Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls (3 page)

He's right, I do worry too much. All the time, about everything. Chemistry and math are just little things on my worry scale. I worry about being too tall, too skinny. Sometimes I have weird thoughts and then I think I might be secretly crazy. What if I crack up someday? Lose my mind? Go nuts? What if I end up in Spring Grove Insane Asylum? The people there howl when the moon's full, at least that's what a boy in my math class told me. He should know. He lives on the street that ends at the asylum grounds. There's a big iron gate and a guard in a little booth and a tall fence with spikes. I'd be afraid to live on that street.

Do other people ever worry about the kind of things I worry about? I glance at Charlie. Not him. He's still talking about chemistry and how much trouble he'll be in if Haskins gives him a C.

It's just me. There's something wrong with me, with my brain or something. I might have a tumor, I might die young before I even graduate from high school.

We sit down beside Walt and Bobbi Jo. I try to push the heaviness in my head away. I smile, I laugh, I pretend I'm just like everyone else. The Great Pretender. I'm good at that. Acting normal.

While Gary chooses the next record, Cheryl and Ralph join us. Her face is flushed, her eyes bright. She's holding Ralph's hand.

Over on the other side of the rec center, just where the rec lights meet the dark, Buddy is watching her. He's looking at Cheryl like he hates her.

Cheryl notices Buddy and holds Ralph's hand tighter.

Ralph grins at Bobbi Jo. "Aren't you a little young to be out this late?"

"Less than two years to go and I'll be sixteen," Bobbi Jo says.

"Yeah, but when you're sixteen, we'll be eighteen," Ralph reminds her. "You'll never catch up with us."

"I can pass for sixteen right now," Bobbi Jo says. "I told that cute guy at the Esso station I was sixteen and he believed me. He wants to take me out, but I know what my father would say if he showed up at our front door. He won't let me date." She pouts for a second and then smiles at Ralph.

How I wish I had dimples like hers. But maybe they wouldn't look as cute on me. Maybe my face is the wrong kind for dimples. Too long maybe, too plain.

Ellie and Paul come over. "It's too hot to dance," Ellie says. "Look at my hair, it's all frizzed up and I'm roasting."

"There's a cure for that." Cheryl drops her voice low. "Ralph's got a couple of six-packs of Rolling Rock. We're going over to the playground. Want to come?"

I glance at Ellie. If we get caught with beer, we'll be in a lot of trouble. She looks a little worried, but she says, "Count me in."

Bobbi Jo grins. "Me too."

Me too, me too, me too
...
I will if you will
...

We walk across the baseball field lit by lights from the rec center. Our shadows stretch out toward the woods, long and thin with impossibly small heads.

For maybe the first time in my whole life, I'm doing something really reckless. Beer. The nice kid is going to drink beer. Maybe the nice kid will get drunk. Maybe the nice kid will make out with somebody. Who knows what the nice kid might do on a warm, dark summer night?

N
EAR
the playground, a bunch of guys are playing pickup basketball.
Thud, thud, thud,
the ball bounces.
Thwang,
it drops through the net. Somebody curses. Somebody laughs.

Buddy joins the boys on the court. Did he follow us across the field? Must have. My arms prickle a little. It scares me to think about him skulking behind us. He's stupid and mean and I don't like him. Don't trust him either. Those squinty eyes of his, that narrow foxy face.

Why can't he just leave Cheryl alone? Can't he see she doesn't like him anymore? She likes Ralph. No, she
loves
Ralph. Anyone can see it in her face, in the way she looks at him. Maybe Ralph's looking at her like that too, but I'm not sure. Boys are harder to read than girls.

Except for Buddy, who still looks like he hates Cheryl. But he used to look at her like he loved her. Which I think he did. But she stopped loving him and that's the problem. It seems to me, if I was ever lucky enough to have a boyfriend, I'd never stop loving him. True love forever. That's all I want. Isn't that what everybody wants?

Before Cheryl sees him, Buddy slips away from the basketball game. Walks up behind her, grabs her arm, forces her to turn toward him, his face close to her face. Close enough to kiss.

Ralph and Paul have gone to get the beer out of the car. Bobbi Jo, Ellie, and I stand there paralyzed. We don't know what to do.

"You cheating little bitch," he mutters. The veins in his neck stand out like cords. His face is red. His hair is in his eyes. He looks wild, crazy, mad enough to do anything. Hit her. Strangle her.

"Get your hands off me." Cheryl doesn't look scared. Just angry. She tries to yank her arm free, but Buddy holds tight.

I look at Ellie and Bobbi Jo. We should do something, say something, but we just stand there like we're watching a play. Not something real.

Suddenly Ralph is there, his hand on Cheryl's other arm. "What the hell's going on?" he asks Buddy. "Let her go."

Buddy's grip on Cheryl tightens. He scowls at Ralph. "Go back to Dulaney where you belong."

Ralph's face reddens. "This is a free country," he says. "I can come here anytime I want."

Buddy lets go of Cheryl and she moves closer to Ralph. "Leave me alone," she says. "Get the hell away from me."

The boys face each other. Ralph's taller than Buddy, but Buddy's arms look strong. He has the look of a guy who knows every dirty trick.

The other kids crowd around them, pushing each other, shouting, egging them on. "Fight!" a boy yells. "Fight!"

The night is turning into a movie, the kind James Dean and Natalie Wood would be in. It excites me in a strange way.

Cheryl looks pleased to be the center of it all. She flips her long blond ponytail this way and that, staring at Buddy as if she's daring him to fight.

Then Charlie steps in between Ralph and Buddy. He's shorter than either of them. Skinnier. His shadow slants across the basketball court.

"Why don't you just forget it?" he asks. "If a fight starts, some nosy SOB in the neighborhood will hear it and call the cops. They're always prowling around here looking for trouble. They'll spot the beer and arrest us all."

Ralph scowls at Buddy. "Just leave Cheryl alone. She's not your girl anymore."

"She can go to hell for all I care." Buddy picks up a beer bottle and turns to his friend Gene. "Let's get outta here."

Followed by a couple of other guys, they walk over to Buddy's car. Before he opens the door, Buddy turns back and shouts at Cheryl, "If you died tomorrow, I wouldn't shed one tear."

Revving the engine, he drives away with a screech of tires that leaves the smell of burning rubber behind. I can hear the old Ford with its rusted-out muffler long after it disappears.

"Nice going, Charlie," Ellie says. "I really thought they were going to fight."

"Me too." Cheryl sounds a little disappointed, I think. She squeezes Ralph's arm. "I was hoping you'd beat the crap out of him."

Ralph laughs and puts his arm around her. "Come on, let's get a beer."

"Good idea," Charlie says. "How about you two?"

Ellie and I look at each other and grin. We're almost seventeen, with one more year of high school, the best year, ahead of us. We're practically old enough to buy beer legally. Well, in five years, actually.

"What about me?" Bobbi Jo asks.

"Wouldn't you rather have Kool-Aid?" Charlie asks.

"I'm not a baby," Bobbi Jo says. "Give me a beer too."

Walt puts his arm around Bobbi Jo. "Aw, let her have one."

Charlie opens the beer and hands us each a bottle of Rolling Rock. Little bottles, not enough beer to make you drunk.

"Just don't tell your father," he says to Bobbi Jo. "I don't want to go to jail."

"Why would I tell him?" Bobbi Jo asks. "I'd be grounded for life. Or sent to a Catholic girls' school in Switzerland."

"Saint Bernard's Academy of Lost Souls?" Charlie asks.

For once I get the joke, but Bobbi Jo doesn't. "No, I think it's Saint Ursula of the Alps or something like that."

The beer has a harsh taste. Sour. I don't really like it, but I pretend to. People say some things are an acquired taste. Beer must be one of them.

Ralph takes beers for himself and Cheryl and hands a bottle to Paul. "Damn," he says. "That's almost the last of it already."

"After we finish these," Paul says, "I'll collect some money and buy a case."

We sit around the table, laughing and talking, remembering funny things from our junior year and making plans for senior year. And after. When we're finally free of public school. Paul and Charlie and Walt are going to hitchhike across the country after we graduate, working odd jobs and seeing places like the Grand Canyon and Old Faithful. They'll be home in time to start college.

Ellie and I have an idea we'll get waitressing jobs in Ocean City and spend the whole summer at the beach. We'll get great tans and save enough money for fall clothes. We'll start college dressed like
Seventeen
models.

Cheryl's uncle has already promised to hire her as a typist in his welding business. Boring, maybe, but she says he'll pay her a good salary. Ralph says he and Don might spend the summer lifeguarding in Bethany Beach.

My mind drifts. Bethany's not far from Ocean City. Maybe Don and Ralph will eat at the restaurant where Ellie and I wait tables. I'll be tan, my hair will look good, Don will ask me to meet him on the boardwalk when I get off work. We'll walk on the beach, wade in the surf, the moon will be full...

"You guys will have so much fun," Bobbi Jo says glumly. "All I'll do next summer is babysit bratty kids."

"You need another beer." Ralph hands her one.

When I finish my second bottle, I decide I like the taste after all. I also like the silly feeling I'm getting, a sort of numbed drowsiness that makes me happy and relaxed. My mouth feels funny and I wonder if I'm doing that curly thing with my lip that Daddy does when he's drunk.

"Ellie," I whisper. "Are you drunk?"

She laughs. "I think maybe. How about you?"

"I'm so drunk I can't get up." We both start laughing like this is the funniest thing I've ever said.

Bobbi Jo sees us laughing and joins in. "Me too," she says. "I'm drunk too!"

"You guys are ridiculous." Cheryl gives us a superior look. "Nobody gets drunk on two bottles of Rolling Rock."

"We do," I say. That makes us start laughing again.

Cheryl puts her arms around Ralph and kisses him. "They aren't drunk," she says. "They just think they are."

Ralph laughs. "Let's see you three walk a straight line."

We reel across the basketball court. I'm laughing so hard I keep snorting, which makes me laugh harder and snort more. In a way, I'm play-acting, not really drunk but definitely not my normal self. I feel like I could fly if I tried hard enough. The future is mine, the world is beautiful, and the fireflies in the trees flash a code I can almost understand.

I grab Ellie's hand and she grabs Bobbi Jo's hand and we dance around the basketball court singing an old song we sang when we were kids. "Up in the air, junior birdman." We can't remember the words, and we start laughing again.

"Okay, okay," Charlie shouts. "You're drunk. Or you're crazy. Come on over here, Long Tall Sally. Sit down before you fall down." "We need more beer," Ralph says.

Paul collects some money and he and Ralph leave for a liquor store on Route 40. The guy there never asks for IDs, Ralph says. He lets you buy anything you can pay for. Simple as that. You just have to know where to go, and Ralph knows—he knows where to go and what to do and what to say. I wish Don was here and I knew what Cheryl knows, so I'd be sexy and he'd fall in love with me.

While they're gone, some other kids from the neighborhood show up. One of them has a portable radio. When Ellie and I hear Shirley and Lee singing "Feels So Good," we sing along. I'm always Shirley, singing high, and Ellie's always Lee, singing low. We have that song down perfectly.

"God, will you two just shut up?" Cheryl says. "You sound like cats in heat or something."

Ellie and I look at her, look at each other, and keep on singing until the song's over. Cheryl isn't the queen of the world. If we want to sing, we will.

Louise Weeks starts jitterbugging with her boyfriend, Harry. They know the Baltimore dance steps, too. Soon we're all dancing, trying to imitate their moves. Since there are more girls than boys, Ellie and I end up dancing together, which is fine when the music's fast and we can twist and twirl and swing and do the dirty boogie.

Cheryl and Bobbi Jo sit at the picnic table, talking. Cheryl's probably telling Bobbi Jo not to get as silly as Ellie and me. The next time I look in their direction, I see a boy leaning over the table, talking to them. It's too dark to see who it is. I hope it's not Buddy.

The song ends, and Pat Boone starts singing "Ain't That a Shame," a really bad steal from Fats Domino. Ellie and I groan. We hate Pat Boone—he's such a goody-goody. We like bad boys, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and the Big Bopper and Little Richard, the baddest of all, with hair a foot tall and long, painted fingernails and crazy ways.

I hear Cheryl laugh and say something to the boy. I can't make out the words but her voice is sharp, nasty-edged. He moves away from her. In a second, the dark woods swallow him up.

Ellie and I go back to the picnic table. Even though it's almost midnight, it's still hot, the air heavy with humidity. Down in the woods, I hear a frog croaking in the creek.

"Who was that guy you were talking to?" Ellie asks Cheryl.

She shrugs. "Some stupid jerk from my history class."

"He wanted Cheryl to dance with him, and when she wouldn't, he started bugging me." Bobbi Jo laughs. "Cheryl called him Crater Face. She said his clothes were ugly and so was he, and then she told him to get lost." She dissolves in giggles, and Cheryl lights a cigarette.