“My medicine isn’t lifesaving. My life’s not in danger. It’s just a thing.”
“But if you never take it, it will never work.”
She closed the math book. The pages flipped closed like a fan, sending even more of the eraser pieces flying. “Seriously, Isaac, maybe you should figure this out. The medicine part, not the fractions.”
“You’re a lousy math tutor.”
She glared at me instead of laughing. After a while she said, “I’m better than your dad.”
“For sure.” My dad was too brilliant to explain basic math because to him it was like telling someone how to breathe. If you ever try to explain breathing or think too hard about it, you only end up in worse shape than before because you’re not supposed to think about it. That’s how it is for my dad. “You’re not as good as my mom, though.”
“Yeah. The unit test is before Halloween. Will she be back before then?”
“Probably not. I don’t know.” My hands were streaked with red. Probably just from the erasing. Probably I could leave it alone. Probably I could not itch. Probably I wouldn’t need to go to the nurse. “It would be nice, though.”
We talked about Halloween for a little while, about how she was pretty sure she was going to be a zombie. She said she thought I should be a pheasant, which I thought was dorky. And complicated. “How would I even get a costume like that?” Anyway, I was grounded.
“Just start collecting feathers.” She grinned. It was a joke. “Hey,” she said, “I heard you’re going to get Nate a bird.”
CHAPTER 12
EVERYBODY WAS TALKING about birds and the farm the next day at lunch.
Tyler asked, “Aren’t there emus back there? Or ostriches?”
We were back in the art room. As the school year went on, it got stinkier and stinkier. Paint. Glue. Fat Magic Markers. If my mom weren’t in China, she’d investigate and warn that we might be eating in a room filled with toxic fumes.
Nate said, “They’re pheasants. Emus are something else altogether. Emus are big. You can ride an emu.”
Tyler snorted. “Is that true?”
“That old farmer won’t miss a bird,” said Daniel.
“He will if it’s an emu,” Sydney said.
I was done with air sandwiches. I ate a strawberry jam and cream cheese sandwich with some green pepper slices on the side. I was done with the peanut shell too. I dumped it out of its box into the garbage and put the box on my mother’s dresser. It had never worked. It was just a thing I’d carried around. And I felt bad for ever showing the shell to Sydney.
“He’ll miss a bird,” I said. “That’s the whole point. Counting the birds, the eggs, and then the chicks. That’s how he makes money.”
Lucas asked, “How does he make money from birds?”
Sydney answered. “He sells them.”
“For pets?” Homer asked. “I’d rather have a dog.”
“For hunts,” I said. “Mostly.”
“That’s not fair,” said Homer.
Nate said, “I want a bird.” He pointed at me. “I want two birds.”
Lucas turned to me, asking, “What do you mean, for hunts?”
“He sells the pheasants to private preserves. Private land where you can hunt whenever you want, or something. The pheasants live there, and people pay to go hunting, to get a chance to shoot a pheasant.”
“Seriously?” Homer asked. “Who does that?”
“Don’t look at me,” Nate said. “I just hunt deer. Well, and squirrel. But squirrels don’t count. They’re more like target practice. Got to get ready, you know. Youth deer-gun season starts weekend before Thanksgiving. That’s like, four weeks away.” Nate was casual about it, but I bet he was crossing out the days on his calendar.
Homer asked, “But would you do such a thing? If you could? Would you pay to go hunting birds that are sitting there just for you to kill?”
Daniel said, “Don’t be stupid, Homer. They’re birds. They can fly away.”
Nate said, “I’d do it if I could bag a lion. That would be sweet.”
“Not if it’s easy. Not if it’s right there waiting. That’s not fair.”
“It’s not easy. It’s a skill. You have to be patient. My grandpa and me—we get up earlier than I do for school and plan where to go, and track, or sit out in a tree stand somewhere for hours, hours, and then you have to know what you’re doing, it’s not just dumb luck.” Then Nate asked Homer, “Don’t you hunt? Weren’t you homeschooled? I thought homeschoolers were all survivalists and stuff.”
Homer shook his head. “You just sit in a tree? And wait for some deer to walk by?”
“Yeah.”
“And then you kill it?”
“Yeah. And then I eat it.”
Nate grinned. We laughed. Homer was horrified. “That’s atrocious,” he hissed.
Daniel asked, “How can this be news to you?”
“It’s the food chain,” Sydney said. “Do you eat cow? How’s it any different with a cow?”
* * *
—
By the next day’s lunch we were on a whole new topic. We were in the gym. Everybody was busy telling Homer about how last year an eighth-grader stole frog legs from the biology lab and stuck them in the salad bar. It was a good story. Funny and disgusting at the same time. The kid who did it was the smartest kid in the whole eighth grade. He wanted to be a doctor. They said that was how the biology teacher figured it out, because the cuts on the legs were so good. Also, since he normally wasn’t a troublemaker, he confessed quickly.
The gym was my favorite place to eat. We could be as loud as we wanted. When you were done eating, you could play basketball. Mr. Mullins didn’t like it. He came out of his office every now and then and crossed his arms and scowled at us, probably thinking about all the ways our food could ruin his nice gym floor.
Tyler said he’d never confess, not like the kid who took the frog legs. “If you’re smart,” he said, “you know what you can get away with.”
“Nuh-uh,” Sydney said. “If you’re smart, you know what you can’t get away with.”
Dad had made me a roast beef sandwich. I think it was supposed to be special. I hate roast beef. I like it for dinner but not cold and soft like cloth in a sandwich. I ate a slice of bread.
Daniel leaned over and asked if he could have the meat. “You’re weird, man. Who doesn’t want roast beef? It’s the best lunch meat you’re ever going to get. It’s classy.” He dangled the whole piece above his mouth and then dropped it in. He didn’t wait to finish chewing before he said, “Too many air sandwiches, Itch. They went to your head.”
Homer, who had looked appalled at the way Daniel had stuffed his face, suddenly thought what Daniel had said was especially funny, which bothered me more than anything Daniel said because it was just Daniel being Daniel.
Homer laughed and laughed about what Daniel had said about air sandwiches and my brain. I could see his teeth—skinny, like the rest of him, and with a lot of space between each one—and I realized maybe he’d figured out a way to fit in. Maybe it was to laugh at me.
Nate stood up on one of the bleachers and announced, “Let’s take a vote. Who here thinks my friend Itch should get me a bird?”
It got about as quiet as it gets in a gym full of kids eating lunch. All eyes were on me. I looked at my feet. I didn’t want to see Homer’s picket fence teeth or Nate’s big grin.
“All in favor?” Everybody raised their hands. Kids spread out on the bleachers and far away from us. Abby and Maria. Lucas. Daniel and Tyler. No surprise there. Sydney. Homer. Guess we weren’t on the same team, no matter what he said. And wouldn’t you think he’d have issues with the morality and legality of stealing? Well, he didn’t. He said it would be a good thing, saving a pheasant. He said he was glad Nate was turning into a lover, not a fighter, whi
ch made most of us pretend vomit.
* * *
—
The next day at lunch Homer showed me his sandwich, peeling back one slice of brown bread to show me what was inside.
“Air,” he said. “It’s an air sandwich.” He whispered. As if we were friends with a secret.
“Hey, guys,” I said, “look who’s got an air sandwich!”
He stuck his chin forward and made a face. “It’s because of what Sydney said about the cow. How I eat beef and don’t even think about it.”
“But you don’t eat beef for lunch,” Sydney said. “Right?”
“I usually had meat in my sandwich. Turkey. With mustard.” He sighed. “But I couldn’t stop thinking last night about how I thought it was cruel to shoot deer and then how I could eat turkey in my lunch.”
“You could just be happy,” Nate said, “that you’re at the top of the food chain.” He took a big bite of his sandwich. He’d told us earlier it was roadkill.
“My mom was going to send soup,” Homer said quietly. “In a thermos.” He looked at me.
“Not a good idea,” I whispered. It would have been too mean not to keep him straight with this. To let him think it would be okay to bring in soup. It would be like poking a bear, and the bear was Nate.
“I know.” Then he leaned toward me. He whispered too. “What am I supposed to do? Cut out a whole category of food?”
Nate didn’t look at him. If he heard us talking about soup he wasn’t going to show it. If the big kids didn’t bother him, then Homer wasn’t even a blip on his radar.
“That’s funny, Homer,” I said, “because the answer is yes.”
“My name’s not Homer. And it’s not like I can pick my lunch from all the foods, Itch. You can pick from all the foods.”
“Yeah, well, my name’s not Itch either.”
Sydney said, “I like sunflower seed butter. My mom says she likes it better than peanut butter too, and she can eat anything.”
Homer nodded. “I was in a hurry. I needed something fast, so I thought, oh, yeah, air sandwich.”
Everyone went back to their lunches. They didn’t care.
Homer took a bite. “It’s good.”
* * *
—
I guess Homer wasn’t too mad at me for calling out his air sandwich because the next day I found an invitation from him in my desk. Flat and uncrumpled and totally out of place.
The envelope was red. Square. Inside was a fancy, thick card, red too, but not really red—officially it was scarlet. I knew this because there was a big O for Ohio State on the cover with two little buckeye leaves down in the O’s right corner.
The room was filled with the sound of ripping paper and before long kids were saying, “Cool!” and “Wow, Homer, cool!” Tyler got some high fives because he was wearing an Ohio State jersey. Once a kid had a whole-class birthday party at a bowling alley, but this was definitely going to be the coolest party we’d ever been to.
It was a neat trick. Everyone forgot all about Homer’s concern for emus and the food chain.
Homer had a smile stretched all across his face. “We’ll watch the game outside! We project it right onto the side of the house! Don’t worry about the weather because we have heat lamps!”
Daniel asked, “Why isn’t the bus going to be at the game? Why would you be here when you could be there?”
Homer said something about the bus getting old and unreliable. Nate said “Yeah,” in the way that didn’t mean yeah. Homer told Nate, “It will be the next-best thing to being there.”
“Maybe,” Nate said. “My dad said he’s going to take me next season.”
Daniel said, “Your dad. Right.”
“Shut up about it,” Nate said, rising out of his chair.
I didn’t really think the chicken noodle soup scared his dad out of town, but even so everybody knew Nate lived with his grandparents. They looked old too, like old grandparents, not young ones, and when they showed up at school events they looked like they stepped out of one of the historical photos that hung in the hall by the office. Homer laughed. I don’t know why he laughed. Nate turned his angry gaze to him. “Don’t worry,” Homer said, smiling big in the face of Nate’s scowl, “it’s going to be awesome. I’ve been going to games and tailgating since I was a baby, and it’s the tailgating that makes the game. Gives you the whole experience. I promise you, Nate, it’s the next-best thing to being at the Shoe. We put down turf. Plus, we’ve got a projection TV like you won’t believe.” Homer yammered on about resolution and thousands upon thousands of pixels.
And wouldn’t you know it, the invitation gave me a paper cut. It smarted. Blood welled up.
“You going?” Sydney asked me.
I couldn’t believe I’d have to miss this. No one would ever think I was a Buckeye. Everybody would be there, and I’d be home, watching the game on TV. And that was if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, my dad would decide we had to go to the mall or something. This was crucial. It was big. No one in class would miss this. I’d be the only one who wasn’t there.
“Sure.” Maybe I could convince my dad.
Sydney grinned. “You’re not grounded anymore?”
Instead of reminding her that I was grounded for an eternity, I showed her my blood. “Look at that. Scarlet. Just like yours.”
Homer stuck his head over and said, “I don’t see the gray.” He turned to Sydney. “Can my mom call your mom and talk food?” I couldn’t see Sydney’s face, just the back of Homer’s head. “Syd. Just think. It’s my party and we can eat all the food.”
When Homer finally moved I saw Sydney’s smile. People say stuff like this all the time, but it was true: she lit up. That’s how people say it. When someone looks so happy it’s like there’s something electric on the inside that gets turned on and shines out. “That sounds really cool, Homer.”
Mom: Do you need Dad’s help with your math? Dad will help you.
Me:
Mom: What is that?
Me: Me and Dad doing math homework. You know how it is. He’s too smart for fractions.
Mom: When’s your math test?
Me: Next week.
Mom: Are you ready?
Me: Sydney helped me out. I think I got it. I’ll be glad when we can get it over with and learn something else.
Mom: Good luck.
Me: Ha, ha, ha, you mean I don’t have to study? I can just count on good luck?
Mom: It’s a one-two approach. Preparedness. Finger-crossing. Preparedness first, of course.
Was there an eye-roll emoji? I couldn’t find an eye-roll emoji.
Mom: Dad says you aren’t taking your new medicine every day. It lasts longer and shouldn’t make you sleepy. Take it every day to preempt an outbreak and then take another if you do get one.
Me: It just happens sometimes. And they taste awful.
The flavor was supposed to be orange or lemon but instead it tasted like a metal-and-powdered-lemonade mix.
Mom: I think you can handle it.
Me: Why can’t I go to the football party at the Buckeye Bus? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If you live in Ohio, it’s against the law to forbid your kid to go to a football party. PS. Supervised by adults.
Mom: Not even going to answer that one.
Me: But it’s not until November. Won’t I get parole or anything? A weekend off?
Mom: Next topic, please.
Me: When are you coming home?
Mom: Soon. Keep those fingers crossed. Tell me more about school?
I wrote back about the bird farm. Even though it was old news, I told her about Brutus and the owl. I asked what birds she’d seen. I sent her a picture of Dad’s beard.
She answered right away. Yowzers! Mountain man!
CHAPTER 13
THE DAY OF
our math test we got stuck having lunch in our own room, which is the worst. You don’t have any long walk anywhere. You don’t get a new place to sit. No change of scenery. You’re just glued to your same old same old. We asked Mrs. Anderson if we could rearrange the desks and she said it was unnecessary, but she still got to go off to the teachers’ lounge that always smelled like coffee and popcorn, and one of the lunch monitors came in and sat at her desk. The monitors were really the regular cafeteria workers, who had to do this until the cafeteria was finished. I think it was a pretty good job. This one sat at the desk and ate her bag lunch, read a book, and played with her phone.
Daniel was the first to move his desk and then everyone was doing it. Nate and Tyler. The girls who don’t usually break any rules. Sydney swapped seats so she could sit in the back with Abby and Maria, her ballet friends, and talk about the Christmas show they were all in. Homer didn’t move his desk. It sat there like an island.
My desk is always a mess and my math and social studies books slid out when I shoved over to Nate’s desk. He wasn’t my first-choice lunch partner, but we weren’t rearranging things entirely, just breaking out of the rows and lines we’d sat in all day. Homer leaned over and peered into my desk. “Nice,” he said.
“Works for me,” I said. “You use all your time organizing and I use my time finding stuff. It’s the same in the end.”
“It kind of looks like a garbage can.”
Nate thumped Homer on the back. “That’s a normal sixth-grader’s desk, Homer. You’re just unfamiliar.”
Homer didn’t have anything to say to that and focused on setting up his lunch. He asked me if I was ready for the test.
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t counting on a perfect score or anything, but something solid. Something that would make Mrs. Anderson forget she ever stopped grading my homework because it was too messed up. And, I’m not going to lie, I wanted to beat whatever Nate’s score was.
Because I was thinking about fractions, it took a minute for it to register that Homer had set up a silver thermos on his desk. I couldn’t believe it.
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