Mascot

by Antony John

  I can feel a new plan coming together—another unmasking, except this time, it involves Mr. Riggieri.

  And this is one operation I plan on carrying out alone.

  30

  One Is the Loneliest Number

  Tuesday. Dee-Dub and Logan are suspended, and Alyssa is staying home. I’m attracting a whole lot of attention again, only this time it’s because I was the lone witness to Hardesty vs. Montgomery, the greatest heavyweight prizefight in Wellspring Middle School history.

  All day long, students ask me for details of what went down. I keep it simple in case one of them is a snitch for Principal Mahoney. “Only one kid got a broken nose,” I say.

  I don’t think anyone will mess with Dee-Dub again.

  After the final bell, Mr. Kostas stops me in the hallway. “A word, please, Mr. Savino,” he says, directing me into an empty classroom.

  Held behind two days in a row—Mom won’t be pleased.

  “So how did you enjoy your first detention yesterday?” he asks.

  I redden. “I was out of line.”

  “Hmm.” He perches on the edge of his desk. “How’s Alyssa doing?”

  “I don’t know. I called last night, but her mom said she was sleeping.”

  “She’ll probably be back tomorrow.”

  “What about Ruben? Will he be back too?”

  Mr. Kostas rolls up some sheets of paper and raps them rhythmically against his open palm. “From what I’ve heard, no. He won’t be back until next week.”

  “Next week?”

  “I think he needs some time away, Noah. But I was hoping you could give him these work sheets.”

  He hands over the rolled-up pages. I can’t help stealing a glance at the top sheet, but no matter—I think Mr. Kostas expects me to look. And what I see is line after line of really advanced baseball statistics. Not just batting averages but the kinds of metrics that experts use: abbreviations like WHIP and WAR and OPS.

  “What do you want him to do?” I ask.

  “I want him to decide which of these categories is the most useful and why. Then I want him to create his own.”

  I blink twice. “Seriously?”

  “You’ve seen his work, Noah. Yes, he’s a rather perplexing young man, but Mr. Hardesty is a rare find.”

  “He does your work sheets in his head. Like, it’s automatic for him.”

  Mr. Kostas gives a small sad smile. “I know. He’s quite extraordinary. I want to see him succeed here, but that’ll take patience. I could use some help too. Will you help me?”

  I look at the sheets again. Of course I want to help, but if yesterday’s events proved anything, it’s that I’m powerless when Dee-Dub begins to unravel.

  Mr. Kostas knits his fingers together. “I’ve been teaching for thirty years. I’ve had students like Ruben before. They can be the most enthusiastic and also the most disruptive. They can be the brightest and also the most stubborn. Sometimes you want to hug them; other times you want to yell at them. They’re not trying to make life difficult—sometimes that’s just how life is for them.”

  That’s just how life is. Mr. Kostas is talking about Dee-Dub, but he could be talking about me too. Since school started, I’ve felt so angry. I get tense when kids leave their chairs in the aisle so I can’t wheel past. I get annoyed when there’s a stupid little step and I have to ask for help to get over it. I hate feeling helpless, and I hate being pitied. Most of all, I hate feeling like I’m not in control of my life.

  I think maybe Dee-Dub feels that way too.

  But Dee-Dub has made me feel normal when other people stared at me. There must be a way for me to help him back.

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” I say finally.

  Mr. Kostas beams. “I knew you’d say that. You’re a good kid, Noah.”

  “Thanks. You’re a good teacher.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps you could try telling Alyssa that.”

  With a quick salute, he slides off the desk, gathers his belongings, and heads for the door. Then he pauses. “One more thing,” he says in a serious voice. “You might want to avoid Principal Mahoney for a while. After your meeting yesterday, he seems to think that you and Ruben are like criminal masterminds, hatching despicable plans behind his back.” He busts out laughing, and I laugh too, to show what a crazy idea it is.

  I don’t mention that it also happens to be true.

  31

  Building the Perfect Crib

  Mom picks me up from school and lugs me into the minivan. As usual, we’ve got an hour and a half to kill before PT, and today there’s something I need to do.

  “Mom,” I say, “could you take me to Dee-Dub’s house, please?”

  She eyes me in the rearview mirror. “Dee-Dub?”

  “Yeah. You know . . . Big kid. Math genius. Buys hair gel in bulk.”

  I don’t think she was unclear on his identity. It’s the other stuff that worries her: loose cannon . . . fondness for breaking noses.

  “He’s my friend,” I remind her. “Plus, he went after Logan, which is almost like a public service.”

  Okay, that might be too much for Mom, who believes that a child’s facial features should remain precisely where God intended. So I play my trump card: “Mr. Kostas told me to give him these math work sheets.” I rummage in the backpack at my feet and pull them out. “I don’t want him to get into trouble again.”

  Mom won’t argue over schoolwork. Which is why she does a U-turn and drives in the direction of Dee-Dub’s house.

  Ten minutes later, we’re sitting outside, the engine is idling, and I feel strangely nervous.

  “I’d like to come in with you,” she says.

  By the time we make it to the front door, Mrs. Hardesty is waiting.

  “Noah! Come on in.” She calls Dee-Dub to come help me. The next thing I know, he’s hoisting the back of my wheelchair over the step.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Uh-huh,” he replies, which isn’t the same as “Hi” or “Good to see you” or “Thanks for coming around,” but it’s not the silent treatment either.

  As Mom heads to the kitchen with Mrs. Hardesty, Dee-Dub leads me to his computer station. It looks like he’s spending his suspension from school playing Minecraft. I don’t think that’s the punishment Principal Mahoney had in mind when he sent Dee-Dub home yesterday.

  “I’ve got work sheets for you from Mr. Kostas,” I say. I place them beside the keyboard. “Sounds like you won’t be coming back to school tomorrow.”

  He hangs his head the way Flub does whenever he whizzes on the kitchen floor. “My parents think I should take a break this week. Just in case.”

  “In case you break Logan’s nose again?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh. Well, don’t. It’s not worth it. Logan’s nose is stuffed full of boogers. Trust me, you don’t want his cooties getting on you.”

  Dee-Dub’s eyes widen. “That’s a good point. I really don’t enjoy other people’s boogers.”

  I’m about to ask him if he enjoys his own but change my mind. There are some things even a friend doesn’t need to know.

  “I wish you’d told me everything about the accident,” he says, taking a seat beside me. “I don’t like not knowing stuff.”

  “And what about you, huh? You never told me you’re a professional wrestler. Or that, you know, you’ve changed schools a lot.”

  He looks hurt. “Not a lot, but some. Mostly when I was younger. I’m better now.”

  “You could’ve fooled me.”

  It’s a snarky thing to say and probably not very smart. Dee-Dub raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t get angry. I think that counts as progress.

  “When we got to St. Louis, my parents said no one at school would know anything about me,” he explains. “They said I’d be starting over. And it all worked out for a while. But I guess everyone knows me now.”

  “Oh, please! It was one fight. Plus, it was with Logan, so you were doing us all a favor. I’m going to s
tart a petition, see if we can get the school to put up a statue of you.”

  Dee-Dub laughs, which is good to hear. Then the laughter dies out, and he’s serious again. “Why do you like me, Noah?”

  No one’s ever asked me that question before. It feels awkward, like being asked for a Kleenex while your neighbor sobs in class. But if Dee-Dub’s being honest with me, I should probably be honest with him too.

  “Same reason you like me,” I say. “Because you only see me like I am now. Everyone else at school remembers what I was like before the accident. Some of them even visited me in the hospital, but they didn’t know what to say. It got so weird, I asked Mom not to let them in.”

  “Except Alyssa.”

  “Well, yeah. She’s different.”

  “She’s a girl, you mean.”

  “No. I mean, yeah! But that’s not . . .” I shift my weight on the chair. The air conditioning is on, but I’m feeling a little warm. “We’re just friends.”

  “That’s what Gabriella Masterson always says too, right before she starts kissing boys.”

  My mouth hangs open. “Gabriella Masterson? That girl in the books? The one who goes around rescuing polar bears and sucking face all the time?”

  “So you’ve read them too!” He wrinkles his nose, thinking. “What if Alyssa likes them as well? It could be a sign.”

  I mash a couple keys to wake up his computer. Anything to change the subject. As the monitor blinks to life, the image on it looks familiar: Busch Stadium—although Dee-Dub’s been making improvements.

  He clears his throat. “What actually happened the day of your accident, Noah?”

  I tense up. Didn’t I just tell him I liked having one person who didn’t know about the accident? Why would he cross that line?

  But just as suddenly, a strange calm comes over me. Dee-Dub’s crossing that line for the same reason I want to know all about him, including his life in Albuquerque. Because it’s a part of him, for better and for worse. How can we be friends if we don’t really know each other?

  “I was going to baseball when it happened,” I begin. “Dad had been getting calls from work all morning because there was a problem with the store’s computer system. But when Coach Montgomery told us there was going to be an extra practice, Dad dropped everything to take me.

  “He was on another work call when his battery died. So he asked to borrow my phone instead. But I hadn’t had a chance to talk with him all morning, and I wanted him to focus on us, you know?”

  Dee-Dub doesn’t answer. He knows it isn’t a real question.

  “Dad got annoyed when I didn’t give him my phone. He said he didn’t even know there was going to be practice, but he was giving me a ride anyway. I felt guilty, so I handed it over. But I wouldn’t help him type the number for the store. That’s why he was looking at the screen. He didn’t look up until I screamed.”

  When I close my eyes, I can picture every terrifying detail of that moment. The car drifting in front of us. The sound of my voice. The jolt as Dad jams the brakes, locking the wheels. The hush as the car spins out of control. The bone-crushing crunch as we collide with the concrete underpass, and the smash of shattering glass. I can still smell the rubber we left smeared across the road.

  “You must hate him,” says Dee-Dub.

  I open my eyes. “What?”

  “Your dad . . . for what he did.”

  “It was an accident. If I’d just typed the number for him—”

  “But he never should’ve been on the phone in the first place. There are statistics—it’s as bad as driving drunk.”

  “He died.”

  “I know. And you could’ve died too. And it wasn’t your fault.”

  I take a deep breath and remind myself that Dee-Dub isn’t trying to be cruel. “I don’t care whose fault it was. Dad’s gone, and now everyone wants me to move on. But I don’t want to move on. And I don’t want Mom to move on either, especially not if it means hanging out with Mr. Dillon all the time.”

  “All the time?”

  “Okay, maybe not. But definitely too much time.”

  I mean for this to end the conversation, but Dee-Dub doesn’t notice. “How do you calculate that?” he asks.

  “Calculate it?”

  “Yeah.” I can see the wheels turning in his brain. “There ought to be an algorithm. Something like: duration of relationship multiplied by a happiness coefficient. Wait, no! That wouldn’t work. My parents say their honeymoon was the best week of their lives, and they’d only been together for six months.”

  “Uh, Dee-Dub . . . did you really just say ‘happiness coefficient’?”

  “Yeah.” He chews on a fingernail. “That’s what we need: a quantitative measurement of how happy they seem to be together, but with the objective factor of whether they choose to spend time together or apart when the opportunity is present.”

  I’ve always wanted to step into the world of Minecraft—my own parallel universe. Now I’m not so sure. Dee-Dub seems to spend most of his life stuck in a parallel universe, and it’s a pretty strange place.

  “Look at my parents,” he says. “I’d say they rate almost ninety percent on the happiness meter. But once a week, Dad goes off to play poker with his friends instead of hanging out with Mom. Then again, he always wins, so he could argue that it’s an extension of his work.”

  “Hey, Dee-Dub?”

  He looks at me like he’s forgotten I’m in the room. “Yeah?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He nods. “Ah, I see. You’re saying the algorithm needs refining. You’re right—it’s too simple at the moment.”

  A minute ago, I was fighting tears. Now I’m trying not to laugh. “Yup,” I agree. “Way too simple. You need a lot more variables.”

  Stumped, Dee-Dub turns his attention to the computer monitor. The baseball diamond at Busch Stadium is complete now, and gigantic lights loom overhead. In the distance, the arch rises above the bleacher seating. The only thing that’s out of place is the tower built behind home plate.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “That’s our crib.”

  “Our crib? Do people even use that word anymore?”

  “I do,” says Dee-Dub.

  That’s not exactly what I meant.

  “Yeah,” he continues. “I figured that since you’re such a big baseball fan, you’d want a house on top of the stadium. I’ve seen the blueprints, remember, so I’m pretty sure the foundations are strong enough to support it.”

  I always dreamed that one day I’d get to play at Busch Stadium. Now I have a house there. Who knew?

  “I thought this would help us visualize Operation GMU,” he says. “Friday’s game is only three days away.”

  “Your parents are still going to let you come?”

  He nods energetically. “I promised them I’d behave.”

  “I’m not sure that unmasking Fredbird in the middle of a Cardinals game counts as behaving,” I say.

  “Can you think of another way to prove that Mr. Dillon isn’t Fredbird?”

  “No,” I admit. “I can’t.”

  “And his daughter needs to know the truth, right?

  I almost say yes, but then I wonder, Does she? Makayla will be crushed when she discovers that the man inside the Fredbird suit isn’t her dad. How can I ruin their relationship while I’m busy trying to patch things up between Mr. Riggieri and his kids?

  “Listen, Dee-Dub,” I say, stalling. “Operation GMU is amazing—”

  “I know,” he says.

  “Right. And you’ve worked hard on it.”

  “Extremely hard,” he agrees.

  “Yeah. But I’m just not ready, you know?”

  “I understand. You’ve been busy. That’s why I took over the planning myself.” He opens a drawer in his computer desk and pulls out a padded envelope. “Look,” he says, emptying it, “here’s the packet of itching powder, and here’s a copy of the stadium blueprints so I can navigate to F
redbird’s nest with maximum efficiency. I printed it out and folded it to fit precisely in the back pocket of my favorite pair of chinos.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “So you see, Noah, I have everything under control.”

  It’s true. He really does have everything under control. And he looks much happier with a project to focus on. Surviving middle school might be a stretch for Dee-Dub, but put him in charge of an honest-to-goodness criminal enterprise, and he makes it look easy.

  “I’m still not sure about the operational code name, though,” he says. “GMU just isn’t right.”

  The code name is the last thing I’m worried about. I’m about to tell him so when our moms appear in the doorway.

  “We need to get to PT, Noah,” my mom says. “Don’t want to be late.”

  For once, I actually agree with her.

  As I turn the chair around, I take a final look at our crib on the top of Busch Stadium. It’s enormous, with tall windows and a deck as wide as twenty rows of bleacher seats.

  “It’s a sweet crib,” I say.

  “Nothing but the best for us,” says Dee-Dub.

  I can’t help it: I start laughing. Seeing me, Dee-Dub laughs too.

  “You’re a funny dude, Dee-Dub.”

  “I guess I am,” he says.

  “And, uh, kind of unique.”

  He gives me a thumbs-up. “You too, Noah. You too.”

  32

  Dealing with Dynamo

  Because of the detention, Mom has to move my PT session to Tuesday again. Somehow, Dynamo has moved his as well. In the past, this would’ve been my worst nightmare. Today, it’s a bonus.

  “Check this out, Angelica,” I say, wiggling my left foot. Okay, wiggle is an exaggeration—it probably rises about half an inch, but that’s half an inch more than last week.

  Angelica stares at me, open-mouthed. It’s not a good look for her, but I can tell she’s impressed. “This is progress!” she exclaims.

  The other PTs turn their heads to see what all the excitement is about. Once I’m sure that Dynamo is watching too, I give another performance. I don’t think he likes me being the center of attention, especially not when he’s working his butt off on the clinic’s climbing wall.