CHAPTER 11
When I got home, I raced into our apartment and dashed for my dad’s laptop without even taking my jacket off. I didn’t think that you could successfully clone yourself, but you never know what those scientists are coming up with. I figured it was worth a quick check on the computer. Unfortunately, my dad had already parked himself at the laptop that we keep on the dining room table, and he was hogging the screen as usual.
“Excuse me, Dad, but would it be okay if I look something up?” I asked as politely as I could.
“Sure, Hank, right after I fill in this eight-letter word for knee scab.”
My dad has always been a crossword puzzle maniac, but lately he’s gotten obsessed with online crossword puzzles. He competes nonstop with other crossword puzzle maniacs around the world, like in Africa and the South Pole and stuff.
“How was karate?” he asked, without looking up from the screen.
“It’s Tae Kwon Do,” I answered. “And it was fine.”
“You learn any fancy moves?”
“Not yet. Principal Love is the sensei, and he’s still giving us the history of martial arts. Next week we start the real stuff.”
You probably noticed that I didn’t mention to my dad that I was thinking of doing the Reading Gym instead of Tae Kwon Do. It’s not that I was trying to lie to him. Not exactly, anyway. I just figure there are some things he doesn’t need to know. Like anything that has to do with my performance in school. If I had told him that I was taking the Reading Gym because Mr. Rock recommended that I get special help, he would’ve gotten all upset and wanted to go talk to Mr. Rock about what’s wrong with me. And then he’d start checking my progress every five minutes and supervising my extra work and telling me a million times a night how he thinks I should be working harder. I know because I’ve been through this with him before. I also know that the fastest way to get him to change any subject is to talk about crossword puzzles.
Which I immediately did.
“Does ‘scrape’ work?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at the screen as if all those little boxes and letters and numbers made any sense to me at all.
“Think about it, Hank. Scrape is only six letters.”
Hey, I thought it was great that I came up with a word at all. When you spell like I do, you can’t be too picky about the number of letters involved.
“Um . . . what about ‘icky skin’?” I suggested.
“That’s two words, Hank. Not one.”
“Besides,” an annoying voice said from behind me, “skin is technically not a scab. Everyone knows a scab is composed of dried blood and the remains of dead skin cells.”
This cheerful piece of news could only have been delivered by one person in my family, my know-it-all sister, Emily.
“Actually, while we’re talking scabs, we can’t leave out the black scab, which is a potato disease that causes mildew-type growth to spring up on the skin of the common potato.”
I didn’t even have to look around to see who was talking now. There is only one person on the planet both boring and disgusting enough to be fascinated with potato-skin scabs, and that would be my sister’s bony little boyfriend, Robert Upchurch.
“Robert, you are so interesting,” Emily said to him. “Imagine, I didn’t know a thing about black scabs.”
“Let’s go look them up in the encyclopedia,” Robert said. “Maybe there’ll be an illustration of one we can trace and color in.”
I am not kidding you. This conversation actually took place in my own apartment and was heard by my very own ears. Sometimes I wonder how Emily and I are related. One of us is a mutant throwback, I’m just not sure which one.
As Emily and Robert got up from their Scrabble game and hopped off into nerd land to read all about potato disease, Emily suddenly stopped and turned to me.
“Oh, I forgot,” she said. “There was a phone call for you. A girl.”
I tried not to look too interested, but I noticed that my heart sped up a little.
“Did she leave a name?” I asked, twirling the belt on my gi with what I hoped looked like a who-cares kind of attitude.
“Yes,” Emily said.
Then she waited. That puny pigtailed punk was going to make me ask. Can you believe it?
“Would you care to share that piece of information with me, Emily?”
“Let’s see,” she said, with a wicked little grin. “I’m not sure I remember.”
That did it. I lunged for her, but she’s quick and dodged out of the way before I could reach her.
“Save me, Robert,” she laughed. “Hank’s attacking me!”
Yeah, like Robert could ever save her. The guy is as skinny as a flagpole and the only muscle he has in his whole body is in his tongue. And he got that one from talking so much about such attractive topics as black scabs and dust mites.
“Stop teasing your brother, Emily,” my dad said. “The proper way to deliver a message includes date of call, time of call, name of caller, and any and all message to be communicated.”
“Okay,” Emily said, stifling a giggle. “February ninth, four forty-four P.M. Zoe McKelty called. She said to tell you she loves you.”
My dad stopped typing. The living room grew very quiet.
I couldn’t see my ears, but I’m pretty sure they turned bright red, along with everything else on my face.
“She didn’t say that!” I said. “Did she?”
Emily burst out laughing, and Robert did, too. When Robert laughs, it sounds like a hippo snorting up river water.
Now that my dad knew it was a joke, he started typing again.
“Emily!” he said, not looking up from his screen. (He must have had a brainstorm on the knee scab front.) “Deliver the proper message.”
“Okay, okay,” she answered. “Zoe McKelty called and said to tell you that you forgot your notebook. And your pen. And your root-beer flavored gummy worms.”
That is so typical of me. Why can’t I remember anything? Here I am trying to impress this girl with how cool I am, and what do I do? Leave my gummy worms behind.
Hank Zipzer, how uncool can you be?
“Is this young lady in your karate class?” my dad asked.
“Tae Kwon Do, Dad. And yes, she is.”
My voice cracked a little on that last part because if I told him she was in Reading Gym then I’d have to bring up the whole subject and that wasn’t going to happen. Again, I knew I had to change the subject as quickly as possible.
“Did she leave her number?” I asked Emily.
“Maybe,” Emily answered. Then she whispered so my dad couldn’t hear. “What’s it worth to you?”
“My dessert every night for a week,” I whispered back.
“Wow,” said Emily. “Someone’s really in love.”
What was it with this love thing? I mean, a guy can make a friend, can’t he?
I took Zoe’s number that Emily had written down on a Post-it note, grabbed the phone, and headed into my room. Without thinking, I dialed the number. I should’ve thought about what I was going to say before I dialed, but I didn’t, so when Zoe answered, I just kind of sat there on my bed, holding the phone.
“Hello,” she said. “Is anyone there?”
“It’s me,” I finally stammered.
“Hi, me,” she said with a laugh. “Me who?”
“Me, Hank Zipzer.”
“Oh . . . you mean Hank Improvement Zipzer.”
“Huh?”
“You said Improvement was your middle name. Remember?”
I laughed. The problem was, after I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. That happens sometimes when I get nervous. I either laugh too much or talk too much or eat too much or bite my nails too much.
Finally, I bit my lip really hard until it hurt, to make myself stop laughing.
“You forgot all your stuff in Reading Gym,” Zoe said.
“Oh,” was all I could think to say.
“Mr. Rock was already gone, so I took it with me.”
“Oh,” I said again. My mouth couldn’t seem to produce another sound.
“My uncle’s picking me up from school tomorrow and taking me to his bowling alley,” she went on. “I hang out there sometimes when my mom’s at work.”
“Oh.”
That makes three oh’s in a row. Come on, Hankster. Three strikes and you’re out. You know that! Say something. Anything!
“So maybe you could meet me there tomorrow and pick up your stuff,” Zoe said. “It’s called McKelty’s Roll ’N’ Bowl, and it’s just around the corner from your school.”
I go to McKelty’s all the time with Papa Pete, who is a champion bowler and the leader of his league team, the Chopped Livers. The bowling alley is owned by Nick McKelty’s dad, who is actually a very nice man in spite of the fact that he is the father of the world’s biggest blowbag.
“Hank?” she said. “Hello? Are you there?”
Whoops, I had forgotten to answer. I was so busy thinking about the Chopped Livers and Nick McKelty’s dad and my three oh’s in a row that my brain had gone into orbit and left my mouth here on planet Earth with nothing to say.
Yo, brain! Hank here. Over here on the bed. Yeah, that’s me, the doofus holding this phone. If it’s not too much trouble, can you come back to Earth sometime? Like NOW!!!!
“Hank?” Zoe said.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I answered when the old brainster finally kicked into gear. “And I’ll be there.”
“Where?”
“McKelty’s. Tomorrow. After school.”
“Great. See you then. Bye, Hank.”
The phone clicked. I just sat there on my bed, holding the phone and listening to the dial tone. What a great girl that Zoe was.
Man, oh, man, she even had a great dial tone.