The Boy on Cinnamon Street

by Phoebe Stone

  So I reach in my pocket and get out the crumpled piece of paper with the words I am your biggest fan written on it. We both stare down at it. Some lady from planet Extremely Nosy standing next to Reni tries to read it, so Reni turns around and forms a serious Reni wall. “Is this for real?” Reni goes. “I mean, do you know this guy Benny McCartney?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “Possibly my grandma knows him, but I’m not sure. I mean, I thought he had just started on the job. I don’t think he’s delivered any pizza to our condo before, but maybe I just didn’t notice.”

  “You didn’t notice him? This guy is major in love with you and you don’t notice him?” says Reni. “Think about it. How could you miss something like this? I mean, this could be your ticket to the Spring Fling Dance.”

  We’re near the large windows along the front now and I can see it’s starting to snow again. Through the blur of steam and the crowds waiting in line, I can see my only-other-friend-in-the-world Henderson (Reni’s brother). He’s wearing a sandwich board for Ben & Jerry’s. On both sides of the board it says in big letters, DON’T GO AWAY, IT’S FREE CONE DAY. Even though it’s cold out there, it looks like Henderson is having a good time walking back and forth. This kid always has a good time, even when he’s taking tests at school. Finally he looks through the large window in front and waves to us.

  “What is he doing?” I say.

  “Oh, he gets these after-school jobs here and there. I don’t know. I think he’s friends with the manager. He knows everybody and he’s always doing dumb things.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Henderson is such a pain. You’re sooo lucky you don’t have a brother,” says Reni.

  Then Henderson opens the door at Ben & Jerry’s and walks in smiling. He’s one of these kids who smiles when there is nothing to smile about, which, to use his favorite word, is baffling.

  Everybody, including the manager, beams at the sandwich board and at the very tall goofball inside it. Some girls come over to chat with Henderson. Some knock on the front of the sandwich board, trying to be funny.

  After ten billion years, Reni and I finally get our ice cream. Now the sandwich board walks toward our table. He has a wool scarf wrapped around his neck and there are snowflakes still on the scarf, and stars of snow stuck to his pointed red wool hat.

  “Guess what?” says Reni, throwing open her arms. “She got a love letter.”

  “Really?” Henderson says. “Wow!” He does a couple of jumping jacks inside the sandwich board and then he frowns at both of us through his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “We’re almost sure who it’s from,” says Reni.

  “Hush,” I say, kicking Reni gently with my foot under the table.

  “Ouch. We need your help,” says Reni.

  “Hmmm,” says Henderson, crossing his arms over the front of the sandwich board, so now it feels like we’re talking to a pack of cards in Alice in Wonderland. “Well, Thumb, at least you know someone out there in the universe finds you lovable.”

  “Not someone,” says Reni. “Benny McCartney, this cute guy who delivers pizza.”

  “Oh,” says Henderson, backing away.

  “And to be sure, we need you to analyze the handwriting,” says Reni.

  “Not now. Maybe later,” I say, putting my arm on the table to cover the paper.

  “Hmmm,” says Henderson again. And he grabs my ice-cream cone and I let him take a bite because he’s number two in my best-friend lineup.

  Then he goes, “I gotta get back to work. It’s cold out there but at least it’s not Jupiter. On Jupiter you’d freeze and choke to death instantly, if you weren’t wearing a space suit.” He looks cheerfully at us. Then he reaches for Reni’s ice cream, but she pulls it away.

  “Go get your own,” says Reni, “and grow up while you’re at it.”

  Henderson smiles. Seriously, I’ve never ever seen this kid look sad. He told me once he thinks everything in the world is interesting, even boring things. Now he heads toward the door, waving to the manager.

  “He’s always doing stupid stuff like this,” says Reni. “Hey, Henderson, what did you do with Annais’s Chinese fan, the one she had on her wall above her desk? It’s suddenly missing.” But Henderson doesn’t hear her. He’s already outside in the falling snow, hopping around on the sidewalk and joking with shoppers.

  Reni rolls her eyes and shrugs her shoulders. Then suddenly she gets really quiet. She looks at the crumpled paper on the table. “You should be happy. I never got a letter from Justin Bieber, and I wrote him five times. I can understand not answering one letter, but five letters? It’s like rejection times five.”

  “Reni, we don’t know if he even got any of the letters.”

  “True,” goes Reni.

  “You know what? I feel like I need to know more about Benny McCartney. I have this funny feeling,” I say. “And it’s kind of, I don’t know.”

  “Uh-oh,” goes Reni. “Are you starting to get, like, ‘obsessed’ with this guy? I mean, are you thinking about him twenty-four seven?”

  “Maybe,” I say, “sort of.”

  “Uh-oh,” goes Reni, shaking her head. “Sounds like a crush.”

  And then I start thinking about my grandma and how she kind of backed away when she saw that pizza kid. She didn’t go, “Darling, how are you?” like she does to everybody she encounters. My grandma gets to know the personal history of every dork she meets. But for this kid, she was all strange and shaky.

  “Um, maybe you should order a pizza, Reni, and see if he leaves you a note. Maybe this kid has cracked up and leaves notes for everybody. Maybe he’s, like, a pizza stalker,” I say.

  “Yeah, but I’m not allowed to order pizza,” says Reni, looking down at her T-shirt, where there are two pink spots of bubble gum ice cream. Her T-shirt is a Gap XL and across the front are the printed words LOVE ME ANYWAY? “I never get pizza. I have borderline diabetes. The doctor says I have to lose twenty pounds or I have to go on insulin.”

  “Now you tell me, Reni. Let’s get out of here. Say good-bye forever to that friendly Ben & Jerry’s cow behind your head.” I pull on Reni’s arm and she gets up and we start laughing. Then I say again, “Reni, can we find out where Benny McCartney lives at least? He goes to North, I know that.”

  “I can ask my sister. Annais knows everybody at North. Come on, admit it. This is an unmistakable crushy kissy kind of thing,” says Reni.

  “I don’t know,” I say again. My first and only crush passes through my mind. It was on Frosty the Snowman when I was six years old. I know it was stupid, but it came with a sort of warm, fuzzy, longing feeling. “Reni, this doesn’t feel good.”

  “Of course not,” says Reni. “Crushes hurt. None of them feel good. They’re pure agony.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Remember when I first starting crushing Justin Bieber? It was major pain.”

  “Okay,” I say. And I feel a little better having given a name to this strange unwanted sliding feeling that seems to be pulling at me. Then Reni starts laughing again and I join in, though I’m not sure why. But Reni and I are really good at laughing. It’s all we ever do. Too bad they don’t have laughing contests, cause Reni and I would rule.

  When we get out to the sidewalk, it’s still snowing. It’s a dizzying, confusing snow. If you stare up at the snowflakes like Henderson says to do, you lose your balance. You feel like you’re floating. You don’t know where the sky is and where the ground is. Is this how to understand everything?

  From where we are standing, we can see Henderson in his sandwich board up on the corner. A group of pigeons have flocked around him and are looking up at him. Henderson is waving his arms around in the snow like he’s their conductor, a conductor of a pigeon choir.

  “What a doofus,” says Reni.

  Chapter

  Four

  It’s Saturday and my grandma and grandpa are going to yet another antique show. “No way,” I say. “Do I have to go? There mi
ght be a tornado today. It said so on the Internet. I think I’d rather hang out in the basement to be safe.” But the sky is a pure blue. The snow has stopped and Grandpa is all smiley and gives me a hug. He’s so excited. He collects old beer bottles. I’m not kidding you. After he finds one, he is like a crazy man singing and kissing my grandma, all over finding some stupid bottle that should have gone in the trash a hundred years ago.

  “You need to get out of the house,” says my grandma, and she hands me a pair of socks made of recycled materials. They’re made from old plastic milk and yogurt containers all smashed up and spun into plastic yarn. They look like regular socks, but they’re not. I’ll probably just keep thinking about old spilled milk when I’m wearing them.

  Grandma puts her arm around me and whispers, “With every step we take, we need to be more aware of our magical green environment.”

  My calendar says I’ve got nothing to do, so I go along. My calendar is so blank I can reuse it every year by just flipping a few numbers around. Clever, no? Grandma drives because Grandpa needs new glasses, and the whole way there he’s telling her what to do and where to turn and where to go. Every time we come toward a stoplight, Grandpa stomps his foot on the floor on the passenger side, trying to stop the car.

  “All right, Mr. Control Freak,” Grandma says.

  I’m sitting all by myself in the big empty backseat, thinking about that letter and Benny McCartney. Reni is so excited that I have a crush on somebody. I’m pleased that she’s so pleased. It’s true I’ve never been in crush land before (except for Frosty, and I’m just being honest.) All the signposts are upside down and backward here because I don’t know what a true crush is supposed to feel like. And then I don’t feel anything about certain stuff anyway and this freaks my grandma and grandpa. They go to this dorky support group that I call a big crying festival. They are always trying to get me to go with them. But I won’t.

  Honestly, I don’t feel a thing about my mom or my dad. It’s like when a doctor gives you a shot of painkiller for a broken hand or something and you go home and put that hand on a hot burner on the stove by mistake — you could burn up your hand if you aren’t looking because you don’t feel a thing. Not one thing.

  We pull up in front of the antique show. Grandma parks the car nicely and doesn’t bump or smash into anything. She smiles at Grandpa and says, “Perfect. What did I tell you?”

  And Grandpa says, “You’re wedged too close to that truck, baby doll. The guy’s gonna come back and dance all over our car. Let me repark this thing.”

  I’m not in any hurry. I hate antique shows. There’s nothing old that I like anyway. Except maybe a little jewelry box that used to belong to my mother. When you open the lid, it plays this little song called “Oh Stars in the Sky.”

  Oh stars in the sky,

  All the stars twinkling by,

  I wish and I sigh

  At the stars so high.

  I wish and I sigh

  And I wonder why.

  Why? Why? Why?

  My mother pinned a picture of herself, my father, and me on the inside of the lid on the soft white satin. It’s still there. When you open the lid, you hear the song and you see the photo.

  As we walk into the building and down the rows of booths full of junk, my grandma gets all excited and says, “Louise, darling, pick something out. Anything at all, dear. For your room.” She pats my hair. Her hands smell of rose hand cream. Grandpa and she kind of match. They go together like a set of something, like two canisters on an antique table. That starts me thinking, would Benny and I make a good set of salt and pepper shakers? Seriously.

  “Louise,” says Grandma, “anything here. I mean it.”

  I have told my grandma that I am now Thumbelina, that I will never be Louise again. But when I told her, I don’t think it sunk in. She just kept smiling and singing some dumb Beatles song. My grandma and grandpa love the Beatles and they’re always dancing around the living room to “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

  I’m standing at this table, looking around for penguin salt shakers, but I don’t see anything like that. Then I notice this humongous cupboard with a long mirror down the front. I’m looking at myself in the mirror and wondering if there is any way Benny McCartney would think I am in ninth grade, even though I’m in seventh grade and have the unfortunate appearance of a fourth grader. I look down at my body and whisper, “Grow, you stupid idiot.”

  As I am standing there, the man selling the cupboard shows me a little secret drawer. “See this?” he says. “People used to hide their diaries in here. It’s a great place for something like that.” I am thinking this might be the perfect thing for me. When you have a grandpa like I do, you need a cupboard like this.

  Next thing you know, something really hazy crazy happens. As my grandma says, “Life is full to the brim with the mysterious and the amazing.” That is her answer for almost everything. I used to think it was a very ho-hum thing to say. But now I’m reconsidering because suddenly Benny McCartney walks by. I’m not kidding you. He walks past me. I see his face and for a moment I feel like a mini tornado just ripped through me, and it isn’t a pleasant little tornado. It’s dark, and signposts are spinning around. Everything’s blurry. I feel like somebody punched me in the stomach. Benny’s carrying a big box and he doesn’t see me. I back away and I feel like I’m trying to move in a pool of deep water. I feel so dizzy I might fall to the ground. I can see he has a book in his pocket and I can see the title. It seems to be called On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

  Before I know it, he’s gone. Boom. And I need to talk to Reni. Am I supposed to be feeling like I can’t breathe? This doesn’t feel like a crush. With Frosty the Snowman, I used to get this secret happy feeling. It was with me all through first grade. But Reni says that crush doesn’t count because he melted into thin air in the end and also because what idiot would fall in love with a snowman?

  I take a deep breath and go back to my grandma and grandpa. They are poking through old dingy boxes of bottles in someone’s booth. My grandpa stands up, looking all dented and disappointed. He brushes the dust off his knees sadly and offers Grandma a hand.

  Then I show them the cupboard I have decided I want, with the cool secret drawer in the back. Grandma and Grandpa look kind of overwhelmed and quite small standing before it. And my grandma says, “Oh, honey, of course. Honey. Honey. Honey. Of course.” Then she and Grandpa stare at the cupboard like two wistful mice looking up at a giant they have to slay.

  Grandpa goes off to pay for the cupboard and to arrange for someone to deliver it to the condo. I leave the building, looking down at the stupid bloodred stamp on my hand that says SOUTH POTTSBORO ANTIQUE SHOW. I can’t wait to wash it off. My grandma is back at the car with a bag of antique lace she just bought and I lean against the car door in a wish-I-was-on-the-moon sort of way.

  I look at my grandma. Behind her head the sky is an icy, crystal, pure winter blue. I want to ask her why she acted weird when Benny McCartney delivered the pizza that night. I’m just about to form the words when suddenly this memory pops up in front of me, like someone just shook one of those paperweights full of snow and when the snow settles in there you see the scene clearly. I’m in the side yard at my house on Cinnamon Street. I’m running. The grass is bright green. I’m falling toward it. I need to get to the front yard without throwing up or fainting. I have to get there. I have to, have to, have to get there before I fall over.

  “Honey?” says my grandma. “Are you okay?” She looks at me for a minute and then her face splinters and shatters and she puts her arms around me and gives me one of her squeeze-you-to-death-forget-about-breathing grandma hugs.

  Chapter

  Five

  I can’t believe I’m at school down in the basement in Merit Madson country. The halls in this part of the school smell wet and like chlorine because of the swimming pool nearby. There’s a watery echo in the air, and everybody who brushes by me has wet hair tucked back behind their ears
in a busy, belonging kind of way that makes me feel like somebody just clicked the UN-FRIEND button when they got to my name.

  When I was at North last year, I used to come over here for gymnastic meets. Then these halls were dark and gloomy because we were just the visiting team and we didn’t know anything about the school. I guess I still feel like a visiting team. Like no matter how many freaking showers I take, I can never wash away that feeling of being a visiting team. Even though this is my school now. Even though I quit gymnastics.

  The only reason I’m down here today in these halls is because I left a brand-new leotard behind in my old locker in the gymnastics room. I stop now in front of Coach Tull’s office and practice room. There’s this little window high in the door and because I’m small, I have to get on my tiptoes to see in.

  Up on my toes, I can see the whole flipping gymnastics team sitting in a circle in there surrounded by the equipment. Coach is talking about “inner poise” and the importance of stretching. Blah. Blah. Blah. I can see Merit Madson and Janie Brevette. They stand out like somebody took a yellow Day-Glo marker and drew a big circle around them. Merit is leaning against the pommel horse with one arm over it in a very loving way, like it’s her personal pet, even though we never use those pommel horses.

  Suddenly this seventh grader named Sue McCaleb appears next to me, like out of freaking nowhere. She looks down at me like I’m from Loserland, USA. I have to look up at her and this fries me big-time because she can peek in the window with ease while I’m hopping around next to her like a dorky M&M on springs. “Are they starting earlier now? I’ve been in another section,” she goes. “Are we late?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m not on the team anymore. I had to quit because of schoolwork,” I say.