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“Are you sure you don’t want to stay home a few more days?” Max says, as she pulls up in front of the school. “Get a bit stronger?”
“I’m good,” I say. “Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re sure Rosie can bring you home after school?”
“Max...”
“Okay. I know. I just...”
“I know. You worry. Stop it. Go down to Nunamakers and get an ice cream cone.” We both laugh, knowing I’m talking about a lot more than ice cream.
My face is still bruised, but Max says no one will notice. I guess my skin’s dark enough that the bruises have reached the color of blend. I still walk with a limp, but I’m down to only one pain pill at bedtime, so at least I can stay awake in class during the day. If I want to.
Miss May does one of those cartoon doubletakes when I show up before zero period. It’s a quick double-take, though, and then she’s all, “Great to see you—so glad you’re back—the tables are a mess, the cupboards are a mess—hard to get along without you!”
“Thanks,” I say, starting on the daily routine, tables first, then putting whatever May has for us today at each place.
“What’s with the cap, Eddie? No caps.”
“Hockney said it’d be okay, as long as it’s an HH baseball cap,” I tell her.
She looks doubtful. I take my cap off and bend my head to show her the hairless strip in the middle of my head and the still stapled-up gash.
She turns away. “Okay, okay! Put the cap back on.” Once I’ve covered my stitched-up bald head, she asks, “Are you all right? I heard you were hurt pretty bad.”
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
“I missed you.”
I focus on straightening the tables in the front of the room.
The class is all quiet as I pass out notebooks and today’s reading. Like people can’t talk and get a good look at me at the same time? A couple of the girls look at me like “poor Eddie.” I hate that!
I scoot into my desk next to Phong and half-listen as May talks about choosing our favorite writing for the next WriteLight collection.
Phong leans close and whispers, “You look like shit.”
I laugh, thinking “You look like shit” is a lot better than “poor Eddie.”
“Who’s that?” I say, pointing to the WWKTTD on Phong’s wrist. I guess that girl who makes the bracelets must be getting rich by now because a lot of people are wearing them.
“You know. KT Tatara, that Asian comedian guy?”
“Wait. Asians can be comedians?”
Phong pulls back his hand as if to smack me, then drops it. “There’s no safe place to hit you, is there?” He looks me over again. “It was probably those Patriot guys.”
“Don’t know.”
“Probably though.”
I shrug, finding the lines of the poem that Naomi just read, counting down to the place I’ll read when it’s my turn. “I would show you/the invisible tokens/of sorrow and joy.” It’s good that Miss May always reads the whole poem when we finish reading around because everybody mostly only concentrates on their own lines when we do the read out loud thing.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence, or if May chose the poem with me in mind. “Scars” for today’s writing prompt. Ours or someone else’s? Internal or external? I’ve got a lot to choose from. There’s the scar down the middle of my right hand from the surgery back when I was four years old. The surgery that was supposed to give my hand greater flexibility and range of motion. But didn’t. Max says there was only one, highly questionable, advantage that came from that surgery, and it wasn’t a better working hand.
The pain pills made me sick, and sometimes after the surgery, I’d wake in the middle of the night, screaming in pain. And the only thing that could distract me were Mario’s farts. So, Mario became an expert fart master. He was in 7th grade back when he was on regular fart-duty. With so much practice, he soon became the fart hero of Palm Avenue School. He’s twenty-five now, and he says the fart-hero designation doesn’t carry as much weight as it once did. He says Francie shows no respect for this highly developed skill. Sometimes, though, when it’s just the two of us, and we’re outside somewhere, Mario lets loose with his favorite long, rhythmic, melodic release of gas. And, like always, or almost always, I bust out laughing. He likes to wait until I’ve taken a gulp of soda, so he can get that soda-snort from me, too, but it’s harder for him to find perfect fart conditions now that he’s grown up and I’m almost grown up.
I said I almost always bust out laughing, because there was a time, back when I was nine, when I stopped laughing at Mario’s farts. That’s what tipped him that there was something seriously wrong in my life. And when I started laughing at farts again, he knew I was going to be okay. Max says that if the surgeon had told her, no, the surgery wouldn’t make my hand better, but it would turn Mario into a fart king, well, she could have saved me a lot of pain and saved herself a lot of much needed money.
That old hand scar’s not the scar I’ll write about today, though. Maybe I’ll write about the scar that runs from the top of my forehead past the crown of my skull. That’s a “doozie.” That’s Dr. G.’s word, not mine. He says it remains to be seen whether or not hair will grow back in the strip. Rosie says she’ll love me with or without a full head of hair, but I for sure don’t want to have this reverse mohawk thing for the rest of my life. Max says it will be distinctive, but what with my stub of a hand, I don’t need any more weird distinctions.
So, what scar to write about? Maybe the scar of betrayal by a once-trusted adult? Nah. The hand scar, the hairless head scar, the heart scar...Does Simba have a scar? I’m not sure. It doesn’t have to be real...
Imani, also known as the pest,
Has a scar left by Simba, in jest.
A scratch thin as his whisker,
No blood, not even a blister,
But the pest cried bloody murder.
Even the neighbors heard her,
Neosporin and band-aids
Lessened her tirades,
Consoled with ice cream and kisses...
...to be continued. Bad last line, and I want to get something in there about rewarding Simba with tuna, or fish? Fish would be easier to rhyme.
Phong and I make our way through the jammed-up halls toward Earth Science.
“I heard you didn’t tell the cops who beat you up.”
“I don’t know who beat me up.”
“Would you tell if you knew?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what I’m asking is would you tell if you did?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if I’d tell or not.”
“But...”
“Could we talk about something else? Like the weather, or something?
“Hmmm. Was it raining that night you got beat up?”
By the end of third period, I’m totally done in. I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising ‘cause all I’ve been doing for the past two weeks is walking from William’s recliner to the kitchen and back, watching “Parks and Recreation,” thinking I could be dead, dozing, walking from the recliner to the bathroom and back...You get the idea.
I drag myself to the lunch court and flop down at the table across from Brent, who is in agreement with Phong’s earlier assessment. “You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit,” I tell him.
Cameron puts his tray on the table and sits next to Brent. I look into my lunch carrier, take out the bottle of water, then zip it up again. Nothing looks good.
“I heard the cops were here again this morning, grueling those Patriot guys about beating you up,” he says.
“Where’d you hear that?” Brent asks.
“You know. Monica. She’s an aide in the office. She knows stuff. She says they brought five of those guys in and had them wait outside Hockney’s office. Then they called them in, one at a time. Everyone knows they did it.”
“I don’t know they did it. I don’t know who did it,” I say.
“Yeah, well, you for sure know you pissed them off,” Cameron says.
“What else did Monica say? Who all was in there?” Brent asks.
“She didn’t know their names, just that they were the guys who were wearing ‘Make America Great’ hats back when school started,” Cameron says.
Meghan comes over and sits down next to Cameron. “Can I talk to you?” she says.
“Sure,” Cameron says.
“I mean, like private?”
“Oh. Okay,” He takes the last bite of his white bread sandwich, empties the remaining Cheeto crumbs into his mouth, slides his tray to the end of the table and follows Meghan to a spot over by the tree, away from everyone else.
“More drama for Cameron,” Brent says. “I don’t know why he gets so much girl-drama.”
“Maybe it’s the tie,” I say.
“Maybe I’ll start wearing a tie,” Brent says.
I unzip my lunch carrier and look inside again. Just like before, nothing looks good. Brent watches me for what seems like too long. “Really, you look worse than shit.”
“I’m hella tired. I wish I was home.”
“Well...go home then.”
“I’m riding with Rosie, and she’s not out ’til after 6th period.”
“Well, at least you can sleep through dumbbell math.”
But instead of going to math, I go down to the yoga room and meet Joe coming out.
“You don’t look so good,” Joe says.
“That makes it unanimous.”
He gives me his raised eyebrow look.
“Phong. Cameron. Brent. That’s been their greeting today. Before hi, or how’s it goin’, it’s ‘you look like shit.’”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in class this period? What brings you here?”
“I just...I’m tired...”
“Well...” He holds the door open for me. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I sit at his desk, lean back in his chair, and try to get comfortable. I shove a huge stack of stuff to the back of the desk, make a space where I can lay my head. For a Buddhist, Joe’s got a lot of shit piled around. God, I’m tired. When am I ever not going to be so tired?
The buzz of the bell cuts through my sleep. I don’t open my eyes.
“Eddie. Eddie. Wake up,” Joe says, nudging my shoulder.
I open my eyes.
“Come on. Sit up. If Mr. Hockney sees I’m letting kids sleep in my office, that’ll be the end of me.”
I lift my head, push myself back into the chair.
“What’re you doing here, anyway? You shouldn’t be back at school yet.”
“I was bored at home.”
“So? Is this better?”
I shake my head. Just a little, not past the hurt line.
“You should go home.”
“Have to wait for Rosie,” I tell him.
“Call your mom?”
“She’s at work.”
Joe glances at the clock, then back at me, then at the clock again. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the nurse’s office. You can stretch out in there until Rosie can take you home.”
“It’s not her day.”
Joe gives me the question look again.
“Tuesday/Thursday. She’s not here on Mondays.”
Joe sighs, “Okay. You may as well hang out in here as go sit on one of those hard chairs in the office.” He stacks three mats against the wall, rolls another one up for a pillow. I hear him on the phone to the office, telling someone that I’m with him. I drift off.
At dinner that night, Max—who’s not usually an “I told you so” mom—says, “I told you it was too soon for you to go back to school.”
“Yeah, well, I’d finished all 10,123 episodes of “Parks and Recreation.”
“What’d you hear about the guys who beat you up?” William asks.
I shake my head, take a bite of salad and concentrate on chewing. At least I can chew again, sort of.
“C’mon, Eddie. There’s got to be plenty of rumors flying around. It’s high school. Right?”
I take another bite of salad.
“Eddie...” Max starts.
I turn to Imani. “Hey! I wrote a poem about you today. Wanna hear it?”
“About me? Tell me it!”
“It’s in my notebook.”
“I wanna see it!”
“I’ll get it, but I’ll have to read it to you ‘cause it’s all messed up, stuff crossed out, writing in the...”
Imani runs to the living room, grabs my backpack from beside William’s recliner, rushes back and shoves it at me. “Tell me it!” she says. Then, as an afterthought, “Please??”
“Imani. Sit down and finish your dinner,” William says.
“But I want to hear my poem!”
“After dinner, Sugar,” William tells her.
I finish my dinner in peace, now that the subject of who beat me up got shifted to the poem. I hadn’t meant to read it to the pest, but it was a great distraction.
“I’m done!” Imani says. “Tell me the poem!”
I get my notebook out. Uh-oh. This needs some quick editing. I can’t call Imani “the pest” in front of William. I turn the paper around, then back, like I can’t read my writing. All the time I’m stalling, thinking pest, best, jest, rest... I scratch out the first line and make a quick substitute.
Imani, who won’t say dis or dat,
Has a scar left by Simba the cat.
A scratch thin as his whisker,
No blood, and no blister,
But she cried bloody murder.
All of the neighbors heard her.
Neosporin and band-aids
Lessened her tirades,
Consoled with ice cream and kisses...
“It still needs a last line,” I tell her. “What rhymes with kisses?”
“Umm, Disses? Hisses? Misses? Pisses...”
“Imaaani,” William says. It’s his warning voice.
“I’m just going through the alphabet, Daddy! Now you made me lose my place!”
“You were at P,” Max says.
“Sisses,” Imani continues. “Wishes. Is that a rhyme? Wishes?”
“Close enough,” I say.
“Then dishes, fishes...” and it’s through the alphabet all over again.
Max has scraped garbage onto one plate and stacked the others, so dinner’s officially over. “May I be excused?” I ask, pushing my chair back.
“Sure,” Max says.
I put my notebook back in my backpack, get The Grapes of Wrath out, and take the ten steps to the living room where I flop down into William’s recliner. Really, this is where I’ve wanted to be all day. I’ve barely read the first sentence of Chapter 23 when William comes in, gives me a thumb over the shoulder gesture and says, “Out!”
I look up at him, thinking he’s kidding.
“Out! If you’re well enough to go back to school you’re well enough to sit somewhere else”
“I don’t think I’ll go to school tomorrow,” I tell him.
“Out! Your lease is up!”
I drag myself into my room and stretch out on my bed. I don’t know why my head still hurts so much. Maybe they left a piece of gravel in there or something. I rub my stub-hand along the fuzz strip in the middle of my head. Dr. Googoooian says I’ll be more comfortable when all of the stitches are dissolved but I don’t know when that will be.
I go back to the living room, sit on the couch next to Max. “I’ll take my pill now,” I tell her.
She glances at the clock. “It’s not even eight o’clock. You get the pill at nine.”
“C’mon, Max. I’m ready to go to bed.”
“I’ll bring it in to you at nine,” she tells me. “If you’re still awake, you can have it then.”
“But...”
“No buts, Eddie.”
“I’m not Gordon, or whatever his name was. You know?” I say, angry. “I’m not turning into some addict because I want a pill an hour early.”
The pest looks up from her tablet. “Who’s Gordon?” she asks.
“I’ll see you at nine,” Max says, all mad.
William watches as I walk across the room to my bedroom.
“Who’s Gordon??” the pest asks again.
I close the door behind me and sit on my bed. I probably shouldn’t have said what I did about Gordon. He was a guy they both met at some veteran’s thing. He’d been in Iraq when they were, and they got to be friends. Gordon and William used to play basketball sometimes. And then they heard he’d OD’ed. I guess it was cold of me to say what I did, but it pisses me off how Max is all dedicated to being the pill cop.
I find my phone to call Rosie. Battery’s dead. That kind of day.
It’s as if the fluorescents inside my skull flicker on and off. On and off. I wonder if that’s how it’s going to be from here on out. I wonder if something moved around when I was unconscious, and it’s never going to find its place back to the right spot. All I know is, something doesn’t seem right in my head.
I plump the pillows behind me and start on Chapter 23 again. It’s one of the chapters that’s about migrants in general, comparisons to where they’ve come from, their awful conditions. Sometimes I skip those chapters because I want to keep reading about the Joad family. Tonight, I do a quick skim of Chapter 23, then get back to the Joads in 24. I remember where I left off. They’d found a place in a camp that was clean and where people treated each other right. The kids saw flush toilets for the first time. I can remember what I read, but I’m worried about math. I hold my place in the book with my stump thumb, gaze at the ceiling, and, starting with the sixes, go through the multiplication tables. That works, all the way through the twelves. Those were always the hardest for me, but 12 x 6 is 72, and 12 x 12 is 144, and 12 x 9 is 108, and all the rest are still the same. But why do I feel so fuzzy? Floaty?
My phone rings. I get it from the charger. Finally, after one phone call and three texts, it’s Rosie. “Hey, Rosie.”
“Hey, Eddie.”
“What’re you doing?”’
“The times tables.”
“What????”
“You know, 12 x 12 is...”
“I know what the times tables are. Since the 4th grade I’ve known that. Didn’t you?”
“I was testing myself. That’s all.”
“God. I wish that was the test I was studying for. Calculus is killing me, and I’ve got to keep my A or...”
“I thought colleges didn’t even look at your senior year, especially not second semester.”
“So, I should just blow it off?” She sounds irritated.
“That’s not what I said.”
“I’ve got to go, Eddie. I’ve got studying to do.”
“But...”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I lie back down. 8 x 9 is 72, 11 x 12 is 122. Shit. It seems like Rosie’s just waiting to get mad, like something’s changed, and I don’t even know what it is.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
