Bones & All (5 page)

I felt him shrug behind me. “Anyway, you're right. Australian redback spiders are much more interesting.” He kept reading over my shoulder. “This entry is incomplete. The entomological encyclopedia I have at home is better. Do you know why they're called black widows?”

“Why?”

“Because their mates all die. Because she eats him.” Stuart sat down across from me as he spoke. “She eats him right after they copulate, sometimes even while they're still doing it. He lets her eat him because she needs the protein for her young, and anyway, his reproductive destiny has been fulfilled.”

His reproductive destiny has been fulfilled?
I would have laughed at him for memorizing whole lines from the encyclopedia, but all of a sudden I was too nervous to say anything. My heart was thumping like it was trying to get out.

“It's called sexual cannibalism,” he was saying. “It's the most important thing to know about the Australian redback spider, and it's not in there at all.”

“It's a kids' encyclopedia,” I said. “They can't put the word ‘sex' in it.” I paused. “Stuart?”

“Yeah?”

“Do other species do that?”

“Do what? Eat each other?”

I nodded.

“The black widows, like I said. And there are a couple more kinds of spiders that would die after copulation anyway—the males, I mean—so even though the female doesn't attack during copulation”—he was using the word ‘copulation' too often and too loudly; other kids were looking up from their notebooks—“she might as well eat him afterward, you know?”

“For the protein,” I said, careful to keep my voice low.

“Right, for the protein.”

“But are there species besides insects that do it? Like mammals?”

Stuart gave me a funny look and didn't answer. I was very aware that we had been having a conversation, and now we were not, and I could have kicked myself.

“Why do you wear black all the time?” he asked.

Just in case.

So the mess wouldn't show.

What I said was, “So I never have to match.”

“You should wear colors. Then maybe people wouldn't talk so much about how weird you are.” We locked eyes, but only for a second. “Sorry. But it's the truth.”

We outcasts had a way of organizing ourselves into concentric circles, so kids like Stuart could feel bad for someone like me on the very outer fringe and feel relieved that they weren't on it. I said, “They'll think I'm weird no matter what I wear.”

He looked at me. “Yeah.” He got up from the table and hugged his Trapper Keeper to his chest. “You're probably right.” Then he went back to sit at a table by himself.

The boys who wanted to be my friends, they were like me—well, “like me” in that there was something odd about them no one could put their finger on—and so, like me, they were pushed to the margins of the gym and lunchroom. They were boys who moved too often, boys with an ever-present inhaler or a stutter or a lazy eye, boys who were too smart not to be resented for it.

So after I'd been at a new school for a month or two, one of those boys might find an excuse to talk to me. He'd ask for the math assignment as if he didn't always write it down. He'd slide into the chair opposite me in the lunchroom and tell me about his plans for his science fair project or Halloween costume. And one day, months down the road, he'd invite me over after school—to study for a history test, or to try out the mechanism on the science project. At some point I learned the word for this: a pretext, a reason that's really an excuse. The boy's parents were still at work. We went up to his room. It almost always happened that way.

I should have said no. Every time, I wanted to say no. I knew it was the right thing to tell him to leave me alone, but he'd already been snubbed by our classmates a hundred times over. How could I say no?

So that's what happened with Dmitri and Joe and Kevin and Noble and Marcus and C. J. Every time I went over to his house thinking this time I could avoid it, this time he wouldn't be too nice or come too close. This time I wouldn't be tempted.

Eventually I realized something. Whenever you tell yourself,
This time it will be different,
it's as good as a promise that it'll turn out the same as it always has.

After C. J. we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. We were in the car one morning and I said, “Maybe I shouldn't go to school anymore.” She didn't answer. “Mama?”

“I'll think about it.” But by that point I guess she'd already decided to leave.

*   *   *

The highway seemed just as desolate as it had the night before, nothing but gas stations and empty strip malls. I brightened at the sight of an awning proclaiming
FRESH HOT BAGELS
before I noticed
FOR RENT
in the window. I'd almost reached the Greyhound station when I saw a sign marked
EDGARTOWN, HISTORIC TOWN CENTER
. Maybe I could stop at a real restaurant, warm up and get a good breakfast before I bought my ticket to Sandhorn.

After a few blocks the road turned into a good old-fashioned Main Street. It was still early, and most of the shops weren't open yet: an ice cream parlor, a secondhand bookshop, an Italian restaurant. A church, a real estate agent, an art gallery with pictures of sailboats in the front window, another church, a florist, a drugstore, another church: it seemed to go on and on before I found the coffee shop, where a handwritten sign in the window offered
2 EGGS, HASH BROWNS & TOAST, $1.99
. Just what I needed.

As dead as it was on the street, the bustle in the little one-room diner more than made up for it. I smelled coffee and felt a pang of longing for Mama. A waitress eyed my rucksack and told me I could sit at the counter. All the people in the booths along the wall looked up from their plates as I passed, bumping my rucksack into the other waitress as I went, and I mumbled an apology.

I got to the counter and one or two of the men glanced up from their newspapers. There wasn't a single stool.

*   *   *

After Luke we moved to Baltimore. My mom got a job in a law office—it was always accounting or law; her typing speed was the one thing she could take anywhere—and for a while we pretended everything was normal.

Then, just before Christmas, Mama brought me to a party at her boss's house. Like I said, after what happened with Luke and Penny Wilson she could never trust me with a babysitter.

Before we left she sat me down on the sofa. “This is the first really good job I've ever had, Maren. I have friends—people I can talk to, people I can have a laugh with at lunch. And there's something else: I might be up for a promotion soon.”

“That's great, Mama.” But I couldn't be happy for her, not when she was only telling me this out of fear that I'd ruin it for her, that I'd slip up again and we'd have to move away.

“It could be great for both of us, if you could only…” She sighed. “Please, please,
please
be good. Promise me you'll be good this time.”

I nodded, but it was never a matter of trying hard enough to be good. It was like leading me to a banquet and telling me not to eat.

It was a proper grown-up cocktail party, with shrimp arranged around bowls of bloodred dipping sauce and women with perfect manicures sipping from long-stemmed martini glasses, laughing a little too loudly as they popped their olives. There was a cathedral ceiling in the living room, and the Christmas tree went up all the way to the top.

There was a spare room near the front door, and Mrs. Gash told us we could go in and put our coats on the bed. No one came in behind us, so my mother closed the door and said, “Don't talk to anyone. If anyone says hello or asks your name you can tell them, but that's it—I don't want anybody thinking you're rude. Just read your book.”

“Where?”

She pointed to an armchair in the corner of the room, and I went over and dropped into it with a sigh. “I'll bring you a plate and something to drink.
Please
, Maren—please stay here and be good.” In a few minutes she returned with the promised plate of shrimp and crackers, asked me one more time not to leave the room, and left again. I ate the shrimp and watched as three women came in, shrugging off their coats and shaking the cold out. No one noticed me sitting in the corner.

The pile of coats grew and grew, and after a while people stopped coming in. I could see a fur coat peeking out at the bottom of the pile and I got up, reached in, and petted the sleeve. I thought I might like to burrow into the coat pile and take a nap so that when I woke up it would be time to go home, so that's what I did.

Under the coat pile it was warm and safe and cozy, and in every breath I smelled perfume and cigar smoke. I fell asleep. The shrimp hadn't satisfied me, though, and my stomach rumbled as I dozed.

Some time later I felt something brush my cheek, and in a second I was fully awake, my heart pounding. In the darkness I sensed a hand reach into a pocket by my shoulder, fumble around, and pull something out—I heard the soft rattle of a box of matches. Then I felt the pause, because whoever it was had realized I was inside. I felt a sharp poke from above.

“Hey!” I said, swimming out of the pile of tweed and Gore-Tex and boiled wool. A boy stood beside the bed. He had a pointy, turned-up nose that made him look like some friendly rodent in a storybook, and tortoiseshell glasses that were too big for his face. On the carpet at his feet was a small pile of things from other people's coat pockets. “Who are you?” I asked.

“I live here. Who are you?”

“I belong to one of the secretaries.” He had his left hand in a fist still held out in front of him, as if I wouldn't notice unless he made a move to conceal it. “You were going through the pockets, weren't you? I saw you. You took out a matchbox.”

“I wasn't going to steal anything. I was only going to look.”

“Yeah, right.” I wriggled out of the coat pile and stood in front of him. “What's your name?”

“Jamie. What's yours?”

“Maren.”

“That's a funny name.”

I rolled my eyes. “Like I've never heard that before.”

He looked at the floor. “Sorry.”

“Find anything good?”

Jamie opened his hand, and an accordion of condom packets spilled out. Of course, I didn't know what they were then. Maybe he didn't either, and that's why neither of us asked.

I pointed to the pile on the floor. “You said you were going to put this stuff back, didn't you?” He nodded. “But how can you keep track of which pockets you found them in?”

“Oh. I hadn't thought about that.”

“Maybe put them back in the pockets, any pockets if you can't remember, and then they can figure it out at work on Monday.”

“All right.” He plucked a pack of Marlboros out of the pile and tucked it in the pocket of a navy blue peacoat. I helped him put everything back, and when the floor was clear he just stood there and looked at me for a minute.

“What?” I said.

“You like stars?”

“The kind in the sky?”

He nodded. “I've got a telescope. Want to see it?”

“Sure.” I followed him out of the guest room and up the stairs.

“I got it for Christmas last year,” Jamie said over his shoulder. “My dad studied astronomy in college, so he knows a lot.” His bedroom was at the end of the hall and by the time we got there I could hardly hear the noise of the party.

I'd never been in a boy's room before. There were Star Wars things everywhere—the sheets and the comforter and a poster of Han Solo and Princess Leia on the wall above the bed. There was a full-size cardboard cutout of Darth Vader in the corner by the closet door and a coin bank shaped like R2-D2 on the night table. It was very tidy, and I could picture Mrs. Gash reminding him to clean it even though no guests would be coming upstairs. Mrs. Gash was a just-so kind of mother.

Jamie had a bookcase above his dresser, and I cocked my head and scanned the spines—
The
War of the Worlds,
Isaac Asimov, and a row of Choose Your Own Adventures that turned my stomach at the thought of Luke—as he went to the big black telescope on a tripod by the window and made some adjustments. Then he opened the window and a cold gust shot through the room, sending the pieces of a solar system mobile clattering above the bed. “Now turn off the light,” he said.

I flipped the switch by the door and came over to stand beside him, shivering in the draft. “Obviously it's better when we take it up to the roof, but I'm not allowed up there without my dad.” He stepped away from the telescope and gestured that it was my turn. “Here, I'll show you the Pleiades. You can see them without the telescope, but it's much cooler with it.” I bent forward and put my eye to the lens. A perfect cluster of stars shone brightly at the end of a dark tunnel. “See them?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. He was standing close to me, so close I could smell him. Irish Spring. His mother had made him bathe before the party.

“You know the myth about the Pleiades?”

“No.”

“They were the daughters of Atlas. You know, the guy who had to hold up the world?”

“Yeah?”

“So after the Titans lost to the Olympians and Atlas was punished, the sisters were so upset that they all killed themselves, and then Zeus felt sorry for them and made them into stars so they could keep their father company for the rest of time. That's just one version, but it's the one I like the best. My dad tells me how all the constellations got their names.”

I stepped away from the telescope. “Now I'll show you the Milky Way,” he said.

I could hear footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later Mrs. Gash turned the light back on. “Jamie? What are you doing up here?” It hadn't felt like we were doing anything wrong—I'd completely forgotten Mama's warning—but there was something funny in his mother's voice.