Summer on the Moon (9 page)

“Park it, soldier. You and me are going to play us a little poker.” The old man slid the deck of cards Socko had found out of its box. The cards became a waterfall of blurred white as the deck flew from one gnarled hand to the other. Although clumsy on the Nintendo DS, the General’s hands were lightning when it came to shuffling cards—as quick as they had been with the matchbook.

The General snapped the cards back into a tidy stack and slapped it down in front of Socko. “Cut.”

Socko sat there.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never played cards before? Not even a sissy-girl game like Old Maid?”

The only card game Socko had ever played was one he and Damien had made up called “Go Spit.” You couldn’t play it inside. Right now he wasn’t exactly in the mood to learn a new game. “They’re just stupid pieces of cardboard.”

“Famous last words, son. Famous last words.” The General lifted the top half of the stack, thumped it down on the counter, then picked up the bottom half of the stack and set it on top. “You try.”

“That looked really hard.”

“Get your laughs in now, because I’m gonna take you to the cleaners, Mr. Wet Behind the Ears. This is a little game called Seven-Card Stud. I suggest you quit moping and pay attention.” He began dealing cards off the deck.
Flick. Flick. Flick. Flick
. Two cards landed in front of each of them with the pictures hidden. “The first two—which are your hole cards—are down and dirty.”

The next card hit the piles face up. “Lesson number one,” said the General. “The poker face. Never let your opponent know what kind
of cards you have. Whether you have the best or worst cards in the world, you keep a straight face. Show me.” The old man glared at Socko. “That is
the
worst poker face I’ve ever seen. What’s the matter with you, boy?”

Normally Socko had no trouble looking blank—he wore the blank face every day in school—but the feeling that he had to reach Damien had just swept over him. In the same way he knew the black car was trouble, he knew something had happened to his friend. He dropped his cards on the table. “Be right back.”

“I thought only old guys like me got sudden urges!” the General shouted after him.

Socko sped up the stairs to his room and closed the door behind him. With his back against the door, he punched redial. After half a ring he heard a click—someone was picking up!

But the voice that answered wasn’t Damien’s.

It wasn’t even human.

“The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service.”

Mom, did you hear what I said?” Early morning wasn’t the best time to try to get his mother’s attention. “Mom! You gotta do it!”

“We’ll talk about it later. I’m kinda busy right now.” Delia reached into the refrigerator and snatched a Phat Burger bag off the top shelf. She was about to bustle past him. Instead she grabbed his arm, zeroing in on a fall-off-the-beam injury. “Where’d you get this big old ugly bruise?”

“Forget the bruise. You gotta check on Damien. I can’t reach him. His phone’s disconnected.”

“Seems like you’re getting in enough trouble all by yourself without Damien,” she said, frowning at his bruised arm. “Breakfast!” she sang out, opening the bag in her hand.

The General grimaced at the cold Hot Apple Tart Delia dropped in front of him. “When I said room and board”—he picked up the box and gave it a shake—“I didn’t think you’d give me a
real
board.”

“You wanted fruit?” She jabbed the word “Apple” on the box with a finger. “You got fruit.” She took the box out of his hands and tossed it to Socko. “Nuke this for your great-grandfather. And here’s one for yourself.” She tossed him a second box.

Socko put both in the microwave and hit the 1-minute button. “Mom?”

“I don’t have time for this, Socko! I gotta get to work. They’re disconnected because Louise didn’t pay the bill. End of story.”

The General put a hand on his belly. “Tonight there’d better be
real
food, because my pipes—”

“I get the message!”

Beep
. Socko took the pie boxes out of the oven and dropped one on the table.

The General unfolded the cardboard flaps and winked back the steam. He snapped the flaps shut again. “Delia Marie, this is unacceptable. I repeat. Real food tonight, or I call my lawyer.”

“Mom, about Damien?”

Delia rested her knuckles on her wide hips. “Hello? I’m kinda in a rush right now! You two may have time to complain, but I don’t have time to listen!”

The General cleared his throat loudly and spat in the garbage can beside his chair.

Delia had just slung her purse over her shoulder but she stopped. “Was that a comment?”

“Darn straight it was a comment!”

“Well, it was gross! I won’t allow it in my house!”

“
Your
house? It’s not
your
house ‘til I’m six feet under, which is probably what you’re hoping for, feeding me all this heart-stopping—”

Socko stuffed his box of hot apple breakfast in the pocket of his cargo shorts and opened the front door.

Delia and the General turned. “Where do you think you’re going, private?” the General demanded.

“Somewhere else.”

“It’s barely light out, baby,” said Delia.

“At least it’s quiet.” Socko stepped outside and closed the door. His house was beginning to sound like Damien’s apartment.

Still holding onto the knob, he took a slow breath.

It
was
barely light out.

Lying in bed last night, he’d admitted to himself he’d probably freaked about nothing. The black car was probably just a car on a road, like the General said. Still … he had learned to trust the tingle on the back of his neck. It had saved him too many times. But even if the car
was
bad news he wouldn’t see it now. He’d learned in the old neighborhood that if there was a safe time it was early morning. Although they might cruise all night, bad guys—like vampires—disappeared with the first rays of light.

He took a few steps away from the house and listened, just in case. But there were no sounds outside, and none from inside either. Delia and the General had probably moved to the scorching-glare stage.

The silence was creepy. While he didn’t miss the sounds of fighting coming through the floor in the old place, he did miss the everyday noise of people doing stuff, like Junebug practicing in the hall when she’d heard
American Idol
was coming to town. Turned out it wasn’t true, but everyone on the fourth floor learned the words to her audition number before she got the bad news.

Maybe today he’d find someone here. Moon Ridge Estates was a big place. Some part of the subdivision had to be populated.

Socko was about to set out on foot when he saw his skateboard lying in the dirt in front of the house. He couldn’t believe he’d ditched it, and that it was still right where he’d left it. Even though it was a piece of crap, at the old place it would have gone missing within ten minutes.

He remembered the ripstick. It was
not
a piece of crap, yet it had lain abandoned and untouched too. Maybe he’d read the house wrong. Maybe it wasn’t empty. But it sure looked empty. And if it was, he’d have himself a ripstick. If it wasn’t? His mom would say, “Then you’ll have a new friend!”

As he kicked down the street he stared at the board under his foot. The grip tape was peeling and the scars and dings on the deck were glaring. But the ripstick was mint. If the kid who went with that ripstick was around, he wasn’t sure he wanted to meet him.

When he got to the house he peered through a window. Empty.

No kid, but no ripstick anymore either. With one foot on his skateboard, he looked left, then right, scanning the street. He wondered which way the kid had gone, and why he’d been there in the first place.

He thought about going back to the house. His mom had left for work by now, and the General would bust him if he didn’t get his
“patoot” home pretty soon. But today Socko didn’t feel like playing his great-grandfather’s games.

Instead, he decided to follow each of the streets off the circle. Maybe he’d find a different phase of Moon Ridge, one where people lived.

Harvest Moon. He stared down the street, which still seemed to be waiting for Phase 1. The road was there. Sidewalks and curbs were in place. On each lot pipes stuck up out of the ground like periscopes, but the lots were vacant.

Socko was about to give the road a pass when, at the back of the first yard-to-be, he spotted giant sections of pipe lying on their sides. He thought about tucking his board under his arm for the trek to the tubes, but left it at the curb. There weren’t even houses on this street, so who was going to steal his cruddy board?

He stepped over the curb and into a dirt yard. Here and there a weed grew out of the parched ground. “Nature’s Phase 2,” he muttered. Even if the developer never planted a thing, weeds, like the ones that muscled up through the cracked sidewalks around the Kludge, were planting themselves.

Watching the toes of his shoes sink as he walked forward, he spotted a tiny black hole in the ground. Ants wandered in and out of it, probably looking for food.

Socko felt the heat from the apple tart box in his pocket. He fished it out and opened the flaps, then broke off a corner of the pastry and dropped it a few inches from the hole.

Antennae tapping, a dozen ants approached the chunk of crust cautiously. Deciding it was food, they mobbed the crust and began to drag it toward the hole.

Socko lay down on his stomach and propped his chin on his hands.

The sugary chunk jammed the hole. Ant frenzy! The ants shoved it back out, turned it, then tried again, breaking off a few crumbs. When the ant gang and their prize finally went subterranean, Socko dropped a piece of apple.

Damien would think he was nuts watching a bunch of ants—Damien
always said he was allergic to nature. But Damien wasn’t here, so Socko monitored the activity closely, every now and then dropping another chunk of pie. He’d seen leafcutter ants on TV, carrying the giant green sails of cut leaves, but this was real, and real was better.

He only realized how long he’d been there when the backs of his legs sent him a message,
hey, we’re burning back here!
He ignored the message for a few more minutes. In some weird way the ants felt like company.

Before getting back to his feet, he slid the rest of the tart out of the box and set it a few inches from the hole. The half apple tart, sitting like a colossus in the dust, would assure him a place in ant legend.

He would have liked to see how they stuffed the giant pie down the midget hole, but the sun’s heat felt like a weight on his back. He turned his head on his arms. From the ground the tubes looked ant’s-eye-view big.

When he stood up, the ants became ants again, the tubes less gigantic, but they did look shady.

He sat inside a concrete tube, legs crossed. Slumped into its curve, he felt the cool through his T-shirt. He’d never seen concrete so clean and white.

One time he and Damien had found a nearly empty can of spray paint in the dumpster. They had sprayed Socko and Damien rule! on the concrete wall of the stairwell. When Delia confronted them, Socko claimed someone else had tagged it. “Who, besides the two of you, thinks you and Damien rule?” she had demanded. Socko was grounded for a week.

But Delia would never sit in this tube. No one but Socko ever would. He could write whatever he wanted. He pulled the pencil out of a pocket, then remembered—his best friend was the one who could draw. Socko’s tag, whatever it was, would have to be simple.

Circle … The pencil scraped across the concrete. Circle. Circle. He
began adding lines. How many? Six? Yeah, they always have six. Plus two antennae.

He leaned back and looked at his symbol. It was—an ant. Compared to a hairy tarantula? Pretty lame. But then he remembered the ants bench-pressing several times their own weight.

THE MIGHTY ANT, he wrote. Jagged lightning bolts zigged away from the stick-figure ant. The lead wore down to a nub before he finished the third lightning bolt, but the idea came across. This was no ordinary ant.

This ant was indestructible.

Radioactive.

Glow-in-the-dark.

Telekinetic.

Kick-ass.

Out of the corner of his eye, Socko caught a flash of movement. The dark car! But it wasn’t cruising this time—it was speeding. He heard a grinding sound, then saw his skateboard porpoising through the air; the car had somehow caught and tossed it as it drove by.

He waited a full minute before sidling over to assess the damage. The board lay wheels up, the front edge of the deck cracked. Socko kicked it over. Stood on it. It still rolled. He pushed it back and forth under his foot.

Should he break for home? Although the prickling sensation at the back of his neck was warning him big-time, he decided to hang tough and go right on making his survey.

As he sped down Harvest Moon, the neck-prickle stung like a thousand needles.

Mighty Ant
, he thought,
Mighty Ant
. He heard words in the hum of the wheels.
Indestructable. Radioactive. Glow-in-the-dark. Telekinetic. Kick-ass
.

He looked over his shoulder. The dark car was behind him somewhere, prowling.

It’s just a car on a road
, he reminded himself.
Just a car on a road
.

When he hit the cul-de-sac at the end of Harvest Moon, he sped
back, flew the short distance on Full Moon that would take him to the next spoke on the wheel, and hung another left.

Again, no houses.

Again, a cul-de-sac. He made a fast 180. His wheels screamed on Full Moon.
Mighty ant. Just a car. Mighty ant. Just a car
. He careened onto Blue Moon Drive.

Suddenly houses as finished as his own lined both sides of the street.

There were still no cars in the driveways, no lawns, no scattered toys, but no cul-de-sac either. This road came to a different conclusion.

The sprawling brick building was so new, the mortar between the bricks was toothpaste white. In the middle of a flowerless flower bed stood a sign: MOON RIDGE ESTATES COMMUNITY CENTER AND CLUBHOUSE.

Socko peered through a louvered window into a huge room with lines painted on the floor. It had to be a gym. Walking along the front of the building, he saw a kitchen, and what would probably be a game room, although so far all it had in it was a lone foosball table. He turned the corner and looked into more empty rooms. Offices, maybe. He couldn’t tell.

When he went around the back of the building he almost ran into a large sign:

MOON RIDGE ESTATES COMMUNITY GOLF COURSE
A
NOTHER
H
OLMES
H
OMES
P
ROJECT

But he barely noticed the sign. Behind it towered a heap of dead trees twice as tall as he was.

Socko had never seen anything like this in the city. Street trees got distorted when the city’s bucket trucks lopped off limbs that grew too close to power lines, but the trees were always left standing.

Dead leaves whispered in the hot wind as he walked around the enormous pile. He turned away, only to discover that this pile was just one of many. Broken trees littered acres and acres of bare dirt. It looked like
the scenes of rain forest devastation he’d seen on National Geographic. He wished he could change the channel.

He watched the ground as he walked, not even noticing that the dirt beneath his feet had turned to concrete until he stepped out over nothing. He wheeled his arms and threw his weight back. He had barely escaped falling into the deep end of the Olympic-size swimming pool promised on the brochure, which would’ve hurt, big-time. The pool was as dry as the dirt of Moon Ridge.

He jogged along one side of the pool and jumped in at the shallow end. Dry leaves crunched under his feet as he ran down the slope.

His back against the wall at the deep end, he slid down to a squat. Now he couldn’t see anything but the turquoise concrete of the pool and the lid of sky overhead. He felt like a specimen in a tank.

For a place that put the word “community” on every sign, Moon Ridge sure was lifeless. He was about to feel sorry for himself, a community of one, when he happened to look up the long blue slope of the pool floor. His jaw dropped. “Genius idea!” The floor of the pool was a ramp, and the floor and walls curved where they met. All he had to do was get rid of the leaves and dirt.

He found a piece of plywood behind the clubhouse. First he scraped the dry leaves into piles, then used the board as a dustpan. Sweat was dripping off his bangs by the time he got rid of the leaves and twigs that littered the floor. All that was left on that long smooth ramp was a fine layer of dust.

He stood on the skateboard on the edge at the shallow end.

Before he could lose his nerve, he stepped on the tail of the board, put his other foot on the front, and dropped in.

The chilled air in the house iced his sweaty skin.

“When you am-scray, you don’t mess around.” The old man closed the book in his lap.

In Socko’s absence the General had put on a sweater. Just looking at him made Socko hot.

The old man straightened the position of the book on his knees, as if the alignment were critical. “Sorry I was fighting with your mom.”

“That’s okay.” Socko fell into a chair. “I was sort of fighting with her myself.”

“True. Who in the Sam Hill is Damien?”

It took a good twenty minutes to explain his best friend, but the General held his tongue for once and listened. Socko talked about how the Tarantulas were after Damien, and about how he hadn’t been able to reach him.

The General sat quiet, staring at the cover of the book in his lap.

Socko took a chance. “He could ride home with Mom, hide out here a while.”

“
Two
boys? Here?” The book slid to the floor. “Now there’s a recipe for noise and foolishness!”

“That stuff about Rapp almost dropping him off the roof? I wasn’t making it up! Damien could die if he stays there.”

The General squinted up at him with his one eye. “Listen, Sacko, there’s such a thing as being too old for this life, and I am. All I want anymore is peace and quiet. I’ve done my part.”

“But Damien’s just a kid and he’s in trouble!”

“I appreciate that, son, but he’s somebody else’s problem.”

“Whose? Nobody cares about him but me.”

“Guess that makes him your problem, doesn’t it?” He turned the chair toward the window.

The old guy was useless! Socko left him staring into the bone-dry yard and went up to his room, where he lay on his cot. That didn’t help. He went back downstairs to try again.

“Sir?” The General was still staring out the window.

“About time you came back. I’m bored.”

“Whose problem is
that?”

The General turned and spat in the garbage can. “Yours.” He fished the deck of cards out of the pocket of his sweater, but stopped as he zeroed in on the bruise on Socko’s arm. “How
did
you get that bruise Delia Marie was all over you about? It’s getting pretty ripe.”

“I walked across a beam in one of the houses.”

“And fell, I assume. You could’ve busted your gourd.” He took another look at the bruise. “You got more guts than I gave you credit for. I’m a little worried about your brains, though.” He slid the cards out of the box. “You ready to lose a few hands of gin rummy?”

Socko lost—and won—more hands of gin rummy than he could keep track of. The afternoon faded.

“The bag of used burgers is late,” the General announced.

“Delia Marie is late,” Socko corrected him. Maybe she was checking on Damien. Or maybe not. “I hope Manuel’s car didn’t crap out on her.”

“Me too. If the car crapped out she’ll be
really
late. Then we’ll have to reheat the burgers in the microwave from dead-cold. Makes the buns all rubbery.”

Socko lowered his cards. “Is that all you care about?”

“Get older and you realize, it’s the simple pleasures. Eating. Sleeping—even if it’s just eating greasy burgers and sleeping sitting up.”

“What about caring about other people? Something might’ve happened to her.” Socko was playing a losing hand and imagining an eighteen-wheeler plowing into Delia’s multicolored car when the multicolored car pulled into the driveway, tailpipe smoking. He tossed his cards down on the table.

By the time he made it to at the car, he was panting. “How’s Damien?”

Delia climbed out and unstuck her polyester pants from the backs of her thighs. “I tried to check on him, but I couldn’t get into our old building. I turned in the key, remember?”

“What about Mr. Marvin?”

She waved a hand. “He got a job, or got evicted, I don’t know. Anyway, there was no one to let me in.” She hung her purse over her shoulder, picked up a couple of plastic sacks, and trudged up the walk.

“Mom?” Socko danced around her until he was between her and the front door. “You gotta take me to work with you tomorrow! I’ll find a way in.”

She planted her feet wide. “That is one thing I am
not
doing, ever. I have enough to worry about with the way Rapp is treating Junebug. You are never going to be anywhere near that thug again.” She reached up and put her hand on his cheek. “When school starts you’ll make another best friend.”

He pulled away from the hand on his cheek. “I don’t want another best friend.”

As soon as they got inside, the General lifted the Phat sack off her arm and peered into it gloomily. “Bun Busters. Cold.” He balanced the sack of burgers in his lap and began to roll toward the microwave.

“Wait! See what else?” Delia dug in her purse. “Apples!”

“Why are they individually wrapped?” the General asked as she set them in his lap.

“Mr. Donatelli always wraps them. They’re more sanitary.”

“What did you pay for these two sanitary apples?”

“Seventy-five cents each.”

“Either you’re a fool or he’s a thief—or both. Find a real grocery store, Delia Marie.” The General shook his head and rolled toward the kitchen. Halfway there one of Mr. Donatelli’s sanitary apples fell out of his lap and bounced across the floor. The General didn’t even slow down.

“That’s the last time I buy you fruit! And I don’t want to hear another word about your plumbing!”

“You better hope that
hearing
about it is the worst that happens!” he shouted back.

Delia watched until he disappeared into the kitchen. “Socko!” she said softly, opening the second bag that hung heavily on her arm. “Take a look!”

As she held the bag out to him she broke into a big smile. “What is it?” He looked, but all he could see was the top of another bag.

“Grass seed! I also got a rake. This Home Depot place is unbelievable! They have everything for your house and yard.”

“Mom, did you really try to check on Damien?”

“Of course I did, Socko. I wouldn’t lie to you. But come on, what do you say?” She shook the bag of grass seed. “You want to help me plant a lawn?”

“What about Phase 2?” asked Socko. “They’re going to
give
us a lawn.”

“And Santy Claus is going to bring you a pony!” the old man called from the kitchen.