Toby

Guess what, that’s the last time I ever pray with my mom, ever. I don’t care if they blow us up or not. Let ‘em.

Grabbing me like that...hugging me like that...

I was back on the porch where I belonged, with my boxes of cards and my plate of toast and jam. Across the street Mr. Pappas sat up in his reclining lawn chair and yelled some gibberish and laid back down again.

I ate a piece of toast.

Then who should come bicycling by but Mary Jo Conrad, pedaling like mad, leaning over the handlebars, not looking at me, not even a glance.

She must think I still like her.

She sits next to me at school, on my left. She’s skinny like one of those stick insects and her hair looks like somebody sawed it off with a bread knife and she’s got so many braces you can’t even see any teeth, plus all her fingernails are bitten right down to the red—they look like they hurt.

People used to say she had cooties but that was just a rumor.

Know what she likes to do at her desk, though? Smear Elmer’s Glue all over her palm, then wait for it to dry, then peel it off in one piece so you can see all the little lines from her palm, then lay the peeling on a stack of other peelings. She’ll do that for hours, like it was her job, like that’s what she came to school for. Sister caught her one time and made her throw the whole pile away, but the very next day she started another one.

She didn’t care.

She didn’t care about Sister getting mad, or about doing any schoolwork, or what she looked like, or people saying she had cooties, or even about the Russians, what they were up to. Like last Wednesday for instance, we were all down on the floor doing a duck-and-cover drill, then I hear this huffing and puffing, so I sneak a peek and there’s Mary Jo blowing like mad on her palm, helping the glue dry. The whole world could be going up in smoke any moment, and there she was.

You had to admire her. I did, anyway.

So then later on I was sitting there with my head on my hand, kind of studying her, you know? Then she noticed me staring.

I smiled.

So you know what she did? Made a little pig-noise at me. Real soft. A soft little pig-noise.

That got to me. That really did.

Pretty soon? By the end of the day? I started kind of liking the way her hair looked all chopped off like that, and how sinnny she was, like in that song, She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni. I even started liking her braces, how shiny.

I started liking Mary Jo Conrad!

Me.

Know what I even did? At home in my room? I made like a Valentine’s card. First I drew a picture of a huge fat bumble bee, just the body, with stripes and a pair of funny little wings. Then I cut out a picture of myself, just my big smiley head, and glued it on the bumble bee body—with Elmer’s Glue, by the way—and drew two antennas coming out the top of my head. Underneath I wrote, Would you BEE my honey?

Next morning I slipped it on her desk during catechism. She took time off from her glue to read it. Then she wrote something on the other side and slipped it back. Here’s what she wrote: Would you BUZZ off?

That really got to me.

So after school I came up to her. She was walking fast, like she does. I caught up and said, “Hi!”

She waited for me to catch my breath and state my business.

I said, “Did you hear about the three holes in the ground?”

She waited.

I said, “Well, well, well.”

She didn’t laugh.

I said, “Get it? Three holes? Well, well, well?”

She still didn’t laugh.

So I asked her, “What’s the difference between a meatball and a golf ball, do you know?”

“Please?” she said.

I didn’t understand. “What. Please what.”

She said it again, begging me, “Pleeease?”

I understood.

I watched her walk away.

The rest of the day I didn’t even hardly eat anything. I just laid on my bed looking up at the ceiling, listening to my transistor. I understood a lot of songs I never used to like before:

Can’t get used to losing you

No matter what I try to do...

Then yesterday afternoon Sister told us, “Down, children, down,” and we all got down, foreheads on the floor, hands behind our heads. And while we were down there, an airplane went over pretty low, pretty loud.

Mary Jo started screaming.

She sounded like an air raid siren. And she wouldn’t stop. Sister had to yank her to her feet and slap her really hard to shut her up.

Then we all got back in our seats, everyone being very quiet now. Sister started writing out some long-division problems on the board.

I snuck a look at Mary Jo. She wasn’t gluing her palm. She wasn’t doing anything. She was just sitting there, hands in her lap, staring straight ahead. And guess what. She was back to looking like she really was, really ugly. Plus? All of a sudden? I felt like I was starving. For baked ham, smothered in heated-up fruit salad.

I was cured.

So now I just wish I could talk to her, just for a minute, so I could tell her, I’m sorry, Mary Jo, but it’s over. You can quit playing hard-to-get.