by Jeff Strand
Was he happier with them than with his real mother and father? That is an unfair question. Given the opportunity to change history, he certainly would have saved the lives of his parents and gone back to excitedly anticipating his candy store visit. Yet he also enjoyed being able to go grocery shopping, to eat in inexpensive restaurants, and live beyond his front and back yard.
He would have changed the past if he could, but since he couldn’t (to the best of his knowledge), he would simply live the life he’d been given and enjoy being happier than he’d ever been.
The happiness was impacted by a sense of dread, though, as the date for his first day of school approached. He liked social interaction such as ordering hamburgers, but to be stuck in a classroom all day? With other children? Who might chant “Fangboy” at him? And who might draw mean-spirited pictures of him depicting his teeth as even larger and sharper than they were? This seemed like it could go terribly wrong.
“Can’t you just teach me at home?” Nathan asked Penny and Mary.
Penny, who sat on the couch, patted the cushion next to her. “Come here, Nathan, and let me tell you a story.”
Nathan sat down next to her.
“Once upon a time there was a little boy, a boy who looked much like yourself as a matter of fact. This little boy did not want to go to school. But we made him. And he went. The end.”
“That wasn’t a very good story,” said Nathan.
“That’s because it’s based on reality. Would you really have us devote as much time as a teacher to your education? Shall I quit my job and let Mary support us? Would you like to get a job?”
“I’m sorry,” said Nathan. “I’ll go to school.”
“Yes, you will. And you’ll bring home good grades. Your handwriting is so atrocious that you’d think you had sharp pointed fingers instead of teeth. What is six times seven?”
“I don’t know, but six times five is thirty.”
“The fives are easy. You have many things to learn, Nathan Pepper, and you will go to school like any other child.”
Nathan nodded, and felt ashamed that he’d ever protested. This was his chance to have a normal life. He couldn’t expect anybody to quit their job to keep him from feeling awkward. When had he become such a selfish boy? He was going to go to school and study hard and learn his multiplication tables and be able to point out every country on a map and become smart and invent things and get rich and move himself and the sisters into a mansion with a butler and a gardener and a special room filled with butterflies.
He would change the world!
NINE
Two weeks before school started, Nathan lay in bed, nearly overcome by sleep, when he discovered that one of his teeth was loose.
It was one of the corner ones that could legitimately be called a fang. The upper left. If he poked at it with his tongue, it jiggled. He lay there for a moment, jiggling his tooth, then got out of bed and hurried into Penny’s room. She sat up in her bed, reading.
“Look!” he said, proudly opening his mouth and making the tooth move. “It’s my first loose one!”
Penny leaned forward. “I believe you’re right!” She called Mary into the room, and they both admired his loose tooth, the way it could wobble forward and backward.
They’d discussed this before. Mary had told him that before too long his teeth would start to fall out, one by one, and that it was nothing to be afraid of, it was part of the natural course of things, and that new teeth would grow back in their place.
“Will they be normal teeth?” Nathan had asked.
“We won’t know until we see them. Perhaps they might. Perhaps when it’s all over, you’ll have a mouth full of teeth just like anybody else.”
Penny had shushed her and told her she was being cruel, that it was wrong to raise his hopes likes that. Mary had argued that it was a perfectly feasible outcome, and that there was no reason the boy shouldn’t look forward to the possibility. Nathan had been told to leave the room, and the subject was no longer discussed.
“Should I get a pair of pliers and rip it right out?” asked Mary, her eyes gleaming with mischief. She said it with a smile to let Nathan know that she was teasing, that she wasn’t really going to rip his tooth out with pliers.
“No, no,” said Penny. “We need to tie a string around his tooth, and then we need to tie the other end around the tail of a bull, and then we need to anger the bull so that it runs off.”
“But what if the tooth isn’t loose enough? Our poor Nathan could find himself being dragged behind an angry bull!”
“You’re right! And what if we were careless about the location of the bull and sent it rushing toward a cliff?”
“And what if at the bottom of the cliff were shards of broken glass floating in lava?”
“He would be doomed, doomed, doomed, and it would be all our fault!”
Nathan poked at his tooth some more. “I think I’ll wait for it to fall out on its own.”
Penny furrowed her brow in deep thought. “I wonder if the Tooth Fairy brings extra money to boys with sharp teeth?”
“The Tooth Fairy?” Nathan asked.
“You haven’t heard of the Tooth Fairy?”
Nathan shook his head.
“You, of all people, have never heard of the Tooth Fairy? What sort of upbringing did you have?” Penny bit her lip, as if realizing that she’d said something awful. “I’m sorry. Maybe your parents meant to tell you at a more appropriate time. When a little boy or little girl loses their baby teeth, they put them under their pillow, and when they wake up in the morning, they find that the Tooth Fairy has replaced the tooth with money!”
“Money for teeth? I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, well, you have to believe, or the Tooth Fairy won’t come.”
“What does she do with the teeth?”
“Nobody knows. Perhaps she makes necklaces out of them. Perhaps she grinds them up and makes chalk. Perhaps she even eats them.”
“Hmmmm,” said Nathan. “If these teeth are so valuable, maybe people should hang on to them instead of selling them off to a fairy.”
“That may very well be a wise idea,” said Penny. “Who knows? You could sell them for ten times what that miserly Tooth Fairy would have left.”
Nathan continued to work at the tooth. He did not have the courage to take any drastic measures to hasten its removal, but he wiggled it whenever he had a free moment, and he bit into apples harder than he might normally have done, and when he brushed he focused nearly twice as much attention on that particular tooth as he did the others.
And then, when he woke up one morning, the tooth was gone.
He’d lost his first tooth!
He was so excited he nearly cried out with joy.
But…where was it?
“I’ve swallowed my tooth!” he shouted. “I can’t believe I’ve done this!”
He’d lost his source of profit!
And more importantly, what devastation awaited his insides as this tooth made its way through his body? He could almost feel it, poking and jabbing and slicing through important parts. Oh no!
He started to run out of his bedroom, then caught himself and walked in a very, very, very, very slow manner, hoping to keep the tooth from moving around. Where was it now? Still in his stomach? Lodged two inches below his throat? He’d be lucky if it didn’t slice him open, neck to navel.
“What’s the matter?” asked Penny, wiping sleep away from her eyes as she emerged from her bedroom.
“I swallowed my tooth while I slept!”
“Are you sure?”
Was he sure? He wasn’t doubled over in agony. There weren’t any new holes in his body where the tooth might have made its way out. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Well, let’s look for it instead of rushing into a state of panic.” They walked into Nathan’s bedroom, where Penny gently pulled the blanket aside. She quickly plucked something small and white from on top of the sheet. “Here it is.”
>
She handed him the tooth.
“Thank you!” Nathan said. “I thought I was a goner!”
“You are a silly boy sometimes.”
Nathan held the tooth up to the light, admiring it from all angles. “I’m going to figure out exactly what the Tooth Fairy does with all of the teeth she purchases,” he said. “Maybe that’s how I’ll make us all rich!”
Of course, it cannot be forgotten that Nathan was only seven years old, and though his intentions were admirable, the lure of easy money was too much to resist. During dinner, he admitted to Penny and Mary that perhaps he ought not to interfere with the Tooth Fairy’s business, and would indeed place the tooth under his pillow.
It is now that we must step way from our story for a bit to speak to the younger readers of the tale of Fangboy. Though we hope you have enjoyed the narrative so far, and perhaps learned some valuable lessons from it, the next section will be of no interest to your youthful minds. You will find it dull and ponderous, and you may find yourself wishing to place the book aside rather than read it through to its conclusion. That would be a shame, for there are many adventures still to come, including some frightening moments and some derring-do action that will tickle your hearts. So when you reach the end of this section (which will be helpfully marked with “* * *”) skip ahead to the next section and resume reading as if you’d missed nothing.
Parents who are reading this book out loud to their children should also skip the following section.
* * *
Of course, there was no Tooth Fairy. When children placed their teeth under their pillow, the parents knew fully well that no magical fairy would appear in the home and secretly replace the tooth with money. It was, in fact, the parents themselves who did this, using their own money. This explained why rich children received large sums of money and poor children received small sums, in much the same way that the disproportionate gift distribution by Santa Claus always favored wealthy families, even though one might think that elves making gifts at the North Pole would be uninterested in a family’s socioeconomic status.
So in the middle of the night, after Nathan was asleep, Penny and Mary crept into his bedroom, moving with great stealth so as not to wake him up and expose the ruse. Penny reached underneath his pillow and withdrew the tooth, while Mary did the honor of sliding the money where the tooth had been.
They placed the tooth in a small jar, and Penny put it in the secret drawer of her tiny keepsake shelf.
* * *
The next morning, Nathan lifted his pillow and there were not one, not two, but three coins! Three whole coins!
He thought about what he might buy. Lemonade? A suckling pig? Maybe he’d save it. Kids at school who were inclined to be mean to him might make less fun of a boy with three coins to show off.
But then he spent them all on comic books.
* * *
On the first day of school, he woke up with a stomachache, one that felt like a giant invisible hand was kneading his guts like pizza dough. For the briefest of instants he considered raising a fuss about it and declaring himself too ill to go to school, but he knew it was only his nerves and that Penny and Mary would make him go to school anyway.
Penny made him an extra-special breakfast of pancakes with strawberries on top. He ate slowly, the syrup congealing around his tongue.
“It will be fine,” she assured him.
They’d had an appointment with Nathan’s teacher, Mrs. Calmon, two days ago, just to be sure she was made aware of the situation. Mary did not come to this meeting, partly because she couldn’t take the time off work, and partly because she felt it was unnecessary. “Why would we warn people about the boy?” she’d asked, when she thought Nathan couldn’t hear.
“It’s the responsible thing to do.”
“It’s like saying there’s something wrong with him.”
“It’s saying that there’s something different about him. There is! It’s not a bad thing, but it’s not a normal thing, and what does it hurt to give his teacher advance notice?”
“Do whatever you want. But I won’t be there.”
Mrs. Calmon was a short, plump, ruddy-faced woman with brown hair tied into a tight bun.
“Are you sure he doesn’t belong in a school for special needs children?” she’d asked.
“Nathan has no special needs,” said Penny. “I just want to be sure he is treated with the same respect as every other child in the classroom.”
“Much of that depends on Nathan himself, doesn’t it? Respect is not distributed equally amongst the students. Every single year I will have one student—never more than one, but always one—who picks from his nose and eats the contents. That pupil does not receive the same amount of respect as the one who takes first prize at the science fair.”
“Understood,” said Penny. “Again, we’re not asking for special treatment. I merely felt it was appropriate to warn you. We love the little rascal, but his appearance can be jarring.”
Mrs. Calmon nodded. “Fair enough. You’re a good aunt.”
That was the story: Penny and Mary were Nathan’s aunts. His parents had died, he’d been “moved around” a bit, and finally came to live with his aunts. Nathan didn’t completely understand how everything had been arranged, but he did know that some papers weren’t as authentic as they might be.
While they were discussing this story, he’d almost asked why they didn’t just adopt him, but something told him that it wasn’t a question that should be asked, that perhaps he didn’t want to know the answer.
* * *
“Each desk has a piece of paper with a name on it,” said Mrs. Calmon, as the children entered the classroom. “Find your name, and that will be your desk.”
Nathan walked up and down the rows, searching for his name. There it was. Nathan Pepper. Back row, left corner. He sat down and ran his fingers along the top of his wooden desk, which was shiny and new.
The other students found their seats as well. About twenty of them, if he’d counted correctly, and since there were five rows of four, he was certain that he had. A freckle-faced little girl stuck her tongue out at him before sitting down in the desk in front of him, and a thin, sickly-looking boy gave him a shy smile as he sat down to his right.
“Good morning, class. My name is Mrs. Calmon.” She wrote it on the chalkboard. “We have a lot of learning ahead of us this year, so I hope you’re all ready to pay attention. I will now have each of you come to the front of the class so you can tell the others your name, what you want to be when you grow up, and what you did on your summer vacation.”
Public speaking? Already? What if she made him go first? What would he say?
“We’ll start with you, Peter, and then work our way up and down the rows.”
So, he was to go last. Such cruelty! The agony would be unbearable! Why couldn’t she just let him get it over with?
Peter walked to the front of the classroom. “My name is Peter, I want to be a fireman, and over my summer vacation I set some things on fire.”
“Very good, Peter. Helen?”
“My name is Helen, I want to be a maid, and over my summer vacation I chased away a stray dog.”
“Very good, Helen. Gordon?”
“My name is Gordon, I want to be an astronaut, and over my summer vacation I took a rocket to the moon.”
“Now, Gordon, are you telling the truth?”
“Yes, teacher.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, teacher. I was on the moon for three days.”
“Gordon, you will now be the first person of the year to spend five minutes in the Corner of Ridicule. This is for students who deserve to be silently laughed at by their peers. Go sit on that bright red stool until I say to stop, and feel their eyes upon your back, judging you for your shameful foolishness.”
Gordon hung his head and went to sit in the Corner of Ridicule.
The other students went up, one by one, as Nathan tried to keep his pani
c under control. “My name is Nathan” would be easy. That part he could handle. But what did he want to be when he grew up? A cowboy? A doctor? A zookeeper? The other kids were taking all of the good choices.
Maybe a banker. Yes, everybody liked a good banker.
Oh, his stomach was killing him.
What if Mrs. Calmon sent him to the Corner of Ridicule just for his teeth?
What if he threw up in front of all the kids, and then she sent him to the Corner of Ridicule?
He’d never imagined that school could be so difficult!
The other kids were moving too quickly. He’d never have time to think of something!
The sickly boy next to him went up to the front. “My name is Jamison, I want to be a magician when I grow up, and over the summer I stayed in the hospital.”
“Very good, Jamison. Tammy?”
They were on his row! Would he get sent to the Corner of Ridicule if he ran shrieking from the room? He could feel his stomach bouncing around in there, trying to dislodge his breakfast. He couldn’t do this! He couldn’t!
Before he knew it, they were at the girl with freckles.
“My name is Beverly, I want to be a queen when I grow up, and over the summer I beat up my older brothers almost every single day.”
“Now, Beverly, is that true?”
“It is. I’ll beat up one of the boys in here if you need me to prove it. I’ll do it right now.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. Very good, Beverly. Nathan?”
Beverly stuck out her tongue at Nathan as she returned to her desk. Nathan didn’t like that at all. Maybe he could use that to delay his public humiliation. He raised his hand. “Teacher!”
“Yes, Nathan?”
“She stuck her tongue out at me.”
“Beverly, did you stick your tongue out at Nathan?”