Parker sleeps in my room, curled up on the bottom of my bed, right on my feet, all night. I wake up from him pawing his way up the comforter, sniffing in my ear, and patting my chest with his paw.
“Morning, Parker,” I say. “Parker Olson.”
Dad makes me go to school even though I want to stay home with Parker. But he says he’ll come home at lunch to let him out, and he promises me he’ll scratch him behind the ears.
I leave him curled up in the living room with my T-shirt and tell him I’ll be home after school.
Dad says he’ll drive me today, so I hop in the car and rub my hands together while he starts the engine. Sometimes it seems like fall starts faster than a snap to the quarterback, and instead of summer tans and T-shirts, it’s wind and leaves and jackets with hoods. This morning is the snap, and just like that, I’m rubbing my hands together and wishing the car would heat up faster.
The drive is short, but Dad waits until we’re almost there to say, “I don’t like what you told me about Marcus and Shane being mean to that new kid.”
“Eduardo,” I say.
“Eduardo.”
“I don’t like it either.” The car is just starting to get warm as we pull up to the front of the school, and now I really don’t want to get out.
“Good,” Dad says. “I trust you’ll know what to do then.”
I nod and say OK because I do know what I should do, I’m just not sure I’m brave like that. Brave like snuff-out-a-fire-before-it-spreads kind of brave.
The hallway is clogged with kids opening and closing their lockers and talking about the football game and how a freshman threw the winning touchdown. They’re all looking for Marcus, but I’m looking for any of The 7, and when I see Katherine and Ruth and Alexis talking across the hall I jump above all the heads between us and wave my arms and I don’t care how dorky I look. When that doesn’t work, I make myself small, Eduardo small, hunched-over-and-weave-between-everyone small.
“You, guys!” I burst as soon as I get to them. “Parker!” And in one long breath, I tell them all about running to the humane society and the vet tech letting me in and Dad and the adoption and how Parker’s at home right now. My home. Our home.
By then the rest of The 7 is circled around and Elli says, “Yes!” and gives me a high five and people stare at us but we don’t care. Lou puts her arm around my shoulders and gives me a hug and June reaches out so we can connect fists.
I tell them that I’m still going to go to the humane society with them sometimes to walk the other dogs. I like helping. I like their circle.
Then someone shouts, “There he is!” and he’s pointing at Marcus, who’s sauntering toward Mr. Hewett’s room wearing his jersey. Everyone starts giving him a “Heywood Hurrah! Heywood Hurrah!” And it doesn’t feel right, him getting any Heywood Hurrahs, because he’s not brave like that. Brave like stare-down-what’s-wrong-and-stand-up-for-what’s-right brave.
The teachers start calling for us all to keep it moving and get to homeroom, so I duck and weave back across the hall to my locker.
Marcus is making his way down the hallway. I hide behind the open door of my locker and fake that I’m looking for something way in the back because I don’t want them to ask me about quitting the team and I wonder if we’re even friends without football, but when they pass by, Marcus says, “Hey, where were you? What happened?”
And Shane adds, “Yeah, did you really quit?”
I nod and I clench my teeth closed so I don’t say sorry.
They just kind of shrug and say, “OK,” and, “That stinks,” and then walk into Mr. Hewett’s room.
Eduardo shows up at the bottom of our locker. He’s squatting down on flat feet, his knees bent up to his ears, and he’s organizing his notebooks.
“Morning!” he says. His oboe case sticks out of his book bag.
“Nice job,” I tell him. “Halftime was really the best part of the whole game.”
Eduardo laughs a little and says, “Don’t tell Marcus that.”
We close the locker and Alejandro comes over and reaches out for a high five and it kind of makes me wish I had a brother too, or maybe it just makes me miss Parker even though he’s at home and I get to see him later.
Eduardo and I walk into Mr. Hewett’s room and I sit with him again at Patrick and Curtis’s table. Everyone is zipping their bags and talking about our book reviews that are due tomorrow and a math test we have at the end of the week so I’m not sure if anybody else hears it, but I do.
I hear Marcus describing his game-winning throw. How he had to hold the ball and wait until he saw an opening and how he held on even when he was this close to getting tackled right before halftime.
He clears his throat and whispers to Shane, “Then little Edweirdo Button came out on the field with his Velcro shoes to play his oboe.” Shane laughs first and then it spreads to Zander’s table and Geordie and Chris are chuckling because the way he said oboe made it sound like it was directly the opposite of being brave like that. Brave like throw-a-ball-before-you-get-mowed-over brave.
And it’s not.
And I can hear Benji kind of chuckle and say “He plays the oboe?”
And I know what I have to do. Put the fire out at its source because it’s spreading to Zander and Chris and Benji and pretty soon our whole class will be in flames.
So I stand up and point myself in their direction and clear my throat and say, “So what?”
Everyone stops chuckling and looks up at me.
“What, Cy?” Marcus says.
Now it’s really quiet, but the embers are still glowing and even though they’re not roaring and flaming I know how hot those little bits can be and I know all they want is to find some loose paper to start back up again.
I will not be loose paper.
“I said, ‘So what’?”
I say it to Marcus and to the whole class.
Shane shifts in his seat and looks like he’s trying to find something to say. Like Marcus has the ball and it’s his job to deflect all the tackles, so he kind of sputters out, “The oboe is weird.”
“So what?” I repeat.
And no one has a good answer because there isn’t one. So what if there’s Velcro on his shoes? And so what if he plays the oboe? So what if he isn’t even tall enough to reach Shane’s shoulder? Or thinks a picture book about a boy who likes to dance is the best he’s ever read? So what?
And then the coolest thing happens. I start to catch because Addison says, “Yeah, so what?” and turns around to look at Marcus and Shane and Zander. “I’m weird too. I have teal streaks in my hair.”
“Me too!” Hadleigh says and yanks on her ponytail.
“Yeah, so what?” Nora adds. “I like to color my fingernails with Sharpies. That’s kind of weird.”
Eduardo pipes up and fans out his fingers. “Can you do mine?” And everyone kind of giggles, but not at Eduardo like before, more with him because he’s funny and doesn’t care if others think his rainbow-Sharpied fingernails are weird.
Then Patrick pipes up too and says, “Yeah, so what? I dress up my hamsters and let them run through my sister’s dollhouse!” This makes everyone laugh even harder, and Patrick is laughing so hard that he kind of chokes out, “But so what? So what?”
And before I know it, everyone is trying to outweird everyone else.
“I wear something green to school every single day! If I don’t, I feel itchy all over.”
“You do?” a few people respond.
Chris puts his foot up on his desk and pulls up his jeans. “See!” His socks are lime green. “Tomorrow I’m wearing green boxers! I’m obsessed with green! But so what?”
“I like memorizing dates and maps!”
“I can’t ride a bike!”
“I have a math tutor!”
And with all the So what?s crackling around the room and people standing up and showing off their weird, without even trying, I pipe up and say that I’m weird too. That I sound good when I read out loud, but it’s impossible to keep a story in my brain and I’m going to sign up for band and play the trombone because it’s the coolest sound in the whole world.
“The trombone?” Shane asks, and he says it like Marcus said oboe.
“So what?” Eduardo says.
“Yeah, so what?” a few people respond together and it makes them laugh again.
Mr. Hewett is clapping his hands three times and raising his peace fingers in the air, trying to get us to be quiet, but a few more people say, “I’m afraid of swimming!” and “I can’t ride in a car for more than ten minutes without puking!”
I’m kind of feeling sad for Marcus and Shane, who are sitting in the back with pink glowing beneath their cheeks, because I know they’re weird too, because they’ve been my friends forever. Shane still plays with G.I. Joes and Marcus cries at the end of movies all the time. And so what? But they aren’t adding their weird to the room, so I just kind of smile at them and sit down next to Eduardo, who pushes his arm over a little into mine until our elbows touch.
“Gracias,” he whispers.
At the end of homeroom I ask Mr. Hewett if I can borrow Red. I have all this good so-what feeling stirring in my belly, so I just come right out with it and I tell him I haven’t finished any books, not really, ever. I tell him about my grandma and how she helps me find the rhythm and how I might not be able to finish Wonder, at least not yet, but I like Red, and I think I can write a pretty good review.
Mr. Hewett says he has some strategies for me to try, and that I should be proud I can read so fluently, and that I’m brave for telling him.
I call Dad from the office at the end of the day and he shows up in Mr. Fletcher’s band room to sign a permission slip and fill out a rental form for my very own trombone. Mr. Fletcher tells my dad we’ll be working on the basics for the first few weeks: buzzing into the mouthpiece, playing notes, reading a simple song and practicing it over and over again.
“Students who are ready will play that song at the football game Thursday,” he says. “But there’s no pressure.” Dad thanks him and shakes his hand and asks me if I can carry that big case all the way to the firehouse after band practice. I nod my head.
“OK, then,” he says, and taps the case. “I wonder what Parker will think of this.”
We both laugh a little and I’m imagining Parker’s head parked on one shoulder and my trombone parked on the other and that gets my foot tapping.