Thirty-one

After one practice, we all knew what we were good at.

And we were good at a lot more than I expected.

I unzipped my coat and followed Beech as he wound his way through tables and waitresses across the Atomic Flapjack.

Art Club had Dillon, of course, whose throws were so hard and so accurate, he could’ve drilled a hole right through the supply-closet door if the balls had been anything but foam. And Gretchen, who seemed to have ball magnets in her arms. She could catch anything, which made sense—all that belt weaving had given her amazing hand-eye coordination. And Spencer, who was a big surprise. He darted this way and that around the art room, all quick and disjointed. Nobody could hit him because nobody knew where he’d dart next.

Those were some pretty good skills. Still, I wasn’t sure they were enough to win a tournament. Especially against Wesley and the Sundances.

I unzipped Beech. He wrestled out of his coat and squeaked on his knees across the slick red vinyl of the booth seat. It was the big round booth in the corner—our regular Laundry Day booth—and Beech knee-scooted to his usual spot in the exact center of the round part. I pulled my coat off and slid in on the end. My stomach grumbled.

The Atomic Flapjack was pretty crowded, and the clink of silverware and murmur of conversation filled the air. The smell of freshly sizzled bacon and hot pancakes whirled around us.

Almost made me dizzy, I was so hungry.

“Hey, guys.” Our regular Laundry Day waitress—Phyllis—slid three Atomic Flapjack place mats and two glasses of orange juice onto the table. One for me and one for Beech. “You already got your laundry in?”

I nodded. “Mom’s feeding the machines.”

On Laundry Day, Beecher and I helped Mom haul the laundry baskets from the car into the laundromat. (Beech carried the dryer sheets.) We sorted the laundry and threw it into the washers (Beech was in charge of standing beside the jug of detergent), and then Mom sent us ahead to the Flapjack while she added soap, slipped in the quarters, and got the machines chugging along, sudsing up our dirty clothes. She always caught up to us at almost the exact time Phyllis slid our breakfast onto the table. We had our timing down perfect.

Phylllis placed a coffee cup and a big silver pot of coffee next to Mom’s place, then reached in her pocket and pulled out an Atomic Flapjack coloring page and a handful of crayons. She set them in front of Beech.

“Have fun,” she said. “Your food shouldn’t take long.”

She turned on her sensible white waitress shoes and strode off. She didn’t leave menus for us. She didn’t have to. She knew our regular Laundry Day breakfast order by heart: teddy bear pancake with a chocolate chip face for Beech, French toast for me, veggie omelet for Mom.

I reached over for one of Beecher’s crayons. Not the red one. That was his favorite, and I didn’t want to hear him scream. I picked up the green.

“Can I borrow this for a minute?”

Beech looked up from his coloring page, studied the crayon in my hand, and nodded.

I slid my paper Atomic Flapjack place mat toward me and started writing.

 

 

Beech leaned over to study my scribbles.

“What doing?” he said.

“Trying to figure out dodgeball strategy.” I shook my head. “Who would have figured Dillon Zawicki as a human cannon? That kid can flat out throw. And nobody even knew.”

I was mostly talking to myself, saying it out loud, trying to get it sorted in my brain.

But Beech nodded. With authority. “I know,” he said.

I looked at him. “You know what?”

“Dillon throw. Throw shoe. Throw shirt.” He counted on his fingers. “Throw paper. Throw underwear.”

“He threw underwear?”

Beech shrugged. “Sam say.”

Yeah. I’m sure she did. I could almost hear her growly voice inside my head now: “Well yeah, he can throw. How do you think he got the sneakers up on the gym lights?”

Dillon’s born talent was right there, in front of my face, the whole time. It made perfect sense, and until this very minute I hadn’t figured it out.

Beech went back to his Flapjack page. I watched him color for a minute. He pressed really hard and colored everything red. The stars, the planets, the pancake spaceships. By the time Phyllis got that red crayon back, it wouldn’t be more than a nub. A nub with all the paper peeled off.

“Beech,” I said, “I know you’re mad at me for not being a superhero—”

“You superhero,” he said, without looking up.

I blinked. “I am?”

“You win,” he said, still coloring. “Win big.”

“But I thought you were mad at me. About, you know, the Iron Man helmet. I wasn’t a superhero anymore because I couldn’t get it back for you.”

“You superhero,” he muttered into his coloring page. “I not superhero.”

I gave him a confused frown. “What do you mean you’re not a superhero?”

He looked up finally. He blew out a breath. “No helmet,” he said. “No helmet. No Ine Man. No superhero. No. Superhero. Know that?” He looked at me hard, like he was trying to drill the information into my brain with his eyes.

“Okay,” I said. “Calm down. I know that.”

I took a sip of my orange juice and thought about this. Beech wasn’t upset because I wasn’t a superhero anymore. He was upset because he wasn’t a superhero. I’d been making everything about me, and this wasn’t about me at all.

“You’re kind of a superhero,” I told him.

He looked up again, eyes narrowed.

“I mean, stuff’s harder for you,” I said, “but you do it anyway. That’s what superheroes do.”

He considered this for a minute. Then went back to coloring.

“Not save people,” he said.

Well, that was true. But he still thought I was a superhero, and I never saved anybody either.

“What if you had the helmet?” I said.

“I not.” He kept coloring.

“I know. But what if you did?”

He looked up again.

“I not,” he said. “He have helmet. He not superhero.”

Beecher set down his red crayon and let out a heavy sigh.

“Everything nice.” He spread his hands wide, showing how big and nice everything was. “Then he? Mean.” He pushed his hands together in a little point, showing Wesley’s little wedge of mean.

He was right. Wesley Banks wasn’t a superhero, no matter how many helmets he bought, because he didn’t use his powers for nice. He used them for mean. Even my goober of a little brother—a kid who couldn’t eat his food unless it had a face, a kid who had to go up and down stairs sitting on his butt—even he had figured that one out.

Why couldn’t Earhart Middle?

I looked at his hands. At Beecher’s hands pressed into a wedge. When Wesley was using his superpowers for mean, he was exactly like that. He zeroed in like a laser, like the sharp little point Beecher had made with his hands.

I thought about that day in the lunchroom. Wesley had been so busy tripping me with his giant feet, he didn’t even notice that somebody at his own table grabbed me before I fell on my face. And then in Coach Wilder’s room. Wesley was so zoned in to humiliating me with my roster, he didn’t see when Owen Skeet, a player on his very own basketball team, a guy who, along with all the other basketball players, had followed him through the halls of Earhart Middle like a puppy trotting after his master, who sat at the table next to Wesley’s at lunch just so he could maybe soak up some of his reflected cool, that kid, in a single instant, stood up and quit being Wesley’s puppy. He convinced Curtis to quit being a puppy too.

And Wesley didn’t notice.

I tapped my crayon against the place mat and thought about this.

A blast of cold air whipped through the Flapjack. I glanced up, thinking maybe Mom was already here.

But it wasn’t Mom. It was some other family. I went back to my place-mat list.

“Hey!” Beech climbed onto his knees on the booth seat. “Mrs. Hottins!”

Before I could figure out what he was talking about, he scrambled across the slick vinyl, climbed down the other side, and shot across the Atomic Flapjack, weaving around tables and chairs and under the arms of a waitress carrying plates of hot breakfast.

“Great.” I dropped the crayon and wove my way through the restaurant after him.

This new family was standing inside the doorway, shaking off the cold. Beecher plunged right into them. Plunged into the mom.

“Mrs. Hottins.” He fell against her and hugged her legs, eyes closed, cheek pressed against her winter coat. “You here,” he said.

I’d never met his teacher before, but I figured this must be her. Otherwise Beech was attacking a complete stranger.

“Hey there, Beecher.” Mrs. Hottins patted his shoulder. “What a nice surprise. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“We always here,” Beech told her legs. “Now you here too.”

Mrs. Hottins ran a hand over his head, then leaned down and peeled him away. “What do we talk about in school? We talk about how hugs aren’t appropriate outside your family, right? How, when you meet your friends, it’s better to fist bump or shake hands. Right?”

“Right.” Beech held up his fist and bumped her. Then he collapsed against her again.

“Sorry.” I reached down and dragged Beech off poor Mrs. Hottins. I wrapped my arm around his chest so he wouldn’t glue himself back onto her legs again.

Mrs. Hottins laughed. “Don’t worry about it. We do this all the time. I imagine we’ll have this same conversation Monday when you get to school, won’t we, Beecher?”

By this time Phyllis had arrived, menus tucked under her arm. “Table for four?” she asked Mrs. Hottins.

“Your teacher has to go sit down now, Beech,” I told him. “Tell her you’ll see her later.”

“See you later,” said Beech.

I tried to angle him toward our booth. And as I turned, I noticed the rest of her family. Her husband, I guess. And her sons. One younger and one about my age.

No, exactly my age.

I stopped, dead frozen, right there in the middle of the Atomic Flapjack.

Because Beecher’s teacher wasn’t Mrs. Hottins. She was Mrs. Hawkins.

And she wasn’t just Beecher’s teacher.

She was the mother of one of the Sundances.

The mother of T.J.

T.J. Hawkins.

Who had been milling around behind his dad this whole time, scrutinizing the specials scrawled on the chalkboard by the door.

Now he cut his glance from the specials—

—and accidentally looked right at me.

His eyes grew wide and his cheeks turned pink. He whipped his head away again to give the chalkboard more scrutiny.

Who could blame him? I was completely staring at him. I’m sure my mouth was hanging open, I was staring that hard.

But after studying the chalkboard for a minute, he flicked his eyes back. He met my eyes. And raised his chin at me, in a half nod.

I was surprised at first. Then I half nodded back.

Then T.J. noticed Beech standing there holding up his clenched fist.

T.J. looked startled for a second, like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. But then he held up his fist. Gave Beech a tap. He quickly turned and followed his mom and their waitress across the Atomic Flapjack.