Camo Girl (5 page)

Today, without so much as a wistful glance toward the library, he smiles. “Lead the way, milady.”

W
hen mom's acting cranky, just
about anything goes. Grammie stays in her room a lot to avoid crossing Mom's temper, thus keeping her usual busybody self out of my hair, and Mom sits on the couch in the afternoons watching the sort of cheesy television that causes her to reach for tissues from time to time.

It's because of this and only this that Z and I get away with building the catapult.

We clatter around the pantry and come up with a plan. Using miles of masking tape, we lash the mop handle to the broom to the Swiffer sweeper, and by then it's decently long enough that we think we have a shot of getting Millie's cat to fly all the way over the woodpile.

It's not as mean as it sounds. We've secured him in
a padded basket, all cushy with a blanket and copious amounts of bubble wrap. To be totally honest, I'm not sure this is the best plan, but Z's taking the name “catapult” really literally at the moment.

“Cat-a-pult,” he murmurs as we experiment with using a beach ball, a lawn chair, the barbecue grill, or my lower back as a fulcrum. I'm on my knees with the pole leaning over my back when Grammie sticks her head out the window.

“What in the name of creation!” she shrieks.

I scramble to my feet. “We're fine, Grammie!” I wave up at her.

Five seconds later she's standing over us, huffing and puffing from the little sprint she just did.

Grammie takes Z by the sides of the face. “You're going to hurt the cat,” she says softly, studying him. “Do you want to hurt the cat?”

“Fair maiden,” Z says, laying his small hands over hers. “This fierce, brave jungle cat that we have captured cannot be harmed. Have you seen him in his wild form? He leaps from tree to tree with ease, this magnificent hunter.”

“Cats always land on their feet,” I translate.

“Not when they're trussed up in bubble wrap,” Grammie says. She kisses Z's forehead, and shoots me a sharp
you-know-better-missy
glare. “New game.”

Pretty quick after Grammie gives us the talking-to, Z gets tired of playing. It's a lot of work, coming up with an idea like the catapult. And very disheartening not to get to see it reach its full potential.

We lay in the grass beside our failed experiment. We position ourselves the usual way: head to head, with our feet sticking out in opposite directions. So we're ear to ear, really.

I know what's coming next. Z blows out a quick, short breath. Then he sucks in a chestful of air and starts blowing loudly.

I wait until I think he's going to have to breathe or die before I suck in a breath of my own. Blow it out in a long, slow
whoosh
. We go back and forth as long as we can until we are both gasping for breath and not laughing becomes too hard.

“Wind tunnel!” Z shrieks, rolling until his cheek touches the grass. A few blades poke into his nose and he sneezes, which just makes us both laugh louder. When we're all laughed out, we look up at the clouds. Today they're few and far between. The sky is blue-white and almost spotless.

Z murmurs something to himself. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, not sure if I was supposed to hear, and answer. He stares up at the sky, and I wonder, not for the first time, how it is in his mind.

Millie's cat, now free, skulks in the grass around our bodies. Why he's not running for the hills, I don't understand. Glutton for punishment, I guess. Or maybe it really wasn't so bad, what we almost did.

I look at Z, lying there, all innocent and thoughtful. All wrapped up in his imagination, wherever it's taking him. The cat steps on his belly, and he gently strokes its ears.

There's a fine line between things you can get away with and things that are actually wrong. The catapult episode is a small case. There are bigger cases.

I'm talking about times when the real world and Z's world don't line up and he doesn't seem to see it.

“We shouldn't have tried that,” I tell him. “Putting Gorbachev in a bubble. Cats can't fly.”

Z laughs. “Cats can't fly, milady. Cats can't fly,” he repeats.

I get that feeling all of a sudden, that desperate tugging feeling that I want the game to be over, just for a minute. I roll toward him. “Come on, you know it wasn't very nice.”

Z rubs Gorbachev's head. “To tame the wild beast is no simple feat.”

I grind my heels into the grass. “It's Millie's cat,” I say. “‘Wild' to him is Mrs. Taylor's garden.”

Z glances toward Millie's backyard. Maybe he's looking for the garden. Maybe he's looking at the tree house—
the one we both sometimes forget isn't ours anymore.

I try again. “Are you sad?”

Z jerks his chin back, pointing his face to the sky. He gazes at the fluffy, floating clouds.

“It's just us,” I whisper. “You can talk to me, when it's just us.”

I know he's listening, but I guess he doesn't want to come back to Earth. I try to content myself with seeing things his way. Grammie says sadness doesn't last forever, but with Z and me it's sometimes hard to see that.

It's quiet out here, until suddenly it's not. A strange sound from inside the house, or on the other side of the house. Sort of a pinging, kind of echoey. I sit up, listening. Z sits up too, gathers his backpack, and slides it onto his shoulder.

“Do you want me to have Grammie drive you to the library?” I say. Sometimes we do that. Usually when it's raining or cold, which isn't all that often, but we've been known to do it just for the heck of it too.

Z shakes his head. “No, I will ride.” By which he means horseback, by which he means walking. He climbs to his feet. “Good day, milady Ellie-nor.”

“Good day, Zachariah.”

He takes a shortcut across my backyard and into Millie's. The cat wanders vaguely after him, but I don't
worry, because it won't leave our yards. It doesn't like the feel of cement compared to grass.

I'm quite ready to go inside, but there's something going on, something nagging at me. It's the sound. The echoey, pinging sound that is both strange and somehow familiar. Then it stops and there's another sound, a sort of metallic
thunk,
but dull. Then it's back.
Ping.
Echo.
Ping.

What is Grammie up to now? I skip around the house to the front yard.

“Grammie—” The word is out of my mouth as I'm coming around the corner and, oh, how I wish I could take it back. I'd just melt right into the side of the house and pretend I was never there.

It's not Grammie.

Really, really not.

It's a boy. I stand, exposed, as he catches the basketball he's been bouncing in my driveway and turns.

Not just any boy. Bailey James.

B
ailey catches the basketball mid-
bounce. “It's you,” he says, surprised. “You're in my class.”

I put my hands on my hips, feeling reckless. “You're in my driveway.” Those words were never part of the plan.

Bailey cringes, looking, I don't know . . . guilty? “You have the only basketball hoop in the neighborhood,” he says. “Do you mind?”

I contemplate. If it were Jonathan asking, I would say no, just because I can. Instead, I shrug. “It was here when we moved in.”

Bailey frowns. “You don't play?” He dribbles hard in a fancy pattern, spinning with his feet. So cool.

“I don't even own a ball,” I say.

Bailey grunts like this is a deep sacrilege. “Want me to show you?”

I don't do sports. Really don't do them. But I find myself saying, “Yeah, okay.”

Bailey grins, and I feel myself blushing. This is so not going to go well. Why did I say yes? He takes two steps closer, still smiling, and I remember why.

“So, tell me, Ella,” he says. “How much do you know about the sport of the gods?”

He knows my name. I didn't tell him. Did I?
Hi.
Hi.
That was it. Until just now. I never told him. But he knows. Which means he must have asked someone. Which means he was thinking about me. Somewhere, somehow, for just a second.

I turn my hands up. “I know it's called basketball,” I say. “And it tends to be orange.”

Bailey flips the ball up onto one finger, spinning it artfully. “Well, then we have our work cut out for us.”

“I'm at least twenty minutes away from being able to do that,” I say, pointing.

Bailey laughs, actually laughs, at what I just said. His smile gets better the longer he wears it. I don't get tired of looking.

Bailey teaches me to dribble, guard, pass, check, and shoot. I throw the ball up over and over, but it just refuses
to go into the basket. Bailey never laughs when I miss, he just goes, “Good try,” or if it wasn't, he gives me pointers. He laughs a lot of the rest of the time, though, sometimes close to my ear. I like the sound of his voice.

He explains the rules, and we try to play one-on-one, but obviously I'm no match for his actual skills. He must be bored with me. He's really patient, though. I wonder why he's not still at the school, playing ball with Jonathan Hoffman and his cronies. That would be more his speed.

Instead, he's here. I try to guard him, but he's really fast and gets by me every time. We don't keep score, because what's the point, but he gives me plenty of turns. There's a part where his hand is on my back, guarding me. I duck, spin, stop, aim, aim a little longer, shoot.

The ball swishes through the net, making my first basket ever! I jump and clap my hands, screeching, “Yes!”

Bailey pumps his fist in the air. He hugs me with a hard fist-thump on my back. I'm suddenly very aware of my training bra. We pause in the hug, then spring apart. The basketball rolls to a stop against the pole.

“Um,” Bailey says.

“Um,” I say.

“Um, that was really good,” he says.

“I never made a basket before.”

“Yeah? Cool.”

Bailey fetches the ball and holds it in front of him. I'm not sure if he's about to check it to me or if he's using it as a shield. Knowing me, I'm going to go with shield. I take a step back.

The sky's grown dusky, almost dinnertime light. It's a little funny that Mom and Grammie haven't come to call me in yet.

“Can I ask you a question?” Bailey says.

Anything.
“Um, yeah, okay.”

“How come you hang with that little white boy?”

So this is how it ends. Still, I was lucky. I had one whole afternoon with Bailey, all to myself. A whole afternoon living some other girl's fabulous life.

I tilt my head, innocent. “Everyone here's white.”

Bailey shrugs. “Yeah, I get that, but why
him
?”

I search for something to say besides the real reason. “Someone has to look out for him.” We don't know each other well, so I figure half truths are okay. Saying it also makes me seem . . . whatever the girl version of chivalrous is.

“Yeah, I get that,” Bailey says.

No one gets that. Maybe he's just being nice.

“I gotta go,” he says a second later. Confirmed: He's just being nice.

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

I call after him, a shade less than desperate. “You can use the hoop anytime.”

Bailey looks back over his shoulder, gives me a full-arm finger point. “Count on it.”

I
slip inside and lock the front door. mom
and Grammie are tripping all over each other in the kitchen, working on dinner. It seems like they just got started.

My stomach rumbles.

“No dinner?” I say. “What have you been doing?”

Grammie waggles her eyebrows at me. “Oh, honey. What have
you
been doing?”

Mom chokes back a laugh and smacks Grammie with a spatula. “Hush. Leave the child alone.”

My heart thumps, eyes narrow. “Why?”

Grammie turns all matter-of-fact on Mom. “Keisha, they were right there in the driveway, for all the world to see. She has no choice but to tell us all about him.” Grammie winks. “That's what we women do.”

“There's nothing to tell,” I mumble. “He's just a boy from school. He won't be coming back.” It hurts a little to say it out loud.

Mom and Grammie Look at each other. Mom smiles at me.

“I know a thing or two about men,” Grammie says.

“Splenda, please,” Mom groans.

Grammie waves her fork, undeterred. “I know men, when they're coming and when they're going,” she says. “That one'll be back.”

I make a silly face at her, because, well, that's just what I do. I make the silly face, but underneath, I'm really, really hoping she's right.

A
s it turns out, the fourteen hours
between when Bailey leaves and when I get on the bus to go to school in the morning are plenty of time for me to work up a story in my mind. Here's how it goes:
I jump off the bus, smiling. Bailey's there, waiting for me. He grabs my hand, tells me how much fun yesterday was. He thinks I can be great at basketball. He's been thinking about it, and I'm really quite a natural. I just need a little polish, and who better to teach me than him? He will be over every day from now on, to show me things. Not only that, but he'll walk the halls with me, holding my hand, not allowing me to exert myself, so my strength will be saved for the game.