Regular Guy
Page 6
“Yech, Mom, too much information,” I protested.
“Guy, I didn’t let you out of my sight the entire time I was in the hospital. Poor little Bobby Smith was coming and going all the time for treatments and ointments and what not, while you just lay in my arms staring up at me like a little angel. I felt sorry for Marie. I still do.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Guy, Bobby is, well, let’s just say he hasn’t had an easy time of it. He’s always been kind of an odd duck. Marie and John are perfectly nice people, but they don’t have a clue when it comes to helping that boy.”
“What do you think they should be doing?”
“Paying attention to him. Listening to him. Right from the get-go they refused to really look at him. Now their kid is walking around talking to himself and stuffing his pockets full of rolled-up tuna fish, and they’re sitting around with their noses stuck in—”
“—magazines.” I finished the sentence for her. “Why does he have tuna fish in his pockets, anyway?” I asked.
“I asked him that. He told me he hates tuna fish, but every day his mother packs him a tuna fish sandwich for lunch. He wads up the tuna and eats the bread.”
“Why doesn’t he just throw it out?” I asked. “That’s what I do with the raw hot dogs.”
“You do? Why didn’t you tell me not to pack them?”
“I did,” I said quietly.
We sat for a minute on the step not saying anything. Finally I got up the nerve to ask, “How come you said ‘it didn’t work’ when Bob-o walked in, before?”
“He was picking his nose,” she said.
“So?” I said.
“I tried to hypnotize him out of that habit,” my mother said. “But it didn’t work.”
“Oh, that’s what you meant?”
“Uh huh. What did you think I meant?”
“I thought you had tried to kill him, Mom.”
“What?!”
“He was green, and Dad said he was dead to the world. I heard him.”
“That’s just an expression. I tried to hypnotize him to stop him from picking his nose, Guy. Obviously I haven’t mastered the technique yet, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’ll show you when we get home.”
Home. I let the word wash over me like a warm wave, but only for a minute. I still had more questions.
“Why did you put Bob-o’s hands in plastic bags?” I asked.
“I put an herbal salve on his hands to help break the picking cycle, and the bags were supposed to keep it from getting all over everything. He fell asleep on the couch and the bags broke open. I was in the kitchen frosting a cake, and by the time I checked on him he’d somehow managed to get himself covered pretty much head to toe with the stuff. My couch will never be the same.”
“What were you doing with that knife, Mom?”
“I was cutting the cake when I heard something outside the window. I thought it might be Sammy and Val’s cat making a mess in the bushes. Apparently it’s tired of your old sandbox and has taken a shine to my lilac bushes, the little poot.”
“Were you going to stab it?”
“Of course not. I forgot I even had the knife in my hand. I just ran outside when I heard the commotion in the bushes.”
“I thought you were going to kill me,” I said, and I was surprised by the flood of emotion I felt as I said it.
My mother put the book down next to her and put her arms around me.
“Apparently a vivid imagination is one of the many genetic traits you failed to notice you had inherited from your parents, you nut,” she said.
“Oh, yeah? Name another.”
“Ever noticed your father’s earlobes?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, come take a look. They’re notched, and so are yours.”
I held the screen door open for my mom, and we went inside to examine those wonderful lobes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning I woke up feeling lighter than I’d felt in a long time. I knew I was where I belonged. I lay in bed, running my fingers over the notches at the tops of my earlobes and listening to the sounds in my house. I could hear my parents laughing in the kitchen. My mother’s heels clicked across the floor as she went to turn on the radio. She tuned it in to something jazzy, and I knew when I went down there that she and my dad would probably be dancing.
I got up and opened my top drawer. It was full of brand-new white underwear. I opened the sock drawer—the pairs were still unmatched, but somehow it didn’t bother me. I pulled on my clothes and went down to the kitchen. Just as I’d predicted, my mom and dad were doing a tango. Mom’s head was thrown back and her eyes were closed. Instead of a red rose between her teeth, she gripped a plastic spatula. Everything was back to normal.
“Good morning!” I called as I grabbed a pancake off the plate, folded it, and shoved it into my mouth.
My parents stopped dancing and watched as I downed another pancake and then gulped some orange juice.
“You feeling all right, son?” my father asked.
“Yeah, Dad, I feel fine.”
“We were worried about you yesterday, Guy,” he said.
“I know, I was worried about me too. But I’m fine now. Really.”
My father reached into his pocket and handed me a stack of baseball cards.
“I’m still looking for a couple of them.”
“Forget about it, Dad. This is fine. Really. Thanks.”
I slipped the cards into my back pocket and left my parents standing in the kitchen hand in hand as I headed off to the fort to meet Buzz.
“So, what did I look like when I fainted?” Buzz asked.
“Like sleeping beauty, only ugly.” I laughed.
“I’m rubber, you’re glue—” he started, but he stopped mid-sentence when Bob-o stuck his head in the door. Buzz and I looked at each other.
“Uh, come on in, Bob-o,” I said.
Bob-o stepped inside. He looked different. It took me a minute to figure out that he was wearing new pants—long enough to cover his socks. His hair was also slicked back. He still looked weird, but somehow it was a little better.
“What’s up, Bob-o?” Buzz asked.
Bob-o did his shrug thing and stuck his hands in his pockets. Then he looked at me. He said something, but I couldn’t hear him.
“Speak up, will ya?” I said.
“I, uh, wanted to thank you,” he said.
“Me? For what?” I asked.
“Well, for, for a bunch of stuff.”
“Like?”
“Like caring about my being dead even though I wasn’t. And letting me come to the fort. And making me realize that they’re driving me nuts.”
“Who’s driving you nuts?” Buzz asked.
“My parents, who do you think?” Bob-o answered.
“You know, Bob-o, I have to agree with you on that one,” said Buzz. “Those two are definitely bizarre-o.”
“You’re telling me. They’re turning me into a nervous wreck,” said Bob-o. “I had no idea what it felt like to relax until I spent the weekend with your folks, Guy.”
I had to laugh. “You found my parents relaxing?”
“Yeah. Plus you can hear your mom coming a mile away, which is a very good quality in a mother.”
“I know exactly what you’re talking about, Bob-o,” I said.
“That makes two of you,” said Buzz.
I smiled at my old friend.
“One thing, though,” Bob-o said seriously. “That oyster trick is really disgusting.”
“You get used to it,” I said. “Listen, Buzz, would you excuse us for a minute? I want to talk to Bob-o alone.”
Buzz didn’t looked thrilled, but he went outside and pulled the door closed behind him.
“I owe you an apology,” I said. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Forget it,” he said.
“Can I talk to you
about something else?” I asked.
Bob-o gave the half shrug.
“It’s about the tuna fish balls.”
Bob-o blushed and looked away.
“I think you should tell your mom you want hot lunch from now on. I told mine last night when we got home and she said okay. You and I can brave the mystery meat together.”
Bob-o grinned.
“Who knows, maybe it’ll put hair on our chests,” he said as he stuck out his scrawny chest and flexed his nonexistent muscles.
I laughed and so did he.
“Okay, girls, enough with the private chitchat. Ready or not, here I come!” Buzz called out.
We spent the rest of that afternoon hanging out at the fort, the three of us, talking and laughing and just being regular guys. Well, Bob-o wasn’t exactly regular yet, but Buzz and I agreed that his weirdness had a certain charm. When I headed for home at the end of the day, I felt older somehow and a little wiser; and when I pushed open the screen door and saw the cake cooling on the counter, I shouted at the top of my lungs—
“I’m home!”
About the Author
SARAN WEEKS is the singer, songwriter, and author of the best-selling picture books with tapes CROCODILE SMILE and FOLLOW THE MOON, as well as the groundbreaking book with CD-ROM, LITTLE FACTORY. She also wrote lyrics for the 1997 hit Disney video Pooh’s Grand Adventure. REGULAR GUY is her first novel for children. She lives in New York City with her two sons.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Cover art © 1999 by Michael Koelsch
Cover © 2000 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
REGULAR GUY. Copyright © 1999 by Sarah Weeks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-197883-8
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