CHAPTER TWO

It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.
Vince Lombardi

Heck is that? A warm, wet washcloth—a warm, wet, stinky washcloth wiping his face over and over again. What the hey? Lee opened one eye to find Santiago licking the devil out of his left cheek. And Rhonda slapping the daylights out of his right cheek. “Daddy, Daddy, you okay?”

“Knock it off, Ron,” he said, pushing her away. Lee raised himself on one elbow. “What are you doing here?” he squinted at the unfamiliar bushes. “Where the heck am I?”

“You fainted!” said Rhonda. “I was just bringing Santiago over for a visit and I saw you keel right over. You okay?”

Lee sat up. “’Course I’m okay.” Then he lay back down. He wasn’t okay. He was sure he was going to throw up. He was already lying there in front of Rhonda Ronaldson, in wet Levis. Now all he needed was to upchuck in front of her. The smell of Santiago’s dog breath wasn’t helping.

“Just give me a minute,” he said.

Rhonda settled back on her haunches and watched Santiago sniffing at Lee’s wet jeans. When she caught Lee noticing the sucks-to-be-you look on her face, she turned away fast and whistled a tune into the treetops.

Smooth as sandpaper Ronaldson, thought Lee. He rolled his eyeballs. Ouch! That gave him a headache. He took a deep breath and slowly stood up. Bed. He wanted his bed.

Unfortunately, bed happened to be three blocks away.

“Do you need help?” asked Rhonda.

“No,” said Lee. A wave of dizziness. “Yes.”

Rhonda took his arm and steadied him as he weaved his way down the sidewalk. “What happened, anyway?” she asked.

“Sunstroke, probably,” he said. “Had it before, once. Should have worn a baseball cap, I guess.”

Three blocks might as well have been three miles, as far as Lee was concerned. And as they approached his street, his brain was such a bowl of mush he couldn’t even remember which “home” he was staying at tonight—pffff! which was mostly his mother’s fault; how was he supposed to keep track of her constantly changing schedule. He’d asked her once why she couldn’t just work Monday to Friday like the rest of the world, and she’d snorted, “The day I become a creature of habit is the day I make like a lemming and head for the nearest cliff.”

“Just lead me to the nearest cliff,” he mumbled to Rhonda, “and make it a high one.” But instead, he felt her steering him toward Agnes’s house. Good, thought Lee, Agnes would be the better of the two moms tonight. He knew his real mother would have a thing or two to say about this, and he didn’t have the stomach for it right now. Didn’t it just figure that as they reached Agnes’s sidewalk, his mother came bustling out of her own front door, late for work. She was tucking her denim shirt into her blue jeans with one hand and straightening her cowboy hat with the other. She stopped dead when she saw Lee leaning on Rhonda, looking pale as a naked spud. Lee used his last ounce of energy to make it up the steps and into Agnes’s house.

“What’s up with him?” Gertrude asked Rhonda as they both followed him into the house.

“Sunstroke,” said Rhonda.

“Sunstroke,” repeated Gertrude, hurrying over to the couch where Agnes was already fussing over Lee. “I thought you were going to a movie with a friend today.” She put a hand to his forehead. “How can you get sunstroke in an air-conditioned movie theater?” Her look of concern suddenly changed to one of suspicion. “Lee,” said Gertrude, eyes narrowed, “please, tell me you weren’t doing another one of your fool marathon records again …”

Lee knew his mother wasn’t going to like this. He remembered the day she finally put her foot down and tried to squash his record-breaking stunts. It had been a rainy afternoon when she’d come home from work to find him in the kitchen on his pogo stick. He happened to be two hours and eighteen minutes into a record of non-stop bouncing and the linoleum still had the dents to prove it. There had been no need for his mother to say a word. He could translate the angry smoke signals that had poured from her red ears that day: Verboten. No more records. The end. And now here he was with sunstroke.

Lee looked up now at his mother’s broad shoulders. There was a reason she’d been hired as a security bouncer at the Country and Western. Aside from her size, she had a presence that let you know at once that she wasn’t about to put up with any monkey business. Lee had heard stories of grown men who had been known to cower past her and out the club door after merely receiving one of her “I think it’s about time you were heading home” looks. Lee knew she had a soft side, but not everyone did.

“Your lipstick’s on crooked,” said Lee, hoping to buy a little time. Gertrude always wore a bold swipe of lipstick the same color as her bright red neckerchief.

“Never mind that,” said his mother. “Didn’t I make it abundantly clear to you that …”

But Lee was gone. He just made it to the bathroom in time. Rhonda squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her nose as she heard him retch.

Gertrude sighed, went to the kitchen for a cool cloth to put on Lee’s forehead, and met him at the bathroom door. “Come on, kiddo,” she said, gently leading him down the narrow hall to his bedroom.

Agnes grabbed a plate of homemade gingersnaps, and she and Rhonda tailed Gertrude (well … more accurately, Agnes tailed Gert, and Rhonda tailed the plate of cookies) and squeezed in the door before Gert could shut it.

By this time, Lee was moderately confident that the danger of barfing in front of them had passed. He looked at the trio at the foot of his bed and imagined he was viewing them through the lens of a video camera—zoom in for a close-up of their faces, zoom back out for a full frontal view of three goofy people framed against his bedroom wall like some kind of wacky portrait—okay, hold it; now freeze that frame. If he weren’t feeling so crappy, he’d be tempted to laugh at this bizarre picture of extremes: Rhonda, as short as he was tall, Agnes as thin as his mother was wide. It was as if they were made of silly putty and some kid had come along and stretched them this way and that for his own crazy amusement. It seemed to Lee that life was all about extremes. At school, for example. Kids were either very cool, or way uncool. They either came from nauseatingly normal families, or totally weird ones. Sometimes Lee wished he could just be Joe Average—dive right into the mainstream and coast along the current with everybody else. More often, though, the thought of being “ordinary” seemed like the worst life sentence in the world.

Agnes plumped his pillow, then sat on the edge of his bed and offered him a cookie. Aggie was every bit as strict as his mom, but she didn’t mind letting her affection gush out in a way that would have embarrassed his mother.

“You sure you don’t mind, Agnes?” said Gertrude. “Because I can book off work if you’d rather—”

“’Course I don’t mind,” chirped Agnes. “Sonny’ll be just fine here with me.” She looked over her shoulder at Gertrude. “Run along, now. No point in being late for work.”

Lee could see the motherly apprehension on Gertrude’s face as she took his chin in her fingers and gazed into his eyes as if she could read something there. Lee didn’t know much about telepathy, but just in case, he imagined his eyes were computer screens with the words I’LL BE FINE!! written across them in bold. Lee’s mom must have picked up the message. Suddenly satisfied, she squeezed Lee’s toe on her way out, and she and Agnes left the room, discussing such details as whether or not the ginger ale supplies would hold out until morning, and whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to persuade him to take a Gravol.