See You Around, Sam!

by Lois Lowry

  See You Around, Sam!

  Lois Lowry

  * * *

  Illustrated by Diane de Groat

  * * *

  Houghton Mifflin Company

  Boston

  * * *

  Walter Lorraine Books

  Text copyright © 1996 by Lois Lowry

  Illustrations copyright © 1996 by Diane de Groat

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce

  selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  For information about this and other Houghton Mifflin trade and reference

  books and multimedia products, visit The Bookstore at Houghton Mifflin

  on the World Wide Web at http://www.hmco.com/trade/.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lowry, Lois.

  See you around, Sam! / Lois Lowry

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sam Krupnik, mad at his mother because she won't let him

  wear his new plastic fangs in the house, decides to run away to Alaska.

  ISBN 0-395-81664-5

  [1. Runaways—Fiction. 2. Neighborhood—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L9673Se 1996 96-1213

  [Fic]—dc20 CIP

  AC

  Printed in the United States of America mv 10 9 8 7 6 5

  * * *

  Books by Lois Lowry

  Anastasia Krupnik

  Anastasia Again!

  Anastasia at Your Service

  Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst

  Anastasia on Her Own

  Anastasia Has the Answers

  Anastasia's Chosen Career

  Anastasia at This Address

  Anastasia, Absolutely

  All About Sam!

  Attaboy, Sam!

  The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

  Switcharound

  Your Move, J.P.!

  A Summer to Die

  Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye

  Autumn Street

  Taking Care of Terrific

  Us and Uncle Fraud

  Rabble Starkey

  Number the Stars

  The Giver

  * * *

  For The Bean

  1

  "Sam?"

  Leah's mom, sitting in the driver's seat of the station wagon, turned to look at him. "Here we are at your house. Aren't you getting out? Need help with your seat belt? Can you open the door by yourself?"

  Sam shook his head. He had already unbuckled his seat belt with no difficulty. "In a minute," he said. "I need to get something out of my pocket."

  "There's your mommy, at the back door," Leah said, pointing. "She has a pencil sticking out of her ear.

  Sam wiggled so that he could pull the small object out of his pocket. He didn't look up. "No," he explained. "She always wears a pencil behind her ear. It's her carrying place for pencils."

  "Sam's mom is an artist," Leah's mom explained to Leah. "So it's probably important for her to have a pencil available all the time. Isn't that right, Sam?"

  "Yeah," Sam agreed, but he wasn't really listening. He examined the little object carefully, figuring out which was the front and which was the back. Then he ducked his head so that no one could see, and he inserted it into his mouth. It felt damp, and he realized that it was damp with his friend Adam's spit, and that someone else's spit might be poison. But Sam decided he didn't care.

  "Okay," he said, and opened the door of the car.

  Mrs. Krupnik had come down to the sidewalk to meet him. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She had a yellow pencil tucked behind one ear, as usual, and a coffee cup in one hand.

  "Hi, Sam," she said. She smiled at Leah's mom, waved through the window of the car at Leah, and took Sam's hand as he climbed out. "Hot dogs for lunch," she told him cheerfully.

  Sam waved to Leah and her mom but he didn't say good-bye the way he usually did. He was arranging his mouth. His mouth felt kind of uncomfortable, and it might be full of Adam's poison spit, but Sam didn't care. He felt like the coolest guy in the neighborhood. In the town.

  He felt like the coolest guy in the whole world.

  He held his mom's hand and walked beside her through the yard, up the back porch steps, and across the porch to the kitchen door.

  "Sam?" his mom said as she unzipped his jacket in the kitchen. "You're awfully quiet today. Is everything okay?"

  Sam nodded. Then, slowly, he smiled at his mother.

  She screamed.

  It was really cool to make people scream, even your own mother.

  "Sam!" his mother said loudly. "What ¿5 that in your mouth?"

  "Fangs," Sam said happily.

  He smiled widely. He knew what he looked like, because he had seen Adam smiling just this way at show-and-tell time this morning. Adam had brought the fangs to nursery school.

  Sam knew that he looked like Dracula, because he had seen Adam looking like Dracula. Not a fake Halloween costume of Dracula, but the real Dracula, with pointy, scary teeth.

  Everyone in the nursery school circle had screamed, even the teacher, Mrs. Bennett, when Adam had stood up and smiled. Sam had screamed, too. At first, he had felt very scared. Then, after the scary feeling wore off, he had felt very jealous.

  But now he had the fangs; they were in his mouth; he had turned into Dracula. And now his mother had screamed.

  It was so cool to have fangs.

  He was surprised that he could talk when his top teeth were covered with plastic. But he could say "fangs" pretty well, although it sounded a little like "fangsh."

  He said it again. "Vampire fangsh."

  "Spit," his mother said tensely. She held her hand cupped in front of Sam's mouth.

  That was kind of weird, Sam thought. Why would his mother want him to spit into her hand? When the dentist told him to spit, there was a neat little round sink with swirling water for him to spit into.

  Anyway, it was hard to spit around the fangs. Sam tried but he didn't manage very well.

  "Sam!" his mother said. She jerked her hand away, and wiped it on her denim skirt. She sounded angry now. "I meant spit out the fangs."

  Oh. Well, of course he wouldn't be able to eat his hot dog with fangs in his mouth. The hot dog smelled really good. Sam could see it there in the pan on the stove, waiting for him. And the little plastic bottle of bright yellow mustard that squirted from a nozzle—his favorite kind; Sam didn't like brown mustard at all—was waiting by his place at the kitchen table.

  So Sam reached into his mouth and carefully took the fangs off of his teeth. He put them into his pocket so that he could find them right after lunch.

  Sam was planning to wear the fangs all day. He was already looking forward to greeting his sister, Anastasia, when she came home from school; and his father at the end of the day. He thought maybe his father would be so surprised that he would drop his briefcase and papers would fly all over. That would be exciting.

  And he was planning to scare his cat, too. Fangs were so cool.

  But his mother was still standing in front of him with her hand out.

  "Not in the pocket, Sam," she said. "Give them to me. No more fangs."

  Sam closed his hand, inside his pocket, around the fangs. "I traded for them," he explained. "They were Adam's, and he gave them to me, but I have to take him my Etch A Sketch tomorrow."

  "Bad trade," his mother said. "Give them to me."

  "Why?" he asked. "Why can't I wear fangs?"

  "Because it makes you look disgusting," Mrs. Krupnik said.

  "That's why I want them," Sam explained. Sometimes mothers didn't get it. "I like to look disgusting."

&n
bsp; "It's just too scary, Sam," his mother said. "Too gross. I saw a terrible movie once, about vampires, and I hated every minute of it, even though Tom Cruise was in it. I've had a thing about fangs ever since. I'm sorry, but I can't let you wear fangs in this house."

  Sam frowned. He really wanted his hot dog, but he didn't want to give up his fangs. "How about if I keep them in my pocket?" he suggested.

  Mrs. Krupnik thought about it. Finally she sighed. "Promise me you won't take them out of your pocket as long as you're in this house?"

  "Even just to look at?"

  "Even just to look at. I don't want those fangs to see the light of day. I don't think my heart can stand the sight of those fangs."

  "But can I reach into my pocket and touch them?" Sam asked.

  "Okay, but don't tell me when you're touching them. I don't want to know."

  Sam's hand was in his pocket. "I'm touching them right now," he said.

  "Sam! I told you not to tell me!"

  "Oh. Okay, now I'm not touching them. Look—here are both my hands. Can I have my hot dog?"

  Mrs. Krupnik put their lunch on the table and poured a glass of milk for Sam and a cup of coffee for herself. Usually she talked to him a lot during lunch. Usually she asked him everything about his morning at nursery school, what songs he had sung and what stories he had heard. But today Mrs. Krupnik didn't say much. "I'm sorry, Sam," she told him as she cleared the empty plates away. She sliced an apple and gave him a couple of pieces. "I just seem to have a thing about fangs. I guess I suffer from fangphobia."

  "What's that?"

  "Fear of fangs," his mother explained. "Want more apple?"

  Sam nodded and she gave him two more slices.

  "Do you think maybe you'll get over fangphobia?" Sam asked hopefully. "Maybe by tonight, when Daddy comes home, so I could—"

  "Nope. Never."

  Sam sighed. He finished his apple slices. "I'm going up to my room," he announced.

  "Okay," his mother said, "but remember what you promised, Sam? No fangs. Not in this house."

  "I'm going to be very sad up there."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. No fangs in this house," she repeated, looking at him.

  His mother's face looked very certain, and her voice sounded very certain, so Sam trudged up the stairs to his room with a disappointed feeling. His hand went into his pocket and felt the fangs. His day was ruined.

  Somewhere, Sam thought, there would be a nicer place to live. A place where people didn't have fangphobia. Maybe somehow he could find that place.

  That was when Sam decided to run away.

  2

  Quietly, in his bedroom, Sam gathered up the things that he wanted to take with him when he ran away from home.

  He found the fireman's badge that he had been given by a real fireman on the day that his nursery school class went to visit a fire station. His mother had planned to sew it to his jacket but she hadn't gotten around to it yet, partly because Sam couldn't choose which jacket.

  Very carefully—it took him quite a long time—Sam attached the fireman's badge to the neck of his sweater with a large paper clip that he found in a dish on his sister's desk.

  He thought about what else he should take with him. In the bathroom, standing on a chair so that he could reach the medicine cabinet, Sam found a little box of Band-Aids. Sam was very fond of Band-Aids, and especially of these Band-Aids, which were decorated with hearts and stars.

  He put several Band-Aids into the pocket of his jeans. But his pocket was already full of fangs, so it didn't feel very comfortable.

  He decided maybe it would be better to wear the Band-Aids. So, very carefully—it took him quite a long time—he unwrapped three of them, two red and a blue, and stuck them onto himself. Pushing up the leg of his jeans, he stuck one onto his knee, then he stuck another to the back of his left hand. Finally, after a lot of thought, he stuck the third one on his forehead.

  Sam climbed on the stool again and examined himself in the mirror.

  The fireman's badge was paper-clipped to the neck of his blue sweater. The Band-Aid, red with white stars, was neatly across his forehead.

  He stared at himself for a moment, thoughtfully. It was interesting to see himself with a Band-Aid on his forehead, but what he really wanted to see in the mirror...

  The bathroom door was closed, so maybe it didn't really count as "in the house," and he wouldn't be exactly breaking his promise.

  Carefully Sam inserted the fangs into his mouth.

  He shuddered a little, looking at himself turned into a werewolf. No wonder his mother had fangphobia. He was really scary to look at.

  Thinking guiltily again about his promise to his mother that he would not wear the fangs in the house, Sam replaced them in his pocket. In the mirror, he looked disappointingly normal again, even with a red Band-Aid on his forehead.

  Just for the sake of curiosity, Sam tried his mother's eyebrow pencil, which was in a small basket on the back of the toilet. There were lipsticks in the basket, too, but Sam didn't bother with those. He still remembered playing with the lipsticks when he was much younger, and getting into a lot of trouble.

  He darkened his eyebrows a little. He made them bigger than his normal eyebrows, which were quite small. He made his eyebrows into upside-down Vs.

  The new dark eyebrows actually looked pretty good with the Band-Aid. They made him look kind of fierce, Sam thought, the way a werewolf or a vampire should look.

  He scribbled a little with the eyebrow pencil on his upper lip. He was pretty sure his mother wouldn't mind. It didn't seem to damage the pencil any. And it was his upper lip, after all, not anyone else's. The reason she got mad about the lipstick before was because he had scribbled on her bedspread.

  He gave himself a sort of mustache and scribbled some whiskers onto his chin.

  Cool, Sam thought, staring into the mirror.

  Back in his room, he found a pair of green mittens. It wasn't very cold out, but Sam didn't know how long he would be gone. Maybe winter would come and he would need mittens.

  Then Sam decided that he needed a suitcase.

  In the hall closet Sam found what he was looking for. It was his father's gym bag, crimson-colored with the words HARVARD UNIVERSITY on the side.

  He took his father's big sneakers out of the bag and put them on the floor of the closet, but he kept the rolled-up towel that he found inside the bag. You could never tell when you might need a towel. Maybe he would wash or something while he was gone.

  He added the mittens to the suitcase.

  Then, because there was space left in the bag, he added his bear.

  Sam had had his bear for a very long time. It had been given to him when he was born, and there were photographs of Sam sleeping in a little crib, with the bear sitting in the corner near his head, at a time when Sam and the bear were both the same size.

  Now Sam was, of course, much bigger than the bear. And the bear was a little scruffy, because Sam had chewed its ears when he was a baby beginning to get teeth. But it still slept in his bed, so he decided to take the bear—which had no name—along. The bear had never had any adventures at all, and Sam felt a little sorry for him.

  He thought about taking his pajamas, which were hanging on a hook on the inside of his closet door. But he decided not to.

  People who ran away probably slept in their clothes, Sam decided. People with fangs wouldn't wear pajamas, especially not pajamas with spaceships on them.

  "I'm running away soon," Sam called down the stairs to his mother so she would know. "Because of the fangs," he added.

  He listened, but she didn't answer. Mrs. Krupnik had gone into her studio, the large room where she worked at her drawing table doing book illustrations. Probably she hadn't heard him. Sometimes when she was working, his mother didn't notice anything else that was going on.

  Well, thought Sam, that was good. He could just sneak away and she wouldn't notice. Probably if she knew he was running away, she would cry
and try to stop him.

  She would probably scream, Sam thought.

  "I'm running far away!" he called loudly, and waited for the scream. But there was no answer from the studio.

  "Because of the fangs!" he added. But his mother was silent.

  Sam trudged back to his room and got his Harvard gym bag suitcase. He thumped the bag down the stairs noisily.

  "I'm sorry I'm making all this racket," he called toward the door of the studio, "but I'm taking a big suitcase full of stuff because I'm going to be gone a long time.

  "I'm taking mittens," he added, when he got to the foot of the stairs. "Because when winter comes I'll need them.

  "I'll be sleeping in the snow," he called toward the room where his mother was. He could see her back now, in the striped sweater, through the doorway. She was hunched over, working at her drawing table. Her shoes were on the floor and her legs and feet, in black tights, were wrapped around the legs of her special chair.

  "Do you hear me?" Sam asked after a minute. "Do you hear me talking?"

  His mother turned. She had a pen in her hand and a cheerful expression on her face. "Oh, Sam," she said, with a smile. "Is that you? I heard someone talking, but I didn't think it was you, because the person I heard was talking about running away. So I thought it was a stranger."

  "No," Sam said in a serious voice, "it was me."

  "I see you are wearing a Band-Aid on your forehead," his mother said with interest.

  "Yes. In case I get injured when I'm running away."

  "I see. And what is that on your upper lip, Sam?"

  "A mustache," Sam explained.

  "And attached to your sweater?"

  "A fireman's badge."

  "In case of...?"

  "Well, in case there's a fire," Sam explained.

  "I see. You certainly are well prepared, Sam. Do you have your toothbrush?"