The Big One-Oh (13 page)

“Will you come out and pway wid me?”
Brad whined.

Lorena sighed,
“Awwwww, Brad,”
and then I heard nothing for about a minute.

Until, suddenly, Lorena
screamed
like her fingernails were being pulled out with pliers!

Now, Lorena and I may have a lot of differences, but she's still my sister. That's why I jumped up from my post in front of the heater, yelled, “LORENA!” and knocked over everything in my path on my way out. I threw open the garage door, raced to the front hall, and, with Boing Boing yelping right behind me, I ran out onto the front lawn, where Lorena and Brad were having a terrible fight.

At least that's what it looked like to me.

He had her by the hair and, as she struggled to get free of his vicious grip, they were thrashing all over the lawn while Lorena kept yelling, “Ow! Brad! Stop! Ow!”

I flew at Brad, pounding him, screaming, “Leave my sister alone!” At the same time, Boing Boing was leaping and snapping at him from the other side. There was a lot of noise, and everybody was shouting, “Ouch!” and “Stop!” and “Don't!” until Lorena snorted at me, “Give it a rest, you dork!”

“But he's hurting you!” I pointed out. In fact, Brad's fist was
still
buried in my sister's hair.

“No, he's not,” she scoffed. “I'm stuck.”

She twisted her head around to show me that her hair was tangled in the buckle of Brad's wristwatch; I guess he had tried to run his fingers through her hair, and he'd gotten stuck.

“Oh,” was all I could manage to say.

I thought I should at least get credit for coming to Lorena's rescue, even if she didn't need rescuing; but Lorena and Brad were too busy giggling and untangling her hair from his wristwatch buckle to give me a second thought.

So I stood there on our front lawn, feeling stupid and useless; Boing Boing stared up at me with a look that said,
“That was fun. What's next?”

And that's when our neighbor Mrs. Cleveland came tearing out of her house, waving her golf-club-walking-stick over her head and wailing, “Fire! Fire! Save yourselves!” And she was pointing
to our garage.

Brad, Lorena, Boing Boing and I all turned and saw the smoke at the same time.

And my very, very short life flashed before my eyes.

 

 

It was a little fire, I promise. There were no big yellow and red flames licking at the walls. But, still, it was a fire.

By the time the fire trucks came squealing up our little street with their sirens shrieking, neighbors from blocks around were standing and staring at the black smoke billowing out of our garage.

Mom was coming home from work when a policeman stopped her at the end of our street. She jumped from her car and sprinted down the block, pushing through the crowd and panting, “That's my house! My children are in there!”

When she saw that Lorena and I were okay, she looked like she was going to cry or faint, but before she did either one, Lorena pointed to me and said, “It's his fault.”

And it was. Sort of.

The firemen had told us that when I jumped up and ran out of the garage, I had knocked a paper towel in front of the portable heater that was warming my finger mold; the heater lit the paper towel on fire, and it spread from there.

But I wouldn't have jumped up if Lorena hadn't screamed.

And Lorena wouldn't have screamed if Brad had stayed away.

So, see? There was plenty of blame to go around.

 

 

A little while later, Garry came shoving through the crowd, totally out of breath from running down the street.

“Is everybody okay?” he asked us all, but he looked at Mom as he spoke.

“It seems you've given my son some very dangerous ideas,” Mom said before she turned her back and walked away, leaving me to face Garry.

“What did she mean by that?” he asked.

I hung my head.

“Well, I . . . uh . . .” I started softly. “I was trying to make some body parts. With your latex. And I turned on the heater so they'd . . .”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Garry waved his hands. “
My
latex?”

I nodded.

Garry glanced back at his house, then at me. “How'd you get your hands on
my
latex?”

“The Delivery Man . . . he let me sign for your box.”

Garry blinked once and stared at me in silence. It was horrible.

“But don't you want to know why I was making body parts?”

“No,” he said gravely. “I don't.”

We stood like that for a few more terrible moments before he crossed to Mom and started to say, “I had no idea what Charley was up to. If there is anything that I can . . .”

But Mom flipped up her hand in a way that said,
“Stop!”
So he did.

Garry glanced over at me and shook his head. Then he crossed his lawn, went into his house, and shut his door. And when he did, my eyes started to burn.

And it wasn't from the smoke.

After the firemen drove away and our neighbors all returned to their homes, Brad kissed Lorena good-bye and went to work at the Chick-A-Dee.

Boy, did I feel dumb. Even a blind man could see that she didn't
really
hate him.

 

 

The garage was still standing. A few boxes of Christmas decorations had burned, and some of our garden tools were too melted to ever use again. But it could have been a lot, lot worse.

That didn't matter to Mom.

Neither did the fact that I said, “Sorry,” about five hundred times in the next few hours.

That evening, as we were throwing out all the charred and water-soaked remains of the fire, Mom looked around at the damage, shook her head and muttered, “We don't have the money for this.”

Then she took a deep breath to make herself feel brave, and I could tell she had already made a plan.

“I talked to Mr. Fittipaldi, and he's gonna let me add some Saturdays to my schedule. Pick up a little extra cash.”

She was already sounding better.

“But, Charley,” Mom turned to me, “if I work Saturdays, I can't be here for your birthday party.”

I stopped breathing.

“He doesn't deserve one after what he did,” snarled Lorena.

“Hey!” Mom snapped at her. “Your brother ran out to help you.”

Lorena bit her lip.

“So, Charley,” Mom continued, “I'm going to have to call everyone's parents and tell them that the party is off.”

“No!” I cried out.

“ ‘No'?”
Mom asked sharply.

She and Lorena stared at me until I dropped my head and mumbled, “I . . . I should tell them myself.”

“See that you do,” Mom said. “See that you do.”

When I got to school the next morning, Donna and Dina and Dana smiled at me from their lockers; I couldn't bring myself to un-invite them first. Then Leo gave me a thumbs-up. And Darryl waved. How could I ruin their day with my bad news?

It was only when I saw Cougar and Scottie bearing down on me in the hallway that I knew where I was going to start.

“Hi, guys,” I gulped and waved. “Listen. About my party. . . .”

Cougar stopped and squinted at me. “What about your party?”

“It's just . . . there may . . . there might be a teensy problem.”

Cougar grabbed my collar and slammed me up against a locker.

“Don't tell me you're getting a clown.”

“No,” I grunted. “No clowns.”

“So what's the problem?” Scottie asked.

The locker knob was digging into my back, and Cougar's grip on my neck was cutting off my flow of oxygen, so I decided not to un-invite them just yet.

“Oh,” I shrugged. “Nothing I can't handle.”

Cougar released me and clapped me on the shoulder. “That's my man! Okay, check this out.” He looked behind us to make sure we weren't being watched, and then he pulled a small aerosol can from his jacket pocket and held it up for me to see.

“Spray glue. Stole it from my dad.”

From the way he proudly displayed it, I figured out that stealing a can of spray glue from one's dad was some kind of awesome accomplishment.

“Whoa.” I looked between him and Scottie. “What's it for?”

Cougar snickered in his crazy way.

“Wait'll you hear this plan he's got,” Scottie snorted. “It's the best.”

 

 

Jennifer Mobley looked up when I entered the Nurse's Office. She was wearing her little white coat, and her little white nurse's cap was balancing on her explosion of hair.

“Hi, Charley!” she said brightly, but her smile faded when Cougar and Scottie stepped in behind me.

“The Nurse is out,” said Jennifer sourly. “What're you guys doing here?”

I turned to Cougar. “Yeah. What
are
we doing here?”

“Well, you're here to be our lookout,” he said as he grabbed my arm and pushed me halfway out the doorway.

“I'm your
what?
” I sputtered.

“Just tell me when somebody's coming,” he ordered in a loud whisper.

“Why? What're you gonna do?” I demanded.

“Hey!” Cougar pointed a stern finger in my face. “You wanna be our friend, doncha?”

The question paralyzed me. Because he was right; after a lifetime of not really thinking about it, I now wanted to be somebody's friend. Even Cougar's.

He turned and snatched Jennifer's nurse's cap off her head.

“Leland, give that back!” she wailed, reaching for her cap.

“Scottie!” Cougar shouted, and Scottie jumped in front of Jennifer, waving his arms like he was guarding a basketball star with the ball.

“Get out of my way, Scottie!” Jennifer demanded. “I am
the Nurse's Aide!
”

As she struggled to get past Scottie, Cougar pulled out his can of spray glue and popped off the top. He was moving so fast that I couldn't have stopped him, even if I could have figured out what he was up to.

“What're you doing with that?!” Jennifer squealed.

Cougar pointed to the place on his face where his eyebrows used to be, before Jennifer ripped them off.

“It's payback time,” he chortled, and then he coated the inside of Jennifer's nurse's cap with a sweeping, wet spray of glue.

“Stop that! Leland! Give me back my hat this instant!”

“Whatever you say,” Cougar sneered as he finished spraying. Then he smooshed the hat down on Jennifer's hair. And he held it there.

Jennifer gasped.

I gasped.

Cougar and Scottie cackled.

For a long, horrified moment I stood there thinking:
I have to do something. But what?! WHAT?!

So I blurted out the only thing that came rushing into my brain.

“I hear somebody coming!”

In a split second, Cougar and Scottie were out the door. I was frozen in place, though, watching Jennifer wincing and tugging at the cap that was now firmly bonded to her wild thatches of hair.

She looked up and caught my eye, but just as I opened my mouth to
swear
to her that I had no idea Cougar had planned such a terrible revenge, Scottie grabbed my elbow, hissed, “Let's go, Jerkface!” and yanked me down the hall.

I hid out in the upstairs boys' room for the rest of the day. From time to time, I splashed water on my face and stared in the mirror.
“What has happened to you?!”
I silently asked the monster I had become.

I waited until the school emptied and the halls had gone silent. By the time I left the building, only the janitors were left.

I set my skateboard down and was about to step on it when I realized:
no!
I didn't deserve to go zipping along, care-free and untroubled. Not after what I had done. So I picked up my skateboard and trudged toward home. At the far end of the block, I turned the corner, and what I saw nailed my feet to the sidewalk.

Across the street, Jennifer Mobley sat alone on a bus stop bench. I cringed when I noticed that her once poofy hair had been lopped off in more than a few patches.

Seeing her hunched over like that, intently studying her homework, I felt worse than I had felt since . . . well, since the night before when Garry shook his head and walked away from me. And I suddenly knew how Jennifer felt.

Because in that moment I knew what it was like to lose a friend.

See, I was so new to the whole friendship thing that I'd never really known somebody—outside my family—who could hurt my feelings the way Garry had.

Or someone whose feelings I could hurt the way I'd hurt Jennifer.

I couldn't go home feeling so rotten.

 

 

When I sat down at the other end of her bus stop bench, Jennifer glanced out of the corner of one eye. Neither one of us breathed.

“Did you come to laugh some more?”

“There's nothing funny,” I said quietly.

After a long silence, she pointed to her head.

“Nurse finally came back. She cut me out of my hat.”

“Oh,” I nodded. “You can't tell.”

She looked up and studied my face. Her eyes were red, like she had recently been crying, but, from the way she finally nodded, I could tell that she believed me. Then she went back to studying.

Now I should say something nice,
I thought.
But what?
Mom says that “I'm sorry” is always appreciated, but that's only two words; the horrible trick that I had been a part of would need a lot more words to make right, I felt.