How to Survive Middle School (13 page)

I turn off the light in her apartment, close the door and trudge to the kitchen.

The three Alans are in the living room, plugging in their “instruments.”

Dad spots me and waves. “Join us,” he calls, dangling the toy plastic microphone.

“No thanks.”

“We could use you,” Alan Drummond says, adjusting his guitar strap and looking very serious.

It’s a toy
, I want to yell.
A video game. For kids!

“Can’t,” I call. “Homework.”

“Hey, David,” Alan Wexler says. “Watch this.” He twirls one of his drumsticks. It falls out of his hand and plops noiselessly onto the carpet.

I nod, then grab the slab of kugel from the fridge and run upstairs.

“It’s just you and me tonight,” I tell Hammy.

Even Hammy burrows in his wood shavings and ignores me.

I take one bite of kugel, then go to my closet to get my K’nex set. When I remember I tossed it, my shoulders slump.

I turn on the computer, watch a few video clips on the
Daily Show
site and eat some more kugel. Then I check my Jon Stewart
TalkTime
video on YouTube. A piece of kugel drops out of my mouth and falls onto the keyboard.

There are nearly a thousand views and forty-seven comments!
Forty-seven comments!

I scroll through some of them while I pick kugel off my key board.

Great vid, dude. Make more
.

2 Funny!

This rox!

“Oh my gosh,” I say to Hammy. “I’m famous.” I click on the
Hammy Time
video and find that it has more than fifteen hundred views and one hundred and five comments. I push my chair back. “Come on!”

I hit “refresh.” One hundred and six comments. “Oh, my …” I press my face to Hammy’s cage. “You’re more famous.”

Hammy looks unimpressed.

“I can’t believe all those people watched our videos. And commented!” I’m dying to tell Elliott, but remember the orange incident in the lunchroom today. It feels like the nice comments fill up that empty space inside me. I wonder if this is how Jon Stewart feels on the
Daily Show
set when he walks out and hears hundreds of fans in the audience scream for him.

Take that, Tommy Murphy. My videos aren’t lame. You are!

I scan the comments.

Cuuuuuute hamster
.

Luv the hamster
.

Hammy Time sooooo awesome
.

Oh my gosh. They’re eating Hammy up! I need to tell
someone. But the three Alans have started playing, so no way I’m going down there. Bubbe and Lindsay are gone. Elliott’s a jerk. And I don’t have Sophie’s e-mail address or phone number.

Sophie! Your homeschool network. How many people did you tell?

I pull out a sheet of paper and a pen.

I tap the pen on my desk. It will take too long to explain. Besides, Mom doesn’t even have a computer, so she won’t understand what I’m talking about. I don’t want to write to Mom; I want to talk to her.

But I can’t.

I crumple the paper and throw it away.

I hear Alan Drummond yell downstairs, “Rock on, dudes!”

It’s going to be a long, long night.

I’m awakened Saturday morning by guitar music. Real, out-of-tune guitar music. I hear it through the penguin earmuffs I wore to bed last night so I’d be able to fall asleep while the “band” was playing. The earmuffs are too tight—and they made my ears hurt.

I shove them into the back of my underwear drawer with the penguin bathing suit, rub my ears and follow the guitar sounds to Dad’s bedroom door.

Lindsay appears from her bedroom, wiping her eyes. “What the …?”

I shrug.

Her hand on the doorknob, she whispers, “On three.”

“One,” I say.

“Two,” she says.

“Three,” we say at the same time, and Lindsay flings open the door.

I’m not prepared for what I see: Dad, wearing pajamas, sits on
the edge of the bed, strumming his Fender Strat. The cool Fender Strat that’s been in a dusty case under his bed for years.

“What? Are? You?
Doing?
” Lindsay asks, hand on her hip.

Dad looks up. “Oh, hi. Did I wake you guys?”

“Um,
yeah
,” Lindsay says.

I shake my head, and Lindsay pokes my shoulder. “Yes he did, David.”

Dad’s finally playing his guitar, Lindsay. Don’t make him feel bad about it
.

“Sorry, guys.” Dad puts the guitar into its case and snaps the clips.

My heart sinks.

“I was just …” Dad gets that sad, misty look in his eyes.

Lindsay must not notice, because she says, “I’m going back to bed. Wake me when we’re normal!” Then she stomps out.

I sit on Dad’s bed. “So, what’s up with the …” I jerk my head toward the guitar case.

“The guys, they …”

I know he means the other two Alans from last night. The Alans he’s been friends with since he was my age.

“
They
thought we should get a
real
rock band together.”

I want to be supportive, but a laugh slips out. I can’t help it. I’m picturing my dad and the Alans onstage with long hair and leather pants, smashing their guitars.

“I know,” Dad says. “Ridiculous, right?”

Yes
. But Dad hasn’t seemed this excited about anything since Mom left, so I say, “No. It’s an awesome idea. What would you call yourselves? Widow’s Kiss?”

Dad laughs. “Nah, that was my college band’s name. We’d
need something new.” Dad presses his palms onto his thighs. “Alan Drummond doesn’t even have drums yet. It’s just a crazy idea.”

I knock my shoulder into Dad’s. “It’s not crazy. But you’ll need a name.” I head toward Dad’s door, pausing to nod at his guitar case. “And more practice.”

Dad rakes a hand through his wild morning hair. “I’m not sure your sister would appreciate that.”

I nod toward Lindsay’s room. “Practice, Dad. Even if it drives Lindsay crazy.” I grin. “
Especially
if it drives Lindsay crazy.”

And I go to my room and write Mom a long letter about how Dad has taken up playing guitar again and how he’s forming a new band. As I drop the letter into the mailbox, I’m sure this will make Mom want to come home.

At least for a visit.

Sunday morning, I can’t concentrate in Hebrew school. I look at the cantor but think of Sophie. She found my phone number and asked me over to work on our project.

Dad drives me to her house. “Have fun.”

“I will,” I say, even though my stomach flops around every time I think of her soft, curly hair. I carry the bag with the Einstein book and my camera case and ring the doorbell.

Sophie answers. “Hi, David.”

In the foyer, I inhale deeply. It smells like our house did when Mom lit vanilla-scented candles for her morning yoga. I remember the morning she asked Dad to join her. He laughed and said, “Not my cup of chai tea.” Mom looked hurt, so I told her I’d do yoga with her, but she just shook her head and walked away. Sometimes I wonder if Mom and Dad were always so different or if they became that way through the years.

“David?” Sophie waves her hand in front of my face.

I shake my head. “Sorry.”

When Sophie closes the door, I notice a label on it that reads
puerta
. On the banister along the stairs, another label reads
escaleras
. I expect a dog to trot by with the word
perro
on its back, but I remember Ms. Meyers’s reaction to Hammy and know there won’t be a
perro
in this house.

Ms. Meyers walks in, wiping her hands on an apron. “Hello, David.”

I nod.

“The labels are a throwback from homeschooling,” Sophie says, then glares at her mom.

“I’ll take them down,” Ms. Meyers says. “Soon.”

Sophie grabs my wrist and pulls. “We’ll be in my room.”

Ms. Meyers opens her mouth as though she’s going to say something, but doesn’t.

We go up the
escaleras
, open the
puerta
to her bedroom, sit on the
sillas
and turn on her
computadora
.

Sophie yanks the label off the computer and throws it into the trash can.

“Feel better?” I ask.

“A little. Sometimes it feels like Mom’s suffocating me. She totally needs to get her own life.”

I can almost hear my mom shrieking,
I’m suffocating here
. My mom did get her own life, far away from us. “I know what you mean,” I say to Sophie, even though I really don’t. “At least you know she cares about you.”

“I guess.” Sophie shrugs. “But if she cared a little less, that would be good.”

“Hey, can I show you something?” I ask, eager to change the subject.

“Sure.”

I call up
Hammy Time
on YouTube and scroll down. There are twenty-three new comments since last night.
Twenty-three!
And three hundred sixty-five more views.

I stare at the screen, trying to picture three hundred sixty-five people, all watching my video just since yesterday. Three hundred sixty-five people! That’s like the entire sixth-grade class at Harman Middle School.

“Oh my gosh.” Sophie shoves me. “This thing’s going viral. All I did was send it to my homeschool network.” She reads some comments. “Cartooney87 says, ‘Cute hamster. I have one just like it.’ Redsoxnritas writes, ‘You rock. Make more vids. Pls!’ and Astrokid13 says, ‘Ha. Ha. Ha. Hammy’s hilarious.’”

“They like it,” I mutter, shaking my head. “They all like it!”

We click over to the
TalkTime
show with my interview with Magazine Cover Jon Stewart. That one has fourteen more comments.
Fourteen!
And a hundred twenty-two more views.

We read through the comments, which are almost all positive. One guy even says,
You should have ur own show! I would watch u
. Reading through all these compliments makes me feel amazing, like I used to feel when I made Mom laugh, and it makes me want to make another video like crazy. Finally, Sophie twirls a curl on her finger and says, “We’d better get started on our project.”

I have an irrational urge to lean over and kiss her. After all, she’s the person who got all this attention for my videos. Instead, I say, “I got a great idea for our project from the book your mom got us.”

I teach Sophie how to work the camera. This requires me to be incredibly close to her peppermint-smelling skin and hair, which makes it hard to concentrate. I think about Cantor Schwartz from Hebrew school. The mole on his chin has hair growing out of it. I can concentrate again.

Sophie and I shoot several segments that involve my putting baby powder in my hair to make it look white, like Einstein’s. The baby powder makes me sneeze, which makes Sophie laugh. Somehow, we keep working and manage to nearly finish editing our video by the time Ms. Meyers yells, “Dinner!” And a loud bell clangs.

I look at Sophie.

“Our dinner bell is a cowbell.”

“You have a dinner bell?”

Sophie bites her lip. “Weird, right?”

Yes!
“No.” I check my watch. “You eat kind of early, though.”

When Sophie turns to me, she’s got that same look in her eyes that Dad had when I found him with Mom’s tuba the other morning.

“We used to eat really late,” Sophie says, twirling hair around her finger again. “
Really
late.” Sophie looks up at me, then down again. “’Cause we’d wait for my dad to come home from work. Sometimes he was late.” She lets out a big breath. “Sometimes …”

It’s weird. I know I said they eat kind of early, but now that Sophie’s explaining, all I want is for her to stop. I want to tell her she doesn’t have to explain if it hurts. I want to tell her about Mom and the Farmer, but I don’t.

“My dad ended up moving in with some lady from work.” Sophie slaps her palms onto her knees and laughs. “I’ve never told anyone before.”

Not sure what else to do, I pat her shoulder.

It must have been the right thing, because Sophie smiles. “After that, Mom decided we’d eat dinner at a
decent
hour, and ever since, we’ve eaten earlier and earlier and—”