Wow.
I was used to explaining money stuff to Kevin. I wasn’t used to having him explain something back to me. So I lay there, kind of surprised, thinking about what he’d said. It actually made some sense.
“I don’t know, Mitch. But that’s what I think, anyway. Hang in there. Nobody stays mad forever.” He got up and headed for the door again.
“Kevin?” I said before he got there.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. But the thing is…” I said quietly, still staring up at the ceiling, “most of them weren’t really my friends, even though I wanted them to be.”
He nodded, like he understood what I meant, and then he left.
I lay there, thinking about the one real friend I’d made during this whole year so far, and the look on her face in the assistant principal’s office. If anybody in the world could stay mad forever, it might be Jamie Spielberger.
Back in California, a kid in the grade above me was suspended for getting into a fistfight one time. I remember thinking that suspension sounded more like a vacation than a punishment. You have to stay home from school for a few days? Not much difference between that and a weekend.
Wrong.
Mom and Dad made me swear I wouldn’t watch television, turn on the computer, play video games, or watch a screen of any kind. Instead, I had to work on all the assignments from school that I was missing. On top of that, they gave me extra assignments to keep me busy. Dad printed out a list of world capitals and told me that I was expected to have them memorized by the time he returned home from work. From Afghanistan (Kabul) to Zimbabwe (Harare).
Mom had given me a list of vocabulary words to commit to memory.
Illicit: illegal
Clandestine: held in secret
Deceiving: tricking or giving a false impression
(Jeez, I wondered whether all the words Mom chose were intended to be about my “crime.” I was relieved that the rest weren’t about me. I think.)
Corpulent: fat
Xenophobic: fearful of foreigners
Diffident: shy
Craven: cowardly
Interminable: never-ending
They’d also decided that I was going to have to “make amends” to the Jonasburg school community. “People will feel better about you, and you’ll feel better about yourself,” Mom said. They were going to call Mrs. Allegra and talk about some ideas for what I could do.
Oh, and one more thing. They made me get rid of all the money!
By this time, I had a little more than three hundred dollars stashed away. Mom and Dad sat me down for a talk about what to do with my “ill-gotten gains,” as Mom called them.
“We thought about making you give back the money to the kids who paid to bet,” Mom said. “But we decided that it could get too complicated.”
“Plus, those kids made some mistakes, too,” Dad said. “They shouldn’t have been betting in the first place.”
I guess that’s why they were waiting to talk to Mrs. Allegra.
It turned out they decided there was somebody who needed the money more than I did, or the other kids at Jonasburg Middle School did. Dad told me I was going to have to donate everything I’d earned off the gambling ring to a charity. “We have a few suggestions for you,” he said, “if you need some ideas. Or you’re welcome to come up with something on your own. But you’re not going to keep that money.”
You know, I wasn’t too upset about that. Making the money had been fun. Figuring it all out—how to place the bets, how to eliminate the risk, how to make people want to give me two dollars every Monday. Having the money was fun, but it was never really the point.
I’m not sure Mom and Dad would have understood that, though. So I just nodded and agreed.
Thinking about where I’d donate all my cash was actually the only interesting thing that happened that whole week. Otherwise, one of those vocabulary words—“interminable”—basically described my days.
Boy, was it boring. And, worst of all, there was no one else to talk to.
At one point, my mind wandered and I reached for the phone in the living room to call Jamie. Then I remembered:
1) I wasn’t allowed to use the phone.
2) Jamie hated my guts.
Still, I wondered what she was doing. Probably writing in her notebook. A new notebook, anyway. Maybe she was writing down more insults. He’s so dumb, he tried to drown a fish. She’s so dumb, she tried to put M&M’S in alphabetical order. Maybe she was reading her favorite magazine, Sports Illustrated. Maybe she was playing with Pepper. Maybe her parents had given her extra school assignments, too.
On Friday, when Dad asked if I wanted to go to the store with him, I was practically panting with excitement, just like Pepper when she thinks you’re about to throw her ball.
Mom was working on some sort of “big secret project,” and she had to go to Louisville to buy supplies. Dad was vague on the details but said that he had an appointment in the afternoon, and maybe I could “hold down the fort” while he was busy.
When I got to the store, I noticed that something looked different. There was a lot more stuff on display. Vases and paintings and teapots and sculptures and bowls. More of them than ever. One of the things on the walls was that painting I’d bought, the one-hundred-dollar one of the covered bridge. I remembered Mrs. Allegra saying that my parents had found it under my bed.
My dad saw me looking at it and walked over to the cash register. He took out a handful of twenties. “Here,” he said. “The rest of the money—I know we said you had to donate it. But I think this is yours.”
Oh, man. I felt sick.
It was weird. I’d been yelled at by the assistant principal and my best friend. I’d been suspended. I had to give away hundreds of dollars. But the thing that made me feel so bad that my stomach squirmed around inside me was when my dad made me take back that hundred dollars.
“No, Dad,” I begged. “I don’t want it. I don’t. I just—I really wanted you to have it. Dad, please?”
He didn’t budge. But after he pushed the money into my pocket, he leaned back against the counter and looked at me.
“You wanted us to have that money?” he asked softly.
I nodded.
“Why, Mitch?”
I’d told Jamie, but this was a lot tougher. How do you tell your dad that you’re worried he and your mom aren’t making enough money?
“I just—I was getting worried,” I muttered, staring down at the floor. “That things were getting bad. Like back in California.”
“Oh, Mitch.”
Dad sounded so sad. That was really worse than him being mad. I looked quickly up at him and then down at the paint-splattered floor.
“I know it was rough on you, having to move,” he said. “You and Kevin both. But things are okay here, right?”
“Yeah, things are okay,” I agreed. That was sort of the point. “I just—I want them to keep on being okay, right, Dad? I like it here. I really do. I don’t want to have to move again.”
Dad sighed.
“Maybe I should get suspended, too,” he said sadly. “Mitch, really? Running an illegal gambling ring? You were worried about our family’s finances, and that was your solution?”
Well, when he put it like that, it did sound kind of stupid.
“Listen,” my dad said seriously. “You don’t have to keep this family afloat. That’s our job, your mom’s and mine. Maybe we haven’t always done it perfectly, but we’re working on it. And it’ll be okay. You’re a kid. Please just be a kid. All right, Mitch?”
I must have made a face that indicated it wasn’t all right.
“Mitch? Say what you’re thinking, please. When you get that look on your face, I start to get worried you’re about to go sell shares of the Brooklyn Bridge or start a gambling ring or something.” He was smiling. But, I wasn’t.
I took a deep breath.
“So I’m a kid. Right,” I agreed. “But I do know some things, D
ad. I do have good ideas.”
“I know you do, Mitch.”
“No, you don’t!” He sort of jumped. I guess my voice was a little loud. “When I try to talk about money, you don’t ever listen. But I understand this stuff, Dad. I’m not trying to tell you about what glaze to put on your pots, or how hot to make the kiln. But I can help you sell stuff. Like—look at the store. Look at all this stuff!”
He looked around blankly. Like, Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff here. So? “We’ve been hard at work making a lot of different things,” he said. “Even if no one is buying them.”
“Maybe that’s not a coincidence.”
Dad’s eyebrows went up.
“Tell me more,” he said. I hesitated. “No, really,” he went on. “Are you saying that you think having more products to offer our customers, that show off more of our artistic talents, might be a bad thing?”
“Well, there is such a thing as too many choices,” I said. “People get overwhelmed. Remember when Mom took me to get a Halloween costume last year and I eventually came home with nothing?”
“Yeah,” said Dad.
“I couldn’t decide because there were too many choices. There were hundreds and hundreds of costumes in the store. I could have been a zombie or an ax murderer or a mummy or a lumberjack or a racecar driver or a pirate or a hippie like you.”
“If you’d chosen to be a hippie,” he responded, “I could have given you your choice of tie-dyed shirts.”
“But I didn’t choose that. I didn’t choose anything. It was way too much to think about. If there had been six costumes, I would have picked one. When there were six hundred, I was, like, frozen.”
“If you were frozen, you should have gone as a yeti. Or the guy who drives the ice cream truck.”
“Very funny,” I said. “Seriously, Dad, sometimes less is more.”
He nodded. He looked like he actually might have heard what I had to say. But right then the bell over the door jangled, and a serious-looking man carrying a binder full of files walked in. He reminded me of the guy the bank had sent to foreclose on our house in California.
“Mr. Collins!” Dad greeted him, shaking his hand. “The office is this way. Mitch, you’re minding the shop. If you need anything, come get me.”
CHAPTER 13
WHAT’S IT REALLY WORTH?
With Dad downstairs talking to Mr. Collins, I strolled around the shop. I was embarrassed to realize that I had never really looked at Mom’s and Dad’s artwork before. Sure, I’d seen it. But I’d never really appreciated it the way that I should have.
With nothing else to do, I studied the vases and pots and paintings. There was so much detail, all sorts of neat curlicues, intersecting lines, and colors I could swear I’d never seen before. I don’t think that I’d ever felt prouder of Mom and Dad, even if all this art was still in the shop, unsold.
If you looked closely, there were even some jokes. Mom had made a painting of the bulls that live on the farm across the road from my grandma’s house. On their cowbells, in the smallest letters, she had written their names: One was Kevin, the other was Mitch. Another of the oil paintings showed a boy going to school in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. She named it French Schoolboy, Yves Dropper.
Speaking of eavesdropping: When the Grateful Dead music Dad had put on the stereo got through its last track and stopped, the showroom got quieter and I could hear some of the discussion coming from downstairs. I could only pick up little bits of the conversation, but I sure didn’t like what I heard—words like “renegotiate” and “penalty” and “debt.”
I wanted to get closer, but figured I had already gotten in enough trouble for one week. Or month. Or year. Or for a kid’s lifetime. Besides, just then the wind chimes over the door jingled. A customer!
A woman walked in, talking on her cell phone. She was wearing sunglasses and a Jonasburg baseball cap. “Yeah, I’m in Sloans’ Creations,” she said into her phone. “That new art store. Yeah, my kid is friends with the owners’ kid. Lemme call you back.”
Hmmm, I thought to myself. She’s the mom of which of Kevin’s friends? Neil Butwipe? Or maybe Julio Haberberg, the punter on the football team, who everyone says is worse than Clint Grayson, but who has been getting more action than he wants this season. Or maybe her “kid” is a girl and it’s one of the sophomores or juniors who have a crush on Kevin.
Looking at this woman in her baseball cap made me think of Jamie. I tried to picture her as a grown-up. Maybe she would look like this woman when she got older. But no way would she ever wear those fancy designer sunglasses.
“What can I help you find?” I asked her, trying to sound as charming and professional as possible. This was another trick I had picked up from watching business shows and reading articles online. When you walk into a store and the worker says, Can I help you find anything? it gives you the chance to say no. Politely, of course. But still, no is no. When you say, What can I help you find? you’re kind of setting up the person to find something.
“Oh, a nice piece of art for our new living room,” she said. “Something warm and inviting.”
She strolled around the store, looking like an art critic. I thought about how weird it must be for my parents to have people come into their store, look at their work that they spent hours and hours, days and days, trying to make perfect, and then walk away. I’d be so tempted to say: Wait, what don’t you like about it? You think you could do better?
The woman stopped right in front of the picture of the covered bridge. I kind of cringed inside.
“Wow,” she said. “This is beautiful.”
“It’s great,” I agreed. “Notice the shade of red on the roof?”
“Perfect,” she gushed. “But it doesn’t seem to have a price. How much is it?”
I probably should have gone downstairs, interrupted Dad, and asked. But instead I blurted out, “Well, what do you think it’s worth?”
See, if you want to buy something like a pizza or an airline ticket, you can figure out a fair price by checking around. But with art, it’s different. It’s not like there’s another store selling paintings of covered bridges. Or maybe there is, but not exactly like this painting. Each piece of art is unique, one of a kind. So the price is unique, too.
“Oh, gosh, I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe three hundred dollars?”
Sweet!
“I think that’s fair,” I said.
“Don’t you want to check with your folks first?” she asked.
“Nah, they trust me,” I said, trying my hardest to sound grown-up.
“Yes, we do,” said Dad’s voice.
I jumped. I hadn’t even heard him come up from the office. But there he was, leaning in the doorway, grinning at me and the customer.
“Mitch is in charge of the business end,” he said. “Couldn’t handle things without him. Let me get that wrapped up for you.”
When Dad had her painting safely wrapped and she was about to go, I asked her something. “I heard you talking on the phone when you walked in. Who’s your kid, the one who’s friends with Kevin?”
“Kevin?” she asked. “I don’t know Kevin. My son says he’s friends with you.”
Friends? With me?
“My name is Catherine Barnes,” she said. “My son is Ben.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Barnes,” I said, holding out my hand. “I like Ben a lot, too.”
“A pleasure,” she said, shaking my hand. “Ben told me that you’re really smart and clever.” She smiled. “And it’s nice to see you putting those smarts to good use this time.”
Uh-oh. Was I about to get yelled at by another adult? “I’m sorry if I got Ben in trouble. I didn’t mean to.…”
“It’s okay,” she said. “No one else got suspended. The school just gave every participant a stern warning. And Ben knows he did something wrong, too. He’s not blameless.”
“Well, please tell him I said hi.”
“You can tell h
im yourself,” she said with a smile. “He’d like to hear from you.” She started to walk out, then paused and turned around. “But just to be clear, you’re not going to start another scheme—”
“No way!” my dad and I shouted at the same time before she could even finish.
The Sunday night before I went back to school, life started to feel normal again. Mom and Dad gave me back my TV and Internet privileges. Once I finished the last of my homework, put out my clothes, and packed my lunch, I could watch football. But after everything that happened, I realized I wasn’t as excited to watch as I used to be.
I also knew things were getting back to normal when Kevin asked for a loan again, complaining that he had blown through his weekly allowance. “I only need a few dollars,” he whined. “It’s for lunch tomorrow. I’ll pay you back. With interest.”
I was tempted to use a line from the Shakespeare play Hamlet. Some of my homework over the last four days had been to try to read it. I didn’t really understand much, but this one line made a lot of sense: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be. For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”
I was pretty confused at first because I thought “husbandry” probably had something to do with being a “husband.” But then I looked up the definition and found out that it means “working hard.” The whole line basically says: When you borrow or lend money, you can lose both money and friends. Kind of like when you make bets, I guess. Plus, borrowing money (and maybe winning bets, too) makes you less willing to work hard.
But I didn’t quote Shakespeare at Kevin. For one thing, you know how I was feeling about money right then? Kind of like a guy who’s just won a hot dog eating contest would feel about hot dogs. Ugh. No thanks, no more. I found a balled-up five-dollar bill in my pocket and tossed it to Kevin. “Keep it,” I said.
“Hey, thanks, Mitch,” he said in a low voice, sounding extra grateful.
“I’ll give you a tip, too,” I said.
The Rookie Bookie Page 10