Стивен Кинг - If It Bleeds

Miss Richards took her hands away. She looked concerned. “Are you all right, Chucky?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then go on. You’re a good boy. I’ve enjoyed having you in class.”

He went to the door, then turned back. “Miss Richards, do you believe in ghosts?”

She considered this. “I believe memories are ghosts. But spooks flapping along the halls of musty castles? I think those only exist in books and movies.”

And maybe in the cupola of Grandpa’s house, Chuck thought.

“Enjoy your summer, Chucky.”

Chuck did enjoy his summer until August, when Grandma died. It happened down the street, in public, which was a little undignified, but at least it was the kind of death where people can safely say “Thank God she didn’t suffer” at the funeral. That other standby, “She had a long, full life” was in more of a gray area; Sarah Krantz had yet to reach her mid-sixties, although she was getting close.

Once more the house on Pilchard Street was one of unadulterated sadness, only this time there was no trip to Disney World to mark the beginning of recovery. Chuck reverted to calling Grandma his bubbie, at least in his own head, and cried himself to sleep on many nights. He did it with his face in his pillow so he wouldn’t make Grandpa feel even worse. Sometimes he whispered, “Bubbie I miss you, Bubbie I love you,” until sleep finally took him.

Grandpa wore his mourning band, and lost weight, and stopped telling his jokes, and began to look older than his seventy years, but Chuck also sensed (or thought he did) some relief in his grandpa. If so, Chuck could understand. When you lived with dread day in and day out, there had to be relief when the dreaded thing finally happened and was over. Didn’t there?

He didn’t go up the steps to the cupola after she died, daring himself to touch the padlock, but he did go down to Zoney’s one day just before starting seventh grade at Acker Park Middle School. He bought a soda and a Kit Kat bar, then asked the clerk where the woman was when she had her stroke and died. The clerk, an over-tatted twentysomething with a lot of greased-back blond hair, gave an unpleasant laugh. “Kid, that’s a little creepy. Are you, I don’t know, brushing up on your serial-killer skills early?”

“She was my grandma,” Chuck said. “My bubbie. I was at the community pool when it happened. I came back in the house calling for her and Grandpa told me she was dead.”

That wiped the smile off the clerk’s face. “Oh, man. I’m sorry. It was over there. Third aisle.”

Chuck went to the third aisle and looked, already knowing what he would see.

“She was getting a loaf of bread,” the clerk said. “Pulled down almost everything on the shelf when she collapsed. Sorry if that’s too much information.”

“No,” Chuck said, and thought, That’s information I already knew.

On his second day at Acker Park Middle, Chuck walked past the bulletin board by the main office, then doubled back. Among the posters for Pep Club, Band, and tryouts for the fall sports teams, there was one showing a boy and girl caught in mid-dance step, he holding his hand up so she could spin beneath. LEARN TO DANCE! it said above the smiling children, in rainbow letters. Below it: JOIN TWIRLERS AND SPINNERS! FALL FLING IS COMING! GET OUT ON THE FLOOR!

An image of painful clarity came to Chuck as he looked at this: Grandma in the kitchen, holding her hands out. Snapping her fingers and saying, “Dance with me, Henry.”

That afternoon he went down to the gymnasium, where he and nine hesitant others were greeted enthusiastically by Miss Rohrbacher, the girls’ phys ed teacher. Chuck was one of three boys. There were seven girls. All the girls were taller.

One of the boys, Paul Mulford, tried to creep out as soon as he realized he was the smallest kid there, coming in at five-feet-nothing. Miss Rohrbacher chased him down and hauled him back, laughing cheerfully. “No-no-no,” said she, “you’re mine now.”

So he was. So they all were. Miss Rohrbacher was the dance-monster, and none could stand in her way. She fired up her boombox and showed them the waltz (Chuck knew it), the cha-cha (Chuck knew it), the ball change (Chuck knew it), then the samba. Chuck didn’t know that one, but when Miss Rohrbacher put on “Tequila,” by the Champs, and showed them the basic moves, he got it at once and fell in love with it.

He was by far the best dancer in the little club, so Miss Rohrbacher mostly put him with the girls who were clumsy. He understood she did it to make them better, and he was a good sport about it, but it was sort of boring.

Near the end of their forty-five minutes, however, the dance-monster would show mercy and pair him with Cat McCoy, who was an eighth-grader and the best dancer of the girls. Chuck didn’t expect romance—Cat was not only gorgeous, she was four inches taller than he was—but he loved to dance with her, and the feeling was mutual. When they got together, they caught the rhythm and let it fill them. They looked into each other’s eyes (she had to look down, which was a bummer, but hey—it was what it was) and laughed for the joy of it.

Before letting the kids go, Miss Rohrbacher paired them up (four of the girls had to dance with each other) and told them to freestyle. As they lost their inhibitions and awkwardness, they all got pretty good at it, although most of them were never going to dance at the Copacabana.

One day—this was in October, only a week or so before the Fall Fling—Miss Rohrbacher put on “Billie Jean.”

“Watch this,” Chuck said, and did a very passable moonwalk. The kids oohed. Miss Rohrbacher’s mouth dropped open.

“Oh my God,” Cat said. “Show me how you did that!”

He did it again. Cat tried, but the illusion of walking backward just wasn’t there.

“Kick off your shoes,” Chuck said. “Do it in your socks. Slide into it.”

Cat did. It was much better, and they all applauded. Miss Rohrbacher had a go, then all of the others were moonwalking like crazy. Even Dylan Masterson, the clumsiest of them, got into it. Twirlers and Spinners let out half an hour later than usual that day.

Chuck and Cat walked out together. “We should do it at the Fling,” she said.

Chuck, who hadn’t been planning on going, stopped and looked at her with his eyebrows raised.

“Not as a date or anything,” Cat hastened on, “I’m going out with Dougie Wentworth—” This Chuck knew. “—but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t show them some cool moves. I want to, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said. “I’m a lot shorter. I think people would laugh.”

“Got you covered,” Cat said. “My brother’s got a pair of Cuban heels, and I think they’d fit you. You’ve got big feet for a little kid.”

“Thanks a bunch,” Chuck said.

She laughed and gave him a sisterly hug.

At the next meeting of Twirlers and Spinners, Cat McCoy brought her brother’s Cubans. Chuck, who had already endured slights to his manhood for being in the dance club, was prepared to hate them, but it was love at first sight. The heels were high, the toes were pointed, and they were as black as midnight in Moscow. They looked a lot like the ones Bo Diddley wore back in the day. So okay, they were a little big, but toilet paper stuffed into those pointy toes took care of that. Best of all… man, they were slick. During freestyle, when Miss Rohrbacher put on “Caribbean Queen,” the gym floor felt like ice.

“You put scratches on that floor, the janitors will beat your butt,” Tammy Underwood said. She was probably right, but there were no scratches. He was too light on his feet to leave any.