by Susan Shreve
“Good news,” I said.
“Not exactly, Ben,” my mother said. “Then I saw Mr. Baker. After the meeting with all the parents, during which we heard what each class had done this year and how you were all ready to go on to the sixth grade, Mr. Baker asked if your father and I could remain afterwards, he needed to talk to us. In front of everyone, he said that.”
“I hate Mr. Baker,” I said.
“Mr. Baker wanted to talk to us about Trout and the influence he’s afraid Trout will have on your school performance.”
My father sat down with his second beer.
“What do you mean, influence?” I asked.
“Trout has had real problems in other schools, Ben. Real problems.”
“Like he’s a juvenile delinquent.”
My father hesitated.
“Exactly,” my mom said.
“We don’t know that, Jane.”
“I know it,” Mom said.
“Enough.” My dad got up and spilled his beer, which had been sitting on the edge of the couch, kicked the newspaper, which was lying on the floor, and asked my mother to come into the kitchen, he wanted to talk to her.
My parents fight. Not all the time, not even very often, but they do fight. I’ve never been worried about their fighting because it’s over before I have a chance to worry. But they usually don’t fight about me.
I decided not to go in the kitchen, where they were talking, and not to call Trout, which is what I wanted to do, of course. So I went into my bedroom, got into my pajamas, turned out the light, and lay on top of the covers, waiting.
Someone must have seen us and told Mr. O’Dell, I thought. Maybe Mr. Baker even guessed that we were “up to no good,” as my dad would say. Maybe the librarian or even Mickey Suter, who I had seen go into the boys’ room after I had left, and then I forgot to watch the bathroom door to see if he came out while I was standing on the stairs with Trout.
What Trout and I did wasn’t terrible. It caused some confusion. Of course, someone had to pick up the balls, but that turned out to be all the fifth graders, so it wasn’t a big deal. Ms. Pratt fell down, but she’s only about twenty-two and she’s soccer coach after school and I’m sure she falls down all the time. Besides, she didn’t get hurt.
What I’m trying to say is, we weren’t criminals.
I was waiting for one of my parents to come into my bedroom to kiss me good night. I hoped it would be my father. I love my mother, but she gets insane when I have a problem in school. That doesn’t happen with my dad. I wanted him to say what he usually says: “Listen, Benjamin, no big deal.”
But as it turned out, it was my mom, and worse than that, she had been crying.
“Hi,” I said quietly.
“Hi, Benjamin.” She sat down beside me on the bed.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said.
She didn’t reply. In the light from the streetlights, I could see she was looking away, looking out the window across the street to the market where we get our groceries. It was beginning to seem as if she was going to stare at the market all night when she turned to me and took my hand and said we’d talk about it in the morning.
“What I want you to understand, Ben, and I know it’s hard to understand, but you must make your own decisions about what you’ll do. You can’t be influenced by other boys, like Trout, who want a partner in crime.”
“I did make my own decision, Mom,” I said.
“I don’t know Trout and he might be wonderful. He might become a very good friend to you. But at the moment, he has come to Stockton with a very bad reputation.”
“He told me that.”
“Tonight, some of the parents at the meeting said they did not want their children to be around Trout. They said he was too odd. He isn’t polite to the teachers and he’s got that foolish question mark on his chin just announcing that he wants to cause trouble and he’s looking around for pranks like the Super Balls. These parents, and there were several of them, think he’s becoming a destructive influence and they want him put in the other section of fifth grade or sent into special education.”
“He’s not a destructive influence, whatever that is. He’s really nice, Mom. Really nice.”
“I’m glad he’s nice, Ben, but it worries me that the parents of the fifth graders will begin to think of you and Trout as a team.”
“We are,” I said. “A team is exactly what we are.”
She got up from the bed and put her hand on my forehead, but she didn’t kiss me, and then she left the room.
“When’ll Meg be home?” I asked, but she had gone and I already knew the answer.
I don’t know how it happened, but by May Day, when we have this big ceremony at Stockton and all the girls dress up and dance around the maypole, I was in tutoring every day. Even during the maypole dance, I was sitting at a desk on the second floor, listening to the music outside and trying to concentrate on what the tutor was saying about fractions. Trout was too, except we had different tutors.
Every day got to be the same. I’d meet Trout at the corner before the first bell. Then we’d go to homeroom and then to classes, where one teacher or another, all except Mr. Worth in science, who seemed to like Trout and me, would have something to say about us that wasn’t what we wanted to hear. During recess, we’d have tutoring. The same during lunch. Eat quickly and meet the tutor in the library. No time for recess then either. And after school, we’d have tutoring some more at the place downtown where I’ve gone since second grade. Since we didn’t have the same teachers for tutoring, Trout would be one place bored to death and I’d be another bored to death, and then we’d have a few minutes to talk before the next class. Some days I thought I would go crazy.
Which brings up another problem. I had to see a psychologist. This happened after the Super Balls. The principal and Mr. Baker and my mom and my dad had a meeting and somehow it was decided that once a week, on Friday afternoons after school, I’d talk to Dr. Fern. I didn’t have any interest in talking to Dr. Fern. I had nothing to say to him. But apparently that didn’t make any difference, since the plans had already been made for me to see him. So on Fridays I’d go to Dr. Fern’s office and sit in a chair across from him, and he’d ask me how I was and I’d say fine. And then he’d ask me what I meant by fine. Speaking of dumb questions. Fine means fine, right? And anyway, it was none of Dr. Fern’s business how I was.
Trout saw a psychologist too. A woman named Dr. Berriault, who had quite a lot of hair growing out of her chin, according to Trout. When Dr. Berriault asked Trout how he was feeling, he said, “Not so good.” In fact, he said, “I’m thinking of setting fire to Stockton Elementary some Saturday when I have nothing better to do.” As a result of that conversation, Trout saw Dr. Berriault three times a week after tutoring, which meant that most days he didn’t get home until six o’clock and he never even got to play sports or hang out or go to the drugstore for candy.
So it should have been no surprise that we decided to skip school on May 3 and go to New York. This time it was my idea.
We were sitting on the steps behind the school and it was a Tuesday, raining and cold. We weren’t even talking. After an hour and a half of tutoring, plus school, plus a meeting with Mr. O’Dell about my behavior and a meeting with Ms. Pratt about my behavior, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even Trout.
“My dad’s out of town again,” Trout said.
“So does that mean you’re staying home alone?”
“Yup,” he said.
“Creepy,” I said. “I mean, I’d be afraid, I think.”
“No reason,” Trout said. “I live in an apartment, fourth floor, no one’s going to try to get in. And my dad has this woman who lives next door that he kind of likes named Ginger, who checks in on me like every hour.”
I’d never been to Trout’s apartment. We’d been friends for a few weeks and I hadn’t been to his place or met his father and I didn’t really know anything about him except he was an o
nly child and his mother lived in Hawaii with her boyfriend.
“So maybe we can go to your place,” I said.
“To do what?” Trout asked.
“You know. Hang out.”
“Not today,” he said. “I’m not allowed to have people over when my father’s not there. It’s the only rule I have except no smoking.”
“So if we skipped school tomorrow, we couldn’t go to your place, right?”
Trout gave me a thumbs-up.
“Skip school, huh.”
“Why not?” I shrugged.
“You’re right. It isn’t a lot of fun around here.”
“And what difference does it make whether we go to school or not? We’re still going to be dumb.”
“Right. We’re the dumbest kids in the fifth grade. Maybe we’ll end up being zookeepers. That’s what my dad says to me when I get bad grades. ‘You’ll end up as a zookeeper if you’re not careful, Trout,’ he says.”
“What does a zookeeper do? Take care of animals?”
“Not a chance. A zookeeper shovels manure.”
“Sounds fun.”
Trout was drawing on the blacktop with a piece of chalk that he’d taken from homeroom. “Stockton sucks” is what he’d written.
“So? Whaddya think?” I asked.
“I think we should skip school and take a train to New York.”
New York. I hadn’t even thought of New York. I’d been there, of course. Once a year as a treat around Christmas, Meg and I go to New York with my parents, and sometimes we go to the Bronx Zoo, where I want to go, or FAO Schwarz, where I used to want to look at toys when I was little, or ice-skating at Rockefeller Center, where Meg likes to go, or to an art gallery for my mother and a play for my father and then we come home extremely late. I usually fall asleep on the train.
I like New York a lot but I’ve never thought of going there by myself. I mean, I’m only eleven and not exactly a world traveler.
“Have you ever been to New York?” I asked.
“Nope,” Trout said. “I don’t even know how far away it is.”
“An hour.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“We could leave for school and meet at the corner like we usually do and then walk to the train station, so we’d be in the city by nine-thirty maybe and then hang out till about three and come back.”
“Cool,” Trout said.
I could tell that he was a little nervous about the idea.
“How long is your dad going to be away?” I asked.
“Till tomorrow night.”
“So it’d be easy. My mom and dad go to work when I leave for school and they work all day till six and then they get groceries and come home and we eat dinner. They’ll never know the difference.”
“So you wouldn’t have to be back till six?”
“Right,” I said.
Trout sat on the step with his chin in his hand.
“What would we need to do?”
“Call in sick.”
“They’d recognize our voices, don’t you think?”
“I can disguise my voice,” I said.
“What about tutoring? How many tutors do you have tomorrow?”
“Two,” I said. “Ms. Afram for reading and Mr. Bart for math.”
“I only have one,” Trout said.
“Tutoring will be easy to cancel. We’d call the office and no one will know our voices.”
“What about Meg? Do you think she’d call for us?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to think about it.”
“Maybe you should ask her first and then call me when you get home,” Trout said. “It makes me feel weird to call myself.”
On the way home, I thought about skipping school. It made me happy just to think about it, to imagine meeting Trout at the corner and walking to the train and getting on and getting off in New York City like we were regular grown-ups with jobs in the city and no time for school. And then I thought I could actually say I was sick and my mother would call school and notify the tutors. Maybe I could close the bathroom door and pretend to throw up. Who would know the truth? And even my mom understands you can’t go to school with the stomach flu. Then I’d have to call her a couple of times during the day so she’d think I was at home. And Meg could call in sick for Trout. I’d tell her Trout’s father was away and could she call to say that Trout had the stomach flu too. As long as Meg and Mom didn’t talk. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, I thought as I walked up the steps to our apartment. But it had possibilities.
No one was at home when I got there so I had time to call the station for schedules on New Jersey Transit into New York City. There was a train at 8:20, which got to New York at 9:20, and one coming home at 4:17, so we wouldn’t be cutting it too close in case my mother decided to come home from work early.
I called Trout.
“It’ll be easy,” I said, and told him the plan.
“That sounds okay,” he said. He sounded a little more excited than he had.
As soon as I hung up from Trout, the telephone rang and I thought it was Trout calling me back, but it was my mom at the pharmacy.
“I’m so glad you’re there, sweetheart,” she said.
As soon as she calls me sweetheart in that maple-sugar voice, I know she’s going to say something I won’t like.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment for you this afternoon and I called the school to tell you about it, but you’d left already.”
“I’m not sick.”
“I know you’re not sick. Dr. Fern wants to see you.”
“I see Dr. Fern once a week on Friday, Mom. I’m not going to see him any more than that. Already I see him too much.”
“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” my mom said, and when I started to protest, I heard the click. She had hung up the phone.
Dr. Fern sat in a chair in one corner of the room and my mother sat on a couch with me and my father sat in a chair next to the couch.
“How come I didn’t know about this?” I asked.
“We just found out, Ben,” my dad said.
“What did you just find out?”
“Your parents called me after the school called them this morning,” Dr. Fern said. He’s a small man, not much bigger than me and kind of funny-looking with a gray crew cut and a pointy beard and cowboy boots. I don’t like him and I especially don’t like the way he tries to be so incredibly pleasant, listening to me carefully as if I’m the most interesting boy he’s ever met. Which I know I’m not. He’s faking it. He’s paid to fake it. Paid a lot, according to Trout.
What Mr. O’Dell had called my parents about was my uncontrollable behavior. I just don’t get it. I feel completely in control of my behavior, which I think is excellent. Well, okay. No worse than anyone else’s. At least no worse than the boys’. The girls act like girls, so they’re always “picture perfect,” as my dad would say. But according to Mr. O’Dell, I interrupt classes, call attention to myself, annoy the other students. Mr. O’Dell goes on and on.
“There’s a medicine called Ritalin,” Dr. Fern was saying.
“I know about Ritalin. I won’t take it.”
“I think it would be good for you to try it, just for a few weeks, to see if it helps your concentration.”
I didn’t know why he was worried about my concentration since I wasn’t at all worried about it, and already my mother and father had said they were “dead set against Ritalin.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Just hear me out, Ben,” Dr. Fern said.
“Nope,” I said. “Either I can concentrate without medicine or I’ll end up as a zookeeper.”
“Why a zookeeper?” my mother asked as we were leaving Dr. Fern’s office.
“Maybe I like to shovel manure,” I said.
My dad laughed and ruffled my hair and said this whole nightmare would be over in a heartbeat, and not to worry about the medicine or anyth
ing else. Everyone had learning disabilities. Just look at him.
On the way home, my mother got the prescription for Ritalin at her own pharmacy and handed me the pills with the information about them, which pharmacists have to give a person when they order medicine. So I opened the package and read the information about side effects from Ritalin sitting in the back seat of our car.
“‘This medicine is a central nervous system stimulant,’” I read out loud. So you see I’m a perfectly good reader if I’m not nervous in front of a teacher or the kids in my class. “It’s going to cause a lot of problems for me. Like, listen to this. They don’t know if it’s excreted in breast milk and I’m going to have to cut out drinking alcohol.”
“Going to be pretty tough on you, especially the breast milk,” my dad joked.
“And it’s going to make me sick. Listen to this— ‘check with your doctor if you experience a rash, itching, fever, joint pain.’”
“Benjamin, they have to write everything on the information leaflet. These things almost never happen.”
“‘Weight loss, irregular heartbeat, blurred vision,’” I went on.
My dad couldn’t help himself. He was sitting in the passenger seat looking out the window, trying to hold in his laughter.
“‘Seizures.’ Now seizures is something I really need, since I have so much trouble concentrating.”
“Oh, Ben. Get a grip,” my mom said.
“‘Involuntary muscle movements or changes in mood or personality.’ Is that what you want? A brand-new Benjamin Carter, new personality, new mood. Mom.”
“We’re dropping the subject for now,” my mom said. “I’m getting a headache.”
She always gets a headache when she doesn’t like the conversation.
But my parents did decide we wouldn’t talk about Ritalin for a couple of days. We’d wait until I calmed down, which wasn’t exactly about to happen. Then, as my dad said, we’d discuss the “pros and cons.”
“Some guys I know flush their Ritalin down the toilet,” I said. “Which is what I’ll do, just so you know.”
After dinner, I called Trout.
“I’m skipping tomorrow. No question. It’s a done deal,” I said.
