Chapter 14

I admit that by the time lunch period came around, I did want to eat, although I didn't do much in Mr. Guttag's office to build up an appetite. Mostly I just watched Mr. Guttag's secretary type and answer the telephone and saw who went into Mr. Guttag's office, and what they looked like when he let them out. (Pale, mostly.)

About eleven o'clock another kid got suspended for calling his math teacher a weirdo, and he and I played Tic-Tac-Toe for a while and it wasn't that bad. In fact, the kid said tomorrow he was going to call his home-room teacher a weirdo to make sure he'd get another day off. I told him I might cut again so we could continue our game, but I really didn't mean it. No kidding, I never wanted to be suspended again.

We were sent out to lunch at about twelve o'clock, and by that time my mouth was watering for the Friday special, cheese pizza. I got on the cafeteria line and was waiting my turn when I spotted Beef Adams having lunch at a table with a bunch of his East End buddies.

It was like somebody stuck an ice cube down the back of my T-shirt. Just seeing him sitting there laughing with his friends, probably telling them what a fast one he'd pulled on the big chumpo in his English class, gave me a chill. Seeing him eating his pizzas (no kidding, he had one in front of him on a plate and one in his hand) was ruining my appetite, especially when I figured I'd paid for one of them. I left the line and made a beeline over to his table.

"Okay, Beef," I said, trying to sound like I was tougher and meaner than Mr. Guttag and might even be carrying a knife or a hand grenade in my pocket. "Give me back my dollar."

Beef looked around at his friends and winked at one of them before he answered me. That made me even madder. "What dollar?" said Beef. One of his finks laughed.

"The dollar I gave you yesterday, for fixing the cut slip you didn't fix, Adams."

"I spent it. I bet it on the Yankees. Sorry, they lost." All his friends went ha ha ha like they never heard anything so funny.

"Give me back the dollar, Adams."

"I told you, the Yankees lost. Bug off if you don't want to be a loser too." Ha ha ha

"I want my dollar and I want it now."

"Hey, didn't you hear me?" Beef said. "Didn't you understand what I told you?" he said, and then he said something that made the red flag go up. "What are you, retarded or something? Does it run in your family?"

It was like he stuck my finger into an electric wall socket. I went berserk. I picked the extra pizza off his plate, lifted it into the air, and mashed it right into his face. It caught the right side of his head, and no kidding, it actually made me feel good to see the tomato sauce and cheese running out his ear.

Of course, he went wild. He threw the other pizza right back at me and caught my left shoulder and neck. Then he picked up his milk container and hurled it too, but I ducked and it hit a pole and sprayed a girl wearing glasses who was sitting next to it. She just sat there with milk covering both her lenses and running down her nose, looking ghostly and not knowing what hit her.

The entire cafeteria went wild.

The screaming was like in a football stadium. Beef's friends were pounding the table yelling "GO! GO! GO!" like he was going to make a touchdown. Other kids were stomping their feet and leaping on the tables; an applauding, whistling crowd was gathering.

It didn't last long. Within a minute, I saw Mr. Peck, the assistant principal, zigzagging toward us, his face looking like a death mask in the art museum. It was all over before you could say Juvenile Detention Center. "Let's go, fellas, the party's over," he said, and I didn't have to ask where we were going. I just wished that a hand would reach down from the sky–maybe Grandpa's, but I didn't really care whose–and grab me up out of the cafeteria, out of this school, and dump me somewhere else, preferably as far away from Mr. Guttag as possible, like Venus or Saturn.

None of that happened. Mr. Peck knew the way to Mr. Guttag's office so well that we arrived there before I could finish even half of the Lord's Prayer. I was at "give us this day our daily bread" when Mr. Peck pushed us in our same old seats and told us not to move an inch. The secretary stopped typing and looked up over her glasses at us.

Before I could even get to "lead us not into temptation," Mr. Guttag's face, carried on his familiar body, made its way right toward us. I actually wished Gerri were here right now, to go over and throw her arms around him, change his expression from murderous to at least not-so-murderous, maybe soften his eyes from tombstone grey to just plain grey.

No luck. We were led to his office one by one, Beef first, then me, and I think stake-burning would have been easier. The inquisition lasted forever. What was wrong with me, he wanted to know. Did I realize I was in danger of being expelled? "Expelled" was a word I put in the same category as "electric chair." Things like that didn't happen to people in my family, or hadn't, until now.

At the very minute that thought fluttered through my head like a dark and terrible bat, Mr. Guttag leaned back in his chair, stretched his lips above his teeth to make sure I could see he had none missing, and asked me what I thought my parents would say when they found out that I had caused a near-riot in the cafeteria. Would they be proud of a son who had assaulted another boy with a pizza without any provocation?

Since I didn't want to tell him about the provocation, I couldn't think of an answer for that question. What was more, I knew if I'd had another pizza and some more time, I'd have thrown one at Joe/Jason too, for blabbing it all over school about Gerri. At the same time, I didn't even want to think about what would happen when my mother and father found out. I even–believe it or not–thought it might be a relief to find a wall to bang my own head against to get some of the terrible it's-going-to-burst feeling out of it.

"What will they say when I tell them you've been sent to my office three times in the last three days? That you behaved in a violent and dangerous way?"

"I don't think they'll like it." Here was the understatement of all understatements. I managed to say it, but not very loud.

"Well, let's find out," said Mr. Guttag.

To my absolute horror, it turned out that Mr. Guttag was going to call my mother this very minute, while I was still sitting here, waiting for the hand from the sky to rescue me, and dying of fright a mile a minute.

Instead of a hand from the sky, Mr. Guttag's secretary appeared with a card with who-knows-what written on it. Mr. Guttag studied the card a few seconds and then he looked up at me. "Your father's name is Theodore?"

"Yes," I said. Nobody ever calls my father anything but Ted, although his mail is addressed to Theodore. Maybe Mr. Guttag just intended to send a letter to my father instead of calling?

No. His hand was reaching for the telephone; I guess our telephone number was written on the card too.

Had they called Beef's house too? Beef had left Mr. Guttag's office looking smug, giving me a big wink on his way past my chair as if he'd just gotten away with everything, had pinned it all on me, and was now getting the afternoon off to celebrate.

While Mr. Guttag waited for my mother to answer the telephone, he looked at me with his I'll-get-you eyes and drummed on his desk blotter with his fingers.

"Hello," he finally said, and my stomach did a complete somersault–I moved to the edge of the chair in case I had to run out of his office to the boys' room to throw up.

"Mrs. Oxley?" he said, and there was a pause. "I see. When will she be in?"

He'd gotten Mrs. Shrub! I'd forgotten that Mrs. Shrub had promised to stay with Gerri so my mother could go to the beauty parlor to have her hair cut, although today, Friday, was not Mrs. Shrub's regular day.

"Will you have her call Mr. Guttag at Franklin Pierce Junior High School the minute she comes in, please? And please tell her I'm delaying Neil at school until I hear from her."

"Delaying Neil" meant I was a prisoner in this office, until who knows when my mother would get home.

"I hope your mother calls early. I have an appointment in the city and have to leave school at five," Mr. Guttag said, looking at his watch.

Five! The tryouts were at three! I moved back in my chair, looked up at the clock over Mr. Guttag's office door, and began to wait. It was 2:05. I crossed my fingers; how long could a haircut take?

What I never expected and what really surprised me was that my mother never called at all and that I not only lost my chance to try out for the Follies, but I lost something much more important as well.