Poser

by Alison Hughes

  Well, I’m thinking there can be two master plans.

  Old Spin might have a few surprises up his size-twelve sleeve.

  “You’ll have to miss some school, honey. Quite a lot of school,” my mom said, looking worried. She was staring at all the bookings on The Calendar That Rules Our Lives. I hate that calendar. It doesn’t even have any pictures. Just huge squares and red ink.

  “Busy month coming up,” she said.

  I always do well in school, so missing some days has never seemed to be a big problem. But grownups are supposed to worry about kids missing school. Not Macy. For Macy, the modeling always comes first. I think Macy sees it as our ticket to the big time, to the huge contract that is always just around the corner.

  But Mom is different. With Mom, school comes first. She actually reads my report cards, even all those cut-and-paste sentences that every kid in the class gets. This was a good time to complain a little. And exaggerate.

  “You know, Mom, I’m finding it hard to keep up, missing so much school,” I said, looking up from watching highlights of the Flames–Canucks game. It wasn’t true though. Chan took great notes, and I studied when I was on the road. I like school. I hate missing classes.

  “Really? That’s not good. I had no idea. Look, I’ll talk to Macy, okay?”

  Excellent. Macy listens to Mom. Mom is about two feet shorter and a lot quieter, but she’s tough too. She’s had to be, to put up with Macy for all these years. There was nothing much she could do about the dates that had been booked, but maybe she could sort of slow Macy down.

  “Hey,” she said, looking over at me. “Everything else okay?”

  Here was my chance. My chance to complain, whine and rant about Macy ruining my life. I opened my mouth. It was hard to know where to start.

  “Well, you know, Mom, lately...”

  The front doorbell rang, long and loud. Macy. She had a key but never seemed to use it. She just rang whenever she needed to get in. She came in fuming about some appointment she’d had, and the conversation that Mom and I were about to have never happened.

  After dinner, Mom knocked on my door. She was shrugging into her coat. Mom is always rushing somewhere. She takes evening classes at a community college toward a diploma in business management and administration. I’m proud of her for going to school while she works full-time. Other than being freakishly busy all the time, she seems to like it.

  I, on the other hand, clearly have no future in business, because all her courses sound stupefyingly boring. Beyond boring. Deathly. “Corporate Structure and Governance,” “Statistics and Quality Assurance,” that sort of thing. Blah-blah and blah-blah. Just the words make my brain turn off. They make my science unit on “The Structure and Organization of the Plant Kingdom” sound wildly exciting.

  “I know it’s not scintillating,” she said once, “but it’s important. I’m actually becoming qualified for something other than reorganizing the sympathy-card section. I’ll get a better job, a career...” She had big plans.

  She stood in the doorway, winding a scarf around her neck.

  “BB, I have to get to class, but I will have that talk with Macy. She’s booking too much during school.”

  “Yep, couldn’t agree more, Mom.”

  “But we do need to let the school know why you’ll be gone so much,” she said firmly. She knew I wanted to keep the modeling a secret, but she didn’t approve of lying.

  “Look,” she said. “Your principal will probably be totally impressed! Ever thought of that?”

  For a smart person, my mom could be completely clueless. It wasn’t about anyone being impressed or not; it was about making sure I could survive junior high. She just didn’t understand that lying had become totally, utterly necessary. If I told Mrs. Walker, how could I trust her not to tell anyone else? How could I ever be sure? I’d live in fear and dread that the secret would get out.

  “Look, Mom,” I said, “you’d better write me a note. Just something vague, about me missing school. I’ll talk to Mrs. Walker and let her know why. Leave it to me.”

  She looked at me hard. The woman is no fool.

  “Nothing in writing, hey? Okay, listen, Luke, if I write you a general note, you promise me you’ll tell Mrs. Walker the details?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. Lie.

  “So I can trust you on this?” she continued.

  “You can trust me,” I lied confidently. I’m such a jerk.

  She smiled, then glanced at her watch.

  “Yikes, I’m late. Okay, general note...” She sat down at my desk, grabbed a piece of loose-leaf and wrote.

  “Done. Got to go. Love you.” She kissed the top of my head and left.

  I read the note. It said:

  Dear Mrs. Walker,

  My son, Luke Spinelli, will have to be absent for quite a few days in the next little while. I will let him explain to you why he’ll be absent, and we would like that reason to be kept private. He will keep up with his schoolwork, so please let his teachers know.

  Thank you for your understanding,

  Kathy Spinelli

  This was good. Nice and vague. Now all I had to do was come up with a reason.

  A reason that was way, way different than the truth.

  A reason that was believable, but didn’t lead to much investigation.

  A reason that was a question-stopper.

  It was going to be a lie. That wasn’t an issue. The issue was how big a lie I was comfortable with.

  Pretty big, as it turns out.

  * * *

  An hour later I was still at my desk, gnawing on the end of my pencil. (Everyone tells me that’s a disgusting habit. It probably is, but that doesn’t seem to stop me from having to floss orange pencil paint out of my teeth.)

  Anyway, this was significant gnawing. Important gnawing. I had to invent a disease. Ever invented a disease? Not an easy thing. The thing is, when you think disease, you think of all the ones you know.

  All the ones you’ve heard of.

  Here’s the problem. I knew I was a jerk for going behind my mom’s back, inventing a disease and planning to tell the principal it’s the reason I have to miss school. But somehow, I wasn’t quite such a jerk that I was going to use an actual disease that actual people are suffering from. Even jerks have a code they live by. A jerk code of honor. And, bizarrely, it appears that lying about having an actual disease is against my jerk’s code of honor. Who knew?

  So what I needed was a completely new, very serious, totally made-up disease. This was a very tricky thing to do. It had to sound legit but in reality be not legit. Believable, but a complete lie...

  So I gnawed. I have to tell you, I was coming up with nothing but blanks. Think illness, think disease... I tried body parts, but that just got ridiculous. I mean, who was going to believe I had Multiplestomachosity?

  I got out my dictionary. There was a chart of some bits of words that go before and after a real word to make it sound more Latin-y. I’ve noticed many illnesses have a Latin-like name. Or Greek, probably, but I only had the Latin.

  I needed a main part to attach the Latin-y bits to. The main part of the illness.

  Think, Spin, think...I looked around my room. My eyes fell on the games stacked on my shelves. The ones we never seemed to have time to play. Hmmm... After scribbling and scratching out such obviously lame fake diseases as Battleshiposity and SupraClue Trauma, I hit on Cranium. Cranium...Craniumectomy! I started to get excited. That sounded super Latiny. That is, until I figured out that it meant “surgical removal of the brain.” Not, maybe, exactly what I was looking for.

  Scrabble, Candyland...wait, Candyland? What am I, four years old? Mental note: clean room.

  And then, there it was. The game I was sure I could work into a disease. Monopoly. Only I’d change the spelling a bit—Monopoli—and add a suffix.

  Monopoliosis? Monopoliitis? I kind of liked the cool double ii of the last one.

  Now, to do a lie properly, you hav
e to sell it. If I went in there whining “I have MONOPOLYitis,” Mrs. Walker would obviously just think I was some kid who’d made up a disease out of the board game. Am I right?

  That’s why you pronounce it “mono-poli-itis”. Emphasis on all three parts, see? And you say it seriously, while looking the person in the eye. And maybe you gesture to your chest or something.

  I heard the front door slam. I opened my door a crack and peeked out. I was in luck. Macy, the house computer hog, was outside “stretching her legs” (which I knew really meant having a quick cigarette out by the Dumpster).

  I hurried over to the computer. I felt like one of those heroes in action movies who have to type really quickly because they’re doing something they shouldn’t be, maybe trying to hack into a bad guy’s computer while he’s coming down the hall... But I had to be sure. The jerk code book was telling me I had to be sure.

  I googled M-o-n-o-p-o-l-i-i-t-i-s.

  Ka-ching!

  No matches. Not one.

  Entirely made up.

  What do you know? I think I have my disease.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I UNLEASH THE MONSTER LIE

  “Yeah, most people haven’t heard of it,” I said, staring Mrs. Walker straight in the eye. “It’s a rare disease, but serious.” I closed my eyes for a second, as if feeling the pain. “But we’re really hoping the operation might help.”

  The principal stared at me. So long that I began to wonder if I was as good a liar as I thought. My heart began to thud loudly.

  Finally, she sighed.

  “I’m so sorry, Luke. This all sounds like quite an ordeal for you.”

  I nodded bravely.

  “Yep, so that’s why I have to miss those big chunks of school. Surgery. Recovery. Uh, therapy. Mom is so upset she can’t talk about it. She just can’t. Really, don’t talk to her about it. At all.”

  “Of course, of course,” Mrs. Walker murmured, wiping her eyes behind her thick glasses. “I’m sorry, but I hate to think of you, a child, going though such pain.”

  Okay, I have to admit that when she started crying, I felt totally horrible. I thought she’d be kind of businesslike about it—ask for doctor’s notes and stuff like that. I just about caved when those tears welled up.

  I should have remembered that Mrs. Walker is emotional. She tells kids who get sent to the office all the time, like Shay, that she believes in them. She puts together these inspirational, be-all-you-can-be PowerPoint presentations for our assemblies, sets them to very lame, sappy music, and sits and tears up at how wonderful we all are.

  She’s a good person. And it sucks lying to good people. I could lie to mean, stupid people all day long, but the nice ones make a good lie almost impossible.

  I sat there feeling miserable, and not just because of the fake disease. There was nothing I could do now. I mean, I couldn’t all of a sudden say, “Just kidding!”

  She asked me a few gentle questions, like “Are you in pain?” and “What’s the prognosis?”

  Hmmm, if I knew what that word meant, I might be able to answer you, I thought. I just shook my head sadly. That seemed to do the trick.

  “I really don’t want anyone to know, Mrs. Walker,” I pleaded. “Can you just tell my teachers I’m a little sick or something? Everything is...hard enough already,” I choked out.

  Okay, I know what you’re thinking: This guy is a complete and total JERK! Well, I guess there might be some other jerk out there thinking, You go, Spin! Anyway, I felt like a real jerk. Worse than a jerk.

  But believe me, I’d used up every single other halfway-believable excuse. Every one. I told you that a few chapters ago. In the lying business, you have to keep things fresh. It’d be insulting otherwise. I’m not a my-dog-ate-my-homework kind of liar. I’m an artist.

  There was a long, awkward silence. I didn’t feel right about breaking it. I mean, you don’t drop a depressing bombshell and then jump up, check your watch and say, “Well, lunchtime, gotta go!”

  Finally, Mrs. Walker got up and held out her hand. Her face was all blotchy, and her hand was really warm.

  “Luke, I’m honored that you chose to tell me about your illness. And I want you to know that this school, this family, will stand behind you one hundred percent. A thousand percent,” she said. (Chan hates stuff like that. I can just see him putting his big head to the side, narrowing his eyes and snapping, “There’s no such thing as a thousand percent.” Good thing Chan’ll never know that he and the “family” are that much behind me.)

  I looked at the door behind Mrs. Walker and thought, Please don’t hug me please don’t hug me please don’t hug me... The phone rang.

  I can move quickly when I need to. I shook Mrs. Walker’s hand up and down a few times, muttered “thanks” and bolted for the door.

  Even a jerk gets lucky once in a while.

  CHAPTER NINE

  RED PLUSH (A PLACE. NOT, THANKFULLY, AN OUTFIT I HAVE TO MODEL)

  Today was going to be the last day for a while that I had free time after school. I needed it. Mrs. Walker had popped by our class after lunch “Just to say hi!” and given me a brave, supportive smile. She’d also left an inspirational quotation on my locker (which I ripped off and crumpled up as soon as I saw it). It said: Bravery is the smile worn by a trembling soul. What the heck? Why should something I didn’t even understand make me feel like garbage?

  It was nice to hang out with Chan and Frey for a while. They’re total goofs, and we laugh a lot. Not fake-laughing either. Actual friends having actual, unphotogenic good times.

  We headed over to Red Plush, a movie-rental store about three blocks from our school, tucked in the dark end of a grim little strip mall. I can’t figure out how it stays in business, because there never seems to be anyone in there but us. We pushed open the door that still, at 3:30 PM, had the CLOSED sign on it.

  “Uh-oh, look out. Here comes trouble,” rasped a voice as the little bells above the door jangled.

  Red (none of us knew her last name) said the same thing every time we came in. She was a tiny, shriveled old woman with patchy, dyed-red hair and big, watery, blue eyes. She mostly sat in a recliner with her veiny legs up, watching old movies.

  She turned toward us, smiling.

  Now, if you didn’t know Red, that smile might have made you turn and run.

  First, her teeth were not terrific. With modern advances in dental care, most people don’t have black teeth anymore. But Red had a few, and you could see them all when she smiled. Second, there was, as Chan called it, her “extreme makeup.” We’d had arguments, just us three, about whether she used markers or crayons or small paintbrushes.

  Whatever she used, the effect was very dramatic. Okay, I’m being diplomatic. She looked completely creepy, like an old-lady zombie or maybe like a little girl who got turned into a creepy old-lady zombie. I’m not really putting this well.

  Today’s look was bright orange lipstick WAY outside the lines, bright blue eye shadow sweeping around her eyes and up the sides of her bony forehead, and two blotches of pink on her withered cheeks.

  Anyway, no matter what she looked like, Red was super nice. Like a grandmother who never tried to kiss you or told you to cut your hair or tucked your shirt in for you at the back of your pants. Red pretty much just offered you snacks and left you alone.

  “Hey, Red,” Frey called out cheerfully. “How’s business?” Frey lives down the street, so he and Red know each other pretty well. Frey shovels the walks at Red Plush when it snows, runs (or sort of shuffles) errands for her and helps (slowly) with any lifting.

  “Oh, okay. Steady,” she replied, her eyes wandering back to the black-and-white movie on the ancient TV. I noticed the cover was still on the cash register. How does this place stay in business? I wondered for the millionth time. Humphrey, Red’s slobbery bulldog, slid off the couch and snuffled over to us. I bent down and gave his ears a good scratch. He loves that.

  I love dogs. Dogs don’t know when you’re lying
or what kind of problems you have. They don’t care. They just like you (or not), and they show it. Often with drool.

  “You boys want some popcorn? Or there’s cookies.” Red waved her blue-veiny hand toward the back of the store.

  Frey, always hungry, was already rummaging. With four boys, the Frey household is always short on food. I’ve known Frey to bring nothing but two whole carrots, with the green tops still on, for lunch. He will sit there, chewing like a barnyard animal, totally oblivious to any snickers from me and Chan. Actually, Frey often eats most of Chan’s lunch as well. Mrs. Chan packs Chan these mammoth lunches—spring rolls, rice, noodles, stir-fried vegetables and pork. They’re the best lunches in the class. Ask anyone.

  Chan and I tucked our backpacks out of the way and sat on the couch. Red Plush was kind of a rundown place, but it was a neat idea. The main room was set up like a living room: a couch and Red’s recliner faced a TV hooked up to an old VCR and a newer DVD player. And along the wall, bolted to the floor, there was this cool row of old, red, velvety movie seats. Red got them from some theater that was demolished. Anyway, the movies were like an afterthought, lining the rest of the walls in crooked, haphazard bunches.

  In most movie-rental stores, the movies are organized into sections. Drama, comedy, family, classics... that kind of thing. At Red Plush, it was all random, and you pretty much had to ask Red where anything was. Sometimes we’d quiz her just to keep her on her toes.

  “Sunset Boulevard,” Chan would say.

  “Easy. Second from the bottom of that pile near the till. Watched it yesterday.”

  “Aladdin.” There didn’t seem to be anything newer than about 1980 in the store, except the Disney movies. She seemed to have a soft spot for those.

  “Top shelf by the door,” she’d rattle off. “Fourth from the left.”

  “Ah, but do you know where The Troll Diaries is?” Chan would slip in.

  Red would turn, wagging her finger, giving him the full benefit of her terrible face.

  “You little rat, Chan, you’re making them up again. Whaddaya think I am, an amateur?”