by David Lubar
None of my cousins came. They’re all older. Bobby’s up in his room taking a nap. They never did find him an apartment.
Speaking of football, the last game is tomorrow. I’m glad it’s over. Though I was actually starting to enjoy the games. I had sort of a ritual. I’d sit near the top so I could see everything. Not at the very top. That’s where the tough guys hang out. Mouth went up there once and they dangled him over the edge and shook him until his pockets were empty.
At halftime, I’d get a cup of hot chocolate. I always drank it too soon and burned my mouth. That’s another thing you need to know. Some foods are deadly. Maybe I should make a list for you.
Scott Hudson’s Guide to Lethally Hot Foods
Pizza: Watch out for the cheese. It will stick to anything. I’ve seen kids lose half a lip this way.
Chicken Pot Pie: The crust keeps the heat in. The sauce is the most dangerous part. One bite can turn the roof of your mouth into shredded flesh.
Blueberry Pancakes: The great ambusher of the food world. Even when the pancakes seem cool, the berries are little heat bombs. The same warning applies to blueberry muffins.
Fried Ice Cream: The oxymoron of the food world. It’s ice cream that’s coated in some kind of stuff and then quickly fried. I know what you’re thinking. How can it be dangerous? That’s what I thought, too. The first mouthful I ever tried burned my tongue so badly I couldn’t taste anything for a week.
Hot Chocolate: Magically, no matter how long you wait, and how much you blow on it, when you take that first sip it’s always just hot enough to scorch your mouth.
There was nothing to be thankful for on the football field that Friday. We played South Welnerton, our traditional Thanksgiving rivals. Though rival might not be quite the right word, considering they beat us 108 to 3. The scoreboard didn’t even go up that high. Maybe executioner would be a better choice.
I had an extra day to write my article. We always got the Monday after Thanksgiving off. It was the first day of deer season. I wasn’t sure whether they did this so kids could hunt or because they were afraid some nearsighted hunters would take a shot at a school bus. Either way, I was happy to have a nice quiet day to hang out, read, and eat turkey sandwiches.
Tuesday, on the way out of homeroom, I gave the book back to Lee. She’d gelled her hair into tons of tiny spikes, which made her head look like some sort of dangerous green vegetable of the sort that was always trying to kill the Mario Brothers.
“Like the poem?” she asked.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Wasn’t it cool where they—”
“I gotta go.” I hurried off. I was halfway down the hall before I realized why things felt so uncomfortably familiar. This was just like in the hospital, when Tobie wanted to talk about his books and I didn’t pay attention. Back then, I at least had the excuse that I wasn’t much of a reader. This time, I didn’t have any excuse at all. I loved spooky stuff.
I turned around, but Lee was gone.
I wished she’d never loaned me the book. When people do favors for you, life gets complicated. That’s why I hadn’t asked Mouth if I could write a review. But maybe Mandy would suggest it herself. There was a newspaper meeting tomorrow. With football over, I figured she’d let me do something fun.
{eighteen}
mr. Franka had taught us to be careful about using words properly when we were writing. A phrase like five p.m. this afternoon is wrong because p.m. means afternoon. He gave us a whole list of stuff like that, including free gift and unfortunate tragedy. His favorite example was the sentence The troops ran into a surprise ambush. He pointed out that since an ambush is a surprise, the word surprise isn’t needed.
Either way, I got ambushed on Wednesday. And it was a surprise.
“Which do you like better,” Mandy asked when I walked into the meeting, “basketball or wrestling?”
That was easy. “Basketball.” Of course, I liked her brown top even better.
“Good,” she said, “so I’ll put you down for basketball.”
“What?” My jaw dropped as the meaning sank in. “Wait. That’s not what I meant.”
Mandy smiled at me. “Sorry. My mistake. If you’d rather cover wrestling, that’s fine. You did such a great job with football, I wanted to give you first choice. You really brought an amazingly fresh approach to the task.”
Book reviews! my mind shouted. That was my choice. I’d even brought a copy of Dragonflight with me, just to see if I could start a conversation with Mandy about fantasy series.
“So, then. Wrestling?” she asked. She leaned closer to me and smiled like she’d just offered me a sip of her soda.
I tried to think of some way to say Neither. I pulled my eyes from her and looked around for Mouth. But he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been on the bus, either. Maybe he’d be out for a long time. Then they’d have to let someone else do reviews.
Before I could speak, Mandy clapped her hands together and said, “You know what—I’m going to take a chance. Call me crazy, but I think you can handle both. That way, you don’t have to decide. This is super, Scott. It’ll be a lot of work, but I guess for a big sports fan like you, it’s actually a lot of fun. It’ll give you a great excuse to go to all the games.” She glanced around the room. “Anybody else want to do any sports?”
Naturally, every other pair of eyes in the place fled from contact.
“Fabulous,” Mandy said, making another note on her pad. “I’ll put you down for both. That’s a relief. I thought you might want to try other stuff, but this will work out perfectly.” She gave me a schedule, then started handing out art assignments.
Oh, great. There were two or three basketball games a week, and one or two wrestling meets. Worst case, I’d be covering as many as five games in one week. Best case, I’d meet a vampire who’d put me out of my misery. Or a giaour.
November 28
Don’t ever be afraid to ask for what you want. Nobody can read your mind. People always assume you want the same sort of things they want. I’ll give you an example. Bobby likes pepper flakes on his pizza, so if I go somewhere with him, he just sprinkles flakes on the whole thing, even though that’s not what I want.
So make sure to ask for what you want. Except from me, of course. And watch out for girls in tight tops. Especially when they lean toward you. Or clap. Or move at all.
“Urrrggghhhhhhhh …”
“Oooooooffffffff …”
Mr. Cravutto had found a new way to torture us.
“I miss freezing to death,” I told Kyle as I tried to defeat the force of gravity by raising far more iron than anyone would ever need to lift in real life. The iron seemed equally determined to thwart my efforts.
“Weights are great,” Kyle said. He got off his bench, checked out his biceps in the mirror, then peeled off his shirt and twisted at the waist so he could stare at his back.
“‘Weights are great.’ That was sort of a minimalist poem,” I said. After that, I stopped talking and saved my breath for grunting. Mr. Cravutto filled in the silence by shouting various encouraging phrases at us and occasionally questioning our masculinity. If there’s a hell, it has a weight room.
“Can’t believe I survived,” I said as we headed for the shower. We’d lifted for almost the whole period. I had a funny feeling I’d be hurting pretty soon.
On the way to art class, I noticed that Lee had stuck a sign on her locker. It said This is not a locker. I’d hate to be her art teacher. She’d probably glue a bunch of magazine photos of people on a page, with their eyes cut out, and write something weird on top like Art is in the eye of the beholder.
After school, I went to a basketball game and had a completely new experience. We won. The team was pretty good.
I realized there was no way I could come up with some clever article about every single game. So that evening I wrote a short piece describing the highlights. It felt strange to just tell what happened. It also felt kind of nice. The writing didn’t get in
the way of the information.
Friday, when I woke up, I felt like someone had packed my muscles with ground glass.
“It’ll be worse tomorrow,” Kyle told me after I crawled off the bus. “Second day is always bad. Glad I’ve been lifting for a while.”
My pain continued after school at the wrestling meet, but moved from my muscles to my mind. The team stunk. Vernon was on it. Yet one more reason for me to be careful what I wrote. In the article, when I got to his match, I just said, “Vernon Dross, at 176, fought valiantly for a minute and twenty-seven seconds.” In other words, he was pinned at 1:28 of the first period.
Kyle wrestled on the JV team. I didn’t have to cover that, but I went early so I could catch his match. He won. Pinned his opponent at the start of the second period. I wanted to congratulate him, but I didn’t get a chance to see him afterward.
November 30
If gym grades were based on pain, I’d have an A-plus right now. Or maybe an A-plus-plus.
Congratulate me—I’ve managed to take on more than I can possibly handle. I’ll nail my tongue to my chin before I agree to do anything else. Oh yuck—that sounds like something Lee would do. Of course, she’d use a more interesting object than a nail. An ostrich feather, perhaps. Or the shinbone of a bat.
On the bright side, I’ve notched off another month.
December 1
Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.
{nineteen}
it was the first Monday of the month, which meant I had a student-council meeting. Since nobody paid any attention to freshmen, I sat in the back and killed time writing a fake football article. I didn’t miss football, but I missed getting creative about it.
On Tuesday, I heard the following conversation in English class:
Julia: Did you see the announcement?
Kelly: Yeah. This is so exciting. Are you trying out?
Julia: Of course. I love acting. Are you?
Kelly: Absolutely. I’ve been in a play every year since fifth grade.
I checked the bulletin board after class. The poster was already halfway covered with other stuff, but I could see the important details. They were putting on A Tale of Two Cities. I guess someone had turned the book into a play. Auditions were on Thursday. Which meant I had two days to talk myself out of doing something stupid. After my experience with student council and the newspaper, I’d have to be a total idiot to try out for a play just because Julia might be in it. Not that I cared. I’d pretty much stopped thinking about her. At least, not every waking moment. Or every sleeping moment.
Besides, I didn’t know the first thing about acting. Though it didn’t look all that hard. I’d already given a speech. A successful speech, for that matter, that had launched my career in the exciting and glamorous world of student politics. Acting wasn’t much different. Look at all the actors who ran for office. I’d bet the cast spends a lot of time hanging out together.
I’d been taking the Sheldon Murmbower shield for granted since it had been functioning perfectly for months. But Wednesday morning, he wasn’t on the bus. Thanks to that, I got smacked on the head a couple of times. To make things worse, the bus was so overheated that I kept nodding off. So each slap was like some sort of medieval wake-up torture.
I saw Lee at her locker before homeroom. The sign was still there. The one that said This is not a locker.
Ignore it, I told myself. I started to walk past. But I couldn’t help myself. Maybe the head smacks had jarred something loose. “What’s that supposed to mean?” It was a stupid question. There was no reason to believe it was anything more than a meaningless slogan.
“It means nothing and everything,” she said.
My response must have gone straight from my gut to my mouth, because it never passed through my brain. “That’s a bunch of crap. It sounds deep, but it’s just words.” I could feel myself ready to start ranting. I hated it when people tossed a bunch of words at you and pretended there was some sort of deep meaning. Word were too important to be used like blobs of paint. I mean, when someone can come up with stuff as amazing as “caverns measureless to man,” people have no excuse for spouting gibberish and calling it art. But I stopped dead and clamped my mouth shut when I remembered the bandages I’d seen on her wrists. I sure didn’t want to be the one who pushed her into some kind of bottomless depression.
To my surprise, Lee smiled. “Just a bunch of words,” she said. “That’s the point. It’s a meta-statement. Words about words. Get it?”
“It’s still crap,” I said, but without any anger in my voice.
“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” She patted the sign. “And I’ll bet, despite the fact that you’re one of the few people in school who actually care about knowledge for its own sake, you can’t tell me where that quote comes from.”
I had no idea. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Lee. Or stand around all day talking with her. So I took off.
When I got home, I tried to find out who said that quote. I searched for it on the Internet, but our computer was getting completely flaky.
Thursday, in English, Mr. Franka asked if anyone was auditioning for the school play. “It’s a great way to get a different insight into the written word,” he said. “Not to mention a chance to spend quality time with Charles Dickens.”
Five kids raised their hands. Including Julia. I wasn’t one of them.
That afternoon, I noticed Lee had put a new sign on her locker. It said This is a locker.
December 6
Auditions for the school play are tonight at seven. But I’ve learned my lesson. No way I’m going. I can’t act. I have no interest in theater. My voice still cracks once in a while. And I’m far too busy already.
I made it to six-thirty before I asked Dad for a ride to school.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I have to go to the hardware store. I’ll drop you off, get what I need, then swing back and see if you’re done. How’s that?”
“Great.”
When Dad dropped me off, kids were just starting to show up. Mine was the third name on the list. But the place filled up pretty quickly after that.
At seven, Mr. Perchal, the director, got on the stage, thanked everyone for coming, and gave the usual pep talk about trying your best and accepting that not everyone would make it.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get started.” He grabbed the clipboard and called the first name. Then he walked over to the piano that was sitting to the left side of the stage.
A kid, carrying a sheet of paper, walked to the middle of the stage. When the kid nodded, Mr. Perchal started playing music, and the kid started singing.
What in the world? I looked around me. Everyone had sheets of paper. I glanced to my right. It was music. By then, the second person was onstage.
“I thought we were doing A Tale of Two Cities” I whispered to the kid on my left.
He looked over and nodded. “Yeah, but this is the musical version. Didn’t you learn a song?”
Musical? No way. This was Dickens. The French Revolution, death, and tragedy. Not song and dance. I had to get out. But I was in the middle of the row. I looked around. Ohmygod. Julia was two rows behind me, along with Kelly.
“Scott Hudson,” Mr. Perchal called.
Maybe if I just stayed in my seat, he’d move on, like at the deli counter when they get to a number after the person has left.
Kelly gave me a little wave and said, “Break a leg.” I should be so lucky.
I got up and walked over to the director. “I didn’t learn any of the songs,” I said. Maybe that would be the end of it.
“No problem.” He bent over and thumbed through a pile of sheet music on the floor next to his bench. “You know ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ right?”
I wanted to lie. But every kid who’s made it through third grade knew that song. I nodded. Mr. Perchal pointed t
oward the center of the stage. “Go for it.”
I should have run off right then. Or pretended to have a burst appendix. Instead, I made the horrible mistake of trying to sing. I could see this shocked look on everyone’s face when I let out my first note. Shock turned to horror as I produced a second note that was totally unrelated to the first. It was like they’d seen a small animal get cut in half on a table saw. My voice cracked on the third note, and never uncracked until the painful end. When I was done, Mr. Perchal didn’t say a word. He just sort of nodded. I hurried off the stage.
I waited by the outside doors for Dad. I could hear the voices floating out from the auditorium. Julia sang like an angel.
“How’d it go?” Dad asked when he picked me up.
“Fine,” I lied.
When I saw Mr. Perchal in the hall the next day, I ducked my head and avoided his eyes. No point reminding him of what was probably the worst experience of his theatrical career. As I started to dash past him, he said, “Got a moment?”
“Sure.” I wondered whether he was going to ask me to take a vow never to sing in public again.
“How’d you like a spot on the stage crew?”
“Stage crew?”
He nodded. “Show business is more than just actors and singers.”
I guess he felt sorry for me. “I’m pretty busy,” I told him.
“This won’t interfere with any of your activities. I promise. Our schedule is very flexible. We could really use your help. The crew is the backbone of the troupe.”
“What do they do?”
“Not much. Mostly just make sure things run smoothly. The whole experience is a lot of fun. The crew and cast are like one big family. You’ll see.”
One big family.
It sounded perfect. I’d get to hang out with the cast and I wouldn’t have to sing or dance. Or learn any lines. What could be better than that? I’d probably be able to do my homework while I sat around backstage. “Okay, sure. I’ll give it a try.” I could even offer to help Julia learn her lines.
