Untitled (48 page)

  I nodded, trying to smile. "I thought it would be a surprise."

  "Oh, she was very surprised. And happy, of course. Your story won first prize in your age group. That's quite an honor. The contest organizers want you to come to San Francisco to read the story aloud at a ceremony; they'll be printing it in an anthology of stories for girls."

  I looked at Fox, and she was grinning. "We won," she said. I wanted to jump up and down and hug her, but Ms. Parsons was still talking.

  "I'm looking forward to reading the story," she said. "The judges thought it was extremely imaginative and well-crafted."

  Ms. Parsons got the contest organizers to send her a copy of the story, after I lied and said we didn't have a copy. She gave a copy to my mother, and they both read it.

  They had to like it, since it had won the contest, but I don't think they understood it at all. "It's very imaginative," my mother said. "How ever did you and your friend think of all those clever names?"

  "Your metaphors are very nice," said Ms. Parsons. She was always talking about metaphors in class. "But I do wish you had shown it to me before you sent it in. I think I could have helped you tone it down just a little."

  We gave a copy to Gus. "It's got the raw power of adolescence," he said. "Great stuff." When I was heading home that afternoon, he said, "Give my regards to the evil king."

  Of course my mother started making plans. She insisted I give her Fox's phone number, and she talked to Gus on the phone. "I thought I'd take the girls shopping for some clothes to wear to the ceremony," she told him brightly. "It's such a special occasion, and I know they'll want to look nice."

  Fox didn't want to go, and Gus wouldn't make her. After talking to Gus and Fox on the phone, my mother said that she was very proud that I had had the patience to work with that girl and that maybe I should write my next story without her.

  She took me shopping and made me try on dozens of dresses that she thought would be appropriate. I hated them all, but she finally settled on a plain red jumper with a black turtleneck underneath. "Not too dressy," she said. "But very cute."

  On the evening of the ceremony, we drove to San Francisco, which was only about an hour from where we lived. My father was away on a business trip, so he couldn't be there. My mother had arranged for Gus and Fox to come with us.

  Fox was wearing a dark blue dress. Gus was wearing a gray suit, but his belt had a big Harley Davidson buckle and that helped a little.

  Gus kept talking to Fox and me about how we'd be great, but I felt a little sick. The story had been ours, ours alone. Now my mother thought it was hers and Ms. Parsons thought it was hers, and for all I knew the contest people thought it was theirs. Everyone thought they owned a piece of us. We were whittled away to nothing.

  Fox and I waited backstage at a big theater with all the other kids who were reading their stories. Four high-school students were in one corner of the room, pretending to talk about what books they had read but actually proving to each other how cool they were. The elementary school kids were in another corner – they were reading first. A young woman sat by the door – a college student, I'd guess. As I watched, she pulled a makeup case from the pocket of her coat and put on lipstick. She looked, I thought, so cool and perfect. My mother wanted me to look like that.

  We waited with the others for a minute, feeling uncomfortable and stupid. "Let's just leave," Fox said softly.

  "What?"

  "Let's sneak out of here. This is no good. It isn't our story anymore."

  I glanced at the door. "We can't do that."

  "Sure we can." There was a note of pleading in her voice. "Who's going to stop us? We're the wild girls." She looked down at her hands. She wasn't Fox anymore. She was Sarah, and she was unhappy. "It's all gone wrong."

  "It's the clothes," I said. "How can we be wild girls, dressed like this? It just doesn't work."

  "They don't want us to be wild," she said sadly. "Wild girls have dirt on their faces."

  "Or war paint," I said.

  As I watched, the college student stood up and walked down the hall to the ladies room, leaving her coat draped over the arm of the chair. I hesitated for a moment, then stood up. "Come on," I said to Fox. She followed me to the coat. I quickly dipped my hand into the pocket, grabbed the makeup case, and kept walking until I found a spot backstage where no one would bother us.

  The lipstick was a lovely shade of red. Fox closed her eyes while I painted her forehead with wavy lines and spots, drew jagged lightning bolts on her cheeks and streaks on her chin. The lipstick felt cool and smooth on my face as she drew circles on my cheeks, lines on my forehead, a streak down my nose. I unbraided my hair—my mother had braided it tightly and neatly. It frizzed around my face like a cloud.

  "We're ready now," Fox said. She was grinning.

  As the elementary school students were walking off, a woman announced our names. At that moment, I grabbed Fox's hand and we walked to the microphone together. The woman at the podium stared at us, but I did not hesitate. I took the microphone from the woman's hand and stood still for a moment, staring out at the audience. Then I said the first line of the story, which I'd memorized months ago.

  "We are the wild girls who live in the woods. You are afraid of us. You are afraid because you don't know what we might do."

  "We didn't always live in the woods," Fox said, picking up the next line. "Once we lived in the village, like all of you. But we gave that up and left it all behind."

  That is the moment I remember. The hot lights on my face; the sweet greasy scent of lipstick; the startled faces in the audience. The feeling of power and freedom as my voice rolled from the microphone, booming over the hall.

  I looked out at the sea of faces – so many people, all watching us. I could see Gus – he was grinning. Beside him, Ms. Parsons sat with her mouth open; my mother was scowling. They were shocked. They were angry. They were afraid.

  We were the wild girls who lived in the woods. We had won a contest, we had put on our war paint, and nothing would ever be the same again. We were the wild girls, and they did not know what we might do.

We stood waist-deep in the muddy green cattle pond. Seven of us. Boys, girls. None of us more than eleven. All of us standing perfectly still.

  "Leeches," Carly had said at breakfast. "Leeches are the way out."

  "Who wants out?" I'd wanted to know, because I always felt fine in the morning when the sun had not yet cooked the juices from the day, and my belly was full of pancakes and new milk, and the long night was a fading memory. Not so bad, not so bad. Ask me how it's going. Okay, so how's it going? Not so bad.

  Carly had given me her china blue okay for you, buster brown bozo look. In fact, she'd swept the mess hall with the look. She could say a lot with a look like that, like sure you've got your pancakes and you've got your milk but how long do you think it really is until dark? Not to mention the cows. Oh, forget it. Just forget it. I don't care what you do.

  I could feel the leeches on my legs. My head felt light and tight and I'm thinking maybe it's nap time, slappy happy nappy time. Maybe just sink under the surface and fluff up a big mud pillow and pull the green slime up to my chin and drift off and wake up somewhere else. Was that the way it was supposed to work?

  "Hey, Carly," I called, "just how the heck is this supposed to work?"

  "The leeches," she said "transport you from the inside out, interdimensionally, if you know what that means, piece by piece to another world. Over there, first you're blood and then you get your muscles and your bones and your skin and stuff and then you're you, and you're not here any more."

  "Bleed me up, Scotty," I said, but no one laughed. "Are we there yet?" Still nothing. We had sunk so low we were just heads in a pea-green sea.

  "This looks like a painting of Hell," I said.

  "They don't send kids to Hell," someone said.

  "They send them to camp," Carly said.

  Where before they'll let you ride the ponies for five stinking minutes, they make you follow the cows around all day with super pooper-scoopers. Look at us. Dozens of little butt munchkins dotting the fields as we move in on the cows with our dark green garbage sacks.

  How you do, Buckeroo?

  Okey dokey skinny-dipping with Carly, leech lazy and taking it easy.

  But here it comes. The moment of transport.

  Or not. Because next I know I'm on my back and on the bank and naked Carly is sitting on my stomach picking leeches off my legs. She looks back over her shoulder at me. "You idiot," she says.

  I'm looking at her bottom but I'm seeing the future. Eaney meany jelly beanie the clouds open up, the angels sing, and I see us dancing, eating linguini, drinking white wine, and checking out Paris.

  Or maybe it was Rome. What did I know about faraway cities that summer?

  "So, if I decide to go jump off a cliff," she says, "will you just stupidly follow right along?"

  She doesn't know I can see the future. She doesn't know that she will have the power to drain the blood from my brain any time she wants; a sidelong glance, a crooked smile, a feather-light touch to my arm, and one time she'll drop her keys and bend over to pick them up and I'll know she's doing it on purpose, but it won't matter.

  "Yes," I say, "I'll jump after you, Carly."

Once upon a time, not long ago, outside a city that was a forest, two sisters lived in an abandoned housing project. The older sister was called Mareen Rotritter, the other Kapuzine. The older sister ran a praiseworthy household, spotlessly clean and unfailingly sterile. The younger sister was only twelve. She spent her time playing with the ancient machines, running down the long corridors or exploring the suburbs.