CHAPTER 26
When I’d gotten back to the house with Denny, everyone was gone except Mrs. Rosenblatt. Mom and Grandpa were in the kitchen, cleaning up.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said. Denny left and I went to my room. I wasn’t going to tell her she didn’t have to apologize. But it was really Grandpa’s fault, anyway. He kept poking the Flee. He ruined my birthday. Let him be sorry.
Two days after that, Grandpa drove me to see Dr. P after school.
“You can talk now,” Grandpa said. “Nothing to say?”
Nope.
Maybe I was being rude. Maybe I was a little mean. But I was still mad. He didn’t have to go off like that at my birthday dinner. He could have done it when Sandy wasn’t around, and I wouldn’t have minded it one bit.
And then I was in Dr. P’s office.
“So, Wayne, you can talk now?” Dr. Pajaczkowski asked. “And you can say my name out loud? Let’s hear it.”
“Sir, I’m not sure I could have said your name before my throat injury.”
He laughed. “Fair enough. You can call me Fred.”
“Thanks, Fred.”
When we got home, I sat outside on the porch and waited for Sandy. I’d asked her to stop by after she got out of school. It seemed better to speak to her face-to-face. I’d made the decision to just rip the Band-Aid right off. Get it over with. Break up before she could do it to me. Because I understood something about girls and Sandy. I knew I liked having Sandy as a friend because she was always nice to me. Always. Why not try to stay friends so that it wouldn’t be so awkward?
I had a book to read, but it sat there unread for a long time. Then I nearly pruned our front bush to death, picking all the crunchy leaves from it, tearing them in half, and tossing them to the sidewalk.
All these thoughts flew around my head and I wanted them to stop. So I dove into the book. You would think I’m a nut, but I was reading a book authored by a pilot that tells you everything you wish you could ask someone in aviation. If you were thirteen and had no access to a pilot in real life, this was the book for you.
According to Mom, anyway. She gave it to me for my birthday.
Anyway, I opened the book right at the chapter about bird strikes and planes. Bird strikes against airplanes are serious business, especially where the birds are concerned. Did you know some airports use border collies to keep the bird population down around the runways? Also, planes fly at two hundred fifty knots when they are at an altitude under ten thousand feet. This is supposed to minimize the damage caused by birds flying into engines.
But the thing is, why don’t the stupid birds change course? Why aren’t they scared away by the noise of the aircraft? Why can’t they feel the change in the air?
Why?
Reading about this didn’t take my mind off what I was about to do that afternoon.
I recognized her mom’s muffin-delivering green car when it pulled up. Sandy got out of the car and walked up our cracked sidewalk. She held a muffin basket tight.
“Hi, Wayne,” Sandy’s mother shouted from the car. “Be back in a little bit.”
“Hi, Wayne,” Sandy said.
Sandy sat down next to me on the cold porch. I plucked more leaves off the bush and twisted and tore them into little pieces. “So, your voice?”
“Yeah. It’s back,” I managed to say in a scratchy tone. My new voice was deeper and different. Like it was the voice of someone else coming from inside me.
“That’s so great.” Sandy plucked the leaves from the bush on her side of the porch. “Are you going to come back to Beatty?”
“Probably. Probably next year.”
“That’s good.”
Don’t chicken out. Don’t chicken out. You know what to do.
“Listen,” I said.
For a second, I couldn’t push any more words out of my mouth. I was too afraid. Why is the right thing to do often the hardest thing to do?
So I said, “We should still be friends, but I don’t think we should sort of go out anymore.”
Even though it made me more than a little sad to say these words to the most beautiful girl in seventh grade, all the awkwardness I’d felt around her decreased.
Sandy’s response was quick as a wink.
“Okay,” she said.
It was so fast it hurt a little. But she threw her arms around me in a hug, which knocked me halfway into the bushes. “Wayne, you’re so easy to talk to. You’re the best ex-boyfriend ever!”
“Feel free to spread that rumor around school,” I said.
And then, as if it had all been a perfectly written scene in a movie, Mrs. Showalter hit the brakes in front of our house, Sandy bounced down the sidewalk, and their green car sped away from the scene of a breakup.
I looked at the front porch step.
There were two matching bald spots on the bushes flanking the sidewalk.
Well, I’d said what I needed to say.
After a while, a plane flew overhead pretty low. It wasn’t a commercial jet but some kind of single-engine plane. I could tell by the sound. White wings with red tips at the ends. Not big enough to have a 14A. Probably only two souls on board. I lifted my hand to its underbelly and held it in the air until it was out of sight. It circled back around. A rising trail of smoke formed. Was the plane in trouble?
Mayday?
It went straight up and down and made one thick line in the air. I stood up to get a better look. The smoke stopped, turned on again, and formed the shape of a heart. Then it made a giant U.
U.The message hung in the air like white cotton suspended in blue sky.
A skywriter. Someone’s message in the sky. A love message right at the moment I said good-bye to Sandy Showalter.
True story.
Sad story.
I waited for the skywriting to go all smudgy before I went inside. I went to the fridge and searched for something to eat. Using my voice to do the right thing had made me hungry.
Grandpa strolled into the kitchen.
“Win some, lose some, Wayne. It’s tough to get dumped, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t get dumped. I was technically the dumper.”
“Either way, the sound of heartbreak is loud and profound.” I wished I still had my legitimate, plane crash–caused ability to grrrr. I would have grrrrr’d at Grandpa.
“Whatever.” I opened the fridge and grabbed the milk.
“I guess your birthday could have been better if all that hadn’t happened the other night,” he said.
He arranged the blue glass birds on the counter into two straight and perfect rows, then turned and looked me square in the eye.
I knew what he was doing. That was how a drill sergeant said he was sorry. I wanted to say it was okay. But my awful birthday was like a bruise. The hurt spot would fade gradually, not right when you wanted it to. So I didn’t say anything.
“Know what I think, Wayne?”
“No, sir.”
“I think we need a cheeseburger. You can eat a cheeseburger now that you can talk again, right?”
We went out for a cheeseburger. Sure, I thought about being brave enough to come right out and set things square with Grandpa.
So, would you like a side of fries and to tell me what those pill bottles on the counter are for?
Yeah, I thought about it a lot. But, surprise, I had more thoughts than I could speak.
We sat in a booth at a restaurant, and the bubbly waitress with twelve thousand buttons on her shirt told us the day’s special like a rapid-fire cheerleader drill.
“Okay, today’s special is two entrees, one appetizer, two iced teas, and Death by Chocolate, all for one low price!”
“We’ll take it!” Grandpa said.
Later, as we were starting dessert, Grandpa told me, “Don’t give up, Wayne.” And I wondered for the millionth time if Grandpa had mind-reading abilities. If maybe he’d looked behind my closet door and seen my dumb collection of facts that were leading me nowhere.
“Don’t give up on what?”
“Girls. You’ll find the right lid to your pot,” he said, forking a big piece of cake. “She’ll be in the least likely place. I met the love of my life at a hardware store.”
“Did she look miserable?” I asked, thinking of Denny’s theory of miserable girls.
“More like out of place. But that’s why I noticed her.” Grandpa looked across the restaurant, a sad expression on his face. “Your grandmother. She was special.”
“Hey, did you know that the smell of chocolate increases theta brain waves, which induce relaxation?” I said. “Chocolate is also thought to increase blood flow to the brain, so it’s possible that it makes you smarter.”
“Well, look who’s back, Mr. Fact.” Grandpa grinned. “Let’s order a second dessert!”
“Are you allowed to?” I asked.
Grandpa tilted his head to the side and gave me a look. I could have asked more questions. I could have tried to get information. I could have.
“I mean, I’m too full for any more dessert,” I lied. “This is the most I’ve eaten in months.”