The Big One-Oh (2 page)

Most days, I know, he goes to the restaurant where he cooks, because he's a chef. A really good one, too. My dad can cook
anything
. The place he works in Glasgow, Scotland, is a Mexican café, and, even though he's not Mexican, he told me that the Scottish people are starved for good Mexican food.

At least that's what he said when he left home three years ago. I try not to think about that day.

 

 

In my bedroom, Boing Boing sniffed and licked at Dad's package until I opened up the big, puffy envelope. Inside, wrapped in blue paper that said “Happy Birthday!!” all over was a flat parcel that I figured out was supposed to be my birthday present.

Four weeks early.

Dad's usually within a month or two. He never remembers my exact birth
day
, but that's okay. I bet he's got a lot on his mind.

I immediately knew what was in the wrapping paper because Dad always sends me the same present: two issues of
Monsters & Maniacs
.

You've never heard of
Monsters & Maniacs
? What planet did you grow up on? It's only the greatest literature in the history of the world!

Monsters & Maniacs
is a comic book all about zombies and vampires and madmen and stuff. It's got demons (like in Issue 113: “The Gates of Hell Are
UNDER MY BED!!
”), giant spiders (Issue 49: “Six Hairy Legs and
SIX FEET TALL!!
”), aliens (Issue 85: “On My Planet
YOU'D BE LUNCH!!
”), and the occasional headless babysitter (Issue 136: “What Have You Done
WITH MY CHILDREN?!
”).

I loved them even before I could read the words, because the pictures were just so cool. Then, when we learned the alphabet in first grade, I'd run home from school every day and practice reading them.

My happiest memories always involve
Monsters & Maniacs.
Back when Dad was still living here, for instance, I used to grab a stack of issues and read that stack from top to bottom. Afterward I'd go downstairs, and Dad would grill me a cheese sandwich. And he'd let me flip it on the griddle.

Those were good times.

I wasn't in any hurry to open up Dad's issues of
Monster & Maniacs
, because I knew I had them already. I get every issue the moment it hits the racks at The Comic Soup, the store where I spend all my allowance.

Instead I opened the card that was taped to the present. On the cover, above a picture of a boy sailing a boat, it said,
“Oh, good heaven! You're going to be eleven!”

“
Ten
, Dad. I'm going to be ten,” I groaned as if he were in the room with me. Then I opened the card and read where he had written, “Happy Birthday, Charley!”

And below that he had scribbled the ten words that kicked off this whole horrible chain of events:

“What are you going to do for your big day?”

As soon as I read Dad's words, my heart flipped over in my chest. My hands started to shake. I could feel myself growing short of breath. Because thinking about what people do on birthdays—mine or anyone else's—always makes me remember something that happened three and a half years ago.

Something that scarred me for life and still causes me to wake up screaming.

I was invited to my first birthday party ever.

 

 

I was six.

We had just moved onto Apple Core Circle because my dad got hired to be the chef at the nearby Wagon Wheel Family-Style Restaurant. Dad and Mom argued a lot where we lived before, so I guess maybe they thought that a change of location might help them get along. Or a new job would help. Or something like that. I didn't pay a lot of attention then.

Soon after we'd moved in, I got invited to this kid Jamie Wiggerty's birthday party; I'd never even met the guy. One day Mom stopped to chat with his mother in the middle of the Pic 'n' Save, and the next thing I know, Mom's gushing, “Charley would
love
to come!”

She didn't even consult me.

When I pointed that out to Mom on the way home, she laughed, “C'mon, Charley! This'll help you make some new friends.”

“That's so totally lame,” sneered my sister Lorena once she heard the news. Lorena was twelve at the time, and she thought that
every
thing
every
body
ever
did
any
where at
any
time was totally lame.

She still thinks that.

Dad was more enthusiastic. “You'll have a blast,” he assured me.

So I went.

 

 

Dad walked me to Jamie Wiggerty's house that terrible Saturday morning. The backyard was filled with lots of parents and kids, and when Dad saw some adults he knew, I was left alone to look around.

In the center of the lawn, on a gigantic picnic table, sat the biggest cake I'd ever seen, a humongous bowl of pink punch and piles of presents. There were streamers draped between all the trees, and kids were all running around, blowing noisemakers and swatting at balloons.

There was even a man giving all the kids pony rides, but the pony clip-clopped around his temporary corral so slowly that it looked like about as much fun as watching paint dry.

And, just as I'd figured, I didn't know anyone. So it was a good thing I had smuggled in some comic books.

“Geez, Charley! Can't you go one day without
Monsters & Maniacs
?” Dad groaned when he found me by myself, reading under a tree. “And your mother wonders why you have no friends.”

Now, I had never heard it put that way before. First of all, I had never really stopped to think about it, but, yeah, I had no friends. But, hey, I was six; I figured I had time.

And second, I never realized that it was something Mom and Dad would even notice—me not having friends. I thought they had plenty of other things to worry about.

Dad stuck a curly party-favor noisemaker in my mouth, took me by the hand and led me across the lawn to the corral as Jamie and his friends watched.

The Pony Man squinted through the smoke of his stinky cigar as Dad lifted me up and set me down in the saddle. “You're the last one to ride the pony, Kiddo,” Dad said.

I got the feeling that the pony wasn't too happy to have yet another squirming kid on his back. I totally sympathized; I wasn't thrilled to be there, either. But it seemed important to Dad that I give it a shot.

“See?” said Dad. “Nice horsie. Hang on, Charley.”

He didn't have to tell me that; I gripped those reins so tightly my hands turned white.

“Say ‘Giddyap!' ” Dad urged. “The horsie won't go until you say, ‘Giddyap, horsie.' ”

Thanks, Dad.
That was all Jamie and his friends needed to hear. They began to shout, “Giddyap!” “Say ‘Giddyap, horsie! ' ” “Make the horsie giddyap, giddyap,
GIDDYAP!!
”

They got louder and louder, stomping their feet and screeching like chimpanzees. While the Pony Man was blowing cigar smoke my way, Dad kept urging, “Say ‘Giddyap!,' Charley! ‘Giddyap!' ” and trying to yank the noisemaker from between my clamped, gritting teeth.

Can you understand how I could get confused?

I took a deep breath which I fully intended to use to say, “Giddyap!” Instead, I blew powerfully into the noisemaker, which made an awfully loud honk.

Which the pony didn't like one bit.

Not only that, but the curled-up party-favor uncurled, and the little feather at the end of it must've tickled him in a place that he didn't like to be tickled. Because that pony threw back his head, whinnied like he was being poked with a burning torch, reared back on his hind legs and then, while I hung on for dear life, he—I mean,
we
—took off like a shot.

BAM!

That pony and I plowed through his flimsy little corral. We rocketed across the lawn—with Dad and the Pony Man chasing us—and we trampled Mrs. Wiggerty's perfect flower beds. We zigged this way, and we zagged over there, galloping straight for clumps of kids, who ran, shrieking, in every direction.

Parents began chasing us, too. They were slipping on the grass, crashing into chairs and smashing into each other. They were waving their arms and screaming out suggestions: “Say, ‘Whoa!' ” “Pull his reins!” “Grab his bridle!”

Then, suddenly, everybody seemed to get organized and formed two lines. The kids and parents were closing in on us, cutting off our escape. They formed a single path that led right up to the picnic table, where they knew we'd have to stop, because there was no way the pony could gallop fast enough and leap high enough to clear that picnic table.

Was there?

Later, the Pony Man would tell Dad that, in all the time he owned him, he had never seen his pony leap so high before.

Sadly, it wasn't high enough.

 

 

It amazes me to this day that the pony and I both walked away from the crash without a scratch. Oh, sure, we were covered with cake and frosting and punch and birthday candles and ribbons and wrapping paper.

And, yeah, there were hot dogs and presents and potato chips and pickles scattered as far as the eye could see.

Jamie Wiggerty was crying into his mother's dress, and when they saw that, a few other kids started sobbing, too.

So Dad and I left real fast.

I never pinned a tail on a donkey, I never got to eat ice cream and cake, and I never sang
“Happy Birthday, dear Ja—mie!!”

And after that, I never got invited to another birthday party.

 

 

I shook off that horrible memory and steadied my trembling hand, in which I was still gripping Dad's birthday card. To ease my panic, I read his message out loud:

And when I realized what I had just asked, I gasped, “Wait a minute!”

That made Boing Boing look up.

“It
IS
my big day!” Boing Boing tilted his head in drowsy confusion and went back to sleep, but my mind was racing with this startling new understanding:

I was gonna turn ten. Me. Charley Maplewood. Ten years old. No more single-digit birthdays—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

I would finally move into double digits—
and then I'd never go back again.

How awesome was that? Life-changing, even.

I began to think that maybe it was time to put the disaster of Jamie Wiggerty's birthday party behind me.

Maybe it was time to move on.

Maybe I
should
do something for my “big day.”

But what?

Later that afternoon when Mom came home from work, I watched her closely and decided to wait a few minutes before starting a conversation.

See, Mom's the bookkeeper at Fittipaldi's Appliances, where they sell stoves and TVs and vacuum cleaners. Even though she gets a whopping twenty percent employee discount on anything in the store, she also has to deal with Mr. Fittipaldi, who can be very . . . loud. Mom never speaks badly about Mr. Fittipaldi's temper, but I can always tell if she's had “one of those days.”

If Mom groans when she pulls off her shoes and shakes her head as she flips through the mail, I know that I should wait before I open my mouth. But if she notices what I'm cooking for dinner and she sniffs at the pots on the stove and goes, “Mmmm, smells good,” as soon as she walks in, then it's a pretty safe bet that I can ask her anything.

That day, I decided to wait. And, while I waited, I continued chopping parsley.

People find it strange that I do the cooking in our house, but I don't see why. After all, Dad's a cook. I watched him a lot before he was gone. He left behind lots of great pots and pans and spoons and things, but he took his favorite knives with him.

Without any help, I can reach the front burners on the stove. For now, I still need to stand on a kitchen chair to reach the back burners, but, if I keep growing on schedule, I should be tall enough to do that by next summer.

And besides, if I left it up to Mom, we'd have chili dogs 365 days a year, so doing all the cooking is really more out of self-defense.

After Mom unpinned her hair and shook it out, I sensed that it was finally okay to speak, so I asked her what she had planned for my “big day.”

“Your ‘big day'?” She blinked.

“My birthday.”

“Oh, honey! Your birthday's not for a month. We've got time.”

Just then Lorena came barging in the front door. My sister's in tenth grade now, and she's still a pain.