by Thomas Tosi
“What difference does it make?” I said, coming round the corner. Probably because of how loud we were arguing, the chipmunk started chirping again.
“An’ you just shut your pie hole and stay out of it,” Celia shouted at him.
“Judge Sally is only on TV in the U.S.,” I said. I didn’t know that for sure, but it sounded reasonable enough. “Your MyVids video is already being watched online around the world. So, why would it be any worse if they showed it once on TV?”
Celia’s eyes got all squinty and mean again.
“Not that they would,” I said. “In fact, they probably wouldn’t…”
Celia waved me off. “That dog don’t hunt. Y’all are gonna have to do better’n that.”
“Okay, how about this? Think of it as your way of getting back at Sweetly Crisp for…for wrecking your car.”
Celia considered this and stopped glaring at me. She ran her hand back and forth across the top of the orange junker’s fender like she was petting it.
“Well, I’m not sure they’re entirely culpable for that. I could argue that they were at fault, but I don’t reckon there was any malice—expressed or implied.”
Culpable? Malice expressed or implied?
I had no idea what Celia had just said, but I was pretty sure I knew how to use it.
“You know what that is, right?” I said.
“What what is?”
“Culpa…That stuff you just said. It’s lawyer gobbledygook. That’s what Mr. Paczki called it, remember—at the doughnut shop? He called what you’re studying: LAWYER GOBBLEDYGOOK.”
Celia bit her lower lip. She wheeled around and slammed both hands down on the hood of her car.
I thought that now Celia would be steaming instead of her engine. But she wasn’t. She took a deep breath.
“Darlin’, you are good,” she said.
“Does that mean you’ll help me on Judge Sally Rules?”
“Y’all sure you wanna go through with this?”
“Of course.”
“You know she can be one ornery old cuss.”
“So can you.”
Celia turned to me and smiled. It was a hard smile. It was a we’re‐going‐to‐win smile.
“Ornery old cuss.” Celia broke out in laughter. “Shoot, that’s just about the sweetest thing you can say to a lawyer gal. All right then.”
Touch Has a Memory
Since Celia had college stuff to do during the week, we decided to wait until the weekend to start working on our case for Judge Sally Rules. That’s what Celia called it—our case. I liked that. It sounded official, just like on TV or in the movies or something.
Getting through the next few days was a long haul. When we finally got to Friday morning, I was pretty excited. Dad dropped us off in the school parking lot—again. He reminded me to wait for my sisters—again. And I ignored him—again. The day was beginning just as it should.
In fact, nothing out of the ordinary happened until I was making my way through all the other kids heading to school. That’s when she came up behind me and tapped me on my shoulder. It was the first time that Marlene touched me that wasn’t an accident or a shove.
That morning was also the first time that Marlene started a conversation with me where she wasn’t mad or smart‐alecky or anything. You know, she talked to me like a normal person.
“I guess we’re supposed to be buddies, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed, jolted away from my thoughts of doughnuts by the touch of her fingers. “We did get stuck sitting next to each other.”
I immediately wished I hadn’t said get stuck. That didn’t come out like I’d wanted. It sounded almost mad. And Marlene was talking to me nicely for a change. Well, not nicely exactly, but normally. Compared to her angry voice, normal sounded nice. I was going to ask her what gives, but I didn’t want to wreck the moment or anything.
“So, if one of us has to be out, the other gets the notes and stuff?” she said.
“Sure. I mean, I’m not that great at notes, but sure.”
My pants slipped a little. I hitched them up, hoping Marlene wouldn’t notice.
“How come your uniform’s different?” she asked.
“It’s a hand‐me‐down from my brother Brian…or James.”
“You don’t know which one?’
“They’re my older twin brothers.”
Marlene looked back toward the kids crowding in behind us. Faye and Peg were there and had seen us talking. This could be trouble.
“And those are your sisters, right? How many of you are there?”
“Five.”
“That must be great.”
“Yeah? Try being crammed into an attic bedroom with all of them—and with only a blanket wall dividing the boys from the girls.”
“Five kids? Attic? Blanket wall? You’re so lucky,” Marlene said just as Faye and Peg passed by us.
Faye batted her eyelids and puckered her lips. Peg pointed and looked like she was about to say something. Before she could, Faye started giggling, grabbed Peg’s arm, and pulled her along down to the path.
See what I mean about giggling? Even if it’s your own sister, that’s all that girls have to do to make you feel crummy. Faye totally deflated the good feeling I had about just talking regular to Marlene.
Giggling.
I’d rather be punched in the gut—well, as long as the punch wasn’t thrown by someone too strong.
Thinking about punches started me thinking about people who might want to beat me up. And then I thought of something else. I scanned the parking lot cautiously.
“He’s not here,” Marlene said.
“Who?”
“My dad. That’s who you’re worried about, isn’t it?”
Marlene was right. I was looking to make sure that Mr. Paczki wasn’t about to run me down. Since she touched me on the shoulder, Marlene obviously didn’t think I was poison anymore. But that didn’t mean her father now thought I was romping along leaving a trail of rainbows and unicorns wherever I went.
“No, I just—”
“It’s my mom’s day to drop me off,” Marlene said. “I’m with her this weekend.”
We walked in silence for a bit, making it to the path. We were going slowly, and other kids were pushing past us. After what she said, I’m with her this weekend, I thought Marlene was waiting for me to ask her something about her parents—like, were they divorced or something. But I didn’t. You might think I was some kind of gentleman because of that—not being nosy about her stuff—but I really just didn’t know what to say.
Marlene was looking down at both her hands while she walked—the one with the splints on the fingers and the other one. I don’t know why she was so interested in her hands but, as I looked at them, I thought about how it felt when she tapped me on the shoulder—like a vibration had pulsed from the spot she had touched down to my gut. I was thinking about her using those hands to play the piano—how the wires inside it vibrated when she touched its keys, just like I did when she touched my shoulder.
I was wondering what kinds of songs she played. I bet they sounded really nice. And I’m not usually somebody who cares much about music.
“So many days with my dad, so many days with my mom,” Marlene said finally. “It’s like they’re both trying to own me.”
“Well, you’re their kid. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?”
“No. Not like they’re doing it. For them, it’s like a competition.”
“Competition?”
“Yeah, a competition to own me. Let’s say my dad wins, and I’m his—that means my mom loses. When you own something, it also means that somebody else doesn’t own it.”
Now I thought that maybe the songs that Marlene played were the sad kind—the kind that, when they’re over, you pretend you got something in your eye while you brush at it with your hand because you didn’t want anyone thinking you almost cried over a dumb song.
“That’s fine when
there’s plenty to go around,” Marlene said, “but there’s two of them and only one of me. They’re supposed to share me. We’re all supposed to share each other.”
The whole time she was talking, Marlene didn’t look at me. But, if you want to know the truth, it felt like the most we were ever connected. We didn’t say anything for the rest of the walk to the school building.
I guess Marlene already felt like she had said a lot.
An Encounter with Bernard
How can you eat that?” I asked Dewey at lunch. He, Peachy, and I were sitting at our usual table in the farthest corner away from the equipment room where they kept the stinky team uniforms.
At Green Hill Academy, we ate in the cafegymatorium. That might sound like some bizarre word that kids made up, but it wasn’t. Everybody called it that, even the grown‐ups. It was a big open hall with a stage on one end, a kitchen along one side, and sport pads on all the other walls. You could think of it like a transformer—a boring, loud, echoing transformer that smelled of stale cooking grease and sweat.
I wasn’t asking Dewey about the rubbery mac ‘n cheese and tater tots being served. Anybody can eat mac ‘n cheese—even bad mac ‘n cheese. I was talking about his dessert. The kitchen had the parfait cups again that day. Dewey was slurping one down.
“Better to eat them than to wear them,” Dewey said. “You gonna get another one to throw on Bridget?”
“I didn’t throw it, and it wasn’t even mine. It was Marlene’s.”
“Then ask her how you can eat these. She seems to like them.”
I was surprised that I hadn’t thought about Marlene when I was in the food line earlier and saw the parfaits. All day I felt bad about her parents and her fingers. The fingers were looking a little better—if you think purple turning to yellow around the edges is better.
“She here?” I asked.
“How should I know? It’s not my job to watch her,” Dewey said.
“She’s your buddy,” Peachy said to me, chewing. There was nothing wrong with his fingers. He had the last of his tater tots jammed on them and was eating the little spuds off, one by one.
Something was up. I saw Bridget and the same old gang of giggling girls but no Marlene. She was usually with them. She must be at the doctor’s for her fingers—that’s why she asked me about taking notes.
I had an idea. Maybe I could do something nice for Marlene. If she was missing lunch, then she was also missing the parfaits. She loved the parfaits. I could sneak a parfait back to the classroom for her. Maybe that would make her feel a little bit better about her fingers and her parents.
“I gotta go look around,” I said to Dewey and Peachy.
“Dude, I was kidding,” Peachy said. “It’s not really your job. You’re taking this buddy thing a little far.”
“Unless, of course, you want to go looking for Marlene Paczki,” Dewey said, lowering his spoon and looking at me with one squinted eye and a raised eyebrow. “Do you want to go looking for Marlene?”
“I don’t want to go looking for her.”
“Then why are you standing?” Peachy asked.
Along with some applesauce, Jell‐O cups, and dried‐out brownies, a few parfaits were still sitting out at the end of the tray counter in front of the cafegymatorium kitchen. The lunch ladies—and one lunch dude—were cleaning up and putting the food away, but they had started at the other end. If I hurried on over there—
“That wasn’t cool, you know,” a voice said.
It belonged to Dewey’s desk buddy, Bernard, who looked like a Truffula tree. He stepped out in front and intercepted me just as I was getting to the counter. If my arms were longer, I could’ve almost reached around him and grabbed a parfait—I was that close.
Bernard was about two feet taller than me. I had to tilt my head pretty steep to look him in the eye. Except, I wasn’t looking him in the eye. I was looking at his bushy hair to see if there was any sign of my pencil. There wasn’t.
Had he figured out it was me who put it there?
“What you did to Bridget,” he said. “That’s not the way you let a girl know you like her.”
What on Earth is he talking about?
Behind Bernard, I could see the sweaty lunch dude with the hairnet and plastic gloves lift the last of the silver trays that had held the mac ‘n cheese. Steam came softly out of the gap in which the tray had been. The lunch dude scraped what little sticky yellow sludge was left in the tray into a big gray trash barrel and turned to the sink. Next, he would be back for the tater tot tray.
“Bridget?” I asked Bernard.
He shook his head at me. “I know about kids like you. You crush on a girl, and what do you do? You punch her in the arm, grab her backpack—or throw a parfait on her. Stupid. Childish.”
That sounds weird, right? A fifth grader talking like that? But because Bernard was so tall and wicked smart, it didn’t really seem weird. For a moment, it felt like he was an adult—like he would have made a better principal than Mr. Richards. He even crossed his arms over his chest and was impatiently tapping one of his feet.
“First of all, for the hundredth time, I didn’t throw the parfait on Bridget. And second of all, I don’t like Bridget.”
When I heard myself say that, I got kind of red in the face. This was because I emphasized the word, Bridget. I didn’t mean to, but there it was. It sounded like—to me anyway—I didn’t like Bridget, but I did like someone. I was horrified that Bernard might be about to ask who.
“You don’t like Bridget?” he asked instead.
Over in the kitchen, the tater tot tray was gone. Only some smaller containers with wilted, steamed, veggie medley remained to be put away before the dessert cooler with the parfaits.
“No.”
Bernard was no longer an adult. He uncrossed his arms and grabbed a tangle of the thick hair on his head with his hands. Now it was his turn to get red in the face.
“Wow. Wow, oh, wow. That’s great.”
Smooth. Real smooth.
“It is?”
“Sure it is,” he replied. “Now, I don’t have to make you my arch enemy.”
I looked back over both shoulders to see if anyone was standing behind me. Maybe Bernard was talking to someone else.
Nothing.
When I turned to face him again, I could see that, over in the kitchen, the veggie medley was gone. All that was left was the dessert cooler. If I stood any chance of getting a parfait, I had to move now.
“You have no idea what a relief this is,” Bernard put his hands on my shoulders—preventing me from going anywhere.
Lunch dude was coming back for the parfaits.
“We would have been rivals for her affection,” Bernard said. “We might even have had to fight, or duel for her honor, or something. But now we don’t…get it?”
“Ah…no. Look, Bernard, I really have to—” I tried to move around him, but he gripped my shoulders even tighter.
“How could you not get it? It must be written all over my face. I like Bridget.”
I never saw a kid do that before. He said it. He said it out loud so I could hear. He said he liked a girl. I might not have seen what was written all over Bernard’s face, but he sure must have seen the surprise written on mine.
“I know, right?” he said. “But I believe you have to say it when you feel it. You can’t wait. Wait—and you’re lost.”
“Bernard—”
“That’s it, man. Wait and you’re lost,” he said.
The kid just looked so happy. For a second, I was terrified he was going to hug me. He didn’t. Bernard released my shoulders. I was free to go.
But there was no place to go. The parfaits were gone—lunch dude was carrying them to the big silver fridge. All I could do was stand and watch.
Wait and you’re lost.
The Recess Proclamation
On Fridays, recess comes right after lunch. In all its wisdom, the school must think it’s a great idea to have kids with bel
lies full of gooey mac ‘n cheese, tater tots, and yogurt parfaits running around. I bet the reasoning went something like this—if any of us barfed, at least we were already outside. The janitors could just cover it up with dirt. That might save money on the green sawdust stuff they sprinkle when someone tosses a sidewalk pizza inside the building.
In honor of having tater tots for lunch, Peachy, Dewey, and a bunch of the other guys decided to play SPUD with a spongey rubber ball—about the size of a tennis ball—which Peachy had found under the slide.
I decided not to play. That was partially because the ball was grungy, had little chunks bitten out of it, and looked like it had been slimed over with dog drool. Also, as I said earlier, I wasn’t very good at sports. I knew it, and everyone else knew it—there was no reason to remind people.
There was another guy who wasn’t playing SPUD, Bernard. He was over near the swing set, pacing back and forth with his head down. That wasn’t so unusual, but what made me notice him was the fact that he was talking to himself.
“SPUD!” someone yelled behind me.
Looking down at the ground, Bernard couldn’t see that the smaller kids on the swings were coming within inches of clocking him. I’m sure there’s nothing those demented first and second graders would've liked better than a chance to take out a fifth grader—especially a tall one like Bernard.
I wasn’t the only one to notice Bernard. Every now and then, he would stop and look up across the playground toward the big rock. And guess who was over by the big rock? Yup, it was Bridget and the rest of the girls—except for Marlene. They were pretending like they didn’t see what Bernard was doing, but they saw him all right.
“SPUD!”
You probably know SPUD is sort of like a cross between tag and dodgeball. One guy chucks the ball up in the air while everybody else runs away. While the ball is up there, the guy who threw it yells out some other player's number. The guy whose number is called stops running and comes back for the ball. When he’s got it, he yells, “SPUD!” and everybody else freezes. Then, he tries to bean one of them with the ball.
