Jasper John Dooley, Left Behind (4 page)

Jasper opened the front door wearing his best, unfriendliest frown. It was Annie. She wasn't old, and her eyes looked normal, just like Mom said. But there was something different about her. Jasper noticed right away.

“Oh!” he said.

Mom came to the door zippering her dress. She said, “Hello. You must be — Oh!”

Then Dad came with his best, friendliest smile. “Hel — Oh!”

Jasper said to Annie, “You have a ring in your nose.”

Mom had told Jasper that Annie baby-sat lots of the kids in the neighborhood. She had told Jasper that all the mothers loved Annie. One of them had given Jasper's mom Annie's phone number. But Mom hadn't said anything to Jasper about the ring in Annie's nose. From the look on Mom's face, Jasper knew no one had told Mom either.

Annie smiled and shook Mom and Dad's hands. She shook Jasper's hand, too. “Nice to meet you. I think we're going to have a lot of fun, Jasper,” she said.

“Don't worry about anything,” she told Mom and Dad.

Mom already looked worried. She looked so so worried, but Dad made her put on her coat and go.

After Mom and Dad left, Jasper told Annie, “Usually my Nan baby-sits me. She doesn't have a ring in her nose.”

“Where is she tonight?” Annie asked.

“On a cruise.”

Jasper told Annie about the ship. He told her about the swimming pool and the ballroom and the ten restaurants. “Nan wants to see icebergs,” he said. “She's never left me behind before.”

“You must miss her,” Annie said.

“I do!” Jasper said.

“So, how about we go on a cruise, too?” said Annie. “Then you won't miss her so much.”

Jasper said, “I had exactly the same idea! I'm building a cruise ship in my friend Ori's backyard, across the alley and one house down.”

“It will take quite a while to build a huge cruise ship,” Annie said. “I was thinking about going tonight.”

“Tonight?” Jasper asked. “How?”

“First we have to set up the restaurants. How many did you say?”

“Ten.”

“How about four?”

Jasper said, “Okay.”

They put cookies in the living room, grapes in Mom and Dad's room, milk in the kitchen, and ice cream in the dining room. Jasper told her that one of the restaurants in his and Ori's cruise ship was only going to sell popcorn.

“Do you have any popcorn?” Annie asked.

They checked the cupboard. They didn't.

“Then why don't we start with ice cream?” Annie said.

“Aren't you going to make me eat my fruit first?” Jasper asked.

“Do you want the ice cream to melt?”

“No!” Jasper said and sped ahead.

After they finished the ice cream, Annie said she felt like a swim in the pool. “How about you, Jasper?”

Jasper felt like swimming, too. On the way to the pool, they stopped off in the living room to eat the cookies.

Annie filled the tub, and Jasper started to undress. As soon as he pulled his shirt over his head, Annie gasped. “Nobody told me you had your appendix out!”

“What's a pendix?” Jasper asked.

“It's inside you.” Annie pointed to his Band-Aids. “Did you have an operation?”

“No. That's where I stapled my story to myself.”

“Say that again.”

“It's a long story,” Jasper said.

He told Annie about the snake. He told her how nice the first Band-Aid was and how Mom had put two more Band-Aids over it the next day but still he
pthththed
at school and needed more Band-Aids over those ones.

“How many does that make?” Annie asked.

“Twelve,” Jasper told her. “But that first one was so nice.”

“And how does the snake fit in?” she asked.

“That was the story. He was so long people kept stepping on his tail,” Jasper said. “Most people don't know where a snake's body ends and its tail starts.”

“I guess I don't, either,” Annie said.

“It starts at the end!”

“You're kidding,” Annie said.

“No. And I think I need more Band-Aids before I go in the pool.”

“Okey-dokey,” Annie said.

Jasper showed her the cupboard where they kept the Band-Aids. It was a new, full box, so Annie put a lot more on. When he was all bandaged up, Jasper dove in the pool. He showed Annie the front glide that he had learned in swimming lessons. He showed her his back float and his roll-over.

Annie lay on the bathmat and pretended to be sun tanning.

Afterward, while Jasper was putting on his pajamas, the phone rang. He heard Annie say, “It's going great!” She called, “Jasper! Your mom wants to talk to you!”

Jasper came to the phone. “Are you all right?” Mom asked. She sounded worried.

“Yes!” Jasper said.

He was just a little bit hungry after all that swimming. Also, a big wet circle had appeared in the middle of his pajama top. After he got off the phone, he took off his top and pressed a towel against his Band-Aids while he and Annie ate grapes in Mom and Dad's room.

Then Jasper went around the house looking for balls. He found a baseball and a foam ball. He found his leaky beach ball. He put them on his bed. “This is the ballroom,” he said, pulling a new pajama top over his head.

Annie laughed. “A ballroom is for dancing. But I like your idea better.”

They played with all the balls. Jasper balanced on one, then stuck it up his top. “I ate so so so so much in all those restaurants,” he said.

Annie knew how to juggle. She could juggle three different kinds of balls at once. Afterward, they went back to the first restaurant where Annie pretended to be a waitress serving him more ice cream. While they were eating, she asked if he wanted to dance, too.

“Does this ship have two ballrooms?” Jasper asked.

Annie said, “It could.”

They went to the living room. Annie turned on the stereo and twiddled the dial until she found a station Mom and Dad never listened to. She turned it up LOUD. When she danced, her arms made circles in the air and her bottom wiggled as if her underpants were too tight. Jasper gave it a try. “This is fun!” he yelled.

He got an idea. “Hold on a sec.”

Jasper ran to the kitchen and came back with a twist tie from the bread bag. He bent it into a ring and hung it from his nose. Annie laughed and laughed.

After dancing, they dropped into another restaurant for a drink of milk. Then Jasper brushed his teeth and went to bed.

“I think I need more Band-Aids,” he told Annie. “These ones are still wet. They might come off in the night.”

Annie put on more Band-Aids. Jasper fell asleep right away, even before Mom and Dad got home. “Oh, no,” he thought as he was drifting off. “We forgot to look for icebergs!”

The next morning at breakfast Mom asked about Annie. “Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” Jasper said.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.” He got up from the table and started opening the kitchen drawers.

“What are you looking for?” Mom asked.

“Twist ties,” Jasper said.

Dad checked the time. “Hurry, Jasper. Go get dressed or you'll get the lates.”

And that's what happened. Jasper got the lates again, but not because he was looking for twist ties. He got the lates because of Dad.

While Jasper was dressing, Dad came into his room to hurry him up again. “Jasper!” he said. “Look at all those Band-Aids!”

Jasper looked at his tummy. Twenty-seven Band-Aids were holding the first one on. “You have to take those off,” Dad said.

Jasper remembered the last time he'd hurt himself. Taking off the Band-Aid had hurt more than falling down and scraping his knee. It had hurt a lot more.

“No!” Jasper cried. “Taking them off will hurt more than getting stapled!”

“The trick is to rip them off.”

“No! That's what you did the last time!”

“Fast. It won't hurt at all,” Dad said, taking a step toward Jasper.

Jasper dropped down and slipped under Dad's legs. He ran right out of the room to Mom and Dad's room, where he hid behind the curtains, making himself so so flat. He'd
pthththed
so much since Nan went away he could be as flat as he wanted.

“Jasper!” Dad called. “You have to get going! Come on!”

Jasper didn't answer and Dad walked right past where he was hiding. “If you let me take those Band-Aids off, I'll buy you something special!” he called.

Jasper wondered what Dad would buy him, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Your very own stapler?” Dad called.

Behind the curtain, Jasper shook his head.

Nothing happened at school that day except that Jasper got the lates and then had to go to the principal's office for doing a Very Dangerous Thing at recess. Four kids did the Very Dangerous Thing — Jasper, Ori, Isabel and Zoë — but only Jasper got sent to Mrs. Kinoshita's office. Because the Very Dangerous Thing was his idea.

Mrs. Kinoshita folded her hands on top of her desk. She looked hard at Jasper in the big chair across from her. Jasper felt nervous. He always felt nervous when he sat in a chair too high for his feet to touch the ground.

“It's Very Dangerous to put things in your nose, Jasper,” Mrs. Kinoshita said.

Jasper stretched his legs downward in the chair, but his feet still wouldn't touch. “Leon always puts things in his nose,” he said.

“What does Leon put in his nose?” Mrs. Kinoshita asked.

“Fingers.”

“A finger can't get stuck inside your nose.”

“Sometimes it seems that Leon's finger will get stuck,” Jasper said. “It seems like his whole hand is going to get stuck. You should see him.”

“But a finger can't accidentally stab you in the brain the way a twist tie can.”

“The twist ties were just hanging from our noses. What about celery behind the ears?” Jasper asked.

“Behind the ears is okay. In the ears? Never! Put nothing in your ears or nose, Jasper. It's Very Dangerous. Particularly if you're horsing around.”

“We were dancing,” Jasper said.

“I saw you out the window,” Mrs. Kinoshita said.

“Did you think our underwear was too tight?”

“No,” Mrs. Kinoshita said. “I thought you were doing a Very Dangerous Thing, horsing around with twist ties in your nose.”

“We weren't,” Jasper insisted. “We were doing this.” And he jumped out of the chair making circles with his arms and wiggling his bottom. He felt much more confident now that his feet were on the ground.

“Yes, I saw,” Mrs. Kinoshita said. “Sit down.”

Jasper said, “I prefer to stand.”

Mrs. Kinoshita let him stand because she was almost finished talking to him. He only had to promise not to bring Very Dangerous Things like twist ties to school again and not to get other kids to do Very Dangerous Things, like put twist ties in their noses and horse around. Then she sent him back to his classroom.

On the way he stopped at the sickroom and knocked on the door so the nurse could check his Band-Aids. When she didn't answer, Jasper remembered that she only came to school one day a week. Luckily, it had been the day he stapled himself! He walked the rest of the way to the classroom backward because it would take longer, and he suspected they were doing math.

But they weren't! They were choosing who got to take Hammy home!

Every year Ms. Tosh's students got to name the real live little brown hamster in the cage at the back of the class. Last year he was Bob, but this year he was Hammy. Every Thursday Ms. Tosh drew a slip of paper out of a hat. On the slip of paper was the name of the kid who got to take Hammy home for the weekend.

Please
, Jasper thought.
Please let it be my name today
.

More than half the class had already had a turn taking Hammy home. There weren't that many slips of paper left in the hat. All the kids who hadn't had a turn sat at their tables holding their breath. Jasper focused on his name.
Jasper.
He saw it written on the slip of paper.
Jasper
. He saw Ms. Tosh's hand reaching into the hat.
Jasper
. He saw her fingers touch the slip of paper that said
Jasper
. He saw all this, but his eyes were closed.

Jasper.

Jasper.

Jasper.

Then he saw Ms. Tosh read the name on the slip of paper.
Jasper
. He saw Ms. Tosh frown because Jasper had just been in the principal's office for doing a Very Dangerous Thing at recess.
Please
, Jasper thought.
I'll never do it again. I'll never hang a twist tie from my nose and dance around!

“Jasper.”

Never again!

“Jasper?”

Somebody poked Jasper. He opened his eyes. Ms. Tosh was smiling at him and fluttering a slip of paper. The slip of paper that said
Jasper
.