Chapter 33
THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
The next day, I’m still feeling a little down.
Especially when Vincent O’Neil takes a victory lap in the cafeteria by standing up on a table to host his very own “rebroadcast” of his winning performance.
“And then I said, ‘He’s so old, he shops at Extremely Old Navy.’ Get it? See, Old Navy is the store, but Extremely Old Navy is this store I made up to show how old the guy is. What’s the matter, people? Why aren’t you laughing?”
“Because Stevie Kosgrov isn’t here to threaten them all with knuckle sandwiches,” mutters Gilda.
“You ever wonder what a knuckle sandwich would actually taste like?” says Pierce.
“Yeah,” I say. “A McRib. But with knuckles.”
Gaynor laughs so hard, chocolate milk comes squirting out his nose.
“You’ve still got it, dude.”
“I’m glad you think so, Gaynor.”
“The judges up in Boston on Saturday will think so, too,” says Gilda. “Stevie won’t be up there, threatening them with bodily harm.”
“Maybe I should go back to doing jokes from joke books,” I say.
In the distance, we can hear Vincent O’Neil.
“Hey—what flies through the air covered in syrup? Peter Pancake! Get it?”
“Then again, maybe not.”
After school, Gaynor asks Pierce, Gilda, and me to follow him to his locker.
“What for?” I ask.
“Something extremely important to my conscience!”
His conscience? Geez! Cue the melodramatic music, please. Thank you.
With the suspense killing us, we follow him down the hall to our lockers, where he pulls out two huge shopping bags he has somehow crammed inside.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“The things I stole from all those lockers.”
“I’m going to put it all back, except the money. I kind of spent that at the movies. But Uncle Frankie lent me some cash to live on, and I’ll work until I earn enough to pay everyone back.”
“You washing dishes at the diner?” I ask.
Gaynor shakes his head. “Busing tables.”
Gilda pulls a bright blue Smurf head from the bag. “You stole somebody’s movie souvenir drink cup?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Probably because you weren’t.”
“Probably.”
“A rotten banana?” says Pierce, plucking something black, stinky, and slimy out of bag #2.
“It wasn’t rotten when I stole it. Last week.”
“Come on, you guys,” I say. “Let’s just put these things back in front of whatever lockers they were from.”
“You’d help me do that?” says Gaynor.
“Hey, you’d do it for me, too. We all mess up sometimes. And besides, it takes guts to say you’re sorry. It will also take guts for somebody to eat that banana. Or this bologna sandwich. Exactly how long did it take for the meat to turn green?”
“Let’s do the previous owners of the moldy sandwich and banana a favor and chuck ’em,” says Gilda.
We all nod and laugh. I wouldn’t tell him, but Gaynor looks a little choked up.
Teamwork. It’s kind of like having a family.