The Strings 4 страница

I put my hand to my jugular, but I was smiling.

We were walking away from the car together when Margo reached down for my hand, laced her fingers in mine, and squeezed. I squeezed back and then glanced at her. She nodded her head solemnly, and I nodded back, and then she let go of my hand. We scampered up to the window. I gently pushed the wooden casing up. It squeaked ever so quietly but opened in one motion. I looked in. It was dark, but I could see a body in a bed.

The window was a little high for Margo, so I put my hands together and she stepped a socked foot onto my hand and I boosted her up. Her silent entrance into the house would have made a ninja jealous. I proceeded to jump up, get my head and shoulders into the window, and then attempt, via a complicated torso undulation, to dance the caterpillar into the house. That might have worked fine except I racked my balls against the windowsill, which hurt so bad that I groaned, which was a pretty sizable mistake.

A bedside light came on. And there, lying in bed, was some old guy — decidedly not Chuck Parson. His eyes were wide with terror; he didn’t say a thing.

“Um, ” said Margo. I thought about shoving off and running back to the car, but for Margo’s sake I stayed there, the top half of me in the house, parallel to the floor. “Um, I think we have the wrong house. ” She turned around then and looked at me urgently, and only then did I realize I was blocking Margo’s exit. So I pushed myself back out the window, grabbed my shoes, and took off.

We drove to the other side of College Park to regroup.

“I think we share the blame on that one, ” Margo said.

“Um, you picked the wrong house, ” I said.

“Right, but you were the one who made noise. ” It was quiet for a minute, and we were just driving in circles, and then finally I said, “We could probably get his address off the Internet. Radar has a log-in to the school directory. ”

“Brilliant, ” Margo said.

So I called Radar, but his phone went straight to voice mail. I contemplated calling his house, but his parents were friends with my parents, so that wouldn’t work. Finally, it occurred to me to call Ben. He wasn’t Radar, but he did know all of Radar’s passwords. I called. It went to voice mail, but only after ringing. So I called again. Voice mail. I called again. Voice mail. Margo said, “He’s obviously not answering, ” and as I dialed again, I said, “Oh, he’ll answer. ” And after just four more calls, he did.

“You’d better be calling me to say that there are eleven naked honeybunnies in your house, and that they’re asking for the Special Feeling that only Big Daddy Ben can provide. ”

“I need you to use Radar’s login to the student directory and look up an address. Chuck Parson. ”

“No. ”

“Please, ” I said.

“No. ”

“You’ll be glad you did this, Ben. I promise. ”

“Yeah, yeah, I just did it. I was doing it while saying no — can’t help but help. Four-two-two Amherst. Hey, why do you want Chuck Parson’s address at four-twelve in the morning? ”

“Get some sleep, Benners. ”

“I’m going to assume this is a dream, ” Ben answered, and hung up.

Amherst was only a couple blocks down. We parked on the street in front of 418 Amherst, got our supplies together, and jogged across Chuck’s lawn, the morning dew shaking off the grass and onto my calves.

At his window, which was fortunately lower than that of Random Old Guy, I climbed in quietly and then pulled Margo up and in. Chuck Parson was asleep on his back. Margo walked over to him, tiptoeing, and I stood behind her, my heart pounding. He’d kill us both if he woke up. She pulled out the Veet, sprayed a dob of what looked like shaving cream onto her palm, and then softly and carefully spread it across Chuck’s right eyebrow. He didn’t so much as twitch.

Then she opened the Vaseline — the lid made what seemed like a deafeningly loud clorp, but again Chuck showed no sign of waking. She scooped a huge gob of it into my hand, and then we headed off to opposite sides of the house. I went to the entryway first and slathered Vaseline on the front door’s doorknob, and then to the open door of a bedroom, where I Vaselined the inner knob and then quietly, with only the slightest creak, shut the door to the room.

Finally I returned to Chuck’s room — Margo was already there — and together we closed his door and then Vaselined the hell out of Chuck’s doorknob. We slathered every surface of his bedroom window with the rest of the Vaseline, hoping it would make it hard to open the window after we closed it shut on our way out.

Margo glanced at her watch and held up two fingers. We waited. And for those two minutes we just stared at each other, and I watched the blue in her eyes. It was nice — in the dark and the quiet, with no possibility of me saying anything to screw it up, and her eyes looking back, like there was something in me worth seeing.

Margo nodded then, and I walked over to Chuck. I wrapped my hand in my T-shirt, as she’d told me to do, leaned forward, and — as softly as I could — pressed my finger against his forehead and then quickly wiped away the Veet. With it came every last hair that had been Chuck Parson’s right eyebrow. I was standing above Chuck with his right eyebrow on my T-shirt when his eyes shot open. Lightning fast, Margo grabbed his comforter and threw it over him, and when I looked up, the little ninja was already out the window. I followed as quickly as I could, as Chuck screamed, “MAMA! DAD! ROBBERY ROBBERY! ”

I wanted to say, The only thing we stole was your eyebrow, but I kept mum as I swung myself feetfirst out the window. I damn near landed on Margo, who was spray-painting an M onto the vinyl siding of Chuck’s house, and then we both grabbed our shoes and hauled ass to the minivan. When I looked back at the house, lights were on but no one was outside yet, a testament to the brilliant simplicity of the well-Vaselined doorknob. By the time Mr. (or possibly Mrs., I couldn’t really see) Parson pulled open the living room curtains and looked outside, we were driving in reverse back toward Princeton Street and the interstate.

“Yes! ” I shouted. “God, that was brilliant. ”

“Did you see it? His face without the eyebrow? He looks permanently doubtful, you know? Like, ‘oh, really? You’re saying I only have one eyebrow? Likely story. ’ And I love making that asshole choose: better to shave off Lefty, or paint on Righty? Oh, I just love it. And how he yelled for his mama, that sniveling little shit. ”

“Wait, why do you hate him? ”

“I didn’t say I hated him. I said he was a sniveling little shit. ”

“But you were always kind of friends with him, ” I said, or at least I thought she had been.

“Yeah, well, I was always kind of friends with a lot of people, ” she said. Margo leaned across the minivan and put her head on my bony shoulder, her hair falling against my neck. “I’m tired, ” she said.

“Caffeine, ” I said. She reached into the back and grabbed us each a Mountain Dew, and I drank it in two long chugs.

“So we’re going to SeaWorld, ” she told me. “Part Eleven. ”

“What, are we going to Free Willy or something? ”

“No, ” she said. “We’re just going to go to SeaWorld, that’s all. It’s the only theme park I haven’t broken into yet. ”

“We can’t break into SeaWorld, ” I said, and then I pulled over into an empty furniture store parking lot and turned off the car.

“We’re in a bit of a time crunch, ” she told me, and then reached over to start the car again.

I pushed her hand away. “We can’t break into SeaWorld, ” I repeated.

“There you go with the breaking again. ” Margo paused and opened another Mountain Dew. Light reflected off the can onto her face, and for a second I could see her smiling at the thing she was about to say. “We’re not going to break anything. Don’t think of it as breaking in to SeaWorld. Think of it as visiting SeaWorld in the middle of the night for free. ”

“Well, first off, we will get caught, ” I said. I hadn’t started the minivan and was laying out the reasons I wouldn’t start it and wondering if she could see me in the dark.

“Of course we’ll get caught. So what? ”

“It’s illegal. ”

“Q, in the scheme of things, what kind of trouble can Sea-World get you into? I mean, Jesus, after everything I’ve done for you tonight, you can’t do one thing for me? You can’t just shut up and calm down and stop being so goddamned terrified of every little adventure? ” And then under her breath she said, “I mean, God. Grow some nuts. ”

And now I was mad. I ducked underneath my shoulder belt so I could lean across the console toward her. “After everything YOU did for ME? ” I almost shouted. She wanted confident? I was getting confident. “Did you call MY friend’s father who was screwing MY boyfriend so no one would know that I was calling? Did you chauffeur MY ass all around the world not because you are oh-so-important to me but because I needed a ride and you were close by? Is that the kind of shit you’ve done for me tonight? ”

She wouldn’t look at me. She just stared straight ahead at the vinyl siding of the furniture store. “You think I needed you? You don’t think I could have given Myrna Mountweazel a Benadryl so she’d sleep through my stealing the safe from under my parents’ bed? Or snuck into your bedroom while you were sleeping and taken your car key? I didn’t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back. ” Now she looked at me. “And that’s like a promise. At least for tonight. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. For richer, for poorer. Till dawn do us part. ”

I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, but all her teamwork stuff aside, I still felt like I was getting badgered into something, and I wanted the last word. “Fine, but when Sea-World, Incorporated or whatever sends a letter to Duke University saying that miscreant Quentin Jacobsen broke into their facility at four thirty in the morning with a wild-eyed lass at his side, Duke University will be mad. Also, my parents will be mad. ”

“Q, you’re going to go to Duke. You’re going to be a very successful lawyer-or-something and get married and have babies and live your whole little life, and then you’re going to die, and in your last moments, when you’re choking on your own bile in the nursing home, you’ll say to yourself: ‘Well, I wasted my whole goddamned life, but at least I broke into SeaWorld with Margo Roth Spiegelman my senior year of high school. At least I carpe’d that one diem. ’”

“Noctem, ” I corrected.

“Okay, you are the Grammar King again. You’ve regained your throne. Now take me to SeaWorld. ”

As we drove silently down I-4, I found myself thinking about the day that the guy in the gray suit showed up dead. Maybe that’s the reason she chose me, I thought. And that’s when, finally, I remembered what she said about the dead guy and the strings— and about herself and the strings.

“Margo, ” I said, breaking our silence.

“Q, ” she said.

“You said. . When the guy died, you said maybe all the strings inside him broke, and then you just said that about yourself, that the last string broke. ”

She half laughed. “You worry too much. I don’t want some kids to find me swarmed with flies on a Saturday morning in Jefferson Park. ” She waited a beat before delivering the punch line. “I’m too vain for that fate. ”

I laughed, relieved, and exited the interstate. We turned onto International Drive, the tourism capital of the world. There were a thousand shops on International Drive, and they all sold the exact same thing: crap. Crap molded into seashells, key rings, glass turtles, Florida-shaped refrigerator magnets, plastic pink flamingos, whatever. In fact, there were several stores on I-Drive that sold actual, literal armadillo crap—$4. 95 a bag.

But at 4: 50 in the morning, the tourists were sleeping. The Drive was completely dead, like everything else, as we drove past store after parking lot after store after parking lot.

“SeaWorld is just past the parkway, ” Margo said. She was in the wayback of the minivan again, rifling through a backpack or something. “I got all these satellite maps and drew our plan of attack, but I can’t freaking find them anywhere. But anyway, just go right past the parkway, and on your left there will be this souvenir shop. ”

“On my left, there are about seventeen thousand souvenir shops. ”

“Right, but there will only be one right after the parkway. ”

And sure enough, there was only one, and so I pulled into the empty parking lot and parked the car directly beneath a streetlight, because cars are always getting stolen on I-Drive. And while only a truly masochistic car thief would ever think of jacking the Chrysler, I still didn’t relish the thought of explaining to my mom how and why her car went missing in the small hours of a school night.

We stood outside, leaning against the back of the minivan, the air so warm and thick I felt my clothes clinging to my skin. I felt scared again, as if people I couldn’t see were looking at me. It had been too dark for too long, and my gut ached from the hours of worrying. Margo had found her maps, and by the light of the street lamp, her spray-paint-blue fingertip traced our route. “I think there’s a fence right there, ” she said, pointing to a wooden patch we’d hit just after crossing the parkway. “I read about it online. They installed it a few years ago after some drunk guy walked into the park in the middle of the night and decided to go swimming with Shamu, who promptly killed him. ”

“Seriously? ”

“Yeah, so if that guy can make it in drunk, surely we can make it in sober. I mean, we’re ninjas. ”

“Well, maybe you’re a ninja, ” I said.

“You’re just a really loud, awkward ninja, ” Margo said, “but we are both ninjas. ” She tucked her hair behind her ears, pulled up her hood, and scrunched it shut with a drawstring; the streetlight lit up the sharp features of her pale face. Maybe we were both ninjas, but only she had the outfit.

“Okay, ” she said. “Memorize the map. ” By far the most terrifying part of the half-mile-long journey Margo had plotted for us was the moat. SeaWorld was shaped like a triangle. One side was protected by a road, which Margo figured was regularly patrolled by night watchmen. The second side was guarded by a lake that was at least a mile around, and the third side had a drainage ditch; from the map, it looked to be about as wide as a two-lane road. And where there are water-filled drainage ditches near lakes in Florida, there are often alligators.

Margo grabbed me by both shoulders and turned me toward her. “We’re going to get caught, probably, and when we do, just let me talk. You just look cute and be that weird mix of innocent and confident, and we’ll be fine. ”

I locked the car, tried to pat down my puffy hair, and whispered, “I’m a ninja. ” I didn’t mean for Margo to hear, but she piped up. “Damned right you are! Now let’s go. ”

We jogged across I-Drive and then started bushwhacking through a thicket of tall shrubs and oak trees. I started to worry about poison ivy, but ninjas don’t worry about poison ivy, so I led the trail, my arms in front of me, pushing aside briars and brush as we walked toward the moat. Finally the trees stopped and the field opened up, and I could see the parkway on our right and the moat straight ahead of us. People could have seen us from the road if there had been any cars, but there weren’t. Together we took off running through the brush, and then made a sharp turn toward the parkway. Margo said, “Now, now! ” and I dashed across the six lanes of highway. Even though it was empty, something felt exhilarating and wrong about running across a road that big.

We made it across and then knelt down in the knee-high grass beside the parkway. Margo pointed to the strip of trees between SeaWorld’s endlessly gigantic parking lot and the black standing water of the moat. We ran for a minute along that line of trees, and then Margo pulled on the back of my shirt, and said quietly, “Now the moat. ”

“Ladies first, ” I said.

“No, really. Be my guest, ” she answered.

And I didn’t think about the alligators or the disgusting layer of brackish algae. I just got a running start and jumped as far as I could. I landed in waist-deep water and then high-stepped across. The water smelled rank and felt slimy on my skin, but at least I wasn’t wet above my waist. Or at least I wasn’t until Margo jumped in, splashing water all over me. I turned around and splashed her. She faux-retched.

“Ninjas don’t splash other ninjas, ” Margo complained.

“The true ninja doesn’t make a splash at all, ” I said.

“Ooh, touch& #233;. ”

I was watching Margo pull herself up out of the moat. And I was feeling thoroughly pleased about the lack of alligators. And my pulse was acceptable, if brisk. And beneath her unzipped hoodie, her black T-shirt had become clingy in the water. In short, a lot of things were going pretty well when I saw in my peripheral vision a slithering in the water beside Margo. Margo started to step out of the water, and I could see her Achilles tendon tensing, and before I could even say anything, the snake lashed out and bit her left ankle, right below the line of her jeans.

“Shit! ” Margo said, and she looked down and then said “Shit! ” again. The snake was still attached. I dove down and grabbed the snake by the tail and ripped it from Margo’s leg and threw it into the moat. “Ow, God, ” she said. “What was it? Was it a moccasin? ”

“I don’t know. Lie down, lie down, ” I said, and then I took her leg in my hands, and I pulled up her jeans. There were two drops of blood coming out where the fangs had been, and I leaned down and put my mouth on the wound and sucked as hard as I could, trying to draw out the venom. I spit, and was going to go back to her leg when she said, “Wait, I see it. ” I jumped up, terrified, and she said, “No, no, God, it’s just a garter snake. ” She was pointing into the moat, and I followed her finger and could see the little garter snake skirting along the surface, swimming beneath a floodlight’s skirt. From the well-lit distance, the thing didn’t look much scarier than a baby lizard.

“Thank God, ” I said, sitting down next to her and catching my breath.

After looking at the bite and seeing that the bleeding had already stopped, she asked, “How was making out with my leg? ”

“Pretty good, ” I said, which was true. She leaned her body into mine a little and I could feel her upper arm against my ribs.

“I shaved this morning for precisely that reason. I was like, ‘Well, you never know when someone is going to clamp down on your calf and try to suck out the snake poison. ’”

There was a chain-link fence before us, but it was only about six feet tall. As Margo put it, “Honestly, first garter snakes and now this fence? This security is sort of insulting to a ninja. ” She scampered up, swung her body around, and climbed down like it was a ladder. I managed not to fall.

We ran through a small thicket of trees, hugging tight against these huge opaque tanks that might have stored animals, and then we came out to an asphalt path and I could see the big amphitheater where Shamu splashed me when I was a kid. The little speakers lining the walkway were playing soft Muzak. Maybe to keep the animals calm. “Margo, ” I said, “we’re in SeaWorld. ”

And she said, “Seriously, ” and then she jogged away and I followed her. We ended up by the seal tank, but it seemed like there were no seals inside it.

“Margo, ” I said again. “We’re in SeaWorld. ”

“Enjoy it, ” she said without moving her mouth much. “’Cause here comes security. ”

I dashed through a stand of waist-high bushes, but when Margo didn’t run, I stopped.

A guy strolled up wearing a SEAWORLD SECURITY vest and very casually asked, “How y’all? ” He held a can of something in his hand — pepper spray, I guessed.

To stay calm, I wondered to myself, Does he have regular handcuffs, or does he have special SeaWorld handcuffs? Like, are they shaped like two curved dolphins coming together?

“We were just on our way out, actually, ” said Margo.

“Well, that’s certain, ” the man said. “The question is whether you walkin’ out or gettin’ driven out by the Orange County sheriff. ”

“If it’s all the same to you, ” Margo said, “we’d rather walk. ” I shut my eyes. This, I wanted to tell Margo, was no time for snappy comebacks. But the man laughed.

“You know a man got kilt here a couple years ago jumping in the big tank, and they told us we cain’t never let anybody go if they break in, no matter if they’re pretty. ” Margo pulled her shirt out so it wouldn’t look so clingy. And only then did I realize he was talking to her breasts.

“Well, then I guess you have to arrest us. ”

“But that’s the thing. I’m ’bout to get off and go home and have a beer and get some sleep, and if I call the police they’ll take their sweet time in coming. I’m just thinkin’ out loud here, ” he said, and then Margo raised her eyes in recognition. She wiggled a hand into a wet pocket and pulled out one moat-water-soaked hundred-dollar bill.

The guard said, “Well, y’all best be getting on now. If I were you, I wouldn’t walk out past the whale tank. It’s got all-night security cameras all ’round it, and we wouldn’t want anyone to know y’all was here. ”

“Yessir, ” Margo said demurely, and with that the man walked off into the darkness. “Man, ” Margo mumbled as the guy walked away, “I really didn’t want to pay that perv. But, oh well. Money’s for spendin’. ” I could barely even hear her; the only thing happening was the relief shivering out of my skin. This raw pleasure was worth all the worry that preceded it.

“Thank God he’s not turning us in, ” I said.

Margo didn’t respond. She was staring past me, her eyes squinting almost closed. “I felt this exact same way when I got into Universal Studios, ” she said after a moment. “It’s kind of cool and everything, but there’s nothing much to see. The rides aren’t working. Everything cool is locked up. Most of the animals are put into different tanks at night. ” She turned her head and appraised the SeaWorld we could see. “I guess the pleasure isn’t being inside. ”

“What’s the pleasure? ” I asked.

“Planning, I guess. I don’t know. Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel. ”

“This feels pretty good to me, ” I confessed. “Even if there isn’t anything to see. ” I sat down on a park bench, and she joined me. We were both looking out at the seal tank, but it contained no seals, just an unoccupied island with rocky outcroppings made of plastic. I could smell her next to me, the sweat and the algae from the moat, her shampoo like lilacs, and the smell of her skin like crushed almonds.

I felt tired for the first time, and I thought of us lying down on some grassy patch of SeaWorld together, me on my back and she on her side with her arm draped against me, her head on my shoulder, facing me. Not doing anything — just lying there together beneath the sky, the night here so well lit that it drowns out the stars. And maybe I could feel her breathe against my neck, and maybe we could just stay there until morning and then the people would walk past as they came into the park, and they would see us and think that we were tourists, too, and we could just disappear into them.

But no. There was one-eyebrowed Chuck to see, and Ben to tell the story to, and classes and the band room and Duke and the future.

“Q, ” Margo said.

I looked up at her, and for a moment I didn’t know why she’d said my name, but then I snapped out of my half-sleep. And I heard it. The Muzak from the speakers had been turned up, only it wasn’t Muzak anymore — it was real music. This old, jazzy song my dad likes called “Stars Fell on Alabama. ” Even through the tinny speakers you could hear that whoever was singing it could sing a thousand goddamned notes at once.

And I felt the unbroken line of me and of her stretching back from our cribs to the dead guy to acquaintanceship to now. And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn’t planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together — but that seemed too cheesy to say, and anyway, she was standing up.

Margo’s blue blue eyes blinked and she looked impossibly beautiful right then, her jeans wet against her legs, her face shining in the gray light.

I stood up and reached out my hand and said, “May I have this dance? ” Margo curtsied, gave me her hand, and said, “You may, ” and then my hand was on the curve between her waist and her hip, and her hand was on my shoulder. And then step-step-sidestep, step-step-sidestep. We fox-trotted all the way around the seal tank, and still the song kept going on about the stars falling. “Sixth-grade slow dance, ” Margo announced, and we switched positions, her hands on my shoulders and mine on her hips, elbows locked, two feet between us. And then we fox-trotted some more, until the song ended. I stepped forward and dipped Margo, just as they’d taught us to do at Crown School of Dance. She raised one leg and gave me all her weight as I dipped her. She either trusted me or wanted to fall.

We bought dish towels at a 7-Eleven on I-Drive and tried our best to wash the slime and stink from the moat off our clothes and skin, and I filled the gas tank to where it had been before we drove the circumference of Orlando. The Chrysler’s seats were going to be a little bit wet when Mom drove to work, but I held out hope that she wouldn’t notice, since she was pretty oblivious. My parents generally believed that I was the most well-adjusted and not-likely-to-break-into-SeaWorld person on the planet, since my psychological well-being was proof of their professional talents.

I took my time going home, avoiding interstates in favor of back roads. Margo and I were listening to the radio, trying to figure out what station had been playing “Stars Fell on Alabama, ” but then she turned it down and said, “All in all, I think it was a success. ”

“Absolutely, ” I said, although by now I was already wondering what tomorrow would be like. Would she show up by the band room before school to hang out? Eat lunch with me and Ben? “I do wonder if it will be different tomorrow, ” I said.

“Yeah, ” she said. “Me, too. ” She left it hanging in the air, and then said, “Hey, speaking of tomorrow, as thanks for your hard work and dedication on this remarkable evening, I would like to give you a small gift. ” She dug around beneath her feet and then produced the digital camera. “Take it, ” she said. “And use the Power of the Tiny Winky wisely. ”

I laughed and put the camera in my pocket. “I’ll download the pic when we get home and then give it back to you at school? ” I asked. I still wanted her to say, Yes, at school, where things will be different, where I will be your friend in public, and also decidedly single, but she just said, “Yeah, or whenever. ”

It was 5: 42 when I turned into Jefferson Park. We drove down Jefferson Drive to Jefferson Court and then turned onto our road, Jefferson Way. I killed the headlights one last time and idled up my driveway. I didn’t know what to say, and Margo wasn’t saying anything. We filled a 7-Eleven bag with trash, trying to make the Chrysler look and feel as if the past six hours had not happened. In another bag, she gave me the remnants of the Vaseline, the spray paint, and the last full Mountain Dew. My brain raced with fatigue.

With a bag in each hand, I paused for a moment outside the van, staring at her. “Well, it was a helluva night, ” I said finally.

“Come here, ” she said, and I took a step forward. She hugged me, and the bags made it hard to hug her back, but if I dropped them I might wake someone. I could feel her on her tiptoes and then her mouth was right up against my ear and she said, very clearly, “I. Will. Miss. Hanging. Out. With. You. ”

“You don’t have to, ” I answered aloud. I tried to hide my disappointment. “If you don’t like them anymore, ” I said, “just hang out with me. My friends are actually, like, nice. ”

Her lips were so close to me that I could feel her smile. “I’m afraid it’s not possible, ” she whispered. She let go then, but kept looking at me, taking step after step backward. She raised her eyebrows finally, and smiled, and I believed the smile. I watched her climb up a tree and then lift herself onto the roof outside of her second-floor bedroom window. She jimmied her window open and crawled inside.

I walked through my unlocked front door, tiptoed through the kitchen to my bedroom, peeled off my jeans, threw them into a corner of the closet back near the window screen, downloaded the picture of Jase, and got into bed, my mind booming with the things I would say to her at school.

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