by Mary Amato
She wants to know what he means. I just say nothing and tell Michael we have to go home.
“Me up,” Tish says.
“Okay, Little Cavewoman.” I pick up Tish and start heading home.
Diamond calls after us. “You know why I’m gonna fail math? Because I sit behind your big head and I can’t see the teacher!”
As soon as we get home, Michael makes me rewrite Charlie’s name in blue chalk because it’s fading, and then he and Tish want to draw a picture, so we do one together.
I love how when I draw, I’m not thinking about anything else. I’m just focusing all my good feelings into the juice of the pen and it’s flowing out onto the paper. There’s something real peaceful about it.
“Momma’s gonna like this,” Michael says. “It makes us look imported.”
“Important.”
“Put Charlie in it,” Michael says. “In a real soft blanket.”
Mom’s going to wonder who the heck Charlie is, but that’s okay.
I want to hang the picture over the hole in the wall, but Michael says it has to go on the outside of the door so it’s the first thing Mom sees.
7.
PIECES
Tish and Michael are sleeping by the time I hear the key in the lock.
Mom’s got two bags of groceries and a look on her face like she’s been chewing dirt. She’s trying to close the door with her foot.
“Wait!” I grab the door. “What happened to the picture?”
“What picture?”
“We made a picture for you and put it on the door.”
Taped to the door is a little corner of the paper, but the rest of it is gone.
“Take this, Trev! My arm’s about to fall off.”
There’s something balled up by the stairwell. I run down and pick it up. It’s our picture. I uncrumple it, and pieces of it come apart in my hands. Somebody tore our picture off our door. Why would anybody do that?
“Trev …”
What’s the point? Why destroy something of somebody else’s just for the sake of destroying it?
“Trev … what are you doing?”
“We made a picture to get you in a good mood.”
She sighs and hands me a bag. “That was nice. Did you give Michael and Tish some dinner?”
“Yeah. Mom, I was thinking we could borrow just a little out of the emergency fund for those cleats and then I’d pay—”
“Honey, you’re not listening. We cannot afford anything right now.”
I wish I had my own room with a door so I could slam it.
8.
SHOE BUSINESS
Morning slaps me across the face.
Wake up, Musgrove. Get moving.
Michael is throwing a fit because last night’s plan didn’t produce a new backpack for him. He thought he was going to wake up and find one under his pillow and is mad at me because it didn’t happen. What am I … the Backpack Fairy?
I got problems of my own. At the bus stop, I ask everybody if they have cleats or shin guards I can borrow.
“You should go to Save the Children,” Juan suggests. “Secondhand. I got mine there.”
“Oooh, yeah,” Diamond says. “Everything is like a dollar. I could show you where it is.”
“Secondhand?” Markus says. “More like third-hand or fourth-hand. My grandpa won’t even wear clothes from there and he’s dead.”
Diamond hits him.
An eighth grader walks up. “Hey, Markus. Where’d you get the shoes, man?”
Markus is wearing the shoes with my creations on them.
“I did those!” I say.
“No way.” He’s checking them out.
“Do yours for a dollar …”
The guy nods. “Definitely. If I had a dollar on me.”
He was like free advertising. “You hear that?” I ask around. “Now, come on! Which of you here is going to be the next one to get a graffiti-style deluxe one-of-a-kind shoe design?”
“Do me,” Diamond says, and holds out her flip-flop.
“Watch out, man,” Markus says. “I think she’s in love with you.”
Diamond hits Markus again, and her friend Celine says, “Ooooh, it’s true.”
“Can you do me the Nike logo?” Juan asks. “Right here.” He points.
Markus snorts. “You want your knockoffs to look like the real deal.”
I cut in fast before Juan can change his mind. “Hey, I can make ’em look like they’re made out of diamonds if you got a dollar.”
“Diamonds!” Microphone Mouth screams. “Make me a logo with diamonds that says Diamond!”
Juan digs around in his backpack and puts together one dollar in change just as the bus pulls up.
It takes the whole bus ride for me to complete the job because I can only draw whenever the bus is at a stop sign. I add tight little lines around the edges of the design so it looks like it was stitched on with thread.
Juan goes crazy when I’m done. “Man, they look just like I bought ’em that way.”
Diamond is hanging over the seat, watching. “Come on. Do my logo,” she begs. “I’ll get you a dollar later.”
“Your girlfriend wants you to do her,” Markus laughs.
“Shut up, Markass!” Diamond gets up and hits him again, and the bus driver yells at her to sit down.
She sticks her bruised-up arm in my face. “Do it on my arm like a tattoo.”
“A diamond tattoo is the only kind of diamond you’re ever gonna get,” Markus says.
“Stolen diamond is the only kind you’re ever gonna get,” Diamond snaps back.
“Diamond got suspended last year,” Markus tells me. “Twice.”
“Well, he got arrested,” she says.
Juan is the first off the bus, strutting his new shoes. “Come on, Trevor, it’s Tuesday. Cinnamon rolls.” Everybody from the bus is heading to the cafeteria for free breakfast.
“Nah,” I say. “I don’t like cinnamon rolls.”
“Don’t like cinnamon rolls?” Markus exclaims. “Get yours and give it to me.”
“For a dollar,” I say.
“Aw, man, you’re hurting me.” Markus laughs, and I keep walking. “I’m a growing boy!” Markus calls after me. “I need my cinnamon rolls!”
Everybody laughs because Markus is already the size of an eighteen-wheeler.
I climb the stairs, turn the corner, and see Xander at his locker.
“Hey, did you get your kangaroo cleats?” I ask.
He nods and smiles. “You wouldn’t believe how sweet they are. Hey, Stephanie!” From the bottom of his locker he pulls out a Eurogear catalog and holds it up so she can see. Xander’s on the cover, standing in a field, looking all fierce, with one foot on a soccer ball. “I told you I had one for you!”
Stephanie comes over, and Xander autographs it for her. She goes crazy.
I can’t believe I know somebody who is on the cover of a catalog. Maybe if I make the team, he’ll tell me how he did it.
“Hey, Ben!” he calls out to somebody. “Later, Musgrove.”
At lunchtime, Markus sees me first and waves me over to the Deadly Gardens table, but I make sure to be looking all casually the other way—I’ll have to tell him later that I didn’t see him. I saunter toward the Summit table. Langley is saying something and everybody is laughing. I catch his eye.
“Hey, Musgrove!” Langley calls me over.
That’s all you need—just a little invitation to get things going. I set my tray down at the table, and Xander says, “How can you eat that garbage?”
Nobody at this table has a school lunch, which makes me look like a fool. But that’s okay because I know what to do in a situation like this. As my mom says, people may try to make you look like a fool, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel like one. “Yum,” I say, and take a big sniff of my free lunch. “Tray-o-McTrash.”
Langley laughs.
“He’s dissing your name, McCloud,” one of the guys says.
&n
bsp; I forgot about Langley’s last name.
“No way,” Langley says. “McSpeak is a sign of respect, right?” He grabs one of my French fries. Langley is my favorite kind of guy—a guy who can take a joke.
Xander starts back up with a conversation they must have been having about voice-mail messages. “Anyway, mine says, ‘I’m not really here, so don’t really leave a message.’ ”
Langley laughs. “Ben’s message is hilarious. It sounds like either he just woke up or he’s drunk.” He does an impression, and Ben, this guy at the end of the table, laughs his head off.
I take a chance. “Mine says, ‘Please leave a message after the tone.’ And then I do the sound of a really long fart.”
Everybody laughs.
“I thought you lost your phone,” Xander says.
“Yeah, it was my message before I lost it.”
Xander asks what brand it was.
“Hey, speaking of phones.” I finesse the subject in a new direction. “What was that you were playing for everybody on your phone yesterday?”
The whole table starts laughing again. “The funniest goal,” Xander says. “I was at the MCS Elite camp in England …”
“And he shot this goal and it hit the goalie right in the face.” Langley stands up and goes into the slo-mo routine that he was doing when I first saw him. It’s like he’s the goalie, and the ball is coming at him and he gets hit in the face and his whole head wobbles like it’s going to fly off. It’s so funny I almost spurt my milk right out of my nose.
Ben tells a story about a funny goal that a guy made at the University of Maryland camp he went to.
“What camps did you do this summer?” Xander asks me.
I’m not sure how to finesse myself out of this one. Michael and Tish and I camped out in McDonald’s Playland one afternoon and threw plastic balls at each other and that was about as fun as it got. “This summer?” Just when I’m trying to think up what to say, the wind blows a little luck my way. Actually, it’s big luck. The tallest kid in the school, the guy who was the scoring champ for last year’s basketball team, according to Langley, walks over and asks me if I’m the “graffiti guy” because he wants to buy a design. Swish! Just like that I go from being a nobody to being Graffiti Guy. Fill up the limo, baby, here I come.
Of course, I play it very casually. “Sure I can do that,” I say, and then I casually raise my price.
He gets out his wallet and puts his foot up saying, “Man, trust me. You don’t want me to take these puppies off.”
“Yeah. I can smell ’em from here.” I joke like it’s a drag, but I’m excited. As I draw, Langley comes around so he can watch.
Xander isn’t impressed, though. He keeps talking about how much his new cleats cost—and the shoes he’s wearing—and how he wouldn’t mess them up by drawing on them. When I’m done, everybody else goes crazy over my design, and Langley asks me to do his name. I do it and it looks totally high quality, if I do say so myself. I have as much business as I can handle during the next fifteen minutes, and then the bell rings.
Nothing like the feeling of new bills in your pocket. If everything’s a dollar, I got enough for shin guards, cleats, and maybe even a jersey at Save the Children.
“You know where to find me,” I tell the ones who are still waiting.
9.
UNDERGROUND INTELLIGENCE
Mr. Ferguson calls me up to his desk before class starts.
Now he’s going to tell me I’m in the wrong class.
He pulls a piece of crumpled paper out of his grade book. It’s the entry I did yesterday of the meadow mushroom. “I found this on the floor, Mr. Musgrove. On the floor. One of the purposes of a notebook is to keep your notes together. This is the most important project of the entire semester. Do you understand?”
I nod.
He hands me a second sheet. It’s the drawing I did of him as a fungus. “I believe this is yours, too.”
Now I’m ready to crawl under a rock.
“You have your notebook?”
“My mom is taking me to get one tonight,” I say quickly.
“Mr. Musgrove …” He leans toward me and pulls his glasses down. “I want to believe you.” He stares like he’s able to see through my lie all the way down to my roots. Some teachers are waiting for you to mess up, but Mr. Ferguson seems like he wants to believe me, which makes me feel even worse.
“I’ll have the notebook tomorrow.” I fold up the Mr. Fungus picture. “And I’m sorry about this one.”
He leans back and pushes his glasses up. “I could take it as a compliment.” He smiles and his freckles dance. “It all depends on how you meant it.”
“Total compliment,” I say. “I never met a fungus I didn’t like.”
Mr. Ferguson laughs.
Trevor Finesse Musgrove gets the goal.
The rest of the class is in by now, so Mr. Ferguson grabs his cap and walking stick and says, “Don’t bother sitting down, Mr. Musgrove. Let us perambulate to the egress!”
Everybody looks confused.
“Walk to the exit,” he says.
“Are we perambulating to the egress for a foray with our utensils?” Langley asks.
“Excellent supposition, Mr. McCloud.”
Langley and I both do funny walks toward the egress at the same time, which cracks everybody up and proves how much we think alike. Ferguson is way ahead, so we keep the funny perambulations going out the door and over to the side of the school, where there is a small greenhouse. In front of the greenhouse, there are two little trees in big pots. One tree is twice the size of the other.
“I think it’s time to cease our perambulating and ponder over the botanical uprisings in these clay vessels!” Langley whispers.
Stephanie hears it and hits him. “Stop making fun!” But she’s laughing, and Langley isn’t being mean. You can only make fun of people you don’t like, and how could you not like a fungus-loving, vocabularically dazzling leprechaun?
Mr. Ferguson taps his walking stick against each pot. “I planted these saplings six weeks ago when they were both exactly the same height. They are both saplings from the same kind of tree—a maple. I have given them the same amount of sunlight, the same amount of water. Who can guess why one is taller and healthier than the other?”
Hands go up.
Mr. Ferguson calls on Xander, who guesses that it has something to do with something called mycelium.
The teacher’s eyes light up. He’s like a kindergartner who is all excited about a new toy and wants everybody in the whole world to be excited, too. “Smart thinking, Mr. Pierce. You obviously did the reading. Mycelium, singular. Mycelia, plural. Who can explain what a mycelium is?”
“It’s an organism,” Langley says. “A fungus. It lives in the ground or inside dead wood.”
“Bingo! Give that man one hundred thousand dollars!”
Langley holds out his hand, and Mr. Ferguson pulls a dried mushroom out of his pocket and gives it to him.
Langley looks at it and says, “Thank you very mush.”
Everybody laughs.
“Mr. Musgrove, can you dig up an entire mycelium and show it to me?” Mr. Ferguson asks.
Is he asking me to do it or asking me if I can do it? I don’t know what a mycelium is. Dang. Think quick. I smile and hold out my hand. “Give me a hundred thousand dollars and I can dig up mycelanything.”
Score! Everybody’s laughing.
“Um, not really!” Mosquito Boy jumps in, obviously lacking the humor gene. “It’s like a web, a massive bunch of really thin rootlike things all tangled up and connected to whatever it’s growing in, like dirt. Mushrooms are just a tiny part of the mycelium that pops out. There was that picture in the book of somebody pulling a mushroom carefully out of the ground, and you can see the little white threads hanging off the bottom.”
Looks like everybody did the homework but me.
Mr. Ferguson nods. “Interesting way to describe it! Yes, there is mycelium
in this dirt.” He points to the bigger sapling. “Because I introduced it to this soil.” He points to the smaller sapling. “This is the same potting soil without mycelium. Remember that when I started, both trees were the same size. So what can you hypothesize, Mr. Musgrove?”
“The mycelium helps plants grow,” I guess.
“Yes. Certain fungi help plants grow. How?”
“By being nice?”
Everybody laughs.
Mr. Ferguson smiles and looks at me and Langley. “The jokes just pop out of you two, don’t they?”
“Like mushrooms popping out of dirt,” I say.
He laughs. “Well, let’s do a little demonstration. Imagine Ms. Taylor here is a little tree in a big forest.” He motions for Stephanie Taylor to come up to the front, which she is loving. She’s the kind of girl who looks like she was born to be in the spotlight. Perfect hair. Perfect smile. Perfect everything. “Be a tree,” Mr. Ferguson says.
She raises her arms and smiles.
Some people clap and Xander and Langley whistle.
“Almost. You’re a sad little thirsty tree,” Mr. Ferguson says, bringing her arms down so that she droops. “Better! Now imagine over here is a river and near the river are big healthy trees.” He positions Langley, Xander, and Sam. Langley stomps into place and starts flexing his biceps like he’s in a bodybuilding competition. Mr. Ferguson rolls his eyes. “I have a class full of hams!” he says, but he’s getting a kick out of it. “All right. There is a drought in the region. These trees are close enough to the river to get water and nutrients through their root systems. How does poor Ms. Taylor get what she needs?”
“The mycelium?” Mosquito Boy calls out.
“Right.” Mr. Ferguson tells the rest of us—the ones who aren’t trees—to lie down and connect with fingers or feet to another person. “Don’t be shy! Put your hand on somebody’s shoulder and your foot touching somebody else. Everybody has to connect somehow. A mycelium is like a network of microscopic threads.”
I’m right in the middle so I’ve got a girl on one side and a boy on the other. No way we’re holding hands or anything, so I bend my arms and touch my elbows against their arms. Then I reach down and touch my foot to a girl’s shoulder. At the same time the guy who is lying down above my head touches me with his shoe.
