The Friendship Song (10 page)

“This yard is bigger than it should be,” I whispered to Rawnie after a while. It was taking us forever to get to the creek, and not just because we were sneaking either.

“Sh. I don't want to hear it, Harper.”

I didn't shush, because I saw something glimmering up ahead. “Look. There's water. And it's bigger than it should be too.”

It sure was. The creek had turned the size of a river, not the Mississippi or anything but plenty too big to just jump across. There it lay like tar under the black sky, and Rawnie and I stood at the edge looking at it. All through the water we could see goldfish shining like beer signs in bar windows at midnight.

“Maybe it's not too deep,” I said after a while, and I stuck one foot in to find out. Then I hollered. The water was cold enough to freeze your bones, but that wasn't what made me scream—something rushed me. As soon as my foot touched the water there was a swirl and a splash and a flash of goldfish scales as something hit my toes. I jumped back so fast I fell down on the grass.

“Harper! You all right?” Rawnie was so scared she forgot to be quiet.

I sat up to find out. “Look,” I said. The front inch of my shoe was gone. Those so-called goldfish had bitten straight through canvas and rubber and everything. My toes stuck out of the hole. At least they weren't hurt.

“Radical,” Rawnie declared. “We can forget wading across.”

Then another splashing noise turned her around. This one was water slapping against metal. A boat was coming toward us over the black water.

“Run!” I scrambled up. But Rawnie stood still.

“No, better stay,” she said. “How else are we supposed to get across?”

She was right. So we stood still and waited.

It was just an aluminum rowboat with its nose up in the air, the way Aly Bowman always kept hers. A big man sat in the back of the boat and paddled it. His paddle looked awfully familiar. So did he, and when I got a good look at him I moaned. The man was Mr. Kuchwald.

“That's it,” I said to Rawnie, only half joking. “I'm going home.”

“I have a feeling we couldn't get out of here now if we wanted to.”

Which we didn't want to, not really, because of Nico.

Mr. Kuchwald scooted the boat's nose up on the bank right by us, and it stuck there. “Gold for the boatman,” he said.

We didn't understand. “Um,” Rawnie said to him, “will you take us across the river?”

“Of course.” He showed his teeth. “For a fee. Gold for the boatman.”

“But we don't—”

“You don't have anything for me? Then you will wander here for eternity. So think. You must have something.”

Rawnie took the gold studs out of her ears and offered them to him. Mr. Kuchwald—I guess it wasn't really Mr. Kuchwald—shook his head. “Not enough.”

I tried to think, like he said. There was no gold on me. I didn't have on anything valuable, not a watch, not any jewelry except …

I fingered my necklace. It wasn't gold, but it was worth a chunk of gold to me. I glanced at Rawnie, and she nodded.

“We've got to,” she said, and she helped me with the clasp. She took mine off me and I took hers off her. Then I handed them both to the boatman.

“They're not gold,” I said, “but they're valuable.”

He fitted the pendants together and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “a yang-yin. They certainly are. Step in.”

Five minutes later we were on the opposite shore. The boat had left us there and gone away over the dark water again. We stood for a minute watching it go. My hand kept going to the emptiness at my neck where my friendship necklace wasn't anymore.

“It's all right, Harper,” Rawnie told me. “We don't need them. We know who we are.”

CHAPTER NINE

“I'm tired,” Rawnie said. She was not complaining, just saying it.

“No kidding.”

“I'm hungry too.”

Now that we were in the maze, it no longer felt like we were outside. I didn't remember going through a wall or a door, but I couldn't see the sky or hear the music except as a muffled sort of thumping that seemed to come from everywhere, and there were walls to each side of us, metal ones. There was some light, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It was like being in a sewer. No, more like being lost in a mess of basement corridors in some huge new school. Except that we weren't lost really. I knew where I was, I knew my way through the maze in Gus's backyard. It was just that everything seemed different and so much bigger. Our footsteps echoed. So did Rawnie's voice saying she was hungry—hungry—hungry …

“I'm not,” I told her.

“We've been in here for hours.” (Hours—hours—hours …)

“It just feels like hours.”

“Anyway, you've gotta be hungry.”

“I'm not. I'm too starved to be just hungry.”

“Okay, be that way. What's that smell?”

All of a sudden we were drowning in a drooler, a stomach-growler of a good food smell, and I didn't even have time to think up a smart-mouth answer for Rawnie before we turned a corner and there it was.

“A hot dog stand!”

Wow, were they ever hot dogs. Plump, brick-red foot-longs sizzling on their grill. Not a bit like the wimpy green hot dogs at school. Though by then I was so starved I could have gobbled down anything, even school food.

“Free hot dogs,” the person behind the counter told us politely. She had a pale face and not much hair but she did have a big beak of a nose, which she talked through. “As many as you like.” She offered us one in each hand.

“All
riiiiight
!” Rawnie started to reach for one, but I grabbed her arm.

“Listen, there's no hot dog stand in Gus's backyard.”

“So what? There is now!” She pulled her arm away from me, but I got hold of the other one, because I had a funny feeling.

“No, wait, Rawnie, don't!” My stomach was growling maybe even louder than hers, but I never did trust anything that was free. Also, there was something about the hot dog lady—I should know her. I didn't like her, and why did I keep thinking about school?

“Free,” White-face urged, poking hot dogs toward us. Her pale hands had long fingernails painted black.

“Let me go!” Rawnie squirmed away from me, but I lunged after her and got her by both arms from behind.

“Harper, stop it!”

“No, Rawnie, listen, it's some sort of a trap!”

She wasn't listening. I found out later that the one way to make Rawnie go absolutely psycho was to grab her from behind. Always, ever since she was a little kid, it made her fight like a wildcat. Which was what she did. She elbowed me in the ribs so hard that everything went black for a second. I doubled over, and I guess my hands slipped. She twisted around and tore loose and hit me in the face with her fist. That girl really knew how to hit. I had to stagger back or I would have fallen over.

“You don't tell me what to do!” she screamed at me. She stood panting at me a minute, and then she turned away and headed toward the hot dogs again.

My ribs hurt and my head hurt clear down to my knees and I was so shaking mad at her that I nearly let her do it. It still scares me, remembering the way I felt for a second. But something else took over. My heart made my feet get moving, and I ran and tackled Rawnie before she got far. This time I didn't mess around. I knocked her flat on the ground and sat on top of her. She struggled and tried to throw me off, but I outweighed her.

“Damn it, Harper, get off me! You big moose, I hate you!”

I knew she didn't mean it, and I wasn't listening anyway. I was staring up at the hot dog lady, trying to know for sure who she was. She hadn't moved, which was weird. She was still standing behind her counter with her arms stretched out like black wings. “Free,” she crooned. She looked at me.

“Go away, Aly,” I told her.

When Rawnie heard that, she stopped fighting me, went stiff instead, and turned her head to look. But I didn't have time to say anything to her before the hot dog nearest to us changed and started to wiggle out of its bun. It was a fat night crawler, falling toward us.

“Ew!” You better believe I got off Rawnie fast. She grabbed my hand and scrambled up.

The whole hot dog stand was melting, and the hot dogs were turning into worms, and they were crawling on the ground, or floor, whatever it was, and the woman was saying, “Scree!” instead of “Free.” She was a vulture, mostly, a black buzzard with a six-foot wing-spread and road-kill breath. Her bald head had spiralperm blond bangs that curled down over her beak. She pecked at the nearest worm to gobble it and grabbed another with one of her scaly clawed feet.

Rawnie made a retching noise, then turned and ran. I ran after her. “Wait up,” I panted. My ribs still hurt, and I never could run as fast as she did anyway.

Once we were around a corner she stopped and waited for me. When I caught up to her I felt so dizzy I had to lean against the wall with my eyes closed while I caught my breath.

Rawnie said, “Harper, you all right?”

I nodded.

“Jeez, I gave you a black eye.” Her voice sounded shaky. “God, Harper, I'm really sorry.”

“You don't ever have to tell me you're sorry for anything.” The words just came out, I didn't have to think about them, and they were true. I opened my eyes to look at her, and she looked back and swallowed hard and nodded.

I got myself moving, and we kept walking.

“How did you know it was Alabaster?” Rawnie asked after a while.

“I dunno. I mean, it wasn't her exactly.”

“Okay, so we're not exactly in Gus's backyard either. But how did you know it was sort of her?”

“I just guessed.” There were about three ways of looking at anything in this shadowland, so maybe if I went back and looked at the vulture again it wouldn't be Aly. Not that I was going back. I told Rawnie, “Mostly, I just don't think we should eat anything.”

She shivered. “I'd rather die than take food from her.”

“No matter who offers it. Even if we're both starving, we shouldn't take any.”

I couldn't have explained why, because I didn't know the reason. It was just a feeling I had, like I'd been in this sort of place once before with a harp in my hand. Like I knew some of the rules.

Rawnie didn't ask me why, though. She just looked at me and said, “Okay. I won't forget again.”

“Huh?” It was not as if I'd told her before. “Forget what?”

“Who my friend is.”

We kept walking. Running away from the Aly Bowman buzzard had got us all turned around, and neither of us knew anymore which direction we were heading.

I was plodding more than walking. “You okay, Harper?” Rawnie asked me after a while.

My eye hurt and made my head throb. Also my ribs hurt. But I said, “I'm just dead tired. I wish we would find Nico soon.”

Rawnie slowed down and pointed up ahead. “Look,” she said. “Light.”

And there they were, the stage lights, all colors, and we could hear the music again, so strong and beautiful that I didn't care anymore if I was tired and hurting and hungry. I looked at Rawnie and smiled.

A couple minutes later we came out of the maze. We were in the circle at its center, where rows of seats faced a stage with a big red drum riser on it. Behind the big red platform was a wall with a huge circle design that kept turning, turning, white and black and black and white. The music was like the circle, it just went around and around, and kept coming.

We said, Hey, Daddy, we're not about to die

'Cause living is the truth and death is a lie
.

So rock it, rock it, just rock it on by
,

Big wheel turns and the stars keep burning
.

It was like they were playing just for themselves, or us. We could have any seat we wanted, front row if we wanted, because there was nobody in the audience. Everybody was onstage.

We didn't sit down, though, but just stood staring.

“This is so intense,” Rawnie whispered. “They are so
hot
.”

“Hot as Neon Shadow.”

“Hotter!”

Some of them were on the riser with the drummer and his congas and cymbals and things, they were up there playing wild fills and fast runs like guitar gods on a mountaintop, and some of them were all around the red—I knew it was the red car—on keyboard and sax and tambourines, and they were all young, they were all rocking, they were all beautiful one way or another. But it wasn't so much their faces or the way they moved or the way they were dressed that made me want to scream and faint and turn inside out. Or even the way they sang, though they were singing like fire. It was just that they were so alive.

I blurted at Rawnie or whatever would listen, “These are
dead
dudes? These can't be dead people.”

They weren't ghosts or anything like that. They looked as solid as I was. Yet they weren't quite real, I knew that. They were too perfect. The lead singer, the one at the center mike, he had a face like a bad angel. He was like a baby-faced desperado, an outlaw throwing his body at the world, but there was something about him that made me think of an orphan at the same time, like I wanted to take him and cuddle him and calm him down and make him smile.

“They're dead, all right,” Rawnie said softly. “Because there's Elvis, and he's young again.”

“Oh, my God.” Now I understood why people had cried when he died. “That's Elvis?”

“Yepper.”

“Oh, my God. Who are these other guys, then? Who's the one in glasses?”

“I don't know.”

“Buddy Holly,” said a quiet voice behind us. “Hornrims and a Stratocaster. There's never been anybody quite like him.”

The band roared, “Rock it! Rock it! Rock it on by.…”

Already—even before I turned around—I knew. And there he stood, right next to me. Nico Torres.