A Lily in the Light(12)
Esme bit her thumbnail. It tasted bitter and left a film in her mouth so sour she couldn’t swallow it away. She could feel Detective Ferrera’s eyes. The house was stiller than it had been before. Please just come home, she prayed to Lily, silently begging her to climb out from behind the couch or unravel herself from one of the winter coats in the back of the closet so she wouldn’t have to tell Detective Ferrera something she wasn’t sure made sense.
“Just say it,” Madeline whispered, her hand finding its way back into Esme’s.
“Birdman,” Esme said, picking up the stone in her chest and handing it to Detective Ferrera. “The only person whose light wasn’t on tonight.”
With that, Detective Ferrera pulled his notebook from his pocket and started writing.
Chapter Three
Five Years Ago . . .
It was August, and Cerise was meeting a bride. She sent Nick, Madeline, and Esme outside with a bucket of sidewalk chalk and a jump rope. “Come back in an hour, unless I yell down sooner.” They knew the rule: no one in the house when Cerise was meeting a bride for the first time. It was too distracting, and she wanted to make a good impression. Esme thought an impression was like Ash Wednesday smoke, but the brides never left with a smudge on their foreheads. They held purse straps tightly as their heels clicked down the street.
That day, heat rose off the sidewalks in waves so thick the air wiggled. Somewhere in the distance, an ice cream truck tinkled “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
“We could find it,” Esme suggested, wanting to stand on tiptoes under the truck for something cold with sticky syrup. Nick ignored her. Madeline said it cost too much money. Then Denny wandered out in cut-off jeans and an undershirt, oblivious to how hot the concrete was under his bare feet. Madeline abandoned the lazy stars she was drawing, comet trails dragging, and hid the chalk in her fist.
“He looks like Jordan Knight,” Madeline whispered, her voice watery and full of giggles even though nothing was funny. Esme knew they were going to get in trouble.
“Punks,” he said, straddling the stoop. “I’m bored as hell.” Sweat beaded on his lip. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the flame. It burned in the sunlight. Why would anyone make the air any hotter? It seemed especially stupid. Esme slid to the other side of the stoop.
“Scared?” He smirked.
Nick snatched the lighter and swiped twice before the flame popped up. Dripping air conditioners left raindrops on the concrete. Birdman’s was the noisiest. It sputtered and left a puddle on the sidewalk.
Kids made up stoop stories about Birdman between hopscotch skips and tag. Birdman’s mailbox was always full. Neighbors grumbled as they gathered spilled junk mail and dumped it in a heap by his door that grew and grew until it disappeared and the whole thing started over. He’d had a pigeon coop on the roof with birds that flew to Staten Island and back until the super had shut it down. That was a fact because her father said it was true. He’d seen them fly with little messages tied to their legs while Birdman waited up there in a plastic lawn chair, watching the sky until they came home.
On nights when the weather was warm enough to sit in T-shirts and sandals, even grown-ups told stories. They said he was homeless and had gotten his apartment after his mother had kicked the bucket or a former marine who’d almost eaten a poisoned orange in Vietnam, but mostly they tipped back imaginary cups and clucked their tongues as if that explained everything. Kids should not talk to Birdman or go near his door or his pigeon coop. That was a rule.
Birdman’s air conditioner dripped a bad idea right into Denny’s head.
“Let’s steal his mail,” Denny said, dark eyes squinting in the sun. “Whoever gets the most and doesn’t chicken out wins. Then we’ll know his real name.”
“That’s stupid. How’s it brave to steal from a mailbox?” Madeline’s forehead scrunched in the sun. Esme slid closer.
“Not from the mailbox.” Denny patted the side of Madeline’s head like a dumb pet. She turned red and as wide eyed as a Pac-Man ghost. “From his door.”
“Extra points if you knock and don’t run away,” Nick added. A car passed on the street. The window rolled down, and something bright flashed quickly and then exploded at their feet. A water balloon. Yes! Esme thought. This was so much better than the mail thing.
“Let’s get ’em!” Esme’s fingers itched to wrap a water balloon around a spigot and feel it swell. Water dripped down her leg. Denny laughed as the car swung around the corner. Madeline laughed, too, but it sounded forced and fake: her new grown-up laugh. Madeline was wearing mascara, blinking and playing with her long dark lashes, bold as butterfly wings. Esme wished she could rub it off with the back of her hand. Maybe then she’d see how stupid Denny actually was: Denny, who painted plastic army men with Wite-Out and set them on fire, who stole cans of beer from his father’s cooler and poured them on slugs, who drew skulls with shaving cream on car windows and watched from the stoop empty handed while Nick got caught adding bones but said nothing. Denny, who did not look like Jordan Knight at all.
“Let’s go.” Nick stood. The rush of cold air from the lobby made Esme follow, even though it was a stupid idea.
They crept as quietly as four kids on a mission could, a hush of stifled giggles and noisy tiptoes, closing the hallway doors slowly so they clicked instead of slammed. Birdman’s door was gray like the others, dim under a fading light bulb. A pile of glossy cards and newspapers sat where a welcome mat should have been. The peephole stared back like a fish eye. Nick was first, looking smaller than usual next to Denny’s long legs and hunched shoulders. They tucked envelopes into their waistlines. Madeline stuck important-looking long envelopes with typed addresses under her arm, but Esme lingered behind. They looked like hens pecking at seeds in the dirt. She didn’t want to be a hen, but being left out was worse. She crept closer, picked up a postcard with three waxy pepperoni pizzas on it, and folded it into her pocket.