Echoes Ice Cold Lemonade 25¢ Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person Paul Tremblay I was such a loser when I was a kid. Like a John-Hughes-Hollywood-Eighties-movie-typecast loser. Maybe we all imagine ourselves as being that special kind of ugly duckling, with the truth being too scary to contemplate: Maybe I was someone''s bully or I was the kid who egged on the bullies screaming, "Sweep the leg," or maybe I was lower than the Hughes loser, someone who would never be shown in a movie. When I think of who I was all those years ago, I''m both embarrassed and look-at-what-I''ve-become proud, as though the distance spanned between those two me''s can only be measured in light-years. That distance is a lie, of course, though perhaps necessary to justify perceived successes and mollify the disappointments and failures. That thirteen-year-old me is still there inside: the socially awkward one who wouldn''t find a group he belonged to until college; the one who watched way too much TV and listened to records while lying on the floor with the speakers tented over his head; the one who was afraid of the Jaws shark appearing in any body of water, Christopher Lee vampires, the dark in his closet and under the bed, and the blinding flash of a nuclear bomb. That kid is all-too-frighteningly retrievable at times. Now he''s here in a more tangible form.
He''s in the contents of a weathered cardboard box sitting like a toadstool on my kitchen counter. Mom inexplicably plopped this time capsule in my lap on her way out the door after an impromptu visit. When I asked for an explanation, she said she thought I should have it. I pressed her for more of the why and she said, "Well, because it''s yours. It''s your stuff," as though she was weary of the burden of having had to keep it for all those years. Catherine is visiting her parents on the Cape and she took our daughter Izzy with her. I stayed home to finish edits (which remain stubbornly unfinished) on a manuscript that was due last week. Catherine and Izzy would''ve torn through this box-of-me right away and laughed themselves silly at the old photos of my stick figure body and my map of freckles and crooked teeth, the collection of crayon renderings of dinosaurs with small heads and ludicrously large bodies, and the fourth grade current events project on Ronald Reagan for which I''d earned a disappointing C+ and a demoralizing teacher comment of Too messy.
And I would''ve reveled in their attention, their warm spotlight shining on who I was and who I''ve become. I didn''t find it until my second pass through the box, which seems impossible as I took care to peel old pictures apart and handle everything delicately, as one might handle ancient parchments. That second pass occurred two hours after the first, and there was a pizza and multiple beers and no edits between. The drawing that I don''t remember saving was there at the bottom of the box, framed by the cardboard and its interior darkness. I thought I''d forgotten it; I know I never had. The initial discovery was more confounding than dread inducing, but hours have passed and now it''s late and it''s dark. I have every light on in the house, which only makes the dark outside even darker. I am alone and I am on alert and I feel time creeping forward.
(Time doesn''t run out; it continues forward and it continues without you.) I do not sit in any one room for longer than five minutes. I pass through the lower level of the house as quietly as I can, like an omniscient, emotionally distant narrator, which I am not. On the TV is a baseball game that I don''t care about, blaring at full volume. I consider going to my car and driving to my in-laws'' on the Cape, which would be ridiculous as I wouldn''t arrive until well after midnight and Catherine and Izzy are coming home tomorrow morning. Would it be so ridiculous? Tomorrow, when my family returns home and the windows are open and the sunlight is as warm as a promise, I will join them in laughing at me. But it is not tomorrow and they are not here. I am glad they''re not here.
They would''ve found the drawing before I did. * * * I rode my bicycle all over Beverly, Massachusetts, the summer of 1984. I didn''t have a BMX bike with thick, knobby tires made for ramps and wheelies and chewing up and spitting out dirt and pavement. Mine was a dinged up, used-to-belong-to-my-dad ten-speed, and the only things skinnier and balder than the tires were my arms and legs. On my rides I always made sure to rattle by Kelly Bishop''s house on the off-off-chance I''d find her in her front yard. Doing what? Who knows. But in those fantasies she waved or nodded at me. She would ask what I was doing and I''d tell her all nonchalant-like that I was heading back to my house, even though she''d have to know her dead-end street wasn''t exactly on my way home.
Pesky details were worked out or inconsequential in fantasies, of course. One afternoon it seemed part of my fantasy was coming true when Kelly and her little sister were at the end of their long driveway, sitting at a small fold-up table with a pitcher of lemonade. I couldn''t bring myself to stop or slow down or even make more than glancing eye contact. I had no money for lemonade, therefore I had no reason to stop. Kelly shouted at me as I rolled by. Her greeting wasn''t a Hey there or even a Hi, but instead, "Buy some lemonade or we''ll pop your tires!" After twenty-four hours of hopeful and fearful Should I or shouldn''t I?, I went back the next day with a pocket full of quarters. Kelly was again stationed at the end of her driveway. My breaks squealed as I jerked to an abrupt and uncoordinated stop.
My rusted kickstand screamed You''re really doing this? embarrassment. The girls didn''t say anything and watched my approach with a mix of disinterest and what I imagined to be the look I gave ants before I squashed them. They sat at the same table setup as the previous day but there was no pitcher of lemonade. Never afraid to state the obvious, I said, "So, um, no lemonade today?" The fifty cents clutched in my sweaty hand might as well have melted. Kelly said, "Lemonade was yesterday. Can''t you read the sign?" She sat slumped in her beach chair, a full body eye roll, and her long, tanned legs spilled out from under the table and the white poster-board sign taped to the front. She wore a red Coke T-shirt. Her chestnut brown hair was pulled into a side-high ponytail, held up by a black scrunchie.
Kelly was clearly well into her pubescent physical transformation, whereas I was still a boy, without even a shadow of hair under my armpits. Kelly''s little sister, with the bowl-cut mop of dirty blond hair, was going to be in second grade. I didn''t know her name and was too nervous to ask. She covered her mouth, fake laughed, and wobbled like a penguin in her unstable chair. That she might topple into the table or to the blacktop didn''t seem to bother Kelly. "You''re supposed to be the smart one, Paul," Kelly added. "Heh, yeah, sorry." I left the quarters in my pocket to hide their shame and adjusted my blue gym shorts; they were too short, even for the who-wears-short-shorts Eighties.
I tried to fill the chest of my NBA Champs Celtics T-shirt with deep breaths, but only managed to stir a weak ripple in the green cloth. Their updated sign read: ICE COLD LEMONDADE 25¢ HAUNTED HOUSE TOUR: 1 PER PERSON Seemed straightforward enough but I didn''t know what to make of it. I feared it was some kind of a joke or prank. Were Rick or Winston or other jerks hiding close by to jump out and pants me? I thought about hopping back on my bike and getting the hell out before I did something epically cringeworthy Kelly would later describe in detail to all her friends and by proxy the entire soon-to-be seventh grade class. Kelly asked, "Do you want a tour of our creepy old house or not?" I stammered and I sweated. I remember sweating a lot. Kelly told me the lemonade stand thing was boring and that her new haunted-house-tour idea was genius. I would be their first to go on the tour so I''d be helping them out.
She said, "We''ll even only charge you half price. Be a pal, Paulie." Was Kelly Bishop inviting me into her house? Was she making fun of me? The "be a pal" bit sounded like a joke and felt like a joke. I looked around the front yard, spying between the tall front hedges, looking for the ambush. I decided I didn''t care, and said, "Okay, yeah." The little sister shouted, "One dollar," and held out an open hand. Kelly corrected her. "I said ''half price.
''?" "What''s half?" "Fifty cents." Little sis shouted, "Fifty cents!" with her hand still out. I paid, happy to be giving the sweaty quarters to her and not Kelly. I asked, "Is it scary, I mean, supposed to be scary?" I tried smiling bravely. I wasn''t brave. I still slept with my door open and the hallway light on. My smile was pretend brave, and it wasn''t much of a smile as I tried not to show off my mouth of metal braces, the elastics on either side mercifully no longer necessary as of three weeks ago. Kelly stood and said, "Terrifying.
You''ll wet yourself and be sucking your thumb for a week." She whacked her sister on the shoulder and commanded, "Go. You have one minute to be ready." "I don''t need a minute." She bounced across th.