GUILT-RIDDEN TEEN HANGS UP ON REPORTER
NEGLIGENT GIRL IGNORES DANGERS
“Everyone” walks in street, she asserts
TEENAGER TO RED CROSS: DROP DEAD
I could spend the rest of the day imagining nightmare headlines for a nightmare article. But I don’t. School starts in three weeks and since I have nothing better to do, I might as well tackle my summer reading list. Of course, the idea is that you read these books in a leisurely, book-loving way over the twelve weeks of summer vacation. Not that I’m a reliable spokesperson for the high school zeitgeist, but nobody does that. I like to read, but during the summer I want to read what I want to read, which isn’t Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, or As I Lay Dying.
But now I don’t want to read what I want to read. So, I figure, I might as well read what I don’t want to read. I’ll take the bus to the library, check out the books, and add misery on top of my misery by reading about dystopias and death. Why not?
Actually, it feels good to be outside, walking, with a destination. It’s only been a few days, but I feel as if I’ve been curled up for months in the fetal position under my bed. Well, I have been curled up in the fetal position, on top of my bed. My legs and arms, even my head, feel stiff. Walking loosens my tight muscles, my rigid jaw, my one-note (NO! NO! NO!) brain.
It feels so good that I decide to walk to the library, which is a little bit farther than the mall. It’ll be a very long walk, but that’s just what I want. Purposefully perambulating. In a few minutes, I’m on Quarry Road, passing the bus stop. And in a few minutes more, I’m upon the scene of the crime. What was I thinking? All roads lead to this site—I almost never have a reason to go the other direction on Quarry Road. Of course I would end up here.
It looks a mess because of all the roadside memorial paraphernalia that people have strewn about. I count five teddy bears. Six sad little bouquets. (Whose job is it to remove the dead flowers at a roadside memorial?) Three plastic action figures, but not figures corresponding to any hero or villain who’s currently popular. Some kids must have dug into their boxes of discarded toys. One heart-shaped pillow. A bunch of cards, already yellowing and curling, and a large sign: WE LOVE YOU, HUMPHREY.
Okay. It’s true that Humphrey was too young and too sheltered to be really known by the neighbors or their kids. But my heart turns in on itself at this stuff. Teddy bears? The kid didn’t have a single one. Action figures? He wasn’t allowed to watch the television shows the figures were based on, and so he didn’t know that he was supposed to care about them.
My God, doesn’t anyone know that Humphrey’s ambition in life was to throw a perfect spiral? That he loved aliens, specifically aliens of the Bumble-Boo persuasion? Or that, in the stuffed animal department, he passed over teddy bears in favor of turtles and frogs? His parents must know this, but I’m assuming they don’t have anything to do with this collection of junk.
I keep walking, and soon I’m at the entrance to the park. Our park. I could walk on. I do have a destination. But I’m drawn in.
Here are the Bumble-Boos on the planet of Thrumble-Boo. Here’s the spaceship. The playground is deserted, as usual. I cross the field to the scrubby area where a few old picnic tables and an ancient grill have failed to entice anyone to have a cookout for as long as I can remember. I sit up on one of the tabletops and look around. This park is such an ugly duckling. Yet I’ve always liked it. I don’t remember riding on the springy bumblebees—excuse me, Bumble-Boos—but we have photos to prove that I once did, when I was Humphrey’s age and younger. I do remember spinning around on the roundabout, with Adrian providing most of the propulsion. I feel protective toward this park. And now, to me, it’s more of a memorial to Humphrey than the collection on Quarry Road.
Over on the basketball court a guy is shooting hoops, alone. See, that’s another good thing about a run-down park. Not many people come here, so you can get the court to yourself, if that’s what you want. Or, like with Humphrey and me, you can make the playground your own private planet with your own private aliens without interference from other, ordinary human beings.
It appears I have spoken too soon. I’m about to have interference.
“Hey.” It’s the boy from the basketball court. He probably wants to see who’s invading his private domain.
“Hey,” I say back.
“I’ve seen you here,” he says. “I couldn’t tell it was you right away. But I’ve seen you here. You play catch with that kid.”
He saw me? I guess I did notice some guys playing basketball when Humphrey and I were here. But barely. Hey, I was very busy. I was babysitting. Much too attentive to my responsibilities to notice some high school guys sweating on a court all the way across the field, even if one of them was unusually nice-looking.
“He’s too young to throw a regular football,” he says.
“I didn’t know you could be too young to throw a ball,” I say.
“I mean, they make smaller footballs for younger kids,” he says. “They can get their hands around them better. So they can get the grip right and actually throw the way a football’s supposed to be thrown.”
“Excuse me,” I say. “It’s the only football we had.”
“Yeah, no. I’m not blaming you. Just saying. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with using a regulation football.”
How relieved I am not to be blamed for using the wrong football. All that’s left is forgiveness for walking at dusk, dropping the football, and having no control over the child I’m supposed to protect.
“They sell the youth footballs at the mall,” he says. “At that toy store there.”
“I won’t really be needing one,” I say. “Anymore.”
He looks at me with deep brown eyes, dark lashes—and then I see my words registering.
“Oh, jeez,” he says. “He’s the boy. The one who got hit by—that car.”
“Right,” I say.
“Jeez.”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t immediately say anything more. From the look on his face—half horrified, half incredibly sympathetic—I sort of expect him to walk away, to go back to the basketball court. He doesn’t, though. He leans against the picnic table, hesitates, and then pushes himself up to sit on top, like I am.
“I’m really sorry,” he says.
“Thank you.”
I nod.
“I’m really so sorry.”
“Me, too.”
“His name was Humphrey, right?”
“Or Humpty,” I say.
“Humpty?”
“Sometimes that’s what I called him. Or Humpty Dumpty. Short for Humphrey,” I say.
“That’s quite a name,” he says.
“I think it was a family name. Someone in Mr. Danker’s family—like his father or grandfather or something. The point is, it wasn’t for Humphrey Bogart.”
He thinks about this for a moment. “But I wouldn’t say Humpty is short for Humphrey,” he says. “You know? Humpty. Humphrey. Two syllables, either way.”
“I never really thought about it,” I say in a voice that I hope is cold. Who asked him to count syllables? “It was a nickname.”
“Sorry. That was stupid.” He sounds embarrassed. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I wave the apology away.
“Did Humphrey like the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme or something?”
“Or something,” I say. As if Humphrey would stoop to nursery rhymes. Could this conversation be stupider?
“So you were with him. When he. You know.”
“Yup,” I say. “I was.”
“Yup.”
“Man.”
“Yup.”
We sit there for a few minutes without talking.
“Do you … do you go to Western?” he asks. Smooth transition.
“Yup.”
He gives me a kind of look, I assume because I’ve now said “yup” four times in a row. If he were Thomas R. Danker, he would inform me that this was an inappropriate means of expressing the affirmative. But he’s not Thomas R. Danker.
“Do you know …?”
He names a bunch of people I don’t know.
“How about …?”
Now come the names of Western’s mini-celebrities, including a few hockey players.
“I don’t know-them know them,” I say. “But I know who they are. Partly because my brother used to play hockey, so I used to go to all the games.”
“Why’d you stop?”
“Because I was at the end of my sentence.”
He laughs. “No, why’d you stop going to hockey games?”
I deflect the question. “You don’t go to Western, though, do you?” I ask.
“No. MacArthur. I’ll be a junior.”
“So you don’t even live around here,” I say.
He laughs again. “I live close enough. Why? Is there a geographic limit on who can use the basketball court?”
“No. Just who can sit on the picnic tables.”
“I see,” he says.
“Okay.”
“I play hockey. Not well, but I play. And not for MacArthur, just for the rec league.”
“Good for you.”
“Does that give me any more of a right to be on this picnic table?”
He has a snorty laugh, but a good smile, very white teeth set off against skin that I suppose I should call “olive,” except I don’t like the greenish suggestion that goes with “olive.” Anyway, with the dark eyes, it’s a pleasing combination. He’s tall, too—taller than me.
“We play basketball here, my friends and me, because the court is always open,” he says.
“Because it’s such a dumpy park,” I say.
“I like it,” he says.
“Well,” I say. “Thanks for the fascinating conversation.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” he says.
He turns to walk back toward the court; I get up and head toward Quarry Road.
“Hey!” he calls after me.
I turn.
“That was cool of you to try to teach the kid to play football. I shouldn’t have said the thing about using the wrong size ball.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I wasn’t teaching him to play football. Just to throw a perfect spiral.”
He grimaces. “Oh, man,” he says. “So much easier with a smaller ball.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” I say, and continue walking to Quarry Road.
At the library, I find all of the depressing books I’m supposed to read and check them out on my card. On the walk back, I stop at the mall. The high-end toy store doesn’t have footballs, not in any size. The cheapo toy store has an entire basket of them—all PeeWee size. I buy two, one for Humphrey, one for me, and when I pass the roadside memorial on Quarry Road again, I stop to clear away some of the stupid stuffed bears and in their place I put his football, approved for league play, featuring the patented Ultimate Grip cover, and aerodynamically designed to spiral in flight.