Boys Rock! (5 page)

Caroline closed her bedroom door and eagerly tore open the envelope. There was the booklet she had seen advertised on the back of a movie magazine, a booklet for which she had paid two dollars and ninety-five cents plus postage:
Your Aura: Making It Work for You
.

What her family did not understand, Caroline told herself as she settled down in her chair by the window, was that actresses have to spend their whole lives getting people to pay attention to them. Once people stop paying attention, all the good roles in plays and movies go to someone else, and soon that actress is only a has-been. If Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn and Helen Hayes had an aura, there was no reason why Caroline Lenore Malloy shouldn’t have one too. She believed in working hard for what she wanted, and an aura just might help.

Caroline opened the booklet to the first page:
An aura is psychic energy drawn from the soul, which
radiates out to other people and alerts them to your presence
, she read.

Caroline reached for the package of corn chips she kept in a drawer and popped one into her mouth. Then another and another as she read on:

An aura broadcasts a woman’s intelligence, beauty, sensitivity, and passion. A light scarf worn over the head will contain the aura until the desired moment is at hand. Once the scarf is removed and the aura is released, replace the head scarf and repeat the following exercises
.….

Caroline read about the position in which she should be sitting, the manner in which her fingertips should be touching, the thoughts she should be thinking, and whether her eyes were to be open or closed. The hum, of course, was her own idea.

Half an hour later, Eddie peeped into the room and found Caroline sitting cross-legged on her bed with a thin white curtain draped over her head. She was humming one long, low note.

“Caroline, what the heck?” Eddie said.

When Caroline didn’t answer, didn’t even open her eyes, Eddie went over to the bed and picked up the booklet in her sister’s lap: “ ‘…; psychic energy drawn from the soul, which radiates out to other people …;’,” she read aloud. “Caroline, where do you get this stuff? It’s unscientific! Utter nonsense!”

“Well, it’s true, Eddie, or it wouldn’t be in print,” Caroline said, peeping out from under the curtain.

“Just because something’s in print doesn’t make it true,” Eddie told her. “I could write that the Hatford
boys were the smartest people on the planet, but that wouldn’t make it true.”

“Then why would someone bother to print up this booklet?” asked Caroline.

“Because you and a thousand others were willing to send them two dollars and ninety-five cents,” said Eddie.

But Caroline wanted to believe she had an aura, and when Eddie went back downstairs, Caroline went right on humming.

She took a break for lunch, then seated herself on the living room rug, this time using the short plastic “psychic stick” that had come with the booklet. While she hummed, she traced a line all the way up one side of her body, from her ankle to her armpit. First the right side, then the left, just as the booklet instructed.

“Will you stop?” Beth cried out as she stumbled over Caroline again. “Take your aura and your Oreos or whatever, and go someplace else, Caroline!”

All right, Caroline thought. She knew when she wasn’t wanted. She put the booklet away till after dinner, and then, because she knew she might be asked to wash the dishes if she stuck around, she took her booklet, her psychic stick, and her curtain down to the big rock on the Malloys’ side of the river so that she could practice undisturbed. If her father did move the family back to Ohio, wouldn’t it be great to return to school with an aura? To have everyone notice her and wonder how she got to be so special?

Caroline climbed up on the rock. Lights were beginning
to come on in houses across the river, and fireflies flickered in the dark trees. Caroline sat perfectly straight on the rock, her fingertips touching. She had slipped off her sandals and tried to sit so that the soles of her feet were touching. Then, with the curtain draped over her head, she closed her eyes and hummed a long, low note. Whenever she ran out of breath, she took a quick gulp of air and went on humming, helping her psychic energy to escape her scalp but trapping it under the curtain until she could go back to the house, remove the curtain, and see whether her family turned around to look before they even heard her coming.

A twig snapped.

Caroline opened her eyes and tried to see through the curtain, but she did not move her head.

There was rustling in the bushes.

Silence.

And then, a few moments later, the sound of feet pounding down the path to the river and the bouncing and creaking of the swinging bridge.

Seven
Gone

W
ally was making himself a milk shake. A super-thick chocolate milk shake, one so thick that a straw would stand straight up in it. A
spoon
could stand up in it, in fact. A milk shake so chocolatey that it was as dark as the brown shoes he wore on Sundays.

He poured one-fourth cup of milk into the blender. He added one-fourth cup of cream. Three scoops of chocolate ice cream. Two tablespoons of chocolate syrup.

What else? Wally wandered around the kitchen. He found two packages of cocoa mix and dumped those in the blender.

What else? A banana. A teaspoon of vanilla. A teaspoon of honey. His eye fell on the peanut butter jar, and he scooped up a huge spoonful and held it over the blender.

The phone rang, and Wally picked it up with his other hand.

“Wally,” said his mother, who worked at the hardware store. “This is my night to work late, so I’m going to dash home around five-thirty and make a quick supper before I go back. I want you boys to stick to fruit for snacks this afternoon so you’ll be hungry for an early dinner, okay?”

Plop
!The glob of peanut butter left the spoon and landed in the blender, splattering the countertop.

“Okay,” said Wally.

After he hung up, he put the lid back on the blender and turned the appliance on. The blades got stuck in the peanut butter. He took the lid off, poked around to mix it up, then turned the blender on again. One minute … two minutes … three minutes. When he was done, his straw stuck straight up in the mixture, and a spoon leaned only a little to one side.

Wally poured the milk shake into a glass and sat down at the kitchen table. This was paradise. This was what summer was all about. This milk shake was so good, thought Wally, it could be sold for five dollars in New York City! Ten, even! Why, he could go into business! If he couldn’t think of any other job to do when he grew up, he would move to New York and start a chocolate-peanut-butter-banana milk shake business for all the people who worked in the Empire State Building.

“Wall-
ly
!” yelled Jake from upstairs. “How do you spell
judgment
? Is there an
e
after the
g
?”

“No,” Wally called back, and hunkered down a little farther in his chair.
Slurp
. He took a long swallow, filling his mouth with the chocolate stuff. One taste of this was almost better than Christmas and birthdays and Halloween put together!

“What about
cancellation
?” Jake yelled. “One
I
or two?”

Wally sighed. “Two,” he called. Each word popped up on a billboard in his brain. He never forgot.

At last all the creamy goodness was gone and Wally gave a contented belch. He wiped his mouth and took his glass to the sink. He rinsed and dried the blender. He rinsed and dried the spoon and glass. He threw away the straw and wiped the countertop.

When Josh came into the kitchen looking for a snack, Wally said, “Mom says not to eat anything but fruit until suppertime.”

“Darn!” said Josh, and reluctantly picked up an apple.

Wally went into the living room and lay down on the couch, hands on his stomach, a smile on his face.

Mrs. Hatford was impressed.

“I’m really happy that you boys are doing something productive this summer!” she said as she passed a platter of cheeseburgers. Josh took two, Jake took three; Wally took one and asked Peter if he wanted half.

Potato salad came next, and Wally took a table-spoonful. Same with cole slaw.

“Wally Hatford, what did you have to eat this afternoon?” his mother asked.

“I didn’t eat anything,” Wally said, which was the
truth in a way because you don’t eat a milk shake, you drink it. “I just had a really big drink. I guess that filled me up.”

Mr. Hatford was reading the article Jake had written about a college football game back in 1948.

“This is interesting!” he said. “I think a lot of old-timers are going to enjoy your newspaper, boys. Could be that some of the folks around here remember that quarterback.”

“I’m helping with the newspaper too, but they haven’t given me a job yet,” Peter complained. “They never let me do anything!”

“Tell you what,” said Josh. “You can go with Wally to take my cartoon over to the Malloys’ this evening. Eddie’s going to scan it into the newspaper.”

Wally bristled. “Why am I the one who has to deliver it to Eddie? Why don’t you take it over yourself?”

“You agreed to be the distributor, didn’t you?” said Jake. “Well … distribute!”

Wally sighed. Okay. All he had to do was walk across the footbridge, go up the hill, knock on the Malloys’ back door, and see that Eddie got the cartoon. He didn’t have to say anything but “Here. Take it.” He could be polite without having to be nice. Before any of the girls could say something at all that might lead to trouble, he would be home again, and no ghostly presence would find anything to hold against him.

It was almost eight-fifteen when Josh finished his cartoon, and it took fifteen minutes more to draw a decoration to go with Jake’s football story.

“If you want to go with me, Peter, get your shoes on,” Wally called.

Peter came clumping down the stairs in his sneakers, the laces flopping.

“Tie them,” said Wally. “You’ll trip.”

“Huh-
uh
!” Peter said. “I learned how not to trip on my shoelaces.”

“How’s that?”

“You walk with your legs apart,” Peter said, and demonstrated, teetering from side to side as the boys went down the front steps.

“Tie them!” Wally said.

Peter sighed. “
O-kay
,” he said, and knelt down to do it.

Dusk was settling in over the river, and pinpoints of fireflies sparkled along the bank. For some reason, Peter always spoke in a whisper when they were out at night, and he was whispering now.

“What if two of those fireflies were really wolf eyes looking at us, Wally?” he asked.

“There aren’t any wolves in Buckman,” said Wally, whispering back without knowing why.

“That’s what they said about a cougar, until they knew what it was,” said Peter. They continued on a little way and then he asked, “What about ghosts? Do ghosts eat people?”

Why did reminders of ghosts keep coming at him from all sides? Wally wondered. He had sat down the other night to watch a movie called
The Fog People
with Jake and Josh. Only Wally had thought they had said
The Frog People
. He had thought it was going to be about aliens, but it wasn’t. It was about ghosts. It scared him almost as much as the library book had, but the twins would have teased him if he’d gotten up and left the room.

“What made you think about ghosts?” asked Wally, his skin beginning to crawl.

“Because it’s the ghost hour. They come out at dark, right?”

“You don’t believe that, do you?” Wally asked.

“Yep,” said Peter.

“Well, they don’t eat people. They don’t have stomachs. They don’t even have mouths. That’s why they’re ghosts.”

Peter looked relieved.

The fact was, if that story in the library book was true, which it wasn’t, there were ghostly presences all around.
He
had a ghostly self.
Peter
had a ghostly self. And maybe, if he just narrowed his eyes and stared hard at Peter, walking on ahead, he could make out a sort of mist or cloud bobbing along above him. Wally narrowed his eyes and stared as hard as he could. Nothing.