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Authors: Victor Lavalle

Tags: #Young Adult, #Fantasy, #Horror

Lucretia and the Kroons (10 page)

BOOK: Lucretia and the Kroons
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Sunny watched Loochie with disappointment and even aggravation.

“Well where did you learn to do it?” Loochie finally spat.

“I watched my grandmother? Duh?”

When Sunny put it that way Loochie only wanted to prove herself better at it than Sunny could ever be. So all three sat there, for about ten minutes, just practicing their breathing. They looked like a yoga class.

Finally Sunny’s patience ran out. She tapped the bottom of the lighter against the stainless steel plate beneath them. “We’re just going to have a try now,” Sunny said.

“This made me sick the last time,” Loochie admitted. She looked away from Sunny when she said it, feeling stupid and inexperienced.

The practice had helped, though. While Loochie still coughed badly at first, she was able to get it right after a few pulls. Sunny, meanwhile, puffed expertly. And what about Alice? What did she do? Obviously she couldn’t smoke a cigarette without a bottom lip. Instead, Loochie and Sunny took turns inhaling the smoke and leaning across to Alice and blowing it down her throat. Alice inhaled expertly, considering the realities.

Each time the girls exhaled they watched the smoke trail up, gray ribbons and clouds, floating toward the sky. Soon enough the whole cigarette was smoked down. After it was done
they lay on their backs again, looking up at the unchanging, overcast day.

“How do you feel?” Sunny asked.

Neither Loochie or Alice responded.

“Should we smoke the last one?” Sunny asked, but she sounded less assured than the first time.

Loochie lay there feeling buzzed up and dizzy. Her hands were warm, her face tingled in a good way, but each time she lifted her head to answer Sunny her stomach lurched and she thought she would vomit.

“Not yet,” Loochie groaned.

And Alice, also on her back, waved her arms in front of her, another “no” vote.

“Chickens,” Sunny said, pretending to be disappointed, but Loochie could tell she was relieved. That last cigarette would stay in Loochie’s pocket for now.

They stared at the top of the globe, the far end of the world.

“What did you mean when you said you weren’t going back that way?” Loochie asked. “Which way are you going then?”

Up through the frame of the Unisphere the gray sky seemed endless.

Sunny sat up. She looked down at Loochie.

“You’ve got boobs,” Sunny said. She said this with no affect in her voice, but the words were clipped, like Sunny was holding back a rush of true emotion.

Loochie didn’t even understand the sentence for a second. Hadn’t she just asked about something else entirely? Something that seemed far more important? Finally she raised her head slightly, fought back the moment of dizziness, and saw her two nipples poking up through the fabric of her T-shirt.

“These?” she asked, as if Sunny had just cracked a ridiculous joke. “You should see Monique!”

Sunny crossed her arms. “I don’t want to see Monique,” she whispered.

Alice stood up slowly, carefully. With all three of them on the single steel panel there
wasn’t too much room for the Kroon to maneuver. She had to be very careful with her long body for fear of knocking one of the girls off the side. Alice tucked her nightdress between her knees and closed her legs tight. She extended her hands over her head. Her arms were so long she could grab at a pair of the latitude lines running above.

“You wouldn’t ask me to go back,” Sunny said in a soft voice, ignoring Alice’s movements. “If it was you getting the treatments all these years.”

“I want you to come back because I love you, Sunny. You’re my best friend. Don’t you love me, too?”

Alice, holding the latitude lines tight, pulled herself up and then flipped over, so her legs were in the air. Alice hooked both legs over the latitude bars, then let go with her hands, and her upper body swung down. She looked like a child playing on a set of monkey bars.

Loochie wanted an answer from Sunny, but she couldn’t ignore Alice any longer. She had no idea what was about to happen, but Sunny seemed to know. Alice grabbed Sunny’s hands, then curled her body upward, pulling Sunny up as well. She plucked Sunny up and Loochie watched, almost fainting, as Sunny scrambled through a crack between Africa and Europe and climbed
out to the other side
of the Unisphere! Sunny was standing on top of the world. Loochie heard Sunny’s rain boots squeaking as she walked across Europe. Then Alice swung down again, hands out, and gestured for Loochie.

And here’s the crazy part: Loochie didn’t hesitate. She grasped Alice’s wrists and felt her feet lift away from the security of the steel plate below her. She crawled through the gap and lay flat when she climbed out the other side. The wind had picked up and she shivered with a slight chill that felt like fear. She saw Sunny ahead of her. Sunny had walked all the way to the northern edge of Russia, the very top of the world on this tilted Unisphere. Loochie moved toward her friend on hands and knees, keeping low so she wouldn’t be blown off the side.

Loochie reached Sunny. Sunny put out her hand. Loochie took it and rose to a crouch beside her friend. Loochie couldn’t look away from Sunny’s face. Loochie’s mother’s wig, still on her head, rose slightly as the wind snuck underneath it but it stayed on.

They were facing the western end of the park. Another long, jagged run of concrete scrolled out before them. It was a parking lot as long as a football field. At the end of it was an enormous stadium. Citi Field, where the Mets played baseball. Where Louis had taken her. Though, of course, this wasn’t
that
Citi Field. It looked different, older. This stadium’s walls were blue and white while Citi Field’s were reddish brown.

“That’s where I’m going,” Sunny said, pointing.

“Why do you want to go there?” Loochie asked. It sure didn’t look nicer than Sunny’s apartment.

“I know how it looks on the outside,” Sunny said. “But inside the stadium, it’s a very happy place. Alice will take me up to Gate C, the home plate entrance, and I’ll walk through. Everyone who makes it inside is at peace. It’s bright and warm all day. You can take a seat in the stands or run around with other kids down on the field. There’s no pain in there. No need for hospital visits. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Sunny didn’t look at Loochie as she spoke, and her voice seemed to float.

Loochie looked down at her feet. “You make it sound like Heaven,” she said.

“That’s how Alice described it,” Sunny said. “But she calls it Shea.”

“What is Shea?” Loochie asked.

Sunny shrugged. “Once Priya told me that in her family they say ‘Moksha’ instead of Heaven. And Shaz? From 3A? They’re Persian. She said they call it Paradise.”

Loochie worked hard to choke down her feelings of jealousy at the idea that Sunny had been having conversations like that with Shaz or, worst of all, with Priya, when Loochie wasn’t around. When had that been? Where was Loochie when this was going on? Why hadn’t she been invited? But she didn’t ask any of those questions. Instead she got snappy about the conversation at hand. “That still doesn’t explain what the hell ‘Shea’ means.”

“Maybe ‘Shea’ is how you say ‘Heaven’ in Queens,” Sunny offered.

Alice had climbed out there as well, and sat cross-legged behind the girls. She looked out over their heads at the stadium, at Shea.

Loochie leaned closer to Sunny. “How come you can understand those sounds she makes and I can’t?”

Sunny’s eyebrows squeezed tight. “What do you mean? She’s talking. That’s how I understand her.”

“She’s
not
talking,” Loochie said. “She’s always just grunting and stuff.”

Sunny swayed, like she’d been pushed. She looked back at Alice. Then Sunny looked at Loochie again. “If I understand her and she understands me then maybe you’re the only one who’s in the wrong place.”

“I’m with you,” Loochie said quietly. “That’s where I want to be.” Loochie’s vision became blurry with tears. Her nose turned stuffy and she heard herself sniffling but couldn’t stop.

“I want to tell you what happened to me,” Sunny began. “So you can understand.” Sunny grabbed Loochie’s hand, and held it gently.

“Right after I gave you those cigarettes I leaned out and watched you go into your apartment. You were moving so fast! Then my grandmother came and got me. I wasn’t feeling too good when I leaned back in, like I couldn’t really breathe, so
gon-gon
took me to my bedroom. She put me down in bed and went to call the ambulance.

“I was on the bed and my chest started hurting, a lot. I knew you were waiting for downstairs so I tried to get up anyway but I all I did was roll off the bed. I fell right on my face, kind of hard, and I was there on the floor.

“I still couldn’t really breathe and my eyes just seemed like they slammed shut. And when I woke up I was here, in the park. I’ve been here ever since. It feels like I’ve been here a couple months, but I’m not sure. I knew you were going to come. I felt it. And I felt like I had to see you before I could go. It was almost like I
had
to wait for you, or else I couldn’t go to Shea.”

Loochie squeezed Sunny’s hand back, hard. “But I just saw you today! All that stuff on the fire escape was like two hours ago.”

Sunny almost choked with shock. “Two
hours
?”

She pulled her hand out of Loochie’s. She held her neck delicately. “It’s only been two hours,” she muttered to herself. Now it was Sunny’s turn to cry but she didn’t sound sad really, just exhausted. Loochie brushed Sunny’s face, wiping at her tears. She shivered when she felt the skin, which was already quite cold. “I’m not ready to let you go,” Loochie told her.

Alice made a low, thoughtful sound, almost like a cow mooing. Sunny’s mouth dropped open slightly, then she smiled. “You think so?” Sunny asked.

Alice repeated the sound.

“What is it?” Loochie asked, looking at Alice and back to Sunny.

Sunny hugged Loochie so tight. “Alice says you don’t have to let me go. You can come with me. You can go to Shea, too!”

Loochie looked toward the end of the park quickly, at the blue and white stadium walls, and her heart sped up. She even smiled, just like Sunny was doing. But she wasn’t sure why.

12

From the moment Alice’s offer was made Sunny couldn’t stop talking. What was she talking about? Loochie couldn’t really say. It seemed like she was making plans. For what she and Loochie would do once they reached the stadium, once Alice got them to Gate C, once they entered Shea. Sunny guessed at what they would find in that Paradise. What they would do there. Together forever. Forever. At least that’s what Loochie
thought
Sunny was talking about. She couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t make herself focus, make herself really listen. She had this ringing sound playing right behind both ears and with each moment the ringing got louder.

You can come with me
.

Alice crept over to the edge of Europe with her back to Sunny and Loochie, who followed behind. When they reached the end Alice looked over her shoulder and grunted at Sunny. Sunny came closer and climbed up on Alice’s back, wrapped her arms around Alice’s neck, then looked back at Loochie.

“Climb on.”

Loochie heard that, at least. She walked over and did exactly as Sunny had done. The two of them fit on Alice’s back perfectly. They both wrapped their arms around Alice’s throat. At this point Loochie didn’t even pay attention to the missing jaw, the moist skin of Alice’s neck. She was used to them by now. Compared to going through Gate C, it didn’t even seem that scary. And there was the truth of it—the thing Loochie couldn’t hide from herself—she didn’t want to go to Shea, at least not yet. Loochie didn’t want to die.

Now Alice turned around so that her back faced the open air. Alice grabbed on to a pair of steel beams, two latitude lines, and braced her feet between the same bars lower down. Then she climbed down the outside of the Unisphere, with both girls on her back. Loochie and Sunny were basically dangling in midair, twelve stories up. A fall that wouldn’t just kill them; it would spread their insides across the concrete like strawberry jam.

And yet Sunny continued to chatter happily. She’d seemed pretty practiced when she walked across the latitude line earlier, so maybe this wasn’t the first time Alice had climbed
down the side of the Unisphere with Sunny on her back. But it sure as hell was a first for Loochie! The ringing in her ears, the thumping of her heart, the sweat moistening her locked fingers, they were all aspects of her terror. She had to shut her eyes. Every second seemed like a century. And when she opened them again she whimpered because the descent was far from finished yet. They were still ten stories up. Still so much farther to go.

“I bet I’ll get my hair back again too,” Sunny continued. “Don’t you think so? I mean I can’t be bald there, right? It’ll grow back and you’ll brush it for me. And I’ll comb yours and put it in braids. I want to let mine grow down to …”

Still seven stories up. Much higher than Loochie’s apartment. Loochie looked out across the park just to keep from looking down.

“They’re …!” Loochie suddenly shouted, cutting Sunny off.

But Sunny wouldn’t be stopped. “… let mine grow down to like my
ass
.”

“Alice,” Loochie said. “They’re coming back!”

The males.

Having made the circuit of the park, having gone as far as the stadium gates and finding no one, they had finally given up. They were backtracking, looking for the girls but also distractedly scanning the ground. The Kroons walked slowly, and close together this time. If the Twins found something on the ground this time they wouldn’t have a chance to smoke it alone. The Kroons weren’t barking or squealing but silent. They almost looked tired, worn-out. Maybe they were returning home to take their naps. They hadn’t seen the girls yet.

Alice tried to move more quickly. This meant the ride down was even bumpier for Loochie and Sunny. The girls did their best to keep from hollering when their grips loosened but the situation felt impossible. It was doubtful all three of them could just dangle there and let the males pass. Alice looked toward Sunny and huffed out one long groan. A communication that meant nothing to Loochie but Sunny said, “Hold on tight.”

BOOK: Lucretia and the Kroons
3.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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