-
Diving Under
第一章：下潜
All I've ever wanted is for
July Baker to leave me alone. For her to back off
—
you
know, just
give me some
space
.
< br>我只有一个愿望：让朱莉安娜?贝克别来烦我。快点给我走开！——我只想让她离我远点。
It all started the summer before
second grade when our moving van pulled into her
neighborhood. And since we're now about
done with the
eighth
grade
that, my friend,
makes more than half a
decade of strategic avoidance and social
discomfort.
这一切都起源于一年级暑假，
从我家
的卡车停在她家隔壁开始。
眼下，
我们都快上完八年级
了，也就是说，整整五年，我不得不忍受着社交上的不便，对她实行“战略性回避”
。
She didn't just barge
into my life. She barged and shoved and wedged her
way into
my life. Did we invite her to
get into our moving van and start climbing all
over boxes?
No! But that's exactly what
she did, taking over and showing off like only
Juli Baker
can.
她可不只是闯入了我的生活
，
她是千方百计非要在我的生活里占领一席之地不可。
难道是我
们邀请她爬进搬家的卡车里，
在箱子上爬来爬去的吗？才没有！
可她就是不请自来，
好像这
是她的家，
是她朱莉安娜?贝克的特权似的。
My dad tried
to stop her. “Hey!” he says as she's catapulting
herself on board. “What
are you
doing? You're getting mud everywhere!”
So true,
too. Her shoes were, like,
caked with the stuff.
爸爸试图阻止
她，
“嘿！
”她在车里跳来跳去的时候，爸爸喊道，
“你在干什么？你把烂泥弄
得到处都是！
”没错，
她的鞋上糊满了泥巴。
She didn't hop
out, though. Instead, she planted her rear end on
the floor and started
pushing
a big box with her feet. “Don't you
want some help?”She glanced my way. “It
sure looks like you
need
it.”
可她根本没想从车上下来。
正相反，她一屁股坐在车厢里，开始用脚推起一个大箱子。
“你
难道不需要帮忙吗？”她朝我这边瞥了一眼，
“我觉得你真的需要别人帮忙呢。
”
I didn't like the
implication. And even though my dad had been
tossing me the same
sort of look all
week, I could tell
—
he
didn't like this girl
either. “Hey!
Don't do that,” he
warned her. “There
are some really valuable things in that
box.”
我一点儿也不喜欢她的暗
示。
虽然我爸也整天用这种眼神看我，
可我敢说，
他也不喜欢这丫
头。
“嘿，别推了，
”他提醒道，
“箱子里有贵重物品。
”
“Oh. Well, how about this one?”
She scoots over to a box labeled LENOX and looks
my way
again. “We should
push it together!”
“哦，好吧。那我搬
这个吧？”她挪到另一个贴着“
LENOX
（餐具）
”标志的箱子旁边，又
看了我一眼，
“我们可以一
起推！
”
“No, no,
no!” my dad says, then pulls her up by the arm.
“Why don't you run along
home?
Y
our mother's probably wondering where
you are.”
“不，不，不
用！
”爸爸把她抱起来，
“你是不是应该回家看看？你妈妈也许
正在担心你跑
到哪儿去了。
”
This was the beginning of
my soon-to-become-acute awareness that the girl
cannot
take a hint. Of any kind. Does
she zip on home like a kid should when they've
been
invited to leave? No. She says,
“Oh, my mom knows where I am.
She said it was fine.”
Then
she points across the street
and says,
“We just live right over there.”
这是我头一次见识到这姑娘到底有多么不识趣，
毫无自知之明。
作为一个孩子，
当别人礼貌
地请她离开的时候，难道
不是应该立刻乖乖地回家吗？她才不会。她说：
“哦，妈妈知道我
在哪儿，她说没关系。
”然后她指着街对面说，
“我家就住在
那儿。
”
My father
looks to where she's pointing and mutters, “Oh
boy.” Then he looks at me
and
winks as he says, “Bryce, isn't it time
for you to go inside
and help your
mother?”
爸爸看着她所指的方向，
念叨着：
“唉，
上帝啊。
”
然后他看着我，
边眨眼边说，
“布莱斯，
你是不是该回家给妈妈帮忙了？”
I knew right off that this
was a ditch play. And I didn't think about it
until later, but ditch
wasn't a play
I'd run with my dad before. Face it, pulling a
ditch is not something
discussed with
dads. It's like, against parental law to tell your
kid it's okay to ditch
someone, no
matter how annoying or
muddy
they might be.
我马上明白过来，这是个甩掉
她的小花招。可我从来没跟爸爸排练过这出戏。拜托，怎样甩
掉盯梢可不是你平时能和爸
妈讨论的话题。
想想看，
告诉孩子可以甩掉别人，
这可是违背了
做父母的原则，不管这个人有多讨厌或是身上沾了多少泥巴。<
/p>
But there he was, putting
the play in motion, and man, he didn't have to
wink twice. I
smiled
and
said, “Sure thing!” then jumped off the
lift gate and headed for my new
front door.
但是爸爸情急之下还是这么做了，<
/p>
而且，
他真的不用一直冲我使眼色吧！
我
笑了，
答道：
“没
错！
”然后跳出车门，冲向我们的新家。
I heard
her coming after me but I couldn't believe it.
Maybe it just sounded like she
was
chasing me; maybe she was really going the other
way. But before I got up the
nerve to
look, she blasted right past me, grabbing my arm
and yanking me along.
我听见她跟了上来，
< br>但我不敢相信。
也许只是听上去很像她追上来了，
也许她
只是走向另一
个方向。但是，在我鼓足勇气回头之前，她已经赶上来，猛地抓住我的胳膊
。
This was too much. I
planted myself and was about to tell her to get
lost when the
weirdest thing happened.
I was making this big windmill motion to break
away from
her, but somehow on the
downswing my hand wound up tangling into hers. I
couldn't
believe it. There I was,
holding the mud monkey's hand!
这太过分了。我停
下脚步，想告诉她快滚开，
这时却发生了最最诡异的事情。我抡起胳膊想
摆脱她，
可是手臂落下来的时候却变成了挽着她的姿势。
我简直不敢相信，
我竟然挽了这只
“泥猴”的手！
I tried to shake her off, but
she just clamped on tight and yanked me along,
saying,
“C'mon!”
我想甩开她，但她把我的手攥得紧紧的，拉着我说：
“来吧！
”
My mom came out of the
house and immediately got the world's sappiest
look on her
face.
“Well,
hello,” she says to Juli.
<
/p>
我妈妈从屋里走出来，立刻摆出了一副最糟糕的傻笑着的表情，
“
嗨，你好！
”
她跟朱莉打招
呼。
“Hi!”
“你好！
”
I'm still trying to pull free, but the
girl's got me in a death grip. My mom's grinning,
looking at
our hands and my
fiery red face. “And what's your
name, honey?”
我还在
挣扎着想摆脱她，
但她死死地拽着我。
看到我们握在一起的手，
还有我又红又热的脸，
妈妈笑了，
“你
叫什么名字，亲爱的？”
“Julianna Baker.
I live right over there,” she says, pointing
wi
th her unoccupied hand.
“朱
莉安娜?贝克。我家就住在那儿。
”她用那只空着的手指点着。
“Well, I see you've met my son,” she
says, still grinning away.
“
哦，我想你已经认识我儿子了。
”妈妈还在笑着。
“Uh
-
huh!”
“是的！
”
Finally I break free and do the only
manly thing available when you're seven years old
—
I dive behind my mother. <
/p>
我终于挣脱出来，
做了一件七岁男孩唯一能做的充满男子汉气概的
事——我躲到了妈妈身后。
Mom puts her
arm around me and says, “Bryce, honey, why don't
you show Julianna
around
the
house?”
妈妈用手臂环着我，
“布莱斯，亲爱的，你是不是应该请朱莉安娜参观一下我们的新家？”
I flash her help and warning signals
with every part of my body, but she's not
receiving.
Then
she
shakes
me
off and
says, “Go on.”
我用尽全身的力气向妈妈发出
警告，可是她完全没有察觉。她推着我说：
“去吧。
”
Juli would've tramped right in
if my mother hadn't noticed her shoes and told her
to
take them off. And after those were
off, my mom told her that her dirty socks had to
go,
too. Juli wasn't embarrassed. Not a
bit. She just peeled them off and left them in a
crusty heap on our porch.
朱莉
没有马上被允许进入房间，
因为妈妈注意到那双脏鞋并且要求她脱下来。
等她脱下鞋子，
妈妈又说她的脏袜子也不许穿进屋里。
朱莉全然没觉得尴尬，
一点儿也不。
她只是拽下袜子，
随手扔在我家门廊里。
I didn't
exactly give her a tour. I locked myself in the
bathroom instead. And after
about ten
minutes of yelling back at her that no, I wasn't
coming out anytime soon,
things got
quiet out in the hall. Another ten minutes went by
before I got the nerve to
peek out the
door.
我没有认真地带她参观，
而是把自己反锁在厕所里
。我冲她叫喊了将近十分钟的“不，
我决
不出来”之后，客厅里
终于安静下来。又过了十分钟，我鼓足勇气从门缝里往外看去。
No Juli.
没看到朱莉。
I snuck out and looked around, and yes!
She was gone.
我蹑手蹑脚地走出来，看了一圈，没错，她走了！
Not a very sophisticated ditch, but
hey, I was only seven.
这一手不算太高明，但我毕竟才七岁嘛。
My troubles were far from over, though.
Every day she came back, over and over
again.
“Can Bryce play?” I
could hear her asking from my hiding
place behind the
couch. “Is he ready
yet?” One time she even cut across the yard and
looked
through my window. I
spotted her in the nick of time and dove under my
bed, but man,
that right there tells
you something about Juli Baker. She's got no
concept of personal
space. No respect
for privacy. The world is her playground, and
watch out below
—
Juli's on the slide!
不过，
我的麻烦还远远没有结束。
她一次又一次地来找我，
每天都来。
“
布莱斯能出来玩吗？”
我藏在沙发背后，听见她这样问道。
“他准备好了吗？”有一次她甚至穿过院子从窗户
往里
看。我恰好观察到她的动向，马上潜伏到床底下。
不过朋友
，
我得告诉你一些关于朱莉安娜
?贝克的事。她完全不知道“私
人空间”为何物，不尊重别人的隐私。全世界都是朱莉的地
盘，当心——她只会越来越过
分！
Lucky for me, my dad was
willing to run block. And he did it over and over
again. He
told her I was busy or
sleeping or just plain gone. He was a lifesaver. <
/p>
幸运的是，
我爸爸希望保护我。
他徒劳地
试了一次又一次，他告诉朱莉说我很忙，
说我在睡
觉，或者说我
不在家。他真是我的大救星。
My sister, on
the other hand, tried to sabotage me any chance
she got. Lynetta's like
that. She's
four years older than me, and buddy, I've learned
from watching her how
not to run your
life. She's got
ANTAGONIZE
written all over her. Just look at her
—
not
cross-eyed
or with your tongue sticking out or anything
—
just
look
at her and you've
started an
argument.
作为对立面，我的姐姐却逮住一切机会陷害我。利奈特就喜欢这样
。她比我大四岁，从她身
上我学会了不去和命运抗争。她是个浑身上下写满了“抗议”<
/p>
两个字的家伙。
只要谁看了她
一眼——不
用斜着眼睛，或是吐着舌头看——仅仅是看她一眼，就能让她跟你吵起来。
I used to knock-down-drag-out with her,
but it's just not worth it. Girls don't fight
fair.
They pull your hair and gouge you
and pinch you; then they run off gasping to mommy
when you try and defend yourself with a
fist. Then you get locked into time-out, and for
what? No, my friend, the secret is,
don't snap at the bait. Let it dangle. Swim around
it.
Laugh it off. After a while they'll
give up and try to lure someone else.
跟
她在一起，我一向采取消极抵抗的态度，但是这也没有用。
女孩子从来不搞公平竞争。她
们拽你的头发、抠你、掐你，明明是你挨了打，她们却率先跑到妈妈面前告状。然后你被
关
了禁闭，凭什么？不，我的朋友，诀窍在于千万不能上当，不要跟她们正面交锋。你得
不慌
不忙地四处迂回，
对她们的挑衅一笑置之。
过不了多久她们就会放弃了，
把注意力转移到别
人身上
。
At least that's the way it
is with Lynetta. And the bonus of having her as a
in-in-the-rear sister was figuring out
that this method works on everyone. Teachers,
jerks at school, even Mom and Dad.
Seriously. There's no winning arguments with
your parents, so why get all pumped up
over them? It is way better to dive down and
get out of the way than it is to get
clobbered by some parental tidal wave.
起码这套伎俩在利奈特面前行得通。
有这么一个让你如芒在背的
姐姐，
唯一的好处就是，
在
她身上试验
成功的方法，多半对于别人也适用。比如老师、学校里的怪胎，甚至是爸爸妈
妈。真的。
你永远吵不赢父母，为什么不能学着放松点呢？与其时不时被父母修理一通，
不如下潜到
自己的世界里，别在他们眼前出现。
The funny
thing is, Lynetta's still clueless when it comes
to dealing with Mom and Dad.
She goes
straight into thrash mode and is too busy drowning
in the argument to take
a deep breath
and dive for calmer water.
好笑的是，
利奈特在对待父母的态度上依然很幼稚。
她总是直接进入战斗状态，
把精力全放
在争执上，却来不及深吸一口气，潜入冷静的水中。
And she thinks
I'm
stupid.
而她还认为我是个傻瓜。
Anyway, true to form, Lynetta tried to
bait me with Juli those first few days. She even
snuck her past Dad once and marched her
all around the house, hunting me down. I
wedged myself up on the top shelf of my
closet, and lucky for me, neither of them
looked up. A few minutes later I heard
Dad yell at Juli to get off the antique furniture,
and once again, she got booted.
不管怎么说，
和往常一样，
起初利奈特想用朱莉引我上
钩。
有一次她甚至背着爸爸带朱莉进
入我家，到处搜捕我。我蜷
成一团躲在壁柜最上面一层，幸好她们谁也没想起往上看一眼。
没过几分钟，我就听见爸
爸大喊着让朱莉离那些古董家具远一点儿，她又一次被赶走了。
I don't think I went outside that whole
first week. I helped unpack stuff and watched TV
and just kind of hung around while my
mom and dad arranged and rearranged the
furniture, debating whether Empire
settees and French Rococo tables should even be
put in the same room.
头一个星期，
我记得自己根本没出过家门。我帮忙拆箱，看电视，在爸爸妈妈摆放家具、争
论着帝国风
格的靠背椅和法式洛可可餐桌是否能放在一个房间里的时候四处闲逛。
So believe me, I was dying to go
outside. But every time I checked through the
window, I could see Juli showing off in
her yard. She'd be heading a soccer ball or
doing high kicks with it or dribbling
it up and down their driveway. And when
she wasn't busy showing off, she'd just
sit on the curb with the ball between her feet,
staring at our house.
所以，
请相信，
我那时候疯了似的想出去。但每次把目光投向窗户，我都看到
朱莉出现在她
家院子里。
她要么在练习头球，
< br>要么是在高抬腿跑，或是在车道上盘球。假如她没有在那里
卖弄，就是坐在路边，
把足球夹在两脚中间，望着我们家的房子。
My mom
didn't understand why it was so awful that “that
cute little girl” had held my
hand. She
thought I should make
friends
with her. “I thought
you
liked soccer, honey.
Why don't
y
ou go out there and kick the ball
around?”
妈妈完全不理解为什么被
< br>“那个可爱的小姑娘”拉了手，
是件糟透了的事。
她认为
我应该跟
朱莉交朋友。
“我以为你也喜欢足球呢，亲爱的。为什
么不出去在附近踢一会儿呢？”
Because
I
didn't want to be kicked
around, that's why. And although I couldn't say it
like that at the time, I still had
enough sense at age seven and a half to know that
Juli
Baker was dangerous.
因为
我可不想被人当球踢。
在七岁半这个年纪，
我也许嘴上说不出来
，
却已经本能地意识到，
朱莉?贝克是个危险的家伙。
Unavoidably dangerous, as it
turns out. The minute I walked into Mrs. Yelson's
second-grade
classroom, I
was dead meat. “Bryce!” Juli squeals.“You're
here
.” Then
she
charges across the room and tackles me.
而且她一旦出现，
就是个躲不掉的危险。
当我走进叶尔逊夫人
的二年级教室，
我就开始任人
宰割了。
“布莱斯！
”朱莉尖叫着，
“你也在这儿。
”接着，她冲过整间教室按住了我。
Mrs.
Yelson tried to explain this attack away as a
“welcome hug,” but man, that was
no
hug. That was a front-line, take-'em-down tackle.
And even though I shook her off,
it was
too late. I was branded for life. Everyone jeered,
“Where's your
girl
friend,
Bryce?” “Are you
married
yet, Bryce?”
And
then when she chased me around at
recess and tried to lay
kisses
on me, the whole
school
started singing, “Bryce and Juli
sitting in a tree, K-I-S-
SIN-
G…”
叶尔逊夫人想把这次
袭击解释成“用拥抱欢迎你”
，可是，那根本不是什么拥抱，明明是个
< br>真刀真枪、硬碰硬的抢断动作。虽然我把她挣开，但已经晚了，我就此打上了一生的烙印。
人人都嘲笑我，
“布莱斯，你的女朋友呢？”
“你结婚
了吗，布莱斯？”课间休息，当她追着
我、试图亲吻我的时候，全校学生都唱起了拉拉歌
，
“布莱斯和朱莉坐在树梢上，
K-I-S-S-I-N-G<
/p>
……（
kissing,
接吻）
”
My first year in
town was a disaster.
我搬到这里的第一年，简直是一场灾难。
Third grade wasn't much better. She was
still hot on my trail every time I turned
around. Same with fourth. But then in
fifth grade I took action.
三年级也好不到哪儿去，<
/p>
她坚持到处堵着我。
四年级也是一样。到了五年级，我终于决定反
击。
It started out
slow
—
one of those Nah-
that's-not-right ideas you get and forget. But
the more I played with the idea, the
more I thought, What better way to ward Juli off?
What better way to say to her, “Juli,
yo
u are
not
my
type”?
这个主意来得并不突然——有些想法，你明知道
它不对，
却总是盘旋在你脑海里。
不过，它
出现的次数越多，我就越觉得，要想摆脱朱莉、明确地告诉她“你不是我喜欢的类型”
，没
有更好的办法了。
And
so, my friend, I hatched the plan.
于是，我策划了一个方案。
I
asked Shelly Stalls out.
我和雪莉?斯道尔斯约会了。
To
fully appreciate the brilliance of this, you have
to understand that Juli
hates
Shelly
Stalls. She always
has, though it beats me why. Shelly's nice and
she's friendly and
she's got a lot of
hair. What's not to like? But Juli hated her, and
I was going to make
this little gem of
knowledge the solution to my problem.
要
知道，
朱莉和雪莉有不共戴天之仇，
所以你明白这个办法有多聪
明了吧。
朱莉一直看雪莉
不爽，我始终想不通这是为什么。雪莉
是个好姑娘，待人亲切，头发又长又密。她有什么缺
点呢？但朱莉就是不喜欢她，而我要
用这件事解决我的问题。
What I was
thinking was that Shelly would eat lunch at our
table and maybe walk
around a little
with me. That way, anytime Juli was around, all
I'd have to do was hang
a little closer
to Shelly and things would just naturally take
care of themselves. What
happened,
though, is that Shelly took things way
too seriously. She went around
telling
everybody
—
including Juli
—
that we were in love.
我本来指望，
雪莉只需要跟我一起吃个午饭，
也
许还可以散散步。
顺利的话，
只要朱莉出现，
< br>我要做的只不过是和雪莉表现得更亲近一点儿，
剩下的事情就会顺其自然地发生。
可惜，
现
实毕竟是现实，雪莉太认真了
。她跑去告诉每一个人——包括朱莉在内——说我们在恋爱。
In no time Juli and Shelly got into
some kind of catfight, and while Shelly was
recovering from that, my supposed
friend Garrett
—
who had
been totally behind this
plan
—
told her what I was up to.
He's always denied it, but I've since learned that
his
code of honor is easily corrupted
by weepy females.
结果，
朱莉和雪莉立刻
上演了一场女孩子之间的火拼。一架打完，
雪莉还在喘息的时候，我
所谓的挚友加利特——这个主意的幕后策划者——却把实情跟她交了底。他从来不肯承认，
< br>可我从此明白了他就是个重色轻友的家伙。
That
afternoon the principal tried cross-examining me,
but I wouldn't cop to anything. I
just
kept telling her that I was sorry and that I
really didn't understand what had
happened. Finally she let me go.
那天下午，
我受到了双重考验，
可我没那么容易被击
败。
我不断地向她道歉，说自己根本不
知道事情会闹成这样。最
后，她终于放过我了。
Shelly cried for
days and followed me around school sniffling and
making me feel like
a real jerk, which
was even worse than having Juli as a shadow.
雪莉哭了好几天，
在学校里追着我，
搞得我像个真
正的怪胎，
比身后有朱莉这个盯梢还要糟
糕。
< br>
Everything blew over at the one-
week mark, though, when Shelly officially dumped
me and started going out with Kyle
Larsen. Then Juli started up with the goo-goo eyes
again, and I was back to square one.
整出闹剧在一个星期后渐渐烟消云散，雪莉正式宣布抛弃我，开始和凯尔?拉森出双入对。<
/p>
朱莉又朝我抛开了媚眼，而我又回到了原点。
Now, in sixth grade things changed,
though whether they improved is hard to say. I
don't remember Juli actually chasing me
in the sixth grade. But I do remember her
sniffing me.
进入六年级，
状况又变本加厉了，
这很难用语言描述。
我记得六年级里朱
莉并没有再追着我，
而是变成嗅我。
Yes, my friend, I said sniffing.
没错，我说的就是嗅我。
And
you can blame that on our teacher, Mr. Mertins. He
stuck Juli to me like glue. Mr.
Mertins
has got some kind of doctorate in seating
arrangements or something,
because he
analyzed and scrutinized and practically baptized
the seats we had to sit
in. And of
course he decided to seat Juli right next to me. <
/p>
一切都得归罪于我的老师，
马丁斯先生。
是他促使朱莉黏上我的。
马丁斯先生对于安排座位
很有些心得，
他翻来覆去地研究我们应该各自坐在哪里，
然后顺理成章地把朱
莉安排在我的
邻座。
Juli
Baker is the kind of annoying person who makes a
point of letting you know she's
smart.
Her hand is the first one up; her answers are
usually complete dissertations;
her
projects are always turned in early and used as
weapons against the rest of the
class.
Teachers always have to hold
her
project up and say, “
This
is
what I'm looking
for, class. This is an
example of A-plus
work.” Add all the
extra credit she does to an
already
perfect score, and I swear she's never gotten less
than 120 percent in any
subject.
朱莉?贝克是那种一心要展示自己聪明才智的人，因此特别惹人讨厌。她总是第一个举手；
她回答起问题总是长篇大论；
她的作业永远交得最早，
永远被老师拿来打击其他人。
老师们
经常举着她的作业说：
“同学们，这才是我想要的。这是篇
A+
的模板。
”她做了这么多，生
怕自己还不完美，我敢说她门门
功课都没有低过
120
分。
But after Mr. Mertins stuck Juli right
next to me, her annoying knowledge of all
subjects far and wide came in handy.
See, suddenly Juli's perfect answers, written in
perfect cursive, were right across the
aisle, just an eye-shot away. You wouldn't
believe the number of answers I snagged
from her. I started getting A's and B's on
everything! It was great!
但是
，
自从马丁斯先生安排朱莉坐在我旁边，
她的各项知识就变得有
用了。
忽然间，朱莉把
课堂提问的完美答案，
< br>都写成一张潦草的小纸条，
转瞬之间经由过道转移到我手里。
这件事
我们不知道干过多少次。我开始门门功课不是得
A<
/p>
就是得
B
了！这太棒了！
But then Mr. Mertins pulled the
shift. He had some new idea for “optimizing
positional
latitude
and
longitude,” and when the dust finally settled,
I
was sitting right in front of
Juli Baker.
不过，
马丁
斯先生又开始换座位了。
他的
“优化定位学”
< br>又有了新的理论。
当一切尘埃落定，
我被安排坐在朱莉?
贝克的前座。
This is where the
sniffing comes in. That maniac started leaning
forward and
sniffing
my
hair. She'd edge her nose practically up to my
scalp and
sniff-sniff-sniff
.
她就是从这时开始嗅我的。
这个疯姑娘向前靠过来，
闻我的头发。
她把鼻子架在我的头皮上，
就那么嗅
——嗅——嗅。
I tried elbowing and
back-kicking. I tried scooting my chair way
forward or putting my
backpack between
me and the seat. Nothing helped. She'd just scoot
up, too, or lean
over a little farther
and
sniff-sniff-sniff
.
我试过用手肘撞她，
回身踢她。
我试过把椅子往前
拽，
把书包夹在后背和座位之间。
不管用。
她还是会凑上来，或者离得稍微远一点儿，然后嗅——嗅——嗅。
I finally asked Mr. Mertins to move me,
but he wouldn't do it. Something about not
wanting to disturb the delicate balance
of educational energies.
终于，
我忍不住去找马丁斯先生换座位，
但他说什么也不肯。
理由似乎
是“不希望打破教育
能量的微妙平衡”之类的话。
Whatever. I was stuck with her
sniffing. And since I couldn't see her perfectly
penned
answers anymore, my grades took
a dive. Especially in spelling.
不管怎么说，我
被她闻定了。并且，由于再也看不到她完美的小抄，我的成绩急转直下，尤
其是拼写课。
Then one time, during a
test, Juli's in the middle of sniffing my hair
when she notices
that I've blown a
spelling word. A lot of words. Suddenly the
sniffing stops and the
whispering
starts. At first I couldn't believe it. Juli Baker
cheating? But sure enough,
she was
spelling words for me, right in my ear.
有一次听写的时候，她正在闻我的头发，忽然发现我拼错了一个词。不止一个，是很多词。
忽然，她不再闻我，而是跟我说起悄悄话。起初我不敢相信自己的耳朵。朱莉?贝克作弊？
< br>没错，她真的帮我拼出了那些词，就在我耳边。
Juli'd always been sly about sniffing,
which really bugged me because no one ever
noticed her doing it, but she was just
as sly about giving me answers, which was okay
by me. The bad thing about it was that
I started counting on her spelling in my ear. I
mean, why study when you don't have to,
right? But after a while, taking all those
answers made me feel sort of indebted
to her. How can you tell someone to bug off or
quit sniffing you when you owe them?
It's, you know, wrong.
朱莉嗅我的时候确实很隐蔽，
从来没被人发现过，
这让我非常困扰。
不过她
帮我作弊的时候
也同样隐蔽，
关于这一点我倒是很满意。
不过它的坏处在于，
我开始依赖她在我耳边的提示。
< br>说实话，当你不用学习就能拿到好成绩，
干吗还要努力呢？不过，
她帮了我那么多次，
我总
有种受惠于她的内疚感。
当我还欠着人情的时候，
怎么能把对方赶走或是让她别再嗅我呢？<
/p>
你想想就知道，这是不对的。
So I
spent the sixth grade somewhere between
uncomfortable and unhappy, but I
kept
thinking that next year,
next
year, things would be different.
于是，在别扭与难受当中，我度过了整个六年级。我总是忍不住想，明年，只要到了明年，
事情就有转机了。
We'd be in
junior high
—
a big school
—
in different classes. It
would be a world with
too many people
to worry about ever seeing Juli Baker again.
明年我们将升入初中——那是个大学校——我们会进入不同班级。
那是个全
新的世界，
有太
多的人和事等着我去探索，再也不用担心遇到朱
莉?贝克。
It was finally,
finally
going to be over.
我们之间终于，终于要画上句号了。
Flipped
第二章：心动
The first day I met Bryce Loski, I
flipped. Honestly, one look at him and I became a
lunatic. It's his eyes. Something in
his eyes. They're blue, and framed in the
blackness
of his lashes, they're
dazzling. Absolutely breathtaking.
遇见布莱
斯?罗斯基的第一天，我就对他怦然心动。呃，好吧，实际上我对他完全是一见钟
情。是
因为他的眼睛。他的眼神里有某种东西。他有一双蓝色的眼睛，
在黑色睫毛的勾勒下
一闪一闪的，让我忍不住屏住了呼吸。
It's been over six years now, and I
learned long ago to hide my feelings, but oh,
those
first days. Those first years! I
thought I would die for wanting to be with him.
六年了，我早就学会隐藏自己的感觉了。
不过想想最初的日子，还是
让人哭笑不得。最初的
那几年，我想我大概是太执著地想跟他在一起了。
Two days before the second grade
is when it started, although the anticipation
began
weeks
before
—
ever since my mother
had told me that there was a family with a boy
my age moving into the new house right
across the street.
事情起源于二年级开学前两天，
虽然几周之前就有了先兆——妈妈告诉我，
有一家人要搬到
< br>对街的新房子，带着一个跟我同龄的男孩。
Soccer camp had ended, and I'd been so
bored because there was nobody,
absolutely nobody, in the neighborhood
to play with. Oh, there were kids, but every
one of them was older. That was dandy
for my brothers, but what it left
me
was home
alone.
足
球夏令营已经结束了，街坊邻居没有一个人陪我玩，真是无聊死了。附近也有几个孩子，
可他们全都是大孩子。对我哥哥们来说当然不错，可我却只好一个人孤零零地留在家里。
My mother was there, but she had better
things to do than kick a soccer ball around.
So she said, anyway. At the time I
didn't think there was anything better than
kicking a
soccer ball around,
especially not the likes of laundry or dishes or
vacuuming, but my
mother didn't agree.
And the danger of being home alone with her was
that she'd
recruit me to help her wash
or dust or vacuum, and she wouldn't tolerate the
dribbling
of a soccer ball around the
house as I moved from chore to chore.
妈
妈也在家，
不过她有的是比踢球更重要的事情要做。
反正她是这
么说的。
对于当年的我来
说，
没有什么
比踢球更好的了，
尤其是跟洗衣服、
刷盘子、
< br>拖地板比起来。
但我妈妈不同意。
单独跟妈妈待在家里就
有这个危险，
她会抓住我帮她洗衣服、
刷盘子、
拖地板。而且她绝对
不能容忍我在做家务的间隙踢两脚球。
To play it safe, I waited outside
for weeks, just in case the new neighbors moved in
early. Literally, it was
weeks
. I entertained myself
by playing soccer with our dog,
Champ.
Mostly he'd just block because a dog can't exactly
kick and score, but once in
a while
he'd dribble with his nose. The scent of a ball
must overwhelm a dog, though,
because
Champ would eventually try to chomp it, then lose
the ball to me.
保险起见，我在屋子外边晃荡了几个星期，生怕邻居
来早了。真的，足有几个星期。为了自
娱自乐，
我开始跟我的狗
“冠军”
踢球。
大多数时间它只能把球
扑住，
毕竟狗不是真的会
“踢”
球。但
它有时会用鼻子去捅。不过，
球的气味对狗来说一定是难以抵挡的诱惑，因为到最后
“冠军”总会试图把它吃下去，然后输球给我。
When the Loskis' moving van finally
arrived, everyone in my family was happy.
“Little
Julianna” was
finally going to have a playmate.
当罗斯基家的卡车终于到来的那一天，我家里每个人都欢欣鼓舞。
“小朱莉
安娜”终于有个
玩伴了。
My
mother, being the truly sensible adult that she
is, made me wait more than an
hour
before going over to meet him. “Give
them a chance to
stretch
their legs, Julianna,”
she said.
“They'll want some time to adjust.” She wouldn't
even
let me watch from the
yard. “I know you,
sweetheart.
Somehow that ball will wind
up in their yard and you'll
just
have
to go retrieve
it.”
作为一个极度敏感体贴的成年人，
< br>妈妈硬是让我在家里待了足足一个小时才出门见邻居。
“
给
他们留点时间伸个懒腰，朱莉安娜，
”她说，
“他们需要一些时间休整。
”她甚至不允许我从
院子里
往外看。
“我很了解你，宝贝。没准儿最后你的球不知怎么就掉到人家的院子里，而
你不得不过去捡回来。
”
So I
watched from the
window, and every few minutes I'd ask, “Now?” and
she'd say,
“Give
them a little while longer, would
you?”
所以，我只好趴在窗户旁边，隔几分钟就问“现在
能去了吗”
，她每次都回答：
“再给他们一
点儿时间，好吗？”
Then the phone
rang. And the minute I was sure she was good and
preoccupied, I
tugged on
her
sleeve and asked, “Now?”
这时电
话响了。当我能肯定她正心情愉悦并且全神贯注在电话上时，我就拽着她的袖子问：
“现
在好了吗？”
She nodded and
whispered, “Okay, but take it easy! I'll be over
there in a minute.”
她点点头，轻声说
：
“好吧，但是放松一点儿！我马上就过去。
”
I was too excited not to charge
across the street, but I did try very hard to be
civilized
once I got to the moving van.
I stood outside looking in for a record-breaking
length of
time, which was hard because
there he was! About halfway back! My new sure-to-
be
best friend, Bryce Loski.
我太兴奋了，
忍不住横穿了马路，<
/p>
但我努力在接近卡车的时候保持了礼貌。
我站在车外朝里
望去，破纪录地保持这个姿态挺长时间，但是这太有难度了，因为差不多等到一半的时候，
我看到了他！我坚信即将成为我新的最佳死党的人，布莱斯?罗斯基！
Bryce wasn't really doing much of
anything. He was more hanging back, watching his
father move boxes onto the lift-gate. I
remember feeling sorry for Mr. Loski because
he looked worn out, moving boxes all by
himself. I also remember that he and Bryce
were wearing matching turquoise polo
shirts, which I thought was really cute. Really
nice
.
其实布莱斯并没有做什么
。
他只是在那边晃荡着，
看他爸爸把箱子搬到汽车尾板上。
记得当
时我真的很同情罗斯基先生，
因为他
看上去疲惫不堪，
全靠他一个人在那里搬。
我还记得他
和布莱斯穿着相同款式的蓝绿色
Polo
衫（一
种休闲服装）
，非常可爱。真是太好看了。
When I couldn't stand it any longer, I
called, “Hi!” into the van, which made Bryce jump,
and then quick as a cricket, he started
pushing a box like he'd been working all along.
我不好意思再呆呆地站在那儿，
于是朝车里喊道：
< br>“你们好！
”
布莱斯惊得跳了起来，
然后像
只蟋蟀似的迅速开始推起一只箱子，假装他一直在工作。
I could tell from the way Bryce was
acting so guilty that he was supposed to be
moving boxes, but he was sick of it.
He'd probably been moving things for days! It was
easy to see that he needed a rest. He
needed some juice! Something. It was also
easy to see that Mr. Loski wasn't about
to let him quit. He was going to keep on
moving boxes around until he collapsed,
and by then Bryce might be dead. Dead
before he'd had the chance to move in!
布莱斯的内疚感让我猜到，
他本来应该乖乖地帮忙搬箱子，
但他却烦透了这活儿。
没准儿他
已经干了好
几天了！很明显，他需要休息。他需要喝点什么，比如果汁！同样很明显，罗斯
基先生不
可能放他走。
他大概预备干到自己累倒为止，
那时候布莱斯估计
已经累死了——他
大概都没机会走进新家！
The tragedy of it catapulted me into
the moving van. I had to help! I had to save him!
眼前的这一幕惨剧推动我走进了卡车。我必须去帮忙！我必须救他！
When I got to his side to help him
shove a box forward, the poor boy was so
exhausted that he just moved aside and
let me take over. Mr. Loski didn't want me to
help, but at least I saved Bryce. I'd
been in the moving van all of three minutes when
his dad sent him off to help his mother
unpack things inside the house.
我走到他身边，
准备帮他一起推箱子，这个可怜的孩子实在太累了，他只是让出位置，
< br>把活
儿交给了我。
罗斯基先生不想让我帮忙，
但我至少救出了布莱斯。
我在卡车里最多只待了三
分钟，他就被他爸爸发配去屋子里帮妈妈整理行李。
I
chased Bryce up the walkway, and that's when
everything changed. You see, I
caught
up to him and grabbed his arm, trying to stop him
so maybe we could play a
little before
he got trapped inside, and the next thing I know
he's holding my hand,
looking right
into my eyes.
我追着他上了人行道，从这一刻起，一切都变了。这么说
吧，我追上他，抓住他的胳膊，只
想在他被困在屋里之前截住他，
跟我玩一会儿。然后突然之间，他牵起我的手，直直地看着
我的眼睛。
My heart stopped. It just stopped
beating. And for the first time in my life, I had
that
feeling. You know, like the world
is moving all around you, all beneath you, all
inside
you, and you're
floating. Floating in midair. And the only thing
keeping you from
drifting away is the
other person's eyes.
毫无原因地，
我
心脏就那么漏跳了一拍。
我的人生中第一次有了那样的感觉。
就
像整个世界
在你四周，
从你身体由内而外地翻滚，而你飘浮在半
空中。唯一能绑住你不会飘走的，
就是
那双眼睛。
They're connected to yours by
some invisible physical force, and they hold you
fast
while the rest of the world swirls
and twirls and falls completely away.
你
们两个人的眼睛被一种看不见的力量连接在一起，
在外面的世界旋转、
< br>翻腾并彻底分崩离
析的时候，一把抓住了你。
I almost got my first kiss that day.
I'm sure of it. But then his mother came out the
front
door and he was so embarrassed
that his cheeks turned completely red, and the
next
thing you know he's hiding in the
bathroom.
那天，我差一点儿就得到了我的初吻。我十分肯定。但是紧接着他
妈妈就从屋子里走出来，
他尴尬的脸都红透了，接下来他就躲进了洗手间。
I was waiting for him to come out
when his sister, Lynetta, saw me in the hallway.
She
seemed big and mature to me, and
since she wanted to know what was going on, I
told her a little bit about it. I
shouldn't have, though, because she wiggled the
bathroom doorknob and started teasing
Bryce something fierce. “Hey, baby
brother!”
she called through the door.
“There's a hot
chick out here waiting
for you! Whatsa
matter? Afraid she's
got cooties?”
我在门
厅里等他出来，这时他姐姐利奈特发现了我。她看上去比我大，
更成熟一些。她问我
怎么回事，
我就简单地说了一点儿。
不过，
我不该告诉她的，
因为她摇晃着洗手间的门把手，
疯狂地嘲笑起布莱斯。
“嘿，小弟弟！
”她朝门的那
一边大声喊着，
“外面有个漂亮小姑娘在
等你！你怎么不敢出来
？怕她身上有虱子吗？”
It was so
embarrassing! I yanked on her arm and told her to
stop it, but she wouldn't,
so finally I
just left.
这太尴尬了！我拽着她的胳膊想让她停下来，但她不肯，最后我
只好走开了。
I found my mother
outside talking to Mrs. Loski. Mom had given her
the beautiful
lemon Bundt cake that was
supposed to be our dessert that night. The
powdered
sugar looked soft and white,
and the cake was still warm, sending sweet lemon
smells
into the air.
我看见妈妈正在
门口和罗斯基太太说话。
妈妈送给她一个漂亮的烘烤柠檬蛋糕，
那恐怕应该
是我家今晚的甜点。上面的糖霜看起来又白又软，蛋糕还热着，散发着甜甜的
柠檬香气。
My mouth was watering
just looking at it! But it was in Mrs. Loski's
hands, and I knew
there was no getting
it back. All I could do was try to eat up the
smells while I listened
to the two of
them discuss grocery stores and the weather
forecast.
看到它我的口水就流出来了！
但它现在属
于罗斯基太太，
再也回不来了。
我只能在她们讨论
杂货店和天气预报的时候狠狠地吞咽着空气中的香味。
After that Mom and I went home. It was
very strange. I hadn't gotten to play with Bryce
at all. All I knew was that his eyes
were a dizzying blue, that he had a sister who was
not to be trusted, and that he'd almost
kissed me.
然后我就和妈妈回家了。
这太奇怪了。
我根本没能和布莱斯一起玩。
我只记得他那双闪闪发
亮的蓝眼睛，他有个不靠谱的姐姐，以及，他差点亲了我。
I fell asleep that night thinking about
the kiss that might have been. What did a kiss
feel like, anyway? Somehow I knew it
wouldn't be like the one I got from Mom or Dad
at bedtime. The same species, maybe,
but a radically different beast, to be sure. Like
a wolf and a
whippet
—
only science would
put them on the same tree.
晚上，
我想着那个本该发生的初吻睡着了。
被人亲吻到底是什么感觉？不知怎的，
我知道它
一定和爸爸妈妈的晚安吻不一样。毫无疑问，虽然它们看起来差
不多，却有本质上的不同。
就像狼和狗——只有科学家才会认为它们同属一个科目。
Looking back on the second
grade, I like to think it was at least partly
scientific
curiosity that made me chase
after that kiss, but to be honest, it was probably
more
those blue eyes. All through the
second and third grades I couldn't seem to stop
myself from following him, from sitting
by him, from just wanting to be near him.
< br>回首二年级，我总是希望自己至少有一部分是出于对科学的好奇，才如此执著于我的初吻。
但诚实地说，恐怕更重要的原因是那双蓝眼睛。从那一刻起，
直到三年级结束，
我无法自拔
地追随着他，坐在他旁边，希望自己至少能离他近一点儿。
< br>
By the fourth grade I'd learned to
control myself. The sight of
him
—
the thought of
him
—
still sent my
heart humming, but my legs didn't actually chase
after him anymore.
I just watched and
thought and dreamed.
到了四年级，
我
学会控制自己。
看到他——想到他——仍然让我的心怦怦直跳，
但我已经不
再真的追着他跑。我只是在那里望着，想着，盼望着。
Then in the fifth grade Shelly Stalls
came into the picture. Shelly Stalls is a ninny. A
whiny, gossipy, backstabbing ninny who
says one thing to one person and the
opposite to another. Now that we're in
junior high, she's the undisputed diva
of drama, but even back in elementary
school she knew how to put on a performance.
Especially when it came to P.E. I never
once saw her run laps or do calisthenics.
Instead, she would go into her
“delicate” act, claiming her body would
absolutely
collapse from the strain if
she ran or jumped or stretched.
五年级的时候，
忽然冒出了一个雪莉?斯道尔斯。她是个傻瓜，一个爱发牢骚、爱传八卦、
爱背后中伤别
人的家伙。
她总是把一件事对一个人说成黑的，
对另一个人说成
是白的。
现在
我们都升上了初中，
她是
个无可争议的演技派天后，
就算回到小学时代，
她也知道该怎么
装
样子。尤其是体育课上。我既没见过她跑圈也没见过她做操。相反，她会奉上一出“完
美”
的表演，声明她的身体在跑步、跳高和伸展运动的折磨下，一定会晕倒。
It worked. Every year. She'd
bring in some note and be sure to swoon a little
for the
teacher the first few days of
the year, after which she'd be excused from
anything that
required muscles. She
never even put up her own chair at the end of the
day. The
only muscles she exercised
regularly were the ones around her mouth, and
those she
worked out nonstop. If there
was an Olympic contest for talking, Shelly Stalls
would
sweep the event. Well, she'd at
least win the gold and
silver
—
one medal for each
side of her mouth.
这很管用。
每年都很管用。她带来医生的证明，并在学年开始的那几天小小地晕倒几次，然
< br>后逃过一年当中任何需要力量的事情。
甚至放学的时候都不搬自己的椅子。
唯一经常得到锻
炼的肌肉是她的嘴唇，
而且动
起来几乎一刻不停。
假如奥运会增加一个比赛说话的项目，
雪<
/p>
莉?斯道尔斯一定能横扫一切奖项。好吧，至少是金牌和银牌——上下嘴唇各得一项。
What bugged me about it was
not the fact that she got out of
P.E.
—
who'd want her on
their team, anyway? What bugged me
about it was that anyone who bothered to look
would know that it wasn't asthma or
weak ankles or her being
“delicate”
that was
stopping her. It was her hair.
She had mountains of it, twisted this way or that,
clipped
or beaded, braided or swirled.
Her ponytails rivaled the ones on carousel horses.
And
on the days she let it all hang
down, she'd sort of shimmy and cuddle inside it
like it
was a blanket, so that
practically all you saw of her face was her nose.
其实，
我烦恼的倒不是她不用上体育课这件事——说实话，
又有谁愿意跟雪莉分在一组呢？
我烦恼的是，
只要谁有心，
就一定能看出妨碍她上课的根本不是哮喘、
脚踝
有伤或是她表现
出的那种“娇弱”
，而是她的头发。她有那么多
头发，一会儿卷成这样一会儿卷成那样，一
会儿剪短一会儿缀上珠花，
< br>一会儿编辫子一会儿盘成发髻。
她的马尾辫就跟旋转木马的尾巴
< br>差不多。
那段时间她总是披散着头发，
把它们当成毯子似
的把自己的脑袋裹在里面，
所以别
人只能看到她的鼻子。
Good luck playing four-square
with a blanket over your head.
在脑袋上裹着一床毯子玩抛球游戏？还是算了吧。
My solution to Shelly Stalls was to
ignore her, which worked just dandy until about
halfway through the fifth grade when I
saw her holding hands with Bryce.
我对待雪莉
?斯道尔斯的方式是无视她，这一直都很奏效，直到五年级的时候我看到她握着
布莱斯的
手。
My
Bryce. The
one who was still embarrassed over holding my hand
two days before
the second grade. The
one who was still too shy to say much more than
hello to me.
那是我的布莱斯，
是那个始终为了
二年级开学前两天握了我的手而害羞的家伙。
是那个因为
太害羞
，除了“你好”以外不敢跟我多说一句话的家伙。
The
one who was still walking around with my first
kiss.
是那个一直还欠我一个初吻的家伙。
How could Shelly have wormed her hand
into his? That pushy little princess had no
business hanging on to him like that! <
/p>
雪莉怎么敢把她的手塞进他的手心里？这个爱出风头的娇气小公主根本没理由和他混在一<
/p>
起！
Bryce looked
over his shoulder from time to time as they walked
along, and he was
looking at
me
. My first thought was
that he was telling me he was sorry. Then it
dawned on me
—
he
needed my help. Absolutely, that's what it had to
be!
当他们经过的时候，
布莱斯时不时小心翼翼地回头看，
他看的是我。我首先想到的是，
他是
在向我表示抱歉。然后我忽
然领悟了——他是想让我帮忙。没错，只能是这个意思！
Shelly Stalls was too delicate to shake
off, too swirly to be pushed away. She'd
unravel and start sniffling and oh, how
embarrassing that would be for him! No, this
wasn't a job a boy could do gracefully.
雪莉?斯道尔斯太娇弱了，让布莱斯不好意思甩掉她，而且她太缠人了，让他挣脱不掉。
她
一定会心碎的，
然后开始抽搐，
这对
布莱斯来说得有多尴尬！
这件事男生做起来姿态绝对不
好看。<
/p>
This was a job for a girl.
只能由女生来代为完成。
I
didn't even bother checking around for other
candidates
—
I had her off of
him in two
seconds flat. Bryce ran away
the minute he was free, but not Shelly. Oh, no-no-
no!
She came at me, scratching and
pulling and twisting anything she could get her
hands
on, telling me that Bryce was
hers
and there was no way
she was letting him go.
我根本没有考虑过是否还有其他人
选——两秒钟之内我就把她从他身边拽开。
一挣开，
布莱
斯立刻跑掉了，但是雪莉没跑。哦，不——不——不！她冲我过来了，对着她能够到的地方
又抓又扯又拧，说布莱斯是属于她的，她绝不放手。
How delicate.
真是太娇弱了。
I was
hoping for herds of teachers to appear so they
could see the real Shelly Stalls in
action, but it was too late by the time
anyone arrived on the scene. I had Fluffy in a
headlock and her arm twisted back in a
hammerlock, and no amount of her squawking
or scratching was going to get me to
un
lock her until a teacher
arrived.
我满心希望这时候冒出一大群老师，看看真实生活中的雪莉?斯道尔
斯到底是什么样子，可
惜等人们来到这里已经太晚了。我蓬头垢面地被她夹住脑袋，而她
的双手被我反剪到背后，
不管她怎样尖叫、抓人，都不可能让我在老师到达之前放开她。
In the end,
Shelly went home early with a bad case of mussed-
up hair, while I told my
side of things
to the principal. Mrs. Shultz is a sturdy lady who
probably secretly
appreciates the value
of a swift kick well placed, and although she told
me that it
would be better if I let
other people work out their own dilemmas, she
definitely
understood about Shelly
Stalls and her hair and told me she was glad I'd
had the
self-control to do nothing more
than restrain her.
最后，
雪莉带着一头
乱发提前回家了，
而我则留下跟校长复述情况。
舒尔茨夫人是个
健硕的
女人，
也许私下里会欣赏一记正确的飞踢，
但是她告诉我最好还是让别人去解决他们自己的
困境，她完全明白雪莉?斯道
尔斯和她的头发是怎么回事，还说她很高兴看到我能够控制住
自己，没有做出除了制止她
以外更离谱的事。
Shelly was back the
next day with a head full of braids. And of course
she got
everybody whispering about me,
but I just ignored them. The facts spoke for
themselves. Bryce didn't go anywhere
near her for the rest of the year.
第二天，
雪莉带着满头的辫子回来了。当然，
她成功地让所有人都在私下议论我，
但我根本
不理他们。事实是不言自明的。在这个学年剩下的时间里，布莱斯从来
不走近她。
That's not to say that
Bryce held
my
hand after
that, but he did start being a little
friendlier to me. Especially in the
sixth grade, after Mr. Mertins sat us right next
to
each other in the third row back.
这倒不是说布莱斯从此跟我走在一起了，
但他开始变得友善一些。<
/p>
尤其是六年级马丁斯先生
把我们安排在倒数第三排成了同桌之后。
Sitting next to Bryce was
nice.
He
was nice. He'd say
Hi, Juli to me every morning,
and once
in a while I'd catch him looking my way. He'd
always blush and go back to
his own
work, and I couldn't help but smile. He was so
shy. And so cute!
坐在布莱斯旁边感觉很好。每天早上他对我说“
朱莉，你好”
，偶尔我会发现他在看我。他
总会脸红，转回去做
他的事，然后我就不由自主地笑了。他太害羞了。而且那么可爱！
We talked to each other more, too.
Especially after Mr. Mertins moved me behind him.
Mr. Mertins had a detention policy
about spelling, where if you missed more than
seven out of twenty-five words, you had
to spend lunch inside with him, writing your
words over and over and over again.
我们聊天的机会也更多了。
尤其是马丁斯先生安排我坐在他后面以后。
马丁斯先生会让拼写
不合格的人留堂，比如
25
个词里写错
7
个的人午饭时分
必须跟着他，一遍又一遍地抄写自己
的名字。
The pressure of detention made Bryce
panic. And even though it bothered my
conscience, I'd lean in and whisper
answers to him, hoping that maybe
I
could spend
lunch with him
instead. His hair smelled like watermelon, and his
earlobes had fuzz.
Soft, blond fuzz.
And I wondered about that. How does a boy with
such black hair
wind up with blond ear
fuzz? What's it doing there, anyway? I checked my
own
ear-lobes in the mirror but
couldn't find much of anything on them, and I
didn't spot
any on other people's
either.
留堂的阴影把布莱斯变成了惊弓之鸟。
虽然良心上有点过意不去，
我还是会靠向他悄悄说
< br>出答案，
希望自己也许有机会和他一起吃午饭。
他的头发
闻起来有股西瓜味，
耳垂上长着绒
毛。
柔软的金色绒毛。
我十分好奇，
为什么一个长着黑头发的男孩耳
朵上的绒毛却是金色的？
它们为什么会长在那里？我在镜子里研究自己的耳垂，
但上面什么也没有，
我注意到没有一
个人像他这
样。
I thought about asking
Mr. Mertins about earlobe fuzz when we were
discussing
evolution in science, but I
didn't. Instead, I spent the year whispering
spelling words,
sniffing watermelon,
and wondering if I was ever going to get my kiss.
我想过在马丁斯先生跟我们讨论科学史的时候，提出耳垂绒毛的问题，但我没问过。相反
，
整整一年时间我都趴在他耳边拼着单词，闻着西瓜味道，想着自己是不是和初吻无缘了
。
Buddy, Beware!
第三章：哥们儿，小心点！
Seventh grade brought changes, all
right, but the biggest one didn't happen at school
—
it happened at home.
Granddad Duncan came to live with us.
好
吧，
七年级是充满变化的一年，但是最大的变化并非发生在学校，而是在家里。
邓肯外公
搬来和我们一起住了。
At first it was kind of weird because
none of us really knew him. Except for Mom, of
course. And even though she's spent the
past year and a half trying to convince us
he's a great guy, from what I can tell,
the thing he likes to do best is stare out the
front-room window. There's not much to
see out there except the Bakers' front yard,
but you can find him there day or
night, sitting in the big easy chair they moved in
with
him, staring out the window.
最开始的时候是有点奇怪，因为我们中间没有谁真正认识他。
当然，
除了妈妈。
虽然她用
了一年半的
时间告诉我们他是个多么伟大的人，
但在我看来，
他最喜欢做的
事就是从临街的
窗户朝外望。除了贝克家的前院，那里没什么好看的，但他不管白天黑夜
都待在那儿，
坐在
和他一起搬进家门的大号安乐椅上，望着窗外
。
Okay, so he also reads Tom
Clancy novels and the newspapers and does
crossword
puzzles and tracks his
stocks, but those things are all distractions.
Given no one to
justify it to, the man
would stare out the window until he fell asleep.
Not that there's
anything wrong with
that. It just
seems so …
boring.
好吧，他也读汤姆?克兰西的惊悚小说，看报
纸，做填字游戏，看看股票行情，但这些不过
是对他看街景这件事的插花。
没人提出反对意见，
这人总是看着窗外直到睡着为止。
虽然也
说不上有什么不对，但这样真的……挺无聊的。
Mom says he stares like that because he
misses Grandma, but that's not something
Granddad had ever discussed with me. As
a matter of fact, he never discussed much
of anything with me until a few months
ago when he read about Juli in the newspaper.
妈妈说，他眺望窗外是因为想念外婆，但外公是不会和我讨论这件事的。实际上，
他从来不
跟我讨论什么事，直到几个月前，他在报纸上看到了朱莉。
Now, Juli Baker did not wind up
on the front page of the
Mayfield Times
for being an
eighthgrade
Einstein, like you might suspect. No, my friend,
she got front-page
coverage because she
refused to climb out of a sycamore tree.
不像你想的那样，朱莉?贝克并不是作为八年级的未来的爱因斯坦登上了《梅菲尔德时报》
< br>头版。不，伙计，她能登上头版是因为，她不愿意从一棵无花果树上下来。
Not that I could tell a sycamore from a
maple or a
birch
for that
matter, but Juli, of
course, knew what
kind of tree it was and passed that knowledge
along to every
creature in her wake.
虽然我分不清无花果树、
枫树和桦树，
但朱
莉显然知道那是什么树，
并且守在那里把这个常
识分享给她遇见
的每一个人。
So this tree, this
sycamore
tree, was up the
hill on a vacant lot on Collier Street, and it
was massive. Massive and ugly. It was
twisted and gnarled and bent, and I kept
expecting the thing to blow over in the
wind.
所以，这棵树，这棵无花果树，长在山坡上克里尔街的一片空地里，很大很
大。而且又大又
丑。它的树干扭曲，长满节疤，弯弯曲曲，我总觉得一阵风就能把它吹倒
。
One day last year I'd
finally had enough of her yakking about that
stupid tree. I came
right out and told
her that it was not a magnificent sycamore, it
was, in reality, the
ugliest tree known
to man. And you know what she said? She said I was
visually
challenged. Visually
challenged! This from the girl who lives in a
house that's the
scourge of the
neighborhood. They've got bushes growing over
windows, weeds
sticking out all over
the place, and a barnyard's worth of animals
running wild. I'm
talking dogs, cats,
chickens, even snakes. I swear to God, her
brothers have a boa
constrictor in
their room. They dragged me in there when I was
about ten and made
me watch it eat a
rat. A live, beady-eyed rat. They held that rodent
up by its tail and
gulp,
the
boa swallowed it whole. That snake gave me
nightmares for a month.
去年的某一天，
< br>我终于听够了她关于这棵蠢树的唠叨。
我径直走到她面前，
告诉她那棵无花
果树一点儿也不美，
实际上，
那是有史以来最难看的一棵树。
你猜她怎么回答？她说我的眼
< br>睛大概有毛病。
眼睛有毛病！
这就是那个邻里环境破坏之
王家的姑娘说出来的话。
她家的灌
木长得比窗户还高，
到处杂草丛生，
谷仓前面的空场快变成野生动物园了。
< br>我是说，她家有
狗、猫、鸡，甚至养了几条蛇。对天发誓，她哥哥在卧室里养了条
大王蟒蛇。十岁那年，他
们把我拽进屋子，
强迫我看着那条大蟒
蛇吞下一只耗子。
一只活蹦乱跳的、
眼睛滴溜溜转的
耗子。
他们提着那只啮齿动物的尾巴，
大蟒一下子
就整只吞下去了。
这条蛇让我做了一个月
的噩梦。
Anyway, normally I wouldn't care
about someone's yard, but the Bakers' mess
bugged my dad big-time, and he
channeled his frustration into
our
yard. He said it
was our
neighborly duty to show them what a yard's
supposed to look like.
不管怎么说，
我平时很少关心别人家的院子，
但贝克家一团混乱的院子是我爸爸最大的心病，
而他则把这种挫折的情绪倾泻在我家院子里。
他说，
< br>我们有义务让邻居看看一个正常的院子
该有的模样。
So while Mike and Matt are busy
plumping up their boa, I'm having to mow and edge
our yard, then sweep the walkways and
gutter,
which is going a
little overboard, if you
ask me.
所以，
当麦克和马特忙于投喂蟒蛇的时候，我只好忙着给院子除草、修建草坪
，打扫车道和
水沟，而且依我看，我好像还真干得越来越投入了。
And you'd think Juli's
dad
—
who's a big, strong,
bricklaying dude
—
would fix
the place
up, but no. According to my
mom, he spends all his free time painting. His
landscapes
don't seem like anything
special to me, but judging by his price tags, he
thinks quite a
lot of them. We see them
every year at the Mayfield County Fair, and my
parents
always say the same thing: “The
world
would have more beauty in it if
he'd fix up the
yard
instead.”
如果你以为朱莉的爸爸——一位又高又壮
的砖瓦工——会打理院子，
那就错了。
据我妈妈透
露，
他把全部业余时间都用来画画了。
他的风景画对
我来说没什么特别的，
但是从价签上看，
他很看重这些画。每年
梅菲尔德县交易会上都能看到它们，我爸妈从来只说一句话：
“如果
他肯把花在画画上的时间拿来打理院子，世界会变得更美好。
”
Mom and Juli's mom do talk some. I
think my mom feels sorry for Mrs. Baker
—
she
says she
married a dreamer, and because of that, one of the
two of them will always
be unhappy.
我妈妈和朱莉的妈妈有时聊天。
我猜
想妈妈比较同情贝克夫人——她说她嫁了一个梦想家，
所以，他们俩当中总有一个人过得
不快乐。
Whatever. Maybe Juli's
aesthetic sensibilities have been permanently
screwed up by
her father and none of
this is her fault, but Juli has always thought
that that sycamore
tree was God's gift
to our little corner of the universe.
那
又怎样。
也许朱莉对美的敏感正是遗传自她爸爸，
并不是她的错
。
但朱莉总觉得那棵无花
果树是上帝送给我们宇宙中这个小小角
落的一份礼物。
Back in the third
and fourth grades she used to clown around with
her brothers in the
branches or peel
big chunks of bark off so they could slide down
the crook in its trunk.
It seemed like
they were playing in it whenever my mom took us
somewhere in the car.
Juli'd be
swinging from the branches, ready to fall and
break every bone in her body,
while we
were waiting at the stoplight, and my mom would
shake her head and say,
“Don't
you ever climb that
tree like that, do you hear me, Bryce? I never
want to see
you doing that! You either,
Lynetta. That is mu
ch too
dangerous.”
三年级和四年级的时候，
她经常和哥哥们一起坐在树杈上，
或者剥下大块的树皮以便沿着树
干滑到杈弯。
无论什么时候妈妈开车带我们出门去，
总能看见他们在那里玩。
我们等红灯的
时候，
朱莉就在树杈间荡来荡去，
总是快要摔下来跌断每一根骨头的样子，
于是妈妈就会摇
着头说：
“你永远也不许像这个
样子爬树，听见没有，布莱斯？我永远也不想看到你这样！
你也是，利奈特。实在太危险
了！
”
My sister
would roll her eyes and say, “As
if,
” while I'd
sl
ump beneath the window and
pray for the light to change before
Juli squealed my name for the world to hear.
姐姐一般会翻个白眼，说“废话”
；而我则把头躲到车窗下面，祈祷在朱莉
还没把我的名字
喊得震天响之前赶紧变灯。
I did try to climb it once in the fifth
grade. It was the day after Juli had rescued my
kite
from its mutant toy-eating
foliage. She climbed
miles
up to get my kite, and when she
came down, she was actually very cool
about it. She didn't hold my kite hostage and
stick her lips out like I was afraid
she might. She just handed it over and then backed
away.
我确实试着爬过那棵树，
只有一次，
在五年级。在那之前一天，朱莉帮我把风筝从树上那些
会“吃玩具的叶子”里取了下来。为了取我的风筝，她爬到特别高的地方，下来之后一脸淡
定。她没有扣下风筝作为“人质”
，也没像我担心的那样撅起嘴巴不理我。她只是把
风筝递
给我，然后转身走了。
I
was relieved, but I also felt like a weenie. When
I'd seen where my kite was trapped,
I
was sure it was a goner. Not Juli. She scrambled
up and got it down in no time. Man,
it
was embarrassing.
我松了口气，
同时觉得
自己太逊了。
当时我看到风筝挂住的位置，
马上认定它已经回不
来了。
但朱莉不这么想。她二话不说就爬上树帮我拿下来。嘿，这真让人尴尬。
So I made a mental picture of
how high she'd climbed, and the next day I set off
to
outdo her by at least two branches.
I made it past the crook, up a few limbs, and then
—
just to see how I was
doing
—
I looked down.
我默默地计算了一下她到底爬了多高，然后第二天计划至少爬到比她高出两根树枝的位置。
我攀上了第一个大的杈弯，
向上爬了两三根枝杈，
然后——只是想看看自己进展如何——我
向下看去。
Mis-take! It felt like I was on top of
the Empire State Building without a bungee. I
tried
looking up to where my kite had
been, but it was hopeless. I was indeed a
tree-climbing weenie.
大——错——特——错！
我仿佛站在帝国大厦的顶层，
没系安全带。
我试着抬头寻找昨天风
筝挂住的位置，但是根
本看不见。我是个不折不扣的爬树白痴。
Then
junior high started and my dream of a Juli-free
existence shattered. I had to take
the
bus, and you-know-who did, too. There were about
eight kids altogether at our bus
stop,
which created a buffer zone, but it was no comfort
zone.
上了初中，
我以为朱莉会从此消失的梦想也破灭了
。
我需要坐校车，
而那个名字也不能提的
人也是。我们这一站大概有八个学生一起等车，总是吵吵嚷嚷的，
算是缓冲地带，
但绝不是
个安全地带。
Juli always tried to stand beside me,
or talk to me, or in some other way mortify me.
朱莉总想站在我身边，跟我说话，或者用别的什么方法来折磨我。
And then she started climbing. The girl
is in the seventh grade, and she's climbing a
tree
—
way, way up
in a tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell
down at us that
the bus is five! four!
three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from
a tree
—
what
every kid in junior high feels like
hearing first thing in the morning.
最后她
选择了爬树。
一个七年级的女孩，
开始爬树——爬得高高的。<
/p>
为什么？因为这样她就
能居高临下地冲我们喊：
< br>校车离这儿还有五……四……三条街！
一个挂在树上的流水账式交
通岗哨！每个初中同学每天早上听到的第一句话就是她说的。
She tried to get me to come up there
with her, too. “Bryce, come on! You won't believe
the colors! It's absolutely
magnificent! Bryce, you've got to
come
up here!”
她想叫我爬上去跟她待在一起，
“布莱斯，上来呀！你绝对无法想象这儿的景色有多美！太
神奇了！布莱
斯，你一定要上来看看！
”
Yeah, I could just hear it: “Bryce and
Juli sitting in a tree…” Was I ever going to leave
the second grade behind?
是啊，
我都能想象出来：
“布莱斯和朱莉坐在树上……”
二年级的往事，
难道还阴魂不散吗？
One morning I was specifically
not
looking up when out of
nowhere she swings down
from a branch
and practically knocks me over. Heart attack!
一天早晨，
我刻意地没有向树上看去，她忽然从树杈上从天而降，
生生地撞到了我。心脏病
都要犯了！
I dropped my backpack and wrenched my
neck, and that did it. I refused to wait under
that tree with that maniac monkey on
the loose anymore. I started leaving the house
at the very last minute. I made up my
own waiting spot, and when I'd see the bus pull
up, I'd truck up the hill and get on
board.
我的背包掉在地上，
还扭到了脖子，
都赖她。
我再也不愿意跟这只从精神病院跑出来的发疯
的猴子一起在树下等车了。
从此以后，
我总是拖到最后一分
钟才从家里出来。
我设置了属于
自己的校车站，看到校车快到了
，就冲到山坡上去登车。
No Juli, no
problem.
没有朱莉，就没有麻烦。
And that, my friend, took care of the
rest of seventh grade and almost all of eighth,
too,
until one day a few months ago.
That's when I heard a commotion up the hill and
could see some big trucks parked up on
Collier Street where the bus pulls in. There
were some men shouting stuff up at
Juli, who was, of course, five stories up in the
tree.
这种状况贯穿了七年级和八年级的大多数时间，<
/p>
一直延续到几个月前的一天。
那天，
我听
到
山坡上一阵骚动，
几辆卡车停在克里尔街平时的校车站。
一些人仰着头冲朱莉喊着什么，
而
她当然是
在五层楼高的树顶上。
All the other
kids started to gather under the tree, too, and I
could hear them telling
her she had to
come down. She was fine
—
that was obvious to anyone with a pair of
ears
—
but I
couldn't figure out what they were all arguing
about.
孩子们也慢慢朝树下聚拢过来，
我听见他们说她
必须从树上下来。
她很好——对于任何一个
耳朵没有问题的人来
说都听得出来——但我不明白他们在吵什么。
I
trucked up the hill, and as I got closer and saw
what the men were holding, I figured
out in a hurry what was making Juli
refuse to come out of the tree.
我冲上山坡，<
/p>
当我离得近一点儿、
看清那些人手里拿的是什么，
我立刻明白了为什么朱莉拒
绝从树上下来。
Chain saws.
那是一台链锯。
Don't get
me wrong here, okay? The tree was an ugly mutant
tangle of gnarly ranches.
The girl
arguing with those men was Juli
—
the world's peskiest,
bossiest, most
know-it-all female. But
all of a sudden my stomach completely bailed on
me. Juli loved
that tree. Stupid as it
was, she loved that tree, and cutting it down
would be like cutting
out her heart.
千万别误解。
这棵树长满了多瘤的树脂，
纠
结成难看的一团。
和那些人吵架的人是朱莉——
全世界最麻烦、
最霸道、
永远全知全能的女人。但是一瞬间我的胃就抽搐起来。
朱莉爱这棵
树。虽然听起来很蠢，可她就是爱这棵树，砍树就等于在她的心里砍上一刀。
Everyone tried to talk her
down. Even me. But she said she wasn't coming
down, not
ever, and then she tried to
talk us
up
. “Bryce, please!
Co
me up here with me. They
won't cut it down if we're all up
here!”
每个人都劝她下来，包括我在内。但她说绝不下
树，永远也不，然后她试图说服我们。
“布
莱斯，求你了！上来
跟我一起。如果我们在这儿，他们就不敢砍树了！
”
For a second I considered it. But then
the bus arrived and I talked myself out of it. It
wasn't my tree, and even though she
acted like it was, it wasn't Juli's, either.
我思考了一秒钟。但这时校车来了，
我告诉自己不要卷进去。
这不是我的树，而这也不是朱
莉的树，虽然她表现得好像是她的。
We boarded the bus and left her
behind, but school was pretty much a waste. I
couldn't seem to stop thinking about
Juli. Was she still up in the tree? Were they
going
to arrest her?
我们登上校车，
把她一个人留在那里，但这些都没有用。
我忍不住一直在想朱莉
。
她还在树
顶上吗？他们会不会把她抓起来？
< br>
When the bus dropped us off that
afternoon, Juli was gone and so was half the tree.
The top branches, the place my kite had
been stuck, her favorite perch
—
they were
all
gone.
放学后，当校车把我们送回来的时候，朱莉已经不见了，
< br>一起消失的还有上半棵树。顶部的
树枝，我的风筝曾经卡住的地方，她最最心爱的
栖身之地——统统消失了。
We watched them
work for a little while, the chain saws gunning at
full throttle,
smoking as they chewed
through wood. The tree looked lopsided and naked,
and
after a few minutes I had to get
out of there. It was like watching someone
dismember
a body, and for the first
time in ages, I felt like crying.
Crying
. Over a stupid tree
that I
hated.
我们在那儿看了一会儿，
看链锯如何开足马力，
冒着浓烟，
就像在把木
头嚼一嚼吞下去似的。
大树看起来摇摇欲坠，毫无还手之力，没过多久，
我就非得离开那里不可。
这活像是在观察
一个分尸现场
，
有生以来，我第一次有种想要尖叫的感觉。为了一棵愚蠢的、我痛恨已久的
树而尖叫。
I went home and
tried to shake it off, but I kept wondering,
Should I have gone up the
tree with
her? Would it have done any good?
回到家里，
我试着忘掉这一切，
但总是不由自主地想到，
< br>我是不是应该爬到树上，
和她在一
起？那样会有用吗？<
/p>
I thought about calling Juli
to tell her I was sorry they'd cut it down, but I
didn't. It
would've been too, I don't
know, weird.
我想给朱莉打个电话，
说我很抱歉
他们还是把树砍掉了，
但始终没有打。
我不知道这是不是
会显得，呃，很奇怪。
She
didn't show at the bus stop the next morning and
didn't ride the bus home that
afternoon, either.
第二天早上，她没有出现在校车站，下午也没有坐校车回家。
Then that night, right before dinner,
my grandfather summoned me into the front room.
He didn't call to me as I was walking
by
—
that would have
bordered on friendliness.
What he did
was talk to my mother, who talked to
me. “I don't know
what it's
about,
honey,” she said. “Maybe he's
just
ready to get to know
you a little better.”
那天晚上，<
/p>
快要吃饭之前，
外公把我召唤到前厅。
他
并没有在我经过那里的时候叫住我——
那样就显得我们已经是朋友了。他只是告诉了我妈
妈，然后妈妈再转告给我。
“我不知道他
想干什么，亲爱的，<
/p>
”她说，
“也许他准备更进一步地了解你。
”
Great. The man's had a
year and a half to get acquainted, and he chooses
now to get
to know me. But I couldn't
exactly blow him off.
很好。他已经认识我超过一年半了，却
选择眼下这个时候来了解我。可我又不敢放他鸽子。
My
grandfather's a big man with a meaty nose and
greased-back salt-and-pepper hair.
He
lives in house slippers and a sports coat, and
I've never seen a whisker on him.
They
grow, but he shaves them off like three times a
day. It's a real recreational
activity
for him.
我的外公是个高大的人，
长着一只肉乎乎的
鼻子，
灰白的头发向后梳成背头。
他常年穿着室
内拖鞋和运动衫，我从来没见他留过胡须。胡子确实在长，但他几乎一天要刮三遍。对他来
说，这是一种休闲娱乐活动。
Besides
his meaty nose, he's also got big meaty hands. I
suppose you'd notice his
hands
regardless, but what makes you realize just how
beefy they are is his wedding
ring.
That thing's never going to come off, and even
though my mother says that's
how it
should be, I think he ought to get it cut off.
Another few pounds and that ring's
going to amputate his finger.
除了一只肉肉的鼻子，
他的手也又大
又厚。
我想人们大概不会太在意别人的手，
但那只结
婚戒指会让你意识到他的手有多结实。
它从来没有被摘下来过，
虽然妈妈说婚戒本来就不该
摘下来，
但我想恐怕只
有切断它才能从手上拿下来。
如果外公再胖上几磅，
戒指就会勒
断他
的手指。
When I
went in to see him, those big hands of his were
woven together, resting on the
newspaper in his lap. I said,
“Granddad? You wanted to
see
me?”
当我见到他的时候，那双手握在一起，盖在他膝头的
报纸上。我说：
“外公，你找我？”
“Have a seat, son.”
“坐下，我的孩子。
”
Son? Half the time he didn't seem to
know who I was, and now su
ddenly I was
“son”?
I sat in the chair opposite him
and waited.
孩子？大部分时间他根本就像不认识我一样，
而现在我却忽然变成了他的
“孩子”
？我在对
面的椅子上坐下，等着他说话。
“Tell
me about your friend Juli Baker.”
“跟我说说你的朋友朱莉?贝克吧。
”
“
Juli?
She's not
exactly my friend … !”
“朱莉？她不算是我的朋友……”
“Why
is
that?” he
asked. Calmly. Like he had prior
knowledge.
“为什么？”他冷静地问，好像早就知道我会这么说。
I started to justify it, then stopped
myself and asked, “Why do you want to
know?”
我开始辩解，然后停下来：
“你为什么要问这个？”
He opened the
paper and pressed down the crease, and that's when
I realized that
Juli Baker had made the
front page of the
Mayfield
Times
.
他翻开报纸，
抚平上面
的折痕，
我这才发现，
朱莉?贝克上了今天
《梅菲尔德时报》
的头版。
There was a huge picture of her in the
tree, surrounded by a fire brigade and
policemen, and then some smaller photos
I couldn't make out very we
ll. “Can I
see
that?”
那是一张她在
树上的大照片，周围是一整支消防队，还有警察，旁边配了几张小图片，
我看
不清楚。
“能让我看看吗？”我说。
He folded it up but didn't hand it
over. “Why isn't she your friend,
Bryce?”
他把报纸叠起来，但没有递给我，
“她为什么不是你的朋友，布莱斯？”
“Because she's …” I shook my head and
said, “You'd have to know Juli.”
“因为她……”我猛摇头，试着向他解释，
“你认识了朱莉自然会明白。
”
“I'd like
to.”
“我很想认识她。
”
“What? Why?”
“啊？为什么？”
“Because
the girl's got an iron backbone. Why don't you
invite her over sometime?”
“
因为这姑娘很有骨气。你为什么不找个时间请她来家里玩呢？”
“An iron backbone? Granddad, you don't
understand! That
girl is a royal
pain
. She's a
showoff, she's a know-it-all, and she
is pushy beyond
belief!”
“有骨气？外公，你不明白！她是我遇到过的最大的麻烦。她是个活宝，百事通，还固执得
不可救药！
”
“Is that so.”
“真的吗？”
“Yes! That's absolutely so! And she's
been stalking me since the second
grade!”
“没错！千真万确！而且她从二年级就开始跟
踪我！
”
He frowned,
then looked out the window and asked, “They've
lived there that long?”
他皱起眉
头，然后望向窗外，
“他们在那儿住了这么久？”
“I think they were all born
there!”
“我觉得他们简直在隔壁住了一辈子了！
”
He frowned some
more before he looked back at me and said, “A girl
like that
doesn't
live
next door to everyone, you
know.”
他眉头上的皱纹又加
深了，目光回到我的身上，
“你知道吗，不是每个人的隔壁都住着一
个这样的女孩。
”
“Lucky
them!”
“那他们真是太走运了！
”
He studied me, long and hard. I said,
“What?” but he didn't flinch. He just kept staring
at me, and I couldn't take it
—
I had to look away.
他长时间地，深深地审视着我。我问他：
“怎么了？”但他没有退缩，而是继
续盯着我看，
而我退缩了——把目光转向一边。
Keep in mind that this was the first
real conversation I'd had with my grandfather.
This
was the first time he'd made the
effort to talk to me about something besides
passing
the salt. And does he want to
get to know me? No! He wants to know about Juli! <
/p>
别忘了，这是我和外公之间第一次对话。
这是他第一次想要跟我说
点除了“把盐递过来”以
外的话题。而他是想了解我吗？不！他只想了解朱莉！
I couldn't just stand up and
leave, even though that's what I felt like doing.
Somehow I
knew if I left like that,
he'd quit talking to me at all. Even about salt.
So I sat there
feeling sort of
tortured. Was he mad at me? How could he be mad at
me? I hadn't
done anything wrong!
我真恨不得马上跳起来逃跑，但还是按捺住了。不知怎么的，我知道如果我真的离开这里，
那他就再也不会跟我说话了。连递盐这种话也不会再说。
我坐在那儿，<
/p>
像受刑一样。他生气
了吗？他凭什么对我生气？我根本什么也没做
错！
When I looked up, he was
sitting there holding out the newspaper to me.
“Read this,”
he said.“Without
prejudice.”
当我抬起头的时候，他坐在那里把报
纸递了过来。
“看看这个，
”他说，
“
不要有偏见。
”
I took
it, and when he went back to looking out the
window, I knew
—
I'd been
dismissed.
我接过报纸，而他又开始眺望窗外，我
知道——我被丢在一边了。
By the time I
got down to my room, I was mad. I slammed my
bedroom door and
flopped down on the
bed, and after fuming about my sorry excuse for a
grandfather
for a while, I shoved the
newspaper in the bottom drawer of my desk. Like I
needed to
know any more about Juli
Baker.
回到自己的房间里，
我气坏了。
我撞上卧室的门，
把自己摔到床上，对外公生了一会儿气之
后，把报纸塞进了书桌最下面的抽屉。谁愿意再多了解朱莉?贝克的事啊！
At dinner my mother asked me why I was
so sulky, and she kept looking from me to
my grandfather. Granddad didn't seem to
need any salt, which was a good thing
because I might have thrown the shaker
at him.
吃晚饭的时候，
妈妈问我为什么拉着一张脸，
还不停地把目光停留在我和外公身上。
看来外
< br>公不需要我递盐给他，幸好如此，否则我很可能把盐瓶扔给他。
My sister and dad were all business as
usual, though. Lynetta ate about two raisins
out of her carrot salad, then peeled
the skin and meat off her chicken wing and
nibbled gristle off the bone, while my
father filled up airspace talking about office
politics and the need for a shakedown
in upper management.
不过，
姐姐和爸
爸都和平时一样。
利奈特从她的胡萝卜沙拉里挑出两个葡萄干吃了，
然后把
鸡翅剥掉皮、切成几段、
细细地从骨头上啃下软骨；
爸爸则占领了大家的耳朵，谈论着办公
室政治和高管换血的需要。
No one was listening to him
—
no one ever does when he
gets on one of his
if-I-ran-thecircus
jags
—
but for once Mom
wasn't even pretending.
没人在听——每次他说起这些
“假如我是老大”
的白日梦，
都没人认真在
听——但是这一次，
甚至连妈妈都没有假装在听。
And for once she wasn't trying to
convince Lynetta that dinner was delicious either.
She just kept eyeing me and Granddad,
trying to pick up on why we were miffed at
each other.
而且今天她也没有试着说服利奈特多
吃点。
她只是一直看着我和外公，
想找出我们彼此怒目
相向的原因。
Not that he
had anything to be miffed at
me
about. What had I done to him, anyway?
Nothing. Nada. But he was, I could
tell. And I completely avoided looking at him
until
about halfway through dinner,
when I sneaked a peek.
他没什么理由可生我的气。我到底怎
么惹着他了？没有。我什么都没做。但他确实生气了，
我能看得出来。
< br>而我则彻底不去看他，
直到晚饭吃到一半的时候，
我才偷
偷地向他瞥了一眼。
He was studying
me, all right. And even though it wasn't a mean
stare, or a hard stare,
it was, you
know, firm. Steady. And it weirded me out.
< br>好吧，他在端详着我。他的目光即
使不算是恶狠狠的、冷酷的，也至少是严格的、
坚定的，让我觉得如坐针毡。
What was his
deal?
他到底想干吗？
I
didn't look at him again. Or at my mother. I just
went back to eating and pretended to
listen to my dad. And the first chance
I got, I excused myself and holed up in my room. <
/p>
我不再看他，也不看妈妈，继续专心吃饭，假装听爸爸聊天。一有机会，我就找了个借口回
到自己的房间。
I was
planning to call my friend Garrett like I usually
do when I'm bent about
something. I
even punched in his number, but I don't know. I
just hung later
when my mom came in, I
faked like I was sleeping. I haven't done that in
years.
The whole night was weird like
that. I just wanted to be left alone.
我
打算像平时一样，
在心烦意乱的时候给我的朋友加利特打个电话。
号码拨出去了，
我却不
知道该说些什么，只好又挂了电话。<
/p>
当妈妈进屋的时候，
我假装自己已经睡着了。
这是好几
年都没有发生过的事了。整个晚上，我都被这种奇怪的情绪包围着，只想一
个人待着。
Juli wasn't at the bus
stop the next morning. Or Friday morning. She was
at school,
but you'd never know it if
you didn't actually look. She didn't whip her hand
through the
air trying to get the
teacher to call on her or charge through the halls
getting to class.
She didn't make
unsolicited comments for the teacher's edification
or challenge the
kids who took cuts in
the milk line. She just sat. Quiet.
第二天
，
朱莉没有出现在校车站。
星期五的早晨也是。
她去学校了，
但如果没有亲眼见到她，
你根本感受不到
她的存在。
她没有挥着手要求老师叫她回答问题，
也没有冲过走
廊奔去上课。
她没有在老师讲课的时候抢着接下茬，也没有制止不按顺序排队的孩子。她
只是坐在那儿，
安安静静地坐着。
I
told myself I should be glad about it
—
it was like she wasn't
even there, and isn't
that what I'd
always wanted? But still, I felt bad. About her
tree, about how she hurried
off to eat
by herself in the library at lunch, about how her
eyes were red around the
edges. I
wanted to tell her, Man, I'm sorry about your
sycamore tree, but the words
never
seemed to come out.
我想说服自己，
说
她现在这样很好——就像她根本不存在一样，
这不是我长期以来的希望吗？
但是，
我仍然高兴不起来。因为她的树，
因为她在图
书馆里一个人狼吞虎咽地吃午餐，
因为
她哭红的眼眶。我想跟她
说，
“嗨，我真为你的无花果树感到难过”
，但始终没有说出口
。
By the middle of the next
week, they'd finished taking down the tree. They
cleared the
lot and even tried to pull
up the stump, but that sucker would not budge, so
they
wound up grinding it down into the
dirt.
接下来的一个星期，
他们又花了几天的时间运走那
棵树。
工人们清理了土地，
还试图挖出树
根，但它顽固地不肯动地方，所以人们转而锯掉树桩，让剩余的部分隐没在土里。
Juli still didn't show at the bus stop,
and by the end of the week I learned from Garrett
that she was riding a bike. He said
he'd seen her on the side of the road twice that
week, putting the chain back on the
derailleur of a rusty old tenspeed.
朱莉仍
然没有出现在校车站，
周末的时候，
我听加利特说她骑了一辆自
行车。
他说上个星期
有两次看到她在路边骑着一辆生锈的老旧十
挡变速车，链条拖在变速器上。
I figured
she'd be back. It was a long ride out to Mayfield
Junior High, and once she
got over the
tree, she'd start riding the bus again. I even
caught myself looking for her.
Not on
the lookout, just looking.
我猜她会回来的。
去梅菲尔德中学的路很长，
等她把树的事忘在脑后，
就会重新回到校车上。
我甚至发现自己会不由自主地搜索她的身影。不是有意去找，
只是希望能看到她。
Then one day it
rained and I thought for sure she'd be up at the
bus stop, but no.
Garrett said he saw
her trucking along on her bike in a bright yellow
poncho, and in
math I noticed that her
pants were still soaked from the knees down.
一个雨天，
我以为她肯定会来等校车，
但她没有。
加利特说看到她穿着一件鲜黄色的雨衣踩
着单车，数学课上我发
现她的裤子从膝盖以下全湿透了。
When math
let out, I started to chase after her to tell her
that she ought to try riding the
bus
again, but I stopped myself in the nick of time.
What was I thinking? That Juli
wouldn't
take a little friendly concern and completely
misinterpret it? Whoa now,
buddy,
beware! Better to just leave well enough alone.
下课以后，我跟在她后面，想说服她重新乘坐校车，但是在最后一刻，我还是放弃了。我到<
/p>
底在想什么？朱莉根本不会在意一句友善的关怀，并且完全可能误解我的意思。嘿，伙计，
你要注意了！最好还是离她远点吧。
After all, the last thing I needed was
for Juli Baker to think I missed her.
不
管怎么说，我最不希望看到的事情，就是让朱莉?贝克以为我在想她。
The Sycamore Tree
第四章：无花果树
I love to watch my father paint. Or
really, I love to hear him talk while he paints.
The
words always come out soft and
somehow heavy when he's brushing on the layers of
a landscape. Not sad. Weary, maybe, but
peaceful.
我喜欢看爸爸画画。
或者说，
我其实是喜欢听他一边画画一边和我聊天。
当他描画出层层风
景时，那些话语总是变得温柔，似乎还有些沉重。那并不是悲伤。也许带着几分疲倦，但却
充满平静。
My father
doesn't have a studio or anything, and since the
garage is stuffed with
things that
everyone thinks they need but no one ever uses, he
paints outside.
爸爸没有画室，
车库又总是
被一堆以为有用、
却从来没有派上过用场的东西塞得满满的，
所
以，他在户外作画。
Outside
is
where the best landscapes
are, only they're nowhere near our house. So
what he does is keep a camera in his
truck. His job as a mason takes him to lots of
different locations, and he's always on
the lookout for a great sunrise or sunset, or
even just a nice field with sheep or
cows. Then he picks out one of the snapshots,
clips it to his easel, and paints.
室外能看到最好的风景，
但我家附近却没有什么风景可言。
因此，
爸爸习惯在卡车里放上一
架照相机。
作为泥瓦匠，
他有很多机会去不同的地方，
经常
留心去寻找一片美丽的日出或夕
阳，也许只是一处牛羊成群的田野，之后他从照片当中挑
出一幅，夹在画框上，开始作画。
The
paintings come out fine, but I've always felt a
little sorry for him, having to paint
beautiful scenes in our backyard, which
is not exactly picturesque. It never was much
of a yard, but after I started raising
chickens, things didn't exactly improve.
那些画还不错，
但我总为他感到有点难过，
不得不在模样欠
佳的后院里画出美丽的景色。
院
子里从来就没什么好风景，自从
我开始养鸡以来，就更糟了。
Dad doesn't
seem to see the backyard or the chickens when he's
painting, though. It's
not just the
snapshot or the canvas he sees either. It's
something much bigger. He
gets this
look in his eye like he's transcended the yard,
the neighborhood, the world.
And as his
big, callused hands sweep a tiny brush against the
canvas, it's almost like
his body has
been possessed by some graceful spiritual being. <
/p>
不过，
爸爸画画的时候，
似乎从来不会注
意到院子本身，
或是那些鸡。
他看到的也不仅仅是
照片和画布，
而是更为庞大的东西。
他的目光中流露
出的神情，
就像是已经超越了我家院子，
邻居家，
也超越了整个世界。
当那双长茧子的大手握住小小的画笔扫过画布的时候，<
/p>
他就像
被某种灵动、飘逸的东西附身了。
When I was little, my dad would let me
sit beside him on the porch while he painted,
as long as I'd be quiet. I don't do
quiet easily, but I discovered that after five or
ten
minutes without a peep,
he'd
start talking.
< br>小时候，
爸爸在门廊上画画的时候喜欢让我坐在他身边，
只要我乖乖地不出声。
保持安静对
我来说有点难，不过我发现，
只要五到十分钟不去看他，爸爸自己就会开始说话了。
I've learned a lot about my dad that
way. He told me all sorts of stories about what
he'd done when he was my age, and other
things, too
—
like how he got
his first job
delivering hay, and how
he wished he'd finished college.
我就是这样了
解了爸爸的很多事情。
他给我讲过各种故事，
比如他在我这个年
纪都做些什么，
还有其他的——比如他怎样得到了第一份运送干草的工作，还有他多渴望
能上完大学。
When I got a little
older, he still talked about himself and his
childhood, but he also
started asking
questions about me. What were we learning at
school? What book was
I currently
reading? What did I think about this or that.
等我长大一点儿，他仍然给我讲他的故事，以及他的童年，但
也开始问我一些问题。我在学
校学了什么？最近在读什么书？还有我对各种事物的看法。
Then one time he surprised
me and asked me about Bryce. Why was I so crazy
about
Bryce?
有一天，他出乎意料地问起了布莱
斯的事。问我为什么对布莱斯这样着迷。
I told
him about his eyes and his hair and the way his
cheeks blush, but I don't think I
explained it very well because when I
was done Dad shook his head and told me in
soft, heavy words that I needed to
start looking at the whole landscape.
我
给爸爸讲了他的眼睛，
他的头发，
他脸红的样子，但我觉得自己
根本没有解释清楚，
因为
爸爸听我说完之后摇了摇头，语重心长
地对我说，我需要抬头看看整个世界了。
I didn't
really know what he meant by that, but it made me
want to argue with him.
How could he
possibly understand about Bryce? He didn't know
him!
我没太明白他的意思，
却忍不住想反驳他。
他怎么可能会理解布莱斯呢？爸爸根本就不认识
他！
But this was not an arguing spot.
Those were scattered throughout the house, but not
out here.
不过我们没有真的吵起来。在屋子里我们
也许会吵架，但在院子里不会。
We were both
quiet for a record-breaking amount of time before
he kissed me on the
forehead
and said, “Proper lighting is
everything, Julianna.”
长时间的沉
默之后，他亲了亲我的额头，然后说：
“合适的光线就是一切，朱莉安娜。
”
Proper lighting? What
was that supposed to mean? I sat there wondering,
but I was
afraid that by asking I'd be
admitting that I wasn't mature enough to
understand, and
for some reason it felt
obvious. Like I should understand.
合适的光
线？这是什么意思？我坐在那里想了又想，
但不敢开口问他，
生
怕一开口就证明了
自己还没有成熟到足以理解他的意思，虽然某种程度上这是明摆着的。
他真以为我能理解
吗？
After
that he didn't talk so much about events as he did
about ideas. And the older I
got, the
more philosophical he seemed to get. I don't know
if he really
got
more
philosophical or if he just thought I
could handle it now that I was in the double
digits.
从此以后，
他不再多谈他做过的事情。等我长
大一点儿，
他似乎变得更加具有哲理。我不知
道是他真的变了，
还是他认为我已经超过十岁，能够听懂这些东西了。
Mostly the things he talked about
floated around me, but once in a while something
would happen and I would understand
exactly what he had
meant. “A painting
is more
than the sum of its parts,” he
would tell me, and then go on to
explain how the cow by
itself is just a
cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and
flowers, and the sun
peeking through
the trees is just a beam of light, but put them
all together and you've
got magic.
大部分时间，他的话都被我当成了浮云，但我偶尔也能完全听懂他到底在说什么。
“一幅画
要大于构成它的那些笔画之和。
”他这样说道
，然后解释说为什么一头牛只是一头牛，一片
草地只是一些花和草，太阳照射着树木只是
一束光线，而把它们放在一起就有了一种魔力。
I
understood what he was saying, but I never
felt
what he was saying
until one day
when I was up in the
sycamore tree.
我明白他在说什么，但在我爬上无花果树的那天之前，
我从未真切地感受过这句话的魅力。
The
sycamore tree had been at the top of the hill
forever. It was on a big vacant lot,
giving shade in the summer and a place
for birds to nest in the spring. It had a built-in
slide for us, too. Its trunk bent up
and around in almost a complete spiral, and it was
so much fun to ride down. My mom told
me she thought the tree must have been
damaged as a sapling but survived, and
now, maybe a hundred years later, it was still
there, the biggest
tree
she'd ever seen. “A testimony to endurance” is
what she called
it.
这棵无花果树一直
矗立在小山丘的最顶端。
那儿有一大片空地，
春天它为小鸟提供
一个筑巢
的空间，夏天它投出一片阴凉。
它也是我们的天然滑梯
。
树干向上盘曲伸展，几乎长成一个
完美的螺旋形，
从上面滑下来真是乐趣无穷。
妈妈告诉我，
她觉得
这棵树小时候遭受过损害，
却生存下来了，
一直屹立到百年后的
今天，长成她见过的最大的一棵树。她管它叫
“坚毅的
象征”<
/p>
。
I had always
played in the tree, but I didn't become a serious
climber until the fifth
grade, when I
went up to rescue a kite that was stuck in its
branches. I'd first spotted
the kite
floating free through the air and then saw it
dive-bomb somewhere up the hill
by the
sycamore tree.
我经常在树上玩，
但是直到五
年级去取一只挂在树杈上的风筝时，
才真的爱上了爬树。
我先<
/p>
是看着风筝自由地从天上滑落，然后眼看它一头栽到小山坡上无花果树的附近。
I've flown kites before and I
know
—
sometimes they're gone
forever, and sometimes
they're just
waiting in the middle of the road for you to
rescue them. Kites can be lucky
or they
can be ornery. I've had both kinds, and a lucky
kite is definitely worth chasing
after.
多年放风筝的经验告诉我——有的时候它们一去不复返，
有的时
候它们就等在你去拯救它们
的路上。有些风筝很幸运，有的也很难搞。两种我都遇到过，
一只幸运的风筝才值得你去追
寻它。
This kite looked lucky to me. It wasn't
anything fancy, just an old-fashioned diamond
with blue and yellow stripes. But it
stuttered along in a friendly way, and when it
dive-bombed, it seemed to do so from
exhaustion as opposed to spite. Ornery kites
dive-bomb out of spite. They never get
exhausted because they won't stay up long
enough to poop out. Thirty feet up they
just sort of smirk at you and crash for the fun
of it.
这只风筝看来就很幸运。
它的样子并不出奇，
只是个传统的带蓝黄条纹的菱形风筝。
但
它用
一种友善的方式跌跌撞撞地飞了一阵，
当它掉落的时候，<
/p>
也是以某种疲倦的姿态栽下来，
与
那些态
度恶劣的风筝截然相反。
难搞的风筝们总是恶意地向着地面俯冲轰炸。
< br>它们从不疲倦，
因为根本没有在天上待够那么长的时间。
它们一般飞了
10
米左右就冲你坏笑一番，
然后坠落，
只是为了好玩而已。
So Champ and I ran up to Collier
Street, and after scouting out the road, Champ
started barking at the sycamore tree. I
looked up and spotted it, too, flashing blue and
yellow through the branches.
冠军和我跑向克里尔街，
在路上找了一会儿，
冠军开始朝着无
花果树的方向吠叫。
我向上看
去，也发现了枝杈间闪烁的蓝色和
黄色。
It was a long ways up,
but I thought I'd give it a shot. I shinnied up
the trunk, took a
shortcut across the
slide, and started climbing. Champ kept a good eye
on me,
barking me along, and soon I was
higher than I'd ever been. But still the kite
seemed
forever away.
看上去要爬很长
一段距离，但我决定试试运气。我攀上树干，
在树弯上寻找捷径，
开始向上
爬。冠军密切注视着我，
一路吠叫，
我很快便爬到了从未达到的高度。
但是风筝却还在遥不
可及的树梢上。
Then below me I
noticed Bryce coming around the corner and through
the vacant lot.
And I could tell from
the way he was looking up that this was
his
kite.
向下看去，
我发现布莱斯正走过街角，正在穿过空地。从他向上窥探的方式，我能看出那是
他的风筝。
What a lucky,
lucky
kite this was turning
out to be!
原来这个风筝是这么、这么的幸运！
“Can you climb that high?” he called up
to me.
“你能爬到那么高吗？”他朝树上喊道。
“Sure!” I called back. And up, up, up I
went!
“没问题！
”我喊回去。
我要向上、向上、再向上！
The branches
were strong, with just the right amount of
intersections to make climbing
easy.
And the higher I got, the more amazed I was by the
view. I'd never seen a view
like that!
It was like being in an airplane above all the
rooftops, above the other trees.
Above
the world!
树枝很粗壮，并且提供了足够的交叉点，
让攀爬变得容易起来。爬得越高，
我就对上面的景
色越惊讶。
我从来没有见过这样的风景！
就像是在飞机上俯瞰所有的屋顶、
所有的树木。我
在全世界最高的地方！
Then I looked down. Down at Bryce. And
suddenly I got dizzy and weak in the knees.
I was
miles off the ground!
Bryce shouted, “Can you reach
it?”
然后我向下望去，
看到树下的布莱斯。
忽然间我觉得有点头晕，
膝盖也软了。我离地面有
好几英里呢！布莱斯喊道：
“你能够到它吗？”
I caught my
breat
h and managed to call down, “No
problem!” then forced myself to
concentrate on those blue and yellow
stripes, to focus on them and only them as I
shinnied up, up, up. Finally I touched
it; I grasped it; I had the kite in my hand!
我喘了口气，努力喊回去：
“没问题！
”
然后强迫自己把注意力集中在头上的蓝黄条纹，在攀
爬的过程中只盯着它
。我终于摸到了，一把抓住它，那风筝现在就在我手里！
But the string was tangled in the
branches above and I couldn't seem to pull it
free.
Bryce
called, “Break
the string!” and somehow I managed to
do just that.
可是，风筝线缠在了头顶的树枝上，我没法把它拽出来。
布莱斯对我喊：
“把线扯掉！
”我尽
量
照他的话去做了。
When I had the kite
free, I needed a minute to rest. To recover before
starting down.
So instead of looking at
the ground below me, I held on tight and looked
out. Out
across the rooftops.
终于摘下了风筝，
在下树之前我必须休息一下。
我不再把目
光投向地面，
而是抱紧树干向外
看去，朝着屋顶的方向。
That's when the fear of being
up so high began to lift, and in its place came
the most
amazing feeling that I was
flying. Just soaring above the earth, sailing
among the
clouds.
忽然间，因为爬得太高
而产生的恐惧不见了，
取而代之的则是一种
“我正在飞翔”
的神奇感
觉，就像翱翔在大地之上，航行于云朵之间。
Then I bega
n to notice
how wonderful the breeze smelled. It smelled like
… sunshine.
Like sunshine and wild
grass and pomegranates and rain! I couldn't stop
breathing it
in, filling my lungs again
and again with the sweetest smell I'd ever known.
我突然发现，原来微风的味道是那么好闻。它闻起来就像……阳光。像阳光，野草，石榴
和
雨滴！我不由自主地大口呼吸着，我的肺被这种最甜蜜的味道一次又一次地充满。
Bryce called up, “Are you
stuck?” which brought me down to earth. Carefully
I backed
up, prized stripes in hand,
and as I worked my way down, I could see Bryce
circling
the tree, watching me to make
sure I was okay.
布莱斯向上喊道：
“你被
卡住了吗？”我这才清醒过来。小心地向下退去，手里抓着那只珍
贵的条纹风筝，我在下
树的过程中看到布莱斯正绕着大树一直看着我，以确保我的安全。
By the time I hit the slide, the heady
feeling I'd had in the tree was changing into the
heady realization that Bryce and I were
alone.
当我爬到树弯处，
爬
树时那种让人飘飘然的感觉已经变成了一个让人飘飘然的现实：
布莱
斯和我正单独待在一起。
Alone!
单独待在一起！
My heart
was positively racing as I held the kite out to
him. But before he could take it,
Champ
nudged me from behind and I could feel his cold,
wet nose against my skin.
把风筝拿给他的时候，我的心
脏狂跳不止。还没等他接住风筝，冠军就在背后轻推着我，我
能感觉到它那又湿又凉的鼻
子蹭在我的皮肤上。
Against my skin?!
蹭在我皮肤上？
I grabbed my jeans in back, and that's
when I realized the seat of my pants was ripped
wide open.
我向身后摸去，才发现牛仔裤的屁股后面撕了一个大口子。
Bryce laughed a little nervous laugh,
so I could tell he knew, and for once mine were
the cheeks that were beet red. He took
his kite and ran off, leaving me to inspect the
damage.
布莱斯紧张地笑了笑，我知道他已经看到了，
一瞬间，我的脸上火烧火燎。
他拿着风筝跑开
< br>了，把我留在那里检查裤子的破洞。
I did
eventually get over the embarrassment of my jeans,
but I never got over the view.
I kept
thinking of what it felt like to be up so high in
that tree.
我最后还是把裤子带来的尴尬抛在了脑后，
却一直无法忘记树上的风景。
我不断地想起坐在
高高的树枝
上的那种体验。
I wanted to see it,
to feel it, again. And again.
我还想再去看，再去体验。一次又一次地体验。
It wasn't long before I wasn't afraid
of being up so high and found the spot that
became
my
spot. I
could sit there for hours, just looking out at the
world. Sunsets
were amazing. Some days
they'd be purple and pink, some days they'd be a
blazing orange, setting fire to clouds
across the horizon.
没过多久，
我就不
再害怕爬到高处，
并且找到了一个只属于我的地方。
我在那里一
坐就是几
个小时，什么都不做，只是向外眺望整个世界。夕阳美不胜收。有时候是紫色夹
杂着粉色，
有时候是烈焰般的橙色，把地平线附近的云彩都点着了。
It was on a day like
that when my father's notion of the whole being
greater than the
sum of its parts moved
from my head to my heart. The view from my
sycamore was
more than rooftops and
clouds and wind and colors combined.
就这
样，
某一天我忽然顿悟了爸爸所说的
“整体大于局部之和”
的道理。
无花果树上的风景，
已经超越了那
些屋顶和云朵本身。
It was magic.
它有一种魔力。
And I
started marveling at how I was feeling both humble
and majestic. How was that
possible?
How could I be so full of peace and full of
wonder? How could this simple
tree make
me feel so complex? So
alive
.
而我开始惊讶于自己竟
然同时体验到了卑微与宏大。
这怎么可能呢？我的内心为何充满了平
静，
同时又充满了惊叹？简简单单的一棵树，
怎么会让我体
验到如此复杂的感情？它让我感
觉到自己的存在。
I went up the tree every chance I got.
And in junior high that became almost every day
because the bus to our school picks up
on Collier Street, right in front of the sycamore
tree.
一有机会，
我就爬到树上
。初中的时候几乎每天都爬，因为克里尔街有个校车站，
正好停靠
在无花果树下。
At first I just
wanted to see how high I could get before the bus
pulled up, but before
long I was
leaving the house early so I could get clear up to
my spot to see the sun
rise, or the
birds flutter about, or just the other kids
converge on the curb.
一开始，我只想看看在校车到站之前能
爬多高；没过多久，我就早早地出门，只为了爬到我
独享的位置，欣赏日出，看小鸟振翅
，看其他的孩子聚在路边。
I tried to
convince the kids at the bus stop to climb up with
me, even a little ways, but
all of them
said they didn't want to get dirty. Turn down a
chance to feel magic for fear
of a
little dirt? I couldn't believe it.
我曾经
试图劝其他等车的孩子跟我一起爬上来，
哪怕只爬一点点高，
但
是他们全都不想把衣
服弄脏。因为怕脏而拒绝一个感受奇迹的机会？我简直不敢相信。<
/p>
I'd never told my mother
about climbing the tree. Being the truly sensible
adult that
she is, she would have told
me it was too dangerous. My brothers, being
brothers,
wouldn't have cared.
< br>我从来不敢把爬树的事告诉妈妈。
她是个特别敏感纤细的大人，
< br>一定会说爬树太危险。
我的
哥哥们，作为兄弟，他们才不
管我呢。
That left my father.
The one person I knew would understand. Still, I
was afraid to tell
him. He'd tell my
mother and pretty soon they'd insist that I stop.
So I kept quiet, kept
climbing, and
felt a somewhat lonely joy as I looked out over
the world.
还有爸爸，我知道他会理解我。不过，我还是不敢告诉他，他会
告诉妈妈，然后他们很快就
会禁止我再爬树。
所以我保留了这个
秘密，
继续爬树，
在俯瞰世界的时候感受着一份孤独的
快乐。
Then a few months
ago I found myself talking to the tree. An entire
conversation, just
me and a tree. And
on the climb down I felt like crying. Why didn't I
have someone
real to talk to? Why
didn't I have a best friend like everyone else
seemed to? Sure,
there were kids I knew
at school, but none of them were close friends.
They'd have no
interest in climbing the
tree. In smelling the sunshine.
几个月以前，我
发现自己开始跟树说话了。一段完整的对话，
只有我和树。
从树
上下来的时
候，
我有点想哭。
为什么没
有一个人愿意和我说话呢？为什么我不像其他人一样有个最好的
朋友在身边？我当然认识
学校里别的孩子，
可他们中间没有一个人和我算得上亲密。
他们
对
爬树不感兴趣，也一点儿都不关心阳光的味道。
That night after dinner my father went
outside to paint. In the cold of the night, under
the glare of the porch light, he went
out to put the finishing touches on a sunrise he'd
been working on.
那天晚饭之后，
爸爸到户外去画画。
寒冷的夜晚，
在门廊刺眼的
灯光下，他准备给一幅还未
完工的日落风景添上最后几笔。
I got my jacket and went out to sit
beside him, quiet as a mouse.
我穿上外套，来到屋
子外面，在他身边坐下，安静得像一只小耗子。
After
a few minutes he said, “What's on your mind,
sweetheart?”
过了一会儿，他说：
“你在想什么，亲爱的？”
In all the
times I'd sat out there with him, he'd never asked
me that. I looked at him but
couldn't
seem to speak.
以前我们在一起的时候，爸爸从来没有问过这个问题。
我看着他，却说不出话来。
He mixed two
hues of orange together, and very softly he said,
“Talk to me.”
他把两种不同色调的橙色混在一
起，然后非常轻柔地说：
“跟我说说吧。
”
I sighed so heavily it surprised
even me. “I understand why you come out here,
Dad.”
我重重地叹了口气，把自己都吓了一跳，
“我理解你为什么到这里来了，爸爸。
”
He tried kidding me. “Would you mind
explaining it to your mother?”
他故意逗弄我：
“那你可以帮我跟妈
妈解释一下咯？”
“Really, Dad. I
understand now about the whole being greater than
the sum of the
parts.”
“我没有开玩笑，爸爸。现在我明白你说的‘整体大于部分之和’的意义了。
”
He stopped mixing. “You
do? What happened? Tell me about it!”
<
/p>
他停止调色，
“是吗？怎么回事？说说看。
”
So I told him about the
sycamore tree. About the view and the sounds and
the colors
and the wind, and how being
up so high felt like flying. Felt like magic.
于是，我给他讲了无花果树的事。那里的风景，声音，色彩，风，还有爬到高处时飞翔般的
感觉。如同一种魔力。
He didn't
interrupt me once, and when my confession was
through, I looked at him
and
whispered, “Would you climb up there
with me?”
他一次都没有打断我，当我把憋在心里的
话都说完，我看着他，低声说：
“你能和我一起爬
上去吗？”<
/p>
He thought about this a long
time, then sm
iled and said, “I'm not
much of a climber
anymore, Julianna,
but I'll give it a shot, sure. How about this
weekend, when we've
got lots of
daylight to work with?”
他思考了
很长时间，然后露出了笑容，
“我很久不爬树了，朱莉安娜，但是我愿意试一试，
真的。你看这个周末怎么样？白天我们有很长时间可以用来爬树。
”<
/p>
“Great!”
“太棒了！
”
I went to bed so excited that I don't
think I slept more than five minutes the whole
night.
Saturday was right around the
corner. I couldn't wait!
我带着激动的心情上床去睡觉，
我想整晚我睡着的时间不会超过五分钟。
星期六眼看就要到
啦。我已经等不及了！
The next
morning I raced to the bus stop extra early and
climbed the tree. I caught the
sun
rising through the clouds, sending streaks of fire
from one end of the world to the
other.
And I was in the middle of making a mental list of
all the things I was going to
show my
father when I heard a noise below.
第二天早
上，我起了个大早冲向校车站，
爬到树上。正赶上太阳冲破云层，
把火焰般的光束
洒向世界的每一个角落。
我在心里默默地列出
一个清单，
写满了要给爸爸看的东西，
忽然听
< br>到树下一片嘈杂。
I looked down,
and parked right beneath me were two trucks. Big
trucks. One of them
was towing a long,
empty trailer, and the other had a cherry picker
on it
—
the kind they
use to work on overhead power lines and
telephone poles.
我朝下面望去，
两辆卡车
就停在树下。都是巨型卡车。其中一辆拖着长长的空拖车，另一辆
装着一架车载式吊车—
—就是用来修理输电线和电线杆的那种。
There
were four men standing around talking, drinking
from thermoses, and I almost
called
down to them, “I'm sorry, but you can't
park there….
四个男
人站在那里聊着天，端着热水瓶喝水，我差一点儿就想对他们大喊：
“对不起，这里
不能停车……”
That's a bus stop!”
But
before I could, one of the men reached into the
back of a truck
and started unloading
tools. Gloves. Ropes. A chain. Earmuffs. And then
chain saws.
Three chain saws.
我的后半句话
“这里是校车站！
”
还没说出口，
其中一个人就开始从卡车上卸下工具。
手套、
绳子、防滑链、耳罩，最后是链锯，三把链锯。
And still I didn't get it. I kept
looking around for what it was they could possibly
be
there to cut down. Then one of the
kids who rides the bus showed up and started
talking to them, and pretty soon he was
pointing up at me.
我还是没反应过来。
我朝四周看去，
想找到他们来这里到底想砍什么。
这时，一个坐
校车的
学生走过来，和他们交谈起来，一会儿他伸手指了指树上的我。
< br>
One of the men called, “Hey! You
better come down from there. We gotta take this
thing
down.”
其中一个人喊道：
“嘿！你最好快点下来。我们就要砍树了。
”
I held on to the
branch tight, because suddenly it felt as though I
might fall. I managed
to
choke out, “The
tree
?”
我紧紧地抱住树枝，
忽然之间我觉得自己快要掉下去了。
压抑
住快要窒息的感觉，
我问：
“砍
树？”
“Yeah, now come on
down.”
“对，现在赶紧下来吧。
”
“But who told you to cut it
down?”
“可是，谁让你们来砍树的？”
“The owner!” he called back.
“树的主人！
”他喊道。
“But
why
?”
“为什么？”
Even from
forty feet up I could see him scowl. “Because he's
gonna build himself a
house, and he
can't very well do that with this tree in the way.
Now come on, girl,
we've got work to
do!”
即使在十几米的高空，我都能看到他的眉头皱了起来
。他说：
“因为他想建一座房子，这棵
树挡了他的路。快点下来
，姑娘，我们要工作了！
”
By
that time most of the kids had gathered for the
bus. They weren't saying anything
to
me, just looking up at me and turning from time to
time to talk to each other. Then
Bryce
appeared, so I knew the bus was about to arrive. I
searched across the rooftops
and sure
enough, there it was, less than four blocks away.
大部分学生已经在车站等车了。
没有人跟我说一句话，他们只是
看着我，不时交头接耳。这
时，布莱斯出现了，
我知道校车就快
到了。我越过房顶搜索了片刻，确定校车离这里已经不
到四条街了。
My heart was crazy with panic. I
didn't know what to do! I couldn't leave and let
them
cut
down the tree! I
cried, “You can't cut it down! You just
can't!”
我又惊又怕，心脏狂
跳。我不知道该怎么办！不能眼睁睁地离开，让他们砍了这棵树！我尖
叫道：
“你们不许砍树！就是不许！
”
One of the men shook his head and said,
“I am this close to calling the police. You
are
trespassing and
obstructing progress on a contracted job. Now are
you going to come
down or are we going
to cut you down?”
一个工人摇了摇头，<
/p>
“你再不下来，
我就要叫警察了。
你这是
擅自妨碍我们工作。
你是下来，
还是想跟树一起被我们砍倒？”
The bus was three blocks
away. I'd never missed school for any reason other
than
legitimate illness, but I knew in
my heart that I was going to
miss my
ride. “You're
going to have to cut me
down!” I yelled. Then I had an idea.
They'd
never cut it down if
all of us were in the tree. They'd have
to
listen! “Hey, guys!” I called to my
classmates.
“Get up here with
m
e! They can't cut it down if we're all
up here! Marcia! Tony! Bryce!
C'mon,
you
guys, don't let them do
this!”
校车离这里还有三条街。
除了请病假，
我从来没有因为任何原因逃过学，
不过潜意识里
我知
道今天一定会错过这趟校车了。
“你连我一起砍倒吧！
”我喊道。
忽然我想出一个主意。如果
我们
所有人都爬到树上，他们一定不敢再砍了！
“嘿，伙伴们！
”我
招呼同学们，
“上来陪我
吧！如果我们都在树上，他们是不敢动
手的！玛西亚！托尼！布莱斯！来呀，朋友，不能让
他们砍树！
”
They just stood there,
staring up at me.
学生们只是站在那里，盯着我看。
I
could see the bus, one block away. “Come
on,
you guys! You don't have
to come up
this
high. Just a
little ways. Please!”
我看到校车了
，
就在一条街以外，
“上来吧，
伙伴们
！
不用爬这么高，
一点点就够！
快来吧
！
”
The bus
blasted up and pulled to the curb in front of the
trucks, and when the doors
folded open,
one by one my classmates climbed on board.
校车晃晃悠悠地开过来，
停靠在路边，就停在卡车前面，
车门一开，所有同学一个接一个上
车了。
What happened after that is a bit of a
blur. I remember the neighbors gathering, and
the police with megaphones. I remember
the fire brigade, and some guy saying it was
his blasted tree and I'd darn well
better get out of it.
之后发生了什么事情，
在我的记忆里有点模糊不清。
我记得邻居们聚在一起，
警察拿着扩音
器。
我记得搭起了消防云梯，
有个人跳出来说这棵倒霉的树是属于他的，
我最好赶紧从树上
下来。
Somebody tracked down
my mother, who cried and pleaded and acted not at
all the
way a sensible mother should,
but I was not coming down. I was
not
coming down.
妈妈被人叫来了。
一改往日的理性形象，
她又喊又叫，
求我从树上下来，
可我就是不动地方。
我不会下去的。
Then my father came racing up. He
jumped out of his pickup truck, and after talking
with my mother for a few minutes, he
got the guy in the cherry picker to give him a
lift
up to where I was. After that it
was all over. I started crying and tried to get
him to look
out over the rooftops, but
he wouldn't.
后来，
爸爸也赶了过来。
他从卡车里跳下来，
跟妈妈交谈了一会儿，然后请吊车司机把他升
到我所在的地方。
这时我只有缴械投降的份儿了。
我哭了，
我试着让他俯瞰房顶上面的景色，
但他不肯。
He said that no view was
worth his little girl's safety.
他说没有什么风景比他小女儿的安全来得更重要。
He got me down and he took me home,
only I couldn't stay there. I couldn't stand the
sound of chain saws in the distance.
爸爸把我从树上接下来，
然后送我回家，
但
我根本待不下去。
我受不了远处传来的链锯声音。
So Dad took me with him to work, and
while he put up a block wall, I sat in his truck
and cried.
于是，他只好带着我去工作，在他砌墙
的时候，我坐在卡车里哭泣。
I must've
cried for two weeks straight. Oh, sure, I went to
school and I functioned the
best I
could, but I didn't go there on the bus. I started
riding my bike instead, taking the
long
way so I wouldn't have to go up to Collier Street.
Up to a pile of sawdust that
used to be
the earth's most magnificent sycamore tree.
我至少哭了整整两个星期。
当然，
我又去上学了，<
/p>
努力作出最好的表现，
但再也不坐校车了。
我改骑自行车上学，
虽然要骑很长一段路，
却不必每天到克里
尔街等车了，
也不用面对一堆
木屑，它们曾经是全世界最美的无
花果树。
Then one evening when I
was locked up in my room, my father came in with
something under a towel. I could tell
it was a painting because that's how he
transports the important ones when he
shows them in the park. He sat down, resting
the painting on the floor in front of
him. “I always liked
that
tree of yours,” he said.
“Even before
you told me about it.”
一天晚上，
当我回到自己的房间，爸爸走进来，拿着一件用毛巾盖住的东西。我看出那是一
张画，
因为每当在公园做展览的时候，他总是这样运输他的重要作品。<
/p>
他坐下来，
把画放在
面前的地板上。
“我一直很喜欢你的树，
”他说，
“甚至在
你告诉我之前，我就喜欢上它了。
”
“Oh, Dad, it's okay. I'll get over
it.”
“哦，爸爸，没关系。已经都过去了。
”
“No, Julianna. No,
you won't.”
“不，朱莉安娜。你不会忘记它的。
”
I started crying. “It was just a
tree….”
我哭了，
“只是一棵树……”
“I never want you to convince yourself
of that. You and I both know it isn't
true.”
“我不希望你这样说服自己。我们都知道，这不
仅仅是一棵树的问题。
”
“But
Dad…”
“但是爸爸……”
“Bear with me a minute, would you?” He
took a deep breath. “I want the spirit of that
tree to be with you always. I want you
to remember how you felt when you were up
there.” He hesitated a moment, then
handed me the painting. “So I
made this for you.”
< br>“听我说完，好吗？”他深吸了一口气，
“我希望这棵树的灵魂可以一直陪在你身
边。我希
望你记住爬到树上的感觉，
”他犹豫了一下，把画递给
我，
“所以，我给你画了这幅画。
”
I pulled off the towel, and there was
my tree. My beautiful, majestic sycamore tree.
Through the branches he'd painted the
fire of sunrise, and it seemed to me I could feel
the wind. And way up in the tree was a
tiny girl looking off into the distance, her
cheeks flushed with wind. With joy.
With magic.
我掀开毛巾，
看到了我的树。
我美丽、
庄严的无花果树。
他在枝条中间添上
了火焰般的阳光，
而我似乎能感觉到微风吹拂着树叶。
树顶上，
一个小女孩正在向远处眺望，
她的脸蛋红红的，
染红它的是风、是欢乐、是魔力。
“Don't
cry, Julianna. I want it to help you, not hurt
you.” I wiped the tears from my
cheeks
and
gave a mighty sniff. “Thank you,
Daddy,” I choked out.
“Thank
you.”
“别哭了，朱莉安娜。我想帮助你，不是想惹你伤
心。
”我从脸上擦去泪痕，轻轻地抽着鼻
子。
< br>“谢谢你，爸爸，
”我抽泣着说，
“谢谢你。
”
I hung the painting
across the room from my bed. It's the first thing
I see every
morning and the last thing
I see every night. And now that I can look at it
without
crying, I see more than the
tree and what being up in its branches meant to
me.
I see the day that my view of
things around me started changing.
我把画挂
在床对面的墙上。
它是我每天早上睁眼之后看到的第一样东西，
也是晚上闭眼之前
看到的最后一样东西。现在我见到它不会再掉眼泪了，在我眼里，它已
经不仅仅是一棵树，
我理解了树上的时光对我来说意味着什么。
从那一天起，
我对待周遭事物的看法开始改变了。
Brawk-Brawk-Brawk!
嘣
< br>-
嘣
-
嘣！
布莱斯
Eggs scare
me. Chickens, too. And buddy, you can laugh at
that all you want, but I'm
being dead
serious here.
鸡蛋令我害怕。鸡也是。兄弟，你如果想笑就尽管笑，但
是我是认真的。
It started in the
sixth grade with eggs.
从六年级的鸡蛋开始说起
And a
snake.
然后是一条蛇。
And the Baker brothers.
然后是贝克兄弟。
The
Baker brothers' names are Matt and Mike, but even
now I can't tell you which
one's which.
You never see one without the other. And even
though they're not twins,
they do look
and
sound
pretty much the
same, and they're both in Lynetta's class, so
maybe one of them got held back.
贝克兄弟的名字是马特和迈克，
但是就算是现在我还是不能分清谁是谁。
你从没见过他们分
开过。
虽说他们不是双胞
胎，可他们看起来，
听声音都差不多相同，而且他们都在利奈特的
班里，所以也许他们其中的一个留过级。
Although
I can't exactly see a teacher voluntarily having
either of those maniacs two
years in a
row.
尽管我无法想象任何老师自愿带这两个疯子两年。
Regardless, Matt and Mike are the ones
who taught me that snakes eat eggs. And
when I say they eat eggs, I'm talking
they eat them raw and shell-on whole.
无
论如何，
就是马特和迈克教会我蛇会吃鸡蛋的。
当我说到吃鸡蛋
，
我的意思是连壳生吃下
去。
I probably would've gone my entire life
without this little bit of reptilian trivia if it
hadn't
been for Lynetta. Lynetta had
this major-league thing for Skyler Brown, who
lives
about three blocks down, and
every chance she got, she went down there to hang
out
while he practiced the drums. Well,
boom-boom-whap, what did I care, right? But then
Skyler and Juli's brothers formed a
band, which they named Mystery Pisser.
如果不是利奈特的话我这一生大概都不会遇到那种爬行类动物。但是利奈特为斯凯勒
.<
/p>
布朗
做了什么社团的东西，
住在向前大约
三站路的地方，
只要一有机会，
她就会去那里看他们练
习敲鼓。好吧，
咚咚锵，我在乎什么？但是斯凯勒和朱莉的哥哥们组成了
一个乐队，
起名叫
神秘尿人。
When my mom heard about it,
she completely wigged out. “What kind of parents
would allow their children to be in a
band named Mystery Pisser? It's vile. It's
disgusting!”
当我妈妈
听说的时候，
她真急了：
“
什么样的父
母会允许他们的孩子给乐队起名为神秘尿人？
这太可耻，太恶心了！
”
“That's the
whole point, Mom,” Lynetta tried to explain. “It
doesn't mean anything. It's
just to
get a rise out of old
people.”
“
这正说到点子上
了，妈妈，
”
利奈特试着解释。
“
这没有任何意义，只是为了让老一辈的人
吃惊。
”
“Are you
calling me
old,
young lady?
Because it's certainly getting a rise out of
me!”
“
你在说我老吗，年轻小姐
？因为这件事完全让我吃惊了！
”
Lynetta just shrugged, implying that my
mom could draw her own conclusion.
利奈特只是耸了耸肩，暗示妈妈说出了她自己的结论。
“Go! Go to your room,” my mother
snapped.
“
走，回你房间去
。
”
妈妈斥责道。
“For what?” Lynetta snapped back. “I
didn't say a thing!”
“
为什么？
”
利奈特反呛道，
“
我什么也没说啊。
”
“You know perfectly well what for. Now
you go in there and adjust your attitude, young
lady!”
“
你完全清楚为什么。现在回房间改正你的态度。年轻人！
”
So Lynetta got another one of her
teenage time-outs, and after that any time Lynetta
was two minutes late coming home for
dinner, my mother would messenger me down
to Skyler's house to drag her home. It
might have been embarrassing for Lynetta, but
it was worse for me. I was still in
elementary school, and the Mystery Pisser guys
were in high school. They were ripe and
ragged, raging power chords through the
neighborhood, while I looked like I'd
just gotten back from Sunday school.
于是
利奈特得到了另一个青春期隔离，
在那之后利奈特总是晚两分钟回家吃晚饭，
我妈妈会
叫我去斯凯勒家把她拉回家。也许这对利奈特很尴尬，但是我更惨
。我那时还在上小学，而
他们已经在高中。他们显得很成熟，
穿
着衣衫褴褛，为邻居制造了破碎的噪音，而我看起来
像刚刚从主日学校回来。
I'd get so nervous going down
there that my voice would squeak when I'd tell
Lynetta
it was time for dinner. It
literally squeaked. But after a while the band
dropped Mystery
from their name, and
Pisser and its entourage got used to me showing
up. And
instead of glaring at me, they
started
saying stuff like, “Hey, baby
brother, come on in!”
“Hey, Brycie boy,
wanna jam?”
每次我去那里都会非常紧张，
当我告诉利奈特晚饭时间到了的时候我的声音都会颤抖。
它确
实在颤抖。
但是没过多久乐队就把
“
神秘
”
二字从他们的名字里去掉了，
而贝克兄弟和其他随
从的人员也习惯了我的出现。他们不再瞪着我，而是开始
对我说话，例如，
“
嗨，小弟弟，
快进
来！
”“
嗨，布莱斯男孩，要吃果酱吗？
”
This, then, is how I
wound up in Skyler Brown's garage, surrounded by
high school
kids, watching a boa
constrictor swallow eggs. Since I'd already seen
it down a rat in
the Baker brothers'
bedroom, Pisser had lost at least some of the
element of surprise.
Plus, I picked up
on the fact that they'd been saving this little
show to freak me out,
and I really
didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
然后，这就是我怎样去斯凯勒
.
布朗的地下室，在一群
高中生的围绕下，看一只蟒蛇吞
掉鸡蛋。
不过我已经见识过它在
贝克兄弟的厕所里吃掉一只老鼠，所以这至少去掉了点
惊吓的成分。再加上，我认为他们
就是想用这个小小的表演来吓我，但我绝对不想给他
们任何满足感。
This wasn't easy, though, because
watching a snake swallow an egg is actually much
creepier than you might think. The boa
opened its mouth to an enormous size, then
just took the egg in and
glub
! We could see it roll
down its throat.
但是这并不容易，
因为看
一只蛇吞下一个鸡蛋事实上比你想象得更令人毛骨悚然。
蟒蛇
会
把嘴巴张得极大，然后咕咚一声吞掉鸡蛋！我们甚至能看见鸡蛋从它的喉咙滚下去。
But that wasn't all. After the snake
had glubbed down three eggs, Matt-or-Mike said,
“So,
Brycie boy,
how's he gonna digest those?”
但这还不是全部。在蛇吞下三个鸡蛋之后，马特或者迈克说：“那么，布莱斯男孩，他
要怎么消化这些呢？”
I shrugged and
tried not to squeak when I answered,
“Stomach acid?”
我耸了耸肩，试图在回答的时候不要颤抖，“胃酸？”
He shook his head and pretended to
confide, “He needs a tree. Or a leg.” He grinned
at me.
“Wanna volunteer
yours?”
他摇了摇头，假装在告密：“他需要一个树，
或者一条腿。”他对我笑了笑。“想要贡
献出你的吗？”
I backed away a little. I could just
see that monster try to swallow my leg whole as an
afteregg
chaser.
“N
-
no!”
我往后退了退。
我几乎能看见那个怪物吞下我的整条腿作为鸡蛋的解药。
“不，
不要。
”
He laughed and pointed at the boa
slithering across the room. “Aw, too bad. He's
going the other way. He's gonna use
th
e piano instead!”
< br>他大笑着指了指摇摆着穿过房间的蛇。“哦，真遗憾。他朝另一个方向走了。他会用钢
琴作为代替！”
The piano! What kind of snake was this?
How could my sister stand being in the same
room as these dementos? I looked at
her, and even though she was pretending to be
cool with the snake, I know Lynetta
—
she was totally creeped
out by it.
钢琴！
这到底是什么蛇啊？我姐姐怎么
能忍受和这群疯子呆在同一个房间呢？我看了看
她，虽然她假装很镇静，但是我了解利奈
特——她完全被吓到了。
The snake
wrapped itself around the piano leg about three
times, and then
Matt-or-Mike put
his hands up and said, “Shhh! Shhh!
Everybody
quiet. Here
goes!”
那条蛇绕着钢琴腿卷了三圈，然后不知是马特还
是迈克把手举起来说：“嘘，嘘！大家
都安静！就要开始了！”
The snake stopped moving, then flexed.
And as it flexed, we could hear the eggs
crunch
inside him. “Oh,
gross!” the girls wailed. “Whoa, dude!”
the guys all said. Mike
and Matt smiled
at each other real big and said, “Dinner is
served!”
蛇停止了爬动，然后开始扭曲。它一边扭曲
，我们一边能听见鸡蛋在它里面嘎吱作响。
“太恶心了！”女生们尖叫道。“喔！”男生
们说。迈克和马特相视而笑道：“晚餐解
决了。”
I tried to act cool about the snake,
but the truth is I started having bad dreams about
the thing swallowing eggs. And rats.
And cats.
我试着保持镇静，但是事实是我开始做噩梦，有关它吞下鸡蛋，还
有老鼠、猫。
And
me
.
还有我。
Then the
real-life nightmare began.
接着现实生活中的噩梦开始了。
One morning about two weeks after the
boa show in Skyler's garage, Juli appears on
our doorstep, and what's she got in her
hands? A halfcarton of eggs. She bounces
around like it's Christmas, saying,
“Hiya, Bryce! Remember Abby and
Bonnie
and
Clyde and Dexter? Eunice and
Florence?”
蟒蛇出现在斯
凯勒地下室的两周后的一个早晨，朱莉出现在了我们家门前，
她手上拿了
什么呢？半打鸡蛋。她欢欣鼓舞的样子就像现在是圣诞节。“嗨，布莱斯！你还记得艾
< br>比、邦妮、克莱德、德克斯特、尤妮斯和弗洛伦斯吗？”
I just stared at her.
Somehow I remembered Santa's reindeer a little
different than
that.
我只是瞪着她。至少我记得圣诞老人的驯鹿和这不同。
“You know … my chickens? The ones I
hatched for the science fair last
year?”
“你知道……我的鸡？上一年我为科学展孵化的那些？”
“Oh, right. How could I
forget.”
“哦，对了。我怎么能忘呢。”
“They're laying eggs!” She pushed the
carton into my hands. “Here, take these!
They're for
you and your
family.”
“它们在下蛋了！”她把盒子放在我手上。
“呐，拿着！这些是给你和你家人的。”
“Oh. Uh,
thanks,” I said, and closed the door.
“哦，呃，谢谢。”我说，然后关上了门。
I used to really like eggs. Especially
scrambled, with bacon or sausage. But even
without the little snake incident, I
knew that no matter what you did to
these
eggs,
they
would taste nothing but foul to me. These eggs
came from the chickens that had
been
the chicks that had hatched from the eggs that had
been incubated by Juli Baker
for our
fifth-grade science fair.
我通常很喜欢鸡蛋，特别是炒
蛋，加上培根或是香肠。但是就算没有蛇的事件，我也知
道不管你怎么烧这些鸡蛋，它们
对我来说也糟透了。这些鸡蛋是朱莉
.
贝克为五年级科
学展准备的鸡蛋里孵出的小鸡长成的大鸡下的。
It was classic Juli. She
totally dominated the fair, and get this
—
her project was all
about watching eggs. My friend, there
is not a lot of action to report on when you're
incubating eggs. You've got your light,
you've got your container, you've got some
shredded newspaper, and that's it.
You're done.
这是典型的朱莉风格。
她完全控制
了整个展览，而且要知道——她的课题全是围绕观察
鸡蛋。
我的
朋友，
孵蛋并没有什么报告可以写。
你只要有光线，
有容器，
有一些碎报纸，
你就完成了。
Juli, though,
managed to write an inch-thick report, plus she
made diagrams and
charts
—
I'm talking line charts
and bar charts and pie charts
—
about the activity of
eggs. Eggs!
但是朱莉，却写了足有一英尺厚的报
告，而且还制作了统计图表——我说的是条形、柱
形和扇形的统计图——关于鸡蛋的活动
。鸡蛋！
She also managed to
time the eggs so that they'd hatch the night of
the fair. How does
a person do that?
Here I've got a live-action erupting volcano that
I've worked pretty
stinking hard on,
and all anybody cares about is Juli's chicks
pecking out of their
shells. I even
went over to take a look for myself, and
—
I'm being completely
objective here
—
it was boring. They pecked for about five seconds,
then just lay
there for five
minutes.
她还控制了鸡蛋的时间让它们能在展览的那
天晚上孵出来。
怎么会有人这么做呢？我有
一个制作得非常努力
的火山喷发模拟，但是每一个人都只关心朱莉的鸡从壳里钻出来。
我甚至也去看了看，然
后——我完全客观地说——那非常无聊。它们只轻轻啄五秒钟，
然后就会休息整整五分钟
。
I got to hear
Juli jabber away to the judges, too. She had a
pointer
—
can you believe
that? Not a pencil, an actual
retractable
pointer,
so she
could reach across her
incubator and
tap on this chart or that diagram as she explained
the excitement of
watching eggs grow
for twenty-one days. The only thing she could've
done to be more
overboard was put on a
chicken costume, and buddy, I'm convinced
—
if she'd
thought of it, she would have done it.
我还必须去听朱莉对评审的演讲。她做了个指物棒——你能相信吗？并不是只铅笔，一<
/p>
只真正的，可伸缩的指物棒，这样她就能避开孵化器和窃听器，一边指着这个或是那个
图表，
一边解释观察鸡蛋生长二十一天的兴奋感。
< br>她唯一能做的更兴奋的事就是穿上一
件鸡的衣服，兄弟，我相信——如果她当时想
到这一点，她会做的。
But hey
—
I was over it. It was just
Juli being Juli, right? But all of a sudden there
I am
a year later, holding a carton of
home-grown eggs. And I'm having a hard time not
getting annoyed all over again about
her stupid blue-ribbon project when my mother
leans out from the hallway and says,
“Who was that, honey? What have you got
there?
Eggs?”
但是，
嗨——这已经过去好久了。这只是朱莉的风格而已，对吗？但是我突然间在一年
后，拿到
了一盒家养的鸡蛋。正在我再一次被她一流的课题所烦恼的时候，妈妈从走廊
里探出了头
问道：“刚才是谁？你拿了什么？鸡蛋？”
I could tell by the look on
h
er face that she was hot to scramble.
“Yeah,” I said, and
handed
them to her. “But I'm having
cereal.”
我可以从她的表情看出她很想去炒蛋。“是
的，”我说，把盒子递给她。“但是我会吃
麦片。”
She opened the carton, then closed it
with a smile. “How nice!” she said. “Who
brought them
over?”
她把纸盒打开，然后微
笑着合上。“真不错！”她说，“谁拿来的？”
“Juli.
She grew them.”
“朱莉。她下的。”
“Grew
them?”
“她下的？”
“Well, her chickens did.”
“哦，她的鸡下的。”
“Oh?”
Her smile started falling as she opened the carton
again. “Is that so. I didn't
know she
had… chickens.”
“
哦？”她的嘴角开始下垂，她又把盒子打开。“是吗？我不知道她养了……鸡。”
“Remember? You and Dad spent an hour
watching them hatch at last year's science
fair?”
“记得吗？你和爸爸在
去年的科学展花了一个小时观察它们孵化？”
“Well,
how do we know there're not …
chicks
inside these eggs?”
“恩，我们怎么知道这些鸡蛋里没有小鸡？”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I'm having
cereal.”
我耸了耸肩：“我刚才说了，我要吃麦片。”
We all had cereal, but what we talked
about were eggs. My dad thought they'd be just
fine
—
he'd had
farm-fresh eggs when he was a kid and said they
were delicious. My
mother, though,
couldn't get past the idea that she might be
cracking open a dead
chick, and pretty
soon discussion turned to the role of the rooster
—
something me
and my Cheerios could've done without.
我们都吃了麦片，
但是我们谈论的是鸡蛋。我爸爸说那些蛋没问
题——他小的时候也吃
过饲养的新鲜鸡蛋而且它们很美味。但是我妈妈没办法不去想她可
能打开一个死鸡，没
过一会儿讨论就变成了公鸡的作用——我和我的麦片没有它就不行。
Fin
ally Lynetta
said, “If they had a rooster, don't you think we'd
know? Don't you think
the
whole neighborhood would
know?”
最后利奈特说：
“如果
他们有公鸡的话，我们会不知道吗？你们会认为整个街区会不知
道吗？”
Hmmm, we all said, good point. But
then my mom pipes up with, “Maybe they got it
deyodeled. You know
—
like they
de-
bark dogs?”
恩，
我们都说，正说到点子上了。但是我妈妈说道，“也许他们不让它叫呢。你知道—
—就像
他们不让狗叫一样？”
“A
de
-
yodeled rooster,” my dad
says, like it's the most ridiculous thing he's
ever heard.
Then he looks at my mom and
realizes that he'd be way better off going along
with her
de-
yodeled idea
than making fun of her. “Hmmm,” he
says,
“I've never heard of
such a
thing, but maybe so.”
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