Enter at Your Own Risk

by Henry Winkler

  “Whoa there, Mr. Rock,” I said. “I’m not actually in the Reading Gym. I mean, I’m in the Reading Gym, but not actually in the Reading Gym, if you know what I mean.”

  Zoe giggled.

  “It’s complicated,” I whispered to her.

  “You can say that again,” she said.

  After me, we went around the room and the other kids said what their school problems were. At least, I think that’s what they said. I have to admit that I was only half listening. The other half of me was watching Zoe. I noticed that she was a doodler, just like me. She spent the whole hour drawing lightning bolts all over the front of her notebook with a glittery purple pen. She was a leg shaker like me, too. Her knee bounced up and down like it had a motor in it.

  “Are you going to stay in Reading Gym for the whole ten weeks?” I whispered to her, just after a shy girl named Chelsea described how she had difficulty reading because she was dyslexic and reversed letters on the page.

  “Sure,” said Zoe. “But it sounds like you’re not staying. Too bad. We could have fun.”

  Hold on, ears! Did you just hear what I heard? She thinks we could have fun. Oh, yeah. Hank and Zoe. Zoe and Hank. Having fun.

  “Well, actually, I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing,” I said. “I mean, I told my two best friends that I’d do martial arts.”

  “And they’re counting on you?” Zoe asked.

  “Well, they’re kind of counting on me but not actually counting on me. It’s . . .”

  “I know,” Zoe said. “Complicated.”

  Wow, this girl really gets me. I mean, look, we’re already talking like we’ve known each other our whole lives.

  We listened for a minute while another kid, Brandon Clarke, explained his reading difficulties. When he finished talking, I suddenly heard my mouth whispering something that my brain hadn’t planned to say.

  “You know what?” I whispered to Zoe. “I’ve decided to stay here. I think Reading Gym will be much more fun than some old martial arts class. And besides, my friends have each other.”

  Was that me talking? The same me that had been looking forward to Tae Kwon Do for weeks? The me that couldn’t wait to execute roundhouse kicks and leap in the air like a pouncing tiger? Hank Zipzer, have you lost your mind?

  “I’m glad,” Zoe said.

  “You are?”

  “Sure, it’s nice that you want to improve.”

  “Improvement is my middle name,” I said.

  It is? the old me was saying to this new me. I thought it was Daniel.

  “What’s your last name?” she giggled.

  “Zipzer,” I said with a smile. “What’s yours?”

  “McKelty,” she said.

  The smile froze on my face like I had just swallowed an iceberg.

  “McKelty? As in McKelty McKelty? Like Nick McKelty?”

  “Yeah, he’s my first cousin.”

  Oh, no. This couldn’t be true.

  It was just my luck.

  I finally meet the blue-eyed, hat-wearing, learning-challenged, drum-playing, roundhouse kicking girl of my dreams, and can you believe it, she’s a . . . I can barely even say it . . . she’s a McKelty!

  CHAPTER 9

  NINE WAYS ZOE MCKELTY IS NOT LIKE HER CREEPY COUSIN NICK

  1. She does not have brown cookie crumbs stuffed in between her two front teeth and crusted around the corners of her mouth.

  2. She does not call me Zipperbutt, Zipperhead, or Zipper Doofus.

  3. She does not go around saying that her father is best friends with everyone from the Queen of England to every guy in the Baseball Hall of Fame, even the dead guys.

  4. She does not have a thick neck the size of one of those five-thousand-year-old redwood trees.

  5. Her breath does not smell like burning rubber.

  6. She does not lie about how she is the best at everything including things she has never even done like pole-vaulting, bungee jumping, and camel racing.

  7. When she laughs, she does not sound like a woodpecker with a stomachache.

  8. Oh, yeah, and the main way she’s not like Nick McKelty is this: She likes me.

  9. There, I said it. She likes me!

  CHAPTER 10

  “Absolutely no way, Zip!” Frankie said to me as we walked home from school that day. “Tell me you have not developed a wild crush on a member of the McKelty family!”

  “Listen to me, Frankie, she’s not like him. There is nothing about Zoe that is anything like Nick.”

  “Well, I think it’s sweet,” Ashley said. “Hank’s love is going to overcome the McKelty-Zipzer rivalry and turn Nick into a real sweetie pie.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, right there in the middle of the crowd of people shoving their way along Amsterdam Avenue.

  “Just a minute, Ashweena,” I said. “Who said anything about love? All I said about Zoe was that she is beautiful, nice, interesting, kind, funny, and totally awesome.”

  “Sounds like love to me,” Ashley said with a laugh.

  Unfortunately, just then, Papa Pete appeared about a half a block away, waving his newspaper in the air to get our attention.

  “Hey, kids,” he called out. “Wait up!”

  Let me just say that the only unfortunate thing about Papa Pete’s arrival was that it didn’t give me time to answer Ashley and tell her that I was definitely not in love. Everything else about him showing up was great, for several reasons. One, Papa Pete is extremely cool and it is always fun to see him. And two, he almost always offers to buy us a slice of pizza at Harvey’s, which is the best and cheesiest pizza in the whole world.

  “Let me buy you kids a slice of pizza,” Papa Pete said when he reached us. “I happen to know Harvey has a fresh pie coming out of the oven right about now.”

  What’d I tell you? That Papa Pete is the best.

  We walked over to Broadway, went inside Harvey’s, and sat down on four stools at the counter. I ordered a slice with pepperoni, Frankie ordered meatballs and extra cheese, and Ashley ordered mushrooms and sausage. Papa Pete ordered coffee and a crumb donut.

  “So how are my grandkids?” Papa Pete asked. Even though only one of us is officially his grandkid, he likes to include Frankie and Ashley in the family, too.

  “Did you hear the news?” Ashley said as Harvey brought her a paper plate with the steaming hot slice of mushroom-sausage pizza. “Hank is in love.”

  “No kidding,” Papa Pete said, brushing a few donut crumbs off his furry black mustache.

  “I am not!” I said.

  “Who’s the lucky girl?” Harvey asked, putting my pepperoni slice down in front of me.

  “She’s no one,” I answered. “There is no lucky girl.”

  “She’s Nick McKelty’s cousin,” Frankie added.

  “Oh, that must be Joe McKelty’s niece,” said a man with a red beard sitting next to Papa Pete. “I went to my high school prom with her mother.”

  Great. Now the whole city of New York was participating in my love life. I mean my not love life.

  “Joe mentioned the girl to me,” Harvey chimed in. “Tells me she plays the drums. Sounds like a spunky girl you’ve picked for yourself, Hank.”

  Attention! Is there anyone else in Harvey’s who would like to comment on my relationship with Zoe McKelty?

  Apparently there was. A woman wearing a knit cap with two big pom-poms hanging down by her ears spoke up.

  “Valentine’s Day is coming up, honey,” she said to me. “Buy her some flowers.”

  “Yeah,” said the busboy, who had a tattoo of a peacock on his arm. “Chicks love roses.”

  “Forget roses,” said the lady with the pom-poms. “Go orchids.”

  “I’ve had better luck with roses,” the tattoo guy said. “Stick with roses, little dude.”

  This had gotten totally out of control. The whole restaurant was buzzing about something that hadn’t even happened. I had to take some action.

  “Thanks for all your advice and good wishes,
” I said in a voice loud enough so everyone could hear me, which, by the way, wasn’t that loud because Harvey’s only holds about twenty people. “But I’m not in love. I just met this girl-type person and she just happens to be a very nice girl-type person and that’s all there is to it.”

  Good. That put an end to that.

  Harvey brought over a lemonade and put it down in front of me.

  “Here you go, Romeo,” he said, giving me a wink.

  What was going on here? Harvey had never winked at me before. Thank goodness Papa Pete came to my rescue. He could tell that I was definitely not comfortable with all the love talk.

  “So, kids, let’s change the subject,” he said. “Tell me what happened in school today.”

  “School was regular,” I began quickly, “except we have Mr. Rock for a substitute for one whole month.”

  “Where’s Ms. Adolf?” Papa Pete asked. “Not sick, I hope.”

  “She threw her back out doing the rumba,” Ashley said.

  “Funny, she doesn’t seem like the rumba type,” Papa Pete said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “She seems more like the give-everyone-a-D type.”

  “Well, you can’t judge a book by its cover,” Papa Pete said. “Inside, Ms. Adolf is obviously quite passionate and romantic.”

  Frankie, Ashley, and I almost spit out our pizza in unison.

  “That is so gross, Papa Pete,” I said. “That is the grossest thing you have ever said.”

  “Immediate change of subject,” Frankie said. “Let’s move right on to telling you about after school. No chance of Ms. Adolf getting all passionate cropping up there.”

  “Fine,” said Papa Pete, polishing off his crumb donut. “What happened after school?”

  “We’re taking Tae Kwon Do,” Ashley added. “Today was mostly a lecture on its history and stuff, but next week we’re going learn some basic moves and in a couple of weeks, Principal Love said we are going to participate in some exhibition matches.”

  “We are?” I said. Wow, maybe I left Tae Kwon Do too early. That was sounding like fun.

  “You’re coming back, aren’t you, Zip?” Frankie said.

  “Me? Coming back? Um . . . yeah. Sure I am.”

  That’s weird, Hank. Didn’t you just tell Zoe that you were coming back to the Reading Gym?

  “Good,” Frankie said, “because I want you to be my sparring partner. We’ll show them how it’s done.”

  As I ate my slice of pizza, I wondered if it was possible to clone yourself and be in two places at once. I was going to have to look that up on the Internet the minute I got home.

  CHAPTER 11

  When I got home, I raced into our apartment and dashed for my dad’s laptop without even taking my jacket off. I didn’t think that you could successfully clone yourself, but you never know what those scientists are coming up with. I figured it was worth a quick check on the computer. Unfortunately, my dad had already parked himself at the laptop that we keep on the dining room table, and he was hogging the screen as usual.

  “Excuse me, Dad, but would it be okay if I look something up?” I asked as politely as I could.

  “Sure, Hank, right after I fill in this eight-letter word for knee scab.”

  My dad has always been a crossword puzzle maniac, but lately he’s gotten obsessed with online crossword puzzles. He competes nonstop with other crossword puzzle maniacs around the world, like in Africa and the South Pole and stuff.

  “How was karate?” he asked, without looking up from the screen.

  “It’s Tae Kwon Do,” I answered. “And it was fine.”

  “You learn any fancy moves?”

  “Not yet. Principal Love is the sensei, and he’s still giving us the history of martial arts. Next week we start the real stuff.”

  You probably noticed that I didn’t mention to my dad that I was thinking of doing the Reading Gym instead of Tae Kwon Do. It’s not that I was trying to lie to him. Not exactly, anyway. I just figure there are some things he doesn’t need to know. Like anything that has to do with my performance in school. If I had told him that I was taking the Reading Gym because Mr. Rock recommended that I get special help, he would’ve gotten all upset and wanted to go talk to Mr. Rock about what’s wrong with me. And then he’d start checking my progress every five minutes and supervising my extra work and telling me a million times a night how he thinks I should be working harder. I know because I’ve been through this with him before. I also know that the fastest way to get him to change any subject is to talk about crossword puzzles.

  Which I immediately did.

  “Does ‘scrape’ work?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at the screen as if all those little boxes and letters and numbers made any sense to me at all.

  “Think about it, Hank. Scrape is only six letters.”

  Hey, I thought it was great that I came up with a word at all. When you spell like I do, you can’t be too picky about the number of letters involved.

  “Um . . . what about ‘icky skin’?” I suggested.

  “That’s two words, Hank. Not one.”

  “Besides,” an annoying voice said from behind me, “skin is technically not a scab. Everyone knows a scab is composed of dried blood and the remains of dead skin cells.”

  This cheerful piece of news could only have been delivered by one person in my family, my know-it-all sister, Emily.

  “Actually, while we’re talking scabs, we can’t leave out the black scab, which is a potato disease that causes mildew-type growth to spring up on the skin of the common potato.”

  I didn’t even have to look around to see who was talking now. There is only one person on the planet both boring and disgusting enough to be fascinated with potato-skin scabs, and that would be my sister’s bony little boyfriend, Robert Upchurch.

  “Robert, you are so interesting,” Emily said to him. “Imagine, I didn’t know a thing about black scabs.”

  “Let’s go look them up in the encyclopedia,” Robert said. “Maybe there’ll be an illustration of one we can trace and color in.”

  I am not kidding you. This conversation actually took place in my own apartment and was heard by my very own ears. Sometimes I wonder how Emily and I are related. One of us is a mutant throwback, I’m just not sure which one.

  As Emily and Robert got up from their Scrabble game and hopped off into nerd land to read all about potato disease, Emily suddenly stopped and turned to me.

  “Oh, I forgot,” she said. “There was a phone call for you. A girl.”

  I tried not to look too interested, but I noticed that my heart sped up a little.

  “Did she leave a name?” I asked, twirling the belt on my gi with what I hoped looked like a who-cares kind of attitude.

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  Then she waited. That puny pigtailed punk was going to make me ask. Can you believe it?

  “Would you care to share that piece of information with me, Emily?”

  “Let’s see,” she said, with a wicked little grin. “I’m not sure I remember.”

  That did it. I lunged for her, but she’s quick and dodged out of the way before I could reach her.

  “Save me, Robert,” she laughed. “Hank’s attacking me!”

  Yeah, like Robert could ever save her. The guy is as skinny as a flagpole and the only muscle he has in his whole body is in his tongue. And he got that one from talking so much about such attractive topics as black scabs and dust mites.

  “Stop teasing your brother, Emily,” my dad said. “The proper way to deliver a message includes date of call, time of call, name of caller, and any and all message to be communicated.”

  “Okay,” Emily said, stifling a giggle. “February ninth, four forty-four P.M. Zoe McKelty called. She said to tell you she loves you.”

  My dad stopped typing. The living room grew very quiet.

  I couldn’t see my ears, but I’m pretty sure they turned bright red, along with everything else on my face.

  “Sh
e didn’t say that!” I said. “Did she?”

  Emily burst out laughing, and Robert did, too. When Robert laughs, it sounds like a hippo snorting up river water.

  Now that my dad knew it was a joke, he started typing again.

  “Emily!” he said, not looking up from his screen. (He must have had a brainstorm on the knee scab front.) “Deliver the proper message.”

  “Okay, okay,” she answered. “Zoe McKelty called and said to tell you that you forgot your notebook. And your pen. And your root-beer flavored gummy worms.”

  That is so typical of me. Why can’t I remember anything? Here I am trying to impress this girl with how cool I am, and what do I do? Leave my gummy worms behind.

  Hank Zipzer, how uncool can you be?

  “Is this young lady in your karate class?” my dad asked.

  “Tae Kwon Do, Dad. And yes, she is.”

  My voice cracked a little on that last part because if I told him she was in Reading Gym then I’d have to bring up the whole subject and that wasn’t going to happen. Again, I knew I had to change the subject as quickly as possible.

  “Did she leave her number?” I asked Emily.

  “Maybe,” Emily answered. Then she whispered so my dad couldn’t hear. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “My dessert every night for a week,” I whispered back.

  “Wow,” said Emily. “Someone’s really in love.”

  What was it with this love thing? I mean, a guy can make a friend, can’t he?

  I took Zoe’s number that Emily had written down on a Post-it note, grabbed the phone, and headed into my room. Without thinking, I dialed the number. I should’ve thought about what I was going to say before I dialed, but I didn’t, so when Zoe answered, I just kind of sat there on my bed, holding the phone.

  “Hello,” she said. “Is anyone there?”

  “It’s me,” I finally stammered.

  “Hi, me,” she said with a laugh. “Me who?”

  “Me, Hank Zipzer.”

  “Oh . . . you mean Hank Improvement Zipzer.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said Improvement was your middle name. Remember?”

  I laughed. The problem was, after I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. That happens sometimes when I get nervous. I either laugh too much or talk too much or eat too much or bite my nails too much.