Betti on the High Wire (15 page)

Sam turned to me and snapped her blue gum.
“What?”

I put my nose in the air and walked over to Timmy. I tugged on the back of his shirt. “You ... be Snake Lady. She live in tree.” I pointed over at a funny tree. “She speak snake. Ssssss.”

Timmy tilted his head and licked his wire teeth lips. “I don’t understand, Betti.”

Tabitha didn’t understand either when I told her, “You be Fifi the elephant. She has big feet and big nose. You dance.”

“I’m not an elephant. That’s mean!” Tabitha’s nose quivered and she blinked a whole bunch of times.

I wanted to play with George instead.

“George!” I hollered across the play yard, waving my arms around. “George! George!”

George didn’t even hear me. He was too busy with the second graders making funny hats and squealing as if this was the most fun he’d ever had in his whole life.

George was wearing the most ugly hat I’d ever seen. His extra-large ears stuck out like bananas on a vine.

But it was too late for my good games anyway. Kids were already kicking the ball, running across the grass, running around in circles, catching the ball or picking it up, and bombing it at someone all over again. A girl got hit straight in the knee, so she hobbled off the play-ground crying. Kickball made me dizzy.

“Go! Go!” and “Whoo hoo!” and “Run!” they hollered and clapped as if kickball was some great circus act.

Suddenly someone pushed me to the front of a line. I watched my bright white play shoes as the ball came barreling toward me on the grass.

Three ...

Two ...

One ...

KICK!

The campers all reached their arms up, they jumped a little, their eyes all peered up and squinted from the sun as my ball flew through the sky. They looked just like the leftover kids when there was a Melon plane flying over the circus camp.

And me? I ran like crazy. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to run exactly, so I ran straight toward George.

“GEORGE!” I shouted.

The voices behind me were shouting, “Get her!” and “Where is she going?” as I ran straight past all of them.

It was the perfect time to run away. Just perfect. I was going to run and run and run and run.

“Hurry, George!” I shouted, but George was too busy playing with his hat.

That’s when I realized that someone was chasing me. “I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered between jagged breaths. I was known for being the fastest runner in the whole circus camp, maybe the whole village, even with my missing toes. But there weren’t any places to hide in the play yard. No woods. No trees. No swamps.

The ball whizzed right past me, and right past George’s ear.

“I GOT HER!” shouted the dude Bobby Ray. “On the shoulder.”

I stopped running and swung around. “NO ... YOU ... DID NOT!”

“I DID TOO!” His hands were clenched tight as he hit them against his sides. His brown hair was hanging over his eyes and I thought that his backward hat might fall off.

“YOU’RE OUT!”

I didn’t know what it meant to be “out.” I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing to be out.

So I kicked Bobby Ray.

“OW! She kicked me!” Bobby Ray rubbed his bottom, exactly where I’d kicked him. “Ms. Stacy! She—”

Running away was more dangerous than I thought.

So there was really only one place to go.

No one ever messed with old ladies in my country. They were the special ones. Everyone held their breath when old ladies told their stories. Old ladies had seen just about everything. They could see all the way into the past and halfway into the future.

No one would ever hit an old lady with a ball.

I ran right behind the girl who was sitting on the bench with the old, old lady. I gripped the back of the bench with my hands until they turned white. I was breathing straight into the back of their heads. Their hair blew up and down. The old lady’s hair was a tropical blue color, which matched her blue-veined hands. The girl stopped reading.

“Hi,” she said, turning around and looking up at me. Her eyes were squinting behind her crooked pink glasses.

“Nice of you to join us, sweet girl,” said the old, old lady. She didn’t look at me because she was staring straight ahead in her dark gray glasses.

“Those games get nasty.” The girl motioned with her head toward the kickball game. “I’m always the first one out.”

I nodded. Nasty. Which must’ve been the Melon word for when a ghost got mad and gave a bad kid purple pimples.

“I’m Mayda,” said the girl, smiling just a little. “And this is Nanny. We’re reading. You can listen, if you want.”

Nanny patted a place on the bench next to her, just as the kickball bounced toward the bench and landed between Nanny’s brown slipper shoes. Camp Lady Stacy was waving like crazy to me across the play yard.

It was the end of kickball and the end of Day Camp.

I’d have to run away on another day—I’d just have to wait—because I didn’t want to move an inch. I wanted to sit right there on the bench next to Mayda and Nanny. Mayda watched the campers for a second, and then she turned to the next page of her big book. Nanny put her wrinkled hand on the new page to keep it from flipping over.

Mayda took a breath and was about to start reading, when I suddenly blurted out, “My name is Babo. Betti. Betti Babo. You can call me Betti. Mrs. Buckworth’s mama. It maybe is easier.”

IT IS BAD to kick people.

I told Mrs. Buckworth exactly how bad I was. Bobby Ray was a very good boy playing kickball, I told Mrs. Buckworth, but I was a very bad girl. Because I wanted to kick him in the bottom. For no good reason. That’s just how I am. Horrible.

I was all ready for Mrs. Buckworth to tell me to pack up my orange bag because I’d be flying straight back to the circus camp. Immediately.

Instead, she said I was ... grounded.

“Grownded?” Being grounded sounded horrible!

No TV for the rest of the day. No swinging on the swinging seats in the yard. I had to play quietly in my room. That’s what Mrs. Buckworth said.

I scrunched my face. “Only ... one
day?”

“Betti,” she said, “you’re not a bad girl. I know better than that.”

“Yes I am.” I shook my head lots of times. “Bad bad.”

“No, I think there must’ve been a reason that you kicked Bobby Ray.” Mrs. Buckworth tilted her head and looked straight into my eyes. “Still, you’re absolutely right. It’s not nice to kick anybody. For any reason. And because you’re smart enough to know that already, well then, you’re grounded for today. I’m sorry.”

I sighed.

First I sat in my yellow room and ate some leftover lunch out of my orange bag. Then I drew some horrible pictures for Auntie Moo in my Empty Book. Mean backward hats, and wire teeth, and a pig mouth, and crazy spiked hair, and me kicking a bad boy. I also wrote down important new words like “drive me crazy,” and “nuts,” and “dude.” Auntie Moo would want to know these words too. I read her letter again and folded it up neatly.

I changed out of my Day Camp clothes, back into my circus dress, and stood in front of the mirror. I pretended I was the Snake Lady. “Ssssss. Ssssss.” I swayed back and forth to a rattlesnake rhythm. I pretended that I was the Hairy Bear Boy. I beat my chest and squinted my eyes and put my nose right up to the glass. I pretended I was Santy Claws and the Fairy Ghost with Teeth. I growled and scratched and chomped my fangs like a little tiger.

Then I got on top of my bed and put my arms out and put one foot in front of the other. My line in the sky. I had to practice every second so those Melon campers would believe me. I did live at the circus. I am a circus star. I watched my feet as I walked to the end of my bouncy bed, and—

“Betti?”

I tripped on my pillow and tipped over.

Lucy tilted her head and stared at me. One of her ponytails was practically on top of her head and the other was way down by her shoulder. Her play pants had big circles of dirt on the knees. “What are you doing, Betti?”

“I am playing.”

“Playing
what?”

I opened my mouth really wide. “I am playing that a lady ghost watch me and try to steal my teeth.”

“Oh,” said Lucy.

“Then ... an important ghost man with claws come down from sky.” I pointed at my ceiling. “He only come one time in year—today. But they are not my mama and dad.”

“Well, can I play too?” Lucy didn’t wait for an answer. She came and sat down right next to me.

“I am bad. I am grounded.”

“Sometimes I’m bad too. Really, really bad. I get grounded all the time.” Lucy bounced on the bed, which made me bounce too. “But I don’t want to play that game with the teeth lady or the man with claws.” In about one second Lucy ran out of my room hollering, “I know!” And then came leaping back. “Look, Betti! Look what I have!”

Lucy’s little hand was gripping a doll with wheels on her shoes. “Her name is ... Roller Derby Tina. She’s my very favorite ... I never even play with her ’cause ... don’t want her to get dirty ... or to ...”

Gobbledygook.

Lucy held her doll up in front of my nose so I had to look at her up close.

“Rolling Derby Teeena. She is like ... picture.”

“What picture?”

I got up and opened my secret door closet. I took out my orange bag and dug to the bottom for the picture. Lucy with wheels on her feet.

“Oh!” Lucy beamed. “That’s me roller-skating!”

“It is ... fun?”

“It is so fun. I love to skate. And I’m so good, Betti. You should see me! Sometimes I roller-skate outside, and sometimes Dad takes me to the roller rink. He’s not as good as me though. I’m probably the best skater in the world.” Lucy started to twirl around my yellow room. Then she lifted one leg and bounced around and put her arms out like an exotic bird.

Once in a while Lucy did something interesting. I really needed to practice for the circus, but instead I said, “I want to play that.”

“Well, Dad said that I can’t skate unless I skate with him. It’s kinda dangerous, he says. But maybe we can just try them on.”

Dangerous? Perfect.

“Okay. Yes.” And just as I said it, Lucy was out the door in a flash. When she came back she had two pairs of roller skates in her hands, one tiny red pair and one enormous blue and white striped pair. Lucy held out the big pair for me as she took off her play shoes and laced up the red skates on her feet.

I took the huge wheel shoes in my hands and looked at them. I rolled one of them up and over my orange bag and along the edge of my bed. They were about as long as my arm. “My wheel shoes are too big.”

Lucy was already trying to roll around on the floor. “Yeah, they’re my dad’s. Just put some socks in ’em.”

I balled up some of my new white socks, stuffed them inside the huge skates, and slipped the skates on. They felt like someone else’s feet, but I didn’t care. My missing toes never felt much anyway.

“It’s kinda hard at first.” Lucy giggled, holding on to my arm.

I tried to roll. It was like walking in the pig yard, heavy and sloppy. But I felt so tall. Like a giant! The tallest girl in the world! Like my mama!

“Let’s go outside,” I said.

Lucy looked toward the door. “We’re not supposed to.” She shuffled her skating feet. “Mom’ll get mad. We’re supposed to stay here while she’s working in her office.”

Perfect. I was grounded, so I was supposed to play inside. But I had to make Mrs. Buckworth really, really mad. Maybe it was even possible to run away on roller skates, like a circus star. To roll and roll and roll and roll away. “Just for one minute?”

“Well, I guess a minute is okay. We have to be quiet though. Okay, Betti?”

I nodded and threw my orange bag over my shoulder, and then we tiptoed into the hallway in our roller skates. I clunked behind Lucy, holding on to the wall. My circus dress was getting all clumped up around my knees. Rooney woke up from his nap on the sofa and Puddles stretched and itched herself. We passed a door that was open a crack. Lucy looked back at me and said “Shhhh,” but I had to peek inside.

Mrs. Buckworth was sitting in front of a machine that stared out like a strange square face. Her hands were moving fast. And then they stopped. She sighed and mumbled things to herself and chewed on a pencil. And then her hands moved fast again. Click click click.

Mrs. Buckworth didn’t even notice as Lucy and I slipped out the front door and hobbled down the front steps. Lucy was already ahead of me, rolling back and forth down the sidewalk, with Roller Derby Tina clutched tightly in one hand. “Look at me,” she tried to squeal quietly. “Watch me, Betti!”

I wanted to go faster. Step step, roll roll, but Lucy had no idea how clumsy I was in my own country. Rooney kept biting at the jaggedy threads on the bottom of my circus dress, which made things worse. My hands swatted at the air. “Shoo, shoo!”

Lucy skated around in circles; she went toward the sidewalk and over the cracks. “Betti, watch this!” She held one foot up and then the other.

We skated down the cement path to where the Buckworths’ yard ended. Then we kept going, down the block past all the houses that looked like the Buckworths’ house. I felt happy for a second, rolling away. Unfortunately I didn’t know that the sidewalk was a small hill. And we were rolling down. Not much, just a little. But my rolling feet started to move on their own.

Faster ...

And faster ...

And then even faster ...

When Lucy saw me, her mouth made a little “o” as my arms started waving in huge circles. “Wait, Betti!” I heard her scream. “Wait for me!” She skated super fast to catch up and her free hand reached out for mine. Finally ... she grabbed it. Her fingers squeezed my hand.

Rooney caught us too, and Puddles was barking like crazy.