Читать книгу Bride Of The Bad Boy - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 7

“I think I see him.”

“Where?”

“Up there. Just above the sycamore tree. About six inches to the left of the moon. See him?”

Fifteen-year-old Angie Ellison squinted hard and directed her gaze to the area of the night sky toward which her friend Rosemary March was pointing. All she saw was a big black smudge of darkness surrounding a silver sliver of moon, and a tiny little speck of white light that differed only marginally from the other stars in the sky.

“That little thing?” her other friend, Kirby Connaught asked incredulously. “That’s Bob?”

Rosemary nodded. “That’s him.”

“That’s nothing,” Angie countered in a tone of disgust that most fifteen-year-old girls had mastered without problem. “Frankly, I’m not impressed. What’s the big deal about Bob anyway? I mean he’s just a big, gaseous fireball, right?”

Angie, Rosemary and Kirby lay on their backs staring up at the sky, at the very back of Angie’s expansive suburban backyard, where there were no lights from the town to mess with the comet’s luminous glow. They formed an irregular, six-pointed star, the crowns of their heads touching at its center, their legs spread casually, their arms folded beneath their necks. It was 3:13 a.m., and they were waiting. Waiting to catch a glimpse of Bob.

Bob, or more specifically Comet Bob, was due to make his closest pass to the earth in the night skies above Endicott, Indiana, at precisely 3:17 a.m. For whatever reason, the comet returned to the planet like clockwork during the third week of every fifteenth September. And when it did, it always—always—made its closest pass at coordinates that were exactly—exactly—directly above the small town of Endicott.

It was an anomaly that many a scientist had tried without success to understand over generations, an enigma that brought them back like lemmings to the small, southern Indiana town every fifteen years—only to send them home again after Bob’s appearance and disappearance, scratching their heads in wonder. And because no one had been able to explain exactly what caused Bob’s regularity or his preference for Endicott, the comet’s celebrity had grown and grown, and the little Indiana town had come to claim him as their own.

The September night was hot and surly in spite of the summer’s end, and the scant breeze moving about the three girls’ faces did little but stir up more hot air. Although school had begun three weeks ago, the appearance of Bob—absent since the year of the girls’ births—and the subsequent Welcome Back, Bob Comet Festival for which Endicott, Indiana, became famous every decade and a half, called for a brief holiday. Schools were closed the following day, and all workers had been given an official holiday decreed by the mayor, just so everyone would have the opportunity to stay up late and get a good look at Bob.

But Bob seemed to have other plans this year. Although he was right on schedule, according to those with high-powered telescopes, unusually cloudy weather this year had kept him inaccessible to most casual observers so far. And the night was partly overcast, making identification of the comet even more iffy. Angie squinted harder toward the area the local astronomers had indicated would be Bob’s stage, but she still saw nothing more impressive than a vague dot in the dark sky.

“I think somebody goofed,” she said. “I don’t think Bob is coming tonight.”

“He’ll be here,” Kirby assured the others. “It’s been fifteen years. He’s never missed.”

“Bob is already here,” Rosemary insisted. “Up there above the sycamore tree, about six inches to the left of the moon. Look harder. It’s not much, but I’m telling you, it’s Bob.”

Comet Bob actually had a much more formal name, but virtually no one could pronounce it correctly. He was named after an Eastern European scientist who had few vowels, and even fewer recognizable consonants, in his name, and who had been dead for more than two hundred years anyway, and the general consensus seemed to be, What difference does it make?

Comet Bob was Comet Bob, famous in his own right and for a variety of reasons. He was always on time, he was visible to the naked eye once he drew close enough to the planet, and Endicott, Indiana grew rich off his exploitation every fifteen years.

Oh, yes, and there were the legends, as well. Anyone who’d been around for more than one appearance of Bob knew full well that he was responsible for creating all kinds of mischief. Because of the dubious honor Endicott, Indiana claimed for repeatedly sitting smack-dab beneath the comet’s closest pass to the earth, all sorts of local folklore had arisen over the years.

Some people said Bob caused cosmic disturbances that made the Endicotians—both native and transplanted—behave very strangely whenever he came around. Others thought Bob made people see the ghosts of their pasts. Then there were those who were certain that Bob was responsible for creating love relationships between people who would normally never give each other the time of day.

And, of course, there were the wishes.

It was widely believed by the townsfolk of Endicott that if someone in the small southern Indiana town was born in the year of the comet, and if that someone made a wish the year Bob returned, while the comet was making its pass directly overhead, then that someone’s wish would come true the next time Bob made a visit. Angie had barely a passing interest in the legend of the wishes. But clearly, it was on Kirby’s mind that night.

“Hey, do you guys believe that myth about the wishes?” she asked her friends.

“What?” Angie asked. “The one about them coming true if you’re born in the year of the comet?”

“Uh-huh,” Kirby replied. “Do you believe it?”

“Nah,” Angie told her. “Wishes don’t come true. Not by cosmic means or any other.”

Evidently, Rosemary was inclined to agree. “Yeah, I don’t think anyone in Endicott ever really got their wish.”

“Mrs. Marx did,” Kirby said. “She told me so. She was born in a year when Bob came around, and the next time he came by, she made a wish, and when she was thirty, when Bob came around a third time, her wish came true.”

Angie and Rosemary turned their heads to gaze at Kirby, clearly interested in hearing more.

“What did she wish for?” Rosemary asked.

Kirby looked first at one friend and then the other. Finally, she confessed, “She wouldn’t tell me.”

Angie nodded knowledgeably. “That’s what I figured.”

“But she swore her wish came true.”

Rosemary sniffed indignantly. “Yeah, I bet she did.”

“She did,” Kirby insisted. But when neither of the other girls commented further, she turned her gaze upward once more in an effort to locate the comet.

Angie did, too, noting that the nearly moonless sky was as black as she’d ever seen it, the almost utter darkness descending all the way down to the earth. Removed from the lights of civilization as the three girls were, they could scarcely see farther than each other’s faces, and the scattered billions of stars above them seemed very far away indeed. Angie stared as hard as she could in search of Bob.

And she thought again about wishes.

“Well, we were all born in the year of the comet, right?” she said, taking up where Kirby had left off, turning to each of her friends. “So if you did make a wish, and if you did think it would come true in fifteen years, what would you wish for?”

A moment of silence fell upon the three friends, until Rosemary, always the most vocal, spoke up. “I wish that pizzafaced little twerp, Willis Random, would get what’s coming to him someday.”

Willis was Rosemary’s lab partner in chemistry, the thirteen-year-old science whiz of the sophomore class, whose current focus in life seemed to be to make her life miserable. Rosemary had never much been one for scientific endeavors, and Willis had adopted a one-man—or rather, one-boy, as the case may be—campaign to belittle her and hold her in contempt for her egregious lack of understanding for his chosen field of study.

Angie nodded. The demand for Willis’s downfall seemed a suitable wish. “How about you, Kirby?” she asked her other friend.

Kirby emitted a single, wistful sigh and turned her gaze upward again. “I wish …” she began softly. Her voice trailed off, and just as Angie was about to spur her again, she said, “I wish for true love. A forever-after kind of love. Like you read about in books and see in old movies.”

Kirby’s entire life consisted of going to school and caring for her invalid mother, Angie knew, with virtually no time left for anything social or enjoyable or steam letting. And most of the boys in Endicott just thought she was much too nice a girl to ever want to ask her out on a date. So the wish for someone to come along and make her life more romantic was in no way surprising.

“That kind of love doesn’t exist,” Rosemary told her.

“Yes, it does,” Kirby objected.

“No,” Rosemary replied immediately. “It doesn’t.”

“Yes,” Kirby retorted just as quickly. “It does.”

Knowing the two girls would argue all night if given the opportunity—Bob was making everyone in Endicott behave abnormally these days—Angie cut them both off by interrupting, “Maybe we’ll find out in fifteen years.”

“I doubt it,” Rosemary muttered.

“How about you, Angie?” Kirby asked. “If you could wish for something, what would it be?”

“Yeah, what would you wish for?” Rosemary echoed, joining in.

“Me?” Angie asked thoughtfully. “I dunno. I guess I just wish something—or somebody—exciting would happen to this stupid town sometime.”

“Riiiight,” Rosemary said. “Something or someone exciting. No problem.” She propped herself up on one elbow and turned to study her friend with a knowing expression. “Angie,” she began patiently, “this is Endicott. Nothing exciting ever happens here. Even Bob can’t work miracles.”

“Well, that’s what I wish anyway,” Angie said.

“Fine. Hear that, Bob?” Rosemary shouted up to the sky. “My friend here, Angie Ellison, wants something or someone exciting to happen to Endicott the next time you come around. Write it down, will ya? Just so you don’t forget.”

And way up high, in the black night sky above Endicott, Indiana, Bob tilted and winked as he passed directly overhead. Then he began his departure from the earth to make his way toward the sun. He would be back, after all.

In exactly fifteen years.