Jasper John Dooley, Star of the Week

by Caroline Adderson

  “Nothing’s in the box,” Zoë guessed. “The box is empty. The box is the Show and Tell.”

  “Wrong,” Jasper said.

  “Air’s in the box!” Leon guessed.

  “Wrong,” Jasper said. He felt wonderful saying “wrong” over and over again.

  “All right, Jasper,” Ms. Tosh said. “We give up. What’s in the box?”

  Jasper felt all shivery undoing the gold latch. Everybody in the class leaned forward over their tables again. “Are you ready?” Jasper asked.

  Everybody was waiting. It was their turn to Look and Listen.

  When Jasper threw open the lid, the class leaned forward even more to see what was inside. Some of the kids at the back got up from their tables and came closer to get a better look. Ms. Tosh had to step in and shoo them back. “What is it? What is it?” they were all asking.

  “Lint!” Jasper announced.

  “My goodness,” Ms. Tosh said. “Where did you get all that lint?”

  Jasper was surprised she didn’t know because he knew for a fact that she had a dryer. Once, when she was leaning over him helping with his math, he had smelled that fabric softener clean-clothes-start-of-a-new-day smell coming off of her. “Did you just wash your jacket?” he had asked. When she said she had, Jasper asked her if he could look in the pockets.

  “There’s nothing in them,” she said.

  But there was. There was some nice dark-green pocket lint that she let him keep!

  Now that he had Showed, he began to Tell. “I collect lint. I’ve been collecting it for a long time.” He pointed out that there were different kinds of lint in the box, the light gray, the dark gray and the gray flecked with bright colors that he scraped off the dryer screen. There were also all different colors of pocket lint, including the dark-green lint Ms. Tosh had given him. The pocket lint looked more like worms than blobs. Finally, there was the very rare and very special belly-button lint. When he said, “Belly-button lint,” somebody, he thought it might have been Isabel, said, “Yuck!”

  He explained how hard it was to collect belly-button lint, how he had to sneak into his parents’ room in the morning and very carefully lift up the covers and check his dad’s belly button while he was asleep. If Jasper tried to get the lint out when his dad was awake, he would cover his belly button with his hand and run away screaming, “Stop thief! Stop!”

  Everybody stared at Jasper. They didn’t laugh, though Jasper always laughed when he chased his dad around the house trying to steal his belly-button lint. Dad laughed, too.

  “Very, very interesting, Jasper,” Ms. Tosh said. She coughed a little cough and then asked the class if they had any questions for Jasper. Lots of hands went up, but nobody asked the questions Jasper expected. They asked, “Don’t you have any toys?”

  What kind of question was that? “Yes,” Jasper said. “I have lots of toys.”

  “Don’t you have a garbage can?”

  “A garbage can?” Jasper said. “Of course. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Are you really, really poor?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jasper said. “Why?”

  Nobody asked about Jasper’s Show and Tell at all. Nobody asked, “Is the smell of dryer lint your favorite smell?” Or: “Don’t you love how pocket lint looks like worms, but belly-button lint looks like tiny little pills?” Or: “Is dryer lint like the ghosts of all the clothes you ever wore?”

  Chapter 4

  At the end of the day, Jasper went up to Ms. Tosh’s desk to turn in his star. When he stuck out his chest so Ms. Tosh could unpin it, he closed his eyes, too, so he wouldn’t have to see her close the star up in the drawer. Show and Tell hadn’t gone very well. He knew because when Ori was Star of the Week, the kids had oooed at his model airplane. When Leon was the Star, they had oooed at his fossil. But when they saw Jasper’s lint collection, they had yucked.

  Jasper laid his hand on the empty place on his shirt where the star had been. He was afraid to ask, but he had to. “Do I still get to be the Star tomorrow?”

  Ms. Tosh didn’t seem to know what he meant. “Of course, Jasper,” she told him. “You’re the Star for the whole week.”

  Jasper felt a little better after that.

  Mom was waiting for him when he came out of school carrying his box. Dad walked Jasper to school before he left for work, and Mom picked him up because Mom worked at home on her computer, doing computer things. “How did it go?” she asked.

  “Okay,” Jasper said. “Did you go to the hospital?”

  “Did I go to the hospital? What for?”

  “To see if they had any extra babies,” Jasper said.

  Mom blinked a few times.

  “I thought you might surprise me,” Jasper said. “Because I’m the Star of the Week. And because nobody understood my Show and Tell.”

  “Didn’t they? I’m sorry to hear that.” When Mom pulled him close for a hug, the Star of the Week almost dropped his box of lint.

  Jasper and his mom always waited for Ori, and then the three of them walked home together. Ori was slow today, but finally he came out of the school dragging his backpack. “Ori,” Mom said, “you look terrible. Are you sick?”

  “I’m tired,” Ori said. “Can I come over to your house, Jasper?”

  Jasper said, “I have to work on my Family Tree. On Tuesday, the Star presents his family. Remember?”

  “That shouldn’t take too long,” Mom said. “We have a small family.”

  “It’s going to be even harder to make a good tree because of that,” Jasper told her. “You should see Ori’s tree. It’s so big I could climb it.”

  Jasper turned to Ori. “Sorry, Ori. Not today.”

  Ori slumped a little. When they reached the alley, he trudged away dragging his backpack behind him.

  As soon as Mom and Jasper got inside, Jasper started work on his tree. He took a big piece of construction paper from the craft cupboard and a pencil from the pencil jar. First, he drew two straight lines for the trunk, then he drew a branch. On the branch, he drew three leaves — one for Mom, one for Dad and one for the Star of the Week. At the end of the same branch, he drew a little twig with two leaves — one for his Nan and one for his dad’s brother, Jasper’s Uncle Tom, whom they usually only saw at Christmas.

  Jasper opened his box of colored pencils and sharpened two of them. Brown and green shaving flowers fluttered down. He colored the trunk, the branch and the twig brown. He colored the five leaves green. “We need more people in this family,” he said, frowning at his picture.

  He got an idea. He erased some bark in the middle of the tree trunk and drew a hole. In the hole, he drew a mother and a father squirrel. All around the tree and along the branch he drew squirrel children and squirrel aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. When he was finished, he held the drawing out. It didn’t even look like a Family Tree. It looked like a Family Stick overrun with squirrels.

  But it gave Jasper another idea. He crumpled up the paper and went out the back door to look around for a stick. He found a good one under the hedge and stopped to scratch his back with it. Ah! That felt good!

  Now he needed cardboard for a stand. He asked his mom for a box to rip up. While she was looking for one, Jasper got the photo album and found pictures of everybody. He cut leaves out of construction paper and glued everybody on their own leaf. For himself, he made a leaf in the shape of a star and covered it with tinfoil. Mom came back with something better than cardboard, a piece of Styrofoam.

  “String?” asked Jasper.

  She got some yarn. Jasper hole-punched the leaves and threaded them with yarn.

  “What?” Mom asked after they had hung all the leaves on the stick and glued it to the Styrofoam. “What’s wrong? It looks terrific.”

  “It’s so skinny! It looks so
sad!”

  Then Jasper cut out a purple leaf and hung it on the Family Stick, too. “There,” he said. “That’s a little better now.”

  Jasper’s Family Stick stood in the middle of the table during supper. Dad said, “I like this new decoration.”

  “It’s skinny and sad,” Jasper said.

  “Jasper is unhappy about the size of our family,” Mom explained.

  Jasper remembered scratching his back with the stick when it was an ordinary stick, before he had made it his Family Stick. “A small family is only good for scratching backs,” he said.

  “Scratching backs?” Dad said.

  “Yes,” Jasper said. “Can’t we get a baby? Tomorrow I have to present my Family Stick at school. Do you see?” He pointed to the one purple leaf dangling from the stick. “I have a leaf all ready.”

  Dad said, “I am completely happy with the kid I already have. I really, really don’t want another baby.”

  Mom said, “A school presentation isn’t a good enough reason to have a baby. Besides, having a baby takes a while. It’s not something you do overnight.”

  Dad said, “Who wants dessert?” and Jasper knew he was changing the subject.

  “I do,” Mom said.

  “I want a baby,” Jasper said.

  Then he got another idea, the best one so far. He was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before.

  After dessert, Jasper went over to Ori’s house. He could hear the crying as soon as he climbed the fence to Ori’s yard. Jasper knocked and waited a long time for someone to answer. While he was waiting, he remembered that he had told Ms. Tosh about seeing Ori’s sister. He had told everybody the baby was purple. When they saw a purple baby, everybody would know she was Ori’s sister, not his. He’d have to put a hat on her and bundle her up so not too much purple showed.

  Finally, Ori’s mother came to the door with dark circles like sunglasses around her eyes. She took the earplugs out and said, “Hello, Jasper.”

  “Can I borrow the baby?” Jasper asked.

  “Borrow her?” Suddenly the sunglasses seemed to lift off Ori’s mom’s face. “Certainly! Of course you can! I’ll go get her.”

  “I mean tomorrow,” Jasper said, but Ori’s mom was calling, “Ori! Come take the baby out with Jasper!”

  “No!” Ori called.

  “Jasper wants to,” she said.

  Ori came to the door wearing his earflaps hat, followed by Ori’s dad with the crying baby in his arms. Ori’s dad was wearing dark circles around his eyes, too. “Would you like to hold her, Jasper?”

  “Could I?” Jasper asked.

  “Of course. You won’t drop her?”

  “No,” Jasper promised.

  Ori’s dad showed Jasper how to support the baby’s head so it wouldn’t flop around. As soon as she was in Jasper’s arms, she stopped crying and looked up at Jasper with her big, dark eyes. Ori’s mouth fell open. “She stopped,” he said. “She stopped.” But when Ori’s dad pulled the earplugs out of his ears and laughed, the crying started up again.

  Ori’s mother came back from the garage with the carriage. She took the crying baby from Jasper and placed her carefully inside, checking that the straps were done up properly. “Wa-wa-wa-wa!” the baby cried.

  “Did you name her yet?” Jasper asked.

  “That’s her name,” Ori told him. “Her name is Wa-wa-wa-wa.”

  Ori’s mom told them to walk the baby up and down the sidewalk right in front of the house. Ori’s dad went with them to the front yard and sat on a lawn chair to watch.

  “Up and down,” Ori’s mother called. “I’ll tell you when it’s time to come in.”

  “Can I push her?” Jasper asked Ori.

  Ori said, “Go ahead.”

  They walked up the sidewalk with Jasper pushing the carriage, then turned and walked back down. Ori dragged his feet and yawned, but Jasper felt proud.

  “Do you think?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Could I bring her to school tomorrow and pretend she’s mine?”

  “If you’re asking me,” Ori said, “sure. The thing is, my mom won’t let you.”

  Jasper shrugged. “Everybody would know she’s yours anyway. She’s purple. I’d have to paint her or something.”

  It was too bad he couldn’t borrow her, but at least the people who drove by might think that the baby was in his family. They might think he was the brother and Ori the friend. The only thing that spoiled the proud feeling of pushing the baby in the carriage up and down the sidewalk in front of the house was that the baby was crying so loudly.

  Jasper told Ori about the dream he’d had the night before. “I came to school in my pajamas. The door was locked. I couldn’t get in.”

  Ori said, “I think I remember what dreaming is. Yes. I remember sleeping, too.”

  “Does she ever stop crying?” Jasper asked.

  “The thing is, no.”

  After they had walked up and down the sidewalk for a long, noisy time, Jasper started to feel bored. The boys wheeled the baby back into the yard. Ori’s dad was slumped in the lawn chair snoring into his chest so Ori and Jasper left the carriage beside him. “Wa-wa-wa-wa!” the baby cried, and Ori’s dad started to stir. The boys went inside to find Ori’s mom.

  She was in the bedroom, in the bed, fast asleep.

  That night Dad came into Jasper’s room to kiss the Star good night. He sat on the bed and said, “How’s being a Star so far?”

  Jasper shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about Show and Tell. He especially didn’t want Dad to know somebody had yucked at his belly-button lint.

  “Everybody will like your Family Stick,” Dad said.

  “I wish it had more leaves,” Jasper said.

  “I know,” Dad said.

  “I wish it had more branches.”

  “I understand.”

  “I wish we had a bigger family,” Jasper said. But he wasn’t sure anymore that he wanted a baby to make it bigger. Not if they cried so much.

  “Small families are good, too,” Dad said.

  “Big families are better,” Jasper said. “They have bigger trees.”

  “Some of these big families?” Dad said. “The parents don’t even know their own kids’ names. Sometimes they move house and accidentally leave five or six kids behind.”

  Jasper said, “Name tags. And, at school? Ms. Tosh takes attendance every morning.”

  “You have an answer for everything, Jasper. I can see why you’re the Star.” Then he said, “Jasper, I’ve got an itch. Right between my shoulder blades.”

  Jasper sat up to scratch it. Dad moaned. “Ah! That’s wonderful. Lower.”

  Jasper scratched lower. Then he scratched some letters and asked Dad if he could read them, which he could. He scratched H-I, and H-E-L-L-O and J-A-S-P-E-R. Dad asked Jasper if he needed a scratch, too, before he went to sleep.

  “I think I do,” Jasper said.

  Dad scratched I L-O-V-E Y-O-U on Jasper’s back, and it felt really good.

  “Thanks,” Jasper told him. Then he kissed Dad good night and lay down thinking that maybe, maybe, a small family wasn’t so, so bad.

  Chapter 5

  At recess the next day, Isabel and Zoë got Ori and Jasper to play babies with them. They still had Halloween candy left over from last year, and they paid the boys with it. Isabel was Ori’s mother, and Zoë was Jasper’s mother. The boys lay on the grass and wailed while the girls went to collect food. Food was pinecones and twigs. As soon as Ori and Jasper finished pretending to eat the twigs and pinecones, they started wailing again for more food.

  “You’re not doing it loud enough,” Ori told Jasper.

  Jasper wa-wa-waed louder, so loudly that the playground monitor came over to see what
the problem was. She stared at where they were lying on the ground waving their arms and legs around.

  “The thing is, we’re pretending to be babies,” Ori explained.

  Jasper didn’t say anything. Babies can’t talk.

  The playground monitor said, “Babies shouldn’t be left alone. I’ll stay until your mother gets back.”

  When the two mothers showed up a few minutes later with more food, the monitor asked to be paid for baby-sitting. Zoë gave her a pinecone. Jasper said, “We’re doing it for Halloween candy. You should ask for that.” The monitor laughed and moved on while the girls got down on their knees and hauled their babies onto their laps.

  “Be careful of my star,” Jasper told his mother.

  “Eat up,” Zoë said, waving a twig in Jasper’s face.

  “I want Halloween candy instead of twigs.”

  “I’m not giving it to you now. You’ll just run off. You can have it when the bell rings,” Zoë said.

  “This is boring,” Jasper said.

  “I told you,” Ori said. “Babies are boring. All they do is cry.”

  “Wa-wa-wa-wa!” Jasper cried. Then he decided to be a baby that bites. That was much more interesting, except before he’d even started biting, Zoë said to Isabel, “Maybe they’re crying so much because their diapers need changing.”

  Jasper and Ori jumped to their feet. “No, we’re not!”

  Luckily, the bell rang just then, and the babies ran safely into the school. By the time they got back into the classroom, Jasper was having more second thoughts about getting a baby, even a pretty purple one. He’d forgotten about diapers! Who would change them? Mom and Dad made him clear the table. They made him make his bed. They would definitely make him learn to change diapers!

  He had just slid into his place at his table when Ms. Tosh called on him to present his Family Stick. Jasper went over to his cubby and took it down. He carried it by the Styrofoam stand to the front of the classroom, and when he passed Zoë at her table, he whispered, “Where’s my candy?”