You Will Call Me Drog (3 page)

Dumb question. Nothing like this would ever happen to him, and not just because he wouldn’t go poking around in the junkyard in the first place. Dad’s an engineer. Everything in his world has to follow what he calls the rules of logic. It just does. He wouldn’t have
let
anything this weird happen to him. So it must be my fault. But how?

Take it easy
, I told myself. Just get through till tomorrow, and then figure something out.

I have my own sort of a bedtime story. I close my eyes and picture my hands moving blocks of wood around, not just rectangles and triangles, but bananas and curvy worms and zigzag shapes—whatever I think of. The more I fool with them, the more they go together to make fantastic patterns or objects, and then my hands get all warm and happy and I fall asleep. Works every time.

But that night I kept waking up and remembering all over again—
a puppet’s got my hand
.

I hid Drog in my pocket through breakfast, then struggled into my jacket and ran out to the corner to meet Wren, but she must have gone some other way to school.

I found her on the playground, though. She frowned when she saw me, but then she came over. “Hey Parker, you okay?” she said. “You look awful.”

I pulled Drog a little way out of my pocket, then stuffed him back in. “Didn’t sleep too much,” I said.

“Oh. The puppet,” she said. Her voice sounded flat. “How come you brought it to school?”

“Wren, I can’t get him off. I told you.”

Her eyes hunted mine. “I hope you’re not going to try to tell everybody it talks,” she said.

“No way! I’m going to keep him in my pocket the whole day so he won’t talk at all. Do you think you could ... ?”

Wren glanced around us and lowered her voice. “Please tell me what’s going on, Parker. I’m getting kind of scared about you.”

Scared? Scared was worse than mad. “I
am
telling you. Are you deaf or something?” Right away part of me wished I hadn’t said that, but part of me was glad.

She stepped back, shocked.

“Oh come on, Wren, I didn’t—”

“I guess maybe you’re right. Maybe I am deaf. Because I don’t hear any puppets talking.”

We climbed the stairs to Mrs. Belcher’s room. Together, but not together.

“Sorry,” I said, “I shouldn’t have said that about being deaf. I really need you to help me. Just... don’t tell anybody about Drog, okay?”

“Who, me?”

“Hey, Parker,” Gordy called out when I walked in, “I signed us out a basketball for recess so we can play horse.”

“Um. Not today.”

“How come? You sick or something?”

“Something.”

He looked at me funny, then went to ask somebody else.

School turned out to be pretty hard one-handed. Without my left hand to hold the paper still, my handwriting got scribblier than ever. It was even harder to open a book and turn the pages.

After lunch Wren passed me a note:

Unfair! I was about to write back and say,
If you’re such a good friend, why don’t you believe me?
But I didn’t get the chance. Because while I was reading Wren’s note, I forgot to keep Drog in my pocket.

Mrs. Belcher noticed. “Parker, what’s that you have on your hand?”

It sounded too dumb to say “a puppet,” so I just held Drog up.

Twenty-six faces swung around to look.

“Good afternoon, kiddies,” Drog said.

I knew right then my life was over.

The kids grinned, all except Wren. Gordy, my recess buddy, called across the room, “Awright,
Parker
!” So everybody thought it was me talking.

“Put that away until after school, please,” Mrs. Belcher said.

I shoved Drog back in my pocket.

“No, Parker, I mean away. Put it in your desk.”

I stuck my whole Drog hand into my desk.

The kids turned clear around in their seats to watch the show.

“Parker, whatever you have there, come up and give it to me. Now.”

I walked up to Mrs. Belcher’s desk feeling sweaty stare-holes all over my back and said, practically in a whisper, “I can’t.”

“Excuse me?”

I went through the motions of trying to pull Drog off, then shrugged.

“Nice fit, don’t you think?” Drog said.

I spun around toward Wren. “Did you hear that?”

She sighed. “That was you.”

“Parker, I’m losing my patience.” That was Mrs. Belcher–code for cease and desist.

“I’m sorry. I mean, it’s not me, it’s him, he keeps—”

“I think I’m going to let you explain it to Mr. Fairweather,” she said.

Wren shook her head as I walked out.

The counselor’s office smelled like old cardboard boxes. Mr. Fairweather studied Mrs. Belcher’s note.

“Parker Lockwood, hmm? When’s the last time you were in to see me, Parker?

“I’ve never been to see you, Mr. Fairweather.”

The most trouble I’d ever been in at school was in fifth grade, when some kids asked me to draw cool fake tattoos on them and I used permanent markers. The teacher handled that himself though and didn’t turn me in.

Mr. Fairweather leaned back in his chair. “Well now, how does it happen that you keep your nose clean for six years, and today you get sent to me? A sudden interest in spitballs?”

“No.”

“Fighting?”

“No.”

“Talking back?”

“No.”

“Hormones?”

“Hormones?”

“Never mind. Just tell me what happened.”

I showed him Drog, and he sat straight up and wrote things down. I hated to tell him Drog talked, but how else was I going to explain?

“Anything special bothering you at the moment?” he asked me.

Besides not being able to get a nasty puppet off my hand? I shook my head.

“Hmmmm,” Mr. Fairweather said, and leaned back in his chair again. “I think it would be a good idea for you to leave that puppet at home tomorrow.”

I already had that figured out, but if I said I would and then I couldn’t do it, I’d just get in more trouble.

Mr. Fairweather scribbled something on a notepad, tore off the sheet, folded it, and stapled it—
Whomp! Whomp!
—with the heel of his hand.

“Give this to Mrs. Belcher, please,” he said.

I took my time walking back to the room, peeking into the note sideways, but I could only make out a few words like “tomorrow” and “not too” and “first.” I stopped for a minute at the glass case in the hallway by the library where our class had a display of ancient Egyptian gods we shaped out of clay and painted.

Most kids’ gods stood sideways and had animal heads and looked kind of stuck-up. But mine, Bes, was a fat, bow-legged, pop-eyed dwarf who stared right at you. I’d painted him yellow and orange, and he turned out great.

Bes. Snake-eater and protector of children. A good-luck god who scared away monsters. Hmmmm. It was worth a try. I held Drog up to the glass.

Nothing. So much for help from the gods.

I scuffed home alone through the sidewalk leaves, Drog in my pocket, trying to figure out what was happening to me.
Use your head, Parker. Either the impossible is true—the only puppet that ever talked on its own has just attached itself to your hand and won’t let go—or else... what?

A nightmare? It would have to be the longest bad dream a kid ever had. Was somebody playing a mean trick on me by remote control or something? If so, how? And why? As far as I knew, I didn’t have any enemies.

What if I was out of my mind? Could it happen just like that? I was pretty sure I was normal up to the minute I put Drog on, but maybe if you’re really insane you don’t even know it. They say you’re crazy if you start hearing voices that aren’t there. Drog’s voice
was
there, though, because other people could hear it too. They just thought it was me talking. So was everybody else crazy?

Whoever Drog was, he did talk, and the only one who knew that was me, his prisoner. I needed to get free from him and
then
figure him out. Or not. Just get him off, that was the main thing.

“Do you ever wash your pants, Boy? There are some nasty bits in your pocket I don’t appreciate having my nose shoved into.”

I frowned into the bathroom mirror.

“My name isn’t Boy, it’s Parker,” I said.

“Whatever.”

I rubbed my forehead to erase the frown marks, but I could still see them. Before Drog, the only thing different about me was my hair. It’s plain brown, like a lot of people’s, but it’s real curly and, well, it’s big. Drives my dad crazy, but Mom just says, “How come boys always get the curls?” Kids at school tease me and call me The Mop, but I think they kind of like it. Anyway, having big hair was nothing compared to going around with a puppet stuck on your hand.

Getting undressed was hard. I pretended my arm was broken. Even people with one arm in a cast have to get dressed and undressed, don’t they? It took a long time.

Usually I take showers, and never in the daytime, but I climbed into our bathtub, one of those old ones with feet like animal claws. Maybe if I couldn’t pull Drog off, I could take a bath and soak him off. I turned on the faucets.

But Drog said, “Drog doesn’t bathe. You will keep me out of the water.”

I held him out of the tub like he said to, but it made me mad. My last idea. If I couldn’t soak him off, I was going to have to tell Mom—“Hey, Mom, I’ve got this talking puppet glued to my hand”—and get her all upset. Nobody had ever actually said so, but it was my job not to give her any worries.

I couldn’t keep hiding Drog in my pocket. But if I did stick him under the water, he’d yell at me.

So what? Why should I take orders from him?

I hate this
, I thought. I reached over and tried again to rip him off in one motion. As usual, he was too fast for me. He squeezed, hard.

“If you’re so keen on taking something off, you might start with that ridiculous wig.”

“It’s not a wig. That’s my hair.”

“More’s the pity.”

I slumped down in the water, my Drog hand still up. “How do you do it, Drog?” I said. “How do you keep me from pulling you off?”

“Ha! Sheer willpower, Boy. Lots of it. You think I don’t know what you would do with me if you could get me off your hand?”

“But
somebody
took you off. Or else how’d you end up in the—”

“Somebody is not you. We will not discuss it.”

His green face hung over the edge of the bathtub, grinning that mocking grin. I pictured him not just floating off my hand in the water, but getting sucked down the drain headfirst. He was too big, but maybe that meant he’d get stuck. Even better!

I plunged him under, then flipped him so I couldn’t see his face. I counted to three. To ten. Thirty. Was he letting go? Sixty.

A stony feeling crept up my chest as I realized what I was saying in my head.
Drown
.
Drown
. I didn’t just want him to soak off. I wanted him to die.

Eighty. One hundred. I quit counting. If only I could lie in the warm bath forever and not think about what I had just done.

Finally, though, the water felt cold even when I scrunched down. I turned Drog back over.

“Well, now we know where we stand, don’t we?” he snarled. “You had better get me dry, and quickly, or I will keep you up all night coughing.”

I sighed and hauled myself out of the tub, pulled the plug chain, and toweled myself off as well as I could with a wet puppet on one hand. Then I set Mom’s hair dryer on warm and aimed it at Drog. I wished I had a third hand so I could hold my nose, because Drog, wet, smelled like some old brown medicine you wouldn’t want to take.

“Ah, that’s more like it,” he shouted over the dryer’s whine. “This feels like the breeze off the desert in Kartoon the time the emir and I journeyed to the oasis there. Imagine a dozen chieftains with their retainers arriving on camels, and the desert abloom with colorful tents! We dined on figs and grape leaves, and of course there were the most beautiful dancing girls ... .”

Did he say retainers? Would chieftains on camels wear braces on their teeth?

“Parker?” Mom called up the stairs. “Who’s that you’re talking to up there?”

“Uh, nobody, Mom, just talking—”

“Nobody? Drog is nobody? Where are your manners, Boy?” Drog said. “It’s time you introduced me to the lady of the house!”

Did I have any choice?

It was hard to pull my clothes back on one-handed with my skin all spongy from the bath and me shaking inside and outside.

I crept downstairs with Drog, still slightly damp, in my pocket.

Mom had her back turned, stirring something on the stove, so I slid into my chair.

We live in a big old house that Dad still calls The Barn. Ever since he moved to Moline, Mom and I have been eating in the kitchen instead of the dining room. It’s kind of cozy and kind of lonely. I still miss Dad, even though he would make me sit up straight and eat my french fries with a fork.

Funny, he always wanted to live in a house where everything was tidy and put away, a house with a few nice things sitting out on tables, like something out of a magazine. Now he does. Our house is more like something out of a book. Mom orders handmade stuff from around the world out of catalogs—baskets and bowls and carvings—and they’re all over the place. My favorite is a carved wooden box from Peru that hangs on the wall in the kitchen. It has two doors that open out, and inside there’s a workshop full of carved carvers carving more little workshops to hang on the wall, with carvers inside each of them, carving even tinier workshops. One time I tried looking at it through a magnifying glass, but I still couldn’t see any end to the carving, and for some reason that made me happy.

Supper was spaghetti. Definitely a two-hander. I tried to scoot a bunch on my fork one-handed and look normal doing it.

Mom stopped eating to watch.

“So, Parker,” she said, “you’ve been going around with one hand in your pocket since yesterday. Would that have anything to do with a message I got today from Mr. Fair-weather? Some problem with a hand puppet?”

I worked Drog out of my pocket and held him up.

Mom flinched. “Kind of homely-looking isn’t it?”

“Careful what you say, Mom.”

“Is this the one you and Wren were arguing about?”

“Uh-huh. We found him in a trash can at the junk yard.” The minute I said “trash can” I felt Drog squeeze.

“Hmmm,” Mom said. “And you have a name for him?”

“He told me to call him Drog.”

“He told you. Really.”

“It’s true, Mom! I put him on and he just started talking. I don’t know how.”

“Well, let’s discuss that after supper. Put him away for now so you won’t get spaghetti on him.”

I forced myself to smile. “Maybe he likes spaghetti.”

“Don’t be silly. Take it off until after supper.”

“I can’t, Mom.”

“You’re not at school now, Parker. Take it off, please.”

“I can’t. I CAN’T!” I yelled.

Mom pushed back her chair and stared hard at me. “What’s this
really
all about?”

“I told you. He won’t
let
me take him off. And he talks whenever he feels like it. I can’t stop that either. Mom, do I lie to you?”

She shook her head. “No. You don’t always tell me everything, but no, you don’t lie. That’s what—”

“Then believe me.”

She wiped her hands with her napkin. “I want to, Parker. I’m just ... I’m trying to make sense of what you’re saying. You don’t make it talk?”

“No. I don’t even know half of what he’s talking about. And he’s bossy. And rude.”

Drog squeezed hard.

Mom started massaging the back of her neck. “Does it—
he
talk to anyone else? Wren?”

“No, because she called him a doll. And now she’s barely talking to
me
. She thinks I’m making it up.”

“And you can’t take him off ... because he won’t let you? May I try?”

I held out my Drog hand, and she tugged on his bald green head.

“If at first you don’t succeed, perhaps skydiving is not for you!” Drog said.

Mom frowned. She thought it was me saying that.

“Relax your hand, now.”

“I am, Mom. See what I mean?”

Mom let go. “Oh, Parker. Why didn’t you tell me about this right away?”

Good question. Why didn’t I? “I guess ... I wanted to take care of it.”

“Well, that doesn’t—that would be good. Do you have some ideas?”

“Not right now.”

“I know,” she said, pushing away from the table. “Let’s just cut him off with scissors.”

“Mom ... we can’t cut. ... something that talks.”

She rubbed the sides of her forehead in little circles. “Are you sure you want me to leave this up to you?”

I wasn’t. I nodded.

“But what about school, Darling? Mr. Fairweather says you’ll get detention if you still have it on tomorrow.”

“I’ll be okay, Mom,” I said.

My spaghetti was getting cold and sticky. Mom cut it in pieces for me the way she used to when I was little.

“Looks like worms,” Drog muttered.

How come I never noticed before?