by Mary Amato
Tish starts to cry.
“Momma, Tish peed her pants.”
“Great,” Mom says. “More clothes to wash.”
35.
THE NOTEBOOK
I am alone in the living room, lying on my mattress in the dark, looking out the window. When you’re lying on your back, you can’t see the ground or any trash. You just see the sky. Tonight, the gray fingers of a cloud are trying to suffocate the yellow moon. Every once in a while a streak of lightning shocks the darkness without any thunder, without any sign yet of rain.
A thousand thoughts are tangled up together in my mind. I’m thinking about Diamond and wondering if she’s still in the hospital. I’m trying to imagine what it was like for her, living with Mudman. I remember that time she knocked on our door and asked to come in. I wish I had said yes.
The cop said guys like Mudman will find any excuse to beat up somebody. What kind of person wants to do that? How can that make him feel better?
That’s why I don’t understand Xander. He makes people feel bad all the time. It’s not just me. He puts other people down, too. I don’t understand how that could possibly make him feel good.
I’m going to have to face Xander and his dad at the meeting. Xander’s dad is going to give me a look like “Here’s one of the dregs.” He’s going to look at me and see a stupid, low-quality kid who is dragging his son’s school down.
My mom always says judge people based on what they do, not what they have. Mr. Ferguson is like that. To Mr. Ferguson everybody is a fresh specimen, just waiting to be identified. You either earn his respect or you don’t.
The thought of not being in his class anymore makes me sad. If somebody told me that my favorite class of all time would be taught by a mushroom-loving leprechaun, I would’ve thought, No way. But all you have to do is walk into his room and you know that something interesting is going on. Now there’s not one thing that I have to look forward to. The only other decent class—P.E.—has Xander in it, so that’s going to be about as much fun as running barefoot laps on broken glass.
Another bolt zigzags from one cloud to another, lighting up the sky.
I hold myself silent to hear if it’s raining and wonder if Mr. Ferguson is looking out his window, hoping for “a good soak.” I don’t know how long I’m listening, but after a while I hear something. Not rain. Someone is crying, real faint.
I get up and look out the window. The streetlamp lays down a wide circle of pale light on the parking lot, but I can’t see anybody.
I hear it again. It’s not coming from outside. It’s coming from the bedroom.
I open the bedroom door. Michael is standing in the corner in his underpants, crying with his thumb in his mouth.
“Did you wet the bed?” I whisper.
“No.” He starts to gulp. When Michael cries a lot, he can’t breathe through his nose, and then if he’s sucking his thumb, he can’t breathe through his mouth, either, and he starts gulping for air.
“Come out here so we don’t wake up Mom. What’s wrong?”
He stumbles into the living room and sits down in the middle of the floor without taking his thumb out of his mouth.
Just enough light is spilling in from the streetlamp so that I can see his face. It’s like all the sadness of the whole world is concentrated there. Two wet tracks of tears stream from his eyes.
“Police are coming for me,” he says around his thumb.
“Were you dreaming that?”
He shakes his head.
“Take your thumb out of your mouth and tell me why you think they’re coming for you.”
“ ’Cause I stole.”
“What’d you steal?”
He won’t look at me.
“It’s okay. Tell me.”
He scrunches his eyes shut and mumbles something and I have to ask him to say it again. “Your mushroom thing,” he says.
“My notebook?”
He nods.
“You took my notebook?”
He nods and starts crying again.
“When?”
“Before school.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m mad at you.”
“Why are you mad at me?”
“Because you won’t listen.” He starts gulping again.
“Where’d you put it, Michael?”
“You’re gonna hate me,” he gulps.
“Just tell me.”
“Promise you won’t hate me.”
“You have to tell me.”
He wipes snot away with the back of his hand. “I threw it out.”
My stomach drops. “Where?”
He points to the kitchen.
I look in the garbage can. There’s an almost empty plastic grocery bag in the can; just the macaroni and cheese stuff from dinner is in there.
“Did Mom bring the trash down to the Dumpster today?”
He walks over and stands in the corner like he’s giving himself a time-out.
Neither of us says anything for a little while. I’m picturing my notebook in the bottom of a filthy bag in the bottom of a filthy Dumpster.
“You can make another one, can’t you, Trev?”
“No.”
He starts gulping again.
I put on my shoes.
“Where you going?”
“I’m going to look for it.”
“Out there?”
“Where do you think, Michael?”
“Momma’s gonna be mad.”
“Don’t tell her, Michael. You already caused enough problems. Don’t wake her up.”
I slip out the door.
The hallway is easy. As soon as I get to the stairwell, it gets spookier because you can’t see if anybody’s waiting below.
I don’t want to make any noise, so I try to run lightly. My heart is pounding. The main door rattles when I open it. Broken glass crunches under my feet as I walk down the outside steps. Then I freeze. Something is skittering by the fence. Lightning flashes and a rat scampers through the spotlight of the streetlamp and then disappears in the no-man’s-land behind the two buildings. Thunder follows this time.
I run over to the Dumpster. It’s a top-loader, big enough to hide a grown-up dead body. Hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Most people just lift the lid and toss their trash in, so in order to actually see inside, I have to climb up on the side and lift the lid open. Wish I had some of those blue gloves. I lift the lid and the smell almost makes me throw up. Piles and piles of dark bags and garbage not even in bags, just spilling over everything. It’s impossible. Even if I knew which bag it was in, even if I could somehow get the bag out, the notebook would be ruined.
I jump down and stare at the Dumpster. I can’t help thinking about Charlie. How come some babies get cardboard boxes and other babies get houses like Langley’s? That doesn’t seem fair. It seems like everybody should start out the same. A real soft blanket and a little bed and some milk. But you can’t pick how you start, can you? So, is it luck? Good luck if you end up in Langley’s house and bad luck if you end up in a Dumpster? How can something as important as your life be based on luck? And when you know you’re not lucky, how are you supposed to feel?
A car pulls into the parking lot, and the headlights bounce off the Dumpster.
My heart jumps to my throat. I’m not sure if whoever is in the car sees me.
Two big guys get out, their cigarettes glowing red. Maybe they’re okay, but you can’t trust anybody in a place like Deadly Gardens in the middle of the night. Better to stay still and wait until they’re gone.
The front door of our building opens and Michael appears in the doorway. What is he doing down here?
The guys are just beyond our building, so they don’t see him, but if Michael calls out to me…
Please stay quiet, Michael! Don’t say anything.
They keep walking past me, headed for the far building.
Please stay quiet, Michael! Don’t say anything.
<
br /> Michael sees them and he doesn’t move. As softly as I can, I run from the Dumpster to our building, looking at Michael with my finger on my lips. Please stay quiet, Michael! Don’t say anything.
I make it and pull him into the stairwell. “Michael! You shouldn’t be down here.” I grab him by the arm and pull him up the stairs.
“I wanted to help you find it.”
“Help get us killed is more like it.”
When we make it inside, I lock our door and lean against it.
“You hate me.” He comes rushing at me and buries his face in my stomach.
I don’t know who to feel more sorry for … him or me. His whole body is shaking.
“You hurted me.” He rubs his arm.
“Oh. I hurt you? Don’t get me start—” I stop. A picture of Mudman grabbing Diamond by the arm flashes through my mind. “I’m sorry, Michael. Come on, you’re like a snot machine. You’re getting snot all over me.” I peel him off me and get a roll of toilet paper and help him blow his nose. I sit him down at the kitchen table.
He sniffs. “Everybody says I’m garbage and it’s true.”
“It’s not true.”
“My backpack is garbage.”
“Is this all because you don’t have a superhero backpack?”
He nods.
“Some kids are teasing you about that?”
He nods again.
“Man, that makes me want to march in and kick some kindergarten butt.”
He laughs one of those just-to-keep-from-crying laughs.
I give him some more toilet paper. “You know what Mom always says.”
“What?”
“When people put you down, rise above it. Don’t believe the stuff they say about you.”
“They say I’m a baby because babies don’t have superhero backpacks, either. You say I’m a baby, too.” The look he gives me stabs me right through the heart. He’s sitting there with his big brown eyes full of tears and his little tummy is going in and out because he’s trying so hard to breathe. I remember kindergarten. I remember getting teased about being short and I tried to crawl under Mrs. Kemper’s big blue rug. She dragged me out and told me to stop acting like a worm, which made it worse because then I just felt like a short worm.
“Aw, Michael. I don’t think you’re a baby. You walked all the way down the stairs to come and help me. A baby wouldn’t do that. Only time I’ve called you a baby is when you suck your thumb and I’ve only been telling you not to do that because I’m worried you’ll get teased.”
“I don’t suck my thumb at school.”
“You don’t?”
He shakes his head. “They’d really call me a baby if I did.”
“Well, see. That’s so good, Michael. That’s a grown-up way of thinking.”
I make him blow his nose again.
“But sometimes when nobody’s looking I go in my cubby like this.” He pretends he’s sticking his head in his cubby and he takes a quick suck on his thumb and then he pops it out.
I have to laugh because he looks like a tiny cigarette addict taking a puff.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“No, man. I think that’s real smooth. It’s like your secret way of taking care of yourself. It’s like you know what you need.”
“I know what I need. I need a new backpack.” He lays the words down again like a bricklayer.
Something catches in my throat. It kills me to imagine him waking up every morning and dreading what everybody’s going to be saying about him. “Hey, Michael,” I say.
“What?”
“I’ve got an idea.” I bring his backpack and my markers over to the window where I can see better. “I’ll draw a superhero on your backpack. Who do you want? Spider-Man? Superman? The Hulk? No, don’t pick that. I don’t have a good green.”
“You gonna draw one?”
“Yeah.”
“It won’t look store-bought. Those kind are puffy.”
“I know what you mean. But I’m going to do something new. I’m going to make up a special brand-new graffiti-style, supercool superhero that nobody else has, so nobody can compare it to anything. You just say it’s your own superhero.”
“What power does he have?”
“What power do you want?”
“Crime-fighting power.”
“You got it. See, this boy looks like an ordinary boy, but he’s got crime-fighting power in his … thumb! When he sees a crime, he secretly sucks his thumb and becomes … Thumbman!”
Michael’s eyes light up.
He tells me exactly how he wants it to look.
“You like it?”
Michael nods.
“Is it cool?”
“It’s cool.”
“So here’s what you do. You wear your backpack and if anybody tells you you’re garbage, just hold your thumb and look at them like this.…” I stare at him without blinking.
“What does that do?” Michael asks.
“It makes you powerful. Whenever Thumbman stares at anybody, they can see the power in his eyes and they know he’s a superhero and they back off. Go ahead and try it.”
Michael leans in and makes his eyes big and stares at me.
His eyes are all Michael. It’s like the whole of his soul is in there and he’s trying so hard to succeed and be powerful even though he’s just a little guy, and it makes tears jump into my eyes. But that’s not what he’s going for at all, so I blink back my tears and I say, “Whoa!” And I fall off my chair. “That was powerful.”
Mom walks in, still half asleep. “What is this? A midnight tea party?”
“I’m a superhero,” Michael says. “Tomorrow when I go to school I’m gonna show everybody.”
Mom is totally confused.
I try to explain about the notebook and she starts having a fit when I get to the part about how I went to look for it. After I calm her down she has to lecture us. I guess when you’re a mom it’s never too late for a lecture.
“Michael, you shouldn’t have thrown that notebook away. Did you say sorry? If you do something you know is wrong, you have to say sorry or bad feelings will just eat away at you.”
“Sorry,” Michael says.
“Now about that notebook,” she says, and a magic trick unfolds before our eyes. She walks over to the refrigerator and reaches for something next to her orange shoe box. It’s my notebook. “Ta-da!” she says, and hands it to me. “I saw it in the trash and thought it looked important. Tish wanted to get at it, so I put it up high, and with all the commotion I forgot to tell you about it.”
I can’t believe it.
“Is it okay?” Michael asks.
“It’s okay.”
Michael cracks my heart wide open with his smile.
36.
MOM
Mom puts Michael to bed. I sit down on my mattress and look out the window. The lightning has stopped and it still hasn’t rained.
After a minute, Mom comes over. “Trev, that thing with the backpack? You’re a genius. He’s actually excited to go to school.” She walks over and slides down, back against the wall, until she’s sitting next to me. “We should both be asleep right now. How come we’re awake?”
I shrug.
She stretches her legs out. Her toes are skinny. Mine, too.
“Holy mackerel,” she says. “Your legs are almost as long as mine.”
We sit quietly. Somewhere in the far, far distance a siren moans. Somebody somewhere is hurt or sick. Or maybe it’s a false alarm. That would be nice.
She taps the side of my foot with hers. “I told Michael to say sorry, but I don’t think I did. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions about you doing graffiti and stealing.”
“Do you really believe me?”
She nods. “But from my point of view you have to admit things weren’t looking too good. You got a detention for being late, you got two detentions for causing trouble on the bus. I told you no travel team soccer and you went behind my back an
d tried out anyway. A cop brings you home and then you go out in the middle of the night and practically get yourself killed. I swear, Trev. Any more excitement and I’m gonna have me a complete heart attack. Youngest woman to ever die of a complete heart attack.”
“Things were going good at first. But Diamond kept getting in my face, and then this whole war with Xander got started. I don’t have proof that he’s framed me, but he is a parasitic fungus.”
She laughs. “That’s a new one.”
“See, I learned that from Mr. Ferguson, but I won’t be able to be in his class anymore, because everybody thinks I’m just one of the dregs.”
“They do not.”
“ ‘The people from those apartments are the dregs’—Xander’s dad said that to Mr. Gonzalez.”
My mom’s face turns red.
“You have to rise above it, Trev. Xander’s dad has no idea—”
A statement comes out of me like one of those big black anvils that come out of the sky in cartoons. I say, “At least he has a dad.”
My mom looks at me, surprised, because we have this unspoken agreement not to really talk about him.
“There’s nothing I can do about that,” she says. “I know the dad thing is hard, but I don’t want you to be ashamed of anything. What your dad did was your dad’s problem. You’re not him. Okay?” She nudges me with her foot. “Okay?”
“Is there … any chance he was innocent?”
I see the answer in her face.
“Wait, Trev.” She looks at me and there’s something new in her eyes. She gets up and takes the orange shoe box down from the refrigerator and tugs off the rubber band. She lifts out our stack of photos and pulls out some envelopes from the bottom. From one of them she takes out a photograph and hands it to me. I hold it toward the light coming in from the window so I can see it.
My throat closes up. I’ve never seen this picture.
“He was seventeen when I took that.”
There’s this guy with this huge smile, mugging for the camera.
