Thwonk (8 page)

I grabbed my car keys, flung on my black bomber jacket, and headed to my Volvo and destiny.

Peter’s Dutch Colonial was at the end of the Sweetwater Lane cul-de-sac; I drove up to it slowly, my heart thumping in my larynx. The Sunday
Times
was still in the driveway. The windows sparkled with promise and eternity. Peter’s mother walked past the big bay window in a red robe, scratching her head and yawning. I smiled. Soon we would spend holidays together. I would be a model daughter-in-law: caring, hospitable, impervious
to stinging criticism. I would keep my judgmental thoughts to myself, especially about the stupid stone pig statue on the front lawn that made a perfectly fine house look like an indoor petting zoo. Peter’s mother glared out the window at the
Times
at the far end of the driveway and made an unsavory gesture in honor of the paper person. Maybe Jonathan should sprinkle her with something. I opened the car door to get out; Jonathan held up his hand.

“Stay here,” he said quietly. “You cannot be present at the shooting.”

He fluttered out of the car.

“This will be the last opportunity, my friend, for you to change your mind. Once the arrow pierces his heart, there is no turning back!”

“
Pierce it, Jonathan!
”

He whooshed out the door past a nervous woman walking a toy poodle. Love was in the air. I breathed it in deep as the poodle peed on my car. Jonathan flew past the stone pig statue and approached the green front door. He disappeared through it without a trace. I put on my sunglasses, slumped down, and waited with the engine running like the driver in a bank heist.

My ears strained, listening for the
thwonk.
I might not hear it, of course, since Jonathan’s
thwonks
were quiet—not surprising, given his size.

The sun hit my car windshield like a beacon. I sensed the eyes of every neighbor upon me. I looked
suspicious. I drove around and around the cul-de-sac, waiting for Jonathan to appear. My sinuses filled; I blew my nose and told myself there were lots of reasons to be calm.

I checked my watch. Twenty-two minutes had passed and still no cupid. Something awful had happened!

A rush of guilt poured over me. Manipulating someone was an awful thing to do. I was a terrible person and now I was being punished!

I tore off my sunglasses.
I’m sorry
, I wailed inside.

Suddenly, like an angry bird, Jonathan shot out the Terrises’ upstairs window and dived into my front seat.

“Go!” he shouted, breathing hard.

I rammed the Volvo into drive and took off. “
What happened? Did you do it?
”

“He kept moving,” Jonathan said. “I am not certain that I got him.”

I ripped the car to a stop.

“He was very resistant.”

“
You introduced yourself?
”

“Of course not! His heart is hard!”

“
What does that mean?
”

“It means that we wait.”

“
How long do we wait?
”

He looked at me with piercing eyes. “That depends upon the dimension of resistance.”

I attempted to collect myself. “But if it didn’t take, you go back, right?”

He was silent.

“
You shoot him again, right?
”

Jonathan looked sadly out the car window and said nothing.

It was Monday morning, 6
A.M.
I’d hardly slept. Jonathan was watching me from the top shelf of my bookcase, leaning against my copy of
Alice in Wonderland
, which seemed bleakly symbolic.

“Don’t you sleep?” I asked.

“Not during a Visitation. Get dressed, please. There is much to accomplish.”

“Don’t you have any idea what’s going to happen?” I wailed.

Jonathan zoomed off the bookcase and fluttered
in my face. “It is too soon to determine the outcome.”

“I could die from stress!”

Jonathan gave me a sympathetic pat and pirouetted on my shoulder.

“Patience, my friend.”

I got dressed in my ice-green pants and floppy turtleneck that cleverly matched Peter’s eyes, which would come in handy if he were to succumb today. My eyes looked puffy from severe sleep deprivation, my skin was a wan, pasty shade. I pulled on my black boots and tossed out my hair.

Mom had taught me the importance of an interesting, healthy breakfast. I went downstairs and ate a lemon nonfat yogurt without refined sugar, a happy, red McIntosh apple, and an Eskimo Pie. Jonathan hovered impatiently at the door, tapping his quiver.

“Shall we?” he asked, and did his through-the-door flitting trick. I tried to beam through the door too.

“
Hey!
” I bonged my nose on it, still earthbound.

Jonathan fluttered back through the door. “
I
am the cupid,” he directed. “
You
are the…” He groped here for proper terminology.

“Art professional,” I whimpered.

We were off.

Benjamin Franklin High was awash in Valentine’s Day magic. The King of Hearts Dance Committee had plastered
red hearts everywhere; they twinkled from walls and ceilings. I stood by Peter Terris’s locker, my arteries pumped in expectation. I touched it. This, ladies and gentlemen, could be the site where Peter Terris falls madly in love with A. J. McCreary, crashing at her feet in passion for all the world to see. Trish came by and accosted me.

“You look like cold oatmeal, A.J.”

“Thank you, Trish.”

“What happened?”

I shrugged.

She eyed me. “Something’s going on.”

“This and that.”

“Start with
this
, A.J.”

I smiled wearily.

“You’re going out with someone.”

“Noooooo…”

“You’re planning something.”

“Ummmmmm…”

“
Tell me!
”

It was killing me not to!

“Later,” I said gently, and pushed through the crowded hall to Peter Terris, who had just filled the corridor with full-orbed gorgeousness.

“Hi,” I said, searching his flawless face. He looked at me, half smiled, and walked away. I clutched my heart. Jonathan was zigzagging between comatose students. I motioned him into the bathroom. We went into a stall; I locked the door.

“I think he needs another arrow, Jonathan.”

Jonathan sat on the toilet-paper roll and crossed his legs. “That is not the solution yet, my friend. These things take time.”

I clenched my trembling hands. “Can’t you speed things up? This is massive pressure!”

There was a knock on the stall door. “
A.J.?
”

I looked down to see a pair of familiar scuffed boots. I opened the stall door to Trish Beckman’s psychiatric stare.

She reached out her hand. “A.J., senior year is a time of conflict. The old gang will soon be gone. No one really knows what college will bring. These are fears that grip us all. If you’re trying to work out your feelings of abandonment by talking to yourself, you know I’m always here to listen.”

“Thank you, Trish.”

The fifth-period bell tolled. I ran to Art History class, slid into my desk near O’Keefe, Mr. Zeid’s cactus, and tried to make sense of my crumbling life.

Mr. Zeid was wrestling with his slide projector from hell, trying to get it to focus and muttering about it being “the wretched refuse of an impoverished educational budget.” He took a sip from his Botticelli coffee mug and told Carl Yolanta to turn out the lights. Carl grinned at me and put his hands together like he was praying.

I bolted up.

I’d forgotten about
the test
!

Mr. Zeid had warned us about it last week—“all encompassing” was how he’d described it—the educational euphemism for a Real Beast. I hadn’t cracked a book because of Jonathan. My grade average would plummet.

Mr. Zeid passed out the test to quiet groans and wails. “Part one,” he announced. “In twenty-five words or less, tell me the artist, what you think he was trying to say, and the greatest strength of the painting.”

He kicked the slide projector from hell and the screen exploded with a Raphael fresco of four cupids circling a nymph, arrows drawn, ready to nail her into oblivion. I knew this one cold. I wrote that sometimes true love needs assistance and that the painting’s strength was in numbers, specifically, the multiple ambushing cupids, providing critical backup in case the lead one missed. I moved to the question sheets and was hurled into space: “What was the precept of art according to Pope Gregory the Great?”

My mind grew fuzzy. I knew Gregory the Great was sometime after Constantine, which told me very little about this guy’s artistic urges. Being a pope he probably had a hidden motive. Suddenly, I
saw
the answer from my art history textbook on page 118. I wrote with freedom: “Pope Gregory the Great believed that artistic images are useful for teaching laymen the holy word.”

Ha!

I turned to the next question like a lion tamer facing a gerbil. “Rubens’s ‘Head of a Child’ is probably the artist’s: (a) oldest daughter (b) granddaughter (c) niece (d) youngest daughter.” Normally I would have stabbed at something, but once again, the fantastic happened. My mind buzzed with the answer on page 415. I filled in “a” for oldest daughter and laughed.

“
Ms. McCreary.
” It was Mr. Zeid. “Let’s keep our chortling to ourselves, hmmmm?”

Right.

I sped through the test like it was a giant water-slide, keeping my chortling to myself. I’d never considered myself a candidate for a phenomenal memory, since I tend to blank on basics like where I put my car keys. I must have been studying subliminally all these months, and if I ever figured out how it worked I wasn’t telling anyone.

I filled in the last box on the last page—“(c) from a tomb in Thebes, around 1400
B.C.
”—and sat back in exultation.

Chortle. Chortle.

Jonathan fluttered down from somewhere and sat on my desk. “You’re welcome,” he said.

Of course.

I smiled gratefully.

“I’ve been watching that Terris fellow,” he said. “It could go either way.”

My soul sank.

“His heart is hard,” Jonathan explained. “That is one of the side effects you weren’t interested in learning about yesterday. A hard heart is never promising, because it signals something deep and foreboding at the individual’s root. I would not suggest going farther until we see the effect of—”

“
Please
,” I whispered, “go back and
do
something!”

Mr. Zeid caught that. “
Ms. McCreary
, would you care to share your enigmatic thoughts with the entire class?”

Never bring a cupid to school if you know what’s good for you. I shook my head as Jonathan flitted.

Mr. Zeid pressed his Doomsday buzzer; the test was over. Glum students passed their papers forward and buried their heads in their hands.

“I advise against any action right now,” Jonathan announced, and buzzed off.

Art History had ended. I told Mr. Zeid this was the finest test I’d ever had the privilege of taking. He sat down hard. I joined the teeming mass of Ben Franklin students thundering to sixth-period classes like lemmings bound for the sea. Peter Terris and Julia Hart were walking arm in arm in matching blue sweaters, oblivious to their surroundings. I approached them.

“Hi, guys,” I chirped. “How are things in the Magic Kingdom?”

Jonathan zipped on the scene and hovered directly
in Peter’s face to observe him. His wings beat quickly. He flew backward a foot, stopped, tilted, and pointed toward the ceiling. He took a small cluster of grapes from his quiver and began eating them. Julia looked at me with total, irritated shock; Peter broke into a wide, friendly grin and started laughing. Jonathan dived straight down and darted in and out between them, his brow furrowed. Peter kept laughing and said did I realize how funny I was? He’d see me around. I watched them leave.

Jonathan landed on my shoulder. “Still too early to tell,” he said.

I ducked behind the sainted statue of Benjamin Franklin; angst surged through me. I gripped Ben’s bronze boot. “I’m falling apart!” I wailed.

Jonathan eyed me somberly. “The human will is not easily broken, my friend. People are not robots.”