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Authors: Jack Gantos

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“Where'd she go?” I asked, and I could feel my chest getting tight.
“Didn't say. Maybe Mexico.”
“Mexico? She doesn't know anyone in Mexico. She doesn't even like Mexican food. Why'd she go there?”
“It's just a guess, Joey. Now hold for a minute,” she said, “I've got another call.”
Mexico? I thought. Why there? Why didn't she tell me? And I could feel myself getting all twisted up inside like when bad things
do
happen. Maybe Dad told her I wanted to stay with him and instead of getting mad she decided to run off and celebrate. Suddenly the operator came on and told me to put more money in the phone so I just hung up and told myself to calm down. Maybe Mom went down to Mexico to get me another Chihuahua as a surprise for me when I came home. Maybe she went to Tijuana to hear Herb Alpert. There were many good reasons to go to Mexico. And as Mom always told me, when you feel mixed up always try to think positive thoughts.
So I ran outside and cupped my hands around my mouth and faced what I thought was Mexico and I yelled out at the top of my lungs, “Have a great time south of the border and bring me back something good!” That made me feel much better, except I had to go to the bathroom so I ran back inside the store.
I was cutting through the boys' clothing section when I passed a kid that looked like somebody I knew
from school. I turned to say hello to him, but realized he wasn't a real kid at all but a mannequin. Then I started examining the mannequin. It was the most real-looking one I had ever seen, and the kid seemed perfect in every way. The hair was just the right blond and the right length. Very cool sunglasses covered his eyes, which were blue and bright. The nose was medium size and straight. The lips were barely open, as if he were going to say something perfectly polite. The chin was strong. His skin was as smooth as new vinyl, with no bumps, scars, moles, weird hairs, or pimples. Not even freckles. His arms were reaching out as if he were going to catch a beach ball. His bathing suit and T-shirt were new and clean and he was wearing sandals. Even his feet were perfect.
I just kept staring at him. There he is, I thought, the perfect kid, and I bet he is perfectly
normal
too. I wondered how it would feel to be one-hundred-percent flawless in every way so that from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night I didn't make one mistake, big or small. Like, I didn't even get itsy-bitsy crumbs on the floor, or feel moody, or forget to feed Pablo. Maybe the store could sell perfect kids that could be placed like mannequins around the house, just sitting next to their toy boxes without ever making a mess, or taking fake showers without ever getting a huge puddle of water on the floor. Or you could put them out in the front yard like garden statues
waving to the neighbors or holding a goofy flag with a bright flower on it. Mom once said it was my mistakes that made me interesting, and although I didn't understand her then, I did now.
Then I got a great idea. I went to the clothes rack and got a beach outfit and went into the bathroom and put it on. I hid all my stuff in my backpack, then dashed over to the mannequin. I hopped up and stood on the fake painted beach like I was his friend and took his sunglasses off and fit them on my face. I clipped my tape player to my waistband, pressed in my mini-speakers, and struck a pose like a lifeguard looking out at the surfers. As people walked by they didn't notice me or my new friend.
But I was looking at them. Most everyone was going somewhere in a hurry. And it got to be no fun standing there with no one looking at me, so then I tried to get their attention.
I leaned way forward and stuck out my tongue until my mouth started to ache. People just walked by as if it was nothing. I crossed my eyes and drooled so much it dripped off my chin. Nothing. I did fake hiccups. Nothing. Nobody seemed to notice, because no matter how weird I was, they were just as weird. People argued and picked their noses and swatted their kids and talked to themselves and pulled at their tight underwear and spit chewing gum out in the corners and wiped their dirty hands on the clothes and sang
off key and did all kinds of strange things that I did too, which made me feel like I was normal like they were and not perfect like my mannequin buddy.
Finally, a lady who looked like any kid's mom checked the price on my shorts and I began to laugh because it tickled and the woman nearly fainted and then started laughing because what I was doing was funny and she knew it, and I figured she must be nice because most people would pitch a fit.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “Spying for shoplifters?”
“No, I'm just being a mannequin.”
“I've always wanted to do something like that,” she said. “I just didn't have the nerve.”
“The only thing you have to worry about,” I whispered, “is that someone will yell at you. But if you are somebody like me, then having someone yell at you is no big deal.”
“Well, you better take your place again,” she said. “You don't want the clerk to spot you.”
“I'm finished,” I said, stepping down. “Time to move on. Today is my day to see if I can be normal and have fun all at the same time.”
She gave me a strange look when I said “normal,” like the last thing in the world I was was “normal.” Oh well, I thought, maybe it's not a good idea to be too normal. It didn't sound like much fun if it only made you afraid to do the stuff you really wanted to do.
After I got dressed I went out to the sidewalk, pointed my finger straight out, and spun around with my eyes closed while I sang, “Round and round and round I go, where I stop nobody knows.” When I did stop I was pointing at an ice cream parlor across the street. “My lucky day,” I said to no one in particular.
While I crossed the street I figured out a little experiment to try. In my mind I picked out the two flavors I would most want on my ice cream cone—chocolate mint and Oreo. But when I went to order I said to the girl, “Give me two scoops of your two most normal flavors.”
“What if you don't like them?” she asked.
“I'll spit them out,” I replied. “I'm not really hungry for ice cream, this is just a test.”
She made me pay in advance. Then she gave me a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of chocolate. “These are our two best-selling flavors,” she said, handing the cone to me.
“Are you kidding?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “the plain flavors are the most popular.”
Well, I thought as I left, I'm not plain either.
When I finished my ice cream I closed my eyes and spun around and around and wondered where I'd land next.
When I stopped and opened my eyes I was pointing at a church with bright red doors. I hadn't been in a
church since Grandma took me when I was little. I had filled my pockets with marbles and during the sermon they got loose under the pews. They made a loud racket, but nobody laughed like I did. After that, Grandma made me stay home with her to watch church on TV.
I opened the huge red door and quietly tiptoed up the aisle. The chapel walls were glowing with tall blue-and-red glass windows, and as I walked down the aisle I imagined the dusty shafts of red air and blue air and purple air filling me up inside. And when I breathed out, the same colors swirled around my head. A choir was practicing in the balcony and I took a seat and listened.
“No, no, no!” the conductor shouted. “Tenors, follow the organ. You're flat. Now, again.”
The organ started up so loudly I could feel it buzzing in my feet. The tenors sang and the conductor pointed to another group of singers and they came in. “Stop!” he shouted. “You're late, altos. Come in crisply after the first measure. Now, again.”
The organ started, the tenors began, and the altos came in on the correct beat, then a third group, which sang even higher, joined in.
“Stop!” shouted the conductor. “Sopranos, take the gum balls out of your mouths. Enunciate! Again.”
They started up, but soon the conductor lowered his arms. “Stop. Basses, you've got to hold the bottom.
Don't let the tenors pull you into their octave. Again!”
The conductor continued to start and stop and start and stop the singers and it made me nervous and I began to get a funny idea running through me. I wanted to play my trumpet. I reached down into my backpack and slowly pulled it out and set it on my lap. I looked at it. I touched it. I licked my lips. I listened to the choir music which was smooth and creamy as yellow icing on a cake and I was aching to stand up and blow the opening notes to “A Taste of Honey.”
Finally the conductor started them from the beginning. It was amazing to listen to them sing one perfect wave of notes on top of another. The more perfectly they sang the more I wanted to join in. I felt as if I were being tickled all over but wasn't allowed to laugh. All I wanted to do was hold the trumpet to my lips and wail. Suddenly, the choir stopped and the conductor lowered his arms.
“Perfect,” he said. “You should be proud of yourselves. Not a note out of place.” And the look on everyone's face was beautiful. They were filled with their perfection.
I was so excited I just wanted to go somewhere and practice my trumpet. I wanted to be as perfect as they were and not have a note out of place. I went outside and began to spin around and around and when I
stopped I was facing a tall building. It looked like the bell-tower part of an old cathedral. I ran over and it was full of people reading books. I knew I couldn't cut loose there so I took the elevator to the top and when I got out I snooped down the hall and found a small balcony, so I went out on it and looked across the city and saw all the places I had been walking.
The whole day I had been playing a big Pittsburgh board game called Are You Normal, Joey Pigza, or Are You Wired? I was just about to declare myself the winner when I realized there was one more place I had't pointed my finger. At me. The real test was inside me. I leaned back against the balcony wall, closed my eyes, and turned my head upside down. I took a deep breath and when I opened my eyes the whole city had flipped over and it reminded me that so far nothing on my trip had turned out as I had expected.
I had thought Dad would tell me all about his past. But he didn't want to talk about it, so I was wrong about that. I had thought there was some chance Mom and Dad might get back together, but Mom really didn't want to and Dad had a new girlfriend. So I was wrong about that. I had thought Grandma would be creepy, but she was only sad and sick now. So I was wrong about that too. And now I wasn't even wearing a patch, which was the scariest thing of all, but all day long I wasn't goofing up. I was totally in
control of every second. Every thought. Every action. Every word. As Dad would say, “Today, I was on top of my game.” I just smiled to myself, and thought all my troubles had vanished.
This is what it is like to be normal, I guessed. You don't have problems. Only messed-up people have problems, and since I wasn't messed up anymore I was free as a bird. I could just leap off the balcony, spread my arms, and soar through the Chicken Little sky which was not falling.
“I'm normal. I'm normal. I'm really normal. Joey Pigza is normal.” I could stop thinking that bad things were always coming my way. I switched on my Herb Alpert tape. I slipped my speakers into my ears and pulled my trumpet out of my backpack. I stood up and started to play as loud as I could. And I kept playing until I looked at my watch and saw that it was time to meet Dad. I put my trumpet away and got going.
I had a huge smile on my face all the way down the elevator and across the street and all the way up the steps to the War Memorial building where Dad worked. Just when I reached the top Dad stepped out the door.
“Hey, buddy,” he yelled out. “How was your big day?”
“It was perfect!” I shouted. “Awesome. The best day
I ever had. I felt like the most normal kid in the world. Now I just want more and more of these days. A year of them. A lifetime of them.”
“See,” he said. “I told you that patch was bogus.”
“You were right,” I said. “You made me better.”
He got tears in his eyes and had to wipe them away with his long fingers.
“That's the greatest thing anyone ever said to me,” he said. “Give me five.”
I held out my hand and grinned at him.
“No way,” he said, “I'm not falling for that again.”
“I won't pull my hand back,” I said. “Promise.”
He tried to get the jump on me and took a big quick swing, but I still pulled my hand away in time and he lurched forward all over again. “You promised,” he said.
I turned and jumped down the steps two at a time and laughed bent over until I thought I was going to cry too. When I looked up he was still standing at the top.
“I'll get you back,” he said, in a voice that I wasn't sure was joking or serious. Either way, it made me feel nervous all over, which kind of put a tiny dent in my perfect day.
SECRET
“Mexico?” Mom repeated. “Ha! Who told you I was in Mexico?”
“Tiffany,” I replied.
“I'm sure she was just trying to be helpful,” Mom said. “But it's my guess that she couldn't find Mexico with a map.” Then she lowered her voice. “I was doing something private. I was in traffic court. I didn't tell you but I got a ticket on my way back from Pittsburgh. Can you believe I was pulled over for driving erratically? I was dodging the holes and the cop thought I was drunk. Then he saw that my license was expired. So yesterday I had to go to court and pay a fine and now I have to wait thirty days for a new license.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.” I was the one had who told her to dodge the holes.
“Well, that's enough about me,” she said. “What did
you do this last while? Have you made lots of new friends on the team?”
“No,” I said. “I just pitch. I don't have to go to practice. They field and do all the hitting.”
“Don't they let you hit?” she asked.
“They let me try,” I replied. “I just haven't hit the ball yet. I swing, but so far I've whiffed every time.”
“What about after the game?” Mom asked. “Do you go out and eat pizza?”
“No. Dad's the coach and so I just hang out with him and we eat pizza together.”
“Well, I wish you'd make some friends,” she said.
“I have Pablo,” I replied.
“But you need to hang around kids your own age,” she said.
“I'm different than they are,” I said. “
You
always said so. You always said I was special.”
“And you are,” she said as if she had her arms around me. “But you can be my special Joey
and
have friends.”
I knew what she was getting at. But it was hard making friends on a team when Dad was the coach. He yelled at everyone and when the games were over they took off. They didn't want to hang around and get yelled at anymore. But I knew Mom wanted to feel better so I said, “I'm working on it. There are a few nice kids I'm getting to know.”
“Well, I'm glad to hear that, honey,” she said. “You just be yourself and they'll like you even better.”
Suddenly I remembered something good I wanted to say. “I pitched a whole game and won,” I blurted out. “Now we're trying to win the championship. And yesterday I spent the whole day in Pittsburgh. It was the best day of my life. I love the city. There is so much to do and I had a blast.”
“Was your dad with you?”
“No. He was working, but I was fine. I didn't go far and I didn't talk to strangers or do anything they tell you not to do on
Sesame Street.
”
“Are you changing your medication?” she asked.
That was the question I didn't want her to ask and I got that spastic feeling all over my skin like when you slowly walk into an ice-cold swimming pool and your gooseflesh skin just wants to climb up your bones and hunch up on your shoulders.
“I played like I was a mannequin at a store,” I said. “I put on some new clothes and sunglasses and stood next to a real mannequin till a lady noticed.”
“Joey,” she said, “are you changing your patch?”
“Then I went into a video arcade and had self-control.”
“Joey, you aren't answering me. Have you changed your patch?”
“What do you think?” I said, and began to sputter
with laughter, and then I just kept finding different ways to laugh like a braying donkey and an insane hyena and a wacky chimpanzee and I laughed until I thought by the time I stopped laughing she would have forgotten what we were talking about. But she didn't go for it.
“Joey, don't play games with me,” she said in a voice that was backing me into a corner.
“Yes,” I said. “I changed it.” And I had. I went from a patch to no patch. That was a change. But it was a lie too, and I wasn't laughing about that, because it was wrong.
“Let me talk with your dad,” she said sternly.
I held the receiver by the cord and swung it around like a soap-on-a-rope. “Dad,” I hollered across the room. “Mom wants you.”
He came over quickly and snatched the phone out of the air. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to me, “You didn't tell her about our little secret?”
“No,” I mouthed.
“Good boy,” he said, and winked at me. “Hi, Fran,” he said smoothly. “How was Mexico?”
I don't think she talked much about Mexico. Because all Dad said was, “Don't worry. Everything is under control. He's having the time of his life. It's good for him to live in a man's world. He'll make friends, but for now he and I are spending lots of time
together. And don't worry about the medication. I've got it under control.”
When he gave the phone back to me he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer.
“I'm going to work,” he said. “When I get home, be ready for the game tonight.”
I gave him the thumbs-up even though it worried me to see him having a beer for breakfast, and when I put the phone to my ear it sounded like Mom was grinding her teeth. “I have a little secret,” I whispered.
“What?” she asked in her I've-had-it-with-you voice, like she just wanted me to spit it out. “What?”
“It's a secret,” I said. “But when I tell you what it is you'll be stunned.”
“Well, stun me now,” she said. “Hit me with your best shot.”
“Not now,” I sang. “As they say, the best things in life are worth waiting for.”
“Don't play games with me, young man,” she insisted.
“Okay,” I said. “I'm going now. Goodbye.” I put down the phone and went to my room thinking that when I tell her the secret she'll really be surprised and then she won't yell at me anymore.
On my way through the living room Grandma stopped me.
“Do you have any of that telephone money left that your mom gave you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “A little.”
“Well, run down to the store and part with some of it and get me a pack of generics.”
“But they're killing you,” I pleaded.
“Nonsense. You just don't want to part with any of that phone money. You're too cheap to spend a couple bucks on your old grandma.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And I'll call and tell them you're coming,” she said. “I just don't want to ride that buggy down and all the way back. I'm too winded.”
I dug the money out of my pillowcase, grabbed my trumpet, and ordered Pablo to follow me.
“Hurry back,” Grandma hollered from the couch.
“March behind me,” I ordered Pablo as we left the house. “A one, a two, a one, two, three, four!” I put the trumpet to my lips and tried to blast out the long first note from “El Garbanzo” and off we went, down the sidewalk. I took huge giant steps like I was leading a parade and wearing a fancy outfit with gold buttons and one of those white hats with a tall fluffy gold feather sticking out the top. I tried to play and march without the metal mouthpiece cracking my front teeth in half and Pablo had to take twenty baby steps to my one in order to keep up.
At the store the lady clerk had already set the cigarettes on the counter. I gave her the money and she
put them in a bag. We turned right around and started home.
Now I was trying to play “Love Potion No. 9” until I started singing, “I held my nose, I closed my eyes … I took a drink!” Then I ran around kissing “everything in sight” just like the guy in the old song. I kissed a mailbox, a telephone pole, a stop sign, and a tree trunk. Pablo didn't kiss anything but he did do his business in someone's front yard and then got snappish with a toy poodle and I had to separate them and a lady came out of the house and yelled at me for what Pablo did in her yard and I yelled “Sorry” and grabbed Pablo with one arm and ran down the street and after I had turned left and right a few times I didn't know where I was.
I put Pablo down on the road. “Okay, troublemaker,” I said. “Sniff out how to get home.” He sniffed a pebble and looked up at me with his squinty lizard face and I could tell he had no idea either.
We walked around in the sun for a while, which made my head hot. I was nervous that the dogcatcher might come looking for us because Pablo was off his leash. Then I saw a police car and ducked because I didn't want to get arrested for having cigarettes. Finally I saw the oxygen tank delivery truck and knew it had to be going to our house. I picked Pablo up again and tucked him under one arm like a football and my
trumpet under the other and ran until I came to a corner that I recognized and then I knew how to get home from there.
“Where've you been?” Grandma asked when I opened the front door. “I'm here having a nicotine fit, darn near climbing the walls, and you run off to the end of the earth.”
“I got lost,” I said. “I took a wrong turn.”
“I've heard that excuse before. Whenever you used to get lost coming home from school, I knew to expect you were slipping into a bad spell. And sure enough, you couldn't keep your mind on what you were doing and ran around like the devil was poking you with his pitchfork all night long.”
“I'm not that way anymore,” I said. “I'm different. I've changed. I'm better. I spent the whole day in Pittsburgh and was fine.”
“That tells me nothing,” she said. “People in Pittsburgh are nuts, so how could you tell if you weren't too?”
I looked over at Pablo. He was lapping pop out of her glass she had set on the rug and that made me smile.
She unwrapped the pack and began to tap a cigarette out the top. “You might fool yourself, but you can't fool Grandma,” she said, and struck a match.
“You're just trying to scare me like before,” I shot back.
“No,” she wheezed, putting her cigarette down and reaching for her oxygen. “I'm trying to scare some sense into you
now.
”
I didn't want to listen to her anymore and she knew it. I put the trumpet to my lips and let out a crazy duck sound.
“Okay,” she said. “I've said my piece. Now, get some forks. I heated up a snack for us, but it's probably cold by now.”
I set out the TV tables like I used to do when we lived together and then she tuned the TV to
The Price Is Right
and a lady was making a decision between choosing a car, picking what was behind door number three, or taking the big wad of cash.
I got a little jumpy when screaming “Take the cash! Take the cash!” and when the lady picked door number three and only got a roomful of ice cream sandwiches I threw up my arms and knocked over my TV table. It fell forward and my chicken potpie hit the carpet and exploded like someone had upchucked a bucket of yellow slime and peas and carrots and burnt crust.
“Klutz!” Grandma snapped as Pablo started to lap it up.
“Don't eat that, Pablo,” I said. “That's like eating throw-up.”
“It's not throw-up,” she snapped back. “Only throw-up can be throw-up.” Grandma stood and poked her
foot under Pablo's tummy and flicked him into the air. “Bad dog!” she shouted as he flipped around. I lunged forward to catch him but missed and belly flopped onto the potpie mess and slid forward like I had hit an oil slick. Pablo landed on my back and I started to laugh so hard because it was like we were a circus clown act and as I laughed Pablo barked and ran circles around the rug and Grandma pursed her lips and nodded like she had seen it all before.
“Mark my words,” she said. “You're slippin' back to your old self.”
“I only fell,” I said. “I'll clean it up so Dad won't get mad.”
“It's not the cleaning up that concerns me,” she said. “It's you getting that wired look again with your eyes spinning around all over the place.”
I got up and went to the bathroom to wash. But really, what Grandma had said bothered me because I wanted to be the new me and not the old me. I stood in front of the mirror and stared into my eyes. She was wrong. They didn't spin. But the room did so I pulled the T-shirt up over my head. “I'm fine,” I said to myself. And I was.
 
That night my first pitch went right down the middle of the plate about waist high and the kid swung the bat only after it had already smacked into the catcher's glove. A perfect pitch. I looked over at Dad.
He was shaking his head and I thought I could hear the gears turning as he was trying to figure out how to get Mom to let me live with him. All the way over in the car that's all he could talk about. He called me and Leezy his “second-chance family” and went on and on about how he wouldn't make the same mistakes he did with Mom. I asked if he had told Mom and Leezy about all this and he said he was working out the details and figured he needed to visit Humpty Dumpty to do some thinking.

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