The Secret Sheriff of Sixth Grade

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  “Get your freaking hands off me!” my mother shrieked.

  My hands jerked up into the air, and the plate flew up and over my right shoulder. It shattered on the floor behind me.

  Well, that was one way to get rid of a stain.

  “Geez, Jessie! You didn’t tell me your kid was here. Now the freak show is complete!”

  I hopped down off my dish stool and stepped around the corner into the hallway.

  Boy, it felt pretty crowded. My mom was maybe two steps inside the doorway, immediately in front of me. Johnny was just one step inside, and had one hand on Mom’s left arm. He pointed his other hand at me and said, “Get back in the kitchen, Maverick. This doesn’t concern you.”

  Mom said to me, “I can handle this, Mav.”

  But she couldn’t. If she could handle Johnny, he would have been long gone.

  I squirmed my way between them, and said, “Hit me, Johnny.” My voice cracked, but it didn’t matter. Johnny looked shocked.

  “What are you talking about, kid?”

  “You think you can do whatever you want to my mom and I can’t stop you because I’m small, right? But if you touch either of us again, I’m calling the police. And if you hit me, it’s assaulting a child. By the way, do you want to know what my . . . uh . . . best friend Bowen’s dad does for a living? He’s an extremely important police officer. Think about that for a second. In the meantime, you’ll have to get through me to get to my mom.”

  Johnny took a step back. He actually took a step back!

  Then he glared at my mother over the top of my head. “Are you sure this is what you want, Jessica? Because if I leave now, I’m gone for good. No more help with the electric bill. No more big-screen TVs. No more Christmas trees.”

  She said, “I’m sure. Now go.” Her voice shook, but she said it.

  Johnny said, “Well, if you’re really gonna . . . ” Then he just let the sentence trail off as he turned around and left.

  As soon as our half-broken screen door rattled shut behind Johnny, Mom angled herself past me and closed the heavy metal door. “It was the ugliest Christmas tree in the world anyway,” she said. Then she clicked the dead bolt into place. I couldn’t believe it. I had stood up to Johnny, and my mother had backed me up.

  We had won.

  Mom turned back in my direction, smiled, and said, “Well, this calls for a celebration!” Five minutes later, I was sitting across the table from her with an open, warm can of soda in front of me. She was already on her second glass of something clear that was not water.

  Sometimes you can win and lose in the same night.

  The next day during third period, I got called down to the office. As soon as I saw the look on The Bee’s face, I knew this wasn’t going to be one of my usual visits. He was trying to smile at me. The effect was ghastly.

  “Please sit down, Maverick.”

  I did.

  “I just got a phone call, and I’m afraid I have some awful news. There’s been a fire at your apartment.”

  Without even realizing what I was doing, I somehow leaped out of my seat so that my palms were on the edge of his desk. “My mom! My mom was sleeping in there. Is she okay? Did they get her out? I have to tell someone she was in there. We don’t have a car! The parking space in front is empty! What if they don’t know—”

  He stood and put a hand on my shoulder. “Your mother got out of the apartment. She’s in the hospital right now. She has some pretty bad burns on her hands, and some smoke inhalation. The person who called said your mother will be all right. But . . . ”

  “But what?” My thoughts were racing. Had my aunt been there for some reason? Was she hurt? Had one of the neighbors been injured?

  “Maverick, the fire started when your mother fell asleep with a lit cigarette. Apparently, the cigarette fell from her hand and landed on a pile of wood chips. They went up right away. That woke up your mother, who reached down into the glass tank containing the chips, and—”

  “FREDDY!”

  “I’m so sorry, Maverick. Your mother tried—that’s how she burned her hands. But she couldn’t save your pet.”

  A moment later, Aunt Cat ran in and found me crying like a baby while Mr. Overbye patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. The Bee looked at her and said, “Wait! Aren’t you in the hospital?”

  “Umm . . . I’m not exactly Maverick’s mother, exactly.”

  “You’re not exactly his mother, exactly?”

  “Right.”

  “Then who exactly are you?”

  “I’m his aunt. His father was my older brother. Listen, can we sort this out later? I really want to get Maverick over to the hospital. I promise you can arrest me or whatever as soon as I’m done doing that.”

  Mr. Overbye grabbed both of my shoulders, held me at arm’s length, and said, “Are you safe with this person?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I trust her more than anybody in the world. That’s why I told you she was my muh-muh-mom. But I’m sorry I lied.”

  Mr. Overbye stared into my eyes for what felt like forever. I forced myself to look straight back at him without blinking, which was hard, because my eyes were burning. Finally, he said, “Go. But this isn’t over.”

  We had almost made it out the door when Mr. Overbye said, “One last thing, Maverick: Good luck. I’ll be thinking of you.”

  When we got to the hospital and found my mother’s room, she was sleeping. It was terrible. Her hands were all wrapped up in gigantic mittens of bandage stuff, she had an oxygen mask strapped to her face, and there were tubes going into various other parts of her. There were a couple of chairs in the room, so Aunt Cat and I sat down. I was too choked up to talk for a while, but then I worked up the nerve to talk to Aunt Cat about something that had been bothering me all year.

  “This is all my fault. I should have told you right from the beginning about Mom’s drinking. I didn’t want you to know because . . . well, you kept saying I could come and stay with you if I ever needed to. But I didn’t want to ditch my mother. And I didn’t want you to think less of her, and I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t handle my own problems. But now . . . maybe if I had told you, you could have gotten her some help or something. I messed everything up. Last night Mom got in a big fight with Johnny, and I dared him to hit me. So my mom kicked him out. And I thought everything was great for a little while. But then she said this called for a celebration. And she started drinking. And drinking. And then she stumbled into her bedroom and passed out. I checked in on her in the morning, and everything looked fine. She didn’t have any cigarettes or matches near her or anything, I swear! She must have gotten up to get some, and then gone back to bed. But it’s still my fault, because—”

  Aunt Cat cut me off. “It’s not your fault. It has never, ever been your fault. This has been going on since before—” She stopped in the middle of the sentence and clasped her hands over her mouth.

  “Before what?”

  Aunt Cat looked down and away from me.

  “Come on,” I said. “Please tell me.”

  “Since before you were born.”

  “You mean, my mom dated loser guys like this before she met my dad? But how would you even know that? You didn’t know her then. And besides, after what she had with my dad, how could she go back to guys like Johnny?”

  Aunt Cat’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Mav. I loved your father. He was my big brother. But when he was with your mother, he was a guy like Johnny.”

  I swallowed. My ears were buzzing. I felt nauseated. Suddenly, I felt like the entire world had stopped turning. My aunt had just said something completely impossible.

  “Aunt Cat, what are you talking about? Why would you even say that?”

  She sighed, long and slow. “I know I shouldn’t be telling you this. It really isn’t my place. I just can’t stand to see you blaming yourself for your parents’ stuff, because . . . Listen. When your father and I were kids, our parents drank too much. Your father thought it was his
job to be the hero, so he would always try to protect me whenever our father got out of control. He took a lot of abuse over the years that should have been mine. That’s the good part of your father.

  “But then when he grew up and became a husband and a dad, he started acting out the same old pattern. He married a woman who drank a lot, and they got into violent fights with each other.”

  By this point, I was leaning all the way forward, rocking in my seat, my hands covering my ears. This wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true! My father was a hero. My mother had always told me so. I had seen his medal. I carried his star.

  But then I suddenly recalled something I had never been able to remember before. I remembered why I had been angry the day he had bought me the star. We had been on vacation at the beach, and I had been sitting on the front steps of our little rental house, sifting through a bucket of sand and shells. My parents had been just behind me, on the screened-in porch, and at first they were laughing. Then their voices had gotten louder and angrier. I remembered shoving my hands into the sand faster and harder as I got more and more upset. Then I heard a sharp smack and a gasp from the porch, just as I was squeezing a big shell. The shell had cracked and cut into my palm. I jumped up and ran inside, holding my palm outward to show my parents my boo-boo.

  My parents had both spoken at once.

  My mother had whipped a hand up to cover one side of her face and said, “Oh, honey. What happened to your hand?”

  My father, red-faced, had snarled, “I thought I told you to stay outside!”

  I remembered running away, crying, and my mom bringing me back and cleaning up my cut. It must have been hours later when my father offered up the badge as a makeup gift.

  I looked at my aunt Cat and whispered, “Now that you said it, I remember.” She put her arms around me and held me for a long time.

  When we had stayed still for so long that I was starting to get hungry and sleepy at the same time, something occurred to me. “Aunt Cat, did you ever worry that you were going to grow up and be like your parents?”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t a particularly cheerful sound. “Sure, all the time. I used to have trouble sleeping when I was a kid because I was so afraid I would end up like them.”

  I thought about this for a while, and then got up the courage to say, “What if I’m like my dad? What if I think I’m a hero, but really I’m going to be a bad boyfriend? What if I’m going to be an abuser? What if I’m already like that, but I just don’t know it yet?”

  She snorted. “Maverick Falconer, listen to me: You are not going to be an abuser. You don’t have an abusive bone in your body. You are the sweetest, bravest, most thoughtful kid I have ever met.”

  “But how do you know? Nobody looks like an abuser at first, right?”

  “Well, it takes some time and some experience. But now when I meet a nice guy, I can usually tell.”

  I smiled for the first time all day. “So is Bill at the pet store a nice guy?”

  She looked startled for a moment, then maybe a bit annoyed. Finally, she laughed, and said, “I’ve signed your report cards all year. I know what your grades are like. How can you suddenly be this smart? Okay, here’s the deal. When I first started dating, I ran into a couple of bad guys. Then I decided I had to do something to make sure my life didn’t turn into a repeat of my parents’ lives, so I purposely started making different choices.”

  “So it’s that easy? You just decide not to do dumb things, and then all of a sudden, you’re not doing dumb things anymore?”

  My aunt laughed. “Easy? It’s hard. Sometimes making the right choices is super hard. But if I did it, I know you will, too.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Cat. But you never answered my question about Bill.”

  She smiled. “You’re absolutely right. Now, do you want to get something to eat before your mother wakes up?”

  I came back to school three days after the fire, so sad that I felt almost numb. Even after Aunt Cat’s pep talk, I felt like everything I had tried to do in my life was completely pointless. Every act of kindness and bravery had been a dead end. I couldn’t protect anyone from anything, and every time I tried, it backfired. When I had tried to stand up for Nate, he had eventually decided to become pals with the kids who had picked on him. When I’d done it for Jamie, I had gotten my chest all ripped up and my dad’s star broken.

  Which I was pretty sure had not actually helped anybody.

  And when I had finally gotten the guts to stand up for my mom against Johnny, she had thanked me by getting so drunk she had burned down our apartment and killed Freddy.

  Some hero I was. I couldn’t even help a freaking hamster.

  It was time to give up, throw in the towel, and accept my destiny as a plain old shrimpy loser.

  With those fun thoughts running again and again through my head, I trudged through the halls—which were empty, because of course I was late. My mom was ready to be released from the hospital, because she was almost completely recovered from the fire. She wasn’t going to come right home, though, because after some long talks with Aunt Cat and a therapist, she had decided to go straight from the hospital to a two-month alcohol-rehabilitation treatment program. Aunt Cat had insisted we stop by the hospital to see my mother one more time before she went into rehab, so now I had one more tardy mark on my record, and the front of my shirt was damp with my mom’s tears.

  All I could think about was the last conversation I’d had with my mother. I had asked her why she had never told me what my father had really been like. She had replied, “I just wanted you to have a hero.”

  I’d told her, “Well, now’s your chance to be my hero.”

  I had no idea whether she would come through. Of course I wanted her to, but I also didn’t want to get my hopes up too high.

  I walked into Mrs. Sakofsky’s room, and everybody’s heads whipped around to face me. It was a little bit freaky, and definitely not something I was in the mood for. Mrs. Sakofsky said, “Welcome back, Maverick! Your classmates have a little presentation for you.”

  Oh, perfect.

  To my complete and utter horror, Nate and Bowen were the first two people to stand up, followed by several of their other MU friends. Two of the guys were carrying a huge rectangular box. With airholes in it.

  Nate said, “We’re, uh, all really sorry about what happened to your, um, house and everything. So a few of us were talking after soccer practice one day, and our field is right near the pet store, and we decided to see whether the whole class might want to chip in and get you a welcome-back present.”

  The two boys with the box started ripping it open. I was biting my lip as hard as I could, thinking, But it’s not the same. It’s not the same it’s not the same it’s not the same . . .

  “We know it’s not the same as having, um, Freddy back . . . ” Nate said.

  “But we thought it would be too disgusting to bite off one of his feet,” Bowen continued, grinning.

  I know it was horrible, but as most of the class gasped in horror, I actually let out a little half chuckle. Don’t judge—it was funny.

  Nate finished his original thought as though Bowen hadn’t said anything. “ . . . but we thought he might help make you feel better anyway. So, uh, yeah.”

  By then the box was one hundred percent unwrapped. It contained a huge glass terrarium, a new hanging water bottle, gigantic bags of food and wood shavings, an exercise wheel, several running tubes, and one chubby, nervous-looking hamster.

  I felt my heart slamming away in my scarred chest. Everybody was looking right at me again, waiting for me to do something. Jamie must have seen something in my face, because she got up and stood next to me.

  Then Bowen reached down into the enclosure and gently picked up the hamster. He said, “Come on, Falconer. The guy at the store says it doesn’t bite.”

  Just then, the animal peed all over the sleeve of Bowen’s jacket.

  My heart settled down a bit. All right, I thought, rea
ching for the hamster. I kind of like him.

  “What are you going to name him?” Jamie asked.

  “Freddy Junior,” I said.

  But I should have said Frederica, because a week later, I came home to Aunt Cat’s living room and found ten little baby hamsters clinging to her belly. Needless to say, this caused some panic, a quick trip to the pet store, and some negotiation with Bill. I walked out of there with a whole lot of instructions on the care and feeding of baby hamsters. It turned out I would have to keep the babies together and alive for six weeks, and then I would have to give them away to separate homes. I also got ten twenty-five-percent-off coupons for pet supplies. Aunt Cat walked out with a big smile on her face and a date for the following Friday night.

  The next day in homeroom, I asked for volunteers to adopt the babies. Mrs. Sakofsky took one. So did Jamie. So did Nate and four other soccer players. Then Bowen came over to me, grabbed one of the twenty-five-percent-off coupons, and whispered, “Don’t think this makes us, like, best pals or anything.”

  I whispered back, “Oh, please.” But we both kind of smiled, just the tiniest little bit.

  By the end of the day, the last two coupons had been taken, by Mr. Kurt and Mr. Overbye. Picturing the dreaded Bee cuddling with a teeny-tiny baby rodent was a bit alarming. But then again, it kind of wasn’t.

  And at least The Bird hadn’t tried to claim one.

  * * *

  Six weeks later, I met everybody at the pet store, where they all bought their supplies and took their babies.

  It’s weird. I used to get a little bit scared every time I saw a black jacket with gold lettering coming my way in the hall. Now I just think, Hey, that guy chipped in to buy Frederica!

  Things change.

  And maybe this whole thing has taught me something about what kindness is for. Because, looking back at this year, I still basically did fail when I tried to protect everybody. But that doesn’t mean my efforts didn’t matter. Maybe kindness spreads slowly, and even fails for a while, but then sort of seeps through again and keeps moving outward, until you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a ring of fellow hamster owners who used to be your enemies.