Help Wanted (11 page)

Norma's hand flew to her mouth to hold back a groan.
How disgusting,
she thought.

When band rehearsal was canceled, Norma stayed at school to do homework in the library. But first she wandered around the school grounds and hallways in search of Samuel. She checked the basketball court and metal shop. She had even hollered into one of the boys' bathrooms, "Samuel!" She was embarrassed when the janitor came out with a pipe wrench in his hand.

Norma had seen Samuel earlier in the day walking across the school grounds to deliver, she suspected, attendance slips. But she was seated in biology with a dissected frog in her hands and was in no position to scream out the window, "Hey, where's my flute?" And she had seen him at lunch surrounded by pimply boys stomping on their milk cartons. But she dared not confront him with his friends standing around.

In the library Norma did some of her homework and walked home at three-thirty, kicking through leaves that resembled soggy cereal. But she didn't go straight home. No, she stopped at Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors—double chocolate, she discovered after trying
all the flavors, was her favorite. She stopped at the ice-cream store to see if Samuel might be there with one of his friends. He wasn't, though her heart did jump when she heard the sound of a flute.

"Samuel," Norma whispered, then pulled her long hair in front of her face to hide her giggles. "It's the radio." She looked up at the ceiling and caught sight of a speaker with tiny, tiny holes. She placed a hand over her mouth and proclaimed, "I'm in love. I have to be!" She didn't care if the young man behind the counter heard her, or the woman who had just entered.

At home she found three messages on the message machine. Two were for her mother, and one was from Rachael, who wanted to know if she had sheet music for "Here Comes the Bride." She pressed the delete button in anger, as if she were squishing a mosquito.

"She's such a pest!" Her mood had soured.

She went into the kitchen, where she read a note from her mother:
Take the frozen chicken out of the freezer and put it in the sink. At 5:30 peel the carrots and potatoes, and dice the celery. Home at 6:00. Love, Mom.

Soup. Chicken soup.

Norma had heard that chicken soup was good for your soul, and at that hour of the day, she was beginning to think that she might slurp up a big bowl and be cured of everything that ailed her. Only a half hour before, she had been feeling pretty, and then she realized that she might have to face her mother's anger if
her flute had really been stolen, not just swiped by her lover boy, Samuel Ortega.

"But he has got to have it," she said, then jumped when the telephone rang. When she picked it up, it was Rachael.

"Hey, do you have—"

Norma cut her off. "No!"

"Gee, don't get so mad, girl." She hung up without a good-bye.

That night there was no soup to make her feel better. Instead, it was a chicken lathered in creamy sauce. Under the sauce, there were bits of mushrooms, a food that Norma despised. She rounded them up like they were enemies and scooted them around the edge of her plate. Later she would scrape them down the garbage disposal without mercy.

The next day she finally confronted Samuel at a drinking fountain. She decided to be nice. She used her mouth like a musical instrument and asked in a lilting voice, "Do you have my flute?" She asked this while her left hand held her right, and her body twisted, slightly.

"No," he answered bluntly.

Norma noticed that some of his breakfast—grease from eggs and bacon?—was splattered on the front of his shirt. His dark hair was uncombed. The knees of his pants were stained green with grass.

"You don't?" she asked meekly. Her left hand dropped the right hand. The courtship, it seemed, was off.

Samuel looked into her eyes and bit his lower lip. Finally he said, "Norma, quit following me."

Norma rocked on her heels.

"You do it every day."

"What do I do?"

"Pester me."

Hurt, she staggered backward. All last night she had lain in bed thinking of him. She dreamily conjured up his hair, the tenderness of his teddy bear eyes, and his voice that went up and down, not unlike a bird's, or that of her missing flute. All night she had pictured the two of them at Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors sampling every delicate flavor. They were lapping the ice cream from the same cone, which, for her, was kind of like kissing. Their tongues almost touched, almost became flavored with something like love.

"I'm not following you!" Norma shot back.

Samuel grimaced. "Norma, I don't like you." He judged her response before he sucked in a lot of air. "I mean I like you like, you know..."

She did know. He liked her as a friend, or maybe just a classmate. She felt her heart shatter and spill gallons of blood. Yes, that was it! She was bleeding inside! She turned and walked away, her head down for a moment, then up again because she had to keep her pride.
"I don't care," she heard herself say, and she ventured into the cafeteria to get her morning hot chocolate. Tears blurred her vision, but she knew the route. Plus, the breakfasty smells of hot chocolate and doughnuts led the way.

"I hate him," she sniveled, and wiped the warm salty tears that had meandered down her cheeks. She sat alone at a table, where she composed herself and then, suddenly, punched her backpack three times. Feeling better, she got up and got herself some hot chocolate.

"He's a pig," she whispered.
Sip-sip.
"One day he'll see."
Sip-sip.
"I'm going places, and he's not!"
Sip-sip.

When she saw Rachael coming into the cafeteria—Jason Harvey was at her side, his arm in hers—she hurried outside into the yard, fighting against the tide of students entering.

"I hate school," she moaned. She sat on the cement bench, alone. A pigeon visited her and stared her straight in the eye. It scratched and pecked at the ground. The pigeon soon left when it received no shower of bread crumbs or potato chips. But two sparrows arrived at her feet. Their chirps had the sound of flutes. They also sounded to her like rusty latches, but she preferred thinking of them as little flutes.

"What are you saying?" Norma asked.

Chirp, chirp.

"Are you, like, boyfriend and girlfriend?"

Chirp, chirp.

When the first bell rang, the birds flew into the bare wintry tree. Norma got up, spilled her hot chocolate on the cement, and started toward her first class. She imagined that the two sparrows were boyfriend and girlfriend. She imagined that they would dart down from their branch, drink, and maybe wash themselves in the sweetness of romance.

Mr. Burrows lifted off his eyeglasses and peered at Norma. He wanted to hear it again. He wanted to know where her flute was.

"A boy stole it," Norma answered. Her arms were across her chest. A curtain of bangs half hid her face.

"'A boy stole it,'" he said slowly as he slipped his eyeglasses back on. His eyes themselves grew large and luminous. "Did you hear that, class?" He got up and started to pace in front of the band members.

Some of the boys laughed. Only one girl laughed, and that was Rachael, whose arm was scribbled with answers to the next period's geography quiz. Her laughter revealed a wad of blue gum on the back of her molars. It also revealed that Rachael was truly not Norma's friend.

"It's not funny," Norma said without turning to Rachael, even though they sat next to each other on squeaky metal folding chairs.

Rachael raised her hand, her bracelet jangling like
a tambourine. The geography notes resembled tattoos and were revealed to the class.

Mr. Burrows's eyes got bigger behind his eyeglasses, his way of saying,
Yes?

"I got an extra flute at home," Rachael said. She told the teacher that she could bring it tomorrow.

Yuck,
Norma thought.
I have to put my lips to the mouthpiece of her flute?
She closed her eyes and pictured Rachael and Jason Harvey kissing. She pictured their tongues touching.

It was settled. Rachael would lend Norma her extra flute. It was also settled that the band members would meet, rain or shine, in front of city hall on Saturday for the Presidents' Day parade.

Rachael's hand went up.

Mr. Burrows lifted his shaggy eyebrows.

"What presidents are we marching for?" she asked.

Mr. Burrows sucked in his lower lip and then spat out, "All of them. But especially President Lincoln."

Out of habit Rachael wrote that piece of information on her palm. No telling when that answer might come in handy.

They would march with members of Hamilton Middle School. Like their own middle school, Hamilton had few members in the band. Their own band had three trumpets, two flutes, a trombone, a dented tuba, a glockenspiel that gave off the sounds of doorbells ringing all at once, a bass drum carried by a small boy,
and three snare drums that always got all the attention from passersby. Together they still didn't have enough members to make up a true marching band. And neither school had uniforms. Hamilton Middle School sported sweatshirts—green and white ones, Norma recalled—or maybe blue and white. Her own school—Franklin D. Roosevelt—had red and white ones, with a picture of an ancient battleship.

Mr. Burrows spent time discussing the march. To do that, he called band members into the yard, where he first demonstrated a sort of cadet march, but with a swagger.

Three boys laughed. It struck them that their teacher looked like a girl as his legs kicked up in a march.

"Do you get it? We've done this before—remember?" Mr. Burrows was unaware that the boys were making fun of him.

The band members nodded. They were then pushed into four lines—the flutes and glockenspiel up front, and the trombone and trumpets in the second row. The tuba had its own line, and the snare drums and bass drum filled out the last line.

"Now march slow, and listen to each other's steps." He stood in front, walking backward and waving a baton. Occasionally he would look where he was going, but his attention was drawn mostly to the band members. "It's all coming back, no? Remember when we marched last year for Columbus Day?"

Norma felt stupid. She had no flute to bring to her mouth.

"Okay, that's not bad. Let's try 'Stars and Stripes Forever.'" Mr. Burrows ordered the band to attention and, after inspecting the lines, called out, "One, two, three, and—"

The band started playing, the beat of their instruments moving everywhere but in time. Their music was the sound of a car crash, or a pyramid of cans falling all at once. It was the sound of pipes falling off a tall rack, or a kettle whistling on a stove. It was the death moan of a Scottish bagpipe.

"Stop, stop, stop!" Mr. Burrows's chest heaved. He stared angrily at the trumpet players, then at the tuba. He let them know that they had better play better. "Let's start again." He waved his baton and called out, "Now one, two, three, and—"

This time the musicians fell into a reasonable tempo. Mr. Burrows smiled. It was imperfect for sure, but good enough.

But Norma was not smiling. She was marching with the band members but had nothing to contribute except a woeful look.

Still, as Mr. Burrows waved his baton, the band members became confident, and even proud, the boys parodying the swagger of Mr. Burrows that had had them laughing only a few minutes before. The roll of
the snare drums brought out a few lingering students and teachers from the classrooms. They watched silently as the band marched up the yard and then back down.

This is stupid,
Norma thought.
Everyone's watching me.
She believed that everyone—students and teachers, plus the afternoon janitors—was watching her, the only one without an instrument. It got even worse. Samuel Ortega, the boy who had spurned her, was watching, too. He was holding a metal trash can by its handle. He was picking up litter as a punishment for something. Norma wanted to believe that it was for being mean to her. When Samuel started to bang the side of the trash can, Mr. Burrows threw him the dagger of a mean look. He stopped at once and continued to pick up litter.

"Very good!" a beaming Mr. Burrows called out. "Very, very good." He gave a command to march in time, and then a forward, then flank left, then flank right.

They marched until the afternoon became shrouded in dusk. Norma had nothing to do but march and think about love. Like everyone else, she wanted a boyfriend, and wanted to go places with him—a movie, a park, maybe to a lake where they could rent a boat. But she had no boyfriend to hold, nor a flute, that chrome instrument that could send a beautiful melody up into the air. Her fingers tapped at her sides, as if she were
playing a flute, as if she were suddenly involved in the music echoing throughout the school yard.

After band practice Norma went into the principal's office and cried into the comfort of her palms. She told Mrs. Conway that her flute was lost and almost whimpered, "Stolen."

"Let's look right now," Mrs. Conway suggested. Her eyes cut a glance at the clock. It was 4:30, late. She prodded Norma outside her office and into the hallway. Mrs. Conway's shoes rapped like gavels in the empty hallway.

"Where are we going?" Norma asked.

"The place where lost things go," Mrs. Conway answered mysteriously. She also told Norma that she should have reported the missing flute sooner.

Norma wanted to tell her she thought that Samuel Ortega had taken it from her locker, but her explanation would have been too complicated, if not false. Plus, she realized, he was already being punished for something.

Mrs. Conway tried three keys before she had success in turning the knob. When she pushed open the door, Norma faced a treasure of things that had been lost and never claimed—backpacks, lunch boxes, basketballs, coats and jackets, sweaters and sweatshirts, and—what was that?—a stuffed frog holding up a tiny umbrella? There were skateboards, shoes, skates, a box
of eyeglasses, girlish umbrellas pink as flowers, and a flag of Great Britain. There were lots of books. There was also a trumpet and a black case, just like the kind she carried her flute in.