The Anybodies by N. E. Bode Read Free Book Online

“Where is Mary Curtain?”
    â€œShe lives next door to her mother right here in town. She gave up nursing. That part was definitely true! It helps to sprinkle in the truth,” Marty told her. “It helps give a more convincing performance. Mary Curtain got married. We talked to her and her husband. We had dinner together. She’s a great cook. But she’s an anxious woman. She would’ve never been able togo through with something like this.”
    The Bone was quiet, letting Marty chatter. He kept his eyes on the road.
    There was a lull in the conversation. Fern was thinking, trying to process everything she’d learned. The Bone piped up. “I just knew you were my daughter. I knew when I saw you.” His voice was soft for a moment, but he didn’t let it stay that way. “Well, it was clear as a bell.”
    â€œBut how long have you been planning this? You didn’t lay eyes on me until tonight!”
    â€œNot true. Not true,” said the Bone. “Marty delivered a pizza to your house two weeks ago. And I’m the Good Humor Man you’ve seen. I hate that tinkling music. ‘Home, Home on the Range’—a million times a day.”
    So that’s why they had seemed a bit off. Fern didn’t tell them that she’d been suspicious. They both seemed to have fragile egos about their Anybody abilities. But it seemed like those oddities in her life, those inexplicable happenings, might just have been real. “And Howard? What has Howard been?”
    â€œI’m teaching Howard how to hypnotize other people, but he isn’t old enough to do the transformations himself. Howard kept it running. He kept us on track. He had graphs and charts,” the Bone explained.
    Fern was putting things together. “Which one of you was the man from the census bureau?”
    â€œWhat?” the Bone asked. “What bureau?”
    â€œWho?” asked Marty.
    â€œNothing,” Fern said. No, the man from the census bureau had been a bad force. She thought of the Miser and felt that old dread again. But just then something else crossed her mind. They were at a red light in the middle of town. Fern quickly took off her seat belt (the only thing that seemed to work in the car) and looked at the Bone’s face. His eyes looked familiar. His chin seemed to jut out just so. Fern stared at him, and he stared back like he was going to ask her a question…a question about… her scissor kick ? Yes, her scissor kick! Fern gasped sharply, a yelp really, and flopped back in her seat. “Mrs. Lilliopole! My swim teacher!”
    â€œIn the flesh!” said the Bone proudly. “I would have preferred being a softball coach, but you were bent on swimming and there was an opening for a girls’ swim coach at the YWCA. And the woman hiring was a real feminist, wanted to hire a woman. That was clear.”
    â€œIf you cut a Nerf football in half,” Marty explained, “and stuff each end into a swimsuit, it gives a pretty realistic look.” As a visual aid, he pulled two halves of a Nerf football out of his blouse the way Fern’s science teacher used the plastic model human being with removable innards. “Back in our prime, of course, neither of us would have had to rely on such things.”
    Fern couldn’t shake the image of the census bureauman and the dark cloud. She had to ask: “Could you ever turn yourself into, say, just for example, a bird, and then if a cat came along could you turn yourself into a dog or into—I don’t know—a cloud?”
    â€œUs?” the Bone asked. “Are you kidding? Maybe, just maybe, if our lives depended on it, we could have some great sparkling moment. But, knowing us, I doubt it even then.”
    â€œYou and me? Ha!” Marty said, shaking his head, almost laughing. “Nope. Once the Bone almost became a dog. He shrank to four short legs, grew fur even, but he