Funny Business

by Jon Scieszka

  Tracy was in the living room, somehow listening to her headphones and talking on the phone at the same time while watching TV. The turkey sat on a pink blanket in the chair by the bookshelf. I crept back up the stairs, placing my toes against the edge of each step. I moved real slowly over the carpet, down the hallway toward the master bedroom, my ankles pressed up against the wall so I was walking sideways, like a spy breaking into a building.

  I flicked the switch on the wall, and the two lamps on either side of the queen-size bed came on. I surveyed the room. The walk-in closet next to the bathroom, my mother’s attempt at painting resting against the bureau. The bottles of makeup on the dresser top. I went over to the painting, held it up. A self-portrait that didn’t really resemble my mother. Geese flying in the background. A yellow sun. I poked at it with my index finger. It pushed through the canvas easily. I curled my finger in the hole and pulled up. I made other holes. A piece of the painting hung over like a piece of bark.

  Next I headed over to the walk-in closet. The dresses, hanging from wooden hangers in the corner, covered in plastic. I ripped those as well, making sure to rip my mother’s favorite dress, the red one. It ripped easily. I made sure to damage only the bottoms of the dresses. I picked up one of my father’s favorite loafers and bit into it. It tasted sour. I scuffed up the front, scratching at the leather with my fingernails.

  I went back out into the bedroom, and luckily remembered at the last second to turn off the light in the closet. I listened for Tracy’s footsteps but heard nothing. I opened up a green bottle on the dresser top. Inside, the liquid was thick, speckled. I lay it on the side of the dresser, and the creamy liquid spilled out onto the surface and leaked over the side, forming a puddle in the dark blue carpet.

  I hopped onto their bed and kicked at the sheets. I undid the zipper on my brown corduroys. And then I peed in the middle of the mattress. I know most people would say that this was an unforgivably wrong thing to do, but the way I saw it at the time, my life was at stake. I took out the feathers, let a few drop onto the sheets, sticking to the wet mess in the middle. I stepped down quietly from the bed, careful not to make a loud sound, and took a sweeping glance at the room. The puddle of skin lotion was clotting on the carpet; beads of green liquid streaked down the side of the dresser. I placed the two remaining feathers in the middle of the room. I left the door ajar, and walked back into my bedroom.

  The sound of the car pulling into the driveway. The flash of yellow across the far wall in my room. The walls shook when my dad shut the garage door. The sound of Tracy’s fake laughter. The TV shut off. The sound of the turkey making excited noises. I peeked through a crack in the door and saw my mom climbing up the stairs, her high heels in her left hand. The hallway light turned on and I took a step back.

  She went into the bedroom. I waited. I felt queasy with anticipation. I waited for the scream, and eventually it came. “My red dress! Martin, get up here now!” she cried. Dad raced up the stairs. He screamed, too. Now they were both screaming. I cringed, and for a moment wondered if they knew it was me. Had I left the closet light on by accident? Suddenly I couldn’t remember for sure. I pictured my footprints all over the room, circles in the thick carpet. But then I heard my dad race down the steps and into the family room.

  Tracy screamed, “What’s wrong? Is it the baby? I stayed with her all night.”

  The sound of the screen door banging against the side of the house. I waited for Dad to come back inside. I could hear Mom crying at the top of the stairs. I crept over to the window and peeked out. He threw the turkey over the fence. It tumbled, and my dad shook his fist at the turkey before going back inside.

  Tracy pulled away in her silver car, the sound of the engine fading in the distance. I could hear Mom and Dad whispering in the hallway. I looked outside. The turkey was in the clearing, staring up at my window. It was hopping up and down, and its beady red eyes glared up at me. I smiled down at the turkey, waved, and turned away. I climbed into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

  “Sam, come downstairs,” Mom called.

  I scooped up my remaining Legos and dropped them into the plastic bucket. I placed the finished Lego hair salon on the desk. Outside, the sky was bright gray. I could hear the humidifier in the baby’s room hum as I walked by. Through the crack in the door, I could see the baby sleeping in her crib. The room was blue because of the night-light.

  A football game on the TV in the family room, a handful of empty beer cans on the coffee table. Dad sitting on the sofa, a beer between his legs. I walked through the kitchen, and the smells of Thanksgiving hit me full force when I entered the dining room. The table was set with eight places. The baby’s crib next to the window. The sound of chimes on the front stoop. Tracy and her boyfriend came in and sat next to the head of the table. I sat down next to her. The Berrians showed up and sat down on the other side of the table. Me and Josh kicked at each other under the white tablecloth—not the fun kind friends do, but more like the aggressive kind enemies do when they’re forced to eat dinner together. Josh seemed surprised I was giving as much as I took. Finally, Mom and Dad sat down at opposite ends of the table.

  The table was filled with almost every plate from the cupboard. Two baskets of bread, steam rising from the openings in the red cloth napkins; a bowl of store-bought slices of cranberry sauce; a glass casserole dish filled with stuffing; bowls of green peas, corn, and mashed potatoes; and at the head of the table, in front of my dad, was Travis the turkey. Everyone was staring at it. The thing practically spilled off the silver platter. It was golden brown and seemed to glow in the light.

  My parents were silent amidst the idle chatter. Eventually everyone stopped talking and stared at Dad. He took a final swig of his beer and then placed the empty can on the windowsill behind him. Mom got up and took the can into the kitchen.

  “Let us say grace,” Dad said, bowing his head. Everyone at the table bowed their heads as well.

  The baby cried.

  “Bless us, O Lord, for this heavenly feast, on this day of all days, when those less fortunate than us don’t—” He stopped abruptly and his face fell into his hands. The sound of my dad sobbing startled me, along with everyone else at the table. No one said anything. Dad continued to cry, and his whole body seemed to shake. Mom bent over him, embracing him from behind. She had tears in her eyes, too.

  Tracy exchanged glances with her boyfriend.

  It took a minute before Dad finally regained his composure. He stood up, the silver carving knife in his right hand, the three-pronged fork gently resting against the side of the turkey. Sweat rolled down the sides of the bird. The knife slowly felt its way across the side of the turkey. Dad hesitated, looked around, looked at me.

  “C’mere, Sam,” he said, resting the fork on the white tablecloth next to the silver platter. His voice sounded shaky.

  I pushed back in my seat, walked silently over to my father’s side.

  “Son, I think it’s time for you to learn how to carve the turkey,” he said, handing me the blade.

  He stepped aside.

  My fists were white; the fork shook as I looked up at my dad.

  “So, er, just cut on an angle down the side, use the fork for support, thin slices, slow at first—oh, man—” He turned away. The thought of cutting into poor Travis I guess was too much for him to bear in the end. Mom handed him a fresh beer. He took a long gulp, then let out a deep breath. He looked over at me and dropped the half-empty beer on the wooden floor.

  I was shaving slices off the side of the turkey with the skilled ease of a seasoned butcher. It didn’t seem right, given my tiny size, the way I seemed to slice through the tough skin like it was butter. I was sandwiching slices between the fork and knife, tossing them onto the plates, asking if anyone preferred dark meat. No one said a thing. I stabbed at the turkey, leaned back to pull the blade through the center. I whistled low under my breath. Turkey juice mixed with sweat on my face.

  In a minute the tu
rkey was completely carved. What remained was a skeleton of the turkey, a chunk of white meat in the shape of a rhombus. I sat down at my seat. The others stared at their plates, piled high with pieces of turkey. They began passing around the side dishes. It saddened me to see the pretty spread dissolve before my very eyes. I felt warm surrounded by my family. I smiled at my dad.

  “Can we start eating, Daddy?” I asked.

  “Um—okay,” he replied weakly, holding the side of the table in a vise grip. He stared down at his plate, the hairs on the white meat, the rubbery fat on the dark meat. He looked away. He couldn’t eat. Neither could my mom. She stared at her plate with empty eyes, then noticed Travis’s red rubber ball in the corner of the floor and shuddered. Tracy just stared at my dad in a kind of daze, and the Berrians had no idea how to act. Tracy’s boyfriend took a large swallow of wine, red drops down the front of his starchy white shirt. Josh played with his green peas with a look of sheer boredom on his face as he watched them roll off the side of the table. Mr. Elizabeth winked at me, but I was too busy to wink back.

  In fact, I was the only one eating.

  I was swallowing pieces of turkey almost as fast as I could cut them, stopping only for a gulp of milk. It was my first time eating meat in almost two years. I tore off another piece. The sound of the knife scraping against the plate. Kernels of corn spilled off the side. My cheeks were filled, I struggled for air, but I felt like I couldn’t stop. And I didn’t.

  And everyone else watched.

  It all tasted so good, and when I looked at my dad, I was surprised to see that the expression on his face had changed, from a mixture of sadness and horror to something else entirely.

  “That’s my boy,” he said softly.

  UNACCOMPANIED MINORS

  BY JEFF KINNEY

  My younger brother, Patrick, is a normal, functioning adult. He has a job and a car and a house, and he’s a productive member of society. Which is all pretty surprising, considering I’m the one who raised him.

  Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Patrick had an attentive mother and father, two older siblings, and a grandmother who made sure he was loved and cared for. But they couldn’t always be there to look out for him. That’s where I came in.

  Once I got to babysitting age, my folks felt like they could trust me to watch my little brother for a few hours at a time while they ran errands or took care of things for the family. The moment the car pulled out of the driveway, I went to work on my defenseless kid brother.

  Before you get the wrong idea, I wasn’t one of those typical bullying older brothers. The damage I inflicted was mostly psychological. I was too smart to do something that would leave a mark.

  Case in point: One afternoon, Patrick was happily playing a video game in the family room. This was back in the early eighties, when the Atari 2600 was all the rage. It’s also when The Smurfs was a hugely popular Saturday morning cartoon, and Patrick was one of its disciples. The Smurfs were tiny blue men (and oddly, just one female) with white hats and no shirts (except for that female). They could often be seen walking through their valley, singing happily as they marched along in unison.

  But the Smurfs had one mortal enemy: a twisted human wizard named Gargamel. Gargamel was always chasing after the Smurfs, saying, “I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I ever do!” I think he wanted to put the Smurfs in a cauldron and boil them. The reasons are a little hazy to me now.

  Patrick was enjoying Asteroids or some such game, and I told him I needed to go out and get the mail and that he was going to be on his own for a minute or two. I walked out of the front door very casually and then booked to the backyard as fast as my feet would carry me. I got very close to the sliding glass door where Patrick was playing his game, and I spoke:

  “Tra, la, la la-la-la!” I sang, as Smurflike as I could.

  “I’ll get you, my little Smurfs!” I shouted in my best Gargamel voice.

  “Help! Papa Smurf! Save us!” I said, channeling Brainy Smurf.

  Then I ran as quickly as I could to the front of the house and casually thumbed through the mail as I walked through the door. I wasn’t sure if I had fooled my brother. I knew it was a long shot, and I didn’t feel I had done my best Gargamel.

  But when I walked into the family room, Patrick was standing bolt upright. The joystick was lying on the ground, and on the TV were the words “Game Over.”

  Patrick was as white as a ghost. His eyes were wide, and he looked absolutely stricken with fear.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked innocently.

  Patrick gulped, and a single word escaped his lips.

  “Smurfs!” he gasped.

  The Smurfs incident wasn’t the first time I blurred the line between fantasy and reality for Patrick, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  When I was a kid, I loved milk. I drank almost a gallon a day. Patrick, on the other hand, despised milk. Looking back, he was probably lactose intolerant, and I’m sure milk upset his stomach.

  But I made it my personal mission to make Patrick love milk just as much as I did. After all, “Milk builds strong bones!” the ads on TV told us. I wanted to make sure my younger brother had strong bones, just like me.

  Reason didn’t work on Patrick, and neither did bribery. So I tried lying, and that did the trick.

  I created a lie so elaborate that I came to half believe it myself. I convinced Patrick that he was a superhero named Shazaam and that he needed milk to fuel his powers. Why couldn’t he fly or jump over tall buildings? Why, it was because he wasn’t drinking enough milk.

  And why hadn’t Mom and Dad told Patrick he was a superhero? Why, because every superhero has a secret identity, and his was so secret, even his mother and father didn’t know about it.

  So under my supervision, Patrick choked down glass upon glass of milk. He was frustrated that he didn’t yet have X-ray vision or the ability to fly, but I patiently explained that his powers would come to him if he just drank more milk.

  The lie grew bigger and bigger over time. I’m certain that Patrick was having a hard time keeping his secret identity under wraps in kindergarten, where he had to sing the ABCs and finger paint with the mere mortals who were his classmates.

  But every superhero has a weakness, and Patrick’s kryptonite was the rocket slide at the town park. The rocket slide was made up of a tower with a ladder running through the center of it and a metal spiral slide that wrapped around it. Patrick was absolutely terrified of that slide, just as I was when I was a kid. He wouldn’t get within fifty feet of that thing.

  So I convinced Patrick that by climbing that ladder, all of the powers that were promised to him would be bestowed when he reached the top. He would be able to fly, to see with X-ray vision, and to finally get his Shazaam suit. Plus, as a kicker, he’d get a Shazaam action figure. All he needed to do was to conquer his fears and climb that ladder.

  Still, Patrick was skeptical. It took weeks of convincing before Patrick finally stepped inside the tower and began the long climb up the ladder. Little did he know, I was right behind him.

  When Patrick got to the top, the sky did not part and he was not transformed into a being with superpowers. Not even an action figure in sight.

  There was just an older brother who pushed him down the slide, headfirst.

  The superhero scam ended in that moment, and I’m sure many dreams died for Patrick on that day. I can’t imagine the psychological damage that occurs when you’ve spent a year living a secret identity as a superhero with no actual powers only to find that it was all a lie. All I know is, to this day, Patrick won’t go near a glass of milk.

  The Shazaam story was a big lie, but there were lots of smaller ones along the way.

  In the early eighties, a marvelous new technological wonder called the “VCR” started appearing in homes. The VCR allowed you to watch movies on your TV when you wanted to—an incredibly novel concept at the time.

  Picking out a movie from the video rental place was a b
ig deal. We weren’t especially well-off, so as a family, we were very careful about which film we brought into our house on a Saturday night. We took turns choosing, and on this night, it was Patrick’s turn to pick.

  Patrick wanted to rent Meatballs, a raucous comedy about summer camp, which was a big hit of the day. But I had already seen it, so I wanted him to pick something else.

  Patrick wasn’t budging. So I convinced him that Meatballs was the most boring movie ever created. I told him that the whole film consisted of a single shot of two cold meatballs sitting on a shelf. Nothing happened in the movie at all, I explained. Just ninety minutes of two lifeless clumps of meat.

  Unfortunately for me, this struck Patrick as a really entertaining concept. He rented the movie anyway. I think Patrick was confused and maybe even a little disappointed when he realized that there was more to the movie than I had described.

  And speaking of meatballs…

  One night, I was responsible for feeding Patrick dinner. The instructions from Mom were pretty clear: There’s leftover spaghetti in the refrigerator, so take out the bowl, put some spaghetti on a plate, and put cellophane wrap over it. Heat in the microwave for a minute and a half and serve.

  Only I skipped that last step, just for fun. I called Patrick to the dinner table and put his plate of spaghetti in front of him. I told him to be careful, because the spaghetti was very hot.

  So Patrick stabbed a meatball with a fork and blew on it for a while to cool it down. Then he took a bite.

  I remember seeing all of the muscles in Patrick’s face go slack as the ice-cold meatball fell from his mouth back onto his plate. And if you ever wondered why Patrick isn’t a big fan of leftovers, now you know.