Bat Summer

Bat Summer

ALSO BY SARAH WITHROW

Box Girl
The Black Sunshine of Goody Pryne

Sarah Withrow

Copyright © 1998 by Sarah Withrow
First published in the USA in 1999
Third paperback edition published in 2004

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit
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Groundwood Books / Douglas & Mclntyre
720 Bathurst Street, Suite 500, Toronto, Ontario
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West
1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative.

National Library of Canada Cataloging in Publication
Withrow, Sarah
Bat summer
A Groundwood book.
ISBN 0-88899-351-X (bound) ISBN 0-88899-352-8 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS8595.I8455B37 1998 jC813'.54 C98-931362-X
PZ7.W57Ba 1998

Design by Michael Solomon
Printed and bound in Canada

For all the young bats
and especially the original
kim Honey.

“Come with me, Terence,” Tom says.

He hardly ever calls me by my full name. It makes me feel even worse about him leaving. His German shepherd, Steel, is sniffing around Tom's duffle bag. He's getting his goober dog breath all over Tom's new T-shirts. Tom's mom has sewn little name tags into the backs of all his clothes — even his underwear. Like if his name wasn't on there some guy might steal his underwear.

Maybe I should steal it. Maybe he won't be able to go to stupid canoe camp if he can't find his underwear.

“Come on. Get inside.” He smacks his duffle bag. It's half full.

Tom is always smacking things when he talks. He talks with his hands. Once he accidentally poked himself in the eye. That was good. For me, I mean. I'll miss him smacking stuff.

The duffle bag is filling up quickly. I can't believe he'll be gone for a month. He said come with me, but he won't stop packing the bag.

There's no room for me in there. I'd probably suffocate on his flathead geek sunhat.

“Take a chance for once, Terence. Just get in.” He
puts his Walkman in the side pocket. The duffle bag is all bulging out. Steel is sniffing at it some more. Dogs are always happy — until you leave. They are happy until the second you close the door. If I were a dog, today would still be fun.

Steel turns and looks up at Tom like Tom is king of the universe. Tom reaches down to pat him and Steel lets a fart rip right into the duffle bag.

“No way am I getting in there now,” I say. Tom grabs my head and tries to stuff it into the fart-filled bag. I get him by the back leg and bring him down hard on the floor. He jabs me in the stomach with his knobby elbow. I flip him against the door, and then his mom yells up, “Hey, hey, hey. You kids! I don't care what you're doing, just stop it.”

We laugh until I feel like I have asthma because I can't breathe.

It starts to get quiet in Tom's room. I'm not going to be able to hang out here when he's gone. I can hear his parents talking downstairs. I can hear Steel's nails clicking down the hall. Tom is slouched up against the door. He's got his hands on his stomach from when he was laughing. His eyes are closed.

What am I going to do all summer?

It's kind of pathetic that I have to spend another summer hanging out in Wells Hill Park. My cousin, Elys, thinks I have so many friends. She says, “Go out and play,” like there's some friend-filled magic playland just outside our front door. She believes my life is all wonderful just because I don't have to look for work.

I'm sitting on the hill with Rico chewing on the white ends of blades of grass. Rico's in the grade ahead of me. He hangs out with guys who spit on teachers' cars behind the school. Normally he wouldn't even give me the time of day. Summer changes all the rules. You never know who you'll end up chewing blades of grass with in the summer.

Anyway, that's what we're doing when Lucy comes over holding this big book.

“Want to hear about the Midget Employment Stabilization Board?” she growls. Tom says Lucy is an embarrassment to humanity. She draws these magic marker tattoos on her face. Like one day she has one that looks like a spider web, then the next day she's got one of a big flower, but you can still see the spider web underneath. And what's with that old blue sheet strung around her neck? It's like she
thinks she's some kind of superhero. Plus she's got red hair, so she looks like a piece of red asparagus stuffed in a pillow case.

Still, you can't help listening to a story about something like the Midget Employment Stabilization Board, even if it is Lucy who's telling it.

We keep chewing grass and let Lucy go on.

“It says here this guy, Jim Moran, built these huge kites for midgets to fly in. But the whole thing was really a publicity stunt. Moran wanted the midgets to fly past windows in New York yelling at people through megaphones to buy these candy bars.” In my mind I see Lucy hanging from a kite growling through a megaphone, with her stupid blue cape blowing in the breeze.

Lucy clears her throat and starts reading from the book. She tells about the cop that came along to stop Moran and the Midget Employment Stabilization Board.

“So the cop yells at them, ‘You can't fly no midgets from no kites.'”

We crack up all over the hill when we hear that. At least, me and Rico crack up. Rico laughs so hard he starts coughing. I think something is going to come out of his nose, he's laughing so hard.

Except then Lucy starts yelling, “He shouldn't have made the midgets do all the flying for him. It isn't funny to be funny looking. And Moran shouldn't
have called them midgets. He should have called them small people.” That just makes us crack up harder.

“How would you like it if someone called you a midget?” she growls at Rico, like anyone would dare call Rico anything, he's so big. Rico looks like the world's biggest little kid. He's really tall and has biceps that look like someone sewed tennis balls into his arms. His face is kind of fat. Not like I'd say anything.

I don't get called names, either, but it's because my name is Terence and nothing rhymes with Terence. Also, I am completely ordinary. I have ordinary straight brown hair that's too long. And I've got an ordinary flat-as-a-pancake punched-in face, and a weenie chest that I hide pretty well under big T-shirts.

Maybe Lucy thinks it's better to be a weirdo than to be ugly. Being ordinary isn't exactly the same thing as being ugly, but it's close.

“I ain't a midget, Lucy Loser,” Rico says. But he stops laughing after Lucy growls at him. He sticks a piece of grass in the corner of his mouth.

“No. You're Mr. Big Man,” Lucy says. She has her hands on her hips.

“That's right, Loser. I'm Mr. Big Man. I like that,” Rico says.

I'm still laughing about flying midgets, and the thought of Mr. Big Man sets me off again.

Then Lucy turns on me. “You are so insensitive.” And the way she says it, and the way she looks at me in that get-up of hers, her eyes burning into me like tiny lasers…for a second I feel ashamed. For a second it's like I am a midget, or — what are you supposed to call them? I'm so out of it sometimes. I always do the wrong thing.

“I guess next to a small person, anyone could look like Mr. Big Man,” she says to Rico. He pokes the air with his finger and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

Lucy rolls her eyes, slams the book shut and stomps off to hang out under the tree with the chess man. She takes the kite book with her, so I don't get to see the picture of that Moran guy.

“Who does she think she is — kite-queen or something?” Rico says. I pluck at the grass. He looks at me and snorts.

I've got to hand it to that Moran guy. Hardly anyone thinks up stuff like that anymore. Only weirdos think like that, and nobody
wants
to be a weirdo. Even loser weirdos like Lucy can come up with some good stuff sometimes.

I wish I could make my voice do that growl thing. It's kind of cool in a weirdo way.

When I get to the park after lunch the next day, I see Lucy in the middle of the field tying a couple of sticks together. I look around for Rico, but he must be up at the 7-11 getting a Slurpie.

“What are you doing?” I ask. She looks up at me.

“What does it look like?” She must still be burned about yesterday. I take a look at the junk she has in front of her: sticks, string, glue and this roll of Christmas wrapping paper with beady-eyed Santas on it.

“Are you making a present?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Guess again.” Then it comes to me.

I look around for Rico again and sit down.

“I've never seen a kite made with wrapping paper before,” I say. She's got the cross bars made up already. She is so concentrated. Her tongue is sticking out of her mouth. Her hands seem to know exactly what to do. Why don't I think up things like making a kite?

“You just woke up this morning and decided to make a kite?”

“Yup,” she says, but she doesn't stop working. I watch her put glue in the middle of the cross sticks. She hands it over to me, takes my fingers and works
them around the middle of the cross where the glue is.

“Hold it like that until it dries.” She rummages around in her dirty pink knapsack. She has to keep throwing her cape over her shoulder to keep it out of the way.

I do what I'm told. I hold still and look out at the park. Not a cloud in the sky.

Wells Hill Park has two hills in it altogether. We're talking foothills, as in they are about a foot deep. It has three sets of monkey bars — including one that looks like a big blue moon. It has swings, the baby kind, a tetherball stand and a small sandbox.

On the other side of the sandbox is a huge tree with a picnic table under it. Mostly it's used by the chess man. Every time you look over there he's playing chess. He has this white hair that's all greased back and these humongous horn-rimmed glasses. For a while I thought he was Lucy's father because I see her playing chess with him sometimes, but Rico says he's an old pervert.

The second hill goes down from behind this kiddie wading pool. Nothing goes on there. Even sun-bathers don't use it. It looks like a spot that's supposed to be for something only that something never happens. My whole summer's like that — one huge, long stretch of nothing.