by Tim Green
CRASH.
CRASH.
CRASH.
It was a ruckus the neighbors could hear. Martin scurried away, giggling. From below, Joey’s mom shouted. He slumped down with his back against the door. His head fell into his hands and he couldn’t help it anymore.
He cried, not hysterically, but in quiet gasps as the tears rolled down his cheeks. His life was in ruins. His mom thought she was mad now? Wait until she figured out he’d been the one to drug Mr. Kratz’s dog and sabotage his truck. He hated being around Butch Barrett? Wait until Barrett spread the word that Joey was the alternate. Leah? He thought things were awkward with her because he couldn’t dance? Wait until she found out that he was really just a blowhard, talking about Stanford and playing pro baseball when he couldn’t even make the Little League all-star team.
After a time, he stopped. Mercifully, his parents left him alone and Martin didn’t reappear to torture him. Joey got up and looked at the pile of notes and textbooks on his desk. He still had much to do—he knew the consequences if he didn’t, but his life was a runaway train. So much had gone wrong that bombing his exams didn’t seem like a big deal at all. So, against his better judgment, instead of digging into his studying, Joey lay down on his bed and closed his eyes and went to sleep.
39
The good thing about finals was that no one had a chance to really do any talking. During the break between tests, Joey slipped outside and found a quiet, hidden spot at a picnic table behind the elementary school loading dock to eat his lunch. Only the slightest hint of sour garbage asked him to leave. He discovered that if he leaned his head just past the brick wall—constructed to hide the goings on of garbage and delivery trucks—he could catch a fresh breeze and also observe the playground beyond. He chewed thoroughly, studying the pendulum of little kids on his and Leah’s swings, then watching others play tag. It didn’t take long to eat a peanut butter sandwich and an apple, but he loitered, watching the children, and waiting until just before the second test started before he stood to go. He planned on walking right in, sitting down, taking the test, and leaving before anyone else could finish.
When he did enter the school, though, it wasn’t just Butch Barrett and two of his friends standing by the entrance to the gym. Zach, Leah, and her friends waited as well. He pulled up like a horse refusing its jump and might have bolted for the exit except that Zach saw him and waved furiously.
“Joey! Come here. Come on, man. Where’d you go?” Zach looked anxious and hurt. “Where you been?”
Joey took a deep breath and headed for them. Leah’s hopeful expression made him cringe.
“Hey,” Joey said, light as air.
“This guy is saying you didn’t make all-stars. That’s not true, right?” Zach poked a finger at Butch but held Joey’s gaze. “How come you shut your phone down, man? Where’d you go just now?”
“Lunch. I had to study.” Joey knew it sounded weak.
“He’s full of junk, right?”
A part of Joey hated his best friend for being so laid-back and trusting. Why did Zach always presume things would work out the way he wanted, or even the way they were supposed to?
“No, I didn’t make it. My dad’s not the coach.”
“See?” Butch snarled and looked around at the rest of the kids. “I told you guys he’d try to make it like that. It hurts when you stink, especially when you’re always talking about playing at Stanford and in the Major Leagues, but my dad voted for him over me. You can ask anyone.”
“You mean ask all the coaches he had a secret meeting with Saturday night?” Joey couldn’t help himself. As crazy as it sounded, it was the truth.
“Give me a break.” Butch snorted with disgust. “Come back from fantasyland anytime you like.”
Mr. Jasper, their social studies teacher, appeared suddenly from inside the gym, his face contorted in disbelief. “What are you all doing? We’re about to begin. Get inside.”
The teacher stood there, glaring, until they all filed past and took their seats. Joey couldn’t stop thinking about it all, even though he knew he should be focused on his test. The smell of floor wax and old sweat filled his nose as he dug into the exam. He finished before anyone else, so he felt the eyes of the entire sixth grade on him as he handed in his papers and departed the gym. He avoided Zach’s eyes, and Leah’s, too. It was worth getting out of there just to be away from them.
Joey found his bike in the rack outside and asked himself if he could have done better. He knew he could have. He should have studied more last night. He should have read over his answers. It was a sixth grade exam, though. He still had plenty of time to keep his grades up so that he could live out his dream and play at Stanford.
Joey fumbled with the lock on his bike chain, his fingers numb. He laughed out loud at himself. Dream? Stanford? He wasn’t going to play on one of the top college teams in the country and get into one of the toughest schools if he couldn’t even make the Little League all-star team. He had to be realistic.
“But I should have made it.” He growled to himself through clenched teeth, snapping open the lock.
He wrapped the chain around the stem of the seat, then removed the bike from the rack. With one foot on the near pedal, he surged ahead, preparing to mount up and ride for home.
“Joey, wait!”
Instinct tugged his chin around, and instead of swinging his leg over the bike, he let it drag him to a stop. The waffled grips of the handlebars shifted beneath his fingers like the skin of an exotic reptile. Leah sprinted for the bike rack, reaching him just as the door behind her clanked shut. With a hooked finger, she swept a web of hair from her face and stopped to catch her own breath.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to study.” He thought of the swing set, or even the falls, but he couldn’t stay. His skin crawled.
“Can I give you something, first?” Her eyes were wide and glistening.
“What?”
40
Before Joey even knew what happened, she kissed him.
As she moved toward him, he turned his head just a bit so their lips brushed before the kiss landed squarely on his cheek. The thrill and embarrassment of it swirled through him like a front door opened into a blizzard, then quickly shut, leaving him numb and confused. While she stood smiling, he got onto the bike and raced away.
It took him the entire ride home to realize he’d blown it again.
“Stupid!” He threw his bike onto the grass and struck his own forehead.
He jammed his key into the door and stomped into the house and up the stairs to his room. With Martin at day care, he had the place to himself, so he slammed the door and it echoed through the house without a sharp response from his mother. He threw himself onto the bed and curled up in a ball with his hands over his head like the roof might come down.
In the dark cocoon of pillows and arms his mind replayed the kiss over and over so many times that it wound itself down and finally stopped. He was reminded of the old brass alarm clock sitting on his father’s nightstand, dusty and silent. Free from one tyrant, his thoughts turned to another: Mr. Kratz. The science teacher’s truck and dog led Joey naturally to his final exam. It sat in its spot on the calendar of Joey’s mind like a fat spider. That day was tomorrow and now was no time to despair.
Joey threw off the pillows and crept to his desk. He pushed English and social studies to the floor and science ruled his world. Over and over the notes he crawled, sucking the knowledge, page by page, himself a mosquito drinking ink instead of blood. A wild thought danced across the stage in his mind.
What if he aced Mr. Kratz’s test.
Mr. Kratz talked about his test the way a father speaks of a favorite child, now grown and off on his own. No student had ever been worthy of Mr. Kratz’s test. That’s what he said the very first day of school back in the fall, not as an insult but as a challenge. Joey recalled that first day.
“No one has done it, but if anyone ever does,
I will become like a tooth fairy.” Mr. Kratz had looked around at the class and given one of his rare smiles so that the kids knew it was okay to chuckle at the joke. “And I will grant that student any wish within my power to give.”
The image of the huge, hairy teacher as a tooth fairy in a pink tutu with little white wings was hilarious. Joey remembered joking with others about it after class and when Zach had said, “Who’d want that guy to grant a wish. What can he give you? A lifetime supply of blackberry jam?”
But, what if?
What if Joey really did ace the test?
There was a wish Mr. Kratz could grant, and Joey sure could use it.
41
Joey was certain Mr. Kratz didn’t have a full criminal pardon in mind when he’d said it, but a wish was a wish, and if Joey really met the challenge? Wouldn’t that also mesmerize the bearded troll, put him under a spell? Wouldn’t he be able to blink and laugh at the pinched fuel line and a sleeping dog if the criminal wasn’t really a criminal but a brilliant prankster? A prankster so devoted to science as to prove himself an equal of Mr. Kratz’s only child?
This fool’s quest kept Joey focused until dinner, when his mother called him down to eat and his father rolled up his sleeves to carve a pork roast. Martin had a finger up his nose. Joey looked away because he knew what came next and he had to push the image of a waggling gob of snot far from his mind if he was going to be able to eat.
“No, no, Marty.” Mercifully, his mother spoke. “Here, wipe that on mommy’s napkin, pumpkin.”
Joey dug back into the past, trying to recall the exact point in time he had been transformed from a pumpkin into a soccer ball his mother alternately polished and kicked around. His fifth birthday came to mind, when Joey gleefully planted a handful of chocolate cake onto Emily Harriman’s white-blond head. The party was called to an abrupt halt even though the other moms agreed among themselves that kids would be kids. No, Joey couldn’t remember a single “pumpkin” after that fiasco.
“How were finals today?” Joey’s father delivered a medallion of pork to Joey’s plate before meeting his eyes across the table.
“I think, okay.”
“Just okay?” The note of alarm in his mother’s voice made him regret it immediately. She rolled right into a prayer for dinner, bowing her head and beginning in a way that demanded everyone else join in, even her pumpkin. She ended with a special addition, asking God to give Joey the strength of character he needed to do well.
Joey allowed a brief silence after grace before he mended his ways. “Anyway, I think I did good.”
His mother looked at his father first, then at him. “That didn’t sound encouraging. Okay? Good? You’ll have to study tonight. Better you didn’t make that all-star team.”
The clock over the refrigerator said six thirty and it sickened him that the all-stars team might be out there right now—they probably were—snagging grounders and zipping it around the infield, then blasting practice pitches over the fence.
“I wish I did,” he said, but it offered little comfort from the sting.
“Well, you’ll study harder and we’ll see if you can’t ace that science test tomorrow. Mr. Kratz said you’re quite the young scientist.”
“Mr. Kratz?”
His mother slapped a spoonful of mashed potatoes on her plate. “Uh-huh.”
“What? Did you talk to him or something?”
“You knew I was looking into his case.”
“It’s hardly a case,” Joey’s father said, cutting his food.
Joey wanted to ask him to be quiet because he knew that his mother was like Zach’s golden retriever, Bingo. The harder you pulled on a toy Bingo had in his mouth, the harder he pulled back.
“What kind of a sick maniac drugs someone’s dog and skulks around outside a home in the middle of the night? That place is buried in the woods. He gets power from a generator.”
“Why do the police have to assume everyone is a vicious criminal, and that everything they do wrong is just the tip of the iceberg?” his father asked.
“That’s human nature,” his mother shot back. “What should we think? That everyone is good, and the crimes people commit are just little breakdowns that won’t happen again? Ha! How come ninety percent of juvenile offenders end up back in jail as adults? That’s human nature. Criminals are born that way. They’re people who just can’t accept the rules and spend all their time trying to get around them.”
“I can turn your own statistics on their head. The reason anyone who ends up in detention goes back to jail is because we teach them to be criminals and we expect that kind of behavior from them for the rest of their lives. They make one little mistake and that’s it—they’re branded forever. They never get out from under it.”
“Good,” his mom said, ending it.
“Fine,” his dad said, to get the last word in.
“Then we won’t talk about it anymore and ruin this fabulous meal.” His mom never let his dad really get the last word in.
They ate the rest of their dinner in silence. Joey had to force himself to chew and swallow, chew and swallow; otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to eat a thing.
He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what the food was like in jail.
42
The pile of science notes and the textbook weighed down his desk. Mr. Kratz had given them a “study sheet,” twelve pages of single-spaced notes. Mr. Kratz assured them that all they had to do was know everything on it and they could ace his test. Mr. Kratz said it wouldn’t be easy, but that it could be done. Joey looked at his phone. He had nearly a dozen new text messages, mostly from Zach, but two from Leah. He looked from his phone to the pile of work and back again.
Joey shut down his phone without opening a single text, knowing that reading his messages would unleash a series of dramatic texting and phone calls likely to last the night. He sat down, instead, to the pile of biology and began again.
The strange thing was that the longer he studied, the more he lost himself in the biology of cells, anatomy of frogs, and the causes of global warming. When his mother rapped her knuckles on his bedroom door, he looked up and blinked, meeting her eyes as she entered, but lost in the fog of science.
“Studying hard?” she asked.
“Yeah.” The mist cleared and her hard face softened.
She put a hand on his head, looking over his shoulder. “You’re a good boy, Joey. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She kissed him on the head, then considered him for a moment. “Do you think Zach’s dad would do something like that?”
His stomach clenched. “Like what?”
“Drug a dog. Vandalize a truck, just so Zach could play in that game? I know how crazy his dad is about Zach being a baseball player, but he could have killed that animal.”
Joey stared at the science in front of him. “I don’t know, Mom.”
He kept his eyes down until he heard her feet shuffle away. As she closed the door, she said, “Not much longer. You need your sleep, too. That’s just as important as studying, sleep.”
“Okay, Mom.”
She peeked back in through the doorway. “If he did it, I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
Joey looked at her hard and determined face. A voice inside him screamed to tell her the truth, right then and there, that it would be the best thing to do. Stop the nonsense, the suspense, the brutal anxiety.
He opened his mouth to speak.
43
Before he could say anything, his mom shut the door. He stared at the brass knob and the dark metal that showed through where the shiny coating had been chipped away, giving the knob a haggard, shabby, and weary appearance. He sighed and dove back into the sea of science. He stayed there until he woke sometime in the middle of the night with his head on his desk. He stumbled to the bathroom and used it before creeping into bed and falling asleep for the rest of the night, mercifully exhausted.
When
he woke, Joey felt better.
He had a plan.
A different voice from the one he’d heard last night pushing him to confess his crimes told him his situation wasn’t unlike a baseball game. He was behind, yes. The odds were against him, true. But when that happened to a great team and a great player, they didn’t give up. It would take a spectacular performance to pull off a win, but he was capable of it.
The performance was the science final exam. He had the ability to ace it. If he did, his wish would be a pardon from Mr. Kratz. What if Mr. Kratz didn’t hold up his end of the bargain, though? What would Joey do then?
He’d throw himself at the teacher’s mercy as a fellow science buff. He’d say he’d used science itself—a sedative drug for Daisy and a clamp to diminish the fuel in his line—to effect a change in the natural world to benefit his best friend.
If Mr. Kratz was a man of his word—and Joey really thought he was—the teacher would grant his wish without hesitation, call off the investigation, and life could go on.
Joey went downstairs for breakfast. In the flurry of oatmeal and activity of both parents getting ready for work and dropping Martin at day care, Joey tried to review the material he’d studied in his mind. He was thinking about bacteria and white blood cells as he spooned up the last bit of cereal.
“Okay, Joey.” His mom had Martin on her hip as she went out the door. “Good luck.”
“Good luck, buddy.” His dad was close behind her.
Joey cleaned up a bit, loaded his backpack, stuck his cell phone in the outside pocket without turning it on, and pedaled to school. He locked up his bike and entered the gymnasium for the science final, ignoring Zach and Leah, both of whom already sat waiting for the test to begin. He needed to focus. The only glance he took was at Butch Barrett, who was whispering to the girl beside him. Joey sat down and pushed everything from his mind except the study sheet and the things he had learned that were on it.
Mr. Kratz gave the instructions, and the entire sixth grade went quiet. Mr. Vidich, the principal, insisted that all his students take tests in a very formal and pressurized way to better prepare them for the finals and standardized tests to come in junior high, high school, and college. Joey wondered why they couldn’t just do it the way they had in fifth grade, where they took finals in their own classrooms. Mr. Vidich, however, like so many other adults, seemed bent on ending childhood at the first possible moment.
