My Miserable Life (10 page)

“I'm a Genies guy myself.” He stood up. He was
really
tall. “How's it going?” he said. “I'm Coach Hoof.”

I shook his hand.

“Not like that,” he said. “Give me a real grip.”

I tried to grab on tighter.

“That's better. What's your name?”

“Ben,” I said.

“I can't hear you. What did you say?”

“Ben?” I said louder.

“You don't sound so sure. Are you not so sure what your name is?”

“Ben.”

“Oh, Ben,” he whispered, imitating me. “Ben, you have to raise your voice so people can hear you. Now go on and warm up.”

I just stared at him.

“Go on,” he said, taking off my cap and ruffling my hair, then putting my cap back on. “Get out of here, Mr. Darter.”

I ran off. I wasn't sure what I thought of this guy.

“Bye, Ben,” my mom said, but I noticed she wasn't looking at me with the sad expression she has in her eyes whenever I go off to do something new. She was playing with her hair and staring at Coach Hoof the way my sister looks at her posters of Dustin Peeper.

*   *   *

Coach Hoof was really hard on us. He made us run up a hill until it felt like my lungs were going to pop. Then he made us do thousands of sit-ups and push-ups. My back sagged during the push-ups, and then Coach told me to put my knees down, which I refused to do because that is for wimps. I gritted my teeth so hard that my jaw pounded, and I kept doing the push-ups the real way.

All the other kids had chips and cookies and Island Mist juice drinks in their lunches, and I only got a sandwich, fruit, and water. My feet and ankles and knees hurt.

On the second morning, my heel hurt so badly I could hardly walk, but my mom made me go to camp anyway. She said it was because she didn't want to waste the money and she had to work and I could sit out if I wanted to. Coach made me run, even with a hurt heel. He said athletes had to learn to deal with pain.

On the third day, we were practicing our swings in the batting cage, and I kept missing. I threw down my glove, and Coach Hoof just ignored me and went on to the next kid. Basically, camp was eight hours of physical and mental torture. On top of that, we hardly got to play any baseball.

“There will be plenty of time for that later,” Coach said. “Now we're conditioning.”

The only good thing was that at the end of the day, he gave us Long Pops, and when my mom came to pick me up, she was so busy smiling at Coach Hoof that she didn't even notice I was eating sugar on a weekday.

But the Long Pop didn't make up for the fact that a little Peeper-haired bully whose name rhymes with
socko
showed up at Super Sport Baseball Cleat Camp on the fourth day. And of course he was wearing a Genies hat.

“You've got good taste in teams, young man,” Coach Hoof said when he saw Rocko Hoggen. He and Rocko high-fived. “I can tell you're a serious ballplayer. Let's see how fast you can run.”

Rocko took off up the hill.

“What are you doing standing there, Darter? RUN! See if you can catch up with Genie, there.”

All I could think of was 4 Kids Only and how Rocko had pushed me down and broken my clavicle.

“Go on,” Coach said again. So I ran, but Rocko had a head start, and he got to the fence first.

He was standing there, smiling at me so his perfect little teeth showed. “Hey, Ben. Don't run too hard. You might fall and break something again.”

I turned to Rocko Hoggen with my hand clenched into a fist, but someone was holding my arm. Someone strong.

“Okay, Darter, that's enough. Run it off,” Coach Hoof said.

And I did. I tried. By the time my mom came to pick me up, I could barely walk. Her hair was all smooth and straight. She had on makeup and tight jeans and high heels. I knew this had to do with Coach Hoof. Oh, man.

At least it turned out that Rocko wasn't in camp the next day, because his family had decided to go on a last-minute trip to Hawaii. I didn't have to deal with him until school started again. But he'd managed to ruin baseball for me anyway. I decided not to sign up for Little League in the spring. I just wanted to take a break from organized activities and ride bikes with a friend. Not that
that
was going to happen either.

*   *   *

The day before we went back to school, Thursday left. I opened the door of my room, expecting to feel relief as soon as I was able to sink onto my mattress away from the floating, fluffy-haired faces of Dustin Peeper.

But I never made it to my bed.

Something was wrong.

Way wrong.

The walls of my room were painted as black as Thursday's eyeliner and hair and clothes, and my bed looked different, too. Someone had built a wooden lid that hinged onto my bed frame. My bed was a coffin!

How appropriate, because I wanted to curl up and die. And it was Sunday. Maybe Thursday's theory was right.

 

JANUARY

 

CHAPTER 11

CAREER DAY AKA MORTIFY BEN HUNTER DAY

I was sore from Super Sport Baseball Cleat Camp when I got back to school after winter break. I was still sharing Angelina's room because my mom hadn't had the chance to repaint mine yet and I couldn't sleep in there with those black walls. At least Angelina sometimes let me sleep with Monkeylad. Tree had come over a few times to ride bikes with me, but I was still not allowed to ride alone.

I'd thought I'd be happy to return to school after my miserable vacation. It seemed like even picking gum wads off the bottom of desks in Ms. Washington's class would be preferable, but then something happened to make me think winter break hadn't been so bad after all.

Today was Career Day. Another name for this should be Mortify Ben Hunter Day. When I first heard about it, I thought that real professionals who did interesting things would come, but it turned out to be just the parents. Every year my mom came to Career Day, even though I told her she shouldn't waste her time talking to a bunch of ungrateful kids who were only interested in the parents who were firefighters or police officers or the ones who worked on movies. Each year was worse because the older we got, the less interested kids were in parents who had regular, boring jobs like our resident librarian, aka my mom, who ignored my hints and came anyway.

She didn't wear her yoga pants. Instead she wore what she thought was a librarian outfit, even though she didn't actually wear that skirt and sweater to work. On Career Day she put her hair up in a bun and wore her glasses. This part was a relief because she looked a little more normal.

But then she went on and on about how important reading is and how books can change your life. She said that when you care about a character, even if they aren't perfect, and you watch them change and grow by solving problems, at the end of the novel you feel better about yourself.

Today she asked the kids in class how books can change your life. Mercy Keating raised her hand. Mercy Keating never talks in class ever.

“I love books because I used to have these scary thoughts, but when I read a book, it makes them go away.”

My mom looked like she was going to run over and give Mercy Keating a kiss on the cheek.

Mercy is really short and wears tiny glasses that she could have borrowed from her Stuff-It teddy bear. She always wears the same blue turtleneck and green corduroy pants. She loves books as much as Joe Knapp does. Suddenly I had this thought that made me feel the way you do when you hit your funny bone and your whole body buzzes: my mom would rather have Mercy Keating as her kid than me.

“That's lovely, Mercy,” my mom said. “That's why in my house we don't have television—so that my family can spend more time reading books.”

I didn't have time to worry about Mom liking Mercy more than me; now I had to worry about all the kids who were looking at me and whispering “No TV?” and laughing, especially Rocko Hoggen.

My mom handed out library card applications to the kids who didn't have them and then left with so much pep in her step that I thought she was going to skip home.

Later, Joe Knapp's dad talked about being a veterinarian. He was a skinny guy with a long nose and droopy eyes. I thought he was pretty cool, even though he had dressed up as a baby on Halloween. He said sometimes he could communicate better with animals than with people. That animals, like people, just needed to be understood. I wondered if he could help me communicate better with Monkeylad and set him straight about not getting demon eyes and stealing the neighbors' food.

Then the next parent came in to talk to our class. He's an art director on movies. Which explained Rocko's life-size mission.

Rocko's dad talked about how he designed all this “rad” (his word) stuff, like in the movie
Incarnation.
He actually designed the digitally animated fluorescent-orange winged aliens. He showed us his sketches of them and how he worked with the director and animators to help bring his vision to life. After he was done, he gave out these bags with pictures of the aliens from the movie. Inside there was a poster, a DVD, a T-shirt, a little winged alien action figure, and some
Incarnation
candy.

Ms. Washington clapped and clapped when he was finished and thanked him about a million times.

On my way out of the classroom, I saw all these yellow pieces of paper scattered on the floor. They were the library card applications from my mom. Only Mercy Keating and Joe Knapp were clutching theirs as their parents picked them up from school. Joe Knapp waved his at me in what seemed to be an actual hello, but I was too depressed to wave back.

When my mom and I took Monkeylad for his evening walk, I used the
Incarnation
bag as a poop picker-upper. I ate the candy first, of course. You can't let perfectly good candy go to waste, even if the clavicle-breaking bully's father gave it to you.

After the walk, I threw the ball for Monkeylad in the backyard. I figured he might get tired and not have demon eyes. That night Angelina let him sleep with me on my bed.

The next day we were supposed to write a letter to our favorite Career Day parent and put it in an envelope to give to them. I wrote to Joe Knapp's dad.

 

Dear Dr. Knapp,

Thank you for visiting our classroom on Career Day. I'm interested in what you do, because it seems like a veterinarian is someone who likes animals and is kind to them. I have a dog named Monkeylad, who sometimes acts like he's possessed by a demon. His eyes turn blue and roll back in his head, and he runs around the house in circles growling to himself. Sometimes he runs away and steals food off people's tables and brings it back as if he thinks he is doing us a favor. If you were my vet, I would ask you what to do about Monkeylad. He doesn't really obey us. We got him at the shelter as a rescue, so maybe that's why. Sometimes I think that he was not loved properly as a pup, and maybe he didn't get enough to eat, which is why he thinks he has to steal food for us.