Barfing in the Backseat (11 page)

What I hadn’t counted on was that there’d be a video game room next to the elevator.

That spelled Trouble with a capital T.

I
T WASN’T MY FAULT.
After all, the motel had provided a big bucket of
free
tokens. I ran to get Frankie and told him the great news.

“Hey, man, there’s free tokens,” I told him as he was coming out of the pool. “We can just play and play and play.”

And trust me, we did and did and did.

W
E GOT BACK TO OUR ROOM LATE,
after topping off the evening with melted cheese sandwiches dipped in ketchup in the hotel coffee shop. Well, it wouldn’t have been that late if you were a person who didn’t have a nine-hundred-page homework packet to do.

Man, was I tired. The drive and the swim and all that concentrating on the video games had taken a lot out of me. On top of that, I moved the packet from the desk to my bed. Big mistake. I had this mental picture of me sitting in bed, under the nice reading lamp attached to the wall, working late into the night, just zooming through the pages.

The problem with mental pictures is that they don’t always play out in real life the way they exist in your mind. In real life, there wasn’t a lot of zooming through the pages going on. What
there was, was a lot of snoring. That’s right. I fell asleep, holding the pencil between my fingers, with the packet still open on my lap.

I know what you’re thinking.
Hank Zipzer, you’re an idiot. Why did you play video games for three hours instead of taking care of business?
That’s a good question. And when I have an answer, you’ll be the first to know.

When I opened my eyes, it was morning. But the sunlight coming in through the window of our room was blocked by a large figure holding something in its hands. My eyes were still blurry because I wasn’t completely awake yet. I tried to close them completely, thinking I was just dreaming, until the large figure spoke with a voice I knew only too well.

“Hank,” my dad said. “This packet is completely blank.”

“That’s not exactly true, Dad. Check out page seventy-four. I knew the word
elongate
.”

“That’s not funny, Hank. We have to talk.”

“I want to talk, Dad. I really do. But that would be very rude, because Frankie is asleep, and if we talk, it will wake him up.”

“In the hall,” my dad said. “Now.”

All the way into the hall, I was trying to figure out a strategy. As you probably know by now, I’m not usually at a loss for words. But at that moment, there weren’t a lot of words flooding into my brain or my mouth.

My dad held the packet under my nose.

“Do you want to explain this?” he said.

“Would you believe that I’ve been trying to complete that packet?” I began. He was silent.

“Okay, would you believe that I wanted to do it? I mean
really really
really
wanted to.”

“Hank.”

“You know, Dad, I understand that you’re upset, but really you should be very proud of me, because I have been so creative in ways you couldn’t even imagine in pursuing my responsibility of getting that homework packet done.”

“The only creative thing I see is all the fibs you told me when I asked you how your homework was coming.”

“See, that’s the thing, Dad. I wasn’t sure when it was coming. Without boring you with all the details, the packet wasn’t exactly in my possession at all moments of this trip.”

“What are you—”

My dad didn’t have a chance to finish his question because the door across the hall opened and a man in his pajamas stuck his head out.

“Are you aware of the time?” he said. “People are trying to sleep here.”

“Excellent point, sir,” I said, and turning on my heels, I tried to head back into the room. “We’ll finish this conversation later, Dad,” I said over my shoulder.

Nice try, but it didn’t work.

“Come back here this instant, young man,” my dad said in a tone of voice that, trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted in your face. “I want a full explanation of why your homework wasn’t completed.”

“Oh, boy, I went through this with my kid,” the pajama guy piped up. “I couldn’t get him to do a lick of work all through high school. Now he’s a brain surgeon.”

“See, Dad,” I said, grabbing the opportunity. “This is all going to work out fine. A homework packet here or there doesn’t make that much of a difference.”

“We had a deal, Hank,” my dad said. “First of all, this material would have helped you
improve your school performance. And second, you didn’t keep your end of the bargain.”

“Hey, kid, your father has a point,” Mr. Pajama Man said.

Wait a minute, buddy, I thought you were on my side!

“But you should go easy on the kid,” he said to my dad. “It’s almost Christmas. Goodwill toward men. Peace on earth.”

“If you don’t mind,” my father said to the guy, “I don’t need a referee. I can handle this matter with my son very well. Thank you, and good night. I mean, good morning.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m already up for the day,” Mr. Pajama Man said. “I won’t say a word. I’ll just listen.”

“And so will I,” my dad said. “It’s your turn to talk, Hank.”

One part of me had the impulse to keep making up excuses. But the other part of me heard Frankie’s voice in my ear saying, “You’ve got to tell him, dude. The game is up.”

And since Frankie is mostly right, and to be honest with you, making up all those fibs was really hard work and I was tired of it, I said,
“Okay, Dad, here’s the truth.”

Mr. Pajama Man reached out and slapped me on the back.

“That’s a good kid,” he said. “Whoops, I forgot. Not another word. My lips are zipped.”

I told the story all in one breath.

“Here’s the deal, Dad. I left the packet in Washington. It was missing in action for two days, so Frankie and I talked with Mr. Chapeau and he sent it, but it didn’t arrive, and then it did arrive, and then I got nauseous in the car, and when we came here, I went in the pool, and then I saw the video games, which I won by the way, and then I fell asleep, and then there you were.”

“Wow, that’s some story,” Mr. Pajama Man said. “Whoops. I forgot again.” Then he zipped his lips.

My dad gave the man a look, then focused his attention on me.

“Do you think these were good decisions you made, Hank?”

“No, I don’t, Dad. And if I had to do it over again, I would have handcuffed the packet to my wrist.”

“You know there has to be a consequence to this, Hank.”

“You’re not going to say a sentence using the words roller coaster in it, are you, Dad?”

“I wouldn’t, but hey, that’s just me,” Mr. Pajama Man said. My father shot him a look. “Whoops. You’re right. I’ll be going now.”

He slipped back into his room, letting the door shut with a click.

There was a lot of silence in that hallway for a very long time.

“I’m sorry, Hank,” my dad said at last. “I cannot let you go to Colossus Coaster Kingdom. I would be teaching you the wrong lesson. You know in your heart that irresponsibility cannot be rewarded.”

I knew that in my heart, but I couldn’t control my eyes. Tears started to well up. The one thing I really wanted on this whole trip had just been taken away.

And the truth of it was, it had been taken by me.

A
S
I
WATCHED
F
RANKIE,
Emily, and my mom leave the motel, my heart sank lower than a giant anchor at the bottom of the ocean. I closed my eyes and imagined what their day at Colossus Coaster Kingdom was going to be like. Frankie sitting in the first car of Freefall, his body flying over the roller coaster tracks, his hands waving in the air, his stomach traveling at a g-force of four. (Okay, so I don’t technically know what a g-force is, but that’s what it said in the brochure.) I saw Emily stuffing her face with cotton candy and hot dogs with extra mustard. I saw my mom waving to them both as they went on every ride in the park.

Even Katherine was going to have a fun day, watching Animal Planet on daytime TV in the motel room.

And then I imagined me, sitting at the Grand
National Crossword Puzzle Championship Tournament next to my dad, watching him and his puzzle pals putting letters into tiny squares
all day long
.

It makes you want to cry, doesn’t it?

When we walked into the convention center, it was even worse than I thought it was going to be. There was this big banner that said, Welcome, Crossworders. It was written in squares across and down, like a real crossword puzzle. A bunch of guys in plaid shirts buttoned all the way up to the neck were standing around having a big laugh at the banner. I looked at it again, to see if there was something funny that I had missed. There wasn’t.

We entered a big room filled with long tables divided into little cubicles with cardboard partitions. Men and women were sitting in plastic chairs. I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t think there was one person in there who had ever thrown a ball. Or had even looked at a ball. They were definitely indoor types.

My dad found a place at one of the tables up front. He picked it so that he could see the large clock on the wall. That way, he could
pace himself and finish each puzzle in the allotted amount of time. He was in a pretty intense mood. I tried asking him a few questions about the tournament, and all he kept saying was, “Not now, Hank.”

I found a place to sit on the sidelines. I looked around at the tables and chairs. Okay, that took about four seconds. There wasn’t much to look at in there. Scratch that. There wasn’t
anything
to look at.

A man in a cowboy hat covered with pins sat down next to me. I tried to read what the pins said, but Grand National was all I could make out. He saw me staring at his head, and helped out.

“Pins from the Grand National Championship Tournaments for the last twenty years,” he said. “Been in every competition from Omaha to Kalamazoo.”

“So you’re a crossworder?” I asked.

“The wife is,” he answered, pointing to a woman in a matching cowboy hat. “Three-time champion. Twice runner-up. Who you here cheering on?”

“Well, I’m here with my dad, but I’m not
exactly cheering. It more like I’m being punished.”

“If he’s trying to punish you, then he made a mistake bringing you here. This is even more fun than going down one of them roller coasters, which I did yesterday. This is where the real excitement is.”

Was this guy sent here to rub it in? Everyone’s been on those roller coasters but me.

Suddenly, a voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, pencils up. The first puzzle is about to begin. You have five minutes, starting when I ring the bell.”

A bell sounded and the room became completely silent. The only thing you could hear was the sound of pencils scratching on paper. I think I dozed off, because when the next bell rang five minutes later, I nearly jumped out of my chair.

The next couple of hours looked exactly the same, as the puzzlers whipped through one crossword after another. Bell. Silence. Bell. Silence. Bell. Silence.

At the mid-morning break, my dad came rushing over to me. He was drenched with sweat, like he had just run a marathon.