Chapter 13
Happy Birthday!
School on Thursday was a bit of a drag for Robert. He’d had people joke about the board in Mr. Stuart’s room. Unfortunately, it was the last B day in an A-B track and so he wouldn’t have had class with Marissa anyway. She wasn’t at the bus stop either, however, and Rob wondered if he’d so thoroughly embarrassed her that she convinced her parents to not even make her come to the last couple days of school.
Thursday evening, Kile celebrated with Robert and Sara Johansson in a way he’d never really heard of, or at least didn’t really connect with on the TV shows he’d seen. They had cake, and icecream and lit candles on top of the cake. The little troll wasn’t very fond of the cake, but he ate almost half of the gallon-sized container of vanilla icecream. He insisted, when the others put caramel or chocolate chips on top, that he spread some of the cocoa hazel-nut spread on his, and he had to be sent outside to keep him under control.
For about ninety minutes the Johansson’s weren’t entirely sure where Kile had gone, but they could occasionally here laughs and animalistic noises that assured them he was okay. It seemed at one point he may have found a birds nest. There was such a racket it was entirely probable that Kile had eaten some, but they tried not to dwell on it too much. Robert and his mother just talked for a while. About girls, Marissa particularly, and other things. Mom talked about how much she was starting to miss Ricky, and Robert even agreed with her. And then they spoke about Robert’s father.
Sara Johansson had received notice from her husband that he was going to be released from his tour in about a month, just on time for July Fourth. If they really weren’t going to get the trolls to trade back in less than the couple months they had requested Robert’s mother wasn’t too sure how they’d deal with Dad. As far as either had ever heard, Mr. Johansson had not had experiences with faeries as Mom had. It was also likely, though, that Kile’s disguises wouldn’t hold up very well, since father had talked before about having to know when someone was lying or not. In his case, he had said, it could be a life or death situation to trust whether someone in a nearby Iraqi village needed his medical assistance or if he and his troop were being setup for an ambush.
That Thursday night, Robert asked a very astute question, but neither could provide a solid answer. “What do you think Dad might do if he learns about trolls?” he asked.
They agreed he wasn’t very likely to run off and get his rifle to take care of the troll or anything, despite being a particularly good shot for an EMT. It simply wasn’t in his nature. Dad was cautious but always wanted to understand a situation before trying to respond to it, such as when one of the boys was in trouble. He’d take them on his knee and talk to them. Then he’d bring anyone else in that was involved and talk to them. Only after all the “interrogation” as Mom sometimes called it was a discipline determined.
But on the other hand, Dad had been in firefights, and most definitely had had to make snap decisions. His response was going to be a toss up, and both mother and son decided they should let Richard Jr. see Kile in disguise for a while. They hoped that once he’d gotten familiar with the troll bouncing around, imitating Ricky that perhaps he would be very slow to react if…or when…he discovered the deception.
After Kile had come back in, the icecream was gone and a couple shows watched, the boys went to sleep. The following half day of school was a Friday, and Robert did not have English to try to speak to Marissa again, so all he could do was hope she’d come to his party on Saturday.
Friday dragged, and friends all said goodbye, mostly signing each other’s year books. Robert was actually very curious as to who might sign Little Ricky’s year book. Would any of his classmates have noticed a difference with Ricky in the last two weeks of school? Did Ricky even have friends in his class? Robert had never thought about it before but Ricky really didn’t bring friends over to play much. He just hung out with Rob and Rob’s friends and generally the older, middle-school-aged kids in the neighborhood.
In the afternoon, Robert, and Kile to a lesser extent, helped to clean up the house and got the basement setup with folding sort of papasan-style chairs for the kids to have a video game fest. Rob showed Kile a few things to keep in mind on the controller so that if he did end up playing to level out teams or something, at least he would seem as natural at it as Little Ricky was. With his long fingers on a broad palm, it was difficult for the little troll, so they eventually gave up and agreed he’d just do the best he could.
After hamburgers, which it turned out Kile liked immensely, with or without the various colors of human butter on it, (he couldn’t understand why they gave them all funny names, like mustard and mayonnaise. It seemed easier just to call them yellow or red butter, rather than assign made-up words in his mind), they watched a little TV. They stayed up pretty late mostly because Kile was enthralled with a space adventure show. He couldn’t seem to grasp that the stars they showed on the screen were supposed to represent the ones they could see in the sky. The idea of other planets was absolutely out of the question. The little troll swore that the stars and other shapes in the sky were controlled by sky Gods. After a short argument, Robert finally gave up and they just watched the show, Kile entirely confused by the instantaneous shift from “space boat” to walking on earth and back again whenever the characters needed to go down to a planet surface.
Then it was bed. Robert still secretly hoped that Marissa would show up. After all, he needed to prove to Ron that girls could shoot aliens on screen just as easily as boys could and somehow thereby play down the wipe board incident.
Troll Brother Page 34
