by Tween Hobo
“Guess you learned that lesson I was trying to teach you,” said Jim.
“Which one? I still suck at fractions.”
“Self-reliance.”
I blushed, honored at his praise, and lifted my chin slightly, trying to achieve the look of a noble mouse sailing a tiny birchbark boat.
“And there’s something else I wanted to tell you.” Jim coughed. “I been thinkin’ on your lesson too. The one you were tryin’ to teach me. And I think I get it now. And I’m ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“Ready to see my brother.”
I swear I couldn’t have been more excited if you’d told me Justin Bieber had successfully been cloned. Suddenly, all the pieces of my strange journey seemed to add up and amount to something. I was going to reunite two long-lost brothers. I was going to Heal What Was Broken in This Land. I was going to be Mr. Brink’s favorite . . . for life. This was even better than when Hot Johnny kissed me. This was like getting kissed by US president number 12, Zachary “Z-Tay” Taylor, himself.
But before I could whoop and holler to an appropriate degree, my new manager, Todd, had gotten in the way. He squeezed in between us, wrapped his arm around me, and panted heavily into my ear. “There’s two million on the table. Two mil, baby. And all you have to do is talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“Oh, you know,” exhaled Todd. “Stuff. Your time on the road. Your favorite colors. The pact of silence.”
I pulled away sharply. “What do you mean, the pact?”
“I mean, oh, just, come on. We’re talking two million here. All yours if you tell them what went on down there.”
“But—we swore a holy oath. I can’t betray my fellow miners.”
“Come on—oath shmoath. One of these guys is gonna crack. And if it’s you, then you walk away with the cash. Hey—it doesn’t even have to be true. You can make something up! It just has to be entertaining.” Every part of Todd seemed to be wiggling. His goatee was all over the place.
Jim could tell something was wrong. He broke in, “Hey, kid. Who is this guy?”
Todd sized Jim up through his tinted glasses. “Excuse me, who are you?”
Jim said, “I’m her friend.”
Todd said, “Well, I’m her manager.”
I decided to go with my gut. “No, Todd. You’re fired.”
Todd goes, “What?!”
I turned to Jim. “Jim, do you think you could handle being my manager?”
Jim goes, “Reckon I could do that, sure.”
I said, “Great. Diane Sawyer gets ten minutes. Then we’re outta here. We need to get home for the holidays.”
Todd, who was dripping sweat, goes, “This is so unprofessional!”
Jim goes, “Do you want me to kill this guy? With my bare hands?”
I go, “No, that’s not necessary,” and led Jim over to the ABC News tent, where Ernesto and the rest of the miners were getting foundation applied. The interview was over in a flash, and then Jim and I ran for the hills. Dang, it feels great to be back on the road with my BFFL!!!! And we’re almost home!!!! L’chaim!!!!
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/13
Have my people call Honey Boo Boo’s people, set up a meeting in a ditch.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/14
If Hannah Montana was based on me, it’d be called Billings Montana and there’d be a heck of a lot more mining involved.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/15
None of the other stowaways on this steamboat have gotten to first ;)
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/16
For a stowaway on a steamboat it’s safer to be a boy. So my hair is tucked up in my cap and I’m whining about Minecraft.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/17
Stowed away on this steamboat, waves lulling me to sleep, just like the sweet wayback of my mom’s Kia Sorento.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/18
Heard one of the other stowaways say something about “child slavery”; now pulling into harbor, squeezing my stress ball.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/19
Pulling into harbor, about to be sold into child slavery, but I won’t go! Mutiny! Mutiny and then hopefully some snorkeling, I say.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/20
Chugging smuggled Four Loko in preparation for steamboat mutiny.
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/21
Might as well call that ship the HMS Suck It. #EnufAlready
Tween Hobo @TweenHobo
12/22
Stumptown Jim’s an atheist, but me, I’m a #Belieber. IS IT CHRISTMAS YET??!?!?!!
I’m gonna light up this town with my Christmas spirit! And with my light-up Heelys.
December 23
* * *
Charlottesville, Virginia, aka Home Sweet Home (well, actually, School)
Jim and I emerged from the woods behind the school today at around 11:30 a.m., just as the James Monroe Upper Elementary Winter Community Sparkle Event was getting under way. (You could call it a Christmas pageant, if you wanted to probably get sued.) We snuck into the gym through the back doors just in time to catch the end of the fifth grade’s performance, a stirring dramatization of the labor conditions of elves. And then it was time for the sixth grade to go onstage—led by none other than my teacher, Mr. Jeremy Brink. Hearts!!!!!
As Mr. Brink ushered his class onstage (Tessa in the lead, wearing a knitted Jonas Brothers sweater and holding a red-and-green Kwanzaa kinara), I saw a wave of something like panic cross over Stumptown Jim’s face. “That’s him, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Jim. “That’s my brother. Shoot. I don’t know if I can do this.” He shrank backward, as if he wanted to disappear into the gymnasium wall.
“Sure you can!” I whispered, afraid he was going to bolt back out to the woods.
“Sshh,” said somebody’s mom, who was sitting in the back row of folding chairs. She turned around to glare at us, and so did a few other people who occupied various points on the parent-teacher-student triangle. I tried to make myself inconspicuous. And then Jim knocked over a giant rack full of basketballs.
The rack crashed to the ground and the balls went bouncing everywhere, and the entire audience twisted around to see what had happened. The Winter Community Sparkle Event was momentarily on hold. Tessa, onstage, caught sight of me all the way in the back, dropped the kinara, and shrieked. Mr. Brink stared.
We must have made quite a picture, me and Jim, with our bindles and our raggedy clothes—and quite a stench too. We would probably have been thrown out of the gym if not for the fact that I was famous now, and had been on TV so much over the past few weeks that everybody simultaneously recognized me. “Oh my God, it’s that poor little girl from the mine!” I heard multiple people say. “She’s a local!” said someone else. “She ran away from home!” “She ran away from this school!” “Who’s that guy with her?” “He looks like some kind of freegan!” “Who is he?”
Mr. Brink’s voice shot through the hubbub: “He’s my brother!” And he marched down off the stage and strode toward us. Jim looked supernervous. I saw his Adam’s apple bob a little.
The whole audience would gladly have turned their seats around and watched the scene that was about to take place between me, Mr. Brink, and Jim instead of the rest of the Sparkle Event, but Tessa, refusing to be outshone by my glorious return, struck up the band onstage. My former classmates rang their wrist-strapped bells and began a loud rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” The audience tuned in, but Mr. Brink paid no attention. He grabbed both Jim and me by the arms and led us out of the gym. I managed to turn around and stick my tongue out at Tessa real quick before we left.
* * *
In the sixth-grade homeroom, it was as quiet as paper snowflakes. Mr. Brink sat at his big teacher’s desk, and Jim and I sat at
two little desks in the front row, facing him. I felt like I was watching a special episode of a reality show about two brothers who haven’t spoken in fifteen years—or, actually, more like I was watching the uncut footage, before they edit it and make it entertaining. The Brink brothers’ real-life reunion could have used a lot more smash cuts and “Say whaaa??”–type sound effects. In its raw form, it was kind of excruciating. There was a lot of silence, or they would start to say something at the same time, and Jim would go, “You first,” and Mr. Brink would go, “Sorry”—at which point they’d fall mute again. Finally Mr. Brink got out a whole sentence: “I barely recognize you.”
Jim squirmed in his little desk. “I know. I look like hell.”
“No matter what you look like, it’s been fifteen years.” They fell into another long, awkward pause. Then Mr. Brink said, “But you do look pretty awful.”
Jim squinted and ran a finger through his beard.
Mr. Brink goes, “You look like an old porcupine.”
Jim stiffened. “Okay.”
I go, “Dang, Mr. B. You went there.”
Mr. Brink turned on me. “You don’t look so good yourself, kid. And you smell like garbage.”
“Don’t pick on the kid,” said Jim. “She’s been through the wringer, I’ll tell you.”
“I don’t think it qualifies as ‘picking on her’ to point out that she’s missed an entire year of school, and that her general appearance and hygiene level do not comply with this school’s expectations for our Winter Community Sparkle Event.” Mr. Brink was sounding like kind of a nerd. I was getting stressed out.
“I tried to school her some while we were on the road,” said Jim. “Did my best.”
“Oh, that’s great,” said Mr. Brink. “Maybe we can find a place for you in the parent-teacher-student triangle. Maybe we can just make that the parent-teacher-student-bum rectangle!”
The desk part of the little desk, which Jim had been gripping too tightly, now broke off in his hands. He stood up. “Seems like this was a bad idea. I’ll go.”
“Oh, surprise!” said Mr. Brink. “Shocker! Go. Go ahead. Go and leave. That’s all you ever do.”
Jim held up the little broken desktop like a shield in front of his chest. “You still haven’t forgiven me.”.
Now we were getting some drama. If I’d been the producer of this reality show, I’d have been stoked. But since I was not a producer and was in fact a child watching two grown-ups fight, I was just uncomfortable. I realized that on some level I had been expecting that as soon as Jim and Mr. Brink got in the same room, they’d put their wrists together so their matching bracelets would line up and mystical rays would burst out of them and they’d be enveloped in a Double Rainbow–style halo of siblinghood and happy-ending-ness. But instead, the room was full of hurt feelings and dicey family dynamics that were none of my business and also slightly nauseating. I liked to think of Mr. Brink as a cool role model, an icon, and here he was acting exactly as lame and bratty as I must have seemed when Evan first told me I wasn’t allowed in his room cuz his new friends were over. Then it hit me—the big, sad truth. Adults. They’re Just Like Us. I shook my head.
Mr. Brink wasn’t speaking again, and neither was Jim. So I intervened. “You guys, it’s Christmas slash Hanukkah. Slash Kwanzaa. And Jim came all the way back here to spend it with you. The past is the past. History’s important, but sometimes you have to let it go. What matters is family. What matters is love. That is what makes this country great.” I would have kept going, just desperately throwing off-brand Disney Channel moral lessons out there hoping something would stick, but Jim stopped me.
“The kid is right,” he said. “It’s Christmas. We got a lotta talkin’ to do. And I don’t want to waste any more time. I’d like to spend Christmas with you this year. If you’ll have me.”
“No,” said Mr. Brink.
Jim flinched. My eyes bugged out. No sound effects were heard, despite an obvious need for an exaggerated record-scratch.
“No,” Mr. Brink repeated, “what I mean is—Christmas is not enough.” He took a step toward Jim. “I need more than one day. I need you in my life. You’re my brother, man. I need you to stay. Here. In town. You can crash on my couch. I’ll help you get a job. We’ll figure things out. But just don’t leave again. Please.”
I gaped at Jim. Mr. Brink had really upped the ante. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Stumptown Jim gave up the hobo life and settled down here in Charlottesville. Would he shave his beard? Get a pair of khakis? Work at a bank or something? It was extremely difficult to imagine. Even now, just standing in this classroom, Jim had an aura of motion about him. I swear, if you listened closely, you could hear the echoes of trains running through him.
There was another bulky pause that we would need to edit out in post. Then Jim said, “I’ll think about it.”
Mr. Brink rubbed his eyes. “Okay. Good.”
Stumptown Jim goes, “I need some air.” And he walked out.
I did a little tap dance, like, mission accomplished, even though I wasn’t quite sure what had transpired. Mr. Brink hesitated, then put his hand on my shoulder. At which point the glass-paneled door burst open, and the entire sixth-grade class rushed in.
“Mr. Brink! Mr. Brink!” screamed Tessa, arms flailing. “Did she leave?! Is she back?! Where’s your brother?! What’s happening?!?! AAAUUUGHGHGHHGHGHHHH!!!!!” Tessa collapsed in a twitching heap below the whiteboard. All the other sixth-graders swarmed around me. I had to climb up on a chair just so I could breathe. Everyone was taking pictures of me with their phones and tweeting and texting about me.
“I thought you were dead!” screamed Emma, Tessa’s new second-best friend.
“I heard you went to jail!” yelled Kevin R., the second-grossest dude ever after Toothpick Frank.
“I heard you’re wanted in all fifty states!” Tessa moaned from the whiteboard area.
“Only forty-nine,” I said, #humblebragging.
Mr. Brink took control of the situation. “Okay, everybody, calm down. Our classmate here has been on a pretty crazy adventure, but all that’s behind her now. She’s back at school and she has a lot of catching up to do. Because this is the real world. Where we do our homework. Right? Back to reality. Okay.”
I didn’t consider that to be Mr. Brink’s most inspiring speech. The room suddenly felt very room temperature. A bell rang, and it was officially winter break. Everybody stopped taking pictures of me and started packing up their bookbags and zipping their jackets. Then I remembered something. “Wait!” I called out.
“What is it?” said Mr. Brink.
“The tiny turtle! Don’t I get to give him a name?!”
“He’s not our turtle anymore,” said Mr. Brink. “He stayed with the fifth grade.”
And I felt a kind of unaccountable grief.
* * *
Now I’m outside, in the school parking lot, waiting for my mom to pick me up. All the other kids have gotten picked up already, and the school doors are locked for the break. You’d think the kid who’d been missing for a year would be the one to get picked up first, but when I called my mom she was on the other line, and she said to just hang tight because she was on with a client and it would be a little while. I looked around for Stumptown Jim when I came outside, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Mr. Brink’s car is gone. I wonder if they’ll really spend Christmas together. I wonder too if my brother will be in the car when my mom shows up.
It’s freezing out here, but there isn’t even any snow.
Serena Van Der Hamster
This Christmas was good but not great. I got a hamster, but then I dropped her on the kitchen floor and she died. RIP Serena Van Der Hamster. This is her obituary:
Serena Van Der Hamster, 3 months old, of the Baltimore Van Der Hamsters, passed away this Christmas Day in Charlottesville, Virginia, after falling (okay, being dropped) from a medium height. Miss Van Der Hamster was the heir to a great fortune, namely, the cage, wat
er bottle, and wheel she inherited from her human family’s former pet, the much-loved, true-blue, no-fuss-no-frills hamster Bob (deceased). For the brief time she lived in our house, Serena was an active member of the community, tearing up no end of newspaper and pooping with abandon. With her golden fur and well-stocked food bowl she was truly a glamorous hamster and, it must be confessed, a bit of a snob. Indeed she refused to even be handled by her young owner and was generally quite rude and haughty. Still, she in no way deserved her fatal fall and was definitely not dropped on purpose. Funeral services will be held this evening in the backyard, where Miss Van Der Hamster will be respectfully buried in a neon purple Skechers shoebox. Music to be provided by an iPod playing Rihanna’s hit “Diamonds.” Shine bright, Serena. Like a diamond in the sky. You will be missed.
Nothing is as meaningful as a handmade Christmas gift. For example, a handmade DVD box set of Gossip Girl.
Christmukkah
* * *
Ever since getting trapped in the mine, Christmas is different for me. Because now I’d actually be psyched to get a lump of coal.
Something else is different now too. And I don’t mean that my brother says I’m allowed to go in his room again. (Well, technically, he’s not allowed to close the door of his room according to new rules set by my parents since he came back from rehab, but still.) It’s bigger than that. And I can’t talk about it with anyone.
