffocating me.”

“What?”
This was weird.

“I only mean it's, you know, good to have other friends.” She adjusted her ponytail. “We should both have other friends.”

“Well, duh. Of course.” I felt instantly like I might be coming down with some weird, sudden bug, too. “But I don't know. Why do you even like her?”

“I just do, okay?”

“She's mean to me.” I blurted. Maybe telling Peter had given me confidence.

“She's not
mean
.” Taylor sighed. “She's just, I don't know . . . she's funny. And here she is!”

Alyssa had appeared at the base of the driveway, bouncing her ball. She had gum in her mouth, and it made me think of something my mom said all the time, claiming it was something
her mom
used to say.
What are you, a cow? Chewing cud?
I wasn't even sure what cud was but I was still tempted to say it.