by Lisa Yee
I haven’t heard that story. Mr. Thistlewaite and I settle in as Yin-Yin begins, “There was a time when I was told it would be impossible for me to fly. But no matter what anybody said, I knew that they were wrong. I could fly if I wished hard enough….”
I listen to Yin-Yin’s amazing story of what the Earth looked like from the sky. If I could fly, I’d take Emily with me and we’d fly away from Digger and from summer school and from my parents. We’d fly through the clouds, across the desert, and over the ocean. And when we got tired, we’d have a picnic on the top of a mountain and then take our time deciding where to go next.
Yin-Yin looks happy when she talks about flying. I imagine her soaring with her arms spread out. I know my parents think she’s getting senile, but I think she’s just becoming more of who she is — a free spirit.
AUGUST 15, 3:10 P.M.
It’s almost time to meet Millicent at the library. I hope she shows up today. Right now I am standing in front of Dad’s dresser. I like looking at his stuff when he’s not around. I pick up the cuff links he wears to client dinners. They are heavier than they look. I examine his watch and try it on. He has two. One with a black band and one with a brown band. He must be wearing his black one today.
Dad has three bottles of cologne. I take off the tops and sniff them. They all smell good. I spray myself with all three. How much are you supposed to use? This much? I give myself a few extra sprays to be safe.
3:30 P.M.
Millicent is waiting for me at our table. She looks really upset. Is it my hair? I bet she hates my hair. Oh man, if she hates it, then Emily might hate it too. I can’t believe I let Mimi talk me into getting this dumb haircut.
I sit down, and before Millie can open her mouth I cut her off. “I know what you are going to say.”
She looks surprised. “You know?”
“Yes, and it’s not my fault.”
“I never said it was your fault,” she replies. “What are we going to do now?”
“We?” I ask.
“Yes, ‘we.’ If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t be in this mess.” She scrunches up her forehead. “What is that smell?”
I shift in my seat. I can smell something sort of woodsy, bakery, gas station-ish.
“How did you find out?” Millie continues, waving her hand in front of her nose. “Did Emily call you?”
Whoa, wait … what does Emily have to do with my hair? “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Emily,” she spits. “About the fact that Emily knows that I am the one tutoring you.” Millicent gasps for air, then adds, “Stanford, you stink!”
Emily knows? Emily knows that Millicent Min is tutoring me?
“How could you tell her?” I yelp. “Why did you do it? You swore on your mother’s life! What happened? Did you have a massive brain fart or something???!!!”
Mrs. Martinez signals for us to keep our voices down, even though there is no one else in the library.
“I didn’t tell her.” Millicent pinches her nose. “She found my certificates and diplomas. I just thought you’d want to know. I’m doing you a favor, okay?!!!”
I slump back like I’ve been shot. “Now I bet she hates us both. It’s all your fault.”
“No, it’s your fault,” Millicent shouts. “Hey, is your hair purple, or is it just bad lighting in here? What’s going on with you?” Before I can answer, she cuts me off. “I wanted to tell Emily the truth, but noooo, you wouldn’t let me!”
Almost an hour drags by. Millicent and I are still arguing when Emily walks in and heads straight toward us. Millie and I glance at each other. She starts to stand but sits back down really fast, like her legs have buckled.
“Stanford. Millicent,” Emily says, giving us each a formal nod. Her eyes are not sparkling at me. Instead they throw off poisonous darts that attack every inch of my body. “I don’t have much to say to either of you,” she continues, “other than I hope you had fun with your little charade.”
I open my mouth, but Emily raises her hand to stop me. She reaches into her purse and pulls out The Outsiders. “Here, you can have your book back,” she says, tossing it in front of me. She takes one whiff in my direction, then backs away. “Even though you raved about it, I don’t think I want to read it anymore.”
Millicent looks at the book in amazement, then at me. Emily turns to her. She takes off her necklace. “I think this belongs to you,” she says, slapping it down on the table. “I hope the two of you have fun together making up lies. Good-bye.”
Then she is gone. Poof! Just like that. I wonder if Millicent feels as bad as I do. For once she isn’t saying anything. This is all her fault and she isn’t even apologizing for ruining my entire life.
“You’re such an idiot,” I shout. I push everything off the table and storm out of the library.
“You’re such a cretin!” Millicent Min calls after me. “And your hair looks stupid and you stink!”
I don’t care that she’s yelling at me. I don’t care that I have no clue what a cretin is. I don’t care about anything anymore.
10:07 P.M.
My life is lousy. On the Lousy Meter with ten being worst, I rate a fifteen. Digger’s blackmailing me. Then Millie just had to go spill her guts to Emily. And now my father’s finally decided to notice my haircut.
“You look like a delinquent.”
“I do not, I look cool.”
“Purple hair! What will people think?”
“They will think I look cool,” I mutter.
“Can you wash it out? What can we do about this?”
My mother speaks up. “It’s not so bad, Rick, a lot of kids are doing interesting things with their hair these days. At least his hair isn’t pink. I think Stanford looks very independent.”
Mom winks at me and I give her a weak smile.
“Didn’t you ever do something crazy when you were a kid?” she chides him.
“No,” my father replies, shaking his head. “I was a good kid. I always did what my father told me to do.”
I guess I’m not a good kid.
Instead of sleeping, I stay up and listen to the stupid sappy songs on the radio as I knit. I can hear Mom and Dad fighting about my hair. Maybe if I didn’t live here anymore, they’d stop fighting. They don’t fight as much about Yin-Yin now that she’s gone to Vacation Village.
I heard Mom tell Dad that his mother is really improving. The doctor said, “Now that she has a place of her own, she probably feels less anxious. Plus, all the stimulation is really helping her get out of the rut that she was in.”
I’m in a rut. Does that mean I belong at Vacation Village? Do they let kids live there?
I wonder what Emily is doing right now. The songs Lavender is playing are about breakups and lost loves. A man who didn’t pay enough attention to his wife suddenly found the time to call Lavender and tell the entire world what a rotten husband he was. He cries as he asks Lavender to play a song.
“Gee, Dennis,” Lavender says softly, “breaking up is hard to do, isn’t it?” Then, get this, she plays a song called “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”!
It’s unreal. How bad I feel is unreal. I’m still not sure what I am knitting, but I don’t want to mess it up. I want to make sure there’s at least one part of my life that hasn’t unraveled yet.
AUGUST 16, 9:03 A.M.
“Good morning, Stanford,” Mr. Glick says, smiling. SSSSpy shoots him the death glare. If it weren’t for him none of this would be happening with Emily or the A-Team or my dad. This isn’t a good morning. It is a bad morning. A bad day. A bad life.
“Stanford!” Teacher Torturer is still standing next to my desk. What does he want now? “Your homework, please.” His hand is out, waiting.
I stare straight ahead and do not answer him.
“I see,” notes Mr. Glick before moving on to the next student.
4:30 P.M.
Stretch and I are losin
g by a million points. And not just because of my pact with Digger. I’m off my game. I’ve never been off my game like this before.
AUGUST 17, 10:12 A.M.
My father is reading a postcard from Sarah. There is a picture of a sunset over the shore on it. He frowns and hands it to my mother, who reads it, bites her lip, and hands it to me.
The postcard says:
“Matt?” my mother asks no one.
“‘I’m almost forgetting to study’?” remarks my father. “She thinks that’s funny?”
“It is funny,” I tell him. “Why is it always so important to you that we study all the time?”
“You’ve got to think about the future, Stanford,” Dad lectures. “Just to float through life not knowing where you’ll end up will lead you nowhere.”
Why do grown-ups worry so much about the future? Why don’t they worry about what’s happening right now instead, like how everyone’s always mad at each other?
Sometimes I worry that my parents are going to get a divorce. Stretch’s parents divorced when he was little, and his mom remarried. His dad remarried too, and now Stretch has stepbrothers and stepsisters he barely knows. He only sees his real dad a couple times a year and says that it’s weird. Even though his stepdad is really nice, Stretch once told me that he feels guilty about liking him so much.
Lately my father’s been like a ghost. You never see him but can hear him bumping around the house at night. He tries to be quiet so as not to wake us. I don’t care if he wakes me up. I want him to wake me up. He can come talk to me anytime. I have locks on my door to keep my parents out. But if they ever tried them, they’d find out that the locks don’t really work.
At Vacation Village they have a security guard. I’m not sure if he’s there to keep the bad people out or the old people in. I wish he’d do something about all those ladies who always try to pat me on the head. Next time they try that, I think I’ll bark at them. Arf! Arf! If they’re going to treat me like a dog, I might as well act like one.
When Yin-Yin first got sent to Vacation Village I promised to get her out of there. She hasn’t brought it up lately, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want me to. Just because a person doesn’t talk about something doesn’t mean it’s not important.
AUGUST 19, 9:17 P.M.
I called Emily three times today. When the machine answered, I hung up. When her mom answered, I hung up. And when Emily answered, I panicked, then hung up.
“Don’t despair,” Lavender says. “True love always wins in the end.” I hope that what Emily and I have is true love. I hope that’s what my parents have too.
This morning, when Dad asked me how summer school was going, I answered, “Arf, arf, arf, arf!!!” Then, before he could lecture me, I ran off to school.
Later Teacher Torturer asked me what a proper noun was. I just looked at him and barked. The other kids snickered and I stood up and took a bow. Teacher Torturer did not look amused when he said, “Rover, see me after class.”
I expected a lecture. Instead, Mr. Glick told me, “We’re coming down to the end of summer. How you do in the next couple of weeks will determine your grade. You know that, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Stanford? Is everything all right?”
“Arf.”
“I noticed that you didn’t turn in your homework.” Mr. Glick didn’t sound mad. He sounded disappointed. “You were doing so well. Stanford, you’ve really come a long way this summer. I was so proud when you read The Outsiders.”
I started to get choked up. “Arf,” I said.
“Woof,” he replied.
“Can’t talk now,” I told him as I bolted out the door.
“Stanford, may I talk to you for a moment?” It’s my mom. She’s still dressed in her business suit even though it’s nighttime. I had to make my own dinner — three peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. I put potato chips in the last one to give it some crunch.
“What?” I turn off Lavender and open my door.
“Stanford, did you bark at your father this morning?”
“Arf.”
“Does that mean yes?”
“Arf, arf.”
“Well,” she says, looking like she’s trying not to smile, “that’s not how we communicate in this family.”
“How do we communicate then?”
Mom gets serious. “I’m not sure,” she tells me. “I wish I knew.”
AUGUST 20, 3:45 P.M.
I don’t know why I bother to show up at tutoring. All Millicent Min and I do is glare at each other. I still can’t believe she told Emily our secret. She claims that Emily figured it out. I say that if she really didn’t want Emily to find out she should have hidden her stupid certificates better.
Dad’s going to be so angry if he finds out I’ve stopped doing my homework. He still has a math test I took in second grade. I got an A-plus on it. He holds the test up whenever I fail and says, “You got an A-plus once, you can do it again.”
I peaked in the second grade.
“I told you we should have told Emily the truth earlier,” Millicent is carrying on. “But noooooo, you wouldn’t listen to me, would you? You were too interested in playing with plastic balls at McDonald’s. I told you she’d find out sooner or later. I told you —”
I get up and leave before Millicent can tell me one more thing.
AUGUST 21, 2:03 P.M.
Last night I called Emily again. I don’t know what to say, but I like hearing her voice. “Hello? Hello, is anyone there?” It makes me feel good, if only for a few seconds, before I hang up.
I’m coming up on the basketball court when I see the Roadrunners huddled together. Something’s weird. Stretch, Gus, and Tico are all slouching around wearing their Roadrunners caps. Digger looks annoyed.
“What’s up?” The guys look at each other and start snickering. I panic. Maybe Digger told them. Oh man, this is it. This is where I turn back into a nobody.
“Guess what?” Gus says.
“What?” I ask, hoping my voice does not crack.
“One, two, three!!!” Tico and Gus shout. The Roadrunners rip off their baseball caps and toss them into the air.
I don’t believe it. Is that for real? They have purple highlights! I begin laughing hysterically and soon the guys join me. All but Digger, of course. His hair is still the same.
“It was all my idea,” Gus says, tossing me a tube of Wash ’n’ Wear Hair highlighter dye. His hands are purple.
“You lie!” Tico cuts in. “It was my idea.”
Stretch grins as Gus and Tico pretend to strangle each other.
“Ladies, ladies,” Digger says. “Let’s stop fussing over our hair and start playing basketball.”
Stretch grabs the ball. He’s on my team. Digger and Tico start. Gus sits out with Joey and some girls who are watching us play.
Digger has the ball. He comes charging at me and almost knocks me over. He misses the net. Stretch rebounds and passes to me. I have a clear shot, but then I let Tico take the ball from me. He tosses it to Digger; Stretch intercepts and passes me the ball. I look at Digger, shoot, and miss. It kills me to do this. It was a shot I could have made in my sleep. But now that I’ve lost Emily, I can’t lose the Roadrunners too.
Digger rebounds and makes a basket. Tico high-fives him. Stretch throws his hands in the air in protest. I turn away.
We have the ball again. I start to make a layup but stop midway and pass the ball to Stretch, only I purposely throw it high. Digger elbows Stretch and makes another basket.
Tico hoots, “Way to go!”
Game’s over. We’ve been slaughtered.
Stretch just stands with his hands on his hips and stares at me.
Tico asks me, “Did you eat some bad ham or something? You weren’t yourself out there.”
“Yeah, what was with you?” asks Gus. “Digger was all over you.”
“Aw, leave me alone,” I say
.
“I know why Digger’s been doing so well lately,” Tico announces. Digger and I both face him. “It’s the shoes. It’s the BK620s. They’re finally kicking in, right?”
“Right,” Digger and I say at the same time.
“Maybe you could work with me on my bank shots,” says Tico.
“Sure,” I say.
“Thanks, Stanford. You can help too, but I was really asking Digger.”
“Oh yeah. Of course. I’m busy anyway. You know, work and everything.”
“Hey, Digger,” I hear someone call out. I glance around. It’s Joey. “Great game. Not many guys can score points off the mighty Stanford Wong!”
Coming up behind Joey are Marley and a couple of his friends. One of them is wearing a rubber Borg mask, even though it’s boiling outside.
I gotta get out of here. I’m about a block away from the park when someone taps me on the shoulder.
“Oh, hi, Stretch.” His forehead is all wrinkled, the way it gets when he’s worried. “I’m okay, just having a bad day.”
Stretch nods like he knows what I mean. We walk in silence, except for the sound of Stretch bouncing the ball. When we get to his house, I turn on the television while Stretch makes popcorn. Sesame Street is on.
Stretch hands me my own bowl. “Thanks,” I tell him, adding, “Your hair looks good purple. Hey, I wonder what color Digger’s hair would have come out if he added purple to it.”
This cracks up Stretch so much he spits out his popcorn. Some lands on me. I shove a whole handful in my mouth and spit it out at him like a machine gun firing. We keep this up as the TV kids leave the farm and wave good-bye to the animals. But when Ernie comes on and starts singing “Rubber Duckie,” we stop out of respect. That song’s a classic.
AUGUST 22, 4:15 P.M.
I wonder if Millicent Min still gets paid when all she does is sit and snarl at me. We have been having this stare-down for most of the hour. You’d think Millicent would give up, but nooooo, she’s too stupid to do that. So instead, we shoot each other evil looks that cancel each other out.
Finally an alarm beeps on Millicent’s watch. It is the most complicated watch I have ever seen. It even has a compass and calculator on it. What a nerd. We both get up and walk out without even looking at each other.
