My Stupid Girl (20 page)

“Look, all we have to do is get this ladder
to Lucy’s house without anyone seeing us. It’s not that far away and no one is
out. It’s too late and too cold for anyone to care.” I shivered slightly as I
laid the gift on the rungs, more out of nerves than anything else. We all put
our flashlights in our pockets and picked up the ladder. Imagine the sight of
three punk boys tramping through a rich neighborhood, all dressed in black,
hoods up, carrying a huge ladder and a big wrapped box. I was sure the bomb
squad was going to cut us off at any moment. Despite what I’d said to Johnny, I
was really hoping that no one’s Aunt Edna was sitting by the window tonight,
bored out of her mind and watching for any sign of life.

After a few moments of blundering along, we
decided to walk behind bushes, just in case. That probably made us look even
sketchier, but we had no choice. 

“So, dude, how are you carrying that box up
to her?” Johnny’s voice, coming from the front of the ladder line, told me he
really didn’t believe any of this was actually going to work.

“Carefully,” I answered with determination.
This was going to happen, even if we all went to jail. That’s what friends are
for. We turned the corner of the street towards her house. As we did, a big
orange cat leaped out in front of us, which made Johnny scream like a little
girl. THAT made Isaiah snort and drop his end of the ladder. I almost broke my
toe, and nearly dropped the gift box.

“Shhh!” I hissed, in between fits of
laughter. Johnny’s face was amazing; he definitely had more to lose than Isaiah
and I did, if we got caught. He had a happy family in a nice home waiting for
him and they would be scandalized if he got into trouble. His level of
commitment to me was trumping his better judgment right now, and I appreciated
it. Of course, I had my grandma, which was a new thing. But she told me to do
this, so I wasn’t as worried about getting in trouble. Isaiah could have cared
less either way. Once we got ourselves under control and talked Johnny into
picking up the ladder again we continued down the street towards Lucy’s house.
Isaiah kept giggling the whole way. 

“There it is.” I nodded to the double story
blue house completely surrounded by a white fence. 

“You didn’t say we were going into a fenced
area.” Johnny looked around nervously again.

“Sweet,” Isaiah whispered. We both turned
around and saw him staring at the house like he had never seen one before. I
mean, this one was really nice. All the houses kind of looked the same to me,
but this one had a little bit of an edge to it. I’m sure it was all because of
Lucy’s mom, who had to be a decorating and landscaping genius. To my relief,
the silver Acura was sitting in the driveway. Lucy was home.

“So which window is hers?” Isaiah asked.

“It’s in the back of the house.” I
whispered, looking around and trying to plan my best strategy. “Let's walk
around and then go over the fence,” I decided.

“Good idea.” Johnny ducked down and Isaiah
and I copied him so we were all walking and squatting, level with the fence. I
gatta tell you, that’s hard to do in the freezing cold with a ladder and a box
full of breakable things. We walked around to the back of the house and
realized that, because of the way the block was set up, another house was
almost facing it. Nice. 

“Ok, so where is the window?” Johnny
bounced on his heels.

“It’s that one, right there.” I pointed to
the far side of the house. We were going to have to walk through the monstrous
back yard. We would have to navigate the hulking ladder around a small pool, a
basketball hoop, and a big trampoline.

“How do you know which room is hers,
anyway?” Isaiah raised his eyebrows up and down at me a couple of times,
suggestively. 

“I passed it when I went to the bathroom in
their house.” He snorted in disbelief and I rolled my eyes at him. We stopped
below Lucy’s window and looked up.

“I don’t know if the ladder is tall enough,
man.” Johnny was always the voice of reason in our little group.

“Then I’ll just chuck the box at her.” I
gritted my teeth and grabbed the ladder.

“We are such idiots,” Johnny said under his
breath, shaking his head. Carefully, we put the ladder against the house. After
a full minute of finagling without making a sound we managed to get it rested
against the house, then remembered to look around to make sure no one was
watching us. 

“Wait.” Isaiah grabbed my shoulder and
turned me around to look at him. “What if she is sleeping or has no clothes on?
I tell you what, buddy, why don’t you let me go up first and I can make sure
she’s decent.” His face was a mask of seriousness, with only one corner of his
lip betraying his amusement. I punched his arm in answer and turned around to
face the ladder. 

“Ok, here I go.” My nerves felt like jelly.

“Don’t stress man; she’s a cool girl.”
Johnny patted my back like I was a soldier going into war as Isaiah handed me
the brightly colored box. I balanced the box on the top of my head, using my
other hand to go up the ladder. It only took a few seconds to make it up to
Lucy’s room.

I only almost died once.

The ladder was only about a foot short of
the window, which was perfect. I saw a dim light on through the closed
curtains. My heart leaped again; knowing that I was going to see Lucy’s face in
a few moments felt amazing. I had no hands free to tap on the window so I
carefully put the box on the top of the ladder and lightly drummed my fingers
on the pane, praying with all my might that I had chosen the right window. The
mental image of Mr. and Mrs. Peterson opening their curtains to face me made my
heart jump back into its normal spot. It also made me break out into a cold
sweat.

Nothing happened, so I drummed again, a
little harder this time. I saw a tiny piece of fabric move on the curtain. Then
Lucy pulled the fabric aside and opened her window. I was too busy being
relieved to even be excited to see her.

“What on earth?” I heard a confused voice.
It was do or die time. My brain kicked into auto-pilot, thank goodness.

“Hey, Lucy,” I said, my face completely
covered behind the box.

“David?!” Her voice went into such a high
pitch that it broke.

“Would you take the box, please? I can’t
move.” I was straining to keep my grip. She grabbed the box and slid it into
her room so I could climb up the ladder the rest of the way. At the top of the
ladder, I got to take in the first look of Lucy I’d had in a long time.

Lucy’s hair was back in a messy ponytail
and her big eyes were puffy and tired looking. She wore a black tank top and a
pair of green plaid pajama pants. A sliver of her stomach was showing below her
shirt. Her eyes followed mine, down to her midsection. She looked down and saw
what I was looking at and flicked my visible eye with her finger. Immediately,
she reached down on the ground for a hooded sweatshirt and zipped it all the
way up. I laughed but tried to keep it to myself.

“What are you doing up here?” She
whispered.

 “I wanted to see you,” I spoke quietly.
She didn’t answer me, but the corners of her mouth went up for a second. Then
her eyebrows knit together.

“How did you get this big ladder over
here?”

“Johnny and Isaiah helped me.” She stuck
her head out of the window and looked down, seeing both of them holding the
bottom of the ladder.

"Hey!" Johnny did a quick
salute-wave.

"Hey," she whisper-yelled back.
The hair in her ponytail was right next to my nose. It smelled like vanilla. I
wanted to move my face in towards her but I didn’t want her flicking my eyes
again.

"Lucy! Shove! We promise not to catch
him," Isaiah whispered loudly. She giggled then pulled her head back into
her room to look at me again.

“Why didn’t you just call me?” She asked irritably.
Sure, that sounded logical now that I had climbed thirty feet up in the
freezing winter air.

“Open the box,” I suggested, trying to
switch the subject off of my apology decisions. She studied me for a second
then turned around and walked over to where the box lay on the floor. Sitting
down with her back to me, she pulled the box onto her lap. I struggled into her
room and sat down on her windowsill, putting my feet on the carpet.

“No!” She said in a quiet but harsh voice.
I retreated and put my feet back onto the window ledge. “I’m not allowed to
have boys in my room. Don’t put your feet on the floor!” I lifted my feet up,
raising the window as high as it would go. I sat sideways in the window, with
my head turned to watch her open her package.

She glared at me and turned back around to
face her rainbow-colored box. After a brief pause, she tore the rainbow
wrapping off to reveal a moving box. Inside it, she found another wrapped
rectangle. Her head whipped around to give me a look of questioning, but just
as quickly returned to unwrapping. Soon, she held a framed piece of artwork
that had the words “I’m sorry” displayed in graffiti-style writing. After
spending hours getting the lettering just right, I’d searched Grandma’s attic
for a frame that would work. The frame I’d chosen was a dark-wooded antique
with beautiful grooves that went all around the edges. Shapes in the frame
almost matched shapes in the graffiti. I’d been so impressed by myself when I’d
seen it all together.

She didn’t turn around to look at me but I
could tell by the way her hair went back around her ears that she was smiling.
Getting up suddenly, she turned around and walked over in the direction of the
window. I smiled hopefully but she didn’t even make eye contact. She pulled my
legs back into the room, and then reached behind me to push my back forward.
For a second I thought she was releasing me from the “no boy-shoes on the
carpet” rule, but when she shut her window, leaving me sitting on her little
ledge with even less room than I had before, I realized I was supposed to stay
right there.

“It’s getting cold,” she said, as she
strode back to her box. 

My thoughts touched on Johnny and Isaiah,
waiting outside. I hoped I’d left the car doors unlocked, so at least they
could go find shelter somewhere. Isaiah was the type who’d go knock on some
neighbor’s door and try to make friends with some random family just to get out
of the cold.

Lucy placed the graffiti drawing gently on
her bed then bent down to pick up another wrapped package. This one was a
picture I had drawn of myself; it was very accurate. The right side of my face
was covered with dark hair and my left eye peered directly at the viewer with
heavily-lined eyelids. There was no nose and, instead of a mouth, the word “moron”
was written in long slanted letters across the lower half of the face. Smoke
billowed out of the slits between each letter and one lip ring hung off of the
M and another off the N.

Lucy looked over and made eye contact this
time, her eyes a little bit softer. She put the second picture next to the
first one and pulled out yet another present. This one, unlike the first two
rectangles, was oval-shaped. Another antique frame, this one was a dusty orange
that was obviously old and needed a new coat of paint. It was my favorite one
that I’d found in the attic. Inside was the picture I had drawn of Lucy when
she had fallen asleep on my grandma’s couch, her arm laying gently over her
face. Real-life Lucy put her fingers over the glass and traced herself. She
looked over at me in astonishment.

“David, did you draw all of these?” 

“Yeah.” I paused and felt compelled to
explain the obvious. “I drew that one when you slept at my house the night you
took care of me.” She didn’t answer, but put it down next to her on the ground
and reached in for the big square package. This was the biggest, by far. It was
the reason I had to get such a huge box to put everything in. She opened it
slowly, my heart was ready to burst thru my chest with every deliberate tear
and crinkle. She looked at the picture and I saw her tensed shoulders drop down
in relaxation. This time, when she looked over, she gave me a questioning
smile. The large frame contained graffiti artwork with the words, “I love you.”
Bright blue letters with black accents arched across the page.

This was the first time I had told someone
that I loved them. I was putting my heart out there for her to take, or reject.
The most horrifying part of it, I realized suddenly, was that I would never be
able to take it back because there the words were, in her hands, framed. Lucy
stared at it, touching it lightly, like she was studying every letter to make
sure she was reading it correctly.

 "Why?” She asked, not leaving the
ground but searching my face intently, her eyes boring into me. I kept my chin
up, determined to make her believe what I felt.  

"Why do I love you?!” I was shocked
she had to ask. “You’re all I’ve thought about for weeks, Lucy. You’re
everything I’m not. You’re…”  But I paused.

How do you describe someone like her?
“You’re indescribable, Lucy Peterson,” I finally said. 

Her face went blank. Not angry or happy or
any discernible emotion. It was like she was processing and didn’t want me to
see how she felt about what was running through her head. I waited for a
response.

A soft knock from the other side of Lucy’s
door broke the spell. Adrenaline shot through to my fingertips.

“Sit still,” she whispered fiercely,
running over to me and throwing the curtains shut so they were covering my
body. She sat back down next to her bed, on the ground.

“Come in.” Her voice was higher but sounded
natural. No one would ever guess there was a creepy neighborhood night-walker
sitting in her windowsill.

Lucy’s mother spoke, “You ok, hun? I thought
I heard something.” Lucy’s mother walked in and shut the door behind her, likes
she was planning on staying for a while. Commence panicked sweating. I prayed
Isaiah and Johnny wouldn’t start throwing rocks or something.