Cruddy - Lynda Barry [7]
“Hey,” she said. I didn’t say anything back. “Hey, deaf,” she said. “You. I got your message.” She sat down too close to me and started yanking up grass and throwing it on my pile. “I received your message this morning and the answer is yes.”
I said, “Message?”
“You’re Roberta, right?”
“Yes.”
“Yesssssssss,” she said, imitating my habit way of saying the word. The mother went insane if me or Julie said “yeah,” because only idiots said “yeah.” She wanted us to say “yes” very clearly. Make the “s” very clear. She did not want to be known as the mother of two idiots.
“Yesssssssss,” said Vicky Talluso. “That’s so sick. Yessssss.”
She was yanking up the grass vigorously, yanking up roots and dirt clods and I noticed her hands were very small and wide and her fingernails were also small and wide with silver nail polish caked up in chipped layers.
She said, “You have ESP, right?”
I squinted.
“You have ESP and you have contact with an Unfortunate Being, right? You were doing the Ouija board this morning.”
I shook my head. She saw me staring at her missing eyebrow. It was inflamed looking. Slightly scabby. I was thinking of the mange creature Demodex. I said, “Do you got a dog?”
“It’s ‘have,’ ” she said. “Not that it matters. But it’s ‘have.’ You called me this morning on the Ouija board and said to meet you here because you have something you need to give me. Only you don’t know what it is. You said you needed for me to come to you and tell you what it is you are supposed to give me.”
I shook my head no.
She said, “Yessssss.” She said, “Do you have any cigs?”
I shook my head again and she yanked up a clump of grass with a huge root clod attached and threw it. She said, “I hate this place. I hate this school. I hate this world. I hate this universe. Do you have any cigs or not?”
“No.”
“And you weren’t trying to contact me this morning?”
“No.”
“Liar. Not that it matters, but liar.”
From her purse she pulled out a flat chipped metal case that made a spronging sound when she opened it. Inside behind a filigree bar were three cigarettes.
“My last ones. Do you smoke?”
“Yes.”
“Yesssssssss. That is so sick. Do you care if I steal it? Yesssssssss. That is how I’m going to say it from now on. Yessssss. Yessssss.” She offered me a cig. I took it. I took it because the father said that when anyone offers you something, including a new identity, you should always take it and see what it leads you to. Once he found a nudist camp that way.
She pulled out a lighter with USN engraved on it. Big and silver-colored. Special issue. Made for people in windy conditions. You could not blow it out. I said, “Your father Navy?”
She snorted. “My father? Not hardly.”
We sat in the weeds awhile blowing stale Newport smoke into the air. I felt a weird electrification from being beside her. Partly it made me want to leave and partly it was what made me stay when the first bell rang and neither of us acted like we noticed it. Lunch was over. We had five minutes to get to fifth period.
“You don’t need to lie to me,” she said. Blue smoke came out of her nostrils.
“OK,” I said. It was the Navy thing to say. The thing the father told me to do. Agree and agree. See what the person has in mind.
“So you did contact me.”
“Yes.”
“Yessssss.”
Five years is a long time to go around obeying and not talking and having a boring life. Maybe I did contact her. Or maybe my Unfortunate Being did, whatever that was. Maybe it was time to finally tell the story and maybe Vicky Talluso was the perfect person to tell it to.
The second bell rang. Vicky was chewing on grass, grinding down with her front teeth and then actually chewing the grass into a wad. She said, “Roberta. Roberta. Hey.” I looked up and her mouth opened and her tongue shelfed out and there was