Agnes Mallory by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    Agnes began to sing. ‘“Oh, Mary Mac, Mac, Mac, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, back, back …’” She eyed me sidelong. ‘That’s a jump-rope song. I was jumping rope with Jessica. She’s my friend. I was over her house today. That’s why I’m coming back in this direction. “She jumped so high, high, high, she touched the sky, sky, sky, she didn’t come back, back, back, till the fourth of…” You don’t go to JFK, do you?’
    â€˜Uh … No … Bunker Hill.’
    â€˜Oh. Jessica and I go to JFK. I like it there. I’m in third grade.’
    A car coursed by and my front wheel switchbacked. Agnes pulled ahead of me as I righted myself. This gave me a moment to consider. What was going on here? I felt like I’d taken a cold douse in the kisser. I mean, here I was, talking to a girl about a jump-rope song, for crying out loud. Talking about her friend Jessica. With a girl younger than me. And with her braids clocking. And with her prissy nose in the air. He came for witchcraft, he left with cooties – I could see the headlines now. What a let-down this was turning out to be.
    I pulled up alongside her again just as we reached the corner of Piccadilly. I wanted some answers here. Where was the eerie girl I’d met by the stream? How come she was so different now?
    â€˜Uh …’ I said.
    â€˜Well,’ said Agnes. ‘I have to go. Bye.’
    â€˜Bye,’ I managed to get out.
    She turned off, marched away. I pedaled up to speed and got the heck out of there.
    So that was the end of my plaintive pining streamside. No more hankering after Agnes either. It definitely was a let-down, but not the worst surely. I couldn’t even recall exactly what it had been, down there by the water; what she’d been like exactly that day that had put the spook into me so. By now, my soulful converse with grass blades on sneaker tips etcetera had more or less rotted away to the purely philosophical. Illusion, reality, the reality of illusion – who can say when you’re nine years old? And after that, who gives a damn?
    So the next Friday, I was back out on Hampshire Road playing baseball as the sun went down. Up at the sewer, with Dave lobbing them in this time, Freddy and Rick sharing the narrow outfield which went only from curb to curb. I had invisible men on first and third, two outs and two fouls on me – and we allowed foul-outs in this game to keep it moving so I could go down with any swing. And it was that time of day again, the light failing. And the big front window of Andrea Fiedler’s house had gone ebony again and was shimmering with the reflection of gnarly apple branches, sparsely blossomed. My Louisville Slugger, circling over my shoulder, was pictured on the glass as well, and so was the tennis ball coming in. And her shape, her silhouette, Andrea’s, was also there, I imagined, melding with the other blackness as she hovered spectral in her living room, watching me perform.
    Dave’s pitch reached me. I swung. Gave it a thok, a real shot. Usually I pulled those over the housetops, a long strike, but this one stayed true. Soon, it was bouncing way the hell down by the corner of Hartford and Sloane. Rick, who was fast, was tearing after it, but he had no chance of catching up. He could only watch where the ball landed and report back.
    â€˜Home run,’ he shouted.
    I made only the most restrained gesture of triumph, yanking the air in front of me into my fist. Then I pivoted from the plate to walk off the energy. And I saw that the light had come on in the Fiedlers’ window.
    Mrs Fiedler was in there, setting the dinner table. Then, as I watched, a toilet flushed faintly in the distance and Andrea skipped in too and started to help with the cutlery. She came in, I saw, from the back of the house somewhere. She hadn’t been stationed at the window, in