Sticks

by Joan Bauer

  “She’s the Health Week mother,” he says, groaning. “She brings raisins.”

  After school, Arlen and I head back to his house to work on our science fair project, “The Amazing Secrets of the Pool Table.” Arlen wanted to call it “Death-Defying Secrets of the Pool Table to Stun and Amaze Your Friends,” but Mrs. Riggles said it was better to use one big adjective and wow them with our findings. We are developing this in utmost secrecy in Arlen’s bedroom with Mangler standing guard. Arlen heard from Petie Pencastle that Rory Magellan has spies everywhere. Arlen says once your scientific secrets leak out, you can forget about your enduring place in history.

  I think learning the laws of the universe is a whole lot easier than trying to understand mothers.

  We’re laying out the poster that says

  THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE ARE EVERYWHERE

  YOU LOOK, EVEN IN PLACES

  YOU WOULDN’T EXPECT.

  Arlen is drawing an okay universe with shooting stars that look like pool balls. I’m doing the lettering on Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion, which he figured out three hundred years ago to explain the way things move. We put them partly in our own words.

  I’m drawing the first law in red:

  EVERY OBJECT STAYS IN A STATE OF REST OR

  UNIFORM MOTION IN A STRAIGHT LINE UNLESS

  SOME OUTSIDE FORCE CHANGES IT.

  In pool talk this means a pool ball isn’t going anywhere unless it’s hit by something, and once it starts moving, it needs something to stop it like a rail, another ball, or the friction of the cloth table.

  I do the second law in blue:

  THE ACCELERATION OF AN OBJECT IS IN

  PROPORTION TO THE STRENGTH OF THE FORCE

  ACTING ON IT AND THE DIRECTION

  OF THAT FORCE.

  That’s a fancy way to say that how hard you hit a ball will be how fast it’s going to move, and the less it weighs, the faster it will go.

  I do the third law in green:

  FOR EVERY ACTION THERE IS ALWAYS AN EQUAL

  AND OPPOSITE REACTION.

  A cue ball stops dead when it hits another ball straight on.

  * * *

  There’s a knock on the door. Mangler starts squealing. “Friend or foe?” Arlen shouts.

  “Cousin.” Francine walks in wearing lime-green tights and a long T-shirt with sparkly stars. When the nuns aren’t watching she lets loose. She stares at our poster. “It needs glitter,” she says, flopping down. Her face gets serious. “What was the worst moment of your life that you can remember? Everyone has to answer.”

  Arlen says when Mangler got hit by that motorcycle and was lying on the street bleeding and had to have surgery.

  I say when Poppy and I got robbed two years ago by that man with the ski mask and the gun who said if we called the police, he’d come back and get us.

  Francine says it was when she realized she’d never be as successful in life as her big sister, April.

  We’re all just sitting there with our worst moments.

  “April’s president of her junior class, she’s on the debate team, she’s beautiful.” Francine covers her big ears with her thin brown hair. Buck Pender called her Dumbo once and she ran all the way home crying. “I just want to be the youngest magician to ever play Vegas and outdo April in anything. Is this too much to ask?”

  This is why Arlen and I like Francine. She cares as much about her magic as we care about math and pool. We’ve been hanging out with her for years, too, even though she’s a girl. She’s got other friends her age, but they live across town.

  I say April can’t do magic tricks.

  “She could if she wanted to.”

  Francine takes out a deck of cards and does her magic shuffle. “Pick a card, any card.”

  I pick one. She touches her forehead. “The Amazing Francine will now tell you what card is in your hand.” She stops to think. “The three of hearts.”

  “No.”

  “Ten of diamonds?”

  I shake my head.

  “Ace of spades?”

  “King of spades. You were close.”

  Francine throws her cards on the floor. Card tricks are the weak point in her act. “I need a rabbit!” she wails. “Animals help you connect with an audience!”

  Mangler starts squealing. Mrs. Pepper shouts that we have to take him outside before the noise shatters the crystal.

  Arlen grabs his new book, Harnessing the Memory Power Within You, and we head outside. “This wouldn’t happen in a tree house,” he says sadly.

  Francine looks at Arlen’s memory book and groans. We’ve tried all kinds of systems to help him remember. Color-coded ones, numbered ones in base ten and base three; we made a chart to keep track of everything he owned, but Arlen lost it.

  Arlen thumps the book. “Do you know that memory is based on association? I just have to find symbols for the things I don’t want to lose.”

  “Bookbag . . .” Arlen turns the word over in his mind. “When I think of bookbag what do I see?”

  “Death,” Francine offers. “If you lose your bookbag again, your father will kill you.”

  “School,” I say.

  Arlen shakes his head.

  “Homework?” I try.

  Arlen leans against the oak tree, thinking hard. “Prison,” he says. “No—I’d never remember that. Punishment. Misery.” He closes his eyes. “Wood!”

  Francine and I look at him, confused.

  Arlen’s jumping around, hugging his memory book. “That’s it! The paper in books is made of wood. Tree houses are made of wood. Every time I see wood I’ll remember!”

  * * *

  I’m standing behind the counter with Poppy. She just had a wart removed and isn’t too chirpy.

  “Spit it out,” she says. “You’re dragging around like a flea-bitten dog.”

  I say how’s a kid supposed to feel when he can’t get the straight scoop on the one thing in the universe that could guarantee his future as pool champion of the world?

  She shoves a rack of balls at me. “You’re sure not going to improve that game of yours bellyaching here.”

  I kick at a dustball and head for table eight, passing Buck in the process. He’s wiping the cloth with Marcus Denny. He taps the nine ball in for a win and says he has to go.

  “I got my first lesson with Carter Krantz . . . .”

  I stop dead in my tracks. Carter Krantz! He’s the sixth-ranked man in the world for nine ball. He’s the best player in the state. Marcus is saying Buck sure is lucky—his dad wouldn’t even buy him his own stick, much less private lessons with Carter Krantz.

  Private lessons!

  I rack the balls, trying to pretend I don’t care. But Buck knows. He swaggers over, puts his hand on the table, and feels the cloth.

  “Don’t even bother practicing, little boy,” he sneers at me. “It won’t do you any good now.”

  * * *

  I’m in my room, flopped in my beanbag chair, feeling the blackness surround me. I look at all the pieces of paper stuck with little colored pins on my bulletin board. It’s my autograph collection of all the pool greats I’ve ever met: Steve Mizerak, Johnny Archer, Allen Hopkins, Buddy Hall, Earl the Pearl Strickland, Nick Varner, Dallas West. I’ve seen them play exhibition matches. They’re so awesome. I hug one of the big, round nine-ball pillows Camille made for my birthday. I read what I’ve written:

  Dear Mr. Alvarez,

  Buck Pender has hired a world-class pool coach and you’re the only person who can help me now. I need a coach pretty bad or everything I’ve been working for is over. Please talk to my mother. Please do whatever you have to do so that I can learn how to win. I’m pretty sure my dad would have wanted me to learn from you.

  Sincerely yours,

  Mickey Vernon, age ten

  I’m not sure about the part about my dad, but when I called Francine and read it to her over the phone, she said it could be the deciding factor. I put it in an envelope, write URGENT AND PERSON
AL EMERGENCY on the front, and copy the address from the A to Z Trucking card Joseph Alvarez left at dinner.

  “It’ll get him,” Francine said, “even if he is a criminal.”

  CHAPTER

  It’s been two days since I mailed the letter.

  Buck is definitely getting better.

  I ask Mom if she’s figured out what’s right for me yet. This is a mistake. Her face gets purple. Her green eyes go into little slits. She says when she’s figured it out, she’ll let me know.

  I’ll be in college, probably.

  Arlen, Francine, and I are at table seventeen. Arlen’s wearing his favorite T-shirt; it reads R U GIFTED? He’s rubbing my shoulders like a boxing coach.

  “You’re going to make it happen, champ, right? You’re going to focus, ram those balls into pockets. You can do it because you’re the king! Let’s hear that thunder break . . . .”

  I lean over the table to shoot and look over at table fifteen, where Buck Pender is knocking in balls with ease, stretching his long arms across the table. I think he got taller since his lesson.

  I put my stick down.

  “What?” Arlen asks.

  I wipe my nose. “I’m worried, okay?”

  “Not okay,” Arlen says. “You think a mathematician starts thinking he can’t finish a problem? You’ve got to think positive, Mickey.”

  Big Earl Reed puts up the tournament poster in the window.

  WE’RE LOOKING FOR THE BEST AND THAT COULD BE YOU!

  I walk up to the poster and touch the you. Buck heads out the door, looking like he eats cement for breakfast.

  Big Earl touches my shoulder. “World’s full of Bucks, Mickey V.”

  “One’s too many.”

  “First one just helps get you ready for the others.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  Mrs. Riggles said the same thing at school—every battle the colonists fought in the American Revolution helped them get ready for the next one. That’s why the best soldiers are the “seasoned” ones. Then she told us about a homework assignment that’s due next month. We each have to pretend we’re a soldier in the Revolutionary army and write a letter home about our experiences in battle. We can pick any battle, Mrs. Riggles said, and passed a box around. We all took slips of paper that had our pretend soldier’s name and rank. Mine said “Lieutenant John Q. Milner.” Arlen was mad; he only got a private first class.

  “Write your soldier’s name down,” Mrs. Riggles said. “Just think about him for now.”

  Arlen leans against the pool table and reaches into his bookbag, which he hasn’t lost for days. “A perfect one-inch-square cube,” he says proudly, holding up a little cardboard box. “I finally got it right. With this, I can win.”

  He takes out a bag of jelly beans, places a few in the cube. He shakes it, adds two more beans. Arlen is set on winning the jelly bean guessing contest at the mall and the hundred-dollar gift certificate. The sign in the mall said it’s the biggest jelly bean display in America.

  “You’re cheating,” Francine says, picking up cards. “The sign said to guess how many jelly beans are in the fish tank, Arlen, not figure it out to the square inch.”

  “Mathematicians don’t guess,” he says, adding a final bean to the box.

  “Well, if you ask me, it’s not fair. I guessed and I won’t tell you how much. Maybe I’ll win.”

  Arlen empties the cube and counts the jelly beans. “Thirteen,” he says. I write it down. “They’re the exact same size as the ones at the mall.”

  Francine touches her silver cross necklace. “Sister Immaculata says that God knows everything. That means God knows how many jelly beans are in the tank.”

  Arlen says we have to go to the mall and measure the jelly bean guessing tank. This is one of those times that God isn’t telling.

  Francine stands up fast. “I’m going home. A future nun can’t be involved in anything dishonest.” She pops the rubber band on her braces, grabs her mountain bike, which Poppy lets her keep inside the front door for safety, and heads out.

  Arlen holds up his one-inch cube like it’s a diamond. “We’re going to be rich.”

  * * *

  Poppy drives us to the mall in her beat-up beige Rambler, which she says she bought “when dinosaurs roamed the earth.” The black vinyl seats are held together by duct tape, which nobody minds except Camille. Poppy doesn’t like new things much. To her, everything needs to be broken in, including pool tables. Poppy says she’ll meet us outside Pearlman’s World of Fashion and goes to Sears to buy herself a man’s lumberjack shirt since the one she’s had for twelve years finally wore out.

  Arlen and I head for the jelly bean guessing tank, looking down as we walk past Ladies’ Underwear. It took four store managers two hours to count all the beans—that’s what The Cruckston Comet reported. Arlen takes out his tape measure and starts moving fast.

  “Length—twenty inches.”

  I write this down.

  “Width—twelve inches.” Arlen puts his tape measure over the side of the jelly bean guessing tank, making sure no one is looking. “Depth—ten inches. Glass thickness—eighth of an inch. Bottom thickness—quarter of an inch.” Arlen snaps his tape measure shut.

  We walk out of Pearlman’s World of Fashion and sit on a bench in the mall. Arlen gets out his mechanical pencil and pocket calculator and starts figuring.

  “Subtract a quarter inch from length, depth, and width for glass and bottom thickness,” he says. “Multiply length, depth, and width together for volume. Multiply volume by . . .”

  “Thirteen jelly beans,” I remind him.

  “For . . . 29,414 jelly beans!”

  He checks his numbers. I check his numbers.

  “You’ve got it,” I say. “Without using the glass thickness, we would have been off by 1,786 beans.”

  The paper that shows how he did it is awesome.

  Arlen’s face starts glowing. We head back to the jelly bean guessing display.

  “Would you boys like to take a guess?” asks a thin saleswoman.

  Arlen looks at the jelly bean guessing bowl like he’s never seen it before.

  “Go on,” the woman says. “Take a big guess now.”

  Arlen touches his sunglasses. “29,414, ma’am.”

  The woman takes a sidelong glance at Arlen and writes that down. “And would you like to guess, dear?” she asks me.

  “Same,” I say.

  “Pardon?”

  “29,414.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “We’re partners,” says Arlen.

  CHAPTER

  Arlen’s seeing wood everywhere.

  He sees a stick on the ground and runs back to school to get his bookbag.

  He sees a Jaworski Lumber truck and heads back to wherever we were to get his jacket.

  Arlen says if this can happen, the world better watch out.

  Nothing is happening for me.

  It’s been five days since I mailed the letter.

  I’m wondering if the post office lost my letter or they sent it to the wrong place and some guy is just sitting there laughing, reading my innermost thoughts.

  I’m separating laundry in the kitchen with Mom and Camille, putting the clothes that need ironing into Poppy’s plastic basket. Poppy hates doing laundry and loves to iron. She’s an ace at it, too. Poppy says anyone can do laundry; ironing takes a strong heart and skill.

  “Mother, you have got to be kidding!”

  Mom just told Camille that she has to start paying for the gas she uses in the car, which means that Camille has to keep baby-sitting Rodney Huffington, who is five years old and tries to handcuff her to the refrigerator.

  “Motherrr,” Camille says, “Rodney is going to injure me someday, I swear!”

  “We have insurance,” Mom says. “Everything costs money, Camille. I save every month for your and Mickey’s college education. This is how you can help.” Mom holds up my favorite jeans, which got two more holes in the k
nees when Petie Pencastle shoved me off the gravel hill at recess.

  “Mom!” I blurt out. “I’ve got to talk to you—it’s so—”

  The phone rings. Camille runs to answer it in case it’s one of her potential boyfriends.

  “Hello . . .,” she says with that little thing in her voice.

  Camille looks weird. “Mom—it’s for you.”

  I shove as much popcorn in my mouth as it can hold from the bowl on the table.

  Camille winks at me and stretches the phone toward her. “Joseph Alvarez.”

  My body freezes.

  Mom’s moving slowly to the phone. I’m making noises through the popcorn. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.

  “Yes . . .,” she says flat into the phone.

  “We’ll surround her,” Camille whispers to me. We move in close.

  “Joseph, I appreciate that, but this isn’t a good time for me . . . .”

  I’m trying to chew what’s in my mouth, trying to suck on it, anything to get it down my throat. I’m praying he’ll keep on talking, say something really smart that will—

  “All right,” Mom says into the phone, “go ahead.”

  Please, God.

  Mom leans against the stove, listening. I’m trying to read her face. Camille pretends she has something to do by the stove. Mom gives her a dirty look and turns away.

  “I know . . .,” Mom says to the phone.

  Know what?

  She’s listening again for a long time. I finally swallow.

  “Please!” I shout.

  She throws up her hands.

  I grab some paper and write

  MICKEY VERNON, POOL CHAMPION OF THE

  WORLD—IT’S ALL IN YOUR HANDS NOW

  I hold it up to her.

  She sighs deep. “You have to understand,” she says into the phone, “that it was so hard here . . .”

  I drop to my knees right in front of the stove and look like I’m praying. Camille’s moving in behind her. Mom covers the receiver.

  “Do you two mind?”

  I’m lying on the kitchen floor now whispering, “Please, please!”