But getting Freddy had been all my idea. One day after school in fourth grade, Aunt Cat had been watching me at the salon while my mom went on some kind of ridiculous job interview, and I got bored, so I went next door to stare at the hamsters for, like, the ten millionth time. I noticed this one baby hamster in the back corner of the big tank, all alone. It was scratched up and looked like it was shivering. When I scrunched my nose up to the glass, I saw that it had a bloody, raw stump where one of its front paws should be.
I stared at the little guy for a long time, until Aunt Cat tracked me down in there. She and Bill saw what I was looking at, and Bill said, “Such a shame when they turn on one of their own like that. Poor little guy’s probably gonna be dead within a day or so.”
I just blurted it out: “Can I have him?”
Bill told me that I was going to have to feed this hamster out of the palm of my hand because he wouldn’t be able to grip nuts and seeds with his front paws. He also said I would have to dribble warm water into the hamster’s mouth drop by drop, or the hamster would die of dehydration after having lost so much blood. Finally, Bill told me that the hamster probably wouldn’t survive with only three paws, no matter what I did.
Aunt Cat saw the look on my face, and said, “I’ll buy the accessories if you’ll throw in the little rodent for free. What do you say?”
That’s just who she is.
Anyway, I had just started turning my key in the lock on our apartment door when I realized something awful: Now The Bee thought Aunt Cat was my mom. That meant I was going to have keep my actual mom away from every school-related event.
Wow. I was the only superhero whose mom had a secret identity.
My actual mother wasn’t home. She had left a note: Out job hunting. Hopefully I will catch one! :)
Pretty cheerful, considering the situation.
And what had Aunt Cat really been thinking when she’d said, “But . . . ”?
The first thing I did was take the wrapping off my hands and scrub away at Captain America while I was at it. I eventually came up with the idea of pouring nail polish remover over him, which worked. Sadly, it also made me scream when it ran down my hand onto one skinless knuckle, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Mom came home a few hours later, happily convinced that hard times were over. She was always doing this. Every time a guy dumped her, or we got kicked out of an apartment, or she lost a job, she would somehow find a shred of good news. Then she would cling to it and ignore every other bit of reality, in order to convince herself that this time our lives were just about to turn around.
Sometimes, it was a new Prince Charming. But the guy never turned out to be a prince, or very charming. Other times, it was an “amazing” new apartment, with “great positive energies”—and bedbugs.
Once, it was the gleaming promise of a job delivering pizzas on a bicycle—wearing a clown suit.
Today, her friend Lisa had gotten her a middle-shift job at ShopMart, our local gigantic mega-store. Middle shift! That meant she would be working every day from the time I got home from school until after I went to bed. I hated the middle shift.
On the other hand, of course it was great that she had a job. And I did enjoy the huge meal of free sample foods she had gotten to take home after the job interview. Even better was that, in her excitement, she forgot to ask me about my day.
She hardly even drank anything; she just splashed the last dregs of the previous night’s bottle into her share of the sample artificial fruit punch. It was barely enough to slow down her excited chatter. These nights didn’t come very often, so I decided to sit back, keep my damaged hands under the table as much as possible, and smile a lot.
I was used to celebrating small victories.
Believe it or not, I didn’t get in trouble for several weeks after that first day. Partly, I was terrified I’d get dragged to Mr. Overbye’s office again and he would call my aunt/mom back in. I knew I had dodged a bullet there, plus with my mom’s new work schedule, I basically only saw her for fifteen minutes after school, and then on weekends, so I never had to tell her about the first round of trouble.
There was no way I would get that lucky twice.
The other thing working in my favor was that Bowen was behaving himself. I guess even he was worried about The Bee. Whatever—I wasn’t complaining.
I even did some secret good deeds. I routinely emptied our classroom’s pencil sharpener, picked trash up off the floors, and closed open lockers as I walked through the hallways. It probably doesn’t seem like much, but I kept thinking about my dad’s star in my pocket and feeling like I should try to do something every day to make a difference in the world.
I also started to make a friend, which hadn’t happened in a long time. It was just too tricky. What if I got invited to somebody’s birthday party? I would have to say no, because we couldn’t afford a gift. What if the kid wanted to come over to my house, but my mom happened to be drunk that day? Or worse, what if she had a boyfriend at the apartment?
But somehow, I found myself talking every day with Nate, who sat at my table in three classes because it turned out that his last name was Ferguson—very close to Falconer. At first, I had been pretty mad at him for telling on me to The Bee—but, then again, I had slammed him into the lockers. So I got over it.
Besides, I almost had to talk to him. We were like the Shrimp Twins.
After the first day, our English teacher, Mr. Kurt, had reassigned all the seats alphabetically, so I got to trade Bowen for Nate. It started out kind of awkward, because Bowen had somehow managed to replace all of my collage materials with ghastly giant spiders, close-up photos of murder victims, baby dolls, and ballerina figures. Nate was very curious to know how this all fit together to tell my life story. Once I explained that Bowen had been assigned to put all my work in a folder for me, Nate caught on pretty fast.
“There’s a Bowen in every school,” he said. “And trust me, I’ve been to enough schools.”
“Why?” I asked, chucking a guy hanging from a noose into the trash can on top of a tarantula, which appeared to be snacking on a ballet dancer.
“My dad used to be in the army,” he said. “Now he sells top-secret technology to the military. We move around a lot, because his job is to set up new computer systems on different bases all over the country. It stinks. Everybody picks on the new kid. Especially the tiny new kid. Nobody ever wants to be seen hanging out with a shrimp. I mean, no offense.”
Jamie Thompson must have been eavesdropping from the next table, because she giggled. I turned and gave her the Look of Death.
“I’m not offended,” I told Nate. “And I know what you mean.”
“Why?” he asked. “Is your dad in the army, too?”
“He was,” I said, emphasizing the was part.
That was usually a pretty big conversation-killer, but I guess kids who have grown up around the military are a little more used to it than everyone else. He said, “I’m sorry, man,” then asked for the glue. I picked it up with extreme caution and passed it over.
When I had emptied out everything else from my folder, I saw that Bowen had kept one item: the map of Afghanistan. My eyes burned as I grabbed a Sharpie and carefully drew a star on the spot where I knew my father had died.
I glanced up and caught Nate looking. He turned away really fast.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You can look. I’m going to have to write about this anyway, right?”
He nodded. “Is that where—”
I swallowed. I never talked about this, and my throat felt very dry. “Yeah. He was a firefighter on an artillery base. A mortar round came in at night, hit some gas cans, and set the barracks on fire. Almost everyone was asleep in their racks, right? So my dad kept going in and throwing guys over his shoulder, then running outside through the smoke with them. Then he would turn around and run back in. The last time, his commanding officer tried to stop him—he said they were pretty sure everybody was already
out. My dad’s last words were, ‘Pretty sure isn’t sure, sir.’ ”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. They gave my dad a medal. I mean, they gave us a medal . . . after . . . ” All of a sudden, I couldn’t be in class anymore. I got up and walked out of the room, really fast. Then I headed for the bathroom to splash cold water on my face and stayed in there until my heart slowed down and my legs stopped feeling all shaky.
When I got back to the room, the bell had rung, and a whole new group of kids was in there. Mr. Kurt put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Are you all right, buddy? Your pal Nate told me he thought you’d gotten glue in your eye.”
“I’m okay now,” I said. I realized suddenly that I basically was. It had felt good to tell my father’s story.
“Well, if that happens again, please go to the nurse, okay?”
I nodded, but I was actually thinking, In your dreams, buddy-o-rama. I could only imagine what The Bird could do to a kid’s eyeball.
When I went to my table to get my stuff, I saw that Nate had put the map, very neatly, in my folder.
I smiled.
* * *
My biggest problem was gym. We had to wear these incredibly stupid-looking purple-and-gold uniforms that read MONTVALE PHYSICAL EDUCATION on the front and STRONG BODIES, STRONG MINDS! on the back. Personally, I thought the back should have read YES, WE LOOK LIKE DORKS! But nobody had consulted me about the design.
Anyway, there was a ten-dollar uniform fee. I couldn’t remember the last time I had held a ten-dollar bill in my hand, and if I did somehow find myself in possession of one, I certainly wasn’t going to blow it on this monstrosity. However, my gym teacher, Mr. Cavallero, informed us on the first day, right after he handed me my too-large “extra small” uniform, that if we didn’t pay the fee soon, we could fail gym.
Actually, informed is a rather gentle way of saying it. Mr. Cavallero shouted the information at us, just like he shouted everything else. It was like someone had cranked the volume knob on his voice all the way up, and then spilled some of the special glue from our English class on it so it could never be adjusted back down again. And in case his own awe-inspiring loudness didn’t do the job, he also carried a bullhorn, which he growled into for extra ear-shattering effect.
Seriously, the man’s voice rang from the rafters.
Every day after the first week, he read a list of names out loud before class started. For a little while, the list was pretty long, but it shortened up in a hurry, until every single day, the official start to gym class was signaled by Mr. Cavallero barking into his bullhorn: “MAVERICK FALCONER.” He didn’t even bother to say why he was calling out my name, but everyone in there knew.
Finally, I decided I would have to speak with him, no matter how embarrassing it was, because the name thing was worse, AND failing gym would be a nightmare and a half. So I changed really fast at the beginning of the period, and then went over to him instead of heading for my spot on the gym floor.
“FALCONER!” he shouted in my face.
“I’m right here, sir.”
“Do you have ten dollars today?”
My face burning, I stared down at my feet. I don’t ever have ten dollars, I thought. And since today is part of ever, I am going to have to say no, I don’t freaking have ten dollars.
“Um, no, sir. But here’s the thing. My mom just switched jobs, and money is kind of tight at home right now, so—”
I looked up, and saw that Mr. Cavallero was also staring down at my feet—or, more accurately, at my falling-apart footwear. With a horrified look on his face, he asked, “Do you call those things sneakers?”
“Well, actually I call them Jim and Bob. Jim’s the right one, and Bob’s the left—”
“You’re unprepared. It’s bad enough that you haven’t paid your uniform fee, but now you don’t even have the respect to come and talk to me with proper athletic attire on? You know what? I don’t have time for this! Go see Mr. Overbye!”
“But—”
“Go!”
I looked around the room, and every single kid in the gym was staring at me. Nate looked kind of sympathetic, but nobody else did. And Bowen gave me a happy little wave, like he was saying, “Buh-bye!”
Great. Now I was really mad. Mad enough to shoot my mouth off without thinking about the consequences. I stomped all the way to the office and opened Mr. Overbye’s door before the secretaries could stop me.
He was on the phone. In a disturbingly smooth voice I hadn’t heard before, he said, “I’ll call you back, honey. I think I have a situation on my hands here.” Then he hung up and said to me, in a somewhat less pleasant tone, “What are you doing in my office, Maverick?”
Just then, a secretary came smashing in behind me, and whacked me on the back of the head with the edge of the door so hard that some kind of framed picture fell off the door at the same time. I grabbed at my scalp, feeling for gashes, as Mr. Overbye jumped to his feet and waved her away. She backed out, mumbling apologies—not to me, but to him, because she hadn’t blocked me before I had gotten into his office.
Where did the school find these ladies? She had just smashed a kid’s skull with a door, so she apologized to her boss for the inconvenience? If she had shot me, would she have begged his forgiveness for the mess on his carpet?
Probably.
Anyway, The Bee picked up his photo frame, which now featured a cracked corner. Then he eased me into the chair, and asked, “Is your head all right?”
I paused for a minute before responding, because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t bleeding, but there was a kind of disturbing ringing in my—
“Because,” he continued, “I can call for the nurse.”
“NO!” I shouted. “I mean, I’m fine. I’m perfect. In fact, um, my head’s always been a bit uneven back there. I, uh, think your secretary just fixed it. Please thank her for me. Whew!”
He rolled his eyes, then leaned forward and said, “Now. Why did you just charge in here? Which you will never, ever in your life do again, by the way.”
“Mr. Cavallero sent me.”
“Why did he do that? Were you fighting with Bowen Strack?”
“No.”
“Were you fighting with someone else?”
“No!”
“Were you being rude, or disrespectful, or breaking the rules of the gymnasium?”
“NO!”
“Then what happened?”
“Mr. Cavallero kicked me out of class for being poor!”
My eyes burned. I swallowed. I had just done something really scary. See, grown-ups always tell you that lying is the worst thing you can do, and that might be theoretically true. But in practice, the worst thing you can do is blurt out a truth that nobody wants to hear.
The Bee sighed, took a long moment to study the framed item that had fallen from his door, and then turned it toward me. It was just a fancy piece of cream-colored paper, with a sentence written on it in black calligraphy: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. I realized that the sentence had been hanging behind me the other times I had visited his office.
Whenever he had looked over my head and then gotten quieter, it was because he had been reading that quote.
“Maverick,” The Bee said, “you aren’t the first student who’s come in here complaining about Mr. Cavallero’s yelling. ‘He screams in my face!’ they say. ‘He never listens to me,’ they say. It’s an extremely tough situation, Mr. Falconer.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told another student, although I have trusted a few parents with it. Mr. Cavallero is one of the gentlest men I know. Would you believe his hobbies are knitting sweaters for disabled veterans and organic gardening? But he has a problem. Back in 1972—we’re talking a long time ago, before I was even born—Mr. Cavallero was a Marine in Vietnam. An artillery round exploded right next to him, blew out his left eardrum, and damaged his right one pretty badly. Maverick, your gym teacher yells because he can’t hear very well
. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”
That was a sad story and all, but the guy had also been a jerk about my problem. “But—but—I told him my mom couldn’t afford to pay the gym uniform fee, and then he started screaming at me about how I had disrespected him by wearing ratty sneakers to his class. I CAN’T AFFORD NEW SNEAKERS! THAT’S THE POINT! It’s like he didn’t even . . . ”
“Hear you?”
Wow.
“Were you far away when you told him this?”
“No, I was right in front of him.”
“Were you looking directly at him? It’s much easier for him if he can see your facial expressions and read your lips.”
Darn. I had been staring straight down at the floor. I shook my head.
“I bet Mr. Cavallero got a little snappish with you, right?”
I nodded.
“It’s a funny thing, Maverick. People hate looking weak. A lot of them would rather seem tough than weak, even if it actually causes them to look mean. Something to think about, isn’t it?”
I nodded again. I was doing a lot of that. Truthfully, I almost felt bad for Mr. Cavallero all of a sudden.
“Now, what sneaker size are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“What size are your sneakers?”
“Well, these are a six. But they’re really tight on me. I think I’m probably at least a seven by now.”
“Have you told your mother this?”
“No, but . . . umm . . . she just started a new job, and we’re behind on some bills. I figured I would tell her right around Christmas. That way, she can just give me the sneakers as my present.”
Mr. Overbye started to reach for his phone. If he called Aunt Cat, she would start asking me too many questions about Mom, and it would be bad. If she found out I was alone from four until midnight every day, who knew what she might do?
“Please don’t say anything, Mr. Overbye. I don’t mind having old sneakers. I always have old sneakers.”
The Secret Sheriff of Sixth Grade Page 4