Smiles to Go (3 page)

I could see my epitaph:

HERE LIES WILLIAM JAY TUPPENCE HE WAS AFRAID

Of course, that wouldn’t really happen, because no one knows this about me, not even my parents. What everyone sees is a pretty normal-looking kid, 5 feet 9 ½ inches, brown hair, brown eyes, ears a little big, a little stuck
out but not enough to mock. Likes science, especially astronomy. Best friends: Anthony Bontempo (aka BT) and Mi-Su Kelly. Runs cross-country. Chess Club. Good at it. Won a trophy. Calls his skateboard Black Viper. Rides it to school. A little shy, on the quiet side, but friendly enough. Not the life of the party, but not a hermit either. Somewhere in the middle. Sensible.

If I’m famous for anything, I guess that’s it. I’m sensible. Other kids ask my advice about stuff. To me common sense is just that: common. But some kids seem to think it’s this rare gift. They seem to see me as a substitute adult. A homeroom kid wrote in my eighth-grade yearbook: “Thank you for your wisdom & wise ways.” Doug Lawson, a cross-country running mate, calls me “Old Man.”

That’s the macro view. Down here on quantum level, where I live by myself, my fears quiver like leaping electrons. I send my questions up to the surface, but they fizzle long before they reach the top. Why can’t I be like other kids? Why can’t I believe I’m indestructible? Why can’t I believe I’ll live forever?
Why do I stare at the sky at night?

Suddenly the sun was blinding. I panicked. Had I gone too far? The clock tower wobbled. I kicked Black Viper back. I stepped away from the terrifying drop. I climbed on my board and pushed off, back to where I belonged, my wheels whirring over the asphalt.

PD8

S
aturday morning. Downtown. Hicks’ Sporting Goods.

Mr. Hicks handed me the trophy. This was my father’s idea. When I won the chess tournament last spring, my father looked at the inscription—

HOPE COUNTY CHESS CHAMPION AGES 13–15

—and said, “They should have put your name on it.”

“How could they?” I said. “They didn’t know I was going to win.”

“I knew,” he said.

So typical. My father has so much confidence in me, it’s scary. They say that when I was a baby, one year old, he tossed me into the deep end of the Crescent Club pool (my mother screaming), and I swam.

It’s been kind of like that ever since. He knows what I can do before I know. In fifth grade he told me I would be the school spelling champion, and I was. He said I would learn to ride a bicycle in one hour. I did. I wish I could be as fearless for myself as he is for me.

“Here ya go,” said Mr. Hicks.

I looked at the inscription, added at the bottom of the black mirror plate:

WILL TUPPENCE

“Congratulations,” he said. “I never got the hang of chess myself.” He chuckled. “Checkers for me.” He was still holding it.

The trophy was beautiful. It was topped by a pewter King Arthur–looking figure standing
on a board of little black-and-white squares. The five-inch base was blue marbled stone and held the inscription plate. I already had a space for it on the bookcase in my room.

Finally he let go. “It’s figuring out all those moves ahead of time,” he said. “I don’t know how you do it. I hear the real experts—”

“Grand masters.”

“Yeah, the grand masters, they know what they’re gonna do—what, three moves ahead?”

“Try ten,” I said.

His eyes boggled. He whistled.

“Well, thanks again,” I said.

I headed home on foot. I wasn’t taking a chance on crashing Black Viper with priceless freight on board. I walked past the old Brimley Building clock tower. It said 11:45. My watch said 11:55. The clock tower is famous for being right. I reset my watch. Hopefully, in a couple of months, I won’t have this problem. I’ve told my parents I want a radio-controlled Exacta watch for Christmas. I showed them the ad in
Discover
. Every night it receives a signal from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Atomic Clock in
Fort Collins, Colorado. The Atomic Clock is accurate to within ten billionths of a second(0.000000001 sec).

For some reason I looked back at the clock tower. It’s one of those old-fashioned clocks, with Roman numerals instead of Arabic numbers. Suddenly on the right shoulder of the ten(X), I saw a tiny flash, like a glint from the sun. But when I looked up at the sky, it was gray, nothing but clouds.

Tonight Monopoly will be at my house. Mi-Su will bring the pizza, anchovies and extra sauce for me, extra pepperoni for her. And a small regular for Tabby. I’ll tell her not to do that, that Tabby is just a little kid, that she already thinks she’s a grown-up and treating her like one of us will just make her worse. She’ll ignore me and give my sister the pizza. BT will be late. Tabby will race upstairs, go crazy over him. He’ll breeze down to the basement den and call ahead: “Gimme four hotels on Park Place!” He’ll buy everything he lands on. He’ll chuckle when he gets a railroad.

Tabby will cheer him on. Within an hour he’ll be wiped out. Tabby will attack him. They’ll wrestle. She’ll bring him a book, probably an adult murder mystery. He’ll spend the rest of the night reading it to her. He’ll leave out the bad words.

PD16

S
unday morning. Church. Boring, as usual. But as my father says, it’s money in the bank. It’s the ticket. The bridge. It’s how to get from Here to There. From Here to Forever.

There’s always a pencil in the pew. Stubby, yellow, like the ones they give you at miniature golf to keep score with. As the service dragged on, I checked off the items in the program: Call to Worship, Hymn of Praise, Prayer of Adoration, Prayer of Confession, Assurance of Pardon, etc., etc. Then came the dreaded sermon—talk about Forever! This was the third Sunday since the proton died in Yellowknife, and Rev. Mauger hadn’t said a word about it.
Neither has anyone else. The world doesn’t seem to care about the end of itself.

The reverend’s lullaby droned on. I decided to amuse myself by writing down Mr. Sigfried’s number. Across the top of the church program, down the right-hand side, across the bottom and halfway up the left side:

I stared at the number. It made no sense. It’s beyond gazillions. There’s not even a name for it. It’s the number of years from now when everything will be gone. If I could live that long, I would see Rev. Mauger’s pulpit evaporate, proton by proton.

The number was making me woozy. So I did what I sometimes do when I feel lost in
time and space—I began writing down my famous (to me) twelve-step plan:

1. born
   
2. grow up
   
3. school
   
4. college (Naval Academy)
   
5. career (astronomer)
   
6. wife (blonde, named Emily, Jennifer or Ann)
   
7. kids (2)
   
8. house (four bathrooms)
   
9. car (mint condition, black 1985 Jaguar XJS/12)
   
10. retire (win senior chess tournaments)
    
11. death
    
12. Heaven (angel) (Forever)
    

Except now, considering the news from Yellowknife, there’s a parade of question marks after number 12. Like, are angels made of protons? Is Heaven? If so, does this mean they won’t last forever?

And what exactly is Heaven anyway? A thing? A place? I don’t think so. I mean, if I could look at a map of creation, there wouldn’t
be a sign saying, “Heaven—This Way.” My opinion? Heaven is a dimension, like time. Like up and down.

I think.

As for angels, what are they made of? Smoke? Vapor? Holograms? No. Angels are spirits, and a spirit—by definition—is non-stuff.

I think.

I hope.

I turned the church program over and stared again at the unbelievable number. And risked the biggest question of all: When all this time, all these numbers go by, when the last iota of stuff in the universe—the last proton—finally winks out, will Forever still be? Does Forever continue on beyond the last zero? My answer (my prayer?): of course it does, because Forever means endless.

So…

If Heaven and angels are non-stuff…

If the stuff-me becomes after death a non-stuff angel-me…

If Heaven and angels exist in a timeless medium we call Forever (“Hey, nobody here but us angels!”)…

Then…guess what?…

There will be no end of me!

Will Tuppence Forever!

If.

Suddenly we were on our feet singing the last hymn. On the drive home I discovered the little yellow pencil was still in my hand.

PD19

E
nglish. The only class I share with BT. Mrs. Hartenstine, the teacher, is old-fashioned. She believes in memorizing. She says, “Memorized passages should be a part of every person’s wardrobe, like shirts and shoes.”

Today we recited the poems she assigned us to learn. My poem was “The End of the World” by Archibald MacLeish. Mi-Su did “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson.

When Mrs. Hartenstine said, “Mr. Bontempo,” BT didn’t move. He had his nose in a paperback. His long sandy hair fell like a curtain over his face. Mi-Su, sitting next to him, poked him with her fingertip. He toppled
over and onto the floor. Everyone howled, but that wasn’t the funniest thing. Once he was on the floor he kept reading for another ten seconds until he closed the book, looked up half-bewildered and said, “Huh?” More howls.

“Mr. Bontempo, front and center, please,” said Mrs. Hartenstine.

So up he goes—the slowest walker you’ve ever seen—and you could tell he wasn’t prepared. Not that that was a surprise; it would have been a shock if he
were
prepared. So he stood there, his paperback in his hand, cheap sneakers, hair flopping, giving us a loopy grin, like, OK, here I am, now what?

“We’re waiting, Mr. Bontempo.”

BT turned to the teacher. “Me, too.” Not belligerent, just…BT.

More howls. It’s not always easy to tell if BT is trying to be funny or not. Strangely, Mrs. Hartenstine has always cut him a lot of slack.

“Your poem,” she said. “Time to recite.”

BT pointed a finger in the air. “Ah!” He looked around the room, out the windows, back to the teacher. “And, uh, which poem was that again?”

Mrs. Hartenstine smiled. “‘Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening.’ Does the name Robert Frost ring a bell?”

She smiled. Kids laughed. I think they were not just laughing at the scene in front of us. They were also laughing at the craziness of the situation, that the teacher actually expected Anthony Bontempo to be prepared.

BT looked out at us, like a character in a movie sometimes looks right at the camera and into the audience. It was comical. Obviously he hadn’t given it a moment’s thought.
You poor slob,
I was thinking,
when are you going to get it? How long do you think you’ll survive in the real world?

“You mean the one that starts, ‘Whose woods are these I think I know…’?”

Stone silence.

Mrs. Hartenstine almost sang, “That’s the one.”

He folded his arms over his chest, holding the paperback with the cover facing out. It was
Crime and Punishment
. It was thick. Obese. I’ve never known a kid so totally unafraid of thick books. He closed his eyes and he recited Frost’s poem. He said it in a monotone. He didn’t try to make it interesting. He droned it out fast in
half a minute and headed back to his seat, eyes and open mouths following him.

Something was wrong. I’m no poetry expert, but I knew something was wrong.

I think the teacher knew it, too. She called to him. “Mr. Bontempo?”

He looked up. He was already back into the paperback. “Yeah?” he said.

Mrs. Hartenstine blinked a few times. She seemed about to speak but she didn’t. She merely smiled. “Never mind.” She made a mark in her black book. “Next—Miss Bayshore.”

I grabbed my textbook, flipped to Frost, found “Stopping by Woods.” I read it through. The last line comes twice:

But that’s not what BT had said. As Rachel Bayshore went on reciting her poem, it was BT’s words I heard:

PD27

I
saw it as soon as I entered my room after school. My chess trophy stands on top of my bookcase by the door. And it was backward. The pewter king piece was facing the wall. Somebody had turned it around. Hilarious. I turned it back.

I didn’t yell and scream and run after her. I used to, but it didn’t do any good. I calmly walked down the hall to her room. Ozzie, her stuffed octopus, was on the bed. She was under the bed. The bottoms of her socks were showing. I just walked away, ignoring her. She hates to be ignored.

But during dinner I couldn’t help myself. I glared across the table. “Don’t do it again,” I said. Calm. Cool. Not the least bit nasty.

She was building a snowman with her mashed potatoes. She was shaping it with a screwdriver. (Explanation: When Tabby first tried eating with one of my father’s screwdrivers, my mother put a quick stop to it. But then my father got her her own set of plastic tools, and here’s the deal: she’s allowed to eat
with them as long as she never uses them for anything else. So if you open our utensil drawer in the kitchen, you’ll see a yellow plastic screwdriver, a pair of red pliers and a little blue saw along with the forks and spoons. And she’s not allowed to eat with tools if we’re having company. This excludes BT and Aunt Nancy, who are not considered outsiders.) So…she was working her mashed potatoes and pretending she didn’t hear me.