The Battle of Darcy Lane (13 page)

The week took on a steady
rhythm, like time was a metronome, and I started to hear songs and notes and drum beats in my head instead of bouncing balls hitting concrete and palm flesh. I'd forgotten that I
loved
playing with a concert band. I liked the way I knew exactly what to do and started to wish the world were more like an orchestra, everybody knowing their role.

“I wish I could move to your block,” Laney said on the last day of the first week, when we were waiting outside with Peter again. “Wouldn't that be awesome? Or even your neighborhood, so we'd go to high school together at least.”

She and Peter were making me do the tensies move from Russia like a million times—bouncing and slapping,
bouncing and slapping—against a wall near the parking lot. There were bug carcasses on the school grounds, but not a ton.

I said, “That would be amazing.”

But it was a crazy fantasy. In reality, I felt dread of the weekend creeping in. I hadn't really seen either Taylor or Alyssa all week, and I'd gotten used to it. More than that, I'd liked it.

“You think it'll happen this weekend?” Laney asked. She and Peter were as eager for news of the rescheduled game as I was.

“It's possible.”

I dropped my ball and Peter fetched it and bounced it back to me.

Laney said, “Well, just remember that clarinet players totally rule the world.”

“Trumpets are pretty great, too,” Peter said.

“Band geeks for the win!” I said and we all laughed.

When our rides came, we said see ya. And the second Peter's mom pulled out onto the street, I missed Laney so much it hurt.

My mom had a teeth
cleaning scheduled that afternoon, so the plan was for me to go to Peter's until she got home. He had prepared by downloading last Friday's
episode—we were a full week behind—but it started to drizzle on the ride home so the woods were not an option. Instead, we went downstairs, turned on the Wii, and turned the volume up loud. We took turns bowling so that the Wii kept making noises, but our attention was really on
End of Daze
. Peter's mom was too busy getting dinner ready upstairs to notice.

In this episode, Mack and Archer and the guys I couldn't tell apart in the other story line ended up meeting on a deserted highway. And the leader of the other group didn't seem to like Mack's attitude much. So there was a lot of tension and a lot of intense stares and glares. As much as I agreed that Mack had a lot of attitude, I figured you needed some of that if you were going to survive a nuclear-chemical apocalypse. In the end, Mack had to play nice with the guys because they had medical supplies and Archer had gotten a pretty big gash while playing on some old, rusty abandoned car. Or at least they thought it was abandoned . . . but then there was some thumping coming from the truck and they all gathered around—some of the guys had guns—to open it.

Roll credits.

“That's
it
?” I shouted.

“A cliffhanger!” Peter announced. “Surprise! Surprise!”

I fell back onto the couch cushions. “Ugh! This show drives me crazy.”

“Well, it's on tonight. So we shouldn't have to wait long.”

“This weekend?”

“Sure. I'll be in touch.”

Then we bowled a bit for real.

When I got home
, Mom said that Alyssa had called.

I stopped in my tracks. “What did she want?”

“She wanted to play that game with you, I guess, tomorrow.” Mom was setting the table. Every night setting the table. “But we're having company so I told her no.”

“What company?” My parents never told me anything.

“Aunt Colleen, and Mike and the kids. Melissa and George and the kids.”

“Mom,”
I moaned.

“What? It'll be fun.” She took a plate of pork chops from the fridge. “So
anyway
, Alyssa suggested Sunday morning, but we have Mass. And then she said she had other plans Sunday, and after that, I guess she and her mother are going along on one of her father's trips for a few days.”

I sat down on a kitchen chair. “Did she seem mad?”

“No,” Mom said suspiciously. “Why would she be
mad
?”

“Oh, no reason.”

Mom grabbed a beer from the fridge and opened the door to the deck. “I'm throwing these on the grill. Want
to come out and keep me company?”

It was the last thing I wanted to do, really, but I did it anyway.

17
.

Dad and I spent the
morning getting the yard ready, which meant uncovering the pool and getting rid of bug carcasses. I thought they were crazy not to just reschedule since there was so much clean-up to do and some stray bugs still out there looking for love. But these were friends they only saw a few times a year, and I guess the planets had to be aligned for everybody to get together. None of the kids was even remotely my age.

Mom really went all out with the food, making all sorts of neat combinations of skewers, like beef and mandarin oranges, and chicken and limes. She made fresh lemonade and some other pink drink that was only for grown-ups.

I spent the first hour of the party playing tetherball with some of the boys, who were like eight or nine, then went
swimming with five-year-old Isabel, the only girl. After that, she asked to see my room so we dried off and went upstairs.

I got out my carousel and turned on the music and lights for her, and her face lit up when she said, “It's
beautiful
.”

After that I showed her my ballerina jewelry box, which I'd forgotten was a music box. We wound it up and listened as we watched the tiny pop-up ballerina inside twirl. The song playing was the same piece from
Swan Lake
I'd played that one afternoon, before the calls had started.

“I can do ballet.” Isabel stood and put her arms up, fingertips touching to form an arch, and spun for me.

“Good job.” I clapped and she just kept on twirling.

When she stopped, we both tried on some necklaces. Finally, I got out my Snow White and Dwarfs and she asked why there were only six. I went back to the drawer and showed her the many pieces of Dopey, and she looked like she was going to cry.

I said, “Don't worry. My mom's gonna help me fix it.”

“I love your room,” she said after a while, and I felt like an ungrateful person.

After playing with old Barbies, we went downstairs and sat next to each other in folding lawn chairs while eating ice cream sandwiches, and I taught Isabel how to play Millionaire. She was too young to be any good at it, but it was fun anyway, like when she said, “I have so much money you wouldn't even believe it. I have eighty twenty
thousand and twenty hundred ten dollars.”

The adults were right behind us, and Aunt Colleen was telling some old story about a birthday party she'd invited my mom to that my mom didn't go to.

“Not this again!” Mom said.

“
You
didn't think I was cool enough.” Aunt Colleen sounded happy. “And you went to
Celia McGovern's
party instead.”

“It wasn't
that
!” Mom was laughing.

“Oh, just admit it for once, will you?” Aunt Colleen said. “Now that we're old and gray.”

They all laughed.

After everyone was gone, my parents sat outside for a while, just the two of them, while I went up to bed. I could hear their voices through the open bathroom window while I brushed my teeth. They were laughing a lot, and they sounded like something other than a husband and wife, something other than a mom and dad: they sounded like best friends.

Mom came up to my room a while later and sat on the edge of my bed. “You were really great with Isabel today. Thanks.”

“She's cute,” I said. I was really tired.

“So.” Mom adjusted my bedspread. “I was thinking we'd spend some time in the office tomorrow, start cleaning it out, so you could move in there.”

I woke right up.

This was
big
.

Huge!

I could see it all happening because I'd pictured it so many times before.

I knew where everything would go, what it would feel like to sleep in there for the first time. But the whole thing now made me sad. Because of what I knew.

“You're sure?” I said.

“Your father convinced me,” she said. “And I know you're having a rough summer. This gives us a project!”

“Thank you thank you thank you,” I said, and I sat up and gave her a huge, tight hug.

I changed into old clothes
after Mass, and we spent Sunday morning shredding paper and filling big black bags with junk. If Alyssa and Taylor were playing Russia together, I absolutely did not care.

It was happening!

A new room!

But then I looked out the window of my future bedroom and saw Peter and Andrew giving Alyssa and Taylor skateboarding lessons. I stood there, perfectly still, long enough that Mom came to the window to see what I was looking at. I said, “Why didn't somebody come get me?”

Somebody like Peter.

Mom said, “Do you want to go over?”

Right then the whole gang went inside Alyssa's house, and I knew I'd lost my chance to join in. I couldn't exactly go ring her bell.

“No,” I managed. “I don't think I do.”

“Good. Because I was thinking we're just about ready to hit the mall.”

So we went to the mall and mostly I wanted to just crawl into one of the model beds at the store and sleep until it was, I don't know, time to go away to college? Or at least until the day and hour of the Russia showdown had come and gone and Alyssa had either died or moved or stopped caring about this bizarre series of Cold Wars we'd been fighting all summer.

Maybe the cicadas knew
exactly
what they were doing.

How could Peter do that to me? Go hang out at her house when he hadn't even called me about watching the new
End of Daze
together or anything?

And the weekend was practically over!