GO BIG OR GO HOME

By the end of Christmas break, my Get a Life list had 114 things on it. That meant 81 to go, with 77 days until the Spring Art Show at Cathedral. I was a little bit behind, but it wasn’t too bad, seeing as I’d been chained to Grandma’s house for the last two weeks.

And I must have been doing something right, because Mom said I could be not completely grounded once school started up again. I asked her what “not completely” meant, but she just said, “Let’s see how it goes” and “Don’t push your luck.” I didn’t ask any more questions after that.

Now that I was going to have a little more freedom, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I’d been racking up plenty of small stuff over break, but it was time to start thinking big again.

Like really big.

Like Bigfoot Hairy big.

It had been a while now, and maybe if I was lucky, Hairy had taken an anger-management class or something. Anyway, I was determined to at least try to get him to tell me something about my dad.

But I wasn’t going in without backup. I needed someone who already knew about the whole Dad situation and who didn’t scare easily. Also, someone who was a real live human being. (Sorry, Leo!)

So as soon as I got to school on the first day back, I went looking for you-know-who.

I found him at his locker, drawing a new pair of eyeballs on the door to replace the ones Mr. McQuade had cleaned off over the break.

“Khatchy!” he said when he saw me. (He’d never called me that before, but that’s Matty the Freak for you.) “What’d you get me for Christmas?”

“The other half of your brain,” I said. “What’d you get me?”

Matty shrugged and unzipped his backpack. Then he took out this sweet stainless-steel pen, still in the package.

“I’m not so big on wrapping stuff,” he said, and tossed it at me.

Now I felt stupid. I hadn’t even thought about getting a present for him. And the pen looked really nice, like something a real artist would use.

It also looked expensive.

“Um… how’d you get this?” I said, because with Matty, you never knew.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I got some crazy money from my aunt this year.”

I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, but it’s not like I was going to call him a liar right after he’d given me a present.

And right before I wanted to ask him a favor.

“So, listen,” I said. “You remember Bigfoot Hairy, right?”

“I remember running for my life, if that’s what you mean,” Matty said.

“How would you feel about going back over there for a little surveillance with me?” I said.

I’d learned to speak enough Freak by now that I was pretty sure I knew how to get Matty interested. And sure enough, the way he smiled when I asked that question, you would have thought I’d just given him a present, not the other way around.

I think that’s what you call a win-win situation.