“What did you do?” Marshall moved his mouth into a frown as if he had just tasted a lemon.
“It’s the first day of school,” Mason replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m trying to look my best.”
“You smell awful.”
“I think he smells good,” Leila chimed in.
Mason winked at her just as their mother walked into the room. “Okay,” and she looked them over and hugged them. “I’ll see you after school, boys.”
Marshall nodded. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, and wanted to thank her for sticking up for him in the argument with dad, the one that he wasn’t supposed to hear. But he was too angry over being grounded. He’d intended to thank her days ago, but could never form the words to tell her. So he mumbled a goodbye instead.
The bus was already full. The seniors sat in the back and the middle-graders in the middle and front. Mason was off to the back before Marshall had a chance to tell him goodbye. Stupid brother, he thought. Not good for a whole lot.
He saw the Williams twins, who looked like they’d grown a foot over the summer. Michael Marks was there too, his blond hair shining in the morning light. Marshall had promised something cool to show him, but the whole puzzle thing was something no one knew about. It was kind of a secret; something he loved that was unknown by all of his friends. No one except for Iris, and he’d just met her. So she didn’t count as a friend.
At least, he didn’t think so.
Getting excited over a new puzzle wasn’t going to win over his friends. He still needed something else.
He sat down in the only spot left and the bus started to move. Becca Anderson was next to him. She was nice, but sort of strange. She didn’t talk to a whole lot of people, other than her pal Larissa Longview. They were snobs really, but Marshall didn’t care. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone anyway.
He felt his inhaler in his pocket. It was right where it should be. He hoped he didn’t have to use it all day and keep the necessary breaths only for morning and night in the privacy of his own room.
The bus came to the school and the nervous talk dwindled down as everyone picked up their backpacks. They left it single-file, as if it was the entrance to a prison waiting just for them.
Marshall thought that middle school was odd. It was like being a kindergartener once again, only this time you couldn’t take naps and had to be responsible for your homework. Mason had taken off toward the high school with his pals—all with the same gelled hair, gooey like a cinnamon roll—as soon as they had gotten off the bus.
Marshall thought Mason had waved to him, but realized he had only run a hand through his hair to make sure it was in place. He wondered if Mason felt like he did. He wondered if feeling like a newbie was hard on him too.
Marshall pulled his schedule out of his pocket and found homeroom. He slid into a seat in the back and watched the room fill up with faces he’d never seen before. Middle school was so much larger than elementary. This school was the only one for miles around, so all middle and high-schoolers went here. The school felt like it was a hundred times larger than before. Marshall slunk from hallway to hallway, not seeing a whole lot of familiar faces.
Marshall took a deep breath and relaxed when he saw Michael Marks, Justin Blandon and Greg Gutierrez walk in. It was the three amigos. Inseparable, unstoppable, and so far, the only friends he knew. He wasn’t one of them, as a part of the “in” crowd, but he wasn’t “out” either. Marshall was sort of a stand-by; friends with anyone and friends with anyone who wanted to be a friend to him.
Ever since Marshall had acquired a pocketknife from Luke’s last year, the three amigos were all semi-interested in knowing him—even if he was short and asthmatic. The ivory handle, and blade made of pure sterling silver, was a new attraction. He never brought it to school, but on the last day, he had snuck it in and they all oohed and ahhed over it in the boy’s bathroom.
He hid it as soon as the last bell rang, in one of the stalls toilet paper holder. If one of his “buddies” told a teacher he was carrying a knife, he didn’t want to have it on him.
Michael nodded at him as he turned toward him. “Hey Marsh.”
The pack sat down. Marshall nodded back and the three of them already had their heads together planning some sort of new group. Last year, it had been the tall club; only tall boys could be a part of it. Fortunately, for them, that was all three of them. The year before that, it was the club that only sons of father’s who served the community could be a part of. Marshall had been out because his dad was a banker. Michael’s dad was a police officer, Greg’s dad was a firefighter, and Justin’s was in the army reserves. Not quite the same, but they made the exception.
The rules only served to serve them. It was stupid.
Marshall was already doodling in his notebook, trying to figure out what the club was going to be for this year, when a girl with dark black curls walked it.
Iris was here.
Chapter 4: The Fishing Pole
Iris walked in with her head down, focused on an empty seat a few away from Marshall. Marshall was so happy to see her. His heart pounded like a drum. He wondered if she’d seen him and leaned over to get a better look at her.
She opened her backpack and brought out a pencil and paper and stared straight ahead.
The rest of the class was talking to each other. There were a lot of new faces, so Iris was nothing to take notice of. They may have wondered why she was so pale, but other than that, they ignored her.
Marshall looked behind him and tried to wave her down. She still didn’t budge. There was an empty desk right in front of hers. He wasn’t sure if he should risk moving. The three amigos would notice.
He looked at Michael, who was already drawing up a plan on paper—presumably the new club—and figured this was as good as any chance. Marshall picked up his bag and plopped down in front of her.
“Hey,” he said turning around. Her face visibly brightened, and her short hair shook with surprise.
“Hey yourself,” she said. “Where’d you come from?”
“Was right over there. Tried to get you to see me, but you …” he stopped talking.
“I’m a little nervous,” she offered. “This is only the second school I’ve been to in my whole life.”
“I didn’t think you were going to be here,” Marshall said, noticing how pretty her eyes looked. “Thought maybe you would go to your old school.”
“Nah, can’t now with Aunt Norma sick and all. She lives a ways from here too.” She looked at him with a small smile, but it disappeared when a paper airplane flew toward them. The three amigos laughed, then the bell rang and the room became silent.
“Who are they?” she whispered in his ear.
“The tall one is Michael, he’s sort of the leader,” Marshall said in a return whisper. “Then the short dark haired one is Greg, and Justin is the short one. They think they’re hilarious.”
Marshall had hoped this wouldn’t happen. But sure enough, they’d noticed he moved—to sit next to a girl, no less.
Michael made a heart shape with his fingers, and batted his eyelashes. The other two giggled, just as Mr. Lester, their teacher, wrote his name on the board. Then class began.
Neither of them spoke to each other until the end of class. They both had English class next, so they walked to it, hoping the three amigos wouldn’t say anything else. It was just what Marshall didn’t need; rumors that he had a girlfriend on the first day of school.
But Michael caught up to him. “Who’s your girlfriend?”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a friend. Her name’s Iris.”
Iris didn’t look at them and walked on, staring at the floor.
“Whatever. Say, did you find anything good at that junk store this summer? You said you were looking.”
Marshall winced. Sheesh, he was talking about her uncle’s store right in front of her.
“Uh, not really,” he said in pa
rtial truth. He couldn’t tell Michael about the puzzle. They would laugh him out of school. Iris looked at him and smiled. And they both knew what was happening. The puzzle was their little secret.
“Well, you’ve got a lot to live up to after that knife last year. How about a gun or something like that?”
“Michael, we can’t have guns, we’d go to jail. And if I did, no way I’d bring that here.” Marshall looked around and hoped no one was looking or listening to them. He didn’t need anyone tattling on them that they heard them say something about a gun on school property. “I’ll let you know when I get it though. It’ll be cool.”
“I hope so.” Michael grinned, a lopsided one. “This years’ club is going to be about the kid with the coolest toy from summer. You’re sort of my inspiration.” Michael slapped him on the back. “But here’s the kicker—you have to get voted in.”
“By whom?” said Marshall, mouth in a frown. This was absurd and had to be the worst club ever.
“By me and Greg and Justin. That’s who.” He stared at Marshall, trying to intimidate him down just a bit. People don’t go around asking Michael questions: they do as they’re told. “You got the rest of the year to join the club; until December to get something good. No cool toy, no club.”
He grinned once more and sort of shuffled away into his class, American History.
Iris was right next to him, silent.
“I haven’t seen you all week,” she finally said. Her eyes were round and soft today, kind of looking like she’d been crying. But, Marshall wasn’t going to ask that. Maybe she was still sad from leaving her old school.
“Yeah, got grounded. Mason found me sneaking back in.” He tossed his head. “Doesn’t matter though. I’ll be there today. After school.”
Iris looked like she was going to hug him. “Really?” Her eyes were wide and happy now.
“Sure, I did it last year, a couple days a week. Wouldn’t miss it.”
She looked around them. “Then we can start on the puzzle?”
“Sheesh, of course Iris. My fingers have been itching to do it all week! You haven’t started on it yet or nothing, have you?”
Iris crossed her arms. “I told you, I don’t know puzzles. This is my first big one.” He still believed she could be a puzzle master. She had that look to her; like she was smart at a whole lot of things which no one knew about. She was a real-life regular mystery, that Iris.
They went through the day, just waiting for the three o’clock bell to ring.
***
Iris didn’t take the bus. She walked.
Luke’s home was a few blocks past Marshall’s neighborhood, the other way, past the railroad tracks. The bus went her route, but she didn’t go on it and Marshall wanted to ask her about that.
If Marshall wasn’t going to Luke’s, he would’ve taken the bus. But because he was meeting Iris there, he walked too. She’d gotten a head start. He took a quick sip of the inhaler on his way there. Something about the heat and hurry he was in got his chest heaving.
He found her waiting at the door of Luke’s Junk.
“You didn’t wait for me?” he asked. He wasn’t angry, just wondering. “You didn’t want to walk with me?”
“Didn’t know if you wanted me to walk with you. After the way Michael spoke to you about …”
“That idiot is so stupid, he doesn’t even know he’s dumb,” said Marshall, thinking back to what he said about him and Iris being girlfriend and boyfriend. “He’s all talk, you know.”
Luke was at his usual spot, behind the counter, feet up, smoke billowing around him like a low cloud.
“Hey kids,” he said. “How was the first day?”
“Hi Mr. Luke, not so bad.” Marshall slung his backpack on the counter, and Iris followed suit. Luke fired up another cigarette, watching the few customers in the room. Marshall hadn’t even noticed them.
“So, I heard from Mrs. Kelso that you got grounded on account of me,” Luke blew the smoke away from Marshall and instantly dragged again.
“Yeah, no big deal.” Marshall looked at Iris who was watching her Uncle smoke.
“Well now, it is a big deal. Is it okay you being here now?” he motioned at the room.
“Yep. Got the okay.”
Luke nodded and dragged from the cigarette again. “To make it up to you, I stocked the fridge back there with water, juice and soda and some snacks too, so you got something to eat after school.”
Marshall smiled. “That’s awful nice Mr. Luke. Sheesh, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I got the little missy here to take care of now too, so don’t want you getting all hungry on me.”
“Thanks Uncle,” said Iris.” We’ll be in the back then.”
He nodded. “I reckon it’s going to take you all year to finish that puzzle.”
“No way. We’ll get it done before Christmas.”
Luke was looking down at him with a pair of reading glasses when his eyes shot up in thought. “Oh really?”
“Yeah. No sweat.”
“Is that a bet?” Luke asked almost too quietly.
Iris groaned, her lips pressed together. “Marshall, don’t do it. My Uncle never loses bets.”
“No it’s okay. I think we can do it.” He looked at Luke with squinted eyes. “What’s the bet for?”
Luke took another drag and tamped it out in his ashtray. There had to be about thirty odd cigarette butts in there and it was only 3:15. “You win, you get this fishing pole right here.” He pointed to the case below him. Marshall leaned in, his nose pressed against the glass.
“You mean this one?”
“Yep. It beats that pocketknife you bought last year. This one is hand made from the 1940’s.” He grinned, his yellow teeth like slats of a picket fence. “Goes for hundreds of dollars in an antique store.”
Mother of pearl decorated the handle. His dad would be jealous over it, even Mason would want it, and Marshall liked fishing even more than him. Marshall looked at Luke who had a sideways grin. Mr. Luke had reeled him in, hook, line and sinker. Even more reason Marshall had to win the bet. “And if I lose?”
“If you lose, you have to work here three days a week after school, and then on through the summer when we’re the busiest … for only three dollars an hour.”
Marshall squinted again. “How is that a loss for me?”
“Because you’re cheap labor.”
“You don’t have to do it Marshall,” Iris said, a smile floating through her words. “Luke’s nice and all, but if you work here, he’ll really make you work.”
“I would love to work here.”
And that was no lie. It was like a dream come true. Heck, he’d work there for ten cents an hour. Marshall stuck out his hand, and Luke grasped it, thick and warm like a bear’s paw.
“It’s a deal then?”
“Deal.”
“You two,” Iris said and nodded to herself. “Come on; better get this bet over with.” They turned to go to the back room. Luke hacked a laugh and put his feet back on the counter. Marshall was positive he had the better end of the deal.
The two of them grabbed a root beer and Marshall dove into his granola bar.
Marshall looked at the corner of the room where the air conditioning rattled away, chomping on his snack. He noticed four or five new puzzle boxes, sitting on top of each other. “What are those?”
“Those are the only other puzzles in this whole place I could find, other than the giant one. I figured we should do the rest of them too.”
“Iris,” said Marshall, “We’re barely going to have enough time to do the big one, let alone the small ones.”
“They’re not that bad. Two of them are five hundred pieces. The other two are a thousand.”
Marshall took a drink of his apple juice and sat down. He fingered the tiny puzzle pieces, falling all over the place like toppings on ice cream. “You have a point. Maybe we should start with the small ones. And work up to the big one? The small one
s we could finish in a couple days. It would be good experience for you.”
“How do we go about doing this anyway?” Iris asked. “I don’t know puzzles, remember.
Marshall was suddenly excited. He’d done about a hundred puzzles. All of them were fun; easy; like solving a riddle. “We don’t have any room on the table. We’re gonna have to make room on the floor. Here,” he said and pointed to a part of the room, “Up against that wall. We can put a piece of cardboard down, and we’ll keep them all separate.”
She nodded and her bobbed head of curls nodded too.
“You’re uncle’s gonna think we’re crazy Iris.”
“Yeah, oh well. He’s the crazy one.”
Marshall stopped. “What?”
“You see how he smokes,” she said. Her eyes looked like deep holes, as if something was down in them if he looked hard enough. “My aunt said before she had her stroke, that he’s dying of lung cancer.”
“Luke? No way.” Marshall didn’t believe it. Luke would live for years more. He had to. He had a store to run, a place to keep going, junk to collect and sell.
“You’ve heard him cough right?”
Marshall thought. Yeah, he’d heard him cough. It was a bad one. He figured he was always perpetually getting over a cold, or something. But, lung cancer?
“Yeah, but, he would’ve told me. I would know.”
“Marshall,” said Iris, waiting for him to look at her, “he hasn’t even told me.”
“Oh.”
“If something happens to him, I don’t know what I’ll do. There isn’t any more family I can live with.” Marshall thought again. That would be like the worst thing ever. No parents, now no uncle, and a sick aunt who can’t do a thing. Sheesh, she’d be an orphan.
He shook his head. “Iris, that won’t happen to you. It just can’t. God doesn’t do that.”
“God does all sorts of things, Marshall. Good and bad.”
Her dead parents, he thought. She’d been through some really bad stuff. No wonder why she always looked so serious and sad. She was sad. But they couldn’t do puzzles thinking about sad stuff. They’d never get them finished.
The Puzzle Master Page 4
