Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush?

by Jerry Spinelli

  “Kidnapped,” she sniveled.

  “Kidnapped?”

  “Yes. Were you?”

  Suddenly I remembered. “How’s Greg?”

  She smiled, wiping my tears. “He’s going to be all right, the doctor said. Close call.”

  “He was blue. He couldn’t move.”

  “He was in the water for a long time. Another couple minutes—” She started crying again. “He said… said you saved him.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know who saved who.”

  She kissed me and hugged me some more. My father cradled my feet on his lap and squeezed them through the blankets.

  “Now,” my mother sniffed, “were you abducted? Kidnapped?”

  “You mean did somebody snatch me?”

  “Yes. Well?”

  “Why would anybody wanna snatch me?”

  “Megin. Just did they?”

  “Did who? Who’s they?”

  “Anybody! Snatch you?”

  I laughed. “Jeez no!” And she grabbed me again and we cried some more.

  Toddie reached for the hot tea and gave me his pleading face. “Sip?”

  “A sip,” I said.

  Then they started asking me a million questions, but I was saved by the nurse. She told them I needed rest. She almost had to kick them out. Then, for the second time that day, I went to sleep in a bed that wasn’t my own.

  When they came next day, they brought something with them.

  “My stick!”

  “It was found on the ice,” my father said, bowing and presenting it to me. I hugged it, I kissed it. “Seems like you two made the lake a tourist attraction. There’s a whole crowd down there looking at the big hole in the ice. You’re famous.”

  “And something from Jackie at Dunkin’ Donuts,” said my mother, handing me a pink-and-purple box. It was crammed with blueberry-filleds. My mother pushed my hand away, took one out, gave it to me, and closed the box. “Sue Ann and Zoe send their love and say hello.”

  Then she handed me another box, wrapped in Christmas paper. I tore it open. It was something to wear, knitted, red. I took it out: a sweater. There was a little white envelope. It said, “For Megin.” I opened it.

  I told you I can’t knit!!

  Love,

  Your Grandmother

  She was right. One sleeve was longer than the other, and the whole thing was sort of cockeyed. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t see very well either.

  “The director from Beechwood Manor brought it this morning,” my mother was saying. “She found it in Emilie’s room. It wasn’t wrapped yet. She read the card, saw the name. That’s all she had to go on. She said a girl came in Thursday afternoon—” She kissed me on the forehead. “That was you, wasn’t it?” I nodded. “She called the junior-high office. It’s a good thing we named you Megin. There’s only one Megin in the school. They gave her our address.” I was clutching the sweater, crying into it. “I was very, very sorry to hear about Emilie.”

  After a while she lifted my face and dried my eyes and smiled. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Home.”

  “Now?”

  “Doctor says you’re okay.”

  “What about Greg?”

  “One more day for him.’

  I pulled the curtain around the bed and got dressed. My father kept saying, “I see your fee-eet.” I put my new sweater on. Besides everything else, it was about ten sizes too big.

  On the way down the hall, my father said, “There’s Greg’s room.” They stopped and looked at me. I took a deep breath and went in. Somebody else was there, a girl with a light blue scarf. She was leaning over the bed so I couldn’t even see him. I left. “He’s busy,” I said, and we went home.

  Greg

  USUALLY I don’t like a big fuss on my birthday, but since it came just two days after I got out of the hospital, my mother said we should make it into a welcome-home celebration. I was arguing with her and telling her no, forget it, when I happened to notice the situation: it was 3:15 in the afternoon, but my mother was not in the living room lying on the sofa. She was in the kitchen, her hands were flipping through cake recipes, her mouth was telling me how to celebrate my birthday, and her eyes were wide open. She was not surviving.

  “Okay,” I said, “if it’s a little celebration.”

  So I invited Sara and Poff and Valducci. Then I told Megin she could invite friends of hers. I knew she would ask Sue Ann and Zoe. I didn’t tell Valducci.

  Poff and Valducci were the first to arrive. We were in the basement shooting darts when the doorbell rang, and Valducci, at the sound of Zoe’s voice, kangarooed up the steps, dart in hand. A few seconds later there was a howl. Poff and I ran upstairs. Toddie, scowling, fierce, was pushing Valducci across the living room, away from Zoe. Valducci backed into the wall. He looked at us, shocked. “He kicked me.”

  “Zoe my girlfrenn,” Toddie snarled and kicked him again.

  Give Valducci credit. A couple minutes later he came up with something that even Toddie approved of. He got an apple from my mother. He held his dart out to Zoe and said, “Miss Miranda, I besmirched your honor and ruined your apple last week at school. Now, you may take your revenge.” Zoe just stood there staring, so Valducci put the dart in her hand. Then he backed up about five feet and stood at attention and placed the apple on his head. “Fire when ready,” he said.

  Only Toddie made a sound (“Shoot, Zoe, shoot!”). Everybody else was just gaping. As well as I know Valducci, even I didn’t know if he was serious, and I could tell by the faces that nobody else knew either. Zoe stared at him for a long while. You could see her thinking about all the times he’d pestered her; and the more she thought, the faster the dart rolled in her fingers. Then her face changed, just a little, and her hand was rising, up to her shoulder, then pulling back; her eyes were narrow, her lips tight. Sara grabbed my arm. My father reached out—“Okay now—” but his words were cut short by Zoe’s arm snapping forward and all eyes shot to the apple—and then Zoe was laughing, and her hand was hanging limp at her side, still holding the dart.

  She was still laughing when she walked over to Valducci, still stiff at attention, and took the apple from his head. She took a bite of it, not laughing now, looking right into his eyes, the way you’d never see a seventh-grader do to a ninth-grader, and I knew she had seen the same thing I had seen: that Valducci had never flinched, not even when the dart was snapping forward. His eyes never blinked, the apple never moved. Sorry, Toddie, I thought, you lost.

  I’d never heard “Happy Birthday” sung so loud before. Usually it was just my mother and father and Toddie. I was embarrassed. I kept staring at the candles on the cake. I couldn’t wait for them to finish the song. Then a funny thing happened:

  “Happy birthday dear Gre-eg,

  Happy birthday—”

  Right in the middle of the final line, the singing stopped. I looked up. Sara was grinning. They were all grinning at me. Then they all turned to the other end of the table, and my sister, her face in candle glow, swamped in her new red sweater that fit her like a bathrobe, my sister Megin, sang the rest all by herself: “tooooo you.”

  For more great reads and free samplers, visit

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  JERRY SPINELLI is the author of over thirty immensely popular books for young readers, including Eggs; Stargirl; Space Station Seventh Grade; Newbery Honor Book Wringer; Maniac Magee, winner of more than fifteen state children’s book awards in addition to the Newbery Award; and the picture book I Can Be Anything! He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Eileen. His website is jerryspinelli.com.

  Also by Jerry Spinelli

  Eggs

  Maniac Magee

  Space Station Seventh Grade

  Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush

  Jason and Marceline

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of the Newbery Award–winning novel MANIAC MAGEE

  1

  Maniac Magee was not born in a dum
p. He was born in a house, a pretty ordinary house, right across the river from here, in Bridgeport. And he had regular parents, a mother and a father.

  But not for long.

  One day his parents left him with a sitter and took the P & W high-speed trolley into the city. On the way back home, they were on board when the P & W had its famous crash, when the motorman was drunk and took the high trestle over the Schuylkill River at sixty miles an hour, and the whole kaboodle took a swan dive into the water.

  And just like that, Maniac was an orphan. He was three years old.

  Of course, to be accurate, he wasn’t really Maniac then. He was Jeffrey. Jeffrey Lionel Magee.

  Little Jeffrey was shipped off to his nearest relatives, Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan. They lived in Hollidaysburg, in the western part of Pennsylvania.

  Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan hated each other, but because they were strict Catholics, they wouldn’t get a divorce. Around the time Jeffrey arrived, they stopped talking to each other. Then they stopped sharing.

  Pretty soon there were two of everything in the house. Two bathrooms. Two TVs. Two refrigerators. Two toasters. If it were possible, they would have had two Jeffreys. As it was, they split him up as best they could. For instance, he would eat dinner with Aunt Dot on Monday, with Uncle Dan on Tuesday, and so on.

  Eight years of that.

  Then came the night of the spring musicale at Jeffrey’s school. He was in the chorus. There was only one show, and one auditorium, so Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan were forced to share at least that much. Aunt Dot sat on one side, Uncle Dan on the other.

  Jeffrey probably started screaming from the start of the song, which was “Talk to the Animals,” but nobody knew it because he was drowned out by all the other voices. Then the music ended, and Jeffrey went right on screaming, his face bright red by now, his neck bulging. The music director faced the singers, frozen with his arms still raised. In the audience faces began to change. There was a quick smatter of giggling by some people who figured the screaming kid was some part of the show, some funny animal maybe. Then the giggling stopped, and eyes started to shift and heads started to turn, because now everybody could see that this wasn’t part of the show at all, that little Jeffrey Magee wasn’t supposed to be up there on the risers, pointing to his aunt and uncle, bellowing out from the midst of the chorus: “Talk! Talk, will ya! Talk! Talk! Talk!”

  No one knew it then, but it was the birth scream of a legend.

  And that’s when the running started. Three springy steps down from the risers—girls in pastel dresses screaming, the music director lunging—a leap from the stage, out the side door and into the starry, sweet, onion-grass-smelling night.

  Never again to return to the house of two toasters. Never again to return to school.

  2

  Everybody knows that Maniac Magee (then Jeffrey) started out in Hollidaysburg and wound up in Two Mills. The question is: What took him so long? And what did he do along the way?

  Sure, two hundred miles is a long way, especially on foot, but the year that it took him to cover it was about fifty-one weeks more than he needed—figuring the way he could run, even then.

  The legend doesn’t have the answer. That’s why this period is known as The Lost Year.

  And another question: Why did he stay here? Why Two Mills?

  Of course, there’s the obvious answer that sitting right across the Schuylkill is Bridgeport, where he was born. Yet there are other theories. Some say he just got tired of running. Some say it was the butterscotch Krimpets. And some say he only intended to pause here but that he stayed because he was so happy to make a friend.

  If you listen to everybody who claims to have seen Jeffrey-Maniac Magee that first day, there must have been ten thousand people and a parade of fire trucks waiting for him at the town limits. Don’t believe it. A couple of people truly remember, and here’s what they saw: a scraggly little kid jogging toward them, the soles of both sneakers hanging by their hinges and flopping open like dog tongues each time they came up from the pavement.

  But it was something they heard that made him stick in their minds all these years. As he passed them, he said, “Hi.” Just that—“Hi”—and he was gone. They stopped, they blinked, they turned, they stared after him, they wondered: Do I know that kid? Because people just didn’t say that to strangers, out of the blue.

  3

  As for the first person to actually stop and talk with Maniac, that would be Amanda Beale. And it happened because of a mistake.

  It was around eight in the morning, and Amanda was heading for grade school, like hundreds of other kids all over town. What made Amanda different was that she was carrying a suitcase, and that’s what caught Maniac’s eye. He figured she was like him, running away, so he stopped and said, “Hi.”

  Amanda was suspicious. Who was this white stranger kid? And what was he doing in the East End, where almost all the kids were black? And why was he saying that?

  But Amanda Beale was also friendly. So she stopped and said “Hi” back.

  “Are you running away?” Jeffrey asked her.

  “Huh?” said Amanda.

  Jeffrey pointed at the suitcase.

  Amanda frowned, then thought, then laughed. She laughed so hard she began to lose her balance, so she set the suitcase down and sat on it so she could laugh more safely. When at last she could speak, she said, “I’m not running away. I’m going to school.”

  She saw the puzzlement on his face. She got off the suitcase and opened it up right there on the sidewalk.

  Jeffrey gasped. “Books!”

  Books, all right. Both sides of the suitcase crammed with them. Dozens more than anyone would ever need for homework.

  Jeffrey fell to his knees. He and Amanda and the suitcase were like a rock in a stream; the school-goers just flowed to the left and right around them. He turned his head this way and that to read the titles. He lifted the books on top to see the ones beneath. There were fiction books and nonfiction books, who-did-it books and let’s-be-friends books and what-is-it books and how-to books and how-not-to books and just-regular-kid books. On the bottom was a single volume from an encyclopedia. It was the letter A.

  “My library,” Amanda Beale said proudly.

  Somebody called, “Gonna be late for school, girl!”

  Amanda looked up. The street was almost deserted. She slammed the suitcase shut and started hauling it along. Jeffrey took the suitcase from her. “I’ll carry it for you.”

  Amanda’s eyes shot wide. She hesitated; then she snatched it back. “Who are you?” she said.

  “Jeffrey Magee.”

  “Where are you from? West End?”

  “No.”

  She stared at him, at the flap-soled sneakers. Back in those days the town was pretty much divided. The East End was blacks, the West End was whites. “I know you’re not from the East End.”

  “I’m from Bridgeport.”

  “Bridgeport? Over there? That Bridgeport?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, why aren’t you there?”

  “It’s where I’m from, not where I am.”

  “Great. So where do you live?”

  Jeffrey looked around. “I don’t know… maybe… here?”

  “Maybe?” Amanda shook her head and chuckled. “Maybe you better go ask your mother and father if you live here or not.”

  She speeded up. Jeffrey dropped back for a second, then caught up with her. “Why are you taking all these books to school?”

  Amanda told him. She told him about her little brother and sister at home, who loved to crayon every piece of paper they could find, whether or not it already had type all over it. And about the dog, Bow Wow, who chewed everything he could get his teeth on. And that, she said, was why she carried her whole library to and from school every day.

  First bell was ringing; the school was still a block away. Amanda ran. Jeffrey ran.

  “Can I have a book?” he said.

  “They’re mine,” s
he said.

  “Just to read. To borrow.”

  “No.”

  “Please. What’s your name?”

  “Amanda.”

  “Please, Amanda. Any one. Your shortest one.”

  “I’m late now and I’m not gonna stop and open up this thing again. Forget it.”

  He stopped. “Amanda!”

  She kept running, then stopped, turned, glared. What kind of kid was this, anyway? All grungy. Ripped shirt. Why didn’t he go back to Bridgeport or the West End, where he belonged? Bother some white girl up there? And why was she still standing here?

  “So what if I loaned you one, huh? How am I gonna get it back?”

  “I’ll bring it back. Honest! If it’s the last thing I do. What’s your address?”

  “Seven twenty-eight Sycamore. But you can’t come there. You can’t even be here.”

  Second bell rang. Amanda screamed, whirled, ran.

  “Amanda!”

  She stopped, turned. “Ohhhh,” she squeaked. She tore a book from the suitcase, hurled it at him—“Here!”—and dashed into school.

  The book came flapping like a wounded duck and fell at Jeffrey’s feet. It was a story of the Children’s Crusade. Jeffrey picked it up, and Amanda Beale was late to school for the only time in her life.

  4

  Jeffrey made three other appearances that first day.

  The first came at one of the high school fields, during eleventh-grade gym class. Most of the students were playing soccer. But about a dozen were playing football, because they were on the varsity, and the gym teacher happened to be the football coach. The star quarterback, Brian Denehy, wound up and threw a sixty-yarder to his favorite receiver, James “Hands” Down, who was streaking a fly pattern down the sideline.