Jack Strong Takes a Stand

by Tommy Greenwald

  That was true. I’d realized that some part of her was tired of my dad making me do all these activities. And besides, she always reacted to Dad being mad at me by being even nicer than usual. The last couple of days she’d even made all my favorite meals and picked up my homework from school. When I asked her if Dad would be mad at her for doing that, she patted my arm and said, “You just leave that to me.”

  So I left it to her.

  “Well, I gotta go to school,” said Leo. “I guess I’ll talk to you later?”

  “I guess so. Hey did my parents really refuse to comment?”

  “Nah. I think he just wrote that because he says that’s what reporters write when they’re too lazy to actually interview somebody.”

  “Got it.”

  We hung up, and I sat back on the couch and closed my eyes. It was dead silent. Dad was at work, my mom had taken Nana to get her heart medicine, and Maddie was outside trying to catch squirrels—she was 0 for 4,647 so far. I was alone in the house. I was getting used to being alone. I’d been on that couch for five days, and even though Mom and Nana were usually around, I’d never been alone so much in my life. But I had a feeling that was about to change.

  I was right.

  24

  At exactly 3:02, the doorbell rang.

  “It’s open!” I yelled.

  Maddie started barking like crazy, and I knew that it wasn’t just Leo or somebody else who came over all the time.

  “Who’s there?” I shouted, but no one answered. Maddie kept barking, and suddenly I had to come up with a way to scare away a burglar while not getting up from the couch.

  I was thinking over my strategy when I heard Leo yell, “It’s just us!”

  Us?

  I looked up and saw Leo come into the room. Behind him were Cathy Billows, Baxter Billows, Sam French, Kevin Kessler, Vanessa Cummings, and Jenny Zeilinksy.

  “JACK!” Cathy shouted, shoving the high school newspaper into my hand. “You’re famous!”

  I’d forgotten that the paper was distributed at the middle school, too. The headline was even bigger in print.

  “Take a stand by taking a seat,” said Sam French, who up until that very moment had been way too cool to ever even look in my direction. “Pretty awesome, dude.”

  “Completely,” agreed Jenny, whose long auburny-red hair had basically declared her off-limits to all but the lucky few. “I totally wish I thought of that.”

  Leo sat down next to me. “These guys just wanted to come over and tell you in person how what you’re doing is so awesome,” he said. “That’s okay, right?”

  I looked around at all the kids. This was the A-list. The cream of the crop. The future football captains and cheerleaders. The kings and queens of the jungle.

  “Yeah, it’s great,” I said. “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. I’d get it for you myself, but well, you know.”

  When they all laughed at that lame joke like I was the funniest guy on the planet, I knew my life had changed forever.

  Cathy came up to me. “You don’t look so hot, Jack,” she said, suddenly concerned about my well-being. “You look like you haven’t been outside in a week.”

  “I haven’t,” I reminded her.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea!” announced Kevin Kessler, smacking his forehead just like animals do in cartoons when they have ideas. “We should, like, carry your couch outside!”

  “Dude, that’s an awesome idea!” cried Sam, smacking his forehead, too, for no apparent reason.

  What a couple of goofballs. But here’s the thing. It was an awesome idea.

  In fact, it was such a good idea, I was mad that I hadn’t thought of it. Move the couch outside! It was brilliant! That way, I could still be on strike but be in the front yard, get some fresh air, and hang out with people in the neighborhood.

  Then again, maybe I hadn’t thought of it because the couch was a little too heavy for my grandmother to lift.

  I nodded. “Okay, but it’s going to be pretty heavy, because I have to stay on it while you move it. We can go through the screen porch because the door is super wide.”

  “Take all the cushions and pillows off,” Leo instructed. Everyone did as they were told, because Leo got really good grades.

  Cathy, Leo, and Kevin got on one side of the couch, with Baxter, Jenny, Sam, and Vanessa on the other.

  Maddie started barking at them, like she thought it was a bad idea.

  “And … up!” commanded Baxter.

  Together everyone hoisted the couch (and me), and somehow they managed to stagger to the screen porch, just missing about three fancy vases on the way.

  “Careful,” I said, nervously enjoying the ride.

  “Yes, your highness,” muttered Leo.

  We (okay, they) pushed ahead heroically. I couldn’t believe they were going to pull it off! I hadn’t been outside in five days.

  Then Nana wandered in. “Jack, I’m going to take a quick nap—”

  She saw us and almost dropped her juice. “What in the world—?”

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Kellerman!” Leo said, giving her a friendly wave.

  He shouldn’t have done that.

  See, the thing is, you need a hand to wave. Which means, he only had one hand on the couch. Which means, his side suddenly started tilting downward. Which means, the whole delicate balance was thrown off.

  Which means, the couch came crashing down on Kevin Kessler’s foot.

  Kevin yelled “OW!” so loud that Maddie got scared and bolted through the screen door, which unfortunately wasn’t open at the time. The screen popped out of the door, went flying backward, and crushed half of my mom’s prized rose bushes.

  Then Maddie ran over the screen and trampled the other half.

  We waited there for a minute to let Kevin work out his pain.

  “Are you okay?” Vanessa finally said.

  Kevin squinted and said, “Let’s get this frickin’ thing outside.”

  Man, football players are tough. Even middle school football players.

  Thirty seconds later, I was sitting on the couch in the bright mid-afternoon sun. It was glorious!

  Nana followed us outside.

  “Are you planning on sleeping out here?” she asked.

  I answered with a shrug.

  She sat down next to me. “Listen, kiddo, I’m your biggest fan, but I’m not sure about this maneuver.”

  “I’m on strike, Nana!”

  “I know you are, dear,” she said. “And I think that’s wonderful, as long as you don’t break the house.”

  25

  I forgot how awesome outside was.

  The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the trees were rustling, and the coolest kids in the grade were in my yard playing coed touch football, with me as automatic quarterback.

  It turns out that coed touch football is really fun, especially when you never have to get up from the couch.

  “Hike!” I hollered, standing on the top of the cushions. My receivers, Baxter and Cathy, went out. I saw Baxter streak by Kevin Kessler, who was obviously still a little hampered by the fact that a three-hundred-pound couch had been dropped on his toe.

  I threw a somewhat pathetic spiral to Baxter’s shoes, but he was so athletic that he grabbed it easily.

  “Touchdown!” he screamed, accepting a hug from an auburn-hair-swirling Jenny Zeilinsky. He headed over to me for a high-five, just as my phone rang.

  “Dude, you are seriously popular all of a sudden,” Baxter said, pointing at my phone.

  He had a point. I’d gotten a bunch of phone calls from people who had either read the article, heard about it from other kids, or seen it online.

  The weirdest call was from Dr. Steckler, who was my mom’s podiatrist. “I wish I’d been brave enough to take a stand against my parents, like you did,” Dr. Steckler told me. “I never would have gone to medical school.”

  That made me think that maybe Mom should get a new podiatrist.

  I che
cked the caller ID. UNKNOWN, it said. Great. More small talk with a stranger.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Is this Jack Strong?” said a voice that was immediately familiar.

  “Yes?”

  “The Jack Strong?”

  “Do I know you?”

  The voice chuckled. “I sure hope so. If not, I’m not doing my job right.”

  Wait a second. Could it be? It sounded exactly like—no way—

  “This is Brody Newhouse.”

  It was.

  Brody Newhouse was a pretty big deal. He was the host of Kidz in the Newz, a local TV show that was on every Wednesday night, where he interviewed kids from the area who had done something interesting that got people talking. A lot of people watched it.

  “Um, really?” I managed to stammer. “Brody Newhouse?”

  He chuckled. “That’s right, kid. The one and only. Hey, listen, part of our job is to keep an eye on all the local school newspapers. When we saw your article, we thought you’d be great for our show.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Me, Jack Strong, on TV?

  “I don’t get it, Mr. Newhouse. Don’t you usually have kids on who, like, pull a dog from a burning house or save a drowning lady or something?”

  “Call me Brody. And, yes, that’s true. Many of our guests have done something brave. But what you’re doing is equally courageous. You’re standing up for kids everywhere. By sitting down!” Then he laughed that Brody Newhouse laugh that I’ve heard in my living room about sixty-two thousand times.

  “Wow. Um … I don’t know what to say, Mr. Newhouse.”

  “It’s Brody!”

  By now the other kids had realized this was a different kind of phone call than the others, and they all gathered around to try and listen in.

  “Brody Newhouse,” I silently mouthed to them. “I swear.”

  “NO WAY!” yelled Kevin Kessler, who had officially forgotten about his wounded toe.

  Brody laughed again. “Sounds like you’re having a bit of a party there. Celebrating a little bit?”

  “Kind of, I guess.”

  “So here’s what I’d like to do,” he said, suddenly turning serious. “I’m going to want to come up there and see exactly what’s going on. How long have you been on that couch?”

  “Five days,” I said, suddenly realizing how puny that sounded.

  But Brody didn’t think so. “Five days on the couch? Holy moly, how have you not gone crazy?”

  “Sometimes it gets a little boring, but basically it’s been good.”

  “What do you do all day?”

  “Oh, you know, read, watch TV, do some exercises, hang out with my grandmother, stuff like that.”

  “What about the bathroom?”

  “That’s the one time I’m allowed to get up. And for food, sometimes.”

  “And your parents still haven’t let you drop any of these activities?”

  “My dad is pretty stubborn, I guess.”

  “And so are you,” said Brody Newhouse. Then he whistled. “Son takes on father! Takes a stand by taking a seat! Overscheduled kids unite! This is golden!”

  Cathy Billows elbowed me in the ribs. “What’s he saying? Is it really him?”

  “Sshhh!” I snapped. Wow, I was shushing Cathy Billows. The world was officially upside down.

  “My friends can’t believe it’s really you,” I told Brody. “This is so cool.”

  “Well, tell them it’s really me,” he said. “And if it’s okay by you, I’d like to come by Monday around five.”

  “My schedule is wide open,” I said, which made him howl with laughter.

  “I love this kid! I love him!” He put his hand over the phone, but I could still hear him say, “Shaina, I need to be at this Strong kid’s house Monday at five. If all goes well and he’s the real deal, we’ll put him on Wednesday’s show.” He returned to me. “Okay pal, see you Monday. No friends hanging around, I’m afraid. Just you and me. Don’t want a circus.”

  “Yes, Mr. Newhouse,” I said. I could tell he was about to hang up, so I added, “Oh, just one more thing.”

  “What’s that, kid?”

  I held out the phone so I could say it just as much to my new friends as I could to Brody Newhouse.

  “I’m the real deal.”

  26

  About twenty minutes later, Jenny’s and Kevin’s moms came to pick up all the kids.

  “Thanks for coming by,” I said to everyone, but mainly to Cathy.

  “No problem, it was really fun,” she said. “It’s cool hanging out with a celebrity and everything.”

  “Yeah, sorry we can’t move you back inside,” Kevin said, “but I’m already late for basketball.”

  Baxter nodded. “Yup, some of us still have stuff we have to go to,” he said, and everyone laughed.

  “No problem,” I said, but what I was actually thinking was, How the heck am I going to get back inside?

  The only logical answer—Dad—was also the only impossible answer.

  Nana woke up from her nap about a half hour after they all left. She made herself a tongue sandwich and me a meatball sandwich, then joined me on the front lawn. I couldn’t wait to tell her the exciting news about Brody Newhouse.

  “Who’s Brody Newhouse?” Nana asked.

  I laughed. “Only the coolest guy on TV.”

  “My grandson the star,” she said, just as my mom pulled into the driveway. She got out of her car and took it all in. Her screen door, her couch, and her son, all in the front yard.

  She wasn’t exactly thrilled.

  “Does someone want to explain to me what’s going on, and what happened to my rose bushes?”

  Before I could answer, Nana jumped in. “You’re son is going to be famous,” she said, chomping on her sandwich.

  “Oh really,” my mom said. “This I gotta hear.”

  “Okay,” I said, relieved.

  She sat down next to me. “After you tell me about the screen door.”

  * * *

  I was telling my mom the whole story, and was up to the part about playing football in the yard, when I felt the first raindrop. Maddie started barking to get in. She hated rain almost as much as she loved anything edible.

  My mom looked up to the sky worriedly. “Mom, have you heard anything about rain?”

  Nana was a big fan of watching weather on TV. She nodded. “As a matter of fact, I have. It’s supposed to rain quite a bit tonight.”

  We all looked at one another, and then at the couch that had taken seven strong kids to move outside.

  “Fantastic,” said my mom. Then she looked at me. “I don’t suppose this will make you get up from the couch?”

  I raised my arms to the sky. “Are you kidding? What’s a little rain when you’ve got the host of Kidz in the Newz coming to your house to talk about putting you on TV?”

  “You’re lucky I was planning on replacing this ratty old thing anyway,” Mom said, shaking her head at the couch. “I’m going to call Dad.”

  She and Nana took Maddie inside, and a minute later Nana came out with a poncho.

  “Are you sure about this, kiddo?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well,” she said, wrapping the poncho around me, “you’re a better man than I.”

  27

  The next two hours were probably the wettest of my life. They were pretty miserable, too.

  And I would say that I thought about giving up my strike and going inside, oh, somewhere around 643 times.

  But I didn’t. I stayed there. For some crazy reason, I stayed. A crazy reason that was some combination of Cathy Billows, Brody Newhouse, and the fact that I actually believed in what I was doing.

  Luckily for me, it wasn’t cold, or else I probably would have gotten pneumonia and died before the big TV show.

  At one point, my mom came out and gave me soup. At another point, Nana came out and gave me hot cider.

  I looked at her. “You guys do know it�
��s not winter, right?”

  “Well, you can’t be too careful,” Nana said.

  The cider was delicious.

  It started raining harder.

  Maddie stood at the window, staring at me like I was crazy.

  She had a good point.

  I had nothing to do because I couldn’t use my cell phone in the rain, I couldn’t read in the rain, and I sure couldn’t watch TV in the rain. I started to understand why the contestants on Now What?!? were so miserable. The only thing to do was to curse Kevin Kessler and his stupid idea to move the couch outside, even though four hours earlier, it had been like the best idea ever.

  So I hunkered down in my poncho, sipped my cider, and stared at the gray sky.

  Eventually, I got up off the couch and headed inside to use the bathroom. As I stared at myself in the mirror—a wet mess—I couldn’t believe how much had changed. In five days, I’d gone from a pretty normal, somewhat invisible, typically overscheduled kid to a mini-celebrity, local hero, and determined but soggy crusader.

  Would it be worth it?

  I had no idea.

  * * *

  By the time my dad pulled into the driveway, it was pouring so hard he couldn’t even see me when he got out of the car.

  He was halfway up the front steps when he saw his only son sitting in the front yard, on a couch, in a rainstorm.

  He stopped and stood there, his suit soaking in the rain. Then he came over to me and said the first words he’d said to me in two days.

  “Better bundle up.”

  And he went inside and had dinner.

  * * *

  An hour and a half later, it had gotten pitch black and was still raining. Then the porch light came on, the screen door opened, and my dad came outside with a flashlight. He walked up and stood over me.

  “Did you know that I was the first member of my family to go to college?”

  “Yup,” I answered. He’d told me that a lot. Usually when he was trying to talk me into doing something that was good for college.