The King of Jam Sandwiches

by Eric Walters

  It surprised me that I felt that way, and it surprised me even more that she’d heard it in my voice.

  “There’s always a fifty-fifty chance she’ll screw things up. So it could be longer,” she said.

  “I know you’ve been in foster homes before, but exactly how many times?” I asked.

  “More than I’d like to remember. Hey, I was just wondering…since you have a job and get paid, and you obviously don’t spend it on clothing, what do you do with your money?”

  I’d quickly learned that when Harmony didn’t want to talk about something, she changed the subject. I recognized it because I used that trick myself.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I’m saving up for a private jet.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I mean a yacht. I’ve always wanted a yacht.”

  “It’s a car, right? You seem like the sort of guy who starts saving for a car years before they’re old enough to drive. It’s wheels, right?”

  I just smiled and nodded.

  “You don’t seem like a gearhead, but guys are guys. Just out of curiosity, do you ever think about running away?”

  “Why would I?” I asked.

  “Come on, I’ve run away from places that are better than where you live.”

  “It’s my home. It’s my house. It’s my place.”

  “Yeah, I guess I understand. There have been times when I should have called social services about my mother, but I didn’t. I just stayed,” she said.

  She started up the walk to her house, and I called out to her. “What was its name?”

  She turned and looked at me, confused by my question.

  “Your polar bear, the one your mom took and sold.” What was his name?

  She smiled. “Polar. Polar the Bear. Stupid, right?”

  “I like it. I would have called it the same thing,” I said.

  “Oh great, now I’m as hopeless as you.”

  “Or as cool. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. “Right?”

  “You should come by my house, and we’ll walk to school together. I’ll even let you carry my imaginary books,” she said with a wink. “Now you better get home and get to work. You haven’t worked harder than me today.”

  I knew she was joking, but she was also right. I did have work to do tonight.

  Then Harmony surprised me by coming back down the walk. What was she doing? When she was close enough, she threw her arms around my shoulders and gave me a big hug. My arms hung limply at my sides.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said and then turned and disappeared into her house.

  I just stood there, too shocked to move. She’d hugged me. When was the last time anyone had hugged me? I couldn’t remember. I’d just been hugged by some girl I hadn’t even known existed until two days ago. A girl who only the day before had punched me in the nose. A girl who had just gone clothes shopping with me. A girl I’d told secrets that I’d never told anybody. A girl who most likely would be gone in a few days or at most a few weeks. Maybe that made it all okay.

  TEN

  This was the eighth day in a row we had walked to school together. Harmony mostly talked and I mostly listened. And thought. Each morning I’d stop in front of her house and wait. The last three mornings her foster mother had stood at the door and given me a smile and a little wave. I’d waved back. Today Harmony had been a bit later than usual, so we weren’t going to be as early as I liked to be. There was actually a danger we might be a minute or two late.

  Neither of us had said it, but we tried to walk to school with just the two of us. If we saw somebody we knew—somebody I knew, for the most part—we’d slow down or speed up or take a slightly different route. Sometimes that didn’t work, but most of the time it did. I was disappointed when it didn’t. I thought she was too. Not that I’d admit it to anybody, but I felt like I didn’t want to share her.

  My friends were starting to bug me about me spending so much time with Harmony, and I heard some people thought we were a couple. I’d never been the subject of talk like that. I was the thin, tall kid who was smart and good at basketball. I wasn’t the guy with the girlfriend. Not that she was my girlfriend.

  Funny thing was, Harmony never ran out of things to say. The girl could talk. I was okay with that. Listening meant I was less likely to say anything that would reveal any more of my secrets. Even so, some of them came out.

  Today Harmony was a little more feisty than usual. It made me uneasy. She was always close to the line. Two days earlier she’d yelled at a driver and given him the finger when we were crossing St. Clair. He’d pulled over, climbed out of his car and yelled at us, and we’d had to run away. Actually, I’d had to sort of drag her away because she wanted to get into it with him.

  Today it looked like she was itching for a fight again. She’d been going on and on about some of the girls in our class. There was a group of girls—four or five, depending on if they were fighting with each other—who seemed to think they could control the school. They didn’t bother me because I wasn’t important enough for them to notice. It was almost impossible not to notice Harmony, though, and they weren’t happy about her getting attention.

  “If any of them even looks at me the wrong way today, I’m going to lose it on them,” she said.

  “No you’re not. You’re going to behave yourself today, right?”

  “Depends. I’m nice to people who are nice to me. I bet none of those girls have ever been in a real fight in their entire lives,” Harmony said.

  “How about if we keep it that way? Just remember to use your words.”

  She laughed. “You’re hilarious even when you don’t mean to be.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. Did you do your homework?”

  “You’re not my mother. Wait—my mother has never once asked me about my homework. Does your dad ever ask you about homework?”

  “I don’t need to be asked. Besides, he’s too preoccupied with his own things.”

  “Is he still going up in the elevator?” she asked.

  “He’s pretty close to the top, I think.”

  I’d told her more and more about my father—more than I’d told anybody else. But there were so many things she didn’t know, and I was never going to tell her. Still, it felt really good to have somebody to talk to. She could keep a secret. Besides, the fact that she would soon be going back to her mother and leaving the school meant she’d be taking my secrets away with her.

  “I don’t know if he slept much last night,” I said.

  “But he let you sleep?”

  I nodded.

  “Your father is such a jerk. Not that my mother isn’t a jerk too. Do you know how many times she’s been to rehab?”

  I shook my head.

  “Four—no, five times.”

  “And you had to go to a foster home each time?”

  “Not the first couple of times. My nana took care of me.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “Yeah, my mother’s mother. She practically raised me. We lived with her until I was nine, and then, well, you know, she passed.”

  Passed. A polite word for died.

  “That was four, almost five years ago. I still really miss her.”

  “My grandmother and grandfather used to live with us.”

  “And your father drove them away?” she asked.

  “They died. My grandfather a year after my mother and then my grandmother six months after that.”

  “Wow, three family members before you were even six years old. You should be more screwed up than you are.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  We walked for a bit without talking. That always happened when one of us had said too much.

  “Do you know what’s not fair?” Harmony finally asked, breaking the silence.

  “That people die?”

  “That the wrong people always die.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, though nothing she said was meant to be funny. />
  “My nana, who really loved me, died and my mother, who didn’t care for me, lived. Does it sound mean for me to think that about my mother?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve thought it too…about my mother dying and my father living.”

  “It’s okay to think that,” she said. “Right?”

  I didn’t know if it was right or wrong, I just knew it was how I felt and, apparently, how she felt too. We kept walking and stopped talking again. I wondered if we’d say another word the rest of the way.

  “Wanna trade lunches?” Harmony asked. This was a safe thing to talk about.

  “I was hoping you’d ask.”

  She pulled out a banana and half a sandwich from her lunch bag as we walked. Trading had become part of our morning routine so we wouldn’t have to do it at lunch. The guys had noticed I was eating something other than jam sandwiches and knew what we were doing, but nobody said anything anymore.

  I took the items she gave me, put them in my bag and started to remove the half sandwich I’d wrapped separately.

  “Let me guess. It’s a jam sandwich,” she said.

  “You could have a future working for the psychic hotline.”

  “First off, I knew you were going to say that, and second, couldn’t you bring something else for lunch instead? I know for a fact that you have peanut butter in your basement food hoard.”

  “I really don’t like peanut butter.”

  “If you’re going to trade it to me anyway, what does it matter?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know you like peanut butter.”

  “After all this jam, I’m pretty well ready for dog food on a cracker.”

  “We do have crackers and dog food. I can arrange that.”

  “How about peanut butter tomorrow?”

  “You don’t have to trade lunches with me,” I said.

  “Yes, I do, but I’m afraid that if you fatten up, you won’t fit into your fancy new pants.”

  “Maybe you could convince Mrs. Levy to let out the waist.”

  We stopped at St. Clair and waited for the cars to clear. There were traffic signals half a block away, but we never went that far. There was a gap coming up.

  “Let’s go!”

  I ran across the four car lanes and two sets of streetcar tracks, but Harmony took her time. She always did that. It was like she was forcing the cars to slow down—or daring them to hit her. One car blared its horn and sped past, just barely missing her.

  She joined me on the curb.

  “Are you trying to get hit?”

  “It missed me.”

  Harmony turned to the left and started walking.

  “I figured you knew the way by now,” I said.

  “If we head down this alley, we can go through the back gate into the schoolyard. It’s shorter.”

  She was right, but there were reasons not to take this route.

  “Are you scared of the alley?” she asked.

  “No.” Okay, that was a lie. Most of us avoided this alley.

  “It’s eight fifteen in the morning. Bad things happen at night.” I saw a twinkle in her eyes. “I’m going through the alley. Are you coming?”

  If I didn’t go, I’d never hear the end of it. Besides, I didn’t think it was smart for her to go alone. I also thought she might be right, that it would probably be safe in the daytime.

  We turned into the alley. It was deserted. Closed garage doors and garbage cans lined the lane. There were no cars or people to be seen.

  “See? There’s nothing to worry about,” Harmony said. “So stop worr—”

  Three guys came out from between two garages farther down the alley. They were older, bigger and louder than us, and they outnumbered us. My instincts were to turn and run but I doubted Harmony was going to run and there was no way I was leaving her behind.

  They got closer and louder. I tried not to make eye contact. I thought if I just stared straight ahead, not looking at them, they wouldn’t look at me. We had almost passed them when one of them reached out, grabbed me by the arm and spun me around. It was like an electric shock went through my entire body.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

  I was too stunned and scared to speak.

  Harmony jumped in. “We’re going to school. Maybe you should do the same thing, because you have a lot of things to learn.”

  The second guy reached out and grabbed her bag, snatching it from her shoulder. She tried to react, but the third one grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms. She struggled to get free.

  “Leave her alone!” I yelled. I was trying to break free too, but the first guy held me tighter and swung me around until we were face-to-face.

  “You got anything else you want to say?”

  I didn’t answer. I looked down at the ground, but my fingers balled into fists.

  The guy holding me grabbed my bag and tossed it to the guy who had Harmony’s pack. He opened up Harmony’s bag and started grabbing things and dropping them to the ground. An apple, half a jam sandwich, a book. He turned her backpack upside down, and the rest of her lunch and a couple more books tumbled out. He shook the bag again, making sure it was empty, and then dropped it on the ground as well.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Do either of you have money?” the first guy asked me.

  I shook my head. I was so scared I felt like I wasn’t even in my body anymore. What were they going to do to us? There was nobody around…

  “I have some money,” Harmony said. “Let me go, and I’ll get it out.”

  The guy released her, and she started digging in her pockets.

  “Here,” Harmony said.

  She was holding a twenty-dollar bill in her hand. Then she dropped it, and it fluttered to the ground. As the guy bent down to get it, she brought her knee up, and it connected to his face with a sickening thud. He groaned and staggered, almost toppling over.

  Fast as lightning, she grabbed the lid of a metal garbage can beside her and hit him again on the top of his head. He crumpled to the ground.

  I was desperately shaking my arm to get loose from the guy holding me, and I accidentally hit him in the face with my elbow. I heard a loud snap, and his nose exploded. The blood spurted out, and he released me, clutching his nose. He fell to his knees.

  The third guy just stood there, staring at us. He looked as stunned, shocked and surprised as I felt.

  Harmony started swinging the garbage lid, wielding it like Wonder Woman. The guy stepped back, tripped, almost fell over my bag on the ground, regained his balance and then turned and ran down the alley in the direction we’d just come from. Harmony threw the lid frisbee style in his direction. It clattered on the pavement.

  “Come on!” she yelled.

  She grabbed her books, backpack and the twenty-dollar bill, then started running. I picked up my pack and ran too, quickly catching up to her.

  Harmony reached out and grabbed my free hand, and we kept running. I kept checking over my shoulder to see if the guys were chasing us, but two were still on the ground and the third had vanished. We rounded the corner at the end of the alley and kept running, right through the open gate of the schoolyard. I was relieved to see a teacher outside on duty and the yard filled with people waiting for the bell. We were safe.

  We came to a stop at the base of a tree. I looked around and saw that people had turned in our direction. Maybe it was because we were running, or maybe it was the dazed look in our eyes, or… we were still holding hands. We both realized it at the same time, and we released our grip.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “You?”

  “It was like watching a movie starring Disharmony, super ninja warrior.”

  She started to laugh, but it was a strange laugh—like she wasn’t laughing as much as trying not to cry.

  “I think I have to sit down,” she said.

  She slumped against the tree trunk, and I sat down beside her.

&nb
sp; “Where did you ever learn to use the lid of a garbage can as a weapon?”

  “Doesn’t everybody do that?” she asked.

  “Only Captain America, Wonder Woman and now you.”

  “You use what you’ve got. I’ve learned that. You did pretty good with those pointy elbows of yours.”

  “I think I might have broken his nose.”

  “I hope you did! He deserved it.”

  “Should we tell the principal? You know, have him call the police?” I asked.

  “And tell them you broke somebody’s nose and I put my knee into a guy’s face and then hit him with a garbage-can lid?”

  I now realized that both of us were shaking.

  “I thought they were going to do to us what we did to them,” I said.

  “So did I. You ever been beaten up before?” Harmony asked.

  “Other than by you?”

  She started laughing again. “You really do make me laugh, Robert.”

  “Just what I want, girls laughing at me,” I said before adding, “Yeah, I’ve lost some fights.”

  “I can’t picture that.”

  “You can’t picture me losing?” I asked.

  “I can’t picture you fighting.”

  “I don’t. Not now. Not anymore.”

  “But you did?”

  “Before—a few years ago.”

  “And now you don’t fight?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Because you were beaten up a lot?”

  I didn’t answer. That wasn’t the reason, but I couldn’t tell her what was.

  “I’ve been beaten up,” she said.

  “I didn’t know superheroes got beat up.”

  This time she didn’t laugh.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I said.

  “It’s happened a few times.”

  “Is that why your mother went to jail?” I asked.

  “Not my mother. It was two of the assorted loser boyfriends she’s brought around over the years, and one of them did go to jail for hitting me.”

  I felt a rush of anger. What sort of jerk beats up a kid?

  “I’m glad it wasn’t your mother.”

  “She didn’t hit me, but she didn’t stop them. That’s not much better. Your father ever hit you?”

  “Never.”

  “Never?”