Finding the Worm (13 page)

But what can you do?

Well, I was wrong. Quentin did wind
up going back to McMasters today. How it worked was his dad told him he
had
to go back to school, and he
had
to go in the wheelchair. End of discussion. It never crossed my mind that he’d go in the wheelchair, that he’d bring the wheelchair on the bus.

I decided, right off, that getting Quentin on and off the school bus was more important than rushing to Principal Salvatore’s office first thing in the morning and turning in another stupid essay on good citizenship. If you think about it, getting Quentin on and off the bus, and back to school,
is
good citizenship. So I decided to skip a week and see what happened. If Principal Salvatore wanted to punish
me for doing the right thing, let him. It made as much sense as him punishing me for
not
doing the wrong thing.

Shlomo and I headed over to Quentin’s house at seven-thirty to help out with the wheelchair. Lonnie was supposed to lend a hand too, but as usual he overslept. Except it didn’t matter, since there wasn’t much for us to do except stand around and wait for Quentin to get ready. Shlomo killed time with a couple of games of Challenge the Yankees—which, come to think of it, might’ve been the main reason he was so quick to volunteer.

It
was
kind of weird, how Quentin was hustling around the apartment, yanking his clothes out of the closet, chugging a glass of orange juice in the kitchen, doing what he had to do in the bathroom … and then, after all that rushing back and forth, putting on his overcoat and settling down into the wheelchair so Shlomo and I could push him out the door. He kept saying how sorry he was to make us do it. But it was nothing to us. Really, we were glad to do it.

The hard part turned out to be getting Quentin on the school bus. Actually, getting
him
on the bus was no problem. He just got out of the wheelchair and walked up the three steps. Getting the chair folded and then hoisting it up the steps
—that
was a problem. The bus driver, who’s like ninety years old, didn’t lift a finger to help. He just sat behind the wheel and watched Lonnie, Howie, Eric, Shlomo, and me wrestle with the thing until we got it on
board. It was only half folded, but we held it in place in the center aisle for the ride to McMasters.

Getting the wheelchair off the bus was just as hard, which was bad because a crowd of kids gathered to watch us. They saw Quentin climb down the steps and stand on the sidewalk as we got the chair unfolded again. They were pointing at it, wondering who it was for … and then, when Quentin sat down in it, there was like a group moan.

“Hey, that guy’s not crippled!” someone called out.

Lonnie yelled, “Shut up!”

The rest of us glanced around to see who’d said it, but no one stepped forward.

The crowd followed us as we started to push Quentin toward the main entrance of McMasters. Except there were three stairs that led up to the double doors. I’d never even noticed the stairs. It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice—how many stairs you climb in a regular day. You don’t notice it because you don’t have to notice it. But with Quentin in the chair, now we noticed it. Quentin had to hop out of the chair, again, to let us carry it up the stairs. Then he had to sit down again.

The kids behind us roared with laughter when he stood up and laughed even louder when he sat back down.

“Who made him the king of Egypt?”

It was the same voice as before. Except this time, I recognized who said it: Devlin. I wanted to tell him to
shut up, but I knew if he hadn’t listened to Lonnie, he sure wasn’t going to listen to me.

We rushed Quentin through the front door and rolled him to the elevator. Since the school only has four floors, students aren’t allowed to use the elevator unless they’ve got broken legs, or at least sprained ankles, but we figured a wheelchair was better than crutches, so we rang for the elevator and waited. Three teachers got off the elevator when it came, and none of them said a word.

Lonnie and Howie were in the same homeroom as Quentin, so the two of them took him up in the elevator. I knew I wouldn’t see them again until three o’clock, because their lunch period was an hour later than mine, so I forced myself to smile. But it was real sad, watching the elevator doors close. Quentin didn’t even look up. You could tell it was killing him, sitting in that chair. But what could he do? His dad had laid down the law, and Quentin wasn’t the kind of guy who’d shrug that off.

After the elevator was gone, Shlomo, Eric, and I went our separate ways.

I was maybe ten feet from my homeroom when I heard, “Hey, Twerp-ski!”

I turned around.

Devlin was standing behind me, grinning. Until you’re looking right at him, you forget how bony the guy is. It’s
almost painful. It’s not just his arms and legs—it’s even his face. His jaw and cheekbones jut out. You could make a portrait of him out of origami.

“Yeah?”

“How come your friend’s in that chair?”

“I don’t know, Devlin.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“He just is,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

He stepped forward and grabbed me by the chin. He turned my head to the left and then to the right. He didn’t do it fast. He wanted to see if I’d make a big deal out of it. I just relaxed my neck and went with it. He turned my face forward and looked me in the eye. “What you mean is, you know why he’s in that chair, but you’re not going to tell me. Is that it?”

I tried to smile, even though he still had a pretty tight grip on my face. “I guess so.”

“You want to fight?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re bigger than me, and you’ll beat me up.”

He let go of my chin. “You’re not as stupid as you look, Twerp-ski.”

After that, he turned and walked off. There were maybe a half dozen kids who saw what had happened,
who stuck around to see if there would be a fight. Now they were looking at me as if I’d ruined their fun. I just shrugged at them. Really, I didn’t know what else to do.

There’s a guy named Hector who sits in the back row of homeroom and plays a trick on old Mrs. Griff a couple of times a week. He does it at the end of the day, when she’s writing her afternoon announcements on the board and the class is sitting around, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the three o’clock bell. Hector’s got a miniature Chinese gong that sounds just like the classroom bell. He says he got it in Chinatown, but I think that’s baloney—like his parents would let him go into Manhattan alone! More likely, he bought the thing at Gertz department store on Main Street. It’s not as loud as the actual classroom bell, of course, but Mrs. Griff’s hearing is so bad that she can’t tell the difference. So a couple of times a week, Hector hits the gong a minute or so before three o’clock, and Mrs. Griff lets the class go home.

He’s been doing it for a month now, and Mrs. Griff still hasn’t caught on—which amazes me, since she must hear the actual bell go off a minute or so later. Maybe she hasn’t figured it out because she doesn’t want to
figure it out. At her age, she’s got to be pretty tired by three o’clock.

During lunch, I asked Hector to hit the gong extra early, and I even gave him my peach cobbler (which is pretty awful, but he loves it) so he’d do it. Sure enough, the gong sounded at 2:56. I grabbed my books, snatched my jacket from the hook on the wall, flew out of homeroom, and ran down the two flights of stairs. I wanted to be right outside the main entrance when Lonnie and Howie wheeled Quentin through the double doors.

I was standing outside in the cold air, catching my breath and pulling my jacket tighter—I mean, the air was
ice
cold—when someone grabbed my elbow from behind. For a split second, I thought it might be Devlin, but then I spun around and saw Beverly Segal.

She smiled at me. “What kept you?”

“How’d you get down here so fast?” I asked.

“Race me and find out,” she said.

“You went out the side door.”

“Bingo.”

She stood with her hands on her hips, as if she’d made her point.

“What?” I said.

“I went out the side door, which means I had to go farther than you did. Plus, you got out of homeroom
before I did. I was still packing up my books when Hector hit the gong. I saw you running out the door. You had a head start, and I went farther, and I still got here first.”

“I’m not going to race you, Beverly.”

“Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk!”

“If that makes me a chicken, fine.”

“C’mon, it doesn’t have to be in front of lots of people. We can do it back on the block. It’ll just be the two of us by ourselves.”

“Then what’s the point?” I said.

“To find out who’s faster.”

“But I
know
who’s faster—and if you don’t know, it’s because you don’t want to know.”

“But I
do
want to know,” she said. “Maybe it’s you who doesn’t want to know.”

“Can we just drop it? It’s freezing out here.”

Right then, the actual three o’clock bell sounded. Seconds later, there was a sound, a low rumble, that came from inside the double doors. It got closer and closer until the doors crashed open and kids started to pour out. You don’t realize how loud that is, the rush of kids going through the double doors, down the stairs, and out onto the sidewalk, until you’re standing on the outside and not part of it. I mean, it’s like a tidal wave of noise.

Meanwhile, the cold was starting to get to me. Every gust of wind felt like needles against my face. I began
rocking back and forth on my heels, trying to stay warm. It was a dumb thing to do, running outside like I did. Watching the kids pour out of McMasters, I realized it was going to take a while before Lonnie and Howie came out with Quentin. They were smart enough to wait until the rush was over. I turned back to Beverly. The look on her face was different than before, more serious. “Why didn’t you tell me that today was Quent’s first day back?”

“I didn’t
not
tell you,” I said. “It wasn’t a secret.”

“I wouldn’t have walked. I would’ve ridden the bus with the rest of you. I would’ve helped.”

“We had enough—”

“I
know
you had enough help, Julian. You’re missing the point.”

“Then what
is
the point?”

“The point is you don’t think of me as one of your friends.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “I think of you as my friend.”

“Yeah, but you don’t think of me as part of your group.”

“C’mon, you’re part of the group. You live on the block.”

“You know
exactly
what I mean,” she said.

“I would’ve told you about Quentin if I knew it meant so much to you.”

“It’s not just today, Julian.”

“Then I don’t get it,” I said.

“If Eric the Red asked to race you, I’ll bet you’d race him.”

“But he
wouldn’t
ask, because he knows who’d win.”

“But if he
did
ask, you’d race him. Wouldn’t you?” she said.

“I don’t know, Beverly. You’re talking about something that would never happen.”

Eric picked that exact moment to come out the double doors. He noticed us off to the side and jogged over. Shlomo turned up about three seconds afterward. He looked annoyed. He shoved Eric in the back and said, “Why didn’t you wait for me? Didn’t you hear me calling your name?”

“No,” Eric said.

“Then you must be as deaf as Danley Dimmel, ’cause I was right behind you.”

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Eric said.

I cut them off. “Did you guys have lunch with Quentin?”

They both nodded.

“How did he seem?”

“He seemed fine,” Shlomo said. “That stupid wheelchair’s the problem.”

“Plus, he doesn’t even need it,” Eric said. “It’s stupid he had to bring it. It makes no sense. Kids are laughing at him. I mean, they’re not laughing at
him
. But they’re laughing at how he gets up and sits back down. Maybe Lonnie can talk to Quentin’s dad—”

“Julian is chicken to race me,” Beverly blurted out.

“Will you please just let it go?” I said.

“He’s not chicken to race you,” Shlomo said.

Eric grinned at her. “He could give you a head start and still beat you by a mile.”

She looked straight at Eric. “Well, then, what about you?”

“He’d beat me by a mile too.”

“You think
you
can beat me?”

“
Of course
I can beat you,” Eric said. But there was a wobble in his voice. You could tell he wasn’t so sure. “I can beat you any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.”

“What about today?” she said. “What about right now?”

“I’m not going to race you now.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because we don’t have time. We’ve got to get Quentin back on the bus.”

“Then we can race afterwards … when we get off the bus,” she said.

“When we get off the bus,” Eric said, “we have to take Quentin back to his house.”

“You don’t think Lonnie and Howie can manage without you?”

“Sure they can. Anyway, it’s too cold to take off our jackets.”

“Then we can race with them on,” she said.

“That’s stupid. I’m not going to race you with my jacket on.”

“Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk!”

Eric turned to me. “Why don’t you just race her and get it over with?”

But Beverly shook her head. “No, I want to race
you
. I’ll race Julian later.”

As they were talking back and forth, I noticed Devlin come out the double doors. He didn’t notice me, but he also didn’t head down the block toward the buses. He turned and stood about ten yards from the doors. He had on a green snorkel parka, zipped to his throat. He looked as though he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. That wasn’t a good sign.

Lonnie and Howie wheeled Quentin through the doors a couple of minutes later. The rest of us—me, Shlomo, Eric, and Beverly—hurried over to meet them. As soon as he saw us, Quentin stood up from the wheelchair, and then Lonnie and Howie carried it down the three stairs. When they got to the bottom, Quentin walked down the stairs and sat back in the chair.