The Size of the Truth

by Andrew Smith

  I could not bring back any of it, not until the moment those three boys slammed my locker door shut and trapped me inside that small, lightless space. Then it was almost like a movie began playing on the screen of my memory, filling my head with all those sounds, smells, and stories about how it felt being so hopelessly lost when I was such a small kid.

  And there was something else, too—something that started with a tap on my hand and a very familiar voice I had neither heard nor thought about for seven years.

  “Seems like we only ever meet during unicorn molting season. You know, when my horn falls off.”

  Then a name popped into my head—one that I hadn’t thought of at all since I’d come out of the well.

  “Bartleby?” I said.

  All these images and feelings came rushing back to me—the memories of being trapped in the well flooded my head. It was like filling a teacup with a firehose: the dirty trick Bartleby played on me when he (excuse me) pooped on my foot, Ethan Pixler’s coffin and secret hideout, the wild going-away party in the cave with all the animals.

  “It really is me! Really, really, really!” Bartleby said, hopping from one hind foot to the other. “Ha ha, Sam! Look how much you’ve grown! High-four! Or high-nine! Or whatever! Ha ha!”

  Armadillos only have four fingers on their front feet. Or hands. Or whatever they use to high-four with.

  And then Bartleby, naturally, went on. “Oh, forget all this math! Just hug me, Sam! It’s been a long time!”

  Bartleby, I noticed while we were hugging, smelled like rotten garbage.

  But he said, “You smell really good, Sam. Like vanilla and spice and bug repellent!”

  “It’s my—excuse me—stupid solid deodorant, which I had to put on after we did the Mustang Mile and had to take—excuse me—dumb showers,” I said.

  “Ha ha! Who would ever want to be a human?” Bartleby asked. “Remember how muddy we got when we spent all that time together in the well? Those were good days, Sam. Good days!”

  “I didn’t remember anything for a long time. I’m just starting to remember it. Just now,” I said.

  “Well? Remember how I told you if you ever needed me again that I’d be back?” Bartleby said. “Because that’s what subterranean nocturnal friends do for each other.”

  I honestly could not remember Bartleby telling me that. And what I did remember seemed so scrambled, like a movie cut up into segments and rearranged into some incomprehensible disorder.

  Bartleby’s curly whiskers tickled my face.

  He let go of me and stood back at arm’s length. Somehow the inside of my locker had transformed into something as big as a bus station waiting room.

  Bartleby scratched his chin and said, “Well, guess what, Sam. You might think you need me now, but you really don’t.”

  I bit the inside of my lip. “How am I supposed to get out of here?”

  “I’ll dig us a tunnel!” Bartleby said.

  I did not think an armadillo could burrow through steel, but Bartleby was Bartleby, after all. “You will?” I asked.

  “Ha ha! No! Of course not. We are encased in solid steel!”

  Bartleby’s eyes gleamed. He said, “You’re never not going to be the Little Boy in the Well.”

  “I figured as much,” I admitted.

  “Yeah? Well, guess what, Sam. You’re also never going to be without people who care about you too. People who love you.”

  Bartleby made a heart shape between his front claws, which were really quite ugly to look at.

  But I didn’t exactly feel Bartleby’s heart-shaped confidence.

  And Bartleby said, “How’s the macaroni and cheese coming along? Are you going to win?”

  I shook my head. Bartleby knew everything about me. He always did.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Just remember to use the secret ingredient,” Bartleby said.

  And when Bartleby said “secret ingredient,” his eyes flared open like magnolia blossoms in late spring and he hooked his front claws into air quotes. It was something I could not remember, but had also never forgotten, after all those years.

  I asked, “What’s the secret ingredient?”

  I made air quotes too.

  And Bartleby, being Bartleby, said, “You never told me! You’re keeping it secret! Remember, Sam? Ha ha ha!”

  Bartleby was so annoying. That I could remember.

  Then came a rattling sound, and Bartleby said, “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Sam. Don’t forget what I said!”

  “Forget what?” I asked.

  But it was too late. Before the words even came out of my mouth, Bartleby vanished into the darkness.

  Blinding light flooded into the small space of my locker, and then there were hands again, grabbing at me.

  Somebody pulled me out of the dark and into the fluorescent light and linoleum of the main hallway at Dick Dowling Middle School. I nearly tripped over my feet and had to brace myself against the wall of lockers to keep from falling down. I was dizzy, gasping for air, and blinded as though I may have been trapped inside the locker for days. I had no idea how long it had been since those boys had slammed me in there.

  Maybe it was three days.

  “I told you to watch out for those guys. Are you okay?”

  It was James Jenkins who opened my locker and pulled me out. He had his hand on my shoulder and was staring into my blank and unfocused eyes. I didn’t answer him. I just stood there, looking around the hallway, which was already completely empty of kids.

  James repeated himself. “Sam, are you okay? Can you even hear me?”

  “How long was I in there?” I asked.

  “About three seconds. That’s it. Those guys took off when they saw me coming. Do you need to go to the nurse or anything? You look like you’re sick or something.”

  And that’s when I (excuse me) threw up all over our shiny and clean Dick Dowling Mustangs linoleum hallway. It was also when I witnessed James Jenkins moving faster than I’d ever seen him move in his life as he leapt backward to avoid the splattering torrent of my (excuse me) barf.

  Being (excuse me) barfed on by someone else has to be just about as bad as getting trapped in an abandoned well for three days.

  THE LAST DAY IN THE HOLE

  BARTLEBY MAKES A LIST

  Everything always starts at the end of a party, or at the bottom of a well, I guess.

  The growling roar of the digging machine got louder and louder as Bartleby led me back to my place in the well. It sounded like the entire planet was straining to chew me up and swallow me once and for all. I felt the vibrations coming from the metal teeth of the digger as they tore through the dirt and rock.

  It was terrifying, and so loud that Bartleby and I had to scream over the noise just to hear each other. Up above, people were singing and shouting. In all the clamor, I couldn’t make out anything specific in their songs and words, but it was the sound of victory. It sounded like a party.

  And the little blob of sky looked like polished turquoise.

  Bartleby placed a hand on the rock wall beside my shoulder. He said, “Oh my! They’re just inches away, Sam. You’re going to get out. Happy day! Happy day!”

  I watched Bartleby’s jittering hand as he pressed it to the wall.

  Something very strange was going on inside me: I was not sure that I wanted to leave. In many ways I had become used to being in the well. I even kind of liked it. And I had gotten used to Bartleby and his annoying personality. And I liked the chorus of bats, Ethan Pixler’s secret hideout, and especially Audrey, the intelligent and polite coyote.

  Bartleby must have noticed the confusion in my eyes.

  He said, “What’s wrong, Sam?”

  “I’m going to leave,” I said.

  Bartleby’s face got as serious as an armadillo’s face could get. He said, “Well? You’ve been wanting to leave since you got here! Don’t tell me you’d rather stay down here! I’ll never understand you people.”

/>   “But what’s going to happen to you?”

  Bartleby pressed his very thin lips together and shook his head. “To me? To me? Just think about what’s going to happen to you! You’re going to start school next year. One day, you’re going to fly in an airplane for the first time. You’re going to learn how to tie a necktie and to be someone’s big brother.”

  And when Bartleby said “big brother,” his eyes got big and wet and he raised his hands over his head like he was showing an invisible Sam Abernathy how to grow up.

  Bartleby kept making his list: “You’re going to step your bare feet into the ocean one day. You’re going to learn how to cook human food, and people are going to love it. People are going to love you, too, Sam—and one day you’re even going to fall in love with someone very special. And a long time from now, you’re going to be an old man—as old as Ethan Pixler, except with a pulse! Ha ha! You’re going to play tricks, and have tricks played right back at you, change a flat tire, get bad haircuts, see scary movies with your friends, make your mom cry on Mother’s Day, get in trouble for things you didn’t do, and not get caught for things you really did.”

  Bartleby took a deep breath and wiped his eyes. He was crying. He said, “Do you want to know what else you’ll do? You are going to change someone’s life, and you will change the world, Sam Abernathy!”

  I shook my head. I said, “But what about you?”

  “What do you mean, what about me?” Bartleby asked.

  “Are you just going to go away?”

  “Of course not! Ha ha! I’m going to stay down here, living the unicorn life in my subterranean palace, with all this luxury, and all my subterranean friends.”

  And when Bartleby said “all this luxury,” he arched his nearly bald eyebrows and fanned his arms out as though he were showing me a beautiful room and a surrounding mass of other subterranean nocturnal animals. Then he turned his pointy armadillo snout toward the tunnel he’d dug near my feet.

  The roar of the digging machine was so loud, it hurt my head.

  “Wait,” I said. “Don’t go.”

  Bartleby stopped, then turned around. He put his little hands on my face and wiped the mud away from my cheeks. He said, “Aww . . . Don’t cry, Sam. I’ll always be here for you if you ever need me. Ethan Pixler will too! Ha ha!”

  Then Bartleby hugged me and pressed his snout up to my ear and said, “I love you, buddy. Be kind up there, okay? People need kindness as much as they need food to eat. Maybe more.”

  Bartleby turned around and ducked into his tunnel.

  The noise of the digging stopped.

  Bartleby’s tunnel closed up behind him, like it was never there at all.

  A little bit of dirt spilled into the well beside my shoulder.

  They had gotten through.

  A GREAT LEAP FORWARD

  This starts with something I don’t think I would have ever realized if it hadn’t been for James Jenkins pulling me out of my locker.

  It wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t James Jenkins’s fault either. Because sometimes things just happen, and like Bartleby told me, you can’t just live your life with the singular mission of trying to never fall into a hole.

  “Sam? Can you hear me? We’re there, Son.” My dad’s voice crackled through the cable. “They’re going to see if they can get a man down to you. You’re coming home, Son.”

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I was so tired, and I didn’t say anything to him. I shut my eyes and started to fall asleep again.

  “Sam? Sam? Can you say something, sweetie?” Dad said.

  I said, “Okay.”

  Up above, there was cheering at the sound of my voice coming through the loudspeakers. People were actually thrilled, and all I did was say okay.

  And I never remembered any of this until that October afternoon seven years later, when I was eleven years old and James Jenkins told me he would walk home with me to make sure I was all right after I’d been slammed inside my locker at Dick Dowling Middle School.

  He’d said, “We should get those guys in trouble for what they did to you.”

  We’d been walking along Pike Street, which was a block north of the school. Behind us, the two-lane strip of cracked asphalt led to Lily Putt’s, Colonel Jenkins’s Diner, and the center of Blue Creek. Ahead were the open fields and woods and the old spread-out homes that used to be farms where we’d grown up. My nose was a little runny. I kept my chin down and watched the red dirt and gravel that was so familiar as it passed beneath my feet, and all the way I was thinking about those days I’d spent in the well, finally remembering an armadillo who pretended to be a unicorn, a bank robber’s coffin, and the strange blindness that overcame me when I was pulled out from the narrow rescue shaft that had been dug for me, on an angle, as Bartleby had liked to say.

  James Jenkins said, “What’s wrong? You’re not saying anything.”

  I didn’t look at him.

  I said, “I’m sorry if I—excuse me—barfed on your shoes.”

  James Jenkins never laughed. Why would anyone expect him to? But I knew that if James Jenkins never laughed, it was not because he was a murderer. He made a kind of breathy “huh” sound, which was a great leap forward in the evolution of laughter for James Jenkins.

  He said, “I got out of the way in time.”

  “I never saw you move that fast in my life,” I said.

  James Jenkins made that “huh” sound again.

  It was a good sign that maybe James Jenkins would learn how to laugh.

  “It’s all the ballet,” he said.

  “You jump good.”

  “Yeah,” James Jenkins said.

  The thing is, when they had dug that rescue shaft—on an angle—to get me out of the well, they did not take into consideration the size of the firefighter who was supposed to crawl through it in order to reach me. It couldn’t be done. The tunnel was too small.

  An ominous quiet had fallen over the crowds around the well as it began to sink in that maybe the Little Boy in the Well would not be saved that day. Maybe he would never be saved.

  They tried to lower a harness on a cable down for me. I could touch it, and doing that made me feel somehow half-connected to the world above me, but the way I had fallen put me in a position where I could not move my arms enough to pull the harness over me. I tried for an hour before I gave up.

  It felt like torture.

  For the third day in a row I heard Mom crying through the little speaker.

  And Dad kept telling me not to give up, but I knew he was saying it more to all those people up above than he was to me.

  The engineers and rescue crews had to regroup and come up with another strategy to save the Little Boy in the Well. Nobody had to tell me, it was obvious from the weight of silence above me, that many of them were beginning to doubt anything would ever work out. They considered making a call out to emergency crews to find the smallest firefighter in Texas, if there was such a thing. Someone suggested contacting a circus contortionist who might be able to dislocate her shoulders in order to squeeze into the rescue shaft.

  It was frustratingly ridiculous at that point. I wished Bartleby would come back.

  I tried to go to sleep.

  And it was during the stall of quiet frustration that a seven-year-old boy named James Jenkins—most people called him Jimmy then—who had been at the top of the well, waiting for three days with his mother and father because he felt so terrible about causing me to fall down that uncovered hole, slipped that yellow nylon harness around his chest and crawled headfirst down the narrow rescue shaft while people shouted for him to stop, and what was he doing, and was he out of his mind, and so on.

  I remembered.

  When he walked home with me that day in eighth grade, I remembered—I could almost feel exactly what it had felt like when James Jenkins’s hand slipped into my little space at the bottom of that well and grabbed on to mine.

  I remembered.

  BLUE CRE
EK DAYS

  THE SIZE OF THE TRUTH

  My life starts on Pike Street, walking home with James Jenkins almost exactly seven years after I fell into a hole.

  I felt awful about what I had done to James Jenkins.

  For seven years I had tried to stay out of holes, and for seven years I had believed things about James Jenkins that were not true.

  The time had come for me to reexamine the narrative which suggested that James Jenkins was a murderous, football-playing brute who was entirely to blame for those three days I’d spent at the bottom of an empty well.

  That was not James Jenkins.

  The truth was so much bigger than I had ever estimated it to be.

  Blue Creek Days had come. It was a perfect autumn Saturday, a relieving non-camping weekend when maybe fifty years ago all the people around these parts would have been planting onion seeds. And now it seemed they were all filling in blanks, charting out life courses for future football players and computer programmers, and commuting thirty miles in each direction to work inside boxy industrial buildings that seemed to change name and ownership every time the stock market hiccupped.

  I got out of bed early so I could prep the macaroni and cheese dish I’d come up with. It was a risk for Blue Creek. Well, it would have been more of a risk for onion-planting Blue Creek than tech-sector Blue Creek. I’d settled on a baked orecchiette in a sauce of Gorgonzola with prosciutto and small bits of caramelized autumn pears. The trick was to get the dish in the oven just late enough in the morning so it would be perfectly done when the judging began at noon.

  In the meantime, there was all the last-minute setup for the Science Club. Hayley Garcia and the rest of the kids had mostly come to the conclusion that I was dead weight for not helping out with our project as much as I should have. She theorized that I was only using the prestige of the Science Club to pad my transcript for getting into Blue Creek Magnet School.

  Hayley Garcia had no idea how much I did not care about Science Club or Blue Creek Magnet.