Bat Summer Read online

  Bat Summer

  ALSO BY SARAH WITHROW

  Box Girl

  The Black Sunshine of Goody Pryne

  Bat Summer

  Sarah Withrow

  Copyright © 1998 by Sarah Withrow

  First published in the USA in 1999

  Third paperback edition published in 2004

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Groundwood Books / Douglas & Mclntyre

  720 Bathurst Street, Suite 500, Toronto, Ontario

  Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West

  1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

  National Library of Canada Cataloging in Publication

  Withrow, Sarah

  Bat summer

  A Groundwood book.

  ISBN 0-88899-351-X (bound) ISBN 0-88899-352-8 (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PS8595.I8455B37 1998 jC813’.54 C98-931362-X

  PZ7.W57Ba 1998

  Design by Michael Solomon

  Printed and bound in Canada

  For all the young bats

  and especially the original

  kim Honey.

  1

  “Come with me, Terence,” Tom says.

  He hardly ever calls me by my full name. It makes me feel even worse about him leaving. His German shepherd, Steel, is sniffing around Tom’s duffle bag. He’s getting his goober dog breath all over Tom’s new T-shirts. Tom’s mom has sewn little name tags into the backs of all his clothes — even his underwear. Like if his name wasn’t on there some guy might steal his underwear.

  Maybe I should steal it. Maybe he won’t be able to go to stupid canoe camp if he can’t find his underwear.

  “Come on. Get inside.” He smacks his duffle bag. It’s half full.

  Tom is always smacking things when he talks. He talks with his hands. Once he accidentally poked himself in the eye. That was good. For me, I mean. I’ll miss him smacking stuff.

  The duffle bag is filling up quickly. I can’t believe he’ll be gone for a month. He said come with me, but he won’t stop packing the bag.

  There’s no room for me in there. I’d probably suffocate on his flathead geek sunhat.

  “Take a chance for once, Terence. Just get in.” He puts his Walkman in the side pocket. The duffle bag is all bulging out. Steel is sniffing at it some more. Dogs are always happy — until you leave. They are happy until the second you close the door. If I were a dog, today would still be fun.

  Steel turns and looks up at Tom like Tom is king of the universe. Tom reaches down to pat him and Steel lets a fart rip right into the duffle bag.

  “No way am I getting in there now,” I say. Tom grabs my head and tries to stuff it into the fart-filled bag. I get him by the back leg and bring him down hard on the floor. He jabs me in the stomach with his knobby elbow. I flip him against the door, and then his mom yells up, “Hey, hey, hey. You kids! I don’t care what you’re doing, just stop it.”

  We laugh until I feel like I have asthma because I can’t breathe.

  It starts to get quiet in Tom’s room. I’m not going to be able to hang out here when he’s gone. I can hear his parents talking downstairs. I can hear Steel’s nails clicking down the hall. Tom is slouched up against the door. He’s got his hands on his stomach from when he was laughing. His eyes are closed.

  What am I going to do all summer?

  2

  It’s kind of pathetic that I have to spend another summer hanging out in Wells Hill Park. My cousin, Elys, thinks I have so many friends. She says, “Go out and play,” like there’s some friend-filled magic playland just outside our front door. She believes my life is all wonderful just because I don’t have to look for work.

  I’m sitting on the hill with Rico chewing on the white ends of blades of grass. Rico’s in the grade ahead of me. He hangs out with guys who spit on teachers’ cars behind the school. Normally he wouldn’t even give me the time of day. Summer changes all the rules. You never know who you’ll end up chewing blades of grass with in the summer.

  Anyway, that’s what we’re doing when Lucy comes over holding this big book.

  “Want to hear about the Midget Employment Stabilization Board?” she growls. Tom says Lucy is an embarrassment to humanity. She draws these magic marker tattoos on her face. Like one day she has one that looks like a spider web, then the next day she’s got one of a big flower, but you can still see the spider web underneath. And what’s with that old blue sheet strung around her neck? It’s like she thinks she’s some kind of superhero. Plus she’s got red hair, so she looks like a piece of red asparagus stuffed in a pillow case.

  Still, you can’t help listening to a story about something like the Midget Employment Stabilization Board, even if it is Lucy who’s telling it.

  We keep chewing grass and let Lucy go on.

  “It says here this guy, Jim Moran, built these huge kites for midgets to fly in. But the whole thing was really a publicity stunt. Moran wanted the midgets to fly past windows in New York yelling at people through megaphones to buy these candy bars.” In my mind I see Lucy hanging from a kite growling through a megaphone, with her stupid blue cape blowing in the breeze.

  Lucy clears her throat and starts reading from the book. She tells about the cop that came along to stop Moran and the Midget Employment Stabilization Board.

  “So the cop yells at them, ‘You can’t fly no midgets from no kites.’”

  We crack up all over the hill when we hear that. At least, me and Rico crack up. Rico laughs so hard he starts coughing. I think something is going to come out of his nose, he’s laughing so hard.

  Except then Lucy starts yelling, “He shouldn’t have made the midgets do all the flying for him. It isn’t funny to be funny looking. And Moran shouldn’t have called them midgets. He should have called them small people.” That just makes us crack up harder.

  “How would you like it if someone called you a midget?” she growls at Rico, like anyone would dare call Rico anything, he’s so big. Rico looks like the world’s biggest little kid. He’s really tall and has biceps that look like someone sewed tennis balls into his arms. His face is kind of fat. Not like I’d say anything.

  I don’t get called names, either, but it’s because my name is Terence and nothing rhymes with Terence. Also, I am completely ordinary. I have ordinary straight brown hair that’s too long. And I’ve got an ordinary flat-as-a-pancake punched-in face, and a weenie chest that I hide pretty well under big T-shirts.

  Maybe Lucy thinks it’s better to be a weirdo than to be ugly. Being ordinary isn’t exactly the same thing as being ugly, but it’s close.

  “I ain’t a midget, Lucy Loser,” Rico says. But he stops laughing after Lucy growls at him. He sticks a piece of grass in the corner of his mouth.

  “No. You’re Mr. Big Man,” Lucy says. She has her hands on her hips.

  “That’s right, Loser. I’m Mr. Big Man. I like that,” Rico says.

  I’m still laughing about flying midgets, and the thought of Mr. Big Man sets me off again.

  Then Lucy turns on me. “You are so insensitive.” And the way she says it, and the way she looks at me in that get-up of hers, her eyes burning into me
like tiny lasers…for a second I feel ashamed. For a second it’s like I am a midget, or — what are you supposed to call them? I’m so out of it sometimes. I always do the wrong thing.

  “I guess next to a small person, anyone could look like Mr. Big Man,” she says to Rico. He pokes the air with his finger and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

  Lucy rolls her eyes, slams the book shut and stomps off to hang out under the tree with the chess man. She takes the kite book with her, so I don’t get to see the picture of that Moran guy.

  “Who does she think she is — kite-queen or something?” Rico says. I pluck at the grass. He looks at me and snorts.

  I’ve got to hand it to that Moran guy. Hardly anyone thinks up stuff like that anymore. Only weirdos think like that, and nobody wants to be a weirdo. Even loser weirdos like Lucy can come up with some good stuff sometimes.

  I wish I could make my voice do that growl thing. It’s kind of cool in a weirdo way.

  3

  When I get to the park after lunch the next day, I see Lucy in the middle of the field tying a couple of sticks together. I look around for Rico, but he must be up at the 7-11 getting a Slurpie.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. She looks up at me.

  “What does it look like?” She must still be burned about yesterday. I take a look at the junk she has in front of her: sticks, string, glue and this roll of Christmas wrapping paper with beady-eyed Santas on it.

  “Are you making a present?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Guess again.” Then it comes to me.

  I look around for Rico again and sit down.

  “I’ve never seen a kite made with wrapping paper before,” I say. She’s got the cross bars made up already. She is so concentrated. Her tongue is sticking out of her mouth. Her hands seem to know exactly what to do. Why don’t I think up things like making a kite?

  “You just woke up this morning and decided to make a kite?”

  “Yup,” she says, but she doesn’t stop working. I watch her put glue in the middle of the cross sticks. She hands it over to me, takes my fingers and works them around the middle of the cross where the glue is.

  “Hold it like that until it dries.” She rummages around in her dirty pink knapsack. She has to keep throwing her cape over her shoulder to keep it out of the way.

  I do what I’m told. I hold still and look out at the park. Not a cloud in the sky.

  Wells Hill Park has two hills in it altogether. We’re talking foothills, as in they are about a foot deep. It has three sets of monkey bars — including one that looks like a big blue moon. It has swings, the baby kind, a tetherball stand and a small sandbox.

  On the other side of the sandbox is a huge tree with a picnic table under it. Mostly it’s used by the chess man. Every time you look over there he’s playing chess. He has this white hair that’s all greased back and these humongous horn-rimmed glasses. For a while I thought he was Lucy’s father because I see her playing chess with him sometimes, but Rico says he’s an old pervert.

  The second hill goes down from behind this kiddie wading pool. Nothing goes on there. Even sun-bathers don’t use it. It looks like a spot that’s supposed to be for something only that something never happens. My whole summer’s like that — one huge, long stretch of nothing.

  “Boo!”

  I almost drop the kite frame. I turn around and face the monster shadow of Rico looming over me. “Got ya,” he says and plunks himself next to me. “What are you fools up to?” Lucy won’t even look at him.

  “We’re making a kite,” I say.

  “Out of that stupid wrapping paper?” He gets up, puts his foot on the wrapping paper and rolls it under his foot.

  Lucy sighs.

  “Why are you such a Moran, Rico?” she asks.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He takes his foot off the wrapping paper and Lucy grabs it away from him.

  “It means go pick on somebody your own size. We’re busy.” Rico is quiet for a few seconds. Then he says, “Hey, Ter, you want to play some tetherball?”

  The glue isn’t dry on the kite frame yet. Lucy is busy with her other stuff.

  “Maybe later,” I say.

  “What? You too busy helping Loser with her stupid kite?”

  I look down at the kite, like it’s the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen, and pray for some cool thing to say to pop into my head.

  “Can’t you see we’re busy here?” Lucy says. Rico looks at me, shrugs and goes to talk to the lifeguard at the wading pool. Rico calls her Boobacious, for two extremely obvious reasons. Only now I can’t remember her real name, so I’m afraid to talk to her in case Boobacious slips out.

  “I bet he thinks she’ll be his girlfriend or something,” Lucy says. “She’s way too old for him. He is so deluded. He couldn’t see a fly if it were sitting on his eyeball.”

  I feel like I have to stick up for Rico.

  “And you are all-seeing, right? You have x-ray vision or something?”

  “No. Sonar,” she says. She tucks her hair back behind her ear. She’s drawn birds by her eyes today. Blue on the left and purple on the right.

  “What are you supposed to be in that outfit, anyway?” I say.

  “I’m not supposed to be anything. I am a bat,” she says. “If you weren’t so blind you’d see that right off. Or maybe you’d see it better if you were blind. Some things you see better with your eyes closed.”

  “Aren’t you a little old to play pretend?” I say, but I’m already thinking about how she really could be a bat. It’s like my cousin Elys says. If you believe it, it’s not a lie.

  “I’m old enough to do what I like.” Lucy looks me straight in the eye. I’m not used to that. I don’t know if I like it or not. When Tom talks, I look at his hands. His fingernails are always dirty, man.

  “And you like being a bat,” I say. She is way off. She’s outside the universe, she’s that far out.

  “I am a bat. It’s not really a thing you choose. It chooses you.” She’s looking straight in my eyes. I look down at the kite again. She goes on in that growl of hers that you can’t help listening to. “You know, in Finland, there are people who believe that their souls come out of their bodies when they are sleeping and fly around as bats.” I imagine my soul flying out of my body and bashing into my bedroom window. Then I wonder if souls are naked and I guess I smirk because I hear Lucy growl, “You wouldn’t understand, so just forget it. All right?” She looks pretty fierce. She can go on being a bat if she likes. It doesn’t hurt me any.

  “All right,” I say. She makes me hold the frame as she loops string around the notched ends of the sticks. She ties the notches shut with smaller pieces of string.

  “Okay. Now we have to put it on the paper,” she says. She’s barely looking at me the whole time. I hold the kite frame down and she cuts around it. We glue the flaps over the string and she pulls out the kite book to look at instructions. I still want to see that picture of Moran.

  I look over her shoulder at the book. We just have to make the bridle and the tail now. We could be flying this thing in half an hour. I can’t wait to see all those beady-eyed Santas staring down at me from the clouds.

  “Oh, shoot,” says Lucy.

  “What?” Then I hear it. Daphne, Lucy’s big sister, is hollering for Lucy.

  “Just ignore it,” she says. It’s hard to ignore someone hollering “Lucy Goosey.” Lucy bites her lip and starts putting her stuff back in her knapsack. “She’s never around except when I don’t want her to be.”

  I look over at Daphne. It’s like she’s allergic to coming right into the park to get her sister. It’s like those five extra steps are too much work for her.

  “Okay, I gotta go. We’ll fly it tomorrow in the ravine.” Lucy isn’t asking me. She’s telling me. I nod and watch her carry the kite out of the park. As soon as she sees Lucy is coming, Daphne turns and starts walking. Lucy turns to wave at me and then runs after her.

 
I guess we’re friends now.

  I wonder why Daphne doesn’t actually come into the park when she comes to get Lucy. She must like hollering.

  I’ve seen Daphne flipping burgers behind the counter at Fatso’s. She looks kind of like what Lucy should have looked like if God had gotten her face right. Lucy’s nose is all long and sharp and her forehead goes up too high. Daphne’s face looks like it’s had those pointy bits sanded down. Her hair is darker, more brown than red. It hangs straight and moves in one long shining piece when she walks. Lucy looks like she’s got a red porcupine sitting on her head. Daphne’s almost perfect. She’s got that big birthmark by her eye, but it looks like it belongs there. Her voice is round and smooth.

  I like to hear her hollering for Lucy. Sometimes I wish I had a dog, just so I could lose it and holler for it. I’m completely serious about that.

  On my way home I think about what Lucy said about bats and seeing with your eyes closed. I think I know what she means. I see all sorts of things. I see gaps in the way things happen, the huge stretches in time with nothing and no one to carry you to the next real moment. Like this big long one now between making kites and dinner time. Nothing to do again. If Tom were here we could play some cards. If Rico wasn’t talking at Boobacious, I’d let him beat me at tetherball.

  I guess I’ll go home and watch TV.

  I wonder what a bat does at home?

  I get home and my cousin Elys is there staring at an open fridge.

  “Spying on Mr. Mustard?” I say. I swear, she spends more time looking in our fridge than I spend watching television. She hangs around our place a lot. Elys’s mom took off to France when Elys was seven, so she sort of adopted my mom and now she practically lives here half the time. I guess she’s supposed to be keeping an eye on me. Mom’s always working late or doing dinner with this guy Farley.

  “You got any cheese?” Elys asks. She leans into the fridge and pokes a couple of jars like they might be full of pickled spiders or something. The labels are all worn off and Elys has to squint to read them.