Husky (10 page)

Before I go to bed, Nanny lets me watch an opera DVD. So I pick
Carmen
.

But maybe
Carmen
was the wrong choice.

Carmen
is a French opera by Georges Bizet, and it's all about love and jealousy. It takes place in Spain, but they sing in French, which doesn't make sense, sure, but you sort of have to go along with it. Don José is in the army, and he falls in love with Carmen, a gypsy girl, who every person in the world is already in love with. She's just that beautiful. But Carmen doesn't really believe in love. She thinks it's silly. She just happens to be good at it. She sings a whole song about how good she is at love, and how because she's so good, she can't be good to just one person, she needs to go and be good to a lot of people. A lot. Don
José gets jealous and goes crazy, and when Carmen goes off with a bullfighter, he stabs her. Operas are like that. Lots of people go crazy, and somebody almost always dies, and somehow it's always all about love.

I like
Carmen
. The music is great, and when you get a really amazing singer like Maria Callas or Marilyn Horne as Carmen, and she hits the low notes, it sounds like a snarl. And I love the snarl. It's a big nasty snarl of Carmen being so cool that she doesn't even care to sing, she can almost grunt. Or snarl. It's the sound you wish you could make right in some people's faces. Some people, like Allegra. Something low and evil that would frighten even Ryan and Brian. A big grunt of being that good at something that you don't even have to try anymore. I wish I had that. I only stand there and then go home.

I fall asleep watching
Carmen
.

And that's what I dream about. It's all in my head.

In my dream, I'm walking down the hall of my school in a big gypsy shawl like Carmen's, and the music from the opera is playing through the halls. But in a strange way I can hear Jock asking me, “All right, Davey, where
does this go?” I hear him, but I never see him. I keep walking, but as I walk all these kids are coming toward me, and they all look like Allegra. They all have her face and they all have a cell phone, which they stare at as they pass me, bumping into me and not letting me pass. One after another after another bumps into me harder and harder. I'm trying to be Carmen, I guess. Because I have the shawl, so I must be her. I must. But as I struggle to make it down the hall there are only more and more of the Allegras, and it's harder and harder to get through them. They're all bashing into me and barely letting me past. My shawl starts to get caught, and I don't know if I'll get out alive. But I can still hear Jock: “Davey boy, where does this go, now?”

As I pass I can see that all the Allegras' mouths are open, and they are singing the chorus part, responding to the Carmen part that I guess I'm singing, but I can't even tell if my mouth is moving. I can't see if I'm Carmen. So I just keep walking, trying to get to a place where I can see if I am Carmen or not. A big snarl is coming up, I know, so I think if I am Carmen and then this snarl is mine, I can
use it. So as one Allegra bumps into me, I snarl a big fat low note right in her face. But nothing. She doesn't react. She just keeps looking at her phone, mouthing the lyrics to the chorus part, and walks past me. Farther down the hall I see Ellen, but she's not looking at me. She's staring at Charlie, who is standing across from her, smiling that doofy smile he makes. First it's at Ellen, but then it's at me. Right at me. I try to snarl at him or even say his name or something, but nothing comes out. He just keeps smiling. So I fight my way through the sea of Allegras, almost getting strangled in the shawl, until I get to the big double doors of the gym. And I push my way in.

It's quiet. And dark. And then I hear Jock again: “Davey boy, where does this go?” In the center of the room is a small circle of light. I go over to it, but when I step in, the music changes to the end of the opera, where Don José is angry and about to stab Carmen. Is this the part Jock is asking for? Is this where it's supposed to be? I look around to see who's around me. And there is Sophie as Carmen. And Ellen as Carmen. And Mom as Carmen. They're all singing her part. And it gets to the stabbing
part and I feel hands on me. It's Ryan and Brian, and they have a knife. I try to move but I can't. So I start asking the Carmens, “Is this it? Is this where I'm supposed to be?” But they don't answer. And now Paolo's grabbing me too, with a knife of his own. And I know it's coming, the stabbing part. I try to say that I'm not Carmen, and I drop my shawl. I don't want to be stabbed, but it's too late. They do it. All of them. Ryan and Brian and Paolo take the knives and plunge them into me. Mom and Sophie and Ellen just stand there watching. The stabbing doesn't hurt, and I sort of expect to pop like a balloon but I don't. I do the opposite. I start getting bigger and bigger, blowing up like a balloon. And they all keep stabbing, trying to pop me, but nothing works and I get bigger and bigger and bigger until I knock them all over and out of the pool of light and out of the gym and even out of the school. I'm huge. I fill every inch of the school, and it starts to crack around me. Until. Until.

I wake up.

The next morning, I call Ellen to go to the park, so she
knows it's important. I usually get the call from her telling me what to do, but I can't wait to see if that's going to happen today. I have to see her and I have to talk about the party and all of it. I guess I need her, because if there's a real Carmen snarl anywhere in the world, it can come out of Ellen. And she's my best friend, I never think of that, but it's the truth.

On my way to the park, I walk past Sophie's house and I get sort of angry. Maybe angry isn't the whole thing, sad's there too. It's a little like getting kicked out of something or being voted off the island, and you don't know why. No one will tell you. You didn't gossip with other castaways or form secret alliances or anything like that. You were just there, and then you're not. Maybe you looked at an armpit.

I get to the park before Ellen, so I have to wait for her by the big statue at the side entrance of the park. It seems like forever but really isn't. Maybe I'm anxious. While I wait for her, I start thinking what I want Ellen to do. What do I need her to say? Do I need her to tell me that she isn't
going to the makeover party? Do I need her to say that it's a totally screwed-up thing to have the party in the first place and that Allegra is just the worst Plankton of the highest order? Do I need her to tell me that Allegra is totally jealous of me, and how much better Sophie likes me? She does like me better, even though it doesn't feel like it now.

Basically, I need Ellen to be mean, to be the meanest she's ever been: I need Plankton and side-mouth and spit-bubble mean. For the first time, I'm not scared of that, I want it. I sit there thinking of her foaming at the mouth, her eyes turning red while steam shoots out her ears; I think of her wild and angry and running after Allegra, who's scared for her life, as she should be. Or, really, hitting Brian and Ryan like Allegra but harder. They'd all be scared to death, and who wouldn't be when a really angry girl foaming with rage is chasing after them while a little fat kid behind her laughs a big villain's laugh? That's my part in the whole thing. I'm going to sic my hound on Allegra and the rest, and my hound is Ellen, which sounds awful. I won't tell her that part.

When Ellen finally shows up she's smiling, this big kooky smile, one that I've never seen before, which means Ellen is happy. I think,
Why today?!

“Hey, what's up?” Ellen says as she bounces over to me. And then she hugs me.

Ellen. Hugs. Me.

Ellen, my mean friend but my best friend, who says terrible things and hates pretty much everyone—even her own family half the time, who are, like, the super sweetest people in the world—and doesn't ever like to be hugged herself, hugs me. On the one day I need her to be awful, she's deciding to hug people. I need a beast from hell, and I get a puppy.

Ellen. Hugs. Me.

At first, I think I'm going to choke. It is that shocking. I think the surprise of it will get caught in my throat and stay there and I will just turn blue and die right here. But then, as she just keeps hugging, for what seems like a really long time, it starts to feel okay. I don't want it to, but the world is a crazy place, and this is probably the craziest thing I've seen except for that guy who rides a unicycle
through the park with an iguana on his shoulder—but I don't know him. I know this, so I start hugging back.

I forget, sometimes, how long it's been since I've really hugged back. With Nanny at night, it's just a squeeze to say good night. There isn't any way to avoid that. I just stand there and try not to be suffocated by her shoulder pad. And with Mom, well, we haven't hugged in a while. I barely see her, and when I do, I sort of stick to myself. That sounds awful to admit. But she's been working and I've been me.

But with Ellen, this feels nice, because I sort of need it.

When Ellen pulls away, she still makes her
I'msorry
face but tries to smile through it. She's not weird about the hug. She just did it, and I guess she thinks it's the right thing to do, not because she has to or because she thinks it's what I need—though it is—but just because she thinks it is the thing to do in the moment. Maybe that's why it feels so good.

We walk into the park, and I take the lead a little quicker than I ever have. I never get to pick the way and just go. But today is different, and Ellen says nothing and follows
after me. I guess if she's hugging now, I'm doing this now.

I keep walking fast and Ellen is keeping up and trying to talk to me a bit, until finally I'm too far away to hear. It doesn't matter anyway, I'm too busy having one of those totally unrealistic thoughts, like when you think if you do something really well or really fast, something else really awful won't happen. It's a little-kid thought, but every once in a while I still have them, even now. When I was little I thought if I ate peanut butter before bed, I wouldn't get eaten by the monsters under my bed, because monsters hate peanut butter and they'd smell it on me. And even if they did bite into me, I would be filled with peanut butter and that would be super gross to them. I don't know where I got the whole thing about the peanut butter, it was pretty stupid, but I believed it. And I never got bit, so maybe it worked.

Now my little-kid thought is if I can just get to a bench in the middle of the park, everything will be fine. That's the only safe place for me in the whole world. So I have to get there, and I can't stop for anything. Certainly not for Ellen, who may or may not be mean anymore. I need
to get there, I need to get to that bench or the world, or at least my world, is going to end. All of it. All of it for me. So I keep walking. I almost run a little, but I don't. I wouldn't, I don't want Ellen to think it is a big deal. She can't know that I'm a crazy person, not yet.

I don't pick our regular bench by the meadow, it's not that one. I walk right past it, fast. That part throws Ellen a bit, she's getting ready to sit but I just keep going. Past the baseball fields. Past the swampy bit that's all fenced in, where we always hope to see frogs, even though they make the both of us scream. Past the boathouse, and the swans you're always told to stay away from because they can get aggressive. I like them today. But I can't stop, I have to keep going, farther into the park than we've ever really gone, and finally when I get to this little white bridge over a little green pond, there's a bench. The bench. There. And that is where I want to be. So I sit.

Ellen follows me, a little out of breath, which shouldn't make me happy but sort of does. And when she stops, she just looks and me and says, “What's the deal, Ducks?”

“I just wanted to sit somewhere else.” That's the deal, Ellen.

“Why out here? We never come out here,” Ellen asks.