The Boy on Cinnamon Street

by Phoebe Stone

  I think Grandpa is doing this just to make Grandma happy. He’ll do anything to make Grandma happy. The only thing he won’t do is buy himself new clothes. Grandma says he would staple up the holes in his pants and keep using them if she didn’t step in. Once she tried to throw out a pair of million-year-old pajamas, but Grandpa found them in the condo Dumpster in the courtyard, and can you believe he pulled them out and kept wearing them? Finally, Grandma got rid of them by leaving them on the roof of the car when we were going to a local Laundromat cause our dryer was broken. We think they flew off somewhere around the intersection of Route 9 and Pottsboro Avenue.

  I go over to sit on the couch, where Grandpa is using Krazy Glue. He’s putting glitter around some of the photographs, like the one of me on the day I was born. I looked all wrinkly and red and clueless. My mom was holding me, but she had on a hospital mask, so now I can’t see her face. I can just see her hair. It is a pretty yellow color.

  “My mom had pretty hair,” I say to my grandpa.

  “Your mom was so beautiful,” says Grandpa.

  “I can’t remember her hair. I can’t remember her face, either. I don’t remember ever calling anybody Mom,” I say.

  “Don’t you remember the time we went up to our cabin at Lake Mescopi? Remember when your mother rented the rowboat and took you around to all the islands there? You even stopped at the lake grocery store and bought a Fudgsicle.”

  “No,” I say, “I can’t remember any boat or any Fudgsicle.” And then suddenly I get totally mad at my grandpa. I suddenly hate him. “I hate you, Grandpa,” I shout and I get up and I go in my room and I slam the door.

  I don’t answer even when Grandma starts knocking and calling out, “Louise, darling. Sweetheart. Let your grandma give you a hug.” Then my grandpa starts in and now they’re both hammering away. But I don’t answer. I just open the lid of my mom’s jewelry box and let it play till it winds down.

  Later I’m sitting at my desk looking at this card with a puppy on the front. It was from my dad. He’s always calling us, but my grandma won’t ever speak to him. He is always asking me to visit him, but then he doesn’t ever exactly have a time that would fit with his schedule.

  I did go to visit him last year. He has a new family in New York City. He has a stepdaughter around my age named Dearie, who plays the piano. Her mom was always going, “Dearie, dear, it’s time to go to this recital or that performance.” Chopin’s 16th kiss my butt. Beethoven’s 10th blah blah blah. In my opinion, any dude, living or dead, with a name like Wolfgang has got to be a major pain. I was like, “What else do you do around here?” And Dearie looked up at me with this what-are-you-talking-about? look on her face.

  They do have this to-die-for apartment that looks like the honeymoon suite at the Marriott Hotel. I stayed there for two weeks. My dad was nice though, but very busy. When I left, he gave me this cute card with the puppy on the front. The puppy just, like, made me almost cry, it was sooo cute with this big red bow around his neck. Inside the card, there was a twenty-dollar bill. My dad had to go to work, so it was Dearie’s mom who drove me to the airport. I didn’t know what to call her. She wasn’t my mom, but she was married to my dad. Riding in the car, we were pretty quiet. She kept asking me these dumb questions like did I have this book or did I know this person or that person. I answered every question with a yes or a no.

  Then Dearie’s piano teacher called on her cell, and she was going on about Dearie’s piano technique. The whole time, I was staring at the adorable puppy card. That puppy was just looking at me with these big floppy ears and this soft puppy nose.

  I pick up the card now and stare at it. Maybe it’s the red bow or maybe it’s his dopey ears, but for some reason that puppy just about wrings my freaking heart.

  Chapter

  Twelve

  Reni has been trying to learn how to draw. She has a pad full of sketches of shoes and cell phones and stuff. She’s been drawing lots of pictures of Justin Bieber too and Annais has been calling her “a menace to society.” Meanwhile, Henderson says he’s fully analyzed the handwriting on the pizza letter and he has an idea who may have written it. He’s coming over to discuss it.

  “Henderson’s on his way here,” I say to my grandma and grandpa as they leave to go to a town planning meeting.

  “Oh, wonderful!” says Grandma. “That boy is such a hoot. I love the way he reads everything from cereal boxes to Shakespeare. In my opinion, he’s got what it takes. He’ll probably grow up to be the president of the United States.”

  “No,” I say, “Henderson doesn’t want to be president. He wants to be secretary of state.”

  “See what I mean?” says Grandma, smiling. She leans back through the door and says, “Under several layers of dork, there lies a truly cool young man in Henderson.”

  Grandpa looks at her with great admiration. “My goodness, baby doll, you talk just like one of the kids. Doesn’t she?”

  “Uh, not really,” I say, waving good-bye, double-time waves. As soon as I close the door, I start thinking about the Hen. He was there when Merit M started tripping me in the halls a couple of months ago. I’m not kidding you. Because of his messenger job, he was there. (Reni wants to know how he does all this. Come on, she says, he’s a spy. He knows people. How does HE end up with a job like that? Come on, think about it.) I had just fallen on my face in the hall at school and I was looking at the red and white tile floor up close, real close. Somebody gave me a hand. It was Hen.

  Then he went with me to my geology class after that. We were studying the Mount St. Helens volcano that day. I told the teacher Henderson was my cousin visiting from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  And he loved that class. (I know. Henderson loves everything. But he really loved this class.) Now he studies all volcanoes, especially Mount St. Helens. And since then, he’s been full of statistics about how many citizens croaked that day and how many people were buried up to their necks in volcanic ash and all that.

  When Henderson comes in the door, he’s starving, of course. I look at him and immediately I throw open the fridge, but there’s squat in there for food.

  “We’ll have to order a pizza,” I say, smiling.

  “My stomach would not be in opposition to a double cheese, double anchovies, double pine nuts, extra large,” Henderson says. (Opposition is one of his favorite words.)

  “Done,” I go, reaching into the antique Charlie Brown cookie jar, where my grandma and grandpa keep the pizza money for me. I don’t even have to look up the pizza phone number; it’s programmed into my cell. My Palomeeno’s Pizza ticket has been punched so many times, I’ll probably get a free pizza every six months for the rest of my life.

  Henderson gets all comfy in my grandpa’s chair, reading a book called Benjamin Franklin: The Man and the Myth. In the last couple of weeks, Henderson’s buzz cut has started to grow out a little. He’s laying his head back under Grandpa’s reading lamp. I think it’s cool that Henderson knows everything there is to know about Benjamin Franklin. He says his dad has a friend who is related to Benjamin Franklin and who was handed down through the ages an actual pair of Benjamin Franklin’s underwear. With some of Henderson’s stories, I’m like, “Yeah right. Whatever.” The light is falling across Henderson’s face, making him look ninety percent less geek and kind of, sweetly, sort of … I don’t know.

  “We’re having a lunar eclipse next week,” he says. “At three in the morning, we’ll be able to see the earth’s shadow on the moon. I’m planning on camping out in the backyard with a bunch of books and fourteen sandwiches.”

  “You better make that fifteen, Hen. You don’t want to run out early and starve later,” I say. “And, um, by the way, what did you decide about Benny’s letter? I mean does the handwriting back up the facts?”

  “Oh,” he says, looking down. “The letter, um, well, I’m not totally sure yet. I mean, I can’t say right now. I mean, well, I need more time and more information.” He looks at the floor and then he puts
the book up in front of his face again and starts reading.

  My phone rings and it’s Reni. “Hey ho,” she goes. “Hey ho, what’s up?”

  “Oh, Hen is here and he’s hungry and I’m going to order a pizza for him,” I say.

  “Aha!! Great!! Perfect!! I think you’re gonna make it to the Spring Fling Dance after all, but you’ve got to be more aggressive. You’re waffling. Put on that new gorgeous green dress,” says Reni. “Now.”

  “I’m waffling?” I say.

  “Yes, you are. But no more. Okay? Now, when Benny comes to the door with the pizza and you’re wearing that dress, he’ll have to notice you.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Do you want to go to the Spring Fling Dance?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. Do it.”

  “Henderson,” I say, shutting my cell and taking a deep breath. “I’m going to put on my new green dress so Benny will see me in it.”

  Henderson is still reading. He doesn’t look up from his book. “Well, if you’re looking to dazzle him, I guess,” he says.

  “I am, Henderson. I do want to dazzle him. I want to be dazzling.” I spin around the room. Henderson is hidden again behind Ben Franklin’s face on the cover of the book with his wire-rimmed Ben Franklin glasses and his funny little Ben Franklin two-hundred-year-old smile. Before I met Henderson, I thought Ben Franklin was that store on Main Street that sells notebooks and doodads and stuff.

  I don’t really have time to get the whole outfit together. Forget the crown and the shoes. I am pretty hyper now. I’m throwing clothes around my room. I feel a great need to do five somersaults, a couple of flips, and a major handspring. In this dress! Right. The buzzer is ringing and I’m so nervous, my hands are, like, flying all around me like a couple of lost birds. I have the green dress on, but for shoes, I’m still wearing my Day-Glo red plastic Crocs my grandma got me at Shaw’s last week.

  I rush out into the living room and take a quick turn. Oh, I love this dress! (My flips are begging me. My cartwheels are crying. Do one. Do one.) Oh, okay, I do one beautiful perfect cartwheel over the rug. My heart sings for one moment. I land on my feet right in front of Hen, so close I can barely breathe. Henderson is standing there stock-still. Ben Franklin is lying on the rug, staring up at us in a wise, smiling, 1700s way.

  “Thumb,” Henderson says, looking down at me.

  “What?” I say. “The pizza is here! Come on.”

  “Oh, Thumb,” he says again. “I’ve never seen … I can’t believe …” He follows me with his eyes. He does not take his eyes off me.

  “Henderson,” I say, “what? The pizza’s here.”

  I skip to the hall and open the door. Then smack in my face, there Benny is. He’s in the hall, taking the pizza out of its warm little padded pizza case. After all this time, I look up at him.

  And then Henderson comes up beside me and takes the pizza and goes, “Thanks, Benny. Keep the change. That’ll be all.” And he takes my hand and pulls me away from the door and shuts it. He sets the pizza on the coffee table.

  Then I go, “Henderson?”

  And he goes, “What? “

  And I go, “What?”

  And he goes, “What?”

  And I go, “Henderson?”

  And he goes, “What? I was hungry. That’s all.”

  And then my cell rings and it’s Reni again. I go into my room and I slam the door. I flop down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Reni says, “Well, did Benny like the dress?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not sure.”

  “You can’t be serious,” says Reni. My head is still spinning. I feel like I just swallowed a butterfly upside down. Then Reni starts blabbing on about some movie we want to go see next week. I listen for a while and I start to melt into the words. Then I join in. We blab for a while. Reni and I are good at that. We blab on for a long time. It gets dark outside. Very dark.

  When my grandma and grandpa come home, I go back in the living room and see that the double cheese, double anchovies, double pine nuts, extra large pizza is sitting there on the coffee table untouched. And where is Henderson? Disappeared. Gone. Vanished.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  My grandma just took me for my yearly checkup with Dr. Birpkin. He told me I’ve hit a plateau in my growing. He charged us money, but he didn’t do anything about my being small. “Be patient,” he said, slinging his stethoscope over his shoulder. I was thinking, “How about I’ll be a patient and you be a doctor and do something about my height.” I mean, what are doctors for?

  Now my grandma and I are driving home in silence. At a red light, my grandma says, “Remember when you used to write poems? Remember when you used to say things that were so poetic I used to jot them down in a notebook? Now you’re all angry and bristly, honey.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand.

  “You mean bristles like on a hairbrush?” I say.

  “Well, yes, kind of,” she says.

  I don’t answer. I’m never speaking to anyone again. Seriously.

  When we’re walking in the door of the apartment, Grandma throws her purse on the couch and says to Grandpa, “You know what I discovered in the basement today while I was down there sweeping?”

  “What?” says Grandpa.

  “Asbestos,” says my grandma.

  Grandpa raises his eyebrows and looks over at me like he and I are a unit, like a washer and dryer set, and Grandma is a stove way on the other side of the room. “Where, baby doll?” he says, still smiling at me.

  Grandma gives Grandpa a you-didn’t-take-out-the-garbage-so-now-I’m-going-to-have-you-arrested look. She puts her hands on her hips and says, “I was down in the basement this morning and suddenly I noticed there is asbestos around all the pipes down there.”

  “How do you know for sure, Cecile? It’s wrapping that has been there for a long time. You can’t tell by looking at it. Anyway, it’s better if you don’t disturb it,” he says. When Grandpa stops calling my grandma baby doll and starts in with Cecile, you know it’s serious.

  “Oh, I can tell,” she goes. “We’ve got to do something about it now.”

  “I see,” says Grandpa. “You are planning to rile up everybody in the building. Everybody will be up in arms and we don’t even know if it is asbestos.” Baby doll and honey bear have disappeared and it’s Phil and Cecile heading into the ring.

  I go out into the hall again, with Grandpa saying, “You don’t know, Cecile.”

  And then Grandma says, “Oh yes, I do, Phil.”

  I decide to go up on the roof. There’s a terrace and in warm weather a garden, and last summer Mr. Anderson grew twelve watermelons up here. Now, since it’s the end of March, snow is melting all over the Pottsboro area, exposing everything. On the roof, all the furniture is dumped upside down and rosebushes are wrapped up in crummy burlap. There’s junk thrown around, like old beer cans and newspapers, and there are chunks of old snow and ice that look glacial, like they’re never in a million years going to melt.

  I stand at the guardrail that goes around the top of the roof. I look down at all the cars and people below. You could easily get blown right off this roof if you didn’t hold on. When I look straight down the side of the building, my stomach turns over and a weird, tingly, scary feeling goes through me. I guess Thelma and Louise drove off that cliff in the movie because if they didn’t, they would have had to go to jail forever. “They wanted to be free,” Grandma always explains to me after the movie is over. “They wanted freedom from their lives.”

  “That’s why they killed themselves?” I always say back.

  And Grandma always says, “Yes.”

  I get out my cell and call Reni, but she doesn’t answer. I sit up here on this slippery-wet, rusty, upside-down chair, and the wind knocks me around. I look off into the distance and see the buildings at the edge of the horizon stretching away. I can see ice cracking and buckling up on the melting river. I can see old snow in pile
s dripping into large puddles of water.

  I need to talk to Reni. I dial her cell again. Reni, where are you? Come on. Come on, pick up. I need you. I text her and get nothing back. Then I keep hitting redial and redial on my cell until finally, twenty minutes later, she answers.

  “Hey ho, Reni,” I go. “Where have you been?”

  “Hey ho, I’ve just been killing my brother. He is driving me crazy,” Reni says.

  “Oh, good,” I say, “kill him for me too. He’s been acting sooo weird. Does he have the flu or something? He turned into a psychopath overnight. I mean, what’s his problem?”

  “I don’t know. My mom called him ‘utterly listless’ today,” says Reni. “He’s moaning and mooning around and staring out the window all the time.”

  “He’s probably dreaming up a new novel,” I say.

  “No, this is different. I mean, if he’s a spy, maybe his agency fired him or something,” says Reni. “By the way, word is out at North.”

  “What?” I say. “Go on.”

  “Word is out that Benny got a letter. Your letter! Only problem was by mistake I ripped a bumper sticker Benny had pasted over those air slats when I stuffed that letter in his locker.”

  “Oh no,” I say.

  “No, it’s fine. I don’t think he cared because now Benny’s all flustered and honored and embarrassed and proud and curious all at once. He’s trying to figure out who sent the letter. He wrote on his locker in big bold letters WHO ARE YOU?”

  “I’m gonna faint,” I say. “I got to get off this roof.” I start running down the steps to the hallway. “Reni, help. What am I gonna do?” I start going on and on about how scared I am and how freaked I am and how I’m not ready for this, and suddenly I realize I’m talking to nobody at all. My cell has died. It always dies at the moment. I hate my cell.

  When I get back to our apartment, my grandma is on the phone with an asbestos testing service. She’s saying, “Well, we’d like to get this done immediately.” And Grandpa is in the living room doing Tai Chi. He’s standing in the middle of the room in these dorky sweatpants and a black Chinese T-shirt. He’s got a headband around his head and he’s standing there moving slowly, with his arms out as if he’s about to lift up to the ceiling. I’m like, “Move over, Grandpa. I need to watch TV. Where’s the suitcase?”