The Big One-Oh (18 page)

Authors: Dean Pitchford

BOOK: The Big One-Oh

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He nodded.

Finally, my guests began to enjoy themselves. We laughed about the stupid birthday cake I had made. We laughed about Scottie throwing up and Leo passing out. And we laughed about how we had all behaved when Garry first appeared.

“You should've seen your face!”

“My face? What about
your
face?!”

“And the way you screamed!”

“The way
I
screamed!”

We went on like that until Garry reached into the pocket of the Monster's overcoat and pulled out a perfectly painted
hand.

“Coooool,” everyone agreed.

“Remember this?” Garry asked me.

And I did. I excitedly explained to everybody how, even before he cast my face, Garry had cast my hand.

“Hey,” Cougar piped up. “Is your sister still upstairs?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

I yelled up to Lorena to come down.

“I'm in the shower!” she yelled back.

“It's an emergency!” I insisted. “You have to come
now!
”

We were all gathered around the kitchen chopping block when Lorena burst into the kitchen. She was wrapped in her bathrobe, dripping wet and hopping mad.

“
What?!
What is going on down here, Charley?! Even in the shower, I can hear screaming and furniture crashing and . . .”

She slowed down, because she saw that I had my hand laid out on the cutting board. And that Jennifer had a meat cleaver raised up over it.

“NOW what are you doing?!” Lorena squeaked.

“You're just in time,” I snickered. “Check this out!”

And that's when Jennifer swung the cleaver down on my “hand”â
THUNK!
âchopping it off at the wrist. It dropped to the floor and rolled to a stop at Lorena's feet.

I'm willing to bet that Lorena's scream interrupted television reception in six states.

My guests and I were in the middle of the longest, loudest laugh that any of us had ever laughed, when suddenlyâin the next split secondâthe laughter turned to
shrieks of horror!

Because that's when our front door
BLASTED!!
wide open.

I thought it was a bomb. I really did.

Instead, a whole
army
of policemen and policewomen poured into the house, waving guns and shouting: “DOWN ON THE FLOOR!! EVERYBODY DOWN!!”

They were holding the leashes of snarling police dogs who barked and snapped ferociously at us.

And then, as if that weren't horrible enough, the
back
door exploded in, and
even more
police swarmed in, surrounding us and shouting
even louder!
By now there were about a dozen cops and a wild pack of dogs, and, between all
their
yelling and barking and
our
screaming, there was a terrible racket.

We held our trembling hands over our heads, knelt on the floor and tried not to cry.

Why?
I wanted to yell.
What did we do wrong?

But as I lifted my head to speak, Momâmy real mom, not the phony Lorena momâwalked in the front door, drenched by the rain that was falling outside. She was shaking her head with disappointment and fury.

Did Mom call the cops?
I wondered.
Wow. She must be mad.

And that made it official: my Big One-Oh House of Horrors Birthday Party had come to an end.

THE PARTY'S OVER

That's my story; I told it just like that.

When I finished, I looked around at the faces of all the people and animals squeezed into my living room.

There were Mom and Garry and Lorena and Boing Boing. There was Mrs. Cleveland, her arms folded in judgement.

There were my party guests and their parents, who had come to pick up their kids, only to find them surrounded by most of the Fresno Police Department, who had also listened to my saga.

So had seven ambulance drivers who had been waiting outside, ready to transport any casualties to the nearest hospital. I had even shared my story with our neighbors from way down the block who we hardly even know but who come running whenever fire trucks or police cars arrive.

See, what I hadn't known was thatâwhile I was in the middle of my partyâMrs. Cleveland was in the middle of a meltdown.

Ever since I had burned our garage, I guess Mrs. Cleveland had decided there was no evil deed that I was not capable of. So when she heard popping noises coming from our house, she didn't stop to think that they might be balloons exploding.

Oh, no.

She assumed that I had somehow gotten my hands on a gun. And that I was using it.

When Mrs. Cleveland saw the lights in our house flashing on and off, she didn't stop to think that Cougar might be flicking them on and off, keeping time with the radio music.

Oh, no.

She assumed that my victims were desperately signalling for help.

And when Mrs. Cleveland heard people shrieking at the tops of their lungs, she didn't stop to think. Instead, she picked up the phone and called the cops.

And the hospitals.

And the fire department.

And Mom at work.

In all the time it took to tell my story, not one of those people in my living room moved. Not even the dogs. And now that I had run out of things to say, they all stared back at me in silence.

Finally, I turned to Mom and shrugged. “So, can you see now? How one thing leads to another?”

Mom was still pretty stunned. She had already had to deal with a lot that afternoon, and after the police had kicked in our front door and back door, I was sure that she was going to make me live in a cardboard box in the backyard for the rest of my childhood.

But I had to make her understand.

“I'm really, really sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean for it to happen like this. But I didn't know what to do. I had no one to help me. And nowhere to turn.” I started to choke up, but I was determined to finish. “And besides, it's . . . it's my Big One-Oh.”

I think I might have been able to control myself if only Mom hadn't nodded. But, once she did, once she showed that she understood, I couldn't help it. And, as much as I tried to stop them, I could feel the salty tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes and rolling down my cheeks.

There was a long moment when I felt about as dumb and embarrassed as a kid can feel without totally exploding with shame, but then I realized that people around the room were sniffling, too. And it wasn't just my family or the kids from my school.

No.

Cops were clearing their throats. Policewomen were swiping at their eyes. Darryl's mom even took a pill, she was so moved.

Finally Mrs. Cleveland, with tears streaming down her face, broke the awful silence by throwing a hand up into the air and crying, “Lord Almighty!”

We all turned to her. I was afraid she was going to announce that I had a nuclear weapon or something, but instead she surprised us all by shouting, “Hasn't this child suffered enough?”

And, in that moment, I could've kissed her.

Because, you know what? Everybody agreed with her: I
had
suffered enough.

“Poor kid!”

“What a nightmare!”

“All that he went through!”

“And it's his Big One-Oh!”

And that changed everything. People turned to each other and began chattering away. Neighbors and policemen and classmates and ambulance drivers all seemed to forget that they didn't really know each other, and they behaved as if they were at . . . well,
at a party
.

Mom blew her nose on a cake napkin, stood and turned to the crowd. “Hello, everyone?” she called.

“Hello!” they all called back.

“As you have heard,” she said, “it's my son's birthday. And I'm so glad that you could all make it.”

Everybody laughed. Even I laughed.

“I'm just so sorry that I don't have any cake to offer you,” she said.

“Oh!” Garry called out. “I've taken care of that.”

By the time Garry had run back to his place and returned with his cake, people had started to help Mom and me clean up.

A few of the policemen put the doors back on their hinges, and some of the parents mopped up the mud that had been tracked in when the house was stormed.

Tables and chairs were turned over and put back in place; one of the ambulance drivers gave Scottie something to settle his stomach; and I took Cougar upstairs and loaned him a pair of clean underwear.

Garry's cake was amazing. It was decorated all over with rubber fingers and noses and eyeballs staring up out of the frosting. When Mom saw it, I thought that she'd freak out, but instead she exclaimed, “Did you make that?!”

Garry nodded. “Blame Charley. He once told me that if I could reach the sink, I could cook, so . . .” He gave a little shrug.

Mom patted her chest the way she does when she's trying not to cry. She looked at Garry gratefully, and she quietly said, “Thank you.”

They stayed like that, looking at each other, until Lorena waved a hand between their faces and said, “Whaddya say we cut that cake?”

Everybody gathered around and sang “Happy Birthday to Charley!” Mom took a picture as I blew out the ten candles and everybody cheered.

I sliced the first piece, and people screamed in surprise when the cake spurted “blood” that tasted like strawberry syrup. But then they all laughed about having been scared, and they clapped Garry on the back, saying things like, “Oh, man! You really got me!”

It was everything a birthday party's supposed to be.

And it was mine.

It was early evening by the time everybody left. The sky was clear after the rainstorm, and the sun was setting behind a fiery red fan of clouds.

The policemen and policewomen shook my hand, wished me a Happy Big One-Oh, and then they left without arresting anyone. The ambulances followed the patrol cars out of the traffic circle, and the neighbors-we-never-met wandered back to their houses at the far end of the street.

Mrs. Cleveland hugged me before she took her walking stick and started her nightly patrol.

Leo tried to high-five me, but I didn't know how to respond, so he and Scottie and Cougar and even Darryl crowded around and gave me a crash course.

When they left together, Dina and Dana and Donna pecked me on the cheek, and they waved out the window until their car disappeared down the block.

When Jennifer stepped up, I extended my hand, like I wanted to shake. She looked disappointed that she wasn't going to get a kiss like the other girls, but she shook my hand anyway. Then when she saw what I had slipped into her palm, she gasped, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

She held up my latex eyeballâthe one Garry had given meâand she examined it like she was looking at the world's largest diamond. She smiled so hard I was afraid her braces would
sproing!
off her teeth. Her eyes got shiny, and she threw her arms around my neck, hugged me and whispered in my ear, “Thank you, Charley! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!”

“No,” I said. “Thank
you.
”

I stood on the front lawn until the last cars pulled away. Mom and Lorena had gone inside, and I thought I was alone.

But when I turned around, Garry was there. He had cleaned off his face and changed out of the high boots that had made him so tall when he was my Monster.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”

“You really scared my friends.”

He smiled and kind of looked downâreally bashful, really pleased. “Y'think?”

And I could tell that Garry wasn't thinking about North Carolina anymore. Hearing my classmates' screams and watching them running around like drunk chickens had made him a really happy man.

Then I remembered something.

“Hey! What happened at your audition?”

“Oh. I called them and told them I'd come at another time.”

“Why?” I gasped.

“ âWhy?' ”
he laughed. “Because. It's not every day my friend turns ten.”

On a day of so many memorable momentsâsome of them horrible, most of them wonderfulâthat's the one that stands out.

My friend.
Garry had said the words.
My friend.

And that was big.

Bigger than the Big One-Oh.