Being Fishkill Read online

  This was fun. I could see why everyone wanted to drive. I was busy thinking of all the places we could go and the lawns we could pulverize when Duck-Duck pointed to the side of the road.

  “Can you stop right there?”

  I floated over and jammed on the stop pedal, and sure enough, I stopped right where Duck-Duck wanted.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now we park and put the keys back where they were, and my mother will flip out, looking for her car. Then she’ll find it and think she forgot where she parked and wonder whether that means she’s losing her marbles like my grandmother did.” Duck-Duck had a little smirk that reminded me of a cat hiding under the table just waiting for some bare legs to pass by.

  With her short hair and her tough shoulders, I couldn’t really imagine Duck-Duck’s mother flipping out about anything.

  “Park the car. No problem,” I said, and I twisted the key back. The car gagged but then it shut up. It was good to know I could drive, I thought as we walked back. It might come in handy later.

  “I’m going to be a lawyer and go to court every day. I’ll argue cases no one can argue against. Then someday maybe I’ll become a judge. My mother says lawyers can become judges later. So what are you going to be?”

  That question again.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I said.

  “No problem,” said Duck-Duck. “It’s good to decide early so you can pick the right college, but you have a little time. At least now you can drive.”

  Then we walked in the front door of Duck-Duck’s house, as if we had just come home from school and were hoping for a peanut-butter-banana sandwich.

  A couple days after I learned to drive, Duck-Duck invited me to her house to do homework. I wasn’t sure if I should go. Each time I missed the school bus, it was a long walk home. After the edge of town, there were no sidewalks, so I had to walk on the gravel shoulder. Also, I was worried Duck-Duck would think I was stupid. I was in the dumb math class, after all. If we only stuck to language arts and reading, I might be able to get by.

  Years before I learned to bash boys into the dirt, I learned that reading was a form of self-defense. The alphabet meant nothing until I realized spelling could read minds and predict the future. Exactly halfway through first grade, letters clicked into place and became words. In Grandpa’s house, a scribbled note, a phone message, or a piece of mail could mean a night of chaos. An envelope from the Department of Motor Vehicles was almost always a bad thing, as was anything from the courts. Those notes meant Grandpa cursed and threw beer cans at us. A message from the gun club was good. Maybe I’d get four sheets of toilet paper instead of three. A note from the Health Department was always bad, since it meant Grandpa would have to pay another fine, and then he’d refuse to buy us bread. Reading meant I could identify and disappear school mail, sounding out notes for parent-teacher conferences or memos regarding shots and fluoride swishing. Grandpa was against swishing, so I knew it was something I wanted.

  It wasn’t until second grade that I found out reading was for fun too. Miss Carew was the pretty librarian. She wore skirts and wound up her hair like an old lady, but somehow it didn’t make her look old. She invited me over to her desk and asked my name. The first book she gave me to read was Charlotte’s Web, even though the other kids were still reading picture books. Later, she asked me what I thought of it, in a way that sounded like she really cared. And even though she never asked, she somehow understood that Keely didn’t read to me at night or buy me Nancy Drews. During all-school assembly, the vice principal said we should read more biographies and historical fiction, and less about talking animals and orphans becoming superheroes. I figured the old Nancy Drews counted as historical fiction, since Nancy had no computers or cell phones and she had a housekeeper who baked homemade pies.

  In third grade, other girls panned Harriet the Spy as dumb, since who carries around a notebook anymore? They all had computers at home and phones in their pockets. I liked the spying part of the book, but I could never figure out why Harriet got so whiny. Harriet had two parents, a nanny, and a cook, and she could keep her notebook inside the house without worrying that someone would tear it to pieces. Maybe having two parents made you soft, unless you lived in pioneer days, and sometimes maybe even then.

  In the middle of fourth grade, Miss Carew went away and was replaced by two women who shelved books and stamped cards and didn’t ask me what I thought about anything.

  Doing English homework with Duck-Duck would be fine, but what if Duck-Duck wanted to do math instead?

  “Um, sorry, my mother wants me to clean my room,” I mumbled.

  “Tell her you’ll clean it later. We’ll just tell her that education is more important to society’s moral foundation than housekeeping. We can call her from my house,” said Duck-Duck. “My mom got me a cell phone, but she rigged it so that I can only call her and nine-one-one. She’s totally paranoid. She thinks I’ll be tricked by some serial killer like on CSI, but I’m going to figure out how to unlock it. Meanwhile, we can write notes in code to each other if we have to communicate.”

  I had never owned a cell phone, so notes in code were fine with me.

  “We can tell your mother that homework is best done by the cooperative learning method.” She started walking, occasionally giving a little skip, tugging my hand as she headed home. I didn’t pull away.

  “What’s the ‘cooperative learning method’?”

  “Teachers always come up with new reasons they do stuff. Your mother will just think it’s a modern teaching philosophy.”

  I didn’t tell Duck-Duck that my mother would never call anything a philosophy. I wasn’t sure I knew what a philosophy was. I was sure my mother didn’t. Grandpa would have torn up any philosophy book that came his way. He always went on about how his tax money was stolen by schools and libraries to buy cardboard and paper.

  “They’re brainwashing you into thinking you’re better than everyone else,” he sneered. He would tear up any book he saw in the house. Even schoolbooks.

  In second grade, I found a hole under a rock at the end of our driveway, on the outside of Grandpa’s fence. It was almost as good as a safe. I stashed my lunch pass and my library card there so Grandpa wouldn’t know I had them. After he tore up The Secret of the Old Clock, I started putting my library books there too, although Harry Potter wouldn’t fit. I stole a Ziploc plastic bag from the art teacher and put all my things in it and zipped it up so they wouldn’t get wet.

  I still had my doubts about cooperative homework, but I walked along with Duck-Duck anyway. When we got to her house, we went through the pretty red front door with the gold knocker and handle. The first thing I noticed was the smell of chicken roasting. It made me want to live there, with the chicken in the oven and Duck-Duck. I kind of forgot about Duck-Duck’s mother.

  There she was, though, in the kitchen. She raised her eyebrows a little when she saw me but gave us both granola bars and milk. She said we should make sure to do our homework before we played outside. I was glad when she went into the living room and stopped watching us chew.

  Duck-Duck’s bedroom was like a circus. Or maybe a castle. On the wall were pictures of pink princesses and lions and women writers. She showed me how her bed looked like just one bed at first but underneath it was another one that pulled out and popped up: a second perfect pink bed with ruffles. The pillows were cushy and soft and made you want to lie down and sleep and wake up special and re-carnated.

  Re-carnation seemed like a weird word, but last year, the sixth-grade teacher said it meant some people believed you could have a new life, which did make sense. I certainly wanted that. But you’d have to do it right. Like think of how powdered milk is just dry and sticky if you eat it straight. When you add water, it makes milk — but you have to add just the right amount of water. Too little, and it’s still thick, like mud; too much, and it tastes like a ghost of milk. If you did it right, re-carnation sounded like a great idea.
r />   When I was Carmel, boys hit me, and I didn’t hit back. I ate tomato soup and didn’t complain. I thought Social Services could make us normal. Now that I was Fishkill, it was different. Like powered-milk-with-water different. You wouldn’t think water was such a big deal. It doesn’t have any color or taste. But when I switched my name, I realized it was like that water.

  I didn’t tell anyone I was re-carnated when I filled out school papers. I just told teachers at the start of seventh grade that my name got typed backward on the old lists and that they should say Fishkill Carmel, not Carmel Fishkill. Schools made mistakes like that all the time in the front office, where they keep track of who you are and if you show up for school in the morning.

  I don’t know why — maybe it was the promise of those soft pillows — but now I told Duck-Duck: “I was re-carnated,” I said.

  “Wow, cool, like the Dalai Lama?”

  “Umm,” I said, “not really.” I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Things were hard before, so something had to change.”

  I wasn’t sure if that helped, but Duck-Duck seemed to get it. She just pulled out an old-fashioned board game she said would help teach us the skills needed if we ever ended up in a house with a dead body and many suspects.

  “That’s more important than homework any day,” she said.

  We must have been in her room a long time, because when we came out, it was dark, and the wind was blowing pebble rain against the windows.

  “It’s almost hurricane strength,” said Duck-Duck’s mother. “I’m not sure it’s safe to drive right now.”

  “Oh, good,” said Duck-Duck. “We can have a sleepover.”

  I’d never stayed over at anyone else’s house before. My first thought was the chicken in the oven. My second thought was where I would sleep. In the pink under-bed with ruffles?

  “You want to call your mother and ask if it’s okay?” said Duck-Duck.

  “Sure,” I said. My hands got a little sweaty, but the roasted chicken was going to be worth it. Duck-Duck handed me the phone, and I punched in the seven numbers.

  “Hi, Mom?” I said. “Can I stay at Duck-Duck’s tonight? Her mother said I could.” I held my breath and listened. Then I handed the phone back. “Mom said it’s okay.”

  Duck-Duck’s mother was giving me that adult razor-eye, see-through-you stare. “Let me speak to her.”

  “Uh, sorry,” I said. “She hung up already. She’s really busy.”

  I kept my eyes looking toward the kitchen. I could feel Duck-Duck’s mother still staring into the side of my head, but I pretended to ignore her.

  “Can I help set the table, Mrs. Farina?” Good girls in books always helped set the table.

  Duck-Duck’s mother gave a cough-sneeze. “No Mrs. here, Fishy. You can call me Molly.”

  It was funny that she had a name of her own. It was also funny to hear her use Duck-Duck’s name for me.

  The chicken from the oven had hot little carrots and potatoes baked inside it. Not cut-up carrots and potatoes, but little ones, like they came from tiny-land. Cafeteria chicken was oily and somehow tasted the same, no matter what name it had. Chicken Potpie, Chicken Fricassee, Chicken Stew. It was like a trick to make you think you were eating different food every day. Why couldn’t they make chicken like this? I could tell Molly was still eyeing me, but she kept putting more food on my plate, and I kept eating it.

  For dessert we had four little vanilla wafers each. I dunked mine in my milk even though Duck-Duck didn’t.

  The roof of Grandpa’s house on Birge Hill had cracks, so when it rained, I never slept good. Rain makes different noises outside and inside. Outside, it’s wild and fast. Inside, it’s slow drip-drips, making blankets wet and changing bread to glue.

  But on Cherry Road, I slept through the storm in Duck-Duck’s secret guest bed with the pink ruffles. I dreamed we were on a root-beer river. I could hear the outside water, but I was on a big, dry boat, sailing down the root-beer river past vanilla-wafer islands with leafy carrot trees.

  When I woke, the sun was shining again, and Duck-Duck was saying, “It’s Saturday! What do you want for breakfast?”

  While Duck-Duck was in the bathroom, I looked at her books. She had shelves and shelves of them. Some of them were little-kid picture books. Some were big thick books about lawyers and courts and why we have laws. One book was called A Beginner’s Introduction to Forensics, whatever that was. She had the entire Harry Potter series. It was like Miss Carew had visited and brought Duck-Duck all my favorite books, plus some.

  After a pancake breakfast, with maple syrup that tasted like it could have come from Little House in the Big Woods, Duck-Duck’s mother picked up her car keys and said, “I’m taking Chrissy to soccer practice, and then I’ll drive you home.” She didn’t ask. She just got her car keys and stood at the door like a prison guard with the only key.

  My palms got sweaty. Things didn’t go well when grown-ups saw Grandpa’s house. Our closest neighbors were a mile away, but they still complained about the old trucks and the dead refrigerator in the yard. Grandpa had put up an ugly fence in front of the driveway so they couldn’t see in. He’d picked the cheapest, ugliest fence he could find, and he’d topped it with barbed wire so they would have to look at it every time they drove by. The problem with this was we had to look at it too.

  The Social Service ladies didn’t like the fence. They didn’t like the shed either. When the town had changed the dump rules and you had to put a sticker on each bag of garbage and each sticker cost fifty cents, Grandpa had said the town council members were donkey’s asses and no way was he going to pay their salaries with his garbage. The town warned him if he threw it in the river, they would arrest him, so we just tossed the bags into the shed. We kept doing it even after Grandpa died. When you closed the door, it really wasn’t that bad, but the ladies thought it was. When they opened the shed door for the first time, the one lady almost threw up. She pretended she had allergies, but I knew she had almost heaved. They were scared of the dead cat in there too. They were always scared of the wrong things.

  I tried to find reasons and excuses to keep Molly away from the house, but she raised her eyebrows and folded her arms. Her eyes got squinty again, and she looked even more like a prison guard. She ordered me into the backseat of the car and then clicked the child locks. I took a test push, and sure enough, I couldn’t open the door. Parents were weird. Did they think we were going to jump out of a moving car?

  We dropped off Duck-Duck, and then Molly said, “Where to?” like we were out for a little drive and she was the chauffeur. I thought of other houses I could tell her to drive to, but she might decide she had to go in, so I gave up and told her the directions.

  In elementary school, I used to get picked up by the school bus at the end of our short driveway, but then they wanted the parents to drop us at the crossroads so the bus could pick us all up in one place. I had to walk fifteen minutes to the crossroads, but I would get there ten minutes early so everyone would just assume that my mom had driven and dropped me off early. It was extra walking, but at least everyone didn’t stare at our fence.

  It was kind of amazing how quick it took to get home in a car compared with walking. Molly followed my directions. We drove out of town, past a few fields, into the woods, where houses weren’t so nice, and in fifteen minutes we were pulling up in front of the fence. For once I was glad it was there, because you couldn’t really see the house. Grandpa had blocked off the end of the driveway with a dead trailer, and Keely and I had never unblocked it.

  “Thanks!” I said, and rattled the lock to remind her that she was supposed to free her prisoner.

  “I’ll walk up with you and say hi to your mother,” said Molly, and she clicked the locks open.

  “Oh, she’s not here,” I said quickly. “She’s working. She works a lot. Sometimes nights, sometimes even on the weekend.”

  “Oh?” said Molly.

  I didn’t like how she said tha
t. It made me think like Grandpa — that people should just mind their own damn business. At least she wasn’t getting out of the car.

  Molly had turned in her seat to face me. “What does she do for work?”

  That was a stumper.

  “She’s a consultant,” I said. Grandpa once said that to the census guy.

  I waited for more grilling, but Molly just said, “Have a good weekend. Don’t forget your backpack.”

  It all made me wonder how stupid people really were. Molly obviously wasn’t as smart as Duck-Duck. If I had picked someone else’s ordinary house to be dropped off at, how would she have known it wasn’t mine?

  When teachers went to teacher school, they must have learned that when you don’t know what to teach, teach about butterflies. It seemed like in every grade, we talked cocoons. I got the re-carnation part of a butterfly’s life, but it had always seemed to me like they changed in the wrong direction. Butterflies are pretty and have wings, which is nice, but caterpillars are tougher. Butterflies are always getting hit by cars and stepped on by shoes. Caterpillars blend in and hide. They have little suction feet to hang in the air if they need to. They don’t have wings to pull off. If you go to the trouble of re-carnating, you should get tougher, not weaker, but still all those teachers were so impressed by the butterflies. Pretty won’t keep you from being hit by the grille of a truck. Pretty talking won’t either.

  Duck-Duck didn’t get that. She thought she could talk her way out of anything. It was kind of smart of her, but it was also kind of dumb. The problem with talking your way out of a fight is that, no matter how good you are at arguing, the other person has to be willing to listen.

  When Worm came out of the math room all green and mad from being the dumbest in our dumb class, I could tell he wanted to hit someone. I walked real slow so it wouldn’t be me, but Duck-Duck had no warning.

  We all knew it was the dumb math class, even though the teachers kept changing the names. Little-kid classes had animal names: the beavers, the raccoons, the chipmunks. Now they just had colors. But who didn’t know that Blue Group was teacher code for dumb? It wasn’t just dumb either. I once made a list of all the Blue Group kids, and every single one of them except Manny Winter had either dead parents or dirt-poor parents. Manny had parents, but he had a tic and a stutter. He wasn’t dumb. He just couldn’t answer quick. He sat in the corner and drew engines and maps. Once he helped me with fractions.