Bat Summer Page 8

  “Rico told me about your note. What did it say?” She looks at me like I’m speaking another language and starts clicking her tongue again. “You didn’t say anything about Loblaws, did you? That’s not why you left?” She shakes her head and brings her face right up into mine, clicking. I don’t know what to do, so I pick up the bat book and start flipping through it.

  She sits down beside me and pulls it away.

  “I’m hiding from the enemy. I don’t want to get my eyes poked out. I don’t want to be locked in the dark with a bunch of owls.” Now she’s talking crazy talk. She has these vibes coming off her like she’s had too much coffee, all shivery and tense. I want to put my arm around her, but I don’t want her to think that I want her to be my girlfriend, even though she might be already. It seems like a better idea to let her be a bat for a while. She’ll get tired of it.

  Lucy takes the book from me.

  “It says here that this Italian scientist, Lazzaro Spallanzani, sealed all these bats and owls together in a dark room to see how they would fly in the dark. The owls bashed into everything, but the bats could find their way around no problem. So then Spallanzani blindfolds the bats to see if they can still get around, and, of course they do, because we use echoes to find out where everything is. Like we yell like this: OOOOOOOOOO.” She hollers so loud, I’m sure the cars on the bridge can hear. Somebody’s gonna find us if she goes on like that. I want to put my hand over her mouth, but she lifts up her finger and stops. “Did you hear that?”

  “How could I not hear that?”

  “I mean the echo, Terence.” She looks at me for a second and then dives back into the book. “Spallanzani didn’t know about echoes and how we can tell how close something is just by yelling at it and hearing the sound bounce off it. You shouldn’t put blindfolds on animals. I don’t think you should try to make anything blind that isn’t already. Anyway, it didn’t work, did it? But Spallanzani couldn’t leave it at that. He goes and pokes our bat eyes out and then sends us out into the night to see if we can find our way home. And we did find our way home and he still wasn’t happy. He murdered a bunch of us bats — ones with eyes, ones without eyes, didn’t matter to him. He murdered us and cut open our stomachs to see if the bats with eyes ate the same amount as the bats without eyes. And you know what he found?”

  I have a picture in my head of gutted, blinded bats and this guy, Spallanzani, leaning over them with blood on his hands.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. The bats with eyes and the bats without eyes ate the same amount. He killed them for nothing. How could he do that? How could he poke their eyes out and cut their stomachs open? He shouldn’t have done that.”

  I see a drop fall on the book. At first I look up at the ceiling to see if there is a leak. Then I realize it’s Lucy crying. I put my arm around her shoulder.

  “What a Moran,” I say. She looks at me and gives a half-smile.

  “He’s worse than a Moran. He’s a Spallanzani. Those owls in that dark room, they bumped into everything and he didn’t do anything to them. It’s not fair to be picked on because you’re smart like a bat.” Lucy tugs on the end of the bandanna on her head and wipes her eye with a corner of it. I take my shirt from around my waist and give it to her to cry into. I can still hear the rain rustling the bush outside.

  “You want some spaghetti?” she asks.

  “I didn’t know bats ate spaghetti.”

  “This bat does.” Lucy moves over to where the pot is. She puts it between us and lifts up the lid. There’s a whole pot full of spaghetti in there. She digs a fork out of her knapsack and hands it to me. I shouldn’t really eat her food.

  “Why did you run away?” I know it’s a dangerous question. She might start clicking again.

  “I didn’t run away. I migrated. Bats migrate when it gets too cold where they are. That apartment was freezing. We can’t fly unless we’re at the right temperature.”

  It’s almost August. The whole city’s stinking hot. Last year, Tom and me tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk — and it almost worked.

  “Is that what you said in the note? That you were migrating?”

  “What are you so obsessed with that note for? It wasn’t about you. Everybody always thinks everything is about them. All I said was that I had to go away for a while until things warmed up. I couldn’t stand listening to everything freezing up like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we did all that work cleaning the apartment and nobody said anything. It’s like the whole place doesn’t even exist.”

  I think I know what she means. It’s like when I asked Mom about going to canoe camp with Tom and she said maybe, and then never mentioned it again. And now it’s summer and Tom is gone and I’m still here — all without anybody saying anything.

  At least I have Elys to take care of me. Nobody takes care of Lucy. Except maybe me.

  She’s not going to be able to live long on this spaghetti.

  “You should come to my house,” I say. I take a forkful of spaghetti. I’m starving. If she comes home with me, I’ll make her some wieners and macaroni. “We’ve got an extra bedroom. I’m sure it’d be okay with my mom.”

  Her eyes fill with tears again. I wonder if bats cry. This one does. Too much.

  “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Lucy crosses over to the bed. She turns her back to me and unwraps the bandanna from around her head.

  My heart does something it’s never done before. It flops over four full times, like a fish fresh out of water.

  Lucy is bald. She’s shaved her head. And I can tell she had a hard time doing it because there are a few nicks by her ear and at the base of her neck. She must have done it to get rid of the lice.

  Oh, Lucy. I can see her neck muscles tighten. I swear, I can see her brain thinking. She lets her face fall in her hands.

  I can’t catch my breath. I remember the color of her hair. How I once thought it was spiky and stringy, and also how it burned like fire. And also, how I touched it.

  “Lucy.” I don’t know what to say. “Lucy. It’ll grow back, Lucy.”

  She shakes her head in her hands. She can’t face me. I don’t blame her. I go over to her and slowly, slowly, put my hand on her head. I feel her relax under me. She lets out a sob that sounds like the tip of a tidal wave of tears. She buries her face in the sleeping bag and sobs like the end of the world is coming. I sit beside her and pat her back.

  I say, “Shh, shh.”

  We sit like that for a long time. I listen to the rain outside. I listen to myself say “shh.” The candle burns down a bit. I think about how stupid it is to worry about having a weenie chest or getting caught smoking. I think about how those ketchup magazines under my mattress are so fake. I think about Tom’s dog Steel and how he farts up a storm and the whole house stinks and how they love that dog anyway. And I think about how it must feel to be so lonely like Lucy and how, I guess, sometimes I feel that way.

  I almost feel like crying, too. Only, I also have the feeling that the rain is crying for me and Lucy both. I feel like the whole day is a crying day.

  The candle goes out. I have no idea what time it is. Lucy is asleep. I should let her sleep. I sit there in the dark until my eyes adjust to the light.

  I can make out the edges of Lucy’s face. Her head looks so small without hair. She looks so much smaller when she’s asleep. She almost looks like a normal girl, except without hair.

  Tom might not think that Lucy is pretty. Her nose is too long and pointy, and her eyes are set deep in her head so that her cheeks seem to bloom out of them. Her eyebrows are slightly knotted together, as if she were trying to balance something on top of her head. Her bald head.

  I see the marker lying on the ground by the books. I crawl over and get it. I rip a piece off the kite and write Lucy a note.

  “Dear Lucy Bat, I will be back later with food. Please stay here.” I was going to sign it “Ter
ence Bat,” but the marker finally gave out.

  I crawl out into the ravine and scramble up the other side of the bridge. I don’t want to go back through the park. I don’t want to have to talk to the police if they are still there, Rico will probably tell them I don’t know anything anyway.

  All the way home I think about what I could make to take to Lucy. I’ll have to give Elys some lame excuse for going out again. She’ll let me, though. She trusts me not to get into trouble. I think I’ll make Lucy a bunch of cheese sandwiches with those simulated cheese flats. Those things’ll last forever — however long that is.

  When I get home, Mom is sitting on the sofa with her feet up on the coffee table.

  “Where have you been?” she asks. Her voice is calm but I get the feeling like something has happened.

  “I was at the park,” I say. She takes her feet off the coffee table and leans forward on her elbows. Something has definitely happened.

  “Just tell me where you were, Terence. I know you weren’t at the park.” I wonder if she went looking for me. That’s odd. I think of something else.

  “What time is it?”

  “Answer the question.” I go and sit in the rocking chair.

  “Where’s Elys?”

  “Terence!” She’s standing up now. I haven’t seen her this angry in a long time. She must have found the magazines. Or maybe Elys told her about the smoking. “I’ll ask you again. Where were you?”

  “I was in the park. I swear it.”

  “No, you weren’t. Try again.”

  “Not Wells Hill Park, Mom. The other one. The ravine. Up by Spadina. I was flying a kite.”

  She seems to deflate a little.

  “In the rain? That’s dangerous.”

  “I know, but…”

  “God, I was so worried. The police were here, you know. They were looking for some girl. What’s her name?”

  “Lucy.”

  “That’s right. Do you know her?”

  “Kind of…you’re home early today.”

  “It’s past eight, Terence. I’ve been home for two hours already. I don’t want you out this late alone, all right? We don’t know what happened to that girl.”

  She doesn’t know what happened to that girl.

  “I want you home at five o’clock every day. I know it’s a bummer, but I can’t have you tooling about the neighborhood on your own if there’s some freak out there. I’m going to be coming home a lot earlier and I want you to be here.”

  “That’s not fair.” I say it to myself, but Mom hears me.

  “What’s that?” I can feel my face getting red. Somebody needs me, and now Mom’s pulling this stupid adult trip on me. A five o’clock curfew and I didn’t even do anything.

  “There’s no freak out there, Mom. She ran away… I mean, Rico told me she ran away.” I have to be careful not to spill the beans. I’m rocking the chair really fast now. “Elys would let me stay out.” I think I hurt her feeling with that one. She sits back down again.

  “Well, I’m not Elys, am I?” she says finally. “Elys has a new job and she isn’t going to be around so much anymore. That’s why I’m coming home earlier.”

  Everything’s changing so fast. Who am I going to watch television with? Mom? I’m going to eat stupid hot dogs for the rest of my life because that’s all Mom can cook.

  “I guess that won’t leave you much time for Farley.” It was a stupid thing to say. I want to piss her off. I want her to feel bad like me.

  She doesn’t even say anything. She just stands up and walks to the kitchen.

  “There’s some lasagna for you in the oven.”

  Elys must have made it for me. My favorite food and I don’t even feel like eating.

  I stop the rocking chair and head for the kitchen. What a rotten day this turned out to be. “And wipe that black gunk off your tongue. What have you been doing, eating charcoal?”

  11

  When I wake up the next morning, the house is empty. For once, it doesn’t seem like all that many hours between nine and five. I root around the house for things to take Lucy. I should show my face up at Wells Hill Park today. Try to find out what’s going on at Lucy’s house.

  I get a big knapsack from the basement and start filling it with stuff: a pillow, a blanket, a flashlight, a big jar of cranberry juice, my Swiss army knife, a toothbrush and some toothpaste squeezed into a baggie, a pack of playing cards, a crummy harmonica I got in my Christmas stocking last year and a whole shopping bag full of cheese sandwiches (some with mayonnaise and some without).

  I get halfway down the block with the whole heavy pack and turn back for some fruit and celery. Lucy should try to eat a balanced diet to keep up her strength.

  I take the back way into the ravine so that I won’t have to go through the park. That way I can just cruise into Wells Hill later with no load on my back and make like I just slept in.

  My knapsack jams in the mouth of the cave and I fall flat on my face.

  “Oof.” I crawl the rest of the way inside. I can’t see anything.

  “Lucy?”

  No answer. I open the knapsack and fish out the flashlight. I turn it on and beam it on the bed. It’s lumpy. I go over and nudge the lump, but it’s just the sleeping bag. Empty.

  Oh, no. She moved! Where could she have gone? Maybe there is some freak wandering around. I shouldn’t have let her stay here. I should have taken her home, bald head or no bald head.

  I beam the flashlight around, looking for clues. I look in the pot of spaghetti and see that it’s all gone. She must have been hungry. Maybe she went out to steal some food. I hope not. What if she gets caught? What are they going to make of a little bald bat stealing chips?

  It looks like she’s still here. The strand of spaghetti on the bottom of the pot is still kind of wet, so she couldn’t have eaten it that long ago.

  I leave the knapsack and crawl out of the cave. Halfway out I feel a hard blow on the back of my neck and fall flat on my face again.

  “Terence! I’m so sorry.” I look up at her, but I can hardly see through the flapping wings of the little birdies flying around my head. “I saw lights in the cave and thought maybe the police were in there. I was going to hide, but you came out too quick. Are you okay?”

  “Okay?” I try to get to my feet and knock my head on the top of the cave entrance. “Owwww.” Lucy pushes me back inside and onto the bed. I hear some fumbling about and then the light goes on.

  “What did you bring me?” She’s over by the knapsack and unloading it in a hurry. She has the bandanna back on her head. She looks like a gypsy fairy in the half-light of the cave.

  “Pass me the pillow,” I say. My head smarts something fierce.

  “Celery?” She says it like it’s a dirty word.

  “Cheese sandwiches, too. You have to keep your strength up.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Bats eat insects. That’s all bats need. But thanks. Your mom buys good bread. We always get the white stuff. I mean, that’s what they have in their apartment.”

  My head hurts badly. What if it were the police in here? She would have knocked the police on the head.

  “You should go home, Lucy. It’s not safe here. I’m sure your family won’t care about your hair.”

  She keeps unloading the knapsack like she hasn’t heard me. She pulls out the Swiss army knife.

  “Excellent. This is exactly what I need.”

  Now I’m sorry I brought all this stuff. Especially the knife. What if she stabs someone trying to come into the cave? I’ll be an accessory to murder.

  “When are you going to go home?”

  She gives the harmonica a try. It sounds awful.

  “You know, baby bats that can’t hold onto their mothers fall to the bottom of the cave and are eaten by predators who are just waiting there for them to fall down. It’s no wonder they hold on so tight. You have to learn how to fly on your own really early. That way if you fall it’s no big deal because you can fly, right?”
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  I’m not following her. She’s talking like a bat again. Maybe I should tell someone she’s here. I don’t want her to hate me, but she might be in trouble. In the head, I mean.

  “Are you going to go home?” I say.

  Finally, she turns away from the knapsack to face me. She flips through the attachments on the Swiss army knife: a knife, a saw, a magnifying glass, a can opener, a corkscrew and some short, sharp pointy thing. She flicks them back in and looks at me.

  “Thanks for bringing the stuff. I have a plan, you know. I have a really important project I’m working on. I have a lot of work to do. A lot of work… do you have a tape measure? Because that would really help.” She looks around at all the stuff. “A tape measure and a big sheet of heavy plastic — like a drop sheet for paint. I need a lot of stuff, actually. I think I got good branches this morning.” She tugs at something at the door and brings it into the light. She has two huge branches.

  “What are you making?”

  “You gave me the idea with the kite yesterday. I’ve got to do something. I can’t just sit back and let us all die. It will throw off the whole ecosystem. Did you know bats eat fifty percent of their body weight in bugs every day? Well, the ones who eat bugs. The ones who eat fruit help pollinate the fruit trees, just like bees. And they’re killing us, Terence. They think we have rabies. They’re scared of us. They aren’t thinking. They don’t know what we do for the world.” She has this stunned look on her face. Her head is practically drowning in the bandanna.

  “You’re making a kite? For…why are you making a kite?” I sit up straight.

  “It’s like that Moran guy, only it’s going to be me flying. It’s time for me to fly, Terence. And I’m not going to be screaming for people to buy candy bars. I’m going to be saving bats.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m going to make a huge kite and paint it with the message Save the Bats, and I’m going to fly it all over town and everywhere where bats are endangered.”

  I am stunned.

  “You can’t do that. I mean, I’ve heard of Save the Whales and Save the Seals and Save the Rain Forest, but Save the Bats? Forget it. It’s like Save the Mosquito. People just won’t go for it. Plus there’s no way you’re going to build a kite that will carry you. No way.”