Harry Sue (7 page)

“In the wake of a media onslaught,” I read breathlessly, “the residents of Destiny Towers are fighting to keep a reputation for violence and hard living at bay by refusing to comment on the recent near-death experience of a five-year-old girl. However, they all called the child's survival from a ninety-foot fall a”—I glanced up at Homer. His eyes were shining as he mouthed the word—“a miracle as they hurried through the courtyard to their destinations.

“‘I've seen some amazing things,’ said Dr. Omar Melendez, chief of the emergency trauma unit at Ottawa County General, ‘but this tops them all.’

“‘Sometimes there is no explanation,’ said Borne Peterson, a physician at the West Michigan Clinic for Rehabilitative Services. ‘In this case, there was something to break the fall.’ Peterson recalled treating a man who'd fallen through a hundred-foot canopy of leaves and lived. ‘Trees can absorb energy, slowing a fall,’ he said.

“‘As a physician, I believe in miracles. I have seen life defy science. I would say this is a very special girl.’”

“Wait a minute,” Homer said, straining so hard that he caused one arm to slip through the bars of the bed and dangle at his side. “Read that last part again.”

“‘As a physician, I believe in miracles,’” I read, rather dramatically, to play to the audience. “‘This is a very special—’”

“No, before that. About the energy.”

I searched backward and found the word. “‘Trees can absorb energy, slowing a fall.’”

“Amazing.”

I could see it now. He was pulling himself out in one swift motion. Homer bit at his control box, making the bed rise.

“You know what that means?” he asked, eyes wide.

I stood up. I didn't have the faintest idea, but I wanted to be ready.

“That rock. At the pier. The one I hit …” Homer locked onto me. He could do that, grab you with his eyes, I swear, all desperate and pleading and dangerous.

“That rock at the pier. It has my energy.”

You probably wouldn't understand the importance of a statement like that. I know I didn't.

“Huh? The rock?”

“Nothing,” Homer said, but he had a wild look in his eyes as he stared out his window. A faraway look.

“Violet,” he said finally. “She the one who always PCs up? The cheese eater with the allergies?”

I could see that he was not ready to let me in on it.

“Yeah, the one who can't do her own time.”

“That's easy,” Homer said, and in less than three minutes he had a plan he was sure would make Violet Chump very sorry she had dropped a dime on Harry Sue.

“You sure about this?” I asked him. “Doesn't seem like chalk can do much damage.”

Homer gave me his look that said:
Who's the inventor here?

“Before you go, I want you to set me up with my encyclopedia, Harry Sue. I want to learn more about rocks.”

Using Homer's instructions, I'd mounted a little book stand on one of those trays with legs, the kind you see in movies where fake people are making breakfast in bed for their kids when they're sick. If I fit the tray under his neck just right, he could rest his chin on whatever book was on the stand and turn the pages.

I left him like that, studying rocks of all kinds, using the two-volume family encyclopedia Mrs. Dinkins had scored at a garage sale. His mind had
latched on to something. Homer chewed an idea the same way Ivan Denisovich chewed his crust of bread or his little piece of potato in the book we read about him surviving life in a Russian prison. He chewed it slowly, over and over and over, until there was nothing left of it. They gave the prisoners so little bread that most of them starved to death, but the way Ivan Denisovich chewed kept him alive. By chewing that way, he wrestled every little bit of nutrition out of that piece of bread.

That's how Homer was with a new idea. If you could see it, it would look like one of those bug carcasses that pile up under a spiderweb: sucked dry.

I can't say exactly why, but as I closed the trapdoor and swung with one hand onto the knotted rope, I felt a little stab of worry about it.

Until I told myself that Harry Sue does not get intimidated by a rock.

My morning chores looked like this:

1. Swipe a box of chalk from Granny's supply closet.
   

2. Scare Sink and Dip out of drugging the crumb snatchers.
   

3. Give the new art teacher the infamous Harry Sue welcome.
   

4. Keep Spooner out of the muck!
   

And that was all before lunch.

Let me explain. The chalk was an ingredient for revenge. It was to help teach Violet Chump a few pointers about doing her own time. Second, somebody had to make Sink and Dip realize they would be sent up if they hurt one of the babies. And every new teacher had to be educated about my bad-to-
the-bone character. How else was I going to get to the joint?

The Spooner situation is a little harder to explain. Spooner's parents worked the graveyard shift at West Olive Tool and Die, which meant he got dropped off around the time we went to bed and left for home about the time I went to school. That didn't give us too much quality time together, unless you count the four times a week he woke up crying from bad dreams and I had to get him back to sleep.

His parents seemed okay. They drove a nice car. They were clean. But you don't get chased by bad dogs half the night on one of those happy TV-family shows. And then there was the little habit he had of sinking himself in the pond out back up to his eyeballs every morning just before they came to pick him up.

In our war of words, Granny called her backyard a wetland, a unique learning opportunity. I called it a swamp. Our whole neighborhood bordered the spongy, marshy muck. The only good thing about it was it gave Homer all kinds of things to see through his window. Every once in a while a blue heron would fly through the patch of sky that was his viewing screen. He saw hawks and kestrels and turkey vultures there, too.

There's just a lot to eat in a swamp. It's like a regular bird buffet.

I gave Ferdinand Ponce de León Parker the name Spooner because of the way he backed himself right up next to my chest when I comforted him as a baby. Now that he was older, I made him stay in his own bed. Mostly that meant I spent part of the night on the braided rug next to it, holding his hand and telling him stories so he would fall back asleep.

I know what you're thinking. This is not the sort of behavior you associate with criminals.

I know that.

I always told myself that, somehow, I'd be tougher in the morning.

Spooner was the one who got me in the habit of wandering the house late at night. When he finally fell into a restless sleep, I was as wide awake as Dorothy when she first eyeballed the giant head of the Wizard of Oz.

Spooner figures into Homer's web of all things. Because he kept me up at night, I started messing with the people in China Country who were locked away in Granny's curio cabinet. To do that, I had to figure out how to pick the lock. But time goes slower from 2 to 4 a.m. For real. I can pick just about anything now with a jumbo paper clip.

I started putting the squirrel next to the princess instead of his nut. I took the kissing cousins and turned them around so their butts touched instead of their lips. Since Granny made Sink or Dip dust
the cabinet a couple of times a week, she always blamed it on them.

Then later, just before the end, I started breaking off tiny little pieces, the flip of a dress or one little stuck-out princess finger. Whoever noticed the damage—Sink or Dip—would show it to the other in a panic. And if I happened to be around, I'd say casually, but loud enough for Granny to hear, “Oh, that must have been my celestial beings getting knocked out of orbit after Granny put Princella in the closet for coloring on her Quick Pick.”

Or some such.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Unless you kept him under constant surveillance, Spooner would slip outside and wade into the marsh just before his parents were due to arrive.

That morning, I used my trusty jumbo clip to pick the lock on the cheap metal cabinet where Granny kept the art supplies. She never used them herself, as I have already demonstrated. It was just a front for the parents, swung open wide during interviews to con them into believing we gave a regular course in art education.

Next, I had the challenge of keeping an eye on Spooner while grinding the chalk in the blender according to Homer's instructions.

“Special treat today,” I said, picking the lock on Granny's private pantry. “We got Frosted
Flakes.” My hope was that real Frosted Flakes would keep Spooner at the table.

I eyeballed the morning crowd: four sleepy crumb snatchers whose parents all worked the third shift.

Spooner looked back at me through one squinted eye.

I returned his look with my look that said:
Please don't burn the spot, Spooner.

I had too many other things to do.

“Spooner's gonna pour,” I said.

The crumb snatchers on the graveyard shift knew the drill. Keep quiet and eat your chow. Granny didn't allow for much noise before 9 a.m.

Too bad I wasn't one of them.

I dumped the chalk in the blender and pressed the button. Clouds of white dust spewed out of the top. I let it run until I couldn't take the burned smell of the motor any longer. Then I poured it all in a paper bag and tossed it in my backpack.

As soon as I turned around, I realized my “please don't burn the spot” look did not have the desired effect. Spooner had flown.

Dang.

I glanced at the rest of the crumb snatchers and then back at the clock. I'd have to work fast. There was plenty of danger for three sleepy preschoolers in Granny's kitchen and I refused to risk it. I pulled
the box of matches off the window ledge and ran upstairs and down the hall until I stood right under the smoke alarm. I lit a match, blew it out, and let smoke drift upward. It's what I call “Granny's little alarm clock.”

As a rule, I didn't like to rely on Granny to oversee the crumb snatchers. But she'd have to do in a pinch.

I ran back downstairs, aimed cereal at three bowls, splashed on milk, tossed a handful of plastic spoons on the table, and took off after Spooner.

“I am not gettin' dirty today,” I yelled into the marsh grass and duckweed at the end of the backyard. Pretty soon I heard the sound of water sucking into mud.

“Dang it, Spooner.” I pulled off my shoes and socks and rolled up my jeans.

“Okay, okay, look. I'm a stupid zebra coming down here all by myself for a drink of water.” I waded in. The grass could cut you like glass if you weren't careful. And man, was it cold.

See, Spooner's mom was from Spain and his dad was from Portland, which made him exactly … a crocodile. Spooner loved crocodiles. It was the only way to get through to the kid. Call him an alligator and he won't look you in the eye for days.

“Crocodiles love zebras,” I said, wading up to my knees and watching the stink water soak into the rolled-up fabric of my jeans. I parted a clump of
grass shot through with old stalks of purple loosestrife and was picking seedpods out of my hair when he sprang at me.

Little bits of algae and swamp muck spattered my shirt. A crayfish clamped on to my sleeve.

“Awww,” I screamed in a miserable way as he pawed at me. “Right on my muzzle. I'm a goner.”

I wrestled the skinny little bit of nothing that was Spooner soaking wet onto land.

“Now you're gonna shake me and shake me until my arms and legs fly off and I'm nothing but a zebra burrito.”

I dragged him back to the house, swamp stink clinging to my skin. Spooner wasn't giving up any information. Of all the crumb snatchers at Granny's Lap, Spooner and Hammer Head had my vote for “most likely to survive the joint.” Hammer Head because he'd scare the pants off all but the most experienced cons. And Spooner because he didn't mind funky. Not one bit. That, and he seemed to me like a serious candidate for the ding wing.

Granny was glaring at me from the window, a peppermint stick clamped between her teeth—no cigars until the graveyard shift had been picked up. I splashed cold water from the outdoor tap onto me and Spooner, hoping it would rinse out enough of the smell so I wouldn't attract attention. At least so Ms. Lanier wouldn't spray me with that fruit stuff. Harry Sue does not wear foo foo.

“What the bee-jeezus happened here?” Granny asked, swiping at the chalk on the counter and grinding peppermint between her teeth. She still had on her pink shower cap, the one that covered all the pin curlers. Her red-rimmed eyes and naked lids hadn't been painted and plastered over with
makeup yet, so she looked like one of those pink hairless laboratory rats.

Sink looked up from the table, where she'd joined the kids.

“What is that stuff?” she asked me, knowing full well I wouldn't answer to Granny.

“That?” I plastered Spooner into his chair and slid a bowl over to him. “Why, that's cocaine,” I told her.

Sink rolled her eyes and began picking glumly at the dried-up bits of cereal on the table. Dip moved from her place in the doorway to a seat at the table and pulled the box of cereal toward her, pouring for Spooner and herself.

Everyone used slow, deliberate movements in the morning to avoid getting a clout from Granny. They knew it was lockdown until she'd had two cups of coffee.

“I'm gonna give it to the kids to keep 'em happy all day long,” I said, loud enough for Granny to hear. Truth to tell, Granny was more than a little deaf, and the extra noise made everybody at the table jump.

“See, I was gonna use cold medicine,” I kept on, calmly patting myself with paper towels, “but yesterday at school, I saw on the Internet how this lady down in Florida got sent up for an eight ball for accidentally killing a baby she was trying to keep quiet.”

“You're a liar,” Dip said, pinching a big fold of her bloated cheek.

I yanked the wax bag of cereal out of the Frosted Flakes box.

“Eight years and change …”

I stopped then, knowing I had everybody's ear, even the pink rat slurping coffee at the counter. Reaching into the junk drawer for a bottle of Elmer's glue, I put two big blobs on the counter and smacked the empty Frosted Flakes box over them. About twice a year, Granny bought some nice name-brand cereal and let the kids eat it. For days afterward, she left the empty box on the counter for show.