The Boy Who Lost His Face

by Louis Sachar

  “You can put your books in my locker if you want,” said Tori Williams.

  “No, that’s okay,” said David. “I’ll go talk to the janitor.”

  She looked around. “Well, so long, Mr. Ballinger.”

  “Bye, Miss Williams,” he said. She started to walk away. “Tori.”

  She stopped. “David,” she said without turning around, then continued on her way.

  He made sure she was gone, then went to the right locker and opened it. He put his science book and notebook away and took out his lunch.

  Then it hit him. Why didn’t I put my books in her locker? That would have been perfect. Damn! That would have been great.

  Yes, quite.

  “HERE COMES Stooge number three!” announced Roger.

  David could feel everyone turn and look at him as he made his way across the lunchroom to where Larry and Mo were sitting. He just hoped he wouldn’t trip or something. Actually he did feel like a stooge for not putting his books in Tori’s locker.

  Neither Larry nor Mo said a word as he sat down across from them. Roger and his friends were at the next table.

  “Hi, Curly,” said Randy. “How ya doin’?”

  David noticed that Ginger was wearing Scott’s fringed leather jacket. That meant Scott was now going steady with one of the most popular girls in school.

  And all he had to do was hate me, thought David. If only I had put my books in Tori’s locker. That would have been just as good as her wearing my jacket. Even better!

  “I like your jacket, Ginger,” said Mo. “It looks like it’s made out of genuine rat skin.”

  David smiled. Mo could say anything to anybody.

  Ginger stared at Mo.

  “What’s the matter, Ginger?” asked Mo. “Rat got your tongue?”

  Larry laughed.

  “Gee, I’m sorry, Mo, but I can’t talk to you,” said Ginger. “I’m not allowed to talk to boys.”

  Mo turned bright red.

  “That shut her up,” said Leslie.

  As soon as Roger and his friends left Larry cracked up laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” said Mo.

  “She said she wasn’t allowed to talk to you, but she had to talk to you to tell you that!”

  “So?” demanded Mo.

  “So she talked to you, when she said she couldn’t.”

  “So?” asked Mo again.

  Larry shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I know,” said Mo. “You don’t know anything.” She got up and walked away.

  19

  “WHAT DOES a cow say?” asked David.

  Elizabeth concentrated very hard. She pressed her lips together tightly and said, “Mmmmm.”

  “Moooo,” said David.

  “Mmmm,” said Elizabeth.

  David laughed. Then Elizabeth laughed too.

  “Hi, Liz’beth,” said Ricky, entering her room.

  “Hi, Ricky!” said David, exaggerating the words to encourage his sister.

  Elizabeth smiled.

  “Hey, David, can I ask you something?” said Ricky.

  “Sure.”

  “I was just wondering about something. We were talking about famous comedians today at school. Urn, who are The Three Stooges?”

  David felt his stomach tighten. “The Three Stooges,” he said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as Ricky. “They’re some old-time comedians. They were always hitting each other and breaking things and stuff like that.”

  He wondered what Ricky knew. Roger’s brother, Glen Delbrook, was in Ricky’s class.

  “They kind of acted stupid?” asked Ricky. “Goony?”

  “No. Well, maybe. It was more, just kind of, I don’t know.… They were funny. It’s a kind of humor known as slapstick comedy. They were very funny; very well respected in their field.”

  “Was one of them named Curly?” asked Ricky.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he have real curly hair?”

  “No,” David suddenly realized. “He was bald. I guess that was the joke. They called him Curly even though he was bald. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” said Ricky. “We were just talking about comedians at school. Glen said his favorite comedian was Robin Williams, and I said mine was Woody Allen.”

  David knew that Ricky knew that David liked Woody Allen.

  “And then some stupid girl said her favorite comedian was Curly of The Three Stooges.”

  “Oh,” said David. “Well, he was funny, too. Very well respected in his field. I think The Three Stooges are on TV late at night. We could tape it and watch it tomorrow.”

  “No, that’s okay,” said Ricky. “I think I get the idea.”

  “So what do you want to do?” asked David. “Want to play chess or something?”

  “Nah,” said Ricky. “I got a lot of homework.” He walked out of the room.

  DAVID’S MOTHER was making chicken and dumplings for dinner. She asked David to put the sack of flour back on the shelf for her.

  He stood on the counter and put the sack on the top shelf, jumped down, and landed hard on the linoleum floor. The sack of flour tipped over and fell on his head.

  Ricky burst out laughing.

  It took David a few seconds to figure out what had happened. His curly hair had turned white with flour.

  Even his mother laughed.

  “Is that like something Curly of The Three Stooges would have done?” asked Ricky.

  David smiled. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

  It wasn’t until later that night, when David was lying in bed, that he realized the curse had struck—if there was a curse, and he didn’t believe in curses.

  Roger and Randy had trampled all over Mrs. Bayfield’s flower garden. They had stepped on her flowers. Now the flour had “stepped” on him.

  Oh, come on, now, he thought. That’s really pushing it. Flowers and flour are completely different things. Just because they sound alike—that shouldn’t mean anything.

  All it proved was that if you really want to believe something, you can always find some way to make it seem true. Just like those stupid horoscopes.

  Still, he had to admit it is pretty strange for a sack of flour to suddenly fall on your head. That kind of thing doesn’t usually happen.

  He thought about talking to his dad about his problems—telling him about what they’d done to Mrs. Bayfield, and then about all the things that had happened to him. Maybe his dad would be able to find some kind of logical, scientific explanation for everything.

  Except he was too ashamed to tell his father that he helped steal a cane from a poor old lady. And he would be too embarrassed to talk about all the things that had happened to him. His dad probably would just tell him to go apologize to her.

  Besides, what kind of scientific explanation could there possibly be? No, science had nothing to do with it. There were only two possible explanations. Either he was cursed or he was a stooge. It was one or the other.

  20

  HE DECIDED to tell his friends about the curse. “Do you know Felicia Bayfield?” he asked on Friday at recess.

  “Who?” asked Larry.

  “I know her,” said Mo. “She’s this old, spacey lady who wears a lot of funny clothes.”

  “Sounds like Tori Williams,” said Larry. He and Mo laughed.

  “She’s a witch,” said David. “She murdered her husband. She removed his face.”

  “Ugh!” said Mo.

  “He lived for a while,” said David, “but you can’t live too long without a face. But his face is still alive. It’s hanging on a wall of her house. She put it in some kind of special solution to preserve it. And she talks to it, and it talks back.”

  David didn’t like saying mean things about Mrs. Bayfield, but he had to convince his friends she was really a witch. Little did he know that one day his own face would be hanging on the wall of her house.

  “I wonder what a person would look like without a face,” said Larry. He thought a
moment. “Wouldn’t there just be another face behind it? How thick is a face?”

  “Real thin,” said Mo. “Thinner than paper. And behind it you just have blank skin that you could almost see through, with holes where the eyes, nose, and mouth used to be.”

  “Like a ghost,” said Larry. “Except you’re alive.”

  “A Doppelgänger,” said David.

  “What?” asked Mo.

  “I don’t know,” said David, shaking his head. “Remember when I said I thought I was cursed?” he asked. “Well, it wasn’t like you thought. Mrs. Bayfield put a curse on me. She said my Doppelgänger will regurgitate on my soul.”

  He started at the beginning. He told them about how he had helped Roger, Scott, and Randy steal her snake-head cane, except he made it sound like he was the one who led the attack.

  “… Then she said in a really creepy voice, ‘Would you boys like some lemonade?’ Except I don’t think it was really even lemonade.”

  “What’d you do?” asked Larry.

  “You didn’t drink it, did you?” asked Mo.

  “No. As I was pouring it in my glass I pretended to trip, then I knocked her rocking chair over and poured the lemonade right on her face!”

  “All right!” cheered Mo.

  He didn’t want to tell them that he really just stood around while the other boys knocked her over in her chair and poured lemonade on her head. It wouldn’t make sense. Why would she put a curse on him if he had just stood there while everyone else did everything?

  “I tossed the empty pitcher away,” he said, “but it accidentally went into her window. It broke the window and the pitcher.”

  The more he lied, the more he got into it. But at the same time he felt a horrible sense of guilt right in the pit of his stomach. It only bothered him a little at first, but the feeling grew, like Pinocchio’s nose, with each lie.

  “Roger, Randy, and Scott ran away with her cane, but I stood over her. Her legs were up in the air. If you think her clothes are weird, you should see her underpants!”

  “You saw her underpants!” exclaimed Larry.

  “What’d they look like?” asked Mo.

  “It was like they were made out of spider webs,” said David. “And there were spiders crawling all around and some other kinds of bugs, too.”

  “Gross,” said Mo.

  “So then I flipped her off,” said David. “You know, gave her the bird.”

  “Good going,” said Mo.

  “That’s when she said the thing about my Doppelgänger.”

  “What’s a Doppelgänger?” asked Larry.

  “I looked it up in the dictionary. It means the ghostly counterpart of a living person.”

  “What’s that?” asked Mo.

  “I don’t know.” He explained the curse to them, but he exaggerated that, too.

  “… And I was playing catch with my little brother and I threw the ball right to him, but it suddenly curved in midair and crashed into my parents’ bedroom window.”

  Larry and Mo were skeptical at first, but as David went over each incident they had to admit that if nothing else, it was a lot of weird coincidences.

  “Are you sure you’re not making this up?” asked Mo.

  “You know about the beaker I broke in science class,” David reminded her. “And Larry, remember what happened to me in Spanish?”

  “That’s right!” Larry exclaimed.

  “Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” said Mo. “Your fly was down and you didn’t know it.”

  David blushed. “It was because I saw her underpants,” he explained. “Everything I did to her has happened to me. Except so far I haven’t poured lemonade on my head. That’s probably next. Oh, and I also flipped off my mother.”

  “You flipped off your mother!” exclaimed Mo.

  David shrugged.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Mo. “You wouldn’t flip off your own mother!”

  “I was just waving to her,” he explained, “when suddenly I got like a cramp in my hand, and all my fingers bent down except the middle one.”

  “No!” said Mo.

  “It was really no big deal,” said David. “It was just a cramp. Besides, it’s not such a bad thing to do, when you think about it. Why is raising your middle finger any worse than raising any other finger?”

  “It just is,” said Mo. “It’s the most horrible thing you can do!”

  “Why?” asked David. “Most people probably don’t know what it means.” He turned to Larry. “You’ve lived in other countries. Do they know what it means there?”

  “They do it differently in different countries,” Larry explained. “In Spain they do it like this! In Hong Kong they do it like this!” He demonstrated the gesture for each country. “In Italy they do it like this!”

  Mr. Lugano happened by at that moment. He grabbed Larry’s shoulder and said, “You’re coming with me, young man!”

  Mr. Lugano was Italian.

  21

  DAVID DIDN’T see Larry again until Spanish class. “What did Mr. Lugano say to you?” he asked after class was over. “Did you get in trouble?”

  Larry smiled. “He couldn’t do anything! First he was going to send a note home to my parents telling them what I did, except he couldn’t figure out how to write it in a note. So then he told me I had to tell my parents what I did. But then I said, ‘What did I do?’ And he said, ‘You know.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ So finally he just told me not to do it again, and I said, ‘Do what?’ ”

  David laughed, but abruptly stopped when he saw Scott, Randy, and Roger coming.

  Scott, Randy, and Roger were walking down the center of the sidewalk next to the row of outside lockers. There wasn’t room for David and Larry to get by.

  David stepped aside to let them pass.

  Roger glanced at David, then turned to Scott and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Hey, Scott, are you going out with Ginger again on Saturday night?”

  “Sure,” said Scott, equally as loud. “You and Leslie want to join us?”

  “Hey, that sounds like a good time,” said Roger.

  “How about you, Randy?” Scott asked. “Why don’t you and Tori join us?” He said the name Tori especially loud.

  “Yeah, that Tori Williams is one hot babe!” said Roger.

  “Maybe I will,” said Randy.

  David’s face burned, even though he was fairly sure they had said all that just for his benefit. Somehow Scott must have found out that he liked Tori Williams. Maybe Scott also saw them making moon eyes at each other.

  But Randy still might ask her out for Saturday night, he realized, just because Randy knew David liked her. He wondered if Tori would agree to go out with Randy. She must know Randy’s a jerk. But then he remembered that he himself once thought Randy was a good guy. Randy was good at pretending he wasn’t a jerk.

  “You shouldn’t have stepped out of their way,” said Larry.

  “Huh?”

  “You lost face,” said Larry.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a Japanese expression,” said Larry. “You reminded me of it when you were talking about Mrs. Bayfield stealing people’s faces. I used to live in Japan, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know how Mo always tells you to stand up for yourself. It’s the same thing. When you don’t stand up for yourself, the Japanese say you lose face. Like just now, when those guys were coming toward us. We have just as much right to walk on the sidewalk as they do. You stepped aside, so you lost a little face.”

  “There wasn’t room for all of us,” said David. “What was I supposed to do? Push my way through them? It’s not worth getting in a fight over.”

  “Every time they push you around and you do nothing about it, you lose a little more of your face,” said Larry.

  David rubbed his face with his hand. “They push you around too,” he said. “I don’t se
e you doing anything about it.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t have to fight. I know kung fu.”

  “Yeah, right,” said David.

  “I do,” said Larry. “I have a black belt. If I had to, I could take on all three of them at once.” He karate-chopped the air in front of him. “They wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “Yeah, right,” said David.

  “But that’s not the way of kung fu,” Larry continued. “It’s always best to walk away from a fight. Like remember when they wouldn’t let me use the bathroom? I just walked away. You only fight if you have no other choice. Sometimes it takes more courage to walk away than it does to fight.”

  “Well, how come it’s all right for you to walk away, but if I walk away I lose part of my face?”

  Larry didn’t answer. “You know what you should do,” he said. “You should call up Tori Williams and ask her out for Saturday night, before Randy.”

  “Randy’s not going to ask her out,” said David. “They were just saying that. Besides, you know I can’t ask her out.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a curse on me, remember? What if I take her to a movie and then pour lemonade on my head. Or her head?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” said Larry. He shrugged. “Just don’t drink any lemonade.”

  “What if she asks me to get her a cup of lemonade?”

  “Tell her they don’t have any. Get her a Coke or something.”

  “You don’t realize how powerful the curse is. Even if I ordered a Coke, the person behind the counter would probably make a mistake and give me a lemonade. Then as I’m about to hand it to Tori, there’d be an earthquake or something, and I’d trip and pour it right on her head! No, there’s no way I can take her out so long as I’m cursed.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Larry.

  David forced a laugh.

  “What?” asked Larry.

  “Oh, I was just thinking,” said David. “Those guys all think they’re so tough. They have no idea you know kung fu. They don’t know you could tear them apart.”

  “Right,” said Larry. “But only if I couldn’t walk away.” He smiled. “Too bad about the curse. Otherwise you and Tori would have a great time together.”