Make Something Up (19 page)

Almost a lifetime ago, when Rooster was barely a cockerel, he was playing chess with his friends. They were all in the fifth grade, Rooster and Rabbit and Aardvark, sitting cross-legged around a chessboard in a quiet corner of the playground during recess period. Aardvark moved a rook to set an obvious trap, and Rooster took one of Aardvark's bishops, saying, “Check,” when a huge shadow fell across their game. A shadow the size of everything. A foot stomped into the middle of the pawns, scattering the knights and crumpling the game board which Rooster had gotten for his tenth birthday and brought to school in its own latched carrying case with a handle because it looked like a briefcase, like the leather briefcase Rooster planned to carry when he was a lawyer. An intellectual property lawyer, ideally specializing in entertainment law. The carrying case even had Rooster's initials embossed in the fake
leather—embossed
in gold—a gift from his mom and dad. Aardvark had been on the cusp of winning, but now the board was creased down the middle and torn at the edges. His little black-plastic king and white pawns were routed, and standing in the middle of the disaster was Warthog, grinding Rooster's birthday gift into the dirt.

With a savage war whoop, Warthog fell forward, yelling and driving both knees, hard, into Rooster's chest.

Rabbit and Aardvark fell back, scrambling in the grass to escape, each glad that, for once, it wasn't him getting hit. Warthog's knotted fists hammered the eyeglasses off Rooster's face. Warthog's knees drove at Rooster's thin ribs, and flattened his nose. For Rooster's part, he fought back by bleeding copiously through his split lips and spouting nostrils. As he rolled across his own fallen chess pieces, the bishops stabbed him in the spine and the rooks bruised their castle shapes into his backside. Rooster was full-out sobbing like a little crybaby right from the get-go.

A shrill whistle blew in the distance, and Warthog retreated as suddenly as he'd attacked. Of Rooster's glasses, one lens was popped out and the hinge of one earpiece had snapped in half. The chess set was so filthy and broken that Rooster instantly felt ashamed for ever having loved it. Rooster had loved it so much that, now, with Aardvark and Rabbit watching, silent, he stomped what was left into the playground dirt. He kicked knights and queens in every direction, tears and blood streaming down his face. Rooster pounded his own gold-embossed initials into the mud of his humiliation, saying, “Fucking son-of-a-bitch bullshit stupid little pussy game!”

Aardvark and Rabbit were embarrassed for their friend's embarrassment, but they understood completely. The three of them studied and did supplemental reading for extra credit. They each got top marks, and even in fifth grade they seemed destined for lofty futures: Rooster as a lawyer; Rabbit, a brain surgeon; and Aardvark, a rocket scientist. They were the runts among their peers. All of their teachers loved them for boosting the overall standardized-test scores. Their current fifth-grade teacher, Miss Scott, who was pretty and young and wore her long hair tied back with a ribbon, especially loved them, and they adored her. Rooster, Rabbit, and Aardvark came from clean homes and had parents who expressed love and respect for them. It goes without saying that they were beaten by bullies almost weekly.

To make matters worse their school practiced a no-tolerance policy regarding violence so if any hitting occurred everyone involved was punished with a mandatory suspension. For the bully, this amounted to a week's vacation, but to the victim it meant falling behind in coursework. So when Miss Scott rushed out to where Rooster was stomping his chessboard and swearing bloody oaths, he mopped his streaming eyes with the back of one bruised hand and told her, “We were playing tag. I ran into a tree.”

When Rooster came back from the school nurse with his cuts washed and bandaged, the fifth-grade girls watched him and giggled behind their hands. Hummingbird pointed for Swallow to see his fat lip and chipped tooth, and they rolled their eyes. Rooster took his assigned seat at the reading table and told himself, “You test as a genius.” Rabbit and Aardvark would not lift their eyes to meet his, but he leaned across the reading table and told them, “We must think of our own scheme to deliver ourselves.”

Silent Reading was followed by Math Skills. Monday became Wednesday. Spelling and Vocabulary. Rooster's scrapes were healing but not his ego. Near the tail end of a spelling bee, Rooster realized hostile eyes were upon him. As he began to spell “receipt” he caught sight of Warthog in the back row of the classroom, glaring and grinding the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, his teeth bared in a silent snarl. Panicked, Rooster accidentally transposed his “i” and his “e” and threw the victory to Dolphin. That same afternoon, when Miss Scott went to the school office for more chalk, Warthog slammed Dolphin across the back of the head with a dictionary. Just the sound of book-hitting-skull hurt everyone within earshot.

For Rooster the moment was an inspiration.

Walking home from school, he told Rabbit and Aardvark, “Listen, my friends.” He said, “I have a plan for our salvation.”

The plan was simple. It seemed easy but brilliant. Rabbit and Aardvark agreed, it was sheer genius.

The next day, Miss Scott called Rooster to the blackboard and asked him to multiply 34 by 3, and to show his work. Rooster took the chalk and wrote for a long time, half filling the front chalkboard, and his answer was 97. Miss Scott again asked him to answer the problem, and his new solution was 91. She gave him a worried look and told him to take his seat. When she asked Rabbit to solve the problem, he got 204. Aardvark got 188. During a pop quiz in Social Studies, Rabbit put down Athens as the capital of Finland. Aardvark gave Denmark as the capital city. Rooster wrote down the Sea of Cortez.

She asked them to stay after class. She asked if they were happy at home and if their moms or dads ever yelled. Miss Scott's hair was so bouncy and her cheeks so bright that the three best friends could only adore her with full-moon eyes.

In the weeks that followed, Aardvark forgot how to spell his own name. Rabbit muffed the lyrics to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” When it was Rooster's turn to read aloud from
Little House on Plum Creek,
he stumbled over the word
“hermaphrodite.”
Miss Scott handed back the History tests the class had taken the week before, and all three friends received F grades. F for Failed. They brought down the grading curve so far even Warthog got a C. During Recess period nobody beat them up.

F for Freedom.

With Math and Science and Reading and Geography forgotten, Rooster and his friends worked doubly hard. They came to school with dirty faces as proof they'd neglected Hygiene. They pushed past the crossing guard to prove they hadn't retained Citizenship. They slumped to fail Posture.

They were flunking every subject. Rooster's plan was working perfectly. As he'd proposed, all they needed to do was flunk fifth grade. And not just once, but three or four times. Let Warthog and Hummingbird and the rest of the bullying, giggling class, let them advance to sixth grade and seventh grade. In a few years, Rooster, Rabbit, and Aardvark would be physical giants towering among their fellow fifth graders. For the remainder of their schooling they'd be the class presidents, the team captains, and prom kings. And not just bigger, they'd be smart, smarter and more benevolent than any campus heroes, ever. Theirs would be muscle size and physical coordination and the wisdom of former underdogs. In the meantime, they'd relax and enjoy a beautiful four years of extra attention from solicitous Miss Scott.

They knew that flunking a grade was only an embarrassment if you were held back alone. Walking home the afternoon of that botched spelling bee—the sound of a dictionary smacking Dolphin's skull still echoing in their ears—the three had spit in their hands and made a triple swear to flunk together. They could eventually succeed, but only if all three failed as a team. Also, they would not tell a soul about the plan. It was Rabbit who dubbed them the “Flunk Klub.”

“The first rule of Flunk Klub,” Aardvark said, “is you don't talk about Flunk Klub.”

The actuality of their plan was more difficult than they'd anticipated. First, they were forced to go cold-turkey on praise. The withdrawal symptoms were terrible, but if one friend felt tempted to experiment with his chemistry set or reread Plato's
Republic,
he had only to telephone the others for support until the negative impulse passed. Watching hours of television seemed to help, but it took brainpower to be so dumb. Thank goodness Aardvark found a shortcut. Walking to school one morning, Aardvark stepped into an alley and motioned for Rooster and Rabbit to follow him. Where no one could see them Aardvark looked both ways before reaching into his jacket pocket and producing a crumpled paper sack. When he unrolled the sack the only thing inside was a tube of model airplane glue.

Aardvark uncapped the tube and squeezed it flat, letting the viscous ribbon of milky glue dribble into the paper bag. He dropped the crushed tube into the bag—they wanted to be idiots, not litterbugs—and held the open bag over his nose and mouth. Aardvark's eyes were uncovered, watching Rabbit and Rooster while he drew breaths so big they inflated and deflated the bag like a brown-paper balloon. The only sound in the alley was paper crumbling and Aardvark's heavy inhaling and exhaling. His eyes glassed over, and Aardvark handed the bag to Rooster.

The glue smelled like soft bananas freckled with rot. The effect of breathing the fumes was brilliant! No longer were they merely acting stupid, the members of the Flunk Klub actually were stupid! The Glue Method, as they came to call it, didn't last forever; but under its spell Rabbit couldn't hold a pencil. Aardvark fell asleep at his desk and wet his pants. Rooster suggested stealing vodka from his parents' freezer and the magic combination of glue and vodka gave the three friends a greater ignorance than they'd ever hoped to achieve. By Christmas they were demoted to Remedial Reading. By Easter they couldn't tie their own shoes!

Miss Scott, pretty, solicitous Miss Scott, almost never left their sides. She petted them and praised them for so much as opening a comic book. Before Rooster's bruises faded she repeatedly asked, “Tell me, again, how did you hurt yourself?” She'd catch Aardvark alone and ask, “How did Rooster get hurt?” None of them thought to synchronize their stories, and the glue didn't help. Rooster said he'd fallen off the top of the playground slide. Rabbit said he'd been tackled in a game of football. Eventually she walked Rooster to the school office where the nurse snapped three photographs of him and Miss Scott together, her arm around his shoulders. Despite how his split lips stung, Rooster grinned. He beamed into the camera, he was so much in love.

No one punched them anymore. Nobody laughed or pointed. Nobody even noticed them. Initially, it wasn't easy to be invisible. Soon it was. Rooster continued to dream of going to law school. He'd pass the bar exam with flying colors and argue passionately in courtrooms in defense of the downtrodden and the wronged. The school must've sent a warning letter to his parents—the opposite of a progress report—because Rooster's mom and dad kept him at the table after dinner one night. Rooster's father sighed deeply and asked, “Okay, what's up, mister?”

The telephone in the kitchen rang, and Rooster's mom left the dinner table to answer it. Through the kitchen doorway Rooster could see her lift the receiver and say, “Good evening,” and her voice was suddenly serene. “Just a moment, please,” she said, and pressed the mouthpiece to her breast as if covering her heart to give the Pledge of Allegiance. Calling to Rooster's dad, she said, “It's Hamster.”

After Rooster's dad had listened a little, he told the phone, “As your chief legal counsel I have to advise you to immediately ditch that cheese…”

Back at the dinner table, Rooster's mother looked at him with red outlining her worried eyes and said, “We know this isn't about your grades.” She bit her lower lip. “You know we love you regardless, don't you?”

In the kitchen, Rooster's father said, “Salmonella isn't worth the risk, and if our liability carrier gets wind of this they'll void our coverage on the basis of active neglect.” He hung up the receiver and came back to the dining room. It took all the skill Rooster had acquired in being stupid to not understand his parents' concern, but his father said No Television until the grade situation improved. Beyond that came No Telephone Privileges. Then, No Anything Fun. Before the end of it, Rooster, Aardvark, and Rabbit were each sleeping in a bare room with no bright posters on the walls and not even A.M. radio music, nothing to distract them from their neglected studies.

Miss Scott kept Rooster after class one Friday and begged him to tell her what was wrong. Why had he drifted to the bottom of the class? She asked in a voice so heartbroken that Rooster started to cry. He cried as hard as when Warthog had beaten him. To see Miss Scott's suffering expression felt even worse than the kicks and slugs. Rooster cried until his nose started to bleed and his eyes looked bruised like Raccoon's. But even with Miss Scott's arms around him, hugging him as she also cried, even then all Rooster could say was, “I can't tell you. I promised that I'd never tell.”

The following Monday a judge in family court issued a bench warrant, and Rooster was removed to foster care pending an investigation by social welfare agents. Wednesday, Aardvark and Rabbit were also placed in foster homes.

Rooster told himself, “These trials are merely for the short term.” Rooster rallied his comrades, telling them, “The glory of our future will justify these present, temporary hardships.” They had one another, he said. They had Miss Scott's lovely ministrations. In a few years they'd run the school; as the biggest, smartest kids they'd rule the hallways and the playground. The three suffered now so that their future runty classmates would not be bullied and humiliated.