“Forty minutes,” the barber with the toupee announces. Both kids stop and stare at me. They’re afraid I want their chair. Ha. The other barber keeps right on cutting, so serious, so intent on getting it right. He must be related to my dad.
“Can you hold my place?” I ask the old one, he’s in charge. Mom wouldn’t want me to take a chance on little-kid germs. “I’ll be right back.”
“Leave your name.” He points to a pad by the phone.
Freedom.
Mrs. Petriano answers the door. “Daniel, what a pleasure.”
Mack says when his mom first heard about The Disease, she cried all night. If someone else’s mother feels that way, someone who knew me before I got sick, I can’t be but so lame.
She holds the door open wider. “Mack’s next door.”
“With the twins?”
She nods. “Would you like to come in and have some ice cream while you’re waiting?”
“I might go knock. Do you think that’d be okay?”
“Oh…of course. Of course.” She looks at me with big eyes as if it never occurred to her before that two girls my age might interest me more than ice cream. I feel bad for Mack. His mother’s in for a big shock when she finds out he’s not a virgin.
The house next door is identical to Mack’s on the outside. All one level, cinder block. White with green shutters and some kind of gray stone walkway and front steps and those little half-windows sunk into the grass along the front and side. I can hear U2 rumbling underground. They must be in the basement.
No doorbell. When no one answers the knock, I knock harder. No luck. I peer down into the half-window and scream over the U2, “Mack.” Instant silence.
Then his face pops up two inches from mine by the glass. “Daniel.” Some conversation in the dark space behind him. “Come around back.”
The twins’ house has one of those slanted basement doors like my grandmother had at her little farmhouse in Urbanna. She always kept these ancient slatted baskets of apples and potatoes and turnips on the steps, like they did on Little House on the Prairie. Which we were forced to watch during Thanksgiving vacation. Grandma’s basement was spider heaven. Mom would send me down to get whatever Grandma wanted because Mom has a thing about spiders. A major thing.
She’s not the only one. Three years ago, right before Grandma died, Joe and I collected a jar of creepy crawlies from her cellar stairs and threatened to put them in Nick’s bed if he didn’t stop following us. It was very, very effective. A chink in the golden warrior’s armor.
The metal door into the twins’ basement flies open and bounces against the concrete wall. “Shit.” The voice is female. From the murky underground a girl motions me down the steps. Long dark hair and a great tan. If there are two of her, this may turn out to be the best haircut I’ve ever had.
“You’re Daniel?” Like she expected a gargoyle instead of a boy.
“Mack told you.”
She nods. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry.” I look right into her eyes as I put out my hand to shake, an absolute prohibition laid down by my mother the minute she read the first chapter of the first book on AML. “I’m so glad to meet you, Sorry.”
The girl laughs. This could be all right even if she does know the truth about me.
“It’s Meredith, actually. And my sister, Juliann.”
A second girl, same long legs, same tan, but with short hair, appears with Mack right behind. Juliann gives a little wave. I nod back.
“Blabbermouth.” I hook fists with Mack and tug, but he lets go.
“They’re in tenth with us,” he says.
“You lie.”
The basement is set up for a party. A ping-pong table at one end, two couches and an ancient TV at the other. The lamps have colored light bulbs in them—mood lighting. And there’s a fridge in the corner. Too cool.
“Who brought you in to town?” Mack knows if it’s my mother we’re on a tight schedule, but if it’s Dad, we’re golden.
“Mom.”
“Rats.”
“Do you want a Coke?” Meredith says and flicks her hair over her shoulder, that thing girls do. They’re both wearing those shirts with the thin straps and there are no bathing suit lines on their shoulders. Too bad it’s the last week in August, and not June with a whole summer of beach and boats ahead of us.
“Coke’s perfect.” I say. My mother would go ballistic. Coca-Cola is a product of the devil.
Mack sits and Juliann perches on the arm of the couch at his end, her long legs swinging. His grin is as wide as the river. I know what he’s thinking. Evil dude.
“You been over to see the high school yet?” I ask. Mack blinks to warn me I’m working too hard.
“It’s so small,” Juliann says. “We were at Albemarle last year.”
“Sounds French.”
“Indian,” Juliann says. “It’s huge.”
Meredith hands me the cold can. “Haven’t you ever heard of it? State football champions two years running.”
I shake my head and fight the urge to shoot Mack a frown. Her reference to football makes it crucial to ask some background questions. A girl’s interest in football players cuts the odds on social possibilities for fringe guys like Mack and me. How he managed to get a girl to say yes to the big question still shocks me, a story for another day.
“Do y’all play sports?” I ask when Mack doesn’t.
Meredith looks at Juliann, who looks at her feet. Regulation sandals, but pink toes, whoa. Meredith’s smile is still all apology. “Not football,” she jokes.
At the same time her sister says, “Just phys ed.”
Mack and I do a silent high five and he adds, “Dan’s brother is a superstar in the county soccer league. Team sports around here are a little, ah, overwhelming. Not a lot of other stuff to do…” His voice trails off. I can tell he’s thought better all of a sudden about pointing out Essex County’s weaknesses so early in the relationship.
The girls nod as if they know that lack of activities is not the real reason for our dismissal of team sports. They’re so eager not to offend, I bristle all over again at Mack’s breaking our pact not to mention The Disease.
Of course I miss the allotted slot at the barbershop. By the time I realize it, my mother’s probably steaming, but we’ve convinced the twins to meet us Friday night at the public pier under the bridge for a fishing lesson. Much better than the band concert with the whole town on the alert. Dating 101—Mack’s getting to be quite the expert. Without a car, it’s hard to find places you can be alone with a girl.
When I get back to the barbershop, my mother’s sitting outside in the Subaru. Too warm, I try to cover up the puffing. She holds out her open palm.
“Give me the ten-dollar bill.” She’s really ticked. “You can bike in tomorrow and get yourself a haircut.”
“How about Friday? Mack and I were going to teach his new neighbors how to fish. They’re from Charlottesville.”
She just looks at me—that wise tight smile that isn’t really a smile—but she doesn’t say no, even though it’s not likely she’ll let me bike. Since June she obsesses that I’ll faint and fall off while I’m riding.
“If I were you,” she says deadpan, “I’d rethink fishing. Not a lot of girls like to fish.”
I’m speechless, too busy wondering how she figured out the new neighbors are girls.
CHAPTER FOUR
When we get to the grocery store, the assistant store manager is pacing outside. Effie’s face, already pudgy from too many doughnuts, is blotchy and red. She used to be a client of Mom’s at the Food Pantry, the unofficial arm of the local welfare group that distributes free government food, mostly surplus cheese and recalled meat. Mom started the project in Tappahannock years ago. It’s your standard redistribution of wealth scheme on a very small scale. Sometimes Mack and I help them unwrap the boxes and divvy it up into bundles for individual households. With Effie’s job at the grocery store, she has graduated. One of Mom’s success stories.