ALICE’S LEGS WERE long and nearly the same width from ankle to thigh. She looked down at them and thought about how walking worked, wearing her swim cap, chewing a huge wad of bubble gum, headed to meet Theo after school at the bridge on Rabbit Run Road. It was early June. In three weeks she would be free of third grade. Tomorrow Constant was coming for dinner and to stay for a while, like he had done every summer since she could remember.
Constant is Alice’s uncle and Theo’s cousin, but somehow none of them are related, really, in the genetic way. Constant was Ross’s ex-wife’s nephew. And Ross is Theo’s mom’s stepbrother. And Constant is kind of Gene’s brother. In this way, it is like she and Theo are cousins. They look alike, too. They can pretend to be cousins.
“Blood relationships are weak relationships,” she remembered her mother saying. Brain relationships are the ones that really matter. Sometimes you’re related to people you have good brain relationships with, sometimes not. Being related by blood isn’t the same as being a family. Alice thought about this as she walked to the bridge.
Genetics only make a difference because if you have sex with your relatives, you will produce babies with screwed-up bodies or brains—having sex with your relatives is what kings and queens and rich people do, which is one reason rulers tend to be crazy. Gene and Claire told her all about DNA and how humans are all made of the same stuff, and animals are made of mostly the same stuff, too. So the craziest thing in the world is believing you can tell other people what to do—or thinking that some people deserve better care or more things than other people—because all humans have the same biological needs and deserve the same essential things. Kings and queens and rich people try to make those with less than they have give them things. They also think they can tell people what to do and how to act, which proves they are crazy, maybe even from inbreeding or something like that.
She and Theo are not related. But sometimes they would tell each other what to do. And she knew that wasn’t good. Sometimes she wanted to tell him what to do so badly she felt like she might scream. She asked Gene about it while he was splitting wood one day, and he said, “Go ahead, tell him what to do, he’ll do it or he won’t. That’s up to him. Then there’s nothing more that can happen. What do you want him to do, anyway?”
She had thrown her head back and groaned in frustration. “To catch the second trapeze on the second swing! NOT the third—the third gets everything off to the WRONG count if you’re playing Peter and the Wolf!” She shouted because it was obviously so easy to catch on the second swing that she was still mad he wouldn’t do it.
Gene had raised his eyebrows at her and laughed. “Yeah,” he had said. “It would be a different count if you’re playing circus to that CD, and you want the upward swings to be on the downbeat.” He set the axe aside and handed her some split wood and lit his cigarette. “I wonder what sounds right with the third swing?” He seemed to ask himself, though he said it loud enough for Alice to hear. “Not Prokofiev, that’s for sure. You called that one.” Then he hummed. He picked up his own pile of wood, and she walked beside him toward the house carrying hers. He shrugged. “Theo could practice it and get it right or not. Or you guys could find something that has a different tempo; there’s only a million circus songs in the world, punkin. Everything can be a circus song. It’s not that big a deal.”
When he said it, she was amazed that she hadn’t thought of other songs herself. It was like she had completely forgotten other songs existed. She could tell Theo what to do, but then she would only be right about this one trick and this one song. Which didn’t seem worth the bad feeling of wanting to tell a person what to do. It was like the scope in Uncle Ross’s gun. It blotted out the entire world and placed a cross over the thing you wanted to see most clearly. The thing you want to look at up close. It was the opposite of Gene’s old microscope.
She snapped her gum, still thinking about it as she walked toward the riverbank and saw Theo waiting on the bridge in the afternoon sun. He had a way of having all the right things. Magnets, matches, marbles, rubber erasers shaped like animals, a harmonica, beeswax, rolls of caps. Today she hoped he had brought a jar, because she didn’t have one. They had planned to wade out into the river and catch crayfish, but they always forgot to bring a jar. He waved at her and stood on the rail of the bridge.
“Connie is coming tomorrow night!” she called to him.
He nodded. “Why are you wearing your swim cap?”
“Can I sleep over?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“In the yurt?”
“No. Ross said he quit his job. He’s going to stay in the yurt for a while.”
“Really? Why does he have to stay in the yurt if he quit his job?”
Theo shrugged. His hair was always tangled, and it stuck up in the back and was a little too long in the front. He brushed it out of his eyes.
“I wanted to make mobiles for Con,” she said.
“We can make crayfish mobiles. Do you have any more gum?”
Crayfish mobiles are a genius idea, she thought, even better if there was a way to keep the crayfish alive. She reached into the pocket of her shorts and handed him the whole pack of gum as they made their way along the trail that led beneath the bridge and out along the muddy pebbled bank of the river. They crouched, looking into the shallow water for tiny gray-and-green-mottled lobster bodies camouflaged as stones. They wandered in up to their ankles, looking straight down. Seeing the armored insect-like bodies darting away got their hearts pounding. They were hunting, grabbing the crayfish fast, just behind their front claws so they wouldn’t get pinched.
Theo hadn’t brought a jar, so they took off their shirts, making them into pouches to hold the crayfish, and they left the shirts on the bank churning and crawling slowly in different directions as they swam.
This was where they used to pretend to be animals when they were little and their parents brought them there, and they felt it again now—the desire to change into animals. They avoided looking at each other for a while. But it was too much for Alice. She looked right at Theo and raised her eyebrows, hunched her shoulders. Then she waited. She could see when he had become Mole. He didn’t need to tell her. When he first did it, she felt a little sick to her stomach, so embarrassed that they still did this—played Wind in the Willows and Circus and came to their special place when the rest of their class was trading Pokémon cards and going to Little League practice or watching TV. Something about what they were doing was wrong. No one played this way except babies. That was made clear to them when they were overheard on the monkey bars at recess. She felt queasy because it was actually dangerous for Theo to play like that. They pulled his sneakers off and hit him in the face with them. They slammed him on the floor in the hallway coming in from the playground, slammed their shoulders into his back. The kid whose hair was cut with dog clippers, who wore a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt, whose cheeks were rosy like in pictures of Snow White, he was Theo’s age but a big boy. His wide-set eyes were too wet. He had big chapped lips and really straight teeth. He was the one who knocked Theo down for saying “Quite, quite, Ratty.” That kid knocked into Theo and called him a girl and a fag and told him he had a girlfriend. And that his dad was a fag. He called Alice a slut and said her parents were on welfare. She didn’t know what welfare was, but it sounded pretty bad. He also said she was wearing queer Kmart pants. Claire had made the pants and Alice didn’t know if they were queer. When she asked if they were queer or not, her mother laughed. She didn’t laugh about what the kid said, though. She put out her arms for Alice to come lie on the couch and read with her. It wasn’t just the kid with the straight teeth. Alice didn’t want to think about the number of boys who had understood everything that kid said. And her not understanding what he said was the worst part about all of it.
Claire said, “When people do stuff like that, pumpkin sauce, they are in a lot of pain, and they want someone to keep them company, so they try to give them the pain, too. Bring them that bad feeling they have. You have to ignore what they say.”
Claire obviously didn’t know how much company the kid had, because Alice hadn’t told her the whole story. There had to be another reason. The kid with the chapped lips wanted them to stop playing a game they always played—and even to stop wearing the clothes they wore. Somehow Alice really hated her pants now, which didn’t make sense, because they had been her favorite pants. Bright orange with side pockets.
She thought about it. People hurt other people when they were in pain or if they were crazy—if a person is in bad pain or for too long, they go crazy on reflex, like a dog that bites you if you step on its tail. People tell other people what to do if they are crazy. Like the way inbreeding makes people crazy or retarded, kings and queens and that kind of thing. Claire had it mixed up. She thought the kid was in pain, but he was royalty. He was not in pain. You could see he wasn’t unhappy. He was happy. He was so happy when he knocked Theo down that you could see it in the way he breathed.
“I’ll never keep him company,” Alice said, amazed and confused that Claire had even suggested it. You’re not supposed to encourage the bossiness or crazy ideas of rich people. Or ignore the bad things they do. You’re not supposed to be scared of them.
Standing in the river with the queasy feeling, she glanced at Theo to see if he had changed. She watched his eyelids droop, then he squinted. And somehow he actually made his nose pointy and his chin shrink back. He was nervous but dignified.
“It’s ever so good of you to come here, Moley,” Alice said to him, pulling a strand of her long hair out of her swim cap to make a wispy blond tail that would hang down her back. This was why she’d worn the cap in the first place, but didn’t want to say so out loud.
“My pleasure, Ratty,” he said. “But we’ve got to act fast today, I’m afraid. We’ve got to do something about Mr. Toad.” Theo’s English accent was perfect, and he was proud of it. He was the best actor in the whole world. She no longer felt sick or worried.
“Pretend we have to break him out of jail,” Alice whispered.
“We need to take the train out to Elmville,” Mole said, as if he hadn’t even heard her—but he had. “I’ve an idea. A dangerous idea.”
“Quite,” Rat said as she put her hands on the silty, stony bottom and let her legs float on the gentle current. She blew a pink bubble. “Quite so, old chap,” Ratty went on. “We should go to Badger’s at once and bring him these lovely crayfish, and maybe he can help us. They’re holding Toad in the dungeon, I hear.” She gestured toward the only large building visible from the riverbank, the flat white architecture of Haeden Medical Center.
Mole was standing up to his waist in the river, holding a stick in the water and watching the current ripple around it. “Badger will know what to do once we’ve freed him,” he said. “He has tunnels that go all the way to Elmville and even farther. But we need a plan.”
“Yes, quite. A plan,” said Rat. “Toad can’t quite leave as himself, can he? I say we sneak him out, disguise him as an old washerwoman. So long as he keeps quiet, no one will know. Then it’s down to the riverbank and past the wild wood to safety.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, standing shirtless in the green-gray water. She knew the gravity and danger of what they were about to do was immense. Outrageous! But she had no idea what it was or when they would do it, and suddenly, she started to feel like this had all happened before and she was remembering it, felt goose bumps break out all over her skin. She was filled with a sense of awe at their bravery. There was no one in the world they could trust more than each other with the task of saving Toad.
Mole looked at her and squinted. “Come now, we’ve a good deal of work ahead of us.”
They got their crayfish shirts from the bank and began walking in the shallows, following the river in the direction of Alice’s house.
Connie can be Mr. Toad, Alice thought. He can hide out in the barn. We have to show him the new trapeze anyway. Beneath the bridge, she and Theo began to howl, and the concave metal canopy drew their voices up into the sky and out into the town, echoing, their last ghostly tones still resonating as they left the riverbank behind.