The Girl Next Door (5 page)
It started early last summer. A bunch of us—me, Donny, Willie, Woofer, Eddie, Tony and Lou Morino, and finally, later, Denise—used to meet back by the apple orchard to play what we called Commando. We played it so often that soon it was just “The Game.”
I have no idea who came up with it. Maybe Eddie or the Morinos. It just seemed to happen to us one day and from then on it was just there.
In The Game one guy was “it.” He was the Commando. His “safe” territory was the orchard. The rest of us were a platoon of soldiers bivouacked a few yards away up on a hill near the brook where, as smaller kids, we’d once played King of the Mountain.
We were an odd bunch of soldiers in that we had no weapons. We’d lost them, I guess, during some battle. Instead, it was the Commando who had the weapons—apples from the orchard, as many as he could carry.
In theory, he also had the advantage of surprise. Once he was ready he’d sneak from the orchard through the brush and raid our camp. With luck he could bop at least one of us with an apple before being seen. The apples were bombs. If you got hit with an apple you were dead, you were out of the game. So the object was to hit as many guys as you could before getting caught.
You always got caught.
That was the point.
The Commando never won.
You got caught because, for one thing, everybody else was sitting on a fairly good-sized hill watching and waiting for you, and unless the grass was very high and you were very lucky, you had to get seen. So much for the element of surprise. Second, it was seven against one, and you had just the single “safe” base back at the orchard yards away. So here you were firing wildly over your shoulder running like crazy back to your base with a bunch of kids like a pack of dogs at your heels, and maybe you’d get one or two or three of them but eventually they’d get
you.
you.
And as I say, that was the point.
Because the captured Commando got tied to a tree in the grove, arms tied behind his back, legs hitched together.
He was gagged. He was blindfolded.
And the survivors could do anything they wanted to him while the others—even the “dead” guys—looked on.
Sometimes we all went easy and sometimes not.
The raid took maybe half an hour.
The capture could take all day.
At the very least, it was scary.
Eddie, of course, got away with murder. Half the time you were afraid to capture him. He could turn on you, break the rules, and The Game would become a bloody, violent free-for-all. Or if you did catch him there was always the problem of how to let him go. If you’d done anything to him he didn’t like it was like setting free a swarm of bees.
Yet it was Eddie who introduced his sister.
And once Denise was part of it the complexion of The Game changed completely.
Not at first. At first it was the same as always. Everybody took turns and you got yours and I got mine except there was this
girl
there.
girl
there.
But then we started pretending we had to be nice to her. Instead of taking turns we’d let her be whatever she wanted to be. Troops or Commando. Because she was new to The Game, because she was a girl.
And she started pretending to have this obsession with getting all of us before we got her. Like it was a challenge to her. Every day was
finally
going to be the day she won at Commando.
finally
going to be the day she won at Commando.
We knew it was impossible. She was a lousy shot for one.
Denise never won at Commando.
She was twelve years old. She had curly brown-red hair and her skin was lightly freckled all over.
She had the small beginnings of breasts, and thick pale prominent nipples.
I thought of all that now and fixed my eyes on the truck, on the workers and the girders.
But Denise wouldn’t leave it alone.
“It’s summer,” she said. “So how come we don’t play?”
She knew damn well why we didn’t play but she was right too in a way—what had stopped The Game was nothing more than that the weather had gotten too cold. That and the guilt of course.
“We’re a little old for that now,” I lied.
She shrugged. “Uh-huh. Maybe. And maybe you guys are chicken.”
“Could be. I’ve got an idea, though. Why don’t you ask your brother if he’s chicken.”
She laughed. “Yeah. Sure. Right.”
The sky was growing darker.
“It’s going to rain,” said Cheryl.
The men certainly thought so. Along with the girders they were hauling out canvas tarps, spreading them out in the grass just in case. They were working fast, trying to get the big wheel assembled before the downpour. I recognized one of them from last summer, a wiry blond southerner named Billy Bob or Jimmy Bob something who had handed Eddie a cigarette he asked for. That alone made him memorable. Now he was hammering pieces of the wheel together with a large ball-peen hammer, laughing at something the fat man said beside him. The laugh was high and sharp, almost feminine.
You could hear the
ping
of the hammer and the trucks’ gears groaning behind us, you could hear generators running and the grinding of machinery—and then a sudden staccato pop, rain falling hard into the field’s dry hard-packed dirt. “Here it comes!”
ping
of the hammer and the trucks’ gears groaning behind us, you could hear generators running and the grinding of machinery—and then a sudden staccato pop, rain falling hard into the field’s dry hard-packed dirt. “Here it comes!”
I took my shirt out of my jeans and pulled it up over my head. Cheryl and Denise were already running for the trees.
My house was closer than theirs. I didn’t really mind the rain. But it was a good excuse to get out of there for a while. Away from Denise.
I just couldn’t believe she wanted to talk about The Game.
You could see the rain wouldn’t last. It was coming down too fast, too heavily. Maybe by the time it was over some of the other kids would be hanging around. I could lose her.
I ran past them huddled beneath the trees.
“Going home!” I said. Denise’s hair was plastered down over her cheeks and forehead. She was smiling again. Her shirt was soaked clear through.
I saw Cheryl reach out to me. That long bony wet arm dangling.
“Can we come?” she yelled. I pretended I didn’t hear. The rain was pretty loud over there in the leaves. I figured Cheryl would get over it. I kept running.
Denise and Eddie, I thought. Boy. What a pair.
If anybody is ever gonna get me into trouble it’ll be them. One or the other or both of them. It’s got to be.
Ruth was on the landing taking in the mail from her mailbox as I ran past her house. She turned in the doorway and smiled and waved to me, as water cascaded down the eaves.
Chapter Five
I never learned what bad feeling had come between Ruth and my mother but something had when I was eight or nine.
Before that, long before Meg and Susan came along, I used to sleep over nights with Donny and Willie and Woofer in the double set of bunk beds they had in their room. Willie had a habit of leaping into bed at night so he’d destroyed a few bunks over the years. Willie was always flinging himself on something. When he was two or three, Ruth said, he’d destroyed his crib completely. The kitchen chairs were all unhinged from his sprawling. But the bunks they had in the bedroom now were tough. They’d survived.
Since whatever happened between Ruth and my mother I was allowed to stay there only infrequently.
But I remember those earlier nights when we were kids. We’d cut up laughing in the dark for an hour or two whispering, giggling, spitting over the sides at whoever was on the bottom bunks and then Ruth would come in and yell and we’d go to sleep.
The nights I liked best were Karnival nights. From the open bedroom window facing the playground we could hear calliope music, screams, the whir and grind of machinery.
The sky was orange-red as though a forest fire were raging, punctuated by brighter reds and blues as the Octopus whirled just out of sight behind the trees.
We knew what was out there—we had just come back from there after all, our hands still sticky from cotton candy. But somehow it was mysterious to lie listening, long past our bedtime, silent for once, envying adults and teenagers, imagining the terrors and thrills of the big rides we were too young to go on that were getting all those screams. Until the sounds and lights slowly faded away, replaced by the laughter of strangers as they made their way back to cars all up and down our block.
I swore that when I got old enough I’d be the last one to leave.
And now I was standing alone at the refreshment booth eating my third hot dog of the evening and wondering what the hell to do with myself.
I’d ridden all the rides I cared to. I’d lost money at every game and wheel of fortune the place had to offer and all I had was one tiny ceramic poodle for my mother shoved in my pocket to show for it.
I’d had my candy apple, my Sno-Cone and my slice of pizza.
I’d hung out with Kenny and Malcolm until Malcolm got sick on the Dive Bomber and then with Tony and Lou Morino and Linda and Betty Martin until they went home. It was fun, but now there was just me. It was ten o’clock.
And two hours yet to go.
I’d seen Woofer earlier. But Donny and Willie Jr. hadn’t shown and neither had Ruth or Meg or Susan. It was odd because Ruth was usually very big on Karnival. I thought of going across the street to see what was what but that would mean admitting I was bored and I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
I decided I’d wait a while.
Ten minutes later Meg arrived.
I was trying my luck on number seven red and considering a second candy apple when I saw her walk slowly through the crowd, alone, wearing jeans and a bright green blouse—and suddenly I didn’t feel so shy anymore. That I didn’t feel shy amazed me. Maybe by then I was ready for anything. I waited until I lost on the red again and went over.
And then it was as though I was interrupting something.
She was staring up at the Ferns wheel, fascinated, brushing back a lock of long red hair with her fingers. I saw something glint on her hand as it dropped to her side.
It was a pretty fast wheel. Up top the girls were squealing.
“Hi, Meg.” I said.
She looked at me and smiled and said, “Hi, David.” Then she looked back at the wheel.
You could tell she’d never been on one before. Just the way she stared. What kind of life was that? I wondered.
“Neat, huh? It’s faster than most are.”
She looked at me again, all excited. “It is?”
“Yeah. Faster than the one at Playland, anyway. Faster than Bertram’s Island.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Privately I agreed with her. There was a smooth easy glide to the wheel I’d always liked, a simplicity of purpose and design that the scary rides lacked. I couldn’t have stated it then but I’d always thought the wheel was graceful, romantic.
“Want to try?”
I heard the eagerness in my voice and wished for death. What was I doing? The girl was older than me. Maybe as much as three years older. I was crazy.
I tried to backtrack.
Maybe I’d confused her.
“I mean, I’d go on it with you if you want. If you’re scared to. I don’t mind.”
She laughed. I felt the knife point lift away from my throat.
“Come on,” she said.
She took my hand and led me over.
Somehow I bought us tickets and we stepped into a car and sat down. All I remember is the feel of her hand, warm and dry in the cool night air, the fingers slim and strong. That and my bright-red cheeks reminding me I was twelve years old on the wheel with something very much like a full-grown woman.
And then the old problem came up of what to say, while they loaded the rest of the cars and we rose to the top. I solved it by saying nothing. That seemed fine with her. She didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. Just relaxed and content to be up here looking down at the people and the whole Karnival spread around her strung with lights and up over the trees to our houses, rocking the car gently back and forth, smiling, humming a tune I didn’t know.
Then the wheel began turning and she laughed and I thought it was the happiest, nicest sound I’d ever heard and felt proud of myself for asking her, for making her happy and making her laugh the way she did.
As I say, the wheel was fast and up at the top almost completely silent, all the noise of the Karnival held down below as though enveloped there, and you plunged down into it and then back out of it again, the noise receding quickly, and at the top you were almost weightless in the cool breeze so that you wanted to hold on to the crossbar for a moment for fear of flying away entirely.
I looked down to her hands on the bar and that was when I saw the ring. In the moonlight it looked thin and pale. It sparkled.
I made a show of enjoying the view but mostly it was her smile and the excitement in her eyes I was enjoying, the way the wind pressed and fluttered the blouse across her breasts.
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