Mary smiled and brushed her hand, the nails painted a velvety blue, through her long hair. “How could I forget? We almost didn’t get in, because Billy Mears wrote some nasty ink on his arm. Mrs. Colby made him stay on the bus with the driver, the one who had the stutter.”
Eric lofted the ball, went up on his toes, and whacked a killer serve that barely topped the net. Instead of trying to return it, Curt flinched back. Eric raised his arms like Rocky at the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps. Mary clapped. Eric turned toward her and bowed.
Jared said, “It was MRS. COLBY EATS THE BIG ONE on his arm, and Billy didn’t put it there. Eric did. Billy was fast asleep when he did it, and kept his mouth shut because staying on the bus was better than getting beaten up by Eric at a later date.”
“So?”
“So Eric’s a bully.”
“Was a bully,” Mary said. “Fifth grade was a long time ago.”
“As the twig is bent, so the bough is shaped.” Jared heard the pedantic tone his father sometimes adopted, and would have taken it back if he could.
Mary’s gray eyes were on him, appraising. “Meaning what?”
Stop, Jared told himself, just shrug and say whatever and let it go. He often gave himself such good advice, and his mouth usually overrode him. It did so now.
“Meaning people don’t change.”
“Sometimes they do. My dad used to drink too much, but he stopped. He goes to AA meetings now.”
“Okay, some people do. I’m glad your father was one of them.”
“You better be.” The gray eyes were still fixed on him.
“But most people don’t. Just think about it. The fifth grade jocks—like Eric—are still the jocks. You were a smart kid then, and you’re a smart kid now. The kids who got in trouble in fifth are still getting in trouble in eleventh and twelfth. You ever see Eric and Billy together? No? Case closed.”
This time Curt managed to handle Eric’s serve, but the return was a bunny and Eric was vulturing the net, almost hanging over it. His return—a clear net-foul—hit Curt in the belt-buckle. “Quit it, dude!” Curt shouted. “I might want to have kids someday!”
“Bad idea,” Eric said. “Now go get that, it’s my lucky ball. Fetch, Rover.”
While Curt shuffled sulkily to the chainlink fence where the ball had come to rest, Eric turned to Mary and took another bow. She gave him a hundred-watt smile. It stayed on when she turned back to Jared, but the wattage dimmed considerably.
“I love you for wanting to protect me, Jere, but I’m a big girl. It’s a concert, not a lifelong commitment.”
“Just . . .”
“Just what?” The smile was all gone now.
Just watch out for him, Jared wanted to say. Because writing on Billy’s arm was a minor thing. A grade-school thing. In high school there have been ugly locker room stunts I don’t want to talk about. In part, because I never put a stop to any of them. I just watched.
More good advice, and before his traitor mouth could disregard it, Mary swiveled in her seat, looking toward the school. Some movement must have caught her eye, and now Jared saw it, too: a brown cloud lifting off from the gymnasium roof. It was large enough to scare up the crows that had been roosting in the oaks surrounding the faculty parking lot.
Dust, Jared thought, but instead of dissipating, the cloud banked sharply and headed north. It was flocking behavior, but those weren’t birds. They were too small even for sparrows.
“An eclipse of moths!” Mary exclaimed. “Wow! Who knew?”
“That’s what you call a whole bunch of them? An eclipse?”
“Yes! Who knew they flocked? And most moths leave daytime to the butterflies. Moths are fly-by-nights. At least, usually.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I did my eighth grade science project on moths—mott, in Old English, meaning maggot. My dad talked me into doing it, because I used to be scared of them. Someone told me when I was little that if you got the dust from a moth’s wings in your eyes, you’d go blind. My dad said that was just an old wives’ tale, and if I did my science project on moths, I might be able to make friends with them. He said that butterflies are the beauty queens of the insect world, they always get to go to the ball, and the poor moths are the ones who get left behind like Cinderella. He was still drinking then, but it was a fun story just the same.”
Those gray eyes on him, daring him to disagree.
“Sure, cool,” Jared said. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Make friends with them.”
“Not exactly, but I found out lots of interesting stuff. Butterflies close their wings over their backs when they’re at rest. Moths use theirs to protect their bellies. Moths have frenulums—those are wing-coupling devices—but butterflies don’t. Butterflies make a chrysalis, which is hard. Moths make cocoons, which are soft and silky.”
“Yo!” It was Kent Daley, riding his bike across the softball field from the tangle of waste ground beyond. He was wearing a backpack and his tennis racket was slung over his shoulder. “Norcross! Pak! You see all those birds take off?”
“They were moths,” Jared said. “The ones with frenulums. Or maybe it’s frenula.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. What are you doing? It’s a school day, you know.”
“Had to take out the garbage for my ma.”
“Must have been a lot of it,” Mary said. “It’s already Period Three.”
Kent smirked at her, then saw Eric and Curt on the center court and dropped his bike into the grass. “Take a seat, Curt, let a man take over. You couldn’t hit Eric’s serve if your dog’s life depended on it.”
Curt ceded his end of the court to Kent, a bon vivant who did not seem to feel any pressing need to visit the office and explain his late arrival. Eric served, and Jared was delighted when the newly arrived Kent smashed it right back at him.
“The Aztecs believed that black moths were omens of bad luck,” Mary said. She had lost interest in the tennis match going on below. “There are people out in the hollers who still believe a white moth in the house means someone’s going to die.”
“You are a regular moth-matician, Mary.”
Mary made a sad trombone noise.
“Wait, you’ve never been in a holler in your life. You just made that up to be creepy. Good job, by the way.”
“No, I didn’t make it up! I read it in a book!”
She punched him in the shoulder. It kind of hurt, but Jared pretended it didn’t.
“Those were brown ones,” Jared said. “What do brown ones mean?”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” Mary said. “According to the Blackfeet Indians, brown moths bring sleep and dreams.”
6
Jared sat on a bench at the far end of the locker room, dressing. The Silly Sophomores had already departed, afraid of getting whipped with wet towels, a thing for which Eric and his cohorts were famous. Or maybe the right word was infamous. You say frenulum, I say frenula, Jared thought, putting on his sneakers. Let’s call the whole thing off.