The Battle of Darcy Lane (11 page)

After I helped Dad cover
the pool out back after dinner—I bet him ten dollars we'd be uncovering it in the morning—I went out front and saw Taylor on her lawn
with a box of sparklers. I walked over because I wanted her to see that I had a bra now, too.

“Alyssa told me you went bra shopping.” I could hear in my own voice that I sounded sad, that I hated even saying her name. I wanted to go back to last summer, when Taylor and I wrote our names in the air with sparklers, and tasted honeysuckle on our tongues, and didn't even know that Alyssa existed.

“Yeah, so?” I could see the straps of a light pink bra peeking out from under her tank top. I was sure the straps were showing on purpose because I'd done the same thing.

“So why didn't you tell me?” I asked.

“Didn't I?” She started writing something in the air with her sparkler's glow.

“No. You didn't.”

She looked at me differently and her gaze fell upon my shoulders.

I stood up taller.

“You're such a copycat.” She wrote something else in the air with her sparkler.

“Yeah.” I took a sparkler out of the box on the porch. “And you're so original.”

Her ghostly letters were barely there when I stepped to her side and lit my sparkler off hers. “What'd you write?”

“Nothing.”

I took my own sparkler and wrote the word
PETER
. Then I wrote over it in midair with another word:
PRETTY
. I watched the letters disappear into the buzzing night air as little sparks flew off the wand, burning my hand just a touch.

“So you probably heard about the Russia game tomorrow?” My sparkler went dead. “Between me and Alyssa.”

“Yeah, she told me.”

“Are you going to come watch?”

“I don't know.” She wasn't making eye contact.

“Oh, like you have other plans?”

“I said I don't know, Julia.” She did a clicking thing with her mouth. “You're never going to beat her. So why are you even doing it?”

I puffed my chest out. “I might beat her!”

She raised her eyebrows. “I doubt it.”

“Thanks for the support.” I looked away.

“It's almost time for
End of Daze
.” She picked up the box of sparklers and said, “I guess I'll see you around.”

“I'm watching it, too, you know. With Peter.”

“Good for you, Julia.” She went inside.

At home, my parents were settling in by the TV, so I said good night and went up to bed. I wouldn't have wanted to distract myself from tomorrow's mission with apocalyptic images anyway.

All I cared about was tomorrow.

Throwing.

Catching.

Clapping.

Turning.

Touching.

Winning.

14
.

I woke up excited
, with a buzzing in my head. I went downstairs to eat a good breakfast for fuel and found my parents watching TV in their robes. On-screen, a local news anchor was being bombarded by big black bugs in front of the courthouse in town.

The buzzing wasn't only in my head.

“You, dear daughter, owe me ten bucks.” Dad opened the blinds on the door to the deck; bug after bug banged into the screen.

I jumped back for a minute with a shriek, then recovered and moved closer again, to study them. They were huge, bigger than any bug I'd ever seen, and they seemed, well, pathetic. They just kept flying into the screen and falling away and then flying away or banging into it again. I slid the
glass door open an inch, knowing the screen would protect us, and the sound was like a UFO hovering overhead.

So.

Very.

Loud.

It was really happening.

The pool cover was black with bugs, the air thick with them.

When I went to the couch, I sat close to Mom, tucking my feet under her thigh.

We all watched the footage again and listened to the anchorman bring new viewers up to speed, talking about how many millions of bugs had hatched overnight in however many square miles. He looked like he liked bugs about as much as I did.

“Looks like we're stuck inside today,” Mom said.

Dad plopped down on the sofa. “I am so glad I don't have to attempt to get to work in this.”

“But—”

The Russia showdown! I had worked so hard! I was ready!

But I looked outside again.

You could not play Russia with the air full of bugs. Was this an act of God? To save me the humiliation of this showdown?

My parents seemed unable to move from the news, and I decided to stay close. When the phone rang a while
later, it was Mom who answered it on her way back from the bathroom.

I knew it was Alyssa. I knew it was time. But had she seen the news? Had she looked out her window?

Mom simply said, “That was Alyssa calling to cancel.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

“What are you canceling?” she asked.

“Oh, just a game of Russia.”

Canceled.

I wasn't sure whether I was relieved or not.

Did that mean it'd never happen or that we'd reschedule?

Either way it was out of my hands.

We stayed glued to the TV into the afternoon, watching the reporter ask random people for reactions to the bugs. Their answers were pretty boring after the first few. How many different ways could people be expected to say, “Wow. That's a lot of bugs”? There was one report of a car accident that the driver blamed on not being able to see because of bugs—“Ha!” Dad said, “Told you!”—but nobody had gotten hurt, and that was about as exciting as it got. So we kept the TV on low and starting playing board games—Life and Monopoly. It felt like a crazy snow day in the middle of summer, and I liked it.

When dinnertime came around and some of the stations put on their quiz shows and sitcoms, things started to feel normal again. So normal that I was about to ask
if I could go over to Taylor's or something, but then I noticed the buzz again. It had been there all day, but I had gotten good at ignoring it. I looked out the sliding doors at the deck—they were still everywhere.

There was no way we were going anywhere.

Today, only the cicadas had won.

Later that night, too late
, the doorbell rang. Mom pulled her robe on—she was already in her PJs—and shuffled to the door in her slippers. I peeked from the kitchen, where we'd been looking at a catalog of fall clothes, and saw Alyssa and her mother standing on the front porch, swatting bugs.

“I'm so sorry to bother you.” Alyssa's mother's words sounded funny, loose.

“Oh, hi.” Mom turned the porch light on but showed no signs of opening the screen door. “I've been meaning to come by to introduce myself and give you a proper welcome, but I've had this awful stomach thing.”

My mother was a pro.

“Oh,” Alyssa's mother said. “No worries. But, well, Alyssa's father's out of town until tomorrow, and I know the girls are friendly. Could she stay here for, I don't know”—she looked over her shoulder toward her house—“for an hour
or two. I asked over at Taylor's, but it's just her and her father home tonight, so, you know. . . .”

“Oh.” Mom still hadn't moved to open the door. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure, sure. It's just that something came up. So can you take her?” Alyssa and her mom were still swatting. The looks on their faces showed they didn't think it was as funny as I did.

“Of course,” Mom said stiffly, and she tapped the screen a few times so that bugs jumped off. She opened the door, and Alyssa slipped in. Alyssa's mother was already gone, running back across the street with her hoodie pulled up over her head. She didn't even say good-bye.

Alyssa came in and sat at the kitchen table. She was wearing her pajamas under a light hoodie, and something about that made me sad for her. When it was clear she wasn't going to say anything, I finally said, “What's going on?”

“Nothing.” She sighed. “What's going on with you?”

“Nothing.”

I sat there, listening to the kitchen wall clock tick, trying to imagine where Alyssa's mother had to go so urgently. Coming up blank, I said, “You want some ice cream?”

“Sure.”

“You want to watch a movie?”

“Sure.”

So we fixed some bowls and started a movie. A few
minutes later, we were both laughing at the same joke. So maybe a truce was occurring; maybe we were powerless to stop it.

But then, during a boring part, Alyssa turned to me. “You know how you said you didn't think they were going to kill Archer?” She spoke louder. “You know,
End of Daze
?”

I shushed her; Mom was in the next room.

“Did you have nightmares like you thought you would?” She faked actual interest. “The mushroom cloud?”

Mom came in with some water for us, and I held my breath, praying for Alyssa to be quiet. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Richards,” she said, and she seemed to smile at herself when my mom was gone again.

So she didn't actually want to rat me out; she just wanted me to know that she could. How could I have been so foolish as to trust her with my secret?

Luckily, she just watched the movie quietly. All the while my stomach felt like a mushroom cloud, exploding in on itself.

When the doorbell rang two hours later—we were all so very tired—Alyssa's last words to me were, “Don't think you're off the hook. We'll reschedule when the bugs are gone. I don't want to be dealing with all their dead bodies. So gross.”

She took off like the house was on fire, and Mom turned to Alyssa's mom and said, “Actually, there was something
I wanted to talk to you about.”

Mom stepped out onto the front porch and closed the real door behind her.

Whatever they were talking about, it couldn't be good. Because I'd ratted Alyssa out, hadn't I? About the money and the naked neighbors. And if my mom so much as mentioned any of that, let alone accused Alyssa of making prank calls, I'd be destroyed for sure.

I couldn't sleep despite exhaustion
—couldn't block out the buzzing, couldn't get Russia out of my head.

I tried counting sheep.

I tried counting cicadas as they bounced off the window above my bed.

I tried fantasizing about a postnuclear holocaust romance with Peter.

I tried reading the book I didn't want to end.

But nothing could stop my brain from picturing the ball, flying away and then back to me.

It felt like some kind of madness, some disease.

Russia wouldn't let me go.

I wasn't off the hook.

Not yet.

15
.

By 11:00 a.m. on Sunday
—Mom had refused to attempt to get to church—Dad was officially stir-crazy. He'd spent the morning pacing in front of the doors to the backyard, checking on bug activity, and then finally decided that they seemed to be calming down. So he announced that we were going to the mall for lunch. “It'll be great,” he said. “I need socks.”