The Handbook

by Jim Benton

  He tiptoed over to the desk and prepared to quietly type in his password. He gently pressed the first key.

  DING-DONG! A bell rang out!

  Jack tumbled backward in a panic. Ohmygosh. Busted! His dad had installed some sort of alarm on his computer!

  DING-DONG!

  No.

  Wait.

  Jack laughed at himself. That wasn’t an alarm. It was just the doorbell. His mom answered it and he could hear his parents talking to the Wallaces from next door. They had dropped in to say good-bye for the very last time. They were retired now, and they were on their way to the airport. Like most retired old people, they were headed someplace warm, which Jack thought was strange, because when you want to keep something fresh longer, you put it in the refrigerator.

  “Bye, Jack,” they called up the stairs, and Jack poked his head around the corner to wave.

  “Bye, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace,” he said politely. “Have a good time in Florida.”

  Mrs. Wallace gave him a big wrinkly smile. It had been a long time since their only son had moved away, and she was very fond of Jack.

  “If you ever want to come for a visit, you’re always welcome,” Mrs. Wallace said. “There are lots of those amusement parks close by.”

  “I’d like that,” Jack said, thinking how much he wouldn’t like that, and he waved good-bye.

  He wondered for a moment why people wait until they’re old to retire. It seemed like they should have their fun while they’re young enough to enjoy it, and then go get jobs when they got so old they couldn’t do anything fun anymore anyway. Adults had everything SO backward.

  Sometimes summer days roll past like a thunderous roller coaster, clattering and shaking with screaming howls of laughter exploding from the wild-eyed riders.

  And sometimes summer days roll past like a dirty, underinflated little beach ball, wobbling and wiggling, and then coming to a stop because somebody neglected to stuff the plastic nozzle up inside it.

  This Monday had been more like the little beach ball type day, and it was starting to look like the nozzle wasn’t even plugged at all and the sad little ball of a day was slowly deflating.

  Jack and Mike spent most of the morning doing nothing more than sitting on Mike’s front porch. They tried a couple times to go indoors to play video games, or go online, but their moms chased them back outside.

  “It’s such a beautiful day out. You shouldn’t be inside on a day like this. Go out and get some fresh air,” they said, as they would always say.

  “There’s air inside the house, too,” Jack would always point out. “It’s good enough to keep you people alive. Let us stay inside, too.”

  That never changed their minds.

  The two boys sat on the porch and threw tiny pebbles down the sidewalk.

  “I’m so glad that Old Man Wallace moved away,” Mike said.

  Jack nodded in thoughtless agreement.

  “He was crazy, you know. Like totally crazy. Like one time when I rode my bike across his lawn and he turned the hose on me.”

  Jack laughed.

  “One time? You rode across his lawn all the time. And even my dad has turned the hose on you for the exact same thing.”

  “It’s not just that,” Mike said, and he slid up closer to Jack, his voice falling to a whisper. “One time, I saw him kill a man—with a shovel.”

  “You did not!” Jack yelled.

  “You don’t know that,” Mike whispered in the scariest voice he could manage, wiggling his fingers for additional effect.

  “I DO know that.”

  “Okay. Let’s agree that neither one of us knows for sure if he killed a man or not,” Mike whispered. “But the truth is that he kills them all the time. Probably.”

  Jack laughed and shoved him over, not an easy task to do: Mike was only a little taller than Jack, but thirty pounds heavier.

  “Mike, you are so full of it I can’t figure out why it doesn’t squirt out your ears,” Jack laughed.

  The two of them traded stories about Mr. Wallace, like the one time they saw him dancing through the front window of his house, and another time when Mike made him so angry he starting yelling at him in this high, screamy voice that made him sound like a lady who’d caught rabies.

  “What do you think he was like when he was our age?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t think he ever was our age,” Mike said. “You know, a lot of old people never actually were young.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No? Just think about it. What kid would have ever grown up and invented something like a necktie, or creamed spinach? Would a kid ever grow up and be all weird about how nice his lawn looked? No, my data shows that some people must have been born full-grown. It’s the only explanation.”

  Jack considered the theory. It somehow made sense.

  He looked over at his mom’s minivan.

  “You might be right, Mike,” he said. “No kid would have ever said, ‘One day, when I have enough money to buy any kind of car I want, I’m going to buy one that looks like a giant loaf of bread.’”

  “My dad’s car looks like a turd,” Mike said. “I mean, why would you do that? He’s seen all of the other cars ever made, and he still went with the one shaped like a turd.”

  By later that afternoon, they had run out of Mr. Wallace stories and had accepted the fact that Monday was going to be a boring day that would seem to last for weeks.

  Jack had just found the right balancing point so that he could sit on his bike with the kickstand down and his feet up on the handlebars, when Maggie Dooley rode past on her lavender bike, which looked exactly like if you crossed a cupcake with a girl pony.

  Maggie had a dusting of freckles across gloriously pink cheeks, and bright auburn hair that was always immaculately brushed, although when she rode her bike, most of it was hidden under her helmet.

  Jack wanted to wave at her every time he saw her, but something always stopped him.

  But things change.

  Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was because the day was moving so slowly, or maybe he was so completely overwhelmed by cheeks and lavenderness that he just couldn’t help it.

  For the first time ever, Jack waved at Maggie.

  And then he looked away before he saw how she reacted.

  “Mike,” he whispered urgently. “What did she do?”

  “She waved back.”

  “Was it like a friend wave or a more-than-a-friend wave?”

  “What would a more-than-a-friend wave look like?” Mike asked.

  “Like maybe she giggled a little or, like, waggled her hair?” Jack said, flipping his head a bit to demonstrate what hair waggling might look like.

  “Why didn’t you watch for yourself?” Mike asked, annoyed. “What difference does it make anyway?”

  For Jack, it made a lot of difference.

  For him, Maggie had just changed his saggy-beach-ball day into a roller-coaster day. He didn’t know why she had that effect on him, and Jack wondered if it was difficult for her to always be that pretty. He thought that maybe being that pretty all the time might actually hurt, like straining to lift a tremendous amount of weight, or hold in a fart. Not that he believed she did that—fart, that is—but if she did, it would probably sound pretty, like a jingle bell or flute. Maybe a harp. He also wondered how Maggie made him think about stupid creepy things like that, and he made himself stop, but not before concluding it was probably a flute.

  Maggie parked her bike in the garage and put her helmet carefully on the seat.

  “Hi, Mom,” she called out as she came in the side door.

  Her mom was on the phone and took a break from the conversation only long enough to say, “Look at your hair. Do you want it to look like a bird’s nest? Can’t you do something with it?”

  “It’s from the bike helmet, Mom,” she said. “The one you always tell me to wear. See, when I wear the helmet, then it makes a mess of m—”

  Her mom
had already turned her conversation back to her friend on the phone.

  “Oh, her hair is just a tragedy. A catastrophe. All over the place. Like a haystack in a tornado.”

  Maggie hated being talked about that way, but protesting would only result in an argument. The easiest thing to do was to go and brush her hair.

  She walked up the stairs to her room.

  Maggie’s room was lavender, but not merely the lavender of her bike. It was Super-Lavender. It was the lavender like the frosting that tiny fairy bakers use on the precious little cakes they give to itty-bitty girl pixies to congratulate them on how cute they are. Her room was exactly that color.

  Not that Maggie chose the color. She didn’t even like it. Her mom chose it for her, and bit by bit, more lavender stuff was added—lavender sheets, lavender drapes, lavender carpet, and a lavender lampshade. The color reflected off everything in such a way that anybody standing in her room looked as if they had a bad violet sunburn.

  Maggie looked all over for her hairbrush and couldn’t find it—until she glanced out the window and saw her little brother, seven-year-old Sean, doing something with it out in the backyard.

  “Sean!” she yelled as she thundered down the stairs, scrambled out the door, and ran into the backyard.

  “What are you doing with my brush?”

  “I’m brushing the lawn,” he explained.

  She looked at his work. The three-foot-wide path of neatly brushed grass snaking around the backyard suggested that he had been doing it for quite some time.

  Maggie yanked the brush from his hand.

  “Look what you did to my brush,” she yelled. It was filled with clumps of dirt and grass, and the bristles were stained bright green.

  “But look how nice the lawn looks,” Sean said, somewhat offended that Maggie failed to appreciate how hard he had been working.

  She noticed several little grass ponytails and a little patch held in place with one of her barrettes.

  “Okay, maybe the barrette didn’t work out as good as I thought it would,” Sean admitted.

  Maggie stormed inside, slamming the door behind her.

  “MOM!!” she yelled.

  Her mom hung up the phone.

  “Don’t come in here screaming unless the house is burning down,” she yelled back at Maggie. “Do you want the neighbors to think that we’re a bunch of maniacs that the police have to come and take away? Is that what you want?”

  “Look what Sean did to my brush,” she said, waving the evidence angrily at her mother.

  Sean burst in ready to defend himself.

  “I was only brushing the lawn,” he said.

  Maggie’s mom stood for a moment with her hands on her hips. Then she started giggling.

  “Brushing the lawn!” she repeated. “Oh, Sean—you really crack me up.” She gave him a big hug, looked at the brush, and started giggling again. She reached for the phone.

  “I have to call Alice and tell her this one.”

  Maggie’s mouth fell open. “You’re not going to punish him? At least yell at him?”

  Her mom glared at her.

  “Maggie! He’s a little boy. He doesn’t know any better.”

  “He’s only five years younger than I am. You would have yelled at me five years ago.”

  “Just go wash the grass out of it, Maggie. It’ll be fine,” her mom said, and started giggling again. “Brushing the lawn …”

  Maggie began stomping out of the room.

  “Hey, Maggie,” Sean said.

  She didn’t feel like hearing an apology from him at that exact moment, but at least an apology was something.

  “Don’t forget your stupid barrette,” he said, flipping it at her. He had carefully entwined a worm around it.

  She made her nastiest face at him just in time for her mom to turn around and see.

  “You want your face to freeze like that?” she snapped.

  “Faces don’t freeze!” Maggie shouted just before turning down the hallway.

  “They do, too!” her mom yelled. “Kids make ugly expressions like that, and their faces freeze. Happens all the time! They have them lined up in the emergency room.”

  Maggie flopped down in her chair and threw the brush in the trash. She stared angrily at her computer screen.

  “All the time, huh?” she grumbled, and she started searching online for examples of kids’ faces freezing in ugly expressions.

  And she ran search after search right up until dinnertime.

  “Because I said so, that’s why,” Mike’s dad sighed.

  “How is that a reason?” Mike protested. “I only want to do a little gaming before dinner.”

  Mike’s dad had a lot of rules. He had rules about bedtime, even on days when Mike didn’t have to get up early in the morning. He had rules about how much time Mike watched TV, even though he, himself, wasted hours and hours watching golf and the news and other things nobody cared about.

  And the rules kept on coming, every day, like he was making them up as he went along. And to Mike, it seemed the only reason his dad could ever give him for the rules was this:

  “Because I said so.”

  And Mike’s response was always “How is that a reason?”

  “Drop it, Mike,” his dad said. “No video games right now. No TV either. Do something else. Read a book.”

  “Can I read a book about video games?” Mike asked, his face posed in a smug sort of gotcha expression.

  “Sure,” his dad said, replacing the look on Mike’s face with one of pure disbelief.

  “So you’re saying that I can read about a video game but I can’t play one?” he squawked.

  “Of course.”

  “Dad, that makes no sense. First, you’re against video games and then you’re for them? How does that make sense?”

  His dad was trying to watch the news, and Mike had taken a position directly between him and the TV. “Because I said so. Now move out of the way. And get your hair out of your eyes. It looks ridiculous like that.”

  Mike decided to take a stand, and he folded his arms defiantly, shook his head to make his bangs cascade even farther down his face, and remained standing directly in front of the TV.

  His dad exploded from the chair and threw open a cabinet next to the TV. He grabbed the game controllers and shook them at Mike.

  “You want to act like a brat? You’ll get these back when I think you’re ready. Now go wash your hands for dinner.”

  Mike stormed into the bathroom and washed his hands sloppily.

  “How is that fair?” he complained angrily. “All I wanted to do was play a few stinking minutes of video games!”

  Jack stared at the fish sticks on his plate. He had only taken a little nibble of one, and he could feel his mom and dad staring at him as they slowly chewed their food.

  Dad broke the silence. “Why do we have to go through this every single night at dinner? What’s the problem, Jack?” he said.

  “No problem,” Jack said.

  “Why aren’t you eating your dinner?” his mom demanded.

  “I don’t like fish sticks,” Jack said.

  “Of course you do,” she said. “You’ve been eating them since you were a baby.”

  “Then I guess I must have eaten all I’ll ever need by now.”

  “Sit there until you finish them,” his dad said.

  Jessica smiled like a chimp at Jack. “Yeah, you sit there until you finish them,” she repeated.

  “You stay out of this,” Dad barked.

  “I love you, Daddy,” she said.

  It was a feeble attempt, but one that occasionally worked. Dad smiled at her and she smiled sweetly back. She then dutifully picked up her plate to carry it into the kitchen, and as she passed Jack, she grinned at him again, possibly even more chimp-like than before, and that image of her mocking, chimpy face lingered with Jack for quite a while.

  Time passes slowly for a person staring at a plate of fish sticks, and Jack’s mind began
to wander: Why did they call these sticks? When they make them out of chicken, they call them “fingers.” Why don’t we serve other animals in finger form, especially the ones that actually have fingers? And most significantly of all, if parents really want you to eat your dinner, why don’t they just serve food they know you like? How simple is that?

  Jack pushed the fish sticks around on his plate. He smushed the canned peas into something that looked like green clay and stirred the mashed fish into it. He began to carefully swirl in the squooshed peach slices until his entire plate looked like something that might remain behind in an alien’s egg after it hatched.

  With the side of his fork, he began sliding it all into a mound in the center of his plate, which he built higher and higher into a magnificent little heap of pure yuck.

  “You just about done?” his dad asked him, making Jack jump. He had been standing behind Jack, watching Mount Revolting take shape.

  “No,” Jack muttered. “I have about two more hours to go on this before it’s perfect.”

  His dad sat down. “Look, Jack,” he began, and his voice didn’t sound all “daddish.” He sounded more like one regular person talking to another regular person.

  “I know fish sticks aren’t your favorite. They’re not my favorite, either,” Dad said.

  “Wait a second,” Jack said, plunging his spoon straight up and down into his plate of gunk. “Are they Mom’s favorite?”

  “Nope. And your sister doesn’t like them much either.”

  “Dad. Listen to yourself. They are NOBODY’S favorite. You and Mom are in charge. Why the hell wouldn’t you have at least SOMEBODY’S favorite?”

  Jack’s mom walked in and picked up on Jack’s loose use of the word hell. Then she got a good look at her dinner sculpted into a disgusting lump of smushed goo.

  Dad tried to calm things down with a big, broad smile, but it just made his face look like something that somebody had hurriedly carved into a pumpkin.

  “Jack! Go upstairs. That’s it. That’s it,” she howled as she followed him to the staircase. “Go upstairs and stay in your room!”

  Jack went to his room. He hated being sent off like that, but at least dinner was over—for him, anyway. He could hear his mom downstairs. This wasn’t completely over for her.