Gladys

If there was one thing sprouts hated more than going to sleep it was being woken up. After-nap was a cranky, crabby time and Gladys was overjoyed when her father, who’d only worked a short shift today, came home and took her place helping Mama. Grabbing her phone, she sat on her bed playing Scrabble till she knew Chickie would be home from camp.

“I have volumes to tell you,” she said when Chickie picked up. “I hardly know where to start!”

“Hi, Gladys.”

“Can I come over?”

“Sure.”

“On my way!”

Gladys took off her capelet and hung it back in the closet. She had too much to tell her best friend to waste time explaining her fashion preferences, which Chickie had recently begun to question, along with Gladys’s vocabulary.

Dada offered to drive her, but Gladys said she’d ride her bike. The bike was the kind that comes with training wheels, though of course she didn’t need those anymore. It was impossible to get up any speed on the thing. Also, her parents, afraid cars wouldn’t see her despite the humiliating flag mounted on the back, made her ride on the sidewalk.

Still! Freedom! She reveled in the feel of the wind in her hair. Or at least on her helmet. She bumped over the sidewalk, lifted and broken by the roots of tree lawn trees. As she pedaled past one with a crosswise crack in the trunk, whoosh! The black mist of her nightmare blew around her. Bad dreams were supposed to evaporate in daylight, but this one refused.

Shuddering, she bent her head and pedaled harder. She’d tell Chickie about the tree-woman crying Save me! Save me, please! Chickie would give the dream the respect it deserved. She’d listen attentively as Gladys described sweet True Blue and her witchy owner. She’d grow irate over how Angela had quit again, leaving Gladys mired in the quicksand of daycare.

Gladys hoped she wouldn’t burst before she had the chance to tell her best friend absolutely everything. Sweat trickled down from under her helmet and stung her eyes, so she didn’t even notice the two boys walking toward her until the tall one cried, “Watch where you’re going!”

Gladys hit the brakes. She was prepared to be indignant—her bicycle skills were excellent—till she got a closer look. The tall one—everyone was tall to Gladys, but he was extra tall—she recognized. Big as he was, he was a grade behind her. He and Gladys had never spoken. Besides being in a different grade, and a boy, he was not what anyone would call friendly. Before today, if she’d had to describe him in a single word, she’d have chosen sullen.

Now, though, she added handsome. Sullenly handsome. He had blond curls and a high, intelligent brow. Which was as sweaty as hers, but somehow this made him look gallant, like a knight who’d been out slaying dragons. Was that blood on his T-shirt?

Gladys fanned her overheated face.

The sprout had something filmy and gray—it almost looked like a spiderweb—stuck to a nasty cut on his forehead. His face was definitely streaked with blood and his hair was clumped with it.

“Are you all right?” The most obtuse question possible. “I mean, can I help you?”

The little boy lay down on the tree lawn and abruptly went as stiff as a corpse with rigor mortis.

“Get up,” said the other one.

Jude, thought Gladys. She was pretty sure she’d heard him called Jude. From his tone of voice, she guessed the two were brothers.

“Spider,” he begged. “There’s dog crap. Come on. Get up.”

“The gun,” Spider moaned. “We forgot the gun.”

“Gun?” Gladys said, but they both ignored her.

“It’s okay, Spy. I’ll get it later.”

Compared to his brother, Spider was scrawny. Also, his hair was straight and dark instead of blond and wavy. They didn’t, in fact, look anything like brothers, but Jude definitely acted like one. He acted like a dad, almost. Gladys watched him try to pick up Spider, who continued to do his imitation of a plank.

“Help me out here,” Jude pleaded, and even though Gladys knew he was talking to Spider, she was the one who answered.

“Do you want to borrow my bike? You could ride him home.”

He eyed her, then the bike, and for a second she thought he was going to laugh.

“Maybe if I was six years old.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I can ride him.”

“Really?” He considered it, then shook his head. “Forget it. It’s going to take a bulldozer to move him.”

Gladys crouched beside Spider. “You can wear my bike helmet,” she whispered in his ear.

Spider lifted his head and side-eyed her neon-pink helmet.

“Deal,” he whispered back.

Gladys took the helmet off her head and set it on his, careful with the cut. Jude watched in astonishment. Astonishment transformed his handsomeness into cuteness.

“I never met a sprout who could resist a helmet,” Gladys told him as she climbed back onto her bike.

“We live on Church Street.” When Jude set Spider onto the bike seat, the little boy wrapped his arms around Gladys’s middle and pressed his cheek against her spine.

Gladys never rode helmet-less, and though it made her nervous, it also felt daring and bold. She stood on the pedals as Jude jogged beside them, over the bumps in the sidewalk, in and out of lawn sprinklers. The edge of a paperback stuck out of his back pocket. That was interesting. She kept waiting for him to say something, anything, but he seemed to be a person of few words. Also, a terrible runner.

As they approached Church Street, Gladys slowed down, suddenly in no hurry to get there. That was when she registered the woman ahead on the sidewalk, standing still, her back toward them. With a cry, Gladys braked, but Jude, head bent, huffing and puffing, plowed directly into her. Down they both fell in a horrible heap of cries and grunts and a pitiful yelp from True Blue, who’d been sitting patiently and now was on the bottom of the pile.

“Good God!” yelled the woman. Plus other inappropriate phrases.

True Blue wriggled out and tried to back away, but her leash was wrapped around the woman’s leg. Struggling to get free, the dog twisted this way and that, tossing her head, growling and yipping as the choke collar tightened and she grew more and more frantic.

“It’s gonna bite you!” Spider looked terrified. “Jude! Don’t let it bite you!” Waving his arms, he catapulted off the bike and crashed helmet-first to the sidewalk.

True Blue started barking. It was a piercing, scraping sound, like a shovel at the bottom of a bucket. A bucket of metal scraps. Her sides heaved and her eyes bulged. Scrambling to his feet, Jude reached for the twisted leash, and Gladys saw he was as scared as his little brother. Yet somehow he managed to untangle True Blue, and when he stepped back onto the grass, she immediately stopped barking and went still. She sat at his feet, tail neatly wrapped around her. She and Jude looked at each other, both of them breathing too hard.

The woman was peering around in a confused way, like someone who’d just gotten very bad news. When she spied her phone on the sidewalk, she snatched it and hauled herself upright.

“Look what you did!” She stuck the phone in Jude’s frightened face. “It’s cracked! Ruined!”

This was definitely not the woman from Gladys’s nightmare. The dream woman was helpless and voiceless, but this one screeched like a bird of prey.

“Sorry.” Jude took a step back, and True Blue scooted behind him.

“Sorry? Sorry!” She was getting angrier by the second. She shoved the phone in his face again. “Like sorry fixes anything? Like sorry means crap?”

Why didn’t Jude defend himself? Gladys two-footed her bike closer.

“It’s not his fault!” she cried. “It was an accident! We were in a hurry. His little brother’s hurt.”

The woman turned to look at Spider, sitting in a heap on the ground. Blood trickled through the gray stuff and down his cheek. Her cruel eyes widened.

“What happened to him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Gladys said.

“That kid needs stitches. What is the matter with you little punks?” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket but it was crushed. She jammed it back in, then whipped the leash out of Jude’s hand. True Blue gave a desperate bark and the woman smacked her snout with the phone.

“Don’t do that!” Gladys cried. “You hurt her! Why did you do that?”

Whatever evil lived inside the woman vanished. Or maybe—maybe whatever goodness she possessed rose to the surface. For a second, she looked ashamed of herself.

But only for a second.

“You brats owe me a phone. Who are your parents? Where do you live? Never mind—get out of here! Get out of my sight before I...” She pointed at Spider, who was crying without making any noise. “Take care of that pathetic kid! And you better pray I never see you again or I’ll...I’ll...” She stepped into the street, yanking True Blue after her. “You heard me!”

The woman had the leash in a death grip, but as they crossed the street, True Blue managed to twist her head. Jude turned his own head away, and Gladys understood why. He couldn’t stand to look.

She wiped Spider’s tears with a tissue from her pocket, then helped him back onto the bike. They’d gone several blocks before Jude said a word.

“If I was him,” he said, his hands balled into fists, “I’d run away.”

“It’s a girl.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Well I just know it’s a boy.”

“Girl.”

“Boy.”

“Girl.”

“Boy.”

“Anyway you’re right. It’s terrible,” Gladys said. “It’s worse than terrible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s criminal. It’s—”

“Here’s our house.”

What? Already?

Jude lifted his brother down.

“I think he really does need stitches,” Gladys said.

Which made Jude scowl, as if she was criticizing him instead of offering helpful advice. He wrestled the bike helmet off Spider and shoved it toward her.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. By the way, my name is Gladys.”

He was carrying his brother toward the door, which had a menacing totem pole, or something, beside it.

“I live on Fifth Street,” she called. “The yellow house with kid stuff all over the place.”

Without so much as a glance back, he shut the door behind them.

“Goodbye,” she said to the empty air.

A moment passed. Gladys’s legs were trembly and her chest ached. She had a vague feeling that there was something she was supposed to do, yet she didn’t move. Next door, a man came outside wearing giant kneepads. He knelt in the grass, every blade of which was precisely the same height, and began to weed a perfect-looking flower bed. Though Gladys had heard the expression neat as a pin, she’d never known what it meant till now. Pins were spare, no-nonsense things. Nothing comforting about a pin. The yard should have been nice, but somehow it made Gladys feel sorry for the man, his grass, even his kneepads.

Looking back at Jude’s front door, which remained shut, she remembered his face as he gazed at True Blue. Stricken, she thought. People could be stricken with illness or sorrow, but also with love.

She slowly put her bike helmet back on. As if that jolted her brain, she remembered. Chickie! She’d promised to be at her house at least an hour ago.

Flag flying, she furiously pedaled back the way she’d just come.