True (. . . Sort Of) (5 page)

T
hat's how she woke up, too.

She brushed her teeth counting, trudged downstairs counting, crunched her cereal counting.

She counted as Galveston growled at her, “I heard about you. You'd better shape up.”

“Five hundred sixty-seven, five hundred sixty-eight, five hundred sixty-nine,” her mouth mumbled, while her fingers curled into fists.

“Galveston,” Clarice called, “get over here,” and pulled her from the table. So the numbers were not truly tested.

She counted to herself on the way to school. “What are you doing?” RB asked her.

She didn't stop.

“You're counting,” he cheered. Then he sang it, “You're counting, you're counting.

“Is it working?” he wondered.

She shrugged.

“It's working! You can stay. You can stay.” He ran around her, singing that.

And Delly didn't tell him, “Don't count on it,” because it was good to see somebody happy, even if it wasn't her.

Lionel Terwilliger had to ask her every question twice: once for her to quit counting, and again for her to hear it.

Then, for one sweet moment, there were no numbers. But as soon as she answered, “A spider is an arthropod, not an anthropologist,” she'd start again.

It was the most boring morning ever, and when Delly imagined a lifetime of counting, it was like living death. “I can't,” she rasped.

Till she remembered Clarice. “Four thousand seven hundred thirty-two, four thousand seven hundred thirty-three . . . ” She kept on.

At recess, she took herself to Alaska. “What the glub am I going to look at?” she asked the State of Seclusion.

Because Delly'd done some thinking. There were two ways, she decided, she kept ending up in Trouble Town. One was thinking something would be fun and doing it; the other was fighting. She wasn't sure the counting could keep her away from either of them.

So she scanned the playground, searching for something that wouldn't tempt her with fun or the fight. There was Danny Novello on the basketball court. “Just make me mad,” she muttered. Gwennie and Tater were racing. “Too glad.” Everywhere kids were playing and shouting. “Too bawlgram fun,” she rasped.

Then she saw it: sitting under a tree, bent over a book, was that Ferris Boyd.

It wasn't fun. And it didn't make her want to fight much. “One . . .” She began.

From 1 to 1,129, she watched the girl turn the page twice. “Like watching ice melt,” she mumbled.

At 1,130, some birds flitted by Ferris Boyd. Squirrels ran circles around her.

Delly yawned.

At 1,492, a bird landed on Ferris Boyd's head. It put its beak in her hair.

Delly sat up.

The bird flapped down to Ferris Boyd's shoulder and hopped along her arm like it was a branch. It perched on her hand.

“Huh?” Delly quit counting.

Ferris Boyd looked up from her book. Then the girl and the bird stared at each other, as if they were having a conversation. Without making a sound.

When they were finished, the bird flew off. The girl went back to reading.

“What's going on over there?” Delly rasped.

The bell rang, and Ferris Boyd stood.

The creatures disappeared into the air and across the grass.

“Chizzle.” Delly heard herself sigh, like she was sorry it was over. Like it was fun.

“That wasn't fun,” she scolded herself. “It was like watching paint dry.” And she followed everybody into school.

Sitting at her desk, though, she kept thinking about Ferris Boyd and that bird telling each other things without talking. “One thousand five hundred fifty-six, one thousand five hundred fifty-seven,” she murmured. “Hmm.”

The day went downhill from there.

During social studies, the digits dulled her to sleep. Lionel Terwilliger had to shake her.

“One, two, three!” she woke up shouting.

Till she heard the laughs all around her. “Bawl-gram counting,” she muttered.

But when Novello passed her desk and hissed, “Hey, Smelly,” she snarled, “Eight hundred fifty-eight, eight hundred fifty-nine . . . ” instead of slugging him.

“Mr. Novello,” Lionel Terwilliger boomed, “you will write, ‘Ms. Pattison's name is Delaware,' one hundred times.”

So the numbers were good for something.

She was counting when RB came to her room before dinner.

“Hey,” he said.

She nodded.

“You get in trouble today?” he whispered.

She shook her head.

He started singing, “No trouble to-day.”

Between 12,345 and 12,346 she told him, “It's like eating cardboard, RB. It's killing me.”

“You can do it,” he assured her.

B
ut Delly was drowning in the dullness.

Every day was nothing but numbers, the same ones over and over again. She stopped feeling sunshine. The world turned dingy gray.

Except at recess.

The creatures came as soon as Ferris Boyd sat down. Red and blue and yellow birds danced in the air above her; squirrels played tag beside her.

Sometimes Delly'd catch herself giggling and saying, “Ferris Boyd, those squirrels ran over your legs,” as if she and the girl were friends, as if it were fun. Then she'd remind herself, “This is not fun. It's like watching grass grow.”

It was better than counting, though. And for a half hour Ferris Boyd wasn't the head-down-hunched-over kid she was everywhere else.

Because in school, Ferris Boyd was a disaster. All day long she drooped over her desk, as if her sadness weighed so much she couldn't sit up straight.

“Ms. Boyd,” Lionel Terwilliger would say, “please approach the blackboard and complete the problem.”

So she'd shuffle to the front of the room and slouch by the board.

“You may commence.” He'd prod her.

She never did.

Finally, Lionel Terwilliger would give up. “Thank you, Ms. Boyd. You may resume your seat.”

And she'd slump back to her chair.

Without the animals, Ferris Boyd was a barely living lump. Like Delly felt all the time now.

After school, Delly counted as she washed desks for detention. The numbers walked home with her. They sat in the back of her head, waiting, while she did her homework. “Counting is the worst Dellypunishment ever.” She sighed.

Except for this: Clarice hadn't cried again.

A
ll week, Brud Kinney counted the seconds till Sunday. At St. Stanislaus, he had a prayer: Please let me see that boy play again, and I won't wreck it.

Sunday morning he pedaled slowly down the River Road. About a block from the old Hennepin place he heard it:
thump, thump, thump, clang
. He put his hand over his mouth to keep from shouting, “A-A-All right!”

At the end of the drive, he peeked around the brush. There was the boy, dribbling and jumping and shooting just like before.

Brud laid his bike in the ditch. He snuck behind bushes till he was halfway down the drive. Don't mess me up again, his head warned the rest of him.

Because Brud had a plan: he would watch, still and silent, for a little while. I'll learn, then I'll leave, he decided.

And at first his body obeyed. While the boy dribbled between his legs and behind his back, Brud's hands stayed still. When the boy ran down the drive, Brud's feet didn't stir.

Then the boy took the ball in both hands and jumped. As he floated through the air, he turned so the hoop was behind him. Blind to the basket, he threw the ball up over his head.

Brud stopped breathing. It was an impossible shot.

The ball didn't know impossible. It soared to the rim and slid through it.

And Brud Kinney's plan didn't have a prayer. “Oh m-m-man!” he whooped. His arms were pumping the air with happiness.

The boy swung around. His scared eyes spotted Brud; then he was running.

Just like before, Brud needed too much, too fast from his mouth. “Hey,” he hollered, “you p-play real g-g-g-g-”

The boy was at the stoop.

Brud tried again. “You play g-g-g-”

The boy reached for the door. It was over.

Brud hit his mouth with his fist to hurt it. “Unh,” it cried. He hung his head, and waited for the door to slam on him and his too-basketball-loving body.

It wasn't the words that stopped Ferris Boyd. It was the
g-g-g-
: the sound of a mouth that wouldn't speak. It turned her around.

She saw Brud hit himself. She flinched, like she felt it.

When the door didn't bang, Brud wondered if he'd been
g-g-
ing so loud he'd missed it. He looked up.

There was the boy, on the stoop, staring at him.

Brud took a breath. He pointed to his mouth. “H-Hard,” he said.

And the boy didn't leave or laugh.

So Brud kept on. “Y-You play real g-g-g-g-”

The
g
got him again. His head went down for good.

Brud didn't see Ferris Boyd walk toward him. He didn't see the pad and pen she took from her pocket till they were under his eyes.

His face went red. I'm so bad at talking, he thought, that boy thinks I have to write. His hands stayed at his sides.

The pen and paper disappeared, then came back. Write here, was on the page, in pale, skinny letters. They weren't telling; they were asking.

So Brud did. You play real good. I play, too. I was just watching, he wrote.

The boy read it, and glanced at the ground.

Time to go, Brud's head said.

His hand wouldn't listen. Want to play a game? it wrote.

The boy's eyes got scared again. He looked at the house, then Brud. He was weighing which it would be, and Brud could tell the house was winning.

Give it up, Brud's head insisted.

Instead, his mouth said, “I'm B-Brud.”

The boy gazed into Brud's eyes, like he was reading them, too.

Brud let him.

After a long time, the boy took the pad. H-O-R-S-E, he wrote.

“Your name?” Brud asked

The boy shook his head. “Oh, the g-g-game!”

The boy nodded.
No Touch
, he added, in big, dark letters. He held the paper in front of him, like a shield.

“No t-touch,” Brud promised.

The boy passed him the ball to begin.

Brud was so happy he couldn't keep his mouth from yelling, “Yes!”

Before he took a shot, though, he raised his arm, like he was in school.

The boy looked at him.

“Wh-Wh-What's your n-name?” he asked.

Slowly the boy printed, Ferris Boyd.

Brud's right hand waved, Hi. He smiled so the tips of his teeth glowed.

Then they played.

It was over before Brud blinked. He got hammered.

It wasn't that Brud didn't make any baskets; he did. It was because, sometimes, he missed. The boy didn't.

Still, even getting skunked, Brud'd had the best time ever. Because he got to watch the boy up close, without barreling through bushes.

Brud's last shot bounced off the rim and came back to the pavement. He turned to the boy. “A-gg-g-gain?” he asked, because he didn't want it to end.

But the boy had vanished. Nothing moved around that place except birds and a black cat.

So Brud set the ball on the stoop and headed down the drive. Before he left, though, he turned to the house and raised his hand, See you next week. He wasn't telling; he was hoping.

In bed that night, Brud was having one of his visions. In his head, he and the boy were playing H-O-R-S-E again, and this time Brud was winning.

“Time out!” he called, and walked over to the boy.

“Hey, I was thinking,” he said, “maybe you don't like talking, either. That's why you have that pad. Maybe we don't have to talk, ever.”

In his vision, the boy nodded.

And Brud smiled so his teeth glimmered.

F
or Delly, Monday meant no more Alaska, no more detention, no more being stuck in her room.

She wasn't Dellybrating, though; she was worried. “Now I got all kinds of time for trouble.”

So at recess she went to Alaska anyway, because it kept her from fun and fighting.

After school she walked home with RB.

“Want to skip rocks at the river?” he wondered.

“Nope.”

“Want to make a worm pie?”

“Un-unh.” It was all too fun.

“Want to watch TV?” he asked at the house.

“No,” she sighed, because Galveston'd be there, too, with a fight all ready for her. She trudged to her room, to keep the peace.

And it worked. Till Gal found her. “You're ungrounded, not on vacation,” she snarled. “Get downstairs and help us clean.”

So Delly did. She got the dustcloth and swished it across tabletops while she counted.

“That's not dusting,” Galveston declared. “That's pushing dirt around.”

Delly kept swishing.

Gal got in her face. “Get the spray and start over.” As she spoke, Galveston did some spraying— of spit, on Delly.

The spit spattered the numbers aside, so there was nothing between the sisters. Except Delly's fists.

“Gal,” she growled.

“What?”

Just before she hurled her hand into Galveston's gut, Delly gasped, “I got to go.” She ran to her room and slammed the door between her and the fight she was hankering for.

Gal followed her.

RB was trailing the two of them, shouting, “Delly, count!”

“One, two,” she howled.

But Gal was banging, screaming the numbers to nowhere. “You're not done. Get back there and finish!”

Delly had her hand on the knob. In a moment it would be holding a hunk of Galveston's hair.

And Clarice came home early. “Hey,” she called, “where is everybody?”

“Ma,” RB answered, “we're upstairs.”

“What's going on?”

“Nothing,” all three replied.

“Gal, get down here.” Clarice summoned her.

Delly heard her sister retreat.

The battle might be over, but Delly knew the war would go on. She'd need a different plan for Tuesday, or Gal would be bald, and she'd be banished to Trouble Town forever.

She fell on her bed, worn out from fighting the fight, and wasted from a week of counting.

After supper Clarice came to Delly's room. She sat on the edge of the bed.

Delly was so spent she hardly noticed her.

“One week and no trouble,” Clarice said.

“Hunh,” she mumbled.

“Delly,” Clarice told her, “your dad and I decided that when you have a month of no trouble, you get a Delly Day.”

That woke her up a little. “Huh?”

“Whatever you want, for a day.”

Delly'd never had Clarice or Boomer to herself, except for meetings with police Officers and principals. The part of her that remembered happiness wanted to holler, “Jiminy fipes!” Instead, she murmured, “Hmm.”

“I'm proud of you, Del,” Clarice rasped.

Delly'd never heard that before, either. Just like that, those five words filled her up. They inflated her, like a baDellylloon. She wasn't tiny or tired anymore. She was blown up to bursting with Clarice's pride.

Then there were no numbers, only happiness. She was Clarice's again.

“Ma,” she said, because the word sounded so good.

Clarice got up. “Good night, Delly.”

“Good night,” she replied. She fell asleep with her lips curling up to her eyes.