The Absolute Value of Mike (2 page)

“Dad, really, there's nothing wrong with the regular high school.”

“You need to stand out in order to be accepted at a good university. Therefore, Newton High is the only choice.” He sighed and picked up the photo from his desk. It was of Mom and me with the huge LEGO drawbridge I made for Dad's birthday when I was six. “Your mother always said you'd be a great engineer.” His voice was quiet. As if he were talking to Mom, not me. Like he was asking her what went wrong. And how it was possible that he'd ended up with me, Michael Einstein Frost, ignorant spawn of the genius James Elliot Frost, P-H-D.

I slumped back against Dad's bookshelf and felt the blue LEGO brick that was always in my pocket. Mom called me her “little engineer” when I made LEGO creations with my friends at Montessori or when I got all the kids on the beach to help me make the biggest sand castle, but it was when I made that drawbridge—it actually worked!—and Dad laughed and hugged me that she called me a “
great
engineer.” Come to think of it, that's the last time I remember Dad laughing or hugging me. Soon after that, Mom was gone.

“I think you'd learn a great deal from this project,” Dad said, still staring at the photo. “I'd like to see you master math or engineering at an acceptable level, at least. If you can't solve the simplest problems—”

“I know, Dad. I'll end up on the street.” How many times had I heard that?

That's when my toes started wiggling and I knew I was about to have a brilliant idea. It always starts in my feet, and by the time I realize my toes are moving, the idea makes it up to my brain. And there it was.

If I could ace this artesian screw, maybe Dad would be satisfied that I'd “mastered math or engineering at an acceptable level.” Then, I could show him how I could take care of myself and not end up on the street. And maybe he'd let me just go to a regular high school. Someday he'd have to accept the fact that I could never be a math genius, much as he tried to teach me and have me tutored and send me to special camps. He still had hope for me. For some reason, I just didn't have the heart to make him see the truth.

The plan had to work. The alternative, going to Newton High, where I'd flunk out for sure, meant a miserable me and a seriously disappointed Dad. As far as I could see, there were two hurdles: (1) ace the project and (2) get my great-uncle to convince Dad that I was a great engineer. The first hurdle was up to me, and I had a lot of practice at pretending I understood math when I really didn't. The second was an unknown.

“Hey, Dad? What's your uncle like?”

Dad chewed his lip and looked away. Of course. It wasn't the kind of question Dad could answer. It was about people. “I don't know where he received his engineering education and I'm not aware of all of his qualifications. Oh, and, uh . . . Mike?” He looked at me in that cloudy way he had.

Why did he always have to stop and think before saying my name?

“What?”

“You'll need to remember that these relatives are now oc-to-ge-nar-i-ans.” He carefully pronounced every syllable since, ob-vi-ous-ly, I'm stupid.

“Meaning . . . they're eight-armed mutants?” I knew what
octogenarian
meant, but I wanted to see if I could get him.

“It means they're in their eighties,” he said slowly. “They are elderly.”

I nodded seriously. “Gotcha.”

“They may have difficulty hearing you or understanding you.”

So instead of Dad not understanding me, I'd have . . . “What are their names?”

Dad blew at a spot on the monitor and wiped it. “Uh . . . Poppy and Moo.”

“
Poppy and Moo
? Are you kidding me? Dad! You're sending me to live with farm animals?”

He sighed. “You're going to have to control your impulsive behavior, given the demise they've recently suffered.” Dad's gauge for impulsive behavior was a possum. Preferably a dead one. “Their only son died a few months ago. In a car accident.”

Like Mom. Jeez. The familiar dull ache hit my throat. I didn't know what to say. And then I couldn't help thinking,
What if I die in a car accident while he's over in Romania? He'll have no one
.

And he wouldn't even be able to picture my face, because he's got this weird condition where he can't make a mental image of a face, even of someone he's lived with for fourteen years. Like me.

I glanced over at his monitor and saw my reflection. Like a shadow. Of a groundhog. Six weeks of doom. I turned away quickly. “Hey, Dad—”

But I heard the front door close. He was gone.

—a line that passes through two or more other lines at different points

 

 

M
oo's white hair stuck straight out, like the wings of the commuter jet I'd just flown in on. Her glasses covered most of her face. The rest of it was giving me an entire-set-of-dentures grin.

“I'm so sorry I'm late, dear, but this airport is terribly confusing. See?” She pointed at the sign above the gangway door I'd exited from my plane. “It says Exit 88. How many exits do we need?”

“Actually,” I corrected her, “it says
Gate 3B
.”

She squinted at it. “Oh. Well, that's a bad sign.” She held out her tiny pale hand. “Anyway, I'm glad to finally meet you, dear. Do you like scrapple?”

I stared at her. “Excuse me?”

She took a step closer and looked up at me. Even though I wasn't that tall, I still towered over her. “Scrapple,” she repeated.

What the heck was scrapple? “What?”

She chewed her lip for a moment and waved her hand at me, and I bent my head down to her level.

I could hear her taking a big, raspy breath. “SCRAPPLE,” she shouted.

“Ow!” I put my hand over my ringing ear.

“Oh, that must be your good ear. My left ear is my good one, too! We already have something in common.” She patted my hand—the one that wasn't holding my ear. “We need to go to Shop 'n Save because I want to buy you some food and Poppy really needs his scrapple.”

I stared at her stupidly because I couldn't think of what to say.

Moo gazed at me, her smeared red lipstick making her smile even broader. “You look like your father, dear. Only not as . . .”

Smart.
“Yeah, I know.”

She glanced at the Exit 88/Gate 3B sign for a moment, then looked around the concourse as if she were lost. “But I can't see you.”

“I'M RIGHT HERE.”

She flinched and turned her owl glasses to me. “I know, dear. What I meant was I can't see your eyes because your hair is in front of them.”

I tried pushing some hair out of my eyes, but it didn't work very well. My hair grows in stupid swirls all over the place. I figure it's a commentary on what's directly underneath.

“Your hair is very different from your father's. James's hair was so limp. Yours is—well, you just don't see that many people with cowlicks.”

“That's because I got all of theirs.”

“Would you like me to give you a trim?” She reached over and touched one of my swirls.

I cringed at the thought of someone with her eyesight cutting my hair.

“Oh, that's right, James hated anyone touching his hair, too.” She sighed. “At least you don't cover your ears and scream.”

“Excuse me? Dad used to do that?”

“Yes. You mean he's outgrown that?”

“Yeah, well . . . he's fifty-six now. What else did he used to do?”

“Well, he was always forgetting things.”

“He still does.”

“And he loved candy.”

“That hasn't changed, either.”

“He had . . . unusual ideas.”

“That's because he's a genius.”

“Oh, is that what they're calling it now?”

“What?”

“Never mind. I'm glad to hear he's grown up a little. It takes some of us a long time, doesn't it? Still, little steps eventually get us somewhere. Speaking of which, we need to get moving.” She turned and started off the way she came, her pale yellow sneakers looking like duck feet padding down the concourse, pushing through the small crowd of people.

I grabbed my backpack and sports bag and followed her.

“James said you're going to help Poppy, and I must say, he could certainly use the help. Are you good at working with wood?”

I thought about my C's in shop class. It was the fine corners I wasn't any good at. But a screw didn't have fine corners. “Woodworking? I can't get enough of it!”

She clapped her hands. “That's wonderful, Mike!”

“What exactly am I going to be doing?”

“Oh, Poppy will let you know.” Her smile remained frozen. “Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

But she hurried on. “I want you to have some fun, too! All work and no play makes James a very dull boy.”

“I think it's ‘makes
Jack
a very dull boy.' James is my dad.”

She smiled broadly and touched her forefinger to her chin. “I know, dear.”

Wait—was she calling Dad dull? But I couldn't stop to think. I practically had to jog to keep up with her. Tiny as she was, that lady could move.

“Your dad sent some scrap paper for you. I'm glad to see he recycles old school papers. It has all kinds of numbers and symbols and nonsense on the back, but he said you could use it.”

As forgetful as Dad was, he hadn't forgotten summer math worksheets. The numbers and symbols made about as much sense to me as they did to Moo. I definitely needed to concentrate on the artesian screw. It'd be the perfect excuse for why I didn't get to the stack of worksheets.

“Is it for ara—, agar—, goomee . . . what's that folding paper thing?”

“Origami?”

“That's it! Is that what you do with all that paper?”

“Pretty much.” If that's what you called crumpling it into balls, throwing it at the wall, and jumping up and down on it while cursing.

“Well, I'm sure you'll do something very special with it. Come along, now!” She readjusted her red purse that was so large it would have to be considered checked luggage, and I watched it bang against the back of her white hoodie as she walked down the concourse. The picture of the white-haired woman on the cover of my old Mother Goose book flashed across my mind.

I caught up with her and she grabbed my arm, maybe worried that I'd fall behind again. “Tell me, what do you like to do for fun?”

Fun? I hadn't thought of that possibility. “Do you guys have a PlayStation or Xbox or anything like that?”

“Oh, play station! Yes, it's in the attic because we haven't used it since Doug—” She let go of me and stopped, grabbing the strings of her hoodie and yanking so hard, I thought she might strangle herself. She sucked her lips and I didn't see any evidence of breathing. I was about to slap her on the back to make her snap out of it when she suddenly opened her mouth and gasped.

“Play station,” she repeated, with a definitive nod but watery eyes, like she'd just recovered from a painful blow but was standing back up in the ring again. “Yes. Most of the little people are gone, but the cars are still there, along with the gas pump. The plastic hose from the gas pump is a little chewed up, but it still fits into the cars.”

She smiled up at me and I read the big red letters on the front of her hoodie that shouted HOLY COMFORTER, even though the voice inside my head was shouting,
Holy crap!

“Please tell me you have a computer.” Dad made me leave my cell phone at home so I wouldn't be “distracted from the mission.” I had a cheap MP3 player but absolutely no link to the outside world.

“No computer, but they have some nice new ones at the bank. In color! Gladys loves to show off her new computer. She even gave it a name. She calls it ‘Mac.' Isn't that cute?”

I looked away so she wouldn't see my face and stared into Bound for Adventure Books and Videos as we walked past. Of course. Movies. “Do you have any DVDs?”

She stopped and clutched my arm again, blinking up at me. “Oh, dear. You didn't bring any of yours?”

“No. Don't you guys have any?”

“Well, Poppy has some, of course. But they wouldn't do for you. Not at all. We'll buy you some, though. What size BVDs do you need?”

“Size? What do you mean?”

She took a deep, raspy breath. “UNDERPANTS, dear. What SIZE BEE-VEE-DEES do you wear?”

The wave of travelers seemed to settle around Moo's duck feet, gaping at me.

“I—I said DEE-VEE-DEE! You know, like a video? A movie?”

“Oh, that's what you're talking about!”

There's not a whole lot more embarrassing than having your great-aunt shout about your underwear in the middle of an airport. I felt like everyone was staring at where my boxers were. I rushed ahead through the automatic doors to get outside.

“Wait for me, dear!” I heard Moo call after me. “You don't even know where I left Tyrone!”

I turned around and watched her come through the doors behind me. “Tyrone?”

“Yes, dear. How do you expect to find him without me?”

“Who's . . . is that Poppy?”

“Goodness, no! Poppy and Tyrone don't get along at all.” She grinned. “Poppy thinks I spend entirely too much time and money on Tyrone. I think he's a little jealous.”

I had this momentary frightening image of a little old lady having an affair with a boy toy. I shook my head hard to get rid of it. “So . . . who's Tyrone?” I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to know.