Voodootown

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Bambi

It took half the trip to Ash's house before Bambi stretched her sore arm and realized she wasn't tapping her hands on her legs.  Normally, she'd keep up the five beat rhythm from the moment she left her house, but after the phone call from Afghanistan, she hadn't felt the need to do any of her rituals.

Her breathing had stopped when the man on the phone had told her that he was with the army.  For a moment, she thought Ash had been wrong about everything, but then the man had put her brother on.  Chuck had sounded groggy and slow, and he hadn't said even one of his usual jokes, but it had been him.  Her brother was coming back home.

After she hung up, she hadn't even bothered to tell her parents the news.  They had been the same as the day before.  It was still an improvement over their demands and never ending expectations, but it was starting to worry her.  Instead of telling them about Chuck, she had grabbed a jacket and hurried out to tell Ash.

She stopped at his driveway and saw that his dad's old Chevy Impala had been parked at a strange angle, with two wheels on the grass.  She had always thought the car looked like a green version of the Batmobile with the fins that stuck out on the side, but Chuck had always drooled over the car and had begged Ash's dad for rides in it. 

Beside the car, the yard was covered with fallen leaves and even sticks.  She knew Ash's parents were both engineers or did some kind of research.  It was a nice house, but it wasn't kept up the way hers was.  Her father mowed the lawn three times a week while Ash's parent's barely shoveled the sidewalk in the middle of winter.  But the yard next door hadn't been raked either.  Neither had the one across the street.  Bambi looked down the street.  There were no cars driving by.  Ash's house was on a residential street, only two blocks from hers, but traffic was always busier here. 

She looked down the other direction.  Nothing.  It was late Sunday morning and there should have been some cars on the road, at least some people coming back from church.  She wondered where everyone was as she jogged to the front door, kicking leaves up as she went.

On the second ring, Ash opened the door.  He wore a dinosaur t-shirt, had a bandage wrapped around his right arm and had a small backpack on his shoulders.  After staring at her a moment, he smiled.  "Hey," he said as he opened the door for her.  She came in and smiled back at him. 

Bambi made him wait a moment before telling him the news, but Ash just stood in the entryway, watching her.  They had played waiting and stare down games when they were kids and he had always won.  She tried to draw it out, but gave up.  "You were right.  Chuck is coming home.  I just talked to him."

He nodded.  "Cool.  He's okay?"

"I guess he won't be sitting down for a while, but yeah.  Thanks for telling me yesterday," she said.

Ash stopped nodding, stared off a moment.  "Uh, how did he sound?  Was he kind of out of it?"

"Yeah, very.  I think they had him on some major painkillers."

"Painkillers," he said.  "Yeah, that makes sense."

Bambi tried to think of which part of the conversation to tell him about, but heard a noise from the second floor.  The stairs creaked and she looked up to see Danica walking down them.  She had her hair up in a towel and was wearing one of Ash's pajama shirts with a rocket on the front and a pair of undies.  She favored her right foot as she stopped on the landing and smiled at Bambi.  "Oh, hey."  Then she turned to Ash.  "Do you have any kind of pants that might fit me?"

Bambi stood there, stared at Danica's bare legs.  She saw that Ash was looking at them too.  "Yeah," Bambi said.  "Time for me to go."

Ash turned back to her.  "What?"

"Yeah, stay," Danica said.  "I was gonna make waffles."

Bambi's lip curled up into the sneer she had seen her mother do ten times a day.  "Sorry, but I'll leave you both to play house."  On the way over, she had thought about how Ash had asked if she wanted to hang out.  She had thought of asking if he would go to the dance with her Friday night.  After seeing Danica in his shirt, she felt stupid.

Ash gave her the far off stare that he often did, then turned his head back as if he was listening to his back pack.  "What?"  His eyes went wide.  He looked at Bambi, then Danica and finally back to Bambi.  "Oh, no."

Danica stared at both of them.  "What?"

"She thinks we..." Ash shrugged and waved his hands around.

Bambi saw Danica figure out what Ash was talking about, and could tell the girl wasn't faking surprise.  "What?" Danica asked.  "No.  No way.  I mean, Ash, you're really sweet and you saved my life, but no."

"What?" Bambi asked.  How had Ash saved Danica's life?

Before either of them could answer, the doorbell rang.  Ash stood in place and stared at the door.  Bambi sighed and pushed him.  He opened the door.  "Hey, come on in," he said.

As he closed the door, Bambi saw it was Janey.  She wore black jeans, a tank and one of those shrugs that showed off her neck and collar bones.  Bambi looked from her to Danica.  She had also seen Ash hanging out with Eun Kyung at school the last few days.  He might as well invite Hetty over at the rate he was accumulating girls.  "Seriously?" she asked.

Janey looked at them all.  "What?"

Bambi started to push past her to the door.  "Forget it."

"No, wait," Janey said.  "Yesterday, there was something up with your parents, wasn't there?"

Bambi stopped.  The good vibe from the phone call had worn off and she felt the need to start tapping out her rhythm again.  But the worry in Janey's voice sounded like the worry she felt.  "Yeah."

"And you said Ash was always right about stuff, right?" Janey asked.

Three beats with her right hand, two with her left.  Bambi tapped them on her jeans, small enough that no one would see.  But she caught Ash looking down at her leg.  His eyes moved up, went to Janey.

"It's your mom," he said.  "Is she really out of it?"

Janey nodded.  "What's going on?  Is she okay?"

It took a long moment for Ash to answer.  He leaned his head back and seemed to listen to his backpack again.  He gave a slow nod and a strained smile.  "Yeah, I don't know how much I can tell you right now."