Double Dutch (3 page)

HOST:
From yourselves. From jail. From death.

TITAN:
Everybody gotta die.

TABU:
Even you.

HOST:
I think it's time to break for a commercial. We'll be back after these messages.

Randy sat stunned in front of the TV. These guys needed to be locked up or something.

The phone rang, making him jump. It was Delia. “Did you see that? What are we going to do?”

“There's nothing we
can
do. There's no law against talking bad or being mean.”

“You mean we just have to wait until they do something terrible? Can't the school do something?”

“Probably not. We just gotta be careful. Especially you girls. Don't be walking alone after school.”

“You don't have to warn me! Did they say somebody's gonna die?”

“Not exactly. They never really said what they would do, or even might do. It sounded like it was part of an act.” “It worked. I'm scared.”

Randy took a deep breath. “I'll take care of you, Delia.”

“Really?”

“For real. I got your back.”

“Thanks, Randy,” Delia said quickly. “You make me feel real good. Hey, I gotta go. My other line is beeping. I know it's Charlene or Yo Yo.”

“Later.”

Randy got a dish towel and wiped up what the cat had missed from the floor. He wondered how big a threat the Tolliver twins could be. And he thought about Delia and how much he liked her. He chuckled to himself. He never would have had the nerve to talk to Delia like that if the Tollivers hadn't freaked everybody out. He picked up the cat, who was now asleep on the kitchen table. But there was some stuff he couldn't tell Delia or anybody else—stuff like he didn't know where his dad was. He was getting really worried. He hadn't seen his father in six weeks. He was running out of money and food. He was all alone. Except for the cat.

T
HE NEXT MORNING AT SCHOOL, EVERYONE WAS BUZZING
about the Tollivers being on television. The twins were absent from school, which fed the fears and rumors even more.

“I heard they were planning to blow up the school!” asserted Yolanda, as if she had been told directly by one of the twins.

“You did not!” Delia retorted. “Don't be starting no mess, Yo Yo.”

“Well, they could have,” Yolanda replied. “Who knows what they said after the show went off the air.”

“We just better watch our backs!” Jesse said. “Threatening folks on national TV!”

Yolanda, pleased that Jesse, her latest love interest, was close enough in the hall to join the conversation, laughed, looked directly at him, and said, “You are so right.”

“Did they really threaten anybody?” Delia asked thoughtfully. No one answered her.

“I DID hear that the teachers held an emergency meeting this morning,” Yolanda told the collected students in the hall. “I bet we get metal detectors and police in the halls!”

“I bet they're scared,” Charlene said. “I sure am. I have two classes with the Tollivers.”

“Me too,” said Delia. She glanced at Randy, who smiled at her. It made her feel safe.

“Have they actually DONE anything?” Randy asked. “Does anybody have any proof of anything bad they have done? Anybody?”

Everyone was silent. But the fear remained nevertheless. The rest of the school day tiptoed by while everyone waited nervously for the return of the Tollivers.

Delia watched Yolanda breeze through her first few classes. Delia, however, felt every class was a struggle and was beginning to feel overwhelmed with the amount of work the teachers were requiring, and the amount of work it took to figure how to get around it all.

She and Yolanda walked down the back steps of the school toward an unoccupied bench. Lunch followed Miss Benson's English class, and when the weather was nice they usually ate together outside rather than in the hot and crowded lunchroom.

Yolanda carefully unwrapped her egg salad sandwich and announced, “I shouldn't be eating this. I'm allergic to eggs, you know.”

Delia said nothing.

“The last time I ate eggs I broke out in spots and my whole body swelled up like a balloon. My doctor told me the only cure was to eat gallons of chocolate to counteract the disease, so I will be forced to eat five candy bars after lunch!”

Delia usually enjoyed Yolanda's stories because they were silly and they kept her laughing, but today she didn't even smile.

Yo Yo never told the truth. Never had. Delia had
learned to live with it—even looked forward to the latest tall tale that Yo Yo would come up with. They had known each other since first grade, when Yolanda, a six-year-old with extremely long braids, sat down next to Delia and said, “My name is Yo-lan, and I'm from Mars.”

“Well, I'm Delia, and I'm from Cincinnati.”

“Boring,” replied Yolanda. “Mars has bright orange-striped skies. And thirteen moons.”

“Weird,” mumbled Delia. But they became friends because Yolanda turned ordinary days into adventure stories. Through the years she had told Delia of her father's village in Africa, her summers spent in homeless shelters, and her mother's job as an airline pilot. None of it was true.

At first Delia was annoyed at Yolanda's constant exaggerations and tall tales, but after many visits to Yolanda's house, Delia figured that Yolanda lied because the truth about her life just wasn't very pretty. Yo Yo's father was loud and demanding—a former army man—and her mother always seemed to have either a cigarette or a drink in her hand when she came to the door.

“Why you look so bummed out, girl?” Yolanda asked finally. “Every time Miss Benson starts talking about the state proficiency test, you act like she's announcing that all the Shoe Carnival stores are going out of business!”

“It's nothing. I just hate tests,” Delia replied, nibbling on a carrot stick.

“I remember in elementary school, seems like you were always absent on days we had big tests.”

“Maybe.”

“This stupid test is really no big deal. We took it last
year for practice, remember? It was a piece of cake. I passed all five sections—first try, didn't you?”

“No.”

“I thought you told me you passed it too.”

“I probably did tell you that. But I didn't. I failed it. All of it.” She looked at Yolanda. “All except the math part,” Delia added quietly.

“Well, it's not important. It was just a practice test. I'm sure you'll do okay on the real thing.”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay. It's cool. Hey! I almost forgot! I got something I want to show you. Look what Jesse got me for my birthday!” Yolanda dug in her book bag and pulled out a tiny box of candy and a pink, flower-decorated greeting card.

“Dude musta robbed a bank—spent all of three dollars for the card and the candy!” Delia laughed as she sipped her juice.

“It's the thought that counts!” Yolanda insisted. “Read the card! It must have taken him a long time to find a card that said just what I wanted to hear!”

“You sure you didn't buy it yourself? Seems like I remember last Valentine's Day, you bought yourself ten Valentines and swore you had ten boyfriends!”

“That was last year when I was a child of thirteen and before I met my true love, Jesse.”

“Your true love? You don't know anything about him!”

“I'll find out if I decide I like him well enough to ask. ‘Never waste too much time on eighth-grade boys' is my motto. But Jesse's got potential. He's got a bit of class-enough to pick out such a cool gift.”

“He coulda picked up the first card with hearts and flowers he saw and you woulda loved it! Your brain is noodle soup when it comes to boys.”

“Read it. Read it. I want to hear it out loud!” Yolanda jumped up from the bench and pretended she was holding a microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen! Words of love from Jesse Johnson to the lovely Yolanda Pepper!”

Delia frowned. “I don't feel like it. Read your own stupid card.” She jerked away and started to stuff her uneaten sandwich back into the brown paper bag.

Yo Yo looked sharply at Delia, like she was determined to say something. She took a deep breath and asked, “Why, Delia?”

“I just don't want to. I left my glasses at home. Leave me alone!” The softness of the sunny day was destroyed. Delia shifted uncomfortably. They still had fifteen minutes before the bell rang for the next class. “I gotta go to the bathroom. I'll see you after school.” She started to get up from the bench.

“Delia?” Yolanda looked directly at her friend.

“What?” Delia looked at the sky.

“We've been best friends since first grade, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You were there for me in third grade when my baby sister died.”

“Yeah, that was rough.”

“And I stood by you through all that mess when your mom and dad got divorced when we were in fourth grade.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So it's okay if you admit to me, and only me, your very best friend, your secret.”

“What secret?”

“The only thing we have never talked about.” Yolanda sighed and continued. “I know you can't read, Delia. I've known for a long time.”

Silence. Delia sat back down on the bench, stunned. Yolanda sat next to her. Cars whizzed by in the street beyond the teachers' parking lot. Echoes of shouts from the lunchroom drifted toward them. A bird chirped nervously in a tree. An airplane flew overhead. But Delia was silent. She thought of denying it, but she was so tired of hiding, tired of pretending. She covered her eyes, and let her shoulders drop, and finally she began to cry.

This time Yolanda was silent. She waited.

“Then why'd you stick that card in my face?” Delia asked finally, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Fakin' it. Just like you been doin'.”

“You won't tell?” Delia asked after a moment.

“Who am I gonna tell? And who would believe me anyway? Everybody knows how much I lie.”

“You got that right.”

“I don't know how you managed to get this far without being able to read and without anybody figuring it out.”

“I fooled
you,
didn't I?”

“For a while. I sat right next to you through most of elementary school. I thought you were reading, at first.”

“Mostly I was copying off your paper.”

“Get outta here!” Yolanda pretended she was shocked. “Seriously, I guess I knew, even before I really figured it all out, but how'd you fool all the teachers?”

Delia sighed. “It was easy in elementary school. That school was a mess. Teacher parade. Remember? Miss Pringle
in fourth grade got pregnant and left. Then Mr. Balboa took her place, and all he did was read the newspaper while we played cards and checkers.”

Yolanda nodded. “In fifth grade we had that long-term sub until Thanksgiving—the one who kept falling asleep in class—Mr. Biski.”

“Yeah, old Biscuit Head Biski!” Delia laughed. “Then the lady they finally hired quit by January—I don't even remember her name—said her nerves couldn't take thirty-five fifth graders. And the new lady was so confused, she never learned our names. If we did purple ditto sheets and shut up, we passed.”

Yolanda grinned. “Yeah, that was the life!”

Delia sighed again. “In sixth grade Mrs. Davenport decided to retire early, so we got Mr. Franklin, who got fired for smacking Willie Williams in the face.”

“I don't blame him. Willie Williams was a pig,” Yolanda asserted. “But then we had another long-term sub …”

“... Who never figured out I had a problem,” Delia said, finishing Yo Yo's thought. “I guess I was just lucky in elementary school.”

“Or maybe really unlucky. Somebody could have helped you back then.”

“I didn't need any help. I figured out how to beat the system.”

“Yeah, but now the system is about to beat your butt!” Yolanda repacked her book bag and brushed her hair. She clearly enjoyed showing off the fact that she had hair that was long enough to bounce and swing. “You know, it's amazing nobody noticed you always made D's and F's in stuff that required reading.”

“I was happy when I got a C on a test,” Delia admitted. “But I always did my homework.”

“Mostly you did MY homework!” Yolanda laughed and tossed the brush back into her bag.

“Well, what are friends for?” Delia smiled sadly. “And I faked it a lot.”

“Yeah, I know. ‘Cause you seem smart, and you can memorize better than anyone I know.”

“Yolanda, I AM smart. I am NOT dumb!” Delia's anger and frustration returned. “I just can't figure out what the words say sometimes!”

“So that's why you always had to go to the bathroom when we had to read out loud.”

“Or I'd get sick.”

“With a coughing spell.”

“Or I'd fake the hiccups.”

“Or you'd cry.”

“Or I'd speak so softly that the teacher couldn't hear me.”

“Or you'd say you forgot your glasses.”

“I never needed glasses.”

“You didn't?” This time, Yolanda sounded genuinely shocked.

“My parents were worried when the second-grade teacher told them I was having trouble seeing the board. That was the last really good teacher we had. I could SEE just fine. I just couldn't read it. So when they gave me the eye test, I pretended I couldn't see very well, and I got glasses. Actually, they make everything worse!” Delia laughed as she sniffled.

“Delia,” Yolanda said gently as she placed her hand on her friend's shoulder, “I could, uh, maybe help you after
school or something. We could, like, you know, get some, like, uh-”

“Books with bunnies and butterflies? Thanks, but no way. It's too late.” Delia put her head in her hands.