by Jamie Sumner
“Hey, Em!” I yell as I reach her, because my nerves have no volume control.
She doesn’t look at me.
“Can I sit?”
Still nothing.
“Okay, I’m just going to sit down right here and talk to myself, if that’s okay with you.”
I crouch down on the asphalt. It’s dry and a little warm from the sun.
“It’s nice out here, huh?”
“Seriously?” She whips her head around. “That’s what you came out here to talk about? The weather?”
“No! I just want to say sorry!” I scoot back an inch.
“Sorry? Sorry for what, Hugo? For taking out your personal grudge against Chance in the student newsletter? For never taking it seriously in the first place? For getting it canceled?”
“All of the above.”
She shakes her head. “You broke your promise.”
I drop my head. “I know.”
She starts snapping lids onto plastic containers of carrots and hummus and nuts. She’s done with me. If I don’t say something else, she’s going to leave. The words trip out before I can stop them.
“I will make it up to you, Em. I will.”
She stops packing up her lunch and looks at me. The wind blows one dark strand of hair across her nose.
“Is it true you’re leaving?” she asks.
I slump back against the fence. She leans back too.
“Yeah.”
“Then why worry about it? It’s not like we’ll ever see each other again.”
Her words dig in sharp, like a splinter. She’s right, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
“After they told me I had to stop the Paw Print, do you know what I did?” She pulls her knees up to her chest.
“What?”
“I went home and looked in my trash.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see what people would say about me if all they could see was my garbage.”
“And?”
“And it was empty.”
“Empty? Like a few gum wrappers and tissues?”
“No. Empty empty.” She rubs her nose. “I’m in charge of the trash and recycling at home. Everybody else is too busy or forgets. So, there was just… nothing.” A tiny breath escapes. “You’ve met my mom. She loses her phone when it’s in her hand. Between her job at the restaurant and her late shift at Walmart, she’s always going in three directions at once. Imagine what would happen if I didn’t keep everything clean.”
Em howled on a ski lift and chilled out for a nanosecond because she trusted me. She let herself relax, finally, and I ruined it.
“Em—”
“Please don’t say you’re sorry again.”
“Okay. But… cleaner is better, right?” I picture my own trash, overflowing with Coke bottles and broken pens and somewhere, in all of it, my hospital wristband. A waterfall of junk and things I’d like to forget.
“No, Hugo. Because what does that say about me?”
“It says you are very responsible and a budding environmentalist?”
“No. I mean, yes, I am those things. But I’m also not making a mark. The newsletter was at least something tangible that people would remember me for and that might actually make a difference.” She turns to me. “You know they’re actually getting those water bottle stations for the locker rooms after Vij wrote that piece?”
“No way.”
“Yeah. At least we did one good thing,” she says, but she sounds defeated. My stomach tightens. I did this.
“Em, you know the garbology thing is mostly just guessing, right? It’s not like you throw a Nutri-Grain wrapper in the trash and that’s, like, the defining characteristic of your personality.”
“I know.”
“I just mean, you’re more than the newsletter.” I glance down at my too-big jacket. “Like I’m not just small. I mean, I am definitely small, but that’s not all I am. I’m also amazing at FIFA and pretty decent at skiing. And a promising crossword puzzler.”
She looks at me sideways.
“I can also beat anyone in a thumb war,” I add.
“I can whistle out and in,” she says finally.
“Nice.”
“And I make pretty good scrambled tofu.”
“Eggs-cellent.”
She elbows me in the ribs.
“I know the newsletter isn’t all I am, but I’m still going to miss it.”
“I know.”
We sit there for a while. I have no idea if lunch is over or not, but if anyone’s keeping track, it’s Em. I pull at the brown grass poking through the fence. A Dum Dums wrapper juts out from between the wires. I wriggle it loose, but the wind snatches it, and I have to run to chase it. When I catch it halfway down the track, Em gives me a polite golf clap.
Sometimes ideas come slowly, like a snowball rolling down a hill that gets bigger and bigger. But sometimes they come all at once, like a movie fast-forwarded to the end.
As I’m cupping the trash in my hand, a wrinkled old wrapper from a pineapple-flavored sucker that hopefully somebody enjoyed, it hits me—my movie-ending, bolt-of-lightning plan for how to make everything all right again. It might be the best idea I’ve ever had in my entire life.
Chapter Fourteen The Beech Creek School of Garbology
I tell Vij and Micah and Jack and Gray after school.
“Dude,” Vij says, “this could be epic.”
“Epic,” Jack echoes.
“I’m in,” Gray adds. “Let me take care of the photography.”
Micah says, “We’ll all help!”
They better. Because this is one plan I will never be able to pull off on my own. I find Mrs. Jacobsen Windexing her whiteboard and ask her, too. At first I think she’s going to say no, but when I lay it all out for her and explain not just what I want to do, but why, she says, “Well argued, Hugo. Assuming you ask and get approval from Principal Myer first, I’ll supervise. But,” she adds, “do consider the, ah, smell.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I yell, and race down the hall.
Gray finds me by my bus. Sometime between the beginning of the year and now, he’s buzzed the sides of his hair and swapped his regular sneakers for Converse. It’s harder to mistake him for Jack.
“Hey, I just want to say again, I’ll help however I can. You know,” Gray says, pushing his hair out of his face, “Jack doesn’t even like photography.”
“He doesn’t?” I’m only half listening. My head is too full of plans and watching for my bus.
“I was the one who started messing around with my dad’s old Nikon last summer. But when we turned eleven, our parents bought both of us cameras, and that was that. Jack would rather play soccer.” He shrugs. “Sometimes I think they can’t even tell us apart.”
After knowing them for four months, I can hardly remember when I couldn’t tell who was who. It seems impossible. But I do know what it’s like for my parents not to get me at all. I forget the bus and my plans for a minute.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs again.
“I’m just glad you’re doing this. And”—he looks embarrassed—“I have a few ideas I want to run by you, that are just mine, without Jack, okay? Can we talk later?”
“Yeah. Okay. That’d be great, actually.”
After my bus pulls up and I settle in the back, I look out the window. Outside, Gray is pulling out his camera to zoom in on a traffic cone completely covered in ice.
* * *
Tonight, while we’re waiting for the pizza to arrive, I sit Mom down at the kitchen table. Dad is in the living room doing his leg exercises. Every now and then we hear him grunt and then start counting again. “One, two, three…”
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey.”
It’s awkward and formal. This is how we speak now, post-suspension.
“Everything all right?” she asks, and pushes up the sleeves of Dad’s red cardigan. She started wearing his clothes after the accident, an
d she can’t seem to stop.
“Everything’s okay. It’s good, actually.”
“Really?” She looks surprised. I must have been really terrible to be around for the last few weeks.
“Yeah, really. Mom? I want to do check-in.”
“You… do?” Shock, confusion, suspicion—all flicker across her face.
“I mean, I’m not going to lie down on a couch and let you take notes or anything, but I’m cool if you want to ask me how I’ve felt since we’ve moved here.”
I fold my hands in front of me on the table. Cool and collected.
“Okay.” She nods, wary. “Hugo, how have you been feeling since we’ve moved here?”
“One,” I say, and hold up a finger. “Emotionally, I’ve been happy. Like really, really happy with most of my classes, and it’s nice having family close. I really like my bedroom in the basement.” Mom laughs. “Two.” I hold up another finger. “Physically.” I pause, trying to figure out how to describe it. “I know I’m small and that’s probably never going to change, but I don’t feel as small anymore, if that makes sense.” Mom nods, blinking fast.
“Three and four go together,” I continue. “Mentally and spiritually, I feel older, I guess? Like, remember Dad’s fortune cookie?” She looks confused. I never told them this, but I kept all our fortunes from that first family dinner out at the China Palace. They’re in the top drawer of my dresser. “His said ‘The man on top of the mountain did not fall there.’ I’ve finally figured out what that means. It means the good stuff isn’t always the easy stuff. You have to work for the things that really matter.” Not just things, but people, too, I think but don’t say.
“What I’m getting at is that even though I really, really don’t want to move…” I let that hang there for a good solid ten seconds. “I will be okay if we do.” I’m not sure I totally mean that last part, but maybe if I say it, it will be true.
“Right,” she says, and wipes her eyes. She opens her mouth to say more, but the doorbell rings and Dad yells, “Pizza!” and I am saved from a deep dive into All. The. Feelings.
* * *
After two days of digging through all our trash cans and hauling it to Micah’s grandparents’ garage, the little mound of garbage me and Vij and Micah and Gray and Jack have made is only about one gazillionth of what we’re going to need to pull this off by ourselves.
“We have to do a social ask,” Vij says, sitting on a cardboard box labelled CANNING JARS in Micah’s garage.
“No! I don’t want Em to find out. I want it to be a surprise,” I argue.
“Yes, but do you want it to be a lame surprise or an awesome surprise?”
“I agree with Vij,” Micah says, scooting an empty Dr Pepper bottle that had rolled away back into the pile with his foot.
“Me too,” Gray adds.
“Fine.” I sigh. “But I get to decide what we say.”
Vij raises his eyebrows.
“Not to take credit! I just want to make sure we say the right thing, and if anyone gets in trouble, I want it to be me and not you guys.”
In the end, we decide to make an Evite. We start with a select few from each grade—the loyal ones who have brought me their trash before and will appreciate the magic of garbology at work.
The Evite itself is glittery gold, and Micah designs a graphic of trash shooting off like fireworks when you open it. It reads:
From trash to treasure!
The Garbologist humbly requests the contents of your trash for a most epic Winter Wonderland Trash-Extravaganza!
Donate your detritus by the school track next Friday from 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Please used sealed bags, clearly labelled.
“No one’s going to know what detritus means,” Vij points out.
“Of course they will. It’s trash. The implication is there!” I say.
“Fine.” He leans over and hits send, and I smile, but my mouth feels cottony with fear that this whole thing might fail.
All five of us sit there for a few minutes in that freezing garage, waiting and watching to see who opens and when. One by one, the yeses start coming. And then I notice something else.
“Did we forget to turn off the ‘shares’ function?” I ask.
“No, we did not,” Vij answers. “I left it on on purpose. You said it yourself. We need all the help we can get.”
The shares zoom way past our original numbers. Half the school is getting the invite. I sit on my hands to keep myself from deleting the whole thing.
At 9:08 p.m. we receive a message from Principal Myer, who gave us her okay earlier, but we also sent an invite to to keep us honest. This better work, boys. Because if it doesn’t, and you turn my school into a dumpster, you’ll be spending Christmas break cleaning it up.
We blink at one another.
Vij taps his chin. “Ominous, yet supportive. I like it.”
Micah gives me a thumbs-up.
I put my head in my hands.
* * *
On the very last day before exams, Vij convinces Janitor Phil to let us use his supply closet for storage because we’re spilling out of the toolshed behind the track. We win him over with three jars of homemade apricot preserves we found in Micah’s garage. Here’s hoping they weren’t from 1982.
The mass of donations from the Evite was insane. We had people lined up around the track like relay racers with bags of trash. And most remarkably, Em still doesn’t know. I didn’t think it was possible to keep a secret, much less a gargantuan one like this, in middle school, but I underestimated Em’s ability to lose herself in her first-ever set of exams. Now I only have to make it until tomorrow for the big reveal. That is, if we finish. The supply closet is feeling smaller and smaller as we race to turn trash into art.
Vij stops winding twisty ties together to say, “Listen, I know I pushed you into the whole garbology thing, and you kind of sucked as a human being when it all went to your head. But—”
“Did I mention that I’m sorry?” My ears get hot, and I glance from him to Jack to Gray to Micah.
“You did,” Gray says. “About a million times.”
“Well, I really am, I—”
“But,” Vij says, talking over me, “this is something to be proud of, Hugo. Seriously.”
He waves his hand over our piles of garbage that are slowly morphing into works of art, and my ears go even redder because I am proud of this. When I ditched Vij and Em and the newsletter and published the world’s worst crossword, I felt like a worm. But tonight I feel the opposite—big and brave and so dang thankful to be sitting here hooking paper clips together with these guys. Garbology always felt like a magic trick when I tried it before. It was meant to wow people while also making me look cooler. But this is something else. It’s the magic revealed.
* * *
As planned, Vij and Jack and Gray and Micah meet me on the front steps the next morning. We are rumpled and bleary, but victorious. I can’t believe we finished. Mrs. Jacobsen donated all her double-sided tape to the cause. My parents thought I was up all night at a study group with Vij. If you think about it, it’s not entirely untrue. I was studying. This is earth science in the most literal sense.
I spot Em coming up the steps, her red scarf wrapped all the way up to her ponytail. My stomach takes a flying leap into my mouth. I really hope this works.
I signal to the guys, and the five of us form a line across the top step. Oblivious, she tries to hurry around us without even looking up. I knew she’d be a bundle of nerves for her very first exam. “Em!” I shout when she tries to duck under Vij’s arm. She sees me and then notices all of us standing in her path and narrows her eyes.
“What?”
“We have a surprise.”
“Okay, great. Can it wait until after the exam?” She hefts her bag up higher on her shoulder.
“Not really.”
I take her arm and Vij takes the other and we escort her inside.
“Welcome,” I say as glit
ter lands in her hair, “to the Beech Creek School of Garbology.”
I look around, trying to see it from Em’s perspective. Streamers of paper clips and twisty ties hang from the ceiling tiles. Red and green tissue paper, recycled from the “Holly Jolly Holiday Dance” last week, cover all the lights. So far, it looks like a disco at the North Pole.
Silvery balloons, leftovers from somebody’s bat mitzvah, float through the halls, filled with the white dots from all seventy-two hole punches in the school. When kids pop them as they float by, the dots scatter like snow.
A wreath of used green demerit slips hangs from Principal Myer’s door, which she is standing by, welcoming everyone to their first day of exams.
I’m particularly fond of the gum-wrapper tinsel that hangs from Janitor Phil’s mops and brooms, which we turned into Christmas trees. That was all me. I will never confess to the amount of Big Red I chewed to get us here.
Hundreds and hundreds of Gray’s pictures line the walls. But they aren’t the pictures you’d expect. They’re the ones that got cut from the paper because they weren’t perfect: people’s feet, a blurry soccer game, a partially iced-over pond, the cafeteria workers laughing, Vij’s puddle of fruit salad, Micah re-pinning the cosine function onto his calculator sweatshirt on Halloween, the eighth-grade debate competition, Mr. Carpenter’s giant atlas, an orange traffic cone, Em pointing her finger at us at the lunch table. It’s a school yearbook, if a yearbook recorded the food fights and snow days and all the ordinary moments of school life.
At first we didn’t know what to do with the pile of half-used tubes of lipstick and mascara people donated, but Micah had the bright idea of using them to paint all the bathroom mirrors with snowmen shouting, U R perfect just the way U R! He said it’s something his granny tells him every morning. Then we wrote A+++ everywhere else because, let’s face it, we need all the good vibes we can get.
