Lucretia and the Kroons

11

A pack of feral dogs would’ve sounded more civilized. The Twins circled the structure. Loochie thought she and her friends were about to get caught for sure. But the Twins were distracted. They were looking around for Loochie and Sunny, but they also scanned the pathway around the Unisphere. Looking up for the girls and down at the ground, back and forth. Loochie couldn’t understand what they expected to find at their feet. It wasn’t like the girls had shrunk down to the size of small rocks. But then one of the Twins almost seemed to sing, a high-pitched coo, the sweetest sound she’d ever heard one of them make.

He leapt to the ground and snatched something up. The other Twin crowded close, cooing too. In a moment the other Kroons — Pit, Lefty, and Chuck — were scrambling closer to the Twins. But the first Twin ignored them, seemed to have forgotten about anything, everything. All except what was in his hand. He stayed on his knees and hunched over, his back to Loochie. She couldn’t see exactly what he was doing. But in a moment his hands glowed an orange color, as if they were on fire, as if a flame had leapt up out of his palm. The Twin brought his face down to his palm and inhaled deeply, loudly, and his shoulders rose and fell.

The other Twin pushed his face closer to the fiery hands. The other males sprinted closer. Even Alice sat up straighter there inside the globe. But in a second the orange glow died out and both Twins fell backward on their butts, in a stupor. They tilted their heads back and gray smoke wafted from their nostrils. They smiled absently and shivered. Their whole bodies seemed to deflate. They seemed like they were about to fall over. At least until the other three Kroons got close.

Pit choked with rage. He looked like he’d chop the heads off both Twins if he got hold of them now. The Twins scrambled to their feet and ran, slightly wobbly, away from the Unisphere and the other Kroons chased them. The girls watched them all go. Finally Loochie lay on her back and looked up through the top of the globe.

“That was weird,” Loochie said.

Sunny said, “I’ve seen them do that before.”

Both girls looked to Alice, as if she might offer an explanation, but Alice only stared at the spot on the ground where the Twins had found their treasure and stayed quiet.

“Well, can we at least start heading back home now?” Loochie asked.

Sunny didn’t answer. Loochie sat up but Sunny stayed on her back.

“I still have my lighter,” Sunny said. She raised her left foot and wiggled the rain boot until the lighter, a cheap little Bic, slipped out. She held it between two fingers and wiggled it. She looked at Loochie.

Loochie sighed. “Why are you acting like this? You really think I care about that right now?”

Sunny shivered for a moment, it looked involuntary, and her eyes rolled up slightly like she was about to faint. Then she coughed and cleared her head with a shake. She looked at Loochie and her eyes were clear, focused. “We said we were going to smoke a cigarette together. Just in case. You remember I said that? So I want to smoke a cigarette together. Now.”

“I’ll smoke ten packs of cigarettes with you,” Loochie begged. “But let’s do it after we get back to my apartment!”

Sunny’s expression changed. A wash of anger doused her face. “I’m not going back that way! Don’t you get that? Stop acting so stupid and try to understand!”

Loochie grabbed Sunny’s arm and squeezed tightly, with malice. “Don’t talk like this on my birthday, Sunny.”

Sunny looked down at Loochie’s hand. “Your birthday was in November,” Sunny said.

“Fine,” Loochie said, letting go. She contorted herself until she could reach into her pocket. She pulled out the two remaining cigarettes.

“Where’s the other one?” Sunny asked, sitting up.

“I smoked it already,” Loochie said. “It was nasty.”

Sunny waggled her head from side to side. “You just didn’t know how to do it right.”

Sunny snatched one of the cigarettes from Loochie’s palm. “Hold on to that one for me,” Sunny commanded, and Loochie slipped it back into her pocket.

Alice sat up too now. It took a little work but when all three crossed their legs they were able to sit in a circle. “The first thing I want you to do,” Sunny began, “is breathe like this.”

Sunny sat erect and breathed in through her lips but then she held on to the breath and pushed her bony chest out. She let it expand and held the air inside. Finally she deflated and the air rushed out of her nose, a faint, shushing sound.

“Now you two do it.”

Loochie gave it half a dozen tries. Alice clearly knew how to inhale, but Loochie was lousy. She might get the breath down into her chest but just as quickly she’d fall apart, coughing and snorting. And this was before she’d even inhaled any smoke.

Sunny watched Loochie with disappointment and even aggravation.

“Well where did you learn to do it?” Loochie finally spat.

“I watched my grandmother? Duh?”

When Sunny put it that way Loochie only wanted to prove herself better at it than Sunny could ever be. So all three sat there, for about ten minutes, just practicing their breathing. They looked like a yoga class.

Finally Sunny’s patience ran out. She tapped the bottom of the lighter against the stainless steel plate beneath them. “We’re just going to have a try now,” Sunny said.

“This made me sick the last time,” Loochie admitted. She looked away from Sunny when she said it, feeling stupid and inexperienced.

The practice had helped, though. While Loochie still coughed badly at first, she was able to get it right after a few pulls. Sunny, meanwhile, puffed expertly. And what about Alice? What did she do? Obviously she couldn’t smoke a cigarette without a bottom lip. Instead, Loochie and Sunny took turns inhaling the smoke and leaning across to Alice and blowing it down her throat. Alice inhaled expertly, considering the realities.

Each time the girls exhaled they watched the smoke trail up, gray ribbons and clouds, floating toward the sky. Soon enough the whole cigarette was smoked down. After it was done they lay on their backs again, looking up at the unchanging, overcast day.

“How do you feel?” Sunny asked.

Neither Loochie or Alice responded.

“Should we smoke the last one?” Sunny asked, but she sounded less assured than the first time.

Loochie lay there feeling buzzed up and dizzy. Her hands were warm, her face tingled in a good way, but each time she lifted her head to answer Sunny her stomach lurched and she thought she would vomit.

“Not yet,” Loochie groaned.

And Alice, also on her back, waved her arms in front of her, another “no” vote.

“Chickens,” Sunny said, pretending to be disappointed, but Loochie could tell she was relieved. That last cigarette would stay in Loochie’s pocket for now.

They stared at the top of the globe, the far end of the world.

“What did you mean when you said you weren’t going back that way?” Loochie asked. “Which way are you going then?”

Up through the frame of the Unisphere the gray sky seemed endless.

Sunny sat up. She looked down at Loochie.

“You’ve got boobs,” Sunny said. She said this with no affect in her voice, but the words were clipped, like Sunny was holding back a rush of true emotion.

Loochie didn’t even understand the sentence for a second. Hadn’t she just asked about something else entirely? Something that seemed far more important? Finally she raised her head slightly, fought back the moment of dizziness, and saw her two nipples poking up through the fabric of her T-shirt.

“These?” she asked, as if Sunny had just cracked a ridiculous joke. “You should see Monique!”

Sunny crossed her arms. “I don’t want to see Monique,” she whispered.

Alice stood up slowly, carefully. With all three of them on the single steel panel there wasn’t too much room for the Kroon to maneuver. She had to be very careful with her long body for fear of knocking one of the girls off the side. Alice tucked her nightdress between her knees and closed her legs tight. She extended her hands over her head. Her arms were so long she could grab at a pair of the latitude lines running above.

“You wouldn’t ask me to go back,” Sunny said in a soft voice, ignoring Alice’s movements. “If it was you getting the treatments all these years.”

“I want you to come back because I love you, Sunny. You’re my best friend. Don’t you love me, too?”

Alice, holding the latitude lines tight, pulled herself up and then flipped over, so her legs were in the air. Alice hooked both legs over the latitude bars, then let go with her hands, and her upper body swung down. She looked like a child playing on a set of monkey bars.

Loochie wanted an answer from Sunny, but she couldn’t ignore Alice any longer. She had no idea what was about to happen, but Sunny seemed to know. Alice grabbed Sunny’s hands, then curled her body upward, pulling Sunny up as well. She plucked Sunny up and Loochie watched, almost fainting, as Sunny scrambled through a crack between Africa and Europe and climbed out to the other side of the Unisphere! Sunny was standing on top of the world. Loochie heard Sunny’s rain boots squeaking as she walked across Europe. Then Alice swung down again, hands out, and gestured for Loochie.

And here’s the crazy part: Loochie didn’t hesitate. She grasped Alice’s wrists and felt her feet lift away from the security of the steel plate below her. She crawled through the gap and lay flat when she climbed out the other side. The wind had picked up and she shivered with a slight chill that felt like fear. She saw Sunny ahead of her. Sunny had walked all the way to the northern edge of Russia, the very top of the world on this tilted Unisphere. Loochie moved toward her friend on hands and knees, keeping low so she wouldn’t be blown off the side.

Loochie reached Sunny. Sunny put out her hand. Loochie took it and rose to a crouch beside her friend. Loochie couldn’t look away from Sunny’s face. Loochie’s mother’s wig, still on her head, rose slightly as the wind snuck underneath it but it stayed on.

They were facing the western end of the park. Another long, jagged run of concrete scrolled out before them. It was a parking lot as long as a football field. At the end of it was an enormous stadium. Citi Field, where the Mets played baseball. Where Louis had taken her. Though, of course, this wasn’t that Citi Field. It looked different, older. This stadium’s walls were blue and white while Citi Field’s were reddish brown.

“That’s where I’m going,” Sunny said, pointing.

“Why do you want to go there?” Loochie asked. It sure didn’t look nicer than Sunny’s apartment.

“I know how it looks on the outside,” Sunny said. “But inside the stadium, it’s a very happy place. Alice will take me up to Gate C, the home plate entrance, and I’ll walk through. Everyone who makes it inside is at peace. It’s bright and warm all day. You can take a seat in the stands or run around with other kids down on the field. There’s no pain in there. No need for hospital visits. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Sunny didn’t look at Loochie as she spoke, and her voice seemed to float.

Loochie looked down at her feet. “You make it sound like Heaven,” she said.

“That’s how Alice described it,” Sunny said. “But she calls it Shea.”

“What is Shea?” Loochie asked.

Sunny shrugged. “Once Priya told me that in her family they say ‘Moksha’ instead of Heaven. And Shaz? From 3A? They’re Persian. She said they call it Paradise.”

Loochie worked hard to choke down her feelings of jealousy at the idea that Sunny had been having conversations like that with Shaz or, worst of all, with Priya, when Loochie wasn’t around. When had that been? Where was Loochie when this was going on? Why hadn’t she been invited? But she didn’t ask any of those questions. Instead she got snappy about the conversation at hand. “That still doesn’t explain what the hell ‘Shea’ means.”

“Maybe ‘Shea’ is how you say ‘Heaven’ in Queens,” Sunny offered.

Alice had climbed out there as well, and sat cross-legged behind the girls. She looked out over their heads at the stadium, at Shea.

Loochie leaned closer to Sunny. “How come you can understand those sounds she makes and I can’t?”

Sunny’s eyebrows squeezed tight. “What do you mean? She’s talking. That’s how I understand her.”

“She’s not talking,” Loochie said. “She’s always just grunting and stuff.”

Sunny swayed, like she’d been pushed. She looked back at Alice. Then Sunny looked at Loochie again. “If I understand her and she understands me then maybe you’re the only one who’s in the wrong place.”

“I’m with you,” Loochie said quietly. “That’s where I want to be.” Loochie’s vision became blurry with tears. Her nose turned stuffy and she heard herself sniffling but couldn’t stop.

“I want to tell you what happened to me,” Sunny began. “So you can understand.” Sunny grabbed Loochie’s hand, and held it gently.

“Right after I gave you those cigarettes I leaned out and watched you go into your apartment. You were moving so fast! Then my grandmother came and got me. I wasn’t feeling too good when I leaned back in, like I couldn’t really breathe, so gon-gon took me to my bedroom. She put me down in bed and went to call the ambulance.

“I was on the bed and my chest started hurting, a lot. I knew you were waiting for downstairs so I tried to get up anyway but I all I did was roll off the bed. I fell right on my face, kind of hard, and I was there on the floor.

“I still couldn’t really breathe and my eyes just seemed like they slammed shut. And when I woke up I was here, in the park. I’ve been here ever since. It feels like I’ve been here a couple months, but I’m not sure. I knew you were going to come. I felt it. And I felt like I had to see you before I could go. It was almost like I had to wait for you, or else I couldn’t go to Shea.”

Loochie squeezed Sunny’s hand back, hard. “But I just saw you today! All that stuff on the fire escape was like two hours ago.”

Sunny almost choked with shock. “Two hours?”

She pulled her hand out of Loochie’s. She held her neck delicately. “It’s only been two hours,” she muttered to herself. Now it was Sunny’s turn to cry but she didn’t sound sad really, just exhausted. Loochie brushed Sunny’s face, wiping at her tears. She shivered when she felt the skin, which was already quite cold. “I’m not ready to let you go,” Loochie told her.

Alice made a low, thoughtful sound, almost like a cow mooing. Sunny’s mouth dropped open slightly, then she smiled. “You think so?” Sunny asked.

Alice repeated the sound.

“What is it?” Loochie asked, looking at Alice and back to Sunny.

Sunny hugged Loochie so tight. “Alice says you don’t have to let me go. You can come with me. You can go to Shea, too!”

Loochie looked toward the end of the park quickly, at the blue and white stadium walls, and her heart sped up. She even smiled, just like Sunny was doing. But she wasn’t sure why.