Joshua T. Bates Takes Charge

by Susan Shreve

  Joshua didn’t enjoy the idea of lying to Mr. Barnes. But confessing about the NOs would be worse.

  “Who, Joshua?” Mr. Barnes asked again.

  “Whoever wrote that note, I guess.”

  “And who do you think that might be?”

  “I have an idea, but I’d be killed for telling.”

  “Who would kill you?” Mr. Barnes asked.

  “Certain persons,” Joshua volunteered reluctantly.

  “Your class has a reputation for being one of the nicest in the school, hardworking and easy to handle. The teachers have always been very fond of them, so I’m surprised at this.”

  “I wish I could tell you what I think,” Joshua said to Mr. Barnes. “But I can’t.”

  “I want you to go home and really think about what you know and whether you shouldn’t tell me the truth,” Mr. Barnes said.

  “Can I go home now?”

  “I thought you had a dentist’s appointment.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you have a dentist’s appointment?”

  “No,” Joshua said. “But I wasn’t lying to you. I was lying to someone else. I told someone else I had a dentist’s appointment so I wouldn’t have to do something.”

  “I don’t understand, Joshua,” Mr. Barnes said, getting up from his chair. “But in any case I want to see you in my office at eight thirty tomorrow morning with some explanation.”

  “Okay,” Joshua said, getting up quickly.

  “And don’t make an appointment with the dentist for tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay,” Joshua said. He ran down the corridor and down the steps, past Tommy Wilhelm, who shouted, “So what’s up? Any problem?”

  “No problem,” Joshua called back. And he met up with Andrew Porter at the flagpole.

  “Let’s bolt,” he said.

  They crossed Thirty-fourth Street.

  “So?” Andrew asked.

  “Someone wrote a letter to Mr. Barnes saying I took the lunchbox.”

  “Guess who?” Andrew said, pulling his wool cap over his ears.

  “Sure, but who can prove it?” Joshua said.

  “You could tell Mr. Barnes about the NOs. Joey Taggart and Peter Sears and Sammy Fox might tell what happened to them.”

  “Are you crazy?” Joshua said.

  “So what are you going to do?” Andrew reached into his pocket and gave Joshua a Kudos.

  “Move to Africa,” Joshua said. “I’m planning to leave tomorrow morning by boat.”

  They crossed Newark and headed up the hill toward Peoples Drugs.

  “I mean really,” Andrew said.

  “I don’t know,” Joshua said. “I can’t tell on them. And that’s that.”

  Tommy Wilhelm followed Andrew and Joshua to Peoples Drugs. When Joshua spotted him, he was standing at the checkout counter with a Mars bar and a Milky Way, and Billy Nickel was beside him. W.V. was looking at car magazines and Jell-O was behind Tommy in line with a bag of Fritos and a liter bottle of Coca-Cola.

  “Don’t talk to them,” Joshua said.

  “Fine with me,” Andrew agreed. He followed Joshua to the candy aisle.

  “What if they talk to you first?” Andrew asked.

  “I’ll tell them to blow town,” Joshua said. “What else?”

  But he didn’t tell them anything of the kind.

  “So what’s up?” Tommy Wilhelm asked when he had bought his candy. “Did Mr. Barnes give you a hard time?”

  “Not at all,” Joshua said.

  “Just wanted to know how you were enjoying fifth grade. Right?” Tommy asked. Jell-O Hayes and W.V. laughed.

  “Exactly,” Joshua said.

  “Hey, Joshua, I thought you had a dentist’s appointment,” Billy Nickel said.

  “I do.”

  “Then why are you buying candy?” Jell-O asked.

  “I bet you made it up about the dentist,” W.V. said. “You’re just chicken to go to Tommy’s house.”

  “Right,” Joshua said. “Scared to death.” He paid for two Milky Ways.

  “Hey, Josh, how’s your new girlfriend?” W.V. cooed sweetly.

  “Yeah,” Jell-O joined in, “when are you and Sean getting married?”

  “C’mon,” Joshua said to Andrew. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What are you going to do?” Andrew asked, obviously afraid. “Let’s go to my house. You can spend the night.”

  “I told you, dumbbell,” Joshua said. “I’m going to Africa first thing in the morning.”

  At Veazy Street, Andrew turned right and Joshua ran all the way to Lowell Street and home, just in case someone was following.

  chapter eight

  SOMETHING WAS the matter at home. The moment Joshua walked through the front door, hung his book bag on the hook in the hall, and called out “I’m home” to the eerie silence, he knew that something was different.

  “Anybody here?” he shouted. There was no answer. In the kitchen Marmalade slept on top of the apples in the fruit bowl sitting in the sun, and Plutarch was lying underneath the kitchen table licking the inside of a yogurt carton. The morning paper, which his mother never read until late afternoon when she started dinner, was opened on the counter, and the table was still gooey with the remains of Georgie’s banana and yogurt. They must have left in a hurry if his mother didn’t even take the time to wipe the kitchen table. There was no note and no sign of Amanda either. The clock over the stove said three fifty and Amanda was always home by three.

  Upstairs, Amanda’s book bag was lying on the floor of her room, her French book open on her desk to lesson ten, her basketball shorts and shirt piled in the middle of the floor. The tape recorder was playing the last song on the tape of Les Misérables, so there must have been an emergency, because Amanda never did anything careless like leaving the tape recorder on.

  Joshua was worried. Once he’d had a nightmare about coming home to a blue house on Lowell Street, which looked in his dream exactly like his house—even Amanda’s blue Schwinn was parked by the dogwood tree in the front yard. “Mom, I’m home,” he had called, and the front door opened. There was another woman, not his mother, who answered the door. His mother had disappeared.

  He picked up Marmalade and went, full of dread, into the living room. Maybe, he thought, something awful had happened and they had disappeared. He called his father, but Mr. Bates was out of the office. Then Joshua called Mrs. Peachtree next door, who did not know anything at all because she had just returned from Richmond, where she’d been visiting her daughter. Then he called the Franks in the house on the other side and Mrs. Frank, frantic with twins, was in her usual bad mood and said she knew nothing about any of the Bateses except that Marmalade had brought a half-dead mouse into their living room that morning and the twins had chickenpox. “Tell your mother about the cat,” she said, and hung up. He got two chocolate chip cookies and sat down at the kitchen table. At four the telephone rang and it was his mother calling from Georgetown University Hospital to say that the red-haired midget had had an accident.

  “What happened?” Joshua asked. He could hear strange noises in the background. Hospital noises. It made Joshua feel queasy.

  “I’m not exactly sure, Joshua. Apparently he was on the roof at school and slipped. They tried to reach his father, and when they couldn’t, they called me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m room mother for your class, Joshua.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Anyway, he’s fine, darling. We should be home soon. Oh, and I’m bringing Sean with us.”

  Joshua hung up the telephone. He lay down on the couch in the living room with Marmalade on his stomach and put a pillow over his face. Ever since Sean O’Malley arrived at Mirch Elementary School, which seemed like ten years ago, things had been going badly.

  When Mrs. Bates finally came in the front door with Amanda and Georgie, Sean O’Malley wasn’t with them.

  “Joshua, I’d like you to come to the kitchen while I make dinner,
” Mrs. Bates said with an edge to her voice.

  “Where’s Sean?” Joshua asked.

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Mrs. Bates said.

  Joshua lifted Marmalade off his stomach, put the pillow back on the couch, and followed his mother to the kitchen.

  “Sean didn’t come,” Mrs. Bates said.

  “So I see.” Joshua slid into a kitchen chair and took two more chocolate chip cookies out of the jar. “How come?”

  “He said he didn’t want to come,” Mrs. Bates said. “He asked me to drop him at his apartment, which I did.”

  “He had a terrible day at school,” Joshua said. “Maybe that’s why.”

  Mrs. Bates put a pot of water on the stove for pasta. “He said all the kids hate him, including you.”

  “Well, he’s wrong.”

  “Things of his were stolen, he said. He was tripped. Someone’s lunch was deliberately spilled on his head.”

  “I know, Mom. But I didn’t do any of those things.”

  Mrs. Bates gave Joshua an odd, questioning look. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Joshua, Mr. Barnes received a letter saying that you had been very unkind to Sean.”

  “How do you know?” Joshua’s heart was beating fast.

  “Sean told me.”

  “Sean?” Joshua said. “How does he know?”

  “Someone told him. He wouldn’t say who it was.”

  “Brother,” Joshua said, suddenly feeling very sick. “I know about the note. Mr. Barnes called me into his office.”

  “What did he say to you?” Mrs. Bates sat down next to Joshua and put her hand on his arm.

  “He told me to see him tomorrow morning and tell him everything I know.” Joshua’s voice was shaking.

  “And do you know something about all this, darling?” Mrs. Bates asked.

  “I don’t know something,” Joshua said. “I think something.”

  “But you are not involved in what’s been happening, is that right?” his mother asked.

  “That’s right,” Joshua said. “I promise.”

  Mrs. Bates kissed Joshua on the top of his head, stood up, and got the pasta from a pantry shelf. “I believe you,” she said.

  UPSTAIRS, Amanda was lying in the hall talking on the telephone with her bare feet on the wall.

  She put her hand over the receiver.

  “Tommy Wilhelm just called a second ago. He said it’s an emergency.”

  “Thanks,” Joshua said, feeling weak all over. “If he calls again, tell him I’ve left for Africa already.”

  At dinner he was too upset to eat. His father asked Amanda about her day at school, which was full of A’s as usual, and he told them about the trip he’d made to New York and what he had for lunch. His mother talked about Georgie’s playgroup and how she’d broken a bottle of pickles at the supermarket. Amanda said she had been invited to Florida with her boyfriend’s family for spring vacation and Mr. Bates said she couldn’t go, so Amanda angrily excused herself to go to her room. Georgie spilled her pasta and Marmalade brought in a mouse from the garden. Finally, just as dinner was almost over, Joshua’s mother brought up Sean O’Malley and the note to Mr. Barnes.

  “Joshua, I want you to tell us what is going on,” Mr. Bates said.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I can only guess.”

  “Are you involved?” his father asked.

  “No,” Joshua answered, always a little nervous with his father.

  “Do you know the people who are?” Mrs. Bates asked.

  “I know some of the kids involved,” Joshua said. “Two for sure.”

  “Who are they?” his father asked.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Why, Joshua?” Mr. Bates asked.

  “I just can’t.”

  “Why?” his father insisted.

  “I don’t like it when you act like a lawyer instead of my father.”

  “I’m sorry, Joshua,” Mr. Bates said. “I didn’t mean to. I only want to help.”

  Actually Joshua was glad to finally be talking to his parents about the NOs, even though he did not intend to tell on Tommy Wilhelm.

  “Are you afraid that if you do tell us, these boys will do something to you?” his mother asked.

  “Maybe.” Joshua was pleased that they seemed to understand. “Everyone’s afraid. Everyone in class. The boys, that is.”

  “Everyone?”

  “A lot of people.”

  “Do you think a group of boys in the fifth grade are being cruel to Sean?” Mr. Bates asked.

  “Yes,” Joshua said.

  “Why Sean?”

  “Because he’s new and little and wants to fit in.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Mr. Bates said.

  “It’s just like when I flunked third grade.”

  “But you didn’t let them hurt you,” his father said.

  “I guess.” Joshua shrugged.

  “And you got yourself promoted into the fourth grade, didn’t you?” Mrs. Bates said.

  “Yes,” Joshua said.

  “Because you took charge,” Mr. Bates said.

  Joshua nodded.

  “Well, what I think you should do, Josh, is take charge again.”

  Upstairs, Joshua sat at his desk with math assignments in fractions and a composition in language arts, but he couldn’t concentrate on homework. He packed his book bag with his unfinished assignments, brushed his teeth, patted the bottom bunk of his bed for Plutarch to jump up, turned off the light, and climbed into bed. He didn’t fall asleep for a very long time, not until after Georgie had stopped talking to her stuffed animals and Amanda had finished with the telephone for the night and was playing her tapes, not even after his parents had come upstairs to bed. When he finally did fall asleep, he had a terrible nightmare in which he was chased and chased and chased and woke up tangled in his sheets.

  chapter nine

  THE NEXT MORNING Amanda called from her bedroom to say that Tommy Wilhelm was on the telephone. Joshua was awake. He was awake because he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep at all since the nightmare that had woken him up in the middle of the night. And the last thing in the world he wanted to do was talk to Tommy Wilhelm. But he did.

  “We’re meeting by the shed at eight forty-five this morning,” Tommy said. “Meet us there. It’s really important.”

  “If I can,” Joshua said. “I didn’t get my math and English done last night.”

  “Big deal. I never do my math,” Tommy said. “Did you hear about Sean falling off the roof trying to get his lunchbox?”

  “I heard,” Joshua said. He hadn’t been able to think about what he was going to do this morning, but he knew he had to do something.

  Either he had to take charge and tell Mr. Barnes the truth, or else not. He wasn’t at all sure which.

  “Listen, Bates,” Tommy Wilhelm said, “just be there.”

  “Okay,” Joshua said.

  But he knew very well he was not going to meet Tommy Wilhelm and the NOs at the shed. He was certain that they had something in mind. And it was not going to be very pleasant.

  “I didn’t know you and Tommy Wilhelm were good friends,” Amanda said, examining herself in the full-length mirror in her new short-short skirt and FOREVER YOURS T-shirt.

  “We’re not,” Joshua said.

  “Well, he certainly calls a lot for an acquaintance.”

  “We’re enemies,” Joshua said irritably. “I’d like to put him out with the trash.”

  He started into his bedroom to get dressed.

  “What do you think of this outfit?” Amanda asked. “Do you like the skirt?”

  “The skirt’s great,” Joshua said.

  “I mean look at it, Joshua. It’s a new skirt.”

  Joshua looked.

  “You look like you always do. I can’t tell the difference.”

  “Creep,” Amanda said, and slammed her bedroom door.

&
nbsp; JOSHUA LEFT for school just after eight—and before his mother and father came downstairs with more advice about taking charge. They had no idea what a terrible day this might be for him.

  At the corner of Veazy he sat on the front steps of the house where he usually waited for Andrew.

  “So I guess you heard what happened to Sean yesterday,” Joshua said.

  “Your mother called my mother to tell her about it,” Andrew said. “She said that something awful is going on and asked if I knew anything about it.”

  “What did your mother say?”

  “She said she didn’t think so but she’d ask.”

  “And did you tell?”

  “I told about what happened to Sean all day yesterday and about the note Mr. Barnes has that blames you,” Andrew said. “But I’d be crazy to tell about the NOs.”

  They walked along shoulder to shoulder, past Veazy and up Thirty-fourth Street.

  “What do you think would happen if we did tell about the NOs?” Joshua said finally.

  “They’d kill us,” Andrew said.

  “Tommy called this morning,” Joshua said. “I think they have plans for me today.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He asked me to meet him at the shed at eight forty-five.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m not going to do it,” Joshua said. “But I’ve got to have something to say to Mr. Barnes in the next fifteen minutes.”

  “Are you still afraid of Tommy? Even after you fought him last year and won?” Andrew asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Of course I am,” Andrew said. “You know me. I’m a wimp. That’s why I stay clear of him.”

  Joshua laughed. “I’m not exactly afraid of Tommy,” Joshua said. “What I am afraid of, though, is the power he has over the other guys. It’s having the whole class turn against you that’s scary.”

  “I know,” Andrew agreed. “So what are you going to tell Mr. Barnes?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Joshua said.

  “Are you too chicken to tell him about the NOs?” Andrew said.

  “Probably,” Joshua said.

  “Probably?” Andrew was right.

  “Absolutely.”

  They were crossing Albermarle when they saw Sean O’Malley walking up the hill. Joshua waved. Sean did not wave back. He crossed over Albermarle and turned down Thirty-fifth Street so he wouldn’t have to meet up with Andrew and Joshua.