So the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, Darius wrote me a note to get me out of school.
Dear Whoever,
Taco has to go to court today. He’s gotta leave after first hour. Maybe he’ll be back later in the day, but maybe not. Please excuse his unexcused absence.
Darius Keller
A heaviness had settled in my heart. Maggie hadn’t shown up on Monday or Tuesday. Did she stop loving me? Did she have an abortion? She hadn’t called me or anything, so what was I to think?
But as I walked past the trophy cases on my way to meet Mr. Nussbaum out front of the school, there she was. Danielle Corrigan was dragging Maggie by the hand toward the office.
I stopped cold in my tracks, dingus. I couldn’t move. My heart pounded in my throat.
Maggie saw me and stopped. “Taco!” she shouted.
“Maggie!” I cried.
Danielle gave her a big yank. “God. First person we see. Don’t you look at him. Don’t you speak to him. Let’s go. Now.”
Maggie stumbled forward and turned to wave at me as they rounded the corner, but she didn’t say another word. I could tell she wanted to though. The time apart hadn’t destroyed our love. No way! And holy nuts, pal, she looked thick and puffy in her face. Something—maybe the ghost of my mom—whispered in my ear, The baby is still inside her. And so I walked out the front door with huge pep in my step, a wind beneath my wings, and outside I found Randy Nussbaum waiting for me in his super fly Cadillac.
“Hey, hey!” he called from the open window. “It’s the Taco!”
Lancaster is only like fifteen minutes away from Bluffton. You get to roll through these crazy deep valleys and up along these sweet ridges that let you see for miles and miles. All the corn was in, but a few black-and-white Holstein milk cows were out munching the frozen ground, so you could tell you were still in farm country.
I popped on Dad’s old clip-on tie he used to wear to weddings and other festive/formal occasions.
“Looking good,” Mr. Nussbaum said.
“I want to make a good impression,” I said.
“I already chatted up Janice. She likes our plan. She’s going to drop the charges at the arraignment.”
“No fine?” I asked.
“You’re lucky people like you so much. It’s like every day is Taco Tuesday,” Mr. Nussbaum said and smiled.
“It’s Wednesday,” I corrected him.
“True enough, Taco.” Mr. Nussbaum smiled even bigger and nodded.
Dingus, you don’t even know. At the courthouse people treated me so well. Everyone smiled like Nussbaum, and Janice, who is the prosecutor, shook my hand when she saw me.
There was also this other kid there about my age from Potosi. Instead of a sweet clip-on tie, he was wearing this giant Tweety Bird T-shirt about three sizes too big with the words I tawt I taw a puddy! on it, and his pants were all sagged, so his jean crotch was about at his knees. He had his turn with the judge right before me. Turns out he’d been charged with criminal trespassing for breaking into an old railroad car. He pled guilty, and the judge told him he was acting disrespectful, even though I didn’t hear him say a word. Then he got a thousand-dollar fine and fifteen days at the county juvenile facility. Holy nuts!
I was up next. The judge smiled at me, so I figured we were off to a good start. Janice said she was recommending I go under the tutelage of Randy Nussbaum so I could better understand the legal system and make brighter decisions in the future. The judge said it all sounded like a good plan. “Keep getting those good grades and keep your nose clean, Mr. Keller,” the judge said. “Your amygdala will catch up to your talents soon enough.”
“Mr. Keller is my dad. Call me Taco,” I said.
Everybody laughed. But I wasn’t laughing. I just don’t like being called Mr. Keller. To be totally honest, I was a little pissed at the judge for treating Tweety Bird so badly. Kid just did a little trespassing. But he had to go to jail and pay a huge fine? Where was Potosi’s Mr. Nussbaum? Where was Potosi’s Janice? Why couldn’t Tweety work in a law office instead of getting locked up?
After court Mr. Nussbaum took me to Doolittle’s, this bar and grill by the courthouse. He bought me a cheeseburger. While I munched, I asked Mr. Nussbaum why Tweety Bird had it so bad.
“Attitude is half the game, Taco. If you had shown up wearing a profane T-shirt and gangster pants, the judge wouldn’t have treated you so well either.”
“What if Tweety doesn’t have a tie? What if he can’t afford one?”
“You can’t afford a tie, but you showed up in one, didn’t you?” Mr. Nussbaum pointed out.
I shrugged.
On the drive home, I thought about ways I might break Tweety out of jail and how we could both run for the Canadian border. I didn’t really want to go to Canada though, so I decided to stop thinking about it, mostly because I had more important things to deal with.
One, Maggie had returned. And two, I had my audition for the musical. (I hadn’t canceled it because before that morning I thought Maggie might have left for good.) I considered humming a little to make sure I had the song ready, but I didn’t want to annoy Mr. Nussbaum, so I sang in my head and looked out the window the rest of the way.