SMILEY-FACE BALLOON

I'm in Kitty's house again.

I'm always in Kitty's house at this time: one P.M. on a Wednesday after my mother drives off to her night classes in her gassy olive green car. Kitty and I like to watch her ride away, as she sticks one hand out of the car window and yells "Bye, Caleb" until she's just driving in a small mossy dot on the town's horizon.

Today isn't drastically different. Mom drives away, and Kitty turns to me nonchalantly. Her long black braids swing with her head.

"She still calls you Caleb?" Kitty asks, walking to the backyard and telepathically beckoning me to follow her.

"Yeah," I say, itching a beetle bite on my elbow.

She scoffs. "C.B.. Tell her that it's C.B.,"

"I...don't mind Caleb--"

"Yeah, but spies don't go by their real names," she kneels down near the patch of weeds that haven't been pulled out yet.

I take a moment to scan the garden--I've been here lots of times before, of course, but every time you look around Kitty's dads garden, you see something you didn't spot before.

Tomatoes are growing out of a plant pot in the corner of the garden, which is shielded with an oak picket fence. One of the tomatoes burst, with a few flies humming around it's wrinkly skin. Flowers, herbs, and fruits cover the landscape of this backyard. A lonely toad croaks by a small pond. There is a treehouse, too, like any typical suburban household. My mom and I don't have a treehouse. We have an apartment.

Kitty stuffs something in the pocket of her worn jeans and stands up, still covering her pocket like something fragile is inside.

"Hey, climb up the treehouse, will you? I need to give you something up there," she inclines her head towards the makeshift elevator we had attached to the treehouse. It was a bucket that you can pull stuff up with, really, but Kitty said her older brother Freddy taught her how to make it, because he wants to be an engineer. That has got to be legit.

I nod and head for the treehouse, but before I can place my foot on even one step on the ladder, Kitty tells me to wait.

She shoves her pinkie in my face.

"Er...what am I--?"

"You have to promise you won't be scared, OK, C.B.?" she says. She widens her eyes to look more serious, because for some reason when people want to be serious their eyesight worsens or whatever.

I furrow my brows in obvious perplexity because you don't usually have to ask someone to not be scared when you're delivering them something. I look behind me to make sure I wasn't going to back into a giant chopper-fan, because if Kitty tells you to not be scared you have every right to be scared.

"Eh?" I say, barely able to catch my words that flit outside of my mouth (maybe the butterflies?) "Wh-- why not?"

"Just-- promise, OK? Please, C.B.?"

I stare, unconvinced.

"Please please pleeease?' she clasps her hands together.

I am still staring.

"Pretty please with cherries and whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles and chopped nuts and gummy bears and chocolate shavings and toasted marshmallows and peanut butter and coconut and pretzels and fudge a--"

"Fine!" I give in, but only because I know she could go on like this until mom came back from her lessons and probably well after that.

I scale the shaky ladder until I'm grasping for the ledge of the treehouse porch. Lifting myself up, I exhale. Through the nose, out the mouth. I feel on top of the world until I hear Kitty yelling my name from the ground.

"Hey, dingbat! Get inside!" she exclaims, and I open my eyes and scurry inside the treehouse. 

It is decorated in a certainly unwritten style. Kitty has handmade maps of the neighborhood on her desk, moth sketches on the blackboard near the entrance, lilac curtains that are always drawn (she likes the sun to pour through, but it gives me sunburns), sour candy worms in the drawers, pastel gum dried on the floor, and the popped remnants of a plastic smiley-face balloon in the corner. I shuffle to the open window where the bucket hung-- it was tied to an old rope and suspended on an iron pole that was stuck to the wall of the treehouse, so that you pull the unoccupied rope down and the rope with the bucket attached rises. It’s nothing more than overly simple physics which fell into the hands of us, schoolchildren. 

Kitty is already pulling the bucket upwards. I cannot see whatever she has in store for me, because the bucket is covered with some sort of fabric, or a wrap. I lug it up, but I am surprisingly not as scared as I imagined I would be. That’s only ‘cause of the blissful ignorance.

The pail finally reaches and I seize it, sitting on the wooden floor and preparing to uncover its lid-- before Kitty was talking again. 

“Don’t open it until I get there!” she yells, beginning to climb up the ladder. 

Kitty was slow at climbing ladders and my curiosity might kill me if I didn't find out was in there. Curiosity is a serial murderer. I can’t wait for her to climb up, because if something poisonous was really in this bucket I’d rather kill myself myself than be killed by someone named Kitty. 

So I did a sneaky thing. I lifted the flimsy top of the bucket just very slightly so I could see what was in there. For a second, I see nothing but the cold hard bottom of the bucket-- but then I see a little black pointy thing from further under the flap. I see another one. It’s moving. And when it comes further into a view I realize that the dreaded little horned-devil was a beetle. A beetle. 

I scream a little bit. 

**

OK, I kind of scream a lot more loudly than I’d want to, and Kitty crawls up like she’s got danger on her tail. The birds, cawing, flee away from their little tree. I hear a dog barking in the distance. Even the sun seems to scamper behind the clouds in fear. 

“What's wr--?!” Before she can even finish, Kitty spots the half opened bucket in my hands, and the lack of color in my face. She lunges and pulls the bucket out of my hands, but she isn’t as mad as I expected. 

“I told you to not open it,” she says, quite blasé for some reason. 

“Beetles?!” I mutter, staring off into space and still breathing heavily on the ground. “Beetles?!--Kitty, you know I hate beetles!” 

She doesn’t reply. She’s poured the beetles out on her desk. I stumble to the furthest corner in the room. 

“They’re precious, C.B., they’re not gonna hurt you!” She tries to make me feel better about things, and then starts talking to the beetles weirdly. Like in the way parents would talk to their newborn child in that little high-pitched voice that automatically turns L’s and R’s into W’s. 

“P-precious? Kitty, it’s a beetle,”

“They’re not an ‘it’!” Kitty exclaimed. “this one is Mickey, and they go by ‘they’! This one is Muriel and she’s an old lady,” 

I blinked. “Man, you’re weird. What are we supposed to do with them?” 

She pats a stool next to her and gestures for me to come sit down next to her. 

“Oh. Oh no,” I say. 

“Oh, come on! It’s cool! And the games are just about to begin!” 

I stare, unconvinced. 

“Prettypleasewithsprinklesandcherriesandfudgeandcookiesandbrowniesand-”

“Fine!!” I grumble, stomping over to the stool and collapsing in it. 

Kitty gently grabs the two beetles and places them on an empty milk carton that lays on its side. She sticks her index finger in between them and leans in closer. 

“This will be a fair match, there will be no foul play because if you do that I will throw you to the raccoon dumpster behind the house,” she says as if she’s said this tens times before. I don’t have much doubt that she has. 

“On the count of three…” Kitty gives me an approving look as I stare on in a vomit puddle of confusion and fright. 

“One…” 

My muscles tense up. 

“Two…” 

My fist clenches. Any fight or flight switches are now accessible, but the lever is neither on fight or flight. Maybe it’s the placebo effect, but I am scared. 

“Three!” Kitty yelps, whipping her finger away so hard that it almost hit me. 

Immediately, the beetles tackle each other. Their horns are tangled into each other, and they stagger on the milk box. Their tiny little legs gouge the enemy, scratching, pulling, pushing, thrashing. 

“Aren’t they awesome?” Kitty smiles wickedly at me. 

“Kitty, they’re beetles and they're fighting each other,” 

“It’s not just fighting! It is an art! A saving grace! An amazing spectacle!” she defended. 

“Kitty-- why?”

“Hm?”

“Why would you pull beetles from your garden to watch them fi--” 

“Shush! Muriel is winning!” 

“Kitty, are you OK? Was this Freddy? Did Freddy do this to you?” I put a hand on her shoulder, concerned. 

“C.B., do you not realize how cool this is? They’re beetles! Fighting!”

“Exactly, they’re beetles! Fighting!” 

“Listen, brat, if you don’t like this go cry to your little mommy about it. And pick me up some popcorn, extra butter. This is getting heated,” Kitty waves my hand away. 

“I would go to my mom, but she’s at her lessons! If only I could go to her. Beats watching beetles fight,”

Kitty stood. So suddenly, so abruptly. 

“Don’t disrespect Muriel and Mickey again,” she says. 

“Kitty, you have got to be joking, they’re--”

“Shut up! They’re my beetles! Would you want me to disrespect your lousy little snake?”

“Don’t talk about Bea like that!” I say, my cheeks burning red. Bea Constrictor is untouchable by all means. Kitty and I live by those rules. I don’t insult her raccoons, she doesn’t insult my snake. Beetles, though? Beetles have crossed the boundaries. 

“Listen, buster,” she begins. I hate when she calls me buster. “I’ll talk about whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want, OK?" 

“Don’t call me buster,”

“Buster,” she sticks her tongue out.  

Now, I know this is going to make me seem bad in front of a very dear audience, OK, but I want you to know that Bea is a very special snake, and that Kitty and I had promised to not make fun of each other's full time pets (that promise said nothing about beetles).

I kind of slap Kitty. 

It was a friendly kind of slap, though-- one that you’ll laugh about once you get older. It didn’t leave a red palm-shaped mark where my hand had made contact with her face. She didn’t cry, but that might be because I doubt Kitty has tear ducts. 

For a second, I think I’ve triggered her off button. She just stands, cradling her hurt cheek with her mouth agape. 

Then, when I relax  my tense muscles and turn off my fight mode, ready to apologize, she pounces. I tumble to the ground and she tugs at my hair, throws little punches at my chest, beats me up and beats me down all at once. It is impossible to pry Kitty off of you because she is Kitty. 

And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. I saw the two beetles standing on their hind legs and watching us. Watching us fight.

Then Mickey turned to Muriel and said “why would you let humans pull you out of the garden just so you can watch them fight?”. 

Muriel shrugged. “It’s not mere fighting, dear. It’s an art. Dare I call it a saving grace?”