I Am the Wallpaper (11 page)

I sliced myself another piece of Dump Cake. We sat quietly for a while and watched as somebody on the other side of the Narragansett Bay lit the last fireworks of the day. Bright colors burst across the sky. Reds, blues, greens, one after another. It was fantastic, like our own private show. It occurred to me that this could have been incredibly romantic, if only Azra hadn’t been there. But then I felt
bad for thinking that way. Azra and Wen and I were best friends.

“I have a question for both of you,” Azra said, startling me out of my thoughts. “Leslie Dern’s sister told her that Dean Eagler’s parents are going away with his little brother later this month, and Dean’s having a big party. Leslie and the JCs want to crash it. You guys want to come?”

Leslie again. Grrr.

“Another party?” Wen asked as sparkling pink fire shot up from the horizon and fell back down without bursting. “How does he get away with it?”

“I don’t know. Oblivious parents. But it’ll be great.”

“A high school party?” he said. “Maybe I’ll come. I don’t know.”

So then Azra waited for my answer.

“I don’t think so. Why should we go to a party full of girls slobbering over Dean Eagler?” I looked directly at her. “Doesn’t that just seem a little pitiful?”

“For your information,” she said slowly, the flashlight making long dark shadows on her face, “I do not slobber over Dean Eagler. You must be thinking of somebody else.”

As a matter of fact, Azra had often told me how beautiful she thought he was. I even remembered her considering out loud what she might give if only she could be locked in a closet with him for fifteen minutes.

But I didn’t say so. There wasn’t any point.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that. It’s just that I don’t want to be so predictable and ordinary.” And then, thinking of her at the party standing in the middle of a
pack of giggling girls swooning over Dean, I said, “Neither should you.”

She tilted her head. “What makes you so superior all of a sudden?”

Fortunately, Wen spoke up before it got even worse.

“I’ll go, but only if Floey goes too. It’ll show that she’s really over being dumped.”

It took me a moment to realize the significance of this, but when I did it pulled me back into the present. Aha! Here was absolute proof that Wen was interested in me! Clever boy!

I tried to think of something equally clever, some response that would seem just as innocent but would actually be full of secret meaning. But I didn’t get a chance. Because somebody laughed.

Somebody who wasn’t Wen or Azra or me.

That’s when the really really weird thing started to happen.

Wen sat up. “What was that?”

Now, we had been to our secret beach many times before, but never so late. Still, even during the day we’d never seen anyone else using it. Who would come here at such a strange time? It was midnight! In a moment of pure terror, I imagined some horrible lunatic with a chainsaw. The person laughed again, and then there was another voice, whispering, getting closer. We sat as still as we could. The voices were coming from the reeds to our left. It occurred to me that they might be the people who really
owned the cottage. Whoever they were, they were making their way through the reeds toward us.

“Quick!” I whispered. “Flashlights!”

With our lights out, it was almost completely dark around us. On the other side of the little clearing, another light moved through the reeds, getting closer. Our visitors had their own flashlight. Suddenly, the wall of reeds opened up and somebody stepped into the sandy area.

“Such a beautiful night,” whispered a man’s voice, a pretty large man, as far as I could tell from the shadow. In fact, he looked as big as a bear.

“Glorious!” a woman said. She’d stepped out of the reeds a moment after the man did. “Even prettier than last night.”

We were at the edge of the clearing. If these people had only known where to point their flashlight, they could have easily caught us sitting there, so we stayed absolutely quiet and still.

The man turned his light back to the reeds and two more people climbed through to our little sandy area. Even though I couldn’t see the man with the flashlight, I got a brief look at the other three. When I saw them, I stopped breathing. I was close enough to Wen to feel him almost jump too.

These people weren’t wearing any clothes.

They were completely, absolutely stark naked.

There was an old bald man, big and powerful-looking, with a huge belly and a blurry tattoo on the back of his
arm. He was holding hands with a skinny old woman with long white hair to her waist. As they stepped into the clearing, they were laughing about something. The person standing next to the man with the flashlight was another old woman, this one with short curly hair and big droopy breasts, but I only saw her for a split second. They all looked really old, maybe in their seventies. Whenever the light passed over any of them, Azra, Wen and I could see everything there was to see.

Everything.

Without intending to, we suddenly knew an awful lot about these strangers, the most private things.

I was horrified.

Under his breath, Wen said,
“Holy—!
”

I elbowed him. He’d said that almost loud enough to be heard. Thankfully, the naked people were still laughing and didn’t seem to notice.

I felt incredibly guilty. These people probably
were
staying in the old cottage, so they had a right to be here, unlike us. Every now and then the light gave an unpleasantly clear view of something I’d rather not have seen: secret hair, saggy skin—I didn’t want to know about any of it. Even though it wasn’t on purpose, it was terrible that we had invaded their privacy, and in such an awful way. But what could we do?

I was too scared to move.

The two old couples, still holding hands and giggling, ran down the beach and into the water. In the moonlight I watched the large man and the woman with the droopy
breasts sit down in the shallow water and splash each other. The second couple ran in deeper. I remember looking at the bald guy and thinking that for a man with such a huge stomach, he had a surprisingly dainty butt.

After that thought, I felt even worse.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that these old couples were in love. Okay, so they weren’t beautiful or special as far as I knew, but they certainly looked at each other like there was magic going on. Maybe that sounds stupid, but that’s what I saw. They might have been old, but it sure looked like they still had romance in their lives.

Wen tugged my arm and all three of us dashed into the reeds behind us. I only just managed to keep hold of my penlight. We were quick, but we made a lot of noise.

They must have heard us because one of the men called out, “Who’s there?” And then, “Did you hear that?”

We ran away through the reeds as fast as we could. Maybe they would mistake us for a raccoon or something. As I ran, I found myself comparing those old couples to Calvin and me and every other unsuccessful relationship I knew about. Why was it different for these people? What was their secret? How did they find that kind of real and lasting happiness? Later, that question, the Mystery of the Old Naked People, would run through my mind over and over again.

We hopped on our bikes and pedaled as fast as we could. Only when we reached the cemetery, a safe distance from the cove, did we slow down enough to talk.

“Did you see that?” whispered Wen. “Can you believe it?”

Azra looked traumatized. “That was absolutely disgusting. So gross.”

I didn’t say so, but I couldn’t help thinking she had missed the point.

“Don’t ever mention this to anybody,” Wen said. “I don’t ever want them to find us out.”

“Maybe they’re still coming after us,” Azra said.

“You think?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m going home.”

The streets flew under my wheels and the houses raced by one after another. And my heart kept pounding. I felt a strange excitement because I had finally had an actual adventure of my own. At last, my good karma must have been paying off. I couldn’t wait for Lillian to come back from her honeymoon so I could tell her.

I climbed back through the open window to my bedroom as carefully as I could so I wouldn’t make any noise. Unfortunately, as I stepped through the window my shoe caught on the trellis, so I lost my balance and fell onto my bed, accidentally squashing Frank Sinatra. His squeal could have woken the dead. It was loud enough, at least, to wake Tish, and that was saying something. The ferret scrambled away as soon as I hopped off him, but by that time it was too late. The shadow in the other bed sat up.

“What are you doing?” she asked me. “Where did you go?”

“None of your business.” I scrambled down from the bed and yanked off my hat, scarf, shoes and pants. I was worried that my mom might come to the room to find out what had made such a racket. Oh God! Why did I have such terrible luck?

Tish adjusted her pillow so she could sit back against the wall. “This is great! Did you know that my mom told
Richard and me to watch out for you? She said you might be a bad influence. Did you know that?”

“She said
what?
”

“I was hoping she was right, and now I think she was. I’m so glad! Where did you go? Did you meet a boy somewhere?”

What nerve!

“I already told you it’s none of your business.”

“Then I must be right. Was it Wen?”

“All I know,” I said, hopping into bed, “is that you better not say anything about this to anybody.” I put my head on my pillow, and for a while neither of us spoke. I could even hear the crickets outside.

“Here’s the deal,” Tish whispered after a few minutes. “You tell me where you went tonight and who you were with, and I won’t say anything to Aunt Grace.”

I sat up and stared at the shadow in the opposite bed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Sure I would. Tell me.”

She waited quietly while I considered the situation. “Okay,” I said eventually. “Suppose I do. How do I know you won’t blab everything anyway?”

“You can trust me. And while we’re at it, I have lots of other questions too. Personal questions. You’re going to have to tell me what I want to know. Not just tonight, but anytime I want.”

“Personal questions? What kind of personal questions?”

“I don’t know, lots of things. I want to know what it’s like to be a teenager. What’s it like to be pretty and
popular? I keep asking you about things but you don’t answer me.”

Pretty and popular? That was a laugh!

I had to think fast. I was probably off the hook with my mother for the moment, because if she hadn’t come to investigate the noise by then, she probably wasn’t coming at all. But after years of witnessing just how mad she got whenever she caught my sister after one of her adventures, I knew things would get ugly for me if Tish told her about tonight. At the same time, though, I didn’t want to let a ten-year-old walk all over me.

“All right,” I said. “But not any old time you want, just tonight. And just one question.”

The dark lump shook her head. “No. You have to answer every question I have or I’ll tell.”

“No deal, Tish,” I said, trying to sound confident. “You get this one question for sure and that’s all I’ll guarantee. If you ask me another, I might answer and I might not. If you don’t like that deal, go tell, but then you definitely won’t get anything out of me. And I mean
ever.
”

We both sat quietly for a long time and I wondered if I’d pushed my luck too far.

“Okay,” she said finally.
“Two
questions tonight and it’s a deal.”

Relieved, I lifted my head again. “All right. Where was I? On the beach at Otis Cove. That’s one question. Who was I with? I was with Wen, you were right. Whoop-dee-doo. But Azra was there too. That’s two. Now I have a question for
you:
Does Richard really have the birthday picture?”

“Birthday picture?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Does he?”

There was a long silence before she answered. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I dropped down to the pillow. I didn’t believe her—I figured she must know. But what could I do?

“So Wen really is your boyfriend, isn’t he?”

I pulled the covers up to my neck. “That’s your third question. I’m not going to answer any more. Now, while you think about how long you’re going to keep asking me that over and over again even though I won’t answer it, I’m going to sleep.” I closed my eyes. My heart raced. What did I do to deserve twenty nights with this nosy little girl?

Eventually, Tish slid down into her bed again and put the pillow back under her head.

“Good night, Floey,” she whispered.

Just then, another series of explosions went off outside. I imagined big globes of fire and color somewhere overhead.