Smiles to Go (2 page)

BT’s first roll was a three. Baltic Avenue. He bought it for $60. He fished in his pile for the money. Mi-Su and I keep our money in stacks of ones, fives, etc. BT always buys the first thing he lands on. And I always have to say something.

“Dumb.”

He said what he always says: “I’m wheelin’ and dealin’.”

“If I land there,” I told him, “all you’ll get out of me is four dollars rent. The most you’ll ever get with a hotel there is four hundred and fifty.”

“Wheelin’ and dealin’,” he said. He went to the fridge for a soda.

After three times around the board, BT had bought everything he landed on: Baltic, Mediterranean, Vermont, Electric Company,
Tennessee, Kentucky, Water Works, Marvin Gardens, Short Line, Boardwalk. Of course he was broke now, but he didn’t care. “Wheelin’ and dealin’!” Monopoly money or real money—heck, life itself—it all comes down to one word for BT: spend. I don’t think he can even spell the word “save.”

BT’s strategy (I’m being funny using that word in the same sentence as BT) for Monopoly has two parts:

1. Buy everything you land on until you run out of money.
   
2. Love the railroads.
   

He actually believes that if he can ever land on all four railroads and buy them, that’s the day he’ll win.

Busted, BT was ripe for a buyout. I couldn’t stand seeing Boardwalk, the most valuable property of all, in his hands. I offered him what he paid for it—$400. He took it. Mi-Su shrieked in pain.

Pretty soon I landed on Park Place, too, so I could build on the blue. Mi-Su got the green. As usual, it came down to me and her.

“Hear the news?” I said to BT.

He looked at me, shocked. “I didn’t know anybody knew,” he said.

I looked at Mi-Su, back at BT. “What are you talking about?”

“I went down Dead Man’s Hill.”

“Wow!” gushed Mi-Su. “When?”

“Last night.”

“Skateboard?”

BT took a swig of soda. “All the way.”

“And you’re
alive
?”

He pinched himself. “I ain’t dead.”

“I’m talking about the proton,” I said.

BT frowned. “What proton?”

“The one that died. It finally happened. Now there’s proof.”

“Yeah?” He tried to steal one of Mi-Su’s pepperonis. She grabbed his wrist and bit his hand till he let go.

“You want to hear about it?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. He snarled at Mi-Su.

“Carnivore.”

I told him what happened at Yellowknife. As I was talking, he rolled the dice. He landed on Community Chest. He picked up the top card. He looked at it. A huge grin crossed his face.

“Are you listening?” I said.

Now his face was smug. Proud. Superior. He read from the card: “Collect fifty dollars from every player.”

Mi-Su tossed him a fifty.

“Do you know what this means?” I said.

“Yeah”—he waggled his fingers in my face—“fifty big ones, chump.”

“It means matter is mortal. Everything is going to go. Disappear. Vanish. Rock. Water. The planets. The stars.
Everything
.”

He blinked. “Pepperonis, too?”

Mi-Su howled.

“Cretin,” I said.

“So, when’s all this going to happen?”

“Way in the future,” I said. “Billions of years.”

He looked at me, the smirk gone. “
Billions
of years?”

“Trillions, actually.”

He cocked his head, stared at me, honestly puzzled. He turned to Mi-Su. She nodded. He swung back to me. The smirk returned. The waggling fingers were back in my face. “Fifty.”

I crumpled up a fifty and threw it at him.

“He doesn’t care about anything,” I said to Mi-Su.

Mi-Su grinned. “He’s a mess.”

We do this, talk about BT as if he’s not there.

“That’s the word. He’s the most messy, disorganized person I know. He has no—”

“—discipline.” Mi-Su rolled the dice. She landed on green. Pacific Avenue. “I’m building.”

“Right. Discipline. Absolutely none. He just flops and slops through life.”

Mi-Su laughed. “A floppy slopper!”

BT laughed. “A sloppy flopper!”

Sometimes he joins in, talking about himself as if he’s not there.

Mi-Su built four houses on Pacific Avenue.

“He has no sense of time,” I said. “He does everything zippo—like that”—I snapped my fingers—“spur of the moment. No thought. Spends money the instant he gets it.”

“He doesn’t need pockets.”

“He doesn’t think. He just does.” I rolled the dice.

“A nonthinking doer.”

I landed on Park Place. “He spends all his money buying cheap stuff that he can never win with.”

“Railroads!”

“Exactly.”

“He’s disgraceful.”

“Perverted,” said BT.

“But he thinks he can do it.” I built a hotel on Park Place. “And look what he’s using. The
thimble
. He’s a
boy
.”

“Don’t be sexist.”

Unlike the rest of the world, BT doesn’t have a favorite Monopoly token. (I always use the top hat; Mi-Su always uses the dog.) He never chooses his token. He just blindly snatches one up.

“I’m just trying to set him straight,” I said.

“Be a good role model.”

Mi-Su pointed at me. “He skateboarded down Dead Man’s Hill.”

“So he says.”

BT rolled the dice.

Mi-Su looked at me, wide-eyed. “You don’t believe him?”

No one has ever skateboarded down Dead
Man’s Hill. It comes down off Heather Lane. It’s unpaved, stony, rutted, twisting and so steep that when you stand at the top, the faraway bottom almost meets the tip of your board.

BT landed on Park Place.

“He’d be dead,” I said. “Rent fifteen hundred.”

“I believe him,” said Mi-Su.

Deep down, I believed him, too, but I didn’t want to. I waggled my fingers in his face.

“Fifteen hundred.”

It was comical, BT picking through his couple of tens and twenties, as if fifteen hundred dollars was going to appear out of nowhere.

Mi-Su sent a whisper: “Mortgage.”

BT threw a finger in the air. “I’ll mortgage!” He mortgaged all his properties (except of course Short Line Railroad). “Wheelin’ and dealin’.”

He dumped all his money in front of me. I counted it. “You’re six hundred and eighty short.”

“I did something else, too,” he said.

Wide-eyed, Mi-Su, who always bites:

“What?”

BT shook his head. “Not telling.”

I waggled. “Six hundred and eighty, please.”

“BT—
what
?” Mi-Su whined. “Tell me.”

BT shook his head no.

“Tell me and I’ll give you a loan.” She counted it out. “Six hundred and eighty.”

“Oh, no,” I said. I waved the rule book at her. I read: “‘Money can be loaned to a player only by the Bank.’”

Mi-Su snooted. “It’s my money. I can do whatever I want.” She waved the money under BT’s nose. “Tell.”

BT snatched the money, leaned across the board and whispered in her ear. Her eyes bulged. She squealed, “Really?”

He put on a fake shy face, closed his eyes, nodded. He plunked the money down in front of me. “Rent paid.”

Not that it did him much good. Twice more around the board and he landed on Boardwalk, where I also had a hotel. Rent $2,000. He was dead. “I lose,” he said brightly. He tossed his thimble in the box and headed for the dartboard.

There’s no satisfaction in beating BT, because he doesn’t even care if he loses. He cheats you that way.

As usual, Mi-Su and I went on with the game, but something was different. The squares on the board seemed to float under my little silver top hat. BT had done Dead Man’s Hill, and Mi-Su knew something I didn’t, and the proton was dead.

PD3

M
onday morning.

The principal finished talking over the PA, and the student announcer for the day took over. She talked about how to nominate people for Wildcat and Wildkitten of the Month, then she said, “And on Friday night, Anthony Bontempo, Homeroom two thirteen, became the first person ever to skateboard down Dead Man’s Hill!”

Cheers erupted from forty homerooms.

Morning announcements ended with no
mention of the proton.

In the hallways the mobs heading for classes were buzzing:

“BT!”

“He’s crazy!”

“Insane!”

“I knew he’d be the one!”

Funny thing, nobody questioned whether it was true or not. Nobody said maybe BT made the whole thing up. Everybody knows BT doesn’t lie. If you don’t care about consequences, about anything, you don’t have to lie. And it’s not like he did Dead Man’s Hill for the glory. If that were true, he would have had witnesses. He just did it for the same reason he does everything else—he felt like it.

Third period. Physics. Mr. Sigfried.

Finally, somebody to share the proton news with.

The teacher leaned back against the desk, arms folded. “OK, people—there was big news over the weekend. Something happened that will cause textbooks to be rewritten. Who
would like to tell us what I’m referring to?”

My hand was already up when Jamie Westphal blurted, “Anthony Bontempo skateboarded down Dead Man’s Hill!”

Hoots, whistles, cheers, standing ovation—and BT wasn’t even in the class. Even Mr. Sigfried gave him a little pitty clap. Then he called on me.

I waited for total silence and said, “Proton decay. It’s confirmed.”

He snapped a finger at me. “Give that man a prize. And what exactly does that mean, Mr. Tuppence? Proton decay.”

“It means nothing in the universe will last.”

He went into mock shock. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“How so, Mr. Tuppence?”

“Because everything is made of protons. And now we know that even protons don’t last forever. Therefore everything will disappear.”

“The planets, too? They’re going to disappear?”

“Yep.”

“The stars?”

“Yep.”

“My aunt Tilly’s teapot?”

“Yep.” I was enjoying this.

He gazed out the window. “And when is this great disappearing going to happen, Mr. Tuppence?”

“Long time from now.”

“Long time? Like a year from now?”

I snickered. “Way longer.”

Jamie Westphal piped up, “So, how long?”

Mr. Sigfried gave me a palms-up stop sign.

“Let me answer that one, Mr. Tuppence. It’s kinda fun.” He turned to the blackboard and chalked a 1 in the upper-left corner and began writing zeroes and commas across the whole board. And across the board again. And again. He must have gone on for a full five minutes before he plunked the chalk down, stepped aside and gestured at the board covered with the most colossal number any of us had ever seen. “That”—he grinned—“many years.”

“Zowie!” somebody said.

Somebody whistled.

Somebody farted.

The class cracked up. Mr. Sigfried wagged his head and began erasing the board. “OK,
people,” he said, “back to earth. Today we consider”—He lettered the rest on the dusty blackboard:

THE WONDERS OF WATER

After school I drubbed Mi-Su in chess club and headed home on Black Viper, my skateboard. Bones Swiss bearings gave the wheels a buttery whir beneath my feet.

I was still a block from my house when I heard Tabby screaming, “Will, look at me!”

BT has been teaching Tabby to skateboard lately. She was wobbling down the driveway. She fell off before she reached the sidewalk. She jumped up, lugged the board back to the garage and wobbled down again. She threw out her arms—“Look!”—and toppled off again.

“No showboating,” said BT.

“Will,” said Tabby, “can I use Black Viper?”

“No,” I told her.

“Pleeeeze!” She carefully laid a sneaker toe on Black Viper.

I kicked her foot away. I stepped off. I picked up the board. She was looking straight
up at me. Her eyes seemed to take up half her face. I hated BT for getting her started on this. I said, “Don’t ever—
ever
—touch this skateboard.
Ever.
Or you will
die
.”

The eyes blinked. She wanted to cry but she wouldn’t let herself. For once in her life she was going to obey me.

I shot BT a glare and headed for the front door.

Tabby piped behind me: “BT went down Dead Man’s Hill!”

“Big deal,” I said, and went inside.

PD7

T
here I was but I didn’t know why.

I had told my parents I had to go to school early to help a teacher. Sunrise was the only time of day I could be sure no other kids would be around. They’ve been going up there all week—pilgrims on skateboards—just to be near the place, to stand where he stood, to look over the edge of Dead Man’s Hill, to feel the
tingle on the backs of their necks, to try to picture themselves doing it, to laugh and back off.

So far no one else has done it. Sooner or later somebody will. It won’t be me.

The town lay below me. Roofs. Trees. Streets. Sticking up like a periscope: the clock tower on the corner of the Brimley Building. I could see the round face of the clock, but not the time.

The rising sun was straight ahead. I could look directly at it because it was bloody orange and just over the horizon and smoky with clouds. When I looked at the sun, my eyes were crossing 93 million miles of space. But my feet wouldn’t cross another inch.

I had one foot on Black Viper, one foot on the earth. There was already too much space under the tip of the board. The angle of the drop was astounding. I felt as if I was looking down over the roof edge of a skyscraper. I didn’t see how his wheels could have stayed on the ground all the way down. At some point he must have been flying. And then there were the stones and shin-deep ruts.

I thought:
This is impossible. He lied.

I knew I was wrong.

Why was I doing this? I knew I wouldn’t go down. I was scared stiff just standing there. I already knew I was a coward. Did I need to prove it? Remind myself? Ninety-three million miles of space in front of me, and every inch of it seemed packed with the things I was afraid of: high places, cramped places, dark places, thousand-leggers, speed, flying, death, change, time, pain, failure, criticism, roller coasters, train tracks, being wrong, being smelly, being late, being stupid, being rejected, black mambos, leeches, hantavirus, losing, deep water, uncertainty, being buried alive, being caught being afraid, myself…