I Am the Wallpaper (22 page)

“You should know,” he said, still coming. The other shadow-boys were right behind him. “After all, like you say, we’re not separate. It’s all Zen!” He laughed. “If I’m so connected to you and you to me, why do you have to ask? One hand clapping, right?”

“Why don’t you answer me? You
know
that doesn’t make any sense!”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Tish asked from behind me. “He
likes
you, Floey.”

If she hadn’t turned her flashlight onto Billy’s face, I probably wouldn’t have seen it turn red. It glowed like a ripe tomato.

“Problem is,” Tish continued, “this is all you can think of to get Floey’s attention, isn’t it, Billy? You’re too stupid and insecure to try anything else. Right, Billy?”

His big gorilla mouth tightened.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

“Get that light off me!” he said, walking faster. He was
in the middle of the street and only a few cemetery rows away. He pointed his flashlight back at Tish. “And shut your mouth, Chunky Monkey!”

But that’s when Richard bit down on Billy’s hand.

Hard.

Billy stopped. His scream sounded like a little girl’s.
“Ooowwooowwww!
”

Out of his grasp, Richard tried to run. Unfortunately, he didn’t get farther than the grass at the edge of the sidewalk before the other boys grabbed him and dragged him back. I didn’t know whether to be mad at him for being so stupid or proud of him for finally standing up to Billy.

“Keep him down!” one of the boys said. Some of the others pushed Richard and held his face to the ground.

“I’m bleeding!” Billy shouted. “I think he bit right through to the bone!”

He put his knuckle in his mouth and sucked on it. After a moment, he walked up to Richard, flexing his fingers. “That was stupid. You didn’t think I was just going to let you get away with that, did you?” And then to his friends he said, “Stand him up.”

Tish screamed.

“No!” I shouted.

But Billy swung his fist back and belted Richard a good one, right in the stomach. Richard gasped and fell back to his knees.

“Leave him alone!” I shouted. “He’s half your size!”

Billy turned back to me and smiled. “No. Not till I get that camera.”

“Okay, okay!” I said. “Leave him alone and I’ll give you the disk!”

Billy considered my offer and nodded. “All right, Fabulous Floey of the Future. Deal. Give me the disk and I’ll let him go.”

But that’s when Richard finally said something. At first I wasn’t sure it was him, but it was. “Don’t do it, Floey,” he said.

Billy turned and glared at him. I thought he might hit him again.

“I don’t want you to,” Richard continued, trying to pull himself up. “Let him beat me up, I don’t care. Don’t let him have the disk.”

I stared at him. After the way he’d cried that afternoon, I didn’t think he had it in him. Still, I wasn’t going to let Billy beat him up.

“The disk isn’t that important, Richard.”

Tish had the backpack, and she beat me to it. She unzipped it, pulled out what she needed and left the bag near me while she walked across the street to Billy. “Here,” she said, glaring at him. “Take it. Now let him go.”

He examined the little piece of plastic with his flashlight. “Good,” he said. “This is good.”

A moment later, he and the other shadowy boys from the spy club were running away down the street, shouting and laughing in the darkness.

And then they were gone.

I went over to Richard. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, waving me off him. “He just winded me for a second, that’s all.” He didn’t look fine. In fact, he looked like he might wet his pants. He stood up and brushed himself off. “I can’t believe you guys just did that for me.”

“I can’t either,” Tish said. “You didn’t deserve it.”

For a while, the only sound was from the crickets. I wondered if we really were alone now. The spy club had come and gone so quickly. But eventually I picked up the backpack and we walked home. None of us said another word.

Naturally, I was disappointed with the evening. True, since the boys knew I was on to them, the Web site was finished. But now that they had the disk, I felt like they’d gotten away with something. I’d wanted those embarrassing images of terrified spy club boys to be the final pictures on the Web site, their grand farewell. It only seemed fair.

As soon as we got to my backyard again, just before I turned off my flashlight, I heard Tish giggle.

“What are you laughing about?” I whispered.

“I have a secret,” she whispered back. She came closer so that even if there was somebody else listening, only Richard and I would hear.

We leaned in close.

“I switched the disks.”

She pulled a disk out of her pants pocket and held it up to us. Richard and I stared at it, still not sure what she meant.

“This
is the one from the beach,” she said.

“So …,” I said, just beginning to understand, “does that mean Billy has …”

She nodded and giggled again.

“They have the one of Frank Sinatra.”

I imagined Billy and his friends standing around a television. Instead of watching the video of themselves running away from the angry naked people on the beach, they’d see the ferret.

In his litter box.

Making a big ferret turd.

I tried to imagine the expressions on their faces.

Before we could sneak back into the house through the window, we had to wait until we stopped laughing. Even Richard.

The video images from the beach were downloadable by the next afternoon. One thing I’ll say for Richard—he really knew what he was doing. I made sure he blurred out the naked people. They didn’t deserve that kind of exposure. This was my final note on the Web site:

Richard seemed to like that. He even laughed, which said a lot, considering he knew he couldn’t go outside anymore. I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

In the last week of my cousins’ visit, my mother was still mad about my hair. For two days she wouldn’t even speak to me; we communicated through Post-it notes. But eventually she got over it. Tish was at my heels almost all the time. She wanted to do whatever I did, which was too bad for her because I didn’t have any friends anymore, so I didn’t have much of a life. We played cards and went for bike rides and watched movies. Sometimes, when we were feeling charitable, we even let Richard join us.

I was dreading Friday. The plan was, Aunt Sarah would fly in from Alaska and spend the night at our house and then she, Richard and Tish would catch a flight home Saturday evening. But, I consoled myself, once they were gone it would mean no more making breakfasts, cleaning bedrooms or babysitting. Soon my life could go back to normal.

Only, I was no longer sure what that meant. After all, I couldn’t talk to Azra or Wen ever again. I dreaded going back to school at the end of the summer. I’d have to make a whole new set of friends. I’d also have to wonder, I supposed, which ones had seen the Web site.

Bright and wild like fire. Ha.

Friendless and alone like a pathetic loser was more like it.

A man asked a Zen master, “How does an enlightened one return to the ordinary world?” He answered, “A broken mirror never reflects again. Fallen flowers never go back to the branches.”

If that was anybody, it was me.

When Aunt Sarah showed up at the terminal at Logan, I hardly recognized her. She wore hiking boots and a backpack and had a raccoon tan from wearing sunglasses on mountaintops. Other than the area around her eyes, she was completely orange. The outdoorsy look didn’t suit her sourpuss face.

“Hello, my darlings,” she said, squeezing first Richard and then Tish. “I’m
so
glad you met me here. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you both.” She put her hand on my mother’s cheek. “Grace, it’s so lovely to see you. How can I thank you? You have no idea what this trip meant for me. I have a completely new outlook on life.”

To me she just said, “Is that you, Floey?” She stared at my hair.

Then she handed me her giant backpack to carry for her.

At home, Ma made me lug the enormous backpack up to the house and into her room. Aunt Sarah would be sleeping with my mother. I dumped her stuff on the bed and nearly crashed into her as I left the room. She smiled, but it was a fake smile. An I-don’t-like-you-and-we-both-know-it smile.

What was wrong with the woman?

I stepped around her and marched toward my room, where I intended to hide until the following night. But then I changed my mind. There was no point in living like this. Maybe she was going to be unreasonable, but I didn’t want any part of it. I turned around.

Floey Packer didn’t hide anymore.

Aunt Sarah was about to unzip her pack when I marched back in. She straightened when she saw me.

We stood face to face.

“Aunt Sarah,” I said. “I’m sorry that the birthday thank-you note Azra sent you hurt your feelings. Even though I didn’t write it, I still should have called you or sent another note to clear it up. I’m sorry I didn’t. But I still don’t think you have any right to jump to conclusions about me, and you definitely shouldn’t treat me like I’m some kind of delinquent when you don’t even know me.
That’s
rude and ignorant.”

She narrowed her eyes, her hands on her hips. “Are you finished?”

I tried to think of something else to say but I couldn’t. “Yes,” I said, a little less sure of myself all of a sudden.

I thought she was going to lash out at me, maybe threaten to say something to my mother. But that’s when Ma called me from the kitchen. “Floey! Come help me, please!”

Aunt Sarah kept glaring at me. “You better go, then,” she said.

So I left.

For the rest of the day, she and I pretended the whole thing had never happened.