Darnay Road (7 page)

Darnay
Road 15

Abigail
May and I have combed the neighborhood looking for those kittens.

Now
we’ve walked to the ball fields and the boys are playing a big game here. It’s
about all they do. For hours and hours they live here, even Disbro and Mike and
Bobby. Truth be told even those horrid three don’t look like cat thieves
presently, they just look like disgusting boys chattering, ‘We want a pitcher
and not a belly-itcher,’ while they spit and scratch.

We
watch from afar from behind the broken wooden fence. We can see the Hardy Boys
currently known as Cap and Easy, and they play ball very devotedly which does
not surprise me at all. Ricky is that way too, but he isn’t playing now.

“Ricky
says we can’t talk to the Caghans again,” Abigail May says.

“He
can’t boss me,” I say because he’s not my brother.

“He
says he’ll tell if we do it again,” she says. “And I told him we’d tell on him
then. And I have lots of things I can tell Aunt May.”

Abigail fights Ricky
sometimes, well practically all the time, but he doesn’t hardly notice it
seems. He just thinks she’s funny little Abigail, like she’s a buzzing fly.

“Well
I think Easy is the kindest boy in the world. Way nicer than Ricky sometimes,”
I say, but I hope I don’t hurt Abigail May’s feelings because she flips one way
then another on Ricky.

“Well
he sure wouldn’t miss a game like this if he wasn’t mad.”

“He
mad at your Mom?”

“He’s
mad at everybody for everything in the world. He’s mad at Kruschev and he’s mad
at Santa Claus.”

We
start laughing at that, but not too loudly cause we’ve no wish to get caught
spying on the boys.

“Is
Cap your boyfriend?” I ask Abigail.

“Yes,”
she answers with a big grin. “Easy is your boyfriend.”

“I
don’t know. I can’t have a boyfriend and anyway, he didn’t say it.”

“Well
boys don’t know. You have to tell them,” Abigail says. She is the one who knows
cause she has Ricky.

“But
I don’t even love him,” I insist. But secretly I do. He is not sickening at all
like some boys are, well almost all of them.

“Don’t
say love,” she’s giggling and I feel so stupid. I didn’t mean it.

“I
don’t,” I say, but I did say it. Then I leave that fence and run a little.
Granma is home by herself watching the back of her eyelids instead of Roy and
Dale. Once Roy walks Trigger on his hind-legs there is nothing more Abigail and
I want to see. We’d gone out to the hydrant like we were waiting for kids to
finish supper and come out and play.

But
we’re not really playing at all. That’s our cover. While Paul Tucker is
covering his eyes and counting for hide and seek, Abigail and I run for the
ball fields, see. That’s how we end up here.

Granma
won’t know. If she wakes up she just listens for Abigail May. She says Abigail
is louder than all the other children and if she hears her she knows I’m
nearby. But this time of evening, she just knows I’m around.

So
we’re leaving the fields and walking home.

“They
were so cute,” I sigh.

“The
Caghans?” Abigail May says. She’s laughing.

“No.
No. The kittens. They were so little and we bought them a bag of food. I surely
don’t want them to be hurt.” I sniff.

Abigail
is quiet, then I see she’s crying too.

“Are
you crying?” I say.

“No,”
she cries. “Are you?”

“No,”
I say.

“Well
I just don’t want to go to Florida and now the poor kittens. We can’t even find
them.” Then she just bawls and I have to hold her again.

“Who
do we have for suspects?” I sniff again.

Abigail
pulls away then. She’s pretty easy to distract. Granma does it to her all the
time.

So
Abigail gets out her small notebook with the pencil stuck in the spiral at the
top and she turns a few pages and says, “Disbro Peak.”

He’s
top of the list, of course.

“Bobby
and Mike, though they can’t do anything without their leader.”

I
agree with that.

“Then
we have Ricky, but he wouldn’t,” Abigail says. “Then Cap and Easy because they
knew the kittens were under there but they probably wouldn’t,” she says. “Then
Granma.”

“My
Granma?”

“Yes.”

“Well
I never said to put down my Granma.”

“Well you know a
suspect can be right before your eyes but if you’re blinded with love they can
get clean away with it. Like the bad seed?”

“My
Granma is not like the bad seed!” I declare.
The Bad Seed
is one of the
best movies I’ve ever seen in my whole life. It’s about a little girl who is
the very age I will be on July Fourth and Abigail May will be on August
Sixteenth. This little girl, played miraculously by Patty McCormack, is a
cold-blooded killer. I mean she’s killing everybody. And her mother is just
blind about it. She can never imagine that her little dear daughter is a
murdering maniac. But my Granma is nothing like that.

“I
have to put her on the list of suspects because she knew about the kittens.”
Abigail May licks the pencil lead like she’s Lois Lane.

“Then
put yourself on there,” I say pretty mad.

“I
will but I’m putting you too.”

“Go
on. I have nothing to hide. You think I got rid of my own kittens?”

Abigail
is writing furiously, and she writes my name bigger than all the rest.

I
try to grab that notebook away, but she won’t let me, then she runs off. So of
course I chase her. She is the most exasperating girl I ever knew.

I
can’t run as fast as usual with my broken arm, and no one can catch her anyway.
But she stops running and I catch her pretty quickly. She has her purse and she
swings it at me and I duck just in time. “Abigail May!” I yell cause she just
doesn’t think sometimes. “You could have hit my arm!”

“I
don’t even care,” she shouts, then she takes off again.

“You’re
not spending the night at my house,” I yell after.

She
stops and throws her purse at me and it lands near my feet. I am wearing my
white patents with the small bows off to the side and anklets. I am also
wearing a full skirt and a white eyelet blouse with no sleeves. I have my hair
in a ponytail and my pink headband skimming back my hair. I am kind of dressed
up and Granma doesn’t know. Abigail is also dressed up, wearing my clothes
which are a tiny bit big as a rule, but my white crop top and my pink pleated
skirt fits her pretty fine.

I
pick up her purse and take it to her. She is still holding the notebook. She
takes the purse and puts the handles on her skinny arm. She is wearing my pearl
pop-bead necklace and bracelet. The necklace has popped open so it’s hanging
around her neck in a broken loop. I go ahead and fix it by snapping the beads
back together. “There,” I say.

“Thank-you,”
she says feeling the beads to make sure they’re back to normal.

“Sorry,”
I say. I’m about to add, ‘But you shouldn’t throw your purse.’

“Sorry,”
she says, so I don’t have to.

So
we’re walking home and the crickets are singing like they do, just the boy ones
who are looking for lovers, Granma says. So they’re singing away and I’m
wondering how we can interview all of these suspects and get to the truth, and
here they come, all those boys.

They go by and they are
so stupid mostly, Bobby riding along and singing, “Come on Baby take a chance.
I left my underpants at my aunt’s.” And other boys are laughing, and Abigail
May yells for them to get away because they’re so disgusting.

So
those boys go on by and bringing up the back is Cap and Easy.

Well
Cap is first. “What he say?” Cap asks Abigail.

“He’s
so stupid,” Abigail May says about Bobby.

I
see Easy riding by the curb and that old glove is swinging on his handlebar
like earlier. Well here are two of the suspects. I look at Abigail and she’s
twirling her purse while she walks along and Cap’s feet are off his pedals and
he’s walking his bike along with that bat under his arm.

Easy
says, “You go to a party?”

He
means my outfit. I laugh at that. “No,” I say like, ‘No!’

I
can hold his eyes a little longer, even though they make me feel so funny. But
I have to be able to cross his name off the list of suspects so here I go. “I
can’t find the kittens.”

He
just looks at me. He pedals a couple of times to right his bike, then one foot
goes down and he moves it like his bike is a scooter. He has the most beat up
tennis shoes, those kind boys wear for basketball, Converse, just beat up, but
I know he’s so hard on them. He likes shirts with short sleeves or no sleeves.
His hair is longer than ever. It just grew overnight.

I
hear Abigail squeal and there she goes on those handlebars of Cap’s, purse and
skirt and oh my. Cap is riding her in a big circle. Seeing her foolishness
makes me more determined than ever to stay on the case.

“You
didn’t see those kittens or something?” I say.

“No,”
he says like I’m pretty crazy to think he had.

“What
about Cap?”

“No,”
he says.

I
just stare at the ground. We are not moving now.

“Why
you along here?”

“Just
walking,” I say.

He
looks away, but he has that little smile like he’s got a joke or something.
Boys are too difficult.

“I
best get home,” I say. I call out to Abigail May and she acts like she can’t
hear me, but Cap does. He tells her she better answer.

“I’m
coming,” she says and Cap rides over to the curb and Abigail hops off. Then she
twirls in her skirt but it just bells out some. I can’t believe it. There is no
telling what Abigail May will do next.

So
she comes by me and we start walking but those boys are behind us. “What should
we do?” Abigail says clinging to my good arm and walking with me.

“Nothing,”
I say horrified. We should get out of here is all I can think. “They don’t know
about the kittens,” I say. But I wish they’d offer to help us find them. Mostly
I wish they’d ask Disbro Peak, but he wouldn’t admit he’d taken them, would he?

“We
have to find if Disbro has them,” I say.

“Let’s
ask them to help,” Abigail says excitedly.

“No,”
I say. If Easy wanted to help he’d of said it.

But
here they come on their bikes. Easy is beside us riding along the curb and Cap
comes up on the sidewalk behind Abigail.

“Beep,
beep,” Cap says.

Abigail
squeals and laughs.

“Hey
Georgia,” Easy says, “you want to go to the Quick Shop?”

The Quick Shop is near
our house. We never go there because the prices are higher than Moe’s or Mac’s
and it’s just a hangout for bigger kids. And they sell magazines behind the
counter with bare ladies who show their bottoms and tops. Granma says it’s a
terrible place that will bring down the neighborhood. They sell slushies there,
red and blue. Abigail May says Ricky goes there and gets one all the time and
he says they are better than snowcones. Aunt May doesn’t know.

“I’m
not allowed,” I say. I look at Abigail May and I know she wishes I’d said okay.
But we are not at all going there. “We have to find the kittens,” I say.

I
take Abigail’s hand then. I pull her along. She looks back at Cap, but she
doesn’t fight me right off. Then she breaks away and runs back to Cap. “Hey,”
she says, “will you ask Disbro if he has the kittens?”

I
am waiting. I know Easy is beside me again, but I don’t look at him. I wanted
him to say he’d look for the kittens, and he didn’t. So now I just feel so
embarrassed about it, and about going to the Quick Shop. He’s too old, and he
smokes and he goes there and there are other girls, older girls there he
probably knows. And I can’t find the kittens, and Abigail May might have to
move. Sometimes it’s really unfair, and just so hard.