If Only (10 page)

Danny

After school, Danny doesn't have to walk Pam home because she's going to Billie's. She told Danny that she called Dad and he said it was okay and would pick her up at five. So Danny goes back to the Bluebird Market.

Mr. Townley says there's been no sign of Raymond. He's hired a new guy who's starting in a couple of days. Danny feels like kicking something. He'll never find Raymond now.

The next morning, Pam takes forever getting ready for school. Danny thinks she isn't going to go. When she finally comes out of her bedroom, she looks awful, with big black circles under her eyes and her hair sticking out everywhere.

Danny's surprised because Pam was in a good mood when she got home from Billie's yesterday. His sister changes from minute to minute, and Danny can't keep up with her. He almost asks Pam if there's something she can do with her hair (has she even
tried
to brush it?), but he bites his tongue.

Billie has an early make-up class for a science lab she missed, so Danny and Pam walk to school by themselves. Danny keeps forgetting to allow more time now that they're not using the railroad trail, and by the time they get there, the first bell has rung. They skip their lockers and go straight to class, so it's not until the end of the second period that Danny sees the crowd around Pam's locker.

His heart speeds up; he knows that that many kids means trouble, but he has no idea what's happening. A lot of kids are laughing and some look embarrassed, but no one looks sorry. Danny spots Pam, and a pang of pity flashes through him—even though there're kids all around her, she seems so alone. The pity changes quickly to panic. He pushes through the kids.

Pam is staring at a paper taped to her locker. She looks frozen. It's one of Stacey's cartoons. It's of Pam and Billie, no question about it. Their arms are wrapped around each other and they're looking at each other with sappy smiles.
Above their heads is a heart with their initials in it:
P.S.
+
B.V
.
Underneath it says,
Could this be love?

Red-hot anger erupts inside Danny. He rips the paper from the locker and tears it into pieces. There is one muffled giggle and then a hush, as if everyone is waiting to see what Danny is going to do next.

Danny turns and sees Stacey leaning against the far wall, grinning. He pushes his way to her, his hands balled into fists.

“Danny, don't,” Pam says behind him.

Rage is pounding in Danny's ears, and he can't think straight.

“A little late to start defending your sister now, isn't it?” Stacey says. “Where were you when that pervert attacked her?”

Danny gives Stacey one hard shove against her shoulder, pushing her into the wall. It's wrong to hit girls, he knows that. He takes a big breath, tries to steady himself.

The smirk on Stacey's face evaporates. “Screw you,” she says.

“Leave my sister alone,” Danny says as he walks away.

Pam

Billie finds me in the washroom, splashing cold water on my face.

“Does it look like I've been crying?” I say.

“No,” Billie says. She sits on the edge of the counter while I dry my face with a paper towel. “I heard,” she says.

“Nice, huh?” I try to make my voice calm to match Billie's, but I'm still shaking and I don't fool her.

“Stacey's worthless,” Billie says. “You can't let her get to you.”

I toss the paper towel in the garbage can. Now what? My next class has already started, but I don't want to go.

“Let's walk around outside,” Billie says.

For a fraction of a second, I admit, I hesitate. I'm thinking
of that horrible cartoon. I'm thinking that maybe it would be better not to hang around with Billie today.

Billie's cheeks turn pink. She knows
exactly
what I'm thinking.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's go.”

We go to the far field so no teachers can see us through the windows. Billie does most of the talking. She's figuring out a way we can phone each other in the middle of the night without making our families too mad.

“In case we need to talk,” Billie explains. “About stuff. Let it ring once. And then hang up. If Mom and Dad hear it, they won't bother answering one ring. They'll just go right back to sleep. But I'll know it's you and I'll call you back. And you can do the same for me.”

Billie has a phone in her bedroom. Our closest phone is in the kitchen, which means I'll have to keep my bedroom door open. But it also means that Dad would never drag himself out of bed and go all that way down the hall for one ring. And I like the idea of being able to talk to Billie whenever I want.

When we finally go back inside, just after the lunch bell, Celia finds us. “I've been looking all over the place for you,” she says.

We find a quiet corner at the end of an empty hallway where no one will bother us. Celia has potato chips and a jumbo chocolate bar, which she breaks into three pieces.

“Do you ever eat normal food?” Billie says.

I close my eyes.

Billie and Celia are arguing over the chips.

I wonder if this day will ever end.

Danny

Danny goes for a long walk at lunchtime. He doesn't know where Pam is. It's starting to rain, but he doesn't care how wet he gets. He walks quickly, his hands jammed in his pockets. For the hundredth time, he wishes they'd never left the farm, never come to this crappy school.

Danny figures he's walked two or three miles by the time he gets back to the school. He doesn't see Hugh until the last period of the day. When Danny arrives at his locker, Hugh is already there, crouched down and flipping through a binder. Danny knows that Hugh knows; he saw Hugh's face, white and upset, in the crowd around Pam's locker.

Danny should have gone straight to his science class, but it's too late to avoid Hugh now. He opens his locker and grabs a textbook.

Hugh doesn't look up. “You're gonna make it worse for Pam,” he says in a low voice.

“What?” Danny says.

“It's what Stacey wants. It's how bullies work. You gotta ignore them. That's the only way they'll stop.”

“You think I'm gonna let someone treat my sister like that?”

“It's what they want. They want you to get upset. So if you just ignore them, they'll go away.”

Hugh's voice sounds mechanical, like he's repeating something that someone has told him. Danny's been trying hard to hold back his rage at Stacey and the losers who laughed, but now it explodes out.

“Like that plan's really worked for you. How many face plants have you had this week?”

Hugh closes his binder. He's not moving. Maybe not even breathing. His shoulders are rigid. Danny wants to apologize, but his throat feels like it's full of cotton and he doesn't trust his voice.

Finally Hugh shuts his locker door and stands up. He looks at Danny. His eyes behind his glasses glisten with tears.

“Why are you being such a jerk?” he says. Then he's gone.

Danny slams his hand against his locker.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry
. But he only says it in his head, and there's no way Hugh can hear him.

Pam

The phone scares me when it rings that night.

One ring.

It took me a long time to get to sleep. I can't stop worrying that Stacey will tell the principal Danny hit her, and Danny will get expelled. And every time I closed my eyes, I saw Stacey's cartoon all over again. I heard the kids laughing. I saw the look on Stacey's face when Danny pushed her.

But I finally calmed down enough to fall asleep, so now, when the phone rings, I'm totally confused. I flip on my night-table light and look at my clock. Two
am
. I get out of bed and slip down the hall. No sound from Dad's room. I slide onto a kitchen stool, shivering, and dial Billie's number.

It rings once and Billie picks it up. “Hi,” she whispers. “It worked!”

“It's two
am
,” I whisper back. I'm still half listening for Dad.

“I know. Isn't this cool?”

“Everyone in the world is in bed except us.”

“Except
you
,” Billie says.

I remember that the phone is right beside her bed. “Brat,” I say. Next time, I'll bring a blanket.

“This is just a test.” I hear Billie yawn. “You can go back to bed now.”

“Thank you for your permission.”

“Don't mention it.”

I set the phone down with a gentle click. I'm grinning as I stumble back to my warm bed.

Danny

The next afternoon, Danny finds a cartoon taped to his locker. It's a picture of a knight on a white horse. Underneath, it says,
Danny to the rescue!
Better late than never??

Danny stares at it for a few seconds. To his surprise, he doesn't even feel angry. He's tired more than anything. He hardly slept last night. And he really doesn't care if Stacey wants to target him now. As long as she stays away from Pam.

Danny's kept an eye out for Pam all day. They don't have any classes together, but he's seen her a few times in the hallway, walking around with Billie and two other girls Danny doesn't know. She seems okay.

Danny tears the cartoon down, crumples it into a ball and tosses it into a garbage can in an empty classroom across the hall. He has something way more important to do than fight with Stacey. He has to apologize to Hugh.

Danny doesn't have a chance to talk to Hugh until the end of the day. Hugh's walking home and Danny catches up with him a few blocks from school. He stammers out his apology.

Hugh stands still while he listens. His eyes behind his round glasses blink furiously. “Okay,” he says. He starts walking again.

“Okay?” Danny says. “That's it? You're not pissed off?”

“Nope,” Hugh says. “You coming to my house?”

“Well…yeah.” Danny grins. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

Hugh's parents have strict rules about
TV
watching, but today they have gone to Victoria, and they're not coming back until the seven o'clock ferry. “We can watch
Gunsmoke
and
Bewitched
and anything else we want,” Hugh says cheerfully. “I usually have to pick one.”

The television at Danny's house broke a couple of days ago, and Danny thinks this is a perfect way to spend the rest of the afternoon. As they walk along, he doesn't even mind Hugh's chatter.

When they get to Hugh's house, rock and roll music is spilling out onto the front walk.

“Something's happening,” Hugh says. He opens the door, and the music swells over them.

A peal of laughter comes from the kitchen.

“Come on,” Hugh says.

The kitchen is a disaster, a whirlwind of baking pans and mixing bowls and measuring cups. The counter is crowded with bags of flour and oatmeal, cracked eggshells, a bottle of milk, molasses spilled in a puddle. A pan of muffins and plump loaves of brown bread are sitting on racks and a burbling pot of spaghetti sauce is on the stove.

The music is coming from a record player set up on the kitchen table. Harmony is sitting on a chair, in a long cotton dress with buttons down the front. She's balancing the baby, Windsong, on her lap and feeding him pieces of muffin. Meadow is bending over the oven, taking out a tray of chocolate chip cookies.

“Hiya, Hugh. Hi, Danny,” she says. Her sharp, pale face is flushed from the heat of the oven. She's hardly wearing anything, just a skimpy tie-dyed tank top and ragged cut-off shorts, and she's barefoot.

“Peace,” Harmony says. She smiles a dreamlike smile. “Have something to eat.”

Hugh and Danny sit down, and Meadow puts a plate of cookies in front of them. They're still warm, and Danny nibbles around the edge of one.

Harmony reaches over and turns down the volume on the record player. Windsong pushes the muffin away and starts to whimper. “Okay, okay, I know what you want,” Harmony says. She opens the top few buttons of her dress. Out pops something big and brown and swollen like a balloon.

It's a breast.

Hugh spews out pieces of cookie. He coughs so hard that Meadow puts down her ladle and thumps him on the back. Heat surges up Danny's neck and he feels his face turn scarlet. He concentrates on his cookie, keeping his eyes riveted on the table, but Harmony is straight across from him and it's impossible not to see a little bit.

Windsong is making sucking noises now. Danny would rather be anywhere—
anywhere
—else on earth.

The back door opens and Martin bursts in with a bulging garbage bag. “Coyote's gone out to pick up some parts. I'm gonna put in another load of laundry,” he says. “Oh hi, guys.”

“Hi,” Hugh yelps. He gets up quickly, almost knocking his chair over. “We're going to watch
TV
.”

Danny escapes into the living room with Hugh. Hugh turns on the
TV
,
and they flop down on the couch. The curtains are pulled shut, and a fat red candle is dripping wax onto the coffee table. The room smells of pot, and beside the candle is a kind of pipe and four cigarettes.

They're not like normal cigarettes. These are lumpy and look like someone made them. They're joints, Danny realizes.

Hugh sees them at the same time as Danny. “Hey, lookit these,” he whispers.

He picks one up and examines it. Then he grins at Danny and slips it into his pocket.

“What are you doing?” Danny says.

He can hear Martin in the hallway, calling out something to the girls. Martin comes into the living room and flops down in an armchair. He's wearing his headband,
and his hair looks stringy. There's black grease on his hands.

Danny prepares for trouble. He can't believe that Hugh was dumb enough to take the joint. There's no way Martin won't notice. He'll kill Hugh.

“Been working on the bus today,” Martin says. He stretches his legs out. His jeans are frayed, and there's a hole in one knee. “Getting it ready to run back down to the commune in California.”

“Oh,” Hugh says. He stares intently at the
TV
,
as if he has never seen an episode of
Gunsmoke
before.

Martin glances at the coffee table and frowns. He scoops up the pipe and the joints. “You shouldn't be exposed to crap like this,” he says, stuffing everything into his pockets. “I told Harmony and Meadow not to smoke in here.”

Martin opens a window, wide. The music starts pouring out of the kitchen again, and Hugh has to turn up the volume on the
TV
. They stare at the screen as Martin drags himself up and down to transfer mounds of wet laundry to the dryer. It's getting close to suppertime when Danny says, “I better get going.”

A car door slams. Hugh jumps up and pulls back a corner of the curtain. “It's Mom and Dad,” he yells. “They're early!”

“Oh shit,” Martin says.