by Betsy Byars
By the time he was coming up the other stairs, the crowd in the hall and on the steps was beginning to thin. Mouse was running. He was dodging the remaining people as if he was playing a strange game. He was almost to the landing when he looked up and saw that Hammerman was waiting at the top of the stairs. While Mouse had been making this long, frenzied run, Hammerman had coolly walked down the hall and waited, catlike, for him.
Mouse stopped. All day he had been hearing the phrase, “Hammerman’s after Mouse,” and now the people on the steps began to walk more slowly, casting glances at them. Mouse knew that the whole school was waiting for the slaughter.
He couldn’t run now and so he came up the stairs slowly, pulling himself along with the aid of the banister. He was aware that he was not safe even in the hall. He remembered hearing that one time Hammerman had hit someone in front of the auditorium, and a teacher was standing right there and didn’t see it. The boy had been knocked off his feet, Mouse remembered hearing, a huge knot parting his hair, and the teacher had thought the boy had fainted from lack of air.
That’s how slick Hammerman was, Mouse thought. It would not have surprised him if Hammerman had leaned over and with the most casual of blows sent Mouse reeling backward down the stairs. Hammerman would be able to do this so skillfully that the few stragglers who saw it would swear that Mouse had tripped. But then, in fear, they would probably do that anyway.
The late bell rang, and Mouse slowly kept coming up the stairs. When he got to the top, all the stragglers were gone except a boy on the landing below who was pretending to straighten his books. Mouse felt that there was nobody in the world but him and Hammerman. He said, “I’m late for math,” and kept looking at his shoes.
Then he glanced up, squinting at Hammerman, and Hammerman moved his face as if he had chewing gum or a Life Saver in his mouth.
Mouse said, “Did you say something?”
Hammerman shook his head, and with the sun coming in the window behind him, his hair seemed to fan out like feathers. His face didn’t change expression but his eyes were very bright. Mouse thought that this was because he was doing the one thing he was really good at.
Hammerman’s nostrils widened a little, and Mouse wondered if Hammerman could smell fear the way animals could. He had read somewhere that animals become disgusted by the smell of fear and this causes them to attack. Mouse was sure the whole stairway reeked with his fear now. He felt as if he was going to choke on it himself. Emergency Fifteen—When you are afraid, don’t let your body know it.
“I really didn’t hear what you said, if you said anything,” Mouse said, stuttering a little.
“I’ll see you after school.” Hammerman took his finger and touched Mouse on the chest and then passed him and started down the stairs.
“What?” Mouse asked.
Hammerman let the air come out of his nostrils in a sigh of disgust. Still, Mouse knew, a little thing like not having a worthy opponent wasn’t going to cause Marv Hammerman to give up the fight.
Without turning around Hammerman said, “After school.”
Mouse said, “Oh, sure.”
Hammerman went down the steps so smoothly he might have been sliding. Mouse went to his math class and sat down. He could still feel the place on his chest where Hammerman had touched him. He thought that if he opened his shirt he would be able to see a red dot there, marking the spot.
Across the room Ezzie was waving his arms to get Mouse’s attention. Mouse looked and watched Ezzie’s mouth form the question, “Did anything happen with Hammerman?” Mouse nodded. “What?”
Mouse said, “I’ll tell you later,” beneath his breath. He started turning through his notebook as if he were searching for an important paper.
A moment passed, and the boy next to Mouse touched his arm. “Ezzie wants you.”
Mouse nodded but continued looking through his papers. The boy nudged him again and jerked his thumb toward the far side of the room. “Ezzie.” With a sigh Mouse stopped looking in his notebook for the imaginary paper. He looked at Ezzie.
“What happened?” Ezzie asked again, pouncing on each word. “What happened with Hammerman?”
The teacher opened her book, looked up at the class and said, “Ezzie, could I have your attention please?”
Ezzie was beyond hearing the teacher. He leaned over the aisle. “What happened?”
“Ezzie!” the teacher said. Now he heard and looked up, startled. “Take your book and go to the board, will you?”
Ezzie stood up quickly, found his book and walked slowly up the aisle, holding the book in one hand. As he passed the teacher’s desk he said, “I didn’t have time to study much last night because my sister was sick. She made me put out the light.”
“Put the first problem on the board, please.”
Ezzie picked up the chalk and looked carefully at his book. Mouse also opened his book and tried to concentrate. It was amazing how difficult it was to get your mind off something, he thought.
Ezzie put the chalk to his lips. He appeared to be ready to drink a vial of white liquid, perhaps the “smart” medicine he was always hoping some scientist would discover—one sip and instant smartness. He said regretfully, “This was the one problem I didn’t get, Mrs. Romanoski, I remember now. I got all the others, but this one stumped me.
“It’s exactly like problem two.”
“It is?” His face was blanked by surprise.
“So if you got problem two, then you should be able to do problem one.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Mouse tried again to concentrate, but he couldn’t. The thought of Marv Hammerman filled his mind completely. He thought that if doctors were running an experiment on his brain, pouring ideas in, the ideas would just flow right out because there was no room left.
Slowly, glancing frequently at the book, Ezzie began to put his problem on the board. Mrs. Romanoski waited a minute and then said, “Ezzie, this is not an addition problem.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.”
“Are you kidding me, Mrs. Romanoski?”
“It is not addition.”
“Oh.” Quickly Ezzie erased the plus sign with his fingers, leaving a clear round spot on the dusty blackboard. “Wait a minute.” He hesitated. “Are we looking at the same problem?”
“Problem one.”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “Problem one.” He paused and then said in an enlightened voice, “What page, Mrs. Romanoski?”
“Page forty.”
“Yeah.” His voice sagged. “Problem one, page forty.” He took another sip of chalk. “Wait a minute, let me read this thing again.”
Mouse let his head drop down on his book and felt the cool page against his face. His temperature, he thought now, was beyond being registered, rapidly approaching the point where the body shriveled like a raisin.
“Benjie, are you all right?” Mrs. Romanoski asked. He lifted his head and looked at her. “You don’t look well to me.”
“I don’t feel good either,” he said.
“Then perhaps you should go to the office.”
He hesitated. “All right.”
“I’ll go with him,” Ezzie offered quickly.
“No, Ezzie, you continue with your problem.”
“But—”
“Ezzie.”
There was a silence as Mouse got up, gathered his books and walked to the door. As he went out into the hall he heard the teacher say, “All right, Ezzie, it’s a multiplication problem.”
“Multiplication?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what I thought.”
Quickly Mouse started down the deserted stairs to the office.
MOUSE WAS LYING ON the sofa watching a cartoon. It was the kind of old cartoon that he particularly disliked—the ones in which boxes of soap powder and tubes of toothpaste dance on little legs, but he kept watching. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and school had been
over for thirty minutes. Mouse had been lying on the sofa since then imagining Marv Hammerman standing outside the school waiting for him. He knew exactly how Hammerman would look—relaxed, watchful, his hair flowing, his hands hooked in his back jeans pockets, his eyes bright, his face expressionless. Mouse had not been able to get that picture out of his mind.
He watched some matches singing, “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” in high voices, and then there was a knock at the door. Mouse got up so quickly that he knocked a glass off onto the floor. He walked silently into the middle of the room to see if the door was locked. It wasn’t.
The knock came again. Mouse waited, wondering if he should try to climb out on the fire escape and hide. He imagined the door bursting open and Hammerman standing there, filling the doorway.
There was another knock. “Hey, Mouse, you in there?” It was Ezzie, and Mouse called quickly, “Yeah, come on in.” He went back and picked up the glass and the two ice cubes that had spilled onto the rug.
“How are you feeling?” Ezzie asked.
“Oh, all right.”
“Hammerman was looking for you after school.”
Mouse moistened his lips. “He told me to meet him, but I was sick. They made me go home.”
“The boy in the black sweat shirt—you know which one he is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he and Hammerman came over to me after school.”
“What did they say?”
“Hammerman just said, ‘Where’s your buddy?’”
“Tell me every word, Ez, don’t leave out a thing.”
“That was every word. ‘Where’s your buddy?’”
“So what did you say? Did you tell him I had to go home sick?”
“Yeah.”
“And what did he say to that?” Mouse had the briefest hope that his having to go home sick might cause some sympathy from Hammerman.
“He didn’t say anything, but the boy in the black sweat shirt said, ‘Yeah, scared sick,’ and sort of smiled like this.”
“What else?”
“That was the whole conversation, Mouse. First he said, ‘Where’s your buddy?’ Then I said, ‘He had to go home. He was sick.’ Then the boy in the black sweat shirt—I found out his name is Peachie—said—”
“Never mind. I remember it,” Mouse said quickly.
“Well, you were the one who wanted to hear it.”
“Once. I wanted to hear it once.” He sat down on the sofa. On the television screen a bottle of cough syrup was dancing with a bottle of cold tablets, and every time the bottle of cold tablets did a fancy step, the stopper would come off and the tablets would bounce up into the air and then back into the bottle. Mouse said, “Turn that thing off, will you?”
Ezzie paused in front of the television to imitate the bottle of cold tablets. “Hey, look at this, Mouse!”
Mouse glanced at him and then back at the table. “I said to turn that thing off.” Reluctantly Ezzie stopped dancing, turned off the television and Mouse said in a low voice, “My problem is that I have a thing about being hit, I don’t know why it is, Ezzie. I just hate to be hit—or hurt in any way really, especially when I know it’s coming. I just hate to be hurt. It’s one of my personal pecularities, Ez, and somehow I think that makes people want to hit me. It’s strange.”
“Listen, nobody wants to get clobbered.”
“Not as bad as me.”
“Sure, it’s the same with everybody.”
“I just wish you’d been in the hall with me that first day, Ezzie, and seen the look in Hammerman’s eyes—” He broke off. He didn’t know why he had said that. It was the moment he wanted most to forget. He added quickly, “Then you wouldn’t be so—”
“Come on and let’s play basketball,” Ezzie interrupted.
“I just don’t feel like it.” Mouse wanted to get the conversation around to how unfortunate and unfair his plight was.
“Come on, will you? You can’t ruin your whole life just because of Hammerman. Besides, if he shows up, you can just go in the grocery store and pretend to be buying something.” He paused, then added with a little smile, “Band-Aids.”
Mouse got slowly to his feet. “I don’t feel like doing anything.” If he had had a pencil handy he would have drawn an arrow to himself and written the words FRAGILE—DO NOT BEND, FOLD OR MUTILATE.
“Come on.”
“Oh, all right.” Reluctantly Mouse followed Ezzie out the door, and they went down the stairs together. Once outside Ezzie ran ahead eagerly and turned into the alley by the bakery. “Come on, will you?” He ran to the paved area behind the store where the basketball hoop had been put up on the back of the grocery.
Ezzie ran over to where Dick Fellini was idly dribbling the ball and shouted, “Hey, Fellini!” He begged for the ball with his hands, weaving agilely about the pavement, eluding imaginary guards.
“Fellini!” he cried again. He was open now and could make the perfect lay-up shot.
Ezzie had every move of the basketball player down perfectly. He could execute those high jump shots. He could fake, pivot, and go up for a hook shot. He could make the best-looking free throws of anybody. He could dribble so close to the ground the ball seemed to be rolling. The only thing he couldn’t do was get the ball in the basket.
He ran up to the net. “Hey, Fellini, the ball, gimme the ball!”
Fellini fed him the ball, and Ezzie went up in a graceful arc, threw the ball with one hand and watched it bounce off the rim of the basket. Fellini got the ball from the doorway of the grocery store where it had rolled and began dribbling again.
“Hey, Fellini, the ball!” Ezzie spun around now, leaped into the air and caught the ball. Then in a spectacular move he managed to get the ball off before his feet touched the ground. The ball was about a foot short of the basket, and it bounced to where Mouse was standing. Mouse ignored it and let it roll.
Then Mouse walked over and sat down by the grocery. Garbage Dog was there in the doorway, and when he saw Mouse he came over.
“How you doing, boy?” Mouse rubbed Garbage Dog behind the ears. “How are you today?” Mouse really liked this dog. He had never realized how much he liked him until this moment. He thought that Garbage Dog was the kind of animal that never actually changed in any way, just revealed new aspects of his personality from time to time. Like the event of last summer. Mouse thought about that as he continued to scratch Garbage Dog behind the ears.
Mouse and Ezzie had been patting Garbage Dog that day—this had been in August—and while they were just sitting there, patting him, Ezzie had noticed that the dog’s mouth was slightly open. He had said, “Hey, Mouse, what’s old G. D. got in his mouth?”
Mouse had bent over and looked. Garbage Dog had long hair that hung over his mouth a little. “I can’t see.”
Ezzie had reached out and lifted the dog’s lip by this long hair. “What is it? Can you see now?”
“No.”
“Well, let’s get his mouth open. This is driving me crazy.”
They had struggled to open Garbage Dog’s mouth, while the dog sat looking beyond them at the back of the dry cleaners.
“Help me, Mouse, you think I can do this all by myself?”
“I’m helping. He doesn’t want to open his mouth though. That’s obvious. You can’t just force—”
“Yes, you can. There’s a spot that you press—it’s back behind the jaw somewhere—and this spot makes the dog’s mouth spring open. I’ve seen a lady in my apartment give her dog worm pills this way. Wait a minute. This might be it.” Ezzie pressed on both sides of Garbage Dog’s face, and abruptly his mouth opened. A small green turtle fell out onto the pavement.
Mouse and Ezzie had looked at it for a moment without speaking. Then Ezzie said in a wondering voice, “Am I going crazy, or is that a turtle?”
“It’s a turtle.”
“But how could that be? Where would you get a turtle around here?”
“Out of somebody’s t
urtle bowl maybe.”
“Let me see that.” Ezzie had picked up the turtle and looked at it, turning it over in his hand. “This is a real living turtle.”
“I know.”
“But how could it be? How could such a thing as this be?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s like ‘Twilight Zone,’ Mouse. Do you understand what has happened? Garbage Dog has come strolling up with a living breathing turtle in his mouth.”
They had sat there with Garbage Dog between them for a long time that afternoon talking about the turtle, about the strangeness of it. Ezzie kept saying over and over, “It’s a living breathing turtle. This turtle is living and breathing!” And Mouse kept saying, “I know.” Finally they had argued a little about which one of them owned the turtle, and then they had agreed that it belonged to Ezzie because he had noticed it first.
Later that evening Ezzie had sold the turtle to a girl in his apartment building for a quarter. For weeks after that Ezzie never passed Garbage Dog without checking his mouth, the way other people check the coin return slots in telephone booths.
Now Ezzie was guarding Dick Fellini, waving his hands in Fellini’s face, trying to knock the ball from his hands. Suddenly Ezzie was successful. He had the ball, bounced it once, whirled out and away from the basket and lifted his arm in a beautiful shot that missed.
Fellini caught the rebound and shot. Then with a forward dart, Ezzie scooped up the ball and dribbled over to Mouse. “Hey, Mousie Boy.” Ezzie threw the ball to Mouse, and Mouse tossed it back without enthusiasm. “Come on,” Ezzie urged.
“In a minute,” Mouse said. He did not feel like any physical activity. All his strength had to be saved. If he wasted his life force frivolously in games, he thought, there might not be enough.
“Mouse!” Ezzie threw him the ball again. This time Mouse was caught off-guard, thinking about Hammerman, and the ball landed hard in his stomach. He got to his feet quickly, holding the ball against him.
