by Beth Vrabel
I think General MacCathur laughed, too. I seriously doubt you can really even call the hideous beast a cat. That’s like a major insult to the cat species, I’m sure. Because this was more like a yellow-eyed demon. General MacCathur loved to curl through my feet as I walked—always sticking to the right, where I couldn’t spot her until too late—so bam! I’d fall to the shag carpeting. I quickly figured out her second favorite form of torment. General MacCathur tucked under the second to last step on Gramps’s stairway. Just as my foot was about to make contact with the last step, I’d hear the horrid hiss and feel the prick of her pointy devil teeth in the same soft spot above my ankle she’d attacked on day one of being here.
And now we had this. General MacCathur the Second curled up in the middle of my backpack, furring all of it with her bushy yellow hair.
You can imagine how I felt seeing that my all-black-all-the-time gear had some added shag carpeting of its own, thanks to the demon cat. Awesome.
I reached toward the bag, hoping to send the cat flying. Don’t get me wrong: I love animals. I once spent an entire afternoon carrying around Tooter, Alice’s oldie moldy dog, and it was awesome (toxic farts aside). General MacCathur would probably eat Tooter for breakfast. She hissed and raked her claws across my arm like she could hear my thoughts.
“Ow!” I howled. “Move it, fleabag!”
General MacCathur blinked huge yellow eyes at me and raised a leg to lick her butt.
“Now, now, Ryder,” said Mom, floating by without moving her eyes from the lines of the research paper she was editing. She swooped General MacCathur into her arms. The demented beast purred even as it glared at me. “You’ve just got to show her some kindness. Respect her boundaries.”
“Respect her boundaries? She was in my backpack!” I guess I couldn’t be too surprised. Spend your day surrounded by insects and you can’t be easily annoyed, even by a twenty-pound cat determined to ruin your day.
“Next time, I’ll just zip her up in there. Give you a nice surprise ’bout lunchtime,” Gramps laughed.
“Whatever.” I brushed the fur off the backpack as best I could with the side of my hand. A whiff of the General’s musky stench hit my nose as I zipped shut the bag. “See you later, Mom!” I called and headed for the door.
“Ryder, wait!” I could hear Mom rushing toward me. “Ryder!”
“Mom, I’m going to miss the bus,” I called.
“Stop!” Mom ordered in her don’t-mess-with-me tone.
I stopped.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to take the bus,” she said. Her beady eyes flicked back and forth across my face.
“Why?” I snapped. I could hear the rumble of the bus as it wheezed down the road.
“It’s your first day,” Mom said.
“Everyone else started two weeks ago, Mom. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Yes, but it’s your first day in the school district,” Mom said. “I’d just feel better if you had someone there to walk you in and everything.”
“Mom!” I whined. “I’m in eighth grade! I can’t have my mommy walking me into the office!”
“Cah, cah, cah!” I whipped around to see Gramps pulling on leather driving gloves just behind me. He grinned around the keys, which were in his mouth. Swiping them from his lips, he said, “Don’t worry, Richie. Mommy’s heading to work. I’ll make sure you look groovy in front of your friends. Let’s boogie!”
“Don’t do this to me, Mom,” I begged.
“I just need to make sure the administration remembers your accommodations, that’s all, Ryder.”
“I can tell them!” By accommodations, Mom meant that I had to sit in the front, toward the right side of the room so I could see more easily with my left eye. Stuff like that. No biggie, nothing I couldn’t handle.
In a lowered voice, Mom added, “Gramps offered to do this for you. It’s a rare and wonderful thing when he’s willing to leave the house these days, so please, just let him.”
“Mom, he’s wearing white pants. Tight white pants.”
She sighed. “I think it’s not just his house that hasn’t been updated in the past forty years. His wardrobe, too. It’s sort of interesting, really. That he’s been stuck in this time period since Marlene passed away. Kind of reminds me of Jurassic Park—he’s like the mosquito stuck in amber for centuries.”
Mom’s eyes get this faraway look whenever she thinks of the dinosaur movie. Seeing the original movie when she was a teenager made her get on the whole entomologist bandwagon, though she thankfully isn’t interested in resurrecting dinosaurs. Just interested, apparently, in forcing me to kick off day one in public middle school accompanied by one.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
A horn honked in the driveway and Mom pushed me toward the door.
“Calm down, Ryder. He means well.” Mom kissed my cheek. “Good luck today!”
Do you know what an Oldsmobile Cutlass is? It’s a giant, stretched-out car that, if it’s driven by my gramps, belches out bursts of grayish black smoke. His was a sparkly gold color and had windows that you actually had to crank down. I know this because that’s just what he was doing as he lay on the horn yet again, even though I stood right there by the front door. Hanging his head out the window, he yelled, “Whad’ya think, Richie? Ready to pick up some chicks?”
That, of course, was the moment the gorgeous girl from the day before left her house to get onto the bus, which, of course, had every window open so that everyone inside saw Gramps, heard Gramps, and now—cherry on top—could watch him wiggle in his seat to the disco tunes blaring from his open windows. What was the sound? Was that someone singing the words, “Jive Talkin’”? And was Gramps belting along in a squeaky falsetto?
Yes. Yes, he was.
I didn’t want to, I really didn’t, but I twisted my head to see if the gorgeous girl was watching. And, since the bus was to the right, that meant there was no sly is-she-or-isn’t-she glance. Nope, I had to totally commit. Sort of like how Gramps had totally committed to getting down with his bad self.
Yes. Yes, she was.
And also laughing.
Awesome.
Gramps didn’t just pull up to the school building and let me out. Nope, he walked me into Papuaville Middle School. I rammed my hands in my pockets and prayed for an asteroid to fall on my head.
“I seriously can figure out where to go on my own,” I told Gramps.
Gramps’s eyes raked me up and down. “Look at you there with your plain old jeans and T-shirt, walking in here swiveling your head all around like a doofus. What you need is some confidence. You should strut.” He jerked his chin out, did this odd flapping thing with his arms, and shimmied his butt as he walked. Picture a chicken crossed with a cow, in the skin of an old, flabby man wearing white pants. Yep, that’s exactly what he looked like.
“You realize that ‘swiveling my head all around like a doofus’ is the only way I can see what’s going on, right?” I snapped.
“Yeah, you should stop doing that.” Gramps yanked open the door to the school office.
“Wait a sec,” I said, grabbing Gramps’s polyester sleeve. I leaned in to study the picture of the school mascot to make sure my eye wasn’t deceiving me. “Papuaville Middle School’s mascots … are those wombats?”
“Wombats?” Gramps scoffed. “Why in the world would they be wombats? Those,” he said, pointing to two flat-headed, buck-toothed, potato-shaped mascots, “are guinea pigs.”
“We’re the Guinea Pigs? The Papuaville Guinea Pigs?”
“The Papuaville Fighting Guinea Pigs.” Gramps threw open the door farther and called out to the cluster of secretaries, “Hey, ladies!”
I let the door drift shut in front of me. I’m not sure if my one remaining eye could withstand the sight of Gramps flirting with the school secretaries.
“You okay?”
I turned to find none other than gorgeous girl next door standing right in f
ront of me. I worked on getting my jaw to close. She was even prettier up close. The fluorescent lights made her dark brown hair shinier, her light brown eyes brighter. Her mouth twitched a little as I stared.
Too late, I realized she had been watching my eyes while I stared at her. Now her eyes flicked back and forth, trying to figure out which eye to stick with. My artificial eye, it does move. It just doesn’t quite keep up with the other eye. In fact, if you saw me randomly you wouldn’t be like, “Oh, look. That guy has something wrong with his eye.” Nope, that realization would come later once you were standing just a few feet away from me and watching my face, the way Beautiful Neighbor girl was now. She totally saw the not quite part of my eye movement.
I could work with this. Not to brag, but I’ve become a bit of an expert at monopolizing people’s uncertainties when it comes to my eyes. I gave her my swaggiest half-smile, half-nod look. “Hey, I’ve been keeping an eye out for you.”
She sucked in her breath but didn’t take the bait. “Um, I’m Jocelyn.”
“Ryder.” I grinned at her, watching the edges of her mouth pause before smiling back. “You live next door to my gramps, right?” Both of us paused as Gramps’s cah, cah, cah laugh boomed from inside the office.
“Yeah, he’s great.”
“Obviously you don’t know him very well.”
Jocelyn smiled, but whatever else she was going to say was cut off by the bell. “See you later, Ryder. Maybe we’ll have a class together.”
“Yeah, I’ll see you.” The words tasted lame even as they slipped out of my mouth. For some reason, I stretched see into something long and heavy, and it fell like a thud. The only thing worse than a bad joke is nothing. Nothing is worse than a bad joke.
Ugh. Even that was a bad joke.
I texted Alice, even though I knew I could be getting her in trouble with the teachers at Addison if she was caught with her phone in class.
Crisis. Cute girl doesn’t think I’m funny.
Gramps left the office, waving a piece of paper in his fist. Behind him, I could see the secretaries settle back in their seats, shaking their heads. For a second, I felt bad for the old man. He thought he was making jokes all the time, when really, he was the joke.
“Got your schedule, Richie Ryder.” Gramps’s idea of compromise was to call me both of my names. “Took a guess about the experiential classes—the ones you can sign up for as an elective.”
“What? There are optional classes? What are they?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, wood shop. Music. Art. Theater. Things like that.”
“But which one—”
The bell rang again. “You better get to class. You’ve got homeroom with Miss Singer on the second floor to start.” Gramps shoved the paper into my hand, turned me around, and pushed my body toward the stairway.
I heard the soft cah, cah, cah of his laugh as I trudged up the stairs.
Chapter Four
Homeroom was on the right of the hallway at the top of the stairs, which meant zeroing in on the room number took some concentration. Here’s the deal: I could turn my head pretty far around but I suddenly became aware of everyone watching me in the halls. So I was suave about it, stopping to tie my shoes when I got close to a doorway, shifting on my heels a little while I was stooped, then standing to see that the door number was bam! Right in front of me. This one was room 210, and my class was 206. I meandered down another few doors then—imagine that! My shoe was untied again. I positioned myself, quickly tied my already-tied sneaker, and stood to confirm. Yep. Room 206. Like I said, suave.
I guess I was too busy being self-congratulatory to notice the love of my life was standing beside me. I ran right into Jocelyn and she fell backward a few steps and into the boy behind her.
“Hey!” the guy barked. “Watch where you’re going.”
“It’s fine,” said Jocelyn, her cheeks turning pink. “I don’t think he saw me.”
“Of course he saw you,” the guy said. He put his arm around Jocelyn, like I might barrel into her again. “He turned right into you.”
“No, man, I didn’t see her,” I started to explain.
The guy jerked his chin at me. What did that mean? Was it like he was backward nodding, pushing his face up instead of down? Or was it some primitive challenge? He stood there, hand on Jocelyn’s shoulder, pushing-but-not-quite-pushing her toward the door and away from me. But his body was facing me square on. He had brilliant green eyes and the longest lashes I’d ever seen on a boy. I know what you’re thinking: that’s an odd thing for a guy to notice about another guy. But it’s true. They were so long they looked kind of tangled.
And here’s the thing: I have this condition. Alice diagnosed me once, as she claims to suffer from the same ailment. I could hear her voice in my head as I thought of it. When you’re nervous, you just blurt whatever you’re thinking, like you can’t hold the words in another second. Like diarrhea of the mouth. So there you have it. Diarrhea of the mouth struck me, and I blurted, “Do you have to brush your eyelashes? Because they are mega, mega long.”
“What?” This time the guy jerked backward.
Jocelyn’s cough into her shoulder sounded an awful lot like a laugh.
My stupid mouth stretched into a grin at the sound of it. “Sorry, it’s just, I’ve never seen such lashes. Do the mascara people know about you? ’Cause you should be in commercials—”
Lash Boy dropped his arm and did this move where he stepped super close to me, pushing his chest out. I’d seen gorillas do that once in a documentary Dad was watching. It’s a show of dominance, I think. If I were a monkey, I was supposed to cower or throw my poop or something. But I am not a monkey and I was already pressed up against wall. So I did something really stupid. I leaned back toward him. “Yep. Thanks to how you’re standing, I can tell for sure. Definitely the longest lashes I’ve ever seen. Not that I’ve seen many this close.”
By now, I became aware that about a half-dozen other kids were gathered around us. “Have you guys seen his lashes?” I said to them. “They’re like the lashes on doll babies. You know the ones that blink open and shut?” Sure enough, Lash Boy slowly blinked at me.
“You’re a freak!” Lash Boy hissed as everyone around us laughed. “What the heck is wrong with you?”
A hand clamped down on my shoulder and Lash Boy’s at the same time. Oh, great. Perfect way to meet my homeroom teacher. The woman looked a bit like a potato. I think most of the time she must’ve looked like a super nice, teachery teacher. But right then, she was a boiling hot mad potato teacher. “Mr. Waters!” she screamed at Lash Boy. “I am embarrassed and ashamed of how you would treat a differently abled new student! Your parents are going to be crushed when I call them this evening!”
“Wait, wait, wait!” I stammered as Lash Boy’s face turned a frightening shade of purple. His mouth flopped open and shut a couple times, making him look even more like a doll. “He wasn’t talking about my—”
At the same time, Lash Boy repeated, “Differently abled?”
“I admire you standing up for Max,” Miss Singer said, “but I refuse to ignore such a blatant example of bullying.” She clapped her hands together three times. “Everyone! In the classroom. Time for class.” On cue, the bell rang.
“You!” She pointed into Lash Boy’s, aka Max’s, chest. “You get to wherever you need to be. Just know that I will be notifying your parents about what I just witnessed.” Miss Singer pushed past us both.
“It wasn’t like that!” Max gasped. His face drained from cherry red to white in seconds, like watching strawberry syrup sink to the bottom of a glass of milk. “I didn’t mean …”
I sighed. “Look, I’ll make it right,” I said to him. But then, of course, I opened my mouth again as he started to look relieved. “Do you accept payment in the form of mascara or do you have a different sort of currency in mind?” I swear, if I could rein in my wit, I would. But my verbal brilliance cannot be restrained, even when faced with someon
e who very clearly couldn’t keep up. Lash Boy’s mouth flapped open and shut a couple times.
“Let it go,” Jocelyn whispered to him. She turned Max’s body and gave him a half push in the opposite direction. “Just get to class.”
After a moment of Max just staring over his shoulder at me with the same scary purple face, I realized that he only partly was looking at me with hatred. The other part was still trying to figure out what Miss Singer meant by differently abled. And seriously, I’m a nice guy. I couldn’t let Lash Boy burn. Plus, the look Jocelyn pinned me with—sharp and waiting—made me move. And truth be told, he hadn’t called me a freak because of Artie.
Lash Boy called me a freak because of … well … me. I shook my head and rushed after Miss Singer, who had settled in behind her desk and was scribbling into the notebook. As I approached, she closed it with a quick slap.
“Listen, Miss Singer,” I said. “I know I should introduce myself and all, but it seems you already know all about me. I just need you to know: Max wasn’t calling me a freak because of my eye. I swear, I sort of provoked him, and—”
“What’s wrong with your eye?” A kid who had been hanging around the teacher’s desk now leaned in and stared at my face.
Miss Singer sighed, folding her hands under her chin. “I see we’ve just got to deal with this plainly, Richie Ryder.”
“It’s just Ryder,” I interrupted.
“That’s odd,” she murmured. “It says here specifically that you wish to be called Richie Ryder at all times.” She squinted her eyes at the computer screen, where I guess she was reading about me. “Your grandfather was very clear about this to the office personnel.”
“Gramps!” I growled. “Please just call me Ryder.”
“Fine.” Miss Singer stood and put her hands on her round hips. “This is a small town. Most of these kids have known each other since kindergarten. And this group in particular is close. We middle school teachers looped with them, so they had us for all of their courses in seventh grade, too. You’re going to stand out, for a few reasons.” She squinted at me, eyes drifting from my fire-red hair, one eye, and freckles, then to my too-tall, too-skinny frame to my too-long feet. “Let’s get this over with, shall we, Ryder? I find it’s best to face issues head on. At Papuaville, homeroom classes stay for first period. That means once I take attendance and we’re officially into biology class, we’ll address the issue with the class.”
