The Battle of Darcy Lane (2 page)

“First you go like this.” The new girl threw the ball against my garage door and caught it. The sound was a deep
thump
.

“Anybody can do that,” I said. I knew unicorns weren't real. I still liked the
idea
of them, though.

“Well, there are thirteen moves you have to do,” the new girl said. “They get harder and harder, and you have to do the second move twice and the third move three times and so on. And if you drop the ball even once you have to start over with the first move. The first person to finish all the moves the right number of times without dropping the ball wins.”

“Let me try,” Taylor said, and the new girl threw her the ball.

“I'd rather sit here and count my piles of money,” I said in my best fancy accent, but if either of them heard me, they didn't let on.

Taylor threw the ball against the wall and caught it.

Big deal
, I thought.
Even a monkey could do that.
“Come on, Taylor. We were playing Millionaire!”

“What's
Millionaire
?” the new girl asked, and now she was the one that sounded snotty.

Taylor said, “Just a dopey game Julia made up.”

“It's not dopey,” I said, but nobody cared.

Taylor asked, “Hey, what's your name?” and the new girl answered, “Alyssa.”

Then Alyssa started to talk and talk and talk, and we found out that she was twelve like us and that she'd moved from a town right across the bay. The house there had been really small and not that nice but her father had gotten a big promotion and then her grandmother had up and died and now here they were. Except her dad had left that morning for a business trip and pretty much traveled all the time.

“Wow,” Taylor said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Wow.”

I looked away and did that eye-rolling thing again. I had a feeling there was going to be a lot of eye rolling now that Taylor was all gaga for Alyssa.

“So this time you let the ball bounce and then catch it.” Alyssa took the ball back from Taylor and demonstrated. “It has to bounce between the wall and a line—like this line in the cement here—and if it goes out or you miss it, you have to start over with onesies. This is twosies. You do it twice.”

“Twosies?” I snorted. “What are we, babies?” I put on a silly baby-talk voice. “Twosie, woosies. Coochie coochie coo.”

I was about to say something about the stuffed giraffe we'd seen going into Alyssa's house because, really, who
had stuffed animals at our age? But then I remembered the stuffed monkey Peter had given me for my birthday last year because he thought I was a good climber. There was also the not so small matter of my unicorn poster; Alyssa would like that about as much as she liked my shirt.

Taylor looked at me funny and turned to Alyssa—“Let me try”—and held her hand out for the ball, which Alyssa bounced to her. Taylor did the move twice. “Okay, what's next?” She bounced the ball back to Alyssa.

“Throw the ball in the air, clap three times, then catch.” Alyssa did just that.

I had to hold back a snort.

Then someone we couldn't see but who must have been Alyssa's mother called her name.

“I gotta go.” Alyssa snatched up her ball. “I guess I'll see you around, neighbors.”

I watched her walk away, afraid to say anything before I knew she was out of earshot. And I worked hard to think of the exact right thing as I studied her hot pink tank top and too-tight, too-short shorts. Why did it feel like Alyssa had already lived on Darcy Lane forever and
I
was the new girl again?

“I don't know,” I said after Alyssa disappeared into her house. “She seems sort of stuck up.”

“I think she's cool,” Taylor said with a longing look across the street.

“Cool?” I laughed.

“You're just jealous,” Taylor said.

“Of
what
?”

Without my noticing her doing it, Taylor had moved her own clip from the back of her neck, where it had been holding her blonde hair in a low ponytail, to the same high position where Alyssa was wearing hers. She couldn't seem to find an answer to my question and only said, “Calm down, Julia.”

“Why's the game called Russia anyway?” I blew hair out of my eyes with a quick puff.

“Don't know, don't care,” Taylor said.

3
.

“Big night for pizza,”
my mom said, after she pulled into the driveway and got out of the car. It was true she'd left a long time ago.

“Julia's dad's on his way,” she said to Taylor, who was staying for dinner. We followed my mom inside as the empty moving truck pulled away.

My dad worked in the city at a company that built information systems for hospitals. He had to take a train then a ferry then another train from the office every day, and it seemed to me that the commute alone would be enough to make a person tired, never mind the working part. He came in right as we were sitting down with drinks, and before he even took his suit jacket off, he went to the fridge, got a beer, snapped the can open, and took a sip.
He handed it off to Mom, who also took a sip and put it on the table. They liked to share one at dinnertime.

“Well, hello, girls,” he said, as if noticing us for the first time. He sat down at the table. “How was your day?”

“It was okay,” I said.

“Just
okay
?” He loosened his tie and pulled it off with one long stretch of his arm. “I think a day spent lounging around playing cards and maybe going for a dip and drinking lemonade would be more than okay.”

“I guess.” I felt bad about him having to work all day.

“Oh! The people across the street moved in,” Mom said. “I'll have to go over and introduce myself, maybe bring brownies.” She reached for a slice of pizza.

Annoyed that my mom had reminded Taylor about the existence of Alyssa, I looked at Taylor, trying to read her expression. She was holding a slice, but I hadn't seen her take a bite yet. Taylor never ate much, and it showed in the way her ribs practically poked through her terry-cloth tube top.

“What are they like?” Dad asked, and it was Taylor who answered.

“There's a girl our age. She seems nice.”

“Well, that's exciting, huh?” Dad looked at me.

“Yeah.” My mouth was full of pizza. “It sure is.”

“You shouldn't talk with your mouth full,” Taylor said.

“Ah, well.” Dad also had pizza in his mouth. “We all make mistakes, eh, Taylor?”

Man, I loved my dad.

“Their grandmother was going to live with them but she died last week,” Taylor said.

“Oh, how awful.” My mom's hand went to her heart.

“So!” Dad said with some fanfare. “You girls must be pretty excited for your big trip into the city on Saturday.”

“Totally!” I said, even though there was still more pizza in my mouth. With all the excitement of the day I'd almost forgotten that Mom was taking us sightseeing and shopping. Taylor and I had been looking forward to it for weeks.

“Yeah.” Taylor pulled some thick cheese off her slice. “Should be fun.”

She didn't really sound like she meant it, but I didn't care. She'd see. It'd be awesome in every way.

“I just hope the cicadas hold off,” Mom said. But the bugs were so late, supposedly because of the cold, wet spring we'd had, that I'd stopped believing they were ever going to come.

I called Taylor later
and we talked about Saturday, like how we'd both ride in the backseat and pretend my mom was our chauffeur. She told me how her sister had called from the sleep-away camp where she was working
as a counselor all summer to tell Taylor about her new boyfriend who had a motorcycle. We were so jealous. Then Taylor said, “I really miss her,” and I said, “We'll have a great summer, don't worry.” Everything felt right again.

A few minutes later, Taylor wanted to hang up to watch some new summer miniseries called
End of Daze
that was about to start. We decided that I'd go ring her bell when I was up the next day and we'd go for a morning swim.

“There's some big new miniseries starting tonight,” I said when I walked into the den.

My parents were already in front of the TV. Each of them had a glass of red wine on the table beside them, which meant that this was some kind of big occasion.

“Julia,” Mom said before I even had a chance to sit down on the couch next to her. “You have to watch TV upstairs tonight, okay?”

I looked at the opening credits on the screen and, sure enough, they were watching
End of Daze
. The credits seemed pretty creepy with their pulsing black type and a weird dry landscape in the background. “But I want to watch
this
.”

“It's for grown-ups, sweetie.” Dad reclined his armchair. “Why don't you watch one of your movies?”

“
Taylor
's watching it.” I put my hands on my hips.

Mom made a noise like a snort or tsk. It sounded like disapproval, whatever it was.

“I'm twelve years old!” I stood up taller.

Dad nodded. “Which is not quite old enough to watch this show.” He jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. “Up. Now. We'll see you in the morning.”

I stood there, trying to decide whether to go to battle over this, as my dad sipped his wine then put his glass down on a newspaper with a photo of a huge, lone cicada on the front page. The thing that everyone apparently found
so completely fascinating
about these cicadas was that they lived in the ground and only came out to make a big mess and mate every seventeen years. I already felt like I'd spent the last twelve years waiting—I wasn't even sure for what—and the idea that I might have to wait another five years for it made my skin jump and crawl.

But I wasn't sure I had it in me to fight about whether I was old enough to watch
End of Daze
. Not after having spent the last six months of school campaigning unsuccesfully for a cell phone and not after the day I'd had. So I said good night and went up to the office, where the other TV was, and moved some papers off the futon so that I could sit. I'd wanted this room to be mine when we'd moved in but the movers had put Mom's desk and sewing machine in there. She said we'd move them another time, but we hadn't yet, even though I still asked my parents like
every week
if I could switch rooms. I hated that my room was so far down the hall from theirs, like I was a guest in their house.

There was nothing worth watching on regular TV (the one downstairs was the only one with the good cable channels), and I had already seen all the movies we owned too many times. So I watched a half hour of nothing and then went to Mom's laptop to try to see if I could watch
End of Daze
online, but you couldn't unless you had a mobile/device login, which I was sure we didn't. My parents prided themselves on being “late adopters,” which explained why I was the only person my age I knew who still didn't have a phone. So I snuck back downstairs and tiptoed to the door to the den. A mushroom cloud exploded on the screen. Plumes of dark smoke chased people around corners. The air itself seemed to be shaking.

Back in bed, I couldn't get the images out of my head and couldn't get to sleep. So I started playing Russia in my head.

Throw. Catch.

Throw. Bounce. Catch.

Throw. Bounce. Catch.

Throw. Clap. Clap. Clap. Catch.

Throw. Clap. Clap. Clap. Catch.

Throw . . . Clap . . . Catch . . .

It seemed no more or less dumb than counting sheep.

4
.

There were still no cicadas
in the morning, so I got dressed and told Mom I was going next door to get Taylor. But when I stepped outside, I saw Taylor's almost white-blonde hair—her parents had thought she was albino for a split-second when she was born—glinting in the morning sun . . . in front of Alyssa's house. They were playing Russia on the driveway.