The Saturday Boy

by David Fleming

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Come on, Derek, that’s not necessary.”

  “They’ve been staring at me all day and I’m sick of it.”

  “They’re uncomfortable. They don’t know how to act or what to say around you.”

  “They did last week.”

  “Last week was different.”

  “But I’m still the same person.”

  “I know you are, Derek. And Ms. Dickson and the rest of the teachers and a lot of your classmates know you are, too. It’s just that some people—the ones who are doing the staring—do not. Not everybody deals with this sort of thing the same way and you have to allow them time to come to terms with it.”

  “No I don’t,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “I don’t have to allow them to do anything. It’s none of their business,” I said. “It’s not even any of your business.”

  He stopped walking but I didn’t. I walked faster.

  Then I started to run.

  * * *

  Play rehearsal went fine and afterward we all sat on the edge of the stage while Mr. Putnam gave notes to everybody. He said me and Violet’s scene was good but that I had to remember to let her lead me offstage when we exited. He also said I needed to project more and I nodded even though I didn’t really know what he was talking about.

  Then he reminded us that since we opened this Thursday, tomorrow and Wednesday’s rehearsals would be full run-throughs in costume, but I wasn’t worried. I was actually getting excited. Mom was going to be there and probably Aunt Josie was, too. I pictured them standing up and cheering for me the second the lights came up and they saw me onstage and I imagined the rest of the audience joining them.

  “I’ve recruited some students to assist you backstage with props and costumes and so forth,” Mr. Putnam was saying. “They’ll be new at this so please treat them with respect. Violet, Derek—two of them are girls from your class, I believe.”

  “Really?” said Violet. “Who?”

  “Let’s see, Ms. Dickson’s class…” Mr. Putnam picked up a piece of paper and looked at it over the top of his glasses. “Ah, here we go. Helping us from Ms. Dickson’s class will be Melissa Sprout and Marion—”

  Mr. Putnam sneezed suddenly and everyone jumped. Violet even screamed a little. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his coat and blew his nose into it, making a sound like a trumpet. His cheeks had gone red.

  “Mr. Putnam,” I said. “There’s no Marion in our class.”

  “Then who is Marion Pratt?”

  My heart sank, pushing whatever good mood I had right out through my toes. I remembered now, there was a Marion in our class. It just wasn’t a girl.

  “It’s Budgie, sir.”

  It had been the very first secret shared at the very first meeting of the original Secret Secret Club and I’d been keeping it for so long I’d completely forgotten about it until now, and now that I was thinking about it I remembered that was also the day he told me how he’d gotten his nickname. I’d asked him and since we were in the Fort of Truth he had to answer. It was one of the rules.

  “A budgerigar. A budgie bird,” he’d said. “Y’know, a parakeet?”

  Then he told me that when he was little he was always copying the sound of people’s voices and his grandmother thought it was adorable because it reminded her of a pet parakeet she used to have that did the same thing until one day it got out of its cage and the cat ate it.

  “So one time at dinner, she said, ‘Budgie, could you pass the rolls.’”

  “That doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Budgie, “it was during Thanksgiving dinner. So the whole family was there.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What was the bird’s name?”

  “Sissy.”

  I remember wanting to laugh really, really badly but not wanting to open my mouth until I was sure I wouldn’t.

  “Well,” I’d said carefully. “I’d say you got lucky.”

  * * *

  “Thank you, Mr. Lamb,” said Mr. Putnam, making a note on the paper. Then Violet said that since names were being corrected, Melissa Sprout would probably like to be called Missy instead, so Mr. Putnam made a note of that as well.

  “Mr. Putnam?” I asked. “Where did that list come from?”

  “The attendance office.”

  “The attendance office?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Putnam said. “Why? Are you wearing a wire?”

  “What? No. I’m just—it’s just that his mother is the only one who calls him Marion.”

  “Then she must have been the one to fill out all the paperwork at the beginning of the school year,” Mr. Putnam said. “Okay if I continue here?”

  I nodded slowly, a feeling of impending doom beginning to seep in around the edges of me. It was bad enough that I’d broken the Secret Secret Club’s only rule by sharing a secret with nonmembers and now I may have made it worse by talking about it. I needed to give them something else to think about instead.

  “I was born with a tail,” I blurted.

  I didn’t know if that was going to be enough for them to forget the Marion thing but I had to be sure. Me and Budgie might not have been friends anymore but a club was a club and what was said there was supposed to stay there.

  “And my middle name is Dorothy.”

  * * *

  I had trouble falling asleep that night even though I was tired. Someone had taken down the Apache helicopter. It was probably my mom but I just didn’t have the energy to ask her about it. I tried looking at a different model. I looked at the F-14 Tomcat. I looked at the Spitfire. I even looked at the B-52 Stratofortress but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t imagine myself flying any of them the way I could the Apache. I couldn’t imagine my dad at all. It was like I’d forgotten him.

  I rolled onto my side and looked out the window. The moon was cold. The yard shivered. I pulled the quilts up around my neck and closed my eyes. Everything I did in my dreams that night I did alone.

  15

  “HI, PIGGY. HOW’D YOU sleep?” Mom said without looking up from the bowl of batter.

  “Are we having pancakes?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You’re using the green bowl,” I said. “You always use the green bowl to make pancakes.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah.”

  The ingredients were spread out over the counter. The flour canister was open. The milk was still out. So was the butter tub. There were eggshells in the measuring cup. I went to the fridge and got the orange juice out and poured a glass and sat at the table and watched her stir the pancake batter. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d made pancakes from scratch. She usually got the just-add-water kind.

  “Why do you have to stir it so much?” I asked.

  “So it doesn’t get lumpy.”

  “Can I flip them?”

  “When it’s time,” she said. “Do me a favor and get the griddle set up?”

  I got the griddle from the cabinet and cleared off a spot on the counter, plugged it in, and turned it on. Mom looked over at me. At some point she must have rubbed her nose because there was flour on the end of it. Her face had new lines on it and when she smiled it seemed fake—like it was trying to trick the world into thinking everything was okay.

  We ate breakfast and then I went and got my stuff for school and hugged Mom good-bye and went to the bus stop. Budgie was there. He was wearing a red-and-black plaid hat with earflaps. One of the flaps was pulled up and he had a cell phone pressed against his ear. I couldn’t believe it. Where’d he get a cell phone from? And who was he talking to this early in the morning? Pizza Jungle wasn’t even open yet.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m on the phone.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Dude, I’m on the phone!”

  He turned a little bit away from me and covered his mouth with his hand so I couldn’t hear him. I bet there wasn’t even a
nybody on the other end. I bet he was fake-talking just so I would see he had a cell phone and think he was cool for having one. I didn’t, though, and it would take a lot more than just a cell phone for me to change my mind. He took the phone from his ear and pressed a button and put the phone in the pocket of his coat.

  “Where’d you get the phone?”

  “My mom and dad got it for me,” said Budgie. He had this expression on his face like he thought he was cool but the earflap of his hat was still up so it didn’t really work.

  “It’s got apps on it and everything.”

  “What’re apps?”

  “They’re things that do stuff,” said Budgie. “Jeez, don’t you know anything?”

  “I know things.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I do. I know lotsa things.”

  “Name one.”

  “I know the rubber sheets on your bed aren’t so it’ll be more comfortable like you said.”

  Budgie suddenly stopped trying to seem cool. Now he looked kinda nervous.

  “Who told you that?”

  “I asked my mom for some and she told me.”

  “Why? Why? Why would you ask for some?”

  “My bed’s uncomfortable sometimes,” I said. “I also thought if I had rubber sheets it’d be more like a trampoline.”

  Budgie swallowed. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something but then he closed it, digging into his pocket instead. He brought out his cell phone, stood next to me, and held it so I could see it. Then he showed me what apps it had and what they did. They were mostly games. There was a race car one and one where you shot chickens from a cannon. There were others, too. We played them on the bus all the way to school.

  * * *

  That morning was good. Me and Budgie played together at recess and we sat at the same table during lunch. We were even on the same dodgeball team during gym class. It was good to be on Budgie’s team. He might not have been the best player but he threw the ball harder than anyone else. He even told me that one time he threw the ball so hard it knocked a kid out. I wasn’t sure I believed that part but I was glad I was on his team so I wouldn’t have to find out the hard way. Our team won three games to none and for a while everything was awesome.

  It was after school at rehearsal when things started to be not so awesome. Mr. Putnam had Missy Sprout and Budgie and the rest of the helpers sit onstage while he did the roll call, and me, Violet, and the rest of the cast sat in the audience. Budgie’d lent me his cell phone and I was playing a game with the sound off and even though I was only listening to Mr. Putnam with half an ear I heard him call Budgie’s name. Then Mr. Putnam asked Budgie something from so far out of left field it made me stop playing and look up. In fact it made everyone stop and look up.

  “So Budgie,” he said. “Were you named after the Duke?”

  “Who’s the Duke?”

  “You’ve never heard of the Duke? John Wayne?”

  “My name’s not John.”

  “John wasn’t his real name either,” said Mr. Putnam. “It was Marion. Like yours.”

  I felt the color drop out of my face and I could see Budgie swallow from where I was sitting in the third row. Some of the kids onstage started to whisper to each other and giggle. Budgie licked his lips nervously.

  “How did you—?”

  Then his eyes fell on me and suddenly he didn’t seem so nervous anymore. I’ll say one thing about Budgie—for an idiot he could be awfully smart sometimes. This was big. And I didn’t think he would care that I didn’t really do it or that I had tried to fix it. Even though it was his parents who’d named him Marion, the way he would see it, I was the one who who’d let the cat out of the bag.

  He sat onstage and stared at me like I was the only one in the room. His face had gone red and if he were a cartoon there would be smoke shooting from his ears. I sank down into my seat. How was I supposed to know Mr. Putnam knew of the only other guy in the world named Marion? It wasn’t fair that my day was being ruined by somebody I’d never heard of.

  For the rest of the afternoon I kept expecting Budgie to do something for revenge but he didn’t. Mr. Putnam had him looking through the script and copying stuff onto a big piece of paper with a Magic Marker. I felt bad. I’d already heard a few whispered Marions, a couple of Mary Annes and even one Marilyn. I could have made a big scene and told everyone to cut it out but I was afraid that might make things worse. After rehearsal Budgie grabbed all his stuff and left quickly. Phoebe must have been right there waiting for him because by the time I’d gotten out to the turnaround in front he was gone.

  * * *

  I HAD TROUBLE SLEEPING again that night. I still felt bad that Budgie had been embarrassed and that the next few weeks probably weren’t going to go so great for him. I was pretty sure that by now the entire town knew what had happened and everybody, maybe even the grown-ups, were going to start calling him Marion.

  Mom said if I felt bad, then I should say I was sorry and then it would be up to Budgie to forgive my mistake. I told her I didn’t think he would. I told her that now he probably thought I was a bigger archenemy than before. She hadn’t really known what to say about that, so I lay in bed for a long time wondering what was going to happen tomorrow—how Budgie would get his revenge and how many times he would get it.

  But Budgie didn’t do anything. Not in the morning at the bus stop. Not during recess or lunch or rehearsal or anything. I couldn’t figure it out. I mean, I’m sure he hadn’t forgotten about it and even if he had, people were sure doing their best to remind him. They called him Marion on the bus. They called him Marion at recess and lunch. It seemed like me and the teachers were the only ones calling him Budgie. Even Barely O’Donahue was getting in on it until he came back from recess with a fat lip.

  Me and Budgie didn’t walk to rehearsal together. We didn’t sit together onstage while Mr. Putnam gave notes and made announcements. All day I’d been hoping for a chance to apologize to Budgie but there wasn’t a time when he didn’t seem like a jack-in-the-box half a crank from popping open.

  It was the final dress rehearsal and everyone was in costume. Marley’s ghost got to wear chains while I had buckles made of silver foil taped to my shoes. Chains were way cooler than fake buckles. Plus I was wearing knickers. Nobody said anything though. They were too busy making fun of Scrooge’s nightshirt and cap.

  Today’s run-through was the last one in an empty auditorium. Tomorrow there would be people in the seats. Mom was going to be there. I wondered if she’d be in the front row. I wondered if I’d be able to see her. Mr. Putnam said he didn’t want us looking for our parents and friends while we were onstage but I figured I could get away with one or two little peeks if I was sneaky enough.

  Final dress rehearsal also meant full performance conditions with lights and props and no talking backstage or in the wings. It meant if you weren’t in the scene or about to be in a scene you had to wait in the classroom across the hall until one of the backstage helpers came to get you.

  I didn’t think I’d need the backstage helpers, though. I knew exactly when I needed to be onstage. Also, Mom had switched her shift with someone at the hospital so she could be here so there was no way I’d miss my entrance.

  * * *

  “You’re still coming to the play, right?”

  “Of course I’m still coming,” Mom said.

  It was dinnertime. People had been stopping by the house since Saturday with food, and the fridge was full of stuff I’d never even heard of. Mom was heating a bowl full of something in the microwave.

  “What’s that stuff? It looks like brains.”

  “That’s because it is brains.”

  “No way, really?”

  “Not really,” she said. “It’s beef Stroganoff.”

  The microwave started beeping. Mom opened it and took out a Tupperware container full of noodles and brown stuff. Steam rose from it and I got the feeling it was trying to escape what was inside.


  “What’s that?”

  “Y’know Hamburger Helper?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Beef Stroganoff is Hamburger Helper’s rich uncle.”

  I thought about that for a minute and decided I’d try it. After all, I liked Hamburger Helper and even though I wasn’t rich I definitely liked the idea of it. And as far as I could tell from TV, money made everything better. I ate a plate of the beef Stroganoff. It tasted all right but I still didn’t ask for seconds. I wanted to make sure to leave room for dessert because someone had dropped off a chocolate cake.

  After dinner I went to my room and sat at my desk and did my homework. Then I packed up my book bag and got ready for bed. I washed my face. I brushed my teeth. I rinsed with that fluoride stuff that was supposed to taste like grapes but wouldn’t no matter how many they drew on the bottle.

  Then I got in bed and pulled the covers up and looked up at the space where the Apache helicopter had been. After a little while, I got out of bed and went to look for my mom. I heard the shower going in the bathroom so I stood in the hallway and waited for her to be done. The shower turned off a few minutes later. A minute after that the door opened and she came out.

  “Where’s my helicopter?”

  “Jesus, Derek! Don’t do that!” she said. “You scared me half to death!”

  She had her bathrobe on and her hair was wrapped in a towel. I could smell her soap.

  “Why did you take my helicopter down?”

  “I need a minute here, Derek. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “What did you do with it? Did you throw it away?”

  “It’s in the attic.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t think you’d want to be reminded of—of what happened to your father.”

  “But it’s mine! You can’t just go into my room and take stuff!”

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, Derek, and I’m sorry. That was wrong of me.”

  “Go get it!”