Two days later, Grandpa picked me up late from the West Academy. So late, in fact, that I’d sat on the outside steps and watched three planes, a thick bank of clouds, and the trio of gymnasts go past me. The gymnasts all waved to me in perfect unison. Word had definitely gotten around that I’d survived a plane crash. In second-period science, the teacher, Mr. Clark, said, “Wayne is pretty special. The odds of surviving a plane crash are pretty low.”
Everyone in class had turned to look at me.
Special Wayne.
I really needed a fact shield at that moment. I could have blurted out, Did you know your lifetime odds of dying in an airplane crash are about one in eight thousand? Did you know your lifetime odds of dying in a car crash are about one in one hundred?
So please turn around and focus on Mr. Clark instead of me.
I registered their looks as equal parts pity and curiosity.
I was trying not to care what strangers thought of my look. Trying and failing.
“I’m late,” Grandpa announced as I got into his truck, as if it weren’t obvious.
I thought being on time was a virtue! I guess Daltons can be late, too. Ha!
“Your mother’s at an appointment, so I’ll drop you at home before I head to the store. Unless you want to go to the store?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe you want to play poker later? Your mother thinks I should teach you,” he said.
Why?
“So you’ll know how to play,” he said.
Okay.
Great. Another opportunity to feel dumb around Grandpa. I made a mental note to talk about this with Mom. She was still on a quest for me to learn “man things.”
Once I was in the house, I began composing what I thought had the potential for a poetic text to Sandy. I was attempting to take some of Mom’s advice.
Okay, my attempt wasn’t Shakespearean. But I mean, Shakespeare’s first drafts probably weren’t perfect, right?
I stared out the window at the tree and sky in our front yard. I could rhyme tree with Sandy. Or even with the Flee.
I watched the Flee park his car in front of our house. I tried to remember if I’d gotten a text from him. Nope. If he was supposed to come over. Nope. Maybe this was more of Mom’s idea. Either way, I was going to pretend I wasn’t home.
He strolled up the walk, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his work shirt with his name and employer stitched on a badge: DOUG and LPS PLUMBING in white lettering. He didn’t have my jacket with him.
He knocked on the door.
I ignored it.
“Hi, Wayne, open up. I know you’re in there. I saw your grandfather drop you off.”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I opened the door.
I scribbled a note, tore off the paper, and shoved it out the door. The Flee read it and frowned. “What do I want? Is that any way to talk to your father?”
It seemed right to me.
“So, listen, can you come over to the house? Stephanie’s dad is a lawyer, and he’s there right now. He’d like to ask you some questions about the airline case,” he said, pushing his way farther into the house.
What’s our case?
“Well, that’s the thing. We don’t know if you have a larger case. So he’d like to get a statement from you. See what your position is.”
I wrote: I don’t know.
But I did know. Mom had told me we weren’t joining any lawsuit. She’d settled with the airline.
We got out with our lives. The airline is paying all our bills and giving us a settlement right now if we don’t sue. There’ll be enough to replace the broken dishwasher, she’d said, happy. She was ready to put all this behind her, and a friend had told her the lawsuit might drag on. I thought that was smart and told her so. Then I told her I’d rather have a new computer than a dishwasher.
What about both? she’d said. I just found out about this iPad app that will talk for you. Wouldn’t that be cool?
I thought it might be cool. Or maybe I’d sound like a digital nerd. Like a seventh-grade Stephen Hawking.
So I wasn’t going to say anything to my dad. Mom told me not to talk to the Flee about it.
“Hey, get me a glass of water, would you? Your mom won’t be back for a while.”
Wait, what? How did he know Mom was gone?
I got him a glass of water. Before you knew it, we were standing in the kitchen and the Flee was moving Mom’s blue glass birds around on the counter.
“Don’t know why she liked these stupid birds,” he said.
Because they were her mother’s birds.
Then he pawed around at the Sandy Showalter basket of muffins like they belonged to him. My neck started to burn hot with aggravation. If the Flee said or did one more thing, I might go up in flames.
“Look at those tennis shoes,” the Flee said. “What are those, anyway?”
He had to do it. One more thing.
I looked down at my feet. That’s where the flames would come from. From my used shoes. Pity shoes. Duuuude, your face shoes, so why can’t you just get out of my kitchen now?
“How about we go get you some new ones? Write your mom a note on that silly little pad around your neck.” He took another drink of water.
I lied on a note. Can’t go. Dr. appointment.
Talk to Mom.
“‘Talk to Mom’? Don’t be such a mama’s boy, Wayne. Your mom doesn’t know all the questions to ask.”
Please leave.
He tossed my note onto the linoleum but kept eating a muffin. Half of it crumbled to the floor.
“Look, it’s no big deal,” he said as he lazily pushed the dropped pieces of muffin underneath the cabinet with his foot. As if that took care of the problem. “I just want you to explain to the lawyer the accident details, like whether your mom was injured because she unbuckled her seat belt trying to get that silly flag. You didn’t unbuckle yours, right?”
No.
I was certain that my entire face had gone tomato red.
Mom had to unbuckle on the plane. I let go of the flag. Every time I pictured the flag escaping the plane, my chest felt heavy. I wanted to hide from that fact, but there was no place to go. The flag just had to be found. Period. The airline couldn’t replace that.
He poked his head in our refrigerator and pulled out the milk. He shook the carton, which was almost empty. “She still doesn’t know how to keep house. Where are the sodas?”
My neck got hotter and I got a sick feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want new shoes from him. I’d always look down at them and remember him saying mean things about Mom. I’d rather look at stupid Goodwill shoes.
I wrote him a note: Can’t go.
“Wayne, don’t be such a pain. Let’s get some shoes and a bite to eat.”
I shook my head again.
“Come on!” He slapped his hand on the countertop. I froze. For a minute, I thought maybe I should go with him and not make anything worse. He took a deep sigh and drummed his fingers on the countertop. Mom’s blue glass birds were awfully close to his hands.
He took me by the sleeve of my hoodie and pushed me toward the front door. Now that we were clear of the kitchen, of the birds, I jerked my arm out of his grip. I shook my head no, and I wrote it on my notepad with several exclamation points following just so that he could hear my tone. I saw the flash in his eyes. I knew it was coming.
“Now, you stop it!” The Flee clipped the left side of my head with his hand. Normally, I wouldn’t have felt anything but a thump. But now the left side of my face felt everything. I didn’t even sleep on my left side anymore.
So my skin burned.
It hurt like a million tiny darts hitting my forehead. I held my breath. I fought to keep the tears away. I wouldn’t show the pain. I would not.
“Kovok!” Grandpa said, surprising us both.
Grandpa wasn’t just a former army drill sergeant. He had been chosen to teach drill sergeant school. When he turned on that voice, it was full of thunder. More than once in my life, it had scared me senseless. But at that moment, his voice wasn’t directed at me. I felt a tiny bit of relief. No, actually I felt a big wave of relief. The Flee wouldn’t dare be a Grade A jerk in front of Grandpa.
“Take it easy, old man,” the Flee said.
Then again…
“Coming into my house and touching my family! Exactly who do you think you are?”
Grandpa stared down the Flee with the intensity of a laser beam. I’m not joking. And the Flee backed into the front door, then shook a little. “I’m his father. I can come over here anytime I want.”
“You seem a little confused on the facts,” Grandpa said. “Wayne, I feel like getting a cheeseburger. Go wait in the Car while I straighten out Mr. Kovok on the facts.”
I scribbled on my notepad. THE car?
“Affirmative.”
I took a few slow steps backward toward the garage. Because who wanted to stop watching this showdown?
The Flee shifted his weight from side to side. Nervous.
Grandpa crossed his arms and kept his eyes leveled at the Flee. Confident.
Dr. P was right about nonverbal communication. Just looking at the Flee versus Grandpa, you knew who would win on the battlefield. Who would turn and run, and who would stay and fight. Lazy Kovoks on one side. Hero Daltons on the other.
What did that make me?
For a split second, I turned my head away. I didn’t like what I was seeing. Because maybe I was seeing the Flee the way Grandpa saw him. As a darn Kovok.
I felt dazed and even more sick to my stomach.
“Wayne, you don’t have to do what he says,” the Flee said, locking eyes with me. “You can come with me.” He grinned, and it made him look stupid. Like a stupid Kovok.
Grandpa turned and gave me the slightest nod.
My chest tightened and my head throbbed. There was a tug-of-war going on there in the entryway of my house, and I was the rope. The rope never wins. It just gets pulled.
I broke out of my daze and headed toward the garage. Maybe Grandpa saw a darn Kovok junior when I was around.
I stood in front of the Car, feeling dizzy. I told my brain to go someplace better.
I closed my eyes and remembered a Bear Ball hitting me in the chest, knocking the air out of me. Yes, that is the stupid memory my brain selected for me. Bear Ball. Bear Ball is a game they play at Beatty Middle School. Two captains are chosen, and then they choose their teams. The PE coaches think they’re giving us a treat when they say, You can go play Bear Ball now.
It is not a treat.
Last time, I was the second-to-last to be picked. The last one picked was a small girl. We were the leftovers.
The only time a leftover is good is when it’s pizza.
Trey Harris picked me. “That’s just Kovok.” For everyone else, he’d introduced the person by his or her talent. Good at passing the ball. Fast on the court. But me? I was just Kovok. Picked by default. And when that happens, you have to try to show some skills or risk ultimate humiliation. You have to prove they were right to pick you. Instead, you end up proving they were right to pick you last.
Because when you are nervous and annoyed, you suck. And you wish that the gym floor would open up into a black hole. Because then you’d be known as that guy who disappeared into the floor instead of “just Kovok.”
You see how it is inside my head now that my mouth can’t speak and all these thoughts have no place to go? Do you see?