Coach Bob shoved the cap back on his head. “What do you think? It’s like they’ve got bowling balls stuffed in their underwear.”
“Oh, dear. I had hoped…” said Mrs Terwiliger. She always hoped that the kids would do better, maybe one day make their way on to a Wing team and make Hope House the talk of the town, but they never did. Gurl looked through the chainlink fence, out on to the street. The people buzzed by, on foot, on flycycles, on rocket boards, in cars, flitting off to wherever they had to be. Some wore business suits, others wore chains and nose rings, but most didn’t notice the kids of Hope House jumping, straining, failing. If they did happen to look, they frowned in concern and pity or giggled in amusement. Even the crows that gathered in the single tree on the grounds seemed to laugh at them: “Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Gurl wondered if that was why Mrs Terwiliger made them practise outside. She kept a metal donation box bolted to the gate, which was often stuffed to the brim with dollar bills. What, thought Gurl, did she spend all that money on? She certainly didn’t spend it on the kids at Hope House. The clothes were tattered, the shoes too small, the food inedible and the dorms freezing. The few times that they got to go out on field trips, Mrs Terwiliger took them to Times Square, gave them each a can full of Hope House pencils and told them to sell the pencils to passersby for a dollar each. She said that it was a character-building exercise.
“Hey!” bellowed a voice. “What are you looking at?”
Mrs Terwiliger, Coach Bob and Gurl turned, expecting to see Ruckus causing a ruckus again. But it wasn’t Ruckus; it was the nameless new boy. He was shouting at a woman who had stopped her flycycle long enough to tape some sort of notice to the front gate. “I said, what are you looking at?”
The woman, dressed in a neon-pink sweatshirt that fell off one shoulder, glanced behind her, as if she assumed he was talking to someone else.
“Yeah, I mean you!” shouted the boy. “What are you looking at?”
The woman held up a hand. “Are you talking to me? I don’t think you’re talking to me, ya little snot.”
Bug Boy laughed. “I think I am tawkin’ to ya,” he said, imitating her thick city accent.
Mrs Terwiliger egg-whisked over to the boy. “Stop that! Since when do we accost people who are walking down the street?” She pursed red lips. “Never, that’s when. Now apologise to the young lady.”
The boy crossed his arms. “She was staring. She was watching me fly.”
“Ya call that flying?” shouted the woman. “I seen better lift on a block of cement!” She got on her flycycle and took off.
“I’ll show you!” the boy yelled. He turned away from the woman and from Mrs Terwiliger. He crouched, then jumped. Gurl winced, seeing that he barely made it a foot off the ground. He tried again, his face twisted with the effort, and got about six inches off the ground. Then four. Then two. It seemed that the angrier he got, the heavier he got. Soon he looked as if someone had glued the bottoms of his sneakers to the pavement. The other kids, whom you might expect to make fun of the boy, said nothing. His failure reminded them of their own and who wanted to think about that?
Mrs Terwiliger put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I think that’s about enough for today. We’ll try again tomorrow, Chicken.”
“What did you call me?”
Mrs Terwiliger sighed and brushed a bleached strand of hair from her thick, fake eyelashes. “You can’t fly. Neither can chickens. In ancient times the Indians who used to roam these lands liked to name—”
The boy cut her off. “Nobody calls me ‘Chicken’.” Redcheeked, his light brown hair lank with sweat, the boy shook free of her and shuffled from the tarmac, kicking rocks so hard that they rang against the chain-link fence.
“ZOOT!” Dillydally said. “Boy needs to pop a pill and chill.”
“Right on,” said Coach Bob, who knew that Dillydally was obsessed with old TV shows and his speech was littered with peculiar slang.
“Chicken is having a bad day. We all have bad days, don’t we, Ruckus? Lunchmeat? Dillydally? We have to be understanding at times like these.” Mrs Terwiliger looked thoughtfully at the gate, where the notice the woman had hung flapped in the wind. “Gurl, be a dear and fetch that notice for me, would you?”
“I’ll get it,” cried Ruckus, preparing to leap.
“I asked Gurl to do it, Ruckus.”
“Awww,” said Dillydally. “That’s so establishment.”
Gurl walked over and pulled the notice off the fence. She nearly tripped and fell when she saw what it said:
MISSING CAT!
Very rare! Grey, with white belly. Green eyes. Answers to the name “Laverna” (but only when she feels like it). Owner frantic! Reward offered! No questions asked! Call 555-1919!
“Gurl,” said Mrs Terwiliger. “Bring it over here, dear.”
Gurl reluctantly handed the paper to the matron.
“A missing cat!” said Mrs Terwiliger. “My stars! I haven’t seen a cat in years!” Her eyes scanned the notice. “Nasty animals.”
“They’re not nasty!” said Gurl before she could think about it.
Mrs Terwiliger patted Gurl on the head. “I know you children fancy yourselves worldly and sophisticated, but I daresay I know a bit more about wild animals than you do. Cats are bird-killers.” She tapped a long red fingernail on her teeth. “Though I wouldn’t mind finding this one. I wonder how big this reward is.”
“Can I go to my room? I’m not feeling too well,” said Gurl, doing her best to sound ill. She had to get inside the dorm; she had to check on the cat.
“Oh, of course, Gurl,” Mrs Terwiliger enunciated, her plump lips shining like slugs. “I know how hard these Wing practices must be for you, with your condition. Fly along, then. Oh! I mean, run along.”
Gurl turned and walked slowly to the main building, holding her stomach, sick for real with the thought of having stolen someone else’s pet. Gurl could not bring herself to give the cat back, not yet. For the first time in her life, she felt as if she had made a friend (even if it was a fuzzy, nonhuman friend). Just a little while, she thought. I’ll just keep her a little while. That’s not so bad, is it?
Once she got inside, however, she ran down the hallway to the girls’ dormitory and raced to her bed. “Please be here, please be here,” she whispered, pulling out the old sweater box and opening the flaps.
But she knew what she’d find even before she opened the box because it was what she expected each and every day.
Nothing.
THE BOY BOUNCED DOWN THE corridor, punching the wall every few feet or so. Feline Face. Bug Eye. Lizard Man. Any of those names would have been all right with him; he knew his eyes were so big and far apart they were practically on the sides of his head. So, fine. Bug. Bugs were cool. Bugs could fly. Some, like praying mantises, even had those sweet backward scythes for arms. He wondered why grown-ups had operations to have their eyebrows pasted up on their foreheads or fat vacuumed from their butts but never got anything practical. Like antennae. Or fangs. Or scythes for arms. The boy would have enjoyed having scythes for arms because then he could slash through the fence around Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless and fly away for ever. Instead, he was stuck here with Mrs Terwiliger. Mrs Terwiliger