The Life of Ty

by Lauren Myracle

  Also, my recitation. I haven’t done any of it. And a pet for Teensy Baby Maggie. I’m her big brother, and I made her a promise, and I need to keep it.

  I’m actually ready for bed when Dad comes to tuck me in. Sometimes Dad tucks me in, and sometimes Mom, and there are pluses and minuses to both. But tonight it’s Dad, and he’s surprised to find me already in bed with the covers pulled up to my chin.

  “Whoa,” he says, sitting on the edge of the mattress. He lifts the covers. “You’re already pajama-ed up. Good man.”

  I shrug.

  “Did you brush your teeth?”

  I huff at him—though I am not the Big Bad Wolf—and he sniffs my minty breath.

  “Impressive,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  “So what are we reading, partner? Toy Dance Party or Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute?”

  I sigh. Dad is the smartest man in the world, and I like his shirts that are nice and soft, even if the buttons sometimes dig in when he hugs me. He uses deodorant (I will, too, when I’m old), and it’s called Axe. Mom tells him it makes him smell wonderful. I think it makes him smell safe. Maybe “wonderful” and “safe” are the same thing?

  “Could we talk instead?” I say.

  “Sure. What about?”

  I look at him. I want to talk about Lexie. I want to tell him about the terrible thing that happened, but also how I fixed it, and how it ended up not being terrible after all. Just a red mark on Lexie’s leg, and nowhere near as bad as the bruise on her head.

  “Ty?” Dad says. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. I reach for his hand, and he wraps his fingers around mine. His skin is warm. “I have a friend—well, kind of a friend—and do you know what she told me?”

  “What?”

  “That she never gets in trouble, and that her parents never yell at her. And her name is Breezie. But I don’t believe her. Do you?”

  “That her name’s Breezie, or that she never gets in trouble?”

  “Ha-ha. Her name really is Breezie. But every kid gets in trouble sometimes, and every parent yells sometimes. Right?”

  “Do I yell?” Dad asks.

  “Well . . . no. But you have a stern voice, and you use that when I’m bad.”

  “Hold on,” Dad says. “Have I ever told you you’re bad, Ty?”

  “Okay, not when I’m bad, but when I make bad decisions.” I frown. “Do you think Breezie has never ever ever gotten in trouble, for real? Do you think her parents have never yelled at her or been stern with her?”

  “Hmm. My guess is that every kid gets in trouble at some point, because nobody’s perfect. And if a kid does get in trouble, I’d hope the kid’s parents would make sure there was some kind of consequence. Otherwise, the parents wouldn’t be helping the kid learn about right and wrong.”

  “What if the kid already knows right and wrong?”

  “Sometimes it’s a lesson that needs to be learned again and again, I’m sorry to say. Even for grown-ups.”

  So what happens when grown-ups mess up? I almost ask. Who yells at them, or uses a stern voice, or makes sure they get a consequence?

  I decide not to, because out of nowhere an odd thought pops into my brain. Maybe, sometimes, a person can do a bad thing and not have to get in trouble. Maybe the person can learn the right and wrong part all by himself.

  I feel lighter, as if an elephant had been sitting on my chest, but decided to get to its feet and lumber off.

  “Okay,” I tell Dad.

  “Yeah? No more questions?”

  “Just one. Can I get a puppy?”

  “You cannot.”

  “I knew you would say that. How about a hyena?”

  “No again.”

  “How about a platypus? How about if it’s for Baby Maggie and not me?”

  “And that’s strike three. You are officially out.” He flips off my light. “Love you, Ty.”

  “Love you, too, Dad.”

  He leaves, pulling my door halfway shut behind him because that’s the way I like it. His feet go bum bum bum on the stairs. The rain goes drum drum drum on the roof. I stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling until my eyelids grow so heavy I can no longer keep them open. I drift off thinking a little about Lexie, and her cool high-tops, but also about getting older, and what I might be when I’m a grown-up. How, when I’m a dad, I’ll say yes to getting a dog, but no to getting a hyena.

  Probably.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I wake up thinking about rainbows, and the reason why is because Sandra is shaking my shoulder and saying, “Ty! Wake up! There’s a rainbow!”

  “Huh?” I say. My bed is cozy, and my covers make a fort around me. I like it here.

  But.

  Sandra.

  Sandra!

  Sandra does not usually wake me up. Usually Sandra sleeps later than me, and when she does get up, she does girl things with makeup and her hairbrush and perfume that squirts out of a pretty glass bottle. She uses deodorant, too—like Dad—but hers is called Dove.

  “Come look,” Sandra says.

  She grabs my wrist, and I slip out of bed and yawn as she leads me to my window. She kneels and puts her arm around me. She’s opened the blinds already.

  “See?” she says.

  Outside, there are trees, and above the treetops is a pale blue sky. It shimmers the way new skies do. But where’s the rainbow?

  Sandra places her hands on the sides of my head and aims me to the right.

  Ohhh. My heart swells. I know the colors by heart—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—because Sandra taught me the “name” trick, which is Roy G. Biv. I can’t tell the difference between indigo and violet, and also Winnie told me “indigo” got kicked out, but I don’t care. I just like rainbows.

  “I thought you’d like it,” Sandra whispers, putting her arm around my shoulders and hugging me.

  “I do,” I whisper back.

  • • •

  It’s a happy start to the day. It makes me feel . . . well, like a bigger Ty than normal, and when I get to school, I walk straight over to Lexie. My stomach is jumpy.

  “I have something to say,” I tell her.

  She stops coloring the numbers on the fake money she’s making. Lexie loves making fake money. She cuts up construction paper and draws her face in the middle and writes the number 5 on each corner, or 10 or 100. “I’m going to be rich!” she likes to brag, and then she throws her head back and laughs like a crazy, cackling rich person.

  So far, she just has a lot of fake money.

  I move my weight from one foot to the other. “I’m going to say it now—the thing I want to say. But I don’t want you getting wild. Okay?”

  She doesn’t look at me. She’s probably mad because of how our playdate ended yesterday, because it wasn’t the greatest. I walked her to the door when her mom got there, because that’s the rule. I said, “Thanks so much for coming,” because that’s the rule, too.

  She didn’t say, “Thanks so much for having me,” though.

  On the other hand, she also didn’t tell on me for squishing her leg with the electric chair.

  On the other other hand, I didn’t tell on her for grabbing me around the neck and choking me once she was free from the chair. One minute I was standing on the stairs next to her, and the next minute—bam!—Lexie had me in a choke hold and wouldn’t let go. I tried to pry her off, but Lexie is strong.

  Then she added in the neck-pinch-of-death that Taylor taught us how to do during sharing time one day. He taught us step-by-step, because he knows karate. “I think that’s enough of that,” Mrs. Webber told him, but he kept talking even as she steered him back to his seat.

  “The neck-pinch is a real karate move, people!” he said. “It can kill a three-hund
red-pound man, and I mean it!”

  And Lexie did the neck-pinch-of-death on me!

  I said, “Stop!”

  I said, “You are going to kill me!”

  She kept doing it anyway. She did it for fifteen seconds, which was a close call, because I’m pretty sure it only takes thirty seconds before you’re a goner. I yelled and yelled, and I was SO MAD when she let me go that I almost hit her.

  I didn’t, but I felt scared afterward. Keep yourself safe, keep your friends safe, keep your school safe. Those are the rules at Trinity, and I think they’re good rules for everywhere. Like, instead of “school,” you could say “house” or “swimming pool” or “park.”

  But Lexie didn’t keep me safe, and I almost didn’t keep her safe. Later, I realized I’d dug little moons into my palms with my fingernails. That’s how hard I’d squeezed my fists.

  Anyway, when her mom picked her up, she left the house without saying a word.

  There are words I need to say now, though. I make myself say them before I chicken out.

  “I’m sorry for yelling yesterday,” I say.

  She holds still. Even her shiny hair holds still. Lexie and Breezie both have shiny hair, but I like Lexie’s better.

  “I’m sorry for yelling, and that your leg got hurt, and . . . yeah.” I feel stupid standing here. I think she should say sorry, too. She should at least say “apology accepted.”

  Instead, she goes back to coloring her fake money. It makes me mad, but I don’t want to be mad again.

  “Well, that’s all,” I say, “except I think it was a good learning experience for both of us. Don’t you?”

  She doesn’t nod or shake her head. She just keeps coloring her stupid money.

  I walk away, but before I get to my desk, she says, “I’ll check your loose tooth for you, if you want.”

  I pause. Last week, Taylor accidentally whammed me in the mouth with his elbow, and for a few days, I could wiggle my tooth with my tongue. For a few days, I thought, Yay! Tooth fairy, here I come! But my tooth doesn’t seem nearly as loose anymore, so I guess my gums must have tightened up again.

  I go back to Lexie. She pats the floor, and I drop to my knees.

  “Open up,” she says.

  I do, and she wiggles the exact right tooth. She pulls her hand out of my mouth and wipes her fingers on her jeans.

  “It’s not even close,” she says. “Sorry.”

  I slump.

  “You could ask Taylor to hit you again,” she suggests.

  I glance at Taylor, who’s stabbing holes in his reading folder with a pencil. His shirt says CRUNCHY.

  “No thanks,” I say.

  “Or I could hit you,” Lexie says, but before I even have time to frown, she says, “Kidding. Kidding! But at lunch, I’ll find you a stick to bite on. Biting a stick will make it loose again.”

  “It will?”

  “I’m pretty sure.” She purses her lips, then picks up the ten-dollar bill she’s made. No, it’s a one-hundred-dollar bill, with Lexie’s face smack-dab in the middle.

  She flutters it at me. “Take it. Sheesh!”

  It’s a very good fake one-hundred-dollar bill. I transport it carefully to my desk and put it inside.

  Then I remember my manners and go back and stand above her. “Um, thanks.”

  “Yeah-yeah, sure-sure,” she says, hard at work on a new one. “Just don’t spend it all in one place, kid.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  After school, I go on errands with Mom and Baby Maggie. Mom calls it a “date” since it is kind of just the two of us, since Maggie doesn’t talk yet and is still in her cute houseplant stage (except when she cries), but really it is just errands.

  That’s okay. I like the way the dry cleaner smells and how the lady pushes a button and vroooom! All the clothes on their hangers move closer like a giant centipede with swishy legs.

  I like the bank because I like putting my elbows on the counter and JUMP-ing up so that my weight is on my forearms and my feet are dangling off the floor. The bank lady scowls at me—there is a sign that says PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR CHILDREN ON THE COUNTER—but Mom doesn’t make me get down, because she didn’t put me there. I put me there myself. So, ha. I would rather not be scowled at, but I would also rather not stop dangling.

  Our last stop of the afternoon is the mall, which is huge and filled with grown-up stores, and I’m worried Mom is going to want to go clothes shopping for herself. When she goes clothes shopping, it is b-o-r-i-n-g. I have to sit in the dressing room while she puts on clothes and takes off clothes and puts on clothes and takes off clothes. Sometimes there are fun-ish plastic tags on the floor to collect, and once I found a whole bunch of staples, but still. It’s not a free-choice activity I’d ever pick.

  “Mom, no shopping,” I tell her when she pauses outside a window display. The mannequin is wearing a scarf. Scarves are dumb. “We’re here to buy Dad a belt, remember?”

  Dad has a work trip coming up. He needs a belt. I don’t know why, except I guess to hold his pants up.

  I pull her along three other times from clothes, one time from high heels, and one very firm time from the makeup area. “Mom, no,” I say in my stern voice.

  Then, after we buy Dad a brown belt, we pass a kids’ shoe store. On a shelf-thing right inside the door is a pair of black high-tops, just like Lexie’s, only better! Lexie’s black high-tops are sparkly. These black high-tops have paint splattered all over them. White paint and red paint and green paint and blue paint, dribble-dribble-drop-drop over every inch of them!

  “Mom!” I say, stopping dead still.

  Mom, who is pushing Baby Maggie in her stroller, halts. She looks alarmed. “Ty?”

  I grab her arm. I bend my knees and pull on her, and then I quit because she’s told me how much she doesn’t like it when I do that. So I don’t pull on her, but I don’t let go of her, and I say, “Mom-Mom-Mom, can I please get those shoes? Please-please-pretty-please? Because I need new shoes! And I am a growing boy! And those are really good shoes which will make me run faster and also have excellent posture, even though I am already the straightest-standing boy in my class, and yeah! Please? Please?”

  She opens her mouth. She’s about to say, “Sorry, Ty-bug, not today. We’re not here to shop for you.” I can tell she’s about to say that, and I pull on her again—oops—and make a begging face and say, “PLEASE?!!”

  She pushes her hand through her hair. She looks like she needs a nap. Teensy Baby Maggie’s squeaky toy falls on the floor, and I dash and get it and hand it right back to Maggie, even though she doesn’t even play with squeaky toys yet. I smile at Mom very cutely.

  “Sure,” she says.

  My eyebrows fly up. “Really?”

  “If they have them in your size, and if you don’t ask for anything else. Deal?”

  “Deal!” I say.

  They do have them in my size, and they are suh-weet, and I wear them out of the store. I put my not-nearly-so-cool old shoes in the new shoes’ box. I dance around Maggie’s stroller.

  “You just did a very non-random act of kindness,” I tell Mom, feeling bouncy. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “You’re welcome,” Mom says. “Take care of them. They were expensive for a seven-year-old’s pair of sneakers.”

  “High-tops, Mom. And I will, and thank you again, and you don’t have to buy me anything for a really long time.”

  “Hmm,” Mom says.

  “You don’t. I mean it. Not for a whole month! Not until”—I think for a second—“August first! Okay?”

  “This way, Ty,” Mom says, and I jump and spin and follow her toward the end of the mall that connects to the parking garage. “And, for the record, August first is more than a month away. Much more.”

  “Wow,” I say, impressed by how nice I am.

&nb
sp; We pass the pet store, and I run over and press my forehead to the window, cupping my hands around my face. “Mom!” I say. “Can I get a snake? Please? I will be the one to take care of it, I promise!”

  “No,” Mom says.

  “A ferret? Can I get a ferret? Look how fluffy they are!”

  “No ferrets, no snakes, no pets at all,” Mom says.

  “But—”

  “I thought you weren’t going to ask for anything until August first.”

  Oh, I think. Poop.

  • • •

  At home, I discover something bad. Actually, I discovered it in the parking lot of the mall, but I couldn’t do anything about it until now. And here is the something bad: My new shoes are too big! I thought they fit at the store. I really did. But suddenly they don’t!

  There’s NO WAY I’m telling Mom, though. Instead, I put on a bonus pair of socks, and guess what? Now they (almost) fit perfectly! They still hurt a little because of slip-sliding on my heels and maybe making blisters, but I’m tough. I will deal with it, and my feet will grow, and . . . yeah.

  In the kitchen, while Mom fixes dinner, I do jumps and kicks around the table. I add in karate chops and karate noises, too. Kai-yah! Cha-cha-cha! KER-PLAM!

  “Ty,” Mom says.

  “I’m protecting you!” I say.

  “I don’t need protecting. I do, however, need someone to set the table. Would you set the table, please?”

  “I’ll protect Baby Maggie, then,” I say. It’s the least I can do since I wasn’t able to buy her a ferret or an ocelot. (Since SOMEONE didn’t let me.)

  Mom shoots me a look.

  “I’ll set the table, too,” I quickly promise.

  But first, I do a twirl-about with a flying lunge. “Flak-schweeky!” I cry, flinging out my arms to block Baby Maggie from flying aliens or escaped mushrooms.