I Am the Wallpaper (21 page)

I figured that ought to do the trick.

“Keep your head down,” I said, pulling Tish out of the light as two boys on bicycles came up the street. We stood still and let them pass. I couldn’t hear what they whispered, but they were laughing and heading toward the cove.

Even with the slowdown, Tish and I made pretty good time. When we reached the path we put away our flashlights and started into the trees. I squeezed the button to light up my watch. It was 11:53.

In the woods we had to keep very quiet. Earlier that day I’d shown Richard the secret beach (after tonight, it wouldn’t be so secret anymore) and pointed out exactly where I wanted him to bring the little creeps. It had been days since I’d seen a car in the driveway of the cottage, so I was confident that the beach would be all mine tonight. I’d told Richard to lead the spy club boys from the opposite direction, but there was still a chance Tish and I might run into one of them. Inside the cover of the trees it was especially dark. Without our flashlights, we had to move slowly and wave our hands in front of us so we wouldn’t walk into a tree or a branch.

We crept through the tall grass toward the little clearing. Well before we came to the place where Wen, Azra and I had sat on the Fourth of July, we stopped and crouched down.

I checked my watch again: 11:57.

The cove looked beautiful. Moonlight glittered across the water and reflected on the boats moored on the other side. It was a much brighter night than the last time I had been here, and when I raised my head a little I could see into the clearing pretty well. Other than the gentle sounds of the waves and the crickets, everything was quiet. I tried to settle in, but I wasn’t very comfortable crouching. A long moment passed, and I still didn’t hear anything or anybody. I worried that something was wrong.

Tish put her mouth to my ear. “Where is everyone?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered back.

We crouched for another couple of minutes, careful not to move or make a sound. With only a minute to go until midnight, I was worried that my plan had gone wrong, that the boys knew I knew about them and had stayed home. But just then, a few yards ahead of us and to our left, I heard somebody whisper. After that, ahead of us but more to our right, somebody else said “Shhh!” The whispering stopped, but the grass rustled a little. That made me feel better. At least I knew Tish and I weren’t the only people hiding in the reeds. I was glad we’d been careful to sit far enough back from where we’d told Richard to bring the spy club.

I checked my watch again. Midnight.

“Where is she?” somebody said.

“Aww, she’s not going to show,” whispered somebody else.

We’d been squatting as still as we could. My knees hurt. I don’t know whether it was the heat or that I was so nervous, but I was sweating pretty hard. Waiting had been excruciating.

Tish put her mouth to my ear again. “Ready?”

I nodded and reached into my pocket.

But then, unexpectedly, I heard the sound of somebody humming. It was a woman, and it was coming from the direction of the old cottage. What was this? How could anyone have been staying there? There’d been no lights and no car in the driveway. This would ruin everything!

Tish elbowed me.

I froze, a lighter and Richard’s box of firecrackers ready in my hands.

The whispering that had been building in our little area behind the clearing suddenly went silent. Carefully, I peered over the grass to see who was coming. The cottage porch light was on now. In silhouette, I could also make out the tops of a few heads that had risen just high enough to see over the reeds. Judging by the number of shadowy figures peering from the grass, it seemed like there might be more kids hiding with us than I’d imagined there would be. Were there ten, twelve? I couldn’t be sure.

My heart was beating even faster now. I wasn’t sure what to do. I put the firecrackers back in my pocket.

The humming was high and pretty, and it was directly in
front of us now. The woman had a flashlight, and the glow made the individual reeds stand out tall and dark. The wall of grass rustled and finally opened up. The silhouetted heads dropped back out of sight. The lady who stepped out looked like she was carrying a towel. Who was she? In the darkness, I wondered if the monsters thought they were looking at me.

And then I recognized the short hair. That’s when I realized with sudden horror who had come back to the beach.

The Old Naked People.

Immediately behind the woman, two other people stepped into view: first the skinny lady with the long white hair, and behind her the bald man with the big gut. By now it must have been pretty obvious to the boys that none of these people was me because the flashlight had given us a quick glimpse of them.

And just like the other night, they were, as Lillian would say, au naturel. Entirely and utterly buck.

I stopped breathing. How could this have happened? Had they parked somewhere new, maybe on the far side of the house? Whatever it was, I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d felt bad enough stumbling onto them the first time, but now I’d brought an even bigger audience. This was a nightmare!

Somebody to my right gasped. The nearby grass moved just a little. But the old people didn’t seem to notice. “Yes, it
is
a little better down here,” the long-haired lady said. “Not so oppressive.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not waiting for anybody,” the old
man said. He moved past them and ran into the cool water. The women followed him, first wading in and then sitting down in the water up to their necks.

I wondered vaguely where the other man was. The bear. Not that it really mattered. So far my plan had completely backfired, and there was only one sensible thing to do, which is what Tish suggested right then:

“Oh my God, Floey,” she said, wide-eyed, yanking at my arm. “We better run!”

And I almost did, too. I almost bolted back into the woods, hoping to fade unnoticed into the scenery like so many times before. But something held me back. A moment later I realized what it was: anger. I couldn’t let it end like this. The spy club boys were supposed to be the ones running away, not me. Of course, if I could have somehow changed things so that the Old Naked People weren’t involved, I certainly would have. But now it was too late. Their late-night skinny-dipping ritual, if that was what it was, had already been violated. The least I could do was let them know.

I put my hand on Tish’s arm to keep her from running, and then I pulled out Richard’s box again. Inside were a couple of little red tubes and a gray sphere about the size of a golf ball. I picked out one of the tubes.

“Floey, what are you
doing
?”

From my other pocket I pulled out the lighter.

“Get the camera ready,” I whispered.

Her eyes darted from me to the beach and back again. She looked uncertain, but she raised Gary’s camcorder
and turned it on. I found the string on the little tube, and keeping it low to hide the flame, I flipped the lighter and lit the fuse. Then I threw it as hard as I could. The firecracker landed in the middle of the clearing, hissing and spitting.

From the water, the man said, “What the hell is that?”

After a few seconds a bright green line shot into the air and burst over our heads in a brilliant umbrella of color, the embers floating down over the water.

As I lit the second tube, one of the women called out, “Tom, there’s somebody here!”

The second one landed pretty near the first. After a few hisses and sparks it shot up even higher. By the time it burst into a fluorescent pink ball, I’d tossed the last firecracker, the gray sphere, which banged and cracked like gunfire.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

The short-haired lady screamed. The man with the gut, the one they’d called Tom, lunged toward the beach just as I switched on Gary’s portable spotlight, which I’d pulled from my backpack. The reeds sprang to life, suddenly shaking and moving like a big, frightened animal that had been rudely woken up. Terrified boys appeared from the grass, scrambling to their feet, pure panic on their faces. There were more of them than I’d imagined, twenty or so, maybe more. I tried to move the light around so Tish’s camera could catch each of them.

Just at that moment, the reeds across the clearing opened up and the missing man stepped out, bigger
and broader-shouldered than I’d remembered, and very, very angry.

“There they are!” shouted the huge naked man. “Come out here, you little bastards!”

Tom and the giant man reached the reeds at about the same time. That’s when the spy club really started screaming. Everything happened in a matter of seconds. I held up the spotlight, doing my best to shine it on the boys and not the naked people. The men fought and slashed their way through the tall grass toward us, first chasing after the nearest boys, the ones sitting at the front. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the two enraged men would get close enough to Tish and me and we’d have to hightail it out of there. The whole place was complete chaos. It was as if two furious grizzlies had come growling into the clearing. The petrified boys could hardly scramble away fast enough. Shouting and crying, some of them ran into and over each other to get back to the main beach or into the woods.

Tish and I escaped the same way we’d come in. Once we reached the road, we ran down the hill and past the cemetery. A couple of boys on bikes shot past us, huffing and puffing. When we reached the park at the end of my street we felt safe, so we stopped. I set the heavy backpack down in front of a bush. I needed to catch my breath.

“Did you see their faces!” gasped Tish, dropping down
to the ground. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have that much fun again as long as I live!”

“I saw them,” I said. I was still breathing pretty heavily, so I rested against a tree. I hoped all this wouldn’t discourage the Old Naked People from ever skinny-dipping hand in hand again.

That would be a tragedy.

Tish leaned back on her elbows. “Just wait until tomorrow when those guys go onto the Internet to look for your diary but they see themselves instead!” She laughed so hard that tears streamed down her face.

All of a sudden, we heard a scream from down the street.

It sounded like Richard’s voice.

Tish grabbed the backpack and we crept back to the edge of the road to see if we could make out what was happening in the darkness. Around the corner, across the street from the cemetery, were a nursery school and a church. At the other end of the school parking lot there were four or five shadows holding flashlights.

And in the middle of the circle of flashlights stood Richard.

Billy grabbed Richard by the arm. Richard struggled, but with the big gorilla holding him and the other boys all around him there wasn’t much point.

“Hilarious,” Billy said in that high voice of his. “You think you’re pretty funny, Richard, don’t you?”

Richard looked terrified. He didn’t speak.

“Let him go, Billy!” I called. “It was
my
idea, not his. He didn’t know anything about it.”

With his free hand, Billy took out his flashlight and shined it on my face. The other boys did the same. For a moment, I couldn’t see anything.

“Sure he didn’t,” Billy called back. And then, dragging Richard along, he started walking toward me. “Where’s that camera, Floey? Hand it over.”

In this strange, scary moment, with Billy coming for me, a crowd of angry eleven-year-olds staring at me from the shadows and blinding bright lights shining directly in my face, I realized that in a bizarre way, I’d gotten what I
thought I wanted. Everyone was looking at me. A lot of people knew who I was. In a way, the New Floey was a big success. Only, I didn’t want what she wanted anymore. All I wanted was for everyone to leave Richard alone. To leave
me
alone. I wanted to fade away to nothing.

I wanted to be the wallpaper again.

I didn’t move. “Why did you watch me from your window, Billy?” I called out finally. “What’s the matter with you? Why did you tell your stupid spy club to follow me around? Why won’t you leave me alone?”