The Crazy School (16 page)

“All set?” asked Gerald as I held my lighter to that last tiny wick.

“Yeah. Good to go,” I said. “Why don’t you dim the lights?”

Dhumavati held the door for Gerald, and I headed forward with the blazing confection once he’d fi nished the task. She started singing “Happy Birthday,” and everyone joined in from the next room.

I walked carefully, trying to keep the candles lit. Lulu followed, holding the cake knife Dhumavati had brought down—

along with ice cream and little hats for everyone to wear, printed with confetti-throwing teddy bears to match the paper plates.

Fay was at the head of the table, her head slightly bowed. I put the cake down in front of her.

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“Make a wish, Fay!” someone called out from the back of the crowd.

She didn’t move, so I crouched down beside her.

“What do I wish for?” she asked me.

“Whatever would make you happy,” I said.

Fay closed her eyes and nodded, then blew so gently on the candles that the fl ames barely shifted. I added a gust of my own, keeping it up until the last one fl ickered and died.

“You did it,” I said, hoping she’d open her eyes to check. She didn’t.

Gerald snapped the lights back on, and Lulu stepped in with the cake knife as kids jostled into line, gripping their paper plates.

“We’ll serve the ice cream and punch in the kitchen. Come back there when you’ve gotten your cake,” said Dhumavati.

Mooney put two plates on the table next to Lulu—one for himself, one for Fay. “What kind of ice cream do you want?” he asked Fay. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said.

“I’ll get you both, then.”

Lulu put a slice of cake on each plate and then looked at his bandage. “You can’t carry two of those in one hand without getting them all mushy, Mooney. Let me help.”

She passed me the knife and picked up both plates.

“We need to talk,” I whispered to Mooney before he followed Lulu away from the table, though I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me.

Forchetti dropped his plate next to me. There was already frosting smeared on it.

“You’re getting seconds before everyone’s had fi rsts?” I asked.

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“Give me a decent slice this time. Lulu was all stingy.”

“Go get some ice cream. The birthday girl hasn’t even had cake yet,” I said.

“Give him mine. I don’t want it,” said Fay.

“You heard her,” said Forchetti. “She doesn’t care.”

“
I
care,” I said.

Forchetti fl icked his plate closer to the cake. “Why are you always such a bitch?”

“Why are you always such an asshole?” I answered. “You could at least try saying please.”

“
Please,
” he whined, like he was auditioning for the part of Postnasal Drip in a really bad school play.

“And why are you back down here, anyway?” I asked. “You just got de-Farmed yesterday, didn’t you?”

“I got in a fi ght. What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing,” I said, pinching the edge of his plate before slapping a thin slice of cake onto it, knowing he’d try to yank this ill-gotten bounty away.

I locked eyes with him and didn’t let go of the plate. “I’d like to hear a thank-you, Forchetti.”

He mumbled a buck’s worth of nasty in lieu of the word

“thank.” I let him take the damn cake anyway. I served the last three kids in line much fatter slices than I’d given Forchetti, just out of spite.

Everyone else in the room was distracted, fi nally—eating cake, chatting, horsing around.

I pulled up a chair next to Fay. “We need to talk.”

“I know,” she said, “but this doesn’t seem like a good time.”

She seemed more alert now that no one was watching us.

“Maybe it’s the best time,” I said. “Nobody’s paying any attention.”

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“Mooney has some stuff he wants to say, too, though. We were thinking maybe tomorrow, if you could come down during study hours again?”

I looked around the room. “Promise me you guys aren’t planning to take off ?”

“Not now,” she said. “Don’t worry. We have something to ask you.”

“And I have an idea I want to run by both of you. I just want to make sure you’re okay about sitting tight until then.”

Fay glanced over my shoulder. “Dhumavati’s coming.”

I spoke a little louder. “How’s your homework going?”

“I’m almost caught up,” she said, acting all zoned out again.

“I’ve been working really hard.”

Dhumavati pulled up a chair across the table from me and said, “Fay’s really been applying herself down here. I’m proud of her.”

Fay touched Dhumavati’s hand. “That’s so nice of you to say.”

Mooney came back and put a plate down gently in front of Fay. “Here you go, a little bit of chocolate and vanilla.”

Lulu handed him his own plate then sat down and looked at me. “Aren’t you having any?”

I put the knife down on the cake plate next to the remaining wedge of frosted goodness. “That woodstove’s really hot,” I said. “I just want something to drink.”

The roaring fi re had made the air so dry that Gerald had to keep ladling watery fruit punch from a faceted plastic bowl in the kitchen. I lost my cup twice. I kept setting it down only to have it disappear in the general chaos.

The conversational volume went up and up, everyone buzzed on sugar and the rare break from routine.

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I went back to Gerald for a third serving of bug juice, asking him to load it with extra ice.

The cafeteria vats of chocolate and vanilla Frozen Treat were getting soupy.

“Why don’t I put these in the freezer?” I said.

“Great idea.”

When I returned, he handed me my cup, saying, “I think I’m going to make this self-serve from now on. I don’t want to miss the party.”

Another thirsty gang of kids shoved one another through the doorway.

“Nick of time,” I said.

Outside the kitchen, Lulu was lining up chairs in the middle of the room. Dhumavati put a boom box on the table and plugged it in to a wall socket.

“Ready for the games portion?” she asked me and Gerald.

“I’d like to bow out,” I said, “at least for the fi rst round.”

The air felt stuffy and close. I set my punch down on the arm of a sofa at a seemingly safe distance from the jollity, then started pulling off my sweater. As I was yanking it past my head, I heard someone step up next to me.

It was Mooney.

“Good thing Wiesner’s not around,” he said. “You with no sweater on.”

“We need to talk, okay?” I replied. “Fay told me I should come down tomorrow, when you guys are doing homework.”

“Sounds good. You can pretend you’re going over some stuff from class with me. I’ll make sure Fay and I are both sitting at the big table.”

“And you’re not going to leave before then, right?” I asked.

“No way. Not unless you’ve told anyone else.”

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I shook my head. “I haven’t.”

Time enough to ask them about Dhumavati tomorrow, when I came back.

“Cool,” he said. “And thank you for making sure Fay got to have such a nice birthday. You really made her happy, you and Lulu.”

Dhumavati started jollying the kids into a game of musical chairs. At fi rst they were reluctant, but when she recruited Gerald into the action, the competition picked up. Tim landed in Gerald’s lap in the race for the fi nal seat, and even the stragglers started to laugh and get into the spirit of the thing.

“First one knocked out has to be the DJ,” Dhumavati said, putting Tim in charge of the music.

Lulu bustled around the room, picking up sticky abandoned plates and forks to throw in a garbage bag she was dragging around.

Tim punched the stop button on the boom box, and the group surged for available chairs. Forchetti stumbled over Gerald and almost landed on the sofa next to me. I was too close to the game and the woodstove.

Standing up made me dizzy, and I’d broken out in a sweat from the heat of the fi re. I reached to grab my sweater so I could blot my forehead with it.

Tim punched “play” while my face was covered, and the crowd shoved into me. I could’ve sworn there were a hundred people in the room. I dropped the sweater and turned back to get a sip of punch, but my cup was gone again.

Lulu was sliding her garbage bag around behind the sofa.

“Hey, did you take my juice?” I asked.

She picked up a brimming red cup from the little side table 1 5 2

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next to my sofa. Not where I thought I’d seen my cup last.

“This it?”

“Must be,” I said, taking it from her so I could knock back the cold sugary liquid in one go, ice cubes bumping against my lip.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re really fl ushed.”

“It’s just so hot.” I reached for my wadded-up sweater again, mopping my face and neck with it.

Lulu pressed her wrist to my cheek. It felt cool and lovely.

“I need some air,” I said. My chest felt tight, and everything looked all wobbly.

“Don’t go without your jacket,” said Lulu. “You’ll catch your death.”

“Just for a minute,” I said.

“Wait until I get this stuff in the garbage and I’ll go with you,” said Lulu.

She started walking toward the kitchen, obviously thinking I’d stay put, but I had to get out right then. I couldn’t catch my breath, and my jaw felt sore and tight. I lurched for the door, making my way through the spinning crowd, all of them jostling again for too few chairs.

The music stopped, and I could hear them all laughing and shoving behind me as I burst outside into the blessed cold, panting with relief. The buzz of noise died away as the door swung shut behind me.

There was a moon rising up over the trees, and the ground’s dusting of snow looked all blue-white and sparkly in the watery light.

“Pretty,” I said, watching more fl akes dance down.

I walked away from the building and turned my face up, 1 5 3

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closing my eyes in the hope that the snow would cool my still-burning cheeks, but the motion only made me dizzier.

Opening my eyes, I took another step forward. The ground felt like it was moving. I swayed and then fell, landing hard on my hands and knees.

I stayed like that for a while, panting. The idea of getting back up off the ground seemed overwhelmingly diffi cult. I was tempted to lie down and press my face against the snow.

“Get
up,
” I said, but I couldn’t convince my body to make the effort. My voice sounded like it was coming from ten yards away.

I crawled toward the garden fence, hoping to pull myself back to my feet. Halfway there, my stomach heaved, and I started vomiting up an acrid-sweet mess of punch and cake and ice cream—hot and pink all over the ground—droplets melting the thin cover of snow with a hiss wherever they touched down.

I fought against the next wave of nausea to no avail. It just kept groaning up more, again and again, until I was emptied down to my boots.

I wanted to lie down but not in my own mess, so I kept crawling, making it almost all the way to the fence before I collapsed.

The snow felt good. Soft and velvety. Cool but warm.

I wanted to stay there forever.

After what seemed like a stretch of days, I raised my head a few inches—only then realizing that the ground wasn’t covered with snow at all but was instead teeming with millions of tiny white spiders. They were glassy and feral in the moon-light, and every moment saw more of them drifting down to earth through the night sky, plummeting faster and faster until they were piled so thick that everything went black.

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23

When I woke up I was in bed, curled into a ball with the covers half thrown off me, aching all over like I’d asked too much from each muscle in my body.

Everything hurt: neck, scalp, forearms, the arches of my feet.

My face felt sticky, my mouth sour and raw. I turned my head, but all I could see was a line of light spilling inward from between a set of drawn curtains. Morning?

But that’s not where the window is in our bedroom. And we don’t
have curtains.

I was cold, too. I reached for the covers, letting out a little yelp when the movement made everything hurt even more.

“Madeline?” said Lulu in the darkness. “Are you awake?”

“Think so,” I said, my voice all raspy.

Lulu turned on a light.

“Hurts,” I said, squinting against the glare.

“The light?”

“Mmm.”

I tried opening my eyes again. Lulu was wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a chair beside the window.

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“Where am I?” I asked.

“Dhumavati’s guest room. We carried you here last night,”

she said turning off the light and opening the curtains, revealing a window seat piled with a funky jumble of Moroccan-looking pillows. The mattress jiggled when she came over to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Ow,” I said. “Time is it?”

Lulu consulted her watch. “Just before eight. Dhumavati told me to keep you here, make sure you were okay.”

I took in the room’s contents: mismatched armchairs, a framed art nouveau poster of some buxom chick on a bicycle, a dark bureau topped by a ripply oval mirror, spent crumbs of incense on the paisley-shawled table beneath a large tanka portrait of Ganesh.

But for the lack of peacock feathers and my view of bare trees against November-sullen Berkshire sky, I could’ve sworn I’d woken up circa 1970, somewhere in the Haight.

“Try drinking a little water,” said Lulu, reaching for a glass on the bedside table. “You couldn’t keep anything down last night.”