Good Neighbors(23)

Crrrraaakk!

The slab bowed, tearing even more. Julia crouched down. She’d forgotten about her anger. All she wanted was off this damn slab. Please, God. Please, please, please don’t let me fall in. Don’t let the hole get me…

The slab got still. The Rat Pack got quiet. Everything slowed, so the only sound was the angry cicada heat-song.

“Stop,” Julia said, low and loud, even though her throat still hurt. She was in the center, afraid to stand. Worried any movement at all would send them both tumbling down.

“Ask nice,” Shelly answered.

“Crawl off, Julia. Leave her!” Charlie called.

“Stick your hands through!” the Markles heckled like brainless stereo speakers.

“Please, Shelly. I’m asking nice. Stop jumping,” Julia said.

Shelly walked off the slab. It cricked and moaned with every step. “Julia’s a chicken and a loser, but we all knew that when we voted not to hang out with her.”

Still crouched, Julia gathered her courage, trying to decide whether to stand and walk off, or to be smart and crawl.

“My mom’s throwing another barbeque once the hole is closed. To celebrate. Everybody except Julia can come,” Shelly said. “Julia has to admit she’s a lying hypocrite. Then we can all be friends again, and I’ll stop holding it against her, that her family is a buncha sluts and criminals and crazies. So are you gonna say you’re sorry, Julia?”

“I don’t even like barbeques,” Dave said.

“Stick your hand inside!” Michael cried.

“Stick it! Stick it!” Mark added in exactly the same voice.

Julia knew the smart thing to do, what her parents and brother would want her to do: crawl off this stupid slab before it broke open, apologize, and move on with this hot, shitty day.

But it was one thing to avoid her friend-turned-enemy; it was another to buckle under her. She didn’t want Larry to see that. He’d think it made Shelly right, that he didn’t deserve decent treatment. If she apologized, Dave Harrison and Charlie Walsh might still act nice, but they’d think less of her. She wouldn’t be an equal anymore. The rest of these kids weren’t strong personalities. They’d internalize the pecking order, that she could be treated badly without repercussion, that she and Larry were the lowest people on the block.

She’d been on good behavior for a long time. Trying to fit in like her parents wanted even though she had crazy curly hair and her accent was Brooklyn, but not the gentrified kind. Even though her clothes weren’t as nice and she didn’t care as much about school. Even though everybody here had met practically at birth, she’d tried to find a place for herself and for Larry. When that stopped working, she hadn’t gone on the offensive. She’d just taken Larry and hidden out in her house. She’d been cool about it. But this was past her limit. No way she was going to say she was sorry. Not after everything Shelly had said and done. Julia did the only thing she could think to do. The bravest and craziest possible thing. She plunged her fist through the knothole.

“Gee, Shelly. That’s funny. Were you scared? Because it feels just fine to me,” she called as she wiggled her fingers down there, inside the hole.

The Markles hooted. Charlie held Larry by the shoulders so he didn’t follow Julia, which it looked like he was trying to do. Julia reached deeper. Maybe because of her weight on the slab, vibrations rattled the metal rivets, making a high-pitched ringing.

Sound-sensitive Larry covered his ears.

Everybody was watching. Julia plunged her arm in all the way up to her shoulder, her ear against the warm, oil-greasy wood.

“You’re so stupid. I was kidding,” Shelly said. Except her voice was 100 percent awe.

“Real, live, human flesh! Come and get it!” Julia said. Her arm itched with a chemical kind of heat, and she felt the displaced air of something else’s movement. Her fingertips trilled with the sensation of something living and breathing that was very close. Her hand wasn’t alone. She should have been worried, but she wasn’t, because everybody looked terrified, and impressed, and spellbound. For once, these Maple Street All-Americans were in awe of ghetto Julia Wilde.

“Oh no!” She rolled her eyes and drummed her legs against the wobbly slab. “Help! It’s got me!” she cried.

“Get off!” everybody was shouting, but she didn’t care. This was fun. This was real. Now that she’d done this, nobody had the right to tease her or Larry. Not ever again.

Then: The air against her hands got hotter and wetter. It blew like breath. The entire slab rattled, screws singing with vibration. Something lunged. She yanked back. Not in time. The pain was strangely clean. She screamed for real. Her hand tore free. Steaming fumes shot up through the knothole as she fell back and rolled off.

“It bit me!” Julia cried, except her voice didn’t come. She’d inhaled some of the fumes. Her lungs were hot; burning! She didn’t feel the warm blood running down her wrist, or even the pain. Just this adrenaline sense of something clean and thoroughly done to both sides of her palm. A bite that had met in the bony middle.

—CRACK!—

Something punched the slab from underneath. The wood went convex.

“It’s alive!” Sam shouted. “Holy cow! It’s alive!”

The Markles jogged a few feet away. So did Ella.