The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen (8 page)

“He’s a psycho,” said Farley.

“A racist psycho,” I added.

“He tried to kill Ambrose once.”

“Get out.”

“It’s true. They went to the same elementary school. Troy and his friends slipped a peanut into Ambrose’s sandwich, even though they knew he was allergic. He almost died.”

The warning bell rang. “That’s awful,” I said.

“Aw, fudge.” Farley was looking down at his button-up shirt. The pocket was torn almost completely off, exposing the plastic pocket protector and pens underneath. “He tore my shirt.”

His glasses fogged up, and I realized he was fighting tears.

“Do you want to go tell the principal?” I asked.

Farley looked at me like I was mental. He didn’t have to say a word; I knew exactly what he meant. Going to the principal might make things better; or it might make things worse.

Jesse went to the principal once. The principal spoke to Scott. And do you know what happened? Scott just got
better at covering his tracks. And Jesse got branded as a snitch.

Farley took a cloth handkerchief out of his pants pocket and blew into it loudly. He sounded like a Canada goose.

“C’mon,” he said. “I don’t want to break my perfect attendance record.” He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, and we headed to class.

What I like most about Farley is that he’s like a rubber ball. No matter how hard you throw him, he bounces right back.

What I hate most about Farley is that he’s like a rubber ball. No matter how hard you throw him, he bounces right back.

“So listen,” he said the moment class got out, “talk to your dad. See if he’ll take us to Seattle – because my parents can’t, obviously, they’re in Hong Kong. And Maria doesn’t have her license. We could drive down and back the same day. Plus,” he continued, stopping his rapid-fire monologue only to take a deep breath, “we need money to buy the tickets. And for gas and food and stuff.” He started to bounce on the balls of his feet. “I broke down the costs on an Excel spreadsheet last night. They’re based on three of us going. Me, you, and your dad.”

He knelt down and opened up his briefcase in the hallway. Then he handed me a sheet of paper.

“That’s a ton of money,” I told him.

“The tickets might be a bit less, but I had to factor in all those dumb service charges. And I
know
I’m not leaving there without a GWF T-shirt and a Vlad the Impaler poster.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Me, neither. My parents make a lot of money in Hong Kong, but they’re cheapskates. They give Maria just enough for our expenses.”

We’d arrived in English class. Farley sat beside me. “Would your parents maybe lend you the money, and then we can figure out a way to pay them back?”

I looked away. How could I explain that my parents didn’t have any money?
Well, Farley, my mom can’t work because she’s in a loony bin, and our place is still for sale in Port Salish because no one wants to live in a murderer’s house. Oh, and since criminal charges were never laid against my brother because you can’t charge a dead person, the Marlins have launched a civil suit against my parents, claiming “wrongful death.” If they win, we might owe them a lot of money that we don’t have
.

Yeah, no.

“Just ask them over the weekend, okay? We
have
to go see this! We have to!”

Our teacher entered, and I thought that would shut Farley up. But he just kept whispering loudly, “Please! Please!” even after Mr. Schell started the lesson.

“Henry Larsen, tell your friend Mr. Wong to zip it,” Mr. Schell said.

But even that didn’t shut Farley up. He just kept whispering, over and over and over, “Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease –”

“Fine!” I said. “I’ll ask.”

Even though I knew I never would.

Later

I hate Cecil.

When I showed up at his office this afternoon, he said, “What do you say we go for a walk? It’s a beautiful day.”

Leaving the office seemed very “un-psychologist-like,” but it
was
a beautiful day – sunny after weeks of rain – so I said okay.

Once we were outside, he told me a long boring story about the matzo ball soup his mom would make when he had a cold and how good it made him feel. I was like
yawn
, but I nodded to be polite.

“Why don’t you tell me a happy memory about your family?” he said.

I have plenty of good memories about my family. But maybe I wanted to get a rise out of Cecil because I said, “We loved a good fart joke.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Great. Tell me one.”

“Confucius say, man who farts in church must sit in his own pew.”

He laughed. “That’s pretty good.”

So I told him another one. “What do you call a teacher who won’t fart in public? A private tutor.”

Cecil obviously likes toilet humor ’cause he laughed really hard, and I guess it made me feel good because I kept on going.

“Whenever we go to my Pop-Pop and Grams’s in Ontario, Pop-Pop
always
toots at the supper table. Like, loud.”

“Holy Moly.”

“He’s sixty percent deaf, and I guess he thinks that if he can’t hear it, we can’t either. But, of course, we can. And we have to try
so hard
not to laugh. Mom winds up snorting water up her nose. And Jesse and I have to squeeze each other’s knees really hard under the table –” I stopped.

I’d broken two rules. I’d spoken Jesse’s name aloud. And worse, I’d talked about him like he was still alive.

“Tell me another good memory.”

“No, thanks.”

“Please?”

“No, thanks.”

“Henry,” he began, “it’s okay to talk about your brother. It’s healthy.”

“I Am. An Only Child,” I answered in Robot-Voice.

“No, you’re not. You had a brother, and you loved him. And I bet you still love him, even if you’re really angry with him, too. Those conflicting emotions are totally normal.”

I didn’t answer.

“Your dad told me what happened in the park a month before Jesse died –”

“System Meltdown!” I shouted in Robot-Voice. “System Meltdown! System Meltdown!” People on the sidewalk were turning to stare.

“It’s okay, Henry. Calm down –”

“System Meltdown!” I kept shouting as I spun in circles, flailing my arms.

“Why don’t we go back to the office –”

“System Meltdown!” I shouted again, then I ran away from Cecil as fast as my pygmy legs and my wobblies would carry me, which wasn’t very fast. But Cecil didn’t take up the chase. I guess he figured it wouldn’t look good – an old guy in a ponytail trying to tackle a kid.

When I got home, Dad still wasn’t there, so I went into
his room and pulled the shoebox out from under his bed.

“Shithead,” I whispered. “Thanks for ruining my life.”

Then I changed into my pajamas and ate four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a row.

INTRIGUING FACT:
Weekends didn’t exist till the 1940s. Henry Ford was one of the first bosses to give his workers two days off in a row, in 1926; he figured people buying his Model T’s needed leisure time to drive them.

Before IT happened, I loved weekends. My family was good at them. In nice weather, we’d pack up the car and go camping or fishing. In bad weather, we’d bake bread and cookies and play board games and, of course, watch “Saturday Night Smash-Up.”

These days, weekends are torture. Today, for example, Dad spent a lot of time in bed with a “cold.” I’m pretty sure this was code for “hangover.” Usually he just drinks beer, but on Friday night he brought home a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and I noticed this morning that it was half-full.

Since he wasn’t feeling well, I did some chores around the apartment. I even put on rubber gloves and plugged my nose and scrubbed out the toilet, for the first time since we
moved in. Gross. Then I lugged a garbage bag full of dirty clothes to the laundry room in the basement. All the way down in the painfully slow elevator, I fantasized about seeing the GWF Smash-Up Live! in Seattle. But we could never afford it. I know I have to let it go.

When I got to the laundry room, all of the washing machines were full. One of them had finished its cycle, so I pulled the clothes out and placed them on the counter. Believe me, I had no desire to touch someone else’s clothes – especially not someone else’s
frilly undergarments
. But when something fell on the floor, I had no choice but to pick it up. It happened to be a very red BRA with big huge CUPS, and just as I was placing it on the counter, I heard, “Are you fondling my brassiere?”

Karen. She was standing in the doorway to the laundry room, arms crossed, smirking.

In an instant, my face felt like it was on fire, and I knew that even my freckles were blushing. “I was just emptying the machine so I could use it,” I said, hating her.

“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” she said as she started to toss her stuff into a dryer. “No one likes a stranger pawing through their clothes.”

“I wasn’t pawing!”

“Could’ve fooled me,” she said, smirking again.

Then, to make a crap day crappier, Mr. Atapattu
entered the laundry room. “Henry, greetings! How are you?”

“Fine,” I muttered as Mr. Atapattu opened a dryer and started removing his clothes.

“He was pawing through my underwear,” Karen said, and it dawned on me that she was enjoying herself.

“I was not!! I was just emptying the machine!”

Mr. Atapattu tilted his head toward Karen. “Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met. Suresh Atapattu, 213.”

“Karen Vargas. 311.”

They shook hands.

“I was just telling Harry here –” Karen began.

“Henry!” I said, louder than I meant to. I was dying to get out of there. I’d shoved our clothes into the machine and added detergent, and I fumbled for a loonie in my pocket.

“Excuse me, I was just telling
Henry
that he shouldn’t remove someone else’s clothes from one of the machines.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Atapattu. “It can be very annoying when people don’t empty the machines promptly.”

“True, but still, touching their clothes – it’s an invasion of privacy.”

“But that is the price you pay for living in a building with shared laundry facilities,” Mr. Atapattu replied. “A little less privacy.”

Karen crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “So you’re saying just because some of us can’t afford to live in a building with an ensuite laundry, we should have less privacy?”

“You misinterpret my words. I simply mean that, when a large number of people have to use common facilities, rules must be bent to accommodate everyone, isn’t that right, Henry?”

But I’d managed to get the machine started, and I was already halfway out the door. I could hear them arguing as I stood waiting for the elevator.

“If you don’t want anyone else to touch your things, you should be here when your laundry is done.”

“I was ten minutes late! So sue me!”

I couldn’t take it any longer, so I walked up the stairs instead.

Later, when it was time to flip our clothes into a dryer, I approached the laundry room like a sniper in Call of Duty 4. I poked my head in to make sure the coast was clear. It wasn’t. Karen was there, and she was posting a big handwritten sign over the washing machines that said
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE OTHER TENANTS’ CLOTHING
. Then she picked up her hamper, which was full of dry clothes.

I panicked. No way did I want to have to talk to her again about her
undergarments
, or anything else for that
matter, so I hurried back down the corridor. But instead of going
right
toward the stairs, I went
left
toward the elevator, and it wasn’t till I was passing the storage lockers that I realized my mistake. The elevator would take forever to show up. Not only would Karen catch up to me, but we’d have to ride up in that cramped space
together
. With her brassieres!

Then I remembered that the key to our storage locker was on my key ring. I quickly opened our unit and slipped inside. The lockers are basically just floor-to-ceiling metal cages, meaning anyone can see in, but I hid behind some boxes, and luckily Karen didn’t notice me as she passed.

I meant to leave as soon as she was gone. But then I started reading the labels on the boxes:
KITCHEN, EXTRA LINENS, PHOTO ALBUMS
.

JESSE & HENRY
.

I only meant to take a little peek. But before I knew it, I was going through every single item: our old ratty blankets (his was called Softie, mine was called Blankie); all of our report cards; the knitted blueberry hat Jesse wore as a baby, which was then handed down to me; some of our artwork, including a fire truck that Jesse had painted when he was six. He’d signed it
STEVE
. Suddenly I was laughing because I remembered that, for a month in first grade, he had
insisted on being called Steve. We never knew why, but it became a favorite family story.

Even our Lego drivers’ licenses were in there. I’d been seven and Jesse had been nine when we went on that trip – the trip of a lifetime, as far as we were concerned. Mom and Dad had scrimped and saved to take us to California for a week. We’d gone to the San Diego Zoo and to SeaWorld and, of course, to Legoland, where we drove Lego cars and got Lego drivers’ licenses.

Two envelopes were in the box, one marked
HENRY
, one marked
JESSE
. Each of them held a lock of our hair from our first haircuts – Jesse’s dark brown, mine bright red. Holding Jesse’s hair sent a chill up my spine because, aside from what’s in the shoebox, I was holding all that’s left of him.

And then, stupidly, I brought Softie up to my face and breathed deep, and it was the worst thing I could have done because I could
smell
Jesse, I swear I could, and suddenly I was sobbing like crazy. I heard the elevator doors open, and I stuffed Softie into my mouth. My body kept shuddering, but no sounds came out. Mr. Atapattu walked by, but he didn’t see me. Finally, after he’d gone back upstairs, and after I was sure the coast was clear, I forced myself to shove everything back into the box. I left the storage locker and headed to the laundry room to get our clothes from the dryer.