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Belly of the Whale A novel By Kelley Kay Bowles Approx. 55,000 words A nice breeze blows in Whenever the big fella cracks a grin and when the time and the place is right sit down and sip some Bouillabaisse. Ahhh I'm gonna have me a little fun I've got a candle and I can get a lot of reading done somewhere the sun is shining on this world, but not for me two lovers hearts are rising ohh How long before I'm free It feels like Jonah in the belly of the whale I get so lonely in the belly of the whale oooo yeah I feel like Jonah in the belly of the whale oooo and I say if we swim faster we're sure to come back It will please everyone got thrown off the boat before the trip was done so with a smile on my face I disappeared without no trace Ahhh we're only gonna have us a little fun down down down I've lit a candle, we can get a lot of reading done --Burning Sensation Lately, I’ve been thinking I am a changeling. I’ve read myths about changelings in various books and encyclopedias. They have one basic thing in common: a changeling is a creature switched with a child at birth, because someone wants the child more than the creature. I think I am the creature, and I feel sorry for the kid who got switched, because these parents aren’t too bad, usually. Oh, and did I mention the ones doing the switching are trolls? In Wales, the changeling child at first looks like the human it substitutes, but gradually grows uglier in appearance and behavior: ill-featured, malformed, ill-tempered, given to screaming and biting. In Colorado, I’m right now trying really hard to avoid squeezing the zit that ate Cleveland. Patting ineffectually at longish brown hair that behaves like mini tornadoes set up camp in my follicles. I’m tending to agree with the changeling definition. “Mizzes Harper Southwood! Ciao, Bella! And how are ah-we thees morning? Ah-rrravishing, I can see. May I have ah-thees dance?” And he grabbed my arm to start twirling me around like a rag doll. This was my Uncle Peter, who is the only person in my family to whom I could conceivably be genetically linked, instead of a troll family. We call him Uncle Pasta, because he is short, but still skinny and linguini-lanky, if a short person can be such a thing. He also has tornado hair, which he keeps short enough for it to be called kinky. Plus he has this trick he loves to pull out at holiday dinners: he can shove a piece of spaghetti down his nose and pull it out of his mouth. Then he kind of yanks both ends back and forth—al dente spaghetti, I’m sure, because otherwise it would break. What does al-dente mean in its original language, do you suppose? Something about how chewy and gross it is on your dentals, maybe. I’ll have to look it up. Anyway, he likes to talk in this pseudo-Italian accent, which is another reason for the nickname. He lives in our basement, which is the reason he flounced into the kitchen, scaring the bejesus out of me at the ungodly hour of timetogotoschool. “Did I mention I have a date tonight?” he said. “An ab-so-lootlee scrumptious man named ah-Charles. I theenk he rrreally likes me, too.” “Oh, I’m sure he does, Uncle Pasta,” said I. “You, also, are ravishing. Whatever are you going to wear?” Uncle Pasta and I aren’t genetically linked in the matter of sexual orientation, apparently. At least, I don’t think we are, judging by the way my stomach takes a nosedive every time I hear the name Larson McCready, or God forbid I see him and he sees me with the zit and the hair and the increasingly troll-like features. Uncle Pasta sounds like your stereotypical flamboyant gay when he sneeaks up on me and flings me around and with the accent and the al-dente tricks and all, but he’s really sweet and kind of insecure, inside. “I’m sure he really likes you, Uncle Peter. You’re one of the loveliest people I know.” He kissed my cheek. “No, you are. I think I’m going to wear jeans and a button-up shirt. Nice but casual, you know?” I kissed his cheek. “It’s going to be great. You’ll be terrific, I know.” Uncle Pasta sneezed, and my nose started to twitch. “Oh, be careful, though. I think you’re catching a cold.” He looked at me. “I hope you’re wrong this time. I’m off to drown in a quart of orange juice, just in case.” Changeling stories don’t say that changelings have any special powers, except that they are wiser than human children. Which is cool—it’s something to hang on to when my hair explodes out of the ponytail. But I think my troll family might have had a strange quirk — a sense of some sort. When people around me are getting sick, my nose itches or I start sneezing, or my body reacts in some weird way. It’s not a gift or a power, because it doesn’t do anything for anybody. I can warn them to dive into the orange juice, I guess, but aren’t you supposed to drink that stuff a lot anyway? Some help. I have this fantasy where I can actually see the germ or the bacteria or whatever, with my intensive x-ray vision, and then I spray some sort of supernatural mojo out my nose that transforms the offending germ into a super vitamin that makes you healthier. It’s a nice dream, but so is a zit-free face and cascading hair. Uncle Pasta headed to the fridge with fingertips squeezing at his lymph nodes. I felt helpless, like always, but I guess all I could do right now is go to school. * * * The street was deserted this morning, which is unusual. Usually there are these four elderly people, three women and a man, who traipse the sidewalk in a single-file line. They move their arms in sync; a slow motion march where their elbows move from their waists up toward the sky and back at about negative ten miles per hour. I think it is some sort of weird Tai-Chi for old people; I’ll have to look it up. I’m glad for the solitude: the half-mile walk to my high school gives me time to contemplate the best way to avoid troll mishaps and embarrassing situations. Plus I needed to think about what to say to my friend Cora — she’s been acting really weird lately, and she makes the backs of my knees itch. Don’t ask me why. We’ve been friends for the past year and she’s never been sick, besides, my knees? Troll powers are a mystery. I spotted Cora Perkins on a bench in the middle of the courtyard. She has this really cool hair that is the complete opposite of mine: blonde and long and falls straight like a sheet, but today it was tied in a weird knot at the base of her skull and looked dirty. She was wearing jeans and a long sleeved shirt, even though school had only been on for a week and it’s been about 95 degrees every day since it started. “Hey, you,” I said, “Are you okay?” Cora snorted and rolled her eyes at me. “Define okay. I’m not sick if that’s what you mean, crazy changeling woman.” She gave me a faint grin, which made her look a little better, but still not her normal self. Cora knows all about my suspicions of trollhood and the drymouth disease I am afflicted with around Larson, and she is a really good listener and caring friend. She doesn’t tell me enough about herself, though — I know her mom is dead and her dad is militaristic even though he’s a plumber, but mostly she dodges questions about the way she feels and what’s happening in her life by switching the subject over to me or telling these really dumb jokes. “I’m fine,” she said. “Hey, knock knock.” I sighed and my knee twitched, an invisible doctor tapping with a plexor. “Who’s there?” “Nobody.” “Nobody who?” She was silent. It took me a second. “Oh, har har.” She smiled, a real one now, and I was once again surprised that someone as pretty and nice as she is wanted to hang out with me, the troll. Her eyes are green and shaped like almonds, and guys watch her when she walks by and you can tell they talk about her when she’s gone. The Preps AND the Jocks AND the Dramatics are always angling for her to join their respective groups, but she says she’d rather not hang out with kids who could have been lobotomized walk-ons on Sixteen Candles and besides, she wants to be around people who will help keep her brain functioning. That’s me, I guess, maybe because I’m always looking everything up. “Did you do the paper for Carstead?” I asked. Cora flung her hands skyward, “Awright—tell me this—how do we find symbolism in a poem that has…count it…SIXTEEN words in it? And then write a one thousand word essay on the previously mentioned sixteen word poem?” “I take it that’s a no?” “Oh no, I wrote it. I said something about the red wheelbarrow representing our firefighters and it’s glazed with water to put out the fire that is burning the white chickens that represent the Twin Towers. I think it’s so much baloney I can hardly stand it, but you know Carstead has such a jones for even an attempted analysis, I figured…” I shrugged, “Yep. At least she’s not one of those who says you can only do it her way to get the ‘A.’ I said something about how they are all such mundane items: rain, wheelbarrow, chickens, but so much depends on them because without the everyday stuff you can’t appreciate something extraordinary.” She looked at me. “Harper, that’s profound. No wonder you are like, Carstead’s love child.” She patted my back like I was a puppy and I pushed her hand away because here came three basketball players, one of whom was Larson McCready. Oh, no. I bet he would never say one of whom and I can feel some ponytail hair sticking out in ways God never intended hair to go. One of the guys, Mike, said, “Hey Cora. Great shirt. It would look better on my floor, though.” Cora looked at him like a cow just flew out of his nose. “Hey, Mike. I think YOU would look better with your face under my boot, but hey look—I’m wearing flip-flops. Must be your lucky day.” The other guys cracked up and shoved Mike down the walk, calling sayonara to Cora. Only Cora. Larson was bringing up the rear of the group. My nails dug in to my palms in the effort to raise my hand for a wave, but nothing happened and his head was down and didn’t even swing my way. My fingertips went up to cover the zit, but it didn’t matter—he was already gone. Cora looked at me. “So when are you going to talk to him, Chickadee?” I moved my hands up to my neck and could feel the heat there. “I don’t know. Maybe when these hives stop spontaneously appearing whenever he comes within ten or twenty feet.” She pulled at the neckline of my T-shirt. “Oh, yeah. Wow. I thought you only got hives when you were confronted with an authority figure.” I stood at the sound of the bell and we headed for our first hour classes, which are unfortunately different. We walked together for as long as possible. “Yes, that, and when I’m so mad I feel like my eyeballs will pop, oh, and don’t forget the crying. The nervousness and the fear and the anger bring on the hives and the uncontrollable welling of tears, which is why I’m such an impressive specimen, don’t you think?” Cora flung an arm around my shoulders as we walked. “You betcha. I am totally and overwhelmingly impressed.” “You know it.” |