Jumping the Scratch (4 page)

“
WHO ARE YOU CALLING?” SAPPHY ASKED
.

“Shhh!” I said, putting a finger to my lips.
One ring.

She pulled open the cupboard. “Where the heck are my dishes?” she muttered.

Two rings.

I'd forgotten I was supposed to get her some sherbert. I reached over and grabbed the gravy boat out of the dish drainer and held it out to Sapphy.

Three.

“This is the only thing that's clean, Sapph,” I said.

“Sherbert in a gravy boat?” She laughed. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”

Four rings.

Shaking her head, she took it from me and carried it over to the table. “I guess there's no law that
says a person can't eat sherbert out of a gravy boat if she wants to.”

Five—

“Hello?”

Sapphy was banging around, looking for a spoon in the drawer, making it hard for me to hear. I turned away from her, putting my finger in one ear and pressing the receiver harder into the other.

“Uh, hello. My name is Jamie Reardon, and I'm calling about getting hypnotized,” I said. “Is this Madame…Yerda?”

“It's Yerdua,” she corrected. “Yer-du-ah. And I'd be glad to hypnotize you. When do you want to do it?”

In the short amount of time that had passed between when I'd first torn the little slip of paper off the flyer and when I'd dialed the number written on it, I had formed a picture of what I thought Madame Yerdua would be like. I expected with a name like hers that she would have an accent and a deep, mysterious-sounding voice. I imagined that she would hypnotize me in a tent, like the one Sapphy had described at the county fair. She might wear a turban too, or at the very least big hoop earrings and a scarf on her head. What I had not
expected was that I would recognize her voice on the other end of the line, and it would make my blood boil.

“Audrey Krouch, is that you?” I said.

“My professional name is Madame Yerdua,” she told me.

“Cut it out, Audrey. I know it's you,” I said. “And I don't think it's funny.”

“What are you yelling for?” Audrey said. “I didn't tell you to call me up, did I?”

“You've got a lot of nerve hanging up that flyer,” I said.

“It's a free country. I'm allowed to advertise if I want to.”

“Not when it's a bunch of lies, you're not,” I said. “You don't know how to hypnotize anybody, and your name's not Madame Yerdua either.”

“Yerdua is Audrey backward, so it's still my name, and I do so know how to hypnotize people. I'll come over there right now and prove it if you don't believe me.”

All of a sudden there was a loud crash. It startled me so much that I jumped and dropped the phone. Sapphy had knocked the gravy boat off the table, and it lay in pieces on the floor, orange
sherbert puddled in the middle, splattered on her slippers and up her pale, bare legs.

“Oh, no,” she wailed.

“Are you okay, Sapph?” I asked anxiously. “Did you cut yourself?”

Tears began to stream down her cheeks.

“Look what I did. I broke Mom's gravy boat.”

I grabbed the phone by the cord and pulled up the receiver like a fish on a line. “You better not tell anybody I called you, Audrey Krouch,” I shouted into it. “Audrey?” But she was gone. The line was dead, along with my ridiculous hope that some mysterious stranger in a turban was going to be able to solve my problems. For free no less. What a chump. I hung up the phone and turned my attention back to Sapphy.

“It's okay,” I said, getting down on my hands and knees and beginning to clean up the mess. “Don't cry, Sapph. It was just an accident.”

As I began to pick up the broken pieces of china, I realized how absurd it was for me to be feeling jealous of poor Sapphy standing there in her ratty old robe and sherbert-splattered slippers, crying over a broken gravy boat. But I couldn't help it. I was. In a little while she'd be sound asleep in her
bed, and I'd be out in the living room surrounded by empty cherry cans, too afraid to close my eyes. And what's more, in the morning, when she woke up, she wouldn't remember a thing about what had happened.

I could tell Sapphy's sleeping pill was beginning to work, but I went to her room and got the dress out of the closet anyway.

“What in the world are you doing with that?” she asked when I came back into the room with the dress draped over my arm.

“Come sit with me on the couch,” I told her.

I held Sapphy's arm by the elbow to keep her steady, and we walked over and sat down on the couch.

“My mother made this for me,” she said, as I pulled the thin plastic bag over the top of the hanger and laid the long midnight-blue dress across our knees.

“I didn't know Grandma Jeanne sewed.”

“Oh, she was very good. She could do just about anything with that old Singer of hers. She made all our clothes for us when we were little. Beautiful little dresses, with sashes and smocking.”

“You weren't little when she made this dress, though,” I said.

“No. I was sixteen. It was for a wedding.”

“Whose wedding?”

“Barb Shaw.”

“Who's that?”

“Just a girl we knew who got married,” Sapphy said. “Our whole family was invited to the ceremony, and then afterward there was a reception at the Westerner Buffet Restaurant. I remember the shrimp. Great big fat ones. Her parents were both doctors, so they could afford that kind of thing. There was cocktail sauce too, with horseradish in it.”

“I don't like horseradish,” I said.

“You might when you're older. It grows on you. Like coffee.”

“What's this made out of, anyway?” I asked, rubbing the plush blue fabric between my thumb and finger.

“Velveteen,” she said, “like the rabbit in that old story.”

“It's soft,” I said.

“Mm-hmm,” said Sapphy as she ran her hand slowly down the front of the dress. Then she closed
her eyes and stroked it in the other direction, against the nap, her fingers leaving little trails as they went. “My mother made all the buttonholes by hand, and she covered the buttons with fabric so they'd match perfectly. I stood on one of our dining room chairs while she pinned up the hem. I remember she couldn't talk because she had pins sticking out of her mouth. She looked like a—like a—”

“Porcupine?” I said.

Sapphy smiled and sighed deeply as her chin dropped down to her chest. The pill had finally kicked in. I helped her up and managed to get her into bed. Then I slipped the blue dress back into the plastic bag and hung it up in the closet. Yet another key that hadn't fit the lock.

As I switched off the light and pulled Sapphy's door closed, for the second time that night I suddenly remembered the laundry. I was not supposed to leave Sapphy alone in the house, but if Marge arrived in the morning and found out that despite her warning, I had left the clothes sitting in the dryer overnight, I'd never hear the end of it. I was sure Sapphy wouldn't wake up, not that soon after the pill had kicked in, so I pulled on my jacket and
quickly ran down to the laundry shed. A minute later I was leaning against the dryer, waiting to catch my breath, when I heard a noise at the door and turned around to find Audrey Krouch standing there.

“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing here so late?”

“It's a free country,” I said sarcastically.

I opened the door of the dryer and pulled out a wad of wrinkled clothes.

“I hope you have an iron,” Audrey said.

I gave her a dirty look.

“I don't know what your problem is. It's not my fault you called me up tonight,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” I said. Then I went over to the bulletin board, tore the light-blue flyer off the board, and ripped it in half. A couple of silver stars came loose and fluttered down to the floor.

“I can just make another one,” she said with a shrug. “I've got a whole box of those stars.”

“You better not make another one,” I said, “or I'll rip that one down too.”

“You're just jealous because I have special powers.”

“That's the dumbest thing I ever heard,” I scoffed. “You don't have any special powers.”

“I do so. I told you, I have ESP,” she said, pushing up her glasses, “Extrasensory perception. I can see things nobody else can see.”

“Must be your glasses,” I said.

“For your information, these glasses
do
help me see,” she said.

“Oh, come on. They don't even have glass in them,” I said. “How could they help you see?”

“It's not that kind of seeing,” she said.

“What other kind is there?”

“The kind that lets me read someone's mind,” she said.

“Give me a break,” I told her. “You can't read minds, Audrey. And you don't have ESP either.”

“Oh, yeah? Then how come I know you're scared of the office?” she asked.

“I told you, you don't know squirt,” I said.

“I suppose I don't know squirt about cherry cans either, then, huh?”

A chill went right up my spine and made me shiver so hard, I bit my tongue. “Ouch!” I said, tasting blood.

“The reason I'm so good at hypnotizing people is because I have ESP. It helps if you can read their minds first.” Audrey looked at me and pushed up her glasses. “You thirsty?” she asked.

“I thought you said you could read my mind,” I said.

“I can,” she told me. “I was just being polite.”

Then she walked over to the pop machine and gave it a good swift kick in the side. There was a deep rumbling from within, and a second later an ice-cold bottle of orange Faygo rolled out.

“Hey!” I said in amazement.

“Hey, yourself,” she said, and did it again.

She handed me one of the bottles. I twisted off the cap and took a long swallow.

“See, I knew you were thirsty,” she said.

“I just like orange pop is all,” I told her, but I was beginning to wonder if I had misjudged Audrey Krouch.

I'M NOT SURE EXACTLY HOW AUDREY MANAGED TO
convince me that I should go over to her house and let her try to hypnotize me the next day after school, but she did.

“Okay. See you tomorrow,” she said as we left the laundry shed after we'd finished our orange pop and I'd done my best to fold up the wrinkled laundry.

 

The next morning at the bus stop Audrey looked different. Her hair, which was usually uncombed and snarled in the morning, was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and instead of her usual jeans and T-shirt she was wearing a dress. You could tell it was new because the skirt stuck out stiffly, and she kept scratching her neck as if the collar were itching her. Of course she had her glasses on, and with
her hair pulled back that way, her head looked smaller, which made the glasses seem even bigger and more ridiculous than usual.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, yourself. So what's with the dress?”

“We're supposed to dress up today, remember?” she said.

I hadn't remembered. But it wouldn't have made any difference anyway. I did a quick survey of what I was wearing and was relieved to find that at least everything was clean.

“So you're coming over this afternoon, right?” she said.

I looked around nervously at the other kids waiting for the bus, hoping nobody had heard what she'd just said.

“I guess,” I said quietly.

“Well, don't be too enthusiastic about it or anything,” she told me. “I'm doing you a favor, you know. People pay hundreds of dollars to get hypnotized. Sometimes thousands.”

“My grandfather only paid a buck,” I told her.

“Your grandfather got hypnotized?” Audrey asked, pushing her glasses up and leaning toward me with interest.

“Yeah, at a county fair.”

“Oh. Well, it probably wasn't a professional then, just some clown in a turban.”

“Are you going to wear a turban when you do it?” I asked.

She snorted and pulled at her collar. “Of course not. That's hokey.”

“Are you going to wear that dress?”

“Are you kidding? This thing is giving me hives. I'm bumping up, see?”

She pulled the collar of the dress to one side and showed me her neck, which was red and blotchy.

The bus came then, and we got on.

“Hey, Rear-end,” Larry said, grinning at me as I walked past. “How's your crack?”

I looked down and didn't say anything, but Audrey, who was walking in front of me, suddenly whirled around and snapped, “Can't you think of anything else to say? That crack thing is getting so old, it's got wrinkles.”

Larry was speechless, and so was I. Nobody ever talked back to him.

“Are you nuts?” I whispered as I followed her down the aisle. When we reached the back of the bus, I quickly slid into my usual seat. Instead of
taking one of the open seats around me, Audrey slid in next to me.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I said. “You can't sit here.”

“It's a free country,” she said, leaning back and crossing her arms, “I can sit anywhere I want.”

I began to sweat. It didn't take a genius to know this was not going to go unnoticed.

“Oh, I get it now,” Larry said loudly, hanging over the back of his seat and pointing at us. “Look, everybody. Rear-end got himself a girlfriend to stick up for him. Are you going to smooch her? Come on, Rear-end, give her a big wet smooch right on the mouth, why don't ya?”

Everybody turned around to look and laugh.

“Move,”
I whispered fiercely.

But Audrey grabbed two handfuls of stiff skirt, jammed it under her legs, put one foot up on the back of the seat in front of her, and didn't budge.

I guess hearing everybody laughing like that was enough to make Larry feel that he'd evened the score. He quit razzing me and went back to talking with his friends.

A couple of minutes later we crossed over the
railroad tracks. As the bus lurched, Audrey fell against me.

“Watch it,” I said, pushing her off and pressing up against the side of the bus as far away from her as possible.

“Jeez Louise. What are you so touchy about? I don't bite, you know.”

I wasn't about to tell her that besides being afraid to walk up my own driveway or close my eyes at night, I also had a hard time being touched.

“Just watch it, okay?” I told her.

When we got to school, Miss Miller was all dressed up with her lips painted even redder than usual. She had a pink silk scarf with red hearts tied around her neck, and as she walked around the room, the ends fluttered like the little triangular colored flags you see at used-car lots. She wore high heels. Those shoes didn't just make Miss Miller taller; they made her walk in a whole new way. I was slumped over my desk, staring at the pattern in one of the linoleum floor tiles, when Arthur arrived.

“James!” Miss Miller's voice cut clean through me like piano wire through a stick of cold butter. “Sit up like a gentleman. Where are your manners?
We've got company!”

She rushed over to him, her scarf flapping, her high heels clicking on the polished floor. Blushing, he reached out and shook hands with her. He was tall and thin, with a long neck and a giant Adam's apple that slid up and down above his collar like an elevator when he swallowed. His hair was reddish brown and curly, and he wore tiny round wire glasses that looked so much like part of his face, he might have been born wearing them.

“We're just
thrilled
that you could come!” she gushed. “I can't begin to tell you how honored we are to have you as our guest.”

Arthur smiled and said something back, but it was too soft for me to hear. Miss Miller took his coat and hung it in her special closet. Then her red mouth started going again, telling Arthur how excited she was and squeezing his arm the whole time she was talking. His cheeks were getting pink, as if the pressure of her fingers were rerouting all the blood up into his face. The more she talked, the pinker he got. Finally she stopped to catch her breath, and I realized I'd been holding mine the whole time. Even in those high-heeled shoes of hers, she was quite a bit shorter than he was, but
the way she was looking up at him, it seemed like any second she might leap up and swallow him whole.

“It's very nice to meet you all,” Arthur said, turning his attention and his pink face to us. “And I'm grateful to the PTA for helping to bring me here to Pine Tree Elementary.”

His voice was soft and scratchy, and he seemed kind of nervous. I'd have been nervous too, standing that close to Miss Miller. I leaned back in my chair and slid my thumbs over my ears. Open closed, open closed. Word slaw. I must have shut my eyes.

“
James Reardon!
” Miss Miller shouted, clapping her hands right next to my head, startling me so badly, I actually jumped up out of my seat, banging my knee painfully against the sharp edge of the desk. “Have you heard one word that's been said?”

“Yes, ma'am. I heard everything,” I lied, rubbing my knee as I felt the color rise hot in my own cheeks.

“Good,” she said. “Then you won't mind repeating it for us, will you?”

She stared bug-eyed at me, waiting for my response.

“Um…you were saying that you're so thrilled that Arthur, um, that it's an honor that Arthur—” I began.

“Excuse me,”
Miss Miller said, her lips quivering with emotion. “Whom, may I ask, are you referring to as
Arthur?
”

I slowly raised my arm and pointed at Arthur, who was standing right there next to her, looking pinker and more uncomfortable than ever.

The whole class erupted in raucous laughter.

“Who would like to explain to James his embarrassing mistake? Who would like to tell him who our guest this morning really is?” Miss Miller said, looking around. “Yes, Mary Lynne?”

Of course it would be Mary Lynne. Miss Miller's class pet stood up, her round face contorted in a junior version of the same contempt Miss Miller was just barely managing to contain herself. She was dressed in her Sunday best, her white-blond hair curled in ringlets and pulled back with a shiny blue ribbon.

“Our guest this morning is Mr. Anthony Stone,” she said. “He is a published author who lives in Traverse City, and he has come to talk to all the fifth grades about how to become better writers.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Miss Miller, before turning back to me. “
Author
, not
Arthur
,” she said. “Mr. Stone is our
visiting author
.”

I wanted to cry, or scream, or beat my fists against the wall, I was so humiliated. I wanted to run out the door and keep on running, all the way back to Battle Creek. Instead I sat there pretending not to care, tasting butterscotch, and feeling the button pressing into my cheek. It had left a mark. Four round, raised bumps inside a perfect little pink circle. A reminder that no matter what, you don't ever let anybody know how you feel.