Stinger

Still cradling the black ball, Stevie reached the house and paused to search beneath the bay window for the white rock that opened to reveal an extra house key tucked away inside. She was out of breath, still shaking from being chased by a dog as she ran along Brazos Street; the dog, a big Doberman, had snarled and leaped at her, but it had been chained to a pole in the yard and the chain had snapped it back. She hadn't even stopped to thumb her nose at it, because she knew her mother and Mr. Creech would be coming after her.

She found the white stone and the key and got into the house. The air conditioning chilled the perspiration on her skin, and she walked into the kitchen, pulled a chair over to stand on, got a Flintstones glass from the cupboard, and poured herself a glass of cold water from a pitcher in the refrigerator. The black ball was still cool, and she rubbed it over her cheeks and forehead.

She listened for the sound of Mr. Creech's car pulling up out front. It wasn't there yet, but it would be soon.

"They want to break you open," she said to her playmate inside the ball. "I don't think that would be very nice, do youi" Of course it didn't answer. It might know how to play tic-tac-toe, but it had no voice except for the singing.

Stevie took the ball into her room. Should she try to hide it somewherei she wondered. Surely her mother wouldn't make her give it up after she'd explained about the music, and how the black ball had a playmate deep inside it. She thought of places to hide it: under her bed, in the closet, in her chest of drawers, in her toychest. No, none of those seemed safe enough. Mr. Creech's car wasn't there yet; she still had time to find a good hiding place.

She was mulling it over when the telephone rang. It kept on ringing, and Stevie decided to answer it since, at the moment, she was the lady of the house. She picked it up. "'Loi" "Young lady, you're in for a spanking!" Jessie's voice was mock furious, but genuinely relieved. "You could've been killed, hit by a car or something!" "I'm all right." Better not to say anything about the dog, she decided.

"I'd like to know just what you think you're doing! I'm getting pretty tired of the way you've been acting today!" "I'm sorry," Stevie said in a small voice. "But I heard the singing again, and I had to get it away from Mr. Creech 'cause I don't want it to get broken." "That's not for us to decide. Stevie, I'm surprised at you! You've never done anything like this before!" Stevie's eyes burned with tears. Hearing her mama speak this way was worse than a spanking; her mama could not hear the singing and would not understand about the playmate. "I won't do it again, Mama," she promised.

"I'm very disappointed in you. I thought I'd taught you better manners. Now I want you to listen to me: I'm still at Mr. Mendoza's, but I'm going to be home soon. I want you to stay there. Do you hear mei" "Yes ma'am." "all right." Jessie paused; she was mad, but not mad enough to hang up and leave it like this. "You frightened me by running off like that. You could've gotten hurt. Do you understand why I'm upseti" "Yes. 'Cause I was bad." "Because you were wrong," Jessie corrected. "But we'll talk about it when I get home. I love you very much, Stevie, and that's why I got so angry. Do you seei" She said, "Yes. and I love you too, Mama. I'm sorry." "Okay. You just stay there, and I'll see you later. 'Bye." "'Bye." They hung up at about the same time, and at the Texaco station Jessie turned to Colonel Rhodes and said, "Meteor my ass." Stevie's tears dried. She returned to her room with the black ball, which was showing blotches of blue on its surface. Now the idea of hiding it bothered her, but she didn't want it broken to pieces, either. She'd been bad - no, wrong - enough for one day; but what was she to doi She crossed her room and looked out her window at the sun-washed street, trying to figure out what was the right thing: to hide the black ball, in disobedience of her mother, or give it up and let it be broken open. Her mind reached a dead end beyond which she could not think, and in the next moment she decided to entertain her playmate as well as possible before Mr. Creech's car arrived.

She wandered over to her collection of glass figurines on a table. Within the black ball there was a line of blue, like an eyelid beginning to open. She said, "Ballerina," and pointed to the dancing glass figure, her favorite. Then: "Horse. This one is like Sweetpea, only Sweetpea's a real horse and this is made of glass. Sweetpea is a pal... a pal..." She still had trouble with some words. "a 'mino," she said, giving up the struggle. She pointed to the next: "Mouse. Do you know what a mouse isi It eats cheese and doesn't like cats." at the center of the black sphere, there were little cracklings of blue like fireworks going off.

Stevie picked her Raggedy ann doll off the bed. "This is annie Laredo. Say hello, annie. Say we're glad you came to visit today. annie's a rodeo girl," she told the black ball, and then, continuing around the room, came to her bulletin board. On it were construction-paper cutouts that her father had helped her put up. She pointed to the first. "a... B...C...D...e...F...G... that's the alphabet. Know what the alphabet isi" Something struck her as very important. "You don't even know my name!" she said, and held the ball up before her face. She watched the stirrings of color at its center, like beautiful fish swimming inside an aquarium. "It's Stevie. I know how to spell it. S-T-e-V-I-e: Stevie. That's me." also on the bulletin board were pictures of animals and insects clipped from magazines. Stevie lifted the ball so her playmate could see, and touched each picture as she said the names: "Lion... that's from the jungle. Ost... ostr... that's a big bird. Dolphin" - she pronounced it daufin - "and those swim in the ocean. eagle... that flies really high. Grasshopper... those jump a lot." She came to the final picture. "Scor... scorp... a stinger," she said, and touched it too, though it was her least favorite and her father had put it up as a reminder not to walk barefoot outside.

What resembled tiny bolts of lightning curled up from the sphere's center and danced across its inner surface; they connected briefly with Stevie's fingers, and a cold tingling shot through her hand all the way to her elbow before it subsided. The sensation startled her, but it wasn't painful; she watched the lightning bolts arc and pulse inside the ball, as its center of brilliant blue continued to grow.

More entranced than scared, Stevie held the ball between both hands. The lightning bolts curled out and touched her hands, and for a few seconds she thought she heard her hair crackle like Rice Krispies.

She thought that just maybe she should put it down now. There was a storm inside the black ball, and the storm was getting worse. It occurred to her that her playmate might not have liked something she showed it on her bulletin board.

She took two steps toward the bed, intending to gently put the ball down and wait for her mother to get home.

But she didn't make it another step.

The black ball suddenly burst into an incandescent, frightening blue. She started to open her fingers and drop it, but the movement was too late.

The tiny lightning bolts shot from its surface, intertwined through her fingers, continued up her arms and shoulders, wrapped like smoke around her throat, and leapt up her nostrils, into her widened eyeballs, cocooning her head and piercing through her skull. There was no pain, but in her ears was a low murmur like distant thunder, or a steady and powerful voice unlike anything she'd ever heard. Her hair jumped with sparks, her head rocking back and her mouth opening in a soft, stunned exhalation: "Oh." She smelled an odor of burning. My hair's on fire! she thought wildly, and tried to put it out with her hands but they would no longer obey. She wanted to scream and tears were in her eyes, but the thunder voice in her head swelled up and crashed over her senses; she felt herself lifted up as if by waves, pulled down again into a blue swirling place where there was no bottom nor top. It was cool here, and quiet, far from the storm that raged somewhere else. The blue void closed around her, held her firmly, continued to draw her deeper. Only she was no longer in her skin; she seemed to be made of light, and weighed as much as a feather in the wind. It was not a fearsome thing, and she was amazed that she was not afraid - or, at least, not crying. She did not fight it, because fighting seemed a bad thing. It was a good thing to drift down in this blue place, and to rest. To rest, and to dream; because she was certain this was a place where dreams lived, and they would find her if she did not try to fight.

She slept, as the blue currents folded around her, and the first dreams came in the shape of Sweetpea, her mother and father already astride the golden horse and urging her to join them for a long day where there was no sadness, only pure blue sky and sunshine.

Stevie's body fell backward, hitting the floor on its right shoulder. The ball, blue and pulsing, jarred loose from the frozen hands and rolled under the bed, where it slowly turned to ebony again.