by David Lubar
“Great.” He flashed me the same smile I’d gotten from Mr. Franka when he hooked me into picking the topic for April. Then, as he walked off, he whistled a tune all the way down the hall.
December 8
The folks went out to buy some furniture for the nursery. They buy stuff every week. I think you’re going to have a bad impact on cash flow around here. I hope we can recover our investment when I sell you.
Who’d have thought something as simple as a crib would bring two skilled mechanics to their knees. I was smart enough not to even go into the room. Dad was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by bolts, nuts, screws, slats, dowels, and odd pieces of metal twisted into all sorts of strange shapes. Bobby was next to him, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other. A direction sheet lay on the floor between them. Mom hovered above them, her arms crossed on her ever-expanding stomach.
“Will it be ready by May?” she asked.
Dad glanced at her, nodded, then slid the directions in front of Bobby. “Read me the first step.”
Bobby pointed to the top of the sheet. “No need. There’s a diagram. Directions are stupid, anyhow. The people who write them have never put anything together in their lives.”
I thought Dad would get annoyed, but he said, “I think you’re right.” He moved the sheet out of his way. “We won’t be needing this.”
Mom sighed and glanced up at the ceiling. I went downstairs. A half hour later, Mom joined me and started making a batch of cookie dough. I didn’t ask her how it was going. Every five or ten minutes, I could hear Bobby shout something. Once, I heard the clatter of a tool hitting the floor.
Two hours later, when I went upstairs and peeked inside the room, they had something in front of them that Dr. Seuss might have drawn to imprison a baby Sneetch. They seemed to be taking it apart.
Sunday, when I looked in, the whole crib was assembled. There were a couple extra parts lying on the floor, but I figure they weren’t important.
Monday, when I got to school, I saw a crowd of kids around the side door to the stage. I recognized some of them from the audition. I hung back, since I figured they’d probably recognize me, too. After the crowd thinned, I went over to see who’d gotten what role. I read through the list twice before the reality of it sunk in.
“I am such an idiot,” I muttered as I slunk off toward homeroom.
December 10
Guess who ISN’T in the play. Take a wild guess. What’s that? I can’t hear you. Speak up. You’re really going to have to shout if you want your voice to get through all that amniotic fluid.
Yup. Julia didn’t make the cast. Not even the chorus. I can’t freakin’ believe it. Neither can she, I’d bet. Especially since Kelly got a part. Julia can’t be very happy about that, either. Kelly sings like a frog.
To make this whole thing even more special, I found out that the members of the stage crew have to be at every rehearsal. Worse, it’s not just for a month or two. We’ll start in January and rehearse all the way until April. Which I guess makes sense since this is going to be the spring musical. For someone who reads so many books, you’d think I’d have paid attention to those words.
You’re probably laughing your head off as you read this. I guess I should remind you that right now your head is transparent, and about the size of a walnut. Or maybe a grapefruit, at best.
Rehearsals are in the evening. Later than basketball or wrestling. So Mr. Perchal told the truth—it won’t interfere with any of my activities. Just with my life.
By the way—I hope you don’t roll around too much in your sleep. I’m not sure your crib can take the stress.
{twenty}
i’d gotten in the habit of looking at Lee’s locker whenever I passed it. Tuesday morning, she’d put up a sign that said This is not a cantaloupe. But someone had written Drop dead, freaky bitch across it in black marker. It must have just happened. I could still smell the sweet chemical aroma of the marker. Kids passing by in the hall looked at the locker and laughed.
I stood there and stared at it when I should have been keeping an eye on the hall around me. Too late, I saw Wesley Cobble walking up. He glanced at the locker for an instant, but didn’t seem to notice anything. Maybe he couldn’t read. But he could see. He homed in on me and hit me up for a contribution. But after he moved on, the real problem was still right in front of me. I thought about those times on the news when they showed some symbol of hate spray-painted on a wall. Even though Lee was kind of freaky, this was just plain wrong. Someone should take down the sign. I reached out, not sure whether I wanted to get linked with her in people’s minds.
I remembered Kyle chasing after the guy who’d knocked my books to the floor. He hadn’t even hesitated. Or worried about getting hurt. But Kyle and I were friends. Friends stand up for each other. I tried to tell myself that this was different. I barely knew Lee. She wasn’t a friend of mine. I had a hard time even looking at her face.
But it just wasn’t right, no matter how I felt about her. I took the sign down and tore it up. I hoped she hadn’t seen it. She might act all tough, but it had to suck when someone called you names in front of the whole school.
I watched her in homeroom, trying to guess whether she’d seen the sign. I couldn’t tell.
Later, as I was walking out of English class, I heard Mr. Franka mutter, “Why do they kill us with all this paperwork?”
I wandered over to his desk. “Ninety percent of everything is crap,” I said.
Without even glancing up from the piles of paper on his desk, he said, “Sturgeon’s law. How true.”
Score.
December 11
You know what guys do? They stand up for people. You know why? Two reasons. It’s right. And it feels good. Even if the person you helped doesn’t know what you did. Maybe especially then.
I wish someone would stand up for me on the bus. The head smacking continues. I’ve got this crazy fear that each smack drains a tiny bit of intelligence out of my head. Maybe the fact that I’m worrying about this is proof that I’m getting dumber. On the other hand, if I lose enough brain power, I’ll probably stop worrying about getting smacked. Or about anything else.
What about you? Right now, you’ve got nothing in your brain at all. Maybe all you feel is happiness. Or a terrible, unbearable, unquenchable craving for a cheeseburger. Now, wouldn’t that suck?
I think I’ll go ask Mom for a grilled-cheese sandwich. Yum. All crisp and brown and buttery, with lots of tangy cheese just oozing out the sides, Mmmmmm. Yum. Sorry I can’t share it with you. Enjoy your umbilical beverage.
Wednesday morning, while I was waiting for the bus and contemplating the purchase of a football helmet, Mouth started talking about his next book review.
“I’m doing The Princess Bride this week.”
“You must have a lot of free time,” I said. That was a pretty long book to finish in a week. My own life involved far fewer books than I wanted. And far more sports. My butt had been permanently marked by those rounded bolt heads that made the bleacher seats so awfully comfortable. I’d lost track of how many games I’d been to. I guess if I really wanted to know, I could count the rings on my butt.
“I didn’t have a chance to read the whole thing,” Mouth said. “But I rented the movie. I skimmed a lot of the book, too. I just didn’t read every single word. That’s one of the tricks I learned. You can get a pretty good feel for a book without reading everything. I try to pick books that are also movies. It makes reviewing a lot easier. Or short books. With those, you can read most of it. If I do a hardcover book, almost everything I need to know is already on the cover flap. Sometimes, I’ll pick a book because the cover is awesome. This reviewing stuff is a lot trickier than it looks.”
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I turned away from Mouth, I saw something that completely crushed my spirits. Sheldon went by. In a car. I guess his mom was driving him to school. I wanted to chase after them and scream, “Take me with yo
u!”
When I got on the bus, I looked all around, hoping to spot a replacement decoy. I didn’t see one. That’s when it hit me—I was the new Sheldon.
Slightly later, I got to restore at least a pinch of those spirits. On the way out of homeroom, I caught up with Lee and said, “Sturgeon’s law.”
She patted me on the arm. “Well done.”
I guess the head smacking really had done something to my brain, because I brought my football satire—the one I’d written during student council—to the newspaper meeting. Mandy wasn’t there yet. While we were waiting, one of the artists passed around a couple really awesome cartoons he’d drawn.
“Check this out,” I said. I pulled the paper from my notebook. It was too good not to share. I’d called it “A Football Feast.” I compared the players to the food in the snack stand. Vernon was a hot dog, of course. The defensive line was nachos because they crumbled so easily. The offensive line was soda. They lost their fizzle early in the game. I didn’t say anything bad about individual players, except for Vernon. And it’s not all that bad being called a hot dog. I actually complimented a lot of the players, though in a fun way. For example, Terry Swain was pretty fast. So I said he was hot chocolate because he burned up the field, and all the girls thought he was sweet. Terry was also the center on the basketball team.
Mouth laughed so hard, I thought he was going to lose his lunch. Everyone else liked it, too. Then Mandy came in and we got down to business.
I nearly died when I got home and realized I didn’t have the article. The last time I’d lost track of something I’d written, I’d ended up as a sports reporter. If this piece got in the wrong hands, I’d end up as a large bloodstain. But when I got to the bus stop the next morning, Mouth was waiting for me.
“Hey, you forgot this,” he said, handing the piece back to me.
“Thanks. I can’t seem to hold on to anything.”
“I know what you mean.” He started to tell me about all the stuff he’d misplaced.
It wasn’t just papers that could get misplaced. I didn’t see Kyle at lunch. Not at first. I finally spotted him over at the minor-jocks table with a bunch of the JV wrestlers. I caught up with him on the way out and asked, “What’s up?” Which was really my way of asking, What are you doing?
He shrugged and said, “They kind of like the team to hang out together. We’re all in training, so it helps if we eat at the same table.”
I waited for him to suggest that I join him tomorrow. He didn’t. Maybe I should dye my hair green and start wearing black shirts with pictures of dead rock stars. And stick some pins in my face.
December 13
There’s something you need to know about the cafeteria. It’s a miniature map of everyone’s social standing. More than any other place in the school, it defines where you belong. And where you don’t belong. Imagine walking into a huge room filled with sorted students. Cool over there. Extremely cool there. Dangerous and cool that way. Dangerous and not cool this way.
I just realized there’s something else you need to learn about the cafeteria. I never told you one of the most important survival skills of all.
Scott Hudson’s List of Dangerous Cafeteria Foods
Fish in any form. (Fish sticks are safe, since they don’t contain any actual fish.)
Turkey served more than a week after Thanksgiving.
Anything with steak in its name. Especially if it’s chopped up.
Anything with surprise in its name.
Brown lettuce.
Green meat.
Scott Hudson’s List of Safe Cafeteria Foods
Jell-O (unless the lady who sneezes a lot is working in the back).
Pizza (unlike real pizza, this kind is never served dangerously hot).
Potato chips.
Ice cream.
5. Fish sticks (see above).
Monday.
Hush.
It was a day of silences. In the morning, for the first time in the history of the universe, Mouth actually stopped talking. We’d just gotten off the bus and headed into the school. He was describing some of the things his dog had eaten—both organic and inorganic. Right in midsentence, he stopped. The sudden absence of sound was as jolting as the blare of an alarm clock.
A second later, I saw what had caught his attention. Lee strolled toward us, wearing a black T-shirt with two words printed on it in large red letters: FREAKY BITCH. It looked like one of those do-it-yourself iron-on things.
She grinned at me and did a very feminine curtsy, then floated on by without a word.
Mouth managed to recover his rhythm. “Oh man, they’re going to send her home.”
“They” acted pretty quickly. I heard her get called to the office in the middle of first period.
The second moment of silence happened to Mike Clamath at the opposite end of the school day. I saw it right after I got on the bus. Mike was leaning on Wesley Cobbles Mustang in the student lot. Wesley walked over and said something to him. Mike got off the car, but then he swung at Wesley. Wesley took the punch right on the jaw. He didn’t move. Even from far off, I could see Mike’s eyes change. Wesley hit him once, and Mike dropped. Then Wesley grabbed his collar and dragged him over to the side of the parking lot, out of the way of the cars. I expected Wesley to stomp him a couple times, but he got in his car and drove off like nothing had happened.
December 17
This is as good a time as any to tell you about fights. Except for complete psychos, kids really don’t want to fight. Trouble usually starts for some stupid little reason. Like one kid bumps another. And the other kid says, “Watch where you’re going.” And the first kid, instead of just saying, “Oops, sorry,” talks back. Then they both start saying stuff. All of a sudden, there’s a crowd watching, and neither one can back down. So they push each other. And they’re still both hoping something will happen to stop the fight. Maybe another kid will step in, but that’s pretty rare. It takes a lot of guts to break up a fight when there’s a whole crowd shouting for blood. So they end up fighting. It doesn’t last long most of the time. As soon as one kid gets in a good shot, it’s over. But normally, the loser doesn’t end up taking a nap by the side of the parking lot.
Speaking of naps, Christmas break is coming up. They don’t call it that. They call it winter break. I wouldn’t care if they called it the Squid Ink Interval, as long as it meant time off from school. Everyone around me looks so tired, I feel like I’m an extra in a low-budget zombie movie.
{twenty-one}
friday, we had a half day. Finally, it was Christmas vacation. I was more than ready to kick back for a while and relax.
Usually, Kyle and I did our Christmas shopping together. When I called him, he said he didn’t have time, so I went by myself. I was going to buy Dad a book about classic muscle cars, but I figured he’d like some trout spinners better. That way, he could think about fishing while we waited for spring.
I’d wanted to get Mom a cookbook, but I didn’t have a clue which ones were good. And there was no way I was going to touch any sort of baby book. So I got her this nice set of flavored cooking oils. She liked stuff like that.
I bought Bobby a watch. Nothing expensive, but it kept time. I noticed he’d lost his. I also got him a couple cool neon-colored guitar picks.
December 25
“Merry Christmas,” Scott said presently.
I remember back when I was really little, Bobby and I would wake up at sunrise and dash into the living room. The presents would be there under the tree. We’d go to Mom and Dad’s bedroom, but they’d be asleep. We’d figure out some way to make enough noise so they’d get up. But I’m older now, and I can wait. I’ll come back later to tell you what I got. Meanwhile, in the spirit of the holidays, here’s a list especially for you.
Scott Hudson’s List of Perfect Baby Gifts
A case of paper towels
Corks of various sizes
A shop vac
Shrink-wrap
Still December 25
Well, we opened our presents. Mostly, I got some clothes. No sign of a new computer. I guess the folks are saving money for baby crap. Thanks a lot.
The vacation seemed to vanish right in front of my eyes. Before long, it was New Year’s Eve. Mom and Dad were at a party across town. They were probably listening to all sorts of clever new-year/new-baby comments. Bobby was out. Probably making the rounds of a half-dozen parties. I was home, reading a book while the TV played and the end of the year approached.
At midnight, I glanced up from my book and watched the ball drop in Times Square. Right after that, the phone rang. It was Mom. I talked to her and Dad for a minute. The phone rang again a moment later.
“Happy New Year.”
The voice was oddly familiar, but I was pretty sure I’d never heard it on the phone before. I tried to figure out who it was.
“Hey, spaceboy, you there? What’s the matter? Vampire got your tongue?”
“Lee?” I could hear a light tapping. I realized it was the sound of a row of earrings bumping against the receiver.
“Yup.”
“Uh, Happy New Year to you, too.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Neither could she, I guess. She said good-bye and hung up. I hadn’t noticed any party sounds behind her. She was at home, too. Probably alone with a book. I thought about calling her back and asking what she was reading. But that would have been pretty pathetic. I didn’t want to begin the year by starting a telephone book club for people with no place to go.
January 1
I’m still pissed about the computer. But it’s a holiday. In some cultures, the New Year is a time of forgiveness. Not in my culture. You’re gonna pay. Somehow. Maybe I can rent you out to a lab or something. Or auction off your stem cells.
