Didn’t you hear me? she’d asked, voice shaking.
Everyone’s pencils stopped the second they smelled my blood in the water. My arm twitched, pushing my favorite pen, the one that had the Paris skyline rolling from one end to the other inside a gloopy liquid, onto the floor. I bent down for it, staring at the ends of my curled-under pageboy—bangs, all the way around—to keep from crying.
The screech of a chair momentarily pulled everyone’s attention. It was Claude. Of course it was Claude. He’d always been that kid, the one who couldn’t let things just be over. I loved it about him, but also, in that moment, it made me so mad that I could hear my blood. He strode to the front of the class, where he whispered something to the substitute. I’m sure he told her that my ear was burned off, that’s why my hair was all bushy and forward, so I shouldn’t be punished for it. At least that’s what I figured he said, since she apologized to me immediately afterward, and the rest of that period was so awkward I felt like I was made out of string and bells.
I kept quiet, though. I was a rule follower.
“Some days are extra tiring,” Claude said, bringing me back to the moment, to our conversation about Mom.
His words softened me. It was such a relief to not have to explain anything. That was my favorite thing about Pantown, that we knew each other’s stories. “Hey, Junie wants to play word hunt instead of TV tag. What do you think?”
“I think I was promised TV tag, and TV tag I shall have!” Brenda called out from up the sidewalk. I was relieved to see her in the same outfit she’d been wearing earlier: terry-cloth shorts, the bottom front of her raspberry-colored tee hooked through the neck and tugged down to expose her belly, an army-green shirt tied around her waist. Part of me had worried she’d come all made up and squeezed into something tight. That was the virus that had infected her and Maureen.
Speaking of. “We’re still waiting for Mo.”
“She’s not coming. Said she was busy,” Brenda said, rubbing her arms and glancing up at the streaked sky. There was definitely rain on the way. I could smell it in the air.
“Busy doing what?” Junie asked.
I had the same question, but it’d seemed nosy to ask.
Brenda shrugged. “Didn’t say.”
“Boys,” Junie said knowingly.
I hid a smile behind my hand, my eyes traveling to Claude. He and I’d always shared the same sense of humor. We weren’t as close as I was to Maureen or Brenda, but that’s because he was a boy. I was surprised to find him staring grimly at Junie instead of sharing a smirk with me. I wrote his expression off to the rumbling storm. It made the air hot and uneasy, thick with that smell of torn sky.
“Probably, J-Bug,” Brenda said. “Should we get underground before the weather breaks?”
“Yeah,” Claude, Junie, and me said at the same time, right before an alarm of lightning split the sky. We raced into Claude’s house.
CHAPTER 7
I’d never said this out loud, not even to Brenda, but the truth was that the tunnels, though as familiar as my own knees, always made me feel swallowed. I chewed on that as Claude and I made our way into his basement, leaving Brenda and Junie on the main floor. Mr. Ziegler had corralled them into admiring his latest ship in a bottle, which I’d already seen.
When I hit the bottom of Claude’s stairs, a phrase popped into my head.
You can’t live in the dark and feel good about yourself.
I ran over the words like rosary beads, rubbing them shiny.
You can’t live in the dark and feel good about yourself.
Where had I heard that?
“You’re quiet tonight,” Claude said, holding open the door to the tunnels. “Is it worse with your mom than you let on?”
The smell of dank, damp earth spilled into the basement. I considered confessing that today felt like the devil clearing his calendar—ever since Ricky and Ant had shown up and told us about playing the county fair, not just with my mom—but saying it out loud would make it true. “Naw, just tired.”
He nodded. He looked like he might say more, but I didn’t want to hear it. I pushed my way through the invisible skin that separated the house from the dark of the tunnels just as Brenda and Junie appeared. A swish to my left pulled my attention, a quiet noise. Ant swore he’d spotted rats down here once, fat and pink, tails like thick worms dragging behind them, but I’d never seen them. A shiver tickled my spine.
“Brrr!” I said from inside the ink of the tunnel. “Junie, put on your jacket.”