“Lucy said it's easy. She said she'd show me how,” I say. The doors open. I wait for Russell to get off. He looks at me.
“Well?” he says. I figure this is Lucy's floor and I step off. “She's a good teacher,” Russell says as the doors close.
I don't like big apartment buildings. The halls always remind me of those cartoon hallways where all the characters run in and out of apartments. I hate those cartoons. I wonder about all the characters
who live in those apartments they are running through.
They ignore so much on television. It's like the camera decides what's important and it's always the same stuff. It's so predictable, it's sickening. Plus, there's always a happy ending which is just a lie. I can't remember the last happy ending in my life. I can't remember ever feeling like everything was going to be A-okay forever starting now. It's all a big lie. It doesn't work like that in real life. Real life is full of all these boring extra times and stupid little stuff like picking your nose and doing laundry.
I walk up and down the hall looking at the doors. I don't know what I expect â maybe a big bat symbol on the door, or a big arrow sign that says, “Lice here.” I am tempted to put my ear against the doors to listen for Lucy's voice.
If Tom were here he might just knock on all the doors and ask for Lucy. Only Tom wouldn't look for Lucy. I bet Tom has a flat head from carrying canoes around. Tom, Mr. Big Mouth with a flat head. I guess I miss him.
I hear the elevator doors opening. I run for the door to the stairs. I don't want anyone to call the cops on me for loitering in apartment hallways. I peek through the door to watch whoever it is come down the hall.
It's Lucy. She's walking down the hall fidgeting
with something behind her back. I don't know whether to stay hidden or not. What if she sees me hiding? I'd look like the world's biggest jerk.
I fling open the door and say “Hi,” way too loudly. Lucy drops something on the floor and screams. I want to disappear back into the stairwell. Instead, I run up and reach down for the bottle of shampoo she dropped. The top opened and it's oozing all over the place. Lucy has her hand on her throat.
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.” I put the lid back on the shampoo. I've got the stuff all over my hands. It smells like soapy green apples. Lucy grabs the bottle from my hands and marches down the hall.
“I'm sorry,” I say again and follow her.
“What are you doing here?” she asks as we stop at her door. Like me, she has to retrieve a hide-a-key to get inside.
“I didn't know which apartment was yours,” I say. She stares at me like she's waiting for more of an answer. It's like she can't hear you unless you're telling the truth. It must be a bat thing. “I think I'm a bat,” I tell her. “Bats help other bats, right?” I can't look her in the eye, so I look down at the pool of shampoo spreading down the hall. She turns around, opens the door and walks in.
“Well?” she says. I walk in to a total pigsty. I thought I was messy, but this placeâ¦man, oh, man.
So many newspapers on the floor that it looks like they were trying to carpet the place with them. Dirty glasses and dishes, some with old food still on them, are all over the end tables and the coffee table. The couch is draped in sat-on clothes on top of a wrinkled sheet. Underneath, it looks like a decent couch.
I walk over to the window. I see Lake Ontario. I see all the high-rises downtown. I see the CN Tower.
“Awesome view,” I shout to Lucy. It's the one nice thing I can think of to say.
“Be quiet,” she says. She points to the bedroom. Her dad must be asleep. She sits cross-legged on top of all the stuff on the couch. She still has her bat-cape on. Today she has little teardrops painted on her face. You can still see the squiggles from yesterday underneath. You'd think anyone used to washing her face that hard would think to do her hair, too.
“Stop looking at me,” she says.
“Sorry,” I say. I look away. I stand up and look out the window some more. I think I can see the top of Mom's office building. I wonder if she is in conference with Farley right now, planning some big weekend fun. I bet she leaves Elys a lot of money. I can probably convince Elys to take me to the Science Centre. Lucy, too. We could yell our heads off in the soundproof hallway, or do those inkblot tests for the mind. I bet Lucy would see bats in every one of them.
I turn to ask her.
“Don't look at me!” she yells. She has her hands over her eyes. Her cape shudders. She looks up toward the hall and covers her mouth. I go and sit beside her. The only thing I know to do is pat her on the back. She jerks away at first, but then she lets me. We stay like that for a while. The room smells like wet pizza and apple juice. She sniffs a few times, but she doesn't sob.
“I'm not a freak, you know,” she says.
“I know.”
“I don't know what to do,” she says and starts crying. She stuffs the end of her bat cape in her mouth to keep from making noise. I pat her back some more. I can see tears dropping on her leg and bouncing onto her sneakers.
I go to get her a glass of water.
The kitchen is even messier than the living room. The dishes are all over the place and the garbage is overflowing. On the counter is an old cheese wrapper with some fuzzy vegetable on it. I think it is a zucchini, but it could just as easily be a cucumber, or even a carrot. Only the cupboards are clean â empty of all the dishes. I look on the kitchen table for a glass to wash and see a stack of notes, all written on toilet paper.
“Michael: do dishes,” one says. At the bottom in different handwriting is, “Lorraine: buy bread.”
Michael and Lorraine must be Lucy's parents. Another one says, “Michael: pay phone bill,” and at the bottom, again, in different handwriting, is, “Lorraine: clean bathtub.”
There are, like, twenty of these pieces of toilet paper stacked on the table. Someone has blown his or her nose in a couple of them â you can still see the magic marker writing on the sides.
On the corner of the kitchen table is a glass full of colored magic markers. They all have their caps on. Lucy must take care of the markers to keep them fresh for making her tattoos â or maybe to keep them fresh so that her parents can write these notes to one another. I guess with her father working nights and her mom I-don't-know-where during the days, they don't have much time for housework â only enough time for writing notes on toilet paper. Or maybe this is how they have a fight.
I wash out a glass, fill it with water and take it to Lucy. She takes a sip. She blows her nose into her bat cape. Gross. She gulps down half of the water. She puts the glass on the floor and sighs.
“I don't know what to do,” she says to the air. I can almost see the words float out of her mouth.
“Maybe you should wash your hair,” I say. She slices me with her laser eyes. I ignore her and pick up the shampoo.
“I stole it,” she says. I can't believe it. “My sister
Daphne has shampoo, but she's got a lock on her door so I can't get in. My mom showers at the gym at the university and there's a shower where my dad works, because it's so hot with the ovens and everything. Anyway, there's no shampoo in the bathroom. I was using dish soap and then just soap. Daphne's mad at Mom so she hasn't bought any groceries in two weeks. She's supposed to look out for me, but she's been getting extra hours at work. I think she spent the money on new shoes. She gave me $10 last week, but I spent it already.” She chokes it out. “I bought too many egg rolls. I didn't know shampoo was so expensive.”
“I get $10 for allowance every week,” I say. “It's hardly enough for ice creams and Slurpies.”
“You must be rich,” Lucy says.
“I don't think we are,” I say. But I'm not so sure. “We have a pretty big TV set and I get new clothes twice a year.”
“That's rich,” she says. “We used to be rich before we moved here. Dad says it's because Toronto is really pricy. I think we have enough money. It's just that nobody has time to buy anything. He's working. Mom's cramming all these courses in so she can get a better job. And they are mad at each other all the time now because they hate it here. They don't even want to live here. They won't even talk to one another. It's all my fault.” How can it be her fault? “It was
going okay until Daphne got the job a couple of months ago. Now she doesn't have any time to shop or do laundry or anything and my parents are so stubborn. Mom thinks Dad has more time and Dad thinks Mom has more time and they have both been in a crappy mood for a month. I mean, I would buy the stuff if they gave the money to me. I'm old enough to take care of myself. I don't see why Daphne should have to do everything.” I look around at the living-room mess.
“I don't think there's any law against you cleaning up,” I say.
“But I'm only twelve,” she says and smiles at me, bat-style â with her mouth open and all her teeth showing.
That starts me laughing, and then she starts laughing and then she puts a sweater or something over my face to shut me up because her dad is sleeping, and we're both laughing and biting down on clothing. Lucy falls back into the couch, she's laughing so hard, and we both hear her bat cape rip. We both stop laughing for a second and look at each other while we listen for sounds of her dad. She puts her head against the wall, then so do I. We can both hear him snoring and that starts us laughing all over again. Lucy falls on the floor holding her stomach. The newspapers rustle under her and make it sound like it's raining inside.
I get on the floor and start to roll Lucy up in the newspapers. It's like she is a big fish and I'm packing her up for dinner. She squirms, but I get one end folded over her feet. I go to do the same to the head end, to pack her up real good. She sits straight up, her arms still wrapped in newspaper. Her face has a fierce look of warning on it.
The lice â she doesn't want me to touch her head.
That's the end of the fun. She stands up and the papers fall around her feet.
I pick up the newspapers and put them in a pile. I keep picking up papers until all the papers are in one big pile. Then I start taking all the dishes into the kitchen. On my third trip back to pick up more dishes, I run into Lucy in the doorway. She cracks me a shy smile, but we don't say anything.
Once all the dishes are in the kitchen, Lucy starts filling up the sink with water. I fold the clothes on the couch and put them in a pile underneath the coffee table. By the time I get back to the kitchen, Lucy is up to her elbows in bubbles.
“I thought you didn't have any dish detergent?” I whisper. Lucy points to the bottle of shampoo by the sink and we both break out in giggles again. Lucy puts the dishes into the water carefully, so they don't make too much noise. I use Lucy's bat cape to dry the glasses. By the time they are done, the whole
thing is soaked. We still have the dishes and pots to do. Lucy takes the cape off for the first time ever and hands it to me.
I don't feel right using it anymore, now that it's not on her. It's like she handed me her leg or something. Lucy looks naked without her cape on. She looks a lot smaller.
I half wish we hadn't started with the dishes. Tom would have a fit if he ever found out I helped a girl do dishes and even had fun doing it. If Tom found out, I'd never hear the end of it.
Lucy won't tell. Bats don't tell on other bats. I don't know if there's an actual bat rule book, but that sounds right to me.
Lucy has to refill the sink three times before we are even near finished. We decide to let a few of the pots soak. I watch Lucy wipe the counters. She lifts the toilet-paper notes up and puts them back down again. They are the only thing left on the kitchen table â well, them and the glass full of markers. We do a really good job.
The place looks seven thousand percent better. We could vacuum the living room, but Lucy's dad is still asleep. I swear, I forgot he was there for a while.
“Terence,” Lucy says as we are admiring our cleaning job, “will you help me with my hair?” She asks me in a whisper.
I don't know if I want to put my hands in lice hair.
Then again, it can't be any worse than the rest of the mess we just cleared out. Bats help bats.
I nod and Lucy holds up her finger and leaves the room.
She comes back wearing a brown bathing suit. It's the bathing suit that reminds me that she's a girl. It's easier to remember Lucy is a bat than it is to remember she's a girl. The bathing suit's a little small for her, so the neck is pulled down lower than it should go. I can see she's growing boobs. I look up at her face real quick. I can't be treating a bat like she's ketchup.
We go into the bathroom. Lucy locks the door. She kneels on the bathmat and turns the water on. Only one of the bulbs in the light is working.
“Help me make sure I get it all out,” she says. She leans over the tub and wets her hair under the faucet. I sit on the toilet to watch. She lathers up. Her eyes are shut tight to stop soap from getting in them.
I can't help stealing a longer look at her skinny body. She has fuzzy blonde hairs growing on her upper back. You can hardly tell they're there at all.
She sticks her hair back under the faucet and washes the soap out. I can see some lice in the soap. They look like tiny crabs. Their little bodies circle around the drain like pieces of wet rice.
“Can you check my head?” Lucy asks. She keeps her head over the bathtub. I go over and kneel
beside her on the bathmat. I'm not sure exactly what to do. I lean over her and take pieces of her hair and look at them. I don't see anything. I put my hand on the back of her neck. It is soft. I part her hair at the top and look at the scalp. I see a little wriggling piece of something. I take a quick breath and slowly take my hands off her.
“I saw one,” I say. “You better try again.” She hits the side of the tub really hard and kicks her foot against the floor. “I'm sure one more time will do it, Lucy.”